Blackshot Ghosts [Closed]

[MysteriousStranger]

Maverick didn't understand what was happening between Kara and Bernard, or the anger she had barreled in his own direction with, which now seemed to have been contained by more words he could not speak. This failure to comprehend what seemed like anything left him frozen on his back, and his deer-in-headlight stare was only broken by B's invasion through his torso, which caused the soldier to shudder, and grasp at his chest, before settling back into his previous position.

With his eyes still kept on Kara, watching as she took a seat near him, a thought occurred to Maverick, shoved into his consciousness from the aftermath of what the monk's absolution had awakened within him. He always reached for rage because it was easier than dealing with pain. He would rather burn than bleed, because the later showed weakness.

It was starting to come together, at least the important pieces that outlined the picture. For a few moments, he simply gazed at Kara, thinking before speaking, perhaps for the first time in his life.

"Well, it was a pretty impressive fall. You should see me play musical chairs," he replied in a soft voice, lips parting in small smile as he spoke. His head angled so he could search and catch a glimpse of Bernard, before his attention returned to Kara. "Yeah...we're good."

He grunted as he sat up across from her, legs crossing, and hands raising to thread his fingers through his hair, before they dropped to his legs.

"Look, I..." All the thought for words, and he still had a hard time using them. His mouth remained opened as he gathered himself once more to try again. "...What did happen?" It was rather blunt and to the point, but also sincere. He had told her earlier that he wanted to know, and that was the truth.

It was also followed by a quick drop of his eyes, and an added flow of statements, "You don't have to answer me. I won't pry if you don't want me to. But, I, uh, want you to feel..." He broke off, head tilting as he noticed the sound of cascading water for the first time.

Focus.

He closed his eyes, before opening and lifting them. "...Safe with me, all right? That thing I said earlier? About not hurting you? I meant that. Physically and emotionally."

Intentionally, the back of his mind added in a whisper, but he pushed the thought down.

 

[CastoffCaptain]

Maverick’s small smile eased the remnants of Kara’s irritation. Neither man seemed more than ruffled by whatever had happened in her absence, and as long as Bernard was good, then she was good. She had yet to know where Jaxon’s limits lay when it came to anger, betrayal, and all the other pitfalls of dealing with humanity—alive or dead. She’d take him at his word when he said he was good; besides, his face was road map to his thoughts. It was a nice change of pace.


She didn’t bother to smile back at his quip, although her eyes crinkled at the edges just a sliver. Getting to her feet, she left a feather-light touch along his shoulder and head on her way to the bathroom, an unspoken hint that she wasn’t running from his question as she’d done earlier. Metal squealed and pipes shuddered when she turned the shower off, and she returned wrapped in a towel, scrubbing at her bangs to dry them.


Taking a seat with her hip brushing his, she exhaled heavily. “I know you meant it.” Gently, she tugged at the hairs on the back of his wrist, then encircled the bones with her forefinger and thumb as best she could; her fingers almost met.


“I don’t tell a lot of people what I can do,” she started. “Most of the people who say they believe me, don’t. The ones who actually do are kooky. And the ones who outright don’t believe me think I’m crazy. So, I took a while to tell the last guy I was with what I do. His name’s Miguel. You… might have seen him at Constanza’s Coffee up in the nicer part of town.” She smirked. Most parts of town were nicer than where she lived. “He seemed fine with it at first, but… it was just lip-service. I finally got the balls to bring him around here. No problem, right? Well. I go to get milk for coffee at the market one morning, and B goes with me, of course, and I come back and Miguel’s sitting at the table with B’s box in his lap.”


Kara sniffed and tossed a damp strand of hair from her forehead. She stood up and padded over to the reliquary box. “I guess since B gave you permission, you know what’s in here.” She reached inside, her movements slow and ginger, and withdrew a skull bronzed by the patina of time. Holding it close to her core, she peered over her shoulder at Maverick, then turned around to face him. The head was battered, not just by the passage of years. It bore cut marks around its eye sockets, slashes that severed some of its teeth, and its lower mandible was missing. An ugly hole at its base was covered by Kara’s cradling arm.


“Miguel didn’t know how to deal with … with … it..”


Silver flashed through bone in a thin, jittering line. It ran across the lower half of where Bernard’s cheek had once been, a recent mending of a new wound.


Kara lifted a shoulder, unable to meet Maverick’s gaze, uncertain if he was even still looking at her.


“He uh… B’s got triggers. He didn’t need to be broken any more than he was. It…didn’t go well.” She swallowed hard and sat down at the little table. “For any of us.”

 

[MysteriousStranger]

Maverick kept watch on Kara, head moving so his softened eyes could keep track of her movements. He was silent as she shared with him, and as she approached the table home to Bernard’s box, he slowly stood to follow, taking each step forward with care, and lingering a few feet back. He could see her pain, outlined in her hesitance and body. He wanted to make it go away, curl his arms around her, and let her use his strength as her shield to the world.

The name Miguel was familiar, and the name of the coffee shop that had, according to Maverick’s grizzled boss, ruined the neighborhood, attracting young hipsters who walked into his bar for an “authentic” experience, clicked home with the soldier. The epiphany wasn’t important at the moment, but it brought Maverick satisfaction to know if he needed to find this guy, he could do it easily.

His gaze broke only for few moments; first, dropping to examine the skull she held so dearly in her hands. “I actually didn’t see it. He explained to me, though, about what happened to him…Well, as much as I could understand…And they-triggers-never go away.”

Then, he took a glance around the floor, searching for the chair he had sent flying into the rug. He quickly located it, picked it up, and sat it down in front of Kara, close enough so that when he took a seat upon it and leaned forward, he could gently place a hand on her knee.

“You know, I recall someone telling me recently that it’s our breaks that make us who we are.” The same, small, almost timid smile that had graced his lips before returned, stretching upwards to sprawl further across his face. “And this Miguel guy? He’s a fucking dumbass if he couldn’t see that you were worth fighting for.”

He paused, and after a moment, stood so that he could close the distance between them, leaning down to place a ginger kiss upon her forehead. “I’ll always fight for you…Actually, I think I know this guy. Short, right? My place’s on the corner of the same street as that hipster dump of a coffee joint. Say the word, and I’ll start with the fucker. Break his fucking jaw. Or just give him a good scare. Won’t even have to talk.” His voice was soft, and his tone was light, suggesting he was joking, yet there was also a tightness present, hinting that he wasn't afraid-might actually jump at the opportunity-to do exactly that.

 

[CastoffCaptain]

Those words. You were worth fighting for. She'd heard them so many times in so many similar ways during the past few weeks, and now it was Jaxon who echoed them. Kara got sidetracked by his smile and forgot to scoff, but she remained stone-faced in front of its brilliance. It wasn't about her worth--or at least that's what she told herself--but about the wrongness of the entire situation. Miguel had simply been pot metal in a kiln; the two didn't make for a happy ending. Her thumb found an imperfection in the silver she'd used to mend Bernard's skull and swirled around it.

This situation.

triggers

This moment.

our breaks

This wasn't wrong.

give it time.

**

"Do you know how messed up this is? How sick it is? This is twisted, Kara, wrong!"

"Put. That. Down."

Miguel held the reliquary box at an angle so that she could view her transgressions. A hard shake rattled Bernard's skull against the moth-eaten velvet lining, filling the apartment with a hollow and ugly sound. "You get off on this? This turn you on, or something? I mean, it was weird enough with the ghost whisperer shit, but this? No. I can't pretend this isn't happening."

**

The kiss thawed the surface of Kara's stoicism. She tilted her chin in order to allow him easier access to her forehead and breathed in his scent, hands spreading across the skull in her lap to protect not only it but Jaxon, as well. Bonework and tenderness were rarely loving partners.

**

"When were you going to tell me about this? A month from now? A year?"

"I mean it, Miguel. Put that down."

"No. Answer me. Were you just going to keep me in the dark about the fact that you're a morbid little freak with a with her own morbid little graveyard in her apartment?"

"Don't call me that! Don't you fucking call me that!"

The atmosphere in the aparment constricted. The bulb in Kara's T-Rex lamp began to hum furiously, flickering in its housing, and faintly, just at the edge of consciousness, a wet, metallic scent slicked the air.

**

Kara swiveled in her seat and returned Bernard's skull to its home. The spirit himself stayed motionless by the window, apparently oblivious to the conversation behind him. Slipping the pin back into the lock, she reached out to grasp Jaxon's pinky in her fist and pulled herself up, resting her forehead against his chest for a moment. His offer of violence rushed through her like a storm in August, bringing neither comfort nor rest, charging her world with danger-- and the part of herself she'd come to terms with long ago went running out to meet it.


**

"You need to learn that there's more to life than death. What do you do with yours, anyway? You never leave the same five city blocks, you don't have any friends, and you're obsessed with dead people! Face it, Kara, you need a shrink!"

"Put B down, or I swear to God, I'll--"

A shove. A curse. The clatter of bone across wood, and a snap.

The walls began to scream.

**
Her kiss burned. High on her tiptoes, she dug her nails into Jaxon's back, clinging to him with a ferocity that unmasked years of bruised knuckles and split lips, of the blood-rage-joy of pounding a fist into a mouth too full of insults to be borne anymore. There was a beauty in violence, taught all too well in the halls of her Catholic school, and its reverberation kept her from answering him aloud. Eventually, Kara shakingly withdrew, her cheekbones pinked and hot. Swallowing down her darkness, she burrowed into Maverick's embrace.

Would he? that tiny voice inside her head whispered.

He would, its lighter twin answered. He would.

"I can't blame him for wigging out," she said, "even if he's still a shit. That doesn't mean you gotta borrow trouble from me, J. You've got your own mess to wade through real soon. Besides," she smirked up at him, pressing her body harder against him, "you're too pretty for prison."

 

[MysteriousStranger]

Her kiss was like war, awakening within Maverick something kept leashed. His lips moved with hers in a blind berserk, answering her battle cry with just as much fire and fury, spurned on by the feeling of her fingers grasping his back. He knew the sheer savagery boiling underneath her surface well, because it was what kept him alive in more than just the obvious way. With the blood thrumming in his ears, heatedly coursing through his body, his mind started to drift away from its once steadfast course.

Her withdrawal felt like a retreat, and for the briefest of moments, he frowned, before lifting his lips in a half-smirk, and enclosing her tightly within his arms. Though at first he had trouble processing her sentences, only furthered hindered by how close her body pressed against his, his eyes drifting to examine how her damp shirt clung to her body, her reminder snapped his head back into the moment, and his gaze back to her own.

Focus.

He was left speechless, and searched for a response. In his pause, he forced his half-smirk to become a full smirk, and nuzzled his head into the top of hers, taking in her scent.

"They'd have to catch me first, and I'm the type of guy who goes down swinging." After a chuckle that displayed arrogance instead of humor, his mouth moved down to plant a kiss against her jaw. "And, Kara? Your trouble is my trouble. Don't ever forget that. Anyone fucks with you, they fuck with me. And I bite harder than I bark."

It was written in his skin, inked in many different forms, and painted throughout his past in a variety of colors: Jaxon was a warrior, a word that came with its own honor and meaning, beyond a simple soldier, more than just a killer. Without direction, he was all too aware of how his chained violence slipped into cruelty, became needless and bloody and empty. He had been there, once years ago, in the aftermath of shattered innocence. Then once more, years later, suffering the repeated image of his brothers dying around him, only to be left behind with a guilt that killed slower but just as efficiently as the high-caliber bullet that had pierced through his vest, leaving him as nothing more than a hollowed-out husk of motion-going and hatred.

But now.

"I will fight for you," he repeated, this time with the sternness of an oath. She didn't need to understand what that meant, but the simple statement resonated more deeply with the warrior than anything else he had said in the last year. Like he had just been given purpose.

 

[CastoffCaptain]

Her breath warmed his shirt, spreading through the fabric. She still shook from the flood of adrenaline unleashed by both his words and the kiss, but she brought it to heel by clinging to him. Inwardly, she cursed the circumstances that had driven them together, not for the fact that she'd met him--the strongest metals required the hottest forge--but because they would force him to keep fighting. Weariness had crept onto Jaxon's features in the times he'd thought she wasn't looking, and it was the mind-numbing, aching fatigue of constant battle even in the midst of quiet.

I said to my soul, be still.

His promise cooled her fires, bringing her back to center. She should have worried about his vehemence. Their bonds had been created with such speed that any others made under different circumstances would have been questionable, weak. She should have backed her defenses by denying the need to be fought for, but her own emotional exhaustion tossed the rebuke aside. Where Jaxon was worn down by the melee, Kara was tired of the siege. Jaxon's heart heard beneath her ear thundered out more than just his oath. It offered refuge.

She steeled herself against making space between their bodies. Backing up a little without letting go, the change of position brought Bernard into view. Although fainter than earlier, he hadn't moved, his attention fixed on the city beyond. He'd been her only bastion for years, watching one boyfriend after the next fail in their various ways, friends come and go, avenues for change shut down again and again. He'd kept her from tumbling over the edge not only of sanity but worse; a calcification of her own humanity, but Jaxon thrummed under her touch, hot and vital and alive. A pit opened up in her guts, aching and sudden. B in all his devotion, his patience, his steadfastness hadn't been enough.

Kara bit her bottom lip, using the pain to drive away the unsteadiness the realization slammed down in front of her.

I said to my soul...

There. His heart. Inches from the scar. Inches from his death. A whisper away from oblivion.

"J, you--" could've died. "I--" would have lost you before I even knew what was gone.

She traced the bone around his browline with her knuckles, following the route his beard took along his cheek, then wrapped her arms around him again. She couldn't say the words. Could neither deny him his pledge nor offer him her own in the shadow of what she hated to admit to: fear. Jaxon was the same, was her in different armor, swinging the same weapons, but she hardly knew him. Her walls were crumbling but the mortar stayed fast, and her admission could make either decision real.

...be still.

Finally, she spoke. "I want to know. Everything, I wanna know it. Your middle name, your shoe size, your job, who you fucked in high school. If you fucked in high school. I need to... just give me all of it, Jaxon, everything you can. Then I might let you go get coffee in the morning." Because it wasn’t just Marnie who’d delayed Kara in the bathroom via the phone. Miguel had returned early and sent a handful of texts, only a few in the tentative line of many he’d written over the last six weeks of his absence, all reconciliation attempts.

Maverick couldn't see her self-conscious half-smile, hidden away as it was against his body, but the implication ghosted up through her tone.

She just might.

 

[MysteriousStranger]

It was unfamiliar, the way Kara burrowed into his chest, and how the contact from her warm body sent a blaze throughout his own, one that burned with more than just simplistic, primal desire. The shared warmth spread to the smile that now graced his lips; in her presence, the expression was becoming common, unlike the forced mask he'd don in front of his brother and friends, and different from the fleeting ones borne of laughter that had been shared with in his comrades in the rare moments of silence between gunfire.

And she wanted to know.

But did she?

Once more, he buried his face against her head, tightening his arms around her. What could be taken as a simple display of affection was instead a reluctance to let go, because everything meant the damning things, the days when his hand was placed in offering inside the jaws of the wolf burned over his ribs. The hate. The anger. The violent defiance. And then came the bid for redemption, only to find his world once again colored in red.

He made sure he could speak with an even voice, rid of the uncertainty that now choked him, and laced with a timid attempt at humor. "Theodore, after the president. The tongues of my shoes usually just say 'giant'. Bartender at a hole-in-the-wall joint owned by a friend. And a few girls I probably shouldn't have fucked. Every teenager is stupid, and I just happened to be more stupid."

He paused, lowering his head to press his lips against the side of her face to stall for time. It was better to get it over with, like it was better to get shot in the head instead of being left to bleed out against desert sand. With a sigh full of regret, it took every ounce of will he had to pry his arms away from her, and separate their bodies by taking a step back.

"You asked before about my tattoos," he said quietly. He looked down as he grasped the bottom of his shirt, and pulled it free from his body to display the history engraved upon his skin. The fabric in his head felt heavy as he draped it across the back of the chair he had previously fallen with. "Everything's there."

Hesitantly, his hand reached out to gently grasp hers, and bring her palm against his ribs, where the great wolf Fenrir, the harbinger of his sins, awaited his confession. "In high school, I got involved with people I should've stayed away from. I...did bad things. Sometimes to good people." It was hard to keep his gaze up and steady, but he forced himself to, and he would make no excuses.

"Things got bad, I wanted to change, needed to get out of town, so I enlisted when I was eighteen." His gaze dropped to the snake that wrapped around his arm, a testament of his rebirth. "I served for thirteen years...War is war, and will always be war, but...I found my place beside my men." His mouth hung open for a few seconds in a smile tinted with sadness and regret, and his fingers slowly lifted from hers to tug at the chain around his neck.

"We...Had these things called monster mashes during training. Basically a reliving of Hell Week in BUD/S, only significantly worse, but they were made into competitions, and, fuck, frogmen love a challenge." He laughed softly. "It'd end with a race. Assemble a sniper rifle, and then use it to shoot a target from two thousand meters. Fucking Maxson, we were always going head to head, trying to prove who was the better shot." He tapped the bullet, lowered his head, and closed his eyes. "We used this as a trophy, and when one of us beat the other, we'd hand it over."

The world felt uneven, and his shoulders felt heavy. Afraid he might lose his footing, he slumped into the chair at his side. His mouth twitched, and he hid his face between his hands. "I-"

Let him die.
Couldn't save him.

"...He's dead now. Shot in the leg first. I flung him over my shoulders to carry him, but they blew his fucking brains out."

His voice became hollow, echoing the hole gnawing inside his gut.

"He had a wife. Three kids. All girls. Used to joke he became a SEAL because he needed a way to balance out all the estrogen in his life. It should've-" he stopped the admission before it could fully leave his shaking lips.

--been me.

Inhaling deeply, trying to steady his breath, he slid his palms over his eyes, before sliding them down his face, and letting them finally rest within his lap. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..."

 

[CastoffCaptain]

You are the hole in my head
You are the space in my bed
You are the silence in between
What I thought and what I said

You are the night time fear
You are the morning when it's clear
When it's over you're the start
You're my head, you're my heart
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------​

His first admissions pulled an amused breath from her. She wouldn't laugh at them, not in the presence of a Theodore. This was the easy part, the gentle unraveling of his history through humor, and she read the tenseness in his arms as little more than longing and affection. There was no time to work out the patterns tying her world to his via the street where his bar and Constanza's Coffee both stood, however. His sigh shook her surety. The withdrawal robbed them of easy.

His body shone like a phantom's in the apartment lights, tattoos stark shadows against the pale. Kara set her features to neutral the moment her hand met with the beast chained to his skin, lest misinterpretation of any expression shut Jaxon down before he had time to begin. Although there was very little about the man one could dare call fragile, this moment was delicate. How bad was bad? How far had he fallen before he'd clawed his way back up to temporary salvation? She cut a glance at the snake around his arm: a creature of the underworld, it bridged both the world of the living and the dead, it shed its skin to create itself anew, it healed. Much less savage than his wolf, she favored it above the rest.

What followed was spoken in partial English. Kara didn't dare ask for clarification of BUD/S or frogmen, what branch of service he'd chosen, or where he'd served. The details didn't matter. The agony behind them did, and it tore the legs out from under him, forcing him into penitence in the chair. With his hands held to his face to protect him from his past, there was no need for the mask she wore; Kara flinched at Maxson's fate.

Maverick's ghosts surrounded him. They lifted a mournful wail that until today only he could hear. Now, the pain they inflicted upon him roared in Kara's ears, screaming up from a chasm of survivor's guilt to deafen them both. She ached for him, a deep and mournful pang that lay miles away from pity and shared houses with grief. The names etched into his back suddenly made sense; he bore their weight every waking minute by himself. Finally, he'd staggered. Reached out. And found her. The enormity of his loss hit home.

Kara squatted in front of him, angling her head so that she could catch his gaze. Balancing on her heels, she steadied herself with her fingers on his knees, her touch light but steady. "Don't. I asked, didn't I? You don't need to apologize. Look at me, J." The lights strung overhead softened the angles of her face, reflecting starlike in her eyes. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here."

She wasn't stupid enough to deny him his guilt, as wrong as it might have been. That absolution could come from only two places: himself or the dead, and at the moment, only Ayden had stuck behind. "You have... you have other people at the bar. Friends. Family. People who care." She phrased it as a statement, but the question was there.

Others who understood, who wouldn't abandon him despite his demons.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Through the crowd, I was crying out
And in your place there were a thousand other faces
I was disappearing in plain sight
Heaven help me, I need to make it right

No light, no light in your bright blue eyes
I never knew daylight could be so violent
A revelation in the light of day,
You can't choose what stays and what fades away

And I'd do anything to make you stay​

 

[MysteriousStranger]

'Look at me, J.'

It took Jaxon time to do so, because he was afraid to show the brokenness that hid behind his eyes, the weariness that had seeped into his very being, and only grew with each sleepless night spent waging war within his dreams; in these rare few moments, he allowed himself to feel the tiredness within his bones, for which the cure was worse than the disease itself. But he did so. His head tilted to the side, and he met Kara's gaze, finding comfort there, like a beacon in the dark, even as the words she spoke made him stir.

'I'm not going anywhere.'

He swallowed, and carefully placed his hands on top of hers, engulfing her fingers within his palms, and gently tracing his thumbs over the dips in between her knuckles. Perhaps he took more from her statement than was intended, but it was a calming and soothing thought. He was willing to belief it against his better senses, let it bring temporary respite to his restless soul.

Her last question, hidden within a statement, made him inhale deeply, and after closing his eyes, he let the breath escape through his nose in a steady stream. Memories from half a life ago played within his mind, some tinted with joyous nostalgia, others tainted with the regretful burden of his mistakes, and the scars left behind by fate. That dingy, resilient bar, that refused to be swallowed and forgotten by an ever changing city, was at the center of them all.

"The Bjornsens," he answered softly, opening his lids at last. "Leo, he owns the bar. He's a grizzled asshole, but a simple man...By that I mean he doesn't want much out of life, but to be alive, you know?" He paused, letting a smile tug just slightly at the edge of his lips. "He's broken my nose before, and afterwards pulled me into a tight bear hug. Fuckin' crazy bastard, but...a good man. I think you'd like him. His sister, Stella, she owns a tattoo parlor a few streets over from the bar. Does mine for me. She's an asshole too, refuses to take shit from anyone. You'd never think it, but she and my brother are-" The smile faded as the realization hit home; he wasn't the only one Ayden left behind. "-were a thing."

He rubbed a palm along his jawline, tasting the ash left behind in his mouth, before leaning forward, and lowering his forehead to place against hers. His breath steadied, and his hands lifted to gingerly grasp her face, fingers trailing down along her jawline.

"You should meet them."

It was an invitation not given out lightly, an opened door into his world. He just wished it would be under better circumstances, like the summer months before, when Maverick sat outside on the steps, strumming his six-string, Leo's boisterous laughter shook the building, Stella knocked down tough guys by beating them in pool, and Ayden...Ayden watched them all with a smile, making sure no one got into too much trouble.

"They'd honestly like you better than they like me." His lips parted in a smile inflicted with sorrow; His brother's loss, now that it was undeniable and real, would shake his world like never before.

 

[CastoffCaptain]

Winter always short-changed the city of daylight. Without notice, it had painted shadows across the buildings and splashed darkness in between the streetlamps, but the snow fought against the gloom. Although it drained the warehouses around Kara's apartment of color, it reflected a moonlike glow. It reflected hope. In the morning, it would blind them with a clean, crisp glare--the season's attempt at repentance.

Not for the first time, Kara noticed how massive Maverick's hands were when compared to hers. In this light, they could have been mistaken for the same flesh; where bruises marred the skin across his knuckles, machine grease and soldering ash turned her fingertips black. Smiling inwardly at them, she kept her expression still until he spoke of his friends--extended family without blood ties--and of the broken nose Jaxon had received. She imagined she could just note the place where the bone had snapped.

Beyond her field of vision, Bernard tipped an ear toward the conversation. He'd allowed himself a level of desaturization close to invisible, but his movements held fast in this world, sensed more than seen, a hint of a man once sinew and soul now written in sighwork upon the walls. A name caught his attention, sending a ripple through him that destabilized his form for a heartbeat: Bjornsens. More shade than solid, he half-vanished against the bricks, his eyes nothing more than black hollows.

But Jaxon was moving on, speaking to Kara now of Stella and tattoos and--

oh.

Kara hid her chagrin well. Ayden was still stuck out in the hall.

Leaning into Jaxon's caress, she let her eyelids fall closed for a breath, and then snorted softly at his suggestion. His grief sat behind his smile, but it was still a smile, and she ran with it, tugging at his mood in an attempt to haul it upwards before drawing a bleak card of reality.

"I seriously doubt that," she replied. "I don't do public. Tends to end badly. Lots of cursing, chairs get thrown." A swallow constricted her throat, revealing a deeper layer of truth than her tone allowed for.

"But we'll go in the morning, both of us. Just--" Kara hesitated, peering at him without blinking, "I know you don't want to, but we've gotta talk about tomorrow. Marnie's probably already tipped the cops about your brother. Anonymously," she squeezed his knees to emphasize her point. "You can't tell the police we found Ayden. They wouldn't believe us. You can't tell your friends, not until everything's all over, maybe not even then. So you have to decide how you want it to go down. You want to go to them, pretend it didn't happen until the police call you all, or wait until your friends call you about it... either way, I'm with you," she said, an uncomfortable familiarity with the situation tight in her expression, "but just so you know? The cops and I don't mix too well."

 

[MysteriousStranger]

A light exhalation of air escaped Jaxon's lips in what would've been a laugh with more exertion. Though there was something more to her quip about broken bar stools-which happened on such a regular at Leo's that the Norwegian had a sign displayed with amounts that would be added to customers' bills in case of breakage-he didn't have time to dig deeper. Because the cops had been called. And his world was about to come crashing down around him in hellfire.

His mouth twitched. Dropping his hands from her her face, he pushed his fingers through his hair, pulling at a tuft as he tried to iron out the sinking feeling in his gut. He was lost, which only made him angry, because he shouldn't be.

Combat was easier. There was no time for doubt in a hailstorm of gunfire. Hesitation meant death. Decisions had to be made in the time it took to pull a trigger; when it was his life or his squad's, the answer was always clear.

But this...This ate at his insides like a fucking parasite, borrowing deep inside his flesh to leave him as helpless as a child.

"I don't know." The first admission was quiet and weak.

"I don't fucking know." The second was harsh and filled with frustration.

The first time around, Ayden had been the one to handle everything that came with death's aftermath. His words had been soft, his face hardened with stoicism and strength, and never once did he break, at least not when his little brother could see. But Jaxon didn't have that card to play now, would never hold it within his hand again.

Ayden was dead.
And this was real.

"I should be there when they get the call." His voice had been stripped of everything but weariness, soft and broken to match the empty look in his eyes. "I owe them that much. I owe him that much."

His throat was raw, so he swallowed, and tilted his head toward Kara. Within her gaze, he had found sanctuary, silence from the machine that thrummed inside his head. "I would like you to be there."

He wanted the purpose she gave him. But it was selfish.

Once more, he tasted bitter ash on his tongue. His eyes dropped, unable to meet her own. Again, he swallowed. "Kara...I'm not-" His jaw stilled, and he had to force it to open once more. "You shouldn't have to deal with this."

 

[CastoffCaptain]

What she'd said to Jaxon lightenend a two-ton weight she didn't know she carried. With her words, the raw path they'd been hiding from had been laid out in the light once more. She and Jaxon were moving again on their way toward an inexorable outcome: the splintering not only of every single future choice, decision, wrong step, or perfect plan in his life, but that of everyone else's he held dear. Kara set her jaw. Better forward than idling. Idling was nothing more than avoidance, and avoidance led to denial, and denial led to...

She took a deep breath and let it go.

It led to bad things.

She stayed silent while he wrestled with what to do. An outsider might have read aloofness in her expression, pegged her for cold, but Kara had had years to practice her facade. It enfolded her, keeping her as motionless and serene as a Madonna on an altar, save for her eyes. They tracked Jaxon's every move, from his trembling hands to the ragegriefbetrayal in his frustrated admittance.

Kara had seen this moment coming, even as they'd panted for breath, resting from their exertions on sex-stained sheets. He was going to ask her to be there when it happened. He wanted her to hold him up when everyone else around him was crumbling, when he came crashing down. Borne on its own, grief was enormous. Shared with loved ones, and their grief became unbearable. And so she'd be the outsider, the one who could observe from the sidelines without breaking, and she'd keep him from disappearing into dust.

The Kara of two hours ago hadn't wanted this. She'd practiced her refusal in the breaths between lust and afterward in the shower, but it had all been deconstructed by a mere look at the man in front of her.

The living were just as important as the dead.

Her shelf of beloved oddities was proof of that, and there was a certain shame in knowing she'd wanted to bolt the instant she'd gotten close to him just because it wouldn't be easy. Just because for a moment, she might climb down off her little island and face a wider ocean of pain.

Selfish. She nearly snorted for real this time. Who was Jaxon to think he was selfish? His words had hinted at the thought. The guilt. She'd have bet her last dime he was riddled with it for needing a hand to hold.

But now, after he'd torn open old scars and showed her his heart, her island had shifted just so.

Kara got to her feet, ignoring the pain her knees, and wrapped her arm around his head. It wasn't a delicate gesture, although it lacked the roughness that normally would have accomapnied it, and she pressed the side of his face into the softer areas of her anatomy now at eye-level.

"Jaxon Theodore," she murmured into his hair, "shut your fucking mouth. If you don't learn that when I offer something, I mean it... I'm going to hit you with a brick, understand? I've done it before." She let him go and placed her hands on his cheeks, curling her fingers around his ears. Once more she pinned him with her stare, its depths so dark as to be fathomless. "I'll go, you're not a dick for asking, we need to eat, and your damn brother's still out in the hall."

Not that she wanted to let him in, mind, but if nothing else, it might serve as a reminder for Jaxon--no matter how shitty Ayden's death was, J was lucky. Ayden was still around.

Even if she'd banished his dumb ass outside.

 

[MysteriousStranger]

Though he kept his eyes straight forward, a comfortable distance away from Kara's, his head tilted so he could catch her standing. For a moment, he was uncertain, such a feeling foreign to him, yet as unwelcome as the other plagues that diseased his mind. And he was as raw as a fresh, unattended wound. He needed to build back up his defenses, prepare for the unavoidable end. But the arm around his neck shattered any thought of preparation, and her words rung pleasantly within his ears, such so that he believed at first that he had just imagined them.

Her body was warm and solid, however, as real as the hand he raised to caress down the length of her arm. A small, shaky, but genuine laugh snuck out from between his teeth, and he simply breathed as his head was pressed against her chest. A grin began to spread across his lips, and he let his shoulders slump for the moment, freeing the tension kept between them.

Thirteen years. During that time, he never stopped. In the few months spent at home in between deployments and training, he had been restless, wanting nothing more than to return to the side of his Team. He had been made of unbreakable stone, and built a wall around himself so he could do his duty, and serve his men to keep them alive. He made the sacrifice, in his mind to protect the others, but perhaps it was really just to guard himself, to never let anyone pass that wall, locking out the few flings that had wanted more, Leo, Stella, and even his brother. His burden was always solely his own. To share it with someone else was liberating. Yet also fucking terrifying.

It took effort, but he didn't shy away from her stare, though she didn't give him an option to do so. A spark lit behind his eyes, gradually overtaking the gnawing emptiness that had rooted deep within his irises.

"You'd honestly just break the brick," he spoke, his tone mixed with shaky doubt, caused by his unfamiliarity with such circumstances, and joy bordering on giddiness. He could shrug off his burdens for a short while, and the earth wouldn't come crashing down.

"And while you're at it, it's Jaxon Theodore Asher. Yes, that means I am, by name, a jackass."

Echoing Kara, his stomach rumbled in a loud protest of the lack of food its owner had consumed in the previous hours; breakfast had been a lifetime ago, and his energy burned in a multitude of ways.

And Ayden was, as she said, on the other side of the door, probably eavesdropping like a teenage girl in high school. Jaxon inhaled sharply, and exhaled in a huff of air a second later. He wanted to lay his brother out flat on his ass, and he assumed he'd only succeeded in doing it to himself. But the marine unwittingly had played with lives today; Jaxon cared more about Kara having hers fucked with than his own, and the thought that something could've happened...

Ayden was lucky he was already dead.

With a groan, Jaxon pushed his chair back as he stood, arms reaching out to wrap around Kara tightly. "You mean food, right?" Mischief flashed within his gaze, and his lips parted in quiet humor, before his features softened. "Thank you, Kara."

 

[CastoffCaptain]

She'd intended to escape into the kitchen before he stood up, her promises trailing behind her like connective threads between them. Instead, Jaxon clamped her tight against him and electricity thrilled up from her deepest regions, searing every limb, digit, and inch of her with heat. Kara resisted it, pushing against his chest with the heels of her hands, a tiny smirk at the corner of her mouth. A lock of ebony hair slithered over one eye. She wrinkled her nose, glared at him sidelong, and shimmied her lower body like an eel in order to effect an escape.

"Get off," she murmured, trying her damnedest not to grin around the words, "jackass."

As ever, Kara deflected Jaxon's thanks and left it to fade in the dimness. A wriggle and a drop-slide later, and she forced herself out of his arms, calculating that he wouldn't hold her totally against her will. Unused to having her nightly ritual observed by anyone else but Bernard, self-consciousness crept through her skin, but she pressed it into the background and began to light her home. She started with the foot-tall T-rex light frozen in mid-roar on her oddities shelf. Everything but its teeth glowed, giving off a warm, reddish shine. Next came another two strings of white Christmas lights hanging over the west wall, plugged in at the side of the futon.

"There was a girl at St. Cuthbert's," she started, not certain as to where the urge to talk had come from, but quietly unconcerned by it. "Michelle Stokes. She used to hate me. You know the kind: popular, pretty in a use-a-shovel-for-your-makeup kind of way, rich parents, sense of entitlement."

A weak desk light winked on beside her bed, its bendable crane-neck too old to hold its hood up more than a few inches from the nightstand.

"She and her friends used to find places to trap me wherever they could. The bathroom, the janitor's closet, even the boiler room once. Sometimes they'd just humiliate me. They pissed on me once. Mostly they'd beat the hell out of me," Kara spoke with clinical detachment, as if she were recounting a family reunion rather than her past trauma, "and they were smart enough to make sure they didn't leave marks they couldn't say I hadn't done myself, 'cause God knows all Goth girls self-mutilate."

She lifted a bamboo folding screen tied together with gold wire and placed it in front of the first floor-to-ceiling window. Wiping her hands, she turned back to gather up the next screen, this one Chinese, its lacquer chipped, some of its mother-of-pearl missing from its mountain scene. "I fought back best I could, but there were four of 'em. I learned to fight dirty, got in a few really good shots, but people believed their lies more than my truths, so I stayed in trouble and they kept torturing me. Then I found B."

She could sense the monk near the second window and reached a finger out to touch his shadow. It edged closer to her. "He didn't do anything at first but watch. He couldn't. Had too much of his own shit to work through." Forgiveness rolled off her shrug, comfortable and easy. "But one day I was in the office, and the headmaster was just about to tell me I was suspended for some bullshit Michelle had set me up for, when we hear a thump and a scream."

Pausing next to the screen at the foot of her bed, Kara peered at Jaxon, seeking his reaction so far. She continued on. "They found Michelle in the hall, head streaming blood, blubbering about how I'd come up behind her and smashed her face into the bathroom mirror." Her half-smirk didn't entirely lack a dark, bitter humor. "Only I had an airtight alibi, didn't I? Their stories started falling apart after that." She covered the last window, leaving the rest of the dividers up to shield the bed from the door. "After that, they tried to blame me for throwing Delia Braun off the football bleachers and for shattering Jaime's foot, but I was never there when any of it happened. And it kept happening until I made him stop, which I didn't exactly... rush to do. So, on one hand, I kind of got my name cleared. On the other, I didn't win any new friends, if you know what I mean. Anyway," she said, taking a deep breath, "from that day on, Michelle and her girls were terrified of me."

Bernard filled in the edges of visible, a mountainous, macabre shade silhouetted against the wall.

"They left me alone, except--"

She paused, absently wringing droplets of water from her still-damp shirt, a nervous frisson traveling throughout her body.

 

[MysteriousStranger]

While Jaxon had no intentions of refusing Kara her escape, he made no attempt to make it easier. An amused grin sat on his lips as she finally slipped out from under his arms, and he watched as she took flight across her apartment. At her departure, he reached out to pick up his shirt, and slid it over his head.

He had meandered over to the T-Rex, drawn to the dinosaur like a small child, and stuck a finger against its plastic teeth, when Kara's sudden admission made his head turn. He blinked once, and moved his body to face her. Taking a step over so he could lean against her dresser, he crossed his arms over his chest, and listened.

His face changed as Kara spoke, clearly displaying the emotions he felt underneath.

Cruelty is a human phenomenon.

The sheer senselessness of it confused him; teenagers were hateful little creatures, some hellbent on causing as much pain as possible to anyone who was slightly different. He couldn't speak much, but at least he had more reasons--that a lesser man might use as excuses--to lash out in violence. And while it had been needless and brutal, at least it had always possessed a point.

Rage. He turned his face to stone to prevent the fire from spreading, but it blazed as clear as day within his eyes, and his shoulders tensed. His left hand tightened into a fist.

Cruelty transcends culture.

She had fought back, but he never expected less. Fighting was in itself dirty, and decorated throughout the world in different ways to make it seem less savage through 'honorable' measures, but it didn't matter. Winning was what mattered, or at least making sure your opponent bleed before you went down. Fighting was about survival. And survival was savage by nature.

Though his expression didn't change, his chin did lift, as if in approval.

His head titled just slightly at her mention of B, and his eyes only left her for but a moment to examine the spot she had extended a finger toward. Another might have found the monk's actions repulsive, one such as Ayden, who always preached the gospel of the higher road, but that was only pretty on paper, and useless in practice. Jaxon understood, perhaps more deeply than comfortable, of the awful things done to protect one's own.

Cruelty transcends time.

Before he could stop himself, his gaze dropped to steal a glance at the bullet around his neck, before jerking back up to watch Kara once more.

Cruelty is distinctly human.

Watching her attempt to dry out her shirt, he slowly pushed off the dresser, and approached. His heavy footsteps made the floorboards creak, and he only stopped when his own toes threatened to step upon hers. He reached out to gently tug at the bottom of her shirt, tilting his head in the direction of the dresser. "If you're cold, you might want to change."

A heartbeat later, he dropped his hands to his side, softly asking, "Except?"

 

[CastoffCaptain]

Jaxon's nearness nearly crushed any further hope for Kara to finish her story. It wasn't with shame that she stared at his feet, but the sudden derailment of a narration she hadn't expected to begin. To leave it lying on the verge would have been simpler. It would have required less effort, more due to the sheer burden of speaking (a task she reserved mainly for Marnie) than any emotional toil. For Kara, those years were hardly a sidenote, but she'd come to terms with them as much as one would accept the permanence of a scar. Huffing her hair out of her eyes, she gave Jaxon a dry grunt.

"Except you like me in a wet T-shirt," she said, moving to grab another. Profoundly smug about the quip, she pulled both a bra and a long-sleeved gray tee out of her dresser and soft-footed to the other side of the bedroom "wall", conscious of Bernard's presence opposite of it. As she peeled out of the damp garment, she continued.

"Except I wasn't about to let it go." After hurrying into her bra, Kara unfolded the shirt by shaking it violently, then dragged it over her head. "I followed her. Everywhere. Everywhere I could get away with doing it, everywhere she wasn't expecting me. I trailed her in the halls at school. I sat in her eyeline at Mass. The mall, the prom, her street. Even the subway." She appeared around the folding screen closest to the head of her bed. Intricate patterns had been carved through the wood like lace, reminding her all too much of a confessional screen. Her hands, normally busy emphasizing her point in the air, were still. "I wanted her to know she wasn't safe. I wanted her to know I could fuck her up no matter how many people were around her, no matter how many times she said she was sorry. I wanted her to be terrified of me."

Finally, a seismic rumble of rage shuddered up into that one tooth-clamped word. A moment later, and Kara had it cooled and controlled, her features as smooth and unwavering as before. She nodded. "She was. Believe me. I was quiet, I was patient, and I was sneaky, and I made her life a living hell. At least until her dad moved her family three weeks later for some high-shitting job in Montreal. And you know what? I enjoyed every minute of it. I relished it."

Kara punctuated the ending with a pop of her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Her brows knitted, and she busied herself with returning to the dresser in order to rearrange the clothes she'd mussed by taking out her shirt. "Point is? I don't want you to get some sort of savior thing in your head about me. I'm not perfect, I'm not a saint. Neither of us are." A jerk of her chin indicated the monk who'd reappeared in the chair by his box. "I'm only human, and as much fixing as I've done to people," a swirling of her hand encompassed both the living and dead with the word, "I'm just me. Just Kara. Don't build me up to be somebody better than I am."

Tugging at the largest piercing in her lobe, she narrowed one eye and finished, "But I'm not made out of porcelain. You're not going to break me by asking me to be with you tomorrow, which means you don't have to thank me, either. It weirds me out... Jaxon Theodore. Sit-rep clear?"

 

[MysteriousStranger]

Jaxon gave Kara a small smile at her quip, though it soon disappeared as she finished the actual ending of the sentence she had started before. Turning to keep his eyes on her, he raised a hand place on top of a folding screen, but refrained from putting his weight against it, out of fear it might topple over. His jaw set, and as usual with things that hit a little far too home, his lips were pressed into a thin line, his eyes guarded, his features setting like stone to hide his own sins.

'I relished it'.

Like every second he spent behind the scope; that unconscious secret drifted dangerously close to the front of his mind. With his finger on that trigger, deciding who lived and who died in between breathes taken while lining up the crosshairs, he had been God. In a mere few seconds of heresy, he had omnipotent power, absolute control.
And it had been more addicting than any human substance. As the story of his last deployment had broken in the States, along with the ever-changing numbers of his kill record released by the Navy, part of the country had demonized him as a serial killer who got paid.

Perhaps they had been right.

Ayden had never quite understood. His world view had been vigorously constructed to make sense of the violence around him, to give him guidelines by which to judge his own worthiness. Jaxon thought it was pointless, like gold stars given to children for not pissing on the carpet.

But Kara got it.

Glancing down at his feet, Jaxon shoved a toe into the ground, and scratched at his beard. "The world is gray. And things are hardly simple. I don't think you're a saint, Kara. But you're not..." His jaw was left open, and his lips reformed to speak different words than his had intended, "Bad, either."

Dropping his hand, he took a few steps forward to shorten the gap between them. His head lowered, his gaze glued to his feet. "And it's not about breaking you. I just." He huffed in frustration, raking a few fingers across his scalp. "It's not right, asking so much of someone, and giving so little--nothing--in return."

He held out his palms, stretching them towards her. "I want you to know that I don't take it for granted. It means something."

He paused, finally raising his eyes to meet her own. A moment later, a small grin spread upon his lips. "But I guess I'm just have to come up with a better, more direct way to show my gratitude, yeah?" His head tilted, and his brow quirked just slightly.

 

[CastoffCaptain]

"You're not...bad."

Kara's brow arched of its own accord. She paused in the middle of filling in the last of her eyeliner to consider the sardonic look the mirror threw back at her. Dark plum lips twisted, accompanied by a small shake of her head.

Jaxon had simply stated the obvious. In pointing out that the world was a big, smeary mess of non-delineated extremes, he'd also accidentally assumed that--perhaps just in this case--she thought of herself in black and white. Funny. Marnie had looked at her with a mix of pity and concern when she'd told him of her torture and subsequent revenge she'd experienced in high school. He'd scoured her expression to determine if that streak of schadenfreude still lingered, or if she'd cleansed herself of it. She hid the fact that she hadn't from him.

Jaxon seemed to understand, but both men assumed she'd find a reason to be ashamed of it. Kara flicked the tip of the eyeliner up, executing a perfect cat-eye point in miniature.

Bad.

"Never claimed to be," she murmured to her reflection and leaned back.

Sleep had come easily to her and fought hard against the morning. She'd sat up to find Jaxon already awake. It'd taken a full five minutes to become functional, her hair mussed by the pillow, feet heavy and eyes bleary. Now, forty-five minutes later, she was almost ready to face the gauntlet of friends and enemies ahead of her. Mousse slicked her bangs back in a severe sweep against her skull. She'd secured them with a hair clip that had once been a piece of mourning jewelry. It was subtle enough to pass for innocuous unless one knew what to look for: blonde hair had been woven into a tight pattern underneath the bubble of glass. A choker stood out in ebony against her throat. She'd augmented it with tiny d-rings in order to hang thread-thin chains from it, none so long as to interfere with Bernard's reliquary.

Of Swedish make, her knee-high boots with three-inch soles and sixteen buckled straps between them would keep her feet warm, lined as they were with faux fur. Bondage pants with pinned-down straps, layers of mesh, lace, and leather built up the armor she'd donned, topped off by silver bracelets and wristbands from her own metal smith's table, plus the multiple rings she always wore. Kara stepped back and studied the effect she'd taken twenty minutes to accomplish.

She looked hard. All edges and sharpness and hard.

"That'll do, pig," she whispered to her backwards-self smiling back at her. "That'll do."

Bumping the bathroom door open with her shoulder, she strode out into the main room and headed for the last piece of armor she'd laid out on the dining room table: a Soviet long coat that fit her perfectly, its insignia intact, its gray wool the same shade as the sky outside.

Kara sniffed, glancing from Bernard who sat quietly at his table and then to Jaxon. One would have to had known her well to suss out the mischief dwelling beneath her stoic exterior, but it was there, hiding in eagerness for several different opportunities for the very thing that Jaxon had absolved her from.

Miguel's belongings still leaned near the threshold. Ayden still waited on the other side. That brow arched again, and she tilted her head at the door.

"You ready?"

 

[MysteriousStranger]

Waiting for Kara to emerge from the bathroom, Jaxon paced; hands folded behind his back, boots scraping against the floor, the former SEAL went back and forth with his jaw set, and eyes locked on the path in front of him. During periods of the night before, he had risen to do the same exact thing, though that had been to pacify the restlessness within his mind, and to reassure himself of his surroundings. Now he moved briskly because he simply couldn't sit, while yesterday he would've passed the time by strumming the guitar.

He could handle the storm just fine; he'd proven his resilience time after time again. The calm that came before was what he couldn't stand. And it all would start with him setting his gaze on his brother's broken form, after the door to Kara's apartment swung open, and they exited into the bitter cold. At least half an hour of pacing, and he still hadn't thought of what he was going to say to Ayden. It would be simpler and more gratifying if he could just break the marine's nose and move on.

Letting go a sigh, his head snapped at the creaking of a door, and his feet came to a sudden halt. Kara stepped out prepared for war, dressed more intricately than he'd ever been in his entire life. It was oddly beautiful in that dangerous sort of way, and for a moment he felt like he was staring into a mesmerizing dance of flames.

His lips tilted in the faintest of smirks, and his boots, which had formed a forty-five degree angle at the heel, parted, his stance relaxing just so. "I'm always ready, K."

The statement was challengeable, considering that in comparison, and almost literally, he had just rolled out of bed, and was currently dressed in the same clothes he had worn yesterday, not that he had any choice. His jacket was still splotched in places with dirt, but he hardly cared; it was his only guard against the weather on his person. The only 'primping' he had done was brushing his hair back with his hands, which did little to tame the mess on top of his head.

Tilting his chin sideways, his smirk widened, and was echoed by a glint of devilment within his irises. "So, are we starting this morning off with coffee?" His voice was tinted with perhaps a bit too much eagerness, but his inability to take out his frustration on Ayden only stroked his desire to shake down Miguel. It made what he said next questionable.

"But before we set out, I want my gun." It was spoken like a request, but there was a certain sternness set within his gaze, currently locked on Kara's face, that suggested it wasn't exactly that. "You can carry the magazine if you want, but that's not something you should have here."

There were a few reasons behind his request. First, Kara would be taking a risk if she, as an unlicensed individual, he assumed, kept the firearm within her apartment. Then there was the fact that it was his gun, and it belonged on his person, even if just in gutted form.

 

[CastoffCaptain]

The sardonic glimmer in Kara's mien was so well-buried as to nearly be missed, but she'd be damned if she took the bait to Jaxon's joke; she of course hadn't meant his outward appearance nor his readiness to hop back into bed (which, although that hadn't been a jest he'd played in his hand, she read it into the game, anyway); it had been the monumental effort it was going to take for him to go home. Home wasn't home anymore. Not with a giant, gaping hole in it where his brother had been.

Speaking of which--

Before she could even flick a glance at the door, Jaxon had fast-forwarded to the other name on the naughty list, causing her lips to part in what might have been an amused but cautious retort, had the next two sentences not latched onto the short-lived conversation and dragged it down. She'd expected him to ask for his gun, of course. It was his property, after all. And yet for a split-second, she believed he meant to use it on Miguel in whatever fashion--fear-mongering or worse--and her stomach lurched.

One swallow was all he got in regards to a physical response. Kara stared at him, those jet black pools revealing nothing of her thoughts. She sniffed and ran her pinky under her nose, tilted a look at the ceiling, and then walked over to the bed to find the parts. The weapon was remarkably heavy in her estimation, even broken down as it was. Despite the warmth from the space heaters, cold radiated off the metal. Dropping the magazine into the inner pocket of her coat, she made her way back to Jaxon, the body of the thing held out to him, its muzzle pointed toward the kitchen. She was keeping the bullet she'd secreted under the resin rat skull.

Compromise, the faint arch to her brow might have said. Or perhaps... asshole.

Either was a possibility.

"Remember," she said, her hands diving into the lined warmth of her pockets, "you can't do anything to him that'll get you locked up, understand? For obvious reasons, I can't exactly go in to make sure you behave," she narrowed a glance at B, although a tendril of unease coiled around her guts at the thought of facing Miguel after what he'd done--behaving wasn't in her wheelhouse at the moment. "We'll take his stuff back, but if you lay one finger on him that's not in self-defense, I'm out. Completely. Got it?"

The arch in her eyebrow returned, murmuring the same message it had only seconds ago: compromise.

Or, perhaps...

There's your loophole.

Either was a possibility.

 

[MysteriousStranger]

The Sig felt like an extension of his hand. Taking it from Kara's grasp, Jaxon's fingers wrapped snugly around the grip, as if it had been made specifically to fit so perfectly against his palm. With quickness and an automatic gesture that suggested the endless amount of times he had done this before, his opposite hand closed around the slide, snapping it back to make sure no round was in the chamber. After taking a quick glance to assure himself no magazine was loaded into the gun, he pushed the slide forward, and tucked the weapon into the holster he had once more donned around his shoulders.

It probably shouldn't have, but her warning--her order--made him smirk. Tilting his head slightly, he examined her with one eye, arching a brow in return to hers. He pressed two fingers together, lifting them to press against his forehead, and snap off a mock salute. "Understood, ma'am."

He was already carefully picking apart her exact words, mischief settling into his green eyes. His teenage years had been spent working around Ayden's rules, before the time he spent blatantly ignoring them. And the boys in his platoon had known how to push the envelope while on leave. Besides, that little workaround had always been ingrained within his mind: Everything was fair game after the other person hit first.

Tapping the left side of his jacket, where underneath his arm was his holstered pistol, he cleared his throat, letting his tone become more serious as he spoke, "I don't point a gun at anyone I don't fully intend to shoot." He paused, tightening his jaw for a split second, before continuing, "And I don't shoot anybody I'm not prepared to kill."

And Miguel didn't fit that criteria.

Stretching out his fingers on his left hand, he slowly pulled them inwards toward his palm. An exhalation later, and he slipped back into a more relaxed state.

Carefully and gently, he extended a hand to brush against her cheek, before shoving it into his jeans' pocket. "You have my word, Kara. And I've kept it so far, yeah?" A small smile graced his lips, before being replaced by a more sinister expression: the wolfish smirk tugged at the edges of his mouth. "I won't hit Miguel...first."

With a wink, he turned on his heel, walking to pick up Miguel's guitar, which he had considered stealing, had it not been for Kara's art, and slinging it over his shoulder. The instrument had been treated with care, because it might be owned by an asshole, but it was still a six-string that deserved respect. Miguel's other belongings were flung over his shoulder and picked up without any regard for their wellbeing, the shirt landing against a muddy patch of Jaxon's jacket.

 

[CastoffCaptain]

Jaxon's touch still warmed Kara's cheek. Its gentleness stood out in stark contrast to the way he handled his weapon. Which had he learned first? That question blossomed into a dozen and she lined them up in an orderly fashion to await the right time to present them.

For now, she listened to Maverick with an unwavering intensity. Every syllable that left his mouth, each tweak of his brows, all of his tells--subtle or otherwise--were noted, cataloged, and stored away. He might be as sincere as he wanted, but belief didn't always end in reality. One could either be disappointed when the promises broke down, or one could put faith in the right place. If he happened to throw a punch at Miguel first, then that was on her head, not his. Jaxon meant well, and that was a better motivation than hers at the moment. She had no right to bring a bear into a henhouse. Kara cleared her throat. She didn't dare look at Bernard for fear of the accusatory look he might right now be aiming at her, knowing all too well her mind.

First things first.

Habit found her hands slinking into her coat pockets again. The right one held a plastic sandwich bag filled with salt. The left, a bag of the same brick-red dust drizzled in a neat barrier just outside the door. Both would ward off most spirits who meant harm, although it was never a foolproof given, or particularly strong in all cases. Both she carried whenever she stepped outside of her comfort zone of the neighboring five or six blocks, where the dead became unfamiliar and unpredictable, especially in the older quarters. Jaxon had his weapon. She had hers.

Only Jaxon was willing to do battle against the living, and all for her. All because of the last twenty-four hours. She almost felt sorry for Miguel, but then... there'd been so much to patch up after he'd left. So many shattered pieces to gather. The pity crystallized inside her and sheared off.

She stepped toward the door. "Then I shouldn't tell you he's got a hair-trigger temper tied to his pride, right?"

Rubbing her thumb against her forefinger to dislodge the salt they'd brushed against, Kara grabbed her keys from Bernard's table, checked the time on her cell phone, and put a hand to the doorknob.

She grunted.

The metal was freezing, painfully so.

Don't do it.

The doe-eyed look she turned on Jaxon was guileless.

Don't you dare fucking grin.

"Well. Someone's unhappy."

Kara braced herself, and flung open the door.

 

[MysteriousStranger]

Maverick answered Kara's statement with a snort, a grin spreading across his lips, before his restrained anger reminded him to twist the expression. As the door opened, an unnatural chill swept across his exposed skin, and his head snapped to its source. Ayden had taken up post at the far end of the hallway, and hearing their exit from the apartment, started to approach in a march with his hands folded behind his back. Maverick stepped outside to meet him, his massive body deliberately placed in his brother's path, and angled to keep Kara behind him.

The marine stopped in his stride a comfortable distance away. Surprisingly, he was silent, though the way his face was darkened displayed the anger underneath, left to come to a boil over the night. Disapproval sizzled within his once green eyes, and he moved them from Maverick to Kara, sawing his jaw back and forth.

"Sleep well?" He asked at last, though the question hardly held its normal, harmless implications. And it was spoken with as much judgement wielded by Tyr himself.

Maverick's features had settled to be just as hard as his brother's, and the SEAL slid his hands casually inside the pockets of his jacket, purposely relaxing his stance. "Better than you."

Ayden's eyes jerked up to land on Maverick's, and that cold rage rose to the surface within them. "I hope you fucking know what you're doing."

Maverick's left fingers jerked from his pocket and twitched, twirling inward for the slightest of moments as if to form a fist. His jaw set roughly, and he took a few, quick steps forward, until he towered over the marine like a dark shadow. Their eyes locked, bodies tensed. Maverick's left hand formed that fist; what he wanted to do with it was evident.

"You're going to keep your damn mouth shut," Maverick growled. It certainly wasn't a request, and he didn't seem to care if there was little he could do to enforce it. "Because you lost your holier-than-thou bullshit rights the second you decided to put Kara in danger."

To his credit, Ayden seemed to be the calmer of the two, though that clearly wasn't saying much. He remained motionless, except for the darting of his gaze to Kara, then back to his brother. Behind those dead eyes was deliberation, happening in between the breathes the SEAL was taking.

With one more look at Kara and a blink, the marine turned his back, stepping off to the side, and crossing his arms over his chest. Though he had resigned, his repressed rage still rolled from him.

Nothing had truly been brought forward. Nothing had been solved. Just shoved out of the way and aside. Perhaps it was the unshakable curse of their bloodline, but neither one really knew differently.

The song and dance had been familiar, all too familiar. Like opening up an old wound, Maverick was reminded of the deeper chasm created years ago between him and his brother, one that, at times, seemed deeper than hell. It left a hollow feeling gnawing inside his stomach.

Silence stretched on as Maverick readjusted his jacket, taking his time to zip it up. After exhaling, he stepped toward Kara, being sure to keep himself between her and his rider.

"Pride, you said? Don't we all." That information she had given him before about Miguel had been kept and noted, filed at the back of his mind for later use. He made a sound in between a scoff and a dry chuckle, before stepping inside the elevator, and eyeing the old machinery with suspicion.

 

[CastoffCaptain]

Jaxon's efforts to block her from Ayden's approach were swiftly rewarded with a scowl. Turned from her, the former SEAL couldn't see her step sideways to watch the show, chewing on the twin tastes of irritation and curiosity. Somewhere deep inside, a primitive thrill augmented the two, but she boxed up that archaic instinct--thousands of bra-burners and Suffragettes hadn't brought womankind this far to have her excited by a caveman standoff that was all about her.

Anger held up a mirror to the brothers. She held her breath, glancing from one to the other, wondering if either knew how similar they looked, what an exact match their stiffened shoulders were, their steel-clamped jaws, the fire in their eyes that threatened complete conflagration of the pair. Kara had been a watcher on the sidelines all her life, her self-imposed invisibility a free pass to study other people's stories, and the one unfolding in front of her right now consumed her. Maverick couldn't hurt Ayden physically. She doubted Ayden would pursue violence against his brother, but the potential was there, freezing the breath that crept from from her lips, causing the air to thrum with his fury. Ayden's rage hurt like a sudden drop in altitude, and it left her heart in her throat.

His first question didn't win him any favors. Had the Marine behaved in any other manner than he had the day before, deliberately tossing his brother to his demons without care for her safety, she could have sympathized with him. But very few people could admit to sinning, let alone offer a mea culpa for any particular one. Now that he was dead, he possessed a single-mindedness that most likely outweighed even his most stubborn streaks he'd had when alive. Death blurred lines or focused them to razor-sharpness, and right now it seemed that Ayden could sever arteries with a glance.

Both traded verbal blows too quickly for her to respond, although she would have enjoyed snapping her teeth on Ayden's I hope you fucking know what you're doing remark. Jaxon took up the slack, however, and she lifted her chin to keep her expression neutral. These were words that could destroy bonds, and shred decades of trust and familiarity, but she sensed the ties held, even after Jaxon's brother turned his back on them.

But what did an outsider know?

Huffing a breath she didn't realize she held, Kara sidled past him and stepped to the elevator doors. She braced them open with her hip and stared for a long, unhurried moment at the man inside.

"Thank you," she started, the flourescents painting her skin in alabaster, "for standing up for me. I am perfectly capable of doing it myself, I'll have you know, even if what you're about to do," she tilted her head at Miguel's guitar, "seems to say otherwise. But, seeing as you said pretty much what I was going to say about your brother's dickheadedness... I'll forgive you this time." So very indistinct, the crinkling at the edges of her eyes. She stepped inside and turned around, narrowing a stare at Jaxon's brother.

"Hey, Ayden. You got a little somethin'," her pinky touched the middle of her forehead before she used it to punch the bottom floor button, "right there."

Bernard materalized behind her, and as the doors groaned shut, he lifted a hand over Kara's head and waggled his fingers in pleasant farewell at the Marine they were leaving behind.

 

[MysteriousStranger]

'Thank you.'

Maverick tilted his head, raising a brow as if he fully didn't understand Kara's offered thanks. He admitted, it was an odd thing, and he now saw her point from the night before.

His gaze shifted to the image of his brother, who stood like a statue in his retreated spot.

Under different circumstances, Maverick might have found the deeply unamused look on Ayden's face quite amusing, but as the elevator doors closed shut, he was finding that he didn't have the will to grin. Spend thirty-two years with someone and getting under their skin became as easy as pulling a trigger; the weight behind the motion tied only to the reluctance to do so.

'I hope you know what you're fucking doing'.

The sentence scratched at his mind; the conversation had been like a fragment of one held years ago. The implications behind it was as maddening as the hidden accusation; more than a decade later, and Maverick still hadn't been forgiven.

The enclosed space, which he had as much trust in as his brother did himself, didn't help to settle his raging, muddled, buried fears.

Inhaling, he turned his head toward Kara, focusing on her instead of the shaky movement of the descending box they were trapped in, which made it hard to breathe without consciously making an effort to do so.

She had seen the exchange as something else, and he could see why. She hadn't fought in the brotherhood like he had, she had done so alone. The difference was something he was unequipped to explain.

"It has nothing to do with your ability to stand up for yourself. For the record, I have no doubt that you can," he started. That was the easy part. But then he had to stop.

His brows furrowed. A stretch of silence followed.

He opened his mouth to speak once more, but was at a loss for a way to describe what simply was inside his head. After a moment to gather his thoughts, he cleared his throat, and tried, "A lot of people just think of snipers as executioners. I guess that's true, but..." He shrugged his shoulders, glancing down as he fiddled with the bullet around his neck. "...We also watch our men on the ground. Keep an eye on their six." To call it his job felt too light. His duty felt too high and mighty. So he settled for the simple truth: "It's just what I do."

Finally, a smile broke through his expression, even if it just slightly tugged for a second or two at the edges of his lips. It was meant just for her; what he didn't say was that the whole thing had been about more, a drive to protect that went deeper than the simple guardian role instilled by his experiences. "So, I guess you better get used to it. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission, yeah?"

As soon as the doors slid back, he wasted no time stepping out into the welcomed open again, relaxing as his boots landed on solid ground. He exhaled in relief, throwing a glare at the devilish contraption over his shoulder.