alwaysroomforhope | (no subject)

And then there is a ninja-- a once-prince, shaggy-haired exile, recent werewolf.

He is beside her; quiet, but in contact.

"You wanna talk about it?"

..he's not very good at this, but he's trying.

Ninjas rock. She abandons the tree for him, wrapping her arms around him and just - holding on.

When it comes, her voice is a whisper.

"I met a kid. He's. Not dead."

That makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Zuko makes a great support, a very good anchor-- he has strong arms, broad chest, you know.

"Uhm."

He doesn't get it. So he waits for elaboration.

She's going to hide in said arms and chest, taking carefully steady breaths. And really noticing them - even though she's dead, she breathes. But - in that dungeoncrawl, when it was for real, when she was - it was different.

"Someone brought him back," she clarifies, in a tiny voice. "He was dead. And then - they fixed him. He's not - he's -"

She doesn't know what to do! Except for cling. So that's what she's going to do.

Oh.

Oh!

Aw, man.

Zuko's guts twist. That's really funny timing, her meeting-- a boy like that-- when he--

--when he's--

When he's totally following in his uncle's footsteps... trying to bring the dead to...

"I'm sorry."

"I don't know what to do."

She's dead. She didn't know people could come back from it. She'd accepted that. It was okay. She was dead, and she'd had her life, and it was over, and now -

- what is she supposed to do now?

Yeah, he's pretty used to that being final. But sometimes he expects to see someone he's lost-- Lu Ten or Grandfather or Mother--

And sometimes he wonders if he won't see his father sipping tea at the bar, and that would be worse then seeing the dead, really, for his father is alive and cannot be reached...

He kisses her hair, stroking a hand down her back, quiet as she cries it out, murmuring something nonsensicle but affectionate, gentle-- things he has a hard time with. Still, she seems to want that, and ... he can try, right?

He's doing all right, really. She just - right now, she just wants something solid, something to hang on to while the rest of her personal worldview shifts cataclysmically to incorporate the new information.

Death can be fixed.

And Zuko's warm and smells like he's been playing with the dogs and sort of like smoke, the way he always does, and if she just holds on it'll be okay - it'll be okay.

She takes a deep breath, eventually, and gives a last hiccup of a sob, and rests her head against his shoulder. "'m sorry. I'm okay now."

"Are you sure?" He's totally got to prep himself if there is more crying. Really. He's not very sure how to handle it.

Yeah, she's never cried on him before, has she? At least, not this kind of desperately miserable can't-do-anything-but crying.

"I'll be okay. I just - I just -" A forced deep breath here, and she makes herself calm down. "I don't. It's not like it's just - anything. He - it was here. A wizard here ... fixed him. And I don't - I don't want it, I shouldn't want that, but it's -"

She wants to be alive properly again so much it hurts. She wants it like it's burning inside. But it would be - wrong. She doesn't know how to explain it.

"But nobody wants-- to be--"

He gets it, he does. Exile's not the same, being dead to someone while you're still walking the earth isn't the same, but he does get it, he really does. He sighs, kissing her temple, and then urges her to sit with him and then asks...

"IF someone offered, would you say no?"

She leans against his side, looking out at the lake, chewing her lip anxiously.

It's a nice night. Or it might be, if she was really seeing it. Instead of Gotham, burning, the way it was when she looked out of the windows at Leslie's clinic, just before - before.

"I don't know."

"Then don't think about it," he says, "until it happens. If it doesn't-- why--"

He stops, he sighs, and then says, "Don't torture yourself with possibilities, Stephanie. It's pointless-- gets you nowhere, expends useless energy..." He kisses her brow again, and rubs her shoulder.

"Concentrate on the now, rather then wonder..."

About the future you may or may not have outside Milliways.

Steph turns to look at him, stiffening. "Don't - don't condescend to me - I - Knox. Do you know him? He's - there's going to be -"

It gets complicated.

"You know - how I died. It's - there was a war, and - it's going to happen again, in Knox's world. It's - a parallel Gotham - and I can't stop it, I can't do anything, but if I was - if there was a way to -"

There is no now. Milliways is - just killing time. There are things outside that need doing, people that need saving, and dead girls can't help. Dead girls don't have to worry about the outside, because they can't. But if she wasn't dead - if there was even a possibility that she could go to someone and ask them to bring her back - and there is, now, and yet ...

... it would be wrong. It would be messing with things that shouldn't be messed with; it'd disrupt everything.

But she could.

"I'm not--" How can she think that? He tries not to get angry, and fails, just a little. "I'm just saying..."

He flinches; yes, he knows how you died, dummy. He's counted every scar, awake and asleep, and marveled in a sick, sad way at the depths to which a man could sink, the drapavity of which a man is capable of.

But--

But--!

He knows the heart of a hero, too -- he knows what it's like to want to do the right thing, and to do it well, and--

-- and he knows what it's like to fall and fail. He didn't die, but...

...he understands the feeling of powerlessness.

"You can't," he says firmly. "So don't. Accept your limitations." For those who can't, teach! He can't accept his limitations, but he can sure tell her too!

Steph shakes her head no, unhappily. "If I accepted my limitations I'd never have been - anything. I'd have been a second-rate thug's daughter and never looked for anything better. I wouldn't have been Spoiler, or Robin, or - or ..."

And there she trails off. Because if she'd accepted her limitations, she wouldn't be dead now.

Which really kind of makes his point for him, doesn't it?

Steph bites her lip, hard, and shakes her head again in denial.

"Sometimes--"

--sometimes it's hard to accept, someimtes you have to realize you might've made a mistake somewhere, sometimes--

--sometimes the truth is just ugly.

Zuko curls up tightly with her, making her sit, be held, be comforted clumsily by a young man who doesn't really know how. He sighs heavily, and kisses her hair again.

"Just--"

Just let him think about how to fix this.

She's thinking now, over her - life, and her death, even curled up in his arms with her cheek agains his chest and his heartbeat in her ear. There've been decisions she's made that were so wrong, and some that were so right.

Life-or-death decisions. And one of them meant death.

She'd always known it might. It would have been so easy to slip from a de-cel cable, to misjudge the length of a jumpline, to stuff up a landing and fall hundreds of feet. It would have been only a moment's inattention, and she could have ended as a smear on the pavement. Instead - well, it hurt more, and for so much longer - so much longer - but at least she didn't trip over her boots. Or let her dad push her off a roof; or get hit by a truck, or die an old lady in a Gotham she never tried to save...

She rubs her knuckles over puffy eyes and lets Zuko hold her, oblivious to awkwardness. It's okay. She always - she always tried. She was never a natural at the Robin thing like Tim or Dick; never had that innate viciousness that made Jason so fierce. She'd worked, and worked hard, for every ounce of muscle, every scrap of skill.

And now she's dead. But she wouldn't have made any other choices, not anywhere along the line, right until the very end; and wouldn't everyone have wanted to take back the decision that led to their death? That doesn't count. No; she was right. She was right.

People are going to die, though. In Knox's Gotham, a place she's never been, but still a Gotham.

"I just want to ... I just want to help people," she says, eventually, tired and a little bit lost. "I just - I could. I could help."

THere is nothing that Zuko can offer that'll improve this, that'll make it okay. There is nothing that can take back the death (not yet, anyway) or change her choices, and to a point, he wouldn't want to. He didn't fall for someone who made easy choices only. He couldn't have -- he had to have someone to bite down on life and held on with hands and teeth...

She worked hard. Just like he did. And just like he did, she fell. It's just she couldn't get up from that last decent... it went all the way down, all, all, all the way down.

"I know you do," he says, stroking her shoulders. "But you can't."

You can't cross that threshold.

Yet.

And now--

Does he help her? Help her hurt herself again. And if so, what then? What is a second chance, if the coin is spent on other lives, instead of her own...

...but then, wouldn't she be happy, anyway, in -- in that weird, warped, hero way?

Oh, conflict. He hasn't missed you at all.

"I know."

She does know, really. You can't go backwards; you've got to keep going on. Even if everything you so desperately want is behind you.

"Sucks, though."

Angela spots her friend, looking worried. "Hey...what's up?" she asks, putting an arm around her.

[ooc: have you seen this post yet?]

In a Millitimey magical handwavey way, it's been a while since That Conversation, and Zuko's calmed her down; she's still sitting out there, though. It's quiet and peaceful, and she just wants - the quiet. Time to think. Something.

She leans into Angela's hug and rests her head on her friend's shoulder, eyes still on the lake.

"I'm okay. Mostly."

"Mostly?" Angela looks at her. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," Steph says, bitterly. "Nothing, at all. Ever."

"What are you talking about, Steph?"

This is so not like her.

"I just - all this." Steph waves a hand at the lake, quiet under the night sky, at the swing that's sitting still under the trees, at the lights of the Milliways building behind them. "It's all - I don't do anything here, and it's ..."

She trails off, helplessly.

It's usually Angela doing the crying. She's not used to seeing Steph like this.

"Hey...what brought all this on?" She holds her friend and kisses the top of her head. "Did someone tell you that? Because I'll kick their ass if they did."

Even if she doesn't know how precisely.

Steph shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut. "I just ... I'm so sick of being dead, Angie!"

"...oh," Angie breathes. She wasn't really expecting that response.

She hugs Steph tighter. "I'm sorry. I wish I could help."

Steph's trying hard not to just wail and cling.

"I met this kid," she mumbles, into Angela's shoulder. "Gavroche. He used to be dead, but they - they fixed him."

"They...fixed him?"

This is Angela's 'wtf' face, only Steph probably can't see it.

"He's - not dead any more," Steph explains, sniffing. "They - he went to a wizard, and ..."

Angela blinks a few times.

"That...just seems wrong," she whispers.

"But...I guess you really never know what can happen in Milliways."

"I know," Steph says, sniffing back another sob. "It's wrong and it's - it's creepy and - it's not good and it's - it'd be - it'd be wrong."

She can't explain how it's so wrong, or why - but it's just - not right. You only get one chance. And yet -

"It'd be bad."

- and yet she wants another life so desperately it hurts.

"But...it still hurts...not to have that."

Angela keeps a hold on Steph. She wishes desperately for a way to fix things for her.

But she knows there isn't.

"I had - I had all these plans, Angie. ALl this stuff I was gonna do. One day I was gonna - I was gonna go find Carrie again, and I wanted to take her on holidays, and - go see things - and -"

Angela bites her lip and nods. She doesn't know what to say, but she'll listen.

"I'm right here. It's okay, just talk," she says softly.

It's about all she can do.

Steph shakes her head, pressing her lips together. "It's okay. It's ... not okay. But I - I have to deal with it anyway, I guess."

"Some stuff, yeah, you just have to," she says quietly.

"I guess...it's gotta be kind of hard to be here as part of your afterlife. Never thought about that before."

"I thought I was going to Hell," Steph confesses, not looking up. "I didn't - I didn't mean I'm not glad to be here. It's - I mean. I really ... I started a war, Angie."

"Somehow," Angela says softly, "I don't think that you were the only reason for whatever war you started. And lots of people start wars. Doesn't mean they're going to Hell."

"Not like I did," Steph says, voice still tiny and desperate. "I was - I - I can't even say. But it's - I couldn't - I -"

She doesn't actually know what she wants to say. She just wants to be emo for a while. :D?

Angela is going to let her be emo if she needs to be.

"It's going to be okay," she says softly.

"Yeah," Steph agrees quietly, and lets Angie hold her until she's all cried out. "Thank you."

"S'okay. Anytime."