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“I bet you’re wondering why I...”
“Why you kidnapped me here?” Clown snaps. Not exactly thrilled to be once again face to face with someone she was sure was now the hell out of her life. “Why the hell didn’t I flee the country like the rest did,” she mutters darkly under her breath.
“You had your reasons. I know about those. I... might have people watching you...”
“Oh. Oh wow. So it’s I had you kidnapped and it gets worse from there,” she laughs bitterly.
“Did you know achieving your revenge just leaves you feeling completely hollow?”
“Was that like... a revelation to you? You are more of a mess than I thought,” she sighs. Getting a little tired of staring daggers at Parker – and there he goes and supplies her with a reason to look at him with pity instead.
“I deserved that.”
“You deserve a lot worse.”
“If it helps I am in constant pain. Also missing a soul. Don’t think it can get any worse than that.”
“Well,” Clown says, offering him a falsely cheerful grin, “at least you get to be miserable in a mansion, right?”
That seems to genuinely amuse him. Giving her just a glimpse of the person she didn’t used to despise quite so furiously.
He was responsible for that brief period in her life when she got to be fully, loudly herself. Owning all the destructiveness and all the violent impulses she was back to having to keep in check, now that she was trying to pass for the kind of normal no one would think to associate with the city’s criminal underground.
The smell of exotic accelerants no longer clinging to her like a perfume and her life was poorer for it. All the bright colours drained out of her days – but she was safe.
The one thing she didn’t feel by the end. Fingers shaking just a little while she studied an autopsy report and...
Didn’t last, though. The false sense of safety she tricked herself into believing in? Did not last more than a few weeks.
How could it? When Parker Robbins had a score to settle he settled it.
“I need you to burn the house down for me. In my current condition I... It’s unlikely I’ll feel any satisfaction from watching it go up in flames. Watching you having fun doing your thing... That might at least bring back some memories.”
“Living vicariously through people who still have souls?” she smirks. “Sounds healthy.”
“Yeah, well...” he shrugs. “There are a lot worse things I could be doing.”
There were. And it was just a little confusing why it was he wasn’t. The way he forcibly invited her to join him tonight notwithstanding.
“Is this you trying?”
There is a smile that suggests she might be giving him just a little too much credit. And that, yes, he saw just how funny that idea was, in context of what it was he had been doing with his life...
“Well? Do you want to watch this ridiculous place burn or not?”
“I do that and have fun doing it and remember what it was like to be me and... what? We’ll be good again?”
“Clown...” he says and damn if it isn’t hard to watch him. The exhaustion he’s doing nothing to hide. “You do know things can be exactly what they seem to be.”
“Not with you, they’re not.”
He says nothing. Smiles and it’s impossibly sad and more than a little broken. And she has to look away. That’s how hard it is to be in the presence of so much regret.
Such certainty there is no fixing what he did to his life.
“Obviously I do. Want to burn down a fucking mansion,” she says eventually. “I mean what kind of question is that, anyway?”
“One I couldn’t have asked you unless I had you kidnapped,” he offers. And there really doesn’t seem to be even a trace of the person she used to know left. Not even a hint of this moment being a phase one of some bigger plan.
Nothing more dramatic than soon-to-be fun arson going on here.
“Does not make us even,” she repeats.
“Nothing ever will.”
If he’s lying he’s sociopath level good at it. And it would still make him the sociopath that is offering her a chance to be her true, uninhibited self again, if only for a few hours.
“Alright then. Let’s burn a fucking house down.”
LATER
Alive. Almost too alive. A soft hint of carbon monoxide and some other choice airborne irritants making her lungs tingle, but... There is a smile on her face that’s not going to be going anywhere anytime soon. And Clown feels like laughing and dancing and setting fire to a few more things. Such as the desk job she’s been chained to in order to pass for a law abiding citizen.
“I missed this.”
He hears her. Never suggests she can have it back...
“This really wasn’t some fucking ploy, was it?” she realizes. “You literally just...”
“Wanted to see the place burn.”
And watching it do just that, his tone is leaden. Making Clown feel like all that sold my soul to a demon talk wasn’t just talk after all. And what a way to make her regret she was getting the truth at long last...
There was no expectation of sympathy attached to it. That was the part that was getting to her. Let her know a little too much about just how beyond repair everything about his life was – and how painfully aware he was about who was to blame.
“Is your kidnap squad gonna drive me home now?”
“If that’s what you prefer. Or you can pick a car. There are a few around.”
“Were. Burned the garage too, remember?” she points out. All while making no move to leave.
Watching fires up close like this being a thing she didn’t get to do much now that she was spending her days meticulously faking normalcy. Bored out of her mind, sure, but the last person anyone would suspect to be involved in anyone’s superpowered nonsense. And that had to be worth something.
It had to.
And yet...
“So when you said you have me watched...” Clown says, well aware she was failing to sound casual.
“Are you sure you want to have that conversation?”
She was not. And yet, here she was. Having it at what was not a safe distance from the blazing inferno that used to be a mansion.
“How obvious is it? That I’m going out of my way to sabotage my relationship?”
“I mean...”
“Oh, so even you can tell that’s what I’m doing,” she says, nodding to herself. “Okay. That’s... I mean, not great.”
“At least you know you’re doing it?” Parker shrugs. “Can you maybe... stop?”
“What – just tell that voice in my head that’s making sure I never forget he’s way too good for me to shut up? It’s adorable that you think that’s how these things work,” she chuckles to herself. “Crazy that he didn’t dump me yet. I mean I gave him so many excuses by now.”
“Feels like a conversation you should be having with...”
“I know.”
A moment passes in silence but the silence doesn’t last.
“Tell you what. Don’t worry about how I’m getting home. I’m just remembering I have someone I can call to pick me up,” Clown says. In a tone of someone who isn’t thrilled about it – but is in fact adult enough to know that is the sum total of her options right now.
“Are you not going to tell me to stop paying a PI to follow you around?” Parker wonders.
“Honestly? No. Sounds like you need a hobby.”
That actually manages to get a small, surprised laugh out of him.
“Plus that way you’ll always know where to find me if you need another building reduced to cinders.”
“That... is a very good point,” he has to admit.
Saying nothing more before turning to slowly walk away. His back to the fire, his body language that of someone who had nowhere to go and knew it. Didn’t much care while he was at it.
Sad. More than a little. And not her problem.
Not that she didn’t plenty of her own.
“Hey, babe?” she finds herself saying a moment later, once she finally dares to go for her phone. “Remember how I’ve been real good about not committing any arson. I... super fell off the wagon.”
“Where are you and how fast do I need to get there?”
The only question that mattered. But, sure, she was supposed to somehow convince herself he wasn’t way too damn good for her...
Yeah, right.