InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "ow! my stomach lining!"

Dick Grayson (gothamboy) wrote in utr_logs,
@ 2008-04-18 01:13:00

Entry tags:

carrie kelley, dick grayson

Who: Dick and Carrie
What: Discovery of some difficult truths
Warnings: Maybe language.

Nightwing had been done hurting people for the night. A small portion of the black market had been shut down (admittedly very small, but gun sales were down and that was the important thing) and at least three muggers had learned the error of their ways, in addition to learning about how hard it is to be thrown at a wall.

All in all, it had been a very rewarding evening.

And then Nightwing came back, checked the mail, and instantly decided that it was time to go back out on the prowl. After all, there were probably still some criminal types... criminaling. There always were. In a city of however many million, he had to assume that someone, somewhere was breaking a law. Unless he was very, very unlucky.

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girlwonder
2008-04-18 12:02 pm UTC (link)

There were two different little voices inside Carrie, both warring for dominance. Half of her needed to know for sure. The other half wanted to avoid, deny, and forget about all of it. Because if there was no evidence, it could be easily swept away and not made real. Of course, Dick wouldn't be okay with that sort of thing. "I-" Full and coherent sentences were still a little difficult to come by. Between the ring and this, Carrie was still reeling.

In the end, she knew she needed to face it. Even though she didn't want to. She had to be a big girl and deal with it somehow. Even if that meant... well, Carrie wasn't sure what it meant but she figured that if they really were married things were going to be bad for a while. She took a very deep breath and fought the panic. Crossing her arms over her chest, trying to keep her emotions in (and failing), she said, "Go check."

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gothamboy
2008-04-19 02:36 am UTC (link)

"All right." Dick was almost relieved to leave the room. He wasn't exactly sure what he was feeling, and even less what he was supposed to feel. It was probably a joke anyway. They got drunk and the barkeeper did some "With this onion ring I thee wed" joke, and Barry and Iris decided to play a little joke with it. Stupid old people.

And the reason it was so confusing and yet so vaguely familiar, like a dream he couldn't remember, was because... hmm. Power of suggestion? That didn't feel right in his mind, but what did he know?

The computer was blinking at him. With a deep breath, he clicked the mouse to find the results. One marriage certificate on a date when they were in Hawaii. All right, but Richard and Caroline were common enough names, and Grayson and Kelley weren't unheard of, and with six billion people on Earth there had to be at least one other Dick and Carrie that were together, and might have gone to Hawaii.

...That was stretching, even for him. Besides, the birth dates matched, and the witnesses were people named Barry and Iris. "Shit."

Just then, Carrie's much lauded voice feature decided that Dick had been staring at the screen too long and read the contents aloud. Very loud. Burt Ward's voice said, "This certifies that Richard John Grayson and Caroline Keene Kelley were joined together in marriage on the eighteenth of February in the Year of Our Lord two-thousand and eight. Pastor Michael Andrews officiating, witnesses Barry Dibny, Iris Dibny." And because Carrie was smart enough to be too smart for her own good, Burt added, "Holy matrimony, Batman!"

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girlwonder
2008-04-19 04:20 am UTC (link)

Carrie had followed him out slowly, keeping some distance between the two of them. She stood behind Dick in the hallway and stopped moving forward once he sat down at the computer. With her back against the wall, she waited. When she heard the voice, her stomach dropped. "Oh shit," she whispered, bending over slightly and burying her face in her hands. She didn't know what she was going to do. She didn't know how to handle this.

After reminding herself of the importance of breathing, she took a step forward. She could see the screen over his shoulder. It looked official. And real. Painfully real. "Let me... I want to be sure." Carrie's voice was quiet and distant as she leaned forward and took the computer for herself. Her hands flew across the keyboard. She checked once, twice, three times. Each revealed what she already knew to be true. This wasn't a hack, it wasn't an elaborate hoax. They were really married.

Carrie exhaled and set the computer aside. She didn't know what to say so she kept her mouth shut.

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gothamboy
2008-04-19 04:58 am UTC (link)

"It's..." What could he say? He knew it wasn't a mistake. He couldn't imagine there were too many Caroline Keene Kelleys to begin with, let alone ones willing to admit to it in less strenuous circumstances than torture. "It's going to be okay," he said finally. He had no doubt that something would eventually happen that would give them a hint what to do next, it was just getting to that point.

"Look, you don't have to watch it, but... I have to know. I need to know what happened. So I'm going to go check out that DVD, and maybe it'll answer some of our questions." Such as how Dick got Carrie to marry him in the first place. He was pretty certain he wouldn't have liquored her up specifically to do so. He hoped.

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girlwonder
2008-04-19 05:29 am UTC (link)

Carrie couldn't quite look him in the eye when he tried to reassure her. Or maybe he was just reassuring himself. Or maybe the statement was aimed at the both of them. She didn't respond to the comment negatively or positively. Because she wasn't exactly sure that things were going to be okay after this.

"Right." Again, her tone was dull. Like she was in shock or simply holding in any emotion. She nodded. Might as well get hit with everything at once.

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gothamboy
2008-04-19 10:10 am UTC (link)

It seemed weird to be watching this in his Nightwing uniform, but he'd done far stranger things than this in the past, although at the moment he was having a hard time coming up with an example. "Let me... yeah." He retrieved the disc and turned on the television in the living room.

Beauty and the Beast was in there. Ordinarily he would have made a comment, then she would have made a different comment, and they would have flirted. It was a difficult time indeed when they didn't seize upon any opportunity to seduce one another. As Dick pressed play, he hoped that whatever the results were, he would not be the horrific monster he suspected would prey upon Carrie's inhibitions being lowered.

"What are you doing?"

"That couple we talked to are chattering about marriage, I wanted to eavesdrop. Now shush."

"Iris, you rascal."

"Shush! How's this thing work--oh, there." The camera wobbled and focused eventually on Dick and Carrie, who were sitting together and didn't seem to be that drunk.

Carrie was speaking. "--a big deal. It's for life. Or it's supposed to be. And I never saw a happy couple when I was a kid. My folks were just together, it wasn't like they were super in love or happy."

"Oh, the poor dear."

"Iris, I can't hear."

"Oh, rascal, am I?"

Carrie finished speaking just after Barry and Iris did: "I don't really think it's possible."

Dick looked at her for a time, then said, "People don't stay happy forever. They don't stay happy forever. Like Barry said. They work at it."

"Hear that? Boy has taste. Knows when to respect his elders."

"--there are some people who stay together because, well, the happy and the not-happy average out close enough to even that it's more of a hassle not to be together. But then there are others who fall in love, who find just the right person and they grow in just the right ways and they both care enough to work to have as good a relationship as they can possibly have."

The camera moved as Iris let out an 'awwww.'

Dick took Carrie's hand in his and took a deep breath. "If you really, sincerely believe that if you stay with me, then one day you will end up hating me or being miserable, tell me now. Break up with me. I'd rather be a friend with a broken heart than a lover with two."

The camera went to black at this point, then came back on facing a scene clearly taking place a few minutes later. "I'm taking a risk that you might break my heart into a million pieces, and I can look into your eyes every morning for the rest of our lives and think, wow, that was worth it." Dick's voice was crisp, but the camera was facing into Barry's chest. It switched off again, cutting another indeterminate amount of time. "--you really love me," said Carrie's voice over Barry muttering "I think I got it--wait." And the camera went black again.

"Ha! There it is!" Iris' voice was as triumphant as Carrie's was loving. Carrie said, "I love you," and the camera did its best to focus on the young lovers as she said, "Marry me."

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girlwonder
2008-04-20 05:13 pm UTC (link)

Up until that last bit, Carrie had been watching the television screen closely. She was watching like she'd been trained to watch for evidence, with a sharp eye for detail. They'd both been drunk. But not so much so that they were stumbling. Their words had been clear.

Carrie had been looking for blame. And she hadn't been able to find any. Dick hadn't been a slime. If he had, it would have made things much easier.

When she heard her voice telling him to marry her, she let out a soft noise. It might have been a laugh or a simple, quiet exhalation. She'd asked him. And he'd obviously said yes. And they'd gotten married. And it was Carrie's fault. Which meant she didn't really have a right to yell at Dick and freak out and leave. No matter how tempting.

"I-" Carrie brought a hand to her face, covering her eyes. "Shit," she said. "Shit." She should have been happy. Or, at the very least, she probably shouldn't have been freaking out in front of Dick. But she couldn't help herself. She felt a little sick.

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gothamboy
2008-04-21 01:58 am UTC (link)

Dick stopped the video. He let out a few swears in every language he knew, feeling that English wasn't near enough for this kind of thing. It was almost funny, in a sick way. Carrie was driving herself crazy (as was he, to be quite honest), furious at Dick for getting her hammered then popping the question, and it turned out that she was the one who'd done it.

Funny in a very sick way.

Unable to think of anything to say, he pressed play again, and the film jumped very suddenly to a small chapel wherein Dick and Carrie were exchanging vows. He paused it again. Damn. She didn't look... unhappy, though. Or even that drunk, come to that.

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girlwonder
2008-04-21 02:04 am UTC (link)

Carrie had been sitting on the couch throughout the video. There'd been plenty of room between herself and Dick. When he pressed play again and the scene on the screen changed, she rose very suddenly in a jerky motion. "Jesus Christ," she mumbled quietly.

The longer it went on, the more she freaked out. "I can't-" She didn't think she could watch it. She wasn't sure she could even stay here any longer. Her stomach was in a huge tight knot.

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gothamboy
2008-04-21 02:20 am UTC (link)

"I guess we'll have to get a divorce," said Dick. His voice was somewhat flat, but he was making the effort to sound as if this were simply the logical solution instead of something he found appalling. "Y--we're clearly not ready for marriage and we were..." No one in the world would believe they were drunk enough at that point in the video to completely bypass whatever instincts they may have had. "We weren't prepared," he finished lamely.

He turned off the DVD player, then the TV, and then for good measure, unplugged them both. He walked across the room and sat down at Burt. "Look up Hawaii annulment laws." Dick doubted they would qualify. Months had passed, they were cohabitating before the marriage, they had been together for a year or so, and they hadn't discovered anything disturbing about the other between now and then.

Well, except for the fact that Dick had been thinking about proposing, but that didn't count for a married couple.

"Gosh golly, Nightwing, you don't qualify!"

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girlwonder
2008-04-21 02:28 am UTC (link)

Carrie looked up at the ceiling and ran her hands through her hair. She had been married at eighteen and was headed for a divorce at nineteen. It wasn't fair, it felt entirely wrong.

"Dick..." Carrie kept her gaze away from him. She looked instead up at the ceiling, then down at the floor, then at the dead television. "I think I need to go." She needed to get her head straight and she couldn't do that here. She probably wouldn't be able to really think anything over for a few days.

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gothamboy
2008-04-21 02:45 am UTC (link)

Dick sighed. He'd felt it coming, he knew her too well not to expect her to leave. "Look, we're... married." The word felt foreign in his mouth. "And I understand that you're afraid of that because of... whatever reason you have. You don't believe in it, it's dumb, it doesn't matter. But the fact is that you don't have anything to be afraid of. We've been married for the past couple of months, and we have lived exactly as we did before. Sure, we didn't know it, but do you think that would have changed anything?"

He stood up and placed his hand on Carrie's shoulder. "If you don't want to be married to me, then we'll go down to City Hall first thing tomorrow morning and you won't be. If you don't ever want to be married to me, I won't pressure you. That's a promise. But I'm afraid that if you run away now, right now... you might not come back."

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girlwonder
2008-04-21 02:52 am UTC (link)

He knew her well. Too well, maybe. "I just need to figure out what to do," she said. Her voice was very soft. "I just need-" the end of the sentence hung lamely in the air. She needed air. Space. To get away for a little while.

She wanted nothing else than to go back a few minutes and unlearn this news. But that wasn't possible. Dick had a point. Marriage wasn't too terrible when you didn't know about it. But now that it was out in the open, the weight of it was resting heavily on her shoulders. "I was eighteen," she blurted. "You're my first real boyfriend."

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gothamboy
2008-04-21 03:58 am UTC (link)

Dick had married his first real girlfriend (Liu didn't count on the grounds of being an evil sociopathic bitch, as it happened) when he was twenty, but that was one of the differences between him and Carrie. She was afraid of being that much to someone, and he wanted nothing more.

"Did you assume we were going to break up at some point? That you'd get tired of me, or I of you, and we'd go our separate ways?" They'd only had one or two real fights in their relationship, the kind that meant more than Dick torturing Carrie when she was hung over or Carrie pasting his modeling photos all over everything he owned. They... they worked. "I don't think you did, otherwise--not to put too fine a point on it--you wouldn't have proposed."

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