MHA #4, Sunday Morning

[stykera]

Gladio had walked Stark downstairs after the incident with Liliana. He'd needed the escort. He'd been frightened and confused and weak.

Gladio had offered Cup Noodle(TM) and made sure Stark ate and then made sure he was in bed. Gladio had decided that Ignis and Liliana needed to be alone and Stark absolutely did not so he'd stayed. Unfortunately for Gladio Stark was already prone to nightmares and he'd woken up screaming several times during the night. At some point in the very early he'd fallen into a deeper sleep, briefly, and then Gladio had drifted off on the couch.

Stark was awake again, now, exhausted, and he'd snuck out and dragged himself down the stairs to the hallway outside Summer's apartment. He'd lifted his hand to knock and then belatedly remembered to take out his phone. So, standing in the hallway he sent a very quick text.

please open the door i need to seeyou

[beefy chocobro modded with permission, of course, and this is for the gross ginger lady who lives behind the door]

Comments

[somethingwithturquoise]

"I'm really starting to think that maybe I should just sit," Summer agreed.

But when she did, she did more than just sit. She draped her arms around him and pulled him in for a hug. "Oh, Stark," she sighed. "When you said you did what you were meant to do, you don't mean.....that...do you?"

[stykera]

And then Stark was clinging to her and sagging against her a bit.

"She was nearly gone already and I could feel it and there wasn't anything else I could have done but it all went wrong and there was someone else there and then she, she pulled and she wasn't dying anymore but she did something to me. And i didn't sleep enough to recover. At all."

Sorry, Gladio.

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Okay, then, maybe good call on putting a hold on the coffee," Summer murmured, her hand resting comfortingly on his head as he sagged against her. "If she did something to you, you probably need a good rest and coffee, like, will not help that. How else do you feel, though? Overall?"

[stykera]

"Tired," Stark said softly, resting his head against her shoulder. "Like I've been... used up."

Sometimes that happened when you got used as emergency rations, Stark.

"And worried. None of that should have happened and she thinks I was trying to hurt her but I wasn't! I was trying to help!"

His voice cracked a little on that last word.

"I just wanted to make it easier for her if she had to go."

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Sounds like good intentions," Summer observed quietly, hand dropping down to gently rub his back now, "but terrible timing. I can definitely kind of see how that might be a little misinterpreted if she really wasn't ready to go..."

[stykera]

"It felt like she was and I'm not wrong about these things."

Unless there was something weird going on. Like there had been last night.

"I shouldn't be wrong about these things!"

He sighed heavily, burying his face against her shoulder for a moment.

"And I don't know what she did."

[somethingwithturquoise]

And Summer's hand was back to Stark's head as his face buried into her shoulder. "Maybe you're just kind of rusty?" she suggested. "I mean, it's probably been a while, right? Since you've had to do it? But I don't know. I don't know how it works, I'm sorry...

"And you don't think..." She hesitated before continuing, "what she did is something...permanent, do you?"

[stykera]

"It's not something you forget," Stark said. "Or it shouldn't be. It all felt strange even before... and there was someone else. He talked to me."

He sighed again, relaxing his hold just a little.

"I don't...I don't think it's permanent. I don't know. I don't know what she did."

Even if it felt somewhat familiar in a way he was refusing to think closely about.

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Well," Summer had a sigh of her own, "I guess we'll just have to wait and see to find out...Do you want something to help you sleep? You know ai've got some stuff..."

[stykera]

"I...I slept. I just woke up. Often. Poor Gladio..."

Another sigh. "It wasn't restful. I was hoping I was done with nightmares for a time."

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Yeah" Summer murmured dryly. "That makes two of us..."

But she did give him a little bit of an encouraging smile, reaching for his hand to give it a squeeze.

"It's alright, though. We'll get through these ones, too."

[stykera]

"There was so much suffering," Stark said, fighting back a whimper. "I saw so much and the man there was hurting me the way I think he hurt her and then she was hurting me and it was all... I'm sorry."

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Shhhh." Summer shushed him lightly as she soothingly rubbed his arm. "It's okay. It's done now, it's over. You don't need to talk about it. Unless that helps, then I'll listen, you can tell me all of it. Whatever you need right now, okay?"

[stykera]

"I think she might not have stopped," Stark said, shivering a little now. "If Gladio hadn't..."

He didn't want to die and he hadn't wanted to cause any harm. Whatever had been waiting on the other side for her had interfered, somehow.

"But I shouldn't have been wrong."

Maybe he'd deserved it.

"Can I stay here? For a while? I'll try...I'll be quiet. If I can."

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Of course you can stay here," Summer said, with that slight thread of exasperation in it over the fact that he still felt the need to even ask. Honestly, though, she was just latching onto that to avoid thinking too much about how thing apparently might have gone if Gladio wasn't there now. "I honestly just sort of figured you were going to."

She might have actually insisted on it, even.

[stykera]

"You didn't want my company before," Stark said. "When I wasn't...like this. I thought, maybe..."

He sighed, turning so he could slump against the couch cushions while still keeping one arm mostly around Summer.

"I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm...I need more rest and I need to figure out what happened and who the man was and why I thought..."

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Didn't want your company?" Now Summer was looking at Stark with a confused expression. "When didn't I--"

She blinked. Wait. No. There it was.

"You mean on Wednesday? No. No, that was--"

There it was again.

"Ohhhh. Oh, shit. Oh, okay, yeah, I can see that. I can see why you might've...."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry," she said, "I really wasn't thinking straight that night, I don't think I really realized what that might've sounded like, but I assure you, that had nothing to do with you, Stark, I just....I just needed to be by myself that night, that's all...."

She looked at him for a moment as if to see if he was even remotely convinced by that, but then shifted so that she could curl up against him in his new position, almost as if to prove that she was totally fine with not being alone now.

"Is this the man you said said something?" she asked. "What did he say?"

[stykera]

Stark just pulled her closer to his side and shook his head.

"You don't need to explain. I was just...I worry. I thought I'd done something and then we hadn't seen each other since and I...I don't know. Did something happen? Do you need something?"

He'd do what he could. Once he stopped feeling like he could barely move. Really.

"And yes. That man. He was choking me or he was choking her and I could feel it, I don't know. He said someone was waiting for her, on the other side, but that he had plans for her and she couldn't go yet..."

He curled in on himself a bit then. "I didn't know. I got it wrong but I would never have..."

[somethingwithturquoise]

"I'm...fine," Summer said, dismissing it with a lie, although, really, was it a lie? Comparatively speaking, she was doing great, right? She was just avoiding confronting mortality...and not even her own! She hadn't gotten her lifeforce sucked up by someone you were accidentally trying to shepherd to the afterlife! So...see? Fine. Not a lie.

"Has that ever happened before? There being someone else there?"

[stykera]

"No." He shook his head firmly. "No, there isn't meant to be anyone there and I don't know how."

"It doesn't make sense," Stark sighed. "And I don't know if I'm making sense. But I wouldn't have tried if I'd known there was someone trying to force her through but she thinks I did and I can't...I don't know what to do."

[somethingwithturquoise]

"You could always just try talking to her about it," Summer suggested.

"Just, you know, maybe not exactly right away..."

[stykera]

"I'm not certain she'll ever want to speak with me," Stark said, sounding miserable again.

Also Ignis might want to kill him? Which could be awkward.

"For now I just want to be here. Thank you. For being here. For letting me be here. For...for being you."