myownface | MCA #4, Saturday Morning

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MCA #4, Saturday Morning

Deep breath. Exhale.

...

Deep breath.

...

Exhale.

Dial.

Deep breath.

And hit send.

Sparkle had a call to make today. One he'd been putting off since forever, and his last excuse had run out. The island was back to normal. He didn't have to worry about The Big Stuff being completely derailed because he woke up one morning underwater or he couldn't leave the house because there were dinosaurs or on account of nightmarish penance zombies. Dr. Lecter had given him the number to phone, and yeah, he knew it was Saturday and yeah he knew it was early, but he was kind of hoping he could just leave a message and wait for a phone call back on... Tuesday. Because long weekend! See? Smart. Sparkle was super smart. It wasn't procrastinating if there was Labour Day to contend with.

Somebody actually answered the phone.

"Um."

That wasn't supposed to happen.

Shit. Shit shit shit.

"Hi, uh. My name is Sparkle," and ugh, he felt like he wanted to vomit just spitting out his last name, too, but he kind of had to in this case. "Dr. Lecter suggested I call you. Yeah. Dr. Hannibal Lecter. He said you're probably the best lawyer for... a couple of cases I have, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, I can talk right now, sure. So..."

It was not a short phone call.

Dr. Lecter had picked a good lawyer for the job, for sure.

But by the time Sparkle had hung up the phone again, he was looking a little green. That was fine. This was fine. It was all going to go super well, and...

If anybody needed him, he was going to just be burying his face in a pillow and screaming himself hoarse.

Sparkle Vs. The Criminal Justice System was off to an excellent start.

[OOC: Open! Probably not happy! But open! TW: Both threads contain some talk of child abuse/grooming.]

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She shut the door. Didn't lock it, she never locked the door when she was home. Wasn't worth the effort, anyone coming through that door was either someone she'd like to see or would be a new wall coating moments later.

Went to the kitchen and hauled out booze and juice. Cheese, salami type meats, olives, cherries, things like that. Picky foods. Things he could fidget with. They were summarily slid onto the counter.

"You could," she said slowly, "If that's the bullshit you want to spread, you could. You'd have to make the story good and thick for me to buy it because I was here this summer too, most of it. And if you want me to believe the bullshit, I could probably pretend to do that too. If that's what you need me to do, I could probably do it. But that might not be the best thing for you to want me to do."

"Mm," Sparkle agreed, reaching for the olive jar. "Probably not the best thing, yeah."

Especially since it was just going to get worse from here.

"I've been putting this thing off for a while," he admitted. "Years. And I stopped putting it off this morning. And that's a good thing. Probably."

"So there's a thing, and it's an old thing, and it's a thing that's freaking you the fuck out because you've been avoiding it, but you're not avoiding it now and that's good.." Jack followed that winding train of thought, "So if it's good why are you screaming like an animal in a trap, Sparkle?"

"Because..."

And a shrug. And a minute taken just doing battle with the olive jar lid.

Fucking lids.

"It'll be good when it goes the fuck away. But it hasn't gone the fuck away yet. So it feels like a trap. I'm an animal who just walked into a fucking trap to make it go away." A beat. "I'm a fucking stupid animal."

"Or a smart one," Jack said slowly, "Sometimes the best way to deal with a trap is to walk into it and yank the fucking spring out. Depends on the trap. It's still not a good noise you were making." Frowning in thought, she.. had no real idea what to do here. The closest thing she had was, well, channeling Kaidan for a second. "What can I do to help?"

"I... don't... know," Sparkle said, after a long pause. "I don't know, Jack. This thing, it's stupid. It's stupid and fucking ugly and I hate it I hate it and I have to do it, I could keep running from it but I can't just get on with my life if I do that. So..."

He shrugged.

"So I guess just kick me in the ass if I look like I'm gonna bolt?"

"I mean," Jack said slowly, "Buddy, it'd help if I had a fucking clue what 'it' was, you know? Maybe back up a few steps here? Cuz if it's ugly and it's following you and it's making you run, it'd be a shitload easier for me to know what even to look for if I knew what it was."

"It won't come here," Sparkle mumbled. "'It' is the law, it's 'Sparkle did something stupid in response to some shit this other person did, and then left the country.' It doesn't know where I am. But I want my life back."

Jack.. just kind of took that in. "Okay. So there's some legal shit you jumped out on and now you're going to go back and do it?"

Took another second. "This would be easier if you'd stop using random fucking wobbletalk, Sparkle. I've committed more crimes than you could ever have, been in and broken out of prisons for most of my fucking life, so.. you know.. I'm not going to judge you and when it comes to legal shit.. or illegal shit.. I maybe might could help some."

Sparkle's lips pursed a little. His shoulders bunched a bit.

"I don't know if they can pin the break-and-enters on me," he muttered. "They might try. The arson, they have. I didn't deny it. I owned right the fuck up to doing that."

And that wasn't what had him screaming.

Go figure.

She listened. She didn't care at all about the B&E's, if they couldn't pin it on him it meant he hadn't got caught and that made it a no-brainer for getting it dismissed. Arson.. Jack thought about it. What she knew of Sparkle. "So you burned some vacant fucking building down? I mean, sure, you owe someone some money maybe."

Burned it and owned up to it. Wanted it known he was the one who did it.

"The who who did the what would be..?"

"It was an expensive vacant fucking building," Sparkle muttered. "Down one of those exclusive neighbourhoods. Fancy place, probably worth over half a million considering Toronto housing costs and all."

He shrugged.

"Belonged to an asshole who needed his house burned the fuck down."

"That'll be a fun bill if you have to pay restitution," Jack noted idly, "But whatever. If you need money, lemme know. I have more than I know what the fuck to even do with. I fucking ignore it because it's weird."

She mixed a drink and handed it to him, took a straight whiskey for herself. "I get that someone fucking deserved it, Sparkle. While you might burn something down just for the fucking fun of it, I'd like to think you're not stupid enough to let the police get their hands on you and then go 'yeah I did it that's right motherfuckers I did that' for fun. So who is this asshole?"

Sparkle's shoulders bunched up a little.

And he stared at the olives.

Fucking olive jar.

"He was my legal guardian at the time."

Jack made a fist and the lid of the olive jar popped and went spinning right off it like a top to land halfway across the kitchen.

"Okay," she said slowly, "And you burned his fucking house down without him in it." Because Sparkle wouldn't have burned it down with him in it and had just used the word 'vacant' so, yeah. "Asshole got a name?"

No reason.

Mostly because she wanted to ask what he'd done and that was possibly not a question Sparkle was entirely ready to answer. Not with that closed off beaten dog body posture he was giving off.

"He sure does," Sparkle agreed. "Most assholes have names."

He watched the lid fly away and just kind of stared after it for a moment.

... It was even odds he was either withholding that name because he didn't want Jack to go hunt Lewis down, or he was actually just that out of it thinking about having to face the man again.

Jack took a drink and stood there watching him. Giving him a chance to eat some olives, maybe.

She didn't need Sparkle to give her the asshole's name. Toronto. Sparkle's legal guardian. Arson. She could find that name without even pulling EDI into it.

"Is this a thing you want me to shut the fuck up about? Because the next question's 'what did the asshole do' and you know it," she pointed out as gently as Jack ever could manage.

Sparkle opened his mouth for a moment. Tempted to take the out.

So fucking tempted to take the out.

"... You'll want to kill him," he said, because he knew it. He knew she would, if other people had offered before, so would she. "And I need you to not. I need to do this, okay?"

Jack ran a hand over her scalp. "Sparkle, you've looked like a fucked up mess for weeks now. Every brief time I've seen you. You have this look, and it's a look I know because I used to see it in the goddamn mirror when I was a kid, and I hate that fucking look and seeing it on you makes me already want to kill everything around you just in case any of that shit is what's causing it."

She took a long drink. A very long drink and then poured another. "But I won't. I can't do that because I know that even if I did, even if I dropped the body of whoever or whatever was scaring you pissless, it wouldn't help you. You'd feel bad. You'd feel like you did it and it would hurt you. I get that. I don't like it and I think it's stupid as fuck that you'd take that on, the blame for something I did but.. you would and there's nothing in the galaxy I could do to stop you from taking that blame."

Another slug of whiskey and she added quietly, "And you're telling me this is legal shit, which means killing him probably makes it worse because then the fucker can't show up in court and maybe that makes whatever you're doing more difficult. So okay. I'm gonna want to kill him, and I already know you don't want me killing anyone for you. So okay. I won't kill the son of a bitch. If nobody who loves you has done it yet, then I'm at the end of that line already anyway. So okay. No killing him."

"Okay," Sparkle said, still just kinda... standing there holding the olive jar. Hadn't occurred to him that he could actually dig out an olive, now. "Okay."

...

"Okay."

Words, Sparkle.

"... He. Um."

Wow. This was going great for him. He pulled in a long, shaking breath. Tried to find a way to put it that didn't make him feel two inches tall. Failed horribly.

Swallowed.

"Hernando called it 'grooming.'"

So.

Jack's face went expressionless. She knew what that term meant, yes. Even before she'd come to Fandom, she'd been a teacher and there were classes she'd had to take to teach her what things to look for in her kids, signs that things at home were bad. The students were biotics, an unstable home situation lead to an unstable biotic and there were steps Grissom could take if they knew so they taught their teachers what to look for.

She knew what grooming meant.

"How long?" she asked after a moment.

"Four years."

That kind of fell out of Sparkle's mouth like the words were made of lead.

He shrugged and stared at the olives.

"With some Fandom time in there too but..."

Four years.

Four years could feel like a lifetime. She knew. She'd been five when she got out of Teltin. She'd been nine when she'd escaped he slave pit. Thirteen when she was arrested for the first time. Four years could feel like an eternity in hell.

"It's not your fault," she said, looking at him soberly over the rim of her glass, "You know that, right? He was an adult and you weren't and there's nothing you fucking did that made it your fault what he did. He was an adult and he knew better than to look at a kid like that. Ever. Even if you didn't feel like a kid you still were one, and there's no excuse in the world for him lookin' at a kid like that. None. It wasn't your fault. If it had been some other kid, you wouldn't blame them and so you need to listen to me, Sparkle. It wasn't your fault."

Because she knew that feeling, too.

Sparkle nodded. It was a little numb, a little distant, but it was a nod. He knew. He knew logically speaking that it wasn't his fault, but it still made his guts twist. Still made him angry and humiliated and terrified that he'd fuck up everything with the people who loved him now, not because he was an easy target but because he was Sparkle.

"That's why I was talking to a lawyer," he mumbled. "About the arson charges and about taking him to task for... it all."

Jack nodded slowly. "How bad did it get, Sparkle? Bad enough you burned his fucking house down, but not bad enough you pressed charges on this asshole before so.. How bad?"

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