Laurel Lance (i_crylikeabird) wrote in we_coexist, @ 2011-02-04 22:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | dinah lance, harry dresden |
Chivalry is NOT Dead (Log, complete)
Takes place immediately after this
Once they'd decided to go together, Dinah led Harry downstairs to the garage she'd discovered earlier that day. The bike in there needed a lot of work, but it would have to do for now. She had already started listing all the parts she needed to track down and all the improvements she wanted to make. She missed her hand-built bike from home, but the prospect of building a new bike was a little exciting.
Dinah threw open the door to the garage and looked over at Harry.
"Hope you don't have a fear of motorcycles," she said with a grin.
----
Harry grinned when he saw the bike. He could clearly remember riding along with Murphy, and jousting down a military-grade Jeep, with his staff and some added kinetic force. "Nope," he said. "Motorcycles are good. Motorcycles are very good." Since the machines were far more mechanical than electrical, they could (generally) last longer against him as well.
Dinah's bike didn't have the side-holster that Murphy's had, so when Harry mounted up behind her, his left arm encircled her waist while the right cling to the staff. He wasn't about to leave it behind
----
“You have good taste then,” Dinah told him. “This one needs some work, but it should get us there.” A grin spread across her face as she fired up the bike.
She glanced down as Harry’s arm slid around her waist. The touch startled her for just a minute, but she brushed that aside.
“Hang on tight,” she called as the bike took off.
Thankfully, the City obliged for once with the moving streets and Dinah found the bank quickly. Minutes later, they pulled up in front of it. Dinah climbed off the bike and took stock of the bank. The glass doors were broken, but there was no alarm.
“They must have taken out the alarm after they broke in,” she murmured, and then turned to Harry. “Any spells up your sleeve that can give us an idea of what we’re facing in there?”
----
"Three guys inside," Harry said, without missing a beat. "Probably some heavy equipment, but not too much."
He nodded slightly towards a parked car across the street. There was a single figure inside, trying to look bored and failing. When Harry's eyes fell on him, the figure lifted something towards it's mouth. Probably a phone or a radio. It didn't take much more than a slight effort of will and a whispered "Hexus" for Harry to foul up whatever it was. And probably screw up the car's electrical system. When it came to mucking up technology, he had something of a gift.
It was a reasonably sized car, enough for three men and a driver, with a decent trunk. Some scraping along the paint and asphalt were probably the drills they were planning to use to open the vault. Which would also have allowed them to break the glass doors - those were conventionally bulletproof for just this reason.
"At least the man outside can't tell them we're here now," he said. "Nothing else seems supernaturally spooky."
----
Dinah nodded her appreciation of both Harry's assessment and whatever hocus-pocus he'd done to take out the radio that the driver would have used to alert the men inside.
"Nice. I should take you along to all the bank robberies I stop."
She gingerly stepped over the broken glass in the door frame and waited for Harry to follow.
"Just stay behind me, and if I tell you to cover your ears-you have about two seconds to do so. Trust me when I say that you don't want to ignore that order," she told him.
Dinah heard footsteps behind them and whirled around. Of course the man waiting in the getaway car would try to stop them. A glint of metal in his hand indicated that he most likely had a gun or some other sort of weapon.
----
“Harry, cover your ears NOW,” Dinah said. She waited two seconds and then opened her mouth and let loose a scream. Her vocal chords vibrated their appreciation of the exercise and the man dropped to his knees just as he reached the sidewalk.
----
Harry did just as he was told, ducking his head and clapping his hands over his ears. The staff clattered to the ground where he'd dropped it, a mere second before a cry ripped through the air. And he was grateful for the warning.
He had to be careful with what he let go. The First Law of Magic was not to kill with magic. A rule Harry had broken at the age of sixteen, defending his life against his old mentor. Nightmares still haunted him. So there were tools enough to use against straights without killing them.
Like the cord Harry kept in his pocket. When the scream had passed, Harry's right hand dipped into the pocket, whipping out the cord in a draw he'd practiced thousands of times. It was the draw that made the end lash out, snapping around the young man's wrists as he raised them to his own ears. The added effort of will, with a soft cry of "Capturus!" made it tighten, the cord entire coiling around those wrists, tightly, and then rising, forcing the man to stand, his arms held high over his head, as the magic dragged him upward.
After that, Harry sighed. "Hell's bells," he muttered. "That was my only string. Wanna knock him out or something, so I can get it back?"
----
“No problem, just cover your ears again,” Dinah murmured, and then waited for Harry to cover his ears once more.
One short scream caused the man’s eyes to fall closed. Dinah rushed over to him and dragged him off the curb and safely out of the street.
----
Harry had to admit, that voice-thing was pretty handy. He couldn't have shut someone down with such fine precision as that. Harry retrieved the cord and shoved it back into his pocket for later. "Damn useful, that."
----
Dinah grinned at Harry. “I was about to say the same thing about that cord-thing.” She turned back to the bank. “And now we go in,” she said in a quiet voice, again stepping over the shattered door frame.
Of course, the getaway driver was usually the least skilled, so the easy victory over the first of the robbers wasn’t enough for Dinah to let her guard down. She moved forward through the hallway one slow, silent step at a time.
Until she heard a gunshot. There must have been a guard on duty. Dinah took off, sure that Harry would be at her heels. If at all possible, she had to hope that the first shot had missed and she could make it in time to save the guard.
----
Typically, as an investigator, Harry was around after crimes had been committed. While things were happening, they were usually aimed at him, and thus magical in nature. It was a new experience to be following someone else on their job. Even if it was just the moonlighting position.
At the sound of the gunshot, Harry lifted his left hand, shield at the ready. He was about to tell Dinah to stay still, but she was off and running before he could get the words out. He took off after her, glad again that he'd been running for exercise the last decade; his height and the length of his legs already gave him an advantage, and Harry ran daily so that when something was chasing him and he was running for his life, that he would live. It was just good practice.
----
Fortunately, Dinah skidded into the room just in time. There was a bank robber with a gun facing off with the security guard who was, thankfully, still alive. The robber lifted his gun yet again, but turned in surprise at Dinah’s entrance. She took advantage of that moment of surprise and dove at the man, fists flying.
He was disabled in a matter of seconds. From the corner of her eye, Dinah saw a flash of silver and a second figure approaching her. She whirled, prepared to defend herself.
----
At it turned out, Harry was only a matter of seconds behind Dinah. And while the feisty blonde was reminding him of Murphy, she wasn't Murphy -- and so when he saw the knife-wielding robber come at her, he reacted as only Harry Dresden could.
With the momentum he had from the run, Harry threw himself in front of her, at the man. His shield was up, and deflected the blade, but unfortunately, the crash threw the shield's range off and the knife skittered into a graze across Harry's chest before getting caught on the leather of his duster. Harry didn't pay much attention to the sear of pain, opting instead to punch the man across the face. He was angry enough that the man had attacked Dinah - a woman - with a knife to release the kinetic energy stored in just one of his rings. Releasing all of them would have knocked the man's head through the next three walls, but just one gave the punch something more along the strength of a kick from a horse.
There was one left. Harry didn't bother with a spell. He drew the .44 Magnum from his pocket and aimed it at the man. "Damnit," he muttered. "This was the only clean shirt I have!"
----
“Harry!” Dinah shouted as she saw the crimson stain spread across his shirt. But he didn’t stop moving, and took out the bank robber with the knife efficiently. Dinah stepped over to him as he pulled out the gun.
The third bank robber held up his hands in surrender.
“Easy there, buddy. I’m not the one who attacked your girlfriend or anyone else for that matter. Don’t shoot me.”
Dinah placed a warning hand on Harry’s arm, just in case he was the type to act even in the face of a surrender. She didn’t think so, but he was still a largely unknown quantity. With her free hand, she pulled out a pair of handcuffs from her jacket.
“I’ll cuff him,” she told Harry and then stepped cautiously toward the criminal, directing a menacing glare at him. “Unless you want my friend to shoot you, I’d recommend that you put your hands up.”
Dinah caught the mischievous glint in the bank robber’s eyes and was ready for him when he leapt to his feet and a little to the side so she was squarely between Harry and the robber. The man reached out to grab her, presumably to take her hostage and Dinah used the momentum against him, flipping him flat on his back and slapping the cuffs on before he could react.
“Really?” she asked, anger in her tone. “And for the record, he’s not my boyfriend.” She glanced over at Harry with a small grin. “Guess the criminals here aren’t any smarter than the ones at home. That’s… reassuring.”
It was only after the initial rush of adrenaline started to wear off that Dinah's eyes were drawn to the spreading stain on Harry's shirt. She rushed forward to him.
"Are you okay?"
----
Harry wasn't going to shoot when the man offered is surrender, even knowing it wasn't sincere. He'd heard those kinds of surrender's before. The guy was going to fight back in a second, but between him and Dinah, he was pretty sure they had it covered. When Dinah touched his arm, he gave her a slight nod, but didn't lower the gun.
He swore under his breath when the man reacted, knowing he couldn't fire without risk of hitting Dinah, but the woman had the matter well in hand. "Lucky you," he said. "Where I'm from, they're too damn smart for anyone's good." Or too damn stupid to live. But he didn't say that. He shoved the gun back in his pocket, and then looked at his chest.
----
“Well, I should clarify. The run of the mill criminals who might rob a bank aren’t so intelligent. But the supervillains…” Dinah tried to suppress a shudder. “Let’s just say we’re lucky if none of them have made it over here.”
----
It was a bleeder, definitely. A quarter of his shirt was already stained. Frowning, Harry poked at the wound, sucking air in through his teeth. It was deeper than he'd expected. "Damnit." He sighed. "It'll be fine. I'll have another nice scar."
----
Dinah stepped over to Harry and leaned forward to more closely inspect the wound. She stifled a gasp.
“That looks like it needs to be stitched up. We should get you to the hospital, but first I think we can at least get it bandaged up so you don’t bleed out on the way.
She glanced over at the security guard, who hung just on the edge of the scene, seemingly stunned by their appearance and the flurry of action that had just taken place. “Do you have a first aid kit we could use?”
----
Harry shook his head at once. "No hospital. Really. I can take care of it myself. First aid kit, plus a needle and thread, and I'll be fine." Since the shirt was ruined anyway, Harry tore a strip off the bottom to use for a makeshift gauze, holding it against the wound tightly to try and stem the bleeding for now.
The guard, given something to do by an authoritative voice, nodded and shuffled off to find the kit in question.
When he was gone, Harry looked back at Dinah. "No hospitals. There are sick people there. I mean, really sick people, who need machines to keep them alive. What I can do, what I am... magic disrupts technology. The more sensitive the machines, the faster they get fried." He motioned with the hand holding his wound. "This is a flesh wound. I can stitch it up. I'm not putting anyone at risk for that."
----
Dinah nodded.
“I understand. I don’t like it, but it makes sense.”
As the guard returned, Dinah took the kit and started to clean Harry’s wound gingerly.
“You know, you’re chivalrous to a fault,” she told him with the hint of a smile on her lips. “But I suppose that’s as much my fault as it is yours-I should have given you the rundown of what I’m capable of. The first team I worked with… well, let’s just say it took awhile for the guys to stop trying to rescue me and focus on what needed to be done. Once we all learned what our teammates were capable of, we were able to work together cohesively. We still watched each other’s backs-we just didn’t have to take unnecessary chances. Once we got to that point, a lot less people got hurt.”
She finished cleaning up and handed Harry a needle and thread from the kit.
“Are you sure about this?” Dinah grimaced. She would have offered to help, but stitches definitely weren’t her forte.
----
"That's a change," Harry said, eyes twinkling. "Murphy would just call me a pig and tell me to get over myself. And she had a few black belts and some competitive shooting championships to go with it." There was the slightest tension in his voice when he said the name. He couldn't help it. Karrin Murphy was easily Harry's best friend in the world. He missed her. Christ, he missed her.
It stung a bit when she cleaned the wound, but not enough to let Harry show it. He'd been through worse. Hell, he'd been through worse in the two days before he'd woken up in the hospital.
When she held out the needle, Harry nodded and accepted it. Then he ran a finger along the edge, murmuring softly. Over the last several years of teaching his apprentice, Harry had gotten far more skilled at small, subtle magic. He was nowhere near Molly's own talent level, but he'd had to learn, in order to teach. So he heated the needle with a pinprick of fire, cooled it with ice, and then took a breath and began to sew up the slice in his chest.
He didn't feel the need to point out that, given the height difference between them, the slash was pretty level with Dinah's throat.
----
Dinah grinned. “Well, maybe if it happened enough times that you got hurt protecting me from something I would have blocked myself, I’d resort to that, but the first time’s a freebie.”
She noticed the slight catch in his voice and sighed.
“This place… might have some of the comforts of home, but it sure as hell doesn’t have the people we love, does it?”
She rested back on her hands as she waited for Harry to finish his work, trying like hell to keep the frustration of losing everyone she’d ever cared for at bay. Granted, she’d already lost Ollie yet again. But he was still just a plane ride away before she’d landed here. Now… Dinah looked away as the tears stung at her eyes.
----
Harry let out a breath, shaking his head. "It's not home. It could be. I mean, it seems like it's home to some people. But this isn't home." He finished his sewing and cut the string, looking up to see Dinah blinking tears from her eyes.
Nice job, Dresden. Make the girl cry, why don't ya?
"Sorry." His eyes didn't quite reach hers before he knelt, using the makeshift rag to wipe up the droplets of his blood that had fallen. In Harry's line of work, he'd learned not to leave that kind of evidence behind. "So... are the police on the way or anything?" Should we still be here at this point? Harry preferred to not have to explain things to the cops. They didn't always believe things like 'I did it with magic'.
----
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Dinah muttered. She got to her feet and blinked again to banish the tears. Back to business.
“We really shouldn’t be here,” she agreed. “Do you feel up to riding?”
She looked over at the security guard, who nodded.
“Police are on their way,” the man said.
----
Harry nodded. "I can ride." And once they got back to Dinah's, he'd be having a conversation with the skull in his backpack. Though keeping Bob away from Dinah - especially when she was in costume - was a damned good idea. He stuffed the bloodied rag into one of his duster pockets. "Let's go."
----
Dinah walked with Harry out of the museum and they hopped on her bike. A few minutes later, she pulled into the garage behind her building. She looked back at Harry, concerned about how the motorcycle ride might have affected him, given the injury. Regardless of what he said, she still thought it looked worse than he was letting on.
“Are you okay?”
----
Harry glanced her way. He'd been shirtless earlier, sleeping on the sofa, but she hadn't noticed-- oh, right. He'd woken up and shined light in her face. She wouldn't have noticed the collection of scars on his chest, arms, and stomach. The ones on his face were more evident, two parallel lines, one running through his right eyebrow, skipping over his eye, and finishing along his cheekbone, the other intersecting his lower lip and down his chin. His left hand was gloved once again; it was far more functional than any doctor had ever considered it might possibly be, but it was a long way from pretty to look at.
"I'm fine," he said, slight weariness and a touch of exasperation n his voice. "Some Tylenol, and I'll be better. It was deeper than I expected, but it didn't hit anything major." His voice softened, just a bit, but he grinned. "I've been hurt worse than this, Dinah. At least this time I made it out without a concussion. I've had enough of those to make me wonder if someone hasn't replaced my skull with adamantium."
----
Dinah returned the grin.
“I’m supposed to find that comforting?” she teased.
Dinah led Harry upstairs again and closed the door behind the two of them. She turned back to him and attempted to catch his eyes.
“You may have been hurt worse, but not on my watch. Get on the couch and I’ll bring you some Tylenol, food, water, and whatever else you might need. The least I can do is make sure you have the chance to recover.”
----
"Well, when I was hurt worse, it was because of... well, vampires, demons, fallen angels, loup-garou, evil sorcerers, and really evil faeries. But a vanilla with a knife or a gun can still make things happen." Wizards weren't immortal. Given the opportunity, they could live a few centuries, and they could heal perfectly from most injuries - these things Harry knew. But they weren't invincible. They were mortal.
Still, he wasn't going to complain over a knife wound. Nor was he going to deny his host the opportunity to take care of her guest. It was part of the responsibilities each role gave. Humans didn't adhere to those rules of courtesy as much as the Fae did, but that didn't mean they weren't applicable.
"Alright, alright," he said, giving in. Harry shrugged out of his duster again, and set aside the bloody and ruined shirt. The wound was no longer bleeding, and had apparently been cleaned out well. No redness threatened the edge of his skin, and the stitches would hold. So long as he was reasonably careful.
----
Dinah nodded with satisfaction as Harry settled onto the couch. She tried not to look too hard at the mass of scars that lined his chest. Her hand lightly brushed against her own stomach, where her scars from being gutted used to be. While she didn’t miss the daily reminder of that terror, a part of her felt less than whole after losing every mark of the things she’d survived in the past due to her dip in the lazarus pit.
She disappeared into the kitchen and found some bread for toast. Then she checked her dresser drawers. She was sure she’d found a lot of the clothes she’d brought to Gotham, including a few t-shirts that used to be Ollie’s for sleeping in. She hesitated a moment after pulling out a Star City Sharks t-shirt, and then shook her head and brushed that aside.
She returned a few minutes later, toast and water in hand, the shirt and Tylenol under her arm. She set the medicine, food and water on the coffee table and then tossed the shirt to Harry.
“This should fit you well enough. Sorry about your t-shirt.”
----
Harry sat up a bit and pulled on the shirt. "Thanks. And it was just a shirt. I can get more." He downed a few Tylenol with a sip of water and picked up one of the bits of toast. "My duster survived, so that's the important part."
He ate a bite of toast, swallowed, then said, "Um. Sorry I didn't tell you I had a gun."
----
Dinah hesitated for a moment and then studied Harry.
“It’s okay. I’m not a huge fan of guns, but it came in handy tonight. My only problem would be if you’d killed anyone with it. But in my experience, any weapon is lethal in the wrong hands. Or even in the hands of someone who thought he was doing the right thing at the time…”
Dinah looked away then. The ghost of Ollie’s betrayal had no business butting into this conversation.
“I’m sorry that I thought that you might shoot that guy,” she added.
----
Harry nodded. "Magic is nice and all, but it's not always the best solution. I'm much better at evocation -- the kaboom sort of magic - than anything delicate. In a small space... well, it's just easier sometimes." A smirk lighted on his lips. "Confusius say, no use cannon to kill housefly."
He shook his head at her apology. "Don't worry about it. You don't know me that well. I'll only use deadly force if absolutely necessary, and I won't kill with magic. That's a big no-no." A bitter smirk touched his lips. "Technically speaking, you could say I'm part of the Magic Police." It was a very, very basic way to describe the Wardens, but for the moment, it was fitting. It might even help Dinah to feel better about what his limits were, if she was worried.
----
“Magic police?” Dinah raised an eyebrow, though she supposed it made sense. After all, if there were ‘space police’ like the Green Lanterns, she supposed every domain needed its own police system. “Well, that does make me feel better,” she said with a small smile.
“I suppose I should let you get your sleep though. Are you sure you won’t take the bed, since you’re injured? I really don’t mind the couch.”
Somehow, she had a feeling she already knew the answer, but the least she could do was offer.
----
At least she didn't ask for an explanation on the Wardens. Harry might have started talking too much. He didn't want to go too much into detail; Murphy was a pure vanilla mortal, but she had seen what she was getting involved in when Harry told her the Whole Truth about the supernatural world. It had taken nearly a decade for him to explain things to Will - who was a member of the supernatural community.
Sometimes it was just safer to be in the dark.
At her question, Harry just leaned his head, looking her in the eyes for a moment. Just before he would feel the pull of a soulgaze, he looked away. "Host. Guest. I'm not taking you from your bed, no matter if my legs were falling off. You just don't do some things." And making a woman sleep on the couch? Was one of them.
----
Dinah shook her head slightly, but decided not to argue.
“Well, then… thank you for jumping in front of that knife for me.”
She leaned over and gave Harry a gentle and slightly awkward hug, trying to avoid hurting him further. She turned her head slightly to place a chaste kiss on his cheek.
----
Apart from the faint tingle to Dinah's skin, the hint of talent that Harry could safely assume was her voice-control capability, the touch of skin itself was nearly a narcotic pleasure of its own. There was a primal reassurance in being touched, in knowing that someone else wants to be touching you. There was the bone-deep security that went with the brush of a human hand, a silent, reflex-level affirmation that someone was near, that someone cared.
It made Harry remember just how long it had been since he had been touched at all.
His eyes closed, stayed that way, his body still, until he felt her withdraw. He didn't know how to respond. You're welcome? Anytime? His smart-ass center had short-circuited, and he tried to find something to say and couldn't. He knew it was a move he would do again in a heartbeat, not even having to think about it.
Dinah, he decided, was good people.
"Thank you," his brain finally stammered. "For... letting me stay." Lame maybe, but heartfelt. He couldn't exactly thank her for that small, brief reminder of his humanity.
----
After his knee-jerk reaction to her late night appearance, Dinah had half expected Harry to recoil at the hug. Instead, he allowed her to hug him and even hugged her back. Dinah couldn’t help but allow herself to enjoy it for the moment. It was a reminder that the City wasn’t just some hell of an afterlife. That there was still some good, even in this strange place.
“Anytime, Harry,” Dinah said.
She turned toward the hallway and then hesitated and glanced back. “It’s… nice. Having you here, I mean. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need.” She smiled. “Or as long as the couch remains comfortable,” she joked.