Summary: Killing his squad left D'avin with "battle brain". But almost killing his brother and a woman he fell in love with left him much more messed up.

A/N: There's no happy ending in this story. Not even a hopeful one. And I do not promise that I would write more chapters, because trust me, it would only get worse, not better.

Warning for potential triggers: drug abuse, PTSD, self-hatred, self-destruction, overload of angst, hurt and lack of comfort.

Care about yourself.

Crush My Heart into Embers

"Please, tell me that you know I would never do anything to hurt you or John. Please, tell me you know that it wasn't really me.

"I do. Of course, I do. But it was me. And I can't be okay with that."

The words reverberate in his brain, repeating on a loop. "It was me, I can't be okay with that, it was me, I can't be okay with that, it was me..."

What did she mean? Of course it was her, but she was only doing what was necessary, she can't possibly blame herself for that?

D'avin gets up, because it's easier to think about what she said, what she feels, than have that other thing run on a loop in his head. "Thank you, John," and stab.

No...

"Dutch?"

She stands in the cockpit, her back to the door and she doesn't turn around when he calls her.

"You can't..." he starts and chokes. Like words have thorns, but he has to. He takes a breath and forces out, "You can't blame yourself." Her head twitches, as if she's about to look at him but can't make herself complete the motion. It's okay. She doesn't want to talk to him. She doesn't have to, she shouldn't have to, but he clarifies anyway. "What you did, you had to. You had to defend yourself and you didn't... You didn't hurt me beyond what was absolutely necessary to incapacitate me. And you... you didn't have a choice." He hopes she gets it.

Her head twitches again, the gesture complete now – she shakes her head. "I know." She surprises him with that simple statement. "Not what I was talking about."

"Then what?" escapes him. He thinks, gears in his head turning. It was her, she can't be okay with that. With what? "Earlier? That you were killing people? For Khlyen? That..." He isn't sure. "Wasn't your fault either." He wants to believe that, but she said that whatever he did, she did a hundred times worse, and hesitation is evident in his voice.

Dutch turns finally, her face open – hurt – and yet closed, accusing.

"Not what I'm talking about either. And really, D'avin, I don't think we should discuss it now. You need to clean yourself and take those clothes off."

She looks down at his shirt and pants and true enough, they are soaked in blood, so are his hands. John's blood. He wants to vomit.

He doesn't. Gets cleaned up, changes his shirt. Then he sits on the edge of his bed for as long as he can, until the stirred up energy inside his body is too charged to take it. When his chest feels like it's about to explode he stands up and starts pacing up and down his tiny quarters. Up and down, up and down, up and down. Five steps, turn, five steps, turn, five steps, turn. When that isn't enough, he goes down to the cargo hold in hope to punch the bag, but there's blood on the floor and he had cleaned it but it's right there again and he knows this floor will never be clean, so he runs back to his quarters and continues pacing, up and down, up and down, up and down.

Dutch knock at his door in the morning.

"You up for a warrant?" she throws at him and it sounds like salvation.

It's a simple one. Level two, a rebellious Qreshi teenager who escaped his home in an attempt to manifest his freedom from his parents. They find the kid in fifteen minutes, chase him to one of Leith harvest sites in two hours, argue with the owner for some five minutes, before the owner realizes that the warrant is legit and almost faints at their feet from terror that he tagged one of the Nine. The warrant doesn't state what should be done to the owner, so Dutch and D'avin tell him he's forgiven. The teenager is happy and grateful that he got saved after just one day of labor, via a comm-link he promises his worried mother that he will never do anything as stupid ever again, the trip back to Qresh takes another two and a half hours, they are given a nod of acknowledgement and some joy as a reward and an hour later they are back in space, alongside the med-ship where Johnny is being treated.

"Thought we were going back to Westerly," D'avin mutters.

"You said you would go see him today." Dutch speaks to the screen, but he knows the words are meant for him.

"I will."

D'avin is convinced he should leave. It would be better for everybody, they wouldn't have to look at him, to be reminded of what he did and he... He doesn't deserve better anyway. Even if, rationally, he knows it wasn't him he knows he didn't do it.

Memories say otherwise.

Before he goes to see John, he meets Dutch in the cargo-hold; she's doing sit-ups.

"Do you..." words hurt again, like Jakk smoke. "Do you want me gone?" he fully expects a yes, but he needs to hear it, because he isn't sure. Her behavior isn't clear enough to read her intentions; she doesn't speak to him avoids him and that's understandable, that's what he would have done if situation was reversed, probably. But then, she worked a warrant with him and now she wants him to go see John. If she wanted to keep John safe from him, she wouldn't have reminded him about that throwaway promise.

Dutch freezes in an up position, knees drawn up, elbows hanging on each side, palms next to her ears. She looks at him long, her face full of disappointment and anger this time. She lets her palms fall to her knees.

"If you want to hurt him, more than you already..." she pauses, blinks, corrects herself, "more than he's already hurting, then by all means, go."

Her hands go back next to her ears and her body reclines to the floor and comes back up, elbow to knee, right-left, in a quick movement. She huffs and D'avin isn't sure how much of it is exertion and how much is rage.

He doesn't want to hurt John and he doesn't want to hurt her. He never did.

"Johnny? Hey!" D'avin says when he sees his brother stir and squint.

He's been standing there, in the doorway to John's room for a few minutes, not disturbing his sleep, waiting. Horrified by how pale were his lips, how deep the lines on his face.

John recognizes his voice and turns to the side, pure terror marring his features for a blink of an eye. First, instinctive response, the only real one. He blinks then, huffs, smiles, says a soft, "Hello!"

And D'avin decides to play along, pretends he didn't see the fear, smiles as well and steps closer.

"How are you?"

"Sore. But I've been worse."

"Good," D'av says and realizes how inappropriate it sounds, "I mean, good to see you better," he corrects himself. "I'm sorry," escapes him, even though he promised himself that he would not remind Johnny he was the one who...

"Don't," John says, sincerely. "It wasn't you, I know that."

Damn it, D'avin didn't come here so his brother, his injured brother who almost died because of him, would offer comfort. He was supposed to comfort Johnny.

"I know," he says and he tries to make his voice sound genuine, confident. "But I am still sorry." Somehow, while saying those words, he takes a step forward, closes the distance between himself and his brother and his hand hovers over John's midsection, like he wants to touch, to confirm his statement, his apology – with a gesture.

And John flinches.

It's a minute motion, unintended and contained in an instant, but it's there. D'avin withdraws his hand, meets John's eyes and he knows, they both know.

"I'm sor..." John starts, but D'avin puts up his hand, stops him.

"Don't. You shouldn't have to. It's an instinct, you can't fight it and you shouldn't have to fight it. I did this to you. Even if I didn't intend to, it was my hand. It was my face that you saw. I should leave. I should just walk away, so you would never have to see me again."

"No." John shakes his head, lips firmly set. "No, we'll figure it out. You can't leave."

"I shouldn't put you through this."

"D'av. You didn't. It wasn't you."

But it was me! – almost escapes him, but D'avin doesn't want to, he can't argue with John. Not when John is like this, sick, pale, still closer to death than living. He nods, he agrees with his brother, even though his intestines twist and the void opens inside them, the vacuum and the images flash before his eyes making him dizzy, making him want to scream and cry and tear his chest apart with his bare fingernails.

"It wasn't me," he whispers instead, agreeing with Johnny. "I know it wasn't me." And Johnny nods and smiles and lets his head fall back to the pillow, exhausted.

He needs some rest, so D'avin leaves, but not before he promises that they will figure it out, that they have each others' backs and that they are brothers, no matter what.

As he gets out of John's room, D'av is shaking. His hands are rattling and his breath is hitched. Dutch talks to Pawter Sims in the corridor and then she passes him without paying notice, eyes already fixed on Johnny, a mixture of joy and worry evident in them. But Pawter's keen gaze lingers.

"You okay?" she asks once Dutch is out of an earshot.

"Yeah," Davin utters, then changes his testimony, "No." He grabs his elbows, curls in on himself to contain the shivers but it's no good. "Do you have some..." words spill from his mouth, "do you have any Copazenol. Here? Maybe it would be easier to get it?" He looks up at her face and he realizes he's begging, like some junkie, like a Jakk trash.

She looks at him up and down and her lips are twisted and he's not sure what's the emotion behind the grimace. "Copazenol?" she repeats. Of course she won't get it for him. She's made it clear, before, that she doesn't think the medication is doing him any good, that it's not going to treat anything, but he doesn't need treatment now.

"I just want it to make me calm," he explains, even though he knows she won't listen. "I just want to be calm long enough so that Dutch and John would believe that I'm okay. I want them to not worry about me. I want them to believe I'm fine," he repeats time and time again until he's not sure his voice is even audible. He should just pull himself together like he always had, but this time it is a task beyond his skill range. If he could only get that drug, it would give him a hold, a footing in that swamp he's sinking into.

"I'll see what I can do." Pawter's voice is rough, emotionless.

D'avin comes back to the ship before Dutch – she stays by John's side and that's good, that's where she belongs. He has a moment to himself. He sits in the lounge – one pill already in his system, a full vial in his pocket – and he can feel the drug working. Crashing waves of emotions subside, flatten out and in a few minutes he is left drifting. He doesn't fall asleep, a single pill stopped doing that to him a long time ago. He just sits there and time flows by him like molasses, sluggish, gluey, but not intruding.

When Dutch comes back he remembers to appear healthy, pulled together, and he makes his lips curl in a smile.

"Hey." He should probably say something more convincing, but every word is an effort.

"Hey." Dutch takes a chair next to him. She looks at her hands flat on the table. Her fingers are thin, long, shapely, fingernails well taken care of, despite her being around knives and guns all the time and working out, fighting, beating the crap out of people. They are short, but cleaned and... "Johnny says you want to leave," he voice is quiet and soft and the meaning of the words takes time to sink through the veil on his mind.

"He looks good." D'avin's lips form words. It's not the reply to what she said. And those are not the right words either, because Johnny looks everything but good, but D'avin wants to appear okay. Healthy. Pulled together. Dutch's eyes meet his, but D'avin can't seem to hold her gaze, her face is swimming when he tries to focus, so he looks away. "He's getting better, isn't he?" he searches for a confirmation.

"Yes he is," Dutch replies. "He got the best help available in the Quad, I don't really know how Pawter pulled that off and I'm not sure I want to know. I'm just glad that she was there. He's worried about you though."

"He shouldn't be!" It's not right. It's not working, why isn't it working?

"He's worried that you'll disappear again, D'avin. You can't do that. Do you understand? You can't just vanish on him, like you did before. You have no idea how much he missed you, how long he searched for you. What did you tell him?" The wall of words is too high to climb onto, D'avin's mind crashes against it and only the final question registers. He has to answer. He has to remember. He spoke to Johnny earlier.

"I said I would stay. I said we will figure it out. I said we are brothers."

A hand lands on his and it's heavy and gluey and it traps him at this table, immobilizes him, but he doesn't feel trapped, doesn't feel afraid, doesn't feel.

"You did?" she asks and he nods. He remembers to smile and muscles in his cheeks pull at the corners of his lips, making them curve.

"I am fine," he tells her. "It's gonna be okay. We'll figure it out."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"You sure you're okay? You seem-" she doesn't finish.

"I am okay. I am better. Johnny is better and I am too."

"I knew that seeing him would help."

She keeps squeezing his hand and he thinks that perhaps he should respond in kind. He looks at their fingers intertwined. Then he smiles again and nods.

"You want me to get us another warrant?" she asks.

And... "Yeah." Yes, warrant is good. Another way to keep his mind off things. He'll get through this. Right now he actually believes that he will make it out of this alright. Warrants to keep him busy, Copazenol when he can't push the thoughts away and to make him sleep at night. And occasional visits with Johnny.

"Seeing Johnny helped a lot." He nods and meets Dutch's eyes and holds them this time.

But when she walks away, he doesn't get up from the table, just stays there for a long molasses-filled time.

.end