A couple of laps. Tarin was pretty sure that Lee meant a couple of laps around all of Central Park. Yeah, this was going to be interesting. That and the fact that he generally didn’t run with anyone when he went for runs.

The trip back to the shop didn’t take much time and soon enough Tarin was changing into some shorts and and a dry fit shirt. A few more minutes and he’d grabbed his shoes and made his way back out to the kitchenette.

The lack of the last chair was still frown-worthy, but Tarin focused on getting his shoes on and tied before standing up.

”Ready? I figure I’ll let you lead the way…though I’ll bet you’re going to be quite a bit faster than I am right now too.” . His usual pace wasn’t half bad if Tarin did say so himself, but with what Lee had mentioned previously…she was probably faster.

It didn’t really take long to get to the shop, that had kind of been the whole point when she had initially chosen the apartment. But at least this time the walk there was much more comfortable.

As Tarin went about grabbing his clothing and getting changed, Lee remembered about the scrambled eggs they had eaten here the previous morning. And the dishes that hadn’t been washed. But with Tarin just changing his clothing quickly, she realized she wasn’t going to have time to wash them. Not right now.

But maybe later today, when he was grabbing stuff to bring to the apartment.

So instead, Lee just leaned against the counter to wait.

When Tarin said that he was ready, Lee straightened up, moving with him to the door. Laughing when he talked about how she’d be faster than her. ”Normally when I would run, sure,” Lee replied as they made their way out of the shop and toward the park, Lee leading them toward an entrance further west than she would normally use from the shop. ”Not today, though. My energy is almost back down to normal levels.

“Plus, I can’t really run that fast here anyway, even when I have the energy to. That’s why I have to run so far to burn it off. But I think I have an idea where we can run without it being too far for you.”

”Lead the way.”. Tarin said and followed Lee as she guided them to an entrance to the park that Tarin hadn’t used before to run.

That was good, seeing the other entrance from across the street had done funny things to his stomach and his heart had jumped up into his chest. Neither of those things was conducive to a good run.

Once they hit the trails in the park, Tarin kept true to his word and let Lee take the lead, starting the tracker on his watch to monitor their distance and pace.

Tarin didn’t know who was setting the pace, but it was comfortable enough and after the initial struggle that always went along with the beginning of a run he settled into a place where he could breathe and think.

This was a part of the park that Tarin had visited before, but wasn’t particularly familiar with, thank goodness. He didn’t think he was ready to run across a place that would jog his memories of the last few weeks.

Running was cathartic and tension Tarin hadn’t realized he’d been holding onto the last few days began to melt away with the rhythm of his footsteps on the path. Normally he’d have listened to music, but he’d left his ear buds in his pocket when he realized Lee wasn’t wearing any. It was alright, the sun was starting to come up, turning the park from dark silhouettes to a grey landscape as the birds began to sing.

Yeah. This had been a good idea.

Getting into the park, Lee was confused for a moment as Tarin started fiddling with his watch. Then she realized what he was doing. Right…because most people kept track of their workouts and runs to see if they were getting better over time. The only time Lee worried about anything like that was for her skill in sparring. Everything else was variable because of her energy, so why bother trying to track it? There was no way for her to really quantify her energy.

It was strange though, Lee couldn’t help but think as they started running. She had very rarely ever run with someone, and the few times that she had, she had done after running into them in the park. Some, quite literally. She had never actually started a run with someone before, had never planned to run together with anyone.

But despite the strangeness that was caused because this was a novel experience, it…was rather comfortable. Nice, even. And with the sun actually starting to come up now, Lee was able to enjoy the park in a way that was quite rare when she ran. She could look around and actually see the grass and trees, could see the few other people in the park from a distance. She didn’t need to rely on her siphoning to know if there was a person close to her because it was dark.

Glancing over at Tarin periodically as they ran, Lee noticed that as they went further into the park, as they ran longer, he was actually starting to look relaxed. More relaxed that she could remember him ever looking. Not that she had a long history of seeing him, experiencing his moods, but it was good to see. Very good.

It had been less than 48 hours since she had first found him in the park, less than 24 hours since the merge had ended. Yet here he was, running through Central Park, of all places (though she was purposely directing their path in very specific directions), looking relaxed.

Lee couldn’t help the small smile that curled her lips as she turned her eyes to the path again. This was good. This was very good.

Lee was a good running partner. Despite the fact that she’d said she was almost back to normal as far as her energy levels were concerned, she didn’t seem to have any trouble keeping his pace. It was a decent pace too, not the fastest he’d run, but Tarin didn’t know these trails as well as his old path and he was pleased with how the run was going.

The sun was almost fully up now, and it was clearly going to be a warm day in New York City, Tarin was glad he’d opted for shorts over sweats because he’d have cooked.

Really settled into the rhythm of the run, and a little past the halfway point, Tarin gently probed the part of his brain that he’d so carefully been keeping separate from everything he was doing. He was eventually going to have to deal with what was there, but it still felt so very dark. Tarin knew now that he hadn’t been responsible for what had happened, not in any real way, but the guilt he still felt over the whole situation was close to overwhelming if he thought about it for too long. Bits and pieces, small steps forward…that was the best he was going to be able to do.

Instead he thought about how lucky he’d ended up being. Lee had just so happened to recognize the signs of what was going on, and had taken the exact path through the park that night that led her to him. What had happened since then had been nothing short of insane.

Tarin still wasn’t sure why Lee was so keen on helping him beyond what she’d done in the first hour after she’d found him. He was a practical stranger, even now…but sometimes when she looked at him or said something…

It had to be the similarities between him and the Tarin of this world. This Tarin knew that they existed, he’d heard stories of people being so similar that it was hard for people to tell them apart who had known them for years. According to Lee, there wasn’t much danger in that because he didn’t look anything like the original Tarin in the physical sense. Tarin found himself curious, and wondering if it was something he could ask about eventually. Would it be one of the things that made those invisible shutters come down in Lee’s eyes and made her immediately find something else to look at or leave the room?

Time would tell, Tarin supposed. His watch vibrated, 2 miles down. This felt like one of those days where he thought he could run forever. It happened sometimes when he got into the right mental zone and hit the right pace. Those were always good, productive days.

The pace that they were running at was decent. Almost as fast as when she would run when energized and there were people around. Definitely not as fast as when she could really let go and run, but those occasions were rare. And unfortunately, most times were not good, either.

She turned them down a path that would end up wrapping around, letting them make their way back the way that they had come. She wasn’t exactly sure how far they had made it, she’d never needed to actually track the distance when she ran and the conversion between kilometres and miles always confused her, but if she had guessed wrong, they could always turn around again. Or, possibly take another path.

But that was in the future, when they got back to the edge of the park again. Right now it was just running. She could feel a slight sheen of perspiration on her forehead from the exertion, something that she was definitely not used to when she normally ran and she unzipped her hoodie a bit more. Despite the early hour and the time of year, it was definitely too warm to have worn a hoodie when she actually needed to work during the run.

Was this how people normally experienced going for a run, Lee wondered. She could feel herself wearing out slowly, but it was in a good way? Not simply because she had burned off energy she had siphoned. It was…Interesting. She’d never actually run as an actual workout, run like this before. But it felt good.

Even if she now found that she was slowly falling behind Tarin a bit now. Her energy was definitely starting to wane a bit now, and she increased her siphoning a bit more above the bare minimum level it had been at. But there really weren’t enough people around, not at this time of the morning, for that to help all that much, and Lee quickly found herself a full pace behind Tarin now.

Reaching out, she tapped his arm, her breathing definitely heavier at this point than it ever really was when she ran. ”Slow a bit?” She asked as she unzipped her hoodie the rest of the way.

Tarin was so engrossed in the run, so completely caught up in how good it felt to just be outside, stretch his legs, and think that he didn’t notice Lee’s heavier breathing. He didn’t notice her starting to slow down, and he didn’t notice her actually start falling behind until she reached out and touched his arm.

Well that was entirely unexpected.

Slowing his pace until he was comfortably in step with Lee, then slowed the pace a bit further so that they could start to cool down. 3 miles hadn’t been a hard goal, just more of a guideline or limit.

He was sweating though, the morning sun warm and a little intense as it broke through the trees and lit the path.

”Looks like you were right on the money with your expectations. Tarin said, referring to when Lee had said she’d be ready to rest at some point this morning, ”We can stop any time now…” In fact, as he said, it his watch vibrated again to indicate that they’d finished 2.75 miles. ”In fact, it’s time to cool down..” It was only a little white lie.

Lee was glad when Tarin slowed his pace even a bit more than she had. This was…it was very strange for her to have to slow down like this when running, but this was a very different situation than she normally ran in.

When he spoke, Lee smiled, chuckling the slightest bit. ”I’ve had a lot of years to learn,” she replied, breathing just a little heavier than she was expecting it to be. ”It’s easier to guess right when I stop siphoning, though”

Lee nodded when she heard Tarin say it was time to cool down, focusing on her breathing. That was another thing she normally didn’t have to do when she ran, a proper cooldown because she never really got winded like this, or sweat from the exertion, when she was running due to excess energy. The closest thing to a cooldown she normally did was just the walk from the park back home.

But today, her energy had been pretty well back to normal when they had started running. Her normal, everyday functioning level of energy…

Lee grinned happily as they gradually continued to slow down. If she didn’t have more than a normal amount of energy, that meant that the run, the speed, the distance they had gone was all her. The only other time it could be said she had run in even slightly similar conditions was that night she’d run with Jacen so many years ago, and she had not performed nearly as well with him stopping her mutation from working at all.

The grin still on her face, Lee put her hands on her hips as she continued working on getting her breathing to calm the last little bit to normal, not realizing that as she moved, her hoodie slipped down her arm a bit, revealing part of the large black and blue bruise on her shoulder.

As they cooled down and worked to catch their breath, Tarin couldn’t help but notice that Lee was grinning. Not just smiling, but an actual grin that Tarin could feel mirrored on his own face.

Lee had a gorgeous smile, in fact when Lee smiled like that it made Tarin notice things.

First and hopefully inconspicuously he noticed the well fitting workout pants she had out on for the run. Then he noticed the cute way her hoodie was slipping off her shoulder to reveal the tank top underneath…and the absolutely massive bruise that was spreading over her back and shoulder.

”Holy shit Lee…” Tarin said with no small amount of shock and incredulity. Not even thinking about what he was doing as he reached out to move the shirt. He could see more of the bruise as he did so, and Tarin shook his head in mild self-loathing.

Well. So much for smiles. There was only one place Lee could have gotten that bruise.

”How bad does it hurt?” Tarin asked, then his eyes widened a bit, ”Is your head alright? Should you even be running with a concussion?”

God he was dumb. Self-centered and dumb. Lee had looked happy though, genuinely happy after the run. Maybe it was all okay?

This has been good, very good, Lee thought. She was still grinning as her breathing finally returned to normal and glancing over, she saw that Tarin was grinding as well.

Seeing that grin on his face, Lee corrected her last thought; this hadn't been a good idea, this had been a great idea. He looked happy. Because of past experience, it was strange, but Lee was glad to see him lol happy so soon after a merge.

”Holy shit Lee…”

The grin slid off her face as she looked at Tarin in confusion. What was he talking about? But he didn't say anything else. He just stared at her as he reached a hand out to her.

And pushed her hoodie further down her shoulder.

Any bit of the grin that had still been on her face instantly disappeared. “It's not as bad as it looks,” Lee said, but her eyes had dropped as she self consciously pulled the hoodie back up to cover her shoulder. ”And my head is fine. Well it's still tender to touch, but the headache is gone.”

Taking a deep breath as she zipped her hoodie up again as her eyes returned to his. “Really. It doesn't hurt nearly as much as it looks like it should.’

”It’s every bit as bad as it looks.” Tarin said, taking a deep breath and letting it out as his heart rate continued to slow. It kind of stopped slowing though, staying somewhere above where Tarin knew it should be and where it had been when they were in the middle of the run.

The way Lee dropped her eyes and looked away made Tarin’s stomach twist uncomfortably and he cursed again, shaking his head as he used the hem of his t-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face.

Her head was still hurt too, even if she wasn’t having any overt symptoms.

Dropping his shirt and planting his hands on his hips, Tarin sighed and ran a hand through his hair as Lee hurried to cover up the bruises.

”I knew I hit you hard…but I had no idea it was that bad. You should have gone to a doctor.” Tarin wasn’t mad, he was frustrated. ”What if you’d had a brain bleed? Have you been icing that?” he said, gesturing at her shoulder. He was not going to spiral over this, he was not. The last thing Lee needed to be doing was worrying about how upset he was that he’d] made her look like she lost a fight with a mac truck.

To be entirely fair, they had just ran almost 3 miles and it hadn’t seemed like the shoulder was hurting Lee.

Well now it was awkward again. It seemed like every time things started to calm down, something cropped up to remind him about what had happened. Tarin supposed it was the nature of the beast though.

Lee hadn’t even fooled Tarin for a moment about the bruise. But…he wasn’t freaking out about it. In fact, as she started to lift her eyes again, she saw that he was actually just wiping the sweat from his face with his shirt. Revealing quite a length of his well toned stomach.

Lee had seen much more on Friday night than what was briefly visible here, but she hadn’t noticed because there had been far more pressing concerns, such as the vast amount of blood she had cleaned off of his unconscious body.

This time, Lee most certainly noticed.

And by the time that her eyes had made it back up to Tarin’s face, there was a slight flush on her cheeks that hadn’t been there a minute ago.

”I’ve been icing it a bit,” Lee replied. ”Maybe not as much as I should have, but I didn’t even know the bruise was this big until last night.

“If the bruising is anything like when my collar bone was broken, the bruising will stop hurting for the most part in a couple days. It will just look horrible for what will feel like forever.”

Lee sighed as she looked up at Tarin. ”Ok, so maybe it is bad,” she finally admitted. ”But I also knew exactly what I was getting into and knew the risks before I had even left my apartment. And it might hurt more than a bit, but I’m fine.”

Lee kept talking and Tarin just gaped at her as she explained that this wasn’t nearly as bad as the time she’d gotten her collarbone broken. He didn’t even want to know.

”I’m going to start recording some of the things you say just so I can play them back to you and you can hear how absolutely wild they sound.” Tarin said, closing his eyes for just a moment before opening them back up and meeting Lee’s.

The small, mildly infuriating woman was talking again and he supposed it was a good thing that she was at least admitting that it hurt. She was still insisting she’d known exactly what she was getting into when she’d stepped in Saturday night, but at least she wasn’t pretending like it was nothing.

”Look,” he said, ”I know that, ‘helpful’ and ‘reliable’ probably aren’t words that spring to mind right now when you think about me…” neither were “stable” or “independent” but we couldn’t have everything, could we?
”And I know that you are capable and independent and a superhero and all of those things and that you can and have done this all on your own for a real long time.” Oh wow, he was on a roll.

”But, if the whole point of this whole thing is that you don’t think I should have to do all of this alone…then why do you?”

He paused for a moment then, hopefully to let the words sink in a little, ”You keep acting surprised that I’m holding it together as well as I am. I think maybe you’re going to continue to be surprised Lee…because I don’t think a whole lot more is going to change.” It still made him wonder what the other Tarin had been like in the aftermath of these merges. The ESB spirit had alluded that he led with the heart…whatever that meant…but right now all Tarin could tell was that he’d wreaked havoc multiple times and left Lee to pick up the pieces. ”Just…be honest about what I’ve done…what I’m doing. Part of this is me coming to terms with what happened, figuring out where I went wrong so it doesn’t happen again. Okay?” he sighed, frustrated again.

”I know I didn’t ask for it, but I also didn’t go out of my way to stop it…and there I also made mistakes when you got hurt. I’ve got responsibilities in this too”

”I’m going to start recording some of the things you say just so I can play them back to you and you can hear how absolutely wild they sound.”

Ok, yes, Lee knew there was a reason that Matt or her siblings knew next to nothing about these kinds of things in her life. But they were human and had lived completely normal human lives. Things were just different for mutants. Right? Because Slate hadn’t been shocked as though the events in Columbia or Romania were unbelievable (other than maybe the Tarin/Sebastian unicorn part). Jacen hadn’t thought that their actions at the Rockefeller building when they’d been hostages were that surprising; she thought she remembered him saying it was stupid, but he hadn’t been shocked, and Jacen wasn’t even a mutant.

WAS her life so absolutely out of control that she didn’t even realize how crazy the things that happened to her are?

Tarin didn’t stop there, he kept going, and Lee simply stood there mutely as she took in everything coming out of his mouth. Maybe he was right about him continuing to handle things with the merge remarkably well. Hell, they were in Central Park, had been here for long enough to go for a run. When this had happened before, he hadn’t been able to set foot in the park for weeks.

But he pointed out that she shouldn’t have to do this, go through all this alone, either. Except, she did. She was the rock after the merges that he clung to, that he had used to pull himself out of the guilt and horror of what had happened. She had been strong for Kevin when his father had disappeared.

And just about every time she had ended up crying by herself while people slept.

It just seemed so wrong to her that Tarin was expecting her to lean on him, to have him support her after the merge.

But he really did seem to be ok, all things considered. Lee’s bottom lip slipped out from between her teeth, she hadn’t even noticed she had been biting it, and she nodded as she looked up at Tarin.

The longer Lee stood there not saying anything, the more Tarin wondered if he’d overstepped in some major way. He went back through the logic behind everything he’d said.

Was it wrong for him to be so…okay? If he was completely honest with himself…he wasn’t okay. If he’d truly been okay then he’d have been a psychopath on the level of the monster that had been in his head. He wasn’t okay and he probably wasn’t going to be okay for a long time. He’d decided though, with Lee’s help, that he was going to continue to try though…so what was the point in wallowing in what had happened? If he was going to live, why would he live as a weight around the neck of the only person trying to help?

Did it make him sick that he’d been a part of the whole thing? Yes. Was he going to wake up screaming every time he had one of those nightmares? Probably. Did thinking about going back to the spot where Lee had found him in the park make him start sweating all over again? Absolutely. Was the utter depravity and trauma of the whole thing going to hit him at weird times like the elevator? Yep.

Lee was biting her lip again and Tarin wondered if she knew about the little tell. It was cute, but it was also a dead giveaway for when something was causing her serious thought.

Lee was thinking about what he’d said, really thinking about it. It made him smile just a little bit, not a vicious smile or a triumphant one, just a little smile that showed he was happy she understood what he meant. She nodded, and stopped biting her lip.

”Okay…good.” he said, bouncing just a little on the balls of his feet, heart rate finally returning to normal as the conversation calmed. ”Want to walk back to the shop? I need to clean up from yesterday, but I’ve still got some eggs and stuff I should use up before I end up back at your place. Did you hear from Rachel yet about when I need to be scarce? I figure I’ll get my stuff together then, maybe pick up a few things…I’ve also got ice, though we’re almost into the heat phase to get all that broken up.”

See. He paid attention. He could do things.