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

[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."

[more_magic]

Darlington nudges Kirby a little when Alex slides closer, getting him to move enough to give her the space she needs. Just before she turns her face away, he catches the cold obsidian glint of her eyes, and the fury there. He holds her--his dangerous, extraordinary, unexpected girl--as she presses herself against him and keeps talking, his hand resting between her shoulderblades and a few fallen strands of her hair brushing against his fingers.

The night the bat showed up, he remembered her saying they'd planned to throw Hellie away; a detail he'd heard but hadn't heeded, mired as he'd been in his own sense of betrayal and unease. It had even sounded like another kind of excuse. She says it again now, and so in a way he's expecting it, but the fact of Ariel laughing is new. Now it sounds like a justification, and it's one that some dark part of him can't disagree with.

"Because she was..." He breathes out, hears her in his head saying trash from the Valley and hating the memory of it. "They thought she was disposable. That's all they thought she was."

[takecourage]

"That's all either of them were to then," she says, numbly. "I just managed to get my ass out of the way.

"That's when I heard her. Asking me to let her in and I didn't know any better. I just...I just wanted her to stay with me."

[more_magic]

"She spoke to you?" he says, surprised enough that he doesn't think before it's out in the air. It wasn't unheard of, but it was unusual enough to be notable; he makes himself file that away rather than press further. "Okay. She spoke to you, she...asked. And you wanted her to stay, so you said yes."

He swallows hard, his hand moving in a slow, tight circle against her back. "You let her in, because you didn't want her to go."

[takecourage]

"I didn't want to lose her," says Alex quietly. "So I let her in." She sighs. "I don't...remember what happened next that clearly. You probably know more about the details than me. I remember...having her inside me felt like being full of sunlight and holding my breath at the same time. I remember how holding the bat felt." She presses her cheek against his shirt. "I remember feeling what she wanted. And I let her have it."

[more_magic]

"I think I do," he says, images from her file flashing through his mind despite his best efforts. "They're not...all you need to know is they're not pretty. Not that they should be." Darlington believes that now with a conviction he hadn't had before.

He doesn't envy her the sensations she describes, for once not wishing he could share them, deciding to be satisfied just with the things she says. It takes effort, ashamed at his sense of a door not walked through merely out of cowardice, but the effort is worth it. He dips his head, dropping a kiss to her hair when she rubs her cheek against him.

"There are things I could say about possessions, about the force of will some Greys have reportedly demonstrated," he says. "But I don't need to, it's not..." He never expected to say the thing building at the back of his throat, how much it flies in the face of all he's ever learned. But he does, the words soft and just for her even though they're already the only people in the room.

"Hellie deserved to have that. Revenge, or retribution, or...call it what you like. So did you."

[takecourage]

Something like relief floods through Alex when he says it and she nods, her nose brushing against his shirt.

"I meant what I said before," she says. "I'd do it again. I'd let her in every single time." She swallows. "I've got this...such a dim memory of being in the river, wearing her shoes, and then I lay down and I remember thinking that I didn't care if I froze to death right there. I asked her to stay with me. I wanted that more than anything." She squeezes his fingers. "That's it. That's all I've got."

[more_magic]

"The river," he says, the final piece slipping into place. "That's why you were clean, that's why they didn't find any evidence, not even in the drains." It sounds to him like some dark parting gift, but it was the one thing, or one of the few, that Hellie had to give.

Darlington knows already she didn't stay, maybe even couldn't; repeating it won't do Alex any good or tell her anything she's not painfully aware of. He returns the squeeze to his fingers, then carefully moves just far enough back that they're not pressed flush. She hadn't wanted to look at him for so much of the story, but for this, he needs to look her in the eyes.

"If that's all you have," he says, his free hand cupping the side of her face, "then that's all I need." He holds her gaze for another moment, full and waiting, then leans forward to kiss her as gently as he dares.

[takecourage]

He kisses her for the first time in weeks and Alex feels something in her chest knit back into place. She makes a soft sound, pressing into it a little. She'd actually started to worry she might never have this again.

[more_magic]

That quiet sound sinks through him, reinforced by the way she presses into the kiss, deepening it slowly and perfectly and exactly as much as he'd been missing. His fingers trace down her back, his hand coming to rest just above the hem of her shirt as they keep kissing.

They shouldn't go too far, after so many weeks of trying so hard to be careful with one another. But this, right now, is enough.

[takecourage]

She breaks the kiss sooner than she might have, mindful of the desire she has to press closer to him, to push her hands up under his shirt, to touch.

"I think we'd better...talk boundaries..." She says, biting her lip for a moment. "Just...to be safe."

[more_magic]

Darlington had seen her as she changed, just as much as she'd seen him. Neither of them are wearing very much, not now, and that knowledge feels all the more immediate and compelling as Alex breaks the kiss and pulls away. He closes his eyes a moment, willing away the memory of her in the bedroom: bare legs and her bra on the floor, the curve of her ass in dark panties just visible beneath the bottom of her t-shirt.

"You're right," he says, the corner of his mouth going up as she bites her lip and looks at him, as he looks back at her. "We should." He thinks, choosing his words, one finger tracing the curve of her knee over the blanket. "I'm not ready for us to have sex again. I want to, God, I want to, but...I think we need more time before we do."