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Darren had meant to walk away before she had time to react to him, much less catch up and keep arguing her points. At the word psycho, he blanched. As much as he wanted to turn on her and snap that no, there was nothing wrong with him and she was being absolutely ridiculous, he couldn’t just put aside the fact that he didn’t remember what had happened the night before. He couldn’t tell her what he had or had not done because he didn’t know. And besides, he didn’t want to get her any more involved in this than he already had because of the stupid cat who was now purring away contentedly in his ear.

When she touched his arm, even though he’d known she was there, he still instinctively flinched away and took a step back, making a very deliberate space between them. “I didn’t do it,” he said automatically, but the words sounded miserable and weak to his own ears. “There was no blood.”

It was the same mantra he’d been using ever since he’d woken up that morning. Wordlessly, he took his hands back out of his pockets and offered them in her direction so that she could see that, yes, his hands were clean. There was no blood in the grooves or under his nails, and his clothes—the same clothes he’d been wearing last night—were a little dusty from spending the night outdoors but had no suspicious stains.

The cat purred her support, seemingly quite pleased with her perch on his shoulders.

She’d asked what happened, and he didn’t know what to tell her. So he once again went with miserable, exhausted honesty. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” He looked away from her, staring at the street that the alleyway opened up to, watching people appear and disappear past the narrow opening. “I don’t remember. I thought…” He had to stop for a second to recover his thoughts before continuing, quieter than ever now, “I thought it was you. I thought you were the one who was dead in my ******** apartment building, and then you went and almost got yourself run over by a car. The ******** did you think you were doing?”

No, s**t, he wasn’t supposed to yell at her about that because he didn’t care what happened to this girl that he didn’t even know very well. He’d been scared because he had thought she was dead (he’d thought he’d killed her) but now he knew she wasn’t so he should just take the cat and go.

But he stood there as though his feet had suddenly taken root, staring down at her out of intensely unhappy eyes—partly angry, partly terrified, and partly just miserable.

“What the hell were you doing?” he repeated, more quietly this time. “Running out in front of a car like that. Following me around even when I told you I was dangerous. Do you have some kind of death wish?”

Darren stood rigidly as Fawn inspected his hand. It looked like he wanted to yank away again—and he did—which might be frustrating but was at the same time rather sad. It had nothing to do with her; he simply wasn’t used to being touched in a way that was not meant to cause pain. The moment she let go of his hand, he put both of them back in his pockets, just to be safe. Though he made a disdainful sound when she said she just ‘got distracted’ (how did one just get distracted from nearly being run over by a car?), but he could sense, could practically smell the doubt on her after he’d said he didn’t remember, and it made him take another step away from her.

He stood still, lightly balanced on the balls of his feet as though debating whether or not he should run away, while Fawn gave a muttered recitation of her history. There was no reading the expression on his face; it was as blank and disinterested as ever. Inwardly, he was only confused. Why was she telling him this? They didn’t know each other at all well. It seemed a very personal thing to be telling someone that she hardly knew.

(And if he noticed that the hands still in his pockets were curling into fists that felt useless and late, he ignored it.)

When she looked up again, she’d find him standing with his back to her, staring down the alleyway again as though wishing to escape. “You don’t think I’m dangerous.” It was said with an odd strain in the words, as though he were trying to make sense of a foreign language. “Because I don’t hit you. That’s why you don’t listen when I tell you that you aren’t safe. Because I don’t hit you.”

The half-laugh he made had no humour in it, and it sounded like desperation. “Fawn, there are two dead people in my apartment. I don’t know how they got there, but I know that there were two of them. Now that I’m thinking about it, I know they were both men, and I’m sure I can describe how their bodies look. I don’t think I killed them, but I don’t remember anything about last night after I yelled at you to get out.” He turned his head and pinned her with his stare. “When I heard about it on the news, before I had time to think about it, I thought you were one of them. I thought I had killed you.”

Looking away from her again, he said softly, “I don’t know what’s happening. But I am dangerous. To you and to everyone.”

There was a short pause, and then he added abruptly, “I’m leaving town.”

Darren went deadly still when Fawn wrapped her arms around him. He waited for an uncomfortable moment, and then another, and still another, but she seemed to have no intention of letting go of him. Lifting his hands to hers, he slowly removed her arms from him. It had been a very long time since anyone had touched him kindly, and it only made him more tense. “I don’t even know you. You don’t even know me.”

The sentence was short, but it encapsulated all of his confusion and frustration with this girl who was so insistent on being a part of his life, even when she had seen with her own eyes how he started to lose control. Even when he’d warned her away. Even when he’d told her that she needed to back off because he could hurt her, she just wouldn’t listen. She trampled all over the lines he was trying to draw, and she didn’t seem to understand that that only made him feel more nervous and vulnerable.

“You make me nervous, because you’re small and fragile and you don’t listen. I have to go.” Now it just felt like he was babbling; the sentences were strung together even though they had nothing to do with each other. “You have a life here, you can’t come with me.”

He didn’t want her to come with him. If she went with him, she’d just be putting herself at unnecessary risk, and the next time he woke up in an alleyway, she’d be the one dead on his apartment floor. Why the hell wasn’t she listening to him?

At her last question, though, he made a choked sound of disbelief and spun around. “What the hell is that supposed to mean, did it excite me?” He took a step back from her, and there was a mix of fury and horror on his face. “Is that what you think? That you’ve found yourself a psychopath without having to write letters to serial killers on Death Row?”

He shoved his hand roughly through his hair. “Listen to me. I say what I mean. Stop trying to read things into what I say, because they aren’t there. I’m telling you that you’re in danger because you are. I’m telling you that you can’t come with me because you can’t. And now I’ll add that you’re being ridiculous, because you’re doing that too!”

The cat wrapped around his shoulders meowed plaintively at him, and the sound made him pause and take a breath. Deliberately lowering his voice, he said quietly, “Go home, Fawn. I have to go, and I can’t take anyone with me. I shouldn’t even take the cat, but a cat can take care of itself if…something happens. I’m definitely not taking you.”

((It's totally okay! I'm still recovering from my exam earlier today.))

Darren stared at her, and then he laughed. The sound was dry and rough and sad. “You read too many romance novels. I’m not some tragic brooding hero that you can just fix with the power of love and platitudes and rainbows.” He looked up; she was small enough in comparison to him that just by looking straight, he could look over her head. The comparison only served to remind him of how tiny she was, how ******** fragile. Restlessly, he shifted his weight, longing to be gone. “How old are you? Sixteen, seventeen?” He deliberately guessed low, knowing little was more infuriating, particularly to people who did look young. “I know it seems real romantic right now, like oh, he’s just hurting and you can make it all better if you go travelling with him and don’t let him go no matter what, but you can’t.”

He reached up with two fingers and stroked the cat’s chin, listening to its rumbling purr. “I’m dying, Fawn, and if what’s been going on keeps up, it looks like I’ll be taking someone or a lot of someones with me when I go. You can’t fix death with naïveté and idealism.” He was being deliberately harsh because nothing else was working—appeals, insistence, honesty were doing nothing, so brutality it would have to be. If this didn’t make her back off, he didn’t know what would, but he’d already seen how ridiculously stubborn she could be.

“I’ve been happy alone for the better part of my life. I think I can manage it for a few more months. Besides,” he added, turning to leave, “I won’t be alone. I have the cat.”

Connection to him? Be there for him through anything? She sounded so young. Did she even understand what she was promising by saying those sorts of things? As much as he wished he had time to stand there and argue with her, explain to her how saying things like that to a man she’d known less than a few months could be even more dangerous than insisting on hanging out with him, he didn’t have that time. He had to get moving; he wanted to be out of town before dark.

“You say you can take care of yourself,” he said calmly (too calmly), “then do it. Take care of yourself by staying away from me.”

Darren looked back at her, looking almost startled for a second, and then he laughed. It was a real laugh this time, honest and warm and deep, and there was actual amusement in it. (He hadn’t laughed, really laughed, in months.) “Twenty,” he muttered. “God, I had you pegged for eighteen, tops.” Raising his voice to a normal volume, he added, “If you’re twenty, shouldn’t you be old enough to have gotten the lecture about believing what people say about themselves?”

He still looked amused when she’d finished. “Well, for one thing, the cat doesn’t argue with me when I’m offering sensible reasoning,” he replied promptly. For a second, the laughter disappeared from his face as he remembered what he thought he’d heard
(well done)
but he dismissed that again after a second and the amusement reappeared. “And since I am dying, the only one whose whims matter should be mine.”

Letting Fawn pout, he turned his attention back to the street. “No,” he said at last, “I can’t make you give up on me. But I can keep telling you that you’re only hurting yourself, and making a mess for yourself when you have to give up on me sooner or later.”

Did the girl not know what dying entailed? He was going to be gone. He might leave behind a shell (and would that shell keep moving? Speak to others with his voice? God, God, he hoped not) but he would never come back to it. Sooner or later, she would have to give up on him unless she intended to ******** follow him to the doors of hell.

At this point, he wasn’t ruling anything out.

“I’ll be off, then. Oh, and Fawn?”

Turning away and beginning to walk down the alley, he added over his shoulder, “Don’t forget your bags this time.”

((So I am totally wiped and cannot give this post the LOLworthy response it deserves. I'm off to bed now, and I'll post tomorrow after I've written my paper, yes? Yes.))

“Darren. I have one final argument to make.”

He kept walking. He didn’t want to hear it, he wasn’t interested in hearing anything else she had to say—as far as he was concerned, the matter was closed. Whatever Fawn thought she could say to change his mind, it wasn’t going to—

When she grabbed his wrist, he jerked away, but not quickly enough. As the silver thing snapped shut around his wrist, he stared at her in total shock for almost thirty full seconds before recovering his voice. “What. The ********. Do you think you are doing.” Even the sharpness of his voice couldn’t entirely hide the shock. “Do you think this is funny?”

With one sharp jerk of his wrist, he lifted her nearly off her feet, and for once, seeing that didn’t slow him down in the slightest. “Get the key for this,” he said, each word cold and steady, “and take it off again. You are behaving like an idiot child.” Despite the steadiness of his voice, his thoughts were in a frantic whirl. If she didn’t take it off, by tonight he would have the strength to break it (easily his mind whispered) but that would require having her in close contact with him for the entire day and putting her in danger when night fell.

Not to mention the fact that they could not be more conspicuous if they tried. He’d have to find somewhere to go to ground for the rest of the day until he could break the chain on this thing, because if this act of hers had told him anything, it was that she was too ridiculous to have even basic survival instincts—chaining yourself to a monster? Who thought that was a good idea?

Pulling her back down the alleyway (and not particularly caring if she tripped), he walked her back to her bag and waited impatiently.