Doors Logs

Wed, 22 May 2013 05:51:22 GMT

Who: Ford and Blake
What: Dreams of the nebulous kind.
Where: Dreamland.
When: Backdated to fuzzy Fairy Tale dreamland plot.
Warnings/Rating: None.

The dream was indistinct, a quiet blur of warm color that resolved slowly into concrete shapes in a wash, like a splash of water dragging paint down a canvas. It started out as the abstract idea of a home, and then it became one. The window streamed in thin gray light, and there was something strange about the atmosphere. It was lived in, certainly - the leather couch had the imprints of long wear, the TV was on. The bookshelf was full, mostly of poets from the early part of the 20th century, and the books in it were haphazardly arranged, some laying atop the others and some stacked neatly, untouched. The floor was old hardwood, and the pillows scattered across the floor spoke to someone sitting there, reading, maybe.

But something was wrong, as well. The place had a little of the feel of a museum, like the miscellaneous spray of misplaced cushions and the out of sync books had been left there for much longer than their positions would suggest. The kitchen smelled like nothing, and the room was too cool. The pictures on the wall had gathered dust at the tops of their frames, and the picture on the plasma tv had burned echoes and shadows into the screen, which persisted even as the image flickered, muted, a newscaster telling the day’s stories.

The only human figure was in the window, on the small seat. He was slightly curled into himself. He looked like dead leaf, skeletal and delicate, as if his bones might break were he to actually stand up. His hair was thin and fraying. His arms were folded around each other, hands clasping his elbows, and he was looking out the window at nothing. There was fog outside, through which the light filtered. The door to the apartment was firmly locked.

There didn’t seem to be sound there in the way that sound should exist, but he must have heard footfalls, because he lifted his head and turned it to see who had come into this quiet space. “Hey,” he said, on sighting his visitor. And on sighting him, he smiled a little, and something clicked into place, and he didn’t look gaunt or tired or delicate anymore, the transformation as immediate and abrupt as turning on a switch when he knew he wasn’t alone. You could have woven a rope to climb on out of that slick, strong, dark hair, and he had shiny black eyes like the highwaymen in old ballads. “Come to wake me up?”

Ford didn’t belong in the museum. His boots were too heavy and his thin sleeveless had holes in it where the seams were starting to give; all that pale skin and dark curl didn’t belong in a place quite so quiet or so dark. Ford was strongly reminded of special libraries with deep corners and stern guardians, and he kept glancing around, thinking that any moment someone would show themselves and tell him to get out before he broke something. No one did, and as he progressed through the watercolor rooms, his weight creaking on the hardwood, creaking without sound, he grew more bold, until finally he dared touch the edges of cupboard doors and bookspines.

He was so startled to see actual movement that he stopped short entirely. Ford’s head tipped delicately to one side, a fraction of an inch, and a heavy riot of dark curls in a ratty nest of neglect fell over each other in a way more confusion than charm. He didn’t speak, and the sound around him seemed to focus as he searched for noise to fill his silence: the beat of his heart, the expansion of his ribs under his lungs. The air around him only accentuated a total lack of voice.

Ford stared for a little while at the person on the windowseat. He wasn’t sure he had seen what he had seen, aging in reverse, fragility into strength. Ford was the kind of young man to doubt what he had seen, and accept surface as real. He took one step forward, stopped, and then spoke. Are you asleep? His mouth did not move. His voice made no sound. He spoke clearly and perfectly, thought actualizing with absolutely no effort. It was a dream.

Blake didn't even notice, testament to the reality of it. One thing flowed into the next, and everything made it's own kind of dream-sense. "That's what the witch told me," he said. He seemed tired though his appearance screamed vitality, and he slid off the seat, unfolding with an unnatural blossoming out of limbs on joints with too many points of articulation. "Come on," he said, taking him by the hand. It was a strangely chaste move, paper dry palm against Ford's. "You should try the door," he said, tugging on his hand to lead him to it. "I couldn't open it. Maybe because I can't wake up, I don't know."

The door seemed as ordinary as could be, solid wood with a brass handle. There was no keyhole, no sign of a lock, and Blake merely waited, expectantly, for Ford to try.

Ford blinked and looked expressly confused at the mention of the word witch. He was accustomed to lacking entirely in speech, and most of it was made up in his face and the way his eyes moved, clear as words. The moment that he accepted the strangeness as just strange, and let it pass as something outside his understanding, his expression cleared. Maybe he hadn’t heard it right, maybe it was some joke he wasn’t meant to get. He let the strangeness go and focused.

At first, he was visibly surprised that Blake reached out for him, his fingers closing compulsively and then pulling shortly away before they closed once more. His expression migrated to pleased. He didn’t seek any further intimacy nor appeared to expect more. The bright blue eyes redirected at the door. He nodded agreement, and then stepped slightly forward, aligning his body forward to precede Blake to the solid oak barrier. He put his hand out against the wood and then shoved at it, experimental. Then he pulled at the handle.

Whatever Ford had done worked. The door swung open onto thin air, and a long drop. There was no floor immediately beyond the doorway, but when one peered out, there the floor was, stories below.

It became apparent that they were standing inside a room in miniature, a room which opened out onto a house built for giants. The door through which they were looking was set high on the wall. The drop to the ground would feel like a thousand miles of falling were they to take the plunge, and the chair on the other side of the hallway looked like it could fit a hundred of them both comfortably on its plush seat.

The mysterious house was cheerful enough. It looked more lived in than the museum behind, sun soaked and attractively furnished in light hardwoods and antiques. Just in sight from their tiny doorway was a stair leading down to the dimness of the first floor.

Blake jumped out, without warning, his hand still clasped around Ford's. And, as things were in dreams, he suddenly stood in the hall, just the height he ought to be to be in regular proportion to the house, and he turned around. The wall from which they had come was decorated with dozens of miniatures in shadowboxes, tiny rooms with perfect tiny furnishings and perfect tiny signs of life, a glass of milk on the table here, a spilled bottle of whiskey on the floor there. They were arranged in gradations of color, light on the left moving into dark on the right. They had come from far to the left side. The little door inside the shadowbox of the apartment was still ajar.

Blake didn't let go of Ford's hand. "I think I might never wake up again," he said, conversationally. "I like it here. Come on. Let's go downstairs."

Ford tried to pull back. Before he understood the dimensions of the room, Ford thought the door was just empty air, and he’d had many dreams of stepping out, foot waiting for pavement and meeting empty air instead. (He thought of it just then, it’s a dream, and a second later, forgot once more.) He hauled back on Blake’s hand, but it was far too late, and Blake dragged him forward. Ford opened his mouth to scream, waited for that terrified emptiness in his stomach, but it never came. He tripped over his feet and only just caught himself from falling over in the foreign hallway.

Ford’s hand was caught tight, and he made no attempt to escape a second time. The blue eyes stared into Blake’s, fear melting into vague distrust. He spoke once more without speaking. Why would you like it here? There’s nowhere to go. Just boxes. He looked around, dark curls heavy around his sharp features. The dream, with its tiny apartments and its big/small, it was not a place for Ford. Everything about him was too sharp, too pale, too thick with the need to survive. None of that was furniture, milk or whiskey.

Blake didn't let go of Ford's hand. He liked having it to hang onto. Things felt mixed up in this dream, and he'd been asleep so long with no door out. It was good to feel grounded, to touch someone that felt alive. There were shades here, but they weren't the same, and he didn't like to see them. "But they're mine," he protested. "I like them. They're what I have." Where the rest of the house felt warm enough, but still dream-like, there was a pulsating twist of raw emotion and reality hovering over those little boxes, vivid and meticulously crafted from memory. Blake pointed to one low on the wall, a classroom scene. "They're all perfect. Just the way they were, exactly. They don't ever change, and they all stay right here." He looked them over with briefly anxious eyes, but, yes, they were all still there. "What do you mean, nowhere to go?" Blake asked. He looked up at Ford with a vulnerability that was nothing like the drunken, smirking, unapologetic mess who'd crashed in his apartment. "I can't get out anyway. I can't wake up. But I can go into any of these. Or downstairs. Or outside." Blake swallowed, and nodded. "I'm not scared of not waking up," he said, voice gone thick and quiet.

You’re asleep? Ford asked, but it wasn’t a question he really needed an answer to. Ford wasn’t the kind of man that thought things through, sought to solve them. He was not a man for puzzles, and he had a tendency to let people live their own lives even if it cost him a great deal of curiosity. Part of it was discipline; speech was such a trial that he had to hold his tongue ten times more often than he really wanted to, and after a while he’d gotten used to not asking questions out loud. He just thought them, and here, it appeared, thought was action.

Sensing that Blake didn’t want to release his fingers, Ford shuffled forward and leaned in, examining one of the tiny little rooms. They rose the hair on the back of his neck, and even under the thick curls Ford felt cold. They’re lonely. I mean there’s nowhere to go if you want to leave. Leave and not come back. That doesn’t freak you out? Ford straightened up in a long spine, curving back and flexing his shoulders, trying to work out the cold still prickling somewhere behind his ears. He caught the look on Blake’s face and immediately shut his mouth, so abruptly that his teeth clicked. Remorse shadowed his face, expressive and immediate. Sorry.

"Like I said, some witch showed up and told me so." Blake stared straight ahead. "Yeah, I'm asleep. Someone should come and wake me up, I guess, but I don't know who'd bother." He felt tired, even in the dream, which didn't seem at all fair. Ford's silent presence, talking in his head, made it feel less like a wasteland, though, less empty.

He protested, though, all the same. "They're not empty," he said. "Well...they are empty, but they don't feel empty." It was like seeing a film or reading a book that one couldn't really explain, having an experience that meant nothing to anyone but him. He couldn't put into words why the miniatures mattered to him, what made them comforting. Familiarity, perhaps, even in the darkest of them all, all the way to the right and covered over with a roughly hewn wooden board. "And I can't ever leave anyway," he said, and let go of Ford's hand at last, "So what does it matter?" His usual bravura and the cursing were suspiciously absent, as if all his hard edges had been sanded down by sleep. "It's fine," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "It's fine. Look, I like it here. I don't need to leave. Even if I could leave, I wouldn't want to. It's safe, and nothing's going anywhere. Right?" He seemed to see Ford for the first time, then. He didn't look as polished anymore as he had when Ford first arrived, somewhere between the hale and healthful shine and the tired doll reflected in the window pane. "Haven't you ever wanted to stay somewhere because everything else was like a wasteland outside?"

Ford looked just the same, pale as formica and as roughly drawn. The thick dark curls made him look both confused and exotic, large loops of them over extremely blue eyes, but there was nothing of innocence there. Ford had strength, solidity. He was a rock in a stream, and things moved around him, not through. What fragility he had, he kept it shored up inside where nothing could break it down. Even his weaknesses were strong. Ford was a survivor, and he was stubborn hard-work and a refusal to give in. The emptiness of the dream freaked him, but he wasn’t afraid. Ford now knew fear, and it wasn’t this weird patchwork. Fear was mortality.

If you’re sleeping, then you wake up, and then you leave, Ford said, denying Blake’s assurances about never going anywhere. He didn’t pursue Blake’s hand, but watched him carefully and refused to draw back. Blake’s long stare made him shift awkwardly on his feet, but he did not change, either in form or thought. Ford brushed at the thin cotton over his stomach, ribbed and unstitching at the hem from too many washings. No. I’ve never stayed anywhere different on the inside than everything else on the outside. Eventually... things come in. Again he spoke without sound, and his fingers came up to rub over his generous lower lip, awkward but determined.

"Can't," Blake said, seemingly unaware that they'd already covered the topic. "The witch said I can't leave. You could stay, though," he said, the idea obviously occurring to him even as he was speaking, and he turned to fully face Ford. He let his gaze linger on his lower lip for a long moment, which he liked, and he remembered liking when he met him (and that had been...? He couldn't remember). He moved closer to him, limbs slow and heavy in the way they so often were in dreams. "You could stay as long as you want," he said. "Nothing's coming in. There's nothing out there." He picked at the unraveling seam of Ford's shirt, which felt strangely real in that unreal place. "Just me."

Ford lingered on the edge of uncertainty for a little while. It seemed long to him but really it was short, only a few seconds of hesitation. Ford knew what it looked like when someone admired him, and it seemed to him like the lights dimmed for just a little bit, which he liked, because Ford was convinced that people in general only really liked him with the light was low and it was too loud to hear anything he said. That was the kind of place that he expected Blake to be, and so it was, here, now, also what he expected. Ford’s dreams were fluid and simple; compact, isolated places like this confused him. He didn’t want to leave Blake here alone, but he also wasn’t prepared to stay forever. Eventually he decided, and he curved an arm around Blake’s so that the hollow of his elbow curled around Blake’s bicep. For a little while, I can stay. But then you have to wake up. I’ll show you. He had absolutely no idea how he would do that, but he was confident.

Blake liked the easy warmth of Ford's presence and the lowering of the light. Here was something he understood, something that reflected the world outside the way it was, rather than all the things it wasn't, like a funhouse mirror. "Going to lead me on out like Peter Pan? Third star to the right, straight on 'til morning?" His crooked mouth was curved wry, and they weren't words he would have said when he was awake. But nothing here was the same as it was outside. Ford, maybe, wasn't the same either, but it was hard to tell, except through those words that kept landing in his head like stones dropped into a still pond. He liked Ford's confidence, because he liked anyone who was confident. Confident people rarely asked questions, and they also didn't ask for too much.

Ford understood the reference in one--not always a guarantee when the people around him seemed to prefer fairy tales in books rather than Disney movies found on cheap cable--and grinned. I could do that. I don’t know the way, but we should try. This was another decision, as he didn’t attempt to encourage Blake but simply began moving, choosing a direction along the gallery of tiny lightboxes. He kept his arm just behind Blake’s, pulling him gently along with him in the mere expectation of his cooperation. I’m always rescuing you from things, Ford commented, sounding pleased with himself. Lately there hadn’t been anybody around that needed his help, except for maybe Sam, who Ford thought could handle himself if he had to.

Blake followed. He had nothing with which to protest it. He liked the house, its familiarity and safety, but if Ford knew another place, he would go there. "I get the feeling you like rescuing lost causes," Blake said with a sharp little laugh, sticking close to Ford. That did seem right. Picking up drunk guys with no intention of taking advantage of them? Seriously, who did that? Only someone with a lot invested in the idea of rescuing people. Blake knew what that was like, to be invested in an idea of yourself. If Ford saw himself as a rescuer, he couldn't be who he was if there was no one to rescue. It made perfect sense.

No, Ford admitted, solemnly. I like it but I don’t do it much. Too fucked up to be helping other people. He was dead serious, and yet still able to look at Blake and flash him an unmistakable smile. Ford could smile in that way and yet still talk of deep, dark things, things that went under blue veins and thick curls. But I can give you a hand up, you know? If I’m standing. And I am, right now. He swept his free hand down to indicate his boots, old worn things they were, and then up to indicate where they were standing--which was at the junction of two halls, perfectly perpendicular to one another. They could go ahead, or they could go left, and they could go right. All three destinations led on into white fluorescent forever, with no apparent difference between the three.

Blake laughed. "You? I can't believe it." Everybody, in Blake's experience, was some level of fucked up. That went without saying. But Ford didn't seem the type, too placid for that shit. "Whoever said I needed a hand up?" Blake said, with dark amusement, and he didn't let go of Ford.

The hallways onto nowhere were a little...unnerving. Blake didn't like them very much. He liked the familiar house behind him, still there when he turned around to check. The blank nothing ahead felt familiar too, but in another way. "Left," he said, unthinking. That blank void gave him a sudden, desperate need to have a destination, to be going somewhere. It made the nothing feel like a place when there was a direction to walk in.

Ford wasn’t placid. He was internal. Everything was going on inside, because he just couldn’t babble the way other people could babble. Here, in this place, it was all speech, the silent kind that was meaning inside meaning and all thoughts being obvious because Ford wanted them to be obvious, and the dream allowed it. Ford didn’t think he was all that deep, really. He thought he was stupid and boring because he was told that he was stupid and boring, and he had no reason to think otherwise.

Everybody needs a hand up sometimes. Ford’s statement was full of the certainty that no one could survive forever standing. You had to learn to pick your ass up sometimes. It was a charitable thought, not that he knew it. He turned left because Blake said he wanted to go left, and Ford rarely had a path to follow. The hallway began to narrow. It was not abrupt, but time here did not move as it should, and the walls were close against their shoulders. Ford stopped, uncomfortable. What’s left?

Blake didn't like being boxed in. The feeling was claustrophobic to say the least, and he felt more and more uncomfortable as the walls grew closer and closer. "I don't know," he said, trying to mask his growing panic. Around them, the void seemed to be dimming, its limitless, unidentifiable source of light going out slow, like the lights in a theatre. If they were stuck here, in this too quiet, too close space in the dark, Blake didn’t know what he would do. Ford’s presence suddenly not enough to comfort and make the place seem safe, and, behind them, the house had disappeared. “Don’t let go of me,” he said, with a severity that made it seem life or death.

Ford didn’t like the closing walls either. He was not one of those people that was frightened of small spaces especially, though he did prefer the ability to move, he liked his space to spread out so if he wanted to leave the door was clearly outlined. Tiny places were cheap and made only for eight hours in a bed, not living. Ford kept his hand in Blake’s, but it soon didn’t matter what he was doing, because the dream began to come apart, and as it did, it took away everything but sensation. The sight of the hallway dissolved only into that sense of compact claustrophobia, a pressing of thin air on the senses and the delicate curves of the ear, and Ford’s fingers curling against Blake’s became cold skin and grinding bones. Then those sensations were gone, and new ones replaced them. The feel of gravel scraping the skin. The first blush after a kiss. The ecstatically pleasant feeling of a long stretch after a solid sleep. A harsh, tingling steam burn. A drop of warm sunshine on a chilled spine.

Then, finally, the sudden, stomach-churning drop of a long, long fall.

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:54:22 GMT

Who: Olivia Landon
What: Past calling.
When: Recently!
Warnings: None!

It was a voice on the telephone. Like, Olivia supposed - with the sudden snow-blindness of those blindswept, a sheet of white where once there had been pieces to distinguish, a world on canvas and easily discerned - any other.

There was no wild sweep of New York through her apartment, no trammel of subway systems and the achingly grey dirty building-sides. No sensation-memory unloaded itself over desert-dry heat, the peculiar unpleasantness of silk shirt clinging stickily to the back of her neck. She answered, ‘hello?’ as she kicked off her shoes, a satisfying smack of leather against the nearest door, and she was smiling - a moment, please, for those seconds we are still more than who we have grown up to be - at the next, and the smile slid, like vodka drunk from the bottle, like Olivia herself as she sat and the creases ironed themselves into her suit skirt.

She was blank agreement, ‘mms’ and ‘yes, oh I see’, business without the board-room into the empty room and the coffee mug lingering on the table from the morning, scattered things, abandoned.

Of course she understood. No time at all. West Coast to East was very much a trip, given - Olivia felt the astonishing desire to laugh rise like a bubble in her throat, cloying-thick - given that she was, after all highly religious. Olivia hadn’t thought much of religion, given through-the-stairs glimpses of the woman who had been - legally - her mother. Dramatic, perhaps. Drunk, almost certainly. Overly fond of red lipstick and declamations, absolutely. Religious? It was like a malformed lock with a poorly made key, the tumblers refused to line up, roll over and click into place.

She hung up.

There was nothing to throw. There was nothing - at all, in fact - to say. No one, after all, to say it too.

There was, however, gin. Gin could be poured quite swiftly, and gin could be crystalline-sharp and absolute, and when one glass of gin was drunk (quickly, with the severity of medicine) wine might well follow.

It was the third glass, that sent her to the box in the hall. Above the coats. The box, dark-colored rose-wood and softly polished. Dust-laden, of course. She unpacked it, hands and knees and silk-wool skirt suit half-way to ruined but the last time she’d packed it, there hadn’t been any such suits at all.

She had had taste, at least. Olivia knew that. The brushes were expensive, soft. The paint had dried out - of course, her favorites were - but she had bought herself myriad back-ups, had painted until three, had painted until she was nearly drunk and the birds were singing and paint buying wasn’t an expedition to be conducted. There was paint, in the box. New paint. Old paint. Paint from stores long since closed.

She dragged the box out, and she took her glass of wine and she sat on her floor and ignored her suit as she dug through.

Tue, 21 May 2013 07:55:03 GMT

Who: Jason, Damian, and the Bat
What: Jailbreak.
Where: Blackgate.
When: Let's say now-ish.
Warnings/Rating: Some violence.

Damian was trying so hard to hold onto that toxin high. It kept him from fighting back against the Bane goons, kept the physical and emotional trauma that Kara put him through at bay and it even made him not even care that much he was in Blackgate. Even if he wasn’t high, Blackgate didn’t pose that much of a threat. Most of the prisoners were innocent people or white collar criminals who managed to shake money around to keep themselves from being caught. No one was stupid enough to mess with the angry, brooding teenager who just wanted to be left alone to sleep. Most of the time he forced Jim away from the door (who was getting tired of the new and exciting ways Damian managed to hurt himself), but today his mind was starting to clear and his...member was feeling better.

With the toxin gone, it caused a fevered paranoia that reminded him of a flower his mother made him eat once to improve his training. If he could fight when he felt weak and scared, he could fight any time. For all the misery his mother put him through, at least he could thank her for little gifts of experience like that. Sitting up on his bunk bed inside of the cramped, dank cell he rubbed his face and sighed. “How many days have we been here?” He asked like a little kid wondering how late into the night it was. One of the former rich men in a cell nearby murmured something Damian couldn’t make out and the little bird decided that how long he was in here didn’t matter. It was all about how he was going to get out.

He jumped off the bunk bed and looked around before pressing his face against the bars, trying to remember which one of his brothers was dragged into prison with him. Grayson didn’t make it back to the mansion, did he? Or was he there the whole time? Damian sighed, hitting his forehead against the door a couple times before turning around to see Jason sleeping on the bottom bunk. “Hey, idiot.” Damian said, poking at Jason’s arm before shaking him a little. “Wake up.”

Jason was dead asleep, that much was true. The toxin had already been wearing off by the time Jack had escaped from his minders at the apartment. When Jason came back through he had been just getting ready to try to really get his shit together and maybe do something to help the people trapped in Gotham when Bane’s men arrived. He wasn't sure what exactly he would have done, still sort of delirious, the toxin waning but not enough that making plans was an easy thing. He would have tried something. Probably gotten himself killed, too. It was enough to almost be grateful that he'd been knocked over the head and dragged to Blackgate.

There had been no defending himself, really. Jason hadn't been in any state to get in a fight, running on no sleep at all and kicked up into a high stage of post-toxin paranoia. He'd managed to down one henchman, and after that it had been a slaughterfest with him in the middle. He would have bruises for weeks, if they ever made it out of this place.

One thing could be said for Jason, however, and that was that old habits died hard. Being poked awake made him bolt upright and turn toward Damian with all readiness to grab him by the neck and plant him into the wall if he needed to. When he saw who it was he deflated. Where the fuck was he again? Right. Blackgate. "Don't fucking do that," Jason groaned, sliding his legs off the bunk, resting his eyes carefully against the base of his palms. "Jesus. Something going on?"

Damian was both nonplussed and unimpressed by Jason’s alarmed, murderous response. His heavy brow, dead-behind-the-eyes gaze and thin, tight lips made the little bird look like he was in his final form of grumpy. Like he went on a spiritual journey through the mountains of Tibet to learn the secret to being the grumpiest eighteen year old on the planet. “No, dumbass.” Damian snapped, crossing his arms and leaning on the wall behind him. “We have to get the hell out of here. Did you grab anything on your way out of the mansion or are you just as useless as I remember?”

He turned and pressed against the bars again, reaching a hand through to see what kind of lock the cell used. “I need a hairpin.” Damian said with finality. “Or maybe you could fake a stroke and get a guard over here.”

Jason was not awake enough to deal with Damian sassing the hell out of him. "No I didn't grab anything on my way out of the fucking manor," he said, lifting his head to glare daggers at Damian's back. Give him a tin cup and he'd complete the prison picture, pressed against the bars like that. "I was still pretty high." And he'd been unconscious before they even dragged him out. "I don't really carry around bobby pins like you do, sunshine, but I had a lockpick. It was gone when I woke up here, they must have taken it off me when they threw us through the metal detectors." He looked up at one of the guards on patrol around the prison floor. "And maybe you could screech like a spaz. That'd get their attention."

It was, perhaps, fortunate that neither of them had the opportunity to attempt loud noises and false illnesses in order to lure a guard to their cell. Blackgate’s overpopulation worked in his favor, but it was the disproportion between prisoners and guards which gave the Bat his true advantage. He moved faster than news spread between guards, which meant that he was already inside the prison by the time they detected a security breach, and he was a good two steps ahead as they struggled to keep up. The Bat didn’t go so far as to blow open a wall and barrell through obstacles like some sort of unstoppable machine, but he wasn’t as subtle as he could have been. When all was said and done and the dust cleared, he wanted it to be known who’d broken into Blackgate. He couldn’t set them all free, not yet, but this was a fair start and he would never let either of his sons rot behind bars when he had the means and opportunity to get them out.

Too late, the walkie-talkies lit up with static and warnings. Something dark and heavy dropped from above, and then it was chaos, shouting and gunshots and metal, overlapped by the sound of fists meeting flesh and bodies hitting the ground. It was over in no more than a minute, and the keys he’d collected jangled as he moved. The comm in his ear buzzed, guidance only he could hear, but from this point on he was confident enough to not need assistance. There was relief in his gaze, just for a moment, as he approached the cell, but then it was gone, and the Bat was all business once again.

“We don’t have much time,” he told them, sliding the correct ring of keys off his belt. “How do the two of you feel?” The toxin had seemed, for the most part, to have worn off, but he had two doses of the antidote as a precaution.

Jason could hardly believe what he was seeing when a bat shape appeared in front of him. For a moment he wondered if it was the toxin still wreaking havok on his system, but, no, he stared and the shape remained.

He felt something then that he hadn't felt in a long, long time - a surge of relief at the sight of Bruce, and warmth. He stood, a little unsteady, and tried to cover for the unexpected reaction with movement. He was tired and still drugged out - that had to be it. "Exhausted," he said, honestly. "And a little dodgy, but I can make it." If they caught them halfway out, he sure as hell wasn't going down without a fight. He still had a roided out psycho with a mask to deal with.

“Pissed off.” Damian said, rattling the bars again impatiently, looking up to Batman only briefly enough to give a small sign of gratitude. He expected someone to come save them because no one left the family locked up or in trouble, but he thought Grayson would have come. The fact that it was Bruce meant something and he was comfortable enough showing that small piece of gratitude that only a fellow Wayne would pick up on.

Once the doors were open he slipped through and looked back to make sure Jason was coming along. “Can we beat up some idiots on the way out?” Damian asked, knowing it would be hard to get out of there without knocking some heads together, but he was willing to take the long way if it meant more criminals to take his aggression out on.

With both of them relatively level-headed and free of the toxin, this would be much easier. The Bat still wondered how it had gotten this far, toxin or no toxin, but there was no use dwelling on a past he could not change. Now, they had to move forward. He had to get Damian and Jason out of here, get them somewhere safe, and then concentrate on Bane and his partner. When they fell, their hold on the city would fall with them, and Gotham would be free.

The key turned with a quiet click, and he stepped back as the door opened, continually scanning his surroundings for any approaching guards. As much as he might have wanted to open every door in the block, he didn’t have the time, and he wouldn’t be responsible for innocent people being gunned down in a botched escape attempt. Once they were both out of the cell, he let the door swung shut and lock itself behind them. They still had a few minutes, give or take, before the guards caught up, and he regarded Damian with a flicker of what might have been amusement, or might have simply been a trick of the poor prison lighting, when he made his request. “They’ll make it easy for us. They should know enough to stay out of our way, but they won’t. Just don’t waste too much time,” he warned. He had both an entrance and an exit route, not wanting to reuse the same path, and with that he turned, expecting them both to follow. Getting out of Blackgate didn’t concern him; even exhausted and dodgy, they were more than a match for the guards here.

To say it was an unexpected turn to be broken out of Blackgate by Bruce, rather than put there by him, was a major understatement. Jason slipped out after Damian and stuck close to the Bat, eyes on the mostly wide-eyed and terrified white collar types who'd been locked up with random assortments of other rich as sins and the scum of the earth.

Jason wasn't worried about getting out either. He'd recover from the toxin soon enough, and being off his game didn't change the fact that he was pissed as hell about everything he'd missed in his cloud of not giving a shit. So many dead already, and the city under Bane's martial law. That he had heard the news, seen some of it happen, and not cared even a little was unnerving in a way he wouldn't have wanted to admit to out loud. The one guard that ducked unexpectedly out of a dim hallway became the subject of his ire - a sharp jab to the neck got him down quietly, and a solid kick put him out for the count. Bane needed to hire faster men.

Damian edged out of the cell before it was even open all the way and trotted after Bruce. His focus started to sharpen and the second two other guards tried to stop their exit, Damian knew he was turning back into his regular, kick ass self. One of the guards yelled stop, which earned a smirk from Damian as he clenched his fists and slid one of his legs forward in a perfectly tuned fighting stance. He looked the guards dead in the eyes and gave a simple,

“Nope.”

And, before either of them knew what was happening, one guard’s gun was smashed into the other guard’s face before both of them were shoved against a nearby cell door. The bounce of their skulls against the iron bars made him feel better. Refreshed. He turned to see another set of guards appeared at the far end of the hallway and saw the wreckage Todd and Damian did without much of a thought, they backtracked a little to call for more goons. “That’s fine. Cowards are no fun to beat up anyway!” Damian called after them and then sprinted forward before he could fall behind.

The Bat might have glanced back once or twice, more out of a perpetual state of concern for those close to him than any doubt he had in either boy, but what he saw satisfied him, and he continued forward. Those who were foolish to attempt to stop them were dealt with, and while he spared their lives, he wasn’t very generous otherwise. His blows fell hard and heavy, ensuring that while the guards’ interference slowed him down, they didn’t stop him. He had no patience for unnecessarily drawn-out fights. With the remainder of the guards pursuing them falling back to wait for reinforcements, the Bat saw their chance. They were slow, these guards, and while he might have relished lingering in order to beat every last one into submission, his main priority was getting Jason and Damian out, and somewhere safe.

He turned a corner, nearly colliding with a lone guard who appeared to be attempting to get away, but Bruce barely even blinked. One, a knee to the man’s abdomen, two, his head connecting with the wall, and then he was down. “Almost there. The door won’t be guarded,” he said over his shoulder, stepping over the unconscious guard. Once they were outside, they could easily be long gone before the guards did a sweep of the grounds.

Damian trailed closely after his father, practically right in his shadow. It didn’t surprise him that guards were starting to fan away from them and though part of him wished they were stupid enough to put up a fight, he was mostly eager to simply get out as fast as possible. Once they reached the main door, Damian rushed forward as if he were just going to take off into Gotham, but he stopped and turned back to look at Batman. “I’m coming with you.” He said decisively. An echo of what he should have said when his father went after Ra’s. So much of what mattered before Bludhaven seemed less important now that the city needed him and the family was together.

The Bat paused and regarded his son for a long, long moment. His instinct was to say no, to protect Damian as he sought to protect the others, but he realized that this was their fight too, as much as it was his. They’d all returned, after all. Even after going their own ways and needing space, they’d come back, and if it hadn’t been for the toxin, maybe they could have managed to band together and stop Bane before things escalated this far. His only response to Damian’s assertion was a nod, because that was easier than finding the right words, and then he turned and shoulders through the main door, out of the prison and into Gotham itself.

Tue, 21 May 2013 07:27:06 GMT

Who: Neil and Ella
What: Retrieving baby Beth.
Where: Aria.
When: Recently.
Warnings/Rating: Nooone.

Two weeks, and Neil had bypassed starting to worry and gone straight to panicking that Beth’s mother might never come back. He knew, at least, that the woman existed, but he had no idea where she was or why she couldn’t wake up. Was she in a coma? Was she dead? Maybe he should have filed a missing persons report, but if the law got involved they’d take the baby and he’d have no control over where she went or what happened. It would be out of his hands, and if the mother did return, she would have a hell of a time explaining where she’d been for the past couple of weeks.

Normally, he wouldn’t have cared. It wasn’t his kid, after all. Not his problem. But that wasn’t quite true, because Ella showing up in his dream had made it his problem-- no, his responsibility, and now he was irrevocably tangled in the well-being of a baby and her mother. For a guy who hadn’t been around kids in a long, long time, he hadn’t done too badly. The suite wasn’t exactly made for kids, but he and Louis had gone shopping for baby supplies, which amidst diapers, a crib, bedding, and formula, had also included those pain in the ass baby-proofing things despite the fact that Beth was a little young to start crawling around and trying to open drawers. Better safe than sorry, though, and Neil had gone into overdrive when it came to taking care of the kid. He could have just stayed at Ella’s place, but he felt weird staying in someone else’s house, just like he felt weird about taking her stuff; besides, it wasn’t like he couldn’t afford it. A few hundred or more spent on baby supplies that he’d never use again wasn’t a big deal to him.

Between himself, Casey and Ash, there had been no disasters, nothing that would scar the nine-month-old for life or cause Ella to press criminal charges. There was a lot of crying, a lot of agonizing when Beth just wouldn’t eat, or wouldn’t sleep, and it took him a while to get the hang of changing diapers, but now it was finally over. Ella was back, she was coming to pick up her kid, and his suite would no longer smell like baby powder and spit-up. And, really, he was no caregiver. Beth needed her mother.

She was blessedly quiet, the baby, though Neil had no idea how that would last for. He had the crib set up in the living room, where he’d been crashing on the couch for weeks, where a variety of soft toys, bottles of baby formula, and blankets were stacked in a sort of organized mess. If a part of him thought that maybe, just maybe, he might actually miss the kid, it was stoutly ignored.

The cab wasn’t in her budget.

Two weeks out of work, the fancy restaurant with the low lighting and the uniform and the soft voices and list of daily specials and the bar on Saturdays - that cramped cabs out of her budget by a long shot, but Ella was buzzing-blank fear that refused to contemplate it, was the ocean-roar of adrenaline in her ears, empty hands and a whirl of movement through the apartment. Keys, keys and she looked for the diaper bag (still there: why was the diaper bag still there? A jolt, fear beating wild beneath her breastbone) and finally the door slammed behind her, the slap of sneakers on the tile floor and running for the street beyond and the nearest cab and the address in her hand, the little book bouncing as she went.

Aria. She watched the rush of traffic past the cab, her knee jittering in the back as the cab’s meter ticked idly and the lights choked red and Ella leaned her head against the cool sleekness of the glass and deliberately didn’t think about knowing it, about knowing the kind of men who lived in suites there. Men who paid out for hotel rooms instead of homes, who purchased company that left when the purpose of it was done. “Can we take another route please?” she heard her voice shake as she leaned forward, tapped the driver on the shoulder; trained singer tension lost in the quiver.

It took too long, the ride, long enough that she shoved a handful of bills sightlessly at him, slammed the door, ran the last two blocks herself. She ignored the concierge desk as she plunged past, sweaty sundress clinging and the rubber squeak of her sneakers into the nearest bank of elevators before pounding the buttons. Check he’s not a sexual predator - Bethie was young, Bethie was a baby, she couldn’t talk but maybe that was some people, it took all kinds. Ella hadn’t worried about sex before; she thought of the song she sang Beth asleep with, the warm weight of her, the particular note of her cry. It took too long, the elevator ride: she ran the length of the corridor and she was fists on the door to the right one, small, mussed blond woman and sleepless-wild, the other side of ‘108’.

Her concerns about the kind of man he was wouldn’t have surprised him; in fact, Neil fully expected Ella to be panicking terribly just then. Any mother would, and one dream was a poor judge of character. He wasn’t horrible, and he wasn’t a sex offender, but she didn’t know that. So when he heard the frantic knocking on his door he was on his feet immediately, and it was open a few seconds later. He took her in, mussed hair and sleep-deprived eyes, and then he stepped back wisely, not wanting to get in the way of a mother being reunited with her child. “She’s okay,” he said, the crib well within view of the front door. “Sorry, I should’ve-- left a note or something, letting you know I’d brought her here.”

Ella didn’t think of notes and she didn’t look at him beyond the initial flitter of gaze it took to see he was the same man who’d lain on too-green grass in a dream that was ragged, muzzy at its edges. She pushed past instead, and she gathered up Bethie, all strange smell clinging over familiar baby-scent, warm weight against her hip, below her breastbone and she tipped her chin down, lips to the tip of Beth’s head and breathed in safety, breathed in comfort. Then - and only then, hands smoothing down shoulders and spreading tiny hands, she looked at him, damp-eyed apology and smile. “Y’all should have left a note.” The voice was soft South and the quiet chiding was blunted off by it; she didn’t sound as though she said much that was annoyed at all.

“But she’s fine,” it was soft, it was addressed to the baby who pressed fat hand against Ella’s shoulder and showed a remarkable lack of anything like consternation at her sudden return after two weeks of absence.

“I’m sorry, I should have started with a thank you,” and now she looked, at the heavy opulence of a suite and at the man that stood in it, and the couch behind him loaded down with things Beth had never owned in her life. “Y’all look like a baby factory blew up in here.” A bewildered smile.

No matter how well taken care of the baby might have been while she was under his roof, Neil knew there was no substitute for a mother. He hung back tactfully, watching with only a hint of wistfulness as they were reunited, because this was what he’d wanted. No more crying, no more baby smell, no more waking up every five seconds because the presence of someone so young and vulnerable made him feel like he had to be alert at every moment. It was sweet, really, and while he’d had no reason at all to doubt Ella’s mothering skills--no one could control the doors, much as they wanted to--if he had, it would have been wiped away in that moment. “I know,” he admitted, sheepish, when she reminded him that he should have left a note. Idiot, of course he should have. “Sorry. I guess I just wasn’t thinking.”

She was fine, though, and he nodded, eager to agree. He wasn’t experienced and he wasn’t particularly parental, but he had tried. “No, it’s okay,” he insisted, vaguely uncomfortable in the presence of gratitude. “Don’t thank me. I just-- you know, I went to check it out, because my dreams aren’t usually like that, and I couldn’t just... do nothing.” He gave a sort of half shrug, unable to explain why he was so capable of apathy but, in this case, hadn’t managed to not care. He looked around at the suite, as though just realizing the amount of stuff he had, and laughed. “I didn’t want to take your things. I mean, it’s no big deal, all of this. I went shopping. You can keep it,” he added. “I don’t need any of it, and it was all for Beth anyway.” He paused again, and realized he hadn’t properly introduced himself, save for his name being visible on the forums. “I’m Neil, by the way. Neil Donovan.”

Ella didn’t think Beth had owned as much stuff as all the things crammed into the suite in her little life, and she thought either the man had more money than sense (how many babies needed so much?) or he knew nothing about babies at all; it was a vague look of something too polite to be disbelief as she slid the baby onto her hip with the comfort of long-practice, her left arm curled around Beth and her hand tight on the baby’s back and she walked the floor beside the crib. It looked like the man had emptied a damn store of everything that they sold for babies - and after the disbelief wore off, it was sweet. Real sweet. She turned up a smile at him, easy-open gratitude and shy embarrassment and, “I should probably have asked y’all your name but dreams don’t make much sense. Nice to meet you, Neil, Neil Donovan. You have much to do with babies before?” She eyed the couch.

Dreams didn’t make much sense but he’d gone on over to check it out and she’d come busting in, scared to death and Beth was in whatever baby-heaven was. “I owe you a whole lot. I hope you like cookies or something, because I got no real way to say thank you, otherwise.” Beth blinked benignly against her shoulder, small sovereign in a hastily-made queendom. “And I’m real sorry about the door. They said it only took twenty-four hours, a whole day maybe but not two weeks. I hope she wasn’t too much trouble?” Ella’s voice held hesitation, a step away from true embarrassment; a sitter was one thing, pushing in on a man who didn’t need to bother was another.

Standing there, looking at all the crap he’d bought through her eyes, Neil realized he might have gone a little overboard. Yeah, the saleswoman kept giving him strange looks while he was paying, and Louis had followed him around the store with a perpetual expression of bewilderment, but he hadn’t known what babies needed and better too much than too little, right? He watched, slightly apprehensive, as though his excessive spending meant he’d done something wrong, which concerned him far more than it should have. But then she was smiling, and he brought his shoulders down in relief. “Yeah, I know. I don’t really meet a lot of people in dreams either.” He considered bluffing, just for a moment, but decided honesty was the best way to go. “No,” he admitted. “I have a lot of younger siblings, but I kind of just watched, you know? I had some help, though. Ash, my sister, she babysits a lot, and Casey, my brother, loves kids. Louis helped me with the shopping. Sort of a joint effort, I guess.” During the daylight hours, at least.

She didn’t owe him anything, really, and he would have continued to insist had she not mentioned cookies. Maybe cookies were fine. Money he wouldn’t take, but cookies were harmless, and he wouldn’t have to feel guilty about it. “I’m good with cookies,” he said with a grin. “Don’t worry about it. The doors, I mean. You don’t have to explain. I get it. Sometimes stuff happens, and you can’t do anything about it. Usually you get kicked after twenty-four hours, but maybe something was going on in your door.” Two weeks was a long time, but maybe something had gone wrong. “She wasn’t,” he assured her. “It was fine. Really.”

Ella counted; Ash, that was one and Casey, that was two. Louis made it three and that was a family big enough to count on, solid enough to be reassuring. You didn’t grow up with siblings all over and turn out wrong, did you? He didn’t seem wrong in the least, this Neil who clearly had enough to live in Aria. “I make real good cookies. Maybe not two weeks of childcare good, but real good,” and if it sounded a little too clearly like guilt, she was fussing over Beth, head lowered so she didn’t have to look at him carefully, “I can’t pay you back for all the things, I can try maybe, if you don’t mind it going slow.” She kept her head down, the small knot of guilt wound tight and it ached against her ribs, she pressed lips to Beth’s smooth cheek to make herself stop thinking about the budget and how she could find the wherewithall and enough work through Anna to make enough to pay him back for baby stuff she didn’t need.

“I don’t like the doors much,” she said, and when she looked at him, it was eyes very blue and very direct; Ella was candid in a way that was small towns and knowing people and strangers not strangers very long. New York hadn’t shaken it out of her in four years there, “But I think the people are fine.” Ella drew out ‘fine’, she made it sound like ‘fine’ was a grand thing to be. “Y’all have been real helpful. You got all those siblings,” Ella sounded wistful, “Must be nice to have all those people right here. You like kids much?”

“I know it was a dream and all, but I remember your cookies being pretty good,” he said. “Two weeks of childcare good, I’d say.” Neil immediately shook his head when she mentioned paying him back, because it would be ridiculous, really, to accept her money when he had more than enough of his own. “No. I don’t want you to pay me back. I don’t need money, and I’m not taking yours. All this stuff? I don’t need it, so you might as well take it back with you.” He wasn’t angry, or even insulted, but his voice was firm; he wasn’t going to budge, not on this. While he wasn’t absolutely sure of her financial situation, he suspected paying back a stranger would make it difficult for her to make ends meet. Hell, if anything, he should be offering her money, but he didn’t want to come off like he was offering charity and unintentionally insult her in the process. Sam was like that; he had to pull teeth just to get her to let him help, and they actually knew each other beyond one dream.

He could definitely relate to how she felt about the doors. “I don’t like them either,” he admitted. As for his siblings, he shrugged. “Yeah, it’s nice. Ash is staying with me, but she’s out doing her own thing right now. Having family around helps.” Though he refrained from mentioning that he and Louis didn’t always get along. “Yeah, I like kids. I mean, I don’t know if I’ll ever have any of my own, but I like them. I have a bunch of nieces and nephews back home.” He’d always thought he would make a horrible father, in all honesty, and he was pretty sure he could find a handful of people to agree with that.

Relief unfurled, bloomed hot and warm in her throat, calmed her heart right down from flittering too fast. Ella didn’t like owing things, she didn’t like it a little bit but she liked the stack of bills even less - it wasn’t giving if she didn’t take any of it, not one bit. It wasn’t wrong then. “I don’t need anything,” Ella said quickly, stubborn as a drill sergeant, all heels dug in with a smile to take off the sting. Maybe he could return it? She looked around a little helplessly at baby paradise, and the sweet powder smell layered on over whatever it was ritzy suites were supposed to smell of when you lived there instead of dropped by. But she could give him cookies, and if it wasn’t nearly enough then at least he was pretending it was.

“Yeah, I guess family would help,” and if there were three of them all in the suite, maybe it was a little less crazy, maybe they split those hotel bills between them all? Ella had only paid a hotel bill the once, the one-step-up-from-a-motel Coop had taken her to, giggling all the while and when there hadn’t been enough cash in his wallet, they’d split it. She didn’t know how much a suite like the one they were stood in cost, but she knew how much the men in them paid for entertainment. “Back home? That’s ...England?” Ella made the guess, all soft bright smile for a passel of nephews and nieces. It wasn’t worth the free background check on this man, who stood tall in the middle of all the mess like it hadn’t bothered him one bit to have a baby for two weeks. “Why wouldn’t you have ‘em, if you like ‘em?”

Donating all the baby stuff seemed a waste when there was someone right in front of him who could use it, but Neil knew stubbornness, and he knew he could argue and cajole all he liked; Ella wasn’t going to budge. Short of delivering everything to her place when she wasn’t home, he could do little else. Maybe he’d hold onto some of it for a while, though. Just in case. “Alright,” he conceded. He wouldn’t return it; what he didn’t keep, he’d make sure found its way to people who needed it more than he did.

It would have been awkward, not necessarily difficult, to explain that he could afford this suite on his own. He never liked talking about money, and while he was more than willing to spend it, he felt like the fact that he got to live it up because his family just so happened to be wealthy wasn’t quite fair. “Scotland,” he said, with just a touch of wistfulness. “That’s where we were, in my dream. Home.” As for why he wouldn’t have kids, that earned a shrug. “I just never saw myself as the father type, I guess. I’m better as Uncle Neil.”

“Scotland,” Ella repeated, and she gave it all the magic and all the mystery of fairy-stories and growing up somewhere that was as far away as possible, with a wistful sound all her own. “Don’t you miss it, all the way over here?” She missed home something crazy, even after all the years in between and New York its own kind of home. Vegas had colored lights and madness, it had doors that walked you through to other worlds, it had women who shook it all for cash and men who laid it all down on the turn of a card - its own kind of fairy-story. The dream had been cool green and wide-spread trees and the kind of blue above she remembered, thin tissue of a dream at fingertip’s edge of a reach.

“All those siblings of yours, they have kids?” He didn’t look like the not father type, with a room full of baby things just because - a room full of things that a pushy salesperson could only account for so much of. Ella’s smile darted teasing, “Next y’all be telling me you’ll miss having a baby around.” There weren’t many people who’d miss a baby not theirs, it was mild disbelief and a note stealing in, almost laughter. “Your dream was pretty. Did I say sorry for coming in like that? I didn’t mean to spoil it.”

Did he miss home? Neil tilted his head to the side as he considered the question. In some ways, yes, he did. He didn’t necessarily miss his parents, but he missed a large chunk of his relatives, and he missed the familiarity, the safety of a warm bubble where he knew everything and everyone and they knew him in return. He’d lived a ways out from any city, and at night there had been no bright, man-made lights; the stars provided illumination. When he thought about it, really thought about it, at its core, home was his dream; peaceful and quiet, not necessarily connected to people. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “I did a lot of traveling, though, so I’ve gotten used to missing it. And I have some family here. Friends, even.” Not a lot of those, but there was Sam, and she counted for a lot even though he never knew where they stood on any given day.

The baby things were a result of overzealousness and too much money, rather than any real knowledge of what babies needed. “Not the ones here,” he said, “but some of the ones back home do. Louis, I don’t think he’ll ever have kids. Casey, maybe. Ash will, someday. I can imagine her being a mother.” In fact, if her husband hadn’t died, he was certain Ash would already have a kid or two to speak of. He blinked, and then shook his head, because he’d never admit that maybe, just maybe, he would miss having the kid around. It was crazy. It didn’t make any sense. “You didn’t, but you don’t need to,” he said, of her saying sorry. “It was kind of boring until you showed up, actually. And it worked out in the end, didn’t it?” At least in the sense that he hadn’t ended up being some kind of serial killer.

She smiled, all that family unwound and unpicked; Ella could imagine it, that warm certainty in others. He sounded happy, he sounded like his family was the kind you didn’t pull apart, didn’t return letters or leave phone calls unanswered. Not the kind that disowned one another. “Someone told me you might be a child molester,” Ella was frank, the kind of blunt that was all artless lack of edge, and wide, clear blue eyes. “I don’t think you are but I don’t think y’all would tell me if you were. Beth is okay, and I’m real grateful you looked after her. Even if you got enough stuff for three kids, not the one.” A grin. She shifted Beth onto her hip, the weight change a thoughtless, casual and comfortable sort of thing and she looked around a little bit at all that richness for a long minute.

“I think friends sometimes, they’re even better than family but family goes down way deep when you need ‘em,” and Ella was certain, because even if blood didn’t do it, then Coop had, and Coop and she had been there, it, the end of the line. “You need a body buried at three in the morning, family’ll do that.” Another grin and the tension that had been threaded through small shoulders had seeped to the kind of calm that was entirely relaxed. “I better get on out of your hair. And if I can return a favor,” a shrug, one that encompassed the suite, the baby things, the wide vastness of favors impossible to return. “Y’all let me know, right?”

Of course when children were involved, precautions needed to be taken, but Neil still blanched when she said someone had suggested he might be a child molester. He might not have been perfect, but hell, he wasn’t that, and for some reason her knowing he wasn’t any kind of sicko was important. “Yeah, I think the sitter was worried about that too,” he said. “I had to show her my ID and everything. I think she might’ve done a background check, or wanted me to think she was going to.” He paused, awkwardly, trying not to seem too earnest in his desire to convince him that he didn’t, and never would, hurt kids. “I’m not, though. I mean, I know if someone was, they’d say they wouldn’t, but I’m not. You can check with any of my siblings, or-- I don’t even have a criminal history. I was a little stupid back in college, sure, but nothing serious.” He stopped there, before he could get into actual rambling territory, and smiled. “I’m just glad you got back okay. A kid needs her mother.” As for the surplus of stuff, he shrugged. “I figured better safe than sorry.”

He saw the logic in her words. He and Louis, for example, didn’t always agree, didn’t always get along, even, but he’d been there for him when he’d hit rock bottom, disapproval aside. Not a lot of people would put in the time and effort to sober up their drunk screw-up of a brother, after all. “Yeah, that’s true. We don’t always get along, my siblings and I, but we’re there for each other, no matter how pissed off we might be.” he agreed. He didn’t think he’d ever call on her for a favor, but he appreciated the offer, and he nodded. Asking to see Beth again, that would be crossing the line. “I will. You do the same, if you ever need anything.”

She shifted Beth from one hip to the other, all squirming warm weight and she grinned at all that protest, one word after the next until they knocked about like bowling pins; there wasn’t a bit of Neil that sounded like he was wrong, the smooth-edged kind of wrong you couldn’t pry up with your fingernails. Ella had met plenty of wrong and she didn’t think the man whose words slid over one another and a list of sources to check on in with, needed a background check to prove it. Her smile slid on to sober, something about the eyes that wasn’t all laughter, “That’s real nice. Don’t let that go. You’ve got siblings like that, you keep them.” And she didn’t want one minute of thoughts sliding over to Max, for a woman she’d not seen in years, for ‘there for each other’ that hadn’t been.

She hitched up the diaper bag and she smiled at him, bright, all deliberate sunshine and Beth on her shoulder with her fingers stuffed in her mouth. “Honey, you’ve done more than enough for both of us. You want to visit, you come on by,” teasing, “And I’ll drop in those cookies. You tell me after if you dreamed ‘em right.”

Sam and his siblings were two surefire ways to get his smile to soften into something more genuine, despite his occasional issues with both. “Yeah, I intend to. I don’t want to lose them.” Even growing up, Neil had been closer to his siblings than his own parents, and that still rang true now. He wasn’t sure whether or not he should take her invitation seriously; if he did, and it wasn’t meant as such, it would be incredibly embarrassing, but if he did and she had meant it, that was admitting he had, to some degree, actually missed the baby. “Alright, I’ll let you know.” He smiled again, dropping his gaze to the baby, and he wiggled his fingers in an attempt at a child-like wave. “Bye.”

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:55:00 GMT

Who: Max and Ella
What: A sisterly reunion
Where: The library
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Nope

She’d taken as long as she could.

Two days, of sitting beneath the choked whirr of the air conditioning unit, watching the kind of mindlessness that was cheery tunes and bright colors, the kind of thing that in the books said helped babies to focus, gave them something to look at. Two days of eating the stale Cheerios at the back of the cupboard because Ella didn’t want to take anything out of the checking account before rent got due. She’d sat on the couch, and she’d watched Beth sleep on a blanket on the rug - she’d done a lot of watching Bethie sleep, since she’d been back, admired the clutch of fingers around a toy. Beth didn’t seem to much mind having been in someone else’s place, at having some stranger look on after her, and she let that sit beneath her skin just long enough for it to prickle.

But two days was long enough, long enough for phone calls to the restaurant and the shift leader at the bar, of wheedling, putting the sunshine Coop had called persuasive back in her voice; she’d looked at herself in the hall mirror, phone to her ear and smiling like they were right there in the room with her, warm enough for mid-summer. But it hadn’t worked. Two days, and then hauling out the stroller and taking Beth down to the public library to search for jobs.

It was a low, boxy red building, hunkered down on the sidewalk and big enough to be intimidating - but there was cool air in there Ella didn’t have to pay for, and the bathrooms were clean. She’d gone the first day with real good intentions, there’d be something out there - a bar, maybe, even if she’d miss the restaurant with its honeyed, expensive hush and the maitre’d who kept the girls in line. Maybe even an audition. And then the next, and then the next she’d idled, between searching for open calls and looking for bars that didn’t require everything hanging on out, and she’d tapped that name - the name singing behind her teeth, the name she thought the brusque commenter with strings to pull with the CPS might have - ‘Maxine Main’ into the search bar instead.

Wasn’t much there. Nothing easy, nothing quick that said ‘hey, Ella, honey, your sister - she lives right up the road, here’s her address’. Less than she’d figured on, seeing how Max was the kind to do the brave stuff that people talked all over the news about. A whole lot of nothing, in fact - and the second day, as the air chugged overhead and Beth dozed in the stroller, she tried it on again, elbow propped up beside the slow, five-years-out-of-date computer, with one leg drawn up beneath her and the kind of sundress bought at Goodwill, denim-washed blue, bright gold curls, long and shower-damp sprawling down her back.

Max had gotten the ping the moment Ella searched.

It was a simple precaution, one all good undercovers fearing an agent name sale took, the pingback when someone searched for them on the internet. It was easy enough to swing, and it didn't even require calling in special favors or twisting arms. Max got that ping, and she got the location, and she was out the door.

Max was still in the chair. For long trips, or anything without the nearby support of a vertical wall or flat counter, she was in the chair. She refused to use it at home, where she would rather lurch unseen than sit her ass down on that imitation leather. At home, exhaustion came from five steps across the bedroom and seven across the living room. The kitchen was the best place in the entire townhouse, tight and sandwiched between two counters. The kitchen would have been considered a detractor, when it came to selling points. For Max, it was a reprieve. She was so much better than she'd been, but she still took the hated chair when she left the place, knowing she couldn't rely on a sturdy cane yet. Soon, but not yet. And yet the prospect of eventual freedom did what nothing else could: it made her hope.

And Max was stressed, which really didn't help matters. When she got the ping, she immediately thought of Tijuana, of rogues and of name sales. She didn't think of arsonists, because that ceasefire was still in effect. She didn't think of the woman on the journals with her sister's first name and the wrong last initial. Max hated the journals, and she generally only used them to talk to the kid, Corvus or Daniels. And no one from her family could be stupid enough not to have proper back-up childcare, anyway.

Max had no idea where Ella was, but the little sister that had gotten to grow up with mom, free and happy, was surely prospering somewhere. Probably married, Max thought, to someone who didn't demean her or make her ashamed of herself. Probably somewhere with a kid, or one on the way, a kid that she actually got to live with. Max had grown up in hell; she always assumed Ella had grown up in heaven.

But none of that was on Max's mind when she pushed into the library that day. She'd come by the previous day, when the ping had come, and she'd gotten the description of the tatty blonde with the stroller that had been using the computer. Tatty blonde didn't describe anyone she knew but Wren, and she didn't see why Wren would be in a library searching for her name. So, Max waited, and she came back the second day. The second ping lit up her cellphone just as soon as she rolled into the library, track pants and a black tee, hair scraped back in a long, dark ponytail.

Max didn't even need to get halfway to the computer before recognizing her sister. She had no idea why someone from her family looked like they'd joined the white trash nation, but she figured the stroller might have something to do with it. She frowned. "Where's Mr. Dean?" she asked, because come on, the world wasn't filled with that many coincidences.

Ella startled easy. It was the kind of guilty-jumpstart, all idling limited time with something that wasn’t looking for work, not really and a line of people right behind her who wanted free air-con and the computers and somewhere that wasn’t out in the sun to sit awhile. It would have been the same for anyone who’d said anything in particular, that twitch of shoulders and the jerk of her head upward, toward the speaker who wasn’t up at all and then she was wide, wide blue eyes fixed on the chair and the woman in it.

When Ella thought about Max, it was movement. It was restless physicality, the kind that didn’t settle much - she’d thought (a while back, writing invites with an ink pen, lying on her belly on a bed in a too-small apartment) maybe Max was Army now, maybe she’d gone back after cold Seattle and a baby and a man who didn’t talk much. Maybe Max was somewhere where all that fluidity in motion got used properly. She didn’t think about accidents and she didn’t think about death - the General had, in his own way, been pretty much indestructible and Ella had figured that was Max too. Indestructible.

She stared now, at the wheels and the seat and then at the woman in it, recognizably her sister but her sister four years on; she still looked like the chair was maybe a joke, that Max would get on out of that and move, hard-grooved physicality in stillness. Ella half-wondered if she’d summoned her, genie-in-a-lamp, typing her name on into the computer that still guiltily displayed a row of results for anyone who wasn’t the woman sat in the low, utilitarian-looking thing, but the look Ella gave her was surprise faded out to sobriety.

“Dead,” she said without a speck of emotion to it, the word flavored with growing up near enough to the Army and how dead worked there. She stretched out a hand for the plastic structural familiarity of the stroller’s handle, and she uncurled from the chair, feet tucked up beneath her stretched out to full height. There wasn’t much height to Ella, all their mother’s stature with the same generosity of hip and curve. Had she worn lipstick - or make up at all, she would have looked a great deal like her.

Ella was right about one thing; Dead wasn't the same kind of word for spooks as it was for normal people. Dead wasn't even a word spooks used. Death, in Max's line of work, was washed over to the point of numbness. It was anesthetized - assets, collateral damage, justifiable loss. Nothing that brought to mind families at home, or people crying over caskets. Max's career had involved multiple instances where she stood by, seemingly unfazed, while another agent was executed in front of her after being outed. Undercover meant being able to stand there, to not care, and to not give away the mission the agent had died for. What would be the point otherwise? The best way to mourn someone lost in the field was to succeed, and to take whatever progress they'd made and run with it. Make the loss, as it would always be labeled, justifiable. There was a non-permanence to her life that made that dead something that settled without weight. Her mind turned to practical things; no money, obviously, and no life insurance, and Ella hadn't done anything with the college degree Max had to assume the General made her get. Max's father didn't talk about Ella, and Max never asked.

To Max, Ella was a lifetime of things she'd never had. She reminded her of the woman that hadn't ever known what to do with the eldest daughter that the General had turned into a son, and Max could already see the same kind of vulnerability and lack of practicality that had always made her wonder why the General had chosen the wife he had. It wasn't love, Max knew that much, but her mother wasn't particularly capable in any way at all; Ella didn't seem to be either, at least not if losing her child and not being able to afford a decent stroller or a background check was any indication.

And Max, terrible with outward emotion, had no real response for that "dead."

"The hotel brought you out here?" Max finally asked, hands on the wheels of the custom chair, and slight roll back and forth indicating her discomfort and that inability to stay still that had plagued her all her life. Sitting and talking about hard things; it just wasn't something Max was good at. "Do you have somewhere to stay, and did you figure out childcare?" Because whatever was (or wasn't) between them, Max was always good at practical things, tangible things.

She moved. It wasn’t expected, that little back and forth, Ella figured the chair eliminated the moving, but it was so Max - come Christmas, in and out rather than sat down and still, that Ella smiled, brief and bright behind institution-old computer. It was something that wasn’t surprising, something that was a little bit (maybe) of knowing that went a little way to smoothing out the rough-edged ball of crumpled not-knowing everyone in the whole city that was knotted up tight inside. Not far. But a little bit.

“The hotel didn’t bring me anywhere,” Ella thought a lot about practicalities even if there was nothing much there to make of all that thinking; twenty-two didn’t take out life insurance even if he was the bold, thoughtful sort and twenty-four didn’t get to cash anything in. There was a policy filed somewhere in the tiny apartment, something all fresh and clean paper with Ella’s own name written on the top but policies required putting money aside every month and there wasn’t much for that. It wasn’t the hotel that had sent her clear across the country but the cool, clean and empty grief that was finding all the places Coop had talked of, warm-voiced and sleepy, lying beneath hospital-crisp sheets. Practicalities submerged beneath sentiment; Ella looked at her sister. Maybe the hotel had pulled her but Ella doubted Max was ever going to be pulled past her own will. Indomitable.

No ‘hello’. A snap-to list of questions. The smile didn’t flutter but something in Ella’s eyes steeled. “I’m fine. I live here. And I can manage.” Pause. “Thank you.” Something about that thank you was nothing sweet and nothing polite. It was quiet, nothing that made a scene. Main women didn’t make scenes (her mother, her mother quiet and firm, hands on her shoulders as Max and the General sauntered back out). But it wasn’t sugared tea and soft voice, either.

Max didn't say anything to that the denial that the hotel had anything to do with Ella being in Vegas. It wasn't that she believed her sister, but she wasn't going to argue about something insignificant; it was a waste of time. Whether the hotel had brought Ella here or not, here she was. As for being fine and managing, Max managed to keep her gaze from traveling the steps it had already traveled. She understood pride, and she understood what it meant to lose it. What she didn't understand was putting it before the welfare of a child, but then Max didn't want to get into a parenting fight with this sister of hers either, not when it would likely end in some emotional outburst about how Amanda was across the country and nowhere near her.

"Don't be stubborn," Max finally said. It was, for her, exceptionally tame, but Ella's presence brought back so many things that she'd believed dead and buried. "You don't have to like me. I'm asking practical questions about the state of your affairs." Her gaze did slide to the stroller then, brown and immediately warm. She remembered Amanda at that age; she remembered how terrified she'd been when Amanda was small. She didn't think of fathers, present or absent or dead. And she didn't ask the question that was so prominently on her mind: how did you end up like this? Instead, she lifted a brown brow and the chair rolled back and forth again. "First things first, did you find a sitter who won't hand your child over to a stranger?"

Family wasn’t anything but an argument. It was letters written and returned, the address struck through and it was Christmas cards that never came. It was a phone call, when she’d stood in the hall of the New York apartment with the cord wound round and around her fingers and her belly too big to see her own toes and sweat beading between her shoulder-blades and listening to the long dial-tone and no-answer of the Louisiana house. It was trying, when Beth was so small she was breakable, that old Seattle number, ready to ask - words on the tip of her tongue when she was so tired she was dizzy and grief greyed out everything but the trips to the grocery store and back.

Ella’s smile was a curl of the mouth, all slip-slide and rueful. Stubborn. The Max she remembered was stubborn in the way of rocks and trees and things that didn’t move even when you hauled off and shoved. There wasn’t anything to Max but stubborn right off, and she smiled because it was familiar where the chair wasn’t and the blunt pushing was another familiar, even if it wasn’t college applications and goals but things that had nothing to do with Max at all, things long after sisters had exited stage left.

“You don’t want me to like you?” Ella caught that little look toward Beth fast asleep, and the warmth went a little way toward unfurling the hard, tight ball in her throat as Max reeled off her questions, as formal as paperwork to fill out. “Or you just don’t mind? The state of my affairs,” the formal phrase didn’t sound right in her mouth, she said it carefully, like learning a new piece of music in a foreign language, “Is fine. I manage. We manage.” And she purposefully didn’t think about the sitter and about the man the sitter had bundled the sleeping baby over to, like a lost package but the reminder was coppery fear at the back of her throat, worry creeping into clear blue eyes.

Even if Max had known what Ella was thinking about family, about going it alone, she wouldn't have thought anything of it. Life on Army bases with the General was a life alone, and that was just reality. It made for a strong soldier; it was conditioning. And any amount of crumbling those walls had done for the two years she spent in Seattle had resulted in stronger walls and a reinforcing of the foundation. It was hard, not being around her daughter, and she would have a hard time finding sympathy for anyone who had their child with them, and who still didn't make the most of it. But Max wasn't a very sympathetic woman. Loyal, yes. Caring in a stubborn, little affection way, yes. But not sympathetic. In her world, problems were dealt with, and that was just what life was comprised of - problems to be dealt with, disappointments to be shouldered.

"I didn't say that. If I don't want you to like me, Ella, I'll tell you," Max said bluntly, unwilling to play word games. Ella didn't shrink from her like their mother did, but her expression was close enough that it made Max even more guarded than normal. This was just like work; tasks and practical things and a dearth of emotion.

Max didn't look at the stroller again.

"Your state of affairs is not fine, or you wouldn't have a sitter who hands your child over to unknown men for no reason whatsoever. I don't care how nice the guy looks, your sitter should know better than to hand that child over to anyone you haven't authorized to pick her up," Max clarified, repeated, disapproval thick in her tone. "Listen, kid," she said, her tone turning very similar to the one she reserved for Luke, "I'll help you, but being stubborn isn't going to help that baby, and it isn't going to help you. You need a sitter that won't give your kid away to a stranger, and you need some backup childcare." She wasn't even touching the obvious subject of monetary problems or work. Maybe she could get someone else to talk to Ella about that. Her sister knew Luke and Corvus; either of them would do better with this particular subject than she would.

It had been long enough and far enough (wasn’t Vegas far enough from Louisiana and church-on-Sundays to do away with disapproval?) since that sound, all rules and should-bes implied, that Ella was bright-hot color flaring along cheekbones, a searing stain visible even from a distance and obvious right up close. There were plenty of looks in New York - young, stroller out front, but those looks flicked over to her hand and the ring there and those looks subsided and in Vegas those looks didn’t even start. There was a hollowness there alongside that disapproval and it wasn’t sisterly, wasn’t anything but echoes of a man who hadn’t known how to be anything but. Max did.

“You planning on asking her name right after you’re done? Or you want to talk some more about what I do wrong?” It was coolly sweet as a glass of tea poured out for a stranger, the mild-mannered pleasantness that every woman who had a baby learned for the unsolicited advice on anything and everything. Ella sat a little straighter in the chair and she curled her hand around her knee, and she looked at Max, as calm as if color wasn’t a flush along her throat, as if she weren’t mad, climbing up the back of her neck and prickling there.

“I know I need backup childcare. I’m working on it. I don’t know anyone in Vegas yet, I moved three months back.” Ella was as matter-of-fact as if addressing a stranger; Max had slid that half-step toward the sister she recalled from Seattle, all dispassionate command and adult bossiness. It threatened, that ‘kid’, her voice wobbled briefly, recovered. “You want to help? I don’t need help.” She didn’t say help would have been welcome, a year or so back. She didn’t say help was wanted then. She blinked solid blue at Max and her spine was military-straight.

"Her safety is more important than her name," Max said with practicality. And, in the end, what did it matter? Ella had obviously gotten married and had a child without anyone needing to tell her. And that cooly sweet thing wasn't going to work with Max. It was too subtle for the soldier in the chair. Anyway, the baby's name was Beth; Ella had said on the journals. As for what every woman who had a baby knew, Max hadn't gotten that memo. She'd had plenty of trouble that first year, and no one had come along with advice.

Max had to swallow back a comment about how moving with an infant, without money, or friends, or family was an irresponsible thing to do. It was a hard swallow, but she didn't want to pick a fight. She wanted to help Ella first. They could figure out their own problems later, once everything was secure. It was an extremely military approach to the situation, but it made sense to Max. Ella was an adult, and so was she; their needs were secondary, and so were their emotional reactions. When Ella asked her if she wanted to help, Max immediately began to agree. Yes, that's what all this was about? The sheer terror that this baby had been handed over to someone who could have molested her, sold her, kept her, and a dozen other things. Max knew the people on the journals weren't inherently trustworthy; Max didn't inherently trust anyone.

But then Ella followed up the question with the assurance that she didn't need her help, and Max had always had an impossibly hard time with rejection. It made her emotions spike the way little else did, and she stared at her sister for a moment before rolling the chair backward awkwardly, hating that she was in the thing. "Don't get indignant, Ella, not when you haven't checked on me in years, or on Amanda, or even asked why I'm in a fucking chair." She glanced at the stroller one last time, fondness, and then her expression became all soldier, guarded, nothing warm to it whatsoever; door closed. "And try not to look me up on public search engines," she added, already turning the chair toward the door, "I don't need everyone with a good search engine hack knowing I'm in Las Vegas."

It stung; like dismissal when she was little enough to know Max was best and Max was boldest, that Max was everything an eldest was meant to be. Like an invitation in cream colored envelope, sent back stamped ‘not at this address’. Maybe Amanda was just fine even if no one answered at the old address, and maybe Max was sat when she should have been moving, should have been striding around with the same relentless, impossible sense of her own self but it was that final slide home of slammed doors and impossible-to-reach that stung like burned fingertips reaching for something that wasn’t happy about being held even for a moment.

But the last, that little bit about search engines, public or private, and Ella moved, she pulled the stroller after her and she left her coat swinging on the chair, the screen blinking whitely and Max’s name tapped in above a list of results that weren’t her. “What do you mean? Why would anyone be hacking search engines after you?” It was the bewildered of civilians, of lifestyles that weren’t death and shadows, wasn’t blood and finite decisions. It lost a little of the stubborn in the question, the kernel of things that were strings to pull with government agencies and a history of Army that ran through Max the way it had run through their father, steel-corded, solid.

It was unthinking for Max, reaching down from her easy, low height and squeezing the baby's hand with a soft shake that was surprisingly gentle. She'd learned the hard way, when Brandon guilted her for being a bad mother and not knowing how to hold her own child. It was second nature now, and she pulled her hand away easily and looked up at her sister, who had left everything in her wake. "Ella, your coat, and clear the history on the damn search," she said, looking back at the blinking screen. She sighed, and it was a tired sigh, a woman nearing thirty and with very little to show for it, at least in her daily life. "No one's looking for me, but search engines aren't safe. That's all I was saying." And it was true, just then, no one was looking for her. That might not be the case if the name sale went through, but she'd made peace with her current demon, at least for now.

Max rolled the chair back again, away from the stroller and away from her sister. "You know how to reach me, if you need anything." She started to roll past her, but it was the baby in the stroller that made her sigh and stop the wheels, her back already to Ella, dismissive. "You remember Luke and Wren? From Seattle? They're here. They have a kid. Wren's flaky and messed up; I wouldn't trust her with Beth," she said, not hiding the fact that she already knew the baby's name, "but the kid is trustworthy. He's on the journals."

Ella didn’t know much about her sister’s life. She’d walked into it when there was a baby, and there were raised voices and the kind of cold that hadn’t infiltrated the small house that was home - the kind of cold that was more than weather beyond the windows but misery that made the both of them, her sister and the man who wasn’t her sister’s husband, difficult to reach. She knew Max was brave and she knew Max did the kind of things men admired, the way they admired other men, in exactly the way she knew the General would not retire if anyone allowed him to continue. Search engines were harmless things you looked up restaurants and movie reviews, homework for class and maybe the names of babysitting services - they weren’t harm, they weren’t anything to worry about, except the dispassion in Max’s voice said they might be.

“Max?” and her voice was soft, the timid that was slipping right back to home, before there was school to shake her loose, “Why are you in the chair?” She thought of Luke and she thought of Wren with the brief, sharp gratitude that perhaps there were people in Vegas that might be known, even if ‘known’ was very little indeed - but Ella let go thoughts of people she’d maybe imagined, that first year of college when going home had been almost an impossibility and the rain had wrapped itself around her bones and squeezed until she was nearly as miserable as the cold house she’d crept through. She couldn’t see Max’s face, just the long tail of her hair and the set of her shoulders, and there wasn’t anything she wanted from her sister right then but an answer that wasn’t worry, blooming like water on paper.

Max waved away the question with a flick of a hand lifting from the wheel of the chair. "I didn't mention it in order to guilt you into asking, Ella. I mentioned it because neither of us have any right to be indignant. I was in a car accident," she added, an afterthought, harmless, and the cover that the agency had gone to lengths to make airtight, to the extent of having police reports and insurance claims filed. "Amanda's fine. She lives in New York with Brandon," she added, in case her sister was thinking of following up with that second guilt-ridden question. And, unfortunately, she had no reassurances for her sister. If she kept talking, she'd only go back to practicalities and all the reasons why Las Vegas was dangerous, and all the ways in which Ella was ill-prepared for the city and being childish about accepting help. She'd get in touch with Luke, and she'd have Luke do her following up for her; the kid was always better with people than she was.

"I have to go," Max said, which was a lie, but she wanted to be out of the library. She was still exhausted from Tijuana, worried about Corvus, and confused about her most recent conversation with McKendrick. She didn't need to add Ella to the equation. Ella, with mother's blue eyes and lack of understanding about what life was really like, even after losing a husband, apparently. They were as different as night and day, and not just when it came to coloring.

The wheelchair rolled, and Max didn't look back.

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:01:10 GMT

Who: Kara → March
What: Narrative: Medical treatment
Where: Passages → Hospital
When: Nowish
Warnings/Rating: Nope

March had been dragging himself through the door every time Kara got herself kicked. For Kara, the Kryptonite was so bad it rendered her unconscious. For March, it was just the bullet that hurt like nothing he'd ever felt before. But it wasn't the pain that had him crawling back on through to Helena's apartment in Gotham.

It was the blood.

He knew he couldn't lose consciousness and let anyone mess with all that damn blood, not without him warning them about his status. He was still carrying the guilt of possibly infecting Ford, and he sure didn't need new folks to worry about. It was the damn blood that kept him crawling back through. Surely someone in that damn place would fix the girl. He knew enough to know she wasn't healing like she should have done, and he assumed someone there could figure it out.

But no one did, and days passed, and every damn time he got kicked it was harder to get back in, harder to keep his damn eyes open and make that crawl.

Until the day came when he couldn't manage the doorknob. Crawling, he could manage. But he couldn't manage that damn knob. Kara's Sanctuary door - the one that didn't lead back into Helena's apartment - didn't have a knob. But that door wouldn't show itself for anything, and March slouched against the wall and gave up.

He had no idea how much time passed like that, but he gained and lost consciousness in spurts, and he started making slow progress to the door of the hotel. He was bleeding sluggishly now, and he managed to keep pressure on his belly to stop from bleeding on the rug, where someone might inadvertently come into contact with it.

He had no idea how much time passed, but he eventually made it outside and into the Las Vegas sun. He normally hated that damn sun, but right then March was plenty happy to feel it on his face. And it wasn't real long before a car stopped for the sick looking man on the sidewalk.

"Don't touch me. Call 911." That was all it took.

The hospital was cold and sterile, and March didn't remember a damn thing after telling the paramedics his status over and over, just in case they weren't listening. But he knew he was in a PCU ward now, and he knew there would be a big old paper on his door that told everyone who came in to wear some damn gloves. It would be written so other folks didn't know what it meant, but March didn't care. No one would be getting sick, and he didn't feel like he was dying. It was all he needed.

He let that medicated sleep drag him under, and he didn't fight it even the slightest bit. He'd worry about breaking out and getting back through the Door after sleeping some. With that damn bullet out, maybe Kara could heal him up normal again.

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:41:19 GMT

Who: Laura and Eloise
What: Questioning a charge, meeting of women
Where: The crappy flower shop where Laura works
When: About now?
Warnings/Rating: Some cattiness? Talk of infidelity?

Eloise was exhausted, and she was rather shaken. She felt quite certain that she shouldn't be tired, if what Gabriel had said was true. Two weeks sleeping? At her age, it seemed forever, two weeks. It unsettled her. Her bones ached, and she felt off. Tea would help, and a fag would help. But time would help the most. She asked the taxi driver to take the long way round, hoping the extra time would settle her before she saw the children. Before she saw Gabriel.

You see, Eloise vividly remembered the dream she'd dreamt as she slept. She remembered it like she remembered standing ovations and the sweet scent of roses beginning to turn after a performance. She remembered in the way oft-repeated memories were remembered, as if she'd been working it over, even sleep. Bastard. As if she needed reminders of what was no longer hers to hold.

Cursing, Eloise asked the driver to pull over a moment. She needed that fag now, and he'd a sign posted that said smoking in the vehicle was not permitted.

The cigarette lit, Eloise paced in front of the small flower shop, the feeling returning to her legs.

Flower shop.

Eloise had found the charge for the shop quite by accident. Gabriel had charged the flowers to a card they retained in tandem, for the childrens' needs. And Eloise had opened the statement, instead of forwarding it in utter innocence. The card hadn't been used since the divorce, and she wasn't in the habit of receiving bills for it.

And here the flower shop was, quite by accident.

Eloise stamped out her fag, and she pushed open the door to the shop. She was tired circles beneath her eyes, trousers and a dress shirt in black, and she looked every bit her age, almost forty and gone rail thin from two weeks asleep. "Hello," she called out, all British entitlement, a tone that expected to be catered to.

Laura had been putting more effort in at work. More than just the fact that she had free time and needed the distractions from whatever was or wasn’t going on with any number of people that she knew. The plants seemed all the more important lately, and she was proud of the way she was able to take care of them. The way they thrived with a little attention, even if it was in a shop that she hated, gave her a warm sense of satisfaction. Her boss was still awful to deal with, with her “helpful” comments that were more often than not horribly insulting. But Laura knew that she couldn’t have her own shop, and she needed to make the best of what she had. Between her work and the way she’d been making both the temporary apartment and then the one she had with Max somewhat homier, she was more content than she had been in a while. There was still a large part of her, right below the surface, that felt broken beyond repair. But work and home were both steady, if not perfect, and the fact that Gabe had invited her to grab a drink later in the week was a very tentative icing on the cake. Not the best cake, but doable. And there was the possibility that things might get better. And she had to admit that she sometimes found herself humming again while she worked. Sometimes she couldn’t place the tunes, but she liked the way they sounded.

So she was in a better mood than she often was when the door to the shop opened, and she turned from the shelf of violets she was watering. The shop was still pink and ugly, filled with more knickknacks than actual flowers, but the ones that were there, were looking better. The potted ones, at least, seemed actually healthy. Wiping her hands on the half-apron she wore, Laura stepped around a large display with a small smile. “Hello.” It wasn’t her shop, but she seemed confident enough that it might have been. “Can I help you?”

Eloise registered the voice first, and she registered it with an ear that had been cultivated on the boards. She'd a great respect for what carried in a person's voice, for what a person could become if they'd the right intonation and inflection. Likewise, a person could drag themselves terribly far down using speech and language, and sometimes without even realizing it. The woman who called out to her sounded, confident, and she'd already assumed it wasn't the shop proprietor, as the woman had no true ownership in her tone. An employee, then. That would make it rather easier.

Eloise pulled the bill from her purse, where she'd tucked it when it had arrived, and she approached the woman with all the regality of a queen approaching a supplicant. "Yes. I received a charge from this shop, and I'm not responsible for this purchase," she said, rail thin and nothing to speak of really, save for her voice which belonged on a stage. She held out the paper, and she eyed the blonde with casual disinterest, which was not casual or disinterested at all.

The smile flickered from Laura’s face for just a moment, replaced by a subtle frown, but her expression calmed again after only a heartbeat. She’d seen it before - men that had someone on the side, buying flowers with the wrong card, the wrong check. Putting down the wrong confirmation phone number and having their wife get the call about a mistress’ flowers. It never failed to make her stomach turn, but her good mood meant she could be professional about it. She headed for the counter, the register, and beckoned the woman over. She hoped it was just a mis-bill somehow, that this frail looking woman wasn’t going to have to deal with a cheating husband. There was a rush of pity that she did her best to hide, exuding assurance that things were simply a mistake.

“If you’ll let me see the charge, I’ll see what I can find.” From behind the counter, she pulled out the receipt books, thankful that the shop was too cheap to buy a computer to have at the front. It meant that she was working with ink on paper and could easily find what she was looking for. “Is there a date on the transaction?”

Eloise almost chuckled at the woman's flickering smile and evident discomfort. It was rather cruel, perhaps, to enjoy the faltering, but Eloise was enough of an actress yet to see it as a potential expression to be stolen away without permission and tucked away for a future performance. And, of course, she realized these things happened with rather frightening frequency in a shop like this. Men were never terribly smart when it came to cheating. But Gabriel wasn't a cheat any longer, since he'd no commitments now, not as he had then. It made her take pity on the woman with the receipt book. "Don't fret, darling, he's cheated before. If it's not an error, I'll go about my business and carry on. It's rather less of an infraction this time, I should think," she said, a cryptic reference to her divorce. "Gabriel Reed. You couldn't miss him. Cane, handsome, rather larger than life," she said, sliding the paper over with the appropriate date atop it, and the billing address listed as Gabriel and Eloise Reed.

Laura’s fingers were on the credit card statement, pulling it closer across the counter, when the woman’s words connected with the names above the address. There was a slight jerk of her fingers, and she kept her unseeing gaze on the paper before looking back up at the woman. This time, it was more about study, done in a glance that was intense in its briefness, taking in as much as she could about the woman on the opposite side of the counter. And came to the conclusion that she, Laura, was as far from Eloise as it was possible to be and still both be women. From the delicacy and bearing, right to the dark hair and pale, smooth skin. The woman that Gabe had married was her complete opposite. She shook her head to clear it, to focus on the customer at hand instead of her own racing thoughts. “I remember. The flowers were a joke for a co-worker. A male co-worker. We had extra stock in back, so I only charged him for the vase.”

In that moment, though she was left reeling by being faced with Gabe’s ex that was seeming less like an ex the more she said (the subtle hint of their divorce not registering at all), Laura did her best to stay professional. And also did her best to repair whatever strange rift might have been caused by a joke of a flower arrangement. The action was laced through with her own hot guilt, her own part in flirting with an apparently married man making her want to fix everything she could about the situation. The guilt was easy enough to deal with, but the anger, threatening to inch its way out, needed to be pushed down forcefully. He’s cheated before... Apparently so. He hadn’t seemed the type, had seemed like a good man when she’d spoken with him, and her anger took on the flavor of betrayal. All hidden behind a polite retail worker’s mask.

Really, it was the slight jerk of the woman's fingers that had done it. Eloise was rather good at looking for things hiding in shadows. With Gabriel, there were always shadows, and there were always things hiding in them. Perhaps she didn't always learn what was there, but she learned that something did, indeed, live in that darkness. It was lovely not to be paranoid unnecessarily, truly, but at times she would have rather prefered it.

The woman in front of her was very American. No willowy frame, but solid. No delicate features, but rough. Blonde, of course, and younger, as one would expect. Eloise stared a moment too long, and it was an intentional perusal this time. She'd every expectation that Laura would notice it. In fact, she wanted the other woman to notice. It was the keen-eyed look of a woman nearing forty that had found a secret where she'd not been expecting it. Ah, yes, just there.

"I see," Eloise replied, and it left little doubt as to what she saw. There was more in the acknowledgement than flowers sent as a joke, surely.

Eloise took back the slip of paper, and she folded it over onto itself with deliberate slowness, deliberate care, and then she tucked it away inside her purse. "That was kind of you, only charging him for the vase," she added, as the paper disappeared. She didn't turn and leave immediately, because silence made for interesting outbursts to fill it, as every woman past twenty knew.

Laura knew the second the woman in front of her figured out that something wasn't quite what it should be. Whether it was due to her own expression, her voice, the betrayal of her own tensing body, she didn't know. It could have simply been a general sort of female awareness of things that were not right with the man in her life. Whatever the reason, Laura felt the weight of regard, the study of another woman to assess and dissect. And all she could do was keep her expression calm and let the other woman look. She didn't shrink from it, not after so many years of knowing herself and all of her own flaws. But she wasn't going to offer any of her own information either, not freely, and not even into the silence that followed the dry, papery fold of the credit card statement. The statement that held a shared name and only one address.

"It was a mis-shipment. We received things we normally wouldn't use. There wasn't much call for them." The business talk was stilted at best, but it filled that silence that asked those questions that Laura wasn't going to answer.

The stilted response was answer enough. "Of course," Eloise replied, and that of course meant anything but of course. "He can be quite charming. I understand," she added, snapping her purse closed with drama fit for the stage. "I do thank you for your time. It's been informative," she told the woman-

Ah, yes. Woman. That would hardly do.

"I'm terribly sorry. I'm Eloise Murphy-Reed. I didn't catch your name?" She smiled. It would be rather hard not to give a name in a setting like this, where the woman was an employee and not the owner of the shop. Eloise liked names. The ones parents gave children never struck her as particularly important by themselves, but how people pronounced them, how they claimed them, it was rather interesting. But she wasn't asking for any arbitrary reason. No, simply, she wanted to know what the woman was called.

Laura was never good at the sorts of games that girls and women played with each other. The cattiness grated on her and she found herself ill-suited to it. It had led to her having only one or two very good girl friends in the past, and up until a few years ago, most of her acquaintances had been male. It had just been easier to not have to deal with the ins and outs of feminine attitude. She could do it. She just didn't like it. Nor did she appreciate the insinuation that she couldn't help herself around such a charming man as Gabe. Her shoulders tensed, as if for a physical fight, but she forced them back down away from her ears after that first second.

Everything in Laura wanted to keep her name behind her teeth, to not share that bit of information that could be used to find out so many other things about her. But in the sort of dynamic that came with being customer and employee, all Laura could do was offer a small smile and introduce herself. "Laura. It's nice to meet you." And if refusing to give her last name at first was rude, she made no sign or comment of that sort.

The tensing shoulders told Eloise quite a lot about this woman Gabriel had selected. Perhaps it wasn't surprising, really, that she was the antithesis of Eloise herself. Eloise, on the surface, was a smooth, polite smile and nothing angry or challenging at all. But then she'd never needed a fight; silence worked much better, she found. Gabriel was the exception. Gabriel, who made her yell and throw things in the most horrific manner. But that was a thing of the past, wasn't it? Recent dreams aside.

Eloise took a step back, and she inclined her head. It was an acknowledgement, of sorts. After all, this Laura had won something she'd discarded.

"Thank you for your time, Laura," Eloise said, lingering on the other woman's name and possessing it in lengthened, elegant syllables. "I'll show myself out," she added, as if this was a residential visit of the friendliest sort, and not a commercial establishment at all.

With that, Eloise turned gracefully, the movement befitting the stage, and she left the shop entirely. She'd wait before calling Gabriel and asking him to leave the children with the maid until she arrived. She'd give Laura a chance to call him first, you see; Laura seemed the type.

The nod didn’t seem like an acknowledgement of Laura having won. It seemed like an acknowledgement of an enemy made. And it made Laura feel a little sick. And yet, the mask of employee stayed on as well as she could make it. “Let us know if you need anything else,” she said, watching the turn that was more dance than step, a graceful movement that Laura was aware she never had and never would possess. The sick feeling shifted into something with jealous teeth, and she sighed when the door closed behind the other woman.

She returned to watering the violets, distracted in a way that resulted in some receiving too much water, and some not enough, and when the end of her shift finally rolled around, she grabbed her phone to text an increasingly-familiar number.

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:05:39 GMT

Who: Laura
What: Alter change narrative (finally!)
Where: The random, bland apartment that she's been given for her safety
When: A bit of a while ago because I am behind on my docs. Before Max let Laura know it was safe to return home.
Warnings/Rating: None

Her pay from the flowershop, small as it was and made even less by the fact that it was only a part time position, wasn’t enough to pay for her own, single rent. It was why she’d been more than happy to split the cost of rent with Max, to have a decent place to life though she wouldn’t normally be able to afford it. She knew she could’ve called up a certain wealthy friend and asked for the favor of enough to get her set with rent, her own place to live, money to survive on. If he was feeling especially generous, he might even try to set her up with her own shop again. But she wasn’t the type of person to do that, and the thought of it made her uncomfortable. She’d rather live where she could afford than to go begging for charity. So she kept that phonecall to herself and made do with what life threw at her.

Even when what was thrown at her was a too-white apartment that had no character to it. She’d complained about it to Gabe often enough, and his answer was always the same: get some paint and get some plants. And since she wasn’t paying the rent on the place (though she had no idea who was, and she would kick Max’s ass if it ended up being her), she had enough of a cushion that she could afford a few gallons of paint and a hearty little houseplant. The plant had taken up residence in the living room (and she was contemplating another for her bedroom), and the paint had been purchased and applied: an accent wall of warm butter in the living area, a greyish sage in the bathroom that turned the white tile and fixtures into something more calming than institutional, and a cloudy grey for her bedroom that was just neutral enough to cool the Vegas heat. They were standard colors, nothing ground-breaking, but they made it feel warmer and homier. Something she could actually handle living in.

And in the time between work and painting, she rearranged the place as best she could. When she was done, there was a sweet sense of satisfaction at the changes. Even if she had to move again in two days, the effort had been worth it. She was proud of what she’d done, and she used the still-generic kitchen to make herself a dinner worthy of a tiny celebration. Dinner at the table, a glass of wine, color on the walls. Each thing wasn’t something she would have given thought too until recently, convinced that the more mundane aspects of her life weren’t as important. But those same mundane things, now that they were complete, made her feel better. They gave her a sense of accomplishment, somewhere around her heart and in the back of her mind. It was a satisfaction that blotted out the remaining thoughts of computers and gadgets, replacing them with thoughts of home and growing things. As she ate her solitary dinner, she was content with the change.

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:41:48 GMT

Who: Eddie and Steph
Where: Saint Agnes
When: Night of Arkham explosion after helping the church out
What: Talking, kissing, mostly making up
Warnings: kisses?

The church’s tower had been cleared out of its ancient bell a long time ago and replaced with a very modern kind of speaker system that blasted the chimes of a bell recorded somewhere in Missouri or another inconsequential place. Despite being a vintage super villain who liked to wrap himself in ancient things, Eddie loved the wonders of modern technology even more. He loved that a bell could be a bell without actually being a bell. Of course, nothing had chimed out of those speakers since Bane took over and wouldn’t until the brute was cleared out of Gotham and the streets were filled with people again, but tonight made that seem a daybreak closer. The retired cops and their families were so hardworking and willing to learn that even a former hermit like Riddler could feel buzzed off the energy of community. He remembered Father Michael saying that any non believer could feel god at a packed Sunday mass and Eddie didn’t believe it until tonight. There was something special about a room full of people feeling the same thing, looking towards the same horizon. Eddie had never seen anything like it before. Working with the rogue gallery meant working with selfish people. And, selfish people always had their own directions to look even when they were working together.

Wrapped up building, teaching and configuring, by the end of the night Eddie was still awake in the corner of the church at a worktable they set up for him. Checking the cameras a second time, writing up simple instructions for emergency notifications and making a spreadsheet of supplies that the families needed. He didn’t realize it was so late and everyone else had fallen asleep in their sleeping bags until Father Michael snored so loudly it snapped his attention up from his laptop. Eddie took a moment to look over the sea of trusting, slumbering families who probably hadn’t slept well in weeks and let himself have a private, content kind of sigh. This was all new. All brand new and Eddie couldn’t be more grateful for it. Leaning back with his hands behind his head, he noticed two packets of hot chocolate next to his desk with a note taped to it that simply had an oversized, purple crayon heart and Katie in a squiggly, child’s handwriting. Eddie smiled, glad no one was awake to see that either and quickly brewed himself and Stephanie some hot chocolate to carefully bring up to her.

She could hear him coming up the tower steps slowwwlly, sometimes making little noises with his mouth as he typically did when he was focusing especially hard. Eventually, he appeared at the last step, smiling at her with two mugs in his hand that were filled to the brim with tiny, colorful freeze-dried marshmallows. “Katie wanted you to have this.” Eddie set the mug down next to Stephanie and then handed her the little note that came with it. “I think her mom helped her with the e, but I’ll let it go this time.” Eddie’s smile was goofy from a lack of sleep, but happy. Stephanie was one of the few people who could see the difference between Eddie’s humor as a safeguard and actual happiness. The latter being something that didn’t naturally appear very easily.

After helping fortify the windows and ensuring any unstable nooks and crannies were secure, Stephanie had taken a few minutes to talk to a few more people, get to know their stories or little things about them. Give them a brief second of normalcy, or however normal talking to a young woman dressed as a bat could be. Anything that wasn't strategy or fearing for their lives for just a few moments. She listened to the little kids talk about the new game they'd thought up, and the wives chat about something simple like the reality shows they were watching, and those retired cops laud her and Eddie over their efforts again and again. It was nice, being with the people of Gotham, something she hadn't done in some time. It was plagues or forced vacations to Vegas or her father harassing her. Nothing so fundamentally Batgirl as this.

Eventually, she told Father Michael she'd head up to the gutted bell tower to keep watch in case those jackasses came back. (The curse earned a stern look from the priest and a sheepish smile from Steph.) And that what was how she spent the remaining hours until everyone fell asleep. Goggles on and swooping up and down the street to search for Bane's people. But, really, it was an excuse to give herself time away from everyone. After that crushing kiss shared in the graveyard, she wanted to slap herself upside the head for it. Why'd she allowed herself that momentary weakness? She couldn't help the glances toward Eddie while they finished up work, similar to how he kept glancing at her earlier. And it stung more than she let on to everyone else. So, getting away was good, even if she knew Eddie wouldn't let her stay by herself the entire night.

As she heard his approach -- and she knew it was him -- she didn't move from her perch at the edge, one leg propped up and the other dangling inside the tower. She looked just as exhausted as he felt, even hidden beneath all that black. Her blonde hair was still damp at the ends from the torrential downpour earlier, and it stuck messily stuck out of the back of her cowl. And winding down had also brought back some of those symptoms of withdrawal she'd been able to bury away: the ache in her bones, the numbness in her fingers, the absolute fatigue. But, she managed to flash him a smile as he walked over, quick and small and barely there, before slipping off her gloves to let the mug warm her fingers directly. "The kid's pretty smart for three. Really perceptive." She brightened at the note, and looked back up at Eddie with a little wibble to her lips that she tried to bite away. A happy one, to mirror the stupid happy in his voice and expression. Normally, she'd appreciate something like this from a little girl a lot, but somehow this meant more than those other times. Like it was exactly what she needed.

Eddie brushed the edge of one of his fingers along her bare knuckles, hitting each and every groove between them as if he were pushing a code against her skin and then retreated over to one of the other windows. He nodded with a humming noise, flipping out his glasses so he could read heat signatures, check his email and make sure Arkham didn’t fall while he was gone. Eddie played warden for a while until Crane came back, but he didn’t like it very much over there anymore. Even with the good company, the familiar kind of crazy he could bury himself in, Eddie was a lot happier over here in a part of Gotham that wasn’t going to bring out the worst in him. “Lot of smart kids down there.” Eddie said finally, letting her have a moment with the little note and pretending he didn’t notice the wibble of her lips and the way her eyes lit up at the simple note. He liked that small things could mean the world to her. He was the same way. From pieces of trivia to the way Matilda slept on his feet to keep him safe. Little things were what made the world beautiful to him.

“Rain’s about to clear up. When morning hits I’m going to put their fence up, I think.” Eddie took a couple bites of marshmallows soaked in hot chocolate. “I wish I didn’t have to think about the rest of Gotham. I wish a giant wall went up around this block and we’d only be responsible for these people instead of the entire scope of things.” He said distantly through blinking notifications. Typically he was a man who liked big, complicated mazes. Typically he’d get bored with such a small assignment. Something about this place was different though. He didn’t know if it was the people or the things he was trying to do to help. He didn’t know if it was a simple as forcing Stephanie to spend time with him instead of letting her run off to another corner of the city. If he had to guess, he’d think it was a mess of all those things. Strings of different motivations wadded up in a big, colorful ball that he’d rather keep tangled than pull apart.

The mug burned her fingers a little, the sting a reaffirmation that the numbness wasn't permanent, but the tingle his touch left made sure that didn't even matter. She stared down at her knuckles for a couple of beats with a confused sort of frown, but it might have looked like she was just focusing on the steam billowing from the warm drink. How did he still make her feel so warm and fuzzy and stupid when she wanted to hate him with all her might? Where was the switch in her brain to just turn that off? There had to be one, right? It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair at all that he still had her heartstrings tangled around his fingertips to twist and pluck as he pleased. She knew, or at least she hoped that she had the same effect on him, but that didn't make her feel any better in that moment. So, she buried that frown in the hot chocolate, sipping away as he spoke, and she just offered some noises from the back of her throat as responses. And, she didn't look back at him at first. Down to the letter resting on her lap or to the chipped mug hugged in her hands or the rain out the window. Anything to avoid looking at his deep, dark eyes and being sucked right back in to his riddled puzzle.

Eventually, though, she sighed and looked toward him, but not at his face. "Gotham needs us," she said simply to his shoes. "We're the only ones who can help. And this is our home. We can't let him take it." She sounded angry then, offended that Bane even thought he could take over their city without people soon pushing him back to his rightful place. Out of Gotham and locked away for good. (Even if no one was locked away for good in Gotham.) She fell quiet again, staring at his sneakers for a long moment before her gaze traveled up sloooowly until blues met browns. "I'm proud of you, too, Eddie. Of everything you did tonight. The way you worked with those people down there? I'm so proud." There was earnest pride bleeding through her words, and she offered him a gentle smile. "I told you you could."

He nodded along with her, not angry that Bane had decided to take over Gotham, but knowing full-well that it wasn’t his to have. Eddie didn’t do the right thing because he loved justice or he was particularly interested in punishing the evil. He simply liked things a certain way and didn’t enjoy seeing other people get hurt. If pressed, he might have even admitted that he was protective over certain people. Though, that wasn’t some big mystery to anyone that knew him well enough. The way he kept the Cat’s secrets, the way he forgave Muerte, the way he followed Stephanie around like a puppy. All clear clues into how that riddled heart worked.

He tilted his head on the window, taking his glasses off to simply enjoy the quiet moment of light rain, hot chocolate and her company. When he felt his eyes on her, Eddie turned slowly just as her blues met his dark browns and his eyes crinkled a little in focus at what she was telling him. Suddenly, he was very aware of his breathing, of his mouth hanging open just a little almost in shock and he swung his legs off the window sill so he could face her. “Thank you.” He said finally, eyes ticking with thoughts she couldn’t read as he watched a couple marshmallows melt into the hot chocolate. “I don’t think- I know I couldn’t have managed without you around.” Eddie made a noise like he knew she hated him for saying things like that, but it was the truth. And, he was trying to be truthful. Eddie exhaled through his nose slowly and looked back up to her. “I love you. I love you a lot. I don’t think I can leave you alone anymore.”

Unlike Eddie, Steph stayed in her spot, that one leg propped up while the other swung to and fro, while they lapsed into a momentary silence. She didn't regret saying what she did; it was the truth, even if she wanted him to believe otherwise sometimes. She was unequivocally proud of how he handled the whole situation, how he empathized with those people as closely as he could, how he willingly helped without much of a reward other than a lauding thanks from the people now sleeping downstairs. It was a newer side of him. She'd seen it, of course, time and time again, but she appreciated that he was letting others see it as well.

That didn't save him from a sharp shake of her head with a soft no accompanying it. No, she didn't think that he needed her to do all that. She hated the pressure of it, honestly. Any other time before, she'd indulge in the idea of him needing her, but now it left a bad taste in her mouth. Because if he needed her, why didn't he realize how much he'd wronged her with the entire Muerte situation? Her shoulders stiffened, and she buried her cowled face in her hands with a whine after a second. Why did he have to say things like that? "I'm so mad at you," she snapped finally, hands acting like shields on the sides of her face, and her voice sounded so heavy with emotions. "I'm so fucking mad, and you don't get it." There was a shake in her words that threatened to crack underneath the pressure, and she had to look out that window while gnawing on her bottom lip.

Eddie expected a backlash, he knew her well enough to see one coming a mile away (especially if he was the one causing it), so by the time she was burying her head in her hands he was setting his hot chocolate down and walking over to sit on the floor under her. “I know you’re mad. I know.” He had been mad, too. Cold, even and the fear of her ultimately rejecting him occasionally made Eddie want to hurt her before she could do the same to him. But, the whole night changed something. Made it easy to focus on what was important. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m still the same person I was before. Nothing’s changed. You’ve just haven’t had to see that part of me in a long time.” He tried to reason out. Eddie thought she was upset because he was crazy and sometimes crazy people do things that don’t make sense to people like her, but it wasn’t like she didn’t know. Stephanie more than anyone else in this Gotham should have known.

He leaned against the wall right under her windowsill, sitting up enough to prop his arm up against her body. The right thing to do would be to give her space, to not even show up tonight, but Eddie had seen how well that methodology worked with other relationships from different sides of the tracks. Pride didn’t goddamned matter when it came to her. And, he was so sure that even if she did break his heart and send him away, he’d never snap enough to really hurt people again. “Maybe you’re right.” Eddie said after a moment, fingers lightly brushing against her padded body armor. “Maybe I don’t need you anymore to keep things right. Batman proved that, didn’t he? But, I-” He looked up at her. “But, you can’t expect me to change everything about myself for you.”

When he leaned his arm against her body, she jerked away instinctively, body tense and burning underneath that kevlar. It stung to have him so close, but she didn't nudge him away, even her frame still stiffened considerably. "It's not just that," she muttered, or whined, or breathed out. It was barely a whisper over the din of the rain going pitter-patter on the roof above them, and it was just weak. It wasn't just the fact that his brain worked differently, was it? There was some fundamental feeling of hurt that went with everything that had happened. She placed the mug behind her on the sill and then drew both her legs up to hug them to her chest. Head shaking back and forth against her knees.

"It's not just that," she repeated a little louder, but the sound was muffled in her body armor. "It-it feels like--god, Eddie." A whine of sadness and frustration rumbled in her throat before she snapped her head up again, watery, bloodshot blue eyes storming. "I love you so much, do you understand that? So much that it scares me sometimes. I don't want to feel vulnerable, not after every other time I've been with a guy, but that's what you make me feel so often. I'm goddamn scared of it. And, after everything we've been through, I thought I'd be okay. That I could be brave enough. But, it feels like you chose her over me. She violated me and I've nearly lost control of my body like that but in a different way before, you know that." Her voice shook, and she had to swallow hard to suppress a sudden sob. "She hung my life and your life and our relationship over my head just because I called her out on something that any girl would. And, it's not fair that you forgave her for that." And maybe that showed her youth that she couldn't even fathom how someone could be forgiven for something so egregious and awful.

He sat up a little straighter, turning so he could kneel at the windowsill and reach a hand to hold to the top of her bare one. “That wasn’t her. The toxin and the stress of so many people practically dancing to their own graves scrambled her mind. If something like that happened to me, I’d want someone to forgive me, too. She’s my friend.” Eddie’s voice strained like someone who didn’t have a lot of friends to begin with. Back in Gotham, his Gotham, he couldn’t exactly trust any of the people he called friends and there were plenty of other who thought he was their friend when he’d just as easily backstab them. Here, he was trying to make that right. Muerte was always one of those friends that Eddie would go pretty great lengths to help if she needed him. And, he was just now understanding how that could hurt the person closest to him.

Eddie took a moment to mull over that and exactly how to fix it without ruining either relationship. She could practically hear the gears spinning in his head, mouth screwed up in a thoughtful sort of look before he reached to move her hot chocolate over to the other windowsill and scooted to sit next to her. “Look,” He said after a moment, tugging at her hands to get her to curl up with him. “I can’t get mad at something that wasn’t her fault. But, I should have kept her at a distance. In anticipation of your feelings. In respect. You’re right about that. And, that’s something I can do. Once this is all over and things go back to normal, I can keep her at a distance for you. I’d happily make that sacrifice if it means I don’t lose you.”

In theory, Stephanie understood what he was saying. After all, she'd nearly thrown herself off a roof, then propositioned Eddie with sex on that same rooftop on the same toxin Death was suffering from. And, if it'd had happened to anyone else, maybe she would have understood better. (But, probably not.) But it had happened to her, it had happened to her, and she could not think of it rationally. She was simply incapable of it at the moment. At a time in her life where she was so wrecked a weaker person might not have been able to function. It was an avalanche of shit after shit, and she hadn't gotten a chance to piece herself back together.

Snatching off the mask and cowl (because who cared if someone stumbled onto her secret identity anymore), she ran a shaky hand through her mussed blonde hair. Without the cowl, he could see how bad shape she was really in. Her eyes bruised purple underneath, marks finally healing on her face, and she looked thinner. Like she'd simply fallen apart over the last few weeks. She whined again as he nudged next to her, and at first shook her head at his offer. As much as she hated Death right now, she didn't want Eddie to be alone. And, she tried to tug her hands out of his grip, a quick, fruitless jerk of her arms that had no effect, and after a brief moment, she threw her arms around his neck with a sob, burying her nose in the crook there. Her fingers curled hard into the skin at the back of his neck, like she was clawing at him.

"I can't forgive her," she choked out finally as she soaked his t-shirt with her tears, letting out months worth of emotions all at once. Her body wracked with sobs, and she crowed out ugly, sad sounds. She was aware that maybe she shouldn't break down like this when she was still so furious, but once the floodgates opened, there was no hope shutting them down until it was ready.

Eddie slowly wrapped his arms around her back gently, pulling her close so that his nose rested on her shoulder as she sobbed into him. His eyes stayed open at first, looking through the short, blonde veil of hair that was crimped and messy from the cowl. He knew she had been through a lot, not just this month but since even before all this started between them. He also knew some of it was his fault and he had made some substantial mistakes along the way, but could she really have made it through without him? Probably, but he was going to afford himself that little lie. “It’s okay.” He said quietly, closing his eyes and turning his head to kiss her neck. Then, he didn’t say anything for a long time. Letting her cry as he held onto her like there wasn’t a way to untangle them and he wouldn’t even if he could find the solution to the puzzle.

“You don’t have to forgive her. She hurt you. You don’t have to.” He ran his hand over her hair a couple times, trailing a few more kisses up her neck and across her face. Noting how her body smelt synthetic from being in wet kevlar all night, how much smaller she was in his arms than he remembered and how her whole body seemed to be covered with tender, sore spots. Eddie leaned back to look at her, hands on either side of her face, thumbs rubbing away runaway tears. “Once Bane gets thrown out of the city and things feel normal, we should take a break. You and me. Together. From all of this. I want to take you somewhere like I promised.” He whispered, trying not to pay much attention to the rings around her eyes or the hurt she had been holding back until now. It was a fine line between not wanting to make her feel weak, but wanting to let her know he saw she was in pain and he wanted so badly to help.

It was a sickeningly sweet sort of release to just let it all go. To sob until she couldn't breathe and she could do nothing but choke on the little air she was getting in the nook of Eddie's neck. When he murmured his comfort, she shook her head, but didn't say a word. In fact, Steph didn't say anything during that long stretch where he just held her, only shivered in his arms and clutched harder, as hard as possible. Even if she caught her breath, no words came to her mind. How could she explain everything she felt when she barely understood the maelstrom herself. She wished she could let him just pick her brain apart so he could see and understand and feel what she felt.

Her cheeks were beet red when he pulled back, and she whined as he held her there, trying her best to twist her face away from his grip. She just wanted to hide and wallow in her pain for a moment. Squeezing her eyes shut, she shuddered. "Normal?" she croaked, all the faith and hope in Gotham suddenly sucked dry from her being. "When do things ever get back to normal? If it's not--if we get Bane away--when we get Bane out of this city, it's going to be something else. It's Dad, or it's Joker, or it's Ra's, or it's something, and we'll never get a break. Because this is Gotham, our personal hell, and we're being punished all the time." Her bloodshot blue eyes cracked open, and she looked at him with such broken defeat. "All the time."

Eddie looked at her for a couple beats longer than he should have, still holding onto the sides of her face as if he were afraid she’d slip away. It was difficult for him, difficult to navigate what she said and how she felt with what he knew to be true about her. Stephanie really didn’t see Gotham as some kind of personal hell. She loved it, almost as much as he did, even if it kept breaking her heart over and over again. There was something about Gotham that felt like it was theirs. That made the city unique and imprinted on them in a way that a thousand vacations away couldn’t erase. “No, no.” He whispered after her, finally letting her face go and leaning back against the windowsill, fingers stretching around her shoulders to pull her closer to him.

“I’m going to tell you the same thing I told those reporters. A long time ago. When things started getting bad. Something I tell myself all the time.” Eddie waited until she settled against him, running one hand through her messy hair, his body warm and calm after a night’s worth of working for something he believed in along side someone he really did love. “Gotham used to be a playground and citizens started to notice when things changed. When Joker started murdering people. When I started building death traps. So, these reporters hunted me down and asked me questions about the past. About how things changed. And, I told them that Gotham is our home. I said, we’re trying to survive in this city. It’s huge and contradictory and dark and funny and threatening. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad. But, it’s ours, Stephanie. You and me.” When he spoke he sounded like that perfect mix of the question marked man and Eddie. Sentimental, a little dangerous, untrustworthy, loyal, loving, harsh. Just as contradictory as his city. Their city.

“What I saw you do down there tonight. I wouldn’t trade a thousand Metropolises for it. And, I know you love it, too.” Eddie leaned his head back, rolling his face towards the cool, rain splattered window. “But, we need a break. A small one. Something for us.”

As he finally let go of her face, she rolled her neck away with a tiny little groan, chin jutting out and face toward the cool air blowing against her warm cheeks. Similar to that teenaged tilt of defiance earlier, but with none of the harsh anger. Only sadness and defeat and exhaustion. Her shoulders stiffened again when she felt the pressure of his fingers tug her toward him, but she didn’t fight his advances this time. Instead, she crawled into his lap, little blonde bat curled in his embrace and digging her nose into his chest, and though she was still crying, the sobs abated slightly, enough that she could at least catch her breath. She was confused by how small she felt in his arms, how weak and broken when she was they both knew she was usually at least the physically strong one.

And, Steph knew he was completely right about Gotham. She didn’t protest his words at all, instead nodding along as he went. He was right. Completely right. As much as she hated Gotham sometimes -- and the ire she felt for that city was great at times -- she loved it, too. It was home. It was their home, and as much as she could loathe it sometimes, she wouldn’t even dream of trading it in for a Bludhaven or a Star City or a Metropolis. At the end of the day, she always felt awkward in other places. Out of place. She was a Gotham girl, through-and-through, and they both knew that.

She shuddered in his arms, fingers twisting into the fabric of his shirt and pulling against it. “Why couldn’t everything just stay the same after Vegas? Or before the plague?” she asked into the fabric of his shirt. She just wanted things to go back to the way they were. When they could curl around each other and their biggest worry was over how the Batfamily would react to their courtship. “It’s different in this Gotham. It feels like it’s one thing after another after another without a chance to breathe.” But, she understood that they would need to remove themselves from the disease for a little while.

Eddie didn’t realize how tense he was until she crawled into his lap and each of his muscles loosened one right after the other. First his arms, then his shoulders, neck, and then back. All in a smooth movement like curling up under a blanket. He exhaled with an affectionate noise in the back of his throat and hummed a kiss against her forehead. “We both naturally attract so much trouble on our own, with our forces combined we’re ultra-trouble.” He said with nerd sage certainty and rested his chin on top of her head. “Look at the evidence. The second we got together everything got crazy. Crazier than it had ever been even when we were at each other’s throats.” She could hear the smile in his voice. It wasn’t the usual smartass smirk, but the goofy, almost sweet upturn of his lips. Yes, she was trouble, but he had never been this happy. Never in his long riddled, life. Even when things got bad, he was still given these small moments of pure seventh heaven in between that he wasn’t about to trade for anything. He kept thinking about what Kara said to them. How she could tell how happy they made each other. And, that was something worth holding onto. Fighting for, even.

“Look, I think for the next month we should outright refuse trouble unless it looks fun.” He leaned back a little and tried to look down at her. “We can both pick three things that are on the list of trouble we absolutely have to get into. I pick mysteries, cryptology and pun-related crime solving.”

Eventually, Steph felt the tension in his body melt away, and she slowly allowed herself to break her wall, too. Settle into his hold the way she was supposed to. The blonde bat was still furious about everything, but she knew that her love for Eddie trumped how angry she could be, how complicated things had become, how ugly things could actually be. Her mouth twitched as he rained down on her with nerdy, sage wisdom, and she gently wrapped her arms around his midsection, fingers twisting into his back now. Digging in there like she never wanted to let go of him again. There was a laugh, quiet and barely there, but it was there in the shake of her shoulders and the way she smiled into his chest. “Trouble squared, that’s us,” she said into his chest, smile just as evident in her voice as it was in his.

When he pulled back, she finally pried her face off his chest, looking up at him with big bloodshot blues and resting her chin on him with the ghost of a smile on her face. “So predictable, Eddie,” she teased, her voice raw in a way he hadn’t heard in a long time. Raw with emotion, raw with affection, just stripped down and unguarded. She hummed that thoughtful, teasing little hum that drove him crazy, and closed her eyes. “I say beaches and sun, drunken karaoke, annnnd trying to get ourselves banned from IKEA for disorderly conduct.” Her eyes opened slowly, and she smirked up at him.

Any other day, any other normal day (or as normal as it could get in Gotham), her teasing would earn a phony shocked look or some kind of sharp comeback. Something that mirrored the actual shocked sting from earlier that night when he mouthed a wow at a line she decided to cross. Now, he just grinned at her. Sloppy, with his eyes almost closed and nowhere near the cunning, charmer smile he gave when he wanted something. Hell, if he had a tail, she could have heard it wagging. He liked the rawness, even if it meant she had been stretched a little thin and couldn’t take much more pressure from Gotham or Bane. He liked that even when Stephanie was feeling like hell, she could still smile up at him like that.

“Oh, I like your ideas much, much better. Screw my list.” He gave a flippant shrug of his shoulders as if he already forgot the puzzles and puns, leaning in for a quick kiss, followed by a smattering of more as if he just realized how much he liked them. “The second we can fly out of this city again, I’ll take you somewhere tropical.” Eddie lifted his hand out, panning it across an imaginary scene for them. “I’ll take you to a beach where fanny packs and pale nerds in cargo shorts can roam free.”

A pleased little noise slipped out of the back of her throat when he kissed her, like she finally had found what she was missing all this time, and then leaning into every press of his lips. “I thought you were the brains of this outfit, but maybe we’ll need to do a new scientific survey.” She said, warmer and warmer by the second as she twisted her fingers into the fabric of his shirt until the cotton was taut in her grip. Lifting her chin off his chest, she looked up at him with that usual affectionate candor in her eyes and across her mouth that had been absent for what seemed like too long. Just like the warmth that he boiled under her skin and in her stomach just by the way he looked at her.

“I’ll make sure just to pack my bikini.” Even if the scars from her bout with the plague and clashes over the past few months made her wary of showing off any skin around people other than Eddie. He didn’t care, she knew that, but she still felt self-conscious now and then. He could see that in the quick twitch of her lips downward. “No fanny packs,” she said, faux-exasperation burying away that insecurity for a moment, and she stretched until her nose was inches from his. “I don’t care how useful they are. You’re killin’ me, Smalls.” Her arms slipped out from his waist and settled around his neck, one hand cupping his jaw as she leaned in to claim his mouth for hers. Open and crushing, but nothing like the rough, angry embrace in that muddy graveyard earlier in the night. Her hands, surprisingly warm, slipped up his jaw and tangled in his hair, and she teased his tongue with hers.

Not completely appropriate when you’re sitting in a church’s belltower, but she’d done worse things.

“Yes, you in a bikini, matching fanny packs, long arduous scientific tests and benchmark polls down at the be-” His voice rose geekily, near-shouting that was intercepted by her kiss and easily muted with a rumbling, pleased hum. He rested his hands on that utility belt hanging from her hips, fingers reaching under it and smoothing against the padded kevlar. The Batgirl costume always frustrated him because no amount of thieving could get his hands against her skin without stripping the damned costume off. Tonight, he was just happy he could feel her shape under all of it. Have her in his arms returning a kiss so warm and more familiar than anything he had tasted this month.

“I missed you.” Eddie whispered, pressing his mouth against hers with a tiny whine. He repeated it a couple times before his words lost their syllables and melted under a deep, tangled kind of a kiss that returned a very familiar static to his brain. Something only she could do for him, something he needed to keep that tick-tocking brain of his from overheating. And, more than any other break or hiatus they had been on, this one felt closer to the first time he begged her to come over before her batfamily Christmas. When they were just happy rolling around his apartment with kisses and wayward hands until she had to go be with her family and he had to go explore with the cat. Buzzed, happy and craving each other the rest of the night.

She almost hated herself for how right this felt, but it was true. Being in his arms, pressing herself against him, having his hands wander, it felt right. Like this was where she was meant to be in her life and nothing, not even a conniving concept could change that. She was his, and he was hers. Each of them had their fingers all tangled up with each other’s heartstrings and minds. It was easy to settle back into him, whether she wanted it or not. It was too easy. He felt like an extension of herself that she’d been missing until that moment on the windowsill in his lap. And, she knew that it wasn’t completely repaired, them, but this was the first step. She would try.

The blonde bat whined a little and pressed up against him, kevlar against cotton and jeans, and she kind of wished she could just rid herself of the damn costume at that moment. Feel every inch of him against her. She tugged against his hair, too, when he caught her lips with a deep kiss as if he couldn’t get close enough. And, he couldn’t. “I missed you, too, baby,” she panted, jagged across his lips, and pressed a few quick kisses across his jawline before finding his lips again with a searing, probing kiss that spoke of how much she actually did miss him better than her words ever could.

She could feel him smirk against her skin as she tugged on his hair, leaning away from her fingers just enough that the pressure felt good, familiar. It was a strange little quirk between the two of them that reminded him of their pushy brand of affection. She’d pull his hair, he’d nip a little at her neck and it felt like a combination that only belonged to them. He easily lost himself in it and the intensifying and almost desperate way he kissed her, spending a long time simply getting lost in the dizzy rush she could pull out of him that felt like getting chased and running someone down at the same time.

“Stephanie Brown.” He managed, eyes heavy and mouth sore from pressing his lips against hers. “Typically I’d be pulling your suit off by now, but if the Father catches up here he’ll literally crucify me. And, then neither of us will be invited to the next fish fry. It’ll be a mess.” Eddie offered a small, cheesy smile and took a rumbling bite out of her kevlared arm. “Although if we’re qui-” He started to curl his fingers under her suit when his violet glasses started beeping frantically. “Sorry that’s- that’s Arkham SOS.” Eddie sighed and pulled the glasses from the collar of his shirt and slipped them on, expecting a false alarm or Harley misusing the alert system. But, then she could feel his chest tighten and his usual vibrating energy come to a complete standstill.

“Arkham’s-” She could see his dark eyes go large, blinking with panic before his shades turned dark violet with windows and diagnosis information. “No. I have to- I have to go, baby.” If she wasn’t wearing body armor, she could feel his fingers shaking against her. For another long moment he was lost in his glasses, head tilted back as he mouthed noiseless words to himself in a panic.

A pleased little noise rumbled in the back of her throat as she lost herself in that kiss, pushing all of herself into the embrace like she was offering her entire being to him. Even if he had so much of her already, after feeling like she was separated from him for so long, he didn’t even have to ask her right then and there. She felt a little brain dead, suddenly, but alive in a way she hadn’t in a while at the same time. Everything about that night reawakened parts of the blonde bat that had been slumbering within her for too, too long. They weren’t fully there, that would take time, but she felt more like herself than she had in months, honestly. More like the girl Eddie first invited over to play Oregon Trail instead of the pissed off bat she’d become since her father arrived on the scene.

“Eddie,” Stephanie chided quietly, breathlessly, with a smirk as he began to suggest they carry on further, and she was thinking of ways to tease him about suddenly becoming a churchgoing man when his glasses beeped and he froze. She groaned dramatically, turning away to the drizzle outside and guzzling up air the cool air, hands falling from his hair to twist into his shirt again. “Arkham’s what?” she asked, head snapping back to look at him. She knew it was bad by the way he tensed up against her and the panic bleeding in his voice. Tugging against his shirt to grab his attention, she asked the question again, a little more forcefully. Something was wrong, and the violet glasses’ beeping irritated her. “No, what happened, tell me what happened.” Even as she demanded he explain, she scooted out of his lap, then swung her legs off the windowsill to give him space.

He didn’t hear her at first, too lost in all the terrible possibilities his glasses laid out for him. “All my equipment went out. At once. That’s very bad.” Eddie sighed, frustration and worry all wrapped up in the same exhale. “I need to go check it out.” Another couple seconds spent staring at his glasses and then he snatched them off (because he knew they irritated her) and scooted forward to close the gap between them. “The moment I sort all this out I’ll come find you.” Eddie touched the side of her face, looking just long enough to see a shadow of the affection she showed him just moments before and smiled softly before downing his hot chocolate and bolting for the door.

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:27:08 GMT

Who: Eddie and Steph (Part Two of Two. Here is Part One)
Where: Saint Agnes Church
When: The night of Arkham explosion before Arkham explosion
What: Riddler crashed Batgirl's party and helps her protect some people. Warm fuzzies and awkward all around.
Warnings: Language maybe some violence

Steph offered him a shaky smile when he promised that he’d at least try. That was all she could ask of him for now without pushing and pushing for more. She didn’t want to push him to the brink because she didn’t want to deal with the consequences at the moment. It would make her vulnerable to him in a way she couldn’t be right now if she wanted to make it through the night. She felt a little pathetic not actually fighting off his affection and confessions with the anger still boiling under her skin, but she felt so tired. Still, she whined as he swung around and tried to arch away from him before he grabbed hold of her. Shaking her head violently as he began to suggest they talk. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to do anything, except maybe stop feeling everything again. Where was Crane when you needed him?

“Ed--.” She tried to talk over him to interrupt his plea, but the crackle of the radio did the job for her, and for once, she was thankful for some jackass goons bursting through a personal moment. She wasn’t ready to deal with him just yet, but she buried all those feelings away to drum up the raw anger to take out on Bane’s men. “Ready,” she said firmly, a couple of sniffs the only indication she’d even been upset, and she couldn’t resist brushing her gloved fingers across his jaw before jetting up the stairs ahead of him. She slowed as she reached the top, tiptoeing until she reached the slightly opened door and peaked around the edge. One goon was close enough to reach, and Batgirl edged out of the small opening.

“Ooh, party crasher in the hoooouse,” she whispered in his ear when she was close enough and wrapped her arm around his neck, with one hand around his mouth, to quickly cut off his airway. He collapsed after a bit of a struggle, and Steph could feel the sharp pain in her ribs, but grinned right through it. “I guess I must’ve lost my invitation to the shindig,” she shouted as the goons closed in on the other people in the church, guns toted. Immediately, she took off running down the side, pushing herself up in the air with the help of one guy’s shoulders to knock his head into his friend’s. “Man, are you guys ever gonna learn not to stand next to each other? Oldest trick in the book.”

Eddie wasn’t exactly a crime fighter in the most literal sense, but his experience going up against Batman again and again taught him a couple tricks. He was always good support for someone who could throw a punch. And, he was always prepared. Hopping off the desk after she bolted, he sifted through the basement junk until he came across a good nine iron and raced up after her. Ducking behind some pews pushed over to the side to be dismantled, he crawled over to the backpack of supplies he left the cops and carefully pulled out a harmless enough looking transmitter. Three more armed thugs busted through the front door with the usual PLAYTIME’S OVER catchphrase before shooting a couple stray bullets in the air to show they meant business.

“Hey, frosted tips!” Eddie called from behind the table, baaareelly peeking up at the thugs. “What kind of cellphone do you have?”

“Iphone?” Frosted tips asked, dumbfounded.

“Great choice.” Eddie changed a dial on the transmitter, pointed it at his leg and in an instant the church was filled with a billion different beeping ringtones at once all coming straight from Frosted Tips’ pants. Panicking, the goon tried to pull the overheating cellphone out, but by then it had already caught fire. Completely forgetting why he was even there in the first place, Frosted Tips sprinted out of the church to go roll around in the rain while the other two looked on like Eddie was some kind of wizard. And, if you asked him? He kind of was.

By then he had already slid two handguns over to some of the retired cops who were taking positions behind cover. Neither of them did more than aim, though, looking to Batgirl to finish the job.

As Eddie busied himself with his own brand of crime fighting, Batgirl was off quipping with the mooks on her side of the church. Her leg swung to sweep one of the guys off his feet just as another ran to lunge at her. “They don’t build you guys like they used to, huh? All brute, no brain. Where’s the fun?” She backflipped over the guy on the floor and landed two hard, swift kicks to his chin, then his chest. He rocked backwards and fell onto the floor before Stephanie even bounced herself back onto her feet. A sharp cough snuck out as she felt the stab of her ribs, and she allowed herself a brief clutch of her side before straightening again.

“Yo, girlie,” a voice shouted behind her, and a wicked grin spread across her face. She turned around to another goon measuring a gun at her chest, and she pulled a gesture that said, little old me? As the idiot inched closer, Steph tilted her head, as if completely interested in the little threats he was spouting at her. “That’s Batgirl to you, jerk.” And she cocked her fist back far, connecting it quick into his jaw with a delicious crunch. A roundhouse kick to the back of his knees had him slamming into the marble floor with a pathetic little meep.

Quickly, she scrambled over the wake of unconscious bodies and climbed up to stand up on a pew. “Hey, idiots!” she shouted at the rest of the goons at large and to the ones looking to come in through the front door. “Unless you want to end up like the rest of your friends or worse,” she snapped, waving toward the now-armed cops, “I’d suggest high-tailing it. Comprende, jerkfaces?” She placed her hands on her hips and shot her hardest look at them, anger over everything bleeding into her actions. The remaining goons eyed the exits like it was a good idea to ditch the effort, at least until they were more prepared. Steph took that moment to jump down closer to the remaining goons. “Oh, and tell Bane I say hola, too.”

Eddie was just about to sneak back over to the entrance to take out a couple kneecaps Arnold Palmer style when Stephanie made quick and easy work of the mooks like it was nothing. Next to him one of the little girls gave a soft wow. “Yeah, she’s pretty great.” Eddie whispered and then stood up just as the remaining goons made a run for it. Once the coast was clear, there was a sudden, resounding cheer from the people in the church and Eddie grinned right over to her, momentarily forgetting all of the tension between them. He was just proud and surprisingly awed at the whole display even after being on the receiving end of an ass kicking from someone in the bat family on multiple occasions.

Suddenly, the room was energized in a way it wasn’t before. They weren’t afraid they couldn’t survive without Batgirl or skeptical of what these two weirdos from Gotham could do. Instead, Eddie could sense a sort of fighting spirit and yes a hope that might have died otherwise. It was a strange and unfamiliar kind of feeling like he had never been in a crowd before or worked together with a team that wouldn’t automatically turn around and backstab him the second they got the chance. He wasn’t sure if he liked it or the whole thing kind of scared him, but at least it was something new.

After a moment of celebrating, Father Michael called for everyone to get back to work and Eddie picked his way through the crowd over to her. Cops, kids, wives, all of them taking a moment to thank Batgirl briefly before going back to whatever they were doing to help fortify the place. Finally, he got to her, biting back a small grin sheepishly. “I don’t know what to say.” He murmured near her shoulder, trying not to get too close as if it’d ruin her integrity. There were only a few times Stephanie left him completely speechless, but he was fine putting this one down in the books.

And it was a thrill to see those idiots bolt out like the Bat had suddenly jumped out and scared the crap out of them, and even a bigger thrill to see all those people filled with a sort of confidence Bane and the toxin’s aftermath robbed from them. She grinned brightly, letting her hands fall from her hips and swing at her sides for a second. “Oh, you guys,” she said faux-sheepishly, shrugging her shoulders and waving a hand as if telling them to just stop. “It was nothing, really.” But, she drank up the thank-yous, smiling and shaking hands and mussing up some of the kids’ hair as they came over. This was exactly what she needed, a selfish sort of feed to her ego and a reaffirmation of her role in Gotham. They still wanted her, even after all the screw-ups, and that? That felt kind of wonderful. Her ribs hurt like a bitch, but she could smile through the pain when they all looked at her like that.

She didn’t notice Eddie edging through the crowd until he whispered close at her ear, and she jerked her head in the direction of his voice. She smiled over at him briefly just as little Katie tugged on her fingers. Immediately, she crouched down again, pulled on her safety blanket, and said, “Told you we’d keep you safe. Now, go make sure your brother keeps helping over there, okay? I think he’s got a crush on that girl over there, and boys get distracted.” Katie pulled a face, and Steph smiled, and after a moment, she fished out a Batarang, this one duller than the rest if not still a little inappropriate for a three year old, for the little girl and held it out. It might not have been the best idea, but she couldn’t resist. “Don’t throw it around, but keep it.” As the little snatched it to show off to her big brother and the rest of the crowd dispersed back to their respective jobs, she stood back up with a hiss and turned to Eddie. “You have nothing?” she teased, warmer than he’d heard in weeks. She was on an adrenaline high, and for one moment, she allowed her guard to slip down. “Tell me you’re proud of me.”

Eddie crossed his arms, watching little Katie with a warm smirk on his face that was similar to how he regarded Frankie Jr or one of his dino kids. He couldn’t have concocted a better way to show Stephanie how great she was and how much she meant to people in the city. And, maybe Batman wanted being a vigilante to be a thankless, justice focused kind of job, but Eddie didn’t see a problem with some positive feedback. Batgirl, at least her Batgirl, wasn’t about fear or vengeance. It was closer to the people of Gotham than that. “I’m proud of you.” He said with that simple confidence free of the usual riddles and tricks. “And stupidly impressed.” Eddie nodded with a smile, wanting to say more, but looking away as one of the retired cops stepped up.

“Would you two mind sticking around for the night?” The old cop asked, clapping Eddie so hard on the back that he made an eeek noise through his nose.

“Hell yes.” Eddie said after a gulp and extended his hand (okay, handshaking a cop was a first for The Riddler, too) with a steadying grin. “I got cameras to put up, I have a fancy door lock to show you and I swear the second the rain stops, I’ll have an electric fence up and ready for you guys.” He turned back to Stephanie, grin slowly fading a little but eyebrows up and maybe a little wishful. Though, he tried to be casual. “Are you sticking around, too?”

Her lips shook into a tentative smile as she looked at Eddie, that familiar buzz in her stomach caused by those stupid butterflies, and that smile looked a touch more genuine as he lauded her for her efforts. Because him being proud of her still meant something, it meant something big to her despite everything that had happened. Eddie being proud would always be something that caused a jolt in her spine and a smile to spread across her face, even when things could eventually fall apart like they were before this stolen little moment. She opened her mouth to respond, but the older cop barreled over and nudged his way into their conversation.

Eddie earned a raised eyebrow from Steph because she knew that had to be a first for him, shaking some cop’s hand. She watched the exchange slightly amused, lips twitching in betrayal of a smile she was fighting. After a beat, she looked at the cop with a sarcastic roll of her eyes. “I guess I’ll have to stick around. Can’t have him outshowing me in the good deeds department, techie or not.” She turned to Eddie, the maelstrom of emotions in her blue eyes only recognizable to him, because the cop could only see the light teasing in the crinkles at the corners of her eyes.

Eddie didn’t have time to internally warn himself not to slip back into old habits. Here he was next to Stephanie, telling her how proud he was of her and working on something as her partner. That was all he ever wanted when he first started playing nice and it drummed up feelings of loyalty and affection that had been lost over the past couple of weeks. Dark eyes brightening a little and returning some of her gaze, though most of the pain she saw when they first broke back into Gotham wasn’t anywhere to be found. “Are you going to beat up my surveillance equipment again? I’ll have you know I named all these cameras I brought. They’re like family.” He quipped back, wiggling his eyebrows.

The cop laughed at the two of them and headed over to help dragging goons out of the church and far enough away that maybe they’d get lost or decide to not come back. “Well I-” Eddie looked back at Stephanie, giving a kind of awkward laugh as he rubbed the back of his head and squinted at her. “Actually, I probably need you to put those cameras up for me. I typically use a lever-pulley system but the whole process just makes me look like a dork.” He almost sounded awkward, as if he were speaking to a stranger or someone he hadn’t charmed over yet and the more he became aware of it, the worse it got. Eddie thinned his smirk out and started walking over to the supply table. “After seeing you ground all those goons, you kind of make me nervous.” Eddie said over his shoulder, turning a little to look at her. They both knew that wasn’t why, but it sounded convincing.

She continued to raise her eyebrow and smiled as Eddie quipped back. Any other day, he’d earn himself a set of rolled eyes, but that seemed so wrong to her still. Like everything was too easy for him after everything that had happened. She flashed the cop a smirk, but when he walked away, she sighed heavily, lips dipping down to a frown, but she stood straight so anyone who glanced over wouldn’t know the difference. “I figured,” she said quietly, that warmth diminishing by the second, and she tugged at the ends of her short hair sticking out of her cowl. “Leave the physical stuff to me.”

Steph followed him over to the table and then raised her eyebrow again after his somewhat false confession. “That’s not why you should be nervous,” she offered immediately, lips pursing into a tight line. It completely and totally wasn’t, and they both knew it. “Don’t start. I don’t want to talk about--,” she started to plea with him, but cut herself off. It was quiet, kind of weak, and she stepped forward to lean a hand on the table. She glanced over the scraps and supplies and tried her best to make heads or tails of whatever he was concocting. “What do you need me to do?”

Eddie mouthed a silent wow at her striking back at his own admittance, clearly believing she was being a little unfair. He was trying to be patient and his feelings for her were trumping a lot of the pain she had caused him for simply denying the way his brain worked, but he could tell she was still interested in crossing a couple lines. His eyes closed as she started pleading with him, exhaling slowly through his nose to keep his nerves in check and told himself this wasn’t it. He couldn’t lose her after everything that happened. But, if she kept pushing him away despite all the pawing and love, at what point would he have to just give up?

“I have four of these neat ball cameras.” He held all of them out for her, two in each hand. “Just mount them on the four corners of the church, I’ll test run them a little and we should be good to go.” Eddie pulled out a small, bright green fanny pack and with no humor at all held it to her. “You have to wear this. It has all the tools, screws and such.” Eddie’s eyes narrowed seriously. “Failure is likely without the assistance of this sweet, sweet fanny pack.”

Steph’s head simply tilted to the side to counter that wow, biting down on her bottom lip to suppress an argument or a sob or something inside her that wanted to react to his hurt look. How was he allowed to even think of looking to her that way if she was the one who got hurt? He hurt her. Yeah, sure, she knew he was upset, too, but it was his own fault. He chose to forgive Death after what happened, he had gotten angry with her after her reaction. But someone looked over towards them, and Stephanie smiled a little tightly as she grabbed the cameras from his hand, two in each of her hand, and she glanced down as she rolled them in her palms while he continued to fish through his supplies.

And, when she looked up again, Eddie was swinging a fanny pack out to her, and a laugh bubbled out of her chest, a girlish, surprised giggle that echoed out of their conversation and around the church. “I’m not wearing that,” Steph replied, voice tinged with that carefree amusement that matched the laugh as she waved her hands in front of her. “No way, no how.”

Eddie’s expression went even flatter, his frown turning almost comical as he leaned his head to the side like she was being a princess about the whole thing. “Alright, fine you asked for it. I’m about to drop a logic bomb.” He pushed the fanny pack closer to her even though she wasn’t taking it, the fake seriousness breaking long enough for him to laugh geekily before he regained composure. “I know for a fact your Han Solo utility belt and that hot thigh belt you have going are packed full of supplies and couldn’t hope to dream to house what would be needed to mount these cameras. Furthermore, you and I both know that I can’t be trusted to temporarily hold onto any of your gadgets without wanting to try them out myself. So, there is simply no way you can help set these cameras up without using my fanny pack here.”

He slowly, slowly raised his pointer finger, eyes closing dramatically as if he were just about to solve the world’s hardest math problem. “And, if you refuse to help me at all, I’ll spend the rest of my night trying to hoist myself up on that rain-slick rooftop instead of doing a myriad of other helpful techie duties to keep this place secure for the next round of Bane idiots.” Eddie swung the fanny pack so it lightly hit her hands again. “The probability of me falling off the roof, by the way, is about 68% or higher. And, a geek like me isn’t going to survive a fall like that. If that was your original intent, then by all means.”

“No, no, no,” Steph said firmly, trying her best to talk over him and failing miserably. And maybe her lip twitched when he called the thigh utility belt hot. Maybe. She would always be a sucker for compliments like that, too, because he would never lie to her about that at least. And she liked feeling hot because of him. But, no, not the issue at hand, and she rolled her eyes as he shot that finger up. Why was he right? She didn’t want him to be right. “You’re supposed to be the dork in this outfit,” she said with a weak tease, fighting her twitching mouth to no avail until eventually she gave up with a sharp sigh. “Fine, give it to me,” she said, lips curling up at the corners as she snatched the fanny pack from his hands. “I’m not wearing it, though. I’ll use it, but it’s gonna clash with the black, purple, and yellow if I wear it.”

He gave her a look of shock as the fanny pack was taken, eyes bright and mischievous. “Don’t you dare even try to pretend those colors clash.” Eddie warned, pointing to the very familiar silver ring inlaid with green, purple and black fabric that she’d have to pry off his right hand if she wanted him to take it off. “It’s missing yellow, but you know what I wear enough question marks of that color, it’s good enough.” He rambled, flipping his glasses back down, grabbing his coat and heading out towards the back door. Outside, the light wind made the rain look like glistening sheets of water waving towards them in the streetlight. Eddie blinked as he shouldered his jacket on pulled his baseball cap back around. The little riddled man must have looked odd, hands on his hips as he stood in the middle of a crumbling graveyard and analyzed the best places for the rolly cameras.

“I hope this lets up by morning. Even if I do kind of like it.” Most thieves, even ones like him who weren’t exactly built for stealth, liked the rain. It slowed everyone else down, muffled noises and aggravated pursuers. That last part he could really identify with. Eddie looked over to Stephanie as she followed him out, stepping closer as they had the privacy of the graveyard so that his chest just barely grazed against her shoulder. She could feel the normal, buzzing warmth he gave off and even in the rain some of the heat of his breath reached the side of her face. “Right there, so it’s obstructed enough by the roof design, but can still get a clear shot of the street.” He held an arm up, violet light from his glasses tracing along his fingertips and up towards the roof.

She shot him an innocent look, all wide-eyed and tilt of her head and a silent what, me playing across her lips. The fannypack swung to and fro from her hand as she followed behind him, the image of the ring she gave him still on his finger stuck in her mind. Of course, she’d never taken the necklace off, even after everything, and that was telling itself. There were moments when she stared in the mirror at the pendant resting on her chest where she felt like ripping it off or times in the shower when her fingers closed around the clasp and squeezed it. But, she never went through with it, she didn’t have the heart to do it. It was still resting underneath her suit right then, tucked beneath that yellow bat splayed across her chest. And, maybe that was telling too, what was closer to her heart. Not that bat symbol, but a piece of Eddie that was there as a reminder of what he did to keep her, to keep them safe.

The rain whipped against her face, and she spluttered a few times as rainwater fell into her mouth, and she dropped the cameras into the fanny pack along with the tools she needed to mount them. When he inched close to her, she sighed shakily and closed her eyes, water dripping down her nose, and she turned her body until her chest brushed against his, until her nose was barely inches away from his. A natural reaction, something she’d done time and time before, and something so fundamentally right even if she wanted it to feel wrong. Jerking her head toward the path of violet light, she nodded. “You just want an excuse to stare at my ass as I climb up,” Steph teased, and with a relenting sigh, she stooped down to clip the fanny pack around her thigh. (Take that, Eddie.)

She procured her grapple gun from one of those nifty utility belt pockets just in case as she began to scale the side of the building. Jumping on windowsills and using decorative spires to drag herself up. And once she was mounted in a somewhat safe position, she began to busy herself with placing those cameras in the designated spots, bouncing from place to place as he pointed them out.

“You caught me.” He grinned, digging his foot between hers, slowly lowering his violet glasses dramatically before giving one of those cheesy 80’s movie winks. The kind they’d laugh at snuggling together on the couch with the rest of Gotham on hold. She was allowed to be mad, mad as hell if she wanted. That didn’t mean he was going to let her forget how good it felt to be together. She may not have wanted his love anymore, but Eddie didn’t know the first thing about holding himself back from something he wanted. In fact, he almost asked her to forget about the cameras for a little while and find a nice dry spot outside to lose themselves in. “Steph I-” Eddie started just as she grappled away and he decided it was best to just let the suggestion die with him in the muddy, old graveyard.

Sighing, Eddie turned the comm on and gave her some instructions as he tested the cameras one by one. “Okay, that’s- yeah that’ll work just fine.” He told her once she set up the last camera and he took a couple stumbling steps back to look up at her. “What do I have to do to convince you to paint your regular thigh belt bright green? I like how that fanny pack looks.” Eddie made a rolling rawwwr noise and she could practically see the smarmy smirk forming at the edge of his mouth.

He earned a quick twitch of her mouth at that wink, and she carried that as she climbed up and around the outside of the church. It was so easy to remember what she loved about him when he pushed it on her like that. Smarmy smirks and cheesy winks and wriggling into her personal space. Pressing again and again until she relented with her own affection and love. No, she didn't want to love him anymore after such a betrayal, but it wasn't that simple with them. It hadn't been simple since she poked him on the journals after that disaster of a Halloween party. But, somewhere between Las Vegas and here, they had lost each other in the fray. Communcation got muddled, intentions were misconstrued, and ideologies clashed. The fundamental flaws within the two of them created a rift that she didn't know if they could move past.

"No growling," she said into the comm, trying to be serious but he knew that voice better than that. After one final adjustment, she used the grapple line to parallel down the side and landed in the mud with a splash. "Ugh," Stephanie groaned as she shook off the bits of mud she could, then looked over to Eddie. Smiling despite herself. "Lots of convincing would be necessary. I like to keep my green hidden away just for me." Her cheeks burned at that, and she cleared her throat as she looked away toward the sky and the rain pouring down on them both.

He shielded his face when she plopped back down in the mud, diligently picking off stray globs from his arms and soaked jeans before smiling up to her. “There’s got to be some kind of good bargaining system.” Eddie tried to wipe away some of the rain, taking off his now soaking baseball cap and tucking away his violet glasses with a sigh that seemed to accept there was no trying to stay dry at this point. “You know when Supes died a long time ago, Batman would wear a black band around his arm. Maybe if this rain makes me come down with a cold you could wear green in honor of my sacrifices.” He knelt next to her when she looked up and snapped the fanny pack off her thigh, slinging it over his shoulder and stood back up a couple more inches closer than he was before.

“I’m going to go back and work on the door. Maybe find an old bible study club t-shirt to dry off in.” He reached to brush the back of his hand against her face, mouth screwing up in a bittersweet kind of smile. The moment of hesitation to leave lasted longer than it should have as he pressed a little closer, hand sliding down to hold the side of her neck as he visibly tried to work out what he should do versus what he wanted. That was always something he wasn’t very good at weighing out. His thumb made a couple small brushes along her jaw and then he said quietly, “You really were something tonight. I like seeing you be- well I like seeing you.” He tried to pry himself away from her, but his feet and hands weren’t moving. “You ought to push me away now. I need a little kick to get going.”

"I've come to think your immune system is perfect, so I don't think you'll have an excuse to whine at me about a cold. Thank your Cheetos sandwiches, I guess." She looked down from the dark sky to him, water drops slipping down her nose and cheeks, and she flashed him a tiny smile, the curve of her lip as teasing as the tilt of her head accompanying it. "I'm always wearing green. It's just not for others to see." Leaning into his touches, her eyes closed, but she dipped her hand underneath her collar to tug out the familiar pendant hanging off a familiar chain. She didn't open her eyes just yet, but she felt the pendant swing back and forth in the delicate grasp of her fingers. He felt close, too close, and she knew she would probably do something stupid once she actually looked at him proper.

After a moment, she opened her eyes despite herself and let the pendant fall with a tiny pip onto the slick Kevlar. "Eddie," Stephanie said weakly, like those pleas from earlier but with little of her angry oomph behind it, and looking down to the muddy ground beneath them. She leaned into his gentle touch, head tilting into his fingers, and sighed deeply. A couple sharp breaths almost made it like she wanted to say something, but in the end, nothing came out. He made her stupid. So stupid. Suddenly, she jerked her gaze back up, blues meeting deep browns, and before either of them could say anything, she crushed her lips hard against his. Consuming, unrelenting, and painful. But, before he could rope her in anymore, she shoved him away roughly, albeit not too far. "Go fix the door," she said thickly, panting.

He made a sound through his nose like the wind got knocked out of him, clutching her cape with one hand while the other cupped her cheek like he was starving for her. His focus blurred in that sweet way it did when she got too close and he pushed back without thinking twice about it. An automatic response to something he wanted. Normally, Eddie wouldn’t accept a painful, crushing kiss in fear it would become a habit or she’d turn him into a punching bag like everyone else. Tonight, though. Tonight, it was a good expression of how she felt and Eddie was willing to take any kind of returned feelings he could pull out of her. He didn’t want to be pushed away again. He didn’t want her to try and play it safe. Tonight he was perfectly fine with a little mess.

Eddie didn’t get a lungful of air back until she shoved him back, hand still gripping her cape like letting go meant a certain kind of doom. He looked up at her, eyes wide and wanting to say more and he tugged on the edge of her cape twice as if that alone could tell her all she needed to know. “Yes, ma’am.” He said weakly, rolling the cape’s fabric between his fingers before letting it drop to her side again. Eddie took a couple reluctant steps back, fingers combing through his wet, black hair before he turned and trotted back inside without her.

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:19:17 GMT

Who: Eddie and Steph (Part One of Two)
Where: Saint Agnes Church
When: The night of Arkham explosion before Arkham explosion
What: Riddler crashed Batgirl's party and helps her protect some people. Warm fuzzies and awkward all around.
Warnings: Language maybe

With Blackgate filling up faster and faster every day, any kind of pushback against Bane’s goons was important. Eddie understood that. Saving Gotham wasn’t just about cutting off the head, but making the city believe that it belonged to them and if their neighbor got dragged away for something simple like gambling or stealing the Sunday paper, what was going to stop Bane’s thugs from coming for you next? And, the second someone stepped in and protected the city’s citizens, something would change in them. Yes, he understood that. That said, he didn’t agree for a second that Stephanie was in the condition to bring the kind of hope that only Batgirl could. Eddie also knew that it was only a matter of time she’d get stir crazy in whichever bunker she was nesting in. He thought giving her space would be a good thing, but it always ended with both them doing something really stupid. Sometimes heroic. But, stupid.

And, it had been days since he saw her. When they broke into the city with the Dark Knight, he let her go with only a swift kiss to the side of her neck and a muttered kind of I love you before going off to his own safehouse buried in Wonder City. It was a smart place to hole up, especially if he wanted to do tech support and it was close enough to Arkham that he could sneak through his tunnel system to help Crane resist Bane’s demands. He kept busy, Eddie loved being busy, except it didn’t keep him from drifting off into some long, riddled question as to where she was and what she was doing. He knew showing up to the hideaway without so much as a warning was bad form. He knew trying to talk it out over the comms might do them some good. But, he wanted to see her.

Picking a rainy night that made identification hard and goons a little less perceptive of noise, he headed over to her bunker with some flowers he made out of twisted, ancient metal and a blue thermos for a vase. He couldn’t get her real flowers or some fancy vase, not while the city was burning, but he knew the thought counted for something. It took a grand total of five minutes standing outside of the underground safehouse for him to gather any kind of courage. Pacing in the rain with the metal flowers under his coat as if the water would do more than possibly rust their little petals. He even gave himself a pep talk that was along the lines of If she at least has angry sex with you, that’s in the right direction and She’s probably just happy to see you that she’ll almost forget why you’re fighting in the first place. Finally, he punched in the code, climbed down to the one room bunker and found it empty.

Stephanie had, to no surprise, been following Bane’s movements and according to her computer activity, had zeroed in on a neighborhood of retired cops that had been dragged from their families one by one. As the toxin wore off, they got smart and stayed together in a nearby church with their families in a survival attempt to keep all of them safe and alive. This kind of cooperation was a natural enemy of Bane’s goons and tonight they were going to pay for it. Eddie thought about just buzzing Steph and helping her from her ear, but he knew better. Even if she could handle this on her own, he needed to be there for her. He grabbed his Riddler baseball cap, a backpack full of supplies and practically ran to Saint Agnes after her.

Closing in on the church, he saw a couple pack of goons loitering yards away, but there wasn’t any clear indication they were going to attack. Which made him worry they had already taken what they wanted. Giving a quick look around the corner, he scaled the back stone wall (slowly and sloppily) and landed with a oof in the ancient graveyard out back. “Batgirl.” He turned on the comm, crawling between wet thornbushes and gravestones towards the back entrance. “Riddle me this, did I get here too late?”

There was this disconcerting itch under Stephanie's skin. Of course, the anti-fear toxin Crane released two weeks prior could be blamed, the toxin that had her doped up and sky high for more than a week. The toxin that helped ripped the city apart without its citizens even raising an eyebrow or lifting a finger to halt the crumbling underneath them. It had been an accident, the exposure, but Steph ended up fully embracing it. It'd been so long since she felt so damn good, so damn calm. No images of her bloody father haunting every waking moment and snatched bits of slumber. No more fighting with the other birds. No worry about Eddie and all the complications of their relationship. No self-restraint. No pain. Not one goddamn care in the world. But, she had those moments of clarity, and those felt so stark and sharp comparatively. When she snapped out of it, even briefly, the reality scared her right back in until she couldn't burrow away in the drug anymore.

So, that was another part of the itch. The fear. Fear of Bane and his goons finding her. Fear of Batman's retribution for letting shit hit the fan so hard. And, mostly, the paranoia and fear after what happened with Muerte. Sometimes, she found herself checking her own pulse, fingers pressed hard against her throat where Eddie kissed her goodbye to make sure it was still working. She couldn't even wrap her mind around the panic and pure rage she felt toward the concept and toward her boyfriend, too. Their betrayal burned hot in her chest, and that? That was the biggest part of the itch. The anger, and she needed to find a constructive way of dealing with it that didn't boil down to beating a concept to a bloody pulp and punching Eddie in the face until he bled. Helping Gotham was just that. Her city was doomed if no one stepped in, and she knew she had to. Batman could only do so much, after all, and who knew where everyone's allegiances lied after Bane's threats scared the bejesus out of Gotham as a whole.

Coming down from something akin to a PCP, Steph could feel that she wasn't at her best. There wasn't just the itch, but the shakes, the nausea, the numbness. Her injuries that she was finally suffering from. But, she'd been more broken before, and she couldn't sit idly by in Eddie's bunker while Bane ripped her city to shreds. So, after days of tracking Bane and his me , when she caught wind of what was happening to those retired cops, she sprung to action. She had managed to swing by her own apartment to grab her costume before hiding away in the safe house, something far more decent than the tattered mess she'd worn the last time she patrolled. As she swung over to St. Agnes Church, careful to take her time and stick to the shadows, she wondered if she should contact Eddie or the Bat to tell them, but both men were busy, and she didn't really want to talk to either. Especially Eddie. If he really wanted, he could find her with such ease it was almost stupid.

With the altered comm that could zoom in on nearby conversation in her ear and her rebreather in her mouth (just in case), she loped herself over the stonewall of the church's yard and landed in the garden. Bane's men hardly whispered the plan of attack as they killed about, and oh god, she wanted to beat the shit out of them right then and there. But, no, she had to try to assess the situation, right? Gaggle of goons scouring the perimeter? Check. She swooped to a darkened corner, a little cubby hole with a stained glass window she could look through to see what was going on inside. Switching to heat vision, she began to count warm bodies, but before she could react to whatever was going on, her comm beeped to life, and she nearly jumped to high heaven.

"Riddler," she whispered sharply, because if they were going with alter egos she could do that too. She hesitated just a moment before continuing just as quiet. "No, I don't think so. I think we just made it. There's...twenty-five in there. A couple goons circling. Seven retired cops and their immediate families. I see a few bodies on the floor, but they're alive according to the readings. But I overheard them taking about taking them out one by one, so I don't know if they--," she cut herself off with a hard swallow. A brief pause that held a shaky sigh, Steph fought to keep her voice even. "How'd you find me?"

“I checked your browser history, duh doy.” He chimed brightly, clicking the side of his glasses and found an outline of her crouched up near the stained glass window and smiled. “I came to help. And, normally I’d ask because it’s the-” Eddie made a small grunting noise as he stood up and brushed mud and rain off his jacket. “Gentlemany thing to do, but tonight I’m not taking no for an answer. I know the guy who runs this joint. Catholics love a sinner trying to be good.” That much was true. Eddie didn’t feel bad for the kind of fun he had in this Gotham, but he understood it was wrong. He also knew it was wrong to not feel bad, which was a conundrum that was driving a wedge between them now. But, Father Michael was one of the first to see the good Eddie tried to do during the plague and invited him to talk as men of the cloth tended to do. Riddler would never be religious in the strong sense of the word, but he did enjoy talking to someone who was. He liked the stories. The soul of it.

And, maybe he liked knowing the faces of Gotham more than he liked to admit. If he could put a person behind the face, a story, then it lit something inside of him that wasn’t there before.

“But, first. A momentary distraction.” Eddie pulled out a metal, simple trigger from his backpack with a couple differently shaded green buttons across it. In seconds, alarms started screeching a couple blocks away as an entire street of shops and houses had their security systems triggered by little ol’ Riddler. The goons circling the church looked at each other in confusion and in a panic, loaded up their van and chased the noise down the street. Eddie wasn’t sure how long the alarms would keep the goons busy like a laser pen distracted a cat from a mouse, but he hoped it’d be enough to fortify the church and let Gotham see there was still hope. “I’m going in the back. Drop in when you’re ready.”

Eddie was on his feet and walking up the slippery, rain slick steps as Father Michael opened the door to see what the noise was. “GAH!” Eddie yelled in surprise, practically falling back and cracking his head open on the bottom step before Michael caught him and pulled him back. “Hey, Father. I was in the neighborhood and I thought I’d give you a hand.” Eddie grinned his charming, bright grin and clapped the priest on the back. Father Michael was one of those sixty year old men who looked like they could take a twenty something that was getting too rowdy outside of a pub. Irish, sharp nosed and a little pudgy on the sides with a smile that was small but incredibly kind. Eddie liked that the best.

“Ed. Glad to see they haven’t taken you yet. Come in. You’re soaking.” Father Michael laughed and led him inside, shutting the big heavy door together. Eddie had, up to that point, completely forgot the church was filled with retired cops, but the way some of them looked at him was a striking, quick reminder.

“Aw crap.” Eddie slouched, taking off his coat to reveal a t-shirt with two narwhals battling with lightsabers for horns (Nar Wars, get it?) over a black long sleeved shirt, muddy jeans, green chucks and a belt with a brass question marked buckle. The older, bristly looking ones stepped closer like they’d happily break his bones if he did anything cute. “Listen, I’m here to help. I got a bag full of tricks and- okay I realize this sounds a lot like the Cat in the Hat what with the rain and, uh, but it’s a lot less sinister than that.” He put his hands up, whispering to the cops and then slowly lowered to open the backpack and reveal all kinds of tech and tools. “I set those alarms to give us time. I also have other supplies, please-” Eddie looked up to Father Michael with big, brown puppy eyes and the old man nodded sagely like Irish men do who had been through similar, bloody rebellions. It took a moment, but they backed off and Eddie tried not to smile. Luckily, he could hide a lot under that question marked baseball cap.

Steph let him babble on over the comm line as she tried her best to steady herself in her little hidden away corner. She could have searched for his heat signature with her goggles, too, but she didn’t particularly want to know where he was. Mostly, she wanted him to go away so she could continue burying away all her feelings toward him, and just that thought made her sick. When had it all fallen apart? When had they changed from those two people stupidly in love in December to whatever this was now? And, Stephanie knew that the honeymoon was finally over, if they ever had one to begin with, but that didn’t mean that this didn’t sting. It was easy to desperately love someone that had issues out of her scope when it didn’t affect her, but this all left her with a bigger heartache than when he dunked her with the Pit, left her hurting just as much, if not more than what happened with her father.

But, he was here, and she couldn’t exactly tell him to fuck off now, especially with the situation as cloudy as it was. She would team up with him, take care of these cops and their families, and then they could go back to their respective places on opposite sides of Gotham. Maybe she’d jump into another bunker so he wouldn’t think that things were suddenly repaired just because he stalked her out while she was out on a job, but she would push through this and try not beat her boyfriend into a bloody pulp. So, she let him babble as she crouched in her corner and watched the activity inside unfold. It was like she could feel the fear from there, from the pulsing forms inside that she could see. And, as she was trying to think of a way to come in, the alarms started to blare, and she bit back a yelp, mouth covered as she saw the heat signatures scramble and huddle together. As if preparing for the inevitable. “See you inside,” was all she offered him, a curt acknowledgement that she couldn’t shake him if she wanted to. And, oh, she wanted to. She really, really wanted to because she didn’t want to face the problem right then and there.

The cowl was built for rain, but that didn’t mean a chill didn’t shake to her bones, and she stretched up slowly before circling around the building to find a window to slip through. After a moment, she found a closed one to the rectory and wedged it open from the outside to slip in, feet first. There was a thump of her heavy boots hitting the floor that echoed through the quiet din of rainfall hammering the rooftop. Before walking out to where the refugees of Bane’s terror were, she took a moment to take a deep breath. Prep herself. Look around the room to see anything that could help them. One last sweep with the heat goggles told her Eddie managed to get in (and not get killed by the retired cops), and she opened the door slowly, sure that sudden movements would do more harm than good.

Standing tall and straight, she tried to look as brave as she could, as unwavered as she could in the presence of a warring lover. “He’s good at causing distractions,” she said brightly, arms on her hips as she stood in front of the rectory door. Just removed from the rest of them. Her cheerful voice bounced off the walls. One of the little girls looked awed, and Steph beamed down at her and offered a little wave before edging forward.

Eddie had already started moving over to a small cardtable they had set up with radios, an electric lantern and cellphones, eyes moving over supplies and people as if he were quickly taking in as much information as he could. Cops, especially old grizzled ones, knew the basics of urban survival in Gotham, but they didn’t have the technical know-how to build anything beyond boarded up windows. Eddie on the other hand, could build a castle out of scrap metal and generators if he wanted to. Any goon who saw the signatures of his work tended to think twice before braving the puzzles. After setting the pack down he started to wander around the church, hands behind his back and he looked up and down the walls, windows and different entryways mooks could use to get in.

By the time Batgirl had made her entrance, he was only a couple feet away and her voice made him almost jump over the pews and zig-zag into another direction. He was afraid of getting too close, to see a scornful crack in that bright Batgirl smile, but any obvious tension between them would come off as untrustworthy for the both of them. So, he wandered past her, dark eyes lifting up only momentarily to look at her before making his way back to Father Michael. “They’ve been picking people off one by one. So, you holed up here. But, the strongest have to make supply runs and unfortunately, that boils down to the very people they want to take. Correct? The trick is to make taking any more people a tedious endeavor and supply runs once or twice a week.”

He took a seat on one of the altar steps and rubbed the side of his face in thought. “I can set up an electric fence once the rain clears and I have a miniature helicopter to make deliveries with when you guys run short on food. Once we get some ideas going, I’ll put up cameras, too. But, we need to do something tonight to scare ‘em off.” Eddie pointed to his backpack on the table, fully allowing the cops to rummage through the whole thing, which was a bigger deal than anyone there except maybe Stephanie could understand. Inside were the kind of supplies someone in The Walking Dead would have died for. Surveillance equipment, pipe bombs, medical supplies, electronics and stuff most of them didn’t even recognize. He had to start working on the doors to make them automatic and sturdy, but a plan needed to be hatched beforehand. “Batgirl, do you think we should break up these pews and start boarding up the windows? And, I need ideas for where to keep the kids safe if these idiots do break in.” Eddie turned his baseball cap around, folding his hands together in his lap as he looked up at her, this time much longer than when she first dropped in. There was affection always in the back of his gaze when he looked at her, but it was overshadowed by something that looked like a strategist calling a general in for help.

As Eddie stalked around the edges of the church to try to look for weak points, she glanced up and around to do the same. Trying to spot loose rafters in the ceilings or little alcoves she could possibly grapple up to and use as hiding spots if those jackasses came back soon. There were a few spots she felt were fortified enough for her grapple, and she felt confident enough that there would be enough places for her to take advantage of that the goons wouldn’t even think of. Okay, she could do this. She could help these people out. There was no hope of them leaving, unless Eddie wanted to house twenty-five plus people in one of his underground bunkers, and they needed to make it safe for them until Bane could be taken care of. (He had to be taken care of, right?)

She ignored his first look as he scoped out the place, jaw turned up slightly in a moment of defiance that was far more teenage girl than caped crusader trying to instill some hope and faith into a group of people. Stephanie knew that was petty and probably wrong, but she couldn’t help it. Just being in the same room with him caused a stab in her chest that she couldn’t ignore. Instead, she retraced his steps, walking through the pews the way he came to avoid following him around like some puppy waiting for her master’s approval. She catalogued corners, observed the cops burrowing through Eddie’s backpack (which did, in fact, earn him a brief approving eyebrow raise), and counted off the number of kids. (Too many.) But, before she could go talking to the people, Eddie spoke again, and she stopped somewhere between the third and fourth row of pews, and looked up at him. “I--.” Steph afforded herself the brief shake in her voice and a sad look that was only for Eddie before clearing her throat. “Yeah, we should board these up as quickly as possible, especially since those guys will probably figure out soon that the alarms are just a stupid ruse.” She glanced over her shoulder to the kids huddled around each other, their frightened faces turning her lips down. “The rectory,” she said quickly. “I think that’s the only place that we can hide them away. I got through the window there, but we can rig it so that it’s a lot more secure, I think?”

Steph hesitated for a moment, and the look across her face let him know how not okay she was him still. That affectionate look made her stomach wretch, and she had to turn away to stop herself from saying anything stupid. Sure, Gotham knew about Batgirl and Riddler’s friendlier relationship, but they didn’t need to suffer the consequences of their spat. Instead, she bit down on her lip and looked down at one of the little girls approaching her. Steph immediately crouched down to be on her level and buried away all the sadness with a soft smile for the girl clutching a baby blanket as if it would save her from anything. In her soft lispy voice, the little girl asked if she and the green man would help them. “I promise,” Steph reassured her with a brighter smile. She reached a gloved hand to brush her hand over the girl’s messy hair, blonde like hers, and tugged lightly on that blanket. “Just hold onto that, and we’ll do the dirty work, sweetpea.”

One last brush of the hand over the girls head, and Batgirl pushed herself up to look back toward those cops. “Alright, boys, let’s see what you’ve got. Fastest person to break a pew down wins a prize.”

Eddie visibly zoned out as Steph reassured the girl, sharp and calculating eyes glazing over like he was struck by something he couldn’t explain. Father Michael had to ask him a question twice about one of the tiny laptops he brought with him, shaking his shoulder a little to snap him back. And, luckily it was just when Batgirl called for a pew breaking contest and his focus was up and away from her. The room quickly split off into people who could do manual labor and people who could plan and learn quickly. Eddie was suspiciously fluent in cop codes and terms, which raised a couple eyebrows, but these guys couldn’t be picky. Not when Batgirl just made one of their little girls smile for the first time in days and Eddie brought enough firepower to make any Blackgate mook pee his pants.

The Riddler simply buzzed with energy from teaching people how to use different pieces of equipment and talking strategy, but there were a couple too many wayward looks over to Batgirl when she was in the middle of boarding up a window or helping one of the teenagers pull a pew apart. He wasn’t very sad when he first showed up, just happy to be around, but it occurred to him that simply being near her wasn’t the same as being with her. In fact, helping her with all of this didn’t seem like a bad idea until now. And, he was afraid that she’d see him as some kind of phony or question his motivations for being there. Dwelling wasn’t helping, especially after missing a couple key questions from the people he was trying to train and eventually he quickly asked Father Michael to see the basement for supplies to get some peace.

So, if she ever turned to look for him, he was gone. Downstairs rummaging through broken nativity scenes and gardening supplies for something he could use and pace around the messy, cluttered place until he could get his head on straight again. Eventually, he cleared off a table, threw a pile of scrap metal and tools on it and began working on a winding, complicated locked layer of metal and wood that could reinforce the backdoor and make easy access for anyone that understood how it worked. The design was Riddler in every way. Complicated if you didn’t know anything about it, but oh so simple if you were given the answer. And, he was aware that he couldn’t just put the thing up and ask people to guess how it worked. He’d have to tell them. Something he never did with anyone but Steph. Something he wasn’t sure if he was really capable of, but he wanted to try.

The physical work was tiring, especially for someone recovering being high for the better part of two weeks. Her breath hitched every now and then as she lifted the heavy pieces of wood up to the windows, the fractured ribs shooting pain that she could let show could she? Still, when no one was looking, she took a moment to breathe out the pain, sharp sucks through her teeth before turning back to the teenage boy, Joey, who was helping her. And, that was how she distracted herself from the pain: learning names and stories. Joey was a high school junior with a knack for football and defying his dad. That little girl she comforted, Katie, was his three-year-old little sister who liked Disney Channel and Sesame Street. And, they both really liked the Bat and his family. (Joey thought that Wing guy was pretty cool, while Katie, of course, was a newfound Batgirl fan herself.) Steph could lose herself in that and try to forget the stabbing pain in her chest.

But, after a while, she found herself glancing over her shoulder to look for him. It hurt, it really, really hurt to be so close to him but so angry. She didn’t want to be angry with him. She really wanted to let the whole thing go. She wished she could forgive and forget, but she just wasn’t built that way. Stephanie couldn’t understand that sort of darkness, she would never really understand what drove a person to do something like that and not feel guilty. That was something she would never, ever understand. How Eddie couldn’t understand the concept of feeling bad for something. His best friend stopped her heart after she kissed him, and Stephanie thought any other boyfriend would be outraged and protective and just as pissed. That was what stung the most of all.

She couldn’t help looking for him though in the mix of all these people trying to create a place to feel safe within all the mess going on outside, but he wasn’t there, and she knitted her eyebrows together for a moment. A quick glance told her he wasn’t anywhere, and after a reassuring smile and couple of words of confidence, she left Joey to his own devices for a few minutes to track Eddie down. Father Michael pointed her in the right direction, and she slowly walked down the steps of the basement. “Hi,” she said finally as she wound down the last steps. It was the first time she was in the same place alone with him since their big fight, and the way her face turned down told him how much pain it caused her.

By the time she made it down to the basement, he had worked out a plan for the door reinforcement on the back of a large Fish Fry poster. Tucked away in his corner with a small lamp and his violet glasses glowing up the dark basement, Eddie looked as though he were alone in one of his workshops. Engrossed and maybe even a little in love with the puzzle complexity of it all. When it came down to it, being the Riddler had mutated past just a compulsion and into an art form. A tricky locked door wasn’t just a defense for him, but expression. That’s what made it so hard for him to share it with anyone.

Her voice was distant, but the second he heard it his body visibly perked up and snapped out of his engineering trance. Eddie fought back a smile at her and instead frowned deeply when he saw the pain for what it actually was. A moment passed and then he beckoned her over.

“Can I show you what I’m working on?” He asked quietly, taking his glasses off and turning the poster around so that she could see his plans. “I- well I got the idea from Wonder City, actually. What’s the problem with riddles? Well, once you solve them they aren’t really riddles anymore. Right? In Wonder City, there’s a couple doors that require certain buttons pressed at the same time, but I thought to rotate the buttons so that the combination can keep changing. That way it doesn’t matter if the goons up there see one of the scouts put in a combo, because the guys inside can change it the second the door closes.” Eddie beamed at her, but then remembered she was still upset and looked back down at the scrap metal and wood he was working on. “I need you to explain the details of it to them for me. I don’t think I can.”

He wasn’t looking at her now and there was something nervous in his voice. Eddie hadn’t been nervous around her in a long time, maybe even since they first started seeing each other. But, now he wasn’t sure how to make her love him again and everything he said seemed like a ticking time bomb between them. That desperation to make her happy was still there, alive and beating, but his success rate was so much lower than it had been before.

The way his body seemed to perk up when she walked in tugged the frown deeper because of that lurch in her stomach. Those stupid goddamn butterflies that enjoyed whenever he looked happy. She hated those things right now -- that jump of her heart or shiver down her spine or goosebumps raised over her arms. All the little physical ticks that gave away how Eddie still pulled her in, how he had her twisted around his thieving fingers, how he still had her heart in his mouth. Because, goddammit all, she was still in love with him. Of course she was. How else would she feel so wronged by it all? Stephanie had dropped men for stupider things, but she was always a sucker for Eddie Nigma. There was too much between them to just give up anyway, or so she thought. Really, she was too weak to give him up, or, perhaps, too strong to just let it go.

A tingle shot up her spine, and she could practically taste the nerves in his voice. Oh, she knew him too well, just like he knew her inside and out, too. Slowly, she dropped down the last step and edged towards the corner where he was working. There wasn’t much light, and the purple glow from his glasses didn’t illuminate her face enough for him to see the real damage the toxin and the proceeding weeks after had done. He could do a scan, of course, but she didn’t think about that. She leaned onto the desk, avoiding his eyes and instead studying the plan drawn there. “It’s genius,” she said after a few quiet moments of trying to understand what was laid before her. “You have to explain it to them, Eddie. I’ll mess it up. You can do it.” She looked up suddenly, blue eyes wide and honest and marred with purple bruises underneath. “I know you can.”

Eddie didn’t know how far and in what way Stephanie had made up her mind about him. In fact, he was afraid to ask and it showed. This was a new and uncomfortable phenomena for him as he naturally enjoyed asking about practically everything. “I don’t know, Stephanie. It’s different with strangers.” He smoothed his hands over the plans once, resting his palms face down on the table before looking up to her in honesty. It was very, very hard to slip too much past him and it only took a couple seconds for him to really see how much she was hurting. Those wounds from before hadn’t been properly treated and were only getting worse by the look of her posture. If she couldn’t survive fighting those mooks if and when they came back, he’d never forgive himself.

“One of those wives is a retired nurse.” He said simply, hand reaching to sit gingerly on top of her fingers. Eddie knew Steph well enough not to suggest anything further. They pushed each other, but learnt quickly that telling her what she should do was almost insulting to the blonde bat. Even if she knew he was right. And, he wasn’t interested in pushing her any farther than he already had over the past couple weeks. His fingers squeezed hers, tight enough that she could feel the pressure through her thick gloves and then retreated back to keep working on his plans. As one hand wrote and sketched the intricate door lock, the other started to tap out on the table in Morse Code a very simple I miss you.

“You seem to be friendly with that priest, though,” Stephanie countered, more suggestive than forceful and still looking at him with those wide eyes. She thought he was fully capable of relating to people in some way if he just tried. “All those people in Old Gotham, aren’t they technically strangers? But you still helped them out. At least try.” Her voice was soft, encouraging, and for one brief moment held none of that anger and hurt she held in her tense shoulders or sharp eyes. Just a hope and faith that he could do whatever he set his mind to if he just tried. She leaned a little further onto the table, too exhausted to resist her body’s immediate reaction to the brush of his fingers, and she closed her eyes.

“Oh,” she said, eyes snapping open. Yeah, she knew that she should see someone with a medical degree to actually look at whatever’d happen to her. Not just the fractured ribs or other bumps and bruises, but her heart, too. Death might think she was okay, but stuff like that wasn’t natural. “I’m fine,” she reassured him with a casual shrug despite herself. “I have them wrapped.” And she felt her heart thump when he squeezed her fingers, and she couldn’t help the whine that escaped her throat. “Please,” she started with barely a whisper, and she finally looked away from him. Up toward that dirty ceiling. Away toward anything but him. She made out nothing but the miss, but she could infer. “Don’t.” Her voice cracked, turning back to him and giving him the answer he seeked with just a tear-eyed look: I miss you, too.

Like many of the rogues and even some of the bat-heroes, Eddie felt removed from regular Gotham citizens. It used to be a feeling of being special and turned into simply being stranger, but this city was slowly changing some of that for him. Whether it was the way Stephanie could talk to a scared little girl without even an ounce of adult worry in her voice or the Cat’s love for all things broken, he was starting to see that this city was made up of gears and springs that knew the same tragedy, loss and pain that he did. So he nodded earnestly with a soft, “I’ll try.” With an unspoken for you laced thickly underneath it. That was the best he could do.

And, he almost expected her to yell at him (which he was sure he deserved another round of anyway) at the less than discreet tapping. Her watery plea for him to stop, though, threw him off. He looked up at her directly for the first time since they were upstairs, big brown eyes exhausted from trying to veil any feelings for her sake and he started to climb up on the worktable and crawl over to her. “Stephanie.” Eddie said gently, swinging his legs over the edge so that he was next to her and hands reaching to hold onto her. “Look, we can talk some more tonight. We can figu-” He started, but the little handheld radio on his belt crackled and Father Michael’s voice cut through. The mooks were back. And, they were looking for a good fight. Eddie gave a long sigh, smacking the radio against his leg a couple times in frustration before looking back up to her. “You ready?”

Continued here

Sat, 18 May 2013 03:04:09 GMT

Who: Sera
What: Narrative
Where: Home, a Meetup.
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Adult themes in here, ppls.

Las Vegas was not what she'd been expecting. When Sera made the decision to leave home, her adoptive parents had called her ingenue, credula. They had worried over her mental state, and they had wrung their hands. Her adoptive papà had run his hand over his thinning grey hair over and over, the mannerism one that Sera knew from the moment he had found her that day, all those years go, when Angelo had left her behind. Her adoptive mamma had called the doctor that had been treating Sera since the incident with Sebastian. But there had been no stopping her, and now here she was, and nothing was as she'd expected it would be.

The city was arid, unforgiving dryness on skin born near water. Whimsy, and she could imagine herself a mermaid cast ashore, her scales drying out in the cruel heat, her heart far away and somewhere blue. Whimsy, and she could imagine the walls of her house a prison, one that she'd chosen because the cold tiles reminded her so much of Ravello, of how her bare feet slapped against the floor there. But there was no rush of tides in the morning here, no gulls, no smell of breakfast wafting from the kitchens. Here, there was no maid to ensure she dress, and her mamma did not poke her head into the room and admonish her to stop writing, lest she waste away to nothing. And her papà was nowhere to be found, no bear arms, no hugs that were so tight she couldn't breathe.

Here, there was quiet in the mornings.

Here, she wrote until her stomach protested, the sun already high in the sky, the day almost gone.

(Supplication, and upon the bed, she stretched out her body, arms spread like Jesus upon his cross, legs defiant of any attempt at nails, spread wide until the muscles of her thighs burned. The lance that pierced her side was figurative, a hand broad and unforgiving, drawing more than blood and water from her flesh. And she thought, as she waited for a sip of relief, why she was there, naked upon dingy sheets with a man she had not known before the morning?)

She wrote.

Her stories, once fanciful things full of white dresses and altars, changed.

Forever gone was the white knight, blond hair and blue eyes, broad shoulders and lies. In his place, dark thoughts and dark themes, and she would have had to hide these pages at home; her mamma would have called the doctor.

But Sera didn't need a doctor. The typewriter ding, ding, dinged, the sound soothing enough that she kept the heavy machine, even with lighter, inoffensive alternatives. But she was paper, stacks of it, and that ding. She didn't want to publish anything. She savored her mistakes. What were mistakes, save truth? She marked the pages after, and she drank a little wine and ate a little bread as she curled up on the couch and visited the internet. A city in its own right, the internet felt much more like home than Las Vegas. The houses and stores there were familiar, and her friends were always available.

And then it was night, and she was left restless, prowling, written out, talked out, and always inching toward something that she hadn't yet braved. Meetups were for evenings, and she'd gone to nearly a dozen since arriving in Vegas. Innocuous groups discussing flowers, troubled groups discussing deaths, dark groups discussing sex.

It was the latter that drew her that night.

She was a small thing in a plastic chair. Slim jeans and a snug shirt and eyes the color of haunted evenings. Risk stratification for breath control play, the agenda boasted.

(What is trust? Can something so breakable be considered real? A fallacy, surely, one given and taken in the same breath. It is of no permanence. It has no solid shape, no form. It, like Christmas, does not exist without belief. There is no commercial presence for faith in another human being, and does that invalidate it entirely? What use are gods without belief? What use is trust, when it is so fine a thread that it can snap without warning? Or is delicacy beauty, and is beauty delicacy? Is the fine thread more cherished than the strong rope?)

There was nothing sexual about it. Nothing sensual. Nothing beautiful about the blue plastic chair or the girl sitting in it, her hands clutched tight to the sides and a dozen observers, her own greek choir. The man behind her was old enough to be her father, and Sera tipped her head back and looked at him with doe eyes and maelstroms.

His hands covered her nose. His hands covered her mouth. His fingers found her throat. She gasped.

That night - beneath cool white linen, heavy and chaffing against skin gone sore with emotions too excruciating for flesh to contain - her fingers slid between her thighs. She moaned. She could almost hear the rushing water, the slap of waves on sand, and the sound of struggles in the next room.

She slept.

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:40:46 GMT

Who: Ella Dean & Lin Alesi
What: A fluffy mix-up
Where: Dreamland
When: 13^th Fairy Plot
Warnings/Rating: Little cusses, snuggles, and allusions to sex work.

The place was dark.

Twilight-dark, dusk stealing in through slatted windows, warm-oozy air filtering in from desert-warm evening; air that clung to skin and coaxed sweat. It was a lazy cadence of a night, promises that walked up flesh like fingers and held themselves there, all would-bes and won’t-bes and will-you, twined up in one another like a net. Just a regular hotel room, anonymous as plastic keys on the bar downstairs; anonymous as beige drapes and the city behind the blinds, sheets that rustled as she moved.

She was a twist of limbs beneath cool white cotton, sleepy tangle of could-be sin: a corolla of blond curls on the pillow crushed beneath her arm and hunched shoulders twined in the sheet as she slept - lightly, lazily, the quiet hush of the night before the night and a dress cast on the floor, skirts spread like the faded petals of a bloom long since thrown aside.

The door caught, the electronic click of a keycard, perhaps exchanged over drinks downstairs, perhaps mentioned in good-old-boys conversation as their wedding rings glinted on the sides of their glasses, but paid for upfront. Anonymous as the Gideon Bible in the drawer: Ella-beneath-the-blanket stirred.

Before the door opened, it wasn’t as if he existed. He didn’t. He hadn’t. But he did now. It was a strange sort of consciousness, but it was consciousness all the same—the same kind half-remembered from the womb, as sense of being there with awareness that was so finite, so small it was a universal perspective in itself. Lin felt the cold, impersonal metal of a lever-knob under his hand, the kind put on doors that were opened when arms were full, he saw the taupe door opening inward, numbers wrought in fool’s gold twinkling in his eyes. His ears heard plastic sliding in plastic, and realized he was driving the sound, a square card in his hand blinking a green light on the already ajar door.

In the dimness of the room, under the whirring of hotel air conditioning, there was a bed, businesslike and frank in its size and shape, neutral bedspread of a washed-out spring palette meant to appeal to masses rather than individuals. A dress lay discarded on the floor. Lin’s eyes surveyed with interest and his mind buzzed emptily—full of nothing but surprise at the shock of the cold air. He wore only a t-shirt and slacks, both inoffensive, as anonymous as the temporariness of the room.

There was a woman in the bed, he realized slowly, startlingly. She was a fine splay of white limbs on white sheet, flaxen hair bright and beaten into sleep-tousled curls. And she was like, 100% not wearing clothes, he was like, 300% sure. Lin immediately looked away and flushed, his embarrassment out of place and out of character.

The keycard in his hand was abandoned in the door. It swung shut heavily, the impassive door weighted to close on its own, to keep out those without the right key for the lock. He backed into it, against it, cotton to skin, cotton to 21^st century synthetic wood blend. A knowledge filled his brain and told him he couldn’t leave. He’d left the key. The door shut. And he was here now. Fuck.

“Um.” Lin didn’t understand the setup. Not yet. He saw no correlation, as there was nothing to compare. There was no before to set against the now, no place to connect the few dots freckled in front of him. Instead, his eyebrows rose in an expression of perplexity, but he tried a smile. “Room service?”

He was a sputter of sound in a room set up for something a little more wordless, something a little less bashful. Ella was sat up now, as the door clicked back into place with a weighted swing - the sheet wound around her but with little concern for what it covered and what it did not; it had slipped, her right shoulder was bare, and she was weight on her hands, a curl of knees and not entirely upright but something suggesting an ability to slide right back into the sheets if given the right cue, the right moment. He’d flushed; she smiled gently, amused at that, the kind of thing that pulled at female lips a world of first times. (Was it? Her mind was a muddy drift of first times and last times, of times with cash in hand and times with accounts dialed in before hand, numbers read off as smooth as Swiss bank accounts).

He wasn’t dressed like a businessman; they were, usually. Neckties knotted, cool-eyed; they undid their cufflinks before they took off the wedding ring. It was a transaction, for men used to flicked beads on the abacus, to counting pennies in the dollar and signing thousands with a stroke. “You’re not wearing a suit,” she said, sleepily. A long, slow smile, invitation extended with a curl of the mouth. “Why are you all the way over there, honey?” And then a perplexed blink, all warm honey cooling quickly; the suit wasn’t the only thing not quite right, “Are you in the right place?”

He wasn’t dressed like a businessman. Lin wasn’t a businessman. He was hardly a man as it was, and there was nothing business about him. There in the dark safety of the alcove, he was nothing more than a cowlick of black hair, skinny arms and skinny legs, and big, big eyes, anything but cool, trying very hard to parse that nectar-sweetness that bottomed out sleepy questions. He tilted his head to the side as a child might, trying (and failing) not to stare at the woman, at the nakedness of her shoulder and the color she brought into the drab paleness of the room. He almost came closer.

“I left my apron and headpiece—” Lin’s voice trailed off as quickly as it started, a jagged spike of the QRS complex on an invisible electrocardiogram. Rapid depolarization of the left and right ventricles. There was something here, something that suddenly fit, like a little white bit of plastic in a big faceless door. Click it went, and the green light blinked, and the door opened. Lin frowned. A woman, completely disrobed, with eyes half-lidded and ...persuasive, in a nameless bed in a nameless room in a nameless hotel expecting a nameless man in a suit, expecting... business, and the confusion at the sudden appearance of a most certainly not nameless boy who was far too tentative to be owed something. Oh. Right. Okay. Uh.

Um. Fuck again.

“I don’t know. I—” Lin twisted on firmly planted feet to gaze conspicuously around the featureless space. He looked slowly back to the pretty woman in the sheets. His smile watered down. He realized he really didn’t know. He didn’t know where he was. “I don’t know where I am. Besides here.”

The sheets rustled: Ella twisted, one bare calf and then another slid down from the bed to bland, colorless carpet, thick enough to soak sound, to dim down a night to nothing but stains for someone else to scrub out. He didn’t look a bit like a client might but it could have been a purchase on his behalf... Her head cocked, Ella’s gaze was true blue, unblinking and thoughtful. “You ever spoken to someone called Anna, honey?” She stood, turned, slow as a spoon dragging through molasses and presented him with her back, bare, smooth skin scooped beneath the sheet which dipped for a moment, altogether dangerously, before raised, twisted firmly. If he hadn’t come but he had the card, then who would? It was a pattern, chequers on a board, pieces slid together in a line. They had the key, they came. She checked in at the desk, they did. Passing ships gliding soundlessly alongside one another momentarily and then apart.

She turned and the sheet was knotted above her breasts, Roman toga in hotel-crisp white cotton and something suggestive about the puddle of it at her feet. Languid clung to her, the dregs - like the cast off dress on the floor: Ella wasn’t certain whether unwitting client or client with a game to play, but the lock had clicked. He had the keycard, he was in the room. That was how it worked. She was a pad of bare feet over carpet, trailed sheet and the bed behind her, shadows and dusk and the glint of Vegas beyond the slats - the glint of something, tinsel-bright and tooth-sharp - but she stopped, and the suggestion fell apart like torn silk. “Just another hotel room.” She lifted her shoulder, dropped it; she looked suddenly ordinary, young. “Any of ‘em, sugar. They all look the same.”

In this new cognizance Lin had no recollections. There were echoes, afterimages, ideas he knew he’d had at some point, rooms papered with wood pulp Anaglypta and things more interesting than nothing, ports open, should anything occur to him, but there was nothing seeded here. He was Tulcholsky’s impossible Neuschnee. It was extremely eerie, actually, and uncomfortable. Anna was as unfamiliar as the room, as unfamiliar as the white-pink stem of a leg that dipped so smoothly from the mattress under the semi-soft touch of hotel cotton, and Lin’s expression, the way his smile continued to thin, the way he let his eyes tip to his toes in papier-mâché privacy, and the way his black eyebrows met, was as much an answer as anything else. He refused to look at the sheets and at the black shadows that pooled in the folds invitingly.

“No...” He couldn’t remember the reference he wanted to make. There was an Anna somewhere he meant to say something about. An Anna for a joke that waited at the tip of his tongue, but beyond his memory. She was maybe Russian? He didn’t know. God, that was infuriating. Lin was used to knowing and to remembering and the blank expanse of his mind was overwhelming in its underwhelming amount of knowing, as was this newfound sense of whatever it was—shame? embarrassment? Outside of the hotel room, where he came from, the place he couldn’t quite recall, he knew wouldn’t have cared. He would have been surprised, but he wouldn’t have cared. There was nothing there to worry about. But here, he did worry. “Fuck.”

The boy was frowning to himself and his hands fidgeted with one another, preoccupied by this sudden spotless blindness. When the woman drew in closer, it startled him, and he tried to take a step backward, only remembering there was nowhere to go as his occipital bone cracked on the door.

“Jesus—” With one eye open (the other obviously closed in a starburst of pain), he looked at the woman in her makeshift toga (which reminded him of something else, something else set on a beach with a girl with red hair?), and Lin rubbed the back of his head where a knot was already growing. He hadn’t known that could happen in rooms like this. Still the plainness in the woman’s words, the stripping of pretense was something. She was small, too, sloping shoulders still bare, dressed only in those curls. Something dawned on Lin and he smiled. “There are other rooms—almost rooms. In other hotels. With doors. And behind them there are worlds. Can you believe that? Shit just blows my mind.” He paused. “No room service though.”

He wasn’t sure why he was saying what he was saying, but it seemed to be the right thing for the moment.

His eyes listed sideways and for that she was grateful - gratitude was easy, gratitude was candy-sweet, it fluttered to the floor as she tucked the sheet more firmly beneath her arms; gratitude wasn’t used in rooms like these, no turn down service or thank-yous to the staff. It wasn’t pay by the hour but it was close, bland and inoffensive paintwork and the deadening of sound in the heavy drapes.

“He ain’t around,” she said dryly, of Jesus and she turned back toward the bed, discarded clothing lost beneath the bed, a sway of hips and scooching downward to fish it out. “Seeing as y’all not the one paying for it, honey, you mind turning? Thank you. I don’t think he’s coming.” The silky hiss of fabric as it unraveled - if he’d looked, it was the competent wriggle of someone used to taking things off and dressing with haste: dress first, then underwear. Who he was, she didn’t know; the virtues of anonymity. She didn’t expect boys who blushed like they remembered how.

Ella turned, scooped up the sheet and tossed it over the bed to the accompaniment of the failed wheeze of the air-conditioning, muted, sluggish air pushed around the room once again. “I can believe it,” she said, sinking down onto the mattress, all frankness in the curl of her hand around her knee, the shrug of shoulders. “Worlds within rooms.” Ella laughed; it was a soft wisp of a sound, light. “I don’t think this one got the notice.”

Lin laughed at the Jesus joke, pinning his eyes once again to the shoes—shoes he’d never bought—on his feet as the woman left him in the palm of the recessed door. He listened to the shuff and whispers of cloth on skin, the heavy draping weight of the sheet, but he didn’t look up, not until it stopped and the room was once again filled with artificial, refrigerated air and the light summery sounds of Southern words that came from the bed.

He crossed the unremarkable desert of cardboard carpet, chosen, if it was chosen at all, for its shortness and its endurance, surely, rather than for its color or texture, and seated himself on the queen’s ruff of that bed, the bed whose original intent was lost in that cold, little room. Lin crawled in a few feet and sat cross-legged. He fiddled with the edge of the ex-toga. His head still hurt, but almost as a memory now. His first memory.

“I don’t think so either.” Once again, the boy peered around the space, this time from a new vantage point, and he considered the unobtrusive, glass-topped desk that stood in the corner near the window. It seemed too small. There was a phone on it, a phone that some part of the boy insisted was old. It had a pig’s tail of a cord and was the ugly color of the inside of a pear whelk shell. And then his brown eyes found the woman’s blue, an ocean for that shell. She was pretty, sun-dipped, warm, and in the dress, he felt he could look at her without the need for a bloom of heat in each cheek. He held out a thin-fingered hand, his palm lighter in color, like sand. “I’m Lin.”

Too much in the space was without a name. Too much was like the white expanse of his mind. It needed tracks, some trace of existence to mar it and make it feel like it was his.

The sheets curled, bunched as Ella wriggled backward to make room on the bed; it was inelegant, it lacked grace, the aware sensuousness of the deliberately provocative. She was bare feet scuttled back on smooth cotton, the drape of worn dress over her hip, pulled down chastely over her knee. He wasn’t the one - the One, shadowy in business-suit grey, hollowed out in the shadow behind the door, the would-be could-be of money sliding over wires, coolly insubstantial. And if he wasn’t the One, there was nothing to give. He held out a hand and she looked at it, at the long fingers her teacher would have said made him a piano player (the soft roll of syllables above music, the list and sway of paper fan in the summer torpor) and the splay of his palm. It was right, the gesture - polite as cookies and tea for visitors and she slid her own palm snug up against his, small and pale and a vague suggestion of callouses about the fingers.

“Lin,” Ella tried it on her tongue, lemon-sugar and bright blue skies in a hotel room without a name, light limmed down to the edge of a doorway, to the soft-subtle glow of Vegas shuffled behind slatted blinds (kept out as if the city could be kept out, as if she wasn’t everywhere women who rolled on their backs and made no sleepy protest but held out open arms, might be). The name that belonged to bedrooms, that was oiled-silk-easy for introductions that were left aside like worn out paper, like dirty sheets floated beyond reach; Ella was dream-hazy when she smiled, “Ella.”

She looked around at bleached-bone beige, at a room given over to discard and the light leached away anything but the silver candy-floss fluff of curls and the cant of her head; cut-strings marionette regarding her stage. “I think it’s my dream. That you’re in. There’s been a lot of dreaming.”

It was a dream, Lin knew that now. He felt it deep within and it fastened to his bones with the vague sort of certainty that flourished in unreality, the kind that let you look at a stranger’s face and think, ‘ah, yes, there’s my mother now’ or let you blink at manic black lines and scratches made seemingly at random, by some unknown hand, and say, ‘this is very important information I’ll need to remember.’ There were a few hints that tipped him off. The windows were one—the aura behind their plastic blinds, the radium halo of lights, of some city that made no noise as it didn’t exist. There was also the door. The drabness of the room, and the woman herself who was too real to be any figment of Lin’s own mind. And he knew too, as his not-knowing dissipated (little by little by little), as thoughts inched into that head one by one, that he was far too lucid to be dreaming. He knew he was out of place.

“Ella. Nice to meet you,” replied the boy with more formality than was normal, but he didn’t care. He shook the sparrow-boned hand, enclosing it in his own, just briefly. The name, a name Lin thought fit for a snub-nosed fairy or the cool, green underside of a leaf, rang a distant bell, one he knew he should listen to, but couldn’t seem to bring himself to. He nodded and grinned, his freed hand returning to the fringe of the sheet to pick at it. “I think you’re right. You dream of... men? And doors?”

The smile paled, pared down with each word, a little hesitant as to whether the question was too much. Lin felt himself here as something tentative, something more human than he ever felt in reality. He blushed politely, shook hands politely, and even asked too personal questions politely. It was his awareness of this fact, an awareness that lacked ambition to change, that had him most unsettled.

The question was intrusive, dug around in dream-murk and delved for all things real, for the dregs of bones, of hearts, of thoughts and things that beat beyond the ether-saccharine fug of magic sleep. Ella was opium-sweet smile, drugged on dreaming, the warm press of fingers on back of her hand and her own ice-slide of palm free; she was chilly, bare-prickled flesh and the loose summer-skirts of soft cotton. She sat with hands slack on thighs, same as a child curled on a carpet; her toes were painted candied pink as sugared almonds.

“I dream of it,” the fine bones of shoulders, the disjointing of dream with butcher’s knife, clarified and starkly real, “It dreams me.” He pulled at hotel-sleek cotton; Ella imagined it fraying, the loose unraveling of twists of cotton spiraling and watched it happen without incident or comment, the elision of dream and thought until the two were slickly one. Not often, not long; enough of anonymous rooms and prosaic dates, of chilly hotel showers beyond dreaming to allow them invasion. Her smile glittered, he was hesitant, like an easy night, like gin-soaked laughter in a bar, hand curled on a suit-sleeve.

“I dream all of it,” she said, and she drew one knee up to her chest and leaned her cheek against it, played her fingertips over the dandelion sway of the frayed sheet’s edge, “Wish I didn’t but it’s mostly true. He’s not coming, whoever he is.” A loose shake of shoulders once again; the anonymity of the shadows a dream didn’t pick out. “Who are you, Lin?” Wide-wondering eyes.

Everything moved slowly. So slowly. Life through the Planck Epoch (a contradiction of the highest order), before cosmic inflation, there was only homogeneously and isotropically high energy density, high temperatures, and high pressure. Astrophysical plasmas. It was syrupy and sweet and altogether disturbing. Lin watched Ella, he watched her dream, and he watched her sit and smile and lie her cheek to her knees. The ex-toga was quickly becoming undone (10⁻³⁶ seconds post Big Bang), and what started as one starched thread blossomed into a flower’s head of loose ends in an eye blink, a universe that could fit through the eye of a needle. Lin just kept tugging at it, destroying it, distracted, eternally extrinsic to the gauzy flow of time and the wide-eyed smile on the woman’s open sun of a face. (The Sun, his mind told him rudely, the Sun was plasma and magnetic fields. It was an apt description, he thought.)

His head hurt. It throbbed. The smooth alabaster of skull within was awash with new old memories and pinpricks of ideas he’d had once, sometime, but no longer. Lin squeezed his eyes shut, just for a second. He reminded himself that it was okay not to belong somewhere, that it wasn’t so different from anything else, from everywhere else, and he shrugged.

“You remind me of a caterpillar,” he said with a smile, one that curled a little too much at the corner, like a cat’s. It scared him. And then he sighed, pushing it aside, annoyed by it. “I’m...” Who was he? Lin bit his bottom lip. “You know, I don’t know. I feel like I need to know who I come from first and I don’t. Is that a cop out?”

A caterpillar? She liked that. It wasn’t a flower, it wasn’t something sugar-edged. A caterpillar was, or it wasn’t. (Something, back of mind, uncurled warm-furry and said yes with a shudder of recognition, pointed toes delicate as a dancer, and went back to sleep). The wind-chill gloom of over-exerting air conditioning slid over skin and Ella’s smile shivered like ice cracking; she wrapped cool arms around herself - dream-cold was Arctic, was the pendulum swing toward nightmare. “It ain’t a cop-out if that’s what you feel, sugar,” the syrup-slow sweetness of her voice was quiet in the dark of the room, Vegas a prickle of lights behind blinds that held her out, kept her quiet like a movie played on wide screen. “You’re just Lin, then,” her fingers slid over his arm; cool, light. No touch at all. “Just Lin.” A smile, a yawn. “If he isn’t coming, maybe I’ll wake up. But I don’t know how to wake up if I’m not asleep.”

“Just Lin,” affirmed the boy with his own particular brand of smile, a parabola that existed in a dimension it should not—could not—floating somewhere in the quixotic and wholly imaginary space as a thing both sweet and sly, both mischievous and guileless, open, but secretive, an endless series of contradictions that wound, eventually, into a small, black-haired boy with long-fingered hands and saddled him with the responsibility of pulling two ends of the world together all by himself.

He was cold too. The sheet was lifted from the disheveled bedspread and looped around Ella’s shoulders, then Lin’s, so that they sat wrapped with opposite corners, like children huddled together, sharing their father’s coat. And the yawning—the yawning wasn’t helping. An ephemeral exhaustion swept over the boy with the blanket and he shook his head to keep himself awake.

“I can pinch you,” he offered with a sleepy grin, index finger and thumb pressing together in a very impressive demonstration in the foot or so of air between them.

She laughed. It was a bright bubble of sound that broke the standing-water stillness, the heavy weight of cold air and dream that held them down, kept them struggling near-surface. Ella giggled, and she closed the distance, leaned her head against his shoulder, warm cheek on tee-shirt sleeve as though she had the right to. She wound her fingers into the sheet, child who rubs the satin from a blanket with near-sleep thoughtlessness, and pulled it taut-tight over both of them, the ubiquitous fort to hide from the world in. Hadn’t she had one? She’d had one once, she’d pulled the bedspreads and quilts in the house down, made one on the rug in the living room.

“Don’t pinch me, I’m real,” sleepy-solemn, “Just Lin.” Yawn-smile, all teeth; if there had been a rabbit for a brief moment of white-furred certainty, he fled. “I’m real, I’m just sleepy.” The room bowed, curved convex, distorted like a mirror tilted up to glass; dreaming dreams in dreams too complex labyrinth to navigate without losing detail.

Awake, he would have done it, though, awake, he wouldn’t be here. In the dream, as a boy a little shyer and a little softer, he just continued to smile, pleased by the burst of laughter that scattered around the frigid room like so many shining pennies. Lin let Ella lean on him without complaint. Affection was never something he would turn away, in reality, in dreams, in anonymous rooms with women he didn’t know expecting men he didn’t know. She was sweet. He liked her. He laid his cheek on the top of her head a moment and tried to keep his leaded eyelids from sliding shut.

It was a futile endeavor.

Finally, after a moment of dozing, he shifted out from underneath the woman and laid back on the box of a bed, pulling her with him, cold fingers circling a cold wrist. And once they were lying down, with her head on his shoulder, Lin stopped fighting the pull, the undertow of weariness that sifted around the room like sand on the shore, and he let it take him to a dream within a dream or wherever it wanted to go. The empty walls gave way to blackness, the place was dark, and his crowding thoughts ceased.

Fri, 17 May 2013 01:45:19 GMT

Who: Sam & Ash
What: Testing out a bike
Where: The shop Sam works at
When: Recent!
Warnings/Rating: None!

Sam was jumpy. She'd been jumpy since dinner with Joey, and she hadn't managed to settle the fuck down yet. It was a combination of shit, really. Joey's unpredictability, Neil's surprise infant and the unknown woman who'd produced her, the new apartment, the shit around the new apartment. Stress. She had bills to pay now, which meant she had money, and having ready cash wasn't a good thing when she felt as fucking stressed as she did then. She had her old shrinks back, thanks to Neil's agreement to pay for them, but she was trying to stick by her fucking guns and not ask him for more money. Yeah, so he said he didn't mind, but like wasn't love, and she wasn't going to keep milking him dry. She'd take the shrinks until her court mandated therapy was done, and then she was cutting that shit too. As for the heroin he was supposed to clear out for her, he'd never gotten around to it, and she had it stashed in a good hiding place at work. She wouldn't keep it at the apartment, not with Joey out on parole; she knew better than that. But she hadn't dumped it, either. Maybe it was telling, or maybe she was just tired, done. Joey's pushing about everything wasn't helping her keep her hands off something to keep herself calm, either. Maybe she could trade the heroin for some pills. She hadn't decided yet.

It was late enough that there were only a few stragglers at the old garage just outside the tourist trap that was the strip. The place was old and run down, the type of place broke people brought their shit, because they took payment plans. The old pumps out front didn't work anymore, and the bays were dingy. Sam was in the back, the last bay door open, and the junkie bike that Russ had gotten for $200 leaned against its kickstand. It was a Honda, nothing special, old and rusted with a cracked leather seat. A soft tail, it had seen better days, but the engine block was clean and new, and the kickstand glinted in the lights from outside the bay. Sam wandered outside, dressed in jeans and a faded grey sweatshirt with holes for her thumbs and paint spatters on the sleeves. Her hair was loose and wind-tangled from a spin moments earlier, and her cheeks still held onto the redness of riding without a helmet. Love Never Dies was playing from inside, and Carlos and Juan (still working on a beat up Mustang) were singing along with wrong words and Spanish accents, making Sam grin.

After getting the address for the shop from Sam, Ash had swung by there on her way home from practice at the rink that afternoon. She was still flushed from exertion, a blossoming bruise on her cheekbone from where her and another girl's elbow had met a little too hard, but that was the life she led, battle scars worn proudly. Her bag of gear was slung over her shoulder, dressed in a snug blank tank, black capris, and a grey jacket thrown over all of it to ward off the setting-sun, she stepped out of the cab with a little wave, black braid bouncing against her shoulder as she approached the shop. "Hello, love," Ash said by way of greeting, lifting a hand towards her, an easy smile on her face. "Hope I didn't show up too late. Practice ran a little long, and I was hoping you'd still be here."

"I hadn't put it away yet," Sam assured Ash of the bike as she walked out of the bay. She waved a dirty rag toward Ash's cheek. "Someone got you good, yeah?" she asked, a grin and no concern about where Ash got the bruise. The gear over Ash's shoulder made it obvious enough where the other girl had been. Sam missed the rink. She was having trouble fitting anything like that in now, between Gwen and work and the need to make enough fucking money to actually swing rent for the first time in her fucking life. As for it being too late? Yeah, not really. She loved Joey to fucking pieces, but she was trying to spend as little time in the apartment as possible until she calmed the fuck down. Calm hadn't been achieved yet, so work happened more often than it normally did. She wrapped the dirty rag around her hair, using it as a makeshift ponytail holder, and she motioned toward the bay. "Dump your stuff. Let's take it out," she suggested.

"Something like that," Ash said with a grin of her own, reaching up to swipe at the spot on her cheek, just slightly tender and only a little swollen. "Her elbow wanted to be where my face was. Her elbow won the fight, but only by a little." Moving over towards the bay, Ash dumped her gear down, giving it a nudge with her foot to tuck it alongside one wall and out of the way of anyone in there. "You ought to come by the rink sometime, even just to skate with me for an hour. The girls there are great, but I had a good time with you, too." She hadn't quite figured out how to make this crowd her own crowd yet, and Sam was a familiar, friendly face among the masses, one she liked knowing was on her side. Releasing a breath, Ash finally gave the bike a look over, arms folding over her chest as she thought this through. On paper, a bike seemed nice. Fast, small, easy to get around town on, but now that she was faced with one, entrusting her safety to two fast moving wheels didn't seem as wise. "Do you know how to ride?" Ashleigh asked, glancing over towards Sam with a lift of her eyebrows. "Because I am suddenly feeling a rush of nerves I was not prepared for."

"I'd have such a short fucking career in the derby," Sam admitted. "I'd punch someone in the face, and then I'd be good and fucked," she admitted with a shrug, one that said she really didn't fucking care if she got kicked out. A good punch in the face was something she missed throwing; it had been a while since she'd had the balls for it. Her response to the comment about coming to the rink was a noncommittal shrug. "Yeah. Maybe. My brother's in town. Neil might have told you?" she asked, realizing it was probably stupid to assume Neil had. "Yeah, no, he's in town, so I'm spending nights at home these days," she said, and it wasn't a lie. Sure, she was working a fucking ton, but she was trying to spend as much time when she wasn't working or through the door. Finally, the look Ash gave the bike made Sam laugh. "It won't fucking bite," she promised, backing into the bay and returning with two, old helmets. "Come on. Get on," she said, straddling the bike first, and holding a helmet out, after letting up the kickstand and walking it back to where Ash was standing.

"No, you'd just spend forever in the penalty box and probably get punched in the face in return first time you came out." Ash gave her a grin, easy and comfortable in its essence. "And your brother?" Ash echoed a moment later, the lift of her brows saying that no, Neil hadn't told her, but it seemed that was one of the things her brother was good at, not letting people know things that were going on, not that it seemed wholly important to Ash that Sam's brother was in town. "So, you have a place? Not sleeping here anymore?" If her brother in town meant that was the case, then Ash was all for this, ignorant as she was about the relationship Sam shared with her brother. Ash's family wasn't perfect, but there was a certain closeness between the siblings that had persisted even with all the issues the parents had brought into the mix.

Ash took the helmet that was held out to her, watching as Sam walked the bike over towards her, her expression dubious. "You sure about the biting part?" she asked, nervousness leaking into her voice bit by bit as she stepped towards the bike, reaching out to touch it with one hesitant hand. "I suddenly feel as though I'm signing my death sentence even being near it," she commented, though she didn't move away or go into hiding. Instead, she drew in a breath, settled her nerves, and swung a leg over the bike to straddle it, feeling awkward at first.

"That doesn't sound so fucking bad," Sam said of sitting out and getting a punch back. It sounded a lot like her fucking childhood, actually, and that made her grin. Her grin faltered slightly when Ash admitted to not knowing about Joey, but it was back in place a second later. She had to get better at dealing with this shit. "Yeah, we borrowed your kitchen the other night. He's Lou's brother too, and Lou's never met him," she said of Joey, trying to explain why it mattered, but not following up with more than that. And yeah, maybe that didn't matter to Ash, but Sam was touchy about shit. She needed to work on that, too.

"Yeah," was Sam's simple answer about having a place to crash. She needed to get out of the habit of whining about shit, and there was no time like the present. "Joey and I got a place."

Sam laughed at Ash's uncertainty, and she waited until the other girl settled behind her on the bike to slowly back up. "Hold on," she said over her shoulder, a quick pause to settle gloves on her fingers, which still didn't always work the way they should. The gloves assured her grip didn't slip, and she'd run the bike around the block often enough to feel secure in her ability to grip the bars.

A second later, the bike was on the Vegas blacktop, the air whipping, and the motor loudly accelerating.

“I think you’d get on well in the derby if you ever wanted to try it,” Ash commented, and really, she meant it. Sam wasn’t like a lot of the girls that Ash had met over the years. She had an edge to her, wasn’t afraid to react honestly, and that was something Ash could really get behind. When she mentioned her brother, and the fact that he was also Louis’ brother, it gave Ash a moment to think. She knew that Louis was adopted, much like she was, but her knowledge of Louis and his biological siblings was small. She knew Sam was included in the number, and obviously this other brother, and part of her had to wonder what had happened that Louis had been adopted out but not the others. And that line of thought also had Ash thinking about her own mother; she had never known the woman, didn’t know who her father was, and honestly, she didn’t care to. Her parents were the ones who had raised her, even if they weren’t the ones who had made her. She did, however, wonder if she had any other siblings wandering around out there, and if they knew they had a sister someplace.

She didn’t linger long on those thoughts, however, instead pulling the helmet on over her head and settling behind Sam on the bike, arms around the other girl’s middle. She thought her hold was tight enough, at least until the bike was rolling. A very girlish yelp escaped her as her grip on Sam grew tight, the wind pressing against her, the sound of the motor filling her ears, the warm girl in front of her, and though adrenaline was spiking and her heart was in her throat, Ash found herself loving every minute of it. It wasn’t like a bicycle, wasn’t like a car, it was the best of both worlds. Fast with the world pressing in so close.

Sam liked the physicality of the rink, but she liked physical things in general. She liked climbing things, and she liked danger. It was coming back slowly, those old loves, but it was coming back. People still freaked her the fuck out, but that fear didn't extend to a good I-Beam anymore, or a good fucking sweat, and she liked to think that meant crap was looking up. Joey might not think so, but she needed to believe she was getting better, even with the occasional fuck up or security hit hidden within reach. "You just want to see me fall on my fucking ass," she teased, because Ash was much better than her at the whole skating thing, and she wasn't ashamed to admit it.

The arms around Sam's middle were feminine, despite the lithe muscles beneath the skin. She didn't tense. She didn't freak. She knew she had Tristan to thank for that. Tristan, and that one good experience after all the shit with Micah. Tristan had pushed, and she'd let Sam push back, and that had made all the fucking difference. She laughed when Ash yelped, and she pushed the old bike to its limits. The thing didn't go very fast, but the rush was still a good one. Fuck, now she wanted a decent bike. Maybe she could talk Neil into getting one she could bum. The idea made her grin. She had no problem with mooching; it was being a responsibility that she didn't like. But if Neil wanted to buy a bike, well, that wouldn't meet with any argument.

A light turned red, and the bike idled. "You like it?" Sam called back.

After that moment of surprise that swept her breath away, the movement of the bike wasn't as frightening as it had been initially. Bit by bit she relaxed, arms an easy hold around Sam's middle, even her head lifting to face forward, the thick braid of black hair picked up by the wind every so often. It was a rush, it was energy and speed and all the things that Ash enjoyed, and in particular, it was the freedom of the moment. That bike made her feel positively unstoppable.

When it came to a slow stop, Ash couldn't help the grin that pulled at her lips, the nod of her head in response to Sam's question. "Like is an understatement," she called back, a laugh rumbling through her. "I need to learn to ride so I can get one of my own. I can't imagine having a car in this city, but a bike?" There was another laugh, arms tightening around Sam's waist again, a squeeze of happiness. "I could do this."

"There are classes," Sam called over her shoulder. She'd done one during rehab, as one of her shrink's physical therapy exercises. "A couple of days, and they teach you all the basics," she explained, as the light changed and the bike lurched forward and sputtered, before finding an even speed again. "I was thinking of making Neil take one," she admitted of her plan to trick him into a bike. She didn't worry about how Ash would afford the classes without a job. She was pretty sure Neil's sister wasn't hurting for cash. As for not needing a car, she wasn't wrong. It hardly ever rained in the fucking desert, and even winter didn't come with any wet snow that would make a bike a pain in the ass.

Sam avoided the lights for the rest of the ride, using back roads that crossed in front of shithole motels, and she only rounded back to the dingy old garage when the lack of fuel threatened to leave them stranded. Even so, she took her time pulling the bike into the bay and setting the kickstand down, and she didn't get off the bike right away. "You liking the desert, baby?" she asked. Ash had just been settling in the last time Sam had really talked to her.

“I can make some noises at Neil too, if you want,” Ash offered, and this time, as the bike lurched forward into motion, it didn’t take her by surprise. Instead, she pressed against Sam’s back, more relaxed now that she knew what to expect with the bike. “Maybe I’ll even drag him to class with me. He can make sure his sister doesn’t kill herself on the big bad motorcycles.” She laughed at that, unable to help it at the thought of Neil on a bike. Somehow, it simply didn't fit in her personal perspective of her brother, but it was something she would enjoy seeing.

When they returned back to the garage, Ash pulled the helmet off and settled it on her knee, pushing a hand back through the loose hair around her face to get it out of her eyes. "It's different," she responded after a moment, her lips twisting for a moment. "It's certainly not home, but it has things about it that I like. I'm still not used to the arid desert, though." One shoulder shrugged up and Ash leaned forward, chin on Sam's shoulder. "People make up for it, though."

"Oh, I'll get him on a fucking bike," Sam assured, the grin that accompanied the cocky statement a hint of what it had been a year earlier. Yeah, ok, maybe she was getting better. She chuckled under her breath when Ash pressed against her back, and she decided she liked the feeling of someone needing to hold onto her for a change. It had been a long time since that shit had happened; she could get used to it again, she decided. It made her think of the heroin back at the office. And, reluctantly, she talked herself into swapping it out for some Xanax once she left work. It was legal, she could take it home without Joey having parole issues, and her crappy public assistance shrink had prescribed plenty of the fucking shit in the past week. It was still weak, but it wasn't a needle, yeah? That had to count for something.

Sam took her helmet off as Ash talked, and she hung the strap over one of the bike's bars. She reached back for Ash's helmet a second later, and that beat-up thing joined hers on the bars. The feeling of Ash's chin on her shoulder was nice, reassuring, and Sam looked up at the darkening desert shy. She motioned with her free shoulder, indicating the red-purple light still slightly visible behind the mountains in the distance. "The dryness sucks, but that's fucking art," she said, comfortable to just sit and look at it for a minute. "And, yeah, people make all the fucking difference," she admitted. No point pretending that shit wasn't true anymore; no point lying to herself about it.

There was something about the moment, the sliver of peace as they sat there on the bike together, the setting sun and the last vestiges of light that filled the sky. She'd talk to Neil about the bike as well, and who knows what would happen there? But for right now, there was only here, only now, and Ash would have been content to stay here for some time. "Scotland doesn't have sunsets like this, that's for certain," Ash said after a moment, a smile pulling at the corners of her lips. "But yeah. It's the people for me, too."

Thu, 16 May 2013 07:07:02 GMT

Who: Snow White and Bigby Wolf
What: Dreamwalking, and an attempt to break the curse (read: KISSING)
When: Dream plot
Where: Snow's dreamscape: the woods, then her office.
Warnings: None.

Faster and faster, Snow ran. The trees flew by her and animals scampered in her wake but still she couldn’t stop. She heard a bellow behind her and it sounded so loud, man or beast, she couldn’t discern and she didn’t dare look back.

The forest around her loomed far above her head, light pouring from above but it didn’t help her navigate these unknown woods. She didn’t know where she was going, or where to go. But behind her was a castle, and a queen, and empty, lonely days. And there was death itself at her heels, stalking toward her with swift steps. She had to get away, anyhow, anywhere.

The hill she ran upon abruptly sloped down and she stumbled, falling forward with a shriek. Her court dress caught on a fallen log but she didn’t have time to untangle herself, letting it fray her dark blue hem as she pushed herself up. The footsteps were louder, her pursuer closer, and she pushed herself up with skinned hands and wiped the sweat and stray hairs from her face as she launched forward once more, looking to escape.

The dream wasn't Bigby's, that much was obvious. There was a certain sheen to dreams that were your own, a kind of comfort even in the unknown that was missing here. He was in a forest, but one unlike those he had ever seen either in sleep or waking. Light filtered through the trees above, but the shadows were long and off, making his sight entirely untrustworthy to navigate with.

He heard the footsteps through the trees and started tracking them by sound. He was too far upwind to get a whiff of who it was, but he could hear the belabored breathing, and the fumbling footwork that could only be a result of fear. Whatever was running was being hunted. As sure as he was about the fact that this was a dream, Bigby knew that the beast doing the hunting couldn't possibly be any good. Not on my watch.

His feet picked up the pace at the sound of the shriek, his worst fears confirmed. He knew that voice. He could have picked it out at a thousand paces in the middle of a crowd. Snow was stuck here, and she was afraid. He broke into an all-out sprint through the trees, aiming for where he knew their paths would intersect. He came to a stop just as blue dress came into view, along with its haggard, terrified owner. "Snow, it's me. What's going on?"

She screamed as she collided with the man, her body ricocheting off him even as her hands gripped his arms instinctively. He spoke to her like she knew him and it took several moments for her to get her breath under control and to search his face. “…Bigby?” That was the name that sprung to mind though it felt so unfamiliar at the same time. Her blue eyes clouded with confusion, her face just as she was in New York but younger all at once, the lines of her face gone and with the stress that came with them. There was something new to stress about.

“…Hunted,” she breathed, sparing a glance to the way behind her, the sounds of something coming near. With one hand she tugged at his arm, trying to get him to run with her, as her other picked up her long gown so she could start to run once more. “The huntsman’s coming for me. W—We have to go.” She pulled at him as she started through the woods. “He’ll take my heart. We need to get away.”

Bigby considered for a split second whether to run with Snow or to stop and tell her what was going on. He had experienced his fair share of persecution dreams to know that these things didn't end until someone woke up. Given the weird vision that Logan had seen when she crossed, he doubted that was happening anytime soon. "Snow, wait. It's a dream. We're in a dream." He took a deep breath, digging in his heels to force her to a stop. "He can't hurt you, I promise. I won't let him." Bigby had no idea just how strong the hunstman of Snow's nightmare was, or if his wolf would be enough to overpower him, but was hoping he wouldn't have to find out.

"This is your dream, Snow. You can control it. Make him leave." Bigby had no guarantee that this would work, but figured it was as good a place as any to start. "Or else take us somewhere else."

“A dream?” That felt right, somehow, and something clicked back into place, and between that and his stop she stilled her fleeting steps. “It can’t be this is...” Her eyes darted back from the way they came, the sounds of pursuit still coming, and then to the way they had been going, spying a cottage in the distance. Dread circled her stomach and her fingers tightened on his sleeve.

“You can’t protect me,” she said simply, and the words felt right, a solitary truth amidst all this confusion. That didn’t mean that she wanted to wait for this Huntsman, close at their heels, or go to that cottage that seemed frightening despite shining in the distance like a beacon.

“Take us somewhere else?” The thought sounded foreign and felt impossible and her mind reached for places, only to find them flicker when they were nearing her grasp. Where was she to go? Where else was there? “I can’t. I don’t know anywhere else. I can’t go back to that castle. I simply can’t.”

Bigby let Snow have a moment to regain her bearings now that she knew the truth. He could only guess how disconcerting it must be to be told that you were having a nightmare by someone who wasn't also a figment of your imagination. He trusted she could cope. Nightmare or not, she was still Snow White.

"You can, Snow. And you will." He tried in vain to figure out how old her dream self was. The problem with being a Fable in situations like these was that most of them had looked the same for several centuries. Even if she were young enough to not know anything else, the Snow who was having this dream very much did. And if she was right that he couldn't protect her, then the sooner they got out of there, the better. "Take us to Fabletown, Snow. To your office. Or take us somewhere else." He reached forward on a whim and grasped her hands in his. "Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and picture it."

Fabletown. That was the name, and just like the memory bloomed in her mind, hazy at first but steadily forming with each word he spoke. When he held her hands she didn’t wonder on the flutter of her stomach, only listening and doing as he said, closing her eyes, even as instinct screamed at her not to, not with the Huntsman at her heels. The steps thundered closer and she squeezed Bigby’s hands tighter, holding onto him and the memories of her office until the air changed around them.

When she opened her eyes, it was as he said, her office in Fabletown. Letting him go she stepped around her desk, one hand picking up her the skirt of her long gown, the other fingering the tall stack of papers sitting on the table. “I would dream up this crap,” she sighed, picking up the top most paper before tossing to back down with the rest. The woods of her youth, her office, and everywhere else in between. Some people dreamt fun things but of course, not Snow White.

She turned to look at Bigby, a slight but thoughtful frown on her face. That and her surroundings started to melt away the youth that had begun in the forest, harkening back to the more serious woman of later years. “But how did you get there?”

Bigby knew when he felt her grip tighten on his hands that he had gotten through. He watched their surroundings as the dark trees and long shadows blurred out of focus before sharpening again, this time into the twisted, misshapen shadows of the cavern of artifacts in Snow's office. It was an exact replica of the room in the waking world, but of course, anything based off of Snow's memory would be.

He felt the warmth of her smaller hands slip out of his palms and dropped them into his pockets. "The dress is a good look on you," he said with grin, casting an appreciative once over on something that wasn't all professional-deputy-mayor. Bigby deliberately avoided mentioning the dirt or the scratches; he didn't want her to get her tetchy just yet. Not when he finally had a chance to get in her head.

"You didn't see the medieval broad with the dream talk?" Bigby had assumed everyone else had gotten the same speech that Logan had. "She cursed everyone walking in through the door to fall asleep. It's not like with Briar, but it's close. Someone" he paused, shaking his head at the fact that he was about to say the words, "who is attracted to you has to kiss you awake. The poor kid's stuck for a while. Look's like we all are."

His compliment garnered an eyeroll, both because of the dress and because of the compliment itself. The dirt and tears, she had noticed, and was trying her hardest to not get up in arms about it, instead sliding into her chair as if nothing was amiss.

“I remember,” she said slowly, which meant she barely remembered. What she could recall were mere disjointed fragments, and the more pressing issues of the dream, like the Hunter, took precedence over strange thoughts of fairies. Now that she was safe, somewhat, things were coming back, and it didn’t hurt that he was particularly clear on things.

Kissing, though, brought another eyeroll. “Tired tactics. I’m not surprised it was a fairy, then.” Resting her chin on her hand, she idly ran her thumb over her lower lip as she contemplated their options. “There’s no other way? I’ve done my time waiting for someone to kiss me. I’m over it.” Though it wasn’t the most difficult of things to accomplish, and her eyes slid back to Bigby thoughtfully. “Attraction? That’s it?”

Bigby's grin deepened at the eyeroll he had grown so familiar with over the last few centuries. He moved towards the desk until he was standing directly across from Snow, in their usual way.

"Classics are classics," he shrugged. "I don't think they're romantics as much as sadists." Whatever her motivation had been, the woman had found a surefire method to cause chaos in town. His town. Under his watch. "We need to get her out of town, fast." Of course, they'd need to wake up first.

Bigby had perfected the art of studying Snow without seeming to over the years, and he watched out of the corner of his eye as she thumbed her lip. "That's what it sounded like to me. Walk in and out of dreams until someone who's attracted to you kisses you. I don't know what you did the last time you were asleep, but I'm about to run out of things to do."

“Is it just our town though?” Thoughts of Rose and her friends flitted through her mind and she wondered if they had fallen prey too. Bothering them, or anyone that didn’t need to be bothered, with this issue wasn’t ideal. Then again they wouldn’t know until they woke up.

"Our town, world, door." Bigby still didn't know exactly how it all fit in together, just that it did. "With the way our connection with other side works, I'm guessing it's all of us. Can't know for sure until we stop dreamwalking."

She let his words hang a moment before she stood, walking around once, calmly and quietly, before stopping right beside him. “Well then,” she started, shoulders squaring back slightly and her eyes darting quickly to his mouth and back to meet his gaze, “shall we?”

Bigby's expression remained neutral as she walked around the desk, but his brows rose an inch when she came to a stop next to him. "You think it'll work? This?" He didn't know what she was basing her assumption on; he'd always worn his own feelings close to the chest. Not that he wasn't perfectly willing, of course. He just had some questions first.

Blue eyes blinked in momentary confusion. “Of course. You said--” Suddenly she felt ridiculous, taking his words about kissing at face value but as the memories of the fairy came back to her, so did her promise, and it only echoed him. Still, it was hard to say aloud, if she didn’t have to, and she instead went defensive. “You did say I looked nice in this dress,” she sputtered.

The sputtering was so unlike the well-composed Snow he was used to, that Bigby couldn't help but smile down at her. "You do look good in that dress. Really good." He should have stopped talking then and just kissed her, but some of Logan's curiosity and inability to shut up must have passed over to him, because he kept going. "You think that'll be enough? Fairies used to want true love, or lust."

Her brow furrowed at that. He did have a good point. “What fairies used to do is not really something to consider. I don’t even know this fairy, do you?” She shot him a look before continuing. “And it’s not like walking through dreams with others was common. I might have heard about it once or twice but I didn’t put much stock into it. I never dreamed of anyone when I was under.” She pursed her lips at the thought, but refused to let her thoughts stray farther down that path. “At any rate, we’re not exactly in a position for true love or lust but attraction’s about as much as we have so we can make do or we can hope someone’s awake and can slay her.”

It was hard for him to look away from her mouth or think about anything that wasn't the anticipation of the feel of her lips against his. "So we do have attraction, huh?" His voice was dropping down to the lowest end of his register, as though he wasn't aware he was talking at all. She was so close. "You make a compelling case, Snow."

"Well," she started, pointedly ignoring the flutter in her stomach as his voice dropped to a low rumble, "as you said, you think I look good." Suddenly she was much more aware of the scant distance between them, seemingly even smaller than when she stepped to him. Her eyes scanned his face a moment and as they settled on his mouth, the barest hint of a smile tugging at her lips. Another woman might have blushed. "And you're not bad looking yourself."

There was a time for words and there was a time for action, and Bigby had had enough of the first. He reached forward with one arm to pull Snow against him and cupped her cheek in his other hand. He looked at her for a second longer, making sure that this was actually something she wanted and not just one of his dreams they had walked into, and then he kissed her.

Several centuries of a quiet torch-bearing had led to this point, to Snow in his reach. Whether or not it woke anyone up from charmed sleep, it was one hell of a kiss.

It had been a while since Snow had been kissed. Well, kissed someone, really. Centuries of hurt over her past had turned her away from suitors for centuries and she had preferred it that way. Lonely, yes, but it was better than the alternative - a chance that any happiness could be swept away. So her mouth stilled under his the moment they touched, almost having forgotten what it felt like to be kissed after she had invited one.

But it was a fleeting moment, the next having her flutter her eyes closed and slant her mouth against his, surprised at the fervor of his kiss and returning it in kind, with her hands sliding around his waist. When she finally pulled away, breathless and warm and just a little light headed, their noses still touching as she opened her eyes to take a quick glance around her. “...So it didn’t work.” The words brushed against his mouth, though she didn’t pull away just yet.

Bigby had had considerable more experience kissing over the last several centuries, but nothing close to this. His usual entailed late night encounters in alleys behind bars, or in the bedrooms of flighty young women who were more than happy to spend a few hours with him after a couple of drinks. Those kisses had all been a required step towards something more, leaving little impact on his memory.

But this, this was different. This kiss was a question and an answer and an exploration he had only dreamed of (often). This kiss came with the feel of her chest against his, her arm around his back, his hand running through the dark strands of her hair. He could have gone on touching, tasting, feeling in that way forever, had she not pulled away. A low rumble rose from the base of his throat unbidden and uncontrolled, his wolf's appetites announcing themselves for the world to hear. "We must not have tried hard enough," he mumbled, lightly catching her lips between his teeth before she could pull too far away. "It might take longer in dreams." Anything he could say to keep her in his arms just a few seconds longer.

Caught by the wolf’s teeth, Snow stilled, though the shiver that ran through her had little to do with fear. His words had some logic to them, though his suggestions didn’t sound like they were completely and only about freeing them from the spell.

It was, however, something to consider and that was why - and only why, she would say – she pressed in closer for another kiss. Maybe he was right. Maybe another longer kiss would be necessary. They had to try. To break the spell, of course.

He tasted like smoke, she decided, just faint hints on her tongue from those cigarettes that made her wonder if they’d be more pronounced if this wasn’t a dream. And yet, for all her distaste, she also decided that it was nice, something familiar and very distinctly him that made her sigh against his mouth as she pulled him closer to him, arms tightening their hold.

The intensity of her shiver reverberated through his hands, and it took all the many centuries of practice Bigby had to keep his touch light against her back. Every inch of him screamed to feel more, to consume more, but Bigby knew now wasn't the time. It couldn't happen in a dream, not like this.

Dream or not, Bigby could certainly allow himself to enjoy what Snow did allow to him, including the rare warm welcome of her lips. She tasted the way she smelled - like a fresh mountain spring on a warm, sunny day - a concoction that seemed specially brewed to haunt him consistently over the centuries. Bigby had stopped being able to keep Snow's scent out of mind centuries ago, and after this it seemed the same might go for the way she tasted as well.

In the end, it was that sigh that brought him back, the small exhalation of breath that was so quiet, so vulnerable, and so much the Snow she tried not to let the world see. It was the Snow he wanted to keep close under his protection, and the Snow he couldn't use a ruse to keep kissing, no matter how much he wanted to. "Looks like one of has to be awake for this to work." At least no one could say they hadn't tried to get themselves out of this mess. "Is there anyone on the other side you can ask for help?"

The things they did to get free from a spell. She pulled away as he did, pale fingers touching her kiss swollen lips thoughtfully, maybe even a little distractedly. It took her a moment to remember where they were – a dream, yes, but her office, with someone she worked with – and she leaned back against the side of her desk to get her bearings. “No. No one. He’s something of a hermit.” The slight raise of her brows let him know what she thought of that, though she was no social butterfly herself. “What about yours, Logan? Doesn’t she have anyone?”

Bigby chuckled. "Girl's cute but awkward as hell. Until she admits she's not actually twelve years old, she's not going to have men chasing her anytime soon." He took a deep breath and pushed loose strands of his hair back, just to have something to do. "So what now?"

Snow frowned and then merely gave him a half shrug before her shoulders squared back, all business once more. “We try to find her the old fashioned way. Maybe she’ll appear in a dream, or maybe we’ll find someone else. But we can’t sit around hoping to be kissed.” If there was something Snow loathed, it was precisely that. She looked up at Bigby, the surroundings around them starting to flicker and fade and her own body feeling strangely light. “We’ll touch base then,” she said, her voice the last part of her to go before she disappeared completely.

Bigby started to say something, but found everything fading before the words had a chance to leave his mouth. Trust Snow to hit and run. This was going to make for an interesting morning after, provided they ever woke up.

Thu, 16 May 2013 04:21:34 GMT

Who: Dylan & Aubrey (Part 3/3)
What: Intoxicated snarking, pop culture references, and kisses
Where: The hallway outside the Tales door
When: Shortly before the 13th Fairy plot
Warnings/Rating: Sassy language?

"Jay who?" The tone was utterly fucking clueless, but in Dylan's head he was grinning. There was something to be said for inside jokes, even if they were shared with only oneself. Although feigning ignorance probably wasn't as much of an inside joke to everyone else like it was to a spy. The government spooks he knew got a twisted kick out of that stuff, and maybe Dylan wasn't all that different in the end. He'd never really thought of himself as an agent, or maybe just not that kind of agent. Yet somewhere along the line he'd become a walking & talking paragon of the secrets and the snide distrust that perpetuated government stereotypes. It would have been depressing if he could have actually mentally assessed all of the elements in real time instead of manipulating his thoughts through a staggered Doctor Who map which eventually just distracted from the point of self reflection entirely. Or maybe he was just reading too much into everything these days. God, how he hated taking himself seriously.

The stranger was moving to his side of the wall. Dylan didn't put up a fight or argue. His grin was crooked with entertainment, a bit of tongue caught between the teeth. He longed for some gum, but chewed on the inside of his cheek instead while canting his head in regard the new friend. Anyone who talked this much random, self-deprecating bullshit had to be a kindred spirit, right? The friendship bracelet was already knitting in his mind when Dylan screwed up his face in disbelief. The eyebrows were popping, the mouth was twisted and wry. "You call that a fucking beard?" Get real, bitch.

Then the grin cracked like a fault line, and Dylan forced a palm along the front of his own face with a chuckle. Fuck, he ruined the illusion of disgust. If he wasn't on such a roll with being a massive fuck-all failure these days, it might have been depressing. As it was, Dylan dropped his head back against the wall with a shrug and subsequent chuckle that said he lacked sincerity in just about everything.

The cigarette half-burnt down between his fingers, Aubrey allowed himself a sideways glance at the man who sat to his right - with his broad smile in direct contrast to that coy expression. Just for now, Aubrey drank in the way that this randomly sort-of-happy guy scrubbed one hand over his black-and-blue face, and still he acknowledged the expression that spoke of biting sarcasm and a dry sense of humour in one. And he found himself appreciating those little details, in an intoxicated-musing sort of way that made him unconcerned about his glances that might linger a little longer than appropriate.

“Are you fucking kidding me? ‘ I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man? ‘“ Aubrey recited with an expectant smile, half-sure that this guy was fucking with him and still not quite willing to believe otherwise. For humour’s sake, and all. Also the fact that he didn’t know if he could justify developing a drunken crush on a dude who didn’t have the required amount of respect for Jay-Z. One last subtly-suspicious glance in the man’s direction, and still Aubrey’s gaze was rearranged along with a very artificial frown that tugged at his wine-tinted mouth. If he’d had long hair, he would have flipped it in a typically Clueless manner. As if. “Okay, mysterious man who somehow doesn’t know or care about only the greatest rap genius of the decade. Act like a denialist Beyonce all you like, insult my beard if it makes you feel like a man - whatever.”

There was another brief moment of hesitation, and then Aubrey was flashing his uneven smile in their stretch of narrow hall even while his new friend straightened up. “So,” he ventured, halfway to cautious despite himself, and near-quiet with canines pressing against the flesh of his bottom lip. “Who do you have though the fairy door, Oh He-of-the-Great-Mystery?”

Okay, truth be told, Dylan did have a general pop culture awareness of who Jay-Z was. He didn't live under a fucking rock, just a circuitboard. Although with the recent explosion, the only thing that Dylan was living under these days was hotel room stucco ceilings. They might not have been rent-by-the-hour bad, but they weren't the Palazzo. Its not like the government was picking up the bill, at least not until Intelligence had its full sweep of the debris so that insurance could be claimed. Dylan gave the guy beside him a crooked, halfway annoyed smirk that ultimately evolved into a surprised laugh when the other accused him of being insulting if only to secure his own manhood. It was one of those raw in the throat sounds of the truly impressed. "Yeah, keep talking that shit and I'm not going to help your drunk ass get back down the stairs."

"It's no mystery," he countered with a stretch, a pop, and a fresh grin. "I had a witch, but then the tuna can accident happened.. and now.. I don't know, but it's not her." Reflecting on what he did know of the man on the other side, Dylan screwed up an eyebrow while conceptualizing. "A guy, a soldier maybe?" There had been murmurs of war, of blood. Dylan shrugged while glancing up, just on the other side of his drunk company to the fairytale door, determining the kind of navigation required for actually getting off the floor and getting over there. "He lived in a castle, but I don't think he does anymore." Dylan got the feeling that the guy in his head, J., was glad to be away from the castle, even if he longed for it still. "Maybe he's nobody, you know?" Deep blue eyes shifted onto his company. Dylan's scuffed up, scratched up smile graduated just a bit. Just a degree, but the dimple bloomed.

"Why does everybody in fairytales have to be a prince or a witch? Maybe he's the guy who cuts the fucking hay, I don't know." It sounded like a pleasant simplicity to fall into. Certainly better than the bruised muscles and burn marks that he had to endure here and now. If he went through the door, he had to at least feel better by the time he came back out. The idea was strongly motivating, and Dylan suddenly extended his broad hand to the stranger.

"Want to help me up?" The wine was fading fast, and the pills were cloudy. While he could get up on his own, he wasn't entirely sure that he could do it without a boat load of embarrassment. And as much as he loved being perceived as a jackass, he wasn't in the mood to look like a crippled one. Not today.

Aubrey registered a flicker of amusement on the other’s face as he made his impression of false offence and an (admittedly, somewhat flamboyant) comparison of the man to a pop diva. The words were fun as they spilled from his mouth on a sharp breath, managing to elicit a very surprised sort of laugh from this man, the sort of thing that started in the back of one’s throat and rolled into a low, pleasurable noise. Aubrey leaned in just that little bit closer and his glance served to eye this stranger, feeling a particular sense of pleasure as the unnamed other appeared more than a little amused (and maybe even delighted?) by Aubrey’s very snarky, matter-of-fact evaluation. No one could ever accuse Aubrey Rois of being an introverted sort of man, that much went without saying. Not to speak of his more obvious, immediate lack of sobriety and his undeniably dashing good looks. Duh.

“I will have you know,” Aubrey enunciated, hazel eyes glittering with bright, shining hilarity as the other man’s lopsided smile played around the edges of his very dangerous lips. “My drunk ass is perfectly capable of finding its own way around, thank you. Not that I’m entirely adverse to your lovely self giving me a hand in that regard, but that’s probably too much info for polite company. Tell me, are you polite company?”

With a rueful smile, Aubrey turned his attention onto the bottle that sat on the floor between them, reaching out to rock the mouth of the dark green glass against the heel of his hand. A few gulps of rich, red wine was still trapped within, and maroon stains lingered on the skin of his palm. “Nobody through the door is nobody,” he confirmed thoughtfully, tilting his head as he acknowledged what he knew to be true, if not exactly fair. Another glance at the man whose name he didn’t know and Aubrey’s features hinted at an incisive smile. Because he was the sort who could appreciate the twinkle of those blue eyes, even as he was distracted, thinking of the fact that most of the magic-door occupants were undoubtedly important, pompous assholes who did nothing so simple as cutting the hay or milking the cows or making up the silken bed sheets of nobility.

And despite the lingering intrigue that he felt when faced with this man’s amused expression, despite the surprise that flashed through him when an expectant hand was extended in his direction, Aubrey could not check his pleased little grin. For just a moment, there he stood, basking in the knowledge that some random guy could simultaneously make him smile like that and ask for his help in a very simple, endearing sort of way. God, but it was always more fun to meet people when they were remarkably fucked up. No quicker way to reveal one’s true nature, right? And if this guy’s nature was written in bruises and mystery and long, dark eyelashes, hell, all the more justification for the butterflies that did the backstroke through Aubrey’s stomachful of merlot.

“It would be my pleasure,” he practically purred, grin still fixed firmly in place on his burgundy-painted mouth. With a lot of help from the railing that spanned the hallway, Aubrey hauled himself into his feet until he was sort-of steady, finding that he cared more about his successful lack of vomit than the fact that he was currently the farthest thing from graceful. He staggered upright and stuck out a hand in return to the other man where he sat on the floor, still propped against the wall. He made little effort to hide the path of his flickering gaze that lingered against purple-mottled cheek and the soft, tender column of a neck (and probably his total lack of subtlety was also to blame on his consumption of wine - but again, whatever), even as he reached out and clasped his own fingers around the other’s strong hand.

And there it was, a moment of deliberate consideration as he helped to haul this attractive stranger-man upright, with the pads of his fingers pressed against the meat of an unfamiliar palm and their careful balance-exchange of weight feeling like something altogether more intimate than the slowest of dances. There was an unexpected warmth there, something that rushed to Aubrey’s head and threatened to send him spinning. Even as he helped this man to his feet and played at being an anchor, a tether against which to hold tight, he could not quite help the wobble in his knees that sent him stumbling against the exquisitely tall, broad expanse of the other man’s body. Chest to chest, hip to hip, his head brain swam with a deliberate sort of dizziness that he could only partially assign to the poison in his veins.

In fact, his footing against the rough-hewn floor beneath them was so precarious that only the existence of their shared door pressed up against the other’s back kept them both from tumbling over. And in that moment Aubrey found himself curious, far from cautious as he pressed into the heat of another man’s body, laughing softly at himself and at the absurdity of his situation. A circumstance of breath-catching, romance-novel intimacy thrust upon them. The fall had been an accident, but what came next was deliberate. Aubrey stumbled, and then he kissed him - the seconds between each moment viscous and warm, drawn-out, seemingly endless.

And there it was. Mouth pressed against mouth in a very raw sort of truth. It was a sweet kiss, one that had as much to do with Aubrey’s romanticism and ego, placing itself squarely against the flush of the other man’s lips, as it did with the serendipity of the moment. This man without a name, he tasted sweet like berries.

“I like you, Mystery Man” he murmured breathlessly when he finally pulled away, cheeks flushing with the realization of what he’d done and the knowledge that he wasn’t sorry. “My name’s Aubrey.”

The stranger had a smooth way of talking, the hypnotic spin of a cement mixer preparing to bury and level him beneath the granite of a good argument. Dylan was a contender on good days, but the hospital drugs currently slowed him to the point of atrophy. He wasn't entirely sure that he was following whatever conversation they'd slid into, but that hardly seemed to matter. His grin remained steadfast, unhindered by things like train of thought. "Polite company?" Those weren't exactly words that he was familiar with being labeled as. Not that he was a complete jackass or anything, but the title felt regal for some reason in his current haze, and it made his sloppy grin all the more pronounced. "God no," he corrected with a stubborn laugh. Maybe it was because of his parents, but Dylan thought of polite company in ledgers of cucumber tea sandwiches and conversational piano playing, and fuck that.

Although he kind of blew that inquiry off with a little shrug. He didn't know who he had through the door anymore, but he wasn't worried. Nothing could be as bad as the witch. She'd never caused him any problems directly, but Dylan always had the discomforting sense of responsibility when he went through the door. Every reemergence was noted with creeping dread, and he never could quite shake the feeling that something horrible had happened on the other side. He had no evidence of anything specific, but her magic caused rifts in that world. The witch had always been setting things in motions that destroyed lives, crumbled kingdoms, and ultimately couldn't be controlled. Whatever idiot prince or toothless pauper Dylan was rocking through the door was going to be a vacation by contrast.

Getting off the ground wasn't as difficult as it would have been if he'd been operating solo.. but a partnership always brought bumps in the road. Or, in this case, the carpet. That was really the only explaination as the pair twisted, shuffled, Texas two-stepped, and ultimately stumbled. How they'd managed to turn something as simple as standing up into an intricate and drunken game of twister was bemusing. One of his hands caught like a fisherman's snare on part of the other man's clothes, and there was a gun there. His brain would later confirm it, but in the moment it was just something hard against the frush of his fingertips. Besides, there was other sensory distraction occurring in their drugstore-meets-liquorstore moment. Aubrey fell on him like fireworks.

The door was at his back, suddenly there. It should have hurt, and if it had been any other door in any other bullshit half-rigged hotel, they might have crashed right through it. But they didn't, and that felt like a weird victory in his head. It made him smile, and there was a half-formed chuckle brought on by the embarrassment that came with losing footing. It was cut short by the kiss, which was as surprising as it was confusing. Difficult to follow, like he'd slid into a separate plain from where they -- or he, at least -- had once been standing. Before he could even completely figure out what had happened or why, Aubrey was drawing back a few degrees to introduce himself.

Dylan's hand slapped back against the door behind him, not entirely sure of how to proceed in the split second that followed. Not that he had to worry about it for long, because through instinct or just blackcat luck, his palm found the knob with the key still lodged. The shift and disruption sent the door bucking wide open, and down onto his back he went. Right on through to the other side.

Thu, 16 May 2013 04:15:25 GMT

Who: Dylan & Aubrey (Part 2/3)
What: Intoxicated snarking and pop culture references
Where: The hallway outside the Tales door
When: Shortly before the 13th Fairy plot
Warnings/Rating: Sassy language?

Dylan wasn't following the breadcrumb trail of conversation, and he wasn't entirely certain if it was because of his cotton-fuzzy mind or the other man's clearly fermented one. Royalty and princesses? Dylan lifted his chin and ran his tongue against the serrated edge of back teeth while listening intently.

In retrospect, he only thought he was listening intently. It was a focused laser beam at the forefront of his mind, and it knotted his eyebrows up behind the metallic frame of Top Gun sunglasses: Pay attention. But the thought slipped away on a little demerol sailboat the very first moment that he stopped concentrating on it. Then it was gone and -- what? The drunk man was talking at him. When it was brought to his attention that Dylan looked like shit, he beamed a dimpled grin that was charming all the way down to the toes. As if he'd just been complimented at the local square dance, "Aw shucks." The expression dissolved a moment later as some pain hotwired his nerves, and Dylan was forced to put more of his weight against the wall with that Pisa lean with a wincing sneer.

Somehow he managed to joke, "Villains, beasties, and brutes? I thought this was a Joann's Fabrics.." Whatever that shiteating smirk cost him, Dylan did reach for the bottle. His ribs were fucking killing him, and even when he took a deep swig from the wine, the subsequent expansion of his chest was like fire between the bones. He nearly choked on it, but managed to swallow regardless.. even if some of it ended up on his shirt. Dylan held the bottle out the unknown man while pushing the sunglasses off of his bruised face and into the dark crop of his hair as he considered their surroundings.

"Drinking around this place seems like a good way to get tetanus."

Aubrey’s frown only deepened, caught somewhere between the stranger’s dimples and the pained expression on his handsome, stubbled face. Not quite fooled by the scope of his charm or his affable, easy-going attitude, Aubrey was forced to satisfy himself with a quirked eyebrow and a skeptical smirk. He decided on the spot (in that split-second sort of way that only drunks and children could get away with) that he liked this guy, and that he probably didn’t want to see him go tumbling ass-over-teakettle back down the way he’d come.

He’d been about to make some clever remark, the words on the tip of his wine-flavoured tongue when a nearly-agonized grimace cut across the other man’s face and he suddenly looked even closer to collapse. Aubrey took a hesitant step closer and his free hand raised a couple inches from his side, prepared to catch the stranger if needed. And so he was taken aback when his offer of wine was accepted, and his look of half-amusement, half-concern turned to one of clear surprise. This time his eyebrows lifted nearly to his hairline, and his gaze followed the trickle of ruby-red that ran over the man’s chin and spilled onto the golden Triforce.

“Looks like you took a wrong turn at the pass, buddy,” he quipped easily, taking the bottle back and downing another gulp for good measure. Then he did a bold thing, reaching out to place a hand against the other man’s elbow and bracing for a possible physical retaliation even as he did it. With the bottle, he pointed at the floor. “Yeah, right. As if you need any help to send you stumbling into a rusty nail. Sit. I’m not in the mood to perform first-aid tonight.”

Even if the removal of those aviators had confirmed Aubrey’s suspicions. Yeah, definitely cute.

Despite his lineage, Dylan was never one of those people that fell under the fawn-eyed and attentive headline of Cleans Up Nice. It probably had more to due with his parents than any genuine disinterest in appearance. As a child, his mother had gotten some cruel jollies out of the shrinking disapproval that both grandmothers could adopt when Dylan would run onstage - for a kindergarten graduation or prestigious benefit luncheon - while dappled with rainbow chalk dust, streaks of dirt typically reserved for the homeless, and cake frosting down the front of his little tux. To be fair, he'd managed to reign the dishevel in by a few nautical miles. There wasn't playdoh stuck in his hair these days, and he wasn't smeared with frosting when he could help it. There was a slacker appreciation for fashion, however, and a despicable shaving schedule that left him with an almost-permanent cacti prickle. He was the scion of acidtrip artists, so it would be a hell of a time to start believing that beauty was skin deep or anything.

"You know first aid?" The question was clearly disbelieving, as if this stranger had just told him that he knew how to quantum leap to the Andromeda galaxy. Dylan just wasn't that good at taking care of himself. For as readily as he ran face-first into chaos, it was a bit unfortunate that he could barely tell the difference between a bandaid and a banana peel. Still, sitting did seem like a good idea. Even if it meant momentarily derailing him from the purpose of hiding behind the hotel door until the pain in his side was somewhat alleviated. At this point, Dylan would have settled for a pounding throb rather than a bone-splintering one.

"Good idea, doc.." He sank to the dirty floor with a grimace that screwed his eyes shut and tightened his mouth because it felt like screaming. The fact that he might never get the fuck back up only now began to dawn on him, but the relief that came with resting was too great to ignore. He closed his eyes and rested his head back against the wall of peeling paper patterns. His sigh resembled that of stumbling upon an oasis after forty years in the desert.

They made an odd pair, that much was certain as they performed their awkward dance in the narrow hallway. Aubrey, in his tailored Savile Row that managed elegance despite the dust and the slight wrinkle that came from sitting on the floor, brown curls miraculously behaving in direct defiance of the fact that they hadn’t seen a comb in a few days. The strange, battered man with his Triforce shirt worn without an ounce of irony, with his dishevelled appearance and his painstaking deliberation of style that painted a picture of not caring (and there was an artistry in that, as Aubrey knew better than most) and - he caught a glimpse as the other reluctantly sagged to the floor, shirt hem snagging in the process - okay, those were definitely Sailor Moon boxers.

Who the hell was this guy?

“What, like it’s hard?” He retorted in a put-open tone of affectation that would make any Valley Girl seethe with jealousy, pure Elle Woods indignation as he planted one fist (clenched around the neck of the wine bottle) against his hip. He didn’t let go of the man’s elbow until he was safely settled on the floor, taking the chance to appraise the scrapes and the contusions from close-up. Aubrey couldn’t help but wonder just what sort of scrap had made such a mess of a man both taller and broader than he was, and he thought back to his own past conflicts. Whomever had turned his new drinking buddy into a punching bag, Aubrey certainly didn’t want to encounter them in a dark alley. Hell, he’d even pass on a brightly-lit one.

After another swig of wine for no particular reason other than that it had been almost thirty seconds since his last, Aubrey finally retreated a few steps and settled himself back down on the floor across from the punching bag. The bottle (nearer to empty than it was full) was placed on the floor between them as a peace offering, though he hoped it was an unnecessary one.

“So exactly what the fuck happened to you?”

This bibulous bastard had a poker hand of questions, and it made Dylan close one eye when he stared across the narrow hall. The fact that this man might have been armed had been a very real worry initially.. but now it was kind of forgotten. The drugs were quick with disposal of pesky, useless things like worry and memory. Honestly, it was kind of nice. Even for a guy who didn't put much concern into the multifarious subjects that he really should on a given day. The Mexico thing was even kind of background noise, because Max was out on assignment and out of reach, so what control did he have? He'd always bought enough into the system to faithfully believe that everything would turn out alright. She'd be alright. They didn't need him out there, they needed him here where the information was yet unfledged. The fact that he wasn't at the hotel room batting his homerun way through WPM should have been supplying enough of a guilt trip that turning back around was the only option. But taking a few hours through the door to mask the pain of injury seemed like a damn fine idea for the time being. The fact that he hadn't rushed through the door already was wholly due to the fact that he was still vaguely aware that he'd be unprofessional for doing so. Alcohol would help that..

Dylan edged his way off of the wall just enough to catch the bottle's neck in a fist of noose fingers. Ready for the hanging, he brought it up to his mouth in an ultimatum kind of swig. As a sign of amity and perhaps to prove that he wasn't that sore, Dylan planted his unbottled hand against the floor and leaned on it, extending the wine back to his buddy.

"Freak tuna can accident," he murmured.

"And what about you. Hemingway?" Smiling, he abandoned the wine bottle on the carpet between them as he leaned once more into the wall. He barely felt the ache in his side now, it was a dull throb that vanished into the undertow of prescription and alcohol collaboration. "Drink in decrepit, lonely places often?"

Despite the bizarre severity of the situation - or perhaps, indeed, because of it - he could not suppress the crooked smile that tugged itself into place on his mouth, all wine-flushed lips and straight teeth. Aubrey observed the bleary, one-eyed gaze of the man who sat across from him and managed a drunken-sailor sway even as he was slumped against the wall, and he couldn’t help but be a little impressed. He’d have to request a tutorial on that particular skill at a later date. For the time being he accepted the return of his - Briar’s - bottle, holding it up to the light and giving it a good slosh in his very scientific method of measuring the contents that remained within.

“Aren’t they all freakish? The tuna can accidents? It’s a slippery slope from slicing a finger open to getting loaded up with the good drugs in the ER,” he said in a conspiratorial tone, turning the neck of the bottle between his palms, back and forth. He was more or less entertaining himself at this point, or so he thought for the time being. Then came the crack about Hemingway, and that’s when his mouth twisted into a genuine grin.

“That’s me,” he said, nodding agreeably as he fished a cigarette case from his inside jacket pocket. One clamped between his lips, the other offered to his new friend in exchange for the compliment, with an easy smile that wouldn’t be offended by a refusal. “‘An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.’ Too bad this isn’t a lonely, decrepit hotel in Cuba or the resemblance would be seriously uncanny.”

"Have you ever been to Cuba?" It was said with the tired humor of a man who'd been there a little bit too much, and Dylan waved the offer of a cigarette off because despite the abuse of drugs and alcohol in this moment, he had his health to think about, okay? Not everybody had the luxury of destroying themselves while perfecting their tetris score. Some people had to think about the potential of tomorrow when diving out an open window or leaping from a roof were entirely real possibilities. On that note, he settled back against the wall. It was comfortable only because having a wall of his back meant that he simply had to keep his eyes focused in front of him.

There was a sigh and a stretch, the flex of a lime green all-star tied up tight around the ankle. "I'll stick with Burroughs, I think. Nothing is true, everything is permitted." Because what could really stop a person aside from a lack of imagination? The right idea could take you anywhere. Out of a jail cell, out of a bed, out of the galaxy. The fact that Dylan hadn't been to Cuba aside from on assignment didn't mean much. He got to see the underbelly, which was the most delicious aspect of any city. Street tacos, diesel slick gutters, and that sweet metallic kind of taste in the air. Like bullet casings and frozen yogurt. He actually missed it, and maybe that is what attributed to his lopsided, junkyard dog grin of scruffy satisfaction. He hadn't consumed nearly enough wine for anything else.

"Besides, I'm sure the resemblance isn't too uncanny." Dylan popped his neck with an anxious tilt of the head, and closed his eyes. The jaw was prickled and his neck was long. "You probably write manifestos on sea lions, not the trials of a man's pride in the natural world." He paused. "Or shit, maybe whales. Maybe you're more Melville."

Somewhere between lighting his cigarette and exhaling a stream of grey-white smoke into the air that lingered above their heads, he shot the other the sort of withering look that undoubtedly went best with with a sardonic smile. “Are you going to make me quote Legally Blonde again?” Aubrey wondered aloud with mock sincerity, rubbing one hand over his four-day beard while he perfected the sarcastic arch of his brow. “I’m Canadian, buddy. I’m perfectly free to go frolic on the white beaches of Varadero without my country calling me a traitor - so I guess that’s one thing I’ve got over Jay-Z, huh?”

Another flash of greenbrown-bright eyes and a broad smile, and Aubrey couldn’t quite help himself - in one smooth motion, he turned and slid across the floor of the hallway until he was pressed up against the same wall as his new friend. “As long as you’re not going to try to convince me that Burroughs was a Buddhist, because then I might have to punch you and I’m not sure how much impact that would have at the moment - you seem like you’re pretty much up for taking a hit, what with the bruising and all.” Merely inches from the door through which Briar and her stuffy, over-lubricated kingdom awaited him, Aubrey sat cross-legged and set the bottle of wine back down between them. For now - and for once - he would delay the next mouthful of blissful ignorance.

“Are you insulting my beard?” He asked, somewhat incredulous and feigning a greater sense of insult at the same time. Sure, he was no Hemingway - but that didn’t mean he couldn’t take offense for fun, right? “Or maybe that’s a compliment. Melville had some fairly badass facial hair, but I’m really not into the whole squared-off look. Unless you’re trying to say that you think it’d be a good look for me, in which case I could maybe consider it.”

Another lopsided smile then, before Aubrey ducked his head and focused on his cigarette - lips pursed, inhale, head back, exhale. He pressed his free hand against the worn floor beneath them, fingers splayed against rough planks of wood where the finish had long since worn off and the heads of copper nails rose up. The movement focused him, drew out the swirling sensation in his head and gave him balance, right there on the floor.

Continue to part 3 here.

Thu, 16 May 2013 04:11:23 GMT

Who: Dylan & Aubrey (Part 1/3)
What: Intoxicated snarking and pop culture references
Where: The hallway outside the Tales door
When: Shortly before the 13th Fairy plot
Warnings/Rating: Sassy language?

There was no telling what time of night it was when Aubrey finally stumbled out of the door, half-drunk and slightly stunned to be back in his own body; he was simultaneously delighted and intrigued to find a bottle of wine still clutched tight in his fist, having slipped through the door after encouraging the princess to make a painstaking raid of her own personal cellar. He supposed that it was a fortunate circumstance when he could cross back over with a bottle - free was free, right? Not to mention the fact that his dear princess seemed more inclined to follow Aubrey’s suggestions of inebriation as of late. Leading a kingdom was bound to be stressful, and all that.

Glancing down as if to confirm that he was indeed fully dressed, Aubrey patted his free hand over several of his pockets and against the slight bulge that sat beneath the shoulder of his suit jacket. Phone, keys, shoulder holster and gun - everything in place. Alright. In a wave of relief, he leaned against the opposite wall and slid down, down, until he was sitting cross-legged just across from the hotel door. At least he wasn’t lacking for company - with an oblique smile, he uncorked the bottle and lifted it to his lips. The drink was tart and threatened to stain his lips a berry-pink, but still he gave thanks to the royal winery. A generous princess must be sure to please her subjects, and he saw no reason why they shouldn’t have a mutually beneficial arrangement.

And really, what more could he want? Aubrey cradled the bottle in both hands, crossing his legs beneath him and idly wondering if the poison that filled his mouth would also fill his heart. Briar made a disapproving sound in his head, but she seemed to understand why his thoughts always turned dark. She was a stubborn young woman, headstrong, but for the most part they got along alright. The fact that she was struggling to rule a kingdom with a missing husband, it made him feel sorry for her. Hell, he could certainly understand what it meant to feel alone in a crowded room, right? And so Aubrey gazed down at the bottle he held, enjoying the sweet-sour of the wine in his stomach and wondering if he should get up off the floor.

Talk about a rough few days. The fortune cookies and Dylan's usual brush-over with online horoscopes hadn't clued him in to a goddamn thing as far as near-death experiences went. Which figured. All in all, he'd always suspected that things like fate were as secretive as they were shady. It really had to be fate, as far as Dylan was concerned. There was just no other way that he could have been detected by the cartel in so little time. His methods bordered on flawless, and the fact that there was potentially someone on the other side that was better than him? It was enough to drive a man to drink, honestly.

But he didn't, and he only sometimes took the medication that the doctors had prescribed. The pills had made Dylan mindless and too willing to sleep when sleep was the last thing he needed. What he needed was to work, to unearth who had done this while the evidence was still fresh. Honestly, he didn't know how Max worked with her head full of pills half the time... but he understood it. Now he did. Getting hit by a truck had to feel just about the same, what with the bruised garden of black poseys taking up his entire left side. Scratches mottled the cacti prick of an unshaven jawline, and some more bruising was concealed by the aviator sunglasses and the drawn up cotton hood of deep black. All in all, he kind of looked like the Unibomber (after perhaps getting their ass handed to them by Mr. T) except for that the cotton sweatshirt was unzipped, and the tee-shirt within boasted an archaically pixelated tri-force of goldenrod across his broad chest.

He walked with several limps at varying angles. It was a kind of decrepit pimp shuffle that nibbled at his fucking mind, he could feel the deterioration there too, the whispering rhyme of unending nonsense that just wouldn't go away and now functioned as too much of a distraction. He knew it couldn't be the witch, her creep-book of spells had gotten destroyed in the explosion apparently, and an entirely new book had been waiting for him when he'd finally threatened that doctor for early release from the government sanctioned hospital of spy secrets.

And now? Dylan wanted the singsong voice to go quiet, just for a day, goddamnit. Just a day so that he could think, so that he could make some progress and get this ghost of a half-shattered bombshell casing of a memory off of his back.

By the time that he made the stairs, he was ready to collapse. An ache pervaded his body without the fuel of adrenaline to push him onward still, and his palms slapped against the hallway wall to steady himself once he'd made the landing in a last ditch push for success. He felt like one of the beaten dogs of death, and it was while making a less than perceptive twist to stretch the now-wrecked muscles in his back that Dylan took notice of the other man. Everything became that weird and instinctive motive for pure shade when eyes were upon him (he'd always thought that was what gave him a leg up in the competition of a spy-eat-spy marketplace.. but now he wasn't so sure). He immediately dropped his arm to dissuade the rise of that tee shirt hem, which for a moment had surely boasted above the treacherous ridge of Sailor Moon boxers, exactly where the stark and black grip of a loaded handgun was tucked. Discretion was probably a good idea, and his posture righted with some effort as he tried to think of something to say while simultaneously hoping that his awkwardness had gone unnoticed.

"Shit, if I'd known the wine dinner was tonight, I'd have brought the brie..."

Despite the wine that lulled his senses into some semblance of false security, Aubrey was alerted to the approach of unfamiliar footsteps as they sounded at the bottom of the nearby stairwell. They were soft in a way that suggested caution and an awareness of subtlety, but not so much as to go unnoticed. It was a hollow sound, with the soles of boots (or maybe some fancy loafers; he was too half-drunk to distinguish Timberlands from Gucci) slapping against each step and echoing on the slanted walls of the staircase. Some distant part of him formed words, maybe something his mother had said one hazy, far-off day in her lilting accent.

“L'escalier est le cœur et l'âme d'une habitation,” he muttered, half-bleary as he aimed a sideways glance at the man who emerged from the stairwell. Hazel eyes did not miss the stagger in his step, or the way that his guise shifted from pain to nonchalance and sent a wayward hem falling over a conspicuous waistband. Aubrey’s glance did not linger long enough to catch the Sailor Moon font that stole a contrast against bare skin, but no way in hell was he going to miss the butt of a stashed gun. Either this guy was like him, or this guy was trouble. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Aubrey frowned, but at the same time he resisted the urge to rise and meet the unknown in a defensive stance. Only his right hand disobeyed, slipping under his jacket and coming to rest on the P226 Equinox that sat in his shoulder holster. It was a brief gesture, barely half a second in the grand scheme of things - yet he corrected himself, and turned the move into one that fished his iPhone out of his inside breast pocket. And still he wasn’t quite fast enough.

“Good thing for you that wine-and-cheese dinners happen almost every night beyond the fairy door,” he intoned solemnly, putting on an affected accent at the word ‘fairy’ and wiggling the fingers of one hand. With the other he lifted the bottle from his lap, pointing the neck in the other man’s direction for extra emphasis, before he downed another sip or three. “You’re fine. You’ve still got time to pick up all the fancy cheese your heart desires.”

Was French happening? Dylan felt like there was French happening for some reason, and his eyes wanted to close to imagine it because his body was hurting, but he kept one eye wide when he acknowledged the voice at full. There was a half-pivot there, and the truest part of his brain swore that if he ever went crazy he'd go after doctors because this crooked mindlessness was worse than torture. Dylan managed not to reach for the gun, he wasn't that paranoid yet. Or perhaps the demerol had done its job in more ways than just pain relief.

Despite the drugs and the surgery, the most intrinsic part of himself absolutely fucking had to take notice of the other man's fingers when they pressed beneath the classic, dark fold of a jacket. Dylan didn't stiffen, and he did not alter his stance when paranoia sang in the back of his brain's alley. He only waited. Drugged or not, part of him had to rely on the fact that he was a better shot than the average bitch... and contrary to that, he was enough of a competitor to try and break the record anyway.

In the end, he didn't reach for the gun. His slumped posture bordered on wholly trusting when blue-green eyes watched the other. Even with talk of the fairytale door, Dylan wasn't the type of person to nod along and leave a wide trail of his secrets behind him. That kind of shit was obvious, spy or not. "Really? Do I need a reservation?"

His smile, half pained, was all teeth. There was no point in faking it considering the way that he looked. When Dylan sighed, the exhale was heavy. The knotted joints in his fingers rolled, pushing himself up from the weight of the wall at a slow ease. He liked the slow stagger that life was giving him. The weird pace that hospital drugs provided. "Or do I have to Parlez vous the francais?"

Aubrey made a sour face in response to the tang of medieval-brewed wine on his tongue, peering down the neck of the bottle and giving a slight shake of his head. “Royalty,” he snorted, quirking an eyebrow and curling his upper lip in a disapproving semblance of a sneer. “God, you think they’d have better wine than the swill that ten bucks can buy at the grocery store. Otherwise what’s the point of being a goddamn princess, besides leaving my masculinity in question?”

He lifted his gaze to the stranger’s face with a curious expression, gesturing once with the bottle as if to make clear his exasperation. And it was in that moment that he took in the sight of the bent, broken man who stood before him in a demonstration of trust that was neither earned nor deserved. Actually, from what Aubrey could see of his face behind the mirrored aviators and the days-old stubble, he looked sort of cute. The effect was somewhat offset by the violet bruises that marred his skin, but his shoulders were broad in a way that would have drawn Aubrey’s attention regardless of the situation - and there had been that brief flash of hip and happy trail to send his eyes lingering just south of where might be technically appropriate.

“You look like shit,” he declared unequivocally, dragging his gaze back up to the man’s face where it peered out from beneath his oversized hood, and wincing sympathetically. Using the bottle against the floor for leverage, he hauled himself to his feet in a less-than-graceful way and eyed the other man in contemplation. “Though I do like the shirt, gotta say. But seriously, you think it’s a good idea to show up here looking like a pile of raw hamburger meat? With the villains and the beasties and the brutes running all over the place?”

Aubrey frowned with no small amount of skepticism evident on his face, but he made the (clearly wise) decision to trust a stranger with more bruises evident than skin. He took one shuffling step closer to the place where the man slumped against the wall, simultaneously wondering if he might have to catch an unconscious body and holding out his half-empty bottle, eyebrows raised. “Drink? You look all kinds of pill-happy, but I never trusted those ‘avoid alcohol’ labels on the little orange bottles, anyway.”

Continue to part 2 here.

Thu, 16 May 2013 03:41:38 GMT

Who: Bats
What: Small narrative.
Where: One of his warehouse!Batcaves.
When: After Selina leaves the antitoxin.
Warnings/Rating: None.

Ever since his successful return to Gotham, Bruce had been maintaining a low profile. It was difficult, for someone who was accustomed to being very, very public with his actions; his entire persona had been constructed around the idea of setting an example. With Bane's men still patrolling the perimeter and the streets, however, drawing attention to himself too soon would only make things worse. Blackgate was still full of innocent citizens, Damian and Jason included, and he couldn't have Bane and his assassin friend taking steps to block him before he'd had a chance to make real progress.

So, he was quiet. Subtle. He watched, and he collected information, and he divided the city into 'zones' based on the presence of Bane's men and the danger posed. He planned, and strategized, and when the twenty-four hour kick forced him through the door, Luke simply turned around and crossed back. He'd resigned himself to the reality of the situation, becoming little more than a quiet ache in the back of Bruce's mind. There was no time to dwell on that, however, just like there'd been no time to dwell on Kara's fate after the sacrifice she'd made to allow Eddie, Stephanie and himself the opportunity to sneak into the city. He'd tried calling for her, which she'd told him would work, but received no response; there was nothing he could do. Searching for her posed too much of a risk.

She was not the first to suffer the result of the Bat's absence, nor would she be the last. But he buried his guilt, as he always did, and moved on.

The box appeared after he returned from another recon mission, which had taken no more than half an hour. No one else had access to this particular warehouse, and breaking in would have been no easy feat; there was only a handful skilled enough to manage it. Bruce read the note first, not recognizing the handwriting, and then he saw what it contained.

He was skeptical, of course, too jaded to hope for the best. Hours passed as he analyzed what was in the vials, running test after test, until there was only one left to positively confirm the conclusion he was almost too wary to make. He needed to be sure before he continued any further.

While the toxin had steadily been wearing off, there were still too many who remained under its influence. Finding a suitable subject was simple, as was subduing them and bringing them back to the not-Cave. Once everything was in place, Bruce injected the serum into the still-unconscious young man, and he waited.

It took time, yes, but it worked.

The man panicked. It was a natural reaction to regaining consciousness in a strange place, blindfolded and disoriented, but not one he would have displayed had the toxin still been in effect. A few more tests were run, and Bruce observed him for a while longer before depositing him back in the city, somewhere safe, but there seemed to be no adverse effects.

This was not a trick. Someone, and he had a fair idea of who based on process of elimination, had set the antidote at his feet, and now all he had to do was find a way to distribute it on a widespread scale without attracting unwanted attention.

Wed, 15 May 2013 21:33:14 GMT

Who: Kara and Helena

What: Rescuing a falling Supergirl

Where: Gotham, near the river

When: Directly after Kara was shot

Warnings/Rating: Er, violence. Language. Hels being high and Kara being shot.

Kara wasn't expecting the bullet that felled her. She'd come into contact with kryptonite once, when she'd been locked up by Simon Tycho and experimented on by the government. It had been her introduction to Earth, and it had been one she would never forget. But the kryptonite was a fluke, really. It had been in the fuel that supplied her pod and, when Tycho had brought it into the same area as her, he'd learned that he could use the green fuel to control her, to hobble her. He'd done terrible things to her then, until a stupid mistake on his part allowed her to destroy the station and escape. But she she didn't know what the liquid was, and she had no idea that any of existed on the planet. She hadn't anticipated pain while she provided a distraction for Batman, and her only thought was that the bullet that sliced through her side and embedded itself deep in her gut shouldn't have made it past the skin. That was the last thought she had, because the pain she'd experienced on Tycho's station was nothing compared to this.

Kara fell.

In so many ways, Kara was just a sixteen-year old. She was out of her element, and she was afraid, and now she hurt. She didn't even wonder if Batman had succeeded, because she was still young enough to only be able to focus on the agony in her body. She cried, she wanted her mother, and she splashed into the river without enough force to overflow the bank.

Surfacing, unfortunately, was something Kara couldn't manage, not beyond spurts of gasped breath as the resettling river offered her that small reprieve. It was the false tide created by her fall that saved her. It washed her south, into Gotham proper, and it shoved her toward the edge of the riverbank. She was facedown, soaked blonde, her impenetrable suit not as impenetrable as it should have been, torn and jagged from the river's rocks. Her face was a scratch-blood mess, and her body couldn't do anything to heal itself in the face of the kryptonite lodged deep in her system. She couldn't move; she didn't even try.

While Kara was doing her impression of a flying white bat, Helena had been on the way to a little impromptu play date with Crane. It was long overdue in her opinion, but seeing Kara fall from the sky was just enough to distract her from one train of thought and promptly boot her into another. It wasn't fear that had her turning right towards the river instead of left towards Arkham in her purple Prius, but the thought that if Kara dropped her from that height, it might be even more enjoyable than punching that ridiculous smirk off Crane's face.

It was the height of magpie-itis, one shiny thing traded in for another shiny thing, only for Helena it was one person traded in for another. The fight they'd had on the journals the other day was completely and wholly forgotten, a street sign on the long highway of her joyride. It took her longer to find Kara than she expected, mostly because the river thought it could carry Kara away from her. Well, screw that. In a whine of the transmission and a shriek of the guard rail, Helena plowed right through it in her little hybrid. In the midst of slurping, sucking mud, she skidded to a pause about two feet away from Kara and promptly crowed her success at the river.

"I am awesome," she sing-sang as she hopped out of the smoking, gurgling car and marched over to Kara, who was still face down in the water. "I can't believe you didn't even look!" Hels said, hands on her hips. When that garnered no reaction either, she climbed down in the water, ended up losing a shoe in the mud, and gripped the other girl under her armpits to drag her a bit further up the shore and out of the water. "What are you eating in Sanctuary? Granite?" She groaned, only dimly noticing that her car was slowly being swallowed up by the same water that she was trying to save Kara from.

Kara didn't notice the car. The pain was something too overwhelming, too foreign to let her notice big things. She wanted to curl up and crawl on her mother's lap. She wanted her father. She wanted to die. She didn't want Helena, and she actually managed a groan, despite the pain, when the other girl pulled her up by her armpits. The short-lived groan was followed by a hiss of agony and a completely weak and useless attempt to guard her stomach. She could fight Helena's grip, and didn't it just figure her stupid superpowers decided not to work now? She didn't want to look weak in front of this girl. If there was anyone she didn't want to look weak in front of, it was this girl.

"I eat normal food in Sanctuary," Kara muttered, even as tears streamed down dirty cheeks that were an unhealthy, pallid green-pale. "I did look!" she argued, a little more forcefully, but that took all her strength, and she heaved uselessly, her stomach empty, and sobs following the horrible not-retching. "I want my mother," she whimpered in Kryptonian, H'El's translator starting to short out slowly.

Helena hadn't gotten a good look at her skin, but she did figure that Kara needed to heave up whatever she had in her belly and her lungs, if she'd inhaled any of the river water. That couldn't be good for anyone, Kryptonian or not. "I have no idea what you just said," she informed the other girl as she sat her down for a minute. "Earth languages, Kara. Can't help you if I don't know what you're saying."

Ignoring the fact that her car was slowly sinking into the river, she bent down again. "You're going to have to help me out a little here, 'kay?" 'Cause carrying around the dead weight of Kara was not on the list of fun things to do. Crouching down next to her, Helena started to pick her up again, only this time as soon as she got Kara roughly half the way up, she ducked her head under Kara's arm and pulled her up the rest of the way. "You're going to have to lean on me," she started and then she got her first really good look at the other girl's skin. She knew what it looked like when her Kara was around Kryptonite and this Kara didn't look much different. The question was, where was it that it was making her sick? "Do you know where it is?"

Earth languages? Why would she want to speak Earth languages? Kara didn't actually think in Earthspeak, and she didn't hear in Earthspeak. In her brain, it was all Kryptonian to her, and only the internal translator made the words come out in something the people here could understand. Luckily, her brain wasn't misfiring entirely yet, and the translator hadn't completely shorted out. "I want my mother," she repeated in pathetic, whining English, even as she did her best to toss her very heavy arm over Helena's shoulder. She hissed, she winced, but she managed to do a little bit of the work, even if she wanted to curl up and die somewhere. Just not in front of Helena.

"It?" Kara asked once the question caught up with her slowing mind. "I do not know what it you mean," she said, but her hand reflexively moved to cover the slow-bleeding wound in her abdomen, blood trickling down her leg and into the river below. "Why are you helping? You hate me." The translator hiccuped, caught, but the words might not have needed any translation at all.

"Don't we all?" Hels asked her, but her voice was void of sarcasm. Maybe after this she would contact this world's Selina. It wasn't quite like her mom, but there was still a similarity there, just like there was with this world's Bruce.

She had no idea about Kara's internal struggle about wanting to die, so long as it wasn't in front of her. It didn't stop her from making sure she did most of the work and as long as Kara was mostly up, it was a whole lot easier to slog their way away from the river. "It, the kryptonite." The way her hand went to her side, the slow trickle of blood that Helena had missed earlier -- Kara had been shot. "Is it -- is the bullet still in?" She asked, more in awe than genuine concern. Another time, without the toxin, she might have felt a lot more worry, but mostly she felt like her foot that was missing a shoe was cold. "I don't hate you," she said as they stepped through the wreckage she'd left of the guard rail. "I miss my Kara. I miss my Tim too and my Morgan. I miss my world, and," she huffed and gripped the other girl a little tighter, careful of that sluggishly bleeding wound. "This conversation is bringing me down. New subject."

Kara didn't know if other people wanted their mothers. Right then, she didn't really care, either. She wanted hers. This was like nothing she'd ever experienced, and it was like nothing she wanted to continue experiencing. She wanted to die, and she wanted it more than she wanted anything. Being exposed to kryptonite wasn't the same as having it inside her body, and she was pretty sure she was going to die, regardless, so why not do it now and get it over with?

The question about the bullet was so logical that Kara actually touched a hand to her back - well, as much as she could - feeling for some kind of exit wound. But there wasn't one, and she just gritted her teeth and nodded. She was dead weight by then, no powers, no ability and no way to do anything but be dragged along, listening to Helena speak. "Everyone misses people," she said through clenched teeth. "Everyone here misses people." She hadn't been here long, but she knew that much. It wasn't just Helena, and even with the pain it made her need to point it out. "Your loss is not worse. Is not better. Is the same." She couldn't manage a retort for the conversation bringing her down, because she didn't actually know what that meant. They were no closer to the ground than before.

"It is not the same," Helena snarled. "It's similar but not the same. It's not the same for anyone and saying that is, is just mean." Nevermind that she had just done the same to Kara. Logic came and went in spurts, but it mostly went and at the moment, Hels didn't care. "And this conversation is still bringing me down." If it kept up, she was going to drop Kara and leave her on her own.

And that might suck because then she would have no one to party with. Not that Kara was really in a position to party, but it was the principle of the thing. Just like that, her mood shifted and she was smiling. Hels leaned a little closer and sniffed her. If they were going to party -- "You need a shower." They probably needed to remove the bullet too, but that was going to be easy. "I'll take you back home, throw you in the bath, and then you can soak up some rays. Heal up. Be as good as new, okay? Then we can find Stephanie and take turns jumping off Wayne Towers. It'll be fun!"

"It is the same," Kara insisted. Even through the growing pain, and the way her skin was quickly turning a horrible and sickly green. "It is exactly the same. You are the one who is selfish and mean." Maybe it wasn't the time for this fight, but Kara felt like she was dying, and she didn't have even a little bit of patience for how center-stage Helena was being. She didn't comment about the conversation bringing her down, but she did try to roll her eyes. Helena wasn't the one who was dying, so Kara didn't think Helena had anything to say about a conversation bringing her down.

Tears streaming down her cheeks, Kara tried to made sense of Helena's insistence that she needed a shower. "I hurt," she whined. Oh, god, did she whine. If there was a prize for whining, Kara would have won it just then. If she'd had the strength to flail her arms and shove Helena away, she would have. Her breath was quick-pain sobs, and she screamed. It wasn't her sonic scream; she didn't have enough strength in her for that. But it was close. Painful and ear-splitting, it was a pained, agonized, frustrated shriek; a hurt Kryptonian's tantrum. She didn't know what to do about the kryptonite, about the bullet, about anything. She just wanted it to stop, and she didn't want to jump off a tower. And she was too caught up in her own pain to even remember that Helena was affected by a toxin. She shoved with absolutely no force, and she sobbed.

Hels wanted to retort about why she was selfish and mean and how much she did not want to have this conversation when Kara started screaming. Not any normal scream, not a sonic scream that her Kara could manage, but a whining, piteous, shriek right in her fucking ear. She did the only thing she could think of doing when the sound reverberated into her ear drums -- she clamped her hands over her ears, only it meant that she had to drop her arm from around Kara to do it.

Kara shoved at her anyway, so it was fine for her to take a few steps back and glare at the other, sickly pale girl. The toxin still rolling around in her veins made it impossible for her to care about Kara's pallor or her whining. And as soon as that god awful scream stopped, Helena was yelling. "Oh my god, what is wrong with you! You hurt, fine! I'm going to take you back and get that out of you, but not if you keep screaming! If you keep screaming, you can stay here! I don't need you!"

Kara's agonized scream when she was dropped was nearly sonic. The water in the river rippled, surged and overflowed the banks, and windows in buildings just beyond the body of water shattered, including those in the mud-sucked Prius. By the time Helena stepped back and glared, Kara's breath was coming hard and shock-fast. Her skin was fully green, and she was shivering, but there was still enough fight left in her to realize that Helena taking anything out of her would be bad; they needed a doctor, didn't they? She'd just begun to rein in her impressive temper to tell the other girl that much, intending to make an honest attempt at explaining just how absolutely horrible she felt. But then Helena said she didn't need her and something snapped. In that horrible, pain-agony moment, wracked with sobs and in so much pain that she was doubled over with it, she snapped.

"I do not need you EITHER!" Kara scream-wailed, throwing a hand out and sending Helena flying across the river with what little strength she had left. The shove wasn't enough to slam the other girl against anything with force, but it was enough to get Helena away.

It took a second for the shock of being thrown across the river to wear off. Her Kara had thrown her plenty of times, but never away, never like this Kara had just done. And once the shock was gone, all the anger flooded in. The last time she'd been that pissed was when Silky Cernak had tried to frame her mother and she'd left him unconscious on the steps of GCPD.

Pushing herself off the wall at her back, she started stalking her way back towards Kara. She could have just jumped in the river and swam across, but then she'd stink just like Kara did. The walk on the other hand, allowed her anger to crystallize and burn, but before she could get back to where she'd left the other girl, there was a car. Windows rolled down, nice but not too nice, and the keys were in the ignition, a lucky rabbits foot dangling from it. Helena just needed to borrow it, since her Prius wasn't getting out of the river. A few minutes later, she drove up to where she'd left Kara, all beaming smiles again because car. Half a tank of gas, more than enough to get them somewhere that Kara could get a shower. And where she could shower. She pulled as close as she could without hitting the other woman and got out, the car idling at the curb.

Kara's last bit of energy went into that shove, and she barely managed to lift her head when the car approached and idled. Maybe she managed to groan when she realized Helena had opened the car door, but the sound was lost in the pounding in her head, the sounds of Gotham quickly becoming too overwhelming. The sluggish blood that dripped from her abdomen didn't abate, and she couldn't feel her legs. Normally, Kara couldn't sleep when she wasn't in Sanctuary. She hated that. She hated that in order to feel normal, she had to live beneath the water. She'd tried to sleep outside of Sanctuary's safe walls, but it never worked. It was just like the food out here, which made her sick, her body rejecting it instantly as something unnecessary. But she thought she might be able to sleep now, if Helena just left her alone.

"Go away," Kara managed weakly in Kryptonian. She didn't trust Helena's beaming smile. She wanted Jason or Damian or Sam. She wanted Kal. She wanted her mother.

Helena still couldn't understand the gibberish coming out of Kara, but it didn't bother her. "You are pitiful right now, I hope you know that." She could have threatened her, yelled at her some more, but what was the point? It was only good when someone fought back.

Opening up the rear passenger door, Helena grabbed her under her armpits again and half-pulled, half-shoved Kara into the backseat. "Don't shove me again. It's rude and I'm only trying to make sure you have a good time." When she had Kara (mostly) in, she pushed the other girl's legs forward and bent them so she could shut the door without her leaving her feet hanging out. "Success!" She cried, fists pumping into the air as she jogged around the car and got into the driver's seat. "We should totally do bumper cars later, in real bumper cars. After you're not so green," she told her, grinning again as she threw the car into drive and jammed down on the gas so that the tires squealed as they sped away.

"I do not want to die around you," Kara whined, because she knew she was pitiful, but she thought she was allowed to be just then. And who could have a good time when they were dying? Because she was sure she was dying. This had to be dying. It burned.

With every jostled movement, the bullet slid deeper into Kara's abdomen, something only the AI at Sanctuary or a surgeon would be able to remove. By the time Helena shoved her into the backseat, the decidedly green-tint blonde was barely conscious. She made sounds that weren't quite words, whimpers and groans, and then she gave up when that Success! pierced the air. She curled in on herself, and she stopped fighting. It was probably a good thing that she'd lost consciousness entirely by the time Helena was talking about bumper cars and speeding away like there was actually somewhere worth going, because she would have thrown herself out of the car otherwise. Helena, she'd decided, was a terrible nurse.

"You're not going to die!" Helena cried cheerfully from the front seat. Kara couldn't die. Not her Kara, not this Kara, not any Kara. That was the whole awesome thing about being a Kryptonian -- they were impossible to kill. Of course, her Kal had died in the war against Darkseid, but Helena was definitely not thinking about that right now because that really would bring her down. Way down.

And with Kara groaning and whimpering in the back seat, Hels fiddled with the knobs on the radio until 'Thrift Shop' came blaring out of the speakers. They'd be back at her apartment in no time. Hels would get her cleaned up and then they'd find Steph and party. All in a day's work.

Wed, 15 May 2013 19:52:17 GMT

Who: Ella Dean
What: The 13th fairy plot ended!
Where: Ella's apartment

The door opened, unclicked and sunshine - thin and grey with a corolla of cobwebs but sunshine - streamed through cracked-glass windows and Ella stumbled, swayed against the handle and leaned it shut until it clicked once again, the tick-tick-tick of the gently-swaying gold pendulum, the hiss of the chain through her fingers as she pulled the key from the lock and left it locked.

It didn’t feel like a day, it didn’t feel like twenty-four hours. Dreams collided, tangled like damp silk, impossible to separate, impossible to think through. She leaned against the wall, hand a drag along worn-away wallpaper, the sooty smudge of dust along her palm, a streak of clean left like a ghost-trail behind. More than a day and the sitter had instructions, more than a day and the cash left out on the side, and the note, wouldn’t be enough; Ella didn’t think of hard-won cash, she didn’t think of the neat paper stack of bills, she stretched out blind, dirty hand and she flagged the first cab she could, thin-hunched worry on the sidewalk waiting.

Her heart was battered bird in a cage of ribs, her head jabbering; her fingers fumbled with the clatter of keys, one lock and then the next - she dropped the keys, Ella swore. The neighbor, passing, his trash in hand, looked at her curiously. She undid the door, pushed it open. It smelled like dust. It smelled like trapped sunlight and warm-muzzy emptiness. It smelled like dead flowers -- the sunflowers, jammed into pottery jar, long dried to sour unpleasantness. It was silent; the dance, endless spiral of dust motes the only thing moving.

Ella swayed, faltered on feet that would not keep her up - her stomach roiled, the apartment was crazy-kaleidoscope stumbling forward and the room, her room, Bethie’s room was empty, clean talcum powder and cream smell, soft and empty as outgrown clothes. She fumbled, the crib’s edge reassuringly solid under her hand, scaffolding to hold her as she sank, slid down its side to sit on sun-warmed carpet in empty apartment.

The book was secondary, frantic flit of a thought, a dream, bound up in cobwebs - try, she could try.

Wed, 15 May 2013 19:49:40 GMT

WHO: Angie and Russ
WHAT: Hanging out in dreamlandia
WHERE: A beach. A dreamy beach.
WHEN: Dream!plot times
WARNINGS: This is Angie, we’re talking about. Even her dreams are PG-13.

This was… weird. To say the least. Though that thought kept flitting out of Angie’s mind with each step she took, precarious and barefoot, across the wet stones that dotted the tide pool. The ocean breeze swept past her, tangling her hair, blowing the hem of her short white dress until her tan hands pushed it back down, modesty getting the best of her despite wearing a purple swimsuit underneath.

She skipped down the rocks easily, cartoonishly so, making her wonder what was preventing her from cracking open her skull and then shrugging, the thought passing just as easily as it came. Her feet planted down on the wet sand and she wiggled her toes, watching the impressions made and then destroyed with each movement. A squack from seagulls had her turning her head to the left, her mother’s tiny house standing on the sand. The fuchsia painted walls and black roof cover the single story dwelling were exactly how she remembered, even though she knew it didn’t belong right there by the water, and that it had been demolished a decade ago.

She looked to her right and spied the tall glass building that she called home these days, the hotel doors opening and closing with each approach of the waves, motion sensors going nuts. Tourists and business people spilled out occasionally, seemingly unperturbed that the Vegas strip the should be on was now beach front property. She wasn’t bothered much either, turning back to the rocks and watching as it rose higher and higher, the easy skip downward now suddenly a climb upward.

She sighed, the sound carried away with the wind, before reaching for the black rocks with hands and feet, pulling herself up with a huff everytime she found the proper footing.

There’d been no damn beaches when Russ had been growing up. No beaches and no ocean, and no pretty little houses stood right close to shoreline. Russ didn’t know enough of shores and beaches and water to dream them but the person on the shoreline stood with his hands shoved down in his pockets and he breathed in clean salt and brine and ozone. Russ dreamed casinos, he dreamed turns of cards and he dreamed the flip of a coin but he didn’t dream the slap of water far off out. He admired it with the unself-conscious appreciation he gave the sleek lines of a particularly well made car or a woman across the room and he looked down at his own feet on the sand. The cuffs of his jeans were saggy, the kind of clothes bought for someone with optimism about ‘growing room’ and the denim bled darker with the damp from the sand.

He was young, when he turned to face the woman scrabbling up the rock. Young, in a half-past-seventeen sort of way. The jaw was there, and the shoulders’ breadth too - Russ, even seventeen, had been large - but the muscle was whittled down to what was practical sinew wound around bone, was eating wonderbread and hamburger helper too many nights to count. He watched her, the scrabble up and the rolling back down, with the same calm observation he’d given the sea itself. “Why are you tryin’?” His voice was easy: it was the mellow that Russ managed when three beers in or when he was trying to be pleasant. There was none of the scratch to it that had accumulated in the eighteen years hence. His blue eyes were clear, interested, and the slope of his jaw was bare of anything but the glint of stubble trying to break in. She was an attractive woman and Russ had, by eighteen, been interested in attractive women for at least four years; his eyes lingered on the bathing suit and snapped up to her face when the drifting started to become obvious.

She paused in her climb as she spoke, turning effortlessly on the cliff side despite the small space for footing, somehow knowing it was okay to do so. “Why not?” She gave him her most amused smile, hand settling on her hip a moment before a gust of wind whipped through her skirt, making her laugh. It was a beach. Flashing happened. And here was a woman in her element enough that she didn’t care what he saw.

She jumped down; it seemed so easy and had spent some time watching through some other blonde’s eyes enough to know this okay. Her feet effortless settled on the sand and she hummed her victory, hands slapping together to wipe the bit of dirt from her hands before strolling up to him. He was handsome, the stranger, something familiar about his face and she almost nervously rubbed the back of her neck, fingers checking to see if the ties of her bikini top were still looped tightly at her neck.

“What’s your name, kid?” She couldn’t help the tease. Even taller than her she felt older than him, and it made her grin flash, bright and easy. “Up for a climb?” One bare foot toed snagged playfully at the leg of his jeans.

Russ watched her the way small children watch television in department stores: he was there, she was there, the glimmer of interest rose as the wind flirted with the soft cotton of her skirt. It was extremely teenage, the way he tucked his chin down and he looked as though perhaps he shouldn’t have been, and he dug his hands further into his pockets, rocking back on heels until the wet sand gave underneath him. The little motion of her fingers to her neck was a glint in blue eyes: Russ’s smile was an easy thing, real. It was adult, in his face, the same way the jaw and the shoulders were but it was pleasanter than the adult he would be. “I’d let you know,” he said seriously, all post-adolescent charm, and butter-wouldn’t-melt. “I’d be staring, but I’d let you know.”

He looked down at her foot, as though the jeans and the solidity of him were something passing, as though he could not quantify the tease but was trying. It moved behind the blue eyes, thoughtful-serious before the grin, as though he had decided it was safe to do so. “I’m Russ,” he said in response to that smile and his own curled across his face like something more sunny and true than perhaps he was prone to give when grown. “Where are you even tryin’ to get to?” He squinted, broad hand over eyes and he looked up past the sheet of black rock.

“Russ,” she repeated, pulling back slightly to get a good look at him. “You look different,” she pronounced, though from the way she smiled it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. She reached over, as if she had done it a thousand times before, running her fingers over jawline, smooth under her skin with just a hint of stubble. She didn’t prefer him one way or the other, she thought. Beards were nice, but so were easy grins. But soon she shrugged, pulling her hand back before gesturing up to the rock.

“Why not?” She turned fully to see it as he did, hand over her eyes as she peered up. “It’s there. And I liked being there earlier. Plus there’s all this baggage.” Her hand waved to the side, to the house, to the hotel, but she didn’t take her eyes off the rock until her green eyes met his gaze.

“Is there somewhere better I should be?”

“I know you?” He sounded puzzled, he sounded as though he was trying to be polite like maybe somewhere down the line someone had tried raising him and had half-finished the job, work unfinished like wallpaper gone peeling at the edges. He looked at her, eyes filled with the seriousness in all that blue of trying to unknot something, untie a puzzle as she stepped up close, bare feet in sand and Russ’s eyes fell to bared legs and the flutter of her hemline in the sweet-clean ozone of the wind. Perhaps he wasn’t quite yet old enough for the admiration to be completely without attempt to cover it, but it was naked on the young lines of his face and he turned his cheek into her fingertips, bemusement as obvious as the flagrant decision to enjoy the attention.

“Lady, that ain’t baggage, that’s a house,” Russ was blunt, but it wasn’t deliberately rude. The words rolled out as though he was economical enough with them that when he gave them over he was sparing with them. “I don’t know,” he said, and that steady blue was unclouded, unworried when it met her green. “I ain’t never been to the ocean. I never have - I never did,” he corrected himself, and he frowned, a moment that was neither peaceful nor youthful. It was an adult’s worry, “I don’t know how I’m here.”

She considered his question, watching him try and be sly under her gaze. It really only made her laugh more, soft and unbothered by the blatant attention. But as for her knowing him she shrugged before shaking her head. “Not really,” she offered, the answer probably not as helpful as he hoped, as truthful as it was.

His assessment of the house was followed by her sharp bark of a laugh, another shake of her head that came with a sympathetic smile. He didn’t know but, as she had said, he didn’t really know her. “Dead parents are kind of baggage,” she said simply, not trying to be rude or wanting pity. She’d made peace with them and that fact long ago. They simply were.

“I don’t know why I’m here either. Or you,” she admitted, her face frowning as his was. Sleeping was her last clear memory, and before that, walking through the door but that itself made little sense. Instead she focused on something that could be fixed, his lack of experience with the water making her slide her hands to his shoulders and spin him around to face the sea. “This calls for some wading. Roll your pants up. Time to scratch an ocean off your bucket list.”

There was a minute of relaxation in the shoulders under the thin white tee-shirt: Russ was whippet-thin young, the kind of narrow to his wrists and to his forearms that should have been solid strength but was instead the half-fed, half-grown of someone too tall for his own breadth. Clearly, it did not bother him that a woman older than he (and he’d noticed, the gaze had lingered long enough for it to border on that outright, slow and lazy looking it would become) who did not know him was stepped up close enough to touch - rather that he ought to know her and did not and this now gone, the consternation wiped away as easily as it did for youth. “Shit happens,” it wasn’t apologetic, it wasn’t sympathetic, it was calm - that dead parents perhaps were something that could be clambered over, moved on past. He regarded the building with interest but he moved willingly in her grasp, scuffed boots on sodden sand, but he turned to look at her, a smile that was bemusement moving over his face.

Russ had, once, been open book.

“I don’t got an ocean on my bucket-list,” he eyed the ocean with some trepidation, all desert-boy of parched, dry earth and dust in that reluctance to go on and wade. “You go on and swim. I’ll stay here.” There was something of the admiration in that, the barely-hidden note of the eighteen year old boy who liked the swim-suit beneath the thin cotton, who smiled at her, warm, sly.

He was amused and that was good. Angie didn’t do well with the alternative and his grin was mirrored with her own, even as she knew what he was thinking. “It should be,” she said of bucket lists and ocean waves, standing on her toes to peek over him, lazily looking her arms around shoulders and resting her chin on them. “Everyone should give the ocean a try. Sun’s warm, water’s cool. It’s perfect.” The last came with an almost dreamy sigh as she slid away.

She, however, wasn’t going to let the opportunity slip past. Away from him she tugged off her dress, a pile of white fabric soon at her feet. “You’ve got to at least drip your toes,” she insisted, adjusting the purple strap of her bikini top, knowing and hoping to catch his eye. She wasn’t above playing dirty, not when it came to enjoying her precious childhood beaches. Her own fare feet met the water, the pushing sensation racing up her body before, all too soon, she felt the pull of the waves trying to tug her back to sea.

“See? As they say, the water’s fine.” She even went as far as splashing some towards him, the drops of seawater darkening the sand at his feet before she turned and waded in further.

He was a boy then, even if he was a man dreaming of being boy, and his eyes caught, vivid-blue in the tanned slopes of his face and he grinned, strong and wide and open as if he knew exactly what she was doing but also that it didn’t matter. He stared at the ocean, and he flinched - not a lot but a pin-prick reaction to the seawater that spattered his jeans, caught the sand where he stood - and then he shrugged, a great movement of shoulders and teenage leaving-off of preconceptions, and the shirt was tugged up over his head and the jeans fell in a loose puddle on the shore. He ran - an exuberance in motion that was sunburned arms and legs too white to be out of jeans much at all, and he hit the water with the same enthusiasm but with none of her elegance.

Russ reacted the way a dog might; seawater snorted away from him in disgust, and the vague, bewildered splashing of someone not entirely certain as to how to make locomotion in this strange new stuff. He bobbed in the water, blond hair and grin and blue eyes, and he turned to the side and spat, seawater and curled nose at the taste. “You like this?” he said, as the waves bobbed and lapped.

“Of course!” Her laugh was loud and clear, cut short as a wave crashed into her, eliciting a squeal of surprise before she wiped her face clean of the water. “How is this not fun?” Granted, she was dipping below waves before settling on her back, feeling the water ebb and carry her as he splashed and spat nearby. Some guys didn’t know fun when it hit them, or soaked them.

“You’ve never done this before?” The question was silly, of course, what with him splashing around with no clue what to do and she stopped wondering if they should try surfing. The waves seemed to agree, dying down to soft rolls to the shore. “You’ll have to tell me what you would do otherwise. No swimming, and no climbing I assume.” From their new distance the cliff face still stood, not quite as daunting from afar, and she wondered why he had been so surprised she had tried to scale it.

“No,” Russ paddled experimentally, the bob and lap of the water something first fought against and then (skeptically) accepted. He floated because of the demands of the ocean rather than actively giving into it, and he scowled, all teenage ill-humor at being poor at something rather than giving over to the enjoyment. He looked at her, rather than the cliff-face and the confusion as to why precisely, she was bothering was as visible as the consternation and the attempt to mask it. “What gave it away?”

“Your legs,” she replied, the nonchalant attempt at a shrug lost as she laid on her back. “It’s like you’ve never even seen sunshine.” As if in response the sun bore down upon the, warmer than before, making Angie dip below the waves for more of the cool depths the water could bring. When she came back up, she was all mischievous grins as she pulled her hair back from her face. “But we can call it quits if you like. You pick the next thing we’re scratching off the to do list.”

Russ’s smile was sudden, blatant. It was the self-satisfied, altogether cocky look of a teenage boy; she had been looking at his legs. Cautiously, he began to put together the locomotion through water and the bouyancy of it and stopped thrashing like a sodden labrador and began to look a little less ungainly as he bobbed in the ocean. “I seen sunshine plenty of times,” he told her, “But the dry kind.” In Russ’s opinion, the dry kind was better than the wet. You knew where you were with dust, and with desert. You knew you were real stupid if you wandered off without a bottle of water and your mouth told you and your skin told you, parching out to nothing. You could boil and not know it, in the ocean. He swam a little closer, bared shoulders tanned over by sunshine and the strength in them something to do with work and physicality rather than football or high school sport.

Russ didn’t know why the blond woman was much bothering with him, but he liked it: he liked most women fine, and this one had a smile like she knew things he might want to know. “There’s plenty of things I’m good at,” he said, smugly. “Ain’t nothing to do with water.”

Angie wrinkled her nose at the notion of dry sunshine. It reminded her of Vegas, and the hotel standing on the shores with tourists still spilling out. Vegas was not always the type of sunshine she preferred, not with all that came with it, like alter egos and long nights at work. But he was distracting her before her thoughts could stray. Turning to face him she swam closer, stopping a scant few inches away, knees brushing his as she paddled. Brows raised, she put her smirk firmly into place. “So let’s hear it.”

When Russ dreamed, it was deep enough for Vegas to be forgotten. Vegas was the other side of the pillow, from dust and the bare stretch of desert sky and stars the only lights that lit themselves alive after dark. But Russ wasn’t thinking in the direction of trailers and sun-bleached stone as he paddled. The physicality of cold, wet skin brushing past him startled him and the look in his eyes flickered from certainty to something a great deal less sure of himself - and then the resumed confidence of someone predisposed toward cockiness.

The smile was sharp, a gleam of teeth and a glint of something like daring in blue eyes: Russ’s hand dripped as he raised it out of the water, placed it (almost gingerly) on her shoulder and bobbed toward her, a half-way almost kiss that was teenage-boy rushing and the damp clumsiness of the ocean’s pull and push. There was - for a moment - hesitation about it but Russ was considerably old enough to interpret interest for what it was and for a minute, hung there in the water like anchors, the kiss was a warm-hungry slide of tongue and teeth and the curl of strong, young fingers at the back of her neck. It was, Russ supposed in the lazy assumption of his own infallibility, presumptuous - if he’d had such a word in mind. Instead, it was the certainty he had in adulthood in his own attractiveness when he drew back, but a laughing look to it that was not at all carried past twenty.

“See?” Eternally smug.

It was cute how slow he was taking it, mostly because the Russ that she remembered, fleeting thoughts and memories though they were at the moment, wouldn’t have been so. She met his kisses with equal hunger, her wet hands sliding over his wet shoulders until they draped over the back of his neck as she closed the space between them. When he pulled away her smirk echoed his smugness, and her eyes drank in the sight of him, so different than than the last time they were this close.

“Yeah, yeah,” she sighed, the smile tugging at her lips even when she wouldn’t give him so much verbal credit. She slipped away from him and back under the waves, popping up once more with another huff. “So it compares.” She flashed one more cheeky grin over her shoulder before she padded towards the shore, wringing of the water from the ends of her hair and flicking it off her shoulders as she walked on the sand. “Not exactly what comes to mind when someone asks ‘what do you do for fun.’”

Russ paddled desperately to stay upright in the water, the wake-trail of ripples in an ocean smoothing out as glass as Angie left smooth footprints in sand: desire pressed against dream limits and for a minute, the ocean stretched out like tepid bath-water, as indulgent as a grand hotel on the Strip. “Not all that much fun where I’m from,” Russ followed her with caution, one minute stable in the water and the next stood on the sand with the cliff at his back, as dry and as clothed as if he’d never gone in at all. “Lot of people call that fun.” He looked at her, cheeky smile and bright blue eyes.

“I’m not saying it’s not,” she laughed, slipping her dress back on over her bikini and just like that, the water dried from her skin and the wind breezed through her hair. “But there’s gotta be more to you than just kissing.” She leaned in and pressed a palm to his chest, stealing a quick kiss before settling back on her feet. “And not swimming.” She patted his chest playfully before setting out forward.

In their absence the cliffside had shrunk, much less daunting than before, just a quick climb. At its base was a plastic red bucket and blue shovel, made for children and sand castle lovers, and everyone in between. Including, Angie. Half bending to grab both she slung them on her arm as she set up rocks, feet and hands finding purchase and hauling her up. Soon enough she was at the top, peeking over her shoulder to see if he followed or vanished to wherever he came from.

Russell stood impassively in wet sand and the wind that rippled her dress, touseled her hair, seemed to be something particular to her world, to her dream: it did not touch him and it did not affect him. He lowered his head almost obediently, to allow her kiss - wasn’t nothing wrong with a woman deciding that - Russ’s smile was lingering, was a look that followed her as she climbed above him, but one vague, shifting. “I think,” he said carefully, “There was. Something. Not much anymore. I don’t know.” He flickered. Someone trying to change the channel, shadow creeping along his jaw, the splay of his hands on his hips broadening, darkening. “Maybe that’s it.” A grin that strove a little toward carefree and fell a touch short. “I don’t do much.”

“No?” Bent with her hands on her knees, she frowned down at him, the word and question carried to his ears by her wind. The look she gave him wistful and a touch sad, one hand gesturing for him to come up. “But you can’t want that to be it. You’ve gotta have more. Hobbies. Movies? Books? Music? Dancing?” Angie laughed a little, a memory of their meeting springing forward but she shook her head, no sense bringing it up now. “Can’t all be tongue, can it.”

There weren’t a hell of a lot of rock-faces near on by the park and there wasn’t much time to go on climbing them, even if there had been. Russ’s attempt was successful purely because of his sprawl of limbs, the determination of muscles than any kind of strategic effort. It looked entirely difficult, mostly because he threw himself at it the way a puppy might, and by the time he was at the top, he was grinning with the cocky surety of a true master of an art: success had been achieved. He dusted palms off on his jeans, and he looked at her, confusion clear in the sharp blue eyes. “I can want all I like,” Russ was frank, he looked out across the former cliff-edge toward the ocean mildly lapping the sand, “Don’t mean I got anything. I like fixing stuff?” He said it the way one might offer up appeasement, a peace offering that he already knew wasn’t good enough.

True, true, he could want whatever he liked and she shrugged in concession, her smile still in place despite the confusion on him. “You don’t have to appease me,” she added, knowing full well what he was doing. It wasn’t good enough but that wasn’t the point. It seemed fine enough for him and she… well. That was her problem, wasn’t it?

Still, she was curious. Russ, the Russ she knew, wasn’t this forthcoming (not that this one was very much). He was flirty with her, grouchy with most everyone else she had seen him write to. This was different, somewhere in between, and she couldn’t help but pry with a smile. “Fixing what?”

He blinked at her, the collecting together of thought that was not bright waves below or the pretty woman in front of him, “I like,” but Russ sounded hesitant - or his voice was fading, as though a radio was being tuned in and out, the solidity of him flickering. “I like,” Russ tried once again, and he smiled, as though youth and its enjoyment could hold on, grasp tight where dreams did not allow. The wind rippled, all cool-salt on skin and Russ was asleep, tight asleep, somewhere beyond dream walking.

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:00:30 GMT

Who: Wren (and five seconds of antitoxin delivery by Selina)
What: Narrative
Where: Eventually, a campground
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: None

Wren left Cerise's hotel before the sun rose. A sleepless evening, and she felt restless in a way that only came after layers of madness. First, Thierry. Then, the toxin. Lastly, losing her home. And Luke wasn't anywhere, and she knew Luke wouldn't be anywhere for days and days. She was restless mad, that old trauma that Thierry had dredged up still coating her limbs. But she remembered now. She remembered the antique shop, and she remembered Luke's reactions. He'd been scared of her. She'd never seen him look at her like that before. She couldn't even whisper it all away as madness, because she'd cut men up like ribbons in Seattle. She thought, as she had many times before, that Luke didn't actually know her. He looked at her through a lens that made her something good and pure, but she wasn't either of those things.

And he knew now. He'd seen. He finally understood.

She was angry. She was so angry. When she was young, she'd done what everyone had wanted, and she'd buried any anger she felt down, out of the way, deep in a bottomless well with no bucket. Her own wants had been pushed aside, pushed down, until she'd become a thing that only did what other people wanted, and that had no value of her own. She'd crawled and sucked and begged, and she'd been a blank-eyed doll. Even in Seattle, where she took out that unspilled anger on men, she'd kept her hatred out of sight, not even feeling it herself, really. Even here, when her arm held a crop that sliced mercilessly across a man's back, her anger had slumbered in quiet silence. But she was angry. Make no mistake, she was angry.

And now Luke knew. She'd seen it in his eyes.

He'd killed people. She knew that. But he'd done that for other people. She wanted to cut Thierry apart for herself. Selfish, selfish anger, and now he knew.

She left Cerise's because she felt trapped and sad and without purpose. She couldn't go home, not with that man there, the one that had made her leave the home that felt like it belonged more to Luke than to her. Jack was there. Jack was more important, and that made her angry too.

But their neighbors were back from Disney, and she wanted to see her son. No, more than that. With Luke gone, she feared CPS. She feared the custody she didn't have. Maybe she should have been unselfish, left him there for Luke to claim once he returned. But she knew she wouldn't hurt Gus. Mad at the world, half crazed, drowning in sadness, she would never hurt Gus.

She noticed the box on her own doorstep as she walked up to the neighbors' house. She collected it, opened it, and read the note Thierry had left.

The detour to Passages was unexpected, but she didn't hesitate. The note to Selina was brief, and the whole thing took less than thirty minutes. Selina's return note was equally brief: Left them where he would find them, with the note.

She returned to the neighbors' house. Gus was full of stories. Stories about mice and castles and small worlds. She hugged him, and she thanked the neighbors. She was going to meet Luke, she told them. Their own little mini-vacation, she told them.

She checked the mail and, finding a shiny promotional credit card in a pure white envelope, she smiled. A mini-vacation. Luke would take Gus away once he was home, surely. Now that he'd seen what she really was. A mini-vacation, she decided. It wasn't as if they could go home, not anymore. Or maybe Gus could, but she couldn't, and she wasn't going to leave Gus with that man.

And maybe she should have felt guilty, but she didn't.

Clothes first, then a night in a hotel as she considered.

Years ago, when her maman had died, she'd hidden in all the campgrounds that the Keys had to offer. It hadn't lasted long; the sheriff had found her, bare feet and skinny knees and a skirt that was easy to lift. But she remembered the trees as safety and, more mad than sane, she went looking for something like that, something without men, something safe.

Spring Mountains was huge, green and vast. She bought a tent and supplies and, when Gus yearned for Finch, an expensive puppy joined the purchases.

The campsite was remote, near running water, and within days they'd settled into a wildness that seemed like a wonderful adventure for a four-year-old, and that felt like freedom to her. Life became shoeless days, and baths in the bracing river, and nights spent sitting around a fire speaking French. Luke's car provided daily transportation to zoos and aquariums and movies and playdates with friends, and she didn't have the forethought to try to hide. She wasn't trying to hide. She knew Luke would be back eventually, sometime, and she knew he'd take Gus. She wouldn't try to stop him. She even called his work and said he was sick, that he needed time off work, the concerned wife. She missed him. She missed him. She was heartsick and heartsore.

At night, Gus snuggled her when she cried, the unnamed puppy a warm, wiggling bundle between them in the tiny tent. "I miss papa, too," he said.

"Oui," was all she managed in return.

Wed, 15 May 2013 04:50:18 GMT

Who: Sera Abbiati & Lin Alesi
What: An interception
Where: Turnberry → dive
When: Backdated, pre-13^th Fairy Plot
Warnings/Rating: Some swears.

Since the demise of his iPod that fateful night with Star Fox and Captain Falcon in Denim Disaster Alley, Lin had decided that maybe he didn’t need to listen to music every moment of every day, since he, you know, couldn’t. He could like, listen to the birds and shit as he walked from his car into work or whatever. So, he didn’t put songs on his phone like a normal 21^st century, first-world 20-something. He just kept his ears open. It was proving an interesting experiment, anyway. There were fewer birds than he imagined, but a lot more eavesdropping. People said crazy-ass shit when they thought no one else was listening. It was kind of great.

That was how he heard her—the girl. He’d been shouldering inside, hefting a bag of cat food (and a sweater, since his t-shirt was thin, watery yellow and v-necked and all) because he was a good person even when conversations ended in death threats, when the name ‘Daniel Webster,’ smooth as parmesan and gelato (loljk), stopped him cold, left Adidas Superstar II (black with cool, multi-colored squares around the sole) hovering an inch above the gray-veined marble flooring. He blinked. Lin turned and saw a girl with close-cropped dark hair speaking very fervently and earnestly to the unmoved, hard-boiled man off to the side near the elevator. She was young, that much he could tell, with that doe-eyed look about her that indicated that she was either extremely lost in crazy-ass America or she was pretending to be.

The man was shaking his head when Lin approached cautiously from behind. His mind, of course, heard the Italian curve to the words, the syrupy, warm cradling of the vowels, and leapt immediately to the dead, Italian ex-girlfriend. Carlita.—Not that he thought this girl was her. She was alive for one. (Spoiler alert!) And even though stranger things had happened in Lin’s life (like, he had another entity in his head and went through some kind of physics-defying door into an alternate universe and shit in his free time, and also there was that one time Daniel had drunkenly grabbed his elbow), he also studied the science of decomposition, and this girl was nothing but chemical synthesis. Hm.

“You might want to start crying. That’s the only way I ever get in.” The boy in the t-shirt and fitted slacks raised his eyebrows at the girl and smiled at her. His own Italian wasn’t perfect, grammatically speaking, but his accent was slight enough that—like with his German—he’d been mistaken as a native with some kind of region-specific lilt more often than he’d been pegged as American—well, until he started in with the internet jargon, loudly. That usually gave it away. “I’m not joking.”

Finding Daniel Webster had been easy. It was not that Sera had searched very long or very hard, but she had hired someone to do this for her instead. It had taken hardly any time, and she had arrived in Las Vegas looking for some kind of tether, and glad to have come to the place that was indicated on the odd package she had received. The key and device had come as a surprise, but she did not yet fear surprises, so long as they did not come at the altar or bearing coffins in their pockets like candies. She had read everything for days back, and then she had continued to read before that as well. Daniel W. She did not believe in coincidences, and this may have been something born in Amalfi, where life was different and simple, despite the influx of tourists. Then the call had come that Daniel was in Las Vegas, and she had gone.

She rented a room in a hotel, with the hope that she would not be there long. It was another indication of a girl raised in another place, one not like this anonymous land in the desert, where people did not look into each other's eyes unless they were required to, but Sebastian made that a short lived haven. She thought she could see the man who had left her among tulle and taffeta, and she thought she would be fine with this; she was not fine. Sebastian, once the calming promise of a future, made her feel so much now, and feeling things brought back the past. Brought back the sounds from Carlita's bedroom that fateful morning, and the things she tried to forget.

She did wish to find this other man, this writer who her sister had loved. It was a small thing, one of no importance, but he was the only tether to the memory of brown hair and brown eyes, and he carried within him her sister's laughter and sea-glare bright smiles that Sera only remembered in dreams. She had begun to write of it on the trip over. She had a hundred pages, and all of them nothing. Words that ran together into feelings, and feelings that ran back into words. She tried to write it all in Inglese, but she missed words here, and she missed words there.

And this was the problem she was having with the man at the desk. She knew Daniel lived high up in this place. Why could she not see him? Were doors not opened for visiting here during the midday hours? She was trying to find the words for this in Inglese when she heard the voice.

She turned, delighted, even if the young man's Italian felt like a tourist's tongue. "Why will he not allow me to enter?" she asked, the denim of her European skinny jeans rubbing together at her shin, where she crossed them. Her shirt was cap sleeves and the declaration that she was a Scrittore on the front, a quill beneath the red words. "He looks like he has tasted something bitter," she added, pulling a face to make her point, her pert little nose wrinkling up with the gesture. "I can weep," she assured him; she could. It would be a very good first chapter.

(The girl entered the towering apartment complex, and she immediately fell into tears..)

She looked down at the marble floor, trying to figure out if it would very much injure her knees.

Several dots appeared then, bright halos, like palinopsia afterimages, burnt into the retinas and tiring the cone cells. Lin’s mind went to work connecting them as the girl spoke with animation. Her shirt claimed ‘author’ in red, punctuated with a quill, because, ostensibly, the word wasn’t enough. (That could be a reason for seeking Daniel out. A fan?) He’d witnessed her struggling to find words in English. (This was likely her first visit to the US; affective filler hypothesis in action, only in regards to output?) She was obviously enthused to be speaking to someone who understood her. (She hadn’t been here long; her accent sounded... southern maybe?) She knew where Daniel lived, but couldn’t get up to see him and didn’t seem able to convince the blank-faced man behind the desk to allow her entry, just as she didn’t seem to understand the reasons behind the denial. (If Daniel was as careful (read: secretive as fuck) with his whereabouts as he seemed, then the probability of the girl simply being a hardcore fan of his wonderful, excellent, asshole-y writing and a master Google detective were slim. She also couldn’t have known the dude very well, or she would have either been allowed up or not have come to visit him at all because, face it, the man could be ...uh, a little abrasive.)

“Tragically, I think he was born that way. Came out of the womb unsweetened, I guess,” the boy said of the poor sour-faced man, at whom he flashed his most charming smile. He received in return only a dull bit of staring that simultaneously warned and promised Lin that had the man not been bound behind a desk, he would have had his hands around the skinny kid’s throat in half the time it took to blink. Hilar. “I think he likes me.”

Lin shifted the bag of cat food from his chest to under his right arm. The assumptions—the connections his overbusy mind made as it searched for answers and tried to come up with a larger picture, he knew, were nothing more than semi-but-mostly-not-educated guesses. He couldn’t let any of them act as a stand-in for the potential truth. The only person who could tell him anything was the cute Italian girl and her triangular arch eyebrows. The boy didn’t extend his hand for a shake, but he did deflect the wattage of his winsome grin from Sourpuss Hates-His-Job to the girl in the cigarette jeans.

“My name is Lin.” He gestured to himself with his left hand. “Please don’t actually weep. He won’t believe it if you start sobbing suddenly. You’ll need to leave and come back to be convincing.” Lin tipped his head to the side, dark eyes alive with curiosity. Who was she? “You’re looking for Daniel?”

The name was uttered stripped of its stilted American accent and Lin quirked a brow.

Lin was molto Americano. It was not his looks, which were boyish tan and bronze, with messy hair that could fit in any street in Europe. It was not this. It was something about the way he addressed her, the way he spewed witticisms like they were air. It was like the person - Sunny - who had drawn the sunburst sky on the tablet and then claimed to not enjoy the process. This was also Americano to her, creation for having created, and not for the process of creating. And witticism, for the sake of witticism, was one in the same. But she wrote. She wrote in the same way she breathed, and she had to appreciate someone who could have thought flash bright behind his eyes, while he managed this twist of sarcasm that still sounded sweet. She laughed behind her hands, which ruined any chance of falling prostrate with grief. The chapter had narrowed and her options had lessened. The door above was still denied her, and she paused and looked around the space.

"I'm not looking. That implies I have lost him," she said, her strangely dark smile teasing. She was a pixie cut, harmlessness, and yet there was something dark behind the blue eyes. Something much more serious than the skinny jeans would imply.

The doorman rolled his eyes, unimpressed with all the Italian, and Sera leaned on his counter a moment later. The drama was almost visible behind her eyes as she crafted her tale of woe, and the old, old ancient stack of Carlita's letters was brandished at the doorman with a flourish of wrist. When the doorman barked at them both to Leave! she fell into a sulk, and then a pout, and then a wibble of lip. See, she listened well. This was her version of coming back.

"Signore, I've come to this country looking for this man. You must let me in. I have letters from his long deceased sister, and I bring them for him," she explained, intentionally making her English worse, her accent thicker. "It was her dying wish that he read them in my presence." Which was, perhaps, a weak addition, made only when she realized he might try to send the letters up without her. The letters disappeared into her bag a moment later, and she sighed. "Please, can you only tell him I am here?" she added, sounding much more educated in the mother-tongue of Las Vegas.

The doorman continued, impassively refusing to do anything, which was hardly a continuation of anything. She huffed, and she pulled her phone out of her pocket. Swipe, swipe, and she flashed the screen at him. "That's what you look like," she said very dire, very serious.

The corner of the doorman's mouth twitched.

The girl offered no name, only teased, and Lin said nothing. He smiled, though he disagreed that ‘looking for’ implied a loss of. No. It only asked for a desire to discover or uncover. After all, if something was hidden, it wasn’t necessarily lost, and if someone was searching after said hidden thing, they were looking for it without loss being involved at all—at least necessarily. Semantics and the study of meaning were dear to the boy’s over-academic heart and he happily would’ve argued his point, the denotation being quite clear, however muddy the connotation was taken to be. But, it seemed to him, this was a moment begging for observation, not participation, and the semantics would wait.

The brandished letters were a curious addition, appearing as they did, like so many 2-D rabbits from an Italian magician’s hat. There were so many of them too, yellow and brittle in their decidedly traditional envelopes. (Boring.) No drawings or hearts or silly notes adorned these letters. (Boringer.) The handwriting Lin recognized, only it stood soldier-straight, rather than staggering to the side. Damn. The fucking letters were old, weren’t they?

The boy paid no heed to the mention of a dead sister. That was a question Italian Jean Seberg could answer later. Lin was at least 88% certain that Daniel was an only child (he certainly acted like one, the fucking baby) and he was good at guessing these things. And anyway, the letters were from Daniel to—wait. No—he saw it. The name. The address.

Carlita Abbi—something. It was there. Written in hard black, lines pressed into paper with intent. Obvious intent. But, the letters were stashed back in the cool mod hip Italian bag before Lin’s eyes, slow to remember they could translate aforementioned lines and accompanying circles on the parchment into like, actual words, rather than just identify handwriting, could make out the rest. So, if the boy then appeared a little shell shocked, a little paler and wide-eyed, it was because he was shell shocked, paler and wide-eyed. Carlita. The dead ex-girlfriend. He hadn’t expected to see her again. (Well, her name, but. You know.)

Right. Yes. Fuck. Okay. That fucking settled that.

Lin remained quiet as the girl snapped a photo of the stolid doorman, whose only wish was to go home and drink a fucking beer. He relocated his weight on his feet restlessly and almost wished he’d brought headphones for his fucking phone. Some Bikini Kill would have saved him from this impending mess.

“Don’t remind him.” That was all he said. It was meant in reference to the doorman and his puckered face, but it doubled perfectly, didn’t it? Lin juggled the cat kibble back into his left arm.

Sera was oblivious to all of the boy's musings. She had no notion that he was questioning semantics, or that he had any personal interest in the old letters that were safely in her bag once more. She knew only that he had a gatto, and that he knew Daniel's name. But he wasn't helping her, and neither was the tired doorman, and she was at the end of a very long week that had only resulted in Sebastian. She didn't like life's lessons, and she never wanted to be anywhere so much as she wanted to be home just then. This place seemed unkind to her, just as Sebastian had been unkind on the journals, acting as if she had done something wrong, as if she had come here to inconvenience his life. It all seemed very unfair then.

She sagged.

It was visible. A droop of shoulders, a loss of posture as she tucked her cellphone away. She shouldn't have come to this place, and the expression on her face said as much. She didn't cry, but her lip trembled, and she looked like the dam might burst at any moment.

Don't remind him.

She turned to the young man with the cat food. "Do you mean this man, or Daniel?" she asked, motioning to the doorman. The nuance wasn't lost on her, and there was a crisp, celery-snap to her voice. She was a string pulled tight, over-tightened on the neck of the violin.

She was shrinking, Lin observed, growing smaller out of resignation or defeat or something, her spine the spine of a bowed S in a humanist, serifed hand, a Roman type by Nicolas Jenson someone had distorted and folded in on itself. It heralded a storm. She was going to cry. The boy felt the impending Adriatic Sea of tears, aquamarine as hell, as a physical thing, a tightness in his own throat. No, no, no, no. He couldn’t handle someone else crying—not now, not this little girl, so small and brittle, hard beams of the Italian sun pressed to glass, too fragile. His own sudden intake of breath was audible and suddenly, he smiled. Whatever he was thinking or feeling, he decided, didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they get out of the stupid foyer/lobby/snobby-ass room as quickly as they could.

Fresh air, he decided for no reason at all, would help. That was probably the first and only time he’d ever fucking come to that conclusion.

Lin didn’t answer. Crypticism didn’t suit him anyway. He was no fucking oracle. He watched her lower lip wibble, dangerous and threatening, a hole in the dike, and caught the spring green edge in her voice as she faced him, and he just nodded his head toward the doorman uselessly. The honeyed vowels that poured so sickly sweet from her mouth a moment before, two ristretto shots of espresso, caramel colored with strata of crema, turned curt in a torsion of an arricciare.

“I have an idea.” Lin twisted away from the girl and deposited the bag on the desk, pushing it against the doorman’s chest inadvertently. He spoke quickly, lightly, like before, like it was all a joke to him. “This is for the asshole with the dead sister, dude from the Great Triumvirate. He was on a stamp. Well, the shit’s for his cat, but give it to him. He might be hungry. Thanks, bro.”

On any other day, he might have tried to sweet talk the doorman into brofisting him or chest bumping maybe, but his priorities had shifted and the holes in the dike needed attention. No more time to confuse Daniel Websters for fun. He didn’t wait for the unpleasant man to react in any way. Lin started to drift back toward the exit, his magpie eyes back on the Italian girl and her European jeans so very, very lightly. There was no pressure applied.

“Want to get coffee with me? Maybe his shift will end and you can try again.” Lin, now relieved of the burden of being a good Samaritan for QP, put his hands in his pockets. He lifted his shoulders. “Daniel isn’t going anywhere, I promise.”

That was as much as he could offer at the moment. He hoped it was enough.

She considered.

She was a maelstrom of feelings, and they all flitted across her dark blue eyes. Resignation, sadness, anger, and something dark and churning. Small she might be, but there was something in the gaze she gave the doorman that spoke of old wounds and things never healed. It was a chilling look, something incongruous to the pixie hair and the skinny jeans. She held the gaze long enough to make the man squirm, because she'd never learned the fine art of looking away. No one had ever taught her not to stare, and no one had ever taught her that some people feared eye contact as much as they feared anything.

And then, once the man shrank, she turned and looked at Lin once more, eyes still threatening to overflow.

She considered.

And then she nodded. She sniffled, and she hoisted her bag higher on her shoulder, and she walked toward the door with her head held high. She was tired of being buffeted by the winds. She was tired of uomini with their infuriating ways. Perhaps she shouldn't have come when she was so raw from seeing Sebastian. Perhaps she should have returned home and forgotten her intention to find the man Carlita had loved. Her fairy tale was crumbling, and the last stone was threatening to fall. Dreams always looked so much smaller when they were in pieces on the ground.

In the end curiosity won out. "Why isn't he going anywhere?" she asked, before she even managed to push the door open ahead of him. "Who are you? How do you know him? Or do you only know his gatto?" She turned outside the lobby, and she faced him. A pause, and then she thrust out an ink-finger stained hand. "Mi chiamo Sera."

“Because he’s basically Simeon Stylites atop his pillar, but without the humility and refusal to see women. And you know, not in Syria.” It was as easy an explanation as any, Lin felt, machine-gun English or no. Daniel was a hermit. Simeon was a hermit (well, “ascetic saint,” but, really, hermit). And they were both dudes with infuriating uomini ways. It worked. The boy shrugged in his too-thin shirt painted in that delicate watercolor yellow and shifted the sweater that was hooked over his shoulder. The answer as to who he was was a little slower in coming (he had an inkling as to the answer she wanted, but did he want to give it?), and by then, the girl had her hand held out to him though they had yet to exit the building. Lin could almost feel the doorman’s eyes as they rested on the back of his head, heavy and judging. He smiled, took the bird bones in his own hand and shook lightly, his palm dry and cool against hers. “I’m still Lin.”

There was a smart-ass smile tagging along behind the words, one that was all too comfortable on the boy’s lips, and Lin sidestepped the girl to make for the door. He opened it and stepped back out into the Vegas sunshine, radioactive and noxious, but certainly brilliant. Square, flat black sunglasses were pulled from Lin’s back pocket and settled on his face. He paused to wait for Sera—her name short, but pretty like the girl herself.

“We were originally... uh—” He searched for the word in Italian, groped the backlog and margins of his mind for it, but came up empty-handed. Whatever. “Penpals. Or close enough. And the cat’s name is Quintus Pedius. He’s about the size of my hand and is deaf. We were never penpals. QP isn’t yet literate, but I assume once he is, he’ll join in.”

It was an unsatisfactory answer and Lin knew it. He smiled, hoping the thunder peal of tears was rolling back, or at least dimming to brontide rumblings, rather than the crack and snap from earlier. It wasn’t as if he could tell this girl who’d only just told him her name—‘oh yeah, totally met him on these weird forum things some preternatural, abandoned hotel moderates. And by the way, we go through the doors in the hotel to become different people. It’s basically like meeting in a chatroom, right?’ It was better to stick with obtusion, he thought, at least for now. At least until pressed.

“Why?”

She didn't know Simeon Stylites. She'd been raised Catholic, but it was just a technicality while her parents lived, and it wasn't even that once they died. The only religion Angelo had believed in was Carlita, and she had been martyred on that altar in his name. The Fioris, once Angelo left her at their doorstep, had gone to services on Sundays, but Sera had always preferred to wander the choir loft, to listen to the bells, to sit in the confessional lost in dark thoughts and memories of sins heard through thin villa walls. Her expression was all confusion. Her English was very good, thanks to Sebastian and her years with him, but she didn't understand, and it was evident in the way her pert nose crinkled, the way her head tipped further in question.

"Lin, still," she said, repeating his name. "I don't know who Simeon Stylites is."

She gave him a disbelieving look when he said Daniel was his penpal. She didn't believe it, but she didn't come close to imagining the truth. In her mind, Daniel had been as enamored of her sister as her sister had been of Daniel. She remembered Carlita writing in secret, beneath blankets, late into the night. She remembered curling up with her sister, feet tucked together for warmth, and listening as Carlita read Daniel's letters. It had been the kind of love affair she always aspired to, and she was too strong in her convictions to think Daniel had any relationship with this dark boy that was so different than her sister. "Where are you going to find opposable thumbs for the cat?" she asked, deadpan.

And it was an unsatisfactory answer. It spoke of secrets, and Sera knew more about secrets than most.

She was fully outside by the time she responded to his why? He hadn't given her a truthful answer. Why should she give him a truthful answer in return? She walked to the sidewalk, where she expected a cab would pass, or where he could point her in the direction of a coffee shop. "Should I be honest with you, even though you weren't honest with me?" she asked him. There was no sarcasm in her tone, no anger in her voice, but there was something there that was reminiscent of that string pulled too tight.

Lin owned a cello. He knew the sound of tension. He had wound gut strings around pegs, pulled up from the tailpiece, and he knew that high-pitched hum, the warning behind it. She was smaller—wound catgut on a violin, perhaps. Still, he had to move quickly, whatever the string instrument comparison. The boy continued strolling toward his car just a few spots away in the eerie ghost town of a parking lot (seriously, if a tumbleweed went on by, he wouldn’t have been at all surprised). The car was an old thing, actual molded metal, no fiberglass in sight. It was a squat Volvo station wagon with dorky, four-eyes looking headlights, born in the early ‘80s and painted a red-brown, the color of warm chocolate cake just out of the oven, except not as delicious and a little redder. Its backend, though unseen from the angle at which it was presently being approached, was wallpapered with, you guessed it, geeky-ass bumper stickers. Everyone in Vegas with the luck to actually catch up to the lead-footed Lin was privy to the fact that the 28-year-old’s other ride was, apparently, a Firebolt, TARDIS, chocobo, Firefly-class, time machine, and a unicorn—whether all at once or one at a time was left up to the imagination of the tailgater.

He didn’t know the word ‘opposable’ in Italian, but context informed him of the translation. He grinned at the short-haired girl over the roof of the car.

“The store. Pet section.”

After unlocking the Captain (as it was so christened by Lin’s father, nicknamed Adama by himself), Lin ducked inside, into the groove in the driver’s seat that fit his body, leaned over the console (full of glitter and, yes, Euros), and opened the passenger side door for Sera. He waited for her to join him. Keys were jammed, with fondness, into the ignition and immediately Chuck Berry roared to life over the tinny, thirty-year-old speakers, yelling something about a stubborn seatbelt. Lin dialed the volume back and glanced at his passenger. He turned in his seat, peering over his sunglasses. His dark eyes met hers, the blue there nothing like the blue of Daniel’s, but not in a bad way.

“Look, it’s complicated. It’s nothing, but it’s complicated. It doesn’t really matter. I’m helping him with the cat because he’s useless and used the word ‘Google.’ Tell what you think you’re walking into here, because I have a strong feeling Daniel is different than you might -- remember? Think? Whatever. Different than the person who wrote those letters, at least. Or so I’d imagine. Maybe he really is Ötzi. Idfk, tbh.”

She'd grown up in a place where feet were more practical than cars. But, even if she'd been familiar with many makes and models, this one would have caught her attention. She walked around the back, catching a glimpse of the stickers and then peering at him around the side. "I bet you like Eleven," she said, a reference to the TARDIS sticker. A moment later, she was at the passenger's side door, tugging it open and giving him a look across the station wagon's interior.

"They don't sell those at the pet store," she told him unnecessarily of opposable thumbs.

Until her introduction to the internet two years earlier, Sera had a decided dearth of sarcasm in her life. Her adoptive parents were old and quiet, grandparents doting on the child they never had. They were never sarcastic. They were, in a word, accomodating. And the village was many things, but not sarcastic. Or perhaps sarcasm just tasted difference on that azure coast, where she knew the people employing it, and where she knew how hard she was being poked before replying. But, mostly, her knowledge of sarcasm came from Tumblr, from forums, from gifs and memes. She gave him a look, and she settled herself in the passenger's seat.

She didn't recognize Chuck Berry as anything but old, and she looked at the radio and almost requested something familiar to balance out all the unfamiliar things this day was dragging along in its wake. Almost.

"How do you know what I'm expecting?" she asked him. She didn't like the secrets, the very obvious attempt to get her to spill information, when he had none to share. He knew about the letters; or she thought he did. She assumed he knew about her sister. And he knew Daniel. All of that gave him more than she had, and she didn't like it, not this week when Sebastian had already disquieted her, and when she'd had to pick up and move unexpectedly.

It was intentional when she slipped out of the familiar and comfortable Italian. It was her version of tossing off a blanket, standing, and preparing for war beside an unmade bed. "If you have something to say, please say it. If not, then can we change the subject?" she asked. It was polite, the request, even if it wasn't truly a request. She wasn't going to spill her guts if he didn't, and she had been raised with enough money not to back down easily.

Lin was careful with his words. It didn’t often come across that way, and he fumbled them on occasion (...a lot), but they each carried some meaning with them, some care, some reference, however tangential, and none of them were on accident. Except for the ones after which he clapped a hand over his mouth, but he tried to keep that kind of shit to a minimum.—Here, now, he sat impassive in the driver’s seat, conscious of the girl next to him, the way her hands cut through the (pleasantly scented) air (thanks, little tree-thing!), the way her eyes settled on him and dug.

He had qualified his ‘expectation’ with ‘I have a strong feeling’ for the express purpose of not needing to answer the ‘how do you know what I’-da-da-da-da-da question. When it bubbled forth from Sera’s lips, Lin looked at it. He did. And then he waved it away. He twisted in his seat, hooked his phone up to the little cassette-adapter, selected some JLo (circa 1999), turned up the volume, gripped the gear stick, and reversed out of the spot, fully trusting his passenger to buckle up.

“What I’m saying is that I don’t know what to say, because I don’t know what you expect. But if you’re coming here with love letters or whatever from—whatever, I assume you have a mental image of someone who no longer exists. I never knew Daniel before and I hardly know him now, but I’ve seen glimpses and I get the feeling he’s changed a lot over the years.” Lin spoke rapidly, chirruping over the music, hardly processing the switch to English. Challenges he understood, but right now he was distracted. He glanced sideways at Sera as they bumbled through the parking lot. “For example, he no longer travels to foreign lands and woos women. At least as far as I can tell. I don’t honestly know. He mostly drinks, I think.”

JLo continued explaining what life would be like if they had her love and Lin shook his head. Blue light slanted through the cracked windows. He made a right turn out of Turnberry, just past the heavy gates, and pressed the pedal to the floor. Allons-y.

The music was still a little too old for Sera. In 1999, Carlita had still been alive, and Sera hadn't spoken any English. JLo was not a part of her life then, and while she had tutors and a schoolgirl's English after Angelo left, she hadn't really learned anything true about America until Sebastian had come to Amalfi. The thought made her look out the window as Turnberry's parking lot puttered by, and she exhaled a very loud, very obvious breath. This must be what fish out water felt like, she thought dramatically, only without the dying. Feeling like she was dying on the inside, she knew by now, would not really kill her. She'd survived that particular wound too many times to believe in the melodrama of dying for love in any capacity, even though she understood the desire with perfect clarity.

She said nothing while he spoke. She watched Turnberry's gates open, and she watched Turnberry's gates close.

"I don't expect anything from this. I only wanted to see him, but if you think it is a bad idea, I will consider not seeing him," she said easily, finally looking at him with haunted blue eyes. How did she explain that she didn't care what Daniel was now? It was only the link that mattered to her. Whatever Daniel Webster was, he was the last thing she had of her sister. Be he good, or be he bad, he was a string that led back to something she'd lost to dirt and decay and mottled bruises.

She looked out the window again; it most certainly wasn't a promise not to see Daniel. It was only a promise to think. But she'd wondered so long about why he hadn't come to the funeral, why he'd never come back to Amalfi. How could he write those letters and never come back? Maybe she'd scribble later, jot it down and try to make sense of it on paper. She had no illusions about being a great author, but that didn't dim her delight in writing. It would help her decide in a way the boy behind the wheel of this strange car could not.

His presence seemed to be almost entirely artificial, and she didn't know what to make of that. The car, the stickers, the language. She wondered what bled beneath that surface, but she didn't scratch.

“What I think is that Daniel is not about to let you in, despite your impressive set of Bambi-eyes—Ariel eyes, maybe since they’re blue?—and regardless of the letters—maybe especially because of those letters. It’s not really a question of consideration of ‘should’ or ‘should not,’ since that shit is usually bullshit anyway. I do plenty of shit people tell me not to do.” Lin licked his lips and shook his head as they turned left at the next light. JLo continued to serenade them at top-notch volume. She danced in her white cargo pants in a hallway.

Lin drove. His dark eyes were watchful and his mind ran. JLo gave way to Marina and the Diamonds. ‘Oh No!’ He had a small, out-of-the-way place in mind (not strictly a coffee shop, but), halfway between his place and Turnberry (which were actually grossly near to each other), so he wasn’t bothering to think about where he was going. No. He was considering what kind of mess he was getting himself into and he was thinking back on what he’d heard Sera say. She mentioned she’d come to this country to deliver the letters that rode shotgun in her bag. Lin didn’t doubt her there, for whatever reason. She wanted to see Daniel and she had traveled this far to do it. That was something. His saying ‘I don’t think you should do that’ wasn’t going to cut it, and he didn’t want it to, anyway. He didn’t know why. It would be boring?

He considered the letters. He considered the fact that she had them. He squinted at the rushing pavement. It stood to reason she was either a friend of this Carlita’s or a relative. Friends didn’t tend to make these journeys.

“Carlita.” The boy sucked on his bottom lip. His voice was quiet despite the music. He didn’t make eye contact. “Sister?”

Sera turned those blue eyes on him in confusion, and that confusion had nothing whatsoever to do with Bambi or any other Disney animal doomed to a parentless existence. What he was saying didn't make much sense to her. She didn't disbelieve him, precisely, but she was raised in a very different kind of place. She didn't understand Daniel's apparent refusal to see her; she'd never done anything to him, so why would he refuse? The mention of the letters made her eyes narrow slightly. This young man knew too much, and she knew nothing in return. She was accustomed to a life of powerlessness, and she was starting to learn that it fit poorly upon her shoulders.

Marina and the Diamonds was better, familiar, and she breathed the music in, a landhold amidst a sea of nothing. What would she do if Lin was right? She wasn't sure she could handle the rejection without throwing a tantrum worthy of her sister. Sera looked nothing like Carla. Carla was tall and dark and beautiful. She could laugh with a man and make her laughter sound like a secret. She could wind men around her finger, and with her it wasn't a cliche. Sera was nothing like that, and she'd never felt like she belonged with Carlita and Angelo, where their love for each other crowded the room and barely left space for her. But she could throw a tantrum just as well as her sister could; she'd learned that after Sebastian, after yards of white and a lace veil.

"Pieces of knowledge are not understanding," she told him, slipping back to the Italian and looking out the window once more.

“No. But they’re more than nothing,” was all Lin said as the Captain’s wheels filed on sandy pavement, tar on tar. He took the cryptic answer as an unadmitted yes, sister. The car slowed, easing into the wide, sun-baked parking lot of a low, coral-roofed strip mall. Chains lined the place. Save for the harshness of the sun, they could have been anywhere in God’s America. Minivans dotted the parking spaces, lane after gas-guzzling lane, varied colors of robin’s eggs. The boy ignored them all and sought out a spot with the well-trained eagle-eyes of an American driver. He didn’t bother trying to get near any door or anything. He didn’t mind walking a gray strip of asphalt, no matter how hard the sun beat down.

Marina was cut off and the engine died. The windows were left open. Lin looked at Sera through black lenses, eyebrows riding the frames low. He offered her a half-smile, a little thing that flashed, and he studied her blue eyes. It wasn’t his intention to make her feel powerless. Not at all. He wondered what he could give her.

“We’re friends. Daniel and I.” It was a partial lie, spoken earnestly. Lin was used to bending words and he could do it without batting an eyelash, not always, but usually. He certainly didn’t believe anything he was saying, but he said it all anyway. The words seemed pieces to the sort of solid answer the girl was looking for, something more palatable and satisfying than penpals or allusions, a bit of footing. He didn’t tack on a joke, he didn’t pause, nor was there a ‘as much as one can be friends with someone like him lol.’ Nope. It was all trimmed down, nice and neat, fat-free, English syllables snapping on teeth. Lin opened his door, careful not to hit the ugly white Hyundai in the neighboring spot. Heat poured in and out. Italian followed. “When I told him I thought he was okay—as a human being, he got angry and told me there was something wrong with me. So there’s a beautiful fucking snapshot for you.”

It wasn’t overly optimistic. In fact, it was hardly optimistic at all, as far as these things went, but the boy figured, half-heartedly, he might as well tell her the -- cloaked -- truth. Lin undid his seatbelt, locked the doors, and got out of the car in a short stretch of legs.

"You wouldn't be a very good writer. You don't know how to tell a story," she told him once he he assured her that pieces of knowledge were better than nothing. "Pieces of knowledge can make things very bad," she said, and the understanding of someone who had listened from behind closed doors for the entirety of her young life whispered between the syllables and vowels.

She didn't care where he parked. She was accustomed to walking, and the need to drive everywhere here was one of the things she liked least. When he cut off the engine, she opened the door, but she didn't exit the car immediately. When she looked back at him, he was looking at her, and she met that half-smile with something that wasn't quite a smile. She could be a blank, at times, but even then it was a facade. The maelstrom that roiled beneath the surface was always visible in her eyes. She blinked. She waited.

But she believed him when he said that he and Daniel were friends; she didn't think it was more than that. She believed the lie, but not because he was a good liar; because she didn't conceive of an alternative. His story about Daniel's anger, though, that felt true. And the beautiful fucking snapshot didn't surprise her. She could easily imagine a gothic and dramatic story, one where Daniel knew who had killed Carlita, and who had never recovered from her death. She had been young, but she hadn't been blind. She'd heard the fight, and she'd heard her sister die, and she knew Daniel was the cause. Maybe Daniel knew too.

She made a thoughtful sound. This time she held her tongue. She exited the car, and she closed the door behind her with quietly thoughtful sedateness.

What was more American than a motherfucking parking lot? Gray-faded asphalt, stretching as far as the eye could see, circling desolate smears of ‘80s art deco strip malls in suburban purgatory and chain grocers around the country. The shit was impervious, suffocating, polluting the earth with gasoline, with chemicals that ran off into water, which was about as American as shit got. Americana apple pies had nothing on parking lots and baseball was stupid. Lin liked parking lots, actually. They offered a nice segue from interior to interior, he thought, an isthmus of open space to sing or tease or ride on the backs of carts after running twenty or so feet. They were good for rollerblading too, seamed with lines of sun-hot tar or not. And as they left the Captain behind, the boy hummed to himself (Why do you build me up, buttercup, baby, just to let me down?). He busied himself with his keys and he adjusted his sunglasses and he walked like someone who was singing to themselves and maybe dribbling an invisible basketball, in time to a tempo only they were privy to. The only thing more American than a motherfucking parking lot was probably Lin.

He wasn’t the red-blooded, rednecked, shoot ‘em up, tear-the-legs-off-animals-and-eat-them-raw type of American, nor wholly enmeshed in the ballooned stereotype of greedy fast food guzzlers, leaking gas as they filled gallons, their cars just as insatiable as they, just as unabashedly entitled. No. He was the epitome of a 21st century kid kind of American, raised on a steady diet of TV, video games, and easy access. He was shiny, instant gratification, and yes, he appeared surface-skating. But veneers were veneers. If there wasn’t something beyond the surface, there would be no surface in the first place. It was just that he never could manage thinly veiled inner turmoil. It looked bad on him, it looked fake. His eyes never stormed like Sera’s seemed to, roiling silently, not even in those days he’d been in the white ward off the Strip in that paper-sheeted bed. There they were simply blank. Not to mention, perhaps most importantly, he was loud. It didn’t matter how smart he was, how many books he read or the number of high philosophical concepts he discussed at length, he was always reduced to the kid in the cartoon t-shirt, cracking jokes and blowing pink, snapping bubbles with his fifth piece of Bazooka gum. He’d never heard anyone die, after all.

The boy said nothing further, not until they were inside the cool, low-ceilinged joint. It wasn’t hip. It was a dive, sticky seats, pearly Formica tables, table jukeboxes, laminated menus done up in that mustard yellow so favored by places like this. Lin didn’t even know the name of the place. All he knew was that they had good milkshakes. Their coffee was probably instant.

A waiter, a teenage boy of the disinterested emo make, lank-limbed and lank-haired, led them to a booth and left to fetch them two piss yellow bubble-plastic glasses of room temperature tap water. Lin really knew how to show a girl a good time.

“I’m more whizzywig. I understand that can be flaw, especially when it comes to writing,” he said finally, his voice loud, American, over the hum of the 40-year-old solid steel air conditioner that pumped the dim room full of cool, cloying air. ‘Whizzywig’ being a reference, of course, to WYSIWYG programs like Dreamweaver. Duh. He fingered the menu, the press of plastic booth against his neck very soothing, actually. It was almost cold enough in here to rival Daniel’s Dom. Lin had left his sweater in the car. Goddamnit. He took off his sunglasses. “But mostly it’s that I see life as more convoluted than most people, I think, because I’m a dumbass, and I can’t make a clean story of any goddamn thing. Everything’s always stuck to something else.”

He shrugged and looked at the menu, holding his tongue on Daniel until he got a fucking milkshake in him.

Sera had no opinion about parking lots. Like many things here, she found them to be lacking. Grey, grey and more grey, and the only purpose behind any of it was to park big vehicles that were only necessary because the people here refused to touch one another. In Amalfi, the houses were built on an incline, built tight and cramped with narrow roads that no car could traverse. Even the manor that her adoptive parents had called home, open and cool tiles and cream stone, was sandwiched beside small, tall buildings that reached for the sky. The parking lot was American, yes, but she didn't find it beautiful or impressive. It was an example of what she disliked about life here.

That wasn't to say that she hated everything. Some things, she loved. Just not the parking lot, and not the cars.

She didn't understand Lin. There, staring at him, with him staring back, she didn't understand. She was too serious, but she'd always been. Even when she was young, before her parents had died, she had been the wide-eyed girl that clung to her father's leg and stared at the world in happy silence. Then, older, she'd been the quiet wallflower that wanted her older brother to look at her the way he looked at her sister just once. She didn't understand Lin, but she could appreciate that he was dynamic in a way she wasn't.

She followed where he led, and she looked at the yellow glasses and the warm water. She wondered if there was a shortage of ice. She leaned forward, and she peered into the cup, looking for an icecube in the most obvious of ways. There was no icecube. She sighed, and she sat back against the plastic and crossed her legs on the seat.

She touched the menu, but she didn't lift it. Her fingers traced the plastic. "Doesn't it get tiring?" she asked, not addressing the whizzywig, not even understanding the reference beyond the obvious, that he was a whirl. If he was things that stuck, she was things that never did; she'd learned that the hard way.

When the waiter returned, she turned those blue eyes on him. "Is there ice? Are you sure there isn't a shortage? Molto bene. I would like a soda with ice."

She turned to look at Lin.

Lin laughed. The waiter did not. He reacted the way of the doorman—with a burning inner ire that radiated outward toward the two small people boothed by the window who carried their secrets in vastly different ways. It was hilarious. The dark-haired boy lifted his menu to cover his face as he suppressed his mirth in the face of that righteous, computer-paled adolescent irritation, until he was fit enough to sit up and smile like a real adult who didn’t laugh at slow, cool jabs. The waiter didn’t even ask what kind of soda the foreign girl with the short hair and the buttery accent wanted and he didn’t wait for Lin. He simply left to get the asked for ice and cola, muttering as he went, the chains that dangled from his jeans making a music of their own.

“Tiring?” With his composure regained (you know, as much as it ever was), Lin had to rewind a bit. Was it tiring to be someone who saw the threads that webbed from every little thing like so many fingers—to feel the compulsion to follow said threads, which, of course, led to more threads, nodes connected to nodes, chemical synapses neuron to neuron, on and on, forever until you died? Yes. Kinda. But it was all he knew. There was no mental blade sharp enough to cut that habit from the boy. He saw the big picture, in pieces, and he assembled it as he went. His brain whirred fast enough, generally, to keep up. It was only explaining it that was difficult. (And, like, not being anxious about useless things, but whatever.) “Nah. It’s hard to be exhausted by something for which one has no comparison.”

The glass of cola, which, by the looks of it, was more ice than anything else, was slid in front of Sera wordlessly. Lin bit his lips and looked up at the waiter. He ordered a chocolate milkshake, no food, no mention of Kelis, and the kid left. Lin leaned on his elbows on the tabletop, tracing designs with the sweat from his water. He tapped out a message to no one with yellow-painted nails. -- .- -.-- -.. .- -.-- STOP. --. .- -.-- / --. .- -.-- / --. .- -.--

“I can try to help you get in,” he said finally, boyish smile waning, and eyes bright, but serious. He didn’t have the milkshake yet, but the boys, they were coming to the yard, regardless. Lin lifted his shoulders. “But I make no promises. He’s an unpredictable fucker and a terrible ass cardinal-priest. And if he’s sober, I might just run for it.”

Sera smiled a pixie smile at the annoyed waiter. She didn't squirm, and she didn't look abashed. If she felt any discomfort in his ire, it wasn't anywhere to be seen. It could be assumed that particular trait came with a decade in a very wealthy family, servants and people who ducked their heads respectfully when she entered a room, but the trait was much, much older than that. It was born at the side of a pine coffin, her fingers splinter-dug as she gripped the pale wood and refused to let go. It was glares at priests and attendants, and it was a snarl for her brother. It was a feral child, grown to a hurt woman with a pixie cut and slim jeans. She was comfortable with it, even if no one else was. She'd striven to hide it from Sebastian, all smiles and sweetness. And that was honest, too, but it wasn't everything, it wasn't all of her.

"I'm slow," she said once the waiter was gone, once Lin had explained that it wasn't tiring or exhausting. "I would be exhausted," she admitted with a hint of admiration. "Carlita was energy," she admitted, fondness drenching the words like a heavy spring rain.

She watched his fingers, then, distracted by the very deliberate tapping. She took a sip of her soda, and then she emulated the tapping, perfect spacing and timing and lengths of taps.

"Cardinal-priest?" she asked, and her expression said she knew it was expected, asking. She tapped out the rhythm again, knowing there was an explanation to that as well, even if she didn't quite understand what it was. "Do you say and do confusing things on purpose?" she asked in Italian, assuming the answer before she even finished asking the question.

She sipped her soda daintily, old Aubrey Hepburn grace in the twirl of her straw. "He was young," she said of Carlita's Daniel. "Younger than you. Maybe younger than me. He was amazing. He was passionate, and he was charming, and Carlita said he was dangerous, but she said it with a secret smile." She paused, sipped her soda, and slipped into Italian when she continued. "We didn't have money, and I don't think she'd ever met anyone like him. Even the tourists weren't like he was, she said. I remember him having the bluest eyes I had ever seen, and I didn't know hair could be that black and curly. He was like the film stars everyone talked about. It went on for years, and Carlita spent every winter waiting for him to return, but she never let him know that she waited. She was good at being coy."

She sent his message back to him, and Lin grinned openly, a reincarnation of Morse’s electromagnetic smile that day in 1844 when he first tapped out Annie’s ‘What hath God wrought?’ and the query reached the B & O Railroad Depot in Baltimore, scratched onto paper. He was obviously pleased with the quickness with which Sera memorized and transmitted. There was no doubt that it was a simple echo. She hadn’t reacted to the taps that formed letters that made words that created a message in a way that bespoke of understanding. But that didn’t diminish the act itself.

“I think you have energy,” said the boy. .. / -.. .. -.. / .. - / .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- .-. / - .... . / -. --- --- -.- .. ., said the boy’s spindled fingers, the index and middle of his left hand working in quick, practiced tandem, the kind that was more instinct than conscious effort. He smiled again, listening even as he tap-tap-tapped on the composite table top, each sound marking a second, a grain of sand through the sieve, the way it had so many years ago in the gray rooms of high school calculus. Each counted out a lash of pointed, purposeful irritation aimed at the classmates who didn’t like the know-it-all boy in the Buster Keaton shirts, just loud enough to distract their already wandering minds from polar equations of conics and Kepler’s Laws. r_min = p / 1 +tap-tap-tap

She asked if he said and did confusing things on purpose. Lin thought about it.

“Sometimes.” He mentioned Joachim knowing fully well that Sera wouldn’t know what he meant, but it wasn’t so much about intentionally misleading her or anyone else as it was that Lin was caught up in those stuck threads, a spider in its own web, it was self-referential, it was reflexive, it was how his mind worked—indeed, it was usually an audible reflection of some line of thought in his head that no one else followed but him. His words were deliberate, yes, but they could be aimed inwardly, as well as outwardly. He certainly sometimes meant to introduce confusion, and such instances were hard to tell apart from the others. As it was, in this case, Lin was only talking to Lin.

But the conversation moved forward and the boy didn’t bother trying to explain. His hands stilled as Sera sipped at her soda and spoke of Carlita and of Daniel, both painted in that rosy, sun-warmed tint of nostalgia, of cobbled Italian streets that rose crookedly from dirty, and of sighs for those days, longing apparent. He shifted to rest his chin on his palm and his eyes held on the girl across from him with the direct, unadulterated attention one could imagine being the same make as that with which he approached his scholarly undertakings, the same kind of attention that let someone learn Morse code and its attending history after an afternoon in the dusty, molding stacks of a small town library, pen tip nicking hardcovers in time.

He stored the bits of knowledge away in his mind, the snippets of memory, along with Sera’s tone of voice and what she did with her hands, how she sipped from her straw. He continued painting his picture. He frowned, a slip of his smile. He knew how the story ended—not through which machinations, but how. Badly. Like a Russian film, sadness in bleak proletariat black-and-white, charcoal shadows and all. Youth and beauty taken too soon, the throat of life ruthlessly slit, bleeding rose petals and blood. A man in his cups, blue eyes dimmed, dashed by loss. The end. What hath God wrought?

The ex-Communist state was atheist.

Lin opened his mouth to speak, but the milkshake came then.

She didn't know what to make of his pleasure, and she didn't know how to counter his assertion that she had energy. Perhaps she did, but it was nothing like his brand of energy. It was something quiet, an undercurrent, as opposed to a power source that blazed bright. She didn't have the kind of insecurity required her to want to change that, to want to change herself. She had things she'd wanted, things that had never been hers, but she didn't want to blaze. Maybe it was too outside the lines, the crayons squiggling past borders erected in childhood. Maybe, like she said, she simply thought it exhausting. Either way, the word - energy - had different meanings for the two of them, and she didn't strive to change that. It could be that way. It didn't hurt her.

"Sometimes, like the tapping I don't understand?" she asked, glancing toward his fingers. Maybe if she'd had a father that lived out her childhood, she would understand the morse code for what it was. But she hadn't, and she didn't, and it was an inside joke she wasn't privy to, a secret she wasn't in on. She didn't like it, and her blue eyes said as much, no words required. But she smiled at him, even then, and she shook her head. "Do girls think you're wonderful?" she asked. It wasn't that she didn't think he was herself. It was that she imagined a landscape where he wrapped girls around his fingers. Yes, girls. Not her, but other girls.

The frown came right before the milkshake, and she finished her soda and fished money from her pocket. Coins clattered on the table, tangled up with dollars. She was paying for more than the drink, maybe. She was paying for the silence, perhaps. For whatever had made him frown and find himself wordless, which she already knew was unlike him.

"I'll walk," she said, and like the command for ice, it wasn't a question. The plastic covering of the booth squeaked as she moved, and she dipped her fingers into her glass and liberated an ice cube on her tongue. "You don't need to tell him I'm here. If it's that bad, I'll stay away. I only thought he might want-" That he might want what? How could she even explain that connection? She couldn't, and she very starkly felt that it wouldn't live up to whatever the boy at the table had with long-buried sister's lover. "Grazie."

Lin hadn’t intended the tapping as an alienating activity. It was something to do, a semi-constructive(?) way to channel his nervous energy that was better than unfolding and refolding napkins for thirty minutes. God, but, he seemed to be awfully good at making people feel out of place. He tried to think of a way to say sorry that didn’t involve more tapping, but then it was Italian again, and she was smiling at him, the snap in coast-blue eyes easing, the winds dying down, if only just. The seas calmed. She shook her head. Lin made a sound of disbelief at her question.

“Girls, boys, everyone,” he answered with conviction and a crooked cut of a grin that, hopefully, let on that he was joking. Not about the genders so much as the fact that he didn’t really think anyone thought he was particularly wonderful once they got past a certain point of knowing him. Then he just became annoying.

And then the milkshake came, and the frown, and all of it.

Lin didn’t protest. His mouth was open, eyes torn between the dreary waiter carrying the dessert and the girl exiting the booth with obvious haste, but he didn’t protest. The coins fell loudly on the Formica. The bills fluttered. They said something in Morse code he couldn’t make out, but he knew it was dismissive. Lin snapped his jaw shut and took the nostalgic glass from the boy, the ‘50s mold of the thing fitting firmly in his palm. He stuck a long-necked spoon into the shake.

“You should tell him—see him,” said Lin loudly as the girl turned for the door. He was careful not to pick at whatever wound he’d opened, careful to look away from the half-uttered admission. She had come so far. And whatever it was that burned navy in her eyes, whatever pain, whatever the fuck it was, if it could be helped by seeing Daniel, then... she should, he thought. He put the wide straw lined in red in the milkshake.

He peered at Sera, at her wet fingers as they carried an ice cube to her mouth. An ice shortage. He blinked and almost smiled, but by then she was gone.

The Year of the Snake Indeed.

Tue, 14 May 2013 05:51:23 GMT

Who: Chay and Frodo
What: Fitting a key in a lock
When: May Day.
Warnings: None.

With the last full moon of spring
June comes with soft quiet embraces
year to roam, whisper of home
we are making our final cases.

With Cael busy playing with a band tonight, it seemed like a good idea.

It's quiet here. It all has finally clicked together. The binding of the journal, the two faced snake in the amulet, the drawings at Atlatl Rock and the continued patterned curved snake but instead of sideways this one is moving upwards, the coiled snake found in the concentric rings, the ladder to the upper platform. It all made more sense now. Meso-american history speaks of the snakes with reverence. I thought perhaps it was fear of them originally, back then rattlesnake bites were not so easy to recover from. But how they had been tied to being an entrance to another land? That had always escaped my attention until now, now it was so much more understandable than I ever dreamed was possible. I touch the lintel of the third floor doorway at the hotel finally discovering where it was carved into the wood.

I can't understand why my hand is shaking, as I pull the amulet out of our pouch.
I felt like I had when I discovered my first set of mastodon molars. Destiny in the palm of my hand.

Two worlds are collectively holding it's breath waiting for me to insert the small amulet through the slot of a door. Most certainly Frodo is doing so. Do we dare open the door? And what if it comes out in the side of cliff in Moria, or in the ash pits of Mordor? With the snake, even the Lonely Mountain had distinct possibilities. Do other doors on this level lead elsewhere or back to Bag End? A home I never thought I would see again, Sam was the caretaker of it when I left, overseeing the growing of Byway trees that were leveled. Will it open at Lorien or behind Ithilien's waterfalls? It's tied to me and my black snake-skin journal.. Which with my story could be almost anywhere in Middle Earth. We paced in front of The Hotel door for several minutes and finally made up our collective minds.

We were here for a reason; as everything has a purpose.

The amulet slid into the slot as though it was made for it and the door opened with a soft click. We were going in with eyes wide open, the step in side the door and it almost felt as though the shift was instantaneous. Instinctively I ducked thinking that the ceiling was much too low and heard a soft chuckle in the back of my head. Sorry, thought for certain that I would hit it. I smiled at Chetan's words. It was a Hobbit home, for sure, but it was not quite home. The halls and windows were rounded features we loved so much, but the place was nearly void of furniture. Is is always this empty? Even when I was here in during the forced shift it was just an empty home.

I shook my head and made my way towards the front door. It and the steps to the entrance was familiar, but it was definitely not Bag End. "Well Mr. Chetan, you are in for a treat since this is The Shire, at least. Another door to open and go out into the well groomed.." I opened the door and stopped in surprise. "..well not so well groomed after all, I must say. I know where we are at least, It is my purchased second home of Crickhollow. Over there is the Old Forest, where my Lady Goldberry dwells. And that is the path that leads down to Buckland. The grass looks like it has had at least a full years growth since Merry and Pippin lived here after I left." The nice part about being at Crickhollow; as I swung the door behind me and pulled it tightly closed; was the seclusion. But it was also a pitfall at times like this. My first stop would have to be at BrandyHall in order to borrow a pony from my Uncle Rory, since there was no way I was going to walk the full two day journey between here and Bag End to see Sam and Rosie and all their children.

My eyes scanned the horizon when the bird of prey caught my attention, it was hovering over the Old Forest momentarily before diving down through the trees and I felt my 'companion' give a sigh of relief and settled more comfortably back in my head. "hard to give up the reins, isn't it?" I chuckled and started padding down the path toward the Brandywine River. "it was when the last time I was here we were fighting mountain lions and building those stables, you seemed to have missed out on all the fun."

It felt good to be in my own bare feet at last.

...

"Why Mister Frodo Baggins.. What brings you out to the old place? They not keeping you well fed enough up there at Bag End?" Aunt Mene greeted me with her usual "auntie' fervor with a large hug. Surprisingly not with 'it's been five or fifty years since we saw you here last'.. just the comfortable 'come and have something to eat with the family'. She gave me a second hug when I accepted her invite to an after-lunch-but-not-quite-dinner meal do you always eat this much? "No Auntie, the only one filling my plate up there is myself, so I am always as hungry as only a Brandybuck can be." There, that was a safe answer, as it was nearly the truth. "I was actually out visiting the old house by the Wall."

"Hmm. That old place, your mum and da loved to stay there when you were a wee lad, not surprising that you find it comfortable still. Do you know Rory has been considering putting it up for sale again, but if you are interested in it, I am sure he will sell it to you for Prim's sake. If you promise him more of the Old Winyards I daresay you can have it for an outright steal of a price."

"You get me more Old Winyards and I say you can have her all to your own for the signing of the paperwork young Frodo, my lad." Uncle Rory wrapped an arm around my Auntie and gave her a large squeeze before putting out a hand to shake mine. "Tis good to see you lad. We have missed you around here, well at least when it is mushrooming season. Did not think you would stay gone for long. I can sell you the old house for the price of Primula and Drogo's inheritance. You being the only lad willing to stay out there close to the Old Forest. It does seem as though no one else would want to buy it otherwise, no how."

"Not Merry or Pippin?"

"Lad, they are too young to be holding property."

True there. If they were still the same as what they were when they were in their tweens, then it was no wonder the place looked like it did. The old place could use some fixing up to get it back to the place that it was when I lived there the night before we fled The Shire.

"All right, Uncle Rory, I never knew what I was going to spend mum and da's inheritance on after Unkle Bilbo adopted me anyways, might as well have the money go back into the family."

"And that house go to someone who loves it."

"Well first thing, before I go back to Bag End, I will hire someone to clean up the land around her, she needs that much at least. Leave the inside work to me. I can get her settled back into a friendlier looking home."

"Very right and proper. But come in, can not say I am surprised to see you. Rumor had it from one of the children that you were wandering on the road. We can not keep you away from Menegilda's dinner table can we? We can do the paperwork while she is dishing you up some stew and cheesy bread. And gather up some of the lads to witness the signing of the documents."

"No sir, you can not. Nothing would keep me away from Aunt Mene's cooking."

...

The meal was most excellent and with only a quarter of the inhabitants of Buckland in the BrandyHall this day eating at the hall, it was easy enough to carry on a conversation with Uncle Rory. As the afternoon meal continued on a confusion arose in my mind. None of them acted surprised to see me. Did none notice that I had left Middle Earth at the Grey Havens? Was I that much of a recluse before, that actually leaving The Shire permanently was not even missed? Or talked about even as a rumor? The meal finally ended when Uncle Rory and seven of my second cousins, once removed on my mothers side, and I went into his study to sign the papers handing the deed of Crickhollow, once again back into my possession. The drafting of the documents took some time and we finally gotten around to signing our names and dating the document.

"Why Frodo Baggins, you have gotten as white as a linen sheet a hangin' in the sun, which for you to become paler than you already are, is quite a feat. Are you feeling peaked?"

I clenched the quill tighter and gave a short shake of my head, and hurriedly scratched in the dates and then watched as my seven cousins signed the bill of sale all nice and legal in the required red ink.. Oh, we had gotten back to The Shire alright.. We had gone back in time to before the start of the quest. Working with Chay's hands for so long I failed to realize that I had all ten fingers again.

Which meant..

"F-Fine.. I am just fine.. Do you mind if I borrow a pony, Uncle Rory? I am afraid I can not stay for the night."

"Well you do not look so fine, you look like you have seen a ghost. But if you are wanting to ride, I will not deny you that. It looks like you could use some air."

"Just a bit. I forgot something that was on my list of errands tomorrow and just now remembered it. Maybe cleaning the old place will have to wait, since I will need to head back to Hobbiton tonight."

"The inside perhaps. In the morning I will send a couple of the younger lads up there to clip and clean the yard for you."

"Thank You, Uncle Rory. It will make a nice little hole to hide away in."

"You mean hide from Lobelia and Lotho in?"

The queasy feeling in my stomach returned and I nodded since I didn't trust myself to speak right away. Lotho, alive. So many things are backwards and the clock is in reverse. He seemed to understand 'that' look on my face and laughed. "Yeah, your Cousin Bilbo would often hide from their visits too."

Oh, Uncle Rory!
You have no idea!

...

With shaking fingers I saddled and put on the tack, trusting to the surer fingers of my companion, to get it right. When we finally had the blanket and small saddle set firmly in place I swung up onto the pony and pointed it's nose toward Hobbiton. So what is so wrong, Frodo? Ah I was waiting for that question from Chetan. I pushed a hand into my pocket and afraid I would feel the chain and the weight on the end of it, just like it was when Gandalf and Bilbo entrusted me with it before. Just the thought that it might be there already ate at me. I clicked my tongue at the pony to get him moving. If it were not in my pocket, it would be one place back at Bag End locked away in the chest. Who now holds the Ring if it is not found to be still locked in there?

"Seems we have a problem, Chetan, having to do with the time frame. It's SR1417. That's before I left on my quest. No wonder, no one wasn't surprised that I was at Buckland." Chay didn't respond for a moment lost in thought and it worried me. Have we changed anything that wasn't done before?

"No."

And even more confidently I replied again. "No. I bought the house next to the Old Forest, as a staging place. I just thought I was rebuying it, after thinking that Meriadoc sold it back to The Master of the Hall. It.. Even by mistake it.. is.. in the right time frame as my purchase."

If I, Sam, Aragorn, and Legolas are not the only ones sent back from to the past.
Who knows what someone from your land might do that could change our future?