we kept our hearts from view, this time we're problem solving

[more_magic]

To say they get back to normal wouldn't be true. There's enough that's changed, that's needed to change, that whatever they'd been before isn't a place they can return to now. Darlington moves his things out of the Bramford and back to their apartment in Dimera, paying the exorbitant repair costs the landlord quoted him for the bedroom door just so he won't have to look at the splintered frame and all it represents. He and Alex talk, sometimes more deeply than he thinks they ever had before, other times about absolutely nothing at all. He still takes Kirby for a run in the morning, and he's still over there for dinner almost every night.

Day by day, over the next few weeks, it starts to feel like something's building out of the ashes.

When they'd first begun, Alex had said it could be like dating, starting fresh in a way they hadn't really taken the chance to do before. So far, it's felt like that; slow, and careful, and a little cautious as they feel out the edges of these new boundaries. Almost normal, when so little in their life--here or at home--had been that way for years.

Darlington brings up the idea, dinner out instead of in, one day when they're just sitting on the couch with Kirby. An actual date, maybe, to mark another step forward in the thing growing between them. He picks one of their favorites, a place downtown that's upscale and intimate, making the reservation for an evening Alex has off of work. That night, he showers and dresses, calling a cab and asking the driver to wait outside the Bramford while he goes to the second floor and knocks on Alex's door.

He still has a key, just as she has one to Dimera, but tonight he wants to do everything right.

Comments

[takecourage]

"Couch," says Alex, confirming as she walks into the kitchen to fix coffee how they both like it, bringing it back to the coffee table with a treat for Kirby tucked into the pocket of her shorts. Once she's there, she arranges herself under her blanket and waits for the boys to make themselves comfortable.

[more_magic]

While she fixes the coffee, Darlington takes the blanket from where Alex had bundled it up in the armchair by the window, shaking it out and draping it over the arm of the sofa so she can pull it over herself once she's sat down. Kirby whuffs a little, soft, staying close to wherever Darlington is as though he'd missed him. Maybe he had.

Once Alex is comfortable he goes to join her, sitting at the opposite end of the couch and facing her, his half of the blanket pulled over his legs. Kirby follows, nudging and turning until he's curled up between them with his head resting on Alex's thigh.

"So," says Darlington, his voice gentle and his eyes serious. "Whatever you want to tell me about Hellie or the rest of them, about your reasons why..." He looks down at the coffee mug in his hands, then back up. "I'll listen, which is what I should have done that night."

[takecourage]

"Okay, Hellie," says Alex, shifting, cradling her cup between her palms and not looking at him, not at first. "We met her at Venice Beach when Len was in his Scarface phase and being a really fucking asshole and she was just...she was beautiful. She reminded me of Michelle * Pfeiffer* only no..." She makes a vague gesture. "No bangs."

[more_magic]

Alex doesn't look at him, and Darlington doesn't ask her to. Wouldn't, not tonight. He listens, his fingers running along the coarse hair of Kirby's back and flank. He'd always missed the Yale Social's yearly showing of Scarface--sheer lack of interest, combined with too many things to do on Thursday nights--but had absorbed enough from classmates, roommates, acquaintances to vaguely understand what she means by the description.

It's a better picture of Hellie than the one he'd had up to now, bright and vivid rather than the starkness of the coroner's photographs he'd seen in Alex's file.

"Sure," he says. "I think I know what you mean."

[takecourage]

"She was... Really beautiful," says Alex, blowing over the surface of her coffee. "We used to spend all of the cash we had on like...glittery things and cheap earrings. Dressing up." She smiles, her eyes gone faraway for a moment. "Except she had these really ugly feet? But...God, I loved her. I was in love with her, I think."

[more_magic]

"That doesn't surprise me at all," he says, taking a sip of his coffee. Darlington watches her eyes go distant, her expression getting softer and sadder and more purely in love, and his heart aches for the sake of this thing she'd lost. And the girl she'd lost, along with it. "Any of it, but especially that you loved her."

There's no jealousy to it, no envy, just an awareness that it's what he should have said to her before.

"She was...younger than you, right? Or, only by a little." Knowing now how young Alex had been when everything started, everything between her and Len, his stomach twists at the thought of some kind of reprise of that--even if everyone involved had been a few years further down the line.

[takecourage]

"Just a little bit," she says, nodding. "So, like...I tried to keep her safe. Did everything that I could to keep her safe. We slept in the same bed, most of the time." She takes a sip of her coffee. "Len was trying to move up a letter, trying to get this guy Eitan to give him more weight. He mostly dealt weed, but the kids at the fancy private schools wanted other shit. Adderall, Molly, oxy, ket. And Eitan didn't trust Len as far as he could fucking kick him. Never let him deal more than dime bags of green."

[more_magic]

Eitan isn't a name he knows, someone with enough distance or luck to have avoided showing up in the police reports, but from the way Alex says his name and the description that follows Darlington can guess at his general nature. He nods. "Only the smallest of the small time, then. No real surprise there."

[takecourage]

"Yeah. He just thought he was a big fucking deal," says Alex, shaking her head and looking down at her hands again. "That night...the...last night...Ariel came into town. He was Eltain's cousin and he always made me really fucking...nervous. He felt like...a coiled spring or something, like he was about the explode, and everyone just wanted to impress him and keep him entertained. Like everyone needed permission from him. They were all waiting for it."

[more_magic]

She doesn't even have to say it for Darlington to be aware. Even now, with him dead--spine broken in three places, he would've gone down like a sack of lead and she made sure he never got up again, a cold voice in his head reminds him--and Alex a world away from even the reach of his ghost, if it made it past the Veil at all, there's a tension that settles in every line of her body at almost the thought of Ariel Harel's name.

He ignores that cold voice from before, and moves to rest just the tips of his fingers along the curve of her knee.

"And Len thought this was...some kind of chance," he says, hazarding a guess from what he knows and the things she's said.

[takecourage]

"And he was...laughing at us. He was always laughing at us." She takes one hand off her cup and touches the back of Darlington's, threading their fingers together. "Other girls used to like...warn me about him. That he liked it...not just rough. He liked it ugly." She's aware of what Darlington's into, but so much of it is built on trust and love and her knowing him better than anyone. "He liked to humiliate girls and see them grovel." She worries her lip with her teeth. "He was coming over and Len...told me and Hellie to tidy up, right? Make the place look nice. He...slapped me around and we...bailed the minute he left."

[more_magic]

"Jesus Christ." His stomach gives a sick lurch, a twist, just at the things she says about Ariel. The thought of Alex being warned, of trying to avoid him for her sake as much as Hellie's, of the way it linked in to all the things he'd already come to know about her life in California, and all the things he'd barely let himself extrapolate. And, mostly, because of the way none of it surprises him very much at all.

His jaw tenses further when she gets to Len slapping her, how she says it like something offhand and throwaway, and even the measured sip he takes of his coffee does little to hide it. His other hand stays tight in hers.

[takecourage]

"It's okay," she says, squeezing his hand reflexively, turning his head to take in the tightness of his jaw when he sips his coffee like that. "I got it but Hellie never did. How we were supposed to be part of the fun for Ariel. How they sent all the...good girls away and kept us because we were just trash from the Valley." She's never told Darlington this next bit, and now it's her jaw that tightens. "I was fifteen the first time that I blew someone because Len was trying to suck up to them. He told me that I didn't look fifteen, and I remember thinking..." She huffs out a laugh, though nothing's funny. "I remember thinking what the fuck does fifteen look like, asshole?"

[more_magic]

Darlington hates so much right then, hearing all of that, knowing that there hadn't been anyone but Hellie even remotely on her side. And not even her, when Alex was fifteen and made to perform like that to advance some sick desire of Leonard Beacon's. When she laughs, low and mirthless, it sinks like a knife into his chest.

"Alex," he says, pushing all the care he can into the sound of her name, hoping she'll believe even a percentage of it. "That never should have...I can say that it shouldn't, but it did, and I'm sorry for it." He looks down at the link of their hands against the soft wool of the blanket. "And you're not trash. Not to me."

[takecourage]

"I know that, babe," she says, softly, still holding his hand. She doesn't tell him about the rumour that Ariel like to dislocate girls' shoulders before he fucked them -- it didn't happen to her, and there's no point making him feel worse.

"I just knew that I wasn't going down that road and I wasn't going to let Hellie do it either. I had this two year plan. Jobs at the mall and community college and a car so we didn't always have to take the bus."

She rolls her eyes at how naive that sounds now.

[more_magic]

"It would've been a good plan," he says, but doesn't argue the roll of her eyes much further than that. "If you could have made it work."

The if is the sticking point there, another block in a path already littered with enough difficulties. Maybe they could have done it, maybe they would've tried, and failed, or never started at all. There's no way to tell now.

[takecourage]

"Wasn't meant to be," she says, taking another sip of her coffee. "So we went to the movies, even though it meant that we wouldn't be able to get the bus back. I can't even remember what movie we saw, but I...know that I fell asleep and...I know that, when I woke up, she was gone."

[more_magic]

"She left you behind," he says, no judgement in it; not for Alex, nor for Hellie. "And went back to the house." That's speculation, but Darlington already knows that when Hellie is gone, truly gone, it happens not in the lobby of a Los Angeles movie theatre but on a mattress in that dump of a house in the Valley.

He can only begin to guess at her motivations, take what he's learned about her now and what he already knew about Alex--and what he knows about himself, when it comes to Alex and danger and the deep pull of his own love--and come up with a kind of answer. "She tried to save you," he says. "Somehow. Because she loved you."

[takecourage]

"That's why you'd have done it, but I'm not sure that's why Hellie did," says Alex, leaning to set down her coffee cup and then drawing her knee up against her chest so that she can rest her chin on it. "I think mostly she was just worried that Len was going to get pissed off with us and we'd lose Ground Zero if Ariel and Eltain didn't give us more shit to do." She sighs, still holding onto his hand like its a tether. "I didn't have any money for the bus, so I walked up and down Westwood until my feet bled and I just...sold what was left of my pot so I could get in a cab. And when I got back the party was in full swing and I just sort of...hid in the back and hoped Len didn't see me until he forgot why he was fucking mad at me. I texted Hellie to tell her where I was, and then I..." She hesitates, a tear spilling down the curve of her cheek. "I fell asleep."

[more_magic]

"That's fair," he says, shifting a little when Alex does but keeping his hand in hers. The blunt practicality of her response, as opposed to the softer and more romantic view he'd taken, was the more likely option--much as he wished it was otherwise, even knowing the hardness she'd had to cultivate to survive.

Darlington listens to the rest of the story, none of it much easier to hear than what had come before, nor what he knows is soon to follow. Even harder, when he pictures her like that: alone on the street or limping into the party; doing her best to avoid Len and his ilk and searching for Hellie; curling up on that stained, sad mattress he'd seen from so many angles in all those clinical, terrible photographs. When that tear runs down her cheek, he reaches out, wiping it gently away with his thumb.

Anything he could say would sound too much like a platitude or excuse, inadequate and overly mannered, and so he just waits, holding her hand and keeping his eyes on hers.

[takecourage]

"I woke up when she came to bed," she says, leaning into his touch when he wipes her face. "And I couldn't get a straight answer out of her but she was...there and she was...okay? She was whole, anyway and I fell back to sleep."

She pauses, wiping her nose on the back of her hand.

"I woke up again at three and she was awake. Still fucking high and she'd puked...all down herself. I didn't...I didn't know until I reached out to take the shirt off her and...my hand went straight through." She swallows. "Seeing them in colour can make it hard to tell, sometimes."

[more_magic]

"Alex," he says quietly, and why did he ever think that a gift like hers was something to be desired? It's hard to tell if you see them in color runs through his head like a horrible, mocking mantra, and his heart is heavy with regret on Alex's behalf. He'd known she'd lost everything that night, but the depth of it hasn't been this clear to him until now.

"You'd already made a connection with her spirit, contact and familiarity and calling her by name," he says, falling back automatically on the the things he knows, the things he's learned--and then stopping himself, because none of that matters. "But how could you not? She was...you loved her."

[takecourage]

"I didn't know she was dead," says Alex, her voice small, "And even if I had, I didn't know any better, not then." She wipes her nose again. "So I start...screaming, you know? My whole life I'd been seeing greys, but I'd never actually seen a dead body before. It was like something broke, and every time I went to touch her, I felt...I saw...something that had happened to her, you know? Where she grew up. Surfing. What...what he did to her." She takes a shivering breath. "I woke Len up, screaming and he like...put his hand over my mouth, and I thought I was going to fucking pass out. And then they started talking about...cleaning her up. I thought they meant making her like...nice, you know? I didn't want anyone to see her like that."

[more_magic]

There's a handkerchief in the pocket of his jacket; he thinks of it when Alex scrubs at her nose again, but he'd left everything in the bedroom when he changed and the last thing he's going to do is leave her now. He listens instead, all of it until she's finished, another bit of bile in his throat when she doesn't elaborate beyond What he did to her and mentions Len all but smothering her to keep her quiet. The shards of memory transference were interesting, momentarily pulling his attention, but not what he knows he needs to focus on.

God, this was unforgivable. No one had protected either of them, no one had wanted to, and even if he'd been aware of Alex then Darlington can't be confident he'd have done anything to improve matters either. He sits with the pain of that realization for a long moment.

"Right," he says. "No one should be found like that. And if they had been better people..." Darlington lets that trail off into a slow shake of his head, faint disgust in his expression. "Sorry, that's not productive."

[takecourage]

"And then I realised that they weren't...They didn't want to clean her up. They just wanted to throw her away. Like trash." The tears have stopped now, and all she can feel is this core of fury. Cold like ice. "They were just going to dump her in an alley..." She curls in against him, because this part will be easier if she can't look at him. "I wanted to call the police or something, and Len slapped me again and then they were carrying her out, Betcha and Len, and I just...I just..." She closes her eyes. "Ariel woke up. And he fucking laughed at her. He saw she was dead and he fucking laughed."