It's a Graves thing (soundofwings) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-09-27 01:24:00 |
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Entry tags: | death, door: dc comics, stephanie brown |
Who: Stephanie and Muerte
What: Confrontation!
Where: Stephanie’s apartment
When: Post-everyone getting arrested, pre-Steph finding out about Eddie’s plan to stay in
Warnings/Rating: Some harsh words and violence?
Death wasn’t certain when she picked up the habit of worrying about things. Certainly sometime after she’d shown up in someone else’s mind, needing to go through a door to actually be herself. And even then, it had been sometime after that as well. She could blame Eddie, blame the Bat family, even blame the influence of having Iris as a near-constant mental companion. It didn’t change the outcome, however, and the outcome was worry. About herself and the humanity she seemed to have acquired, about other people - about her effect on other people. Her own worry about dying, about being unmade into something she was not, that had begun to fade with time and a slow return to what she had once been. There were still peculiar blind spots in her awareness, and she knew that her “duties” (as the were) continued to be fulfilled even when she was not there. She knew now that if she disappeared, the door’s universe would carry on without her. There would be no upset, as she remembered there once being with the absence of her brother. It would simply… continue on.
It was a sobering thought. To know that the fading of her existence would have so little effect. Less, in fact, than Iris’ likely would, as there was no family to mourn her (even in anger), and Del might not even notice she was away. At least not at first. Perhaps it was part of why she had reached out, sent gifts. Even if things weren’t necessarily made better because of them. Perhaps it was why she was still trying, even through some rather spectacular failures. Perhaps it was why she was standing in the hallway outside of Stephanie’s apartment.
She could just as easily have shown up inside, suddenly there as she so often was. But she was making an effort at peace, though she suspected it was a losing effort. A matter of short time before she would finally accept the wisdom she’d known for so long and return to what she had once been - an entity with a job, outlasting all others until everything was done and over and gone. But she knew that she’d had an impact during her strange time of attempted friendship, and not a good impact. Some sense of fairness and balance had her wanting to right that as much as she could. So beyond all belief, she’d put all her awareness into one compact (human) body, and knocked on Stephanie’s door. Softly. Politely. Hello, I’ve come to visit.
Stephanie, for all intents and purposes, was a certifiable wreck. After her glorious, angry thrashing that night Eddie first landed himself in, where she’d yelled at everyone she possibly could over the journals and drank far too much of Frank’s good whiskey with the man, she’d fallen into a sort of pattern of mild breakdowns when she least expected it. Oh, she was going about her daily duties. She had to, or else she would wind up in an asylum, too. She forced herself to go to class, and she promised that she’d play Candy Land with Frankie Jr., and she took long walks with Matilda. But, she strategically avoided things that reminded her of Eddie as much as possible. Los Tacos was off the menu, walking remotely towards Old Gotham had her head swirl, and sleeping in her bedroom with the green question mark just fed into nightmare after nightmare. She tried to put a brave face on for Cass, but mostly during her downtime the little blonde bat curled up on her couch with Matilda and tried not to burst into tears again.
It was awful how angry and useless she felt about the whole thing. She wanted nothing more than to storm the walls and burn the prison down, but the Feds who roughed her up and threatened Eddie with a position on the Suicide Squad squashed that notion very quickly. All she wanted was him back home and safe. Sure, he was secure in Arkham City, playing the role of mob boss more easily than Stephanie felt comfortable with, but that wasn’t safe in her eyes. Safe was him cultivating his new life, working on his own projects in his own apartment. Safe was in her arms, and not at the seat of some metaphorical throne in a city abandoned as he lead the weak-minded and willing to do his bidding. She didn’t like it one bit, and it made her sick to her stomach, frankly. But, he was right. She couldn’t tell him how to survive in a place she had no idea about, in a place where he basically was a king.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t upset of course. Oh, Stephanie Brown was upset. On that particular night, it was the first full weekday without him, and when she was finished with her day, she wanted to just call him on their special comm and talk about how boring her economics class is, or the flower that Frankie had given her today to make her feel better, or how weird it was having someone living with her again. But, she couldn’t, so she found herself on the couch again with Matilda staring blankly at the low-volumed TV until she heard a knock at the door. Cass had gone out to grab some groceries -- if you could call frozen junk food groceries but Steph was upset, okay? -- and for a moment, the blonde bat thought the other girl had forgotten her keys or something. “I’m coming,” she called out hoarsely, rolling to her feet. Matilda trotted over to the door first, pressing her nose to the door as if to sniff out the intruder.
As she opened the door, Steph began, “Cass, you can just call me next time, and I’ll leave the door unlo-.” She stopped short when she saw who was actually at the door, and her arm twitched in a betrayal of the intention to slam the door in Death’s face. “He’s not here,” she said as evenly as possible. “Haven’t you heard? He’s in jail.” Stephanie’s blue eyes, blood shot with tears cried and yet to be cried, flashed with anger. She was still in her clothes from school, jeans, blue t-shirt, and a purple Gotham U sweater, and her hair was as messy as usual. Matilda trotted between the women’s feet as if to create a barrier. “What do you want?” Steph snapped finally, chest heavy and eyes narrowed.
Death stood there for a moment once the door was open, taking in the way Stephanie looked, the way Matilda put herself between the two of them. Usually she would have reached down to give the dog a good scratch behind her ears and under her collar, but she only stood there and rested a hand high on her stomach, where her necklace used to hang. She watched the twitch of arm, fully expecting the door to come hurtling back toward her, and was fairly surprised when it didn’t. “I know he is,” her voice came soft and low, something that was often comforting for the people whose time had come to move on. Not that she expected it to be for Stephanie. “I came to see you.”
She stood there, silent after that. She honestly wasn’t quite certain her next step. Mentioning that Eddie had suggested she come seemed somehow like a bad idea. “I know you’re mad. So I came to see you.” Yes, that would have to do.
Something was a little off about the other woman. Just a touch different than the last time Stephanie saw her all those months ago, when Muerte stopped her heart for those few seconds and shattered whatever trust she had with the omnipresent entity. And, maybe there was a twinge of curiosity about what had happened, but the little blonde convinced herself she didn’t care. Instead, she screwed her face up, eyes closed and hand going to press into her eyelids. “Mad about what? What could I possibly be mad about, huh? My boyfriend going to jail? My little brother throwing me under the bus? That Hal Jordan should do us all a favor and stay the fuck out? How this city never manages to let us catch our breath? Oh, no I’m completely fucking overjoyed with my life right now. Especially now that you’re standing outside my door.”
After a brief moment, she let her hand fall down roughly. Matilda looked up at her with her big brown eyes, always more in tune with what was going on that anyone realized, and Steph brushed a hand over her rust-colored fur. “Good girl,” she murmured, looking down at the dog instead of the woman standing in her doorway. “I don’t know what you’re expecting from me,” she said finally, low and rough, but still not looking up at Muerte.
Death’s eyebrows inched up at the litany of things Stephanie had to be angry about. She knew about all of them, but she didn’t interrupt, only let Steph continue until she reached the (for the moment) end of her list. “Yes, all of those things,” she replied, still quiet, still calm. “I meant more at me, though I tried to say that didn’t necessarily take precedence at the moment.” She gave a loose shrug and attempted a smile. It ended up more as a quirked thinning of her lips, but the situation didn’t exactly call for full grins at the moment.
She watched Stephanie pet Matilda, glancing down again to give the dog a truer smile. An aside, a soft whisper: “We’ll get you back the other collar. This one isn’t right.” But then her attention pulled back up again, fully on Stephanie. “I’m not expecting anything. I was hoping. I was told it could help. Let out your anger.” She lifted the hand that had been pressed to her stomach, gesturing at her face, as if that would make everything clear.
Stephanie rolled her eyes, still focused (at least superficially) on giving Matilda the love she needed and deserved, until the other woman addressed Matilda. Something about a collar, and Steph had noticed that Matilda did have a newer, darker collar, but thought little of it. Until now. Now, the blonde bat looked up and straightened, tilting her head to the side as if sizing Muerte up. “You know it really sucks. That you can know everything. Like, everything. No one gets a second of privacy when you’re around, do they?” Steph’s voice bled with sardonic sharp edges, and the way her mouth sneered wasn’t friendly at all. But, she finally let what Muerte said process in her mind, and she quirked an eyebrow at her.
“Who said that?” But as she asked it, she realized immediately who did. Who else would have? She groaned, and she pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers, and she actually took a step back into the apartment, enough to give Muerte some room. It was subconscious, the move, but an invitation nonetheless. Matilda trotted off a little further into the apartment at sat facing the doorway. Tail wagging suspiciously. “Fucking hell.”
Death watched the look, the tilt of Stephanie’s head. Her eyebrows inched up just slightly, wondering what she was looking for, if she was finding it, and then she smiled something small and wry at the unfriendly questions. “It’s less than it used to be. Not that that helps anyone else’s comfort level. I don’t know what’s going on when I’m not here, but most of it catches up when I come back through the door. Not all, but most.” She gave a small shrug, shoulders tense for that moment before they relaxed back down again as she shifted her weight back on her heels and then forward onto her toes. It was the sort of nonstillness she had only when she slipped fully down into the cramped, small human she was in these sorts of moments.
Her smile shifted into something realer, actually amused for a second at the next question. Who else would have told her anything like that? Her recent brief conversations with Selina and Jason definitely hadn’t included anything about Stephanie wanting to punch her. She watched the step back, knew it for the invitation it was, but still wasn’t especially keen on invading Stephanie’s space without a more distinct invite. She cycled through another shift of her weight, hands shoved into the pockets of her faded black jeans, and then (at a soft whuff from the dog) rolled her eyes at Matilda. “Yes, I know,” she responded softly with a shake of her head. “It doesn’t mean I’m going to barge in.”
“You’re still invading our privacy, y’know. It’s fucking rude.” Without thinking, Stephanie had stepped further into her apartment, assuming that Death had followed behind her. It wasn’t an extension of kindness or friendship to allow her in. The little blonde bat didn’t want whatever was going to happen go down in her hallway where her neighbors would probably report her to the landlord. And, she knew that Death could disrespect any boundary if she wanted. Blink, and she could be standing in the middle of her living room or digging through her fridge, or, you know, stopping her heart again. Stephanie didn’t have the energy to fight Death at the moment; she barely had the energy to get up off the couch lately. “Just come in,” she said with the coldest invitation anyone had ever gotten, but she hoped Muerte would take the hint.
Turning on her heels, she faced the front door again, leaning on the back of her couch (because the living room was only a few feet in), and arched her eyebrows at Muerte. “What was the thank you for?” Because she knew it was the other woman who left that recipe for her (that actually hadn’t been thrown out; hey, they were waffles). Eddie had told her so, but she couldn’t pinpoint why Muerte was thanking her.
For a moment, Death frowned. She slipped into the apartment, closing the door behind her with a soft click, but the frown remained. “I knocked. You didn’t have to open the door,” she said, a little bit of confusion clear on her face. “You could have told me to go away.” She could place herself anywhere she wanted to go, but she hadn’t. She’d made the effort to knock and to respect Stephanie’s apartment as her own space, even if (when she wasn’t drawing herself in to be human, at least) she knew what happened inside. She stopped a short way into the space, hand absently reaching for her absent necklace before folding her fingers together in front of her body.
The question got an acknowledging sort of hm and the briefest, subtlest smile. “There’s a lot of things people should thank you for. ...but that day it was for distracting him from the idea of the bioimplants.” She cleared her throat and continued quickly, in case Stephanie jumped in to reply right away. “And I know it’s something you would have done no matter what I or anyone else thinks, but that doesn’t mean I can’t say thank you for it. For being lovely and you, instead who you were when we all got twisted around.” The slightest wrinkle of a frown etched between her eyebrows, and it was obvious that those weren’t positive memories.
Steph bubbled out a harsh laugh, turning her body away for a brief second to check to see if Cass somehow managed to sneak through a window and stumble onto this conversation. When she turned again to Muerte, the blonde bat had a dangerous little smirk crawling up her lips. Sharp, unamused. “You really would have just let it go? After never really hesitating about violating my space before?” She rolled her eyes then, something usually saved for Eddie’s more needling comments, but this had none of the flirtation in it. Not a drop of playfulness. “I don’t want to have a shouting match in the middle of my hallway. I’m two concerned neighbors away from the cops knocking on my door.”
She pursed her lips and looked at the other woman, and wanted so very much to just snap that she didn’t need her approval at all. She didn’t need her reassurance, even if that was what she desperately needed from so many people in her life. But Muerte had fallen far down the totem pole of that, of importance to Stephanie, beyond hurting she and Eddie. There was a time that Steph adored and respected Death, but there were too many times where the entity turned flesh toed across the line until she jumped full-flush over it. “That would be me without him. You realize that? I want all those things. I want to be her. She wasn’t a terrible--I wasn’t terrible, except for the miserable part of not having him. Not being able to ever have him. But that’s not the point,” said Stephanie, waving her hand in frustration in front of herself. “Seriously. What is all this?” she asked, now waving a hand in the other woman’s direction. “Tell me what you want so I can go back to crying about the fact that my boyfriend is locked up.”
Death sighed so very softly to herself at the appearance of the sharp smirk on Stephanie’s face, and very firmly planted her feet from moving any farther into the apartment. “If you wouldn’t have answered? Yes, I would have left. I might have knocked again, but I would have left if there was no answer. Same if you’d closed the door again.” She paused, an expression twisting her face for a moment. “For all the awareness and conceptual omnipresence I usually have when I’m not like this, I do try my best to stay out of your space.” Another pause, accompanied by a loose gesture of her hand. “Other than the recipe, but I did that when you were at school, so while it was your book, it wasn’t coming in here.”
She saw the un-voiced snap, realized that there were definite words that Stephanie was holding back, and she nodded her head. “I do realize that. I also realize that you’re both better with each other, and I’m very glad that it’s not like it was there. I never said anything about her - you - being terrible. But there’s a difference between being good, and being good for each other. And I know that there were so many ways for things to end awfully for both of you there. So maybe ‘thank you’ wasn’t the right way to put it, but the grateful sentiment is still there.” She sighed again, this one louder, and shook her head. “And this,” She gestured at herself in a long, sharp movement. “Is me trying to see if there’s anything I can do to help you. And though I told him that me randomly showing up wasn’t going to be high on your list of great, helpful things, your sweetheart suggested that punching me in the face would help you feel at least a little better. So I came to try that.” Her words came sharper toward the end, but she took a breath and sighed it out with a frown.
“But that is my space still, don’t you get it?” Stephanie sounded frustrated, frustrated in the way that Eddie sometimes made her when he went just a little too far with his needling. Just angry enough to be hurt by it all. Because though she had gotten hurt so many times by so many people in this door, Muerte was one of the ones who continued to rub salt in the wound, whether Stephanie thought it was purposeful or not. Stephanie was sure there was some spite to it, maybe not intentionally, but it was there. Bubbling under the surface. There had to be, right? “Coming into my life,” Steph continued, pushing herself off the couch and taking a step towards the entity. “Always coming into our lives is being in our space.”
She wanted to go on, to rail into the entity standing in her living room/entrance with little control and make Muerte feel the weight of what she’d done, but she didn’t. Instead, she rocked on her heels, trying her hardest to bite away the vitriol rearing its ugly head on the tip of her tongue. She didn’t trust the other woman anymore, and that wasn’t something that would be fixed by chocolate waffles and politely knocking instead of barging into her apartment. Steph smiled a little, shook her head, and then looked at Death with an incredulous flash of blue. “Eddie. Say his name.” Hearing her calling them sweethearts somehow felt off to the little blonde bat now. Like it was perpetuating this weird triangle. “And do you want me to actually punch you in the face? I never thought either of you were down with violence is the answer.” She waggled her fingers for emphasis.
Whatever salt there was for Stephanie, it was never purposeful on Death’s part. She was doing her best to navigate the human side of things, realizing that there was a vast difference between watching for eons and actually interacting on a regular basis. She’d commented to Eddie in passing about the steep learning curve, and while it might have seemed glib or joking at the time, she had been serious. She’d made a few missteps (large ones, but accidental mistakes), and had been trying to catch up ever since with apologies and amends that seemed to only make things worse. And there was an answer to it, hanging there over her head, that had been there for a while. That she’d been trying to ignore. But more and more, evidence and experience was pointing her back in that direction. There was a reason that her siblings didn’t make personal connections with the mortals under their “care”. She didn’t comment on it for the moment - but it remained in the forefront of her mind. It was an answer that made sense.
“No, I don’t want to get punched in the face. And whether or not violence is the answer to anything isn’t really my department.” Her voice grew strained, and she frowned, the line deepening between her brows. “But I know you hate me, and I know it eats at you, and I know you’ve had no place to go with the anger. So whatever Eddie thinks, if punching me is going to help you, then I’m not going to stop you.”
While Death briefly tried to explain her reasoning to Stephanie, the little blonde bat stepped forward again, slowly but surely closing the distance between the two women. Matilda sat still behind her, no tail-wagging and wide brown eyes measured on the two humans in front of her as if she was readying herself for a scene. Stephanie didn’t really want to make a scene, for the record. She didn’t wake up in the morning thinking about Muerte or how she almost ruined her life with Eddie or how punching the entity would solve all of her worldly problems. She hadn’t thought about Muerte for days, as her focus was more on functioning without Eddie than what Death had done to her. It was easy to forget that long, dull heartache for the fresh, stinging pain of Eddie winding up in Arkham.
Still, having her there in the flesh awoke those old wounds. And trying to make herself seem like a saint? “Oh, please,” Stephanie said, rolling her eyes so hard it almost hurt. “I get it. You think you’re better than us lowly goddamn humans. But y’know what? You’re not. You aren’t at all, and you make the same mistakes we all do. Except you don’t think they’re mistakes, or you just don’t care. Kissing Eddie, stopping my heart, saying his mental stability is all based on choice?” She was close now, close enough to cock a fist back and land a good punch. But she didn’t. “I don’t care if it’s you trying to make friends, or understand how humans work, or whatever. Stop messing with us like we’re some kind of experiment for you!” And with that, she did cock her fist back and connect it into Muerte’s cheekbone as hard as she could.
Panting angrily, then looking a little horrified, Steph stared down at her balled up fist. “No,” she said weakly, “that didn’t help at all.”
Death didn’t expect to raise her voice, to push back at Stephanie’s words, but it came out anyway. “Don’t tell me what I think. Humans are one of the most incredible creatures in the universe and you’re more complicated than anything has any right to be, and it’s wonderful and terrifying to suddenly have some of that in you after eons of time, and yes, it results in mistakes. All of which I have admitted were mistakes and have been trying to make up for and not do again.” She paused, stepping in as well. “And it’s not an experiment, Stephanie Brown, it’s me trying to figure out what the fuck is going on with myself in this door so that I don’t keep hurting people who have become important to me, my first real friend, which is another thing that’s new. I am doing my best--”
She broke off and stumbled back at the hard crack of connection between Stephanie’s fist and her own face. She bent forward, eyes squeezed shut and hand coming up to cradle her abused cheekbone. Her breath shook for a moment as she did her best to shove back the instinctive sounds of pain, though a soft grunt of it snuck out around her clenched teeth. It wasn’t as bad as having threads of the Lazarus pit crawling through her body, but it certainly wasn’t pleasant. Her cheek already felt hot, and she spared a moment of concern for how it would affect Iris on the other side of the door. That thought swiftly fled at the sound of Stephanie’s words, and she slowly stood straight again, hand still cupped protectively over her cheek, and looked at Stephanie with pale eyes that had gone shiny with pained tears. The angry words had faded, and she sighed. “I’m sorry it didn’t help. ...I’ll be going now.” And she turned toward the door, giving Matilda the slightest sad smile as she did.
Stephanie wanted to continue on her little railing rampage to tear Muerte to shreds, to make her hurt the way she'd hurt for months and months. Endure the sharp sting that pained her chest ever since Muerte crossed a line Steph never expected she would. But the words died on her lips, the insults buzzed on her tongue, and all she could do was shake like a leaf. She stared down at her fists, still balled up in front of her, and she bit down hard on her bottom lip. Guilt-ridden and still fueled by anger. She hadn’t planned on letting Muerte’s egging get to her, or proving her right in the first place by punching the other woman. Because clearly Muerte (and Eddie, too) thought she needed to just hit someone to feel better. That wasn’t the case; that wasn’t ever really the case. Yeah, beating up goons diffused some of the built-up tension, but it never resolved the underlying problem. And, oh, there were a lot of underlying problems with Muerte.
Still. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, staring down at her sock-covered (purple and green, of course) feet and flexing her fingers in and out of the fist. The sharp sting of tears burned her eyes, too, and she couldn’t face Muerte for a few moments. “I’m s-s-sorry.” A shaky sigh rattled her lungs, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Flexing those fists at her side again, and nodding her dipped head. “Yeah, maybe you should go.” But it didn’t sound like a threat. Weak, conceding, remorseful. “I’m so sorry,” said Steph one last time, as if words were enough to heal the blossoming mark on Muerte’s cheek. But, all of this had proved words meant little in the face of something more, hadn’t it?
Death looked back over her shoulder at Stephanie’s soft words, and she frowned at the expression on her face. There wasn’t any sort of resolution there, and for a minute her too-human heart clenched in Death’s chest. No, things seemed even worse, and her frown deepened even though the pull of it made her cheek ache already.
Pausing near the door, the hand that wasn’t still cupping her cheek resting on the doorknob, she searched for anything she could say that might make it better. And she realized that there was nothing. So she just shook her head and tried to mask her soft sigh. “There’s really nothing for you to apologize for, Stephanie. Not at all.” She figured that it wouldn’t sink in, but it was all she could say before turning back to the door. She looked at Matilda for a quick moment as she did, making certain that the dog would do her best to take care of Stephanie once Death left the apartment. Matilda was worried, but already moving, so Death let herself out of the apartment, the door clicking with a strange sort of solidity as it closed and locked itself behind her.