Chapter Text
David had just come off a nasty fight with a Paladin who had found him while he was sightseeing in Dubai, and though he had won, he was left physically and mentally exhausted and battered. The American jumper staggered down the hall towards his new apartment, the first one he had secured after Roland destroyed his last in New York a few months back. It had taken him weeks to safely find a new home that he was pretty sure the Paladins had not traced, taking into account all the knowledge he had acquired during his partnership with Griffin about staying off the grid.
Griffin. David’s shoulder sagged in depression as he thought about his betrayal of the only person on earth who could understand him, the one person who he trusted. And yet when everything started to fall apart, David only thought to save himself and Millie. He didn’t even have the decency to kill Roland when he had the chance, something that would have made Griffin happy. Instead, he had left Griffin to fend for himself. Actually, he left Griffin to die. And every day he had to live with that.
And the consequences? Millie left him because of the extreme guilt he carried, the Paladins were aggressively pursuing him for threatening the life of Roland, and even his mother was no longer protecting him. And Griffin was gone.
It took a few seconds for his tired brain to register the postcard taped to his front door. An old faded postcard with two men standing with a loaded down mule, a few words of Russian along the bottom. David stood there uncertainly, chewing his lower lip. Checking the hallway in all directions, David reached out and carefully peeled the postcard from his door and flipped it over to begin reading the carefully small printed text.
TO: Mr. David Asshole Rice
ADDRESS: Planet Earth
You fucking ass. Seriously. YOU. FUCKING. ASS. You beg me to help you and then you abandon me to die in Chechnya in the midst of a war zone? All for what? Millie? Love? Was it worth it in the end? You never even checked to see if I survived. I know because after I got free from the cables, I hung out for a month to see if you’d come back and you never did. I hate you so fucking much. You’re worse than the Paladins. They want to kill me because I’m a Jumper and it’s part of their Holy War. But you – you’re a Jumper and you betrayed me, me – one of you own kind, probably the only other Jumper alive on this planet. I actually thought you were my friend. You ass. You donkey. You wanker. You fucker. You’ve got a new war on your hands and I’m the enemy. You think you can survive against me? You’re in deep shit now, and that’s literally, not just figuratively.
There was no signature but it was obvious that it was Griffin. And he was perfectly right to call out David this way, entitled to his anger and hate and need for revenge. And for all the words cut at David’s broken heart, at least he now knew that Griffin had survived and was still alive out there somewhere. David shook his head, sorrowful tears starting to pool in his blue eyes as he opened the door to his apartment.
As the wretched scent hit his nose, his eyes began watering frantically and David started choking at the noxious smell engulfing him. Trying to walk towards the kitchen to get some tissues, the footing under David’s feet went slippery and he skidded a few feet before he spectacularly wiped out and landed painfully on his butt. Wiping at his eyes frantically and keeping his nose covered with his shirtsleeve, David finally managed to get a good look at his new apartment, and groaned in sheer disbelief at Griffin’s handiwork.
Every surface of David’s home was covered in layers upon layers of horse shit. And probably donkey shit, mule shit, zebra shit, and every kind of equine feces from around the world. Mounds of steaming fresh wet droppings, piles of what appeared to be balls of dried old white dung, his newly painted walls repainted in a disgusting green-brown that was oozing downwards thanks to gravity, pools of liquid sludge … David turned away, gagging and trying not to vomit before realizing he was already completely covered in manure as a result of his fall. His spontaneous addition to the chaotic disgusting mess was barely noticeable.
Sitting there alone, David felt relieved about one thing. Griffin could have very easily set things up to kill David the minute he walked or jumped into his apartment. Given his arsenal of weapons, his training and his out-of-control paranoid emotions, Griffin had let him off pretty easy. Then again, David had played Chess, Checkers and Go with Griffin and those supposedly easy opening moves were always the first in a very long and progressively nastier battle that had Griffin ultimately winning. This did not bode well. David sighed, trying to work out whether he was better off abandoning the place as is, or cleaning it up before taking off to find a new safe house. Relatively safe, that is. Because one thing was for sure, Griffin was tracking him as an enemy target, and Griffin’s enemies always lost in the end.