§tain | chapter eleven ~ "control."

  Jade returned home before dawn could peek through the graphite sky. The first thing she did was shower. Scrubbing away remnants of her recent victims from her skin, water pelted her back, dripped from her braids. So much covered every nook, every cranny- pieces of tissue and tendon that she'd let linger for too long. That man, she realized when recalling one of the goons she faced during the rescue misson, I devoured him. After came the images of her teeth tearing into his flesh, the haunting  crescendo of his screams.   Disgust formed inside her belly which made Jade brace against the sudden bitterness beginning to claw from the way back of her throat, provoked by this urgency that draws as a key to her undoing.

  She suffered, and as she did, her nails dug  into the skin on her palms-a torment so unbearable- near ripping in half. And at the mercy of it. Her knees buckled and met the tub's ceramic floor. Doubled over, her pale, nude body trembled as the hazy shower lapped against her. "Stop." she whimpered, chin quivering, and tears wanted to spill upon the provocation. "Please? Please?" But despite her pleading, the torture proceeded and choked off her following words.

   It jerked her to sit straighter, and the twisting of her limbs at jarring angles began from there. She caught the looks of a razor from her peripheral sitting alone in the soap dish and swiped for her last hope as her lips peeled apart for her impending doom to leech itself free. She finds a grip, and her fingers suffer a minor cut. Even the price won't match what she's planning to do next. Screaming out, she fought through the agony. 

  She composed her arms close enough for her to jam clean the sharp object through her right open palm. A scream echoed and there was blood, but it released her, writhing, cowering at her expense to evade her imminent demise.

  The Cater removed her edged blade from her hand and watched the flayed skin heal itself, but not outright. A scar formed, puckered and pink there. Uncommon? Not. Why? Since it occurred once ago. Which cues uneasiness to tie knots in Jade's stomach as she didn't want to consider it happening again.

  The results of her later actions led to her being helpless. She couldn't afford to lose control. Although she hated admitting it even in her head. Finding help was a necessity and fast.

  Soon had arrived the hour to leave, and yet Jade kept her position on the couch. Her eyes peer at the television screen. The prongs of a fork she held stab fluffy piles of chocolate chip pancakes only to drive them in a spreading pool of syrup.

  The newest scar she received earlier caught in the rays of the morning light, and reminded the ex-hero killer that she was just a shell of her former self - how little control she had now, and was what she earned after last night's shameless display of arrogance. 

Jade felt as if her vitality's drained and her appetite had become rapacious. Then disgust hit her full force out of the blue and applied to the food on the paper plate she was holding. Experiencing the abrupt sensation causes her to put it down. The sound of loud banging broke her out of her trance as she felt bile rise in her throat.

  She rose from her seat, smoothed her navy blue button-down shirt of its non-existent wrinkles, and walked to the entrance, assuring whom stood on the other side that she was coming. Jade grew annoyed after she unbolted several of the locks to find the last person she wanted to see.

"Great, it's you again," scoffed the ex-hero killer, not even attempting to hide her aversion.

Panting, Dick tilts his head and regarded her as his face bore a pique expression. In mulish defiance of gravity, each dark strand stood up from its end on his head. His skin kept a sheen of sweat that all seemed to suggest he hurried up seventeen flights of stairs to get to her, and Jade recalled the elevator was down from earlier in the morning when she arrived home. "Well, good morning to you too, then."

   Her eyes wandered briefly before they retracted to the back of her skull in an unapologetic display of her apparent annoyance. Still, the ex-hero killer, despite her bitter mood, granted him entry. He entered in somewhat of a haste while Jade locked the door behind him. "Dick Grayson, whatever you want from me better be good if it's intruding on my get-ready time." Jade demanded coolly, then turned and prepared herself for his most outrageous excuse to date.

  However, nothing could prepare her for what came next, instead. In her living room, shoes scuffle against the shag carpet, which she found such an awful noise belonged to none other than the detective. Dick Grayson, formerly Robin, who's impervious to apprehension, to worry and all that being the world failed to incur, now paced the room looking unable to keep his fidgeting at bay.

  "Oh trust me, it is." The response followed with an unanticipated rush of fingers through his brass-colored locks, bought upon by a duly noted yet unexplained frustration. Then there's a moment where he paused with both calloused palms rested over the brown leather belt strapped to his denim jeans (apart from those professional slacks she saw on him last night.) Dick drew a ragged breath as if this uncharacteristic franticness he displayed was draining. Adrenaline poured through this action and seemed unwilling to tame itself. His eyes found hers, and they held an unflinching gaze that felt quite unsettling.

"Rachel's gone."

  "What?" Her usual neutral and emotionally detached demeanor fell faster than an ice cream scoop off a cone would onto the scorching hot slab of pavement in the sweltering heat of a summer day. The news that just came from his mouth - it was nothing she could've ever expected. It's the kind that rocked you to your core, immediately filled you with worry with no warning and drove you raving mad.

  Unconsciousness seemed how she would remain to express any hint of emotion besides cold neutrality or even the icy yield of her guts or words that should hold only sympathy went unsaid. Jade just swallowed them being that's all she could do at the moment while having his dark, expectant gaze trained on her. A second passes, then a minute, and the lack of reaction on her end raises an unwanted tension between the pair more than what's already present.

"How?" She let out at last, blinking. "When?"

   "A family showed up to Hank and Dawn's apartment last night - a nuclear one and out of nowhere. They took all of us on without a problem - put Dawn in a coma and took Rachel." Halfway through his rant, Dick settled in the same spot where Jade had been earlier.

    His panic seemed to recede, but hints of it still displayed in the slight tremble of his figure. He undoubtedly resembles a leaf on a tree bothered by the wind and damn near breaking from his humble roots. Both hands rested over his neck, which left those coffee brown orbs of his upturned to the bare, white ceiling.

    While so, the detective rotated the frustration and tension that robs his muscles of their proper functionality. "You were right. It's my fault. Everything." The statement honest and rare, even given upon the point of her presence and Jade's head reeling. The world often says it takes a man to admit when he's wrong, but Dick wasn't ever that man - not in her years of knowing him and his stubborn - prideful nature and capacity to be in the right all the frigging time.

   The intense training he underwent at such a young age carried the now detective in such a low-brow quality. One that could summon to dangerous heights - put such a person in a tight - perhaps even an inescapable situation that which he's faced often frequently all she's been a witness to.

"I should have never tried to leave her behind," he continued, and the ex-hero killer blinked, her train of thought breaking away to his attention. "whether I believed it was for the right reasons, Rachel asked me specifically to help her. I feel like I failed her and that was the last thing she needed-someone trying to abandon her after everything she's been through."

   Jade silently regarded him as he shoves those fingers through those loose strands once more while her tongue poked the inside of her cheek. Right. How could she forget the child - or she daresay creature - had lost her mother no less than two or three days ago? Yet this dumb ass before her had the gall to leave the girl in the hands of a couple even more selfish than he. Typical of him since there's nothing better she could expect from the fuck-up that's Dick Grayson. 

   Given the memories from last night's debacle- now ingrained in her brain, the pain and loss Rachel had suffered in such a short time put the ex-hero killer in the mind of her younger self.

   When the people she loved became nothing except leaves lost to the wayward wind of the world's unfairness - where it's dwellers relied on those special to protect them as they were helpless to protect themselves. And like those fools, Rachel, capable of fending for herself - like Jade - foolishly put her faith in the wrong hands and ended up getting stabbed in the back.

   At least she got off better than Jade had. She didn't have the same man leave her to die alone as he caused and too cowardly to face her while life fled from her body - her eyes, as though everything they've gone through together hadn't mattered and been for nothing. He, finally done with using her, walked away like she was nothing and Jade reached for him, trying to hang on to something that wasn't real. Him.

   Looking at him as he's sorry
for wronging that.. thing made her want to hit him so hard that getting back up would be painfully difficult. The image paints so beautifully in her mind.

   To Jade, it's a work of art that's both vivid in so many colors and absolutely breath-taking overlooking its sinister roots. She saw herself stalking over to him. In between those minuscule seconds, her palm meets the bridge of his nose and in that mere moment she got to relish the resounding cracks of bone.

 Her skin stained in the quick splatter of crimson while her lips tingle from its unforgettable metallic taste as it coats on her tongue. A taste she often yearned after to satiate her unrelenting hunger and fuel her weaning power.

    No longer would she have to suffer it later, or worry of herself snuffing out of existence. For just a little while longer, she'll be able to hold on, for just a little while longer all will be well in her universe and the thought of him ever appearing in her life again can't ever occur.

"Jade." the address of her name shatters the dark fantasy. Despite the aching in her throat and the throbbing of her temples as the awareness to feed kept pawing at her like a kitten with a ball of yarn. The hunger is a cruel and haunting symphony playing over in her conscience with only moments before it reached the crescendo.

  However, his voice holds an urgency that she couldn't ignore. "I can't do this alone. If there's any chance of me getting Rachel back, then I'm going to need help... supernatural help." He eyed her, wary of her reaction.

Slowly, she let the weight of the inquiry to settle. Again, her skills are being required by him in just the stretch of a few brief hours from the last. And for what? To fix his mistake. No surprise there. Needing her expendable supernatural gifts wasn't new. In fact, it all triggers the past.

  Those times he would call upon her out of desperation. There'd be the internal struggle of Jade bent of doing so just to either see him fail or prevail in reversing the consequences which his incurable impulsiveness had wrought. 

And she had loved him so terribly amid that conflict hoping change might enact, and he'll work from such an awful character trait. But then here they are, five years later. Neither learned. Well, she wouldn't if she said 'yes'. The things a stupid-hopelessly selfish individual would do for a meaningless sexually based emotion. It's poison-nothing good or nurturing about it as it nearly gotten her killed. However, never again could Jade get sucked up in his bullshit. Even in her weakened state, she holds firm against the pull that's wanting her to succumb.

"No." Her voice wasn't loud nor quiet, yet it resonated the room. Dick stopped short, his muscles visibly tensed under her unmoved gaze whereas his widened and his lips parted and closed, unable to find the words that'll fit the mold which her answer set. Silence finds them and bored so deep into the pair it left an imprint.

   They exchange silent, heavy glares. It's downright agonizing, not knowing what's going on in his mind while his feelings called so faintly out to her in a barreling hurricane bent on unleashing hell.

  Shock resonates throughout his expression while tension holds pause over his body. Bitterness chokes the space between them as they venomously locked gazes. Then it passes, gaping mouth closed, his jaw slackens.

  Bitterness chokes the space between them as they venomously locked gazes. Then it passes, gaping mouth closed, his jaw slackens. "No?" His nostrils flared. The tone of Dick's voice notes as an undercurrent of broken glass and sent out a wave of poison and undoubtedly seeps under her skin, but elicited a different effect than he hoped.

  Jade doesn't respond. Her blank look is an answer itself. She won't budge and will remain lathered in her indifference towards the matter his words and actions so far earnestly expressed. He, too, bore a stubbornness and will too difficult to break. 

   Unlikely is there a chance he'll relent, let alone see her way. This time it'll be him who Jade will give into- not the other way around. Those days were-had been far over for forever now, and yet he allowed himself to get roped in by her loathful calculation. Though never again. He wasn't her 'Birdie' and she the opposing feline threatening to pounce and snap his neck.

He had darkness, too. Darkness worth fearing. Jade felt that-the undying conviction to win the years-long war held between them two. However, this unfurling battle that's ensued won't promise the ex-sidekick immediate victory, she would make sure of so. She's not the type to founder so easily. He should already know from their previous encounters.

"So that's it then? You're okay with letting an innocent girl's life remain threatened by a family of psycho killers?" He said whilst leaning back into the couch. Both strapping arms folded over his powerful chest.

"I wouldn't exactly call her innocent..." (not with what Jade knew lied underneath the surface of a human teenage guise - a certain darkness that even unsettled her, the harbinger of death.) "Besides, the girl proved herself capable of fending for her own. Are you not aware of the unholy powers she possess- powers beyond your tiny unvarying belief?"

  "Obviously, though that doesn't exclude the fact she's in trouble!" He boomed, shooting to his feet, determined now more than ever to make her see reason. No amount of patience rests with the young detective. Urgency has returned and has done so vengefully, too, as it overtook his physical movements once again.

  Dick became rigid. Stillness rippled throughout his body and all Jade could do was stand in her usual quiet regard. Each tantalizing bat of her long willowy dark lashes against her cheeks, blink after blink served counting the seconds passing. During which neither said a word. A flickering candle flame, he resembled then, threatening to tip over and spread.

A sigh escaped him no sooner than they were plunged  back into silence that felt eternal. There'll always be that dividing stretch between them-not even the other could close the distance and repair the damage that their mutual bitterness created.

   He scrubbed his eyes, thrust back into that frantic behavior she found intolerable especially when time came slowly to where she should be leaving for shift. "What is-what's wrong with you." He said, the statement rides on a depleted breath. Jade opened her mouth to respond - undoubtedly with a smart remark she knows will drive him crazy. However, there's no telling at this point. "Tell me, honestly why you're so against saving her, huh? Is it because of last night with what happened between you? Remember you were the one who said 'forget it'." 

  Blankly staring, Jade ultimately shrugged and made a shameless noise through her pursed lips. That only served to fuel his frustration. The detective groaned. "God. I swear you're terrible, you know that. You can't deny it either. You're just fucking awful." 

"Maybe. Perhaps my reluctance to lend a hand and my grand level of expertise  on the supernatural world to you reflects poorly on me, yes." She pouted. "All to save an 'innocent' little girl who you said and I quote "asked me specifically me to protect her." And by me I mean you, birdie." "So please try to understand how little part I want in any of this mess when you'd still set out to abandon her after I told you it'd end badly. You, sir made your bed. Now all I can say is lie in it. Don't expect me to leave behind my sense of normalcy just to re-enter your world of crazy. I have a fucking life." Her counter spelled her meaning out well and clear. He's on his own as he'd been for the last five years and that would not change.

  "I've said all I needed to say - and now if you excuse me, a long morning - hours filled with tending to surly coffee lovers and pastry dough needing to proof for baking and lots of cleaning awaits me. If you don't mind , I trust that you'll see yourself out." She turns on her heel and hurries to trash the now cold, long forgotten tray of her breakfast, then fetched her black drawstring bag off the kitchen counter before looping the measly strings over both her shoulders. 

   Time nearly slipped past her conscious while she had to deal with him and  his bullshit. Another moment heretofore ceases to exist in being spared for him. Her life now mattered, shedding away remains of the past which incessantly followed her no matter what or where, plaguing her sleep. His presence conflicts the balance which the  ex-hero killer created for herself.  However, if Jade learned from the past, then it's how she's the only individual she could trust and never someone like him - unflinchingly handsome and charming, but nefarious and selfrightuos Dick Grayson.

   Her worst mistake was her blindness to the reality of it all surrounding. In her eyes he was a Godsend miracle, and she fell like a sucker to those false pretenses. And later realized he wasn't  anything except an unrepeatable sin. That's all he was and will ever be. Therefore, she doesn't have another second to waste on him more than the years she imprudently offered to aid his foolish intent.

  Getting ready to leave, she let her following claim hang in the air between them being the last thing she'll ever say to him - she didn't want to see Dick again- not for a while, at least until she called in her blood-bound favor. That's if Jade would either remember or care  enough that is to do so, and the binding mark hadn't killed him yet...

  Though, as she held her motorbike helmet under her arm, pressed to her ribs about to step over the threshold of her apartment... she noticed he hadn't moved an inch. His jaw worked as it clearly showed he wasn't through, not yet.

She doesn't need to turn to see his seething glare as it bored into her - sinking into each pore of her skin, leaving fire in its wake that could inevitably have her become a pile of ash in which would get scattered away by the unfathomable winds of his rage.

  "What are you doing, birdie?" The question, sounding soft, seemed irrelevant since it's clear what he's doing. But her palm rested on the chipping door, ever curious as to how this might play out in the end. Though one could hope peacefully.

His head shook. "This is what you've come to, huh? Blatantly refusing to help another person in need. That's low, even for you. It's hard to imagine what Tina might think if she were here." The statement fled in a tone quite clear and unflinching into the open air.

  Perhaps it'd been a last-ditch attempt to convince her to reconsider. However, it didn't matter because right then for the millionth time of the morning, tensed silence wedged between them. 

Jade was seeing red and seething with what might as well be poison. She whirled on him, tossed her helmet aside on the counter all in one blurred motion. Dick didn't get the chance to react accordingly as liked since she already held him by the collar, pulled close to her where they both shared the same breath. The tips of his toes toes barely touched the carpet as his eyes search her's- their both wide, pooling with fury and wild with every intent to end him right there.

Rigid with anger, she snarled more than spoke, "Don't," The word uttered in a voice that's cold, that being so goosebumps would burgeon upon his skin.

   Only if he felt fear, his face betrayed nothing of the sort. He bore a neutral front, similar to the one Jade regularly donned to show her indifference towards any and every situation she faced. "let me hear you say her name. Ever. You have no right." She shook him furiously while she visibly trembled with the emotion that fills her. "No right." Her voice came to almost a breathless mummer.  

  The exasperation in her gaze showed the scared little girl from within. Someone who fought majority of her life and starved for the things she was depraved of. The last people on earth she'd loved and had left were long lost. Dick could see that pain as clear as any revelation of a case he came across in recent time, unearthed as well as her dark soul that's drowned in this image which she carved to fit a world of insouciance. He could only pray that Jade wouldn't tear him apart.

~

  Somewhere across the country a terrified, violet haired teenage girl sits in the car along with her captors with the desperate hope that someone will come and rescue her. Only time reminds her how that certain person failed her once. Counting on them again would be a stretch of her faith that goes only so far.

  She doesn't know when she might know safety again and not this fear that slowly eats at her. But one thing is for sure, shes going to have to be her own rescuer.

~

Author's Note

Sorry it took me so long to upload this chapter
I understand how long you had to wait for this. I wasn't satisfied with this and had to revise this chapter as I went. But thankfully tis finally complete. I will began the twelfth chapter soon. Promise. With all my love

-bbdqqce1