who_is_she | better call saul

better call saul

He'd never meant to hurt her. He'd just wanted her to stop--there were kids in the building, and she wouldn't stop, and the flames were everywhere--so he'd tried to stop her.

Smoke inhalation, mostly, was cause of death they'd said. She'd been killed by the fire she created, they said. But her arm was broken and her head was bleeding--fire couldn't do that.

They'd cheered when he came out of the building, called him a hero because he'd stopped a menace. But she wasn't a menace, she was a girl, a person, and he sure as hell didn't feel like a hero.

He hadn't slept last night, but he still gets up and goes for his morning jog, eats cereal and drinks irange juice in his too-quiet apartment and then decides to go to the hospital. There had only been the one casualty, yesterday, but a handful of people had been admitted to the hospital, and Owen didn't know how well they were doing. He didn't know if he'd killed anyone else.

He's terrified, but he still makes himself go to the hospital because he'd rather know. He walks ten blocks and every news stand he passes is plastered with his face, and every one is like a slap in the face. He wonders if he was cut out for this, wonders if he should quit, remembers the last time his mom had called, excited because they were getting close to paying off the mortgage. When he walks through the doors into the hospital lobby he just stands there for a minute or two before he can gather himself enough to remember what he was doing. He asks the receptionist if he can visit with the victims of the fire yesterday, and she says friends and family only, dismissing him when she turns away.

"Oh," he says, dejected, "Well, can you tell me how they're doing? I don't need names or anything just--" he says, and she turns back towards him and gasps.

"Oh my god! You're The Protector!" she squeals, and Owen's heart sinks. Some days, he misses being Owen. Her and some of the other receptionists coo over him, tell him he's brave, and Owen bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood. They put a list of names and room numbers in his hands, and he thanks them and leaves, his head swimming.

Checking in on the patients actually improves his mood, especially when a ten year old girl gives him a hug and tells him when she gets a dog she's going to name it after him. By the time he gets to the last name he feels less like he's drowning, because nobody's condition has worsened since yesterday.

The other rooms had had balloons or flowers, or family members dozing in chairs next to the bed, but this last one is totally empty and bare aside from the body on the bed. Owen knocks on the frame of the door a couple times, unsure if the patient is awake or not. He'd been closer to the fire than anyone else, and had suffered the most severe burns and lung damage.

"Um, Dimitri?" he asks, checking the last name on his list, "Are you awake?"

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Dimitri needed a cigarrette, and it was killing him that he couldn't have one. All he could do was lie on his back, with these stupid tubes in his nose, and contemplate what a massive fuck up he was.

He'd never meant for all these people to get hurt. When he and his partner had planned it, it had all been so simple; he'd go in, "convince" the teller to hand over the cash, while she kept the bank patrons from trying to stop him. She was supposed to threaten them, not actually attack, but she'd always been more forceful than him.

When questioned, he'd lied, more poorly than usual, and when the lies didn't sell he'd bent the officers brain to convince him his story was solid. He did this often, with few regrets, but this time was different; it was his fault all these people had nearly died, and they would have, if that ridiculous costumed superhero hadn't charged in and saved them all.

He was staring at the ceiling, stomach churning, when he hears a knock at the door. He thinks it must be on the door across the hall at first, but then someone enters, and says his name.

"What?" he says, coughing a little in surprise, "Uh, yeah, I'm up. You...you don't look like my nurse, what's going on?"

Owen's actually a little relieved that Dimitri doesn't recognize him. He hates his hero name, anyways. He smiles at him as he steps into the room, his eyes flicking over his bandages and the tubes in his nose and the machines he's hooked up to.

"No, I'm, uh," Owen starts to say, and then clears his throat, remembering his manners, "I'm Owen. I was, um... There. Yesterday." he rubs the back of his neck, getting embarrassed and looking away, "I saved you, actually. I just wanted to... Make sure you were doing okay." Owen glances around and sees a chair nearby, pulling it closer to the bed and sitting down.

"How are you feeling?"

"Oh...shit," Dimitri says, the need to smoke increasing tenfold. The already overwhelming guilt was crushing him now, and he fidgets nervously, drumming his fingers against his knee.

"Yeah, you're...the guy, aren't you," he laughs, looking him up and down, "Well...nice to...meet you, you, uh. Helped a lot of people." He reaches for the juicebox sitting on the bedside table and pokes the straw through the holes in the mask and drinks, chewing on the straw.

"I'm fine," he says, coughing again, "I wasn't...expecting anyone. Should have told me you were coming, I'd have cleaned up the place!"

He laughs weakly at his joke, then groans, lying back on the bed.

Owen's smile turns hollow when Dimitri says he'd helped people, but he manages to keep it on his face, at least. He laughs honestly at Dimitri's joke, looking around at the impeccably clean and sterile hospital room.

"It's good to hear you're feeling okay," Owen says, then gestures to the file on the clipboard on the end of Dimitri's bed, "Do you mind I, uh..?"

"Oh...yeah, man, go for it," he says, after hesitating for a moment to decide if he had anything to hide in his hospital record. Nothing comes to mind, and he decides if there's anything compromising, he can always make Owen forget he'd seen it.

"So...you're just...checking up on everyone?" he asks, still twiddling his thumbs.

Owen picks up the chart, flipping through it and not feeling at ease until he reads the list of injuries. They are relatively minor, aside from a broken leg, and when Owen looks back up at Dimitri his smile is wider and relieved.

"Yeah, ah, just... After the... The girl, yesterday, I just... Wanted to make sure everyone was okay," he shrugs, his fingers toying with the edge of the chart. Then something printed on the chart catches his attention.

"It's your birthday? Happy birthday!"

Dimitri feels a pang in his chest at the mention of his partner, and he opens his mouth to say something about her, but his eyebrows shoot up at the next thing Owen says.

"It...is? It is. I mean, yeah, I...I guess it is," he says, scratching his chin, "Damn. I...shit. I guess I'm not going out for drinks tonight, am I?"

He laughs a little, but it's sort of a sad revelation, to realize he was spending his 21st birthday in a hospital, with no friends to speak of, lying to the guy who saved him from his own stupidity.

"Wow, you're only 21? You seem... older," Owen says, and then flushes, unsure if that was rude or not, "I mean, I'm only 19, so..." He trails off, biting his lip, mulling Dimitri's words over in his head.

"I can't go drinking with you, but I could bring you something tomorrow. Um... food, maybe? Hospital food sucks, right?" he smiles brightly, mentally going through ideas for cocktail-themes cookies or something similar.

"Oh, Jesus, umm," Dimitri says, running his hands back over his head. This guy was so fucking nice, and the guilt was eating him alive, now, knowing that this guy thought he was just another victim of the fire and not half the reason it happened.

"You...you don't have to do that," he laughs, smiling at him nervously, "I mean, thank you so much, but...I'm sure I'll do something. Later. With...you know. Someone. Eventually. Just a few days late, is all."

"Oh," Owen says, somewhat dejectedly, "But your leg is broken, right? Will someone, um... Come and see you?" he asks gently, still doing his best to be polite, but this guy struck him as the kind of guy without many friends who would visit him in the hospital, "Like... family, or something?"

No matter how much Owen wanted to lock himself up in hi apartment and not emerge for days, nobody should spend their birthday alone.

Dimitri laughs a little at the question, before staring at his hands.

"Uh...no, I guess, not exactly," he admits, "But...seriously, you don't need to worry about it. You've got shit to do, I'm sure, right?"

"Not... Really, um," Owen shrugs, uncomfortable, "My family is all... Hundreds of miles away and I'm... um, not on call. For now. So..." He doesn't say that he was placed on temporary leave until he goes to a psychiatric evaluation tomorrow morning. He doesn't say how desperately he wishes he could go home to his mom, or how scared he is of no longer being able to support her financially.

"I should let you rest," he says suddenly, already feeling stretched thin and not wanting to open up that can of worms in front of a relative stranger, "And I'll see you tomorrow. Bye, Dimitri!"

He excuses himself from the room and ducks quickly past the nurse's station on his way out, and runs the whole way back to his apartment building.

The next day, he's placed on more permanent leave after his evaluation, and his hands shake all the way through making his mom's best chocolate chip cookie recipe. He waits until they've cooled and then packs them into a little plastic container, and stops at a drug store on the way back to the hospital.

He spends ten minutes deliberating over whether happy birthday or get well soon is more appropriate, and in the end he buys both, one happy birthday balloon with a bright red race car on it, and one get well soon balloon with an assortment of flowers.

This time, nobody gives him a second glance when he walks past the nurse's station on his way to Dimitri's room, and he breathes a sigh of relief.

He knocks on Dimitri's door again and let himself in, smiling as he does.

"Happy birthday!" he says, holding up the balloons and cookies as he enters the room, "Or, well, late birthday, anyways."

Dimitri had been watching daytime television, and was flipping through the channels boredly when he hears the door open. He had sort of hoped Owen would forget about him, but here he was, because of course he didn't.

"Oh...hey," he says, forcing himself to smile despite the sour feeling in his gut, "You came back."

"I said I would, didn't I?" Owen says cheerfully, making his way into the room and handing over the box of cookies, "They're chocolate chip." He pulls the chair back over to the bed and sits down, tying the two balloons to the hand rail on Dimitri's bed.

"There! I, um, I wasn't sure which one to get, so I just got both," he says, gesturing to the balloons and then looking expectantly at Dimitri, "Well, aren't you going to try one?" he asked with a warm smile.

Dimitri feels sick to his stomach, overwhelmed as he takes the box from Owens hands. He looks at the container for a moment, feeling certain he's going to throw it up if he eats one, but opens the box anyway, and starts eating one of the cookies.

"Wow," he says, his eyebrows raising in genuine surprise, "These are...wow, they're...really good. Uh...thank you...so much man, I never..."

He was going to say, "I've never had anyone do something like this for me," but he decided that sounded too pathetic, so he coughs instead. The fact that the cookies tasted so good somehow made him feel even worse than before.

"You...want some?" he says, offering him the box, "I mean...there's no way I can eat all these.

Owen nods and takes one, and the taste just makes him miss his mom.

"It's... my mom's recipe. She's a great cook," Owen explains with an absent smile that fades quickly, "I miss her a lot, living out here." He flushes a little after admitting that, glancing guiltily up at Dimitri.

"Sorry, you don't need to hear about my problems," he says with an awkward laugh, finishing his first cookie and reaching for another.

"No, no, man, it's...fine. Totally fine," he says quickly, shoving the rest of the cookie in his mouth nervously. Honestly, he didn't know what he was going to do if this guy started getting choked up about his family on him.

"You can...blow off some steam if you want," he offers, out of guilt, "I'm...here to listen, you know. Don't have anything better to do."

"Really?" Owen says, blinking, touched that someone he knew so little would care about what he was feeling, especially when Dimitri was the one in the hospital bed.

"Well, it's not... A big deal, really, just... Growing up, it was just me and my mom, and she's... really important to me. In high school I wanna gonna get a football scholarship and go to college, but then they found out about my powers and kicked me off the team..." Owen scrubs a hand through his hair, losing track of his thoughts, "But then, um, they wanted me to be... a superhero. So here I am," he shrugs, "It's just... hard. And some days... Some days are harder than others." His eyebrows furrow and he frowns as he holds back his emotions, thinking about the fire.

"Damn," he says, looking down uncomfortably at the box of cookies, "That...sucks. I'm...I'm sorry, dude, you're like, young, and that's a lot to put on someone...right out of high school."

He didn't think the guilt could weigh any heavier on him, and he knows what he means when he says "some days are hard."

"Look...you...can't blame yourself for what happened," he stammered, "Those people were...they set themselves up for it. I mean, she could have killed everyone in the building, she would have, and for all you know she wouldn't have regretted a thing. It's...the whole thing's a damn shame, but you can't...beat yourself up over that kind of person."

Owen looks away and shakes his head, his expression grim.

"I don't believe that. No matter what mistakes she made, she deserved better than that. I knew better than that. I should have... Tried to talk to her, calm her down, get... get her out of there, at least." He sighs, looking back over at Dimitri.

"She was a person. She deserved better. Making a mistake doesn't mean you deserve... to die. Or that I was right in what I did."

Edited 2015-02-26 00:39 (UTC)

Dimitri shakes his head, and scrubs his hands over his face.

"You didn't mean to kill her," he mumbles into his hands, and he was sure he was going to throw up the cookie now, "You were defending people, and she fought you too hard. It can't be your fault. You were trying to do the right thing."

He shakes his head again.

"If it's anyone's fault but hers, it's--"

He needs to tell him, he's decided that already, but he can't get the words out. This guy was literally a symbol of everything that was good in the entire world, and here he was taking the blame for something that Dimitri was partially responsible. Dimitri was usually able to sidestep and handwave his own self hatred away, but this guy was making it impossible to ignore.

He steeples his fingers over the bridge of his nose and sighs.

"...It's my fault," he chokes.

"Your fault?" Owen echoes, stunned and confused, "Don't be ridiculous, Dimitri, you were just a bystander. You couldn't have done anything." He reaches out to gently touch Dimitri's arm, "There's no way it was your fault."

Owen appreciates the sentiment of Dimitri's encouragement, but he doesn't believe it for a second. If he'd been more together, if he'd been better, she wouldn't have died. That's all there was to it.

Dimitri jerks his arm away from Owen's comforting touch, not feeling deserving in the slightest.

"No, man, you don't get it," he laughs, shaking his head. He could feel his eyes starting to well up, and he cursed himself for it. He can't look at Owen, not any part of him, and he traces his finger over the flame tattoos on his wrist, his eye following the movement of his hands instead.

"I wasn't a bystander," he says, in a firm but shaky voice, "I was...there to rob the bank. I was helping her. I can...mess with people's heads, make them do things. I was making the teller hand me the cash while...she kept everybody down. But she...got too aggressive. I tore off my mask and tried to run to escape the fire, fell down some stairs and broke my leg. Blacked out." The tears were flowing freely now, and he sniffs, trying to keep his voice steady.

"If I hadn't been such a fucking idiot and offered to help her maybe she'd never have tried to fucking rob a bank in the first place, but--"

He puts his face in his hands, crying openly, now.

"I got her killed. And I could have gotten more people killed if you hadn't showed up. Please, just...tell them to take me in."

Owen stares with his mouth open, completely floored by Dimitri's admission. Before he can react to anything else, his heart starts to ache at the trail of tears on Dimitri's face, and he scoots his chair closer to the bed so he can reach over and rub Dimitri's back.

"Don't cry, Dimitri, it's okay," he says automatically, even though he realizes a moment later that it's definitely not okay, "I mean, not that... That's okay... I mean, if you think her death can't be my fault, then it can't be yours either. You didn't... You didn't attack anyone. And... obviously you feel bad about it." Owen's still rubbing his back, but he looks up, still processing everything Dimitri had said.

"You can... mess with people's heads?" he asks slowly, carefully, "What does that mean? You have powers?"

And, he's hugging me now, Dimitri thinks to himself as he continues to blubber, because, of course he's that nice of a guy.

He straightens up a little at the question and looks out the window, nodding his head.

"Yeah," he says, rubbing his nose, "Mind control. Something like mind control. Are you...you're gonna turn me in, right?"

"Um... I... yeah, I think I have to," Owen says regretfully, "It... Might be better if you do it, though. I can... I can help you with it." His heart aches a little at the prospect of sending this guy to jail, this guy who's heart was in the right place, even if he had made mistakes. Owen was starting to really like him, though.

Then something occurs to Owen, and he pales a little. He remembers the things the other heroes had told him after he'd joined up, stories about people with powers and less than clean histories, who'd been subjected to experimentation and a myriad of other horrible things.

"You should, maybe, ah... Leave out your... Powers," he says quietly, internally hoping his mom never finds out he advised someone to lie to the police, "Sometimes it's... better if nobody finds out. And you... You obviously use it sparingly, because you could have... Made me forget. You could have made me forget yesterday and I never would have come back. But you didn't."

"Well, as far as that goes...how do you know I didn't just want to see you again?" he says coquettishly, and immediately hates himself for it. He chastises himself for it mentally as he clears his throat, and ponders what Owen had said. He didn't partucularly want to tell more lies during his attempt to come clean, but he'd heard about some nasty things that had happened to powered people who had done time.

"All right," he says, nodding and wiping his eyes again with the flat of his hand, "I've...I've gotta do something, even if it means jail time, these people...deserve to know what I did to them."

Owen laughs a little, squeezing Dimitri's shoulder, glad that he still has a sense of humor in the face of a situation like this.

"Yeah," Owen says, his smile a little sad, "I think that's the right choice. I'll... I'll miss seeing you around, though."

Owen sits back, contemplating this, then runs a hand through his hair.

"I'll tell them what you told me, too. Well... most of it. And I can leave out the crying," he says with a laugh, "I mean, that you're apologetic and regretful... That, um, coming from me... It has to help, right?"

Dimitri shrugs, staring down at his hands.

"I'm not sure I deserve the help," he says, with a sad laugh, "But I guess we'll see."

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