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 Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 9:31 pm
"Point, I guess." He stepped closer and, if he could, moved to her side. Conversational distance as opposed to something more intimate. "You running away from me didn't help. Not that I'd blame you."
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 9:44 pm
She was quiet for a minute, not sure how to explain herself. Running had just felt ... right. She hadn't thought about it at all, she'd just pushed away for the time being. She hadn't thought about how he might feel about it. Another insult to her sketchy track record.
"Are you okay?" she asked instead, picking at the skin under her nails. "Did I...?" She didn't finish the sentence, already too ashamed of her actions. Her blue crystal was a visual reminder of her failure. She couldn't think of how to phrase it.
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 9:57 pm
Only in the silence preceding Chel did he notice the crystal; maybe it had been simpler to ignore with shades and pointed gazes. His mouth quirked humorlessly before he tugged his collar down, revealing some of the spidery veins of the blue scar. "Matching set. It doesn't hurt as much anymore," he added as he released his shirt. It wasn't quite enough of an answer, but his demeanor could fill in some of the spaces; he still had the gaunt look about him of someone fresh from a near brush with death. "You?"
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 10:07 pm
Seeing the scar made her cringe, literally dizzy from the effort to comprehend that she had done that. She could still feel the whispers of the spears, as though she'd be able to summon them here and now.
"I'm sorry," she told him, ignoring the question about how she was doing. Any number of discomforts would be better than the itch she felt that told her to run and leave for good. Better that way, locked in a white box somewhere, than out there hurting people. She'd told him that. "S'not enough, but I'm so sorry. I can't believe I-I did-"
Her fault, her fault, her fault.
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 10:17 pm
"Chel, I know." He sounded more weary. "I don't need to hear it." It didn't matter now how sorry she was. "You made your choice, I made mine. I'm lucky this is all I got for it." Not grateful, but lucky.
"But I had to do it." Maybe seeing her cringe was enough to break through that haze of simmering resentment, if just for now. "I had to," he repeated. "I'm not proud of it, but I can't regret it either." Not even for all the strings attached.
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 10:20 pm
"Why?" She didn't understand. She couldn't understand.
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 10:27 pm
"Because I'm not a ******** decent person," he answered succinctly and, maybe for the first time in his life, rather bitterly. Clearly not someone who could instinctively let something like Excalibur in at least. "I survived something I wasn't going to. And I was going to ******** destroy that thing for meddling with you. With us."
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 10:38 pm
Chel's knuckles were white on the windowsill, fists gripped against the wood the more he talked.
For once, it was anger. She let herself be something other than sorry. "How come I gotta come to you with Merlin stuff, but you get to decide to use him without even-"
She slammed a fist down, cracking the wood slightly (it was old and Tenebrae was more than willing to assist if it meant a little destruction). "Did you even think-" what it would do to me? Her voice was shaking now. Fear again. "Stop sayin' it like you did it for me." Almost begging, amidst her anger. "I already did so many things t'you Jack."
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 10:59 pm
The crack of wood snapped something in him, had him tightening his own fists. "Like I'm some ******** saint," Jack almost shouted but somehow restrained to a growl. "Like I haven't ******** done s**t to you, to other people, again and again. I told you," his voice might have been wavering, "I told you we were going to share this hell, whatever kind it ended up being. I waited, I tried, but we couldn't stop that thing. It was going to kill me, Chel. I couldn't--"
He stopped abruptly, his jaw tightening. He looked up briefly and took a breath.
"I know you asked me to wait for you, but I couldn't let you ask him again. Not for me. Not when I know what it does to you." His voice was definitely wavering. "There wasn't time to deliberate on it. It had to be us." Now he was the one who started to sound like he was begging.
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 11:06 pm
"Hell wasn't here yet!" she yelled back. It felt good to yell, even if she knew she was going to cry after. The more she yelled the more she stayed those tears. "You just went on and did it yourself."
Her mouth twisted in a sneer, not at him but at herself. "How am I s'posed to believe I can protect you f'you don't even let me try huh?" That angle was useless, of course. She hadn't even been able to protect him with the legacy of protection itself.
You're nothing without me.
"I almost lost you over nothin'."
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 11:13 pm
"I ******** did!" he snapped back. "What, you think your pitiful defense against that thing was going to end in a mulligan somehow? It ******** wrecked my shield in three hits, Chel, even with you covering me. That wasn't nothing. If Hell wasn't there, then Death sure as ******** was knocking, and we weren't leaving a goddamn scratch on it."
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Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2015 1:59 am
Having moved away from the sill in the static, she stood her ground, fists clenched.
"Merlin is worse than death!" she yelled, as though raised volumes would get him to listen any better than her normal voice. "This ain't us," she said stubbornly. "Not when you go where I can't follow."
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Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2015 8:07 am
"You think I don't know that?" His eyes blazed, anger mixed with traces of fear (echoes of the look he wore when he frist retrieved her from quarantine) that were swallowed up as he went on. "But at least then we were on the same side. But for ******** sake, I didn't know you were going to go Excalibur on my a** immediately afterwards! I can't follow you there." It was only the surface of what he could begin to say about that, more than resentment and more than pride and more than bittersweet surprise.
He seemed to lean in as Chel stepped forward. "You couldn't stop that thing, so I had to. That's all it boils down to. I'm used to making the decisions you can't, so don't pretend you're surprised it happened. You wanna hate me for it, fine, but at least I'm goddamn alive so you can."
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Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2015 12:02 pm
"I never asked to go excalibur," she said darkly. She never asked for Merlin either; just like before, she only asked for a way out. "But when your a** is in danger, what am I supposed to do? Watch?" She knew there was an argument there for Jack to make; he knew exactly what it was like to watch helplessly.
When Jack leaned in, she leaned away. "Yer always runnin' around savin' me- ********' prince charmin'. I just wanted t'return the favor for once. S'not fun bein' the shitty one out of us both." She turned away and crossed her arms, finally get at the root of her problems. "But whatever, I was still shitty at protectin' you and your choice saved you so yeah I'll be wrong again." She wasn't really talking to Jack anymore, just staring at the wall like it was the source of all these problems. Her voice came out ragged, nearly something broken to its texture. "Dammit Jack I'm so tired of hurtin' you no matter what I do."
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Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2015 12:25 pm
There was a pause, and then a soft, strangled noise that had almost been a chuckle left him. "I pick Merlin to save my a**, but you're the shitty one," he echoed. "News flash, Chel: we're both shitty people. Different reasons, but shitty nonetheless."
He ran a hand through his hair, remembered how short it was, and furiously ruffled it, dragged his nails across his scalp until their left pinpricks of pain in their wake. She wasn't looking at him anymore, but he couldn't rouse something in him to force her otherwise.
"S'not about wrong or right here. Merlin was a ******** stupid choice, yeah, I'll never say it's otherwise, but--I'm just not cut out for protection, Chel." More bitterness, if a tired version. "Between those two, I know where where I'll always end up, whether I like it or not. It's just who I am. I don't--see things like you. I don't see things or people that need protection, I see the s**t that needs to get destroyed so it stops hurting them, or that someone needs to pay for doing anything to us."
He let out a ragged sigh of his own and straightened up. "I told you the same, you know, back there," he said, a little softer. "When you told me to leave. Every other thing I do also seems to hurt you. The only thing I can say in justification is that I never intend for it to. I didn't enjoy throwing you in quarantine either time, and I didn't enjoy making that choice to stay alive either."
And that came with the silent conditionals Chel would be aware of, that there would always be parts of it he couldn't be anything but objectively pleased with: the impenetrable armor, the strength, the renewed purpose. The power that lured the both.
"Maybe channeling Excalibur did save me, though. At least it meant you'd survive." She couldn't look at him anymore, but he found himself incapable of looking anywhere else. "But I'm not...I'm not leaving, Chel. Not unless that's what you want me to do." If he was honest with himself, not even then.
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