collects_strays | time stoops to no man's lure

time stoops to no man's lure

When had he known where this road was going?

Not when Jack Crawford had pulled up to the house. He’d believed it when he said he didn’t think like that anymore, couldn’t do it anymore. Graham hadn’t thought about it in years. It wasn’t just the crimes themselves that he had let fade, gather dust in the recesses of his mind, but those long-drilled principles that had underpinned his imagination – blood spatter patterns, wound analysis, how to quickly scan police reports. Some part of him thought, as he’d entered the Leeds house, that he might look out into the darkness of that space, and finally see nothing looking back at him.

Did he know it then, as he cut Charles Leeds’s throat, yanked his son from under his bed, saw himself in the glass in Valerie Leeds’s eyes?

Or was it later, as he inventoried the Leeds’s possessions, came across a sewing box and a child’s glove with a hole in the thumb that Valerie Leeds had clearly intended to mend. It was a large house, with all the accoutrements and amenities of an affluent family; it struck Graham that she would not simply replace the glove. Mending clothes was something his father had taught him; now it was something he did for Molly and Liam.

He knew it was unhelpful, tasteless to see himself in Valerie Leeds. To see Molly in her. He knew he would do the same with the Jacobis, with the next family.

Three weeks. He could see their deaths so clearly, he’d felt a shade of the man who had walked through the house, smashing mirrors, alone with the dead. Graham thought on this man, and felt a terrible heat within him, but no face coalesced in his mind. No answer formed.

Molly hadn’t answered the phone. Graham knew they were likely out of the house, under the stars. They’d planned to watch the Geminids meteor shower in the waning light of the moon.

Unable to sleep, Graham considers another drink, but then changes his mind. He dresses, puts on his coat, and decides on a walk to try to clear his head.

The walk brought him, unexpectedly, to the Lake. It’s a better view than the motel room, but the lingering Caribbean warmth is unwelcome. He’d rather be in the cold, under more familiar stars. Still, he lowers himself onto a rock near the shore, hands tucked in his coat. His fingers brush the Leeds and the Jacobis, nestled in his pockets.

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It is a little while later that, should he be paying attention, light footsteps move evenly across the grass toward him.

Diana, wearing her usual bracers and some skirted leather armor, steps into Will's view, her smile passing across her face without staying long.

"Will," she says, voice warm, blue eyes searching as always.

"Would you mind some company tonight?"

He hears her approach, feels her presence before he lifts his eyes to her. Hers is a more welcome warmth.

"Hi, Diana."

There's a pause before he answers - he's surprised by her question, and realizes it's because in that moment, he wasn't feeling very alone.

"No," he says. "I don't mind at all."

She's certainly better company than the dead.

Edited 2025-11-11 02:26 (UTC)

"Thank you," she says, swinging herself up next to him in a deceptively easy display of physicality.

She doesn't sit close enough for her knee or elbow to brush against Will, or even his clothing, but the warmth of her next to him can still be felt.

Either she runs hot, or she's just come from vigorous physical exercise.

"It's a nice night. It always makes me wonder if there were ever people that lived here -- just here -- and what sorts of stories they might tell each other about the sky."

Edited 2025-11-11 02:47 (UTC)

He can feel her trying to steer his thoughts into calmer waters. And he considers that there's no ticking clock in here, that in here, he can let his thoughts stray without a cost.

Still, the closeness of her warmth makes him think of home, an ache that only swells as he turns his eyes up to the clear sky. Rather than try to press through it, Graham lets his imagination unspool around them, brings Diana back with him, snow collecting on the grounds, on the black trees nearby, the fir and spruce and northern white cedar of the forests that cover the Longfellow Mountains.

"Stories about the sky were born from practical needs," he says quietly. "Navigation, seasons."

His father had taught him Polaris, a few constellations, what he needed to find his way at night.

Diana spends a few moments in silence, leaning back on her hands to make it easier to look up.

And, perhaps, to spare Will the weight of her gaze, and the reflection he'd find there.

"Explanations of the unknown, too, in the occasional eclipse, or comet, or solar flare."

She smiles faintly, thinking of a bear, and a wheel, and an absent queen.

"Mankind always does love knowing why. Even if they have to invent it."

His mind flutters, unbidden, to Jack Crawford's voice. This freak is in phase with the moon.

Graham shakes his head, tries to clear it.

"How are you, Diana?"

"I'm -- "

She pauses, considering the question. On the one hand, she's physically hale and even hearty. The world isn't ending (for now), and none of the civilians in her immediate circle are under threat.

And yet --

"Recovering, I suppose. Hell is a difficult place to harrow, even at the best of times."

Graham looks over to her now, willingly taking her in - no obvious sign of injury on her, nothing lingering that he can sense. He knows she's not speaking figuratively.

(Maybe it's her influence that makes him look, but if so, he can accept that.)

"I'd expect so." His voice is even slightly inviting, like opening a door.

Diana turns to regard him in turn, from the tip of his chin to the tips of his toes.

"It wasn't my first time," she says, as if to reassure. "Though usually it's Tartarus. The Greek gods have a great deal of interest in my family. And I suppose we have an interest in . . . managing their excesses, in turn."

She's not smiling, but her voice isn't weighted by torment. She's just tired.

"I suspect you may be able to relate. Though not, I imagine, to the godsly interference portion of my story."

They do say Hell is other people.

Perhaps, in the past, his imagination would have woven a loud and frightening tapestry, full of black antlers and bloody wings.

But now, his mind goes very quiet. He sees Abigail Hobbs in the Palermo catacombs, watching him, her face half in shadow. did you know your world has demons -

"Maybe not so literally."

Graham watches her another moment, though he doesn't meet her eyes. "How do you feel about your - recovery?"

Edited 2025-11-14 05:47 (UTC)

Diana considers Will's question for a long moment, gaze going back to the sky, focusing on a zig-zag array of moderately bright stars.

Is it a lightning bolt? A hurricane? A letter in the alphabet of a distant planet?

How literal is any of it?

"The first time was certainly more draining. And the third. This was -- "

She presses her lips together, leaning forward enough and crossing her arms over her chest, contained and secure.

"This was sad. So many people trapped in their own self-hatred, tricked and beguiled into causing their own suffering."

Graham takes a breath, lets it out. "That is something I can relate to."

But like her, there isn't much weight in his voice. He only feels he has to acknowledge it, given how she's found him here before.

The literal notion of it still feels distant and abstract to him, and he makes no effort to clarify it. It's a comfortable space, even in this conversation, and helps him keep his focus.

"Do you worry about - bringing some of that back with you?"

Edited 2025-11-15 21:14 (UTC)

The sound of crickets in the night, and soft waves lapping against the sand feels louder, for a moment.

It would be worse, perhaps, if it were flies.

"I do," Diana says at last, still leaning forward, back a smooth strong curve against the stars' reflection off the water.

"I still have dreams that feel like nightmares, or that freely mix horrors with times of peace or joy. One turns into another with the slightest breath."

She exhales, turning her head to look at him, deliberately straightening her posture just a hair.

"I try to keep it my problem. I don't think that's always wise."

"It's - isolating," he says. "Gathers on you like rust, but it's hard to know where to direct it."

He knows Hannibal preyed on his tendency to isolate. He's also not sure there's anyone else on whom he could inflict the raw truths in his mind.

"It is isolating," Diana agrees, voice gone soft, while remaining weary.

"Even if you're all in the same line of work, or on the same island, as it were."

A breath, held for a long, long moment.

"Where do you direct yours, Will? I'm -- still figuring it out for myself."

He feels that breath in his own throat.

Graham swallows it down, and says, "I'd - tried to get away from it."

A non-answer he knows will be as good as an answer.

Diana lets the sound of the waves on the shore lull her for a moment, pulling her focus from her own pain and fear.

She shifts her body again, too, trying to resume her own open posture, even if she is still not ready to lean back on her arms. Nothing feels carefree now, and even the illusion is severely out of place.

"Is that what brought you here?"

"No, I just couldn't sleep."

He takes a deep breath, tries to stay still as she shifts position, feeling a restlessness in his own limbs with it.

"I was away from it," he says.

And there's a pause, as he tosses it back and forth in his mind. What does he expect he'll get from Diana - permission? Judgment? She'd never offered either readily.

Compassion, maybe for that more pleasant warmth to linger a little longer before he heads to where he knows he's going. Why should the cold stop what common sense couldn't.

Graham takes his hand out of his pocket, the photo of the Leeds family between his fingers. Wife, husband, two young sons - his eyes flicker up as he takes it out, it's harder to look at them, smiling, alive, than it is to imagine them dead. The moonlight catches on his wedding ring as he holds the photo out to Diana.

Edited 2025-11-20 03:16 (UTC)

The glint catches Diana's eye -- the ring, the symbol of Man's World that it is, the cultural meanings of it that she has come to understand -- and in a different world, perhaps they could have a cheerful conversation about Will's spouse, and how they met, and all the hopefully good things related to that.

But in this confluence of worlds --

The photograph.

"You knew them?" She asks, voice steady, if quiet. "If you're not away from it anymore."

"They're dead," he says. His eyes stay down, toward the photograph, but not really looking at it. "Second like it in just over a month. If the pattern continues -"

Graham lets out a breath. "About three weeks until the next one."

Edited 2025-11-23 02:57 (UTC)

The line of Diana's mouth sets, blue eyes narrowing with a well-harnessed anger.

"That is not a great deal of time."

Athena grant that it will be long enough.

"And yet -- how did this task come to you, Will? I can see -- " and here her gaze flicks down to the ring on his hand, " -- that your circumstances have materially changed since last we spoke. Significantly, I should think."

"I was asked."

He withdraws the photo, returning it to his pocket. "I was asked because they're desperate. It's like a superstition with them, that I'll see something no one else will."

Graham also can't deny the truth of it.

With a glance over to her, "Would you refuse?"

He only asks because he already knows the answer.

His very question sets a lead weight into her stomach, because --

Because --

Of course she wouldn't refuse. To say otherwise would be a lie, or would be to claim that Will is somehow weaker than herself, and more in need of protection.

And this, of course, is not true. The human spirit itself is incredibly resilient, and every person deserves to make all their own free, educated choices.

At the same time, one thing Diana has never, never been is alone. Not on Themyscira, not in Man's World, not in any of the times she's been to Hell.

Will, though -- sometimes he truly seems an island in the midst of humanity.

"No," Diana says at last. "I wouldn't. You and I are alike in that. But Will, I tell you this in all truth; I have never been in Hell alone. You shouldn't be, either."

You're not alone, Will.

He feels a silence press into him, after her words. He tries to think of Molly, how he'd longed for her in that empty motel room, imagined her with him, at the window, in the bathroom brushing her hair. But every time he draws her face, he sees the glass shards in her eyes, his own reflection in the shattered mirror, eyes watching in the quiet of that house. Like there's something wound into his heart he can't control, it feels unsafe to think of her. All these evils come from within.

"Diana, I -"

His heartbeat picks up. When had he known?

"I know I'll run out of time. I know I can't do this alone."

Edited 2025-11-27 03:45 (UTC)

Is it the increase in Will's respiration that clues Diana in?

Or is it the echo of reluctance, of loneliness, of something almost entirely else in his voice?

Or is it merely that Diana is the once-goddess of truth, and she's never been good at lying to herself, either?

"There are many sayings about 'the devil you know'," she says at last, sadness leaking into her voice like her chest is a cracked cistern. "Which one do you think this is?"

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