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"...I'll be fine," she said firmly.

Laurel was not about to spill her pathetic life story out to this stranger, but she was not going to be told when she could or could not go home. If they knew where she lived, they would have gotten her before this. Or they did not want witnesses, like her neighbors, when there were so few people on the train this time of night. But he was right. There was a connection between the two of them, something had happened to them that changed them, probably forever.

"If you...want to come with me, that's okay," Laurel said after a moment.

She was insane, obviously. Certifiably insane if she was inviting some stranger to come back to her apartment with her. But Darien was not really some stranger. He was like her, albeit his tattoo was different. But she was going home, she was changing her clothes, she was eating ice cream and she was going to go to bed and forget that the day had ever happened. She hated violence so much.

"But I can't not go home. I need to be able to get changed in the morning for work."

She just kind of nodded, and made sure that she had everything before she began to walk out of the alley, trying to get her bearings. Laurel needed to figure out where she was, looking around before she decided on a direction and began walking. It was only another ten blocks to her own apartment, but the quality of the buildings around them would change not in age, but in quality. They were not the city-sponsored buildings that housed tens of apartments and tenement buildings, but more of the antique buildings that had escaped the ravages of city planning.

The building she eventually took them to was one in a number of old row houses, looking shabby but not too run down. She stopped in front of one with white siding and black shutters, and unlocked the door. In the foyer, there was a set of steps going up and then a hallway going back into the old house that had been cut up into apartments. Laurel checked her little mail box in the foyer, and then went upstairs, going to the door on the right, marked as 2B, and began unlocking the bottom lock and the dead bolt above it.

Turning, she glanced at Darien, then looked him over once again for weapons before opening her door, "...Come on in."

Laurel stepped inside and sighed at the comfort that her apartment brought. It was small, just a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen and a miniscule living room, but the living room had two windows that faced the street and she had flower boxes outside that would have flowers in them come spring. The kitchen had a small aga stove, and a single sink, but there was a dish tub waiting to be used, and a full sized refrigerator waiting for her. There was a used but clean couch in the living room with a scuffed, old coffee table in front of it, a small television, and several bookshelves stuffed full of books of every genre, from child psychology text books to romance novels with tawdry covers.

Nothing seemed to be out of place, so she put her bag on a hook near the door, her keys tossed inside. She hung her badge on another hook and next to that went her coat. Leaning down, she unzipped her boots and stepped out of them, walking them back to her bedroom. Her bedroom was nothing spectacular either, and a little girly, despite how she looked. A floral bedspread in gray and blue and black, a window with curtains over it, a small gray cat snoozing on the end of the bed. Laurel came to the door of her bedroom, looking out.

"You can have a seat or something," she said, before closing the door.

She took a moment to pet the purring cat, and changed her clothing, a pair of comfortable pajama pants and ridiculously fluffy rabbit slippers to replace her skirt and tights, and she came back out, the cat following her. The small animal went over to Darien and began sniffing him over, and Laurel went into the kitchen.

"...Are you hungry or anything?"

Somehow, an encounter just doing her job had turned into having a stranger in her apartment. Laurel was not certain how it had all happened, but she knew that her desire to know more about someone like her was probably responsible. She sighed softly and knew that she was probably getting into trouble she could not even imagine, especially since she had been attacked on the train the way she had been. Her tattoo was pulsing a bit as she thought about it, not painfully, just reminding her it was there, as if she needed to be reminded that she was insanely powerful and terrified of it all.

Leaning over, she pulled some items out of the fridge. Tomorrow would have to be grocery day, it seemed. There was very little left in her fridge aside from eggs, beer, and the food she had planned to make dinner out of. Laurel pulled out one of the beers and glanced over her shoulder, then pulled out a second one, holding it out to him as an offer. If he was not interested, she would put it back in the fridge, no hurt feelings. But it felt like the kind of night that a beer was necessary.

She twisted the top open on her own, then began chopping up the green and red peppers she had pulled out of the fridge, and then worked on the chicken, tossing it into the pan and getting it going over the heat. The cat came over and curled around her feet, and she picked a chunk of chicken out of the pan and put it down on the floor. The cat instantly attacked it, despite having a prominently displayed and full food dish and water dish on the kitchen floor. Laurel took a moment to crouch down and pet the cat's head.

"This is Milton," she said, introducing her pet to her company.

Laurel went back to cooking, throwing spices and the peppers into the pan, as well as a whole jalapeno, and then let it simmer on the stove as she leaned against one counter and sipped her beer. Her jaw ached, a memory of the bar, and she opened the freezer and pulled out an ice pack, putting it against her jaw as she went back to her beer.

"How did you figure out what you could do?" she asked after a moment. "Mine just started manifesting when something was across the room and I wanted it but hadn't gotten up to get it. It came right over."

The cat trotted over to Darien and sniffed his fingers before rubbing his face against his hand. Laurel sipped her beer, not moving out of the kitchen, not leaving the safety of it when he began talking about his powers and how they manifested. She shook her head.

"I don't think it's useful. I think it's terrifying. I don't use it. Not unless I have to. Not unless someone moves against me first. I don't want to hurt anyone, not even scum like the guy who attacked me tonight in the bar. It scares the hell out of me, being able to do this. I don't want to have this kind of power, and I don't want the responsibility of having something like this. Something that can hurt people so easily."

She turned away from him and stirred the simmering meat and sighed quietly, "I can't stand violence against people. Not when they can't defend themselves. And who could defend themselves from me now? Nobody."

Laurel got out tortillas and spooned the filling into them, wrapping them tightly and quickly poured some enchilada sauce over them and some cheese and popped it into the oven to warm through completely. She got out plates and forks, and sipped her beer again, putting the food on plates and handing him one. She then sat down on the chair, leaving the entire couch for him.

"Sorry, I don't really have a table, so I eat off the coffee table like a savage."

Milton came over to her and began purring, interested in what she was eating. A faint smile came to her face, "Back off, fur face. This isn't for kitties."

"There's always room to be kindhearted," Laurel said, shaking her head. She believed that wholeheartedly.

She decided not to give him the lecture on the fact that she was aware that the world was horrible. There was no use in telling him stories of children who came in missing eyes because of cruel parents, of disfigured wives, of babies scalded with water to stop their crying. She reached up to touch the scar on her face, not wanting share about that either. Instead she just stuck with what she felt. That there had to be kind hearts in the world, or it was not worth being in, not worth saving one little bit at a time.

"Thank you. I don't cook much for visitors, but I don't want to make bland food for myself. Life's too short to eat nothing but salads and yogurt, right?"

Laurel finished eating and went back to her beer, "The couch pulls out into a bed. I've got some extra bedding for it, so you don't have to curl up in a ball on the couch or in the chair or anything."

She got up, putting her plate in the sink and rinsing it off with water. Milton rubbed against her ankles and she gave him a can of cat food on a little plate, which he instantly sat down and ate. Laurel then went to the linen closet and got him sheets, blankets, and a pillow, and set them down in the chair. She sat on the arm of the chair, pushing a few pieces of hair away from her glasses.

"I know it's rude, but I really need to get some work done tonight. So remote's there. I don't have cable, but I've got a lot of DVDs. You should be able to find something to watch. There's the books too, if you prefer to read."