Evangeline Sablier is not broken, but please (handlewithcare) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-08-19 21:50:00 |
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Entry tags: | lois lane, red riding hood |
Who: Evie and Will
What: Memories talks
When: RIGHT AFTER THE PUNCH TO THE MEMORIES (yes we're slow sometimes)
Where: Their apartment
Warnings: Touchy subject matter and sappiness.
Once the memories had subsided and Evie’s head had settled down to a dull ache rather than a roar she sat up where she had slouched and rubbed her eyes. Her cereal was still on the floor but she didn’t care. She hurried back to the bedroom where she saw Will on the floor and she knew it hadn’t only been her. He looked as groggy as she felt and she sat down on the floor next to him and held his hand. “Did you see them all too?” she asked curiously.
She didn’t feel hungry anymore, which was rare enough, but she was now focused on the fact that reality was back and Will was here. And as crumpled as they both no doubt felt she was feeling better already. She could touch him, he was real, he was here. The past was in the past and nothing bad was going to happen today. Not one thing.
One hand to his still aching head, the other held in Evie’s, Will squinted over at her as the second memory faded from his mind. It clung on, the sight of a moving skeleton making him frown, but he pushed it away as best as he could. “Two. I saw two,” he managed to murmur out, leaning toward her and pulling her close even as he rested his head on her shoulder. Along with the memories, the angry, negative pressure was starting to increase in the back of his mind again, and he took a deep breath to try to clear it away. Evie’s hair tickled his face with his gusty exhale, and he turned in toward her shoulder for a moment before sitting up again. “One was you...” He paused, frowning. “What the hell was that?”
Evie sighed softly and leaned her head against his, “It wasn’t terrible was it?” she asked nervously. Evie’s mind was full of what she considered happy memories, she didn’t dwell on the damage that had been done to her, but she knew it was there. She knew it was hers and sometimes she shared but it wasn’t who she was. It didn’t define her, and the idea that someone else, anyone else - but especially Will, would have to see that made her stomach ball up in knots. She didn’t know if she’d sent any of those bad times out through the world and if she did, she was so sorry.
“One of them wasn’t very go-” He cut himself off as he looked at her and saw her nervous expression, realizing what she was actually asking. “Oh... no!” He hurried to reassure her. “No, nothing like that. It wasn’t... It was the first time you came to see me. With the food. In Seattle.” He reached over with the hand that wasn’t holding hers, cradling her cheek with care. “I didn’t get anything terrible. Other than me stomping around inside my apartment.”
Evie breathed a sigh of relief and leaned into the palm of his hand and smiled softly. Still clearly a bit shaken, but just glad that he hadn’t had to actually see any of that. As far as she was concerned hearing about it had been bad enough for anyone to have to deal with. She knew how Will was about her, and even though she was doing just fine it wasn’t exactly a part of her history that they drudged up as often as they could. “Your stomping had me more interested than anything,” she said remembering that day as fondly as any. “Your annoyed footsteps.” She was hoping to veer the subject from what she’d seen, she knew he wouldn’t have wanted her to see him like that any more than she wanted him to see her in a bad way.
“God knows why,” Will whispered, using the hand on her cheek to guide her into a slow kiss. Eventually he sighed into it and pulled back, resting his head against hers. His eyes were still closed when he asked the next question. And maybe it was a little cowardly, but he didn’t want to see if hurt crossed her face when he asked. “You get anything awful? From anyone?”
“Because my Will was attached to those feet,” she reminded him gently. She kissed him back her grip tight on his shoulders. She didn’t want to let him go. She sighed, she didn’t want to lie to him. That wouldn’t help anyone, she didn’t want to tell him the truth because she didn’t want to make him worry. But they were nothing if not honest. “I saw you on a bad day,” she said gently. “A bad day before me.”
He shook his head as he looked at her, a small smile hinting around his mouth. “You didn’t even know me yet at that point. You didn’t know that my feet were attached to someone you were going to even like.” He tried to make light of it, but her grip on his shoulders made him worry, and he eventually pulled back enough to look at her closer. Her next words made his stomach drop, because there were plenty of bad days that he’d had before he’d met her, but some were things that he didn’t even want to think about her having seen. He couldn’t not know, though, so he swallowed hard even though it made his throat ache, and tried to force out a question. “How... how bad?”
She sighed and grinned at him, “Didn’t matter, I knew. I was terrified of changing my life, but I knew,” she said with a grin and kissed him again. “And there shouldn’t be any doubt in your mind since you got to have that memory too. Did you get the butterflies?” she said still getting them a bit just by remembering that day. She chewed her lip for a minute and put her hand on the side of his face, “That night, with Lizzie...”
“You’re crazy,” he whispered as he kissed her back again, words against her lips. He had gotten the butterflies, in a way that was similar to (but also entirely different than) the way his stomach sometimes flipped around her. There was still maybe a little bit of doubt, or at least wonder, but there always was when he started thinking about her - how they’d come together, why she was still around. He didn’t think he would stop being amazed any time soon.
Amazement switched quickly to dread and a little bit of nausea when she confirmed his worst suspicion. Of course it would have to be that night. Of all the bad days he’d ever had, it had to be the one when drugs and anger had gotten the better of him. It had to be the night where he’d lost control and hurt the person he’d cared about most at that point. It was Lizzie then, but it was Evie now, and if he could do something like that then... it was one of his deep-down worries, that he would at some point, somehow, lose control of himself again and lash out at the most important person, the most beautiful, lovely, perfect for him woman he’d ever met. It made his stomach roll in an entirely non-butterfly way, and he pulled back from her, putting a wide expanse of space between them as his eyes went hurt and worried. “...I’m sorry.”
“Yeah but we’ve known that for years,” she said grinning at him. She saw the expression change on his face and she shook her head, “Don’t apologize to me,” she said seriously. She’d never let him off the hook for what had happened pre-Evie. She never coddled or told him it was “okay” because it wasn’t. And she was honest about that. But it was in the past, people can get better, he was walking talking proof of that. She didn’t think he’d ever hurt her, and she acknowledged that sometimes there were good people who made bad choices and did bad things. She forgave him of his past, though that event wasn’t really in her power to forgive, she forgave it anyway. And she looked beyond it to the man she knew he actually was.
“It was a bad night, Will. And it was a long time ago. And it wasn’t nice for me to see that,” she spoke plainly, and candidly the way she always did with him. “I’ve seen you bad, and I’ve seen you scary, and I’ve seen you scared and sick. But I’ll take it, I’ll take you faults and all. This doesn’t change anything. Living that memory wasn’t my idea of a good time, seeing it was hard. Feeling it was hard, and remembering it now is hard. But we are nothing if we aren’t resilient and honest. But nothing changes. I promise. I have boundaries, you know what they are. This didn’t cross any of them, this wasn’t a new revelation. It’s not something that you’ve kept from me, there were no surprises here. We’re both sorry I had to see it, but I did and now we go forward. Right?”
Will wanted to close the space he’d put between the two of them, but the guilt still shot through him, plain to see even on his face. “I worry though. You know. You felt it... It wouldn’t take much to get back to that.” He swallowed hard around the rock that had formed in his throat, his voice going thin. “Especially lately. I’ve just been... angry. I feel so close to being out of control.” It was a terrifying thing to admit, even to her. Maybe especially to her. “I don’t want to hurt you.” His voice ached with the fear and the worry.
“Listen to me, William. That’s one thing you need to figure out, and one thing I am begging you to remember. You are in control. You have always been in control. Even then you were in control, you just let yourself forget that. Don’t do that we’ve come way too far to start back pedaling now, babe. I’m not afraid of you, I’m not afraid that one day you’re just going to hurt me because you can’t control it. You’re different now, we’re different now. You’ve got problems but nothing we can’t figure out. I’ve got problems too. But we don’t let these things rule us anymore. We’re not slaves to our brokenness, Will. We never have been, we’ve just been broken and put back together so many times that it feels fragile. But we’re stronger than we think. Even me. Even crazy ass me and crazy ass you,” she said with a smile. “We’re bigger than all of this. I know you’ve got a lot of worries. And you’re on edge, and we’re hanging on the balance of a nice big screaming match. It’s right there we can both feel it. But we’re going to come out on the other side of it, whenever it happens, relatively unscathed and with amazing make up sex, got it?”
Will knew that Evie was being deadly serious, even about the makeup sex, but he was still worried and afraid. There was something in him and in his mind that felt like he was walking on a tightrope and the slightest slip would send him falling and spiralling into things he never wanted to do or be again. He reached out for her though, pulling her into himself and wrapping tight, nearly desperate arms around her. “Got it,” he replied. He had to trust Evie. He had no other choice.