luke henry ; robin (notjustsidekick) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-12-17 22:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, lois lane, robin |
Who: Luke, Max and Thomas
What: Anger, worry, and moderately successful attempts at getting Luke to talk about the kidnapping.
Where: Thomas' Batcave warehouse.
When: Backdated to after this.
Warnings: Nothing serious.
Luke had fallen asleep at least five different times since Jane left, which left him with a sense that hours had passed rather than mere minutes. For the past three days his body had become conditioned to avoid sleep at all costs, and whenever he did begin to drift off some internal alarm would jerk him back awake - he’d been defenseless enough as it was without adding the additional disadvantage of being asleep. If something had happened, either to him or to Wren, he needed to be awake to act properly. Even though he knew he was safe now and sleeping was no longer dangerous, his body hadn’t quite caught up yet. This time he gave up on sleep and opened his eyes maneuvering himself into a sitting position despite the sudden lightness in his head.
Thomas was absent from the room, but a part of him was grateful to be alone even for a couple of minutes. There was no need to pretend when there was no one else around to watch, full of worry and sympathy that he didn’t want. The voices outside didn’t register until they came closer to the door, and it was easy to tell that one was female and very much not Thomas even though it was hushed. It wasn’t surprising, but Luke frowned at the door all the same. He didn’t want to talk to anyone - he’d only said what he had to Jane because it’d been for medical purposes. Even if Bunny or Quinn had shown up right at that moment, he wouldn’t have wanted to talk to them either. Not yet.
He slid down and pulled the blanket back up to his chin just as the door opened, although he didn’t bother closing his eyes and pretending to be asleep. Instead he eyed Max with a carefully blank expression, keeping his voice just as unreadable. "Hi."
Max knew perfectly well that Luke wouldn’t actually want to talk to her. She’d known it when Thomas suggested it, and she knew it as she approached the boy on the bed. Thomas had stayed in the room beyond, and Max considered giving Luke an out, pretending they’d talked, and then returning to the worried man on the other side of the door. But she knew Thomas well enough to know he’d nudged her toward the door because Luke was being quiet, and because he didn’t know how to have the conversation he needed to have, and so she just walked up to the bed and perched her hip on the edge.
She was far enough back that he wouldn’t feel trapped by her presence, and the blank expression in his normally trusting eyes almost broke her heart before she even managed to say anything. But she knew he didn’t need pity, didn’t need sympathy, didn’t need hugs. She’d been there, and she’d been gone a lot more than three days, and she still remembered the sting of coming home.
"You look like shit, kid," she said, her tone neutral, military. "You did good, you know." It was simple, the compliment, and she expected anything from tears, to blankness, to anger as a response - but she was counting on anger.
There was enough distance between them that he didn’t feel the need to pull away, although he probably would have resisted it even if he had. Pretending to be fine wouldn’t work so well if he flinched every time someone got too close.
He shrugged at the comment about his appearance. It was the least of his worries, and he hadn’t needed a mirror to know it was bad, not when he had the reactions of people around him to go off of. What she said next had more of an effect - his eyes narrowed visibly, but for now the anger he allowed to join his guilt remained just below the surface. Of all the emotions he’d felt over the past three days anger had been the most useful, even though he realized that he should have fought it. Anger gave him strength when he had none, it kept him fighting even when there didn’t seem to be any hope at all; and admittedly it felt good to give in instead of resisting. "No, I didn’t," he said sharply. "No one believes that - not me, not you, and not even Thomas. So don’t bother lying, okay? I’m going to get enough of that from everyone else."
She crossed her arms, because she didn’t want to reach out and ruffle his hair and pull him into a hug, which was - admittedly - what she wanted to do most. That wasn’t what she was there for. He’d get plenty of those from his friends, who she knew he wouldn’t be able to tell what had actually happened, not beyond the brave face he would put on for them. "No? Funny, because I thought you were alive. If you had fucked up, made one wrong move, what do you think would have happened? To you, to the girl? If you had, what? Fought more? Would you be alive? If you died, what good would it have done to keep her alive?" she asked, serious and calm, despite the fire of questions. "You got out. You both got out, didn’t you?" she asked, and the questions were intended to get him talking, railing, screaming, and she hoped Thomas knew well enough to stay behind the door that separated them. She knew Luke would keep it all in around Thomas. He’d worry about Thomas’ injury and what Thomas had been through, and this wasn’t about Thomas, not right now. It would be, eventually, but not right then.
"Tell me what you did wrong," she said, and it wasn’t a polite request. No, it was exactly what it sounded like - a challenge.
He glared at her and said nothing at first - but oh, Max was smart. She knew he was angry and it wasn’t easy to hold his kind of anger back, especially not when there wasn’t anyone he could yell at. Luke would never let himself yell at Thomas even if part of him wanted to, because he’d put Thomas through enough as it was. "A better question would be what didn’t I do wrong." Part of him wanted to pull the blanket over his head and ignore her until she went away, but a larger part of him refused to back down from her challenge. She wanted to know what he’d done wrong? Fine, he’d tell her - and maybe someone would finally understand.
"I let myself get kidnapped in the first place. I should have been able to take care of myself, and Wren... I should have protected her. But I didn’t. They did whatever the hell they wanted to the both of us and I couldn’t do a thing to stop it." His voice tightened, but he still kept it low. "You know why we both got out, Max? Because Batman and Nightwing saved us. But it wasn’t bad enough that I nearly got Wren killed - oh, no. I almost got Thomas killed too. That’s all I managed to do, get people hurt. No one’s alive because of anything I did." If M. had given him the original choice between himself and Wren, he wouldn’t have even been alive right now. As it was, Wren would have been the one dead if there had been no masks to save them - and what good would it have been to live if he’d had the blood of a friend on his hands?
She listened to everything he said without interruption, absorbed all the self hate there, listened to everything that he wasn’t saying, too. The transition from fighter to victim was a fucking impossible one, and well she knew it. She knew, too, that lecturing him about victims not being responsible wasn’t going to do him a bit of fucking good. He’d get enough of that from everyone else.
"In that alleyway, when we were up against the Mask Killer, we fled. Why did we do that? Was it because we couldn’t take care of ourselves? Because we couldn’t protect ourselves? No. It was because sometimes the smartest fucking thing you can do is survive. Sometimes, Luke, the odds are so fucking stacked against you that you can’t do anything but keep yourself going from day to day. Being locked up like that, it changes everything in a way no one out here can understand. Living becomes the most important thing, and the fact that you were even thinking about other people while you were in there, it makes you stronger than I ever was."
She paused, modulating her voice again where it had risen slightly, reminding herself that it wouldn’t do either of them a bit of good if Thomas came through that door. "Whatever you did in there to survive? Whatever it took? It was the right fucking thing. You think you didn’t do anything to help either of you get out? Bullshit. You could have chosen to punch someone in the face, or to make a run for it, or to try to get away on day one, and neither of you would have seen day two. Did you need help getting out? You don’t fucking know that for sure. Because you don’t know what would have happened if the Bat and Nightwing hadn’t gotten there when they did. You kept both of you alive for three, long fucking days."
She looked over her shoulder toward the door Thomas was behind, and then she looked back at him. "And when it comes to smart choices? I’d bet on him any day. You had one choice to make for yourself and Wren. You could fight, without weapons and with no clear path out. Or you could wait on him. That one choice? That smart fucking choice? It saved that girl."
She gave him a long look then, a slow and knowing thing of a look. "What did they make you do?" Again, it was military. It was report, nothing coddling about the tone or the words.
He held himself back from interrupting because a yelling match wouldn’t end well, and he didn’t want Thomas overhearing and bursting into the room. Luke didn’t think their encounter with the Mask Killer was anything like this situation, but for a moment he did wonder what she meant when she said he was stronger than she’d ever been. There wasn’t much of a chance for him to dwell on it, though, because the one thing about anger was that it made thinking clearly more than a little tricky. "I wasn’t waiting for him to show up," he snapped suddenly. Somehow he had to organize his thoughts into something coherent, but it wasn’t easy. "I thought I was alone. That woman, she gave me a choice, and there was no one there to help me make it. You know what I was waiting for?" He sat up, ignoring the faint pain in his arm when the IV shifted with his movements. "I was waiting for him to give her whatever amount of money she asked for so I could shoot myself. That was my choice at first: kill myself, or kill Wren. I didn’t think anyone was going to save me, and I couldn’t think of a way to save myself either." He practically spat the words out, and the harsh tone of his voice surprised even himself.
"But then she changed the rules. I didn’t have the choice to save Wren anymore, not before Batman and Nightwing showed up. She stuck a gun in my hand and told me I could shoot Wren myself or watch her die at the hands of one of those monsters who worked for her." That was when his voice rose, regardless of the fact that Thomas was beyond that door. "I know exactly what would have happened if they hadn’t shown up. Wren was never supposed to get out of there alive, do you understand that? I would have watched her die because I couldn’t shoot her. Does that make me strong, Max? Would it have been a smart choice? Because I think it makes me a coward. I think it makes me weak." He wasn’t quite yelling but it was close enough, and this was what he could never tell Thomas - that he’d lost hope, that he was willing to die to save his friend, that he hadn’t known what to do at all.
By this point Luke was tempted to rip the IV out of his arm and throw it across the room, but he dug his fingers into the bed instead. "They made me do whatever the hell they wanted to." What he and Wren had done, that hadn’t been forced - which made it all the worse. No one was ever going to know about that, though; no one except Bunny, because she deserved the truth from him at least once. Without elaborating further, he pointed a finger at the door that separated Thomas from both of them. "You’re not going to tell him any of this. Swear to me that you won’t."
There weren’t words for how hard it was for Max to sit there and listen to him, to watch him and not go move to comfort him. This wasn’t the scared boy who had cried on the stairs when the he received memory of the Night Terror. This wasn’t anything that a hug could fix, no matter how safe and warm. But she sat there, even still, because it wouldn’t do him a damn bit of good to bottle this up. And she knew from experience that once it scabbed over, it would be almost fucking impossible to dredge it up again. She knew nightmares came from this kind of thing, vigilantes too, and she mourned for his childhood, without ever letting it show on her face.
Outwardly, she was Army calm. "You think shooting Wren would have been the better option?" she asked. "Because that would have been playing right into her hands. When you can’t get out, when you can’t break free, you take their power away. She wanted you to shoot, you didn’t. It doesn’t matter why you didn’t, but it matters that you didn’t. When you’re a POW, which is what you fucking were, the goal of the mission becomes singular. One thing. Staying alive. And you don’t do that in pairs. Each of you on your own, you survived. You each get credit for that. Whatever the hell it took to get there, whatever the hell you did, the goal is getting out. If she had a chance to get out, would you have wanted her to take it? Hell, yes. And she would have wanted the same thing for you. It’s about surviving."
She paused a moment, forcing herself not reach for the IV that he kept jostling. "And you know what is fucking brave? The fact that through it all, you were more worried about Wren, about Thomas, than you were about yourself. However the fuck you ended up there, that is what makes you a hero. I was locked up for months once, and I only thought about how I was going to walk out the door myself. Through all the torture, all the shit, I never once thought about anyone else. And when I walked out, I was the only one that did. You, you didn’t do that. Do you have any idea how fucking fast people forget everyone else when they’re hurt? When they’re endangered? You didn’t."
She looked back toward the door, knowing Thomas would have heard the raised voices, knowing they wouldn’t have much time at all before that door swung open and Thomas was walking through it. "I won’t," she promised him. "But you listen to me - whatever happened to you in there, it has nothing to do with the type of person you are here. You are still a fantastic fucking kid, and a better person than most anyone I know. Don’t let her take that away from you. Don’t let her sick fucking head mess up your life, Luke." That was a plea, and it was obvious. "Fucking fight it."
He shook his head almost immediately. "No. No, I never would have shot her. I didn’t know what the better option was. There wasn’t one, was there?" It was a rhetorical question, one he didn’t expect an answer for because he knew he was right. There had been no ‘right choice’, which made it all the worse. Luke didn’t know how to survive at the expense of someone else, and if there was one thing he was intensely grateful for it was that - not having to learn what it felt like to live because Wren hadn’t. He kept quiet, having realized that he’d been too loud and Thomas would have heard even if they tried lowering their voices now. "I wanted to survive, but I couldn’t have gotten out at her expense even if I would’ve wanted her to get out at mine." He was still angry, but at least the urge to yell seemed to have temporarily vanished - he couldn’t even think of anything to say. Three days had been bad enough, but he couldn’t imagine what months would feel like. Maybe he wouldn’t have been able to last that long, not without pushing everyone else aside and only focusing on himself. Despite what Max said, though, he didn’t think he was a hero. Far from it.
"Don’t. I’m not a hero, and I wasn’t brave. I was--" He broke off and followed her gaze to the door, frowning. If he let all the guilt and self-hatred consume him, he’d be giving M. exactly what she wanted. The problem was he didn’t know how to get rid of it, and there wasn’t anyone he could talk to about it - even with Max he easily could have resorted to yelling if Thomas hadn’t been right outside. Somehow, though, he’d find a way. He had to.
"I won’t," he said, with more sharpness than he’d intended. "I’d never let her make that much of an impact on me." No matter what, he wouldn’t let her win - especially not now.
When Thomas appeared on the stage, it was not as dramatic as it should have been. He didn’t play the part at all well. For all that theatricality he worked with, the distracting mask, the obscuring cape, the dangerous stunts, he was bleached and uninteresting when he was at ease, washed out in his greys, eyes pale, features too sharp for anything but pure focus. In fact, he looked anonymous, an unmarked prisoner, a construct without warmth. He pulled open the door, controlled, without haste, and stared at them both from within the frame.
First he verified that neither was hurt, gaze entirely clinical, and then his shoulders sat back against the line of his spine. He had no idea what the words had been, but the raised voices had brought him just as both knew they would. Thomas looked at Luke’s tight, angry expression, and tried not to see a mirror’s reflection looking back at him. The boy deserved better.
Thomas stepped into the warmer confines of the office and pulled the door shut behind him with an air of intent. Whatever was going on in here, he was going to be part of it, and whatever needed fixing, he was going to try putting it back together. He suspected that Luke was taking some aspect of this on himself, and he suspected so because that is what Thomas would have done--and what he was doing. "What is it?" He was asking Luke, not Max.
Max wasn’t surprised to hear the door open, but she didn’t turn around, didn’t move immediately. He was lying, of course, Luke. The woman had already had an effect on him, and it was obvious in the hard look in his eyes, the expression on his face, his posture on the makeshift bed. "You were what?" she asked, drawing him back to his words before he’d remembered Thomas and the door. "If you weren’t heroic, and you weren't brave, what were you?" she asked. Her pushing question was too quiet for Thomas to hear, across the room, and that was intentional. "Because you could have gotten out at her expense, and we both know it. You could have fought your way out of wherever you were held, and you could have left her there. You could have saved yourself. You didn’t. You sacrificed. Isn’t that the very definition of being heroic?" she asked, her voice steady even as Thomas asked his question from the doorway. If Luke stopped talking now, she knew how hard it would be to get him to talk again.
She paused, letting Thomas’ question rest between them for a moment. "What would you tell her, if you could see her?" she asked. "If she was here. If it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Thomas, and there was no girl for you to save. What would you tell her?" Push.
Luke looked up instinctively when the door opened, and he would have stopped talking right then and there if Max hadn’t kept pushing with her questions. It wasn’t easy to ignore her and it was even harder to keep his anger in check when she just wouldn’t stop, because as much as he didn’t want to answer her there was a part of him that still did. "I was scared," he said quietly, barely loud enough for even Max to hear. "No. No. Nothing I did or could have done would have been heroic--" A glance towards the door and Thomas and he lowered his voice again. "What good would my sacrifice have been if I died? So many people would have been hurt, and if she died... it still would have been my fault. I don’t know what a hero is, but I’m not one."
He glanced up again, shaking his head and sliding back against the bed. "Nothing. It’s nothing," he said, directing his response towards Thomas before his attention returned to Max. For a long moment Luke was silent, trying to think of everything he’d wanted to tell M. during the past three days without much success. If he could see her one last time, just the two of them, he wasn’t sure if he would say anything. He wanted her to suffer like he had, and there was only one way he knew how to accomplish that. It didn’t involve words.
"She-- she enjoyed it. All of it." His voice was quiet, but the anger in it was still audible. "I’d tell her... that I hope one day she knows what it feels like to be where I was. I wonder how much enjoyment she’d get out of it then." He forgot that Thomas was standing there, and it didn’t seem to matter that he was really only talking to himself. "There were times when I wanted to kill her, but you know what? She wasn’t even worth it. I’m better than her, and she failed. I’d let her know that despite everything, she didn’t win. She wanted me to feel, and I felt, but I never reached the point she wanted me to and I never will." He frowned at something beyond either of them. "The only one I was ever disappointed in was myself, no matter what she said. In the end... she lost. She did." Luke glanced up sharply, as though just realizing that he’d had an audience, and that was when he dropped his gaze to his knees and finally fell silent. So much for keeping quiet around Thomas.
Thomas was hopelessly out of his depth in this one, and he knew it. He wasn't the type to lounge when he was uncomfortable, so he just stood a few feet away, blending in with the unexciting, bland default white of a room left for him alone to furnish. Max's prodding seemed to him overdone and unnecessary, but even Thomas couldn't deny that he wasn't the best example of dealing with issues. His first instinct was to reassure Luke that M. wouldn't ever win at anything again, but after a moment he bit off that impulse and remained silent. He didn't know what to say, anyway. Indicate general agreement?
"She did," Max agreed, her words stronger and more sure than Luke’s had been. She wasn’t surprised when Thomas remained silent, not really. She might forget it when she was upset, but he didn’t do well with strong emotions, and there was no doubt that Luke was feeling things, strong things. It was written all over his young face. "She did fail," she repeated. "She wanted you to lose you, and you didn’t. Want to know how I know that? Because you didn’t kill her, and you didn’t do what she wanted you to, and you wouldn’t have done what she wanted you to. I know that. Thomas knows that. You know that. And wherever that bitch is right now? She knows it, too." The words were fiercely protective and echo of his own words, but with an added pride in him obvious within them. "She failed."
Thomas’ silence wasn’t surprising, but it left him with no idea what he was thinking and he didn’t feel inclined to look up in order to see his expression. Instead he tugged absently at the blanket and listened while his anger began to die down, not quite as inclined to argue as he previously had been. He didn’t think there was reason for anyone to be proud of him, and even though M. had failed she’d come close to succeeding - too close. If Thomas and Roger had been a little later or hadn’t come at all, Wren never would have gotten out of there alive, and the fact that he refused to shoot her wouldn’t have made much of a difference if she was dead anyway. "I guess that counts for something." It was a struggle to say the words like he meant them, and afterward he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
He did realize that he hadn’t been M.’s only target, though, and Luke couldn’t help wondering what had happened beyond the plant’s walls while he was locked in the freezer. He didn’t know what Thomas or anyone else had done for the past three days, although he had some ideas, nor did he know how M. had made contact and what she’d said. He looked up with the intention of asking, but after a moment’s hesitation seemed to lose his nerve and kept quiet. Maybe it was better not to know - besides, he’d never let anything like this happen ever again no matter what he had to do to make sure of it.
At last, they had hit upon a subject that Thomas understood. He could even be halfway eloquent about it--in his way. He let his arms drop from the defensive cross over his chest, and he moved closer to the bed. There was a stool that matched the ones from the lab area on the opposite side of the bed, and he dragged it out and sat in the exact place he’d sat to treat Luke after he’d brought him back. There were a couple other times he had been sitting there when he thought Luke might have been awake, but he wasn’t sure. He sat now and gave the boy his unwavering attention. "It’s more than something. There is nothing more permanent than killing another person. There is no rescue from death, no changing your mind, no redemption, nothing more that makes that person what they are, be it good or bad. Surviving without killing, Luke, is more than something." He almost smiled at him. It was detectable in his eyes, at least, and they’d been around each other long enough for Luke to pick up the more subtle expressions, which tended to mean just as much as the others.
Max was glad when Thomas stepped forward, because she knew his words had a weight with Luke that her own did not. She watched him as he sat down, but it was Luke she watched while Thomas spoke. She still knew that he needed to yell, needed to cry, but she would take this for now. She didn’t say anything, not wanting to interrupt the conversation between them, and she resisted the urge to grab Luke up in a hug, but only just. She nudged Luke’s knee with her hand, and she just nodded her agreement, hoping he would talk to Thomas about whatever was going on in his head.
He hadn’t been expecting Thomas to say anything, but this time he lifted his gaze without immediately looking away. Luke knew that Thomas wasn’t the sort of person to lie just to make someone feel better, and he also knew that what he said was his honest opinion rather than what he thought he should say. There wasn’t the same kind of doubt that there was with Max about whether what she said was only meant to reassure him. If he said it was more than just something and meant it - which Luke could tell he did - then maybe he had a point. Maybe they both did. He thought for a moment before saying anything, choosing his words carefully. "But is it enough, even though we both got out? And if you and Nightwing hadn’t shown up..." He hesitated. "Would it have been enough then, surviving without killing, even if that was all I could’ve done?"
"The next day," Thomas said, with grave sincerity, "the next hour, the next minute that you are still alive, something may happen to change your situation. You live to see that moment, and you have accomplished something." He said it with conviction. "Death takes that moment away. That’s why you don’t kill, and you survive. Even if that’s all you could have done." A slow nod.
He sounded so sure of himself that Luke decided he must have been speaking from experience. There was something faintly reassuring in the belief that Thomas knew what he was talking about, even more so than if it was just his opinion. It was that possibility of an outside force changing things that he’d forgotten, and even though he’d known that Thomas would have tried to find him he stopped hoping for it after a while. He didn’t think anyone would come in time, if they ever did; instead his time had been spent trying to figure out his own plan of escape or preparing for what he thought was the inevitable. Instead he should have had more faith. "There were times when I forgot that," he admitted guiltily, looking somewhere to the side. "That things could change or something could happen."
"That happens. Sometimes the things that happen to us make that happen." Thomas, who seemed naturally, inherently, perpetually still, moved forward and gripped the back of Luke’s wrist. "To be who you are, you remember when you can, and you survive. That’s what makes you a good person." There was a strange sort of emphasis on the word "you." Abruptly, Thomas let go and leaned back again, embarrassed by the outburst. "It’s a lot to live through," he said in attempt to console without preaching, trying to find somewhere else to look.
Luke looked back in surprise, the unexpectedness of the outburst silencing him momentarily. He wasn’t sure what to make of the added emphasis on that "you", but it made him want to point out that he knew plenty of other good people, two of whom were in the room at the moment. "Okay," he said after a pause, aware that it wasn’t much of a response - but other than ‘thanks’ he couldn’t think of anything else. He fought the urge to shrug at Thomas’ attempt and rolled his shoulders back instead. "Yeah, but I’ll be fine." It was meant as an assurance that despite everything he really would be okay, rather than an avoidance tactic.
When Luke reverted to single syllable assertions, Max looked up at Thomas, the concern evident in her eyes. She looked back at the young man on the bed, and she took his other hand and gave it an awkward squeeze. She would have grabbed him up in a hug if she could, wanted to offer more comfort, but she didn’t know how to breach that space and be that person. It made her worry about her parenting skills, but this wasn’t the time for that, so she just squeezed Luke’s fingers a little tighter. "It’s okay to not be fine," she told him, because if there was anything she’d learned, it was that putting a brave face on for the world was fucking unbearable sometimes. "It’s okay to be angry and hurt. It’s okay to lock the door to your room and scream. All that, it’s okay. You don’t need to be fine when you go home. Just remember that," she said.
In hindsight claiming he was fine probably wasn’t very effective when he’d been on the verge of yelling just a few minutes before, although it hadn’t been an intentional reaction - all that anger and frustration had just slipped out and Luke didn’t like the feeling of not being in control. He did feel a little better now, after all, and he appreciated Max’s attempt at comfort even though a part of him balked at it. "I’ll remember," he assured her, "but I really will be okay. I’ll... find a way to deal with it, to cope." He managed to sound more confident than he felt, but he’d had enough of feeling weak for the time being. It wasn’t just for his own sake - there were other people who’d worried enough while he was gone, and he didn’t want them to do any more of it.
Max looked at him, looked at Luke, and she wanted to tell him that this was how masks were born, by shoving things away and pushing them down so deep that you got so used to pretending you were okay that you forgot how not okay you really were, forgot how other people felt and reacted to things. She wanted to tell him about Corbinian and his torturing of the men in the alley, and she wanted to tell him about Sentinel and the death he’d caused, and she wanted to remind him about Thomas, first and foremost. But she couldn’t, not then, so she just stood, ruffling his hair and looking down at him. "Alright," she said fondly, and then she looked at Thomas over her shoulder. "We should let him rest."
Thomas looked as if he wasn’t so sure about Luke being okay, and he didn’t like the future tense of the word, but he didn’t know what to do with it, so he just nodded slowly and got up as he was bid. "Losing hope isn’t as important as finding it again," he said, circling the bed to join Max by the door. Then, more reluctantly, since he did not want cause Luke more conflict of mind, "I am sorry I was not there sooner." The gray eyes were steady still, but they didn’t have the same intensity as they had before. Thomas was earnest about the apology, and Luke would do well to note that guilt ran in the family.
Luke knew that neither of them were very convinced, but there wasn’t anything else he could say that he hadn’t already. He’d figure something out before the end of the week, before he saw the people that he absolutely couldn’t fall apart in front of, but for now all he wanted was sleep. He started to shift back out of his sitting position, pausing suddenly when Thomas apologized and turning his head to look at him for a long moment. "Don’t be sorry. What matters is that you came, and you came in time." There was evident gratitude there even if he didn’t manage a smile, and he rolled over onto his side without another word.