InsaneJournal

Who: Wren and Luke
What: Post-Alex death, part 3 of 3.
Where: Turnberry.
When: Continuation of this.
Warnings/Rating: Aangst, and some cute. THE SPAM IS DONE.

“Oh,” he said, realizing too late that she might not have intended what he assumed she did. The problem was that it felt a whole lot like she was blaming him, even if she actually wasn’t. “I don’t want you to blame yourself, Wren, I’m just-- I’m saying things can be different, and you’re saying you expected them to, like you don’t think they can be. But you didn’t think I’d talk to you either, right? You said that.” He tried for a smile, but her shaky sigh made him falter, and he realized he’d made a mistake in allowing his reactions to what she said to be so honest.

Whatever protest he might have made was silenced when he realized she was right. She had told him as much, and he’d reassured her that he wouldn’t get tired of it, that it didn’t matter, and now he was acting exactly as she’d feared he might. “I’m not tired of you, I just-- it’s hard. Harder than I remembered. But that fear isn’t going to be there forever,” he said. “I can learn how to be patient. I can wait.” There was nowhere else for him to go anyway, nowhere else he wanted to go. If he didn’t have her, he might as well have had nothing. Brielle was still something she couldn’t get over, and he saw that, but her fingers against his lips momentarily halted his protests, and he listened instead. He’d tried to explain his motivations a thousand times, but nothing he’d said had made a difference then. Why should it be any better now? “I wasn’t keeping her a secret,” he told her, but his voice was quiet, resigned to the fact that she was going to feel the way she felt regardless of what he said. “I just thought it would upset you, and I didn’t see why I should dredge up the past when it didn’t mean anything, not anymore.” He shrugged, almost helplessly. “I guess I was wrong.” He went silent after that, because he was so goddamn tired of arguing, and he didn’t have it in him to do it anymore.

He shook his head, which might have been an answer to her question, or a way to avoid it entirely. “You always think I’m angry with you when I’m not,” he told her instead, completely bypassing the matter of who his guilt was for. Lying down sounded good, really good, but he only managed a small step forward before she was apologizing and avoiding eye contact. “I don’t know what you meant it as,” he admitted, watching almost sadly as she took another step back. The distance, however small, felt so large between them, and maybe he should have given her space, but he couldn’t just let her turn her back on him like that. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, sliding his arms around her waist and bringing his lips to the curve of her cheek, just below her ear. He refrained, however, from telling her not to cry, because he thought she should be able to get it all out if she needed to.

She was quiet through everything, and she expected him to let her go, to let her breathe, to let her find that cool facade and wrap it around herself. She could do that, she thought, if she only had a few minutes. Just that; a few minutes. But then his arms were sliding around her waist, and he was so close that she could feel his breath against her cheek. That alone made the tears fall, and she didn't try to stop them, she couldn't; she didn't have it in her just then. She leaned back into him, as if they hadn't been fighting from the moment they got into the cab, and she just let him take the brunt of it as the sobs wracked her shoulders and made her feel like she was falling apart. She didn't intend to talk. In fact, she bit her lip bloody with the effort not to, but she couldn't help it in the end.

Her words tumbled, wet and quick and hard to understand. "I think- I think we talk about the bad things too much, instead of just trying to make them better," she admitted, and she knew she was to blame for most of that. She was scared, and she kept asking for time, but time wasn't making anything better, not really. "That's me- I know. I can't- I need to just be part of Gus' life, so I don't feel like I'm not, and I don't know how to be a mother. I know that too. And I need to just trust you again, or we're going to talk about it until you can't stand defending yourself anymore." She knew that, but it was harder to do than to say, and she took a deep breath and let her arms rest over his around her waist, her fingertips pressing into his wrists. As she continued, her fingers closed around his hand, her grip clammy, cold and shaky. "I don't want Brielle to constantly be here, and I don't want Silver to be here either, and I need you to push when I get scared, because I'll stay scared unless you do." She turned her cheek a little, just enough so that her cheek pressed against his jaw. "I know that's asking a lot, I do. I just- I'm so not okay, Luke, and I know you're not either. I know, no matter how you pretend, no matter how I pretend. It's just, it's been one thing after another for months, and I don't know how much more I can take. I don't, and I don't want to lose you because I'm falling apart, but I don't know how to stop." She paused, and she swayed back into him, her grip on his hands tightening and going cooler with the fresh dizzy spell. "Tell me, please. About the guilt. Tell me? Just- Just talk. It helps. Please?"

Luke had an advantage in the fact that he was expecting her tears, and so when the sobs came, wracking and all-consuming, he simply held her tighter. It was as though she wouldn’t fall apart, not while he was there, because he wouldn’t let her. He didn’t say anything, choosing to offer comfort and reassurance silently rather muddling it with words. They only complicated things, and so far talking had only seemed to make things worse anyway. So he leaned against hers, and he held her, waiting for the sobs to subside.

“I think we do too,” he agreed in a whisper, once he managed to make out what she was saying past the tears that made her words jumbled together. “Talking about it just hurts, and that hurt doesn’t go away, because nothing’s ever fixed. I want to fix things, Wren. I want them to get better. I do.” This couldn’t be all life had to offer, just endless amounts of pain and anguish that never allowed them a moment to breathe. It had to get better, didn’t it? All those dreams he’d once had, of having a family and marriage and doing something he wanted to do, they had to still be possible someday. “No, no, it’s not just you,” he insisted. “I don’t know how to be a father either, Wren. Parenting, it’s just... you figure it out as you go along. It’s not too late. You’ll be a part of his life, like you should be, and I know it’s hard, but you need to believe that I’m not going to keep him from you. I would never, ever do that.” As for trusting him, she was right about that too, because he could only defend himself against her suspicions and accusations for so long before it would begin to wear him down. He wasn’t a cheater, and he never would be, and her thinking he might be one was decidedly not an easy thing to cope with. He’d always thought she knew him better than that, despite Brielle. His hands shifted on her stomach when he felt her hands on his, and he splayed his fingers, warmth against cool clamminess. “I don’t want them here either,” he said. “This is our relationship, not theirs, and they shouldn’t be a part of it. No one but us should be. And it’s not asking a lot,” he added, shaking his so that his jaw brushed against her cheek. “If you want me to push, I’ll push. I know we’re not okay, I know that, but we have each other, and I’m not going to let you fall apart. Okay? I promise I won’t.”

He didn’t want to talk about the guilt, but he never could resist her when she said please. The way she swayed against him, however, didn’t go unnoticed, and he nudged her towards the couch without loosening his hold. “Okay. I’ll talk, but we should sit down first. Then I’ll talk as much as you want me to.”

"Talking is still important," she added after he whispered his agreement, because it was. "We've never been very good at that," she said truthfully, and this just proved it. It was both of them, really. He was reluctant to tell her things, and she was too quick to take everything he said as something bad. "We need to work at that, but-" She nodded, because it did hurt, and there wasn't enough good between it to make it okay. "I think we need to promise to talk about things, and to be honest, but I don't think it can take the place of living." And that was on her, and she knew it. "Which means no more waiting. I promise, but it might not be easy, Luke," she said, and she sounded so, so worried, unable to keep it out of her voice, because she couldn't really remember a time when they were worse off than they were just then, and that was saying something. Being together and pretending, though, that wasn't going to make anything stronger in the long run, and she knew that too.

She didn't say anything else until he suggested they move to the couch. She just listened, and she focused on the feel of his hands, the strength of his chest, the way his breathing sounded against her ear and the feel of his jaw against her cheek. It was better than any of the words that had come before, and she wondered why they couldn't have enough time to get more of this, the quiet still that made everything seem okay for a few fleeting seconds. And, though she didn't quite understand why, she didn't protest his nudging or the request to sit down. It was getting harder and harder to fight the inky blackness of unconsciousness while she remained on her feet, and she stepped away from him carefully, ensuring she kept her footing with the space between them. She glanced at the fallen whiskey bottle, but it was a careful and intentional choice to leave it where it was.

She kept one hand in his, until her arm was extended as far as it could go, and then she dropped the hold on his fingers. The couch was close, but she turned toward the hallway that led to the master bedroom instead, even though the walk seemed endless. She kept her fingers along the wall, and she talked as she moved, the effort intentional to keep the ache in her skull from making the world go black. "Our relationship," she repeated, and there was a hint of something that resembled a shaky trust in the words. "Are we in one?" she asked, and it was a blatant question, one that tentatively demanded a blatant answer. Labeling was something they hadn't done, not since this had all started, and it had been intentional on her part, safe. If things weren't labeled, then there wasn't as much trust and risk and hurt all tied up in it. She stopped in the door of the bedroom, and she leaned heavily against the doorframe. "Once we make it to that bed," she said, "we're only talking about you," she added, warning him in advance.

Talking had never been one of his strong points, and he thought that their tendency to fall back on physical intimacy when things got bad might have worsened that. He found it difficult to express his feelings through words, but without them he was far more capable, even if it wasn’t very healthy. “No, we haven’t,” he admitted. “I know that too.” They’d never made enough of an effort to work on that, not beyond saying they would, and if things were going to change, they’d actually have to mean what they said. “I don’t care if it’s not easy. I can’t lose you, Wren, which means I’ll do anything to make sure that doesn’t happen. No matter how hard it is, I don’t care. We’ll be okay,” he assured her, with an almost desperate sort of conviction. There was no other option. Aside from Gus, she was the one good thing he had in his life, and they’d been through far too much to fail now. Maybe things were bad, really bad, but they could work through it. Nothing was going to break them up; not Alexander, not Silver, not Brielle.

He could have stood there with her longer, the feel of her body against his enough to keep him content, but he knew she wouldn’t be able to keep standing much longer, and he was admittedly exhausted as well. It would be a relief to get off his feet. He tugged on her fingers when she stepped away, tilting his head to the side in puzzlement when she bypassed the couch and moved towards the master bedroom instead. Regardless, he trailed along behind, a presence behind her validated by a brush of fingers along her shoulder or down her side. “Yeah,” he said, without hesitation. “We are. Do you want us to be?” In his mind, they’d been in a relationship since their tentative reconciliation in the casino all those months ago, and he’d simply assumed she felt the same. He laid his chin on her shoulder when she stopped in the doorway, her warning eliciting a rare smile that was audible when he spoke. “Okay,” he agreed. “Just me.” He circled around her and wound his fingers in hers, coaxing her forward.

He had more conviction than her, but he always had when it came to the two of them being together. She'd always been the one scared of things in that regard - of his feelings for her, of being good enough for him, of a million things that all fit into those two categories and translated as a sometimes paralyzing insecurity. It had made her run more than once when they were kids, and it had kept her from calling Thomas and finding a way back to New York once she'd fled, and it made his deception with Brielle into a thing with teeth that haunted her. If the tables were turned, if he had a close friend who was in love with him, she would have so much trouble being okay with it, and she knew she should handle Brielle with the same calm certainty that he handled Silver. "How can you be so sure?" she asked. "If you'd done the things I have, I would be worried all the time. How can you be so sure?" She let his words wash over her, the assurance that he couldn't bear to lose her, and she let the brush of his fingers against her shoulder or side make the words real. "Tell me you love me," she requested when he pressed his chin to her shoulder, her fingers reaching back and threading through his hair. "I want to believe it, and I want to be sure, and I don't want to be scared anymore." She nodded a second later, as he wound around and coaxed her forward. "Maybe you should ask me," she suggested, matching that rare smile with one of her own. "You're so beautiful when you smile," she added, a near whisper in the cold, dark room. Her fingers tightened in his, and she pulled him to a stop just shy of the bed. "Last chance," she added, looking past him at the mattress. She swayed a little on her feet, and she used her free hand to tug once on his shirt, a silent request.

His calm certainty was a facade, one he was surprised she couldn’t see through. Her friendship with Silver tormented him, kept him up some nights, and just the thought of them being together in any regard made him burn with jealousy. But he hid it, and he told himself that Wren loved him, and she was with him, not Silver, and surely she’d made that clear to the other man. Silver might have been a stubborn jerk, but she wouldn’t cheat on him. No matter what Silver said, or what he did, she wouldn’t. These were the things Luke sought to convince himself of, and he portrayed a sense of certainty because he had no other choice. He couldn’t be with her every minute of the day, and he couldn’t allow his jealousy to consume him, or he would destroy their relationship in the process. He simply had to have faith in her love for him, and trust her in the way she found it so difficult to trust him. “I don’t care about the things you’ve done,” he told her. “It’s not easy being sure, Wren. But... either I trust you, and I believe you, or I don’t, and that’s no way to live, constantly wondering if you’ve found someone else or worrying that you’re cheating on me.” He had faith in so very few people these days, and despite the fact that she’d left him in the past, he’d found it in himself to trust her again. Once he could recover from, but twice, that he couldn’t, and he did understand her fear of it, of lies and betrayal.

“I love you,” he said simply, straining forward to press a kiss to the skin he could reach, just above her jawline. He’d never stopped, and he wanted her to believe him, to stop questioning how he felt. The rare smile became a quiet laugh when she suggested he ask her, the shard of normalcy like a soothing balm on the memory of what had occurred in the past few hours. “You mean like this?” His expression sobered, and his fingers tightened on hers. “Will you be my girlfriend, Wren Maheu?” No matter what she said, he couldn’t think of himself as beautiful, and so he opted not to respond rather than bothering to argue the same spiel all over again. He wasn’t sure what it was his last chance for, but he didn’t care, and after the tug to his shirt and it was discarded he simply pulled her down onto the bed next to him, sliding back against the pillows.

She didn't actually realize he was as jealous of Silver as he was. Silver never talked to her about wanting anything from her, and she didn't see past this particular facade of Luke's. Possibly, she just loved him too much to believe he would worry, and possibly she couldn't imagine anyone leaving him for anyone else. It was a kind of blindness that she had in regards to him, but it had been that way for years. "I don't see anyone else when you're in the room," she admitted of the fact that he had nothing to worry about. "I don't think of anyone else like I think of you," she went on, and this was easy. Fighting about Gus, fighting about Brielle, dealing with the memory of Alexander in that storage facility, that was hard. This, letting him know how she felt, this was easy. But he was right about it being no way to live. She'd spent nights and nights worrying about Brielle recently, and she knew it needed to stop. "I don't want anyone else like I want you." She paused a moment, quietly thoughtful and tightly closing her eyes. "I don't love anyone but you."

The kiss to her jawline made her eyes flutter open again, and the declaration made them water, and the quiet laugh made her smile widen. She bit her lip, and she ducked her head before he asked her. She giggled, the sound young and quiet in the still room, and she wondered that either of them could laugh still. "I think you're supposed to ask to be my lover or... are we allowed to still use girlfriend and boyfriend now that we're parents?" And she normally didn't refer to them as that, a very careful choice, and it made her blush to say it now. But the smile was still on her lips when he pulled the shirt off, and she'd just reached out to touch him when he pulled her onto the bed with him.

True to her word, she dropped the topic of conversation entirely as soon as they were on the bed. Instead, she curled up against him, her cheek against the crook of his arm and one hand possessively pressed against his opposite hip. She shifted forward until she was against his side, until there wasn't a hint of space between them, and she tipped her head back to look at him. "Now, tell me."

She was saying everything he wanted to hear, all the things he worried about when no one was looking, when he could let his facade drop, and he tried to memorize every single word to keep close whenever the doubts returned again. “I feel the same, you know,” he said quietly, warmed by her reassurances. “You’re everything to me. You and Gus, you’re all I need.” Maybe it was strange, to have life so simply defined, but now he didn’t need grand importance and a hero’s life to feel fulfilled as he had back in his teenage years. He didn’t need to make an impact like Thomas, or even Bruce, both of whom, in their selflessness, had ended up isolated and unhappy. No, he just needed his son, and Wren, and a life that didn’t involve Alexanders around every corner. The sound of her laughter in the quiet stillness made him look down at her in surprise, amazed that even after the horrors they’d been through, when they were both on the edge of falling apart, it was still possible to do normal things like smile. “Lover is too... I don’t know,” he said, frowning. “I like girlfriend and boyfriend. Maybe significant other, if you want something more mature,” he teased. “I’m pretty sure we can be parents and still be dating.” One day he hoped they’d be more, but for now, he could be content with this.

Only when he felt the mattress against his back and pillows at his head did he realize just how drained he was. Part of him still couldn’t believe that Alexander was really gone, and he hoped things would quiet down after this, even though he feared they might just get worse instead. He knew she expected him to talk, and she wouldn’t let him get out of it, but that didn’t stop him from stalling. He brushed her hair back from her face, careful to avoid the stitches, and he banded an arm around her waist to keep her against him, and when he finally did speak, he trailed his fingers up and down her arm to distract himself from what he was saying. “Alexander has a brother,” he said. “His name is Nicholas, and I ran into him at Caesar’s after the door thing, and he doesn’t know anything. They’re twins. The only reason he gave up MK’s location is because I threatened to hurt his brother if he didn’t.” He took a deep, deep breath before continuing, and tipped his head back to stare up at the ceiling. “He didn’t care what I did to him, as long as I left his brother alone. Alex cared about him, Wren. Despite everything he’d done, what he did to you and MK, he was capable of caring about another human being. The men I killed... I never thought of them as people. Not really. They were monsters. But-- but they were people. They were terrible, and they did terrible things, but they were somebody’s son. Somebody’s husband, somebody’s father, somebody’s brother. They might’ve had family, but I never knew, because I never wanted to know.”

Then came the hard part, what tied it all together, really, and his voice became strained as he fought to keep his tone even. “So then I thought... Thomas’ parents weren’t good people. I mean, what they were involved in, it would’ve been easy to just see them as criminals. And someone killed them. Maybe it was someone like me. Whoever it was left an orphan behind, and it messed him up, Wren. What if I did that to someone? How many people out there are messed up because of me? And Alex’s brother-- he’s going to be devastated, and I did that. I did that, me, and I’m not even sorry, because I wanted him to die,” he admitted, and it was more of a sob, the words rushed together and barely comprehensible.

"You don't need to save the world anymore?" she asked, and that was still about him, so it was okay. There was a lingering smile in the question as she looked up at him, fondness for the boy he had been, the boy who had given up everything to unselfishly try to help others. She knew he thought that was lost, that what he'd done canceled it out, but she knew better, and she slid her hand from his hip to his jaw, fingers walking back and forth from chin to ear. Her eyes dipped close for a moment when he tucked her hair back from her face, and she only opened them again when he mentioned Alexander. The name came with a small shudder, one she couldn't help, but she said nothing as he talked about this unknown brother of Alexander's. Truthfully, she couldn't imagine Alexander sacrificing for anyone, but then she'd only known the worst parts of that man. But he was right about terrible people having family, and he was right about people loving them, despite their faults. "You're right," she said. "My maman killed my father and his daughters, and I knew that, and I still loved her," she admitted, and she shook her head a little against his shoulder. "But that doesn't mean I didn't know what she did was wrong. This brother of Alexander's, you don't think he knows what his brother was like? I can't imagine someone like Alexander being able to hide it forever." He'd done too many things for too many years, Alexander.

The mention of Thomas silenced her, though, and her fingers moved from his jaw to his chin, and she pushed herself up a little with a his, turning his face so he looked at her as she sat up beside him on the bed. "Thomas was a little boy who didn't get the kind of help he needed. We don't know who he might have been if his parents hadn't died. He might have been worse than they were, or he might have been miserable, or he might have been perfectly happy. You can't beat yourself up for things you don't know, Luke. Alexander's brother will be devastated, but I can't believe he was happy with Alexander doing what he did, and there's no guarantee he would have been any less devastated if Alexander was executed in the electric chair." Her fingers found his lips when he sobbed, as if she could take the pain away by absorbing the sound with her fingers. "You can't know, Luke. Someone you killed might have been abusive, might have been a terrible parent, or a violent sibling, and you might have freed them. You can't let that eat at you, because you can't ever know the answer." Her voice was conviction, and the hope that he'd understand, listen, but she knew guilt too well to think it would go away that easily. She pressed her forehead to his, leaned down and sighed close enough to his mouth that the breath fanned against his lips. "You're never doing this again, though. Not for me, not for anyone. And not because it's bad, or because it hurts other people. Because you're too good for it, and it's going to tear you apart, and I won't let that happen," she said, gaining force behind the words as the sentence went on. "No more."

Saving the world was, in his mind, a dead dream, one he was no longer suited for. That should be left to better men. “I can’t save the world. I know that now,” he said, resigned. He knew he was capable, but he was no hero, and he wasn’t good at saving people so much as he was getting lucky and doing what needed to be done. He felt her shudder, and the pressure of his fingers along her arm increased. “How would you have felt, Wren, if someone had killed your mother because of what she’d done?” The question was quiet, almost tentatively asked, but while he’d never killed any women, he would have seen anyone who murdered children as unworthy of life. “I don’t think his brother knew, not really. He knew that Alexander wasn’t a saint, but he didn’t know the truth. I know it’s not the same, but I don’t even want Roger knowing what I’ve done, and I’d do anything to make sure he never finds out. I think-- I think it’s like that. His brother, he seemed nice.” Which certainly didn’t help in terms of alleviating any of his guilt.

Thomas had never been an easy topic, and even after five years, that hadn’t changed. “He wouldn’t have needed help if his parents hadn’t been murdered,” Luke insisted. “I know that his parents’ death had a lot to do with the way he was as an adult. I know that even though he has a family now, he’ll never be right not really, not like he should be.” He tried to pull free from her fingers, but there was nowhere for him to move, not with the bed at his back, and so he gave up and sank against the pillows. “Happy or not, I’m pretty sure Alex’s brother didn’t want him dead, Wren, and the electric chair is different. Is it okay for me to say that me killing people is right, because hey, they might’ve been sentenced to death anyway?” She was telling him what he wanted to hear, which meant that he wanted to believe it, but a part of him felt like it was too easy, like he didn’t deserve vindication. “I can’t know. You’re right. That’s the problem. I told myself I was doing a good thing, getting rid of murderers and rapists, but I might have made things worse for a lot of good people. I’ll never know. But with this Nicholas, his brother, I do know. I’ll always know.” He looked up at her when she pressed her forehead to his, and his hands slid up to cup her cheeks. “Better me than you,” he whispered, his lips twitching in a poor attempt at a smile. “I’d do anything to keep the people I care about safe. Anything, and I’ll never regret that, never.”

She didn't like that resignation in his voice. For all that she wanted a different life for him when they were young - college, a career, somewhere safe without bullets, or knives, or bruises that he constantly needed to hide - she didn't want it at the cost of whatever faith he had in himself, and that resignation felt like shattered faith to her. "I would have missed her, and I would have cried, and I would have hated whatever took her from me," she admitted of her mother, but she shook her head immediately after. "But even with all that, it could have changed my life for the better. Maybe my uncle would have taken me, or maybe someone would have adopted me. Maybe I wouldn't have ended up hooking at thirteen and spending my entire childhood learning to be like her. It would have hurt me, but it might have been a blessing." And she sounded like she meant it, because she did mean it. She'd thought of it countless times before, when she was a teenager watching everyone go to school, while she did things they couldn't even imagine. "But then I might not have met you, and I might not have Gus. You can't know, Luke, and it doesn't do any good to say what if."

"They would have raised him to do what they did," she said of Thomas, "and there's no way to know if he would have fought it. Countless people might have died if they lived, if he followed in their footsteps. My maman always said fate was fate, Luke. Maybe she was right. Maybe the bad things lead us to the good things, and maybe there's no changing anything. You can't change the past, and I don't want you breaking into a thousand shards because of it." And he was right, maybe, that Alexander's brother likely didn't want his brother dead, but she knew even that could be a relief sometimes. She'd seen it often enough in her time volunteering at the police station, that closure could be good, even if people didn't say it aloud. But that was grey and nebulous, and she didn't think it would help him to hear her say it. "You might have been making things better for a lot of good people. As for Nicholas, he might be hurt, Luke, and it might be hard for him to get over, but that doesn't compare to what Alexander would do if he was still alive." Her voice strengthened with that statement, conviction in in her voice. "Nicholas is one person. Alexander has raped countless women in the past two years alone, and who knows what he did before that. MK will never, ever recover from what he did to her, never forget. Never, Luke. He wouldn't have stopped. He would have kept on going until he had me, and until he had Gus, and then he would have moved on to some new obsession." Her voice was shaking by then, the words hard to understand. "So Nicholas might be upset, but he'll survive, which is more than I can say for some of Alexander's victims." His hands on her cheeks brought her back to the moment, and she blinked away fresh tears as she tried to get her voice under control. "Which is why I should have done this, because I wouldn't care, Luke. I wouldn't. You're too good for this," she repeated, and she'd always known that about him, even if he didn't realize it about himself yet.

He started to tell her that he’d been right, that he might have left kids out there who hated whoever had taken their father away from them, but then she said it might have been a blessing, had someone killed her mother, and that shut him down entirely. It wasn’t what he had been expecting at all, that response, and it left him at a loss for what to say for a long stretch of silence. “I don’t know,” he said finally, closing his eyes against the confusion of it all. Nothing made sense, and his morals had always been skewed at best, and now he didn’t know if what he’d done was so wrong, really, in the grand scheme of things. But it was, it had to be, even if the temptation was still there. Be a hero, it whispered, do what no one else can. What needs to be done. Save those who can’t save themselves. Maybe it would never really go away, that urge, but he could fight it. Alexander was a unique circumstance, one he hoped wouldn’t happen again.

“Maybe not,” he protested, but it was a weak argument. Thomas might have grown up with his problems, but Luke hated to think of him following in his father’s footsteps, becoming like the men he sought to stand against as an adult. “I know I can’t change the past. Trust me, I know. There’s a million things I wish I could change and I can’t. I know I have to accept that what’s done is done and move on, but...” He shook his head, not bothering to finish that sentence in his frustration. She was right. Of course she was. He might have ruined lives, or he might have improved them, but either way there was nothing he could do about it now. Driving himself insane with guilt wouldn’t help, but he knew, no matter how right she was, he wouldn’t be able to just push everything aside and make it okay. “I know he wouldn’t have stopped. I know. That’s why I had to kill him, why I couldn’t let him live. It’s just-- it’s easier when they’re not people, with lives and families. It sounds terrible, I know, to dehumanize someone like that, but it’s how I survived. I made myself numb because they weren’t people to me.” The way her voice shook caught his attention, and he pushed himself up into a sitting position, his hands remaining firm as he held her face and ensured she didn’t look away. “He didn’t get you,” he told her, “and he didn’t get Gus. MK is going to have a hard time, and she might never forget, but she will recover. She will. He’s not going to win, damn it.” He shook his head when she said he was too good for this, thumbs brushing along her cheeks as he spoke.”I’m not too good, Wren. I’ve wanted to kill Alexander since you told me what he did to you, and if I’d have had the time, I would have made it a lot worse. I’m glad he’s dead,” he said. “Me feeling bad for his brother doesn’t mean I would’ve spared him because of it. I could have, but I didn’t, because you’re right. Nicholas will move on. But Alexander could have killed MK, and he could have killed you, and I needed to make sure he never had another chance. And he didn't. He can’t hurt you or anyone else ever again.”

When he closed his eyes against the confusion, she wondered if she'd made it worse with her honesty. The painkillers had worn off, and the world hurt, but she wasn't going to lie to him, not about something like this. She watched him as the thoughts flickered across his features and, even with his eyes closed, she knew he wasn't resting, not with those glimmers of confusion and hurt and not knowing on his face. She wanted to comfort him, to wrap him in her arms and take it all away, but she knew that wouldn't work with this. She might have just recently learned about this secret, but it had shaped the man in the bed with her for half a decade; she couldn't chase it away with her body or her lips, just like there were things he couldn't chase away for her. But he could make things better, and she tried to do the same thing with simple touches while he thought. Her fingers traced his jaw, and they dipped below his ear, and they traveled across his collarbone. I'm here and it's okay in the press of fingertips.

She was pretty sure she held her breath until he spoke again, and even though the maybe not was weak, it was something. When he shook his head, she pressed a kiss to his shoulder, and she sighed against the warm skin there. "Accepting things isn't easy. Sometimes, I think about some of the things I've done, some of the really terrible things, and I can't even breathe. But then there's you, and there's Gus, and then I can breathe again." She sat back when he mentioned dehumanizing, and she shook her head. "No, the fact that you had to dehumanize people is what separates you from bad people. It's like Jack, Luke. I've always known what Jack did, and I still trust him enough to send him to watch Gus. It's not the same as-" She stopped there, because she didn't want to say murder, and she didn't want to say killing. "It's not the same as being a bad person. If it was, we wouldn't let Jack near Gus. You can't hate yourself and forgive Jack for the same thing." His fingers on her cheeks made her stop thinking along those lines, though, and her hands slid down to his chest as he sat up. "He's not going to win," she repeated, as if she could make the words true like that. And that was a hard thing to say, because dead or not, Alexander had changed them all. "You are too good," she insisted, her fingers on his chest pressing harder against skin, as if that would make him understand. "If you weren't, we wouldn't be having this conversation, and you wouldn't feel the way you do." She slid her hands up to his neck, played her fingers against the side of his throat. "Alexander was dead, regardless of what you did, he was dead. Taking MK like that, he went too far. He had to have known that. He knew it while I was there, too. There was no way he was going to get away with taking her and dragging me off somewhere like he tried to do, not when he knew you were there, that Simon was there. He played that card; don't let him win by letting it eat you up inside. Alexander's had that effect on too many of us already."

She could always make things better just by being there, and now was no different. It was much, much harder to focus on the guilt and self-loathing when she was touching him. The feel of her fingers made him sigh, and he kept his eyes closed, wanting a few seconds to revel in the simple touches before he had to return to reality and think about things he really didn’t want to think about. Maybe she couldn’t make all the terrible things disappear, just as he couldn’t do that for her, as much as he wished he could, but this still made a difference.

“Sometimes,” he sighed, “I think it would be easier to forget. You can’t think about things you can’t remember, right?” Yet there could be lessons learned from the past, however painful they might be, and maybe that was the point. What kind of man would he be if he was to forget all the terrible things, everything that contributed to the nightmares that had plagued him since Seattle? He might not be a good person now, but he wasn’t like them, like Alexander or Briggs or even Jude. “But maybe you have to take the bad with the good, and all that, like you and Gus, makes the bad worth it.” Dehumanizing wasn’t healthy, that much was obvious, but he had to admit she had a point. If he’d seen the men he killed as people, with lives and families and feelings, and still been able to kill them without remorse, he was pretty sure that woud’ve made him some sort of sociopath. “The funny thing,” he said, “is that I never wanted to end up like Jack. I know he’s not a bad person, but I saw how hard it was for him to stop, and I never wanted to get to that point. He doesn’t-- he doesn’t know. I haven’t told him. I feel like it’s worse, because I saw what it was like for him, and that still wasn’t enough for me to stop myself from following that same path.” He ducked her head as her hands slid down to his chest, watching her fingers against his skin. “It’s easier to forgive him than to forgive myself,” he admitted quietly. His gaze lifted back up to her face when she repeated his words, that Alexander wouldn’t win, wondering if she believed it any more than him. “We’re never going to agree, you know. You’re always going to think I’m better than I am, and I’m always going to say you’re better than you think you are,” he told her, fondness audible in the words. “He did go too far. There was no way he was getting out alive, even if it wasn’t me. He did bring it on himself, didn’t he?” It wasn’t as though Alexander hadn’t had plenty of warning. He’d had his chance to stop, to change things, and he’d refused. In a way, he’d signed his own death warrant. “Okay,” he said, sliding his hands down her arms and letting them linger on her wrists. “I won’t let him win if you won’t. He was a sadistic bastard and now he’s dead, so fuck him.” Maybe it was a little harsh, but if he was going to drown himself in guilt, it wasn’t going to be over someone like Alexander Pierce. He wasn’t worth enough for him to expend any energy on.

She shook her head slowly when he said it would be easier to forget. "No, just think about the good things that come with the bad," she suggested, even as he said it was necessary to take the good with the bad. "Right. Jude was terrible, and everything about Jude was terrible, but I don't think we'd have Gus otherwise, and I'm not sure we'd be together without all of that happening." Because, at the end of the day, it was being locked in that freezer that had really changed things for her with Luke, even if she still felt guilty for taking advantage of the situation and coaxing him into sex when he had no idea what sex even was. She touched his cheek at the memory of that, her fingers trailing to his throat and tracing a line where that scar had been all those years ago. She listened while he talked about Jack, even as she watched her fingers, and she looked up at his face once he went quiet. "I met Jack before I met you. Did you know that? Jack's he way he is because he lost someone that he can't ever get back, and he'll never be okay, no matter what happens in his life. It's all pretending for him. You aren't Jack; you won't be Jack. I won't let that happen," she insisted, fierce and quiet in the still of the echo-large room. It's the same reason he wasn't like Thomas, and she wouldn't let that happen either, not if she could help it. "You can still turn it around, and you can still have the life you wanted when we were kids." They can't was unspoken, but it didn't really need saying. "It's okay, because I can do enough forgiving for both of us, and I know we'll never agree. That's okay, too, because it doesn't mean I'm going to stop saying it." She smiled a little, a soft-sad smile. "If you hadn't kept telling me I was more than what I did for a living, then I wouldn't be here, not doing that anymore. So I'll keep telling you that you're better than anyone I know, and maybe it'll sink in one day."

She closed her eyes when his hands slid down to her wrists, and she kept them closed throughout the harsh words about Alexander. His tone made it obvious that this wasn't over, not really, not for either of them. But she didn't expect it to be better quickly, not this time. It had been too many months (for him) and too many years (for her) of dealing with a threat, only to have it come back like a monster and do its worst in the end. "He's dead," she repeated, and maybe that was for her, a reminder. She pushed him onto his back with cold fingers, and she looked down at him, hair clinging to her cheeks and grey eyes wide and knowing. "How about the Bellagio?" she asked, and it wasn't anywhere near as random as it seemed, because getting away from all of it seemed like a very good idea just then. No Jack, no condo that reminded him of Thomas, nothing like that. "It's Evie's now, and I bet we can get a good rate on a suite for a few days. Then it really is kind of a vacation for Gus."

While Wren couldn’t have known, as she hadn’t been there, her words reminded him so much of something Jude had said all those years ago, when he’d walked into a hellish prison expecting to die. She’d claimed that it was her who’d brought them together, and he’d denied it then, despite seeing the glimmer of truth in it. He tensed a little, an instinctive response, but beyond that he let it slide; bringing up that part of the past would do no good now. And, perhaps, good coming from the bad was something he could accept. “Yeah,” he agreed, thoughtful. “If it was just constant bad, I don’t think I could take it, but the good is worth something. I just wish we could have it without suffering first once in a while.” Her fingers tracing that faded scar, his first significant one, made him feel like a boy again, when everything, from love to pain, was so raw and fresh. “No, I didn’t,” he said of Jack, “but he told me what happened, about his wife. I don’t think anyone would be okay after something like that.” It made him sad, that Jack couldn’t ever be fixed, really, just like Thomas. There would always be something missing, and he wanted so badly to not end up like that. As much as he admired some things about both men, he didn’t want to be like either of them. “When you left, I thought I’d lost you, and I stopped caring,” he said. “If I ever lost you for good, I think I could be Jack.” Because if Alexander had gotten to her, he would have snapped, he knew that, and there would be no coming back from that, not even for Gus. He didn’t say anything when she said he could still turn things around, but he was thinking about it, considering the possibility, and that much was visible in his expression. “I know,” he sighed, relenting and flashing a quick smile. “You wouldn’t be you if you stopped. Maybe one day I’ll stop being so stubborn and start believing I’m as good as you say I am.” Right now, it wasn’t likely, but maybe someday that could change.

There was no guilt when she said Alexander was dead, a repetition of the truth, not for the loss of a man who’d spent years hurting others. He was relieved, and he was glad, and he only wished this would have ended sooner, before MK could have been hurt. Surprise lit up in his eyes when she pushed him back against the bed, followed by confusion when she mentioned the Bellagio, but only for a moment, before understanding sank in. “Okay,” he agreed. “I bet Gus would like that, and it would be good for all of us. I can take a couple days off work.” The more he thought about it, the better an idea it seemed, and he pushed himself back up on his elbows, straining upward to capture her lips with his in an impulsive kiss.

She didn't understand why he tensed, and she gave him a questioning look before he agreed with her about the constant bad, the sometimes good. "Me too," she said of wishing they could have some good before a deluge of bad. "Maybe we need to make that happen," she suggested, and it was hard, taking responsibility for something she didn't know if either of them could control. "Maybe I could have done something two years ago to stop Alexander, but I didn't. It was easier to stay scared and quiet." It made her think of Simon, of Brielle, and she knew she'd be making some phone calls once she slept and her head stopped screaming. But he was talking about Jack, and her fingers slid from the scars on his neck to his shoulder. "I wouldn't be okay either. Even when we were apart, I couldn't let myself think anything had happened to you. I don't think I'd like the person I'd turn into if something happened to you." Because she'd always been more ruthless than him, and her history of carving into people's skin was indicative of that. Even Alexander had pointed out that she got paid to hurt people for a living, and he was right; she did. As for him, she was pretty sure he'd make Jack look like a saint, if it came to that. "We feel too much, Luke. Both of us. I don't think either of us would be very safe to be around if we had nothing that mattered." It was softly stated, but honest, and she pressed another kiss to his shoulder and then signed against the warm skin there. His comment that he'd believe her someday, that made her smile, and she sat back as she did. "I'll keep pestering you about it, then," she promised, and that smile said she'd never actually had any intention of stopping.

"We should wait a few days, until my stitches are out, and until you get Gus settled." Because even if she wasn't with Gus on a regular basis, she knew her son, and she knew he was probably hiding under some piece of furniture with his fingers in his mouth and a bloody lip from biting it. Moving the little boy wouldn't be good, and even her showing up where he was at might not be the best thing, not until Luke established some normalcy again. "I'll be fine for a few days. I promise. I'll visit MK, and I'll shuffle my appointments," she said preemptively, knowing he would argue with her if she let him. "And I'll talk to Evie." And Simon. The impulsive kiss silenced her, and she sighed against his mouth before giving into it and stretching out beside him again, all without letting him go. Her hand cupped his jaw, and her thigh slid over his legs, and she kissed him until she couldn't breathe. "I love you so very much."

He wasn’t sure how they could make anything good happen, not when so much seemed to be out of their control. “Maybe,” he echoed doubtfully. “Do you really think we can?” The problem with the bad things was that they came out of nowhere most of the time, and stopping them, well, that wasn’t always so easy. He shook his head when she said she could have done something, refusing to let her shoulder any of the blame. “No, Wren. It wasn’t your responsibility to stop him. He was responsible for what he did, not you.” That much, at least, he believed, and he went quiet when she said she wouldn’t be okay either. He hadn’t mattered to anyone in years, and he’d gotten a little too accustomed to not being as careful as he should have been. Life didn’t seem to mean as much when you were on your own, and living was almost a burden. “No, we probably wouldn’t be. I wasn’t the best person to be around while you were gone. I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t come here and found you again,” he admitted. “Probably nowhere good.” But there was no use in thinking about where he could have been, not when there was new hope that he wouldn’t ever have to be there at all. He pulled a face when she said she’d keep pestering him, but there was no real annoyance in his expression. “You’d keep pestering me no matter what I said,” he said accusingly.

A few days sounded good to him, and he nodded in agreement. Gus wasn’t going to be in the best state, not after he’d left again, and it would take more than an hour to coax him back out of his shell. “Okay. As long as you keep in touch, even though it’s only a few days,” he said. He could have argued, and a part of him was certainly tempted to, but Alexander was dead-- what could possibly happen in a few days? As long as he didn’t completely leave her to her own devices, he doubted it would do any real damage. Even if he had decided to argue, the way she responded to his kiss was an extremely effective distraction. No matter how bad things got, as long as he had this, nothing seemed impossible, and what had begun as an impulse became almost desperate, his fears of losing her almost tangible in the way he kissed her. His fingers bunched in the fabric at her hips, and he sighed when she said she loved him. “I love you more,” he countered, voice low and breathless, with just a hint of a smile audible.

"I think we can hope, and I think we can try," she said, because she had no true faith in them being able to keep the demons at bay, but she wanted them to be able to and, at that moment, that hope was enough. It was something to cling to, something to wrap her mind around. His absolving made her smile a little, because he never blamed her for anything. She didn't believe him, but it was still nice to hear, especially when she blamed herself for absolutely everything. She put her fingers over his lips when he said he wasn't the best person to be around when they were apart, and she shook her head. "No. I don't believe that. But you did find me again, and I found you, and I never should have left," she admitted, that part a guilty, almost-whisper. "I'm so sorry that I did," she said, and the apology wasn't for her, and it wasn't for Gus; it was for him. Her eyes went damp, but his comment about her pestering made her smile regardless, and she nodded in response. "Always," she agreed about pestering him, because she would, no matter what. "Because I can see what you can't," she added, voice adoring and full of quiet conviction.

"I'll keep in touch," she promised. "I'll get us something for next weekend. How's that?" she asked, though it would be hard to go without seeing him for that many days, without seeing Gus, but she knew she needed to get the fear out of her system before she saw the little boy, and the stitches too; she didn't want to scare him with dizzy spells and the painkillers she would inevitably be taking come morning, once the local anesthesia wore off completely. And Alexander was dead, and there were no other threats, nothing beyond her own fear. "It's safe now, and if I get really scared I'll call you. I promise. I might wake you at three in the morning, and then you'll be sorry I promised, but I promise."

The desperation in the kiss overpowered everything a moment later, in the fabric bunched at her hips, and at the low and breathless sound of his voice. "I love it when you sound like that," she admitted, brushing her lips against the corner of his mouth. A hand slid along his shoulder and down to his stomach, and she sighed as she settled back down into the crook of his arm. "I'll make sure Evie gets us a suite that's big enough so that Gus can have his own room," she promised, her voice husky, even as she traced her fingers along his lower belly. "Wake me up if I have nightmares?" she asked.

Luke felt a little calmer than he had when they’d first arrived, which was a marked improvement in his opinion, and he stretched out against the pillows as he nodded. “Next weekend,” he agreed, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand. “I’ll miss you until then.” He was teasing, for the most part, but there was a hint of seriousness in the words as well. Maybe they both needed some time to collect themselves, to deal with what had happened. He’d lost a friend because of Alexander, and he was pretty sure Jack would know the truth the minute he walked through the door, but he also knew he wouldn’t push. He’d be there, patient, but he wouldn’t push, and maybe he needed that. “You can wake me up at any hour of the night, Wren, no matter how late or early it is. I’d rather you call than not call and have to deal with things on your own.” He wasn’t just saying it for her benefit, to make her feel less guilty about picking up the phone; he meant it.

Her confession made him smile as she stretched out against him, and an arm wound tightly, almost instinctively protective, around her waist. "I like the way you think," he teased, warmed by the feel of her fingers. "I will," her promised, and it was an easy promise to make, since as tired as he was he doubted he'd be getting much sleep.

He looked so young when he rubbed his eyes like that, like a little boy, and she wanted nothing more than to protect him from the world. She wasn't idealistic enough to think things were fixed, but maybe all the yelling was a start, and maybe the memory of Alexander's dead body in that storage unit would begin to fade quickly. "I'll miss you too," she said, touching her fingers to the back of one of his hands, "and I'm good at waking you with too much whiskey in me, so you should probably count on that." She was going to visit MK, and that was going to be a hard, hard visit, no matter how positive a spin she tried to put on it. "Remember what we said about blame, if anyone asks? And you call me if anything happens. If anyone shows up looking for Alexander, if Gus won't come out from under the bed, if you just need to talk. Anything. Promise?"

The protective arm around her waist was the last bit of encouragement she needed to let that swimming in her head finally win, to finally give up that battle. The teasing tone of his voice was the last thing she heard as she let her eyes drift shut. She hadn't been lying about the nightmares, and she hadn't been exaggerating. They started nearly immediately every night, and she always woke with the bedsheets entirely off the bed from her fitful sleep, but she was too exhausted to worry about waking him with them. She fell into a fitful, deeply nightmare filled sleep within seconds, her lips against his shoulders, and the tips of her fingers beneath the waistband of his pants.