eventually, each of us turns into a ball of chaos

Reccing Notes: So when I first read this I thought ouch. Then I read it again. And again. This is jaded! Chloe, post-turbulence. the sheltering happens from a Davis perspective. But the most amazing part to me, is how wings4music dove into Davis's head and showed how really pure the 'chaos' of his feelings could be. The ending might just break your heart.

786 words. PG. post-turbulence
by wings4 music at wings_for_craft

Davis used to feel pity on those warped by possession and an overrun love. Davis used to swear he wouldn’t pursue something that had tragedy written all over it. Davis used to rely on, believe in, know himself.

~*~
Davis had heard--had seen throughout his life that pinning one’s hopes, one’s life on another person wasn’t healthy. People were built to depend on others, but people were meant to depend on themselves before anyone else. To throw that to hell and instead hinge your life on someone else--it tends to unhinge (or further unhinge in some cases) said dependent.

“If he won’t have me, he won’t have anyone else!” was a scream he’s heard once or twice as a paramedic as the person screaming this was being pushed into a cop car, their unfortunate victims waiting to be saved by him and people of the like.

Davis used to feel pity on those warped by possession and an overrun love. Davis used to swear he wouldn’t pursue something that had tragedy written all over it. Davis used to rely on, believe in, know himself.

*

“You saved me.”

That thing inside him faded, literally drew away, at the combination of her words and touch. As did that memory of him inside that ice fortress with an overtaken Chloe insisting that it was all programming, that those feelings were programming and that he and she would only work together to work towards them advancing that which they really were--monsters, Davis called them. The monsters they were meant to become.

The memory became nothing more than a warning. An incorrect warning. She saved him.

*

He fought another sort of beast when he heard that Jimmy left Chloe.

Something semi-grateful, semi-hateful that he didn’t have the right to feel. Chloe wasn’t anyone’s and she was always free, but Jimmy was gone. Chloe, of course, was adamant in believing he would return; Jimmy just needed a cooling off period, she would insist. Davis didn’t know how he could leave her in the first place, and he just wanted to knock some--

And he had to stop himself. Had to stop the hatred towards Jimmy for hurting Chloe, had to stop the smile that nearly formed every time he remembered that Chloe’s husband was gone. He had to stop.

*

She didn’t cringe, she didn’t tremble, she didn’t run. They both realized at that point that on some level, she had always known.

“Davis,” she had said with such a stoic, calm voice, you never would have guessed that she wasn’t staring directly at the monster that ruined her wedding day and put her marriage at risk. As if she saw a man not guilty of a thing ‘stead of an animal guilty of everything.

“Davis,” she repeated, no louder or firmer tone, just with the same ease, she repeated his name. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes, he saw that he was half sitting, half lying against a brick wall, shaking. But there was a sweater thrown across the front of his chest, and he heard her voice--“hey.” She touched his hand, and he was the one to flinch away.

“It’s just me,” she said. Yes, on some level she had always known what he really was, or perhaps what he really wasn’t. Whatever the case, she was there, and she wasn’t running.

*

He tried to kiss her but that she did walk away from.

*

“Eventually, each of us turns into a ball of chaos,” she whispered as she looked down at her cup of coffee. She grinned for half a second, and then glanced over at him.

“We all…each of us…” She blinked back a tear or two, sipped at her mug, then tucked some hair behind her right ear. “I know what you become sometimes, Davis, and I know you think it best to just make yourself disappear sometimes, but the thing is, we all just want to disappear sometimes. Because everyone eventually becomes a ball of chaos. It’s what unites the human race--or pardon, it’s what unites all living organisms.”

“Then…what is it that separates us living things?” he asked.

She smiled tightly. She had the answer but it wasn’t for him to discover through her.

*

He was leaving. He didn’t have much of a choice.

She had left. She said it wasn’t that she was fed up or that she was tired. She said she was becoming responsible for something that could ruin her soul.

He didn’t see any ruptures or corruptions in her soul when she was keeping him in. He saw warmth, compassion, and beauty in her for not running away and helping him. This was their chaos. Their mad disorder of a life compacted by the beast within him and her aide. Chaos nonetheless, but a beautiful one at that.

It was in the snap of that second in which he realized she had seen their ball of chaos as corrupted whereas he had seen it as beautiful, that he knew what it was that separated them.

And then Davis was lost to himself.