Archive of Our Own ^beta

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“You know what his last words were?” Lenny pops a bubble of chewing gum, before taking it out and squishing it against the grassless dirt that litters the park. All the old grass died, and the new grass won’t grow. The imperfections that would be covered by greenery are now on full display. Piss stains, cigarette butts, and Lenny’s biggest contribution, chewed bubble gum. Her cap sits backwards on her head while she squints into the sunset, covered in the orange glow of the afternoon. She fucking loves it here. David doesn’t. The whispers are loudest here, but he comes anyways because Lenny refuses to go to any other place. Tonight, the whispers speak soft words of malcontent. So soft that sometimes they get swept away with the light breeze of summer rolling through the city, sometimes they get smothered in the dust clouds that now wander the streets.

“Wh-who’s last words?” David looks behind him at the swing set, which squeaks and sighs on its own accord. For the past hour, it has been going through its motions, speaking when he looks away and playing dead when he casts his gaze towards it. When they were kids he wouldn’t go near it, despite Lenny’s generous protests. He had assumed that the whispers he always heard came from the swing. It’s not like he’s ruled it out yet, either. As he turns his back, it predictably rattles its chains in anger. David shakes his head.

Lenny turns to David in disbelief. “Have you been listening to me for the past ten minutes, man? My fucking dad.” She shoves him, hard. David recoils and twitches. Lenny has done that to him all his life, and he gave up explaining to her how mad it makes him years ago. Because she will never get it.

“Oh. Sorry, I guess. Wh...what were his last words?” David rubs his arm and leans away. The screeching from behind him gets louder, and so do the whispers, for a moment. And then Lenny speaks, which calms the beast down enough for David to focus.

“He said: Don’t be like your whore mother. And then he fucking died.” Lenny scoffs and spits at the ground. It lands in the dirt and slowly settles. And there it will stay.

“Oh.” David zips up his windbreaker and shivers. The sun is setting and taking all the warmth with it.

Lenny squints into the fading purple sun and her neck twitches in annoyance at his response. This time she decides to remain silent, probably because she’s not sure she could have given a better answer than ‘oh’ either. The last light in the sky becomes a thin line and then dips. The swingset stills.

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Chapter Text

Lenny Busker sits alone in the park, abandoned by her date a while ago. A few hours ago to be exact. It’s a cold night in Autumn and Lenny doesn’t exactly know what to do with herself, phone dead and face painted as if she had somewhere to go. In her lap, she grips her purse tightly and watches the dark horizon for threats. Her pepper spray rests at her hip, and occasionally scrapes against the wooden bench as she shifts every few minutes. What scares her is that no one is watching behind the bench, in the shadows. Behind her only sits a rusted fence with the eager branches of the bush it encases striving to escape from their prison. She decides not to risk the occasional glance behind her and only prays to...whatever, man...that nothing is lurking there. The only light illuminating anything at all is coming from the few street lights that line the park, their yellow light casting dark shadows of anything in the peripheral. Making shapes out of nothing, twisting them and animating them. She doesn’t stare at any of the shadow people for too long because she fears that will only make them more alive. So she rewards them with the absence of her gaze, and hopes that is enough to slow them down.

Well, she’s not alone. There is a man, there, in the distance. He sleeps beneath one of the other street lamps in filthy, ragged blankets. Lenny assumes that he’s not here to hurt her, just to sleep. He’s just sleeping is all, Lenny, She thinks. Chill the fuck out, alright?

Lenny, the all-star, She scoffs to herself. Sitting alone in the middle of a trashy, dirty park...helpless. Lenny shakes her head and glances at the sleeping man, suddenly worried that he could all of a sudden hear her thoughts and realize that she is helpless after all. Despite the pepper spray. Fuck, I’m sure that guy is high off pepper spray right now.

Beneath his own pathetic excuse for blankets, David lays on the cold hard ground. He lays as still as he can and prays for morning. They always go away when morning comes. Usually. Approximately. The sun will scare that woman away, and then he can move to another park tomorrow, so he’ll never have to know for sure if she’s real or not. What scares him most is that he can’t tell. It has to be both, she has to be both at the same time, because anything else and the rest of David’s reality would come into question as well. He’s not sure he could run away from that.

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Chapter Text

The cold has made its way inside the diner. It has seeped through all the cracks, somehow. Her blood feels chilled, even, as if her body forgot how to warm itself. Or maybe-is it summer? The air is seething with heat, cooking her alive like, like an oven on broil. The man in the booth north is wearing a down jacket and his wife is wearing a spaghetti-string dress. Lenny shivers in her seat and tries to find anyone else that she could possibly look at. Besides the disgusting people to the north, and besides David Haller, who sits right across from her.

She doesn’t want to look at David right now. He’s dark, and his eyes are sickening to look at. They’re bloodshot and his pupils are dilated. A few specks of blood remain on his face, littering his cheeks like freckles. He’s in an episode again, and he always is, but this one is darker. She knows what he did, and he doesn’t seem to mind the ferocity of the act. He’s almost excited by it.

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“Hey, David. Look at that guy. He’s fuckin’...he’s fuckin’ loaded.” Lenny points to a man outside the bar smoking a cigarette. The thrashing of people and music from inside is echoed on the street, and the electric lights reflect off a puddle of oil that has leaked on the pavement. He finishes his cigarette and throws it to the side. Checks his phone. He’s dressed in a suit with gold cufflinks that twinkle despite the absence of light.

“What guy?” David looks behind him and squints into the dark.

Lenny hits him on the arm, which jolts him. “That guy!” She uses her worn, too-small leather boots to grind an old plastic candy bar wrapper into the ground. “All I’m saying, man...is that even the hair from his nose could pay for our, uh…” Lenny giggles and hits him again. “Pastimes.”

David smirks horribly and laughs a little too loud. “Hey, Lenny….You ever read Robin Hood?”

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Chapter Text

The rain washes clean the city of New York, and the dirt, oil, and grime from the streets leak down the storm drains and into the great blue sea. Lenny stands in the middle of the street with no umbrella, and stares at the empty streets. Once busy and alive, the streets of New York are now entirely empty, if she could believe her own eyes. Which she’s not sure she can. The only things moving in the silence of it all are the styrofoam cups and empty chip bags that got picked up with the water. The only signs that people were once here, unless she made those up too. Her hair is soaking wet, and it directs water down the back of her shirt like a spider crawling down her back.

The funny thing is, she woke up to the honking of cars, to the bustle of the living. Her walls were too thin to block out sound, and she was mostly used to it by now. But with the rising sun came entirely new levels yelling and screeching from below. The persistent honking of horns successfully stopped her from going back to sleep. It was like everyone in New York was yelling, screaming, pleading. So she laid there, listening to the muffled chaos coming from all sides, thinking about nothing at all. Until she got up and decided she would go out and end it all with her presence. Once she made an appearance, everyone would finally find the time to shut their traps, and she could get something done. Anything. Fuck.

And they did. But not in the way she expected. The banging and shouting continued all the while as she hurried down the steps, hastily putting on her coat along the way. She jumped off the last step, and caused an explosion of rainwater from the puddle below everywhere, up and down her pant legs included. The sounds and the people along with it vanished before the water could hit the ground again. She was left with only the beating of rain like drums as it pummeled the ground below. After that, a few minutes of kicking down doors and screaming her lungs out proved what she was already sure of: she was the last person on Earth.

For hours, or perhaps days or months, Lenny stands there, waiting for something to happen on it’s own. She waits, specifically, to wake up in a mental hospital, tied down and locked in a room to die there. She waits for this to all be something that she made up to escape from the reality of the real word. If it is a world within a world, it’s good. Well-made. It’s not going away anytime soon. And if it’s real after all….

Lenny shifts her gaze to the clothing store that sits waiting down the street. As if a sign from god, the door swings open and cracks against the side of the store, sending a shockwave of new sound down towards her. She saunters towards it, fully intent on taking everything she can carry and high on the realization that the world is now her play-toy. Fuck, people have fantasies like this. SHE has fantasies like this. Laughing, she speeds up, almost slipping on the oily rain water that covers the concrete in a thin film.

“I found you.” Comes a voice from behind her and she keeps running, because whatever is behind her is only a distraction. A dummy, a test. She knows what she’s doing. She doesn’t need anything else but that knowledge, and she never has. Fuck the rest.

As she reaches the door it slams shut, the force of which causes a large crack in the glass door. Each second it grows larger, yet the door seems to hold together. The sound of the glass breaking itself still echoes through the streets as the voice speaks again, closer this time. Almost breathing down her neck.

“I found you, Lenny. It took me so long.”

That makes her angry. Whoever’s standing there better have a good ass reason. She turns around and a man is staring back, eyes wide, brown greasy hair dry despite the rain that has flooded everything else around him.

Lenny steps back, and she scoffs, balling her fists up preemptively. “And who the fuck are you?”

The man laughs and the crack in the door snaps again as it expands slowly but surely. “I’m David Haller. And I’m here to bring you back home. We’ve got a job to do.”

Lenny stares at him with unmasked fear in her eyes. “I don’t know you. Did you do this? What the fuck is your deal?”

David rolls his eyes as if he has the right. “I don’t have time to mess around and explain this to you. You DO know me. Just not in this time. This...realm. And my deal is this.” He smirks wickedly and offers his hand to her. “You come with me, and I’ll give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of. Everything in the world. Or…” He looks around. His laugh sounds twisted and wrong, the laugh of a broken man. “Or, I’ll leave you here in THIS world, which I’ve taken the time to empty out for you.” His hand extends further and she stares back down at it, frozen in time. “The choice is yours.”

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