Jake Chambers (i_throwplates) wrote in we_coexist, @ 2011-08-02 23:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | dinah lance, jake chambers |
Welcome Home (Jake & Dinah)
He didn't like being locked up. Caged in. The room was enormous, but the more he stayed inside of it, the more the walls seemed to close in on him. He kept throwing items at the walls; small things at first starting with a piece of toast or a napkin. They didn't always sail as far as the wall, and that was okay. If they fell before they struck, he knew the walls were too far to contain him. It reminded him this wasn't a prison.
He threw a glass as well. It shattered when it struck the wall, and the sound was fascinating. It hurt in a way, reminding him that something else had broken, something intangible. Something that he couldn't yet grasp. He'd tried to inspect the pieces, but the yipping little creature had barked and scolded him until he was back in bed. When the boy next opened his eyes, the broken shards had vanished, and his next meal contained paper and plastic utensils and flatware. Safe things that wouldn't reach the walls when he threw them.
Then Jake woke up in a nightmare. The details were fuzzy, but he couldn't shake the fear. Something was wrong. Horribly wrong. Where was he? The first things his hands found were the pillows he'd slept on, and he flung them at the invading walls. They carried, bounced off the barriers, and fell to the ground. It had happened. The walls were closing in on him.
The room wasn't quite dark - there was light coming in through a single curtained window. Jake rushed at it without a sound, his terror locking his throat. The curtains fell when his hands assaulted them, and the window was in his grasp. He smacked his hands against the glass once, twice, and then swung a fist with all his might, willing the glass to part. The window seemed to explode, glass shards falling around him like snowflakes. Jake sucked in lungful after lungful of sweet, clean air. His lungs burned, and once they were filled, a strangled, wretched cry filled his ears.
A moment later, the exhausted boy slumped to the floor. His throat was raw from the scream, and tears were falling from his eyes. Jake felt something draw near, a gentle pressure on his leg. He flinched, looked, and found two gold-rimmed eyes looking back at him. The eyes were alien, yet familiar. They shed their own tears, but further behind, a tail wagged. Slightly. Hopefully.
Jake sniffled, and wiped his eyes with his left hand. It was bleeding from several small cuts, one or two quite deep. He paid it no mind - in truth, he never even noticed. But he looked at those golden eyes and said a word. One word, soft. "Oy?"
The billy-bumbler leaned his head forward and gave Jake's wrist a gentle lick, careful not to taste the blood. Jake trembled, pulled the creature into his lap, and stroked his soft, thick fur.
----
Dinah had taken the bedroom next to Jake's. She'd hated locking him in, but that was the only way she could, in good faith, feel she was doing all she could to keep him from getting out and hurting himself or hurting someone else. It had been days and still no change. She'd thought she was dragging him out of hell, but the way he wandered around with that lost, vacant look in his eyes, she couldn't help but wonder if she'd merely taken him from one hell into another.
She woke up to the sound of shattering glass. The window. She should have remembered to have Alfred replace it with plexiglass.
Well, nothing to be done for it at the moment. Dinah gathered up the first aid kit that she kept handy at her bedside these days and rushed over to Jake's room. She opened the door and stopped in the doorframe, arriving just in time to hear the single word that escaped his lips.
Her eyes bright with tears, Dinah watched for just a moment as the boy showed the first signs of affection for his pet that she'd seen since the return from the Asylum. If his hands hadn't been bleeding, she would have just left him alone, in the hopes that this was merely the first step of many in returning Jake to himself.
"Jake? It's Dinah," she said softly. He had yet to recognize her, to acknowledge her. But all the same, she announced herself every time. "I'm going to come in and get those wounds cleaned up and taken care of."
She knew that Joker would have kept Jake off his element at all times. He liked the element of surprise, of throwing people off with the unexpected. Dinah wasn't going to put Jake through that. Not ever again, if she could help it.
----
His head started to turn when the door opened, but that glazed, vacant look came back to his eyes. Eyes that seemed to remove anyone around from the images he was seeing, locking him away in silence and solitude.
But the billy-bumbler made a sound between a growl and a purr, and pressed his nose against Jake's wrist. "Ake," Oy barked. "Iy-nah. Iy-nah, Ake."
Jake blinked and shook his head slightly. The glazed look fell away from his eyes, and they were blue, tear-bright. "Dinah?" His voice still sounded raw, weak. His expression held only confusion. "What wounds? Where am I?" He looked away, starting to sweep his eyes around the room, but when that caused him to start trembling again, Oy spoke.
"Ake. Iy-nah."
The boy turned his gaze back to the woman. "Dinah? Did... did I die again? I... I..." His breath hitched in his throat, and his arms tightened around the billy-bumbler. "I-I-I-I--" The word seemed locked in his throat, and he strained to breathe again.
----
Again? Now really wasn't the time to ask for clarification on that particular question. Dinah didn't notice the tears as they began to stream down her face after Jake showed his first signs of recognition. Instead, she moved forward, kneeling beside him. She gently started to dab at the blood on Jake's hands.
“No, sweetie,” she said gently. “You didn't die. You're at the mansion. I think you must have broken the window.”
She worked as quickly as she could while remaining delicate, unsure of how long Jake would be this lucid and would allow her to touch him. Once she was done bandaging his hands, she pulled him into a hug.
----
Jake flinched at the hug. His arms tensed and relaxed, tensed and relaxed. He wanted to be held, he was aching for it, but he couldn't respond. His hands dug into Oy's fur until the bumbler let out a soft whimper. When that happened, Jake wriggled a bit, trying to be released. "Too soon," he murmured. "Too soon, can't make it better yet. Has to hurt more. Need it to hurt more so he can make it better. Can't be better if it doesn't hurt."
He was looking at the bandages on his hand. "Am I still a good boy? I didn't make the noises. I didn't hurt enough, but it's fixed. Special boy, makes Father proud to hear the noises, but I didn't make the noises, but it's fixed, so I was bad?" He was starting to panic, eyes losing focus as his mind turned towards that inner nightmare.
----
Dinah didn't fight when Jake wriggled out of the hug. She let Jake go, not wanting to push the issue. As much as she wanted to just hold him and tell him it would be all right, she knew he was skittish, and she knew that too much too soon would just set him back.
Her hands clenched into fists as he fell into talk about the sick things the Joker had done to him. Sure, it wasn't graphic or explicit, but she was more than capable of filling in the blanks. The more she saw, the more glad she was that the Joker was dead. The sorrier she was that she hadn't been the one to finish it.
“He's gone, Jake,” she said in a quiet, slightly cracking voice. “He can't hurt you anymore. No one's going to hurt you anymore.”
----
There was still panic and confusion in Jake's face, but his eyes shifted to her, now mingled with grief and pain. "Gone? Father's gone?" A burst of pain shot through his mind, as clear as lightning, and Jake cried out, clasping a hand to Dinah. The memory was sharp and bittersweet.
The boy looked up at the gunslinger. Neither of them smiled. Oy sat at Jake's feet and smiled for both of them.
'Hile, Jake,' Roland said.
'Hile, Father.'
'Will you call me so?'
Jake nodded. 'Yes, if I may.'
'Such would please me ever,' Roland said. Then, slowly - as one performs an action with which he's unfamiliar - he held out his arms. Looking up at him solemnly, never taking his eyes from Roland's face, the boy Jake moved between those killer's hands and waited until they locked at his back. He had had dreams of this that he would never have dared to tell.
Jake was shaking now, not merely trembling. "Father," he whispered. "Roland. He... I called him Father. My... my father..." Jake then released her, pushed Oy from his lap, turned his head aside and emptied his stomach until his dry heaves were overtaken by wracking sobs.
----
Dinah was slightly shaken by the shared memory. She hadn't known that Jake could do that, and she certainly hadn't meant Roland. Her expression softened and she struggled with herself before placing a tentative hand on Jake's shoulder.
She wasn't going to correct herself and mention the name that she'd actually meant. No, Jack's name would only be brought up if Jake was ready to talk about him.
“I don't know where he is, Jake. I don't think he's in the City.” her voice was apologetic, regretful. “For what its worth, I'm here and Alfred is here. You're safe in this place, Jake.”
----
"Dead," the boy blurted. "The lobstrosities ate him. First they are his fingers and some of his foot, and now they got the rest of him."
He shuddered, still crying openly. "And he made me call him Father. He... he made me think I loved him. Did I love him? He's gone. You said he's gone. Does that mean he's dead? My... he..." Jake coughed, his throat dry and sore now from speaking more. From the heaving and the screaming. "I love him. I don't want to love him, but I love him. I hurt, and he made it better, and he said I was a good boy and he held me and made the voices stop and when it was quiet he would talk to me and I love him and I want him to be dead!"
----
Dinah struggled to find the right words and found that maybe there weren't any here.
“I'm sorry about Roland,” she began, her voice barely above a whisper. She didn't know whether Roland's death was just a hallucination or an actual memory, but what mattered right now was that it was causing Jake pain.
She would slowly help him sort out his reality, but for now she would provide only comfort, if she could.
“He can't hurt you anymore,” she emphasized. “Love doesn't have to come with pain. Not like that. Not ever like that and I won't let anyone do that to you again. I'm so sorry Jake.”
She was crying again, or perhaps she'd never stopped, but she did her best to keep her tone even and comforting.
----
Jake was still crying, and wasn't sure if he could stop. His head hurt, his body hurt, his heart hurt. But he knew this woman, and he knew that she cared for him. The hug had been too much at the time, more than he had been able to stand, more than he had been able to give. But seeing her cry as well, hearing her words... he couldn't believe them yet, couldn't take them as fact. But he took them for what they were - encouragement and the simple promise of love and care that came without pain.
"Pain... doesn't stop." His voice was barely more than a whisper now, but he needed her to hear him. With care, his weary and battered body still trembling, he crawled to where she was sitting and lay down, tucking his head and shoulders in her lap and trying to curl up against her. "Life hurts. Loving... hurts."
Oy curled up at his side, and Jake pulled the bumbler against him with one arm, his other searching for Dinah's hand. "I loved Barbara. I loved Roland and Eddie and Susannah."
He sniffled. "Be my mother? I can be a good son. I can try. No more fathers, they hurt me too much. They fuck me up. But I like having a mother."
He wanted her, wanted her affection and care more than he could even put into emotion, let alone words. But still, his body was tense, braced for rejection.
----
“There is pain in life,” Dinah nodded. “But there shouldn't be pain like that. Never like that.”
She rested her hand on his head, gently stroking his hair, now choking back a sob.
“I would like to be your mother. Very very much. I already considered you my son. I'm sorry I didn't tell you that before, Jake. I should have...” her voice failed her then. There were a lot of things she should have said, should have done.
----
Jake shivered. "Don't... please? Don't say sorry." He pressed against her more, but something in his body was starting to relax. She was warm and soft and her hands were gentle. His weeping was quiet now, only tears spilling from his eyes. "I... had forgotten the face of my father. And he replaced it with his own."
He couldn't bring himself to say that name yet.
"I... I can feel it. That you hurt." He squeezed her hand tightly. "Don't hurt. Don't be angry. You didn't let me fall." His voice was growing softer. It hurt to talk this much, but he could feel her pain, her sorrow, the blame she was laying on herself in every touch. He needed the touch, needed the Touch, to be the good son he wanted to be. But feeling her pain made him want to run, to lock up his mind again and never leave.
----
Dinah took a deep breath, trying to clear out the emotions. She focused on the simple sensation of his head in her lap, on just how young his face still looked, even with all he'd been through. She continued to stroke his hair, focusing on that motion in an almost meditative way.
“Okay,” she finally agreed when the tide of her emotions had calmed. “Okay,” she repeated.
She instead filled her thoughts with the love she'd known in her life, and with all of the plans she'd had for Jake before he'd been kidnapped. Happy things. Things every child deserved the chance to experience at least once. She could only hope that he would pick up on those things and that they had successfully banished the pain and anger to an unreachable part of her mind for the time being.
----
He felt the change. Felt the love and the hope. The silent promises of what could be. Of what would be.
It seemed nice. Peaceful. Like a dream.
He could handle that for now. A dream. Dinah was a hero, and Jake a gunslinger, so the notion of peaceful life might have been out of their hands. But it was a hope he could hold onto.
He hurt, but Jake let go of the pain. He let himself focus on the feel of his mother, of being held by her. His body relaxed further, and it wasn't long before he was peacefully and soundly asleep.