so i ascended

Well, the silver lining is this: It can't get any worse.

Can it?

He knows if Henry can sniff out his insecurities, he can sense his guilt also. If a maybe is a soft no, then a soft no is still a no and a no is just as hard to say as it is to receive. From somewhere, a memory: of lonely boys, each by himself, and lonely that you can't spell without one. He doesn't want to be silenced by the stone of a fruit any longer.

Over the PA, the conductor's voice cuts over the hiss and rumble of the closing doors: "This is Second Avenue, stand clear of the closing doors."

Have you, uh, ever been on a subway before?

"Next stop: Broadway-Lafayette Street."

Other than since–

A flash of a memory image, the Wonder Bar bathroom, Will in the mirror. One eye that isn't his own.

Uh, y'know. Before you came back or… whatever you call it?

What happens when you crack open the stone?

All reminding him how unhuman he is and always has been.

But for their latest agreement he attempts to find new flashbacks. Tries, until he hears —

Have you, uh, ever been on a subway before?

— the question is so shocking he almost mistakes it for a part of the family camping trip he'd walked in on.

"No." Looking at the subway through Will's eyes, he considers the grimy steel, tacky ads, and the collection of people sharing the subway with Will, he's fairly certain he hasn't even done so in one of the many minds he's absorbed. He can't be bothered to try to remember properly.

When Ella reached up to adjust his crown, Kit caught her wrist, and pressed a kiss to her palm.

"You'll have to teach our future children how to make these." He had no doubt that there would be children, not even because it was technically their duty as king and queen, but because they truly loved each other.

Smiling widely as his lips touched her skin, she can't help but lift off her heels the tiniest amount, overcome with love and joy at the place at which her life had brought her.

"I will make sure they continue the tradition, and with their children too," she promised, to herself as much as him and their future children. It was barely a heartbeat, but she could already picture a handful of children that looked just like him.

" You're right, and I don't regret it" she was proud of herself for trying something new, but she did not plan on drinking bay breeze ever again.

She was confused when he grabbed her hip, but she didn't think that he was trying to hurt her. She did enjoy sitting on his lap, so she didn't try to get up again. She was relieved that nobody was looking at them, she wouldn't have liked being judged by some strangers.

He's just knows that she's up to something. He doesn't know what yet, but she's being too docile. That doesn't make Jackson enjoy her weight on his lap any less, but he lets her go the second time she gets up.

Mostly so that bitch stewardess wouldn't come back to scold them with her fake smile plastered on her face.

She can see it in the girl. The desire to let go, to get out of her head and for a second not have to worry about anything. Chronic over thinkers are always their own worst enemy. Katherine knows, if she hadn't learned how to control a situation she'd be in the same boat. It's why she has no problem helping her cut loose. Bringing her out of her shell.

It helps that Bella is cute too.

The more the song went on, the more she saw the girl get the hang of it, brought a smile to Katherine's features.

"Alright." She stated, "as promised? Song's over so I will get you another drink. Keep dancing like that and you just might have a good time." The vampire teased.

It's harder to let loose than she anticipated, but then that's always true. No matter how she psyches herself up, by the time she's midway through the urge to snap back into her shell is impossible to ignore and she inevitably slips back into the edges.

The drink helped a little, but it's hardly enough to overcome a life's worth of self conditioning. An offer like Katherine's usually isn't enough to bring her out the rest of the way, but the difference turns out to be that it wasn't Katherine who was asking.

He can't blame Jonathan for the undiluted disgust apprehension that sits on his face. So he has to relent. Jonathan's question is a bird screech in his mind. "It–" used to bother me, he almost says, and then tries again. "I used to be more aware of it. At first. Now…"

It's hard to remember when sometimes I can't even remember where I end and he begins.

These are things Will keeps in the enclosure of his mind, accessible to two halves of a whole. Jonathan, his half in another constellation, exists outside. How can Will expect him to understand? He doesn't have the words to explain it. Maybe…

Maybe if he didn't have to say it at all.

He tears his empty-moment silent stare from his brother and leans over the armrest. Tucked between the couch and the coffee table is a leather-bound portfolio case that Will pulls into his lap.

Hesitation grips him.

Jonathan is his brother, yes; but this? This is so personal it's intimate. A turn-your-skin-inside-out kind of intimate. And then Will looks at his brother and the doubt dissipates just enough to give him the final push he needs to hold out the case. And then, with bated breath, he waits.

He risks undoing everything he tries to say; he knows this. His art over the last two years tells one story, warts and all. From trapped and un-alone and desperate to something new, something unexpected. A bridge. Under arctic water; under hollow ground. He fell headfirst into Henry's world and before he knew it, he fell.

He fell.

"This is how." Will holds out a gentle hand before Jonathan can turn the next page.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

But Will puts the portfolio case in his hand, and Jonathan is fully aware of what that means, how important this has been to Will. How private this is, and how private childhood in the Byers home left them both. Let alone what Henry put them through, and having to learn to hide it all from the world.

And now he pages through the case, slowly as he pauses to take in every picture's detail. The horror and pain and fear emanating from strokes of charcoal and pencil. The horror of two into the completeness of two-in-one, and Jonathan's heart never aches any less, only yanks in different directions as he's forced to reckon with what the progression means.

He doesn't know how to accept it, but he knows that doesn't matter because he has to. He has to or he has to mourn Will. He has to believe that Will truly feels this way, or he has to believe that Henry returned and his little brother's gone.

Will hasn't truly been gone yet, and he isn't now.

"A sharp blade is only as worthy as the hand that guides it," comes the answer, quiet and exacting. No heat mars her tone; disapproval alone suffices.

His confidence does not move her. It stands before her as so many things have before—loud, insistent, and entirely unproven. Chin remains lifted, gaze steady, granting him the dignity of attention, if not belief.

"What I believe," she continues, voice cool with quiet authority, "is of no consequence to truth. It exists with or without my approval—and without yours."

A slight incline of her head follows, dismissive in its composure rather than its motion.

How very clever of her — and very right, too. Luckily his is the hand that wields his weapon. He could say so, of course, and if (when) he retells this story, he very well might.

However, brutish and stupid as he is, he isn't able to charm a pub full of people because he doesn't know how to read the room and act accordingly. When he wants to. When he cares enough to. In the interest of proving himself worthy of Aoife, he chooses to ignore the barbs he can feel pressing into his ego.

For now.

" Thank you for sharing that with me, your secret is safe with me" she chuckled, she was glad to discover that he had a sense of humor and wasn't upset with her for bringing up the rumors she had heard.

"Thank you for believing me over the tabloids. I know they're always much more trustworthy than the actual source."

Surely it’s rhetorical, a response to a poorly timed joke, but he weighs her question anyway. 

Smile-frowning, he goes, “Tomato.”

Wait. Does she think he’s joking?

“I’m serious, by the way.” Rain crawls down his cheekbones, refracting ‘tomato.’ “It’s not my intention to insult you—just hear me out.”

Ben ducks beneath the awning while rain needles the back of his jacket anyway. Wet hair ropes against his temples. Flinches at a pair of tires hissing under the El like a big, wet cat.

The back of his hand passes over his mouth. 

But also because she thinks he's still fucking with her.

Until he continues and makes it very clear that he's not. Her smile fades but doesn't entirely disappear as her eyebrows climb upward.

She follows him under the awning, even if she isn't yet following these sudden plans that would completely disrupt her life.

This thing between them — she might not yet have a proper name for it yet, but she likes it. She likes him. She doesn't want to muddy it up with money and transactions, make it closer to what she does for a living than something that could be all hers.

It's the obvious staring him into the face. It's the neglect he let happen. The fact that he was so far up his own ass of problems– 

Well, it shouldn't have gotten in the way of being a friend. A best friend, dammit. It's not like he didn't know better, either, because it's not exactly a new development – you could say Mike had his own monkey on his back long before Will's came back to have him in a chokehold.

"I'm sorry," he says. Like sorry can make up for it all. It's too little, he knows it and he feels it and he hears it in the awkward silence he interprets lives between them. So he's quick to shrug his shoulders and shake his head all at the same time. "No, no, not anymore. God, no. What happened was an accident, I swear."

He had help. In the end, he had help.

But Henry's the last thing Will wants to bring up now. It's so tender new – the quiet after their argument, like the air will still smell of rain after the storm. He doesn't want to risk it.

"…I never got to thank you. For, uhm, showing up. Being there when it– when I, uh, needed it. I mean it. Thanks, Mike. And… I truly am sorry."

He swallows.

It was Mike's fault that he'd let himself wallow so much he hadn't noticed what was going on with Will until he'd ended up in the hospital again, and now there was apparently nothing that they could do about the fact that Henry had come back like the weeds in his mother's gardens that refused to stay gone no matter what she did or how she complained.

And now he'd just have to figure out how to help Will on his own, without the rest of the party (without El) without alerting Will or the parasite crawling around his brain.

So he brushes off Will's apology as unnecessary and unneeded. It wasn't Will's responsibility. Besides, Mike isn't ready to deal with... any of that. Any of the last six years or the catalyst for them.

Lucy looked over at him, a single brow raised and something that was almost an amused smile twitched on her lips. She was pretty sure everyone in this city was destined for trouble at one point or another.

“Whatever you say, big guy.” she muttered with a small scoff. 

Her frown returned in full force as she looked down at her arm. A bullet had grazed her at one point. She wasn’t sure how deep it was; she could feel something warm and wet trickling down her arm despite the piece of torn shirt she was tied around it. But it was just a graze, so even though it hurt like a bitch, she told herself it wasn’t a big deal. 

He let the corner of his mouth threaten to quirk upwards before smoothing it out.

"Are you sure? It doesn't look fine." He knew better than to force her into a hospital, no matter what he might feel about it. He'd learned just how terrible the medical side of Gotham was, no matter how many good-intentioned people filled the hospitals and how much money he streamed into them. Gotham was simply too congested with the sick and harmed for it to be anything but a struggle.