Bruce Wainright has (onerule) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-06-30 14:35:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | batman, catwoman |
Who: Wren and Luke
What: Post-Alex death, part 1 of 3. Yes, 3.
Where: The hospital that asks no questions, then a cab, then Turnberry.
When: After the MK rescue I'm too lazy to link to.
Warnings/Rating: Aangst.
Wren had no real concept of being left at the jet while Luke went to clean the storage unit and discard Alexander’s body. She didn’t even register being left there, a blood-covered mess in a jet made of calm leather cream. She didn’t watch Luke go through the small plane window, and she didn’t realize she’d been left alone. And it was all likely for the best, because the terrors in her silent mind wouldn’t have allowed for it. She would have dragged Luke back, insisted he stay with her, that he not go where he could be caught, where Alexander was. Her fear would have overwhelmed any instructions Simon had issued. She would not have let Luke go, and it so it was likely a good thing, the shock that had taken over a mind unable to process the sheer level of fear she had experienced in that storage unit with Alexander. A worst nightmare come to fruition, and it left her quiet and still and unresponsive, a pale ghost tinged red with gore.
She remained like that until Simon arrived with MK. It was a testament to Wren’s current state of mind that she didn’t move away from her seat when the redhead was brought in covered in blood and looking more dead than alive. And, in truth, Wren did think MK was dead for a few seconds. The thought crossed her mind like a shadow through a nightmare - I killed her - and then it flittered away when Simon began to get MK settled. Surely, the dead weren’t fussed over like that, which meant MK might be alive. But the injuries, the state of MK’s clothes, the blood she was certain would never come out of those cream leather seats, the knowledge of what Alexander did to her, it made her fear for MK’s sanity once she woke up from whatever cocooned her. Wren cried, loud, gasping sobs and tears running down her cheeks, but she did not move.
The exhaustion from those tears lulled Wren into unconsciousness, the shock and the injury to the head finally taking over physically - low blood pressure, rapid heartbeat and finally, finally a blessing of nothing. She didn’t hear Luke return, and she didn’t regain consciousness throughout the short flight from the California border back to Nevada. There was nothing until the sharp, bright lights overhead lights of a hospital room, confusion as her head wound was stitched, and the scattered senseless voices of the doctor and nurse in the small, privately funded hospital. She tried to scream, to tell them she had done it, to ensure the blame not be placed on Luke, but she couldn’t speak, and unconsciousness came again, dragging her under without consent.
When she next awoke, Wren was in that same hospital room, a chart at the foot of the bed and her bloodied clothing replaced with scrubs donated from somewhere. They were white, the scrubs, and she touched a hand to blonde hair that was damp and clean of any remaining blood. She groaned when her hand encountered the stitches, but that didn’t keep her where she was. She sat up, swinging her legs off the bed and tugging the IV from her vein with a hiss as the room tipped and spun. Her bare feet touched the cold floor of the hospital room, and she forced herself to stand. She was a small thing, a pale haunt as she peeked out of her room a moment later, fingers gripping the doorframe as if it was her only lifeline. She had read her chart, and it did not declare her a murderer. It didn’t even say her real name, and she wondered who had paid for this lie, this safety. Simon? She didn’t believe him capable of forgiving murder, unless he really believed it was self defense.
She padded into the quiet hall, and she only needed to round the corner and take a few wobbly steps in the private ward to encounter MK’s room. Another name graced the door, but the shock of red hair inside most certainly belonged to her best friend. Wren stood there a moment, in the cool shadow of the other woman’s room, and she forgot to move entirely. She leaned against the doorframe until time stood still and the earth ceased to turn, and it was only the nurse in the next room sounding the alarm about her patient being missing that made Wren remember what movement was at all.
She followed the arrows on the walls to the waiting room, as the alarm sounded behind her in protest of her escape. Her fingertips trailed along the wall as she moved, sway and uneven steps as she rounded the corner into the cool room with its rows of chairs that awaited bad news with such endless patience. Her fingers clutched at her chest, looking for the safety of a ring on a chain that was not there, and her haunted, gray gaze moved over those chairs, seeking.
The last thing Luke had wanted to do was leave Wren on the jet alone, but he’d had no choice. He couldn’t bring her with him, not back to the warehouse, and talking to Simon had made him realize that leaving Alex’s body behind was a terrible idea. If not to protect himself, then he had to do it to protect the others; it wouldn’t be right for them to suffer for his sins. So he told her that he’d be right back, reassured her she would be safe, even though he was fairly certain she heard none of it, and headed back to clean up his mess.
Covering his tracks was nothing he hadn’t done before, and it should have been dangerously easy to slip back into the familiar motions of the past. Should have been, but wasn’t. The difference between then and now, see, was that then he’d been entirely numb to what he was doing. But now, now he wasn’t numb. He felt too much, emotions he’d learned to suppress over the years, and he no longer knew how to cope. Bruce delivered a constant stream of disapproval and guilt, which didn’t help, even though a small part of Luke realized that he deserved all that and more. His hands shook as he scrubbed the floor clean of blood, all that disappointment weighing heavily upon his shoulders. Thomas would have been disappointed, his parents would have been disappointed, Jack, Roger-- all of them. He was certain Simon would never look at him the same, and it felt like everyone knew his secret now, like he couldn’t hide it anymore, even though that wasn’t quite true. The worst, oh, the worst was the guilt, which came as he was disposing of Alex’s body. He didn’t regret killing the other man, no, he couldn’t, but he did regret the effect it would have on his brother. He knew Roger’s death, should it happen, would absolutely kill him, and he’d done that to someone else, regardless of how terrible Alex was and the damage he’d done to so many people. Your actions have consequences, Bruce told him. Every life affects another, and the loss of it is always felt. Whether it’s one person or a thousand, Luke, makes it no less significant. Yes, all of that was true, but Alex never would have stopped. Was he supposed to just stand by and let those he cared about suffer just to spare one miserable sadist? Maybe Bruce could do that, but not him. He wasn’t noble enough, wasn’t good enough... if that made one good. Perhaps it was the price one paid to be a man like him, and Luke just couldn’t pay it.
The tears came unexpectedly, and he wasn’t even aware of them until sobs began to rack his body and he had to physically stop, out in the middle of nowhere, and wait until he could breathe again. He cried for Wren, for MK, and most of all for the boy he’d once been and had lost somewhere along the way; the boy who’d wanted to help people, not hurt them, and had been so very determined to stand strong in the face of adversity. How long he remained there, he didn’t know, but he left behind no trace of himself or anyone else in the warehouse--only a lingering smell of something too-sharp--and by the time he returned to the jet Simon and MK were already there. He didn’t speak to Simon, couldn’t even look at him, but he did look at MK, and what he saw solidified his belief that killing Alexander had been something he’d needed to do. Maybe it wasn’t right, but what was right and what was necessary wasn’t always the same. Sometime in his absence Wren had lost consciousness, so he could do no more than sit with her on the flight back to Las Vegas, cradling her in his arms and wishing Bruce would just disappear for a little while.
Whatever hospital Simon had chosen didn’t want names, not real ones, for which Luke was grateful, and despite a small incident when he tried to break the jaw of the doctor who separated him from Wren he was eventually shepherded into the waiting room, where he could do nothing but wait. So he sat in a chair and did just that, his inability to keep still earning him some strange looks, but at least his clothes were clean and blood-free. That was good. He half-expected the police to show up, even though logically he knew it wasn’t plausible. Still, every sound made him jump, every distant siren made him want to run, to hide in Gotham and let Bruce take control, or maybe just go home. Home, to Gus, where he could pretend everything was okay. Home, a place he could never go again, to parents who were long since dead and buried.
Something made him look up, a sense that he was being watched, and for one heart-stopping, entirely insane moment, Luke thought that Wren was an actual ghost and she’d returned from the dead (even though she’d just needed stitches, just stitches, that’s all) to haunt him. He shut his eyes, pressed his palms almost painfully against them, and only reopened them after he’d counted to five. She was still there, and it was then that rational thought returned to him and he realized that she was there because she was still very much alive. “Wren,” he said, a cross between a whimper and a sob as he rose from his chair, but he only took a few steps forward before stopping. She knew what he’d done; maybe actually experiencing it like that was enough to make her hate him.
Wren watched as Luke closed his eyes, as he pressed his palms against his eyes, and her heart caught in her throat. Her thoughts weren't that far from his, not really. She'd done exactly what he'd asked her not to do. She'd gone to Alexander without calling him, and even though there hadn't been any other choice, not really, she still worried that it would break something, make him distrust her, or blame her, or think she was too much of a liability. And then there was the fact that if she'd just gone, if she'd just taken the water and let Alexander drug her, well, Luke could have still found her eventually, and then maybe he wouldn't have had to kill Alexander in the end. She thought, maybe, that what she'd done to the dead man had changed things for Luke, changed how he saw her, and she thought his reaction to seeing her was indicative of that.
By the time he reopened his eyes, she had leaned her shoulder against the pristine white hospital wall, letting it keep her upright. The pounding in her head only eclipsed by fear of the hatred she might see in his eyes once he opened them. In the end, she just stared as he sobbed her name. There were tears wetting her cheeks, but she didn't notice them at all, too caught up in the expression on his face. She stared, and she wished she could do something to make that whimper go away, that sob, the sounds of pain she wasn't actually familiar with from him. She realized, then, that this might not have been easy for him. It was a slow dawning, like everything else since the storage unit. She assumed he had become numb to it, to killing. She'd been trying to keep him from it because she perceived it as an addiction, something that brought him pleasure. But this wasn't pleasure on his face, this was nothing like pleasure.
She watched him take those few steps forward with her breath held, and she didn't breathe for a few seconds after he stopped. She blinked, and she saw Alexander's face after he'd been shot, and that was enough to move her away from the wall. She took an abrupt step forward, then another before she swayed and hand to reach out a hand to catch herself before she crumbled in the waiting room. No, no, she had to be strong. It was a new mantra, one born in the last few seconds as a new realization took over her previous beliefs. "Hi," she managed, but with the distance between them it was just a soundless movement of lips, a whisper in the anesthetized room. Behind her, the alarm continued to sound, and the nurses called the fake name from her chart as they peered into the ER rooms, but she didn't think to turn. "I want to go home," she managed and, possibly, it was even more of a whisper than the greeting from a moment earlier. She should stay. She should stay for MK. She should stay and let them poke and prod at her with needles, but she just wanted to go home. And home, just then, wasn't a place. It wasn't the huge and empty Turnberry Place condo. It was just somewhere safe, somewhere not here, somewhere not a storage facility. Somewhere else. She reached out a hand, curled her fingers and bit her lower lips, a please in the gestures that was louder than anything she'd managed to say thus far.
If Luke had known what she was thinking, those fears so reminiscent of what had plagued her in Seattle after the seemingly endless stream of terrible events they suffered through, he would have thought it funny in a sad sort of way, that she could even consider that he might think worse of her for what she’d done. In all honesty, he hadn’t cared. Alexander had deserved all that and worse. All that aside, he had no right to judge her, no right at all. He had no right to judge anyone, really, and yet he did; he had. He’d judged Alexander, deemed him deserving of death, but thoughts like that just made his head ache worse than it already did, so he let them go and fade into the recesses of his mind. Somewhere in the midst of everything he’d forgotten his anger towards her for going to Alexander in the first place, which was probably fortunate for the both of them.
She looked so fragile and small in the hospital scrubs, and it broke his heart to see her that way, struggling just to push away from the wall and step forward. He could only imagine what MK would be like once she regained consciousness, and he felt sick just thinking about it, like he did if he let his thoughts wander to what could have happened to Wren. Her whisper wasn’t audible, and he moved closer in order to hear, despite a fear that she might shrink away from him if he drew too close. The alarms didn’t even register, nor did the sound of the nurses calling some foreign name; he hadn’t paid attention to what the chart on her door said. He’d barely even had a chance to see it. Whatever barriers, self-constructed or imagined, that kept him back were shattered when she said she wanted to go home, however, and he reciprocated by taking her hand in his when she reached out while closing what distance remained between them.
“I know,” he whispered, tugging on her hand. “I want to go home too.” He touched her cheek with the fingers of his free hand, tracing over skin as though confirming that she was really there and not just some figment of his tortured imagination.
The tug on her hand shattered something, some of that numbness fading along with the shards of whatever it was that had been keeping her together since the storage unit. She choked back a sob as he touched her cheek, and she closed her eyes and pressed her skin against his palm as she tried to remember how to breathe like a normal person, like someone whose nightmares hadn't all managed to come true in one fell swoop. It didn't work, all that trying, and there was no real thought before she pulled her hand from his and wrapped her arms around his shoulders with more strength than should be possible in her small frame. She was all tiptoes and holding tight, and the white hospital scrubs pressed again the sharp-clean smelling clothes he wore. And she knew what that cleanness covered, the scent of death and blood being washed away, and she only shuddered and clung tighter.
She was muffled against his shoulder when she spoke, and she tried more than once to find her voice before she finally managed it. "Can we go?" she asked, even though it wasn't really a question. She wasn't going back there, back to that hospital bed with MK just around the corner. Her fingers wound into the fabric along his shoulders, twisting and twisting without her even realizing she was pulling the fabric taut the way she was. "I don't want to stay here, Luke. I don't want to stay. I don't." As if the repetition would help. She rocked against him, an unthinkingly fearful thing, and she knew Alexander was dead, knew he couldn't hurt anyone ever again, but that fear was still there somehow, untouched. "It was like everything I thought would happen," she said, and it was just babble then, just words against his shoulder that she couldn't stop. "Like everything he said would happen, and it happened, and why can't we ever stop it?" She pulled back then, just enough to look at him, at his face, to ensure he was there and safe, there and safe, and why did this feel just like five years earlier? "Are we cursed?" she asked, and there was no holding the tears back at that point, and maybe the waiting room wasn't the best place for this conversation, but she wasn't thinking clearly enough for that.
She stepped back, bare feet on the cold floor and looking like a pale shadow of who she normally was. She tugged on his hands, tugged and tugged, toward the door. "Please?" she asked again, silently willing him not to take her back into the ER. "I don't want to be tied up to things. Please?"
There was a brief moment of tension when she pulled her hand from his, but it only lasted until her arms went around his shoulders before ebbing away. Her hold was surprisingly tight, considering how weak she appeared to be, and it reminded him of days long since past, when she used to cling to him tighter than he ever thought possible. He felt her shudder, and he tried not to assume, he did, but he still faltered, his hands stilling where he’d gone to move them in order to return her embrace. All these years later and he still didn’t know how to make anything better. Except she wouldn’t still be touching him if he disgusted her, would she? He felt like a kid again, all uncertainty and doubt, and he wished more than anything he could go back to being numb. He knew how to be numb. But this, fear and guilt, he’d spent so much time running from it that he had no idea what to do now that it had finally caught up with him.
Part of him knew he should have insisted she stay, that she go back to her room and wait until the doctor actually said she could be released. He should have, but he’d always had trouble denying her anything, and his resolve weakened as he held her. “Okay,” he said. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.” He wasn’t exactly sure where they’d go, because either of them being around Gus right now might not be the best idea, but he wasn’t going to let her be alone. No, not when she was still so afraid of a dead man. “We did, Wren. We did. She’s alive, and you’re alive, and he can’t hurt anyone else.” His voice dropped to a whisper, wary of being overheard. “We’re not cursed,” he insisted, and it didn’t matter if he believed it or not. “Don’t talk like that.”
This time he did look over his shoulder, just once, but MK was safe and Simon wouldn’t leave. It was enough to overcome his initial hesitation, and he allowed himself to be tugged towards the door. If nothing else, those pleases would’ve broken him without question.
She felt the tension in him, but she didn't realize what had caused it, didn't know that he would think her disgusted with him. She thought just the opposite, that it was her, that he'd finally realized she wasn't what he thought she was. That he'd realized she could do terrible things, and it just made her cling tighter to him, as if she could change his mind about her with the sheer strength of her arms around him. Or, worse, that he thought her weak, too weak, not strong enough. Because, when it was all said and done, she'd failed. She'd failed him, and she'd failed MK, and she'd failed herself, and there was no making that go away.
The relief when he said she didn't need to stay was something immediate. She took a shuddering breath, a gasping thing that spoke of being worried he would deny her request, and her grip loosened enough to let her rock back onto her bare heels. And then she was tugging him out into the darkness, not saying anything at all until they were in the hot Las Vegas air, fearful that the nurses would drag her back for MRIs and CT scans she wouldn't be able to lie still for. She tugged him in front of her wordlessly, so that he could hail the cab, afraid the driver wouldn't take her, the scrubs and bare feet giving her away as an escapee. Her fingers rested on the small of Luke's back, and her fingertips trembled, and she buried her face against his shirt, between his shoulder blades, where there was only the warm skin beneath the fabric and the safety that warmth offered.
Muffled, there, she finally spoke as she waited for him to get the attention of a driver. "She's barely alive," she said, and it was easier to talk like this, against fabric and without seeing his face. "She's barely alive, and she was already falling apart before, and how is she ever going to be okay?" she asked, and there were tears there, damp against the back of his shirt. "She's not like us, Luke. We go numb, and we put things in boxes, and we go on and pretend we're not as broken as we are. MK's never been like that." And maybe there was doubt in her voice, doubt for the two of them. Because this wasn't like before, and even she could feel it, the fact that coming back from this wasn't a given. "It was easier when I was numb," she admitted, and she knew precisely when that numbness had disappeared for her. It had happened in that hotel all those months ago, when he'd showed up again, and it had only gotten more and more distant with Gus in her life. "I don't know if I know how anymore, how to not feel," she whispered, and that was an unthinking confession, her fingers twisting the fabric of the shirt at the small of his back as she swayed against him, the world spinning as dizziness overtook her for a moment and he became her anchor, the only thing keeping her standing.
Maybe he shouldn’t have let her leave so soon, but the way she gasped in relief made Luke think that the only way he would have been able to get her back in her room was to drag her, kicking and screaming, and he couldn’t do that to her. As long as he kept an eye on her, surely she’d be fine. He kept telling himself the same as she tugged him outside, onto the sidewalk, and he only glanced over his shoulder once when she pressed herself against his back. If she’d had the money, a cab driver probably wouldn’t have asked questions, but he understood her reluctance to take the risk and reached behind himself to brush his fingers against her side in a gesture of silent reassurance.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, scanning the streets for a cab headed in their direction. “But barely alive is still alive, and that’s reason enough to not give up. She has you, and she has me, and she has Simon and--” He paused, stopping just short of mentioning Adam’s name. She wouldn’t like him being involved, but he thought the other man had a right to know that MK had been found, and if she wanted to be involved with him--the fact that they’d broken up notwithstanding--then he wasn’t going to try to stand in the way of that. Whatever Adam might be, he did care about MK. “She has people. That’s the point.” They were Bruce’s words moreso than his own, even though he did his damnedest to sound like he believed what he was telling her. “Maybe it’s not so good, being like us,” he said quietly, finding it easier to speak when she was behind him, and he could feel rather than see her. “Before you came back, none of this bothered me. What I did-- I could have moved on without thinking about it. I never felt anything. After a while I even stopped liking it. And I never, ever thought about the fact that they might have family, or-- or--” His breath caught in his throat, and he shook his head, finding a distraction in stepping forward to hail a cab, tugging her along with him.
He paused, hand on the handle of the door. “Maybe not feeling only works when you’re alone,” he whispered. “Without you and Gus, I think I could do it again, figure out how to make everything numb, but that would mean losing the two of you, and-- I couldn’t do that.” He pulled open the cab door, helped her inside first, and slid in afterward. Since going to his apartment wasn’t such a good idea, not with Gus there, and she needed a change of clothes at the very least, he told the driver to take them to Turnberry Place, looking at her for confirmation--or refusal--a moment later.
He was likely right about the need to get her back to her hospital room kicking and screaming. She was too scared for it, for that stark white nothingness, for only being allowed visitors for a few minutes and then being left alone with her own fears and thoughts and guilt. They'd stitched her up, and she wasn't bleeding anymore, and she was pretty sure the universe wasn't going to let her die. That would almost be a kindness, and life wasn't very kind. So she just closed her eyes when she felt his fingers along her side, and she took the offered reassurance in the touch, even if she thought she didn't deserve it.
"She has Adam," she added, filling in the blank with no true anger. "I talked to him after the party, before we knew what had happened. And then I talked to him after. He blames himself, and maybe he's not as bad as I thought," she admitted, because the entire world felt like shades of gray just then. She still didn't forgive Adam for what he'd done, for dragging Luke into things that he should have known better than to drag Luke into. And she still wasn't sure how much he had to do with the death that had broken MK all those years ago, but now, at least, she felt sorry for him. He would blame himself for this, for what had happened, for sending MK away like he had, and she could understand guilt too much not to feel some compassion for him. "MK went with Alexander willingly, I guess. She called him because Adam broke up with her, and Adam is going to blame himself for that forever." So, yes, MK had people, but that couldn't fix everything. She didn't mention how badly MK had taken everything that had happened in the past, not again, because she knew she didn't need to; he already knew all that. She was quiet for a second, her fingers wrapping tighter in the fabric of his shirt. "I think we would have shattered by now, if we weren't like we are," she explained. She couldn't imagine feeling everything that had ever happened in her life, not without going mad, and madness felt so close right now that she could taste it on her tongue. But he was right. Feeling things for him, for Gus, it meant that closing everything else off was harder, and she wasn't that broken little girl anymore that could just take it, and she wasn't sure she ever could be that girl anymore.
She was unsteady on her feet as she climbed into the cab, and she scooted to the far door and pulled her knees up to her chest without thinking, the protective gesture nothing like the woman she showed the world these days. She looked at him when he suggested Turnberry, her gray eyes knowing and sad. "You don't want me around Gus," she said, but it was a soft statement, and it came with a nod to the driver, who didn't need directions to get to the luxury high-rise. Luke had never been to the sprawling condo she called home, but she knew he was going to hate it. It was too much like Thomas' place from way back when, too cold and austere and with nothing like warmth in the huge, opulent rooms. "Okay," she added for his benefit, another nod accompanying and a press of her fingers to the unbandaged stitches that her blonde hair mostly hid. The movement brought the sharp mark of Alexander's teeth on her earlobe into view, the angry red a sharp contrast to the pallor of everything else.
Luke said nothing as she talked about Adam, too wary of the subject to interject just then. He was the perfect example of how actions didn’t necessarily translate into the kind of person someone was, because even though they’d both done some terrible things, he didn’t necessarily believe either of them were bad people. Not like Alexander, or even the people they killed. Good intentions may have paved the road to hell, but at least their intentions hadn’t been malicious from the start. “He shouldn’t blame himself,” he sighed. “It’s not his fault any more than it is yours. Alexander would have found a way. If it wasn’t this, it would have been something else. What other people do is beyond any of our control,” he said, and there was Bruce again, his influence creeping in when it wasn’t wanted. He scowled and shook his head, as though attempting to shake the other man’s presence off through that simple gesture alone. Maybe she was right when she said they both would have shattered by then, but really, was the alternative any better? “I know, but sometimes... sometimes I wonder which worse, being broken or being like this, how I am now,” he admitted. Because it wasn’t healthy, the way he was, having lived a life of numbness and blood where the only time he ever felt anything was when another life was being extinguished at his hands. Until Wren came back, that is, and Gus, but in order to feel the good he had to feel the bad too, and he wasn’t sure if he could handle all that scabbed-over pain and the darkness he’d kept buried and locked away for so long.
The way she pulled her knees up to her chest once she was inside the cab made him keep his distance, because, at least to him, her body language couldn’t have said keep away any more clearly. Avoiding his apartment wasn’t as simple as just wanting to keep her away from Gus, and he shook his head when she spoke, wordless denial. “No,” he insisted. “It’s not that. Right now, I just-- if he sees you like this, Wren, he’ll be scared, and I don’t think I should see him right now either. We can go back in the morning, once we’ve both gotten some rest.” That was assuming she wanted to stay with him, however, which he realized a few seconds later, and hastily tried to backtrack. “I mean, if you want to,” he added. “You don’t have to stay with-- I want you there, but if you don’t...” He trailed off with a shrug. Normally he wouldn’t have been so terrible at this, but this was like an echo of the past, and all those old doubts and uncertainties were coming back, and he didn’t know what to do with them or how to keep them from influencing his actions now.
While the interior of the cab was dark, all it took was the right angle and the flash of a streetlight beyond the window to illuminate the redness of teeth marks against her earlobe. As fleeting as it was, Luke knew the image would be burned into his mind forever, and it reminded him of the marks he’d seen on her when they were younger, after Briggs and Jude and all the horrors they’d experienced. He thought of Alexander, thought of him being that close to her and of his teeth leaving that imprint, and his breath caught in his throat with a sharp, painful gasp. He almost reached for her, almost, but he caught himself and stared down at his knees instead, jaw clenched painfully tight.
The comment about things being out of their control was so calmly unLuke that she just stared at him for a second, wondering where it came from. If it was Thomas' influence, Thomas' problem with lethal means, or if it was Simon's displeasure, which she'd sensed before passing out on the jet, or if it was something completely different. "That didn't sound like you," she said, a question in the statement. Bruce hadn't controlled him in a long time, as far as she knew, and surely he couldn't be in control now, or Alexander would still be alive. She wanted to say more, but a glance toward the front seat reminded her that they weren't alone, and she bit her lip. It would hold until the condo, she decided, and part of her feared that solitude, the fact that they could fall apart like they couldn't now, in the dark cab. With Gus around that wouldn't have been possible, falling into a million pieces, but with the looming quiet of the expansive condo it was. She should have left it at that, but his words didn't allow it, and she looked up from her knees. "How are you now?" she asked, the question a reluctant whisper.
She didn't want him to stay away, but she wasn't thinking clearly enough to realize that her body screamed that very thing. Her grip on her knees tightened, and she wondered how she must look for him to be worried about Gus seeing her. But he'd said Gus noticed everything, and maybe it was for the best, maybe he was right, but she shook her head in the end, even though the motion made her head scream and the pulsing behind her eyes sharpen. "Seeing him would be good for you," she said, and she wasn't worried about Luke around Gus. That, at least, was something she'd never, ever been concerned about. His stammering drew her out of her thoughts, because it was so very like the boy he'd been, that uncertainty something she hadn't seen in him since they'd found each other again. She didn't take all that stammering as any kind of confession, as any desire to be with her beyond this. She knew it wasn't a choice, not like they'd discussed before all of this fell apart. And so she nodded a little. "If you want," she said, "but maybe Turnberry is better?" she asked, and it had nothing to do with the quality of his place. "Nightmares," she said, because she still had those, worse than when they were kids, and she didn't want Gus to deal with her screaming in the middle of the night. "There's an adjacent apartment that Jack uses, if you don't want to stay with me," she offered, wanting him to understand that she wasn't making any decisions for him.
The sharp gasp made her look up and, though she didn't know what had caused it, she recognized the anger in the tautness of his jaw. "It's okay," she whispered, letting her feet find the floor of the cab and scooting a little closer, away from the safety of the cab's corner. Her fingers were tremble-cold as they touched his jaw. "Whatever it is, it's okay," she promised, her voice reassuring for all its lack of strength. It struck her, again, that she'd misunderstood something, but it was something she couldn't clarify in the darkness of the cab, and she looked up gratefully as the high-rise came into view in the neon distance.
“Because it wasn’t.” He left the subject there, unwilling to say too much with a cab driver who might be paying more attention than he let on. Bruce was so far from being in control, but he didn’t always need to be, and regardless, it was the sort of thing Thomas might have said too. He’d shared similar beliefs in the past after all. And Simon, well, Luke was certain their friendship wasn’t going to recover from this, which simply made him sad, but he wasn’t surprised. It was everything he’d feared from the truth coming out, the inevitable change in the way people saw him, and now it felt like he was on borrowed time, like he couldn’t pretend to be normal anymore. Needless to say, it wasn’t a good feeling. Her question wasn’t one he knew how to answer, not really, and he spent a few long moments staring out the window. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Not how I ever wanted to be, that’s for sure.”
Good for him, maybe, but Luke wasn’t so sure it would be good for Gus. Just until morning, until he stopped feeling like he’d only bring death into the apartment and corrupt the little boy within. “No. I-- he’ll be safe with Jack, just for tonight.” He was certain of that, at least. Even if he ached to see his son, a few more hours wouldn’t make much of a difference, or so he told himself. His stammering was too reminiscent of the past for him to not be able to predict her reaction, and he knew she wasn’t agreeing because she thought he actually wanted to be with her. Whenever bad things happened, she’d always assumed he felt some sort of responsibility for her, and he suspected she thought the same now, but unlike then, he didn’t have it in him to argue in circles with her about it. “Yeah, I do want,” he said, though he had his doubts about moving from his place to Turnberry. “I’ll see how Gus feels about being somewhere else.” Her mention of an adjacent apartment made him look up at her, his expression near unreadable in the half-dark, and he shook his head slowly. “No,” he said quietly. “I won’t need that.” Whether she would believe him, though, was questionable.
He was shaking his head even before her fingers found his jaw. ”But you don’t believe that, do you?” Nothing was okay, and it hadn’t been for a while, and her pretending like it was wouldn’t make anything better. He didn’t need an answer to know what it would be. For a brief instant he turned, leaning into her touch, but he pulled back once he saw the building come into view. For the remainder of the ride he was quiet, and when the cab came to a stop he paid the driver more than enough without saying a word.
She assumed he meant Bruce, that it had been Bruce talking, but she didn't push. Like him, she didn't trust the driver not to pay attention, especially once he'd found out where they were going. Turnberry Place meant money, and money meant gossip, and he'd have enough to tell people without her adding to it. Instead, she tried to remember everything she wanted to say when she was alone with Luke, and she bit her lip and held her tongue.
The topic of Gus seemed safe enough, though, and it wasn't as if all of Las Vegas didn't know about that particular chapter in their lives. Their faces had been plastered all over the news and the tabloids, and there wasn't much worth hiding there. As much as she wanted to see Gus, she knew Luke was right about the little boy being safe with Jack. But still, it had been days, and Jack wasn't a replacement for Luke. She wasn't even a replacement for Luke, not when it came to Gus, but she didn't argue about it. "Call him once we get there?" she suggested, because that had to help, right? When he said he did want her to stay with him, she bit her lip to keep from asking questions, to keep from over-clarifying things that might just make things worse in the dark of the cab. It felt like after Jude, like when she hadn't know what to say that wouldn't be wrong, and she didn't remember until then just how hard that had been, like walking a tightrope with every word that came out of her mouth. She pressed the heel of her palm to her temple, and she tried not to let the comment about seeing how Gus felt get to her. He didn't mean anything by it; she knew that. "It can just be for a week, Luke," she offered. "Maybe make it sound like a vacation?" she suggested hopefully. She took him at his word about not needing the staff apartment, but she knew herself well enough to know she would offer it again, just in case.
She didn't get a chance to answer his question about whether or not she believed it would be okay, because he was pulling back from her touch, and she didn't understand why. She tugged her own hand back quickly, uncertainty in the movement, and she climbed out of the cab with as much dignity as she could muster on uneven, bare feet. She walked to the front door on her own steam, even if she wasn't walking anything that resembled a straight line, and she managed a weak smile for the doorman, who she informed that Luke would be staying the evening. Inside, the lobby was marble and cream, and the elevator attendant swiped his card for the private elevator that led up to the penthouse. She leaned back against the cool, mirrored walls of the elevator, and she closed her eyes, because she didn't want to see Luke's reaction to this place, not when he was as wound up as he was. She stayed that way until the doors opened onto the private foyer, and she stepped into the condo with a hand on the wall to help keep her upright.
She wanted a drink, but she knew that wasn't a good idea, not with a head injury, and so she just took a deep breath and turned to face him. She tried to remember all of the things she'd been saving from the cab, all of the things she wanted to say, but her head was pounding too hard for that. Instead, she just bit her lip and reached out a hand to touch his wrist. "It's not okay," she admitted in a broken whisper. "We can't let anyone know it was you," she added, quieter, almost as scared of his reaction to that as she was of the memory of a dead man.
It was easier to agree, rather than argue, so he nodded. “Okay,” he conceded, deciding that if nothing else the sound of his voice might reassure Gus that he was coming back. Luke felt guilty for leaving, especially since he’d been gone for a week when the doors were on the fritz, and he wondered if he should take a few days off work, to make up for lost time. He hadn’t meant anything by his comment, she was right about that; it had nothing to do with her, but rather bringing Gus into a whole new environment after he’d gone through so many changes already. Maybe his own apartment wasn’t glamorous, but ever since the little boy’s arrival it felt like an actual home, and he didn’t want to hurt him by taking him away from that familiarity. “A vacation,” he repeated with the flicker of a smile. “Yeah, he’d probably like that. Maybe he’ll get used to it by then.”
He trailed behind her as she walked to the front door, hovering like a particularly concerned shadow, but he didn’t touch her. The doorman reminded him of Aubade, but this time the tables were turned, and he met a gaze of cool blankness as he passed through the door and into the lobby. It was so much like what his world had once been that he thought he’d stepped back into the past, at least before he remembered that now he was the outsider and she was the one who belonged. This was her world, not his. These people probably looked at him the way the Aubade staff had looked at Wren back when they were kids, and there was a moment of hesitation before he stepped into the elevator, when he found himself seized by the sudden urge to run and not look back. It passed, the feeling, but Luke spent the entire elevator ride staring at the floor, and he let her lead the way into the condo. Oh, it reminded him so much of Thomas’ apartment, not necessarily in color or layout, but it had the same distant coolness, like it wasn’t a home at all but simply a space in which there was furniture and other living amenities. He didn’t want Gus here, that was his first thought, but he kept it to himself. Maybe things could change. It wasn’t a home now, this place, but maybe it could be.
“No one’s going to know it was me. No one’s going to know anything, not the details.” He looked down at the touch to his wrist, but he didn’t pull away. “What do you think I’m going to do, Wren, tell the whole world what happened?”
Whatever reassurance came from that flicker of a smile ebbed away with his reaction to the elevator, the way he stared at the floor and refused to look up, to look at her, and her arms were wound tightly around her belly by the time the doors opened. The way he looked at the condo filled in the rest, and she tugged her fingers back from his wrist when he looked down. "It's okay," she said, trying to slip into that calmness that she'd clung to so much over the years. It was hard now, so hard, and it was only the lingering effect of the anesthetic and the painkillers that let her to even partially manage it. "I knew you'd hate it," she said of the condo, a glance over her shoulder at the pale decor and silent halls. "I'm okay on my own, Luke, really. He's gone, and I'll be fine," and whether that was true or not, she managed to say it, and to keep the words fairly even as she spoke. "And I know it's not anywhere for a little boy. It's okay." And she realized that she was using the word okay too much for it to be at all believable, but she couldn't think of anything more elaborate, not just then when every blink threatened to bring that storage unit with it.
She didn't answer his question right away, the one about whether or not she expected him to tell everyone what had happened. Instead, she walked into the condo, into the living room, fingers on the wall as she moved. She dropped down onto the couch gratefully, the near constant dizziness threatening to overwhelm her as she rubbed at her temples. She closed her eyes, and maybe it was intentional, not just to keep out the light, but to block out the way he wouldn't look at her, wouldn't touch her. "If someone asks. MK's going to ask, Jack's going to ask. We don't know if Alexander told anyone, if there's any trace. I'm just saying that if it comes down to it, if it comes to that, it can't be you." She didn't add the rest, because she knew she didn't need to. He had custody of Gus, and this was just the way it had to be. "I saw Simon's face on the jet, Luke. He isn't okay with it, and we just need make sure we say the same thing if it comes to that." It was practical, logistics, and she had trouble with the words, because she just wanted to curl up somewhere and never come back out, but that wasn't an option.
She pulled her hands away from her temples, and she opened her eyes, and she looked to see where he was. She half expected him to be gone, half expected the penthouse to be empty of anything but the cat, who came wandering up and meowed plaintively for food. That simple thing, the meow, made that calm disappear, and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to keep from sobbing. "You're angry," she said, the words simplistic, but it was all she could manage, and she didn't even really expect an answer. Or maybe she did, maybe she was just scared of the answer. She pushed away from the couch before he could respond, and she made her way unevenly to the bar on the far side of the room.