Who: Wren and Luke What: (2/2) Discussing memories and the attack on Brielle's husband Where: Turnberry When: Just before Brielle's arrest Warnings/Rating: None
“Damn it. No. You listen to me, okay?” It took every ounce of strength he had left to make his voice firm, but he wasn’t letting her to this to herself. “I did this to myself,” he said, covering her hand with his and pressing it over the scars, left behind by a curved blade while a broken mirror was the only witness. “I did, because I was fucked up. That wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I wasn’t okay, and I let myself get worse.” He leaned his forehead against hers, drawing resolve from her, from Gus, in order to remain steady. “I should have been there, but I wasn’t. I pushed you away. You deserved better,” he insisted, his voice thick with emotion he fought to hold back. “You’ve done everything you could for Gus, and you’ve done more for me than you know. Please. Don’t blame yourself. ”
She shook her head when he refused to answer. "No. I want to know. I'll always wonder otherwise," she explained. She knew she'd done terrible things in order to stay alive after New York, and a lot of it was a jumble, all lost in illness and sadness and fear, but she still wanted to know. She shook her head faster, harder when he said he saw things he could have affected someone, things that could have been different if he'd acted differently. "No. I made my choices. You didn't force me to do anything, and you would have wanted me to do everything differently. I made those mistakes, Luke. You've always agreed with me about that before." He had, and it made her wonder just how awful what he had seen had been, and she almost laughed aloud, an unhealthy, nearly manic laugh that almost bubbled past her lips. Of course it was horrible, it had done this to him, hadn't it? And she didn't really need him to fill in the blanks to make her own guesses. "Sex," she said. It had to be sex. Maybe toward the end, maybe when she was sick, maybe just after Gus. She closed her eyes, and it was only the steady warmth of his jaw against her fingers that kept her from drawing back in shame. "Something with sex, right?" She could write off anything she'd done then, because she'd been doing all of those same things since she was a girl. But it was different for him. He was different; he always had been.
The firmness in his voice snapped her back to the present, to that room, to the ticking clock, to the fact that he wasn't safe there, that Gus wasn't safe there, to his hand closing over hers on his stomach. She shook her head again, harder than before, and she mouthed the word no as he spoke, not interrupting, not doing anything but that until he pressed his forehead to hers. "You didn't push me away. We were kids, and we were scared of a lot of things, and it wasn't your fault. None of it was your fault. I saw- That first time. I saw it." She shook her head, pressing her cheek to his when his voice went thick with emotion, stretching up on her tiptoes to manage it. "I don't deserve better than you. It's the other way around, Luke. It's always been the other way around. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't- I don't know where I'd be. Don't sell yourself short. Don't," she insisted, voice growing more adamant the longer she spoke. "You weren't there because I didn't let you be there. We both know you would have stuck by me, no matter what, if I had let you. I didn't. Yes, it was terrible, but it wasn't your fault. It wasn't. Please, just believe that- It wasn't." Her fingers traced scars as she spoke, able to tell the difference in the patterns against the skin now without even looking, the way they slid without even a ragged edge or break, making it evident there had been no attempt at defense at all. She traced, and she traced, and she traced.
It was tiring, being stubborn, but Luke refused to give in and agree. The things he’d seen were still too vivid in his mind, too close to the surface, and he couldn’t forget. “You might not have made the choices you did if things were different. I can’t believe you wanted to leave, Wren,” he said, almost challengingly, something raw in his gaze that dared her to tell him otherwise. “I agreed because I was angry, because I didn’t... I didn’t know.” He faltered at her almost-laugh, realizing too late that she would be able to connect the dots herself. Of course she would. There were only some things that could have such a profound effect on him, after all, and he flinched when she mentioned sex, unable to keep the reaction hidden as he normally would have. He made numerous failed attempts to speak, though whether he intended to agree or deny was questionable; saying it aloud, what he’d seen, seemed impossible. “Sex,” he said finally, a hollow echo of her question. “That makes it sound so simple. I-- I can’t. I just can’t. Don’t make me talk about it, please.” He didn’t think he could do that, not even for her.
He was quiet for a long few moments when she said she’d seen the first time. So many secrets were slipping away, and he had no control whatsoever. “Maybe that wasn’t my fault. Maybe it was. I don’t know. But-- I did push you away. I pushed everyone away.” It hadn’t been his intention, not at first, but after leaving New York, it seemed like a good way to avoid more hurt-- and everyone left anyway, so why not? “You can’t tell me not to sell myself short and then turn around and do the same, Wren,” he insisted, rubbing his cheek against hers, relishing the contact, as his fingers wound themselves in the fabric of her shirt. “You can’t tell me I deserve better when you don’t. You just-- you know I won’t agree. I should have done something,” he said, almost frenzied in his desperation. He didn’t know what, exactly, he should have done, but something. It was always something. The feel of her fingers tracing over scars was a welcome distraction from everything, and he allowed himself to get lost in the sensation for a few long moments before breaking the silence. “I’m going to do something now,” he said, his voice sounding stronger than it had since he arrived. “I know you want me to take Gus and go, but I’m not leaving you here. I can’t. If the police were coming, they’d already be here by now. Come with me, please? You don’t have to stay at the apartment, but I can find you somewhere else, somewhere safe, until we’re sure it’s okay.”
"And you didn't want to be left behind. It's the same, Luke," she argued, but she could already tell this wasn't going to be easy, that he wasn't going to just give in, just like she knew that he had tipped the scales into not being okay, really tipped the scales. "You were right to be angry. Whatever I went through doesn't change the fact that I left, that I hurt you, that things went terrible after I went away." And maybe that was a direct contradiction of every single defense of her actions that she'd used in the past, but none of those defenses seemed to matter anymore, not after seeing what had happened to him, what his life had turned into. She had ruined so many things, for him, for Gus, and nothing could change that. Maybe it was her penance, the fact that she couldn't have her son for more than five seconds at a stretch. Maybe Silver was right, maybe all of them were. She didn't have the best track record at keeping people safe, not if the man in front of her was any indication.
When he flinched, she knew she'd hit the nail on the head. Sex. In god knows what way. She looked down; she couldn't help it. "Okay," she agreed, and it was probably too easy, too willing that agreement. "We don't need to talk about it." It wasn't like he'd forget it, no matter what he told her, and she was pretty sure she could mentally fill in dozens of encounters and end up in the same shameful place. She shook her head, punctuating her words. No, they didn't need to talk about it. If he couldn't even handle thinking about it, then- No, no. No.
She waited for him to talk again, after that long, quiet stretch. "It wasn't your fault. I saw it. You had no choice. You would have been dead otherwise, and Thomas was wrong. There was nothing wrong in defending yourself from someone who was trying to kill you. His life wasn't worth more than yours." For all of the meekness a moment earlier, that statement was strong and sure. "He was wrong," she insisted, and she wished that man had just understood that at that moment. It would have saved Luke so much heartache. The fingers tangling themselves in her shirt made her look up at him, and the frenzied desperation in his voice edged through a bit of the distance shame had brought to the room. "You would have done something if I let you. I disappeared. I went off the radar. I did that. You can't tell me you wouldn't have found me if you could, that you wouldn't have looked if there had been even a clue." She shook her head. "You didn't let me down, Luke. I let us both down. I've known that since I saw Gus." She sighed shakily when he offered to take her with him, and she wanted to say yes, just so that that strength would stay in his voice. "It's not safe," was all she managed, and even that was weak and reluctant. She didn't want to make him worse, but she didn't want him and Gus in danger either. "I need to leave here anyway. I haven't made the rent, and MK isn't coming back." She laughed a soft, mirthless laugh. "I'm too dangerous to be around. How am I supposed to go anywhere with you or Gus if I can't even be around MK, Luke? Silver's right. I'm irresponsible about him, and I need to stop."
“No one wants to be left behind, and it’s not the same,” he countered, no longer caring if his arguments made sense or not. Maybe they never had to begin with. Hearing his own words thrown back at him was a surprise, one he didn’t know how to respond to. She’d defended herself from his anger for so long that to hear her contradict it, echoing all the things he’d accused her of doing, made him wonder if she really believed it, or if his current state had changed her mind. “Things were worse for you. Don’t you dare tell me they weren’t. I know what I went through, and I saw what you went through, and-- and you can’t compare.” Nothing he had experienced could ever measure up to what that man had done to her for days, or being reduced to taking twenties from men in a back alley while heavily pregnant. No, no, it wasn’t the same, and just thinking about it made him feel sick all over again, and he forced himself to breathe in order to keep from turning his stomach inside out.
Her agreement came too easily, he knew that, but he couldn’t bring himself to argue. He wasn’t disgusted by her, and he didn’t blame her for any of it, what he’d seen; no, it just hurt to know that staying with him was apparently so terrible that she’d driven herself to such desperation, and he hated the thought of her being hurt, as he always had. It made him want to fix things, but he didn’t know how, and it made him want to stop it from ever happening at all, but he couldn’t. What good would it do, talking about what he’d seen? It wouldn’t change anything, wouldn’t make it better. It would only do more harm to the both of them.
It was so simple, for her to say that Thomas was wrong, and his gaze went unfocused for a few seconds. “Yes, it was,” he sighed, more air than words. “Back then, at least. He was always more important than me. I gave him everything, and in the end it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t be what he wanted me to be.” For someone who placed so much weight on that man’s opinion, Luke had been devastated by his disappointment. He went quiet when she said she’d gone off the radar, because she had, and he had looked to no avail, and he so he couldn’t deny of it. Part of him agreed that yes, she had let him down, but then he thought of what he’d seen, of how she’d felt at his assumed betrayal with Brielle, and he found himself shaking his head. “You’ve never let me down, not ever,” he told her, and the weakness in her reluctance to go with him made him think that he might actually have a chance at getting her to agree. “MK leaving doesn’t mean you’re too dangerous to be around. If I thought there was a real threat, I wouldn’t be standing here right now. I’d have Gus home, and you somewhere safe. I-- I don’t remember all of it, but Bruce-- I think the only one who might be in real trouble is Brielle,” he admitted. “It was her husband.” Mentioning Silver was probably not the best thing for her to have done just then, since Luke definitely did not share Bruce’s ambivalence for the man, and he couldn’t keep back a scowl. “Silver doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. Don’t listen to him. You are not irresponsible.” He tugged on her shirt, as though that insistence would somehow strengthen his words.
"I can compare," she said cutting him off, "and it is the same. I've been doing that since I was a kid, Luke. Some of it since before my mother died, all of it after, and I was just a kid. Me leaving hurt you in a way that men- that doing those things couldn't hurt me. You just think so because you never experienced that stuff." She shook her head insistently. "I'm numb to it. I had to go numb to it years and years and years ago, or I would have gone crazy." It was more honesty than she liked to give regarding that particular topic, but it was the truth, and she wasn't really thinking, not beyond wanting to make him understand. It was true that it was harder after him, so much harder after she'd learned to love someone, and after she'd learned what it could be like, but telling him that wouldn't help, and she had to be able to say something that would help.
But then he was breathing hard, and she knew it was the kind of heavy exhales that came with trying not to be sick. She looked down, away, making the mistake of thinking that it was her that did that, what she had done, and she was absolutely sure he would look at her differently now. She walked to the surveillance screen under the pretense of checking on Gus. She smiled a little, a tiny and bittersweet smile, thinking Luke would need to take the kitten (which was currently kneading Gus' side with its tiny paws). Her arms wound around her middle, and she didn't move until she had it together, until she could stop thinking that he was disgusted with her. She understood how MK felt, knowing that Adam had seen her with Alexander, and she almost laughed at how she'd insisted to MK that it wouldn't matter at all.
She returned when he sighed, knowing the topic of Thomas was a complicated one, and too emotionally ruined to toe the line how she normally did. "He was more important to you, but he wasn't more important in general, and he wasn't more important to everyone - not to me." Her anger for Thomas made it through clearly in her words. She'd trusted Thomas to take care of Luke when she left, and no matter what Luke thought, she hadn't left because of him. Stupid or not, she'd been trying to spare him; it hadn't worked. She smiled the tiniest bit. "You'd be standing here if the cops were knocking at the door. That's who you are," she told him, fond and still looking at him like she believed he hung the moon, that he was better than absolutely everyone else in the entire world. When he started to mention Brielle, to mention what had happened, she dragged in a breath. "Brielle can't go to jail, not because of something I caused by asking Selina to come," she said, but she sounded tired, so very tired. If she'd just been stronger, then this wouldn't have happened, but she was having such a hard time with that. "I just- there were so many memories." Which was no excuse; she knew that. She was trying to find a way back from that thought, and so the anger about Silver was unexpected. "I am irresponsible. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have even let you inside. I would have had Gus waiting at the door for you. I wouldn't have given into wanting to see you myself, and risk you both in the process," she admitted, shrugging helplessly with the confession. If the police placed her, how hard would it be to realize the man in her apartment was the unknown male at the scene in Brielle's apartment? Not very hard at all. She looked down at his hands on her shirt, and she uncrossed her arms to touch him, to touch his arms, his hands, his bare stomach again, but she remembered how his stomach had lurched, and she stopped. "I let you down a lot," she admitted belatedly, flipping the ring around on her finger. "Okay. I'll go. Where you want, as long as it isn't where you are with Gus." If it would make him feel better, she'd do it, and maybe one tiny cab ride wouldn't be so bad, wouldn't be such a hugely careless risk.
Luke couldn't imagine anyone numbing themselves to the kind of things she'd gone through. Even he had only managed to succeed to a certain point, and it was clear in the way that he looked at her that he didn't believe her, that he thought she was just trying to spare him. "If I told you that what I did, using knives on myself, was something that didn't hurt because I numbed myself to it, would that make you feel any better about what you saw?" He shook his head before she could respond. "I wouldn't wish what you went through on anyone, Wren, and it kills me that you were alone for it, that I couldn't stop it. Don't you see?" His voice broke then, and he couldn't figure out how to make her understand what it was like, to love her so much that seeing what he'd seen had driven him over the edge of insanity.
When she looked away, he knew he'd done something wrong, and he watched helplessly as she walked to the surveillance screen. He cursed himself for not being able to hide his reactions, knowing her well enough to realize that she would have taken it the wrong way. "Wren," he whispered, but he didn't know how to explain, and he thought by now she would have realized that nothing would ever make him look at her differently. It seemed he was wrong, and it made him sad, that she could still assume the worst. He looked down at his hands, bandages and all, and waited.
He simply shrugged in the face of her anger, aware that Thomas was something she would never truly understand. "I didn't see it that way. He was the most important thing to me, other than you," he explained. He shook his head again, unsmiling, though there was a hint of a smile in his voice. "I'd be with you," he corrected. "I wouldn't leave you alone to face them, no matter where we were." When she said Selina had caused all this he frowned, recalling some distant wisps of memories and attempting to put them together. "No," he said slowly. "I-- I think Ivy planned this, with Brielle's husband, and she would have done it with or without Selina. You can't blame yourself for this. Don't," he said, with sudden fierceness. "Promise me you're not going to turn yourself in or something stupid like that because you feel guilty." Like hell was he going to let that happen, broken or not, because of a few stupid comic book characters. "You're not irresponsible," he insisted. "You think I would have just taken Gus and left? I wanted to see you too. Listen, what I saw-- it doesn't change how much I love you, and it doesn't mean I don't want to be with you, okay?" He paused, looking down at where her hands stilled on his skin and, after a moment, slipped his fingers beneath the hem of her shirt. "Good," he said, a flicker of a smile crossing his features. "And when it's safe, you'll come stay with us."
The mention of him hurting himself, how bluntly he stated it, made it through the shame enough to let her touch him. The word knives made her shiver, and her palms slid from his stomach to his sides slowly, her head bowed and her gaze downward on the skin that she was touching. His breaking voice is what finally made her look back up, eyes damp and sad. "You weren't numb, though. I could feel it," she said, and she wasn't sure if he would understand why that made it different, why it made everything he went through different. He would just argue if she told him he was better than her, and that it made a difference, but it did. "You hurt yourself because you were hurting. That's different, Luke. Knowing you hurt that much, that I left you alone to hurt like that, and all out of some stupid certainty that I was sparing you something." There was a world of self-anger in that word, sparing. "In the end, I put us all through hell, and it was for nothing. You were still miserable, and you didn't get to have the life I stupidly, stupidly thought you would if I was gone. Don't you see? Everything, all of it, it was for nothing." And maybe she was talking too much now, and she realized it. A deep, deep breath followed, one that was unsteady and dangerously unstable around the edges. Her fingers pressed into his bare skin, as if she could find some kind of purchase there, something that made the past five years okay.
Her gaze dropped back down to his bandaged hands, and she moved her own hands away and touched the edges of white. "What are these from?" she asked, finally. She knew what her own were from, but not these, and she didn't think Bruce had- No, he'd had them when he'd come to Turnberry; she remembered now. His assertion that he'd be there, even if the cops came, made her look up, made her smile the smallest bit. "You know, you're supposed to run for the hills like everyone else."
The turn of the conversation to Ivy and Brielle made her want to just hide herself against the crook of his neck, but his heavy exhale from earlier kept her from it, and she just tipped her head and listened. She still didn't know precisely what had happened in Brielle's apartment, and she was torn between wanting to know and not ever wanting to know. "Ivy belongs to Brielle, right?" she asked, because she hadn't known that before. Brielle had never told her, and Selina hadn't filled in that particular bit of information either. "Planned it how? And why would she do that? Brielle was here, and she was safe until all her credit card information starting being put out there, and her social, and all that. Why would anyone do that?" Not that it mattered. Well, maybe it did, if Ivy was someone Selina was attached to it might be a problem in the future. She shook her head when he mentioned her turning herself in. "I promise. It wouldn't help, right? It wouldn't keep Brielle out of jail, would it?" Because then she'd do it, but if it wasn't going to help anyone, then why? His assertion that what he'd seen didn't change anything broke through her thoughts, and she looked up at him and gave him a small, sad smile. "Okay," and the fingers of one hand rested lightly on his side, as if that was proof she believed him, the fact that she was willing to touch him and corrupt him somehow, which was an old, old fear. She closed her eyes when his fingers slipped beneath the hem of her shirt, and she sighed quietly. "You think it'll be safe at some point?" she asked, and her tone very clearly said that she had doubts about that.
I could feel it. Those four words spread like ice across his chest, little daggers of agony that made it difficult to breathe, and even though he hadn't intended for her to experience that, Luke still hated himself for it. "I wanted to be numb," he managed, after swallowing a few times to get the words past his throat. "And yeah, it's different, because I did it to myself. I made that choice. For you, Wren, it was done to you, and you had no control over it. I did. You deserved better," he insisted. "Mistakes don't make you deserving of-- of that. I know you didn't mean to hurt me. I know." And he did. However wrong she'd been in her assumptions, he'd never believed that her intentions had been to cause him pain, even though that was precisely what she'd done. "I was never going to have that life," he said, quieter. "You weren't the one holding me back from that. He was, and in a way I held myself back, but not you." He wished he could argue that it hadn't all been for nothing, but she was right; it had been. Yes, they'd found each other in the end, and they had Gus, but so much time had been unnecessarily lost. "We're all together now, though. I know it's far from perfect, but it's something, isn't it?" Maybe he was trying too hard, but it was either this or fall apart, so he didn't have many options.
There was a brief moment of confusion when he looked down at his hands and couldn't remember why they were bandaged, which made him panic, but then the memory returned; slow, hazy, but there. "The mirror," he said, "Broken glass, after I saw how he got the scars." He shook his head, refocusing, and forced a tiny smile. "I'm not like everyone else. Don't you know that by now?"
He nodded when she asked if Ivy was Brielle's, because he was certain of that much. "I-- I'm not sure, but Ivy and Selina lured her husband there. They weren't expecting all those men to show up," he explained, relying on Bruce's certainty. "Maybe Ivy wanted to take care of him once and for all. I don't know." Even if Wren turning herself in would have helped, Luke would have vehemently denied it, so there was no hesitation when she asked. "No," he said firmly. "It wouldn't do any good. It was Brielle's apartment, and her husband's men would recognize her, not you. You'd just be away from Gus for nothing." He tipped his head to the side when she agreed with him, as though attempting to figure out whether she truly believed him or was just pretending to for his benefit. Beneath her shirt, his fingers stayed low, the brush of them against skin like a reminder that he could still touch her, and--for her sake--that he still wanted to. "Yeah, I do," he said quietly. "I don't think the police are coming for you, Wren. Those men didn't know you, and if her husband doesn't wake up, there's no one to say you were there. It's going to be safe, okay? And-- I mean, you can stay with me if you want," he amended, realizing he hadn't given her a choice before.
She wondered, when his breath caught and he had trouble breathing, what she had said, and her grey gaze turned worried, concerned. She didn't want to make him worse. If there was anything she didn't want, it was to make him worse. She couldn't help shaking her head halfway through his argument, though. "No, Luke, no. We can't compare like that. I'm always going to think anything that happens to you is worse than anything that happens to me," she explained mournfully, because it was true. "I was raised not to care. Don't you see?" she asked, though she knew he wouldn't understand that. She smiled a little, a sad thing of a smile. "Maybe you can't see that, and maybe that's good. Maybe that's why you look at me and see something different than what other people see." When he insisted that he was never going to have that life, the one she'd envisioned for him, she shook her head again. "You could have. I thought you with me gone that he would, I don't know, let you move back in, so you wouldn't have to work to pay rent because I was there." She shrugged a little, because it hadn't worked that way. "Mostly, I just didn't want to break you. I thought I would." And she knew he wouldn't be able to argue with her, not about the fact that it had all been for nothing. It had, and nothing could change those wasted years, not for any of them. In the end, she nodded when he said they were together now, all of them, even though they weren't, not really. Something was always coming up, and no one thought she should be around Gus most days, and she didn't really blame them.
The confusion on her face when he mentioned scars was genuine. Selina hadn't explained any of the memories that had been intended for her (though Wren knew a good number of them were), and she had no idea who the scars belonged to. Scars brought Jack to mind, and she tipped her head curiously. "Scars? Who, Jack?" But the question was slightly unthinking. He mattered; not whoever had the scars, and she frowned down at his bandaged hands and wondered what was so bad to cause him to- what? Punch a mirror? But the statement that he wasn't like everyone else made her smile, soft and fond. "I think it would be better for you if you hid, ran, fled."
The assertion that going to jail wouldn't help Brielle made her glad and sad by turns. Despite everything, she would help her cousine if she could, and all the bad blood between them made the guilt more than it would have been otherwise. "If I'd let you talk to her months ago, it might not have come to this," she said quietly, a guilty whisper. "I saw you two. Memories, I mean. Hers and yours." She bit her lip, as if she was trying to decide whether or not to say more, but the brush of his fingers stole the decision, and she looked up at him with a questioning gaze, trying to figure out if he was touching her because he wanted to, or because he didn't want her thinking that he didn't want to. She was still trying to figure it out when he said she could stay if she wanted to, and that made her smile a little. "Ask me once everything is okay?" she asked. "Not when I don't have anywhere else to go, or when I need somewhere to hide." Her fingers traced the scars along his sides without thinking, and she opened her mouth to say something more, but the doorman's buzzer interrupted her.
There was no phone in the apartment, and the buzzer either meant someone was downstairs, or someone had left a message, and she stared at the blinking light for a second, before looking back at Luke, unsure whether she should answer it or not. If someone was downstairs, they couldn't let them up. Not with his swollen jaw and her bruised face, not to mention the bandages.
No matter what she said, Luke knew he was never going to be able to stop comparing. Just as she always thought what he had gone through was worse, he would always think the opposite. There was no changing that. “I know,” he sighed. “I know you’re always going to think that, but you have to know I’m never going to agree with you. No matter what happens, I’ll always think what happens to you matters more.” It was, admittedly, difficult to understand that she had simply been raised not to care about what happened to her, and it bothered him more than she knew. “I don’t see what other people see when I look at you because I know they’re wrong, and I know you’re worth more than you think you are. It doesn’t matter to me, how you were raised. I’m never going to stop thinking you’re worth something.” He simply regarded her sadly when she said she’d thought Thomas would let him move back in with him, because it really had nothing to do with her at all, the way things were between them. “I couldn’t live with him, Wren. It wasn’t about working or paying rent, didn’t you know that? It was about us not being able to associate with each other, not publicly.” All good intentions aside, breaking him was exactly what she’d done, and he just shook his head. “No. You wouldn’t have broken me,” he said. “Not by telling me the truth.”
Her confusion didn’t register as it should have, and he merely shrugged. “No, not Jack. It wasn’t for me, that memory.” Thinking about it, the edge of a blade tearing his face apart, was not something he wanted to do, and so he pushed it from his mind. His hands weren’t too bad, really, just a little cut up, and he flexed his fingers unthinkingly when she smiled. “But that would mean leaving you, and I’d never do that. Besides, I wouldn’t be any better if I did.” He’d already tried all of that before, after all, and it hadn’t helped.
The guilt in her voice made him ache, and he tugged in her shirt again, momentarily giving up the feel of her skin beneath his fingers in order to do so. “No, Wren. No. You have to stop blaming yourself for things that aren’t your fault. Me not talking to Brielle had nothing to do with this,” he insisted. He sucked in a breath when she said she’d seen their memories, and he wondered if they’d made things worse, what she saw; taken out of context, they might. Part of him wanted to ask what she’d seen, while part of him didn’t, and he was trying to figure out whether or not to ask when she looked up at him, gaze questioning. He smiled, an attempt at reassurance, his fingers moving all the while, over her hips and up along her sides, and he hoped she knew that he still wanted this, regardless of how broken they were, or what either of them had seen. “Okay,” he agreed, because he knew she never believed he wanted things when things were bad like this; she always thought of herself as an obligation, regardless of what he said. “I’ll ask you then.”
The buzzer startled him, admittedly, and his first thought was the police, which almost made him panic. His breath caught in his throat, and his fingers stilled at her sides, and he tried to calm himself down by silently repeating that it might not be the police. It might not be. Luke shook his head when she looked up at him, sparing a glance for the monitor and Gus. “No,” he said quietly. “Just leave it.” If someone was down there, it was perfectly plausible to think that Wren simply wasn’t home.
He still had that old certainty of his youth, the one that insisted there was good in people (like her) that she just didn't see. Admittedly, it was that certainty that had eventually worn her down as a teenager, made her think she wasn't going to ruin him just by being around him, and the memory made her smile a small, bittersweet smile. "You have to stop saying things like that, or I start believing you," she teased, a weakly playful thing. "I wouldn't go back to that work, you know. No matter what, and that's all your fault, so I do listen sometimes. It just takes awhile." His assertion that she wouldn't have broken him chased some of the smile away, that understanding that she had ruined things in a way that could never, ever be fixed lingering between them. "You don't want a clean slate?" she asked him honestly, the feel of his fingers against her skin making it easier to pose the question. Her own hands stilled at his navel, and she flipped the ring on her finger around with her thumb, her gaze drawing down to it. "With someone like Brielle? Someone who's only good memories and not bad?" She knew he didn't love her cousine now, or that he hadn't then, but it didn't change the fact that he could. He could take Gus and go, find someone good and make a clean start. The question came on the heels of his assertion that he'd never leave her, but she wanted to give him the option if he wanted.
She smiled knowingly when he tugged on her shirt. "You would have made sure she was safe, if it wasn't for me," she said, and she had no doubt that was true. It was just who he was; he was drawn to people that needed saving, that needed to be helped. It was the reason he'd started down that path in the first place, the one in Seattle. He might have changed between now and then, but he was still who he was. "You would have had her move in, or you would have stayed with her until her husband was taken care of." The movement of his fingers on her skin was the best kind of heaven, and she closed her eyes for a second, just letting herself linger in it. It was instinct to tell him that he could have her even without what he was offering, without an apartment or safety or any kind of future. But she knew better than to voice it, knew he would only take that as another sign of failure on his end, that she'd think to make the offer. "Okay," she said instead, and she twisted the ring on her finger as a reminder of what he'd said he wanted all those days ago, before he'd seen what she really was beneath it all.
But the sound of the buzzer cased absolutely everything away, and she was still as it buzzed, not moving until seconds after it had begun. "Okay. You need to go first. The service elevator? Take Gus. They won't be looking for you, not here, not after the restraining order. Go?" And it was obvious she was scared, and that she didn't want him to go, but there was no choice, not really. "If it's clear, I'll follow." She tugged on his fingers, too tight, too desperate, and she bit her lip to keep from kissing him. "Don't wake him? He'll want to take the cats."
“You make it sound like believing me is a bad thing,” he said, with a tired smile. Getting her to listen to him when they were teenagers had been an uphill battle, and if was one of those things that hadn’t changed much with time. Maybe she wouldn’t go back to what she’d done before now, but she had while they were apart, and everything he’d said back then hadn’t done a damn thing to stop that. “Lucky for you, I have a lot of patience.” His smile, which was weak to begin with, vanished when she asked if he wanted a clean slate, and he shook his head, suddenly looking older than his years. It was exhausting, her doubt, and normally he could hide it much, much better. “No. I’ve told you, Wren, you’re not just bad memories. You’re some the best memories I have, and I would never be able to start over with someone else. I just couldn’t do it, and I don’t want to,” he told her, hoping that maybe this time she would believe him, maybe she wouldn’t ask him such a question again.
Wren was half-right. Yes, he would have helped Brielle, but not in the ways she seemed to believe. “I wouldn’t have gotten her to move in with me, and I wouldn’t have stayed with her either,” Luke said simply. It was too blunt to be a lie. “There’s a line I know not to cross, and you come first. It’s like if Silver was in trouble, I’d hope you wouldn’t move in with him, or let him stay with you. But would I have tried to help her in other ways? Yeah, I would.” Maybe he was wrong. Maybe, if it was her and Silver, things would be different; he still wasn’t sure she realized just how much their friendship bothered him. Regardless, he knew exactly what he would have done to help Brielle-- to an extent. Killing her husband had been an option once, or even threatening him into submission, but Ivy had apparently beat him there. His gaze fell to her ring when she twisted it around her finger, and the fact that she was still wearing it sparked a small flame of hope somewhere in his chest. "I still want that," he murmured without thinking, lost in his own thoughts and not realizing she might overhear.
He didn't want to go; that much was clear. It was in the way he looked at her, the way his fingers tightened against her sides, and he was torn between staying and getting Gus out of the apartment. "Okay," he agreed, albeit reluctantly. "I don't want to go, but okay. It might be nothing, you know," he added, even as he leaned against her, a press of his forehead to hers and a breath of air between then before he stepped back and away, towards the little boy.
She knew that tired smile too well not to understand what it meant, and she could hear that exhaustion in his voice. It combined with her certainty that he wouldn't be able to forget what he saw in those memories to create a smile that was too bright, too calm, nothing like the wreck she was inside after the things she'd seen, after learning about what happened with Brielle. But it was a calm she was used to wrapping around herself, and she didn't want to lose him, she didn't, not because of her own insecurities. She'd actually been feeling better about things, and distantly she knew that, but nothing was quite right just then, and she knew he wasn't right either. So being strong was what mattered, and that meant no well-meant offers, and she didn't point out that with someone else, someone fresh, he wouldn't feel like this, like he didn't want to have deal with her not being sure all the time. "I just meant because of what you saw too," she began, but then she shook her head quickly. "No. It's okay. Just- I'll be better in a few days. I promise." And that was old habits, how she'd always reacted to things when they were kids. She'd worked her way out of that too for the most part, but it all felt like so very much just then that it was easy to just fall back on it. She should have left it at that, but she couldn't stay silent about the Brielle thing, not wanting him to think she meant it in a way she didn't. "No. I meant if there wasn't me. I didn't mean you'd live with her while I was in the picture." She gave him a small smile once he mentioned Silver, and she would have touched him if she wasn't so busy intentionally not doing it just then. "Silver staying would be just like Jack staying, and I think the same as Brielle for you, maybe?" And maybe it wasn't the same. Maybe the fact that he'd chosen Brielle at all once made it different. but she couldn't deny the fact that he hadn't loved her then, not anymore. "But no. I'd send Jack to stay with Silver," she offered with a smile, following his gaze to the ring she was twisting on her finger. She bit her lip, and the calm smile gave way to a more honest, sad one. "I drive you crazy though."
His fingers against her side distracted her from everything else, and she closed her eyes when he pressed his forehead to hers. We can talk about it later," she offered, knowing they didn't have much time at all. The buzzer was buzzing again, and she went to look out the window as he left her to go get Gus. She touched a hand to the glass when she noticed the police car there, small and down in the distance, but she didn't panic, and she didn't say anything to him once she heard him returning. If it was just her, she could say a client roughed her up. They knew her record; they'd believe that, and maybe they only wanted to ask questions. "Go. I'll catch the next cab," she promised him, looking over her shoulder once she heard him returning.
She reminded him so much of the girl she’d been all those years ago, when they were just kids in Seattle, way over their heads, and such a regression made Luke inexplicably sad. They’d both come such a long way since then, and it wasn’t fair, that things should happen to make them fall back on old habits, not when they’d made progress. “Don’t,” he said quietly, but he was too tired to argue, and after a moment’s pause he nodded. “Okay. A few days. We’ll both be better then.” He really didn’t want to pursue the topic of Brielle, even though he was admittedly worried about what would happen if she ended up in jail, and how that would affect Wren, and he merely shrugged when she said he would have lived with her if she hadn’t been in the picture. “But you are in the picture, Wren, so there’s no use in beating yourself up over it,” he said, and he regarded her sadly when she said Silver would be just like Jack or Brielle. “Jack’s not in love with you,” he sighed, “and Brielle’s not in love with me.” But he didn’t expect her to understand, really, so he just left it at that. She was never going to see why her being friends with someone who had feelings for her was so problematic for him; it stemmed from his own insecurities, and that was his fault, not hers. “You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t drive me crazy,” he teased, and while it was just as weak as hers had been, at least it was there.
Maybe it was a good thing, that Luke was so preoccupied with getting Gus off the bed without waking him up that he didn’t see the police car outside. He might not have left otherwise, and when he returned, the little boy had molded to him in his sleep, arms around his neck and face buried against his shoulder. “Okay,” he whispered. “Promise you’ll take the next one?” Leaving her would be a little more bearable if he knew she would be right behind him. He didn’t wait for an answer, assuming that it would be yes, and he maneuvered around the child in his arms enough to give her a quick kiss and a smile before turning for the elevator.
Wren watched him go, and she listened to the buzzer. She almost pressed it a few times, almost gave in and went down to talk to the police. In the end, she didn't think she could take jail, not again, not then. She slipped out the servant's entrance a few moments later, and she sent Luke a text that said, simply: Hiding through the door for the night. Cops. And then she did just that. She needed to be less bruised to talk to them and, finally, Selina's recommendation that she dye her hair made sense. They were looking for a blonde with battle-scars. She'd come back when that wasn't her.