mk robinson wants to be a star. (hitjackpot) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-07-04 16:36:00 |
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For Wren, visiting MK in the hospital meant going to see all the harm she'd done to someone she loved. It was cowardly, not wanting to go, but she didn't want to all the same. The last thing she wanted to do was see MK pretend to be okay, when she knew perfectly well that MK couldn't be okay, no matter what MK said to convince her otherwise. And, despite everyone's insistence otherwise, she still felt unbelievably guilty for capturing Alexander's attention in the first place and bringing him into all of their lives. It wasn't healthy, and she was trying to leave that guilt behind, but that was hard when she didn't actually believe that she wasn't responsible. But none of that changed the fact that Wren had promised, and so she put together a bag of MK's things, and she dressed in a simple, white sundress and sandals, and she rode to the hospital in Silver's car. By the time the nurses directed Wren to MK's room, she was a nervous wreck, and she wished for a drink, or for a pill, or for someone to lean against, and she wondered when she'd become so weak. It was the past two years, she knew, and the relative peace that had come with them. They'd lulled her into a sense of calm, of numbness, and now everything was back again - all the love, and all the fear, and the recriminations. The fight with Luke from the night after Alexander's death was so fresh in her mind, and her head was still pounding, and she wanted nothing more than to rewind them all back to Seattle and do things right. But life didn't work that way. Instead, Wren walked into MK's room with a hint of a tremulous smile on her face. The stitches were visible through her pale hair, despite her best efforts to hide them, and she looked around the hospital room and wondered why all hospitals had to be so very terrible. "I still hate hospital rooms," she said, not looking at the bed yet, not until a moment (and a very deep breath later). "MK." If there was one person MK was truly wary about seeing after the whole Alexander thing, it was Wren. She hadn’t been conscious on the plane, or for hours before really, and so she missed the state the blonde was in post-Alexander. She knew, however, it would not have been good no matter what happened. The redhead was clueless about the circumstances of her escape, only that Simon managed to find her with the help of Luke and Wren. She didn’t know Alex was dead, or that Wren was attacked by him, or that Luke dealt the finishing blow to the head. She just knew it wasn’t good, whatever happened. Still, she was a little angry that Wren didn’t stay -- no, couldn’t stay. If roles had been reversed, security would have to drag her out of the room to get her to leave Wren’s side, and even then she would go kicking and screaming. But she knew they needed to see each other. Needed to make sure the other was alive. No, neither of them would be okay, she knew that much, and the conversation would potentially be a testament to how well they could fake it. When Wren wandered into the room, MK was glancing through her phone and didn’t look up until she heard her friend’s voice. She looked alive, at least, and surely in better condition than the last time the blonde saw her. Bruises were still pronounced on her cheeks and the arms that peeked out of the white blankets. Overly large lumps at the end of the bed testified to the casts on her broken ankles. The sluggish look in her eyes could have been from the pain medication administered through one of the bunches of IVs poked into her, but more likely from the clawing memories of what happened. “Hi, kitten,” MK said, attempting a small smile and a brave look. She was tired, too tired, but she would still try to fake wellness for Wren’s sake. She locked the phone with a push of her button and waved a hand to the bed stand where a beautiful bouquet of flowers stood in a glass vase. “Your friend Silver sent flowers. You’ll have to tell me how I can say thanks. It’s that driver, right? He’s on the journals?” MK did best to avoid the elephant in the room, but her eyes caught a glimpse of the stitches on Wren’s head and frowned. “What happened?” Wren stared for what was likely a very impolite amount of time. Somehow, MK looked worse without the layer of blood coating her. Or maybe it was just the way the red was starting to turn to bruise black, and the fresh marks to swelling. She stared, and she tried to blink away tears that refused to keep from slipping down her cheeks. She wanted to run; she wanted to run more than anything. Despite all the reassurances, this was still her fault, and she knew it was her fault, and it was worse than Briggs had ever been. Gone were the days when they could just crawl in bed together, little girls small enough to bundle beneath the blanks and lock out the world. No, they were older now and, unlike then, Wren understood now just how this would affect her friend. There was no pretending, no matter how much she wanted to, and it was with a very shaky breath that she finally managed an uneven tread to the bed. Wren set the bag on the bedside chair, and she propped a hip on the mattress of the hospital bed, at MK's hip. This close, the bite mark at Wren's ear was visible, angry and red, and the dark circles beneath Wren's grey eyes seemed endless. She reached out and squeezed MK's hand carefully, mindful of the IV and with the kind of caution that they had never shown when snuggling up beneath hospital issue blankets as little girls. The question about Silver drew her gaze to the vase, and she smiled a little before looking back. "He drove me, and I talked to him yesterday. I didn't think he'd send anything. I hope it's okay," she said, and it made her feel better somehow. It wasn't that she distrusted Simon (who she had made a tentative peace with), or that she had little faith in Adam (though she was fairly sure Adam wasn't the kind of man to save someone), but Silver meant a very lethal, very trained kind of safety, and she was glad he was taking an interest in MK. "You aren't supposed to ask me what happened, MK," Wren continued. "Not when I look like it's been a spring day, and you look like you were just released from Hell." As Wren stared, MK stared right back, unblinkingly and void of the warmth and affection usually peppering her every move and glance. What could she say? Nothing anyone said or did had comforted her in the days since she was taken, and she suspected the same was true for Wren. And Wren hadn’t stayed, hadn’t fought to stay with her, and that almost hurt more than anything Alexander had done to her. She knew she shouldn’t be angry with Wren, instead the situation, but she couldn’t help it. Wren didn’t stay with her, and it felt like a betrayal. The blonde was there now, though, and she squeezed Wren’s fingers back with slight hesitation. She didn’t look at Wren’s watery gray eyes, knowing that they would just break her down too, and instead surveyed the damage visible. The stitches over the crown of her head looked worse up close, and the mark on Wren’s ears reddened angrily. MK felt a lick of anger and sympathy intermingled, deepening the frown that tugged her mouth down. “He seems nice. It’s fine, I really appreciate it. I’ll have to thank him.” Once Wren left, she would send her thanks via the forums. Scooting over to give Wren some room if she wanted to sit on the bed with her, MK looked at her friend expectantly. She ignored what Wren said about looking like she had been put through hell, instead glancing at the bag. “What did you bring?” she asked as she patted the space next to her. Caution or not, she craved the physical affection Alexander deprived of her. She knew it wouldn’t last for long, and that she probably would become ill by the simplest touch, but the hospital seemed safe. Assured her that nothing bad would happen, at least for the moment. The lack of warmth was a tangible thing, and it was impossible for Wren to miss, to pretend it was not there between them. "You're angry at me," she said, repeating the words she'd said to Luke after she'd escaped these white walls and the memories they brought with them. "I deserve that," she said, though it hurt to say the words that felt so much like judgement. She knew she should have stayed at the hospital, but she couldn't even begin to explain why she didn't, not in any real way, so she looked down at her hands instead and listened to MK's reassurances about Silver. "Some clothes, and your toothbrush and shampoo. Some electronics." Wren shrugged a little as she pulled the bag over and put it on MK's nightstand, where MK could look at it without needing to stretch. Seeing her friend like this, really seeing her, made Wren want a bottle, and it made all the pseudo-positive things she tried to tell Luke seem entirely unimportant. "I don't know how you're putting on such a good face," she managed, moving closer when MK patted the space beside her and closing her fingers around the other woman's. "I thought you wouldn't be coming home," Wren admitted, though she'd already said the same words to MK before. "I was sure you wouldn't come home." And now that she was home? Wren had no idea what to say to make it better, and she didn't know how to deal with that either. She missed the days of wine bottles and hugs on the couch, and she brushed tears away from her cheek as she looked toward the door for a moment, needlessly. "Talk to me?" she finally managed, looking back at MK. MK didn’t respond to Wren’s statement, just offering her that same semi-blank look. Of course she was angry, but Wren didn’t need confirmation of that. If roles were reversed, Wren might not be as upset with the redhead, but they weren’t. MK was the one who went through hell, and Wren was the one who couldn’t stay with her best friend. It almost broke MK’s heart to think about that. After all they had been through, Wren couldn’t stay for her. She would forgive the blonde, of course -- she always did. Fingers squeezed Wren’s, and MK decided not to burrow with the bag just yet. Instead, she shrugged, which actually hurt more than it should have, and a quiet hiss slipped out of her lips. “It’s easier in here.” Easier for what, MK didn’t elaborate on. Easier to feel safe, or maybe easier to fake it. She regarded Wren quietly for a moment. “I didn’t think that I was either. I didn’t think I want--” But she cut herself off. Wren didn’t need to know that she didn’t want to come home. That everything made her want Alex to end it right then, right there. “What do you want me to say, Wren? What do you want me to talk about?” She sounded frustrated, tired. The semi-blank look just verified what Wren already knew, and she had no idea how to say that she couldn't handle more needles and drugs, that the days spent talking to Alexander, with no idea what was happening to MK, had broken her in some way she still didn't even understand. She was trying to put up a good front, but it was just a false facade, paint over a hundred million cracks, and every time she closed her eyes she saw Alexander's brains blown out over the storage unit floor. She just fidgeted, her hands in her lap, and she stayed quiet. For Wren, Luke's presence would have been enough, and she'd thought Simon would be the same for MK; she'd obviously been wrong, but there wasn't any going back and fixing it. And, truthfully, even if she could rewind the clock, she wasn't sure she could make herself do anything other than what she had done; escape. MK didn't need to complete the sentence; Wren knew what MK had started to say, and her heart went even more sore, and she became even more worried about what would happen next. This was nothing like Briggs, and she had no idea why. If years had changed things, if this had just been so much worse, if they were just too different, too shattered to glue everything back together. She didn't say it, but she thought MK was right; the redhead was definitely safer in the hospital, where she couldn't do anything to hurt herself, and where she couldn't find solace in a bottle. Wren shook her head when MK posed the tired question, the frustration making her reaction immediate. "I don't know," she admitted. "Whatever helps." But she knew that nothing would, nothing she could say, anyway, and she just squeezed MK's fingers once more, helpless to do anything much. MK watched as Wren sat in silence, and in that moment, she couldn’t be angry at her friend. Just concerned. She didn’t know what happened while she was locked away in that little room in that little house, only what Alex allowed her to be privy to, but she just knew it wasn’t anything good. And that made her chest ache with worry and sadness, that Wren suffered even more. MK was willing to sacrifice herself for the others in her moment of pain, but that it was for nothing, well, that just made her feel sick. “What happened?” she asked again, eyes flickering from the stitches under the blonde hair to the bite mark behind her ear back to those watery gray eyes. "He's dead," Wren said, because that was what mattered, wasn't it? At the end of the day, all the rest was nothing compared to what she'd been through. "He won't be hurting you - or anyone - ever again. He's dead." She was quiet after saying the words aloud, after the blunt declaration that she probably should have wrapped in less plain language. But no, not this time, and she knew MK wouldn't say anything. And MK deserved to know. She deserved to understand that the monster that would haunt her nightmares for endless nights to come couldn't hurt her, not again. That wasn’t the answer that MK was expecting, not by a long shot. She knew they had said things -- Wren and Luke and Simon and Adam -- said that he should be dead or he should be hurt, but she never expected anything to come to fruition. She blinked, and she looked the blonde with a dumbfounded look, mouth shocked agape. “Wait, what?” she asked before she could help herself. “H-h-how? What happened?” Wren shook her head. "No, it's safer not to talk about it, but I wanted you to know. To know that you don't have to worry anymore," she said, and it was a risk, but it was one worth taking. MK knew Wren had been in jail for killing someone before in Seattle, and MK knew about Jude. She was more likely to believe that she, Wren, had killed someone, much more likely to believe that, than to believe good, sweet Luke had; at least that's what Wren was counting on. She couldn't give her friend much these days when it came to reassurance, couldn't take away the nightmares or make the past go away, but she could do this. She squeezed MK's fingers again, and she nodded at the redhead, letting the words sink in. "You don't need to worry anymore," she repeated, a mantra in the cold, antiseptic hospital room. And Wren was right. MK did believe that she had been the one to finish Alex off. Who else would it have been? As much of a loose cannon Simon was, MK could never picture him actually going that far. And Luke wasn’t even a consideration. She knew that Luke had changed over the years, but never in a million years could she even consider that possibility. No, it had to be Wren, and it caused MK to regard her with sad eyes. “I’m not worried,” MK assured her, even as the knowledge that Alex was gone assuaged a tiny bit of her fear. It would bubble there still, festering like a wound in the back of her mind, but rationally, she had nothing to worry about. Irrationally, well, that was another story entirely. Alexander and what he did would just add to a long list of things keeping her awake at night, causing her to turn to the bottle, pushing her closer to the precipice. “Don’t you ever wonder why all this bad shit happens? Why it’s one thing after another after another? Clearly, I’m just a bad fucking person. What else is there? I bring it on myself.” MK wasn’t one for self-pity, but it was a ramble brought on by stress and hurt and a little bit of the pain killers pumping through her system. MK's sad eyes gave Wren the verification she needed, the verification that MK believed it was her, and she wondered what that said about her, that everyone believed her so capable without even batting an eyelash - Simon, Jack. But that didn't matter, in the end, and Wren sat back on the bed and shook her head as MK spoke. "No. You aren't a bad person, and you didn't bring it on yourself. Alexander was a bad person. None of this was your fault. If you ever, ever doubt that, imagine if it happened to someone you cared about. Would you let them blame themselves?" She shook her head, because she knew the answer was a resounding no. A sigh followed, a deep one that practically made Wren's entire body shudder. "I don't know, though, why all the bad things happen. I wish I did. I wish I could keep them from happening. I wish the universe would understand that we can only take so much, that we need time to glue ourselves back up." Because it felt worse here than in Seattle, like everything was so much sharper, more painful and less time in between bad things to recover. "Maybe we'll get a little bit of time this time," she added, her own dark-rimmed eyes sad and hopeful all at once. "You'll get some rest, and you'll get better, and nothing bad will happen." MK pursed her lips because, as much as she tried and as much as others assured her it wasn’t true, she didn’t think of herself as a particularly great person. She was just...a person. Flawed and so very human. Someone that bad things tended to happen to. She didn’t think it made her good, or strong, or whatever. Just made her roll with the punches. Sighing too, she raised her free hand to rub at the bruise on her cheek. “Seattle seems like a walk in the fucking park compared to all this.” And that was true in her opinion. Briggs, and all the other shit, that seemed simple compared to what happened in just the few months since arriving in Las Vegas. The redhead fell quiet for a moment, chewing on her cheek and resisting the urge to rub on the scratches hiding underneath her hospital gown. She resisted the urge to say that she was frightened she would never get better. Not completely. Physically, maybe, but emotionally or mentally, she wasn’t sure. Even then, she knew it probably read in her eyes. Instead, she glanced past Wren and towards the bag on stand. “You better have brought cute clothes. There have to be some med students around here I can impress.” She flashed the blonde a ghost of a smile. “Help me wash my hair in the sink? And then I can try to dress myself.” Her head nodded towards the bathroom located within the room. “I have to call the nurse to help move me to the wheelchair though. They’re nice enough. Funny as hell. They’ve been telling me stories about themselves and their man problems. Apparently we’re not the only ones with screwed up relationships.” "If someone had told me five years ago that those were the good days, I would have told them they were crazy," Wren admitted, because it had all seemed so hard back then. And yet she knew that both she and MK would give anything to go back there, to backtrack, to have life be simple again, and to hold onto things they hadn't been able to hold onto back then. She watched MK chew on the inside of her cheek, and she knew. She knew that things would never, ever be quite the same for the girl in the hospital bed, that some part of her would always remember Alexander. Just like Jude was still part of Luke; one of those defining things that changed a person in ways that couldn't be quantified. She reached forward, and she tucked a strand of red behind MK's ear. "I brought comfortable clothes?" Wren suggested, the bag a good distraction, and she reached for it and put it beside MK on the bed, so that her friend could go through the contents. "I can get the nurse," she offered, standing and looking at MK, pale and bruised and haunted. The smile she managed when MK mentioned the nurses' romance problems was tremulous, but genuine. "I don't know. I'm pretty sure we take the cake on screwed up relationships." She paused, and her expression went more serious. "I am sorry I was so hard on you about Adam. I shouldn't have been. I'm just protective of you, and I want the best possible thing for you, and he wasn't heir to a kingdom anywhere?" she teased, but the sentiment was true. She was sorry. "I'll get the nurse." “Comfortable clothes can be cute,” MK countered with a small smile as she tugged the bag into her lap, mindful of the IVs still hooked up to her. She didn’t want to think about Alexander or his lasting impression, not then. She had the hours of solitude, after Wren left and the hospital fell quiet, to let her mind drift to the darker corners of her memories. Reminders of the searing sting of the scalpel against her skin, or the flush of drugs through her system. She offered Wren a small smile when she spoke of Adam. “It’s okay,” she said, and she meant it. In the list of things that were wrong at the moment, Wren disapproving of Adam wasn’t very high on the list, but she did appreciate the apology a lot. “He means a lot to me, Wren. More than I’d like to admit.” She nodded. “Go get the nurse. I’m not going anywhere.” Wren watched MK rifle through the bag, her attention focused entirely on the IV that was in the redhead's arm, the tubing that climbed and connected to a machine full of blinking numbers and bags of liquids, and she almost missed it when MK spoke again. She managed to give MK a smile, one that was hard-fought and hard-won. "That's a really good start, I think, him meaning a lot to you," she said, and while she did wish MK had found someone who would fight for her above all else, she was glad the other woman had someone. Wren stood, and she considered mentioning serious things before going to get the nurse. Where MK was going after here, the fact that MK shouldn't be alone after this, the fact that she would need help getting around with her ankles hurt the way they were. She thought about all of those things, but she kept her silence. Enough time for all that later. "I'll be back with a nurse." She managed a sad, tentative smile. "Don't run away." MK knew Wren still wasn't Adam's biggest fan, but the blonde had said she was wrong about Adam. Maybe there was hope for them getting along. After all, they were two of the most important people in her life, and all she wanted was for her people to get along. And, well, a shred of normalcy, but MK knew that was a hollow wish, a waste of thought and breath. Instead, she matched Wren's smile with one of her own, a tired one, and said, "I'm not going anywhere. Scout's honor." |