The Paths

[David Jacobs]

He met her look head on, looked right back into those navy eyes and saw so much lingering beneath the surface that David wondered if there was enough time in the world to learn everything there was to know about Fighter. He listened to her words, saw some truth in them but also knew his own truths, it was the very argument that he'd gotten into with Benji before the night that had changed things...except that night had only strengthened his convictions.

"What defines a family?" David asked softly, thinking back over his childhood and the past few years with Jack and the others at the lodging house and on the streets of the city. "I dunno Fight, it would break me to lose mom or dad but...it'd hurt just as much to lose Jack or one of the others." He didn't want to belittle her feelings and he hardly disregarded them, she'd experienced so much pain, he could see it in her eyes.

"I think we deal with what life hands us with the best that we've got. If we find people that help us through then that's good because family are the ones that you can count on to be there...no matter what," David stuck his hands in his pockets again because he felt the urge to reach out and touch her arm and didn't want to startle her again. "You got something special with Gwennie, that matters."

[Fighter Mallory]

Fight didn’t say anything because she knew that those were his feelings and she wasn’t trying to change them. She supposed for someone like Davey it was easy to let people in and to let them get close enough to the point where they were as good as family. That just wasn’t the way she was, it couldn’t be because of they her life was. Those types of people just didn’t make it in her world. She knew this for a fact, she’d nearly not made it when she’d decided to trust someone enough to let them get that close to her. So instead of speaking Fighter just gave him a shrug and took a deep drag from her cigarette. “Yeah..Gwennie’s as good as family.”

Although Fighter meant that it still didn’t mean the same thing to her as it would if she was actually family. She shielded Gwennie as much as she could and looked out for the girl hell Fight couldn’t count the number of times she’d gone hungry so that she could get Gwennie food. To her it was just natural because Brooklyn wasn’t safe for a kid and she figured the girl needed someone to keep an eye on her. But in Fighters mind it was what she would do for any kid because she knew what it was like to starve on the streets and she wouldn’t wish that upon someone else. Sure the kid was as close to Fighter as it was possible for someone to be, but being closer than others didn’t mean they were as close as people could be.

[David Jacobs]

David saw no reason to push the matter, clearly they felt differently when it came to these things and David could understand how it might be difficult for her to allow someone to get close, to be as close as her Uncle had been. He wanted to tell her that he would never hurt her, but the sentiment seemed trite and out of place considering how short of a time they knew one another, even of the sentiment were in fact the truth.

Instead he allowed them to walk for awhile in silence, allowing the comfort between them to linger before he looked over at her, studying her profile for a moment. "I hope you find reasons to smile, Fight." He said softly, the words slipping out before he realized them and he stared at the ground when he realized what he'd said, how it might sound before he turned back to look at her, straightening his shoulders. "You deserve it."

He glanced up the street and nodded in the directions of Romano's, "Come on, I'm getting hungry now after that walk."