Who: Wren What: A narrative Where: Around When: Recently Warnings/Rating: The usual
Wren had no idea if Thierry was doing anything to deal with what he'd done, and she hadn't discussed it further with Luke. She knew Luke had gotten upset with her over the phone, and she knew she didn't want to make him upset again. She knew, too, that she wasn't quite right yet, but she didn't know where grief began and loss ended, and she didn't know how much was the Lazarus Pit and how much was being mostly dead through a door she didn't ever remember. So she kept these things to herself, and she waited for them to pass like things always did. But the girl - Thierry's girl - that needed to be dealt with, because the reality of it just kept screaming in her head, a clawed thing that wouldn't quiet or still. The conversation with Chessie had only made it louder, and she lamented the loss of friends she could talk to about these things.
It wasn't that she was alone. No, she wasn't alone. But Luke was barely holding on, and Evie had a wedding to plan and a baby to look forward to. MK was the one friend that knew her darkness well enough to talk about something like guilt, but MK wasn't there. Silver was gone, and she missed more than just his ability to keep her secrets locked away tight. And Jack, Jack couldn't know.
And, so, she was alone with it.
She'd been alone before. But this was different. Maybe it was the effect of the Pit, maybe it was just the sheer exhaustion of all of it, but she just wanted to scream to the heavens; she had never been a screamer, but she wanted to be just then.
But in the end, once Gus was home again and on a playdate, and once Luke was back at the academy, she picked herself up and, she started making phone calls. First, to her clients, rescheduling the appointments she'd missed at no charge, in the hopes that they'd come back again. And then, to help groups. She ended up on the phone with Trafficking and Prostitution Services fairly early in the day, and she was still talking to the woman when Gus came home from his playdate wanting chicken nuggets shaped like lions. She agreed to meet the woman the following morning, and she smiled at the little boy with the messy hair who still looked at her like he wasn't sure she was who she was supposed to be.
She wasn't sure she was either.
The following morning dawned dry and cool, and she took Gus to the zoo before leaving him to watch cartoons at home with his sitter.
She tried not to look at the back of the driver's head on the way to the cafe where she was meeting her TAPS contact; she wondered if they had enough money left to buy a used car.
The woman, Esther, was older and well dressed, but Wren knew a kindred spirit when she saw one. She could see the lines of resignation around the other woman's eyes, the kind of things forged in alleys and street corners, salt and gravel on bare knees. They talked for hours, and it was only the beeping of her phone that let her know the sitter's shift was almost up. She left with a promise to come into the TAPS safehouse the next evening.
Maybe it would make her soul ache less; she hoped it would.
She walked to the nearest bus stop, not wanting to call another driver, and she walked when the bus stopped short of the residential area she called home. She passed the church she'd wandered into days earlier, and she considered going in and lighting more candles. Her maman, French and Louisiana Voodoo running through her veins, had always found peace in belief, but Wren wasn't sure she believed in anything anymore. All the talismans in the world hadn't kept the people she loved safe, and there wasn't any higher power helping her keep things together. She could light every last candle, and Silver would still be dead, and Luke would still be broken, and Thierry would still be lost to her, and Jack would still be a dead man walking, and MK would still be living on the razor's edge of borrowed time.
She walked past the church, stopping only a second to listen to the choir singing, but she didn't go inside.
Instead, she walked the rest of the way home, where Gus informed her of his new decision to adopt a kangaroo one day. She took him in her arms, and she hugged him. He was warm and wiggling and better than any church, than any deaf God, than any Pit that left craziness in its wake.
She lit a candle to that, and she started making dinner.