and i can barely look at you but every single time i do

[watchthemfall]

 
 

She stayed in Chicago in the end. It’s funny, how this city has its habit of pulling people back in. The Rifts, the violence, the memories. It always pulls you in again, when Chicago gets a hold of you, it sinks its claws in deep. Scarlett tried to leave forever, forever ago – but she was back and felt obliged to stay. For a while, at least.

Raff understood. She’d spent ten years with him, scouring the country for his brother, learning her Calling, controlling it, using it. He promised he’d come back, although sometimes she wondered if that was ever going to happen. As important as she was to him, Simeon always came first.

Sometimes, she goes to visit the grave of the father she murdered so many years ago. It seemed only right, considering she moved into the house she once shared with him – the house she killed him in. It seemed the old bastard was keen on staying dead and she preferred it that way. She never once regretted it. Claude Langford lived his life abusing people. He abused her mother, making her love him, forcing her to love him. In turn, he would use his Calling on his own daughter to keep in her check, scarring her in ways she never realised for a long, long time. It felt right, in the end, to smash his skull in with a blunt object – after he’d screaming his voice raw with terror. Police never suspected her; she’d ran away long before that – returning for a night before running off once more.

Now, she lived in his house, spending his money as if it were some form of compensation. She hated him still, but sometimes – and only just sometimes – she wished he were still alive so he could see what she’d become. She was a force of nature; terrible and cruel, a force not to be reckoned with. A woman of pain and fear and horrible secrets wrapped tightly around her throat.

And then, there’s Leon.

The boy who grew up and became twisted and broken by staying in his city. Who the fuck think it’s right to give a Guardian a dying kid for a Ward? The thought twists up her insides, knots her stomach until she can taste bile in her mouth and feel rage in her fingers. This was the boy she didn’t know how to feel about. The boy she used to beat bloody, grip his face in her hands, digging her nails into his bruised skin and felt like crying because she didn’t know what to do with the feelings she had. The boy she ran away and left; who grew so old in her absence. She couldn’t begin to imagine what losing a Ward would mean, what it would feel like. It hurt to see him like that, when they saw one another on the street that day. She could barely look at him. He was almost swallowed by this damn city.

She won’t let it happen. Not again.

Well, she can start by scribbling her old address over the journals. He can find her if he wants. Who knows what happens after that. She hasn’t gotten that far yet. How on Earth could she begin to help? She feels the need to, knows that she owes that much for leaving him. Maybe it’s why she can’t barely look at him. He doesn’t blame her, of course. He never did. But she blames herself. Maybe that’s why she wants to put things right. Maybe it’s that decade-old obsession that never left her.

Who knows?

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[loveinsidesomeoneelse]

Leon's a shell. It's not bad, really--being hollow isn't as bad as the rest of the world seemed to make it out to be, and if he closes his eyes in his small apartment, he can hear the ocean. He's never been to the ocean, but he's been to the lake, and he can hear city traffic like it's waves.

It could be worse--he remembers, of course, the boiling, useless rage of adolescence, bubbling up inside him and spilling over uselessly. It still happens, once in a while, but he's not caught up in it like he was. Instead, he steps outside himself and lets his body take over, do what it needs to do to work out the problem, and he just watches from the outside until unconsciousness takes over.

Not feeling is infinitely better than feeling, Leon's decided, and he gets by doing just that, not feeling, floating from job to job and returning to his subsidized housing and laying on the futon that functions as a bed, listening to waves of traffic behind his eyes, and ignoring his heart and whatever still resides.

Until he goes looking through the journals for any potential job postings for a broken Guardian Angel, and sees the post from her. It's like the waves in his head increase tenfold, and suddenly they're cresting over his head and he can't breathe, he's holding his breath and his chest burns.

Shaking hands drop his journal and he tries to lay back down on the futon, shallow breaths wracking his body, but his chest hurts, it hurts, it hurts. He squeezes a hand in the top sheet bunched up under his body, squeezes and squeezes like he wants to pop, but he's still there, still feeling it, and it won't go away. It won't go away.

He wants to scream for help, but his throat doesn't know how any more. It won't go away. The fist squeezed around the sheet goes up and comes down on the futon, in times with his breaths, in time with his heartbeat, and there's something about the impact that makes breathing a little easier. Before he knows what he's doing, he's risen to his feet and has punched a neat hole in his wall--are they going to take that out of his rent, how is he going to pay for that, adult consequences mean nothing to him now--and his knuckles are bleeding and he can taste his heart in his mouth. He punches again, blinding pain spreading up his arm to his brain, and he punches again, and things go dark for a moment, dark enough that he doesn't know what he's going to hit, that he's swinging wildly with lights flashing on and off in his head, his knees quivering as his fists carve out a hole in the drywall big enough to pour whatever's going on in his chest.

When he blinks, he's in front of her old address, feet aching in worn tennis shoes, whole right arm numb except for his pulse. He knocks with his left, three times, and he can hear his own nerves in the knock. His chest still aches, and he doesn't know what to call it any more--fear, joy, anticipation, loss, love

He knocks again. His knees are shaking. He's going down sooner or later, and probably sooner.

[watchthemfall]

Scarlet knows it's him at the sound of knocking. No one else knows she's here; not yet anyway. She doubts anyone she knew from her first time in Chicago is still alive by now. Certainly not the Wanderers she knew. The city has a habit of killing people off, or the Rift stealing them away just as quickly as it brought them here.

She steps through the house, over the darkened and aged stain on the floor where her father's body once lay, eons ago. She's never gotten around to replacing the wood; she doubts she ever will.

There's a pressure in her chest, she doesn't know what it is. She doesn't know how to put words to it. She knows it's him, she knows she needs to do something. And when she finally opens the door, looks at him, sees the pearly white blood on his fist, the distant look in his eyes, her breath hitches in her throat. She feels like she can't breathe and she pales at the sight of him. He's gotten worse since that day on the street. So much worse. She shouldn't have let him out of her sight.

And there's that feeling of rage boiling up in her. She knows his Calling has done this, and she's angry, so, so angry it leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. She finally takes a breath, tasting the scent of his blood, old memories bubbling to the surface that she needs to put away. She used to make him bleed like that-- no, she can't, can't linger in the past. She needs to focus on here, the now.

She says his name, softly, quietly. Her brow moves into a harsh frown, unable to hide the pain from seeing him like this. It's fucked up, so fucked up. It shouldn't be like this. Her chest swells again, she feels like she's drowning in her emotions. She tells herself to move, but she remains stuck to the spot, gaping at him, at a loss of what to do.

She never planned this far ahead.

[loveinsidesomeoneelse]

The door opens and Leon immediately averts his eyes, instinct at this point--better risk offense than risk getting another Ward, better stay away from people than getting too close.

She says his name and he lets it sit there in the air while he remembers how to speak. His shoes are worn and he feels a little ashamed, showing up like this--it's not the first time, but he thought maybe being an adult meant you stopped showing up bleeding on other people's doorsteps. His name sounds so gentle in his own ears, when she says it like that, like she cares, and it makes him wince a little. He wonders if she's drunk, feels ashamed for wondering.

Talk. He needs to talk--has to talk He doesn't need to talk, things are so much easier when he doesn't have to talk (always have been, always have been, grunts and head shakes and fists getting his point across so much better than any word he's managed to choke between his teeth) but he has to talk.

"Scarlett," he says, and it doesn't sound as measured as he wants it to. His voice warbles and he instantly hates himself, curls his left hand up into a fist while his right hangs uselessly to his side, white blood running between his fingers and dripping onto her front step. He has to keep going though, because he's here now, and he can't just turn around after she's opened the door. He's been called, and he's here, like he always is, running back to her.

Talk, don't think. State the obvious, Leon, and try not to bleed too much.

"You're back."

[watchthemfall]

Scarlett hasn't been drinking, but part of her wishes she had been. It would make it so much easier to deal with all of this. It makes everything easier. Almost She doesn't drink as much as she used to, actually. She can actually drink to enjoy herself instead of drinking to block things out and numb the pain. She still does, from time to time, when times get hard. But at least she's clean.

He looks like a fucking train-wreck and she doesn't know what the fuck happened to him or why he's bleeding on her doorstep. It feels so familiar it hurts. She wants to reach for him, but she remains frozen, still staring at him as he averts his gaze. It's almost like some spell that breaks when he says her name. Her gaze lowers to his curled fist, the pearly white blood. Her jaw sets, her brow falls into a frown and she takes a shaky breath. It's like she's a teenager again, she feels angry but more at herself than anything else.

Before she says anything else, she grabs him and pulls him into a rough hug. Because he's here, he's alive - at what cost, she doesn't know. But he's here at her door and not dead. "Yeah, I guess so." Back for what? Back for round two? Back living in her dead father's house where his blood stains the floor? She doesn't really know.

It kinda makes up for it, seeing him again. She.. missed him.

She takes a step back, breaking the contact. "So.. you gonna come in?" she asks, clearing her throat and looking away, "Or do you wanna just bleed the fuck out at my door?"