. (spacecowboys) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-05-31 18:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | catwoman, mary jane watson |
Who: Wren and MK
What: All the reasons why Adam fails at everything
Where: Turnberry
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: So many heartbreaky MK sads
It felt like loneliness. Since Luke had been gone, weeks and weeks, and so many things and no one to tell. It felt like alone, like those years between New York and Las Vegas. Wren could handle it, but not in the city. After driving Gus to the airport, after bidding the boy goodbye, she'd wanted nothing more than to hide in her tent for hours. No one to talk to, and therefore no yearning to talk to someone who wasn't there. It didn't occur to her to go home; home wasn't home anymore. She had friends; she had good, good friends. But it wasn't the same. And maybe she was too dependent on Luke, but that wasn't going to change. She felt like she'd lost something, and maybe she'd lost it before Luke had gone. Thierry, churches, Thierry, the antique shop; it all hearkened back there. Sanity was something before, and she shoved that truth down, down. It would only get in the way while visiting MK, and she was getting accustomed to hiding. On the surface, no one noticed if she was a little strange. The only person who noticed wasn't here.
And babies were everywhere. Taunting, bringing back so many memories that Wren couldn't process without grabbing at her hair and wanting to scream and never stop. Evie's labor had been hard. Ella's infant problems had been hard. Gus was gone, and now MK, pregnant with a child she probably wouldn't keep. And Wren remembered that too. That choice, and everything that had come after.
The drive to Turnberry was almost too short, and Wren closed the door on Luke's car and parked far away from the building. She walked slowly, her rumpled sundress grass stained and river-water faded. She'd remembered shoes; ballerina flats in scuffed cream. Her hair was sun-dulled, productless brown and pulled away from her face. She didn't look like she belonged at Turnberry, and she could barely remember living there. That seemed so long ago, almost a different life. The doorman didn't look up when she gave her name, and she didn't blame him.
The familiar elevator led Wren to MK's door, and there she knocked.
After hanging up with Wren, MK dragged herself into her car, slowly shuffling across the ground and gravel giving way to her pathetic shuffle across the side of the road. Cars zoomed past, some with headlights ready to blind against the dwindling sunlight. She sat in the passenger seat, but faced the road instead of the steering wheel, head between her legs and hands threaded through her thick hair, and she took deep, deep breaths as she tugged hard, as hard as she could. Hard enough to well tears into her eyes. Though she should have been comforted by Wren, the conversation only made things worse. The redhead didn’t really believe that her friend thought this was okay, that she wasn’t angry with her for getting pregnant in the first place. Everyone was going to be like Adam, weren’t they, with their judgement and anger and advice.
Slowly, she swung her legs inside, closed the door behind her, and turned the key in the ignition. Drummed her hands on the steering wheel and almost decided to U-turn and drive away from this goddamn godforsaken city all together. Maybe she would head to LA, where people were broken like her, dealt with problems like she did, buried their problems away in drugs and parties until the wee hours of the morning. Or perhaps back to New York where she could hide away with her sister and have her parents berate her for her stupid mistakes. At least she would expect that from them, and maybe they’d let her just fall apart in their tiny corner of Queens where no one really cared what you did or how fucked up you were. But, she couldn’t. It was MJ, a little, who MK had started to feel a little badly for in the wake of the consequences the younger redhead had to pay for. And it was Wren, who clearly need a friend, and MK knew she had been a shitty fucking friend lately. There was still a shake in her bones as she drove the rest of the way to Turnberry, but she couldn’t hide away just yet. Yes. She’d talk to Wren, try to come to a decision, and then maybe hide away until she could face the rest of the world again.
The doorman looked up with slight concern as she strolled in, but said nothing. Clocked it in as another wrecked moment of their newest resident, someone he’d seen time and time again in their paper’s Page Six over the past year and a half. She beat Wren there by a half hour, pacing in her new condo and taking breaks to wretch over her kitchen sink or the toilet in her bedroom. Eventually, she ran a brush through her thick red hair before tying it back, washed the streaked make-up off her face, and tried to calm herself down enough to see her friend. She fought the urge to dig into her secret stash of whiskey hidden underneath her sink or find a hit somewhere or take a razor to her arm, but AA had taught her to transfer her addiction to other things. So, she began brewing a pot of coffee, something ridiculously expensive that smelled divine, and she pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She knew it wasn’t good to do now in her condition, but she could be doing worse things.
When the knock came, she had just began to pour two cups of coffee into the only two mugs she had in the place, and she left the pot on the marble countertop to meet her friend. “Hi,” she said as the door swung open, voice still raw and bags starkly visible underneath her eyes. She did look healthier, at least physically, since Wren had last seen her. A little more fat in her cheeks, color in her face, thicker hair. She had her second cigarette burning in her hand, and she glanced down at the thing. “Lesser evil,” she countered at Wren’s undoubtedly judgmental look, and she waved the blonde inside. The apartment was smaller than Wren’s mini-mansion penthouse and mostly bare, only fundamental furniture like a couch, a coffee table, and a television in the living room immediately in front of them. But MK turned left to direct Wren to the kitchen. It was also bare, but at least there was an island in the middle where they could sit. As she puffed on the cigarette, MK finished up with the coffee in silence, unable to actually speak about what was happening. She placed a mug in front of Wren, and simply asked, “Milk and sugar?” while taking up her own mug to pour a lot of sugar in it. A habit from AA as well.
Even in her less-than-good state, Wren registered that MK looked better. She didn't even care about the cigarette in the light of that, and she gave her friend a reassuring smile. Warmth wasn't hard, even when the world felt like it was constantly tipping on an unsteady axis. Wren could be happy for MK's improvement, just like she could be happy for Evie and Will. What was going on with her didn't touch that, but then caring more about other people was ages old for the girl in the faded dress that had seen better days. She smoothed a hand over her hair self-consciously, sparrow wrists, and she walked further into the apartment. She was wide grey eyes as she looked at the space, strange and quiet and too tentative of step. But none of that was very new for her; she had always been odd, otherworldly, a commodity.
"It's really, really nice," Wren said honestly of the space. It was fairly empty, but MK hadn't been there long, and Wren was just glad to see the redhead out of a hotel and in a real home that she could make her own. And, just like that, she realized how much better MK was overall. It made her so angry at Adam. Didn't Adam see how hard MK was trying? Didn't he see how far she'd come? And now he was putting that all at risk by not being understanding about what MK was going through. It made Wren's stomach hurt, that anger, and it took everything she had in her to silence it and walk forward, into the kitchen. She watched the coffee process in silence, and she nodded when asked about the milk and sugar. "It smells so delicious," she said truthfully, with the appreciation of someone who had been living on cold Pop Tarts and milkless cereal. "You look really beautiful, MK," she said honestly, candid and unprompted.
MK rolled her eyes, but smiled softly. “It’s empty and lifeless,” she said, as she placed her mug down to busy herself with retrieving things from the fridge, where there was a smattering of offerings that a single girl would have. “I haven’t had a chance to--well, that’s a lie. I didn’t really want to settle--I don’t know. I’ve been ordering things to fill it up?” She snatched the milk from the fridge, splashed it in Wren’s mug, and scooped a few sugars into the coffee. “I guess I need to make myself a place now. Since Adam hasn’t--since it’s better for me to be on my own now, I guess.” Her voice shook, and she swallowed hard to suppress something sad in her voice. Adam hadn’t even discussed wanting to make their relationship anything official, and now she surely had no hope at all that he would. It was hard to think about the fact that after everything that they’d been through their relationship was barely a relationship at all.
She rolled her eyes again. “That’s just because you didn’t see me before I got a chance to wipe my face up,” MK responded, taking another, longer drag before sipping at her coffee. There was still that tell-tale shake there in her hands that told Wren she wasn’t as okay as she was playing off at all, but MK couldn’t think of talking about what was growing inside her belly right now. “Are you hungry? I can order something. No, I will order something. What do you want?” With a lean on the counter, her voice had little touch of mania, that rushed moment to please and make her feel better. With a long sip, she burnt her tongue, a sweet, quick pain, and then continued. “Is that your natural color? I’ve never seen you with dark hair. You’re always gorgeous to me, kitten.” And then, she sighed and looked away from the other woman. “How is Gus?”
"It's warm and has potential," Wren countered of the condo, and she meant it. There wasn't much there now, but there could be, and she liked to think that there would be. And it all made her want to find a little knife and introduce it to Adam, but she wasn't the kind of crazy that would actually do it, despite wanting to. She wanted to immediately ask about him, about Adam, but she held her tongue for a minute. She needed to get over being angry about whatever that since Adam hasn't was going to lead into, since she had a good idea without any additional information.
"You were beautiful before you wiped your face, too," Wren assured. "You're always beautiful, MK," she said truthfully, but there was no denying that her friend looked so much healthier now. It was such a stark different from the nearly-emaciated woman Wren had visited at the rehab facility, and it almost made her want to cry with relief. Right then, standing there, she thought MK might make it through all this, that she might be a survivor.
"I am hungry," Wren said honestly. She didn't like charity, but she figured she could make a small concession, seeing as MK's mania seemed to want an outlet. "Anything that doesn't come in a Pop Tart box," she suggested. The coffee was warm and sweet and creamy, and Wren closed her eyes as she took a long swallow. "It is," she said of her hair color, after putting the cup down. "I told Luke I would try it for a little while," she added sheepishly, before giving her friend a direct look. "Talk to me? About Adam, about the baby, about anything," she said, before giving MK a sad shrug. "Gus is with Thomas now. He likes his little aunt, and he likes his grandfather. He'll be happy there until things- happen."
MK just shrugged at Wren’s assurance that the condo would be beautiful and warm one day. She didn’t want to make a separate home from Adam, and it showed in the way she tensed up slightly thinking about this place. Her shoulders stiffened, she gripped the coffee mug a little tighter, and she took a long, long drag. “Yeah, I guess,” was all she said about that. She wanted, more than anything, to move in with Adam. If he wanted to come to this place? Sure, she would nest quicker than anyone ever had. If he invited her to live in his apartment? Even better. But, there was nothing but doubt surrounding everything, and it made her itch for a drink or a razor so badly she almost went blurry-eyed for a moment. But, it passed, that moment, and she flashed Wren a smile. “Liar,” she said simply. She didn’t feel anything close to beautiful at the moment. She hadn’t felt like that in a while.
“Good,” she nodded, and she placed the mug down to dig around in a draw nearby for some take-out menus. “I’m starving. Choose whatever you want, okay?” She tossed the menus across, a small selection of the places close to Turnberry that she’d been ordering from since she moved into the condo a few weeks before. She busied herself with one of the menus, something to occupy the time and distract herself from having to think about what Wren just asked her. There were a few beats of silence, a tight purse of her lips, and a shuddering breath before she decided to respond about Gus first. “He’ll be back soon, kitten. This is good for him. And when he comes back, we’ll--oh, I don’t know, we’ll both take him somewhere he’d like.” Because MK still had a stark sort of affection for the boy she’d help kidnap/save a year prior. He reminded her so much of him that it scared the shit out of her, and she wanted him to be okay.
After a moment, she swallowed hard. “I haven’t even thought of speaking to him yet. I don’t want--I want to see him, that’s not right. I don’t want him to say anything,” MK said of Adam, clearing her throat of the watery words. She looked away from her friend for a moment, out to the hallway they’d just walked in from. “Wren, he didn’t even--he didn’t even hesitate. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t care about what I say, does he? I--no, talk to me first about you. Please, please, just--just talk about something else.” The redhead had started to shake like a leaf, calm exterior shattering and panic beginning to roll in like a bad storm. She dropped the rest of the cigarette into the sink to let it burn away, and she pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes.
Wren understood; she did. She wouldn't want a life apart from Luke, even if it was the best thing for him, for Gus. She couldn't bring herself to want it, which explained why she was always talked out of it so easily. She didn't even run now. Before, she ran, so he couldn't convince her otherwise. Now, running never even happened. She wandered, but never completely out of reach. So, she understood that look on MK's face. "I'm not a liar," she said, leaving the rest for a second. She wanted MK talking first, before she jumped into the conversation about Adam. She knew how protective MK could get about Adam sometimes, and she didn't want to start the conversation off defensively.
The menus were shuffled beneath Wren's fingertips, and she settled on French and slid the menu closer to MK. A crepe would be nice, and French food always made her think of her maman. Plus, it was lighter and less spicy than the other fare, and she thought that would be good from MK. She remembered her first few months of being pregnant, when everything turned her stomach and nothing wanted to stay down. "I know," she said of this being good for Gus. Even when he was happy in the park with her, she knew he needed more than that. It was an adventure for a little boy, but he needed kids his own age and a roof over his head. She smiled. "We can take him somewhere. You haven't seen him in awhile. He's growing like a weed."
Wren let MK say what she had to say about Adam, and she moved once MK began shaking. She walked up behind her friend, and she wrapped her arms around MK's shoulders. She didn't say anything about Adam yet. She just rocked, held, made quietly soothing sounds. Crying it out was a good thing, Wren knew. Sometimes crying it out was the only thing that helped, and she thought MK might keep talking during the quiet, might say what else she had to say.
The menu sliding over was registered slightly, and the promise to bring Gus somewhere when he returned was barely a blip on MK’s radar. She nodded numbly as she tried to quell the panic rising in her throat, and she tried to focus on that French menu staring up at her to give her something to gauge against the raging storm in her chest. She felt her stomach lurching, felt herself go lightheaded, and felt the tears burst through before she could help herself. A pathetic, choked out sort of sob bubbled out, and she shielded her eyes with her hand so that she didn’t even know Wren snuck up behind her until she felt a pair of thin arms wrap around her. The redhead grabbed at the brunette’s arms, fingers clutching roughly into her forearms as if it was the only thing keeping her grounded.
And it kind of was.
As the Earth rocked underneath her, she coughed out tears, wretched though there was nothing left in her stomach to empty, and tried to catch a second of breath. She was suffocating, suddenly, and the lack of air made her dizzy. “It’s not fair,” she choked out quietly, fingers digging deeper for a second before relenting. “I’m being better. He hates me, he hates me. He thinks I’m a terrible, stupid fucking shell of a person.” Shaking her head, she tried weakly to escape Wren’s embrace. “He didn’t even hesitate, Wren. He didn’t even think about it before he told me to just get it taken care of. How could he be so cold? How could he?” MK pushed against her arms again a little harder this time. “He doesn’t care, he just doesn’t want the responsibility. He doesn’t want to be responsible for me or anyone else, and I hate it. I hate it so much it makes me sick. He made me sick in there at his apartment when I was just trying to tell myself to calm down for a fucking second.”
Wren didn't say anything at all at first. It was more soothing sounds, more French words that sounded like calm. She let MK say all the things she had to say, and she did her very best to keep her dislike of Adam off her features. She, herself, had run off because she was pregnant, and she'd considered an abortion, and she'd ended up making the worst choice possible, but she'd done it all because she hadn't wanted to hurt Luke. And here Adam was, and he didn't care about hurting MK. He didn't even take the time to pretend to be decent. Even if he didn't want a baby, he should have been there to console the woman he loved. No, there was no excuse for this. No matter what, there was nothing that could make this better.
"Baby," Wren eventually said, fingers moving to cup MK's cheeks. "Breathe. Breathe, okay?" she asked gently. "Come on. Sit down with me," she said a second later, leading MK to the nearest chair, because all that shaking and shuddering had her worried that MK was going to fall, hurt herself.
Wren tugged a chair for herself, and she reached across the space and squeezed MK's fingers. "Adam has problems, MK. He's scared of taking care of people, and he's scared of responsibility, and he just isn't very nice," she said, trying to soften the last part of that statement with her tone. "He loves you, but he's just not good at it, and it kills me how much that hurts you." Because, really, MK wouldn't be in the state she was in if she had someone decent; that was just plain truth. Anywhere along the line, Adam could have changed MK's fate. He just hadn't. She took a deep breath. "He doesn't hate you. He doesn't." And at least she could say that with conviction. "If he doesn't change his mind, what do you want? Forget Adam for a minute. What do you want to do?"
MK whined childishly as Wren brushed her damp cheeks with her fingers, and she tried to arch her face away from the touch. The French words were soothing, if confusing, but the redhead could barely concentrate on anything her friend was saying. No, she could only think of how royally fucked up all of this was, how wronged she felt by Adam, how she just wished she could go back, back, back to five years ago. To Seattle. She hated this city, she hated what it’d done to her and the ones she loved, and she hated herself. Oh, did she hate herself. It was a vicious little spiral, that self-loathing, and she could feel herself beginning to shift the blame in her head. She should have been smarter about her birth control. She should have just stayed in Malibu.
She should have gone through with ending her life.
Caught up in all that, she didn’t even notice Wren guiding her to a seat until the brunette was sitting across from her, squeezing her fingers. She gasped for air, she sobbed, and her frame shook violently as she tried to make sense of it all. “I can’t--,” she started, snapping her head back and forth. MK wasn’t strong enough for any of this. She wasn’t strong enough for this kind of decision. Maybe Adam was right. “H-h-he said to get rid of it before I get attached. Like it’s a puppy. What the hell is wrong with him?” But, god, did she love him despite it all, and that made her hate herself, too. If she was with someone else, this might not be so difficult. If her boy hadn’t been murdered all those years ago, she wouldn’t have to deal with any of this at all. She’d be clean, she wouldn’t be such a wreck. He would want to have a baby with her. Right? “I have no idea, Wren. I can’t m-make that kind of d-d-decision. I have time, don’t I? I have time, I have time.”
"You have time," Wren assured her friend, though she wasn't sure how much time MK actually had. And, more importantly, she wasn't sure that time would help. Days and days of worrying, of replaying the things Adam had said, Wren wasn't sure MK could handle that. Sitting there, squeezing her friend's hands, Wren had such a hard time keeping her own past at bay. She needed to not look at what MK was going through and compare it to what she had gone through. She knew that. She'd made such terrible choices, and it would be so easy to look at this as a way to fix them, to make sure MK did it "right." But what was right for her might not be what was right for MK, and she had trouble remembering that. And, at the end of the day, it wasn't only MK that would be hurt if the wrong decision was made. All she was knew was that MK was falling apart. All she knew was that Adam wasn't there to make it any better.
"You have time," Wren repeated, a squeeze of fingers. She wanted to say that Adam was the worst kind of bastard, but she knew MK would defend him. Even with all of this, even with how much he'd hurt her, MK would still defend him. And it wasn't that she thought Adam should have embraced fatherhood if he didn't want to. But he should have been supportive, and he should have been understanding. And, most of all, he should have realized this could send MK into the kind of downward spiral that she might not be able to reverse. Wren let go of MK's hand, and she smoothed a few strands of red hair away from her friend's face. "Maybe you should write him a letter? It might be better than talking in person," she suggested. She knew that, in and of itself, indicated a problem, but she was starting to think that seeing Adam would make things worse, not better. "Maybe you should take a few quiet days, figure out what you want, and write to him about it." And maybe she shouldn't meddle, but she was terrible at not giving advice sometimes, especially when MK was as upset as she was just then. She wished Luke was- Luke would know what to say so much better than she did.
The redhead was glad Wren didn’t attack Adam; she couldn’t stomach other people attacking him. No one else understood him like MK did, or at least she thought she understood him. Now, she was just infuriated, sick to her stomach, and at a complete loss with what to do with him. “He’s not going to listen to what I say,” she said pathetically, rubbing the heels of her hands in her eyes again. “If I write a letter, or call him, or knock down his door, I don’t think he’s going to listen at all.” But, taking a few days sounded good, at least until she could quell the panic attacks at the mere thought of the burgeoning pregnancy and its consequences. “I want to just run away, Wren. I almost thought about it today. I almost just drove the fuck out of this city. It’s a miserable fucking place, isn’t it? Look at us. Look at all of us. We might have survived Seattle, but none of us are going to make it out of this hellhole.”
MK didn’t think of how this could all be affecting Wren. She didn’t know the full extent of what Wren had gone through when she was pregnant with Gus, not really. She connected the dots, assumed things, but she couldn’t understand. She did know that this was a taste of the horror her friend suffered, but at least MK had support. She had Wren, at least, who hopefully wouldn’t abandon her no matter what she chose. Adam might drop her like a bad habit, probably would at the end of the day, but at least she had Wren. Wren, who she’d been so awful to. Suddenly, MK’s gaze snapped up to look at her friend. “I’ve been such a terrible fucking person to you, and you’re still here. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.” She reached forward to grab Wren’s hand and squeeze her fingers.
Wren knew that look in MK's eyes, the one that said she would defend Adam to the ends of the Earth. Could she fault her friend for it, when she would do the same thing if anything threatened Luke? She'd killed for Luke before, more than once, and she couldn't begrudge MK her protectiveness; she wasn't that hypocritical. But the difference, to Wren's eyes, was stark and clear; Luke was good, and Adam wasn't. And all of this brought up her old, forgotten anger with Adam. It rekindled the ire she'd felt when she'd found out that he'd taken Luke and turned him into something that killed, without any thought to how vulnerable Luke was. She had to grit her teeth, and it was hard to keep that anger out of her grey eyes, but she managed it somehow. She couldn't even argue that Adam would listen, because she wasn't sure that he would. She wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but his actions weren't making her feel any better about him listening. "I know, bebe," Wren said of wanting to run away. Oh, she knew exactly what that was like. "Running doesn't fix it," she said softly, the haunted voice of experience. "And Luke and I have both left the city and gone all the way across the country, and this place was still with us." She didn't add that this had nothing to do with a Door.
"You haven't been terrible, and I haven't been the best friend in the world either," Wren said, always eager to shoulder the blame. "You were hurt, MK, and we weren't as supportive as we should have been," she said guiltily, because she absolutely believed that was true. She squeezed her friend's fingers. "We can order some food, and get you all filled up, and then I'll stay while you get some rest, okay?" She gave MK a warm smile, sweetening the pot. "I haven't been in a house in weeks. It'll be nice to sit on a couch and have air conditioning for a little while," she added, knowing MK would let her stay for that reason alone. And she would be lying if she said she wasn't scared and worried, but she wasn't in a mental place to worry long into the future, which probably helped just then. She wasn't trying to fix; she was just trying to be there. She smoothed MK's hair, and she gave her a tipped-head little smile. "Look at us. This isn't what we dreamed of on your couch back in Seattle," she said wistfully.
“I wish it did. I wish we could all just fucking leave and be done with it.” She knew it wasn’t possible though. “We’re never going to escape this shit. This absolute draining bullshit. It’s been like this for ever, and it’s always going to be like this.” MK was aware that she shouldn’t utter those words in front of another person so fragile and broken by this city, but sitting there in her kitchen, the abyss stared back at her. Unrelenting, impervious, vicious. And, she wished she could see even the tiniest flicker of hope or light at the bottom, but there was nothing to reassure her there. So, she sighed, and she wiped away the streaks down her face, and she returned Wren’s smile with a shaky one of her own. “I think about that damn couch every day. We thought it was so hard back then, but it was actually pretty great.” MK thought so often about how lucky they all were in Seattle before the floor gave out underneath them. It was a dream compared to this.
So, maybe some of it was wanting to recapture those times, but MK immediately nodded, reaching forward to brush her fingers on Wren’s cheek. “Stay as long as you want. Please. We can--well, no bottles of wine, but we can have as much coffee as we want. Just try to forget about everything for a little while?” MK knew that wasn’t possible either, that the entire thing would be burned in the front of her mind every waking and sleeping moment, but she could pretend.