Who: Avery Jones & Theo Lupei What: Making up? When: Sunday evening, after this Where: Theo's room. Rating: PG-13, the F-bomb is dropped a few times
It had been three days. Three days of Theo walking out of a room whenever she walked into it. Three days of him freezing her out and avoiding being even remotely alone with her. Three days of him either not being in his room when she came by or not answering the door when she knocked.
Hector had been wonderful. That first day when she got back, he helped her wash the blood out of her hair. He'd taken her to the infirmary to see Garrett to have the stitches put back in and left her there while she talked to the doctor and cried a bit. But then after that, she'd wanted to be alone, after that first night where she'd curled up in Hector's arms and sobbed herself to sleep, listening to him trying to reassure her in Spanish that everything was going to be okay.
But it wasn't. And she'd been avoiding Lucas, and Ash, and the one person who she wanted to speak to because he wasn't trying to talk to her wanted nothing to do with her. Her talk with Russell had helped some; he'd told her that maybe Theo was working through that he was meant to protect her and he hadn't done that. Except that was on her, too, and she shouldn't have sent him away. Agents that went out with Theo and Ash didn't come back hurt. They had a perfect track record and Avery... Avery had nearly ruined that.
She sort of got it? But she needed to apologise, try and set the world to rights.
So it was Sunday evening and it was late. Not too late that everyone was in bed, but Theo she knew would be in his room by now; his time doing yoga or whatever it was he actually did when he was with Indigo had been done and dusted, he'd have had dinner, taken a shower and be unwinding for bed. It was the perfect time to strike.
She'd been trying to work out what to say all day, ultimately she'd just decided that perhaps it was better to wing it. So here she was, standing at Theo's door, winging it, as she knocked three times.
It had been three days. Three long days of Theo removing himself from any room that Avery walked into. He was still trying to process everything that had happened on the mission and his own guilt for not having cleared that room before leaving her alone. If he'd just paid more attention maybe she wouldn't have been hurt. And then there was that irrational anger he felt towards Avery for her complete lack of care or regard for her own personal safety. It didn't help that she hadn't listened, to him or to Russell. She'd just done what she wanted and that was beyond frustrating, she could have been killed.
He hadn't spoken to anyone since the mission and had been working himself hard in the gym and out on runs, trying to conquer his feelings and deal with the fallout. Ash he knew was worried, about Avery, but he was just plain mad. Okay that was a lie, he was concerned and angry, a real confusing powder keg of emotion which had been festering as a lot of what he was feeling had gone unspoken. Theo had truly reverted back to how he'd been when he first arrived at Limbo.
Tonight however he was in his room, freshly showered and feeling the ache of having done a hologym session that could have been easier, but better that than everything going on in his head. He was sat on his bed, book in his hands and leg drawn up towards his chest.
Of course then the knock happened and Theo's eyes flicked up, it wouldn't be the first time he'd ignored it.
There was a light under the door, he hadn't turned it off this time, so Avery waited for a moment before it was clear she wasn't going to get a 'come in' and just pushed the door open. She was glad at least that he hadn't decided to randomly start locking it; that would have been the icing on a really shitty cake if he'd done that.
Lower lip between her teeth, Avery stepped into Theo's room, closing the door behind her. Her stomach was in her throat, which wasn't good because her throat was still kind of sore from being compressed and squished and her voice was still a little croaky at times but she'd been doing her best to try and stop that but it would seem she was the worst healer when the injuries were actually inflicted on her.
Her hands hadn't stopped shaking since they'd left the warehouse, and they were doing that now so she tugged her sleeves down over them and stood not too far from the door, looking at Theo and the book he was reading, all the rambled rehearsed words that she had been planning on saying just drained out of her brain like someone had pulled the plug on all of her planning.
She was holding her breath, she realised, but when she let it go she still felt like she didn't have enough air in her lungs.
"Theo, I-"
Theo was still. Deadly so. His eyes were just fixed on Avery though he couldn't look at her too long, not without feeling a very uncomfortable twist in the pit of his stomach. She had so many cuts and bruises, the most vivid of which were the ones around her neck from where that super's hands had been, trying to choke the life out of her.
He put a bookmark into the place where he'd gotten up to and closed the book before he simply waited to see if she'd finished that train of thought.
Theo wasn't exactly the most verbose of people.
But he was. He and Avery had spent hours talking about nothing, and it wasn't like him to just be silent, to not greet her, to not try and guess what she was going to say when her brain turned into soup around him (which happened more often than either of them cared to admit) but he knew her well enough that often his guesses were spot on, or pretty close.
She wanted him to get to his feet and hug her, wrap his arms around her and hold her until the world felt less wonky but he barely looked at her. He'd looked at her for a moment, then down at his book and then he'd looked back at her. His expression was set, cold and closed off, like it had been when she'd first met him and it hurt.
Her lower lip wobbled, her eyes were already shining and she chewed on the inside of it before she took in a shaky breath.
"I- I'm sorry," she started, though she wasn't a hundred percent sure just what it was that she was apologising for. For going off script, for screwing up the mission, for meaning that they had to clean up her mess, for discovering a new power that came out of nowhere that made her deadly?
Theo's jaw tightened when Avery's eyes filled with tears and she shifted nervously where she stood but he remained strong. The book was set aside and his head tipped slowly to one side as his eyes regarded her coolly and with a level of detachment not seen in a very long time.
"Sorry?" He repeated, eyebrow lifted. "What for?"
Avery pressed her lips together, and tensed her jaw but the movement hurt her abused neck and temple, the pain in her head causing her to feel dizzy for a moment. She lifted her hand halfway to her neck but then dropped her hand, though it raised again a split second later because she needed to rub - gently - at her eyes.
"For fucking up the mission?" she started, thinking about Russell's words. The way he was looking at her, like they weren't even friends made her want to crawl into a hole and never be seen again. She hadn't realised just how much she relied on Theo, just how much his presence, their relationship, was important to her until it wasn't there and it was like an aching hole inside her, like a part of her was missing and she hated it.
But the way he was looking at her, she felt like maybe she'd lost it.
When she blinked, a few tears slipped down her cheeks but she dashed them away quickly.
"F-for taking my ear piece out. For not listening. For- for nearly fucking up yours and Ash's perfect tr-track record."
Honestly it was taking all of Theo's self control to not get up off his bed and wrap Avery in his arms because she needed to understand just how serious this was. She could have died. And he wouldn't have been able to do a damn thing about it because she refused to listen, refused to let him do what was in her best interests. No, she'd rather run headfirst into danger. And then she'd nearly been killed, all because he hadn't done his job, he hadn't protected her.
Of course all that regret and sorrow soon evolved into something else when she brought up the "perfect track record" and that something else was anger. She really thought that was what he was worried about? His and Ash's perfect fucking track record?
"You think that's what this is about?" He bit out, eyebrow lifted.
Avery flinched at the shift in Theo's tone. He'd gone from a cold distance to a cold fury, she knew that look but she'd never had it directed at her before. She'd never really seen it directed at anyone before, she'd only ever seen the aftermath when he was trying to cool himself down from being amped up and angered by someone. She drew her lower lip between her teeth, sniffled a bit and looked genuinely confused.
"Isn't it?" she asked, "'cause I fucked up and I-" she swallowed. "Ash said at- and Russel said-"
She'd said something wrong again. This was not going the way she'd wanted it to.
Theo bit out a sharp mirthless laugh as he shook his head, tongue pressing against his canine as he tried to process the fact she honestly believed that he would really give a shit about a record. "So, what? Just because they said that it automatically means that somehow I must think that too?" And he knew Ash well enough to know that she wouldn't care about a track record not when it was a choice between that and Avery.
"Wow, that's... wow," he drawled as he moved to get off his bed. "If that's what you think then why are you here, Avery?"
When Theo moved to get off the bed, getting to his feet and drawing himself up to a height that had never before seemed intimidating to Avery (because come on, her other best friend was a werewolf, her understanding of who was and wasn't dangerous wasn't exactly well developed), she took a step backwards, nervously wringing her fingers in the sleeves of her hoodie where Theo couldn't see them.
"I wanted to say sorry," she told him, "And- and that-" That she couldn't sleep, that she was afraid all the time of hurting someone with her hands now. That she couldn't get that guy's body out of her mind. That she kept seeing his lifeless form twitching. That it had been an adrenaline rush. That she'd nearly died. That she could have died. That she could have died and she never even-
She looked down. "I'm sorry. I don't- I hate that you're mad at me and I don't want you to be and I don't know how to fix it and I'm- I'm just-" her voice broke. "I'm sorry."
"You should be," Theo retorted angrily and quickly. "You could have died, Avery. All because you didn't and wouldn't listen to me, Russell or Ash. People who know what they're doing. You put yourself in danger without any thought and when I told you to stay put you didn't listen, you just had to get in there. That's not okay, Avery. You can't just do that and not expect bad shit to happen."
His hands flexed restlessly at his side before one hand went into his hair, pulling it back and bunching it up painfully between the gaps in his fingers.
"I was supposed to protect you and you-" He bit off that last sentence and just looked away.
Avery frowned as Theo all but snarled at her. It was the most words he'd said to her since the mission had started. She watched him rake his hand through his hair, or he started to but he actually just fisted his fingers in the lengths and tugged. She liked his hair; if he did that any more, he'd end up pulling strands out and that wouldn't be good. She swallowed, wetting her lower lip again.
"Funny you should mention that," she mumbled, "I can't- I can't get it out of my head." The words were quiet, the softest confession. "I keep- I keep seeing him on top of me and I-"
She cut herself off, taking a couple of hesitant steps up towards Theo. "If- You did protect me. And- you- you couldn't have seen the guy. He was in the wall, Theo I- Theo, please- look at me?"
She was closer, now, within touching distance. "I what?"
Theo was steadfastly not looking at her, his head was still turned away with his gaze focused elsewhere. Anywhere on Avery. His chest was lifting and falling quicker than it had any right to but then he was angry and he didn't really do emotion. Not if he could help it.
He finally pushed a breath out of his chest and turned his gaze back to Avery, desperately trying not to see all the injuries, the injuries that he should have but didn't prevent. Guilt was a horrible emotion, ate away at at you and taunted you until you could no longer hear reason.
"You put yourself in danger," Theo bit out. "Didn't stop to think, didn't think ahead, didn't consider what would have happened if I hadn't followed you up those stairs."
Avery watched Theo's chest rising and falling, how he didn't look at her, how he was looking anywhere but at her, and when he did finally there was an expression on his face she couldn't place.
"I know I fucked up," she said, not for the first time. And the words felt so wrong; she wasn't a swearer particularly but there was nothing else that suited in this situation. She hadn't just messed up; she'd fucked up. FUBAR. And right now it looked like she couldn't fix what she'd done.
She felt her lip going again and she wanted to reach out to Theo but she didn't, she wasn't entirely sure she'd be able to take it well if he rejected her right now. If he pushed her away she might just crumble. She was already pretty close.
"But you did, you- you were there. You cleared the room and-" she swallowed. "This?" she tipped her head a little to bare the large hand print bruises that marked her neck, "this isn't on you."
Theo gave a small disbelieving sound as he chanced a look at her neck before he couldn't look at it any longer and he looked someplace else. "It is," he argued. "It was my job to clear the room, to make sure you'd be safe as you healed the Senator. I didn't do my job, Avery. If I had then none of this-" He gestured to her injuries "-would have happened and you wouldn't have needed to do what you did."
He shook his head and reached up to rub at the bridge of his nose.
"How the hell were you supposed to know that there was an invisible man in the room, Theo?" Avery challenged, stepping closer. He hadn't backed off, hadn't tried to put distance between them. It was striking her that maybe he wasn't mad at her. That maybe he was mad at himself, and that he had been worried about her and that he didn't know how to process that?
Yeah, but if that was what it was... why? He'd been on missions with people he was friends with before, maybe not as close to but still friends, and hadn't been like this when they came back.
She reached up and caught his wrist gently with her hand, drawing his touch away from his face. Very carefully, she put his hand on her face, so that his hand was cupping her cheek, his thumb just hovering over the dark bruise under her eye, her touch staying on his wrist but not so tight that if he wanted to pull away he couldn't.
"You don't have x-ray vision, iubitul." She really hoped she got the pronunciation right. "And you're not a pre-cog."
It was different because it was Avery. She was the first person that Theo had actually allowed himself to care about in a really long time. All his life all he had done was move, from place to place, and had never been able to put roots down or form any sort of connections. Avery had been his first actual friend and it was taken as granted that when they were out in the field together that he, Cobalt, would take care of her, Archangel.
This time he failed and really bad things had happened.
He was angry at her for not listening, for doing whatever she wanted, but he was angrier at himself for becoming complacent.
He resisted her touch as it became rather apparent what exactly she was thinking when she moved it to her face, to the place where a dark angry bruise had formed under her eye. And then she spoke the word darling to him in his native tongue and Theo swallowed hard, the muscle in his jaw twitching as he finally touched her, not just her, the injury to her face.
A moment later and he'd wrapped his arms very firmly around her and pulled her into his embrace. It was silent but nonetheless meaningful. Sometimes words weren't really needed.