Who: Will and Evie What: Returning home after a discovery Where: Evie and Will's home When: After Will's day-long disappearance and this Warnings/Rating: Angst, mainly.
Will’s head ached as he slumped in the taxi taking him back home from the hotel. The time through the door hadn’t been anything like he’d expected, trapped in the back of the mind of a girl that hunted and killed both men and animals like it was sport. Her anger was nearly constant, and so much more overpowering when she was in charge. He could still feel her seething in the back of his own mind, like the trip through (or was it the forced return?) had made her even angrier. He’d been able to see the things she wrote on the journals, the way she was looking for some way to get rid of him. He’d seen others warn that she would only harm herself in the process, but he knew her thoughts, knew that she wouldn’t care about that if it meant he was gone as well. She hunted wild creatures and even wilder men with only an axe and a knife - self-preservation didn’t seem to be high on her list of priorities, and his own survival was so far down as to be non-existent.
He could barely believe that he’d been gone an entire day. When he’d stepped through the door, he hadn’t known what to expect, but losing control of the situation wasn’t it. For the first hours, he’d done his best to turn Red back around and return through the door, but she had none of it, and was able to completely ignore his prompting, no matter how desperate he’d become. He knew Evie was worried, had heard it in her voice when he’d called, but he’d avoided her questions for the moment. He knew what Red thought of her, those opinions high in his mind, and he had to push them back more before he got home.
The driver was happy to get him out of the cab once they pulled up to the building, and Will gave him an extra tip for having to deal with the craziness he was trying to get past. The elevator ride up didn’t help to calm his nerves any, and by the time he pushed into the apartment, he could only imagine how rough he looked.
To say that Evie had been worried would have been the understatement of the century. She was worried, angry, hurt, frustrated, terrified, and everything in between. She’d called everyone she knew, she’d had people out looking for him, she’d been all over town, through the bad parts, through the good parts. She’d suffered the sympathetic looks from her security detail who seemed to feel sorry for her that she’d misplaced her boyfriend.
This kind of behavior wasn’t typical but it wasn’t new. It had just been a very long time, and she’d spent the whole night talking herself into the fact that this was just some horrid misunderstanding and they were past all of the issues that had plagued them before. It was never easy, but she had faith. She knew that if things were going to go bad again, that she could weather it. That they’d come out okay. It didn’t mean she wanted to go through it all over again. She’d have to be crazy. Maybe she was. All she knew as she’d spent the last 24 hours in a fucking mess of a mess was that she wanted him home. She couldn’t help if he didn’t come home.
When he’d called she hadn’t slept a wink, had just come back from another drive around town, had just gotten done speaking to everyone else she had looking for him. He’d been at the hotel. And it hadn’t gone well. Forgotten for the time being was her worry and her anger and her fretting. He was safe. And on his way home. And he had not had a good time through the door. He needed calm sensible Evie and while angry pissed off scared and lonely Evie was still screaming to be let out, she pushed her aside and would deal with her later. She put on a pot of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, still in her work clothes from the day before (except the shoes) she looked tired and felt tired. She allowed herself to relax just a bit and when she heard the front door open she took a deep breath and stood up meeting him halfway but not tackling him like she wanted to. She stood on the other side of the door and looked him over. He looked horrible. She looked horrible. This was going to be a rough morning. “I made some coffee, come sit down,” she said nodding toward the kitchen behind her and turning to enter the room herself.
Will froze near the door when Evie emerged from the kitchen. He didn’t miss the way she was wearing yesterday’s work clothes, or the way her eyes had shadows beneath them. For once, he didn’t know what to expect from her, and his mind stopped for a long, silent moment. Long enough for Red’s anger to push back at him again, the bone-deep assurance that he was going to end up hurting Evie, and that he should take care of himself before that inevitably happened. The thought was so strong that he winced, tried to swallow down the self-loathing that it sparked, but it was hard when Red was pushing on thoughts that his own mind had come up with a hundred times over.
He nodded at her invitation (more command) to coffee, and made his way to the kitchen, following the scent of it. He wanted little more than to pull her into his arms, wrap up together and never let go, tell each other that everything was fine, would be fine. He didn’t though. He noted the chair that was askew, the cup of coffee on the table in front of it, and very deliberately put himself in a chair on the opposite side of the table. More than ever, he didn’t trust himself with her, and it showed in nearly every move. Pathetic. She deserves so much better than a beast like you.
“I’m sorry,” he managed to choke out again, slumping forward to rest his elbows on the table and head in his hands. He didn’t know what else to say. What else he could say. Nothing would make it right.
Evie wasn’t afraid of Will, she was often afraid for him, but never afraid of him. She was relieved that he was home and really she just wanted to look him over and apologize for thinking everything she had. But she knew he wouldn’t blame her, which bothered her even more. They could both try to be a little better about some things, that much was true. While he sat down she picked up her cup and grabbed a clean one for him filling them both up and bringing them to the table. She wouldn’t have any of this sitting far away nonsense.
She knew what he was doing, she knew him better than anyone, and she wasn’t going to put up with it. She was worried about who, or what, was in his head that had him so upset. But she wasn’t going to allow it to ruin him. Over her dead body. She came back to the table and set the cup down in front of him and took her seat to the left of him. She wrapped her hands around her mug warming them up a bit and sat quietly for a moment before she looked over at him, “Call next time, I know it was hard this time, but next time let me know. We’re going to have to get used to being away from each other from time to time at odd hours, but lets try and keep each other in the loop okay? I can’t have another night like that, Will. You don’t have to apologize, but I can’t have that happen again. That part of our lives is done. So the next time you find yourself at the Door, just let me know,” they could get to the other side of his door soon enough, but she had to at least get that bit out. She wasn’t angry, she really did understand, but she needed boundaries. They all did. It wasn’t their strong suit most of the time. But when it came time to set them she did try.
The scent of coffee so near him made him breathe in shakily, the bitterness of their usual beans comforting in a way that only scent memory could be. He kept his head in his hands though, not looking up, even when she sat down next to him. He could hear her just fine though, and nodded along with her words. “Okay,” he managed to agree. “I’ll call. If I go back. I just didn’t know. When you talked about it, I didn’t think it would be... like that.” He finally lifted his head just enough to uncover one red-rimmed eye and peer over at her. The expression on her face, talking about what she needed, nearly forced out the emotional tears he was doing his best to hold back. “I’m sorry,” he said again, like it was ripped from his chest, like he couldn’t ever say it enough. He finally unfolded and turned toward her, reaching out to put his hands over hers, but he hesitated before he touched, both of them hovering uncertainly for just a second before he pulled them both back, never having made contact. She’ll end up broken. It will be your fault. He winced and swallowed back a painful sound at the thought.
Evie nodded in response, “Good now will you tell me what happened? It wasn’t like that for me, Lois Lane is a time hog, and she’s always getting herself into trouble, but I want to help if I can,” she said softly. She hated the thought of him having to go through something horrible, or deal with someone horrible when she couldn’t do anything to stop it. Or protect him. As much as he wanted to protect her all the time the feeling was quite mutual.
When he pulled his hands back from her she narrowed her eyes slightly because she wasn’t quite ready for it. Whatever had happened on the other side of the door had hurt him, and in turn it was changing what happened in their own apartment. “Will, this is our life here. It’s not going to change, it can’t.” She said and grabbed one of his hands and held it firmly. “Stop apologizing.”
He opened his mouth to apologize again, but her intent words stopped him, along with her hands on his. He looked down to stare at them for a moment before he lifted them to press the back of her hand to his forehead. He closed his eyes and froze like that for almost too long, then slowly, uncertainly, kissed the back of her hand, then the pulse of her wrist. “She hates me,” he finally whispered. “She hates everyone, is so angry, but she hates me the most...” His voice was wrecked, sounding like someone had taken a grater through his throat as he tried to force the words out loud enough for her to hear.
“Why? And who?” she didn’t like that Will was being tortured right in front of her. By something in his head that she couldn’t get to. So she was going to do her best to work their way through it. She’d work his way through it if she had to.
“Red,” Will whispered, finally turning his upper body and leaning his forehead against Evie’s shoulder. His words almost got lost in the curve of her upper arm. “She’s so... broken.” There was hot rage that pushed at him, and he had to make sure he wasn’t still holding Evie’s hand as his fingers clenched as tightly as possible. Red didn’t want him talking about her at all, her anger about it a nearly tangible thing that Will had trouble breathing around. “Knows I’m going to hurt you,” he managed to gasp out, like he’d been running up flights of stairs. “Is going to stop it. ...whatever it takes.”
Evie listened and processed, and tried to put her finger on what he was talking about. She was intuitive and even though he wasn’t being incredibly forthcoming, she was starting to put the pieces together. It dawned on her that when Will had been gone she’d been talking with Red on the other side of the door. She was angry because she hadn’t known at the time. It perplexed her the two different sides of a coin she was dealing with. “She doesn’t know that, you don’t know that, I don’t know that...That’s speculation. And it’s speculation we’ve dealt with before and we can deal with it now. Broken we can deal with, we’ve been there. Angry, scared, determined. We can deal with it.”
Will kept his head resting on Evie’s shoulder, forehead to the rounded peak of it, and shook it back and forth, a roll of negativity. “Not. It’s happened before. She in my head and she knows. It’s just a matter of time...” It’s better to stop it now, before it happens. “...It’s better to stop it now, before it happens.” It was a repetition that he barely thought about except for how true it seemed in that moment.
Evie’s heart jumped into her throat and her stomach dropped to her feet. Was this the conversation they were actually having? Better to stop it now? What did that even mean? Any way she looked at it there was nothing good and she panicked. She tried to take a deep breath but it was shaky. She tried to remember everything she had learned, but if he was talking about stopping, that meant leaving, and that meant everything was going to fall apart. Her mind unraveled a series of events that had her trying to live her life alone and with just a few words that had been said in this moment and she was devastated. The voice of reason left her completely, calm and collected was out the window, and panic set in. “Don’t leave me,” she said almost desperately. “Will, we can work this out. Things are better right? I mean they’re different? You’re not the same, you’re better. I’m better. I’ll be more patient and you’ll be more calm. This is just a hiccup. We’re going to be fine. I’m going to be fine, I trust you. What you did before was a long time ago, and there were drugs and badness all around. You’re better. Don’t let one bad day ruin six good years. We’re never easy but we’re worth it. You still think that right? This is just because of one bad day and a lot of bad thoughts.” Her hands were on the side of his face, and she was forcing him to look at her. She was almost shaking him, her hands planted firmly and she didn’t bother to hide all of the thoughts going through her mind, they were written all over his face. “I love you, Will. You’re it for me. I’ve never been more sure of anything ever.”
It took Will a minute of Evie’s sudden flood of words to realize what she was saying, to reclaim his thoughts from Red, to focus on the woman that meant more to him than any other person he’d ever known. Once he could really listen to her, it made his own heart miss a few beats as he rewound his own words to figure out what was going on. Her words, even though they were English, made sense as sentences, the feelings behind them were foreign and strange. “No!” His voice was still rough, low, a growl that made Red distinctly uncomfortable. “No.” He reached out for Evie, wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled, somehow managing (without injury to either of them), to slip to the floor and pull her into his lap. His arms were nearly too tight, almost painful around her waist, and he buried his face against her neck as well as he could with her holding him. “I love you,” he murmured against her skin. “I love you. Only you. Always. Terrified of hurting you, but I love you.” His lips pressed against her skin as he spoke, quickly changing into kisses given between words. “I’m sorry. It’s just... she’s in my head. And her thoughts... they’re so much like mine sometimes.” The kisses made their way up her neck until he could pull her even tighter and find her mouth, that kiss deep and desperate and lingering. “Love you,” he whispered into it, “I’m sorry... I love you.”
Evie moved easily with him and put her arms around him tightly, glad to know she wasn’t going to have to fight him to stay after the night she’d had. “We all have bad thoughts and worries, but we can also all make choices. I’m never going to be afraid of you, Will. I know you worry, but of all the things I worry about that isn’t one of them.”
Will bowed his head again to rest against her neck, not saying anything, just allowing himself to hold her while he nearly shook with worry. He was close enough to hear a soft echo of what might be her heartbeat, and the regularity of it went a long way in soothing him. “I worry,” he finally murmured on a sigh. “I worry, and she’s so convinced...” He went quiet again, as if he was done speaking, but he finally continued. “She’s so violent. Things could... get very bad. Very quickly.” He didn’t elaborate, didn’t tell her the way he’d stopped to stare at the knives in the pawn shop window. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her some of the darker thoughts that had been plaguing him already.
Evie sighed and moved her hand through his hair gently. This was not what they needed. She didn’t know if she could survive another bout of badness. She would survive it, but she didn’t know what would emerge on the other side for either of them. “She’s wrong. You’re stronger than all of this, Will. You’ve overcome everything life manages to throw at you, everything you’ve done to yourself, all of it. You can get past this. We won’t let things get bad.”
He wanted to believe her, to put all of his trust in her like he so often did. He knew she was still reeling from her father’s death, and didn’t want to add any more stress. He wanted to hold her forever and never let either of them go back out the door. He wanted (in a thought he maybe didn’t want to admit to and that made Red ill in his mind) to take Evie to the bedroom so they could wrap up in each other, so that he could sink into her and know that there was something there to keep him grounded. The disgust and fury from Red made him gasp and press his face against Evie’s neck again. “Okay,” he whispered, “Okay. I’m sorry.” He wasn’t even certain who he was apologizing to: Evie, Red, or himself.
“Stop apologizing Will,” she said pulling back only far enough to put her hands on both sides of his face and look at him straight on. “This is going to be okay, you’re going to be fine, she’s going to have to be fine or she’ll be so sick of me she’ll have no choice but to nap constantly. We’re going to be alright, I promise. I don’t break promises,” and she didn’t. She wasn’t in the habit of making promises she couldn’t keep, but ‘we’re going to be alright’ didn’t seem that hard to her. It certainly wasn’t ever easy with the two of them, but being with Will and going through the bad times and the good times, it was as easy and as natural as breathing to her. She kissed him then, because she’d missed him, and because he looked so upset, and she just wanted him to remember that when they were here, it was just them. Crazy alters weren’t invited. Even though the one in her head was reminding her that her boyfriend was buckets of fucking crazy, but with Lois, it was all as good natured as ever. Evie liked her life with a side of crazy. She wouldn’t have known how to function otherwise. She could handle this. She maybe didn’t want to, but she could. And would. And be better for it.