[closed] //take a breath take a step meet me down below

[girl_unlocking]

Who: AU!Dawn Summers girl_unlocking & Jay Todd jaytodd
When: Soon after this conversation.
Where: What's passing for where Jason calls home these days.
Format: However it goes. Probably paragraph.
What: The forge violates Jay's brain, Dawn offers to sit watch with an axe so he can (maybe) sleep.
Warnings: Angst, language, possible violence? God knows what? It's

Comments

[jaytodd]

"Right here," he answers. He's sitting on the floor in a place that can take in both door and window while being hidden from the outside, his back to a wall. His guns and knife are spread out before him, on a rag, another rag in his hands. He hadn't needed to clean them, but it was that or pacing. Or maybe punching a wall. Punching the mist if he could, or finding Br-, B and punching the daylight out of him again-

The anger is as always just under his skin, with the tiredness and the fed-upness this time.

Dawn will at least make him think of other things - at least he thinks so, right now. She's poised on the sill of the open window, a silhouette against the false darkness of the night.

"Come in."

There isn't much inside. It's one room, with a bed in a corner (he should just put the mattress down on the floor, the metal of the frame is killing his back), ratty bedding (at least he had a good blanket this time), clothes on a chair (and his jacket is there), a rickety table with a pitcher, a pan and a mirror, the jar on the floor in a corner, with a book of all things, and maybe a pen.

He packs and puts everything back together quickly, washing his hands with the pitcher's water.

[girl_unlocking]

So she slips in, at his invitation, a little like shadow - and she can't help but wonder---

Is this how easy the darkness slipped inside? Just a 'come in' and there it was?

Pictures and printed words could only tell so much, after all. She'd be wrong to think there wasn't more.

She leans the axe against the wall, next to the window and moves toward him. She's traded boots for the geared slippers she'd left behind years (weeks) before, and as she'd suspected, they'd expanded with a little whir to accommodate her feet.

She stares down at them for a moment, suddenly conscious of the click-clink of metal against the floor.

"I missed these." she says softly as she takes in the room, both contents and the state of its occupant. "I don't remember them being this loud."

And instead of keeping it in, she just says it. That seems to be her theme these last few days. "So this is one of the ways that you punish yourself, huh?"

She can't help if it comes out a little sadder than she'd intended. Moving closer, just by a few steps, "How are you? And don't tell me 'fine'."

I'm guessing 'shitty', maybe 'fucking shitty', or 'what do you think?'. Surprise me, Jason.

[jaytodd]

He watches her - but he gives her his back. He doesn't know why he trusts her, but he does.

Her shoes (he remembers them from the rooftop, crazy clockwork shoes) go click click click softly on the wood of the floor.

He turns, then, her question (and the way she had said it, her tone, and there isn't enough light to say properly damn it but the one lamp he has is empty) taking him by surprise, a bit. It sounds like it's the way this night is going anyway, surprise after surprise and it's not the right kind of one.

Punish myself? She gets closer, no close enough that it'd be uncomfortable, but close enough that he can feel the space between them, continue with the questions-

"What?" He stares at her. How the hell do you think I am, Dawn? He won't answer that.

[girl_unlocking]

So, shitty it is, then. That's fair.

She blinks slowly, eyes adjusting to the less-dark darkness, not moving any closer, but refusing to back up. She knows she probably should, but that's the beauty of making a perfectly bad decision even though you've got the hindsight.

"I thought you might want to let it out. Some of it. What little you can?"

Another step. Fuck bad decisions.

"If talking isn't your thing-- if it's bullshit (and half the time it is), and you just want to tear the walls down, then I can do that, too. It's what I'm built to do, pretty much. You don't have to hold anything back. I'm not a kid, and I'm certainly not breakable."

Fuck instinct.

There's a darkness in her eyes as she says this. It can't touch his - it's not nearly as volatile, as violent, but it's quietly dangerous in its own way.

"I want to help you. I'm not saying this out of some stupid half-assed obligation. I'm not saying this because I think I know you because I read some shit in books. I'm saying this because you meant something to me, and you still do, and I couldn't see how fucked up and shitty this all is. But I can see it now. And I can't leave you in the dark with whatever it is that eats you from the inside."

[jaytodd]

He lets her talk, lets her come closer to him. One more step. He just waits, and listens (whatever people thought and said back then be damned, Drake be damned).

It reminds him (painfully) of Quatre - the way he knew bits, and was wiling to take the burden of everything on him, and he didn't even knew Jason-

No. Dawn's nothing like him. It's not whatever Quatre thought he was.

Had Dawn existed in Gotham (his Gotham, not the other Dick's Gotham, fuck the multiverse), he'd have wanted her to be on his side. She'd have been brilliant in Gotham's skies.

He'll blame this train of thought on having been woken up in the middle of his night by the Mist fucking with him.

"Don't wanna fight you." That's what his... friendship thing with Heine is there for. Sometimes. He feel sick at the idea of hurting Dawn. One bullet and bam it's over, brilliant red flower on the opposite wall to stare back at you- he clamps it shut, that thought. Too easy to think like that. It makes him sick.

She talks, and he hears another speech, the very one that- Dawn knows about it.

He's not sure he can sleep more. He rarely does, once he's awake.

You meant something to me, and you still do. He raises a hand, slowly, brings it to her hair, on the side of her face.

"Are you-" are you going to take my fucked upness as your responsibility? Are you going to tell me I'm broken and can't be fixed? Are you going to tell me I can just be cast aside, that I'm not good enough? "What's eating me kept me warm so far."

[girl_unlocking]

Not really all that keen on taking a swing at you, myself.

She's relieved when he says it - that he doesn't want to fight (If this is relief how come it's still prickling just beneath) - and it seems he comes with his own set of surprises tonight.

Surprises that make sickness bloom behind his eyes, and Dawn can only guess at what grows there. Whatever it is it's nightblooming and poisonous, and it's a part of this - a part of who he is.

(Some of it's a part of everyone, it's just all situational and some people are luckier than others)

She's seen it before, she just can't say where, exactly.

"I'm not speechifying. I suck at it, and you're probably sick to death of it by now anyway. Everyone and their good intentions." As his hand raises her eyes follow, but she doesn't move. When it comes to rest she finds that she's smiling, but barely.

I'm broken, too. We all are. Point me in the direction of someone who isn't. I don't care. I think anyone who gives up on someone because of that is a fucking coward. I don't care what kind of suit they wear, or what their name is, or how morall-y their compass is. Giving up like that?

(She thinks of Willow, briefly.)

Means your compass is broken.

"Yeah, well I was kept warm, too, but it turns out it was just the fever from the stigma."

Her own hand comes to light just barely above his, and after a moment's deliberation, rests there as she asks, "Am I what?"

[jaytodd]

It's... nice. Contact. Not fight-contact (and he can still feel the bruises left behind by Heine, and his fingers around his throat-), but contact. It's- yeah, he knows he's screwed in the head, knows that he equals all touch with fight, hurt, bad, now. He's getting better at it, in small ways. Her hand is warm and smooth, smaller than his. She can probably count the scars there. And she knows how he got most of them.

Everyone and their good intentions. He closes his eyes briefly. She could have said 'Bruce' instead of 'everyone', would have worked the same. He is sick of that. He's sick and tired.

Dawn knows better than Quatre had (but he had only his life into his head, no distance to see it), better than anyone back in Gotham, better than Dick who didn't know him here and there.

Her hair is soft. She should be afraid. He doesn't even know what he is thinking anymore.

"Nothing," and it's said in a whisper. "I'm tired, Dawn." He is, he really is, he realizes. It's as if saying it had made it more real.

He takes half a step back, toward the bed, his hand still in her hair, her hand above his.

[girl_unlocking]

She's counting the scars there, in fact - loses count halfway through, fingers trailing along his hand as she backs up just enough - yeah, barely half a step.

Her eyes widen as she steps back into the false darkness (could be her pupils dilating, it's hard to tell, that's what you get for being lampless, you know.) but she's not wearing a mask, so there's no need for anything to fall away other than any illusions about why she's really here.

If she could, she'd beat the sickness to a pulp. But she can't, and she knows that. She's known that for years - she just didn't think---

(Yeah, not thinking. That's one way to---)

---she'd ever see this place, or him, or anyone again. But fact is she's very much here and what she wants is to punch a hole in that goddamn darkness if she can. She wants other things, too (there's probably a list of them), but she'll start there.

It's the least surprising of all tonight's surprises - the realization that beneath her composure her blood is on fire - and that maybe it has been for a while now. Since the Foxhole? When? Does it matter?

It doesn't.

Closing the distance between them just a fraction more. To hell with deliberation and hesitance, she almost thinks - doesn't even have time for the thought to form before she's brushed her lips against his jaw, and pressing a kiss, then murmuring against his scarred throat.

"I know."

[jaytodd]

He shudders, at her lips. When was the last time...? Her hand feels so warm - and he raises his other hand, a question in the touch.

It's Dawn and it's not and it's her and maybe it's the least confusing and surprising thing so far.

He still trusts her. Getting closer only seems natural. He pays no attention to the tiny part of his mind that's saying this is a bad idea.

The metallic frame of the bed creaks horribly.

[girl_unlocking]

His hand raises and she catches it - reflex - her fingers threading through his. It might answer a question. It might raise more. It's cool - she'll roll with it.

Laughing at the creak - just a little laugh - breaks the last of the tension in the air for her, and she raises her lips to his, whispering just over them, "No wonder why you don't sleep."

She's stronger, but she doesn't push.

Things have changed. She's not sure exactly when - but she knows it was long before she came through that door again. What she is sure of is that this what she wants, and she's never really stopped being impulsive.

It's kind of what happens when every day might be your last. Well, what happened to me, anyway.

Somehow her jacket's on the floor. She's not cold. He's warm too as her fingers slide up and under his shirt, and her lips are on his. The kiss is almost chaste, gentle - maybe it's an apology for things that she has nothing to do with.

Okay, she pushes a little.