She swung from her left...

[takecourage]

When she falls asleep, she dreams of Hellie.

Hellie with her beautiful blonde hair and her strong athlete's stance and her big, ugly feet. Sweet, clever, dead Hellie. In the dream, Hellie is alive, and she's swinging a bat, the bat, still splattered with blood and brain-matter, in wide, careless arcs. In real life, that bat had been broken into splinters, and Hellie had opened her hands, opened Alex's hands, and given it to the river but here, in the dream, it's still whole and terrible as it ever was.

"Hey, Alex," says Hellie, swinging the bat again. "How's life?"

Between one blink and another, everything changes - Hellie teeming wiht life becomes Hellie already going blue around the edges, vomit in her hair. Dead in the night. Alex feels tears rolling hot down her cheeks.

"Jesus, Hellie," she mumbles. "Jesus."
She doesn't know how to tell Hellie how much she loved her. In the dream, she hopes she knows.

"Here," says Hellie, holding out the bat. Cold terror spikes through her and she shakes her head.
"I don't want that," she says. "Don't...Hellie, please..."

"You don't have a choice, Galaxy," says Hellie, her blue eyes soft and sad and forever away. "You never did. Just take the fucking bat."

So, in the way of dreams, Alex reaches out and takes the bat and she wakes up, with Hellie's name on her lips and the bloodied bat stil in her hands.

"Oh, fuck," she says, her panicked brain rabbiting, bouncing off the insides of her skull, panic begging for release.

Comments

[more_magic]

Darlington sleeps, drifts, his own dreams odd and fractured things. He's running down the long corridors of Black Elm, going nowhere, and though he's alone he can hear the sound of someone else. Someone familiar, gasping for breath. It takes him a minute to realize it's Alex, and a minute longer to understand the sound isn't a product of his subconscious. He wakes up, sits up, already reaching for her.

"Alex, what..." In the dark, his fingers brush something harder than skin, jagged edges covered in something sticky, and he jerks his hand reflexively away. "Alex?"

[takecourage]

Alex is already out of bed, and she can't bring herself to take hold of the bat, to lift it off the mattress, even though its going to ruinthe sheets, leave them soiled and stained beyond repair. She opens her mouth to speak and no sound comes out.

"Don't touch it," she says, quietly. "Please."

[more_magic]

He can see the dim shape of her there in the dark, a presence standing by the bed; can see the long form of something else lying where she'd only just been. "I won't," he says, still trying to wake up enough to comprehend this, understand whatever it could be.

Careful not to disturb the thing on the bed, Darlington gets up, turning automatically towards the lamp on his bedside table. He reaches for the switch, then stops. "Alex, can I turn on the light? Do you want me to turn on the light?"

[takecourage]

There's a war in her, then, about whether she wants him to turn on the light or not, but there's also a pitching fear in her stomach of the kind of things that could hide in the dark.

She opens her mouth but, at first, there's no voice.

"Yes," she says, finally. "You can...Yeah. Turn it on."

[more_magic]

She sounds small, and young, and scared, her answer full of an uncertainty that he can feel settle in his own chest. He'd spent the last three years standing witness and guard--hoplite, hussar, dragoon, his mind supplies, unhelpfully--for the most terrible and wonderful things, and he'd never even thought of turning away. But whatever's in their bed, in the dark, whatever had dragged Alex from sleep? For a moment, Darlington's not sure it'll be any easier to understand in the light.

"Okay," he says, and does it anyway.

The lamp snaps on, the sudden flood of brightness making him blink a few times as his eyes adjust. He looks towards the bed and stills, taking in the bat on Alex's side of the bed, the red streaks already marring the white of their sheets. "How did that..." he starts, already moving around the end of the bed towards her.

[takecourage]

And she just stands there, bare legs, one of Danny's t-shirts and she stares at the bat in the bed. She doesn't really remember everything that happened that night, other than Hellie's dizzying strength slipping through her, the heft of the bat in her hands.

"I don't...I don't know," she says, taking a reflexively step away from him, towards the bat. "Just don't...don't fucking touch it."

[more_magic]

"I won't," he says again, promises again, and when she flinches away from him and steps towards the bed there's a flash of hurt somewhere deep within his heart. He doesn't move any closer than he is, despite the pull, the wish, the desire to do so.

With the lights on and his mind cleared of sleep after that abrupt, shocking awakening, Darlington's a little better able to follow Alex's gaze downward, to consider what's just appeared and begin picking apart the mystery of the why and the how. It's a horror, the pale ash of the wood stained and streaked in red, flecked here and there with--yes, that could only be brain matter, and there a chip of bone embedded in the crack just starting to form along the length of the bat.

It's not that he hasn't ever seen it, he realizes after a moment. It's that he's never seen it whole. The fragments they found at that squalid house on Cedros, the ones documented in meticulous detail by LAPD forensics, had barely been large enough to signify what they once had been. But here it is, restored through some perversion of a miracle and laid at Alex's side--and his--while they slept.

"Alex," he says carefully, like he's trying to gentle something skittish and wild. He supposes right now, he is. "I need you to talk to me."

[takecourage]

And suddenly, they're back in that basement and she's waiting for him to put it all together and look at her with an accusation in his eyes.

She looks at him, her dark eyes wide and wary.

"Danny, don't..."

[more_magic]

She only looks more frightened when he says it, more rigid as she stands there in a borrowed t-shirt, her hair a tousled mess. "Don't what?" he says. "Something made this happen, brought this to you like some kind of obscene gift." He gestures towards it, some quick and abortive movement that skirts just shy of actually touching the thing.

"This was used to kill everyone you fucking knew and now it's here. Like a threat."

[takecourage]

"Not everybody I knew," she says, her stomach lurching unpleasantly at the thought of it. "It's just...some stupid bat that Len kept and someone thinks it's fucking...funny..."

[more_magic]

"No, not everyone," he says, a low, heavy stone in the pit of his stomach when he sees how pale she is, her dark eyes even more fathomless and guarded for a moment. "Enough of them, but not...that friend of yours."

Not that Helen Watson had been spared her own kind of horror that night, but Darlington can't bring himself to say more than that.

"If it's meant to be funny, it's lost on me," he says flatly, breathing out a slow, unsettled breath as he passes a hand over his face.

[takecourage]

"Hellie," she says, heavy, like she's cast out of so much lead. She realises that one of them has to touch it and, more than anything, she doesn't want that anywhere near him, so she reaches for it and picks it up, letting it hang, bumping against the boards.

[more_magic]

"Right," he says. "Hellie."

Alex reaches for the bat and he almost stops her, willing to take this on, wanting to clear their bed--their house, the place he'd made safe for her in a way few places had ever been--of the sudden, shocking violence of a thing neither of them had expected. It takes effort to stay where he is, reminded of his promise only a few minutes earlier. He watches instead, Alex's fingers closing around the neck of the bat, lifting it up and bringing it to rest at her side, the end thunking against the floor.

It's nothing more than that, but then it's something else. After Sandow's call, he'd tried to let the evidence in her Lethe file, that copy of the police report and all the rest, stand on its own--with one exception. There'd been a clip he'd found on YouTube, some pull-at-the-heartstrings local news piece about the girl who died. Helen. Hellie. A troubled life cut short, the usual thing. Darlington hadn't thought much of it at the time, but maybe because they've both said her name, maybe because of the lateness of the hour and the lingering uneasiness hanging over the room, he thinks of it again now.

Of the quick flash of a photo, one of those youth sports league things almost everyone has a copy of, stashed away in some box in the attic. Darlington's is from the soccer league he'd begged to join, him and his teammates at nine years old, all gap-toothed smiles and scrawny limbs. Helen's hadn't been soccer. Baseball. Softball. The difference didn't matter, exactly.

There's a lurch and stutter inside him, quick and sharp. He looks at the easy curl of Alex's fingers--the fingers of her right hand--around the bat, and remembers the wide left-handed arcs of blood in the photos, against the walls and counter and furniture. Everywhere.

Darlington doesn't know what to ask, how to ask it, his eyes still fixed on Alex's right hand. The bat fits so easily within it.

[takecourage]

"I...don't know what to do with this," she says, her stomach lurching uneasily, her eyes still wiry, still ink dark and watching.

He's seen the folder, seen the evidence.

Be satisfied, she thinks, prays, begs. Please be satisfied.

[more_magic]

When she speaks, he manages to look up; past the bat, past her hand. Into her eyes, ink-black and full of an unsteadiness he should want to soothe away. There hadn't been any blood on either of the girls. They'd been the cleanest things inside that house. Alex, damp and naked, curled against the blue-lipped and stiffening form of her friend. It should be enough.

Why isn't it enough?

"I," he starts, then clears his throat. "I'll get a trash bag from the kitchen. We can strip the bed, too, put the sheets in. I'll take it down to the basement."

[takecourage]

She sees it - the doubt in his eyes - and she feels coils shift inside her ribs, a tongue flicking to taste the air. She forces it down.

"Yeah," she says, nodding. "Okay."

[more_magic]

"I'll go get it." He swallows back the don't follow me that all too suddenly wants to come after. "I'll be right back."

The bags are just under the kitchen sink, but once there he leans on the counter, hands curled along the edge as he stares down at the dull Formica surface. He considers what he knows.

Helen Watson died much earlier than the others. Alex was the most extraordinary candidate Lethe had seen in years. Both girls were small, underfed from too little food and too many drugs. Despite her training, Alex had invited a connection with the Bridegroom in search of answers about that town girl's death. Neither Alex nor Hellie had the strength to do enough to shatter a solid wood bat into fragments, enough to beat five men unrecognizable, enough to leave blood and bone and brain matter congealing into a sludge on a countertop much like this one.

Alex was extraordinary. Alex could see ghosts. Alex could...

Lethe kept records of possessions by Greys, candidates turned untenable, going insane and destroying their rooms, attacking caregivers with the kind of strength that defied belief. Going catatonic afterwards, locked inside their own skulls, unable to be questioned. It's the last part that makes him wonder if he's wrong, if the pieces coming together in his head are taking a shape that should be different. That he wants to be different.

But Alex had never been ordinary. Not in all the months he'd known her--if he'd ever really known her at all.

Darlington gets a bag from the box under the sink and shakes it open, the plastic making a rattling noise that sparks a sleepy huff from the living room, Kirby waking briefly in his kennel before settling again. He goes out of the kitchen, through the living room, down the hall, into their bedroom. Alex is still there, slight and dark-eyed and wary.

"She was left-handed," he says, each word heavy as a stone. "Helen. Hellie. Wasn't she?"

[takecourage]

And, of course, they're going to do this again, they're here again, because this? This is her punishment. For thinking that a girl like her could ever have a man like him. She feels her face go hard, feels herself harden all the way through. He can't ruin her life here, no Yale, no summer job, no Sandow, no Lethe. He can't ruin her life here. But, of course, he can.

"Yeah," she says. "Used to get ink all over her fucking hand."

[more_magic]

He's bracing for a denial, hoping for one, and when her expression goes flat and her eyes turn from ink to flint, to sharp and glittering obsidian, Darlington assumes that's what he's getting. It makes the truth hit harder, when it comes. Alex wasn't left-handed. Hellie was. Hellie died, and Alex lived.

They all died, and Alex lived.

"You killed them," he says, distantly aware he's still holding the garbage bag, slick plastic in numb fingers. "You...used Hellie, and you killed them." He watches her, the bat in her hand the way it must have been that night--or nearly. The dark of her eyes, the swirl of her tattoos. The cold and rigid set of her face. "Tell me I'm wrong, Alex."

[takecourage]

It makes it easier, somehow, that that's the way he looks at her. That he's ever inch the arch, judgemental boy that she'd first met in her dorm room. That he looks, in that moment, a million miles away from the boy that she loves.

"Don't look at me like that," she says, her voice low and hard, the bat still in her hand. "Don't you...don't you dare."

[more_magic]

Still, there's no denial, just the snap and snarl of her voice saying don't you dare with no remorse, no excuses. As though he's the one to blame--and maybe in another way, he is.

He'd known something was wrong. He'd known it the day he met her, an untamed rusalka in a black henley, sweltering in the Vanderbilt common room. He'd known, even if he hadn't had the proof. Lethe never should have let her past the gates, shouldn't have trusted her with their secrets, shouldn't have taught her more about the power magic could hold. Instead, they welcomed her, he welcomed her, unaware of the danger, the weapon she willingly made of herself.

Murderer. The word is too small to encompass what she'd done. Ariel Harel's spine had been snapped in three places. Mitchell Betts's organs rendered to pulp. The photograph of what remained of Leonard Beacon's head had sent him in search of the ginger candies he only used on prognostication nights.

"How am I supposed to look?" he says, and he can hear the sharp edge in it. "What am I supposed to say, Alex? What specific reaction were you anticipating from me, because if it's something other than this, I'd love to know."

[takecourage]

"Like you haven't already made up your fucking mind," spits Alex, and this, she knows, is the conversation that they'd have ended up having, if it hadn't gone the way that it did back home. This is the way he would have looked at her. These are the things that he would have said.

It wouldn't have hurt this much.

"Like you give a shit about 'why' instead of just what, Daniel."

[more_magic]

She's right, he knows she's right. Her motive should matter more, and if he stopped to think, he'd understand whatever it could be. There was a reason she didn't say much about Len, a reason the few bits of information he'd managed to glean turned his stomach in a different way than the photos in her file. Maybe in that light, she hadn't killed anyone who hadn't deserved it. No one who'd be missed, whose impact on the world would've been anything other than another kind of destruction.

The why should matter--but it's the how that's already started to occupy his thoughts. How she managed it. How she stayed sane. How she kept it quiet until the minute she couldn't hide it from him any more.

"There is no why in the things you did," he says, the steel in his voice matching the venom in hers. "Not to that degree. I saw the photos, Alex. I read the file. You staked two sleeping men in the heart. You pulverized your boyfriend's skull."

He watches her, both of them rooted in place for the moment. The bat in her hand, the bag in his. "You'd do it again, wouldn't you. If you could."

[takecourage]

It doesn't matter to him, she realises. Why it happened - it doesn't matter to him, so there's no point in trying to explain it. He won't care that she can barely remember anything that happened, that it was Hellie's strength that went flooding through her, Hellie's fury that left those assholes in smoking ruin. He won't care because he's a sanctimonious asshole. Because he was never trafficked like Hellie, never given out like a party favour like she was. Because he never woke up to find that one of the only people he still loved in the world was already cold.

"Yes," she says, all cold. "They were going to throw her away like fucking trash and I would do it again, and again, and again, if I could."

[more_magic]

She goes colder, harder, locking herself away even further than she had when first they'd met. There's so little he recognizes in her now, and it's only with effort that Darlington pushes back the ache that realization brings to his heart. This was always who she'd been, out only for her own survival at the cost of...so many others.

He should have known. He should have seen.

"Because your kind of justice is...what? More satisfying? There were other avenues you could have used, Alex. Things you might have done. If for once in your life you'd stopped to think." He shakes his head, looking away from her. "I told you once you'd get someone hurt if you weren't careful. I wish I'd known that warning came too late."

[takecourage]

"Do you know what cops think about girls like me?" she says, the bat still haning from her numb, nerveless hand. "About girls like Hellie? Do you know how often girls like Hellie get justice? No, you don't, because you're a white boy from a nice town and nobody ever really hurt you except you, Danny. And nobody ever put their hands on you when you didn't want them to and nobody ever threw you away." She drops the bat, then, so that she can pick up the jeans that she'd discarded when she got into bed earlier. "They were going to throw her away, and then I don't know what they'd have done to me afterwards, but I wasn't about to let it happen. The world has been trying to fucking kill me since I was thirteen years old and I wasn't going to let it happen to me as well as Hellie. I'm sorry that I'm not so fucking damsel in distress for you to save, Danny. I'm sorry that I'm not the girl you fucking thought I was. But them? I'm not fucking sorry for them."

[more_magic]

"My parents gave me up for the price of an apartment," he says, even as he knows it's not the same, just easier to face than the things she's saying. The implications, and the truth, and the thought of her vulnerable again, alone again, unable to be saved. "Then after my grandfather died and I wouldn't give up Black Elm, they couldn't leave town fast enough. Counting their inheritance the entire way, I don't doubt. Maybe I wasn't trash, but I was discarded all the same."

The bat thunks onto the floor, the sound of it loud and sudden enough that he has to work not to flinch. He looks back over at her, sees her pick up the jeans, and he could stop her. He should stop her. There's still the possibility they could fix this, somehow.

He stays where he is, watching as the bat rolls a few inches to the left, leaving a faint arc of red against the boards. It's just because the building's old enough that the floors tilt, but right now it feels like a rebuke.

"So you kill the world before it kills you. Anything that stands in your way." He focuses on the coiled vipers along her collarbones, the furious set of her mouth and the cruel and fathomless dark of her eyes. Like she could drown someone in them, swallow them up and leave nothing behind. "Or anyone."

[takecourage]

"That must have been really hard with a fucking ballroom," spits Alex, and regrets it the moment she says it, but it's already out in the air by then, drawing breath. She half turns away from him, pulling her jeans on, buttoning them and shoving her hair out of her face. "It sounds like you want me to apologise for this, Darlington. Like you want me to apologise for helping my friend - my friend who was drugged and fucked and died. My friend who I..." Her jaw tightens. "I'm not going to apologise, Daniel. And you should understand because you fucking love me."

Loved me. Whatever.

She grabs a sweater off a chair and drags it on over her head.

[more_magic]

He could tell her that hard had been having the electricity cut off in the dead of winter, bundling himself in clothes he found in the attic and doing his homework by candlelight. Keeping track of how much money was left secreted away among the pages of 1776. Balancing whether paying for some repair on the house was more vital than feeding himself that week. Knowing, like a constant, droning hum at the back of his mind, that if anything happened to him no one would find out until it was far too late.

But Alex doesn't care about that, because none of it is enough fuel for another of her acid barbs, the venom that he always should have realized she possessed. The warning had been inked four times on her skin, after all.

"If I really loved you, I'd just accept this?" he says instead, hearing the bitter tang to the words. "Sure, Alex, it's fine with me you let in a Grey, one of the most dangerous, reckless things you could do, something I wouldn't have been able to keep from Sandow if we were back home, because you felt bad that your friend died. I have no problem with the fact you slaughtered five men with a baseball bat and you have absolutely no remorse about it because hell, it got you to Yale, didn't it? Those are the things you want me to say, that's the argument you're trying to make here."

The sweater she grabs is one of his, because it's always one of his. Not long ago, it would've been a source of fond annoyance; now, it feels like another kind of knife in his heart.

"If you don't know that it's because I love you that I'm trying to understand, not just accept, but understand, how you did this..." He exhales sharply, letting go of the garbage bag at last, letting it crumple to the ground beside him. "Then, Alex, I'm not sure how to explain it to you."

[takecourage]

"Fuck you," she says, spitting the words at him. "You're not trying to understand anything, Daniel. You're just judging me because that's the fucking easiest thing for you to do." She grabs her boots, sitting down on the edge of the bed to yank them on, leaving the laces to trail. "Go find a girl who'll live up to your expectations, Daniel. I'm sure there's a fucking Ashley around here somewhere."

[more_magic]

"You think anything about this is easy?" He only just keeps from shouting. "Knowing there's a chance you'd do this again? Hurt someone? Maybe not even someone you think deserves it, next time. How much control do you have over this, really? Because from what I saw it didn't look like a whole hell of a lot."

Alex keeps getting dressed, pulling on one boot and then the other. He could stop her, ask her to stay, work this out somehow. Only a few minutes ago, he might have, but the moment's gone now--and the twist in his gut makes him wonder, a flickering thought he doesn't want to acknowledge, if it's a chance he'll ever have again.

"It's not easy knowing you kept this from me. It's not easy knowing you still would be, if it wasn't for whatever the fuck brought that goddamn bat here tonight. You and I are supposed to trust each other, and you shattered that, just like--" Darlington stops himself, makes himself stop, before he says something he knows even in his anger is a step too far. "Despite your constant insecurities on that front, Alex, I'm not looking for an Ashley," he says, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, his jaw set and rigid. "But maybe that's better than what I got."

That, he regrets as soon as it's out. But it's out, and he doesn't move to take it back.

[takecourage]

"I'm not explaining myself to you, Danny, because you don't give a shit about what I think or why I did it," she says. "You don't give a fuck abotu me, as long as you're right. So whatever. You're right. Fuck it." She stands, grabbing her satchel and slinging it across her chest. "Enjoy looking for her, Daniel. I'm sure you won't have any problem getting your dick wet."

She stalks out of the bedroom, leaving the bat on the floor.

"Where the fuck are my keys..."

[more_magic]

Knowing that it's meant to sting--and that it stings because deep down, it's true--doesn't make the hurt of it any easier to take. Once again, they're left tearing strips off one another with an almost surprising suddenness and ferocity, and just like in January things have spiraled into something neither of them have complete control over.

Alex stomps out of the bedroom, the bat still lying where she'd dropped it. To follow her, he'll need to step over it, around it. It takes him a minute to do so, and even when he does he only makes it to the front of the hallway before he stops again, looking at her as she stalks furiously around the living room.

"Coffee table," he says, with the barest bob of his chin towards where her keys are resting on the wood surface.

[takecourage]

Alex snatches her keys up off the table and turns. In his crate, Kirby whines and, absurdly, that's the thing that almost makes her burst into tears. "I'm sorry, baby," she says, turning towards the door. "He'll take good care of you, okay?"

[more_magic]

"Alex..."

Kirby whines and Alex's eyes fill, and just for a moment there's a crack in the cold armor she'd wrapped around herself. Maybe this is the chance, maybe there's an opportunity he can take here, maybe nothing's happened that can't be repaired. He takes a step into the room, but she's already turning towards the door.

"Of course I will," he says. "I promise. For what it's worth. That's...that's all."

[takecourage]

Alex doesn't have anything else to say right then. She turns and walks out of the apartment and, because of Kirby, she doesn't slam the door. She makes it all of the way to the street before she has to wipe away a tear.