Seventeenth Unused Utility Belt | Spam and text

[hellofist]

[Open Spam]
[Cass inhabiting the CTS isn't a new Barge occurrence, but it's not typical for her to go in looking upset and come out still... really looking upset. But here she is, sitting on the floor outside the CTS to catch her breath and wait for her legs to start working again because it's been a few hours now of nothing but punching and kicking and pushing herself so she wouldn't feel anything, but it's not really doing the job this time around.

So yeah, she's kind of brooding outside the CTS like any good Bat does after an upsetting day.]


[Private text to Dean]
Out.


[Spam for Merlin]
[She goes back into the CTS after her break, but it's still not enough. In the end she's just on her knees punching the floor until her hands are bleeding and that helps, finally. Only took her hours to get there. Finally she leaves the CTS and makes her way back home to wait for Merlin. He can fix her, her hands and her heart.

It's a bit surprising, though, that she runs into him in the hallway, him approaching the door from the other direction. Even after everything, she's able to smile when she sees him.]

Was just... gonna find you. Hi.

Comments

[ Private : Video ]

[surfaceshine]

We were talking. [About you.] And I uh... lost my temper. Told him he couldn't have any more alcohol until he stopped whining. [It still makes him angry, warming his voice; called him a deadbeat jerkoff asshole. Piled his own father's sins onto the plate too, because why not.]

Guess he didn't like that. Honestly, I'm surprised it took us this long to start throwing punches.

[There's another long hesitation; for anyone else, he wouldn't switch. He doesn't want to, for her sake, but it's not fair. It's not fair to make her worry and it's not fair to take away one of her senses because he's a chickenshit asshole.

So he swaps to video, too, and lets her see what honestly looks a lot worse than it actually is. He drops the icepack down to his lap, sucks at the back of his teeth: Cain concentrated on his face, broke his nose, elbowed him in the jaw. None of it's serious, he's had worse, but the bruising and the swelling has set in, along with the pounding, concussive headache.]

[ Private : Video ]

[hellofist]

[It's not actually as bad as she expected, now that she can see him. There's not much of an expression to her face, she just stares at him and looks at every bruises and the break and commits every injury to memory.]

Have someone there... to take care of you? Not just... infirmary people?

[ Private : Video ]

[surfaceshine]

[That puzzles Dean, too, honestly but he thinks he knows how to explain it and it pisses him off. Not as much as the other thing, not as much as their conversation, but still. He shifts the icepack in his hand without looking up, chewing the inside of his lip carefully, before raising it back to his jaw again.

He glances up at the screen, meets her eyes steadily back.]

I'm gonna go find Felix when I'm done here. I need to check on 'im anyway - he ah. Might've saved me the trouble of another deathtoll, maybe.

Cain's in surgery, but he shouldn't die. As soon as he's stable he's going down to Zero.

[The melting ice in the pack shifts, clinking together in brittle, soft breaks as he adjusts his grip.]

I'm sorry.

[ Private : Video ]

[hellofist]

Felix...

[She'll have to track him, she decides. She needs to thank him for protecting Dean. A darker part of her wants to thank him for hurting Cain.

He shouldn't die, Dean says. Is that true, though? If it will stop him from hurting other people like he's hurt Dean, like he's hurt her, would it really be that bad?

She misses Jason, suddenly. That's probably not a good sign.]

Stop apologizing. It's my fault. If I hadn't...

[But she had to. She had to stop him from pretending because it made her sick the way he used her to pretend to be someone good, something nice. Flour on his face and a loving father when there was blood on his hands, her blood on his hands, was wrong. She isn't sorry she spoke out, but she is sorry Dean paid the price.]

[ Private : Video ]

[surfaceshine]

Don't you do that.

[Abruptly, the anger that had mostly drained away is back, his voice firm and harsher than he means it to be through his abused throat, but no weaker for any of that. He'll take a hundred beatings, he'll take a dozen death tolls, if it keeps her from ever really thinking that and now he sits forward slightly on the side of the infirmary bed where he's waiting to be discharged.]

None of this is your fault. Every choice he ever made, from the moment you were born to that bullshit stunt he pulled in the kitchens, to what he decided to do to me, to what he decides to do tomorrow, all of it, all of it is on him. You hear me? I don't ever wanna hear you blaming yourself because he decides to be a shitheel and a bully. He did this. Not you.

You hear me, Cass? [It's important to him that she hears him, that she believes him. He can never convince himself, after all. He has to convince her.]

[ Private : Video ]

[hellofist]

[She's looking at him, listening to him speak and taking it all in, but in the end she can't agree with him. She expects that he'll understand that, they're the same in so many ways that he'll know if he can't, she probably can't either.

Cain makes his own choices, yes. But she provided the push to make him decide violence was the way to respond to Dean. It was inevitable that they would clash, there's too much of Dean's own father in David Cain for them to avoid a confrontation at some point.

Cass being the catalyst for them fighting over how to be a man, how to be a parent? It's almost nauseating how unavoidable that is.]

Hear you.

[ Private : Video ]

[surfaceshine]

[Sometimes, Dean hates how similar they are; he hates that he knows she feels the way about herself that he does himself. He hates that as confident, as certain as she can seem, he knows that it doesn't go as deep as it should.

He studies her for a few more long moments, and yes, he does know that she doesn't believe him. The anger that had subsided is beginning to simmer again, and his hand tightens on the ice pack, making the contents crackle.

His voice, though, is deceptively soft.]

Cass. I...

It's not your fault. [It's not our fault.]

[ Private : Video ]

[hellofist]

Some parts aren't. Some parts are. Only have control... over what I do. It's enough, right now, that I'm not... beating him to feel better.

[She's tried that before. It only reminds her that Father's Day is looming closer, the anniversary of the day she tried to beat her mother's name out of him and he'd wanted her to keep going until she killed him.

He'd gotten a flower instead. Bloody, broken face and a broken flower. Everything broken, all jagged edges. That's about how she feels right now.]

My problem, not yours. Don't worry. Just... rest.

[ Private : Video ]

[surfaceshine]

Cass.

[She's trying to withdraw on him, and while he gets that too, while he'd desperately like to go rest, there are more important things right now.]

We're friends, right? [She doesn't get the chance to refuse that - she's his friend, which means that even if he thought she wouldn't agree, it doesn't change what he has to say.] That means your problems are my problems. Friends don't let friends face bullshit alone.

I don't let friends face bullshit alone.