walkswithheroes | (no subject)

She hasn't been able to get him out of her head, not since that day at the diner.

There are a lot of things that Fred is good at; put a formula in front of her or a puzzle and she'll figure it out. Even the supposedly unsolveable ones— she's seen a lot of those— and given time, she'll take it all apart, put it back together, figure out how it works and solve it.

In Darrow, she's been given two unsolveable problems. One of those, the city itself, is one she's still convinced she'll work out given time. Five years, she spent in Pylea, working the problem, shouting incantations until her voice gave out, scribbling on cave walls just to get the numbers out of her head, and here with resources and actual books, she knows she can do it.

The other problem?

Well, that one isn't as easy.

What are you supposed to do when your head tells you one thing, but everything else in you says something different?

Because she knows that there's something about the police officer she met on her first day in Darrow that she can't exactly explain. Something weird and familiar and unfamiliar all at once. And now she's started remembering things that don't make sense. Snow and sand and sleds. Herself on a stage in front of faces she can't quite make out.

Fred's not exactly sure what to do about it all, which is why she looks up Jason's address and finds herself outside his apartment.

She's going crazy. She can't be going crazy.

She knocks.

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"You used to write on the walls," Jason gasps suddenly, even though it kills him to take his mouth off of her. "That first time I came to you, really wantin' you, there was writing all over the place. And it was summer there all the time, except when it was winter, nothing in between. I got my tongue stuck on a metal pole."

He stares up at her, amazed, like she's got some kind of magic. Maybe, for once, it's good magic.

"On the walls of my room," she says with a nod, and it might almost be funny, if not for the circumstances she remembers now. Falling asleep in the hotel and waking up in that cave, Fred had thought at first that she'd been sent back. And again, after her council speech, that collar around her neck in front of all those people.

"I didn't want you to see them, I was worried you'd think I was crazy."

"Baby, I've seen five million different kinds of crazy, and you're not one of 'em." He lowers his mouth to her neck, and it's like he tastes her skin twice, now and then, all wrapped up right here. There's something important he's missing; it tugs at the back of his brain but he can't for the life of himself care.

It's hard to not just get wrapped up in him. It's gotta be because he knows her so well-- somewhere in there-- that Jason knows just what spots to hit. Fred's eyes lid shut for a moment before she remembers herself.

"Jason?" Fred says, "Jason, I think I need a minute, here."

Because she remembers knowing him and not knowing him, being on that island and not going at all, and as good as it feels to be here again-- she missed him so much-- she can't help but be bothered by the fact that someone or something's been messing around with her memories.

"Yeah, okay, I--"

He just rests his forehead in the sweet curve of her neck, trying to breathe. She smells so good, he thinks feverishly. Smells like she belongs to him.

Whoa now. You ain't some kinda were. You checked.

"Okay."

"It's just... I remember knowing you, and I remember not knowing you. All at the same time," Fred says, but she doesn't make a move away from him, doesn't get up just yet.

"I mean, I can't be the only one with the heebie jeebies here, right?"

Edited 2013-06-22 03:25 (UTC)

"Yeah, I got those, but I got a lotta other feelings too right now," he tells her. "And thoughts."

Jason lets out a short laugh.

"Only thing that makes it calm down is you." But slowly, painfully, he takes his hands away from her waist and the small of her back, makes to get up.

He makes a move to get up and Fred shifts so she's not practically sitting on him, moving to the floor instead.

"You're different," she comments, looking up at him, "Not bad-different, just... different from before."

Some of the things he'd been forcing out of his thinking come back right around then.

The year without Sookie.

Being strapped down so Crystal's pack could take turns with him.

Letting Hoyt go.

Jessica. Jessica.

He swallows roughly. "I, uh, I guess I got sent back home right after the island."

"Me too, I think," Fred says, only unsure because she's still trying to sort through everything she remembers now. She hadn't known about Professor Siedel when she was on the island. They hadn't taken over Wolfram and Hart yet. Suddenly, all of that seems further away than it did before.

"My home, not your home. Obviously. I've still never been to Louisiana."