Who: Liam and Tristan What: Post arrest Where: The hospital Tristan was being treated at. When: Post arrest, fuzzy timeline is fuzzy. Warnings/Rating: Cursing.
Everything was fuzzy. The walls were white, or maybe green, but there were so many windows and the space was filled with nothing but light. The bed under her was comfortable, soft, or so she thought. And when she rubbed her head against the pillow, the case made a noise, the pillow inside crinkling quietly, but it too was comfortable. Her arm didn't hurt where they'd injected her -- she didn't know what -- but nothing hurt anymore. Not even on the inside and she breathed in deeply, wondering if the light would fill her up too, but there was nothing. Nothing at all. Tristan pulled lightly, wanting to roll onto her sides, but the restraints around her ankles and wrists stopped her. Right. They'd said she needed them because she was bad. She hurt someone, but she didn't remember it.
She didn't remember much of anything anymore. It didn't bother her though, not if she'd done bad things. Tristan didn't want to remember those anymore. She glanced up as a woman came close to her, a nurse. Red hair, curly, with freckles and little cats embroidered onto her scrubs. She liked those scrubs, wanted to run her fingers over them and feel the little cats with her fingertips. "You have a visitor, Tristan," she said, voice cheerful as the air.
"I do? I haven't had a visitor before." The only people that came to visit her ever anymore were the men in uniforms, and one in a suit that she didn't like.
Liam was standing awkwardly in the doorway to the room where they were keeping Tristan, arms folded over his chest, fingers tucked in under his arms, as defensive of a posture as he ever took. But there was really no surprise that he acted the way he had, given the history that existed between he and the woman laying restrained on the bed, and even though he had been assured over and over by the doctors that she could not free herself, that she was medicated for her own safety, Liam was still wary. He gave a small nod to the nurse as she slipped past him and out into the hallway, the visitor pass clipped to his shirt catching the light for a moment before he moved, stepping in carefully though he gave Tristan and her bed a wide berth.
“Hey,” he offered quietly, scooting back until his rear was pressed against the window sill, as far away as he could get from her in that small room. Liam wasn’t sure what else to say beyond that. The memories were still too fresh, the fear still something that burned at his senses.
"Hi," she offered up quietly from her spot on the bed. For once, she was dressed in a light green t-shirt, but her legs were covered by two thin blankets, one a mint green and the other a light white. "Do you know me?" She ventured quietly as she watched him. There was something -- some fragment of memory that floated across her consciousness before the drugs shredded it to fluff and it was lost. "You have pretty eyes."
That lack of recognition bothered him in more ways than he could ever think to name. This person, he could tell in just that short exchange that this person, this woman laying here beneath the thin hospital blankets, was not Tristan, not really. And that was harder to accept than he was actually prepared for. He didn’t say anything at first, unsure of what to say to her, but finally some of the tension eased from him and he took hold of the back of the chair near her bed, dragging it into position nearby before he dropped down into it. “Yeah, I know you,” Liam finally responded, long fingers lacing together as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Liam. We’ve been talking for a few months.” Talking wasn’t the best word to use, he knew, but he had been warned by the doctors there at the facility to refrain from bringing anything up. It would be handled in court, he was told, and there was no reason to dredge through that unpleasantness here.
The pause that he took before answering was noticed, but where someone else might have thought it strange, Tristan thought nothing of it, only blinked up slowly at him. "Liam," she repeated and smiled, just a faint curve of her lips as if her muscles didn't know how to express happiness without a cruel edge to it. "Liam with the pretty eyes." Her fingers stretched out to him, but the restraints kept her from being able to reach past the edge of the mattress. "They said I had to have these because I was bad and I hurt people. But I don't remember," she confided quietly. "That's why they give me medicine in sting pinches."
There was something about that vulnerability, so very unlike Tristan in every way possible, that it tore at Liam’s heart. He glanced towards her fingers where they stretched, yearned to reach, and while the inclination was there to extend his own hand to her, he kept it to himself for a the moment, fingers clasped together so tightly that his knuckles whited out. “So, you don’t remember anything?” he asked quietly, because it was both a relief and a disappointment that she couldn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to be scared of this, to even be angry with her for everything that had happened over the past months. And that was a let down he hadn’t been prepared for.
"I--" She wasn't supposed to lie. That's what they all told her. No more lies and she wasn't sure that she knew how to do it anymore. "Sometimes I feel something, and sometimes I get flashes, but then they're gone." Tristan went quiet for a moment, tongue between her teeth as she thought, then added, "I don't like them. They're full of dark, mean things."
“You were full of dark, mean things,” Liam murmured quietly, and then he immediately regretted saying as such. He sighed deeply, rising up to his feet and pushing both of his hands through his hair, though he made no move to leave the room. Instead he turned towards the window, moving towards it and leaning against the window sill, forehead pressed against the heavy paned glass. He was starting to wonder why he had come, what point this was supposed to have in it all. There was no resolution here, not with this woman who was Tristan yet not Tristan, and that feeling of everything being so incomplete was jarring.
"They told me I did bad things," Tristan remarked quietly, her brows drawing together as she watched Liam with the pretty eyes stand up and move around the room. "Did I do bad things to you?" She whispered, worried as she never was when she had been on the outside. "I'm sorry." That's what she was supposed to say, right? Her eyes closed as she rubbed the side of her face against the pillow. "I'm sorry I did bad things to you. That's why I'm here. So I don't do those things anymore."
Her tone, those words, that apology. It was all so wrong, wrong, wrong, and it made his skin crawl. Liam almost craved the acid in her words, the bite, the cruelty, because that’s what made Tristan up, that was what he had come to expect from her. Not these words murmured so softly, the apologies, the simple statements of having done bad things. His fingers curled against the window sill, something inside him crawling, screaming, and Liam’s shoulders hunched up towards his ears. “Yes, you did bad things to me. You all but told me you would kill me,” he said quietly, giving up on the pretense of holding back and using the soft, kind words he had been advised to. There was too much anger in him, more Tristan in him than there was in her, apparently.
"I'm sorry," she whispered to his back, all child's innocence. There was little understanding, both of what he was saying to her and what she was offering in return. It felt like she should be sad, but something else suggested that she be angry and she wasn't sure what she felt except for confused. Then all it was all gone again, melted into nothing. "I won't -- I wouldn't kill you," she offered, hopeful that it was the right thing to say. "I can't hurt anyone anymore."
“Only because they have you drugged to the gills and strapped to that bed!” Liam shot back, the words shouted at the window before his hands clenched into fists, letting his head fall hard against the window, growing quiet for a long while in the wake of that minor explosion. It didn’t seem fair that she just got to forget everything that had happened. To forget that she had killed someone, to forget everything that had happened between them, and that lack of knowledge felt like a betrayal. He had to live with it, with those memories, those feelings, that hurt, and she got to drift in that drug-fueled cloud where even his name was lost to her.
When he turned back towards her, things started bubbling up, words spilling, thoughts he couldn’t control any longer. “Do you realise what you’ve put me through? Afraid to leave my home? Moving out, living with someone else because I was afraid you would come in the middle of the night and kill me? I have scars from you, Tristan. I can’t forget about those! And you get to lay there, and not remember anything you did. Not have to live with what you did.” He was breathing hard by the time he had quieted, his cheeks red, his eyes glassy with tears that didn’t fall. “I don’t get that luxury. And I hate you for that.”
She jumped, the bed rattling when he shouted at the window. Drugged to the gills. Yes. That was her, maybe, she couldn't tell anything anymore, only that shouting scared her. Her face went tight, breaths coming in sharp little wheezes as her vision began to swim. Had she done this to him too? Made him so very angry?
The added words had her flinching with every question, her shoulders drawing up around her protectively as she tried to sink deeper into the bed. It didn't help. There was no escaping what he was saying and then her face was wet. She hated it, and twisted as much as she could to bury her face in the pillow so he couldn't see.
Months prior, Liam might have reacted differently, but that was before he had experienced the sort of hurt and pain that Tristan had given him. Before, he might have held back, apologised for his harsh words, but he could feel no sympathy for her right then. “Stop playing like you’re the fucking victim!” Liam all but screamed at her, his voice ricocheting off the walls, amplified, ringing even in his ears as he rounded on her, both hands braced against the side of the bed as he leaned towards her. “You did this to yourself! You hurt people! You hurt me. And I am not going to feel sorry for you!” He was breathing hard, his teeth bared, the anger and hatred that he felt right then boiling up and over, engulfing him.
He was going to hurt her, like the woman she didn't remember had hurt him. And that's when she started screaming for the nurse, afraid of this man with the pretty eyes whose name was Liam. Who she had hurt and didn't remember. Tristan didn't want to remember if it meant turning someone into this, something like this, and she was still screaming as a nurse and two techs ran into the room.
When she started screaming, it did nothing but add fuel to the flames. His heart pounded in his chest, tight, searing hot. “Shut up! Shut up and stop screaming for help!” he shouted at her, and he was just reaching for her, to press his hand over that screaming mouth, when the nurse and techs ran into the room. Almost immediately, Liam stumbled back, away from her, his back pressed against the wall, the horror of what he had done, of what he had wanted to do, to just shut her up, to maybe make her hurt even a fraction of what he had, dawning on him heavily. He didn’t say anything, one hand pressed against his mouth, blue eyes wide, manic, the adrenaline just starting to wane.
It didn't stop her from screaming, not even with the new people in the room. He was going to hurt her!
"Sir, Sir, I think you need to leave," the nurse was saying, reaching for him as the techs tried to get Tristan settled down. She was having none of it, nearly howling through her tears. He was still in the room! Why was he still in the room! They weren't going to leave again were they?
When the nurse reached for him, Liam recoiled violently, the sound of Tristan screaming clouding everything else that was going on. He couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t figure out what was going on, what he should be doing, only that he didn’t want someone touching him, and he needed her to shut up. “Would someone shut her up? She’s crying- crying like I hurt her. She- She nearly was the one who wanted to kill me! Who all but promised to do so!” His mouth had gone dry and he looked towards Tristan on the bed, the techs wrestling with her, and he wondered when things had gotten so twisted around. When it became about helping her, the one who had caused all of this. It wasn’t right that their concern was with her. No one could cure a monster, cure the kind of evil that dwelled within Tristan, the things he had had a taste of in the months of their acquaintance.
"Sir! You need to leave!" The nurse insisted as Tristan continued to scream on the bed behind her.
"Don't leave me alone with him! He wants to hurt me! He was going to! He said bad things and that I was going to kill him and now he's going to kill me!" She screamed at the top of her lungs. A second nurse appeared in the door, one syringe already in a bottle.
"Sir! Someone call security!"
It was the mention of security that had Liam’s feet moving towards the exit of the room, the coward’s way out as he edged out of the room and into the hallway, both hands raising at the sight of the security guards that were already making their way down the hall. “I’m leaving, I’m leaving,” he said, his voice trembling, and it was clear that the young man was on edge.
As soon as he left the room, Tristan began to calm, her screams turning into whimpers as she watched the doorway with wide eyes. It wasn't long after that that a fresh needle, full of something she didn't know was jabbed into her arm. "This will help you calm down," the nurse said as everything went fuzzy.
Outside the room, Liam slumped against the wall, listening to the sounds Tristan made as the nurse gave her god knows what. All that anger had drained out of him abruptly, leaving him tired, exhausted, so much so that he slid down the wall until he was sitting, knees bent in front of him, head buried in his folded arms. This was supposed to be easier, her in custody, away from him where she couldn’t hurt him or anyone else again, but somehow, it was more difficult than he had anticipated. “Fuck,” he muttered, one hand fisting in his hair, pulling, tugging, a moment of pain to clear his thoughts.
Inside the room, the sounds stopped as she drifted off. The techs stayed to straighten everything again, make sure that she hadn't gotten her restraints free while both nurses stepped into the hallway. "Sir? You can't stay here."
Liam looked up at the sound of the nurses stepping into the hallway, watching them for a long moment before he simply leaned back, head tipped against the wall. “I’ll leave soon. I just. need a moment, okay? So just... Give me a few moments and I’ll leave.”
A look passed between the two of them before Tristan's nurse shook her head. "I mean you can't wait here. There's a room, you can take as much time there as you need."
Confusion crossed over his face at that, brows knitting down together, the expression genuine. “If I go back in her room, she’ll start screaming,” Liam said quietly, planting one hand against the tiled floor as he hauled himself up to his feet, unsteady for a brief moment before he caught his center and settled. “I didn’t mean to upset her, I hope you realise that,” he offered by way of explanation, one hand rubbing at the back of his head. “I can go. I’ve caused enough trouble here just by coming. I shouldn’t have even come.”
"Another room," her nurse tried to explain. A quick glance said that Tristan wouldn't be screaming if Liam went in, but if she woke up, it was likely to upset her again. "Give yourself some time. If you think you can handle seeing her again later, try then." But they weren't going to be allowing him back in for a few days at least. Maybe a few weeks. "Go home and get some rest."
The offer of the room was tempting, but not so much that he wanted to accept. But he gave the nurse a small nod of his head, pushing away from the wall and glancing into Tristan’s room for a moment, watching the woman resting there on the bed. He didn’t say anything further, though there was plenty that he had on his mind right then. But words simply wouldn’t come. So with a hand on his phone, Liam moved towards the exit, dropping his badge off at the desk and dialing up Jack’s number on the elevator ride down to the main floor.
“Jack? It’s Liam. Can you fit me in this afternoon? I need to talk.”