knife_bender | A Pawn Shop in East Flatbush

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A Pawn Shop in East Flatbush | Friday evening

To say today had been rough was quite possibly the biggest understatement ever. It had started with watching porn at way too early in the morning, went into cutting off a guy's hand to get his girlfriend out of jail and somewhere between that Annie had absolutely gotten her ass handed to her by Black Noir.

Diego was worried. He knew why Annie was playing it cool. Her mother was there, and Billy Butcher wasn't exactly someone you wanted to look weak in front of. But she had been hurt, and neither of them had gotten the chance to process that and he just really needed to make sure she was okay.

When everyone seemed to be as settled as they were going to be, he found his way to Annie's side. "Can we talk?"

[Last post for the day, I promise. For the girl! NSFW!]

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It had been a day.

Annie was trying to act like she was fine, even as she'd limped into the hideout. She'd let MM look her over, wincing only a little when he pressed in a few places on her abdomen and confirmed that it didn't seem like she was bleeding internally, and then had basically begged the man to take her mom and go find a car for Donna to leave in tomorrow. (Of all the people here, MM seemed like the only one who she'd entrust her mom to. Could you imagine if she'd sent her off with Butcher? Jesus.)

"Yeah," she said, leaning into Diego just briefly when he made his way to her side, before reaching for his hand and...looking around for somewhere they could talk. Here, in the grossest pawn shop basement ever. (She really missed their room at Mallory's house now.)

She finally settled on the bathroom, leading the way over there with a brief detour to talk to Kimiko. "Can you make sure no one comes in here?" she asked softly, gesturing to the bathroom door.

Kimiko gave the pair a slightly knowing look and a thumbs up before picking up her Gal Gear magazine, and with that, Annie ushered Diego into the...yes, incredibly dingy and gross bathroom. (Was there even a shower in here? Ew.)

And she was just going to kind of lean back against the closed door for a second, now that they had their privacy.

"Are you hurt?" she asked softly, her voice still pretty scratchy. Annie was just starting to let herself slip out of autopilot and actually think about what had happened today, and the fact that Diego was standing here was a fucking miracle.

"I'm fine," he said, moving close to her but kind of afraid to touch her at the moment. "I mean, there's some things I saw that I won't ever be able to un-see but I can deal with that."

He'd just tuck it away with the rest of the trauma he refused to acknowledge.

"What about you?"

"MM says I'm not bleeding internally," Annie said, which was a very clinical response but she was also kind of trying to stay calm now that all of this was really hitting her. "But I...."

She hissed out a soft breath as she peeled up her shirt to look down at her side, where a huge bruise was already blooming from her hip upwards.

"Diego, what were you doing there?" she asked, her voice breaking a little bit.

Edited 2021-06-04 14:36 (UTC)

"Jesus," he said softly, focused on the bruise for a moment. The fact that she gotten that damage solidified the fact that they were both lucky to be alive right now, and if Diego had run into Black Noir he probably wouldn't have known what hit him before he was killed.

"I came to rescue you," he replied, like it was obvious. "Do you really think I would have just sat back and done nothing after finding out they had gotten to you?"

"But how did you know?" Annie asked around a lump in her throat, shaking her head -- and then stopping abruptly, because wow, that actually kind of hurt, too. "Fuck, Diego, it was -- my mom called Ashley."

She hadn't known she was doing anything wrong, of course, but...goddammit, Donna.

"It was all over the TV," he said, reaching for her hand. "Lamplighter guessed where they might have taken you so I made him get me inside the building."

"You made him," Annie repeated, twining her fingers with his and maybe going a little hard on her grip there, just out of worry and adrenaline. "You made him take you -- "

And then something had happened to Lamplighter, and Annie had dealt with Noir, and --

"You could've been killed." That came out in a worried shout, before Annie caught herself and lowered her voice to a harsh whisper. Kimiko might have been keeping watch, but the door didn't exactly seem sound-proof. "You -- Diego, that was so dangerous."

"What was I supposed to do?" he asked, lowering his voice. Yeah, now was not the time to let strangers hear them bickering. "Leave you there to die?"

"I don't know!" Annie hissed, eyes wide. "But if you were worried I was going to die, what did you think was going to happen to you?"

Her voice broke on you again, and Annie looked up at the ceiling for a second to try to get herself back under control.

It didn't really work.

"If Noir had found you instead of me," she started, but she didn't finish. They both knew what would have happened.

"Well he didn't find me," Diego said. "And if he had...well I would have tried my best if it gave you the chance to get out of there."

Probably not the answer she wanted to hear, but it was what he would have done.

It was not the answer she wanted to hear, no. But in a way it was also one of the most profoundly touching things anyone had ever said to her.

They had been pretty loose with the L word since they'd broken the seal on it back in February, yes, and Annie had spent the months she'd been with Diego finding dozens of little ways to try to show him how much he meant to her -- but Diego had gone and proven it today.

And Annie knew she would have done the same in his position. There was absolutely no question.

"You shouldn't have," she whispered, blinking away tears. "I couldn't -- if I'd gotten out and you hadn't, I wouldn't...I don't even want that."

Getting to live because Diego had died saving her sounded like the greatest hell she could possibly go through.

Diego moved to very gently pull her into a hug. "I had to do something. I would have never forgiven myself if something had happened to you and I didn't even try."

He still hadn't forgiven himself for the Ben thing and it had been well over a decade since it happened.

Annie held back a wince as she carefully wrapped her arms up around him -- she was mostly mindful of knives, though her bruises were making themselves very known -- and buried her face against Diego's neck. "And I would never forgive myself if Vought killed you."

It was easier to admit that when she was holding onto him and feeling how very much alive he was right now.

Today -- all of this -- was exactly why she'd been so reluctant to bring him along. (But it was also exactly why she had made the right call, too, because she would have never gotten out of there without him.)

"Probably good it ended the way it did then, huh?" he asked lightly.

"But it might not have!" Annie insisted, shaking her head but keeping her face against his neck for the moment. It was comforting.

She took a second to get herself a little more under control. "What happened to Lamplighter?"

Because it had not looked...pleasant. Who the hell had gotten ahold of him? (And how had Diego escaped a similar fate? Oh, God, she couldn't think about that -- it was bad enough thinking about Black Noir getting him.)

"He did that to himself," Diego said. "He said something about wanting his dad to be proud of him and then just lit himself on fire in front of statue of The Seven."

He was not going to mention how upset he had been that he had been replaced on that statue by her.

"Oh, shit." Oh, that was -- unexpected and terrible in a way Annie hadn't been prepared for. A horrible, selfish part of her was immediately relieved because it meant that Homelander hadn't laser-eyed him, and Diego hadn't been in danger, too.

At least, not directly, at that time.

But that also kind of made a weird sort of sense, and helped Annie piece together something she'd been trying to figure out. "Well, he's the reason I got out, after all," she noted softly, finally pulling back so she could actually look at Diego. "The cell they had me in was lit by glow sticks. No power anywhere. I couldn't do anything until the fire alarms powered on."

Edited 2021-06-04 16:42 (UTC)

"That makes sense." He figured that Vought probably had a cell catered to everyone's powers except maybe Homelander's. "I was going door to door with his hand trying to find you, that's how I found your mom."

"With his hand," Annie repeated, looking kind of overwhelmed by that again. "I can't believe you did that."

And she was pretty much done telling him he shouldn't have, not just because it was over and done with, but because she was also slowly coming to the realization that this was just going to be something that she had to make peace with.

It wasn't exactly fair for her to admire his bravery and heroism, but then take it back if he dared endanger herself for her.

He shrugged his shoulder. "Could have been worse."

The fact that he was pretty crispy actually made it less gross and easier to hack through?

"I sent a picture of it to Five and told him I wasn't going to paintball today."

At least he could find humor in the whole thing.

And that actually got Annie to huff out a soft laugh. "If it were anyone but Five, I'd say that's going to freak them out, but since it is Five...."

He'd probably just have advice about technique or something. Five had probably taken off a hand or two in his weird, weird life.

"He might actually get jealous." The little weirdo probably thought that would be more fun than paintball.

Annie laughed again, actually letting it become the wince it wanted to when she felt her side pull a little. (And then she winced a little more, because the wince had pulled at her temples and she'd been hit in the face with a slab of concrete earlier.) "That reminds me -- did you and Five and Steve maybe take a trip to Ohio a couple weeks ago?"

Annie wasn't going to insult him by demanding he tell her the truth, but she was watching him closely to see how he answered.

Because yeah, she'd been pretty specific about Diego not hurting The Deep.

"I didn't touch the guy." See? Promise kept. "I'm not responsible for Five and Steve's actions."

Annie's smile was a little wobbly, but very genuine.

"You didn't have to do that, either," she said, very softly.

But she was clearly and obviously pretty moved that he had. And honestly kind of impressed that he'd found that loophole.

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