InsaneJournal

Who: Luke and Brielle
What: A visit.
Where: Jaail.
When: Recently.
Warnings/Rating: Saad.

You have a visitor.

This was where the words developed one at a time, where the pale walls sank back on themselves and reality sank in. This was not a place where people were supposed to live, this was a place where one had visitors. Her nails were clean, she thought as much while rolling over on the cot. Jail was quieter than people would expect. Almost everyone wanted to be left alone. This was a place architecturally developed to make people feel guilty. The solitude lead to reflection and the books were carefully chosen for metaphorical reasons. Brielle hadn't been in long, but she could already tell the difference between newcomers and those in for longer. Even so, she knew it would be worse when she progressed to prison in a few months.

Gentry!

The bark of the guard was distracting. He was impatient and it drug on old memories that snared on old flinches.. funny thing is that none of that was necessary anymore. He was gone. Even if he was only in a coma, Brielle knew that he was gone. Even if he woke up, she was here and she wasn't not leaving. Brielle had already decided that she would confess to something else, one of those murders she read about on the journals, something. Anything. How strange that a cell should feel like a safety net. There was nothing to worry about here, not really. There was no death sentence for her, and even Ivy's voice was a long forgotten thing. It was only her now. Only Brielle.

"I'm coming," and it was a murmur while she slid off of the cot in all of her orange glory. With a head hung low, she made her way down the corridor and into the area where visitors received one another on opposing panes of glass. The worst kind of mirror, it didn't even show her herself. Which was an immediate regret when she sat down, not knowing who was coming, only glancing at the raggedy telephone that would connect their voices eventually. Spindle fingers strung through her hair trying to straighten tangles, and she sank a tired elbow onto the counter. She naturally assumed it would be Wren once more, and that confidence had her closing her eyes while she waited. Tilting the bone of her bruised cheek into the cusp of her palm. Waiting while whomever it was got taken through weapons search, daydreaming.

There were a thousand reasons why Luke shouldn’t have been within twenty feet of a prison, and even more pertaining to this particular one, visiting this particular inmate. Yet guilt was a strong motivator, and the thought of Brielle spending years upon years behind bars for a crime that hadn’t even been her fault tormented him day after day. He'd mentioned it to Wren, though he still worried she might get the wrong idea, even though it had nothing to do with love, how he felt. It was guilt, and leftover fondness from a hazy time spent together, two people who understood each other without words, who found refuge in each other, however short their time together was. The way he felt towards her was similar to that of an old friend, nothing more. Yes, he cared about her, and a part of him felt as though he should have been able to prevent this. If he had done more, if he hadn’t let Wren’s insecurities influence him, if, if, if. He had an unfortunate hero complex, a need to help others he’d never grown out of, and it meant that he blamed himself for her incarceration despite the burden not deserving to be upon his shoulders and his alone.

He left Gus with the sitter, far more trustworthy than the foolish woman who’d handed him over easily to Wren, and made the drive to the prison himself. Hours of preparation had preceded his visit; covering up what was left of the bruises, as well as his scars, just in case, and mentally steeling himself in order to ensure his behaviour wasn’t questionable. For a man who might very well have faced the death penalty if his crimes ever came to light, good intentions or not, prison was a very real fear, and it took him ten minutes once he reached the place to stop his hands from shaking.

Somehow, despite all the factors against him, Luke made it through security without issue. He was unarmed, of course, unassuming, and the guards paid him little attention, perhaps labelling him as a boyfriend, a lover, or even just a friend. It didn’t matter, really. Brielle’s closed eyes meant that he had time to study her as he approached, and his breath caught in his throat as he took in her appearance, clad in that terrible jumpsuit behind a pane of glass. She didn’t belong here, not here, no more than Wren did. Men like him were the ones who should be behind bars. It simply wasn’t fair. Luke swallowed heavily, sat, picked up the phone, and waited for her to open her eyes.

It came in stages. There was a sound on the other side, something distance that came through the thick glass like a far away thud. Brielle blinked. Her head lifted and she glimpsed him through a dark fall of hair. Her pupils shrank, recognition came, and with that there was the faintest twitch of her eyebrows. It marked confusion, and her hesitation was evident in the moments before she picked up the phone. It was too easy to sit there in silence for a moment, to think of other things.

"Hi." The word was a single whisper. Her eyes still didn't understand, there was a draw to the eyelids that marked contemplation and a teething to the edge of her lip that noted anxiety. She swallowed and tried again after a moment, "I'm surprised you're here.."

Her confusion didn't surprise him. Realistically, Luke had no real reason to be here, no obligation to visit, and while coming had never been in question for him, he hadn't expected that she would anticipate his presence. Maybe he felt like he needed to be here, but the same time, he wanted to be too. He smiled at her when the recognition sank in, but it was shaky, not altogether as steady as he had intended, falling just short of being reassuring.

"Hi," he echoed back at her. "I-- I wanted to see you." To say goodbye, to say sorry; the reasons were endless. It could just as easily have been Wren sitting on the other side of that glass, and the prospect terrified him. "How are you doing?" It was a mundane, useless question to ask, maybe, but at least these words were easy to get out.

His mimicked greeting brought a smile, and Brielle struggled to make it more reassuring than his own version had been. "You did?" The question was doubtful and somehow also pleasantly surprised when Luke said he'd wanted to see her. Her expression quirked, momentarily fond when he asked how she was doing. "I've been worse," she confided into the mouthpiece of the phone. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again.." There was a thoughtlessness to the words, like they slipped out on their own accord before Brielle really had a chance to stop them. Then again, she didn't seem regretful of the confession, and she didn't seem to put too much meaning between the lines. It was a nice surprise, that was all.

Luke gave no thought whatsoever to what it might have looked like, him visiting, saying he'd wanted to see her; they were so far beyond that point now. For a brief moment he wondered if Wren had come, if she would at some point, but that was a concern for later. Now, now there was just this. Just them. Him on one side, freedom, and her on the other, imprisonment. “Well, yeah,” he said. “You’re in prison, Brielle, and you shouldn’t be. I couldn’t not come.” Maybe he’d been wrong, to let Wren’s fears and jealousy force him into giving her the cold shoulder, and all that old guilt came rushing back now. “I’m sure you’ve been better too,” he quipped with another weak smile. He knew he couldn’t say too much here, not under the watchful eyes of guards and cameras, and he lamented the fact that their last conversation would have to be so guarded. “That sounds so final,” he said without thinking, of her never seeing him again. “How long...?” He gestured with his free hand around at the prison, the other still gripped tightly around the phone to keep it against his ear.

Brielle tugged nervously on one of her jumpsuit's tangerine sleeves. It felt a bit ridiculous to be nervous around him now, with everything said and done. She truly hadn't expected to ever see Luke again. Hoped, maybe, in some secret part of herself. "Yeah," she admitted almost sheepishly while tucking the phone into the cradle of her shoulder, straightening the sleeve she'd nervously cuffed part way up her arm. "I've been better." There was something telling and regrettable in that admission, as if she was thinking on something that she would have rather not been. When the conversation naturally turned to the subject of her extended stay behind bars, Brielle glanced up with a long inhale, thinking. "I go before a judge on Monday for sentencing, they are saying 10 years, but there's parole.. so.. maybe not that long." There was some inherent need to ramble her way through the information, as if that was the only way to get it out in full. "He's not dead," she clarified finally toward the end, watching Luke with an apprehension that said she wasn't sure what he would think - of her or the situation entirely - if David was.

For one of the first times since they’d met, Luke wondered what Brielle had been like before her husband, before the man sank his claws into her and refused to let go. It made him a little sad that he didn’t know, and he never would, not if she stayed in here; she deserved a second chance now that David could no longer harm her. Those two words, ten years, made him inhale sharply, and despite the mention of parole he was, for a brief moment, incredibly angry. This was the kind of justice system they had, one which condemned victims and protected the guilty. Bruce wanted to overhaul the entire system in Gotham eventually, to repair it piece by piece, but Luke didn’t have his patience, and in that moment he regretted giving up his vigilante ways. There was good he could do, as long as he stayed away from his old methods. “It can’t be that long,” he said, shaking his head. “The circumstances are in your favor. You’ll probably get parole after a couple of years or something. I’m sure you will,” he insisted, almost desperate. He hated the idea of her being stuck behind bars for ten years; what about her life? Was she supposed to wait that long to start over? And yes, he did think of Wren, of how she was going to cope with her cousin being locked up for that long, and he hoped it wouldn’t make her do anything stupid as a result.

Bruce had filled him in on the key points of the situation, and admittedly, he was disappointed David wasn’t dead; on the other hand, however, he was relieved, because he was sure things would have been worse for Brielle if he was. “Oh,” he sighed, watching her almost uncertainly. “Then-- how is he? Awake?” For a moment, his expression hardened into a frown; oh, he hoped the bastard would be trapped in some sort of a coma forever, if death was off the table.

"Yeah." The single word was a whisper, so soft that it was barely discernible through the phone's crackling receiver. The desperate insistence with which he mentioned her option for parole. It sounded like hope, and she didn't want to kill that for him. So she said it again, a little brighter this time. "Yeah." A couple of years behind bars, then a few more spent in some halfway house with a curfew.. and then what? Somehow, it was the prospect of life after all of this that was the most unsettling. The most frightening. So much of her life before had been out of her hands, a strict regiment that she had no control over. Prison didn't sound so very different, and she suspected it would at least be less violent. "He's in a coma, and they say the chances of him waking up are not good," there was a note of sadness there. Even if he wasn't a good husband, Brielle had never wanted him dead or hurt like this. Revenge wasn't built for girls like her, too much softness, too much regret.

With David gone, a strange numbness sank into her veins. It didn't feel like she had much to be afraid of anymore, prison or not. It certainly seemed less daunting to her than spending the rest of her life on the run. Implicating others, like Wren had asked, wasn't something she was willing to do. "Wren came to see me," she said finally. She steadied her eyes on Luke through the glass before adding, "She offered to go to the police.. but I assured her that wouldn't help anything."

Hope was rare in Luke’s life, and he had all but lost it for himself. When it came to others, however, he could still manage, and he didn’t want Brielle to see nothing but a life behind bars for herself. He wanted more for her, even if he couldn’t be the one to give it to her. She could be happy on her own, he knew, but he did hope that someday she found someone, someone who treated her like she deserved, and who showed her that not all men were like her comatose husband. “It’ll be okay,” he said, aware of just how weak that sounded, how pathetic, but he didn’t care. “In a few years from now, you’ll be out living your own life.” There was a tinge of nostalgia in his smile, though despite what Wren thought, he had never saw a future for himself and Brielle. They simply hadn’t been right together, and he had never felt for her what he felt for Wren. That didn’t mean, however, that he looked back on their time with anything other than fondness. He didn’t realize that the prospect of life beyond prison unsettled her; freedom was a heady thing, but, he thought, something everyone wanted, even her. “Oh,” he said, trying to temper his reaction to the news that David would likely never wake up for her sake. She wasn’t like him, he knew. She didn’t hate like he did, didn’t burn for revenge or seek vengeance with no mercy. “Maybe that’s for the best.” In that moment, he vowed that if David did somehow beat the odds, if he did wake up, he would be there. Brielle deserved her chance.

The news that Wren had visited didn’t surprise him, nor did her offer to turn herself in. Luke sighed, almost wearily, as though he had expected no less. “Of course she would. I’ll make sure she doesn’t try anything,” he said, and for a moment he felt guilty. “You don’t deserve to be here, but I-- I can’t let her do that. I’d do the same if I could, if it would help, but I can’t either.” He hesitated, tentatively meeting her gaze behind the glass. “I’m sorry.” There was so much more wrapped up in those two words, volumes upon volumes packed into such a short sentiment.

"I told her that it wouldn't help anything. I'd have made her promise, but I think we Maheu girls are the kind to do things our way regardless of promises." Brielle swallowed, emotion and nostalgia made her feel weary. Her posture took on a sideways slouch, where she could rest her shoulder against the cool bricks of the partition that separated her from another female inmate on another phone. Her smile was soft when Luke said that he'd sacrifice himself if it would help, but the truth was heavy in the burnt cedar of her eyes. She didn't really believe him. Who was she to him but a flicker on a sad patch of memories?

"You're not that selfish," she whispered. It was a strange thing to connect to sacrifice, but even Brielle knew that the only reason Wren wanted to do it was to make herself feel less guilty. Not that there was anything to feel guilty about, not for them. It had been an accident, something entirely out of their control.. even Ivy's. "You and Wren have a child that needs you. I don't." She didn't have anything or anyone in Las Vegas. Until this incarceration, Brielle hadn't even been certain that Wren cared about her at all. Their conversation that afternoon said it best, I haven't been kind to you.

Brielle dropped her eyes when his rose to meet in the middle, and she interrupted his apology with a sharp, wrenching word. "Don't." With her eyes closed, she murmured into the phone. "You don't have anything to apologize for. The time I spent with you was the only time I can remember not being afraid."

Luke managed a brief, fleeting smile, one that spoke of a fondness for both Maheu girls, though his feelings for the two differed greatly. “Yeah, you are,” he agreed. “I’ve lost count of the times Wren’s promised me something, and then gone and done her thing anyway. She means well. I know you do too.” He’d always known that, even when Wren had allowed her jealousy to consume her, and he’d listened as she accused Brielle of being malicious, of conspiring to have him behind her back; he should have said something then. He should have, but he hadn’t, and it was too late to change that now. Despite what he said, he didn’t actually expect Brielle to believe him, and so there was no insistence that he would have had it been possible for him to do so. Maybe the boy he’d once been, who would have sacrificed himself for a stranger without hesitation, was dead. Or, maybe, he simply had too much to lose now, whereas before he’d had very little to live for at all. He didn’t avert his gaze, despite the guilt he felt; this time, he couldn’t play the hero, and that knowledge weighed heavily upon him.

That surprised him. Selfishness, he thought, was keeping silent, allowing Brielle to take the fall, so he could avoid jail and keep Wren at his side. “We do have Gus,” Luke admitted, “and that makes things hard, but you deserve to have a life too, Brielle. You don’t deserve this.” Wren had always been too quick to sacrifice herself, too quick to put everyone else above herself, but he knew that her offer to turn herself in had something to do with guilt. Living with it, that kind of guilt, was difficult, and if she’d thought sacrificing herself would alleviate some of it, well, that alone was reason to do so. But it wasn’t going to happen; they both knew that, him on his side of the glass, and she on hers.

He shook his head, a lump forming in his throat when she denied his apology, that don’t making him wince, though he wouldn’t--couldn’t--take it back. “I should have done more,” he whispered, but he didn’t know what more he could have done. Was it enough, that he had allowed her to let go of her fear, if only for a little while? Luke took a deep, shaky breath as he contemplated the question. “I’m glad, though, that I could do that much, at least.”

Brielle didn't know the full extent of Wren's distrust. She'd tried to be honest with her cousine while simultaneously trying to take the blame in order for Luke and the child not to suffer. Maybe it was the wrong decision, maybe they should have all sat down together and discussed it reasonably.. but the highwire emotions made that a treacherous and impossible act. Denial, defeat, and being defenseless had just seemed easier at the time. Maybe Brielle too was like Wren in that way.

"I will have a life," she argued back gently. Brows knit and her expression creased into one of crumbling sadness.. not necessarily because it would be a life without him, but that it would probably be a life without company in general. She hadn't been lying about feeling safe with him. There was nobody else that compared. Jack had saved her once, and with Ivy's influence, she'd tried to make some connection, but it was still all wrong. It was all pity and reflection and violence in too many parts of his bloodstained hands and her brittle bones. She could never trust somebody like him. The fact that she thought Luke to be different probably proved how very little she knew of him. She bought the lies of his negligence and his silence a year ago.. hook, line, and sinker. Just like he'd bought hers.

"What else could you have done, Luke?" She frowned, sadness threatening moisture in her eyes when she instinctively reached forward. Her fingertips hit the blunt glass between them and that hand fell back to the tabletop, as if she'd forgotten the protective glass was there at all for a moment. The dreamer. "Tell me something good?" She asked with a sweet kind of desperation. "Before you make me cry.”

It was strange, really, that after all this time Brielle still had no idea who he truly was, and now she never would. Maybe Luke should have told her the truth, but he didn’t want to do that now, not here, and he wondered if letting her believe he was better than he was would be such a bad thing. What did it matter now? They would likely never see one another again, even if she did make parole in a few years, and it might be nice, knowing there was one person out there who didn’t know what he’d done, who saw him as the sort of man he had always wanted to be. If she could have faith in him, then maybe she could have faith in someone else too, someone who deserved her, and he didn’t want to take that possibility away from her. Despite everything, he wanted nothing more than for her to be happy-- on her own terms. “You will,” he agreed slowly. “Once you’re out of here, you will.” Because this, this was no life at all. He had to believe that one day she would be free, and when she was, she would once again find what David had taken from her all those years ago.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, and it was painful, such helpless honesty. When she reached forward, he reacted on pure, unthinking instinct and leaned closer to meet her, but the glass between them was thick and unforgiving, and he watched as her fingers made contact with the barrier before falling back. He almost apologized for making her cry, his mouth opening to speak the words, but after a moment of thought he closed it and sat back. Apologies would do no good now, and he didn’t want to make her cry. He really, really didn’t want to make her cry. “Something good,” he repeated. “I got a raise at work,” he said lamely, but after a moment he smiled, warm and fond. “I think Gus has his first crush. There’s this little girl at the park I take him to, and he made me help him pick a bunch of dandelions for her the other day.”

The mention of a raise was the first thing to visibly lift her spirits. "That's good." She knew it would mean good things for Wren and the little one. Brielle did not know whether or not Wren was currently working, but she did know that the field Wren had chosen was not good for her. Brielle supposed it was meant to be empowering, but there was baggage there and memories that were surely stronger. How could not flinch away from violence after everything? She did not believe that Wren would resort to old things, the profits of her youth. Not with Luke in the picture, not with the baby. While Gus was certainly no infant, Brielle thought of all children as babies. Too delicate, too helpless.

When Luke went on the explain the crush, Brielle covered her mouth with splayed fingers, a dreamy smile hiding behind the display. Her eyes still watered, but it was certainly not an expression of sadness any longer. Only one of sweet adoration for a little boy that she'd never know either. "C'est precieux..." Wiping at one of her eyes with a bruised knuckle, she corrected herself eventually. "Precious." Somewhere behind her, a guard barked out the time. Visiting hours could not go on forever, there were only so many partitions and so many women inside waiting their turn to see loved ones or their children. "You should probably go," she sighed into the phone. The tone was all apprehension, as if she was unsure of whether or not Wren knew that he was here. She didn't want that to be a problem, another thing to be hated for.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “It is good.” In the grand scheme of things, perhaps a raise was minor at best, and Brielle was actually the first person he’d told, since everyone else was so preoccupied with their own problems that such an insignificant piece of news seemed so trivial. Luke didn’t really have anyone to talk to about the little things, at least not right then. Normally that person was Wren, but she currently thought he’d been so traumatized by the memories that he never wanted to touch her again, and so there wasn’t much communication going on there. Extra money was never a bad thing, especially with Wren’s precarious work situation, Jack’s presence in his apartment, and the fact that Gus was a growing boy who needed things like clothes and food, never mind little treats every now and then that he couldn’t bear denying the child. “I used to think about doing something else, but it’s not a bad job, really,” he shrugged. “And the money doesn’t hurt.”

It occurred to him that Brielle had never met the little boy, her own relative, and in a way that fact saddened him. Someday, Luke vowed, they would tell Gus about her, and maybe he would even get to meet her if she was released. It was the same sort of promise he’d made to himself about Thomas, and all the other truths Gus would one day know. One day. “He’s a regular little gentleman,” he laughed, and for a moment things seemed normal, despite the glass between them, before one of the guards broke the spell. Of course there would be a time limit; how stupid was he? “Oh. Right.” He blinked, as though coming back to reality; he had told Wren that he might come visit her cousin, and she’d said nothing to suggest it would be a problem. For a moment he hesitated, feeling as though he should say something significant, something meaningful, before departing, but his mind was painfully blank. He stood, ignoring the way the guard was looking at him, and offered her one last smile instead. “Bye, Brielle.”