and every once in your life

[allmydiredreams]

Babel is in Grant Park with a rake. She found it in one of the Kashtta's supply cabinets when she was looking for something else entirely, and decided to call the entire day off -- not that she has anything she's particularly supposed to be doing, but whatever -- to go rake all the leaves in the park into a giant pile

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[godtooksides]

He flinches when she laughs; too often that's been directed at him. It's almost hard to see it as directed anywhere else, at this point. But he realizes it's self-deprecating in its own way, after a moment.

The rest of her words leave him, at first, staring blankly. "It's not--" he manages, before she goes after the other rolling pumpkins. Part of him knows he should theoretically be helping her, but he can't really make himself move yet, much less get that close to another person.

Of course, when she asks if she's bleeding, a chill comes over him instead. She's pointing to--she can't be an angel, can she? Couldn't have. She can't be--

He takes a long breath in, attempting once more to light the cigarette. A glance at her back tells him that she's definitely not bleeding, so he can answer with confidence. Or at least as much as he's going to have in this situation. "No--no. Why the fuck--why would you be bleeding?" He's shaking when he finally gets the cigarette lit, every bit of him screaming to leave even if he can't take a step forward. He takes a long drag, closing his eyes and trying to make the smoke get rid of the panic fluttering in him. It's not working too well.

[sophicsulphur]

She doesn't really mind that he's not helping, or notice. Sure, she'd appreciate a hand if he could offer one, but she understands if he's in shock. Sometimes, people can't handle stuff. That's why she tries to make up the difference.

Even when sometimes she can't handle stuff either. But it's easier, when she has someone else to help, something else to fix other than the inside of herself. Focusing on other people's problems makes it all go away, at least for a little while.

--But then she's said too much, and she can't move to go grab another pumpkin because her head is spinning, and she worries if she lets go of the display she'll take a spill all over the sidewalk. Possibly face-first into a pumpkin.

She laughs again at that image, for a moment. It's not a healthy laugh. It's an "I've had too many pain meds" sort of laugh.

"...They cut off my wings," she says, like it's the punchline to some kind of sick joke.

Not that she'd normally be having this conversation with a stranger. But she's doing a lot of things she wouldn't normally do, lately. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she has the thought that she should be worried, by that.

[godtooksides]

For a moment, he's about to point out once again that she's not okay, and half-wonders if there's anyone around more capable of dealing with this than he.

And then those five words hit him and everything goes numb. The number of times he's uttered those words, over and over, hysterical or quiet or gritted out through clenched teeth in accusatory anger. They cut off my wings. It's the entire reason for his pain, the sum of all of that which he throws back spitefully in the world's face.

And here's an utter stranger saying them as if it were a joke.

His bag of groceries joins the pumpkins on the sidewalk, along with his cigarette. He's not entirely aware of the strangled noise he makes, though he's well aware of the searing pain in his back as his own malformed, half-healed wings come out under his sweatshirt. He can't stop them, and doesn't even have the mental faculty to try.

Everything blurs together, the crowd outside the grocery store and the girl and the pain and the voices of the soldiers discussing what to do with him and the hands holding him down and the image of Gladys's body on the ground in front of him and Jessi's concerned face and sirens and the way his roommates looked at him when he came home covered in blood and the pain of his wings and the sound of a man's jaw snapping as he tore it off with his hands and the sedatives and--

--and he's on his knees on the sidewalk, not even noticing how it scrapes against his knees through the holes in his jeans. His arms are wrapped around his head, his hands pressed together between his wings, though carefully not touching anywhere near where they were out of force of habit and the nausea that comes every time he does. He's just trying not to think at all anymore and it's not working, his breath coming in gasps.

Because they cut off his wings. And nothing has worked to fix that yet.

[sophicsulphur]

--She looks over at him, at that strangled sound. Notices something forcing itself out under his clothing, but it's all wrong, too small, and he's cringing and holding himself and--

--and she doesn't want to see this, not so soon, not now, not ever, doesn't ever want this to ever happen to anyone ever ever can't let it happen again, and there's nothing she can do but let happen again what's already happened and what's going to keep happening and the lion is roaring, roaring in the back of her head so loud that she thinks her ears might bleed and if he said anything, said anything in the midst of all that, it was lost to her in the deafness.

She wants out of here. But she's not going to run. That small spike of compassion that pushes through her fear says, we're all each other has. People like us. So she crouches down next to him, puts a hand on his shoulder, tries to be there. Tries to be there in the moment, even though she wants to be anything other than there.

"...You too," she says, softly. "Gods, no."

[godtooksides]

He doesn't notice her -- not her, as a person. He only registers that there's a hand on him, something is touching him and on a good day that's not okay. Right now it's far more than just 'not okay'.

His hand snaps out, wrenching hers off him and back, back, bending it as far as it will go and then some. He's not as strong as an angel, but he doesn't need to be, with humans and wanderers -- not that he's registered her as anything, right now. He's still having trouble registering her.

So she's just going to get a faceful of angry, snarling, panicked angel, whose eyes aren't seeing anything in reality at the moment.

[sophicsulphur]

She cries out, as she's yanked violently backwards, thrown off her feet and cracked once more against the sidewalk. She's sprawled on her back, now, the strained muscles screaming from the collision, broken whines tearing themselves from her throat. She can't deal with this. It's too much. Too much all at once, and the impulse to run's so great but she doesn't know if she can move any more, and besides she'd be running blind, seeing nothing through the swirling vision and the shadows and the tears.

She'd be curled up next to him in a catatonic ball, if she didn't have his condition to hold to. If his pain weren't there, to pull her outside of herself, to give her an anchor beyond her own thoughts. She grabs onto its chain, and starts crawling, forcing herself to the surface, up out of the dark, to respond to him. To try and do something for this poor angel, this man who's suffered just as she has. Even if he doesn't seem to want her help, she has to try.

"...I'm sorry," she whimpers through the tears. "I'm sorry I didn't mean I don't want to hurt you I just-- I'm sorry, I know it hurts."

[godtooksides]

For awhile he's frozen there, her arm twisted in his grip, glaring down. He's not seeing her, though he is seeing people now -- the men who hurt him. It's a vision he keeps having, everyone around him turning into the soldiers that held him down, and over and over he keeps fighting them. Only to find himself fighting someone else, hurting someone else. Or just himself.

He raises his other arm with a snarl when she starts to speak. The words don't get through right away; at first all he can hear is garbled syllables making their way through the panic and fear and white hot anger. Her 'I'm sorry's don't get through until his hand is already balled into a fist, until it's coming down to punch its way through her skull as per the Calling anger, even if it's not Calling anger he's feeling. Or maybe it's misplaced Calling anger -- he can never tell anymore -- and that's why there's so much rage beneath the hurt.

The other people in the parking lot have noticed the one-sided fight by now, and while some have gotten out their cellphones to call the police, a few braver souls have moved to try and pull the angel off her. So for a moment there's hands, hand pulling at his arms and his shoulders and hitting his wings oh god he has them again when did--

His fist hits the pavement beside her head instead, jostled as he is, and he snaps to reality suddenly. And then, even though he realizes the hands on him aren't soldiers, they still mean him harm -- he's sure -- and so he violently throws them off, yelling, "Get the fuck off me!" at the men. "Fuck you, fuckin'--fuck--"

Now he sees Iris still lying on the concrete for who she actually is. She only wanted to help. He keeps doing this. He backs away from everyone; one of the guys tries to position himself in between the angel and Iris, while the other kneels down next to her to help her up, and he feels even worse.

"I'm--fuck, I'm sorry," he says, quietly, realizing now that there's tears running down his face. Great. Way to look like a complete basket case in public. He bends down, retrieving what he can of the dropped groceries (he makes sure he gets all the cigarettes, of course) and shoving them back into the bag before standing up. Now he's not sure which way to go. The guys are blocking his way past the girl, and he's sure as hell not going back into the grocery store. He nearly cringes back against the door. "I'm sorry."

[sophicsulphur]

She's crying, too, in the midst of all this, her face mottled and red, her eyes barely registering what's going on in front of her. But-- but she sees enough. The men, jumping in to attack him. Trying to protect her. Trying to protect her from him.

--No. No. He's one of hers. He's one of her kind, and she won't let them hurt him. Her face twisting into an angry grimace-- or what passes for one, when you're sixteen and sobbing-- she yells at the man keeping them apart.

"...S-stop it! Don't hurt him!" She turns to the guy who's trying to help her. "I... I, really, I'm okay, just don't, leave him alone, leave us, it's e, it's enough already...."

She scrambles to her feet, pushes her way past her benefactors, making back down gestures with her hands as she goes. "It-- it's okay," she says to the angel, bowing, trying to look as harmless and deferent as she possibly can. "It's okay, don't apol-- I understand, I...."

She's not normally one for violence, but she might just have thrown a pumpkin at Owen, too, if he'd been here. Losing your wings hurts. It hurts. Gods, she understands that more than anything right now.

[godtooksides]

He doesn't understand what's going on. He just attacked her and now she's trying to protect him? That's not how it works, that's never how it works. And he's apparently not gotten that through his head, even though in Chicago, that seems to be how it works.

The bow is another thing that he completely doesn't know what to do with. Really, he doesn't know what to do with any of this. He frantically wipes at the tears on his face, as if getting rid of them the instant they leak from his eyes will make them stop.

"Don't say that," he snaps at her 'I understand', then winces. "Fuck, sorry, I." Right. Words. Words are not his friends. He bends down again, picking up the cigarette he'd just managed to light. It's a little bent, but fuck it, it's full of tobacco and that's what he needs right now. And he's not exactly in a financial situation where he can just let a whole cigarette go simply because it's a little crumpled. "Why the fuck are you--doing this?"

[sophicsulphur]

She'd thought the answer to that would be obvious. But he did just sort of lose it a little back there, and, well, she'd forgive him for not remembering.

Not that she really wants to say it again. Not if it hasn't fully got through to him, and she's going to make him freak out again. So she tries to phrase it in the most roundabout terms possible.

'Cause... 'cause it's the same for me," she says, not bothering to wipe up her own tears. "'Cause you were afraid, and I don't know if anyone stands by you. And-- sometimes I, I get scared, thinking no one'll stand by me, thinking-- thinking people are just gonna give up on me 'cause I'm"-- she kicks the ground --"messed up, 'cause I'm broken, 'cause no one knows what to do with me. And I-- just wanted you to feel that, that someone stood up for you. 'Cause it's-- it's not fair."

Admittedly, her reasons for feeling ostracised are pretty different, but she doesn't have to tell him that right now. She doesn't know what she's going to say, to be honest, if he asks. It occurs to her that she could pretend-- that he could be the first person who'd believe she's an angel, a real one. She doesn't want to lie. But the thought is so tempting.

[godtooksides]

The cigarette takes another few blissful seconds to light, and he sucks in a tar-filled breath before answering. He doesn't know what to do when faced with another angel without wings. He doesn't know if he can even believe it -- sure, logically there should be hundreds of people like him, given that he's pretty sure they didn't experiment on just him, but he's never met anyone else like him. And others' reactions seem to suggest that they haven't either.

"That's--fuck, exactly what it is," he says quietly. "Fuckin' broken, fucked up. That's--it's just--it's what I am." He feels ostracized, sure, but there's a very large part of him that vehemently believes he deserves it. If he didn't, it wouldn't have happened to him. God wouldn't have done this to him if he didn't deserve to be this...abomination.

He realizes that a lot of people are still staring at them, including the two guys, though they've backed up a bit, seemingly as bewildered as he by this girl's display of kindness toward someone who just almost punched her hard enough in the face to break at least one bone in it. He also realizes, the next time he brings his hand up for a drag, that his knuckles are bleeding. But that pales in comparison to the fact that people are still watching them, and he's just caused a scene in a public place.

And he can't stick around to see if the cops will show up or not.

"I have to go," he mutters, taking a few steps forward and looking around for a route through the meager crowd. Forget the pumpkins everywhere, forget this crazy girl, forget everything. He needs to get out of there before the police show up. "I can't--can't fuckin' stay here."

[sophicsulphur]

Her head hangs, a little, at that. She hadn't meant to imply that of him, even though she realises in retrospect that that's exactly what she implied.

Well. She can't really fault him for feeling that way. A part of her wants to tell him he's wrong, that he's not fucked up-- well, not in those words, she can't bring herself to speak like he does-- but a part of her thinks he's right, that saying anything else would only be a conceit. They have been broken. This is fucked up.

But while she's trying to decide what to say, and if she has time to concoct a fake angelic Calling and history and-- no. No, she can't do that. Not only is it wrong, but he'd be able to tell, and it hits her then she'll never be able to hide who she is from a real angel, not until Molly fixes things, gods, Molly needs to fix things --while she's thinking all this, he's making to leave, and, well, she doesn't want to stop him. She'd like him to stay, she'd like to try and-- she can't help him, what is she thinking, but maybe she can comfort, maybe she can something-- but honestly, she can understand him wanting to leave. As much as she wants to be consoling, she'd kind of like to go home herself, too.

"...Okay," she says, softly, as she bends down to grab her own groceries. Then just stands there, for a while, as he makes his exit. Right now, there's just too much going on in her mind for her to coordinate motion. Or goodbyes. Or the fact that she forgot to even give him her name, tell him to look her up if he needs anything. Watching him leave is about all she has the capacity left to do.