fic - Jumper: Round 2, Gen
Title: Round 2
Fandom: Jumper
Pairing: Griffin!gen, David/Millie
Notes: See here my refusal to believe he's dead.


He gets cut down eventually. Most good samaritans won't leave a guy in a jumble of electrical wires. Griffin manages to bullshit himself into a nice hospital bed, where he camps out for a while, mostly for the free drugs and cute nurses, and tries to decide where to go from there.

He can't go back to his lair. It had been his fortress of solitude (key word solitude) until David burst in with his stupid superpal plan. Now Paladins would be swarming the place, touching his stuff and using his toilet and eating his food. At least he torched the place before he went. He rather have the product of ten years of blood, sweat, and tears spent tracking them to go out in a blaze than have Paladins poke their dirty fingers through it.

After some deliberation, Griffin jumps to France. He avoids any big cities, and especially stays the fuck away from Paris. So many Jumpers get caught because they can't avoid the tourist hot spots. Vegas, Tijuana, Rome. It's nice, for a while, and then he has the misfortune to walk into a pastry shop and find David and the girl sitting there.

He used to like France. It was one of the few places that didn't coddle morons. No more, it seems.

Meeting David for the first time had been incredibly underwhelming for him. Griffin had known a fair few Jumpers in his life. You run into them, when you're hunting Paladins. Some of them he'd even liked, but they'd all ended up dead in the end. The feeling of camaraderie with fellow Jumpers had worn off years before he met David, and since David had already ruined the perfect moment to take out Roland—a moment he'd been waiting for since he was five—he had no reason to stick around and make small talk, except that he kind of wanted to pick up that fancy French pastry fork and stab him in the ear. But that goes against the whole "don't draw attention to yourself" plan he's been coasting on since the morphine drip, so he swallows his vengeful impulses, turns around, and walks away.

He's not halfway down the block when David pops up in front of him. Damn his penchant for walking. Actually, damn David.

"Griffin! I... didn't expect to see you here."

"You expected me to be deep-fried by now, eh?"

"I couldn't let you hurt Millie," he excuses himself. Speaking of, the girl was hurrying down the street toward them, carrying the jacket David had left behind in his haste. Leaving things behind: that was another way Paladins caught Jumpers.

Griffin turns to her and says, "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, you should apologize!" David says.

"Sorry you've gotten stuck with him," Griffin finishes. ("Hey!")

Millie purses her lips and gives him a distasteful look. Clearly David filled her in on their global game of keep away. "David's very brave—he jumped my entire apartment, you know."

Oh, brilliant. "Hope you had renter's insurance."

"Look, my mother... she's a Paladin. That's why she left when I was five."

God Lord. David liked sharing so much Griffin was surprised he wasn't a Care Bear. "So?"

"So... we need to dismantle the Paladin's organization. And you know more about them than anyone..."

"Right. Because joining forces has worked so well for us in the past."

"We know where Roland is," Millie puts in to entice him. Griffin freezes.

"Where?"

"Grand Canyon."

"How?"

"I put him there," David explains.

"You didn't kill him?!" Oh, where was a pastry fork when you needed one?

"I couldn't," David says. "It's not in me to kill."

"Just leave people in high-voltage electrical towers." Griffin doesn't wait around for David's whiny comeback—he knows where Roland is, now, and he intends to kick his gray, wizened ass over the edge of the abyss. He jumps to the Grand Canyon Skywalk and peers over the edge, wondering how many crevices he'll have to search along the 277-mile long gorge before he finds him.

David comes charging through his jump scar, and Griffin wonders how young is too young to be getting stress-related migraines.

"Which cave did you leave him in?"

"I need your help."

"Funny, I'm not feeling inclined to help you."

"If you do, I'll tell you where Roland is."

This may be the smartest move David has made since pushing him into the live wires. Griffin crosses his arms and stares him down.

"Defeating the Paladins. It's what you want. Just, no blowing Millie up this time around."

"You shouldn't bring her with you," Griffin says darkly. "It may not be me denoting a bomb, but someone somehow is going to kill her."

David expressions hardens and he steps forward. For a minute Griffin thinks he is going to shove him over the edge, but then he holds out his hand to shake. "Deal?"

Griffin hesitates. So many times he has rebuffed people he could care about, not wanting to see them captured and killed.

Maybe the answer was teaming up with a guy he couldn't stand at all.

"Alright," he acquiesced. "But no more superhero allusions."