dualislogs | ya gotta wanna be a battering ram

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ya gotta wanna be a battering ram

WHO: The entire dang city.
WHAT: Dualis Days, a week-long summer celebration.
WHERE: Central Square Park and the rest of the city.
WHEN: June 17-23.
WARNINGS: Terrorist violence, likely some blood and injuries. Please warn in individual threads!

June 17; Central Square Park.

Every year for as far back as anyone can remember, the start of summer is heralded by the week-long festival known as Dualis Days. This celebration officially kicks off at midday in the middle of Central Square Park with a commencement speech by the current mayor. This year marks Marcelina Dubanowski's third term as mayor of Dualis; she is an average-sized, middle-aged human-presenting woman with blonde hair styled in a short bob and a plastic, toothy smile that never seems to turn entirely off.

"Welcome, one and all!" she begins, with the practiced cadence of someone who is quite comfortable with public speaking. She invites all citizens, new and old, to spend the next week indulging in festivities in all districts of the city and getting to know their neighbors a little better. This is a joyous time of celebration, and the crowd responds with enthusiastic applause as the mayor finishes her speech and introduces this year's parade marshall, Peshtigo Tengfei.

Tengfei blows a whistle six times to signal the start of the parade - and this is where the celebration goes sideways.

A loud explosion tears through the air, and it's followed by panicked screams and the sharp screech of microphone feedback. A bomb has gone off at the platform where the mayor was standing, collapsing the wood and tearing it to splinters and dust. Chaos erupts in the gathered crowd, and as the people shift in all directions to get clear of any possible additional bombs, a loud siren cuts through the cacophony, calling attention to the sudden crackle of video feed present on all television screens throughout the city, including those set up in the park to broadcast the mayor's speech for those standing far from the stage. The picture is plain, a black background and bold white block letters filling the screen:

WAKE UP
WAKE UP
DON'T BELIEVE THE LIES

The final image is an anatomical graphic of a human heart, displayed for about three seconds, and then the feed goes black again.

Confused murmurs sweep through the crowd as citizens resume tending to the injured and evacuating the area until official first responders arrive.

June 17-23; aftermath around the city.

Dualis Days continues as scheduled, though Mayor Dubanowski is unable to enjoy the festival, as she is spending the week in the hospital recovering from her injuries. A team of Iterations guard her door - no visitors allowed - but the news media frequently report updates on her condition. Nothing to worry about, folks! Return to your celebrations, and don't mind the increased visible presence of the Hand as Iterations are stationed every few blocks throughout the city. It's only for your protection, after all.

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He's more than happy to hold her for as long as she needs to be held. She's warm and solid and alive, and her warmth and weight reminds Jason that he too is alive, again. That's not a fact that always sticks in his awareness, and all too often, it's more painful than pleasant. Not the case this time - the reminder is a connection between them, a prompt for Jason to recognize that he is part of this world and not separate from it, as he has often felt.

Even as his heart expands with his love for her, it also hurts to hear her sobs. He breathes quietly through his own pain, tears spilling slowly down his cheeks, and gently places a hand on the back of Cissie's head, another small gesture of comfort he can offer. I've got you, he tells her without words.

When she pulls back that slight amount to speak, it takes a lot of self-restraint for Jason to not immediately pull her back in close again. She feels like an anchor, a tether, a lifeline, and now that he's found that feeling, he never wants to let go.

"Just a couple days," he answers, quietly, pushing his mouth into a small smile as he blinks the last tears out of his eyes. "I showed up right when that bombing happened. Cop-bots saw me, wanted to question me, and I was still out of it, so I told 'em to go to hell. They hauled me down to the station anyway, stuck me in a room while someone tracked down Nida and Seifer."

Cissie can’t quite bring herself to entire let go of Jason, herself. She stays close, and finds one of his hands with hers, twining their fingers together and gripping maybe a bit more tightly than strictly necessary. She hates to see him crying, and blames herself for upsetting him with her own tears, but at the same time... She knows that Jason, like Tim, doesn’t just cry or let himself show any vulnerability to just anyone. He trusts her with this side of himself, and the fact that he does is not lost on her.

Any thoughts she may have on this are quickly brushed aside by what he says next, and Cissie’s face creases in a deep frown. “They what? Why would they—are you all right? They didn’t hurt you, did they?” Cissie’s demeanor shifts from exhausted to indignant in the amount of time it takes her to realize that Jason was apparently arrested as soon as he came back to life. She had half a mind to find the nearest cop and give them a piece of her mind, but her curiosity gets the better of her. “Nida and Seifer? You mean—from the Village? They’re here too?” Her frown deepens, confused. “...Why would they track them down?”

Jason learned at a very early age that showing vulnerability meant inviting disaster. He learned to tamp down those parts of himself and hide them behind sturdy, self-constructed walls, because if he can't be touched, he can't be hurt. And on those occasions when he has made the effort to try taking down those walls and inviting someone in, the end result was just as devastating as he'd imagined, but with Cissie? Jason doesn't hesitate to show her who he is behind the snarky, hardened exterior of the castoff stray boy from the worst part of town. She's been a brightness in his life since their first words were exchanged, and knowing her is one of the best things to result from all this bullshit multiverse-hopping they've done. Jason is better for knowing her.

His heartbeat skips when she takes his hand, a gesture he immediately accepts, folding his fingers into hers. Gently, his thumb brushes along the side of her hand in his, another small signal of trust and affection. "Takes more than a tasing to keep me down for long," he answers, ducking his head to rub at his eyes with the heel of his free hand. It's ... probably not the answer she wants to hear, and it's not the entire story, but Jason escaped that episode mostly unscathed, so that counts as not hurt in his book.

Cissie's question about Nida and Seifer is met first with a nod - yes, the same ones from the Village - then a quiet, thoughtful expression, then Jason reaches under the collar of his shirt and pulls out a thin chain and a pair of dog tags to show her. They're stamped with the words If found, return to Seifer Almasy and Nida Nomura.

"Nida's got a thing for adopting brothers," he explains, "and he decided I'm one of his. So's Seifer." Jason's expression darkens for a second, then it's gone again. "Told him it was a bad idea, but he wouldn't listen."

Cissie may not love the idea that Jason was tased (which is an understatement; she hates it, and she would love to find whoever was responsible and give them a piece of her mind, but it would involve letting go of Jason's hand and also possibly getting herself in trouble with the law as well, which isn't something she intends to do quite yet, but then, neither did Jason. But mainly, she isn't interested in leaving his side quite yet, no matter how much she wants to scream at someone for treating him with anything but kindness after what he's been through). Still, she can't help a small smile at that, even if he may not see it. Of course being tased isn't a big deal for him, compared to the kind of injuries he and Tim are used to sustaining. It's probably not the full story, either, but while she considers pressing him for more details, he pulls out the dog tags to show her.

She reaches with her free hand to get a closer look at them, a small frown forming. She's glad Jason has someone else who feels close to him, but there's something... proprietary about these dog tags that she doesn't love.

(It certainly isn't jealousy, that someone else could claim to be as close as family with Jason. No way. There's no reason to be jealous that someone not her or Tim or Steph would get a phone call from the police about Jason, none at all.)

Cissie looks up at him, raising an eyebrow. "Jason... It's not a bad idea. At all."

"I can name about half a dozen people who'd probably say otherwise - including Nida." Jason's mouth presses into a thin line. "I think we might not be talking right now, actually. He was so mad, the first thing he did when he saw me at the station was slap me."

And that had hurt more than just physically; it was a painful reminder of other abuse he'd suffered at the hands of another person who was supposed to be his family. Someone who let Jason down time and time again, pushed him away and reeled him back in. Jason was finding it difficult to forgive Nida for that; he isn't very good at forgiving in general, doesn't have much experience with forgiveness. Jason's more likely to hold on to the hurt, as tightly as someone swept overboard into the sea might grasp for a ring buoy to keep from drowning.

Whatever. Nida's not here, and Cissie deserves Jason's full attention. He shakes his head lightly and absently brushes his thumb over her knuckle. "It's fine," he says, an attempt to convince himself as much as her. "I've been on my own for most of my life. I'm a lot better at being alone anyway."

Cissie is ready and primed at argue with Jason, to tell him that anyone who would say otherwise is an idiot, but then Jason tells her what Nida did. She's so stunned at first, that she hardly registers what he says next, and if there's a moment before she reacts, it's only because the one-two punch of what he's said and how it's made him feel has (metaphorically) knocked her to her knees.

"He did what?" is what comes out first, and if Tim were around, he would recognize the tone in her voice as a dangerous one. Even if Jason hasn't really heard Cissie lose her temper before, what comes next is sure to be a clue. "What the fuck? Why would he slap you? You died! It's not like you wanted to! You didn't do it on purpose! It didn't happen to him, it happened to you!"

Stop her, Jason. She will just keep ranting.

Jason is stunned in return by Cissie’s reaction. He hasn’t heard her like this before, but it doesn’t take detective training to figure out she’s pissed. But it’s the intensity of her anger that’s confusing - she’s a former teen vigilante, so she can’t be angry about the violence itself, can she?

Her grip on his hand is almost painfully tight, but all the same, he doesn’t want her to let go. Instead of extricating his hand from hers, Jason brings their joined hands up to his chest and softly presses Cissie’s hand over his heart, then slides his free hand to cover both of theirs. It’s a gentle reminder that he is alive again, and just maybe, things will turn out OK in this weird city, despite the rocky start.

“He was upset - said it hurt him a lot to lose me.” He quietly huffs an almost-laugh. “I guess I should be happy about that, since no one cared the first time I died.” Yeah, that phrasing is never not going to be weird. Jason smiles wistfully. “I’m OK - really. I’ve been hit a lot harder. You’ve seen that yourself.” When they first met in Wonderland, when Cissie saw Jason bruised and bloody and patched him up. “Don’t worry about it, OK?”

Cissie is spitting mad, but when he presses their hands to his chest, she loses some of her steam and stops her ranting long enough for Jason to respond. The problem is that when he does, her anger deflates quickly, and she wonders vaguely if it's possible to have emotional whiplash.

It breaks her heart, hearing him talk about himself this way. It's not exactly a surprise; she's heard him say things like this before. She knows he thinks no one cared when he died, and she knows that isn't true, based on things Tim has said. She also knows how much they all hurt when he died recently, and that she can't imagine reacting by hitting him. Even if he has been hit harder.

She reaches up with her free hand to cover Jason's, pressing his hands tightly between hers, swallowing past the lump in her throat before she figures out what she wants to say.

"Worrying is what I do," she says, managing a slight smile for him. "But it's not--it's not how hard he hit you. It's that he hit you at all. He wasn't the only one who lost you, or who was hurting. It's not okay. I don't want--You shouldn't--" Her voice cracks a bit, and she clears her throat before continuing, "I don't want you to think you deserve that. Because you don't."

Jason will probably always be of two minds as far as whether he deserves physical violence. In some part of his brain, he knows that what Cissie says is right - he doesn't deserve to be slapped by Nida, just like he didn't deserve it from his father, either. No one deserves that kind of treatment.

But another part of his brain, the part that internalized the abuse and neglect he saw from his parents instead of care, the part that whispers to him that he will never be good enough, that he is an ugly, misshapen thing that doesn't deserve to be loved - that part is hard to silence. Even with Cissie so clearly emotional about her statements, Jason is afraid to believe what she says is fundamentally true, because he is afraid of being hurt again.

He's afraid - but he also wants to try to believe. Because Cissie said that's what she wants, for Jason to believe as she does, and he may not be able to want it for himself with his whole heart, but he can want it for her.

The past few days have been strange and difficult for Jason, fraught with intense and conflicting emotions and thoughts. And right now, with everything Cissie says and does, Jason's heart feels overfull to bursting with love and gratitude for her. Maybe how he responds to Cissie's heartfelt argument is impulsive, no one who knows him should be surprised by that, and even Jason himself can't say he thought about his actions beforehand. Very gently, he raises up their tangled-together hands and bows his head to brush a feather-light kiss over her knuckles. It's an anachronistic gesture, something that belongs to old-fashioned romance stories, but in the moment, it's the only thing that feels right.

"Thank you," he all but whispers, and glances up at her with a wistful smile.

Edited 2019-08-01 04:30 (UTC)

Oh.

Oh.

Cissie can't say what she thought Jason's reaction would be, and she can't say she thought he would immediately just believe her and agree with her that he deserves better than what he's been given and what he accepts... But whatever her thoughts were, they're gone as soon as he presses that kiss to her hand.

Her heart tips over in her chest, feeling like it stutters or stops for a second, and when he smiles at her, it happens again. She has to remind herself to breathe, letting out a soft exhale as she meets his eyes.

Of course she knew that she's loved him, but Cissie is a firm believer in the fact that love is not always romantic. She readily and easily admits and expresses that she loves her friends, that they are her family. She would have admitted to anyone that she loves Jason, that she counts him as one of her closest friends. They've been through too much together and losing him the way they did hurt just as much as losing Kon or Bart--if not more, in some ways. Jason, Steph, Tim... They were her family, back in the Village. She's had shared history with Jason from Wonderland. Of course she loves him.

But it isn't until right now, this moment, that Cissie realizes that maybe, maybe her feelings for Jason might be something deeper and different than the way she feels about Tim or her other friends.

Sure, it's possible she's had a crush. That there may have been some flirting in their interactions. She might even had admitted it if someone had called her out on it. But she's had other crushes before, and that is definitely not what this is.

All of this happens, the thoughts and realization cross her mind so quickly that Jason probably doesn't even see the way the world has sort of tilted under her. She's not angry anymore, though. She's still sad; sad that Jason doesn't see his own worth, sad that someone who supposedly loves him would hurt him, sad that she can't do anything to fix any of it.

Like Jason, Cissie doesn't stop to really think and consider her next move. She squeezes his hands and smiles back at him before she leans up and presses a kiss to his cheek. She pulls her hands free and wraps her arms around his shoulders, hugging him again. She says the first thing that comes to mind. "Thank you for coming back."

It's not so much that he believes her, but he wants to try, for her sake if not for his own. Funny how it's easier to do harder things when it's for someone else and not yourself, right? Jason's known he cares for Cissie since they first met, back in Wonderland, when she showed him unprompted (undeserved, he'd say) kindness without expecting anything in return from him. He's known he's had something of a crush on her at least since the ball, and those feelings only deepened after he became a teenager again and she did what she could to offer the boy he used to be a measure of comfort in a difficult situation. He'd punched those feelings down, though, because he knows that Cissie is much too good for him, and he's already had enough heartbreak in his life. Why screw up a friendship with complications? Nah.

But now ... hell, he'd gone and died again, and she'd mourned him. She's glad he's alive again, and making her even a little bit happy is a worthwhile cause, in Jason's opinion. She's only known him a short time, and she's demonstrated that she cares about him more than people who've known him for much, much longer. She thanks him for coming back, and his arms pull her in just a fraction closer, holding her tightly as the tears return to his eyes.

"How could I stay away?" he asks, softly, and if his voice trembles, he doesn't care. What's important is that he loves her, no matter how that feeling is sorted, and they're together again.

All Cissie can do is give a soft, surprised laugh at that; it may be shaky, but it's still a laugh. She hugs him even closer for a moment, holding him tight for another long moment. When she does finally pull back, she takes a moment to brush at her face, to wipe away the tears and scrub at her face before smiling up at him.

"Do you want to get some really unhealthy fried food with me and check out the rides? Maybe beat some of these rigged games?"

"Yeah ... yeah, I'd like that a lot." Jason can't help smiling as he rubs at his eyes. He's never thought of himself as particularly lucky, unless it was with the bad kind of luck, but he has that feeling now, even if it's brief. He's lucky to know Cissie; he's lucky that they keep getting moved to new places together; he's lucky to be alive again so he can spend time with her, on something as normal as carnival rides and games and junk food.

"I think between you and me, we can give these game-runners a serious run for their money."

He offers a bent arm to her, an invitation to link hers with his, an unspoken Shall we? It's another of those old-fashioned gentlemanly gestures that might seem out of place to anyone who doesn't know the Jason underneath the cold, hard shell he typically shows to the world, but he doesn't need to use that facade with Cissie.

"D'you think they've got chili dogs anywhere in this place?"

She laughs at that, because she is sure that the two of them can get themselves banned from the games if they try hard enough--or even if they don't try. Which might be a fun game in and of itself, but what she says is, "We can win each other giant stuffed animals."

Her smile only grows when he offers her his arm, and she slides hers into his cheerfully, gratefully; just minutes ago, she thought she'd never, ever see him again, and now here they are, about to play at being normal people at a carnival. It's hard to think of when she was last as happy as she is in this moment.

She leans into his side slightly and reaches up with her other arm so his is trapped between both of hers. "I bet they do. I even saw deep fried Oreos earlier!"

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ya gotta wanna be a battering ram

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cw vague mention of domestic abuse

cw cissie's temper

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cw more mentions of childhood domestic abuse, woo

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