voluntaryapnea | 28. I like to keep my issues drawn/It's always darkest before the dawn

[Video -- Open]

[Stiles has already packed up a bag, and it's sitting on his bed. There are clothes, food, his laptop and some various other small things including a couple of books inside, and atop the bag is his pillow. It doesn't show in the video when he turns on the communicator. All you can see is that he's sitting at his desk.]

Like Anya said, no one goes after him. You wanna talk about it, you can come and take it up with me.

[And that's all he's saying, because he had to say something. He knows there's a possibility that someone -- or multiple someones -- may take him up on that. He'll deal with it if they do. He disconnects the feed. He doesn't send a message to the rest of his friends. Doesn't really feel like talking about it. He picks up his bag, his pillow, his bat -- because it's his warden's item -- and he drops the note he wrote on his bed.

Staying down in Zero. Stiles. The others will find it. The pack. They all have access to his room, their own keys.

He leaves the room, locking the door behind him.]

[Spam for Dean]

[There's a resigned feeling that's settled into his chest. He's terrible at being a warden. Probably since the beginning. No. Definitely sense the beginning. He is not his dad. He doesn't have his dad's tolerance and fairness and he doesn't have what it takes to do this kind of job, and he wonders why the admiral ever offered him a deal at all. He had to know Stiles would be shitty at it, right?

Regardless of how he feels about it, how he feels about himself, his duty is to Dean and he takes it seriously despite everything else. Right now everything else has to take a backseat to that. He makes his way down to Zero with his things in hand and looks around, taking note of the cell that's been decimated, bars cut away since Dean had locked himself in with Anya. He lets out a breath, purses his lips and slowly heads down the corridor until he stops in front of Dean's cell. He drops his bag and sets down the baseball bat.

Dean doesn't look that bad. Iris took care of that part. There's not much Stiles could have done because he's not a doctor and he doesn't do well with blood and injuries. His nose is bruised, and Dean doesn't even look up at him. For a long moment he just stares at him silently.]

Hey.

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[There hadn't really been anything obvious leading up to this; there was no real way for anyone that wasn't inside his head - or who hadn't taken seriously the things he'd said when he arrived here a year ago, spoken at the time in vicious, half-deranged certainty - to know what he had planned. He hadn't told anyone. Not even Clementine, who he trusts more than anyone else on this ship. He hadn't told anyone.

But he had withdrawn from what little of the Barge society he had engaged, filling his time with activity from an external point of view, reading, repairing his room, constantly moving from place to place, bothering no one and asking no questions.

Hunting.

But that's over now. He'd been on the wrong scent the whole time, and he knows that now, knows it with a cold certainty like he would the weight of a knife in his hand; he is a vicious, brutal, desperate man, barely a man anymore but still close enough to count, but he'd thought he was managing that as best as anyone could expect him to. He'd thought the sharpest, most jagged edges of him were, generally, aimed in the right direction.

He tortured a human girl. He failed to find the Admiral. He failed to break this place apart. He failed.

These are all things he knows when he comes groggily out of the stupor from Kara's laser, and they do not encourage him to come any further into consciousness than that, so he doesn't. The physical pain is negligible. The knowledge that for how much he deserves to burn, how much he deserves to never forget a single moment of the ways he's been too weak and too slow and too stupid to make the differences he's supposed to make, he still wants nothing more than to end is what keeps him from bothering. Someone is moving him, wiping at his skin, poking at his arm, setting his nose; someone who stays nearby but Dean doesn't care. When the hands go away, he stays where they put him, and he does not bother opening his eyes, or speaking, or answering. He does not bother.

And he does not bother when he hears a new voice - or maybe he doesn't hear it at all. It does not matter. They'll hurt him or they'll try to save him and everything in between and there's nothing he can do for any of it except wait for it to happen.]

[He stands still at the cell door and when Dean doesn't respond, he wonders if he's literally just unconscious. He shifts from one foot to the other, keeping his eyes on the older man. When he doesn't see Dean move he purses his lips and reaches for his bat. He uses it to open the cell, then pulls it open. He doesn't hesitate before stepping inside and pulling it shut behind him.

There've only been a couple of times where he's been legitimately afraid of Dean, and right now isn't one of them.

Even if Dean had just finished torturing someone, and logic should dictate that Stiles be careful, that he take precautions, he doesn't. He doesn't, most times, when it comes to his own safety. He never has. He makes his way to Dean's bedside and gazes down at him for a moment.]

Dean. Can you hear me?

[There is usually a wariness to Dean that speaks to the life he's lead, to how he expects to be attacked at any moment, expects any element or any person in his surroundings to become a threat and to be prepared to deal with that. He sleeps with his boots on. He's always wearing his jacket no matter the weather. Even too drunk to string a sentence together he tracks the movement of the people around him and reacts to them.

Stiles steps up to the bed and there is none of that in Dean now. He's breathing, shallow and slow through his mouth, and upon further inspection his eyes aren't completely closed but neither could they be called open. He either doesn't realize Stiles is there, or does not care.

It's a little of both. He doesn't react to his name and does not acknowledge the question. Whatever happens will happen. Dean intends to let it. There is not a single scrap of energy left in him to bother answering.]

[He's breathing, so that's a plus. And when Stiles leans over him a little closer, he sees that his eyes aren't entirely shut, but they're not open either. He lets out a breath and hesitates a second before he sits down on the very edge of the bed.]

I hate to say it but...I gotta keep you down here for the week. Give people time to cool off. [He rubs a hand over his face wearily.] I don't even know if you're conscious enough to hear me or understand what I'm saying.

[Dean doesn't react to the movement on the bed, either, except for a mild flinch when it jostles his body by proxy. He hears the voice more than the words, picks out bits and pieces and doesn't bother trying to connect them into one solid meaning. He hears the apology and the uncertainty, and he closes his eyes completely.

He doesn't understand. He doesn't want to try, because every time he does, he gets it wrong and ends up hurting more people. And eventually, if he doesn't end somehow, he'll get back up and he'll put one foot in front of the other and he'll start it all over again because that's what he does. He dreads it with everything he is. He does not want it. He does not want apologies. He does not want anything, except to stop wanting.

His voice, when it comes, is low and rusty, sticking from one syllable to the next, inconsistent. Rough and exhausted and unwilling.]

What'd you want?

[He starts a little, mostly because he'd been partially convinced that Dean was either actually passed out or so out of it he wasn't going to respond at all. He shifts a little to look at him, studying him momentarily.]

I was just checking to make sure you were all right. [And by that he means in one piece physically because it's very obvious that Dean is anything but all right.]

Did Iris give you drugs? For the pain?

No.

[Just that at first, just no. No he's not alright, no she didn't give him drugs, no to the pain. It takes him a moment to remember what pain; it seems like he's always been in one kind of pain or another, all his life, some part of him torn and bruised and broken. What there is when he finds it doesn't even qualify and he thinks, misfired synapses in his brain, save the drugs for something more important.

When he realizes Stiles is still there, still wants something else from him, he adds:]

It's fine.

[He's not surprised that there isn't more of an explanation than that. He rubs a hand over his face, sighing inaudibly and wondering how the hell he was going to get through to Dean. If he even could. He glances at his inmate for a moment, then nods even though Dean's eyes aren't open.]

Okay. I'll be right outside if that changes. [He slowly rises to his feet and makes his way toward the cell door again.]

[It is, currently, certainly a good concern: Dean doesn't react to him standing and moving away any more than he did to his arrival. It won't change. Or rather, if it does, Dean already knows he won't say anything. There's no real point to it. He'll heal, he's sure, because his body has always been strong; he won't, he's certain, because he was never strong enough.

Strong enough to come together again, not enough to avoid splintering apart. He breathes out when Stiles goes and does not reply. It's not his business, if Stiles isn't going to punish him; it's not his business if Stiles won't ask for more details.

It's not for him to know. It's for him to endure.]

28. I like to keep my issues drawn/It's always darkest before the dawn

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