Who: Max and Jack What: A terrible visit Where: The townhouse When: Recently Warnings/Rating: Some language and lots of emo
To say Jack didn’t know what to do anymore was an understatement. He was a man adrift. He didn’t know what it would take to mend all the terrible things he’d said while he was on the other side of the door. He didn’t know if they could be mended, and it didn’t help that no one seemed to really believe him when he said that the things he’d been saying hadn’t even been true.
They hadn’t. Not really. There were kernels of truth in them, resentment and exhaustion and frustration, anger, yes, things he had never wanted to admit to and certainly had never imagined himself saying out loud. Not to anyone. Not ever.
Now he felt as if he was trying to put a broken vase back together with half the pieces missing. Max had taken the worst of it by far, and he had no idea how to find his way around it with her. Now that she thought she’d heard the truth, anything else he said was a lie, just ‘pretending’ and being ‘self-sacrificing’. The situation was impossible.
So he went to Max’s house. He procured her address easily enough at work. He knew he shouldn’t do it, that it was a violation of her privacy, but he hadn’t seen her in person since she’d come back from abroad. He hadn’t seen her since she’d insisted he stay away, then gotten angry that he’d done what she asked, one of the ten thousand maddening things he never should have told her how he felt about. She was right. He’d accepted her explanation without questioning it, because he didn’t feel it was his right to ask twice, and for that, he’d been punished. It was like standing at a crossroads with a blank sign post. Max was impossible to predict, and some days, it seemed, impossible to please. But he should have known that fobbing him off after sex wasn’t like her, rather than defaulting to his usual position of trusting her at her word because he couldn’t bring himself to push. It wasn’t in him to question that, not when sex was involved. He didn’t know where that left them, but he did know that apologizing in person might make the kind of difference that talking to her over the phone hadn’t. He could try, anyway.
He went to the front door, and made no attempt to hide from the camera he was sure she would already have in place to keep an eye on visitors. He knocked, like anyone else would, knowing full well there was a good chance she wouldn’t come to the door.
Max was having a bad morning.
She had a hangover, to start. Too many beers mingling with too many painkillers, and a night spent without realizing she needed to shift in her sleep, thanks to the combination. She hurt - her head, her hip, everything between. She was trying to avoid the realizations of the previous evening, that Daniels was in danger by staying with her, and that she really needed to let Brandon know about the black market name auctioning that was going on. Amanda couldn't visit, obviously, but Brandon might want to increase security temporarily. It wasn't a perfect solution, but there wasn't much more that she could do, given the circumstances.
It was one of those mornings when showering had gutted her, and the very process of getting into a pair of track pants and a wifebeater had left her exhausted. She'd called therapy off that day, not wanting to put herself through it, especially when progress had been so fucking slow lately. Maybe Brandon had been right about not transferring over to CIA therapists. Maybe doctors from his private collection would have done better. But it was three months in now, and she was just tired. She'd finally given in and gotten a real chair, sleek and black and aluminum, and even that felt like capitulation. A Fine, fuck you. You win, in shiny black.
She'd managed to start the coffee after Daniels had left the house, and the smell of the beans helped. She really wanted a smoke, even though she'd tried to shake the habit. She'd only smoked when she drove, and driving wasn't happening these days. Eventually, her therapist had said. She was starting to hate that woman.
When the knock came at the door, Max assumed it was her daily meals from Jimmy's Diner. She was back at the office occasionally these days, but she hadn't stopped the food delivery yet. Daniels had left the door unlocked on her way out, like Max always asked her to do. The entryway was a challenge on a good day, and she wasn't about to deal with it twice, not when the food delivery always came at the same time.
"Come in," she called out. For safety, she backed the chair into the entrance of her floor-level bedroom, out of sight, and she pulled the gun, disengaged the safety, and aimed it at the space between the front door and the living room.
Being invited in so casually surprised Jack. Had she already seen him walk up, or was she expecting someone else? He opened the door cautiously, but the house was friendly looking enough inside, and he shut the door behind, looking for her. Her voice had been close to the door, so where was she now? "Max?" he tried, and stepped out of the foyer.
He was wearing a leather jacket despite the fact that the air was finally beginning to warm back to summer desert levels, and the same pair of worn, dark jeans he'd owned since he met her. Fingerless gloves as well, per usual, though his hands were deep in his pockets.
She considered firing the gun.
It would get him back out the door, and she could avoid having this conversation when her head ached, when she didn't have any coffee in her yet, when she wasn't anywhere near her best. Well, no, she, hadn't been anywhere near her best in months. Having the conversation another day wasn't going to change that. Shit. She rubbed her free hand over her eyes, trying to make the non-coffee, hangover world stop blurring, and she gave up a second later. She couldn't see him from where she was, but she heard him step inside, and she heard the door close behind him.
A second later, another knock came, and Max re-engaged the safety and set the gun on her lap. "Answer the door. That's who I was expecting," she said, sounding morning-gravel and tired. She rolled out then, as she waited for him to take the two hot meals from the deliveryman and bring them inside. "Put them in the fridge, and get me a cup of the black that's brewing," she said, rolling the chair into the living room and waiting for him to make things completely worse.
She looked tired, thinner. It had been easier in new York, where there were nurses around the clock and cooks with constant, hot meals. The bed there had been made for someone in a chair, and it had been softer. The entire space had been set up to make her life easier. This place was tight corners and, despite having been in lived in by someone in a chair before, wasn't very chair-friendly.
Jack heard Max's voice from the room beyond and stopped. He couldn't see her from where he stood, but there was no chance to walk further in and find her before a knock came at the door behind him.
The delivery man handed off a pair of meals, which registered with Jack vaguely as being strange for Max, though only in the niggling way of something that was a little off. He'd never known her to bother with things like ordering her meals in advance.
Jack shut the door, turned back around, took a few steps, and stopped. It took a couple seconds of moving forward for what he was seeing to actually register, and when it did, it ceased moving completely, staring at Max. Looking at her like she'd presented him with a variable he didn't know how to compute, Jack let out a slow breath, brow knitting tighter and tighter in confusion, then anger, then resign, and then he moved past her, walking into the kitchen.
Jack put the meals in the fridge, as she'd asked, and searched through the cupboards for a pair of cups, opening doors and sifting through crockery. When he found them, he pulled them down and poured two strong cups of coffee. He took a little longer than he really needed to, pouring slowly. Then he walked back out into the living room, walked over to her, and handed her the mug of coffee.
That long minute spent trying to get his thoughts together, and all he was able to manage was the question he’d wanted to ask when he’d seen her a minute before. "Who did this?" he asked, voice low. Yes. As previously suspected, to no one’s surprise, Jack had fucked up, and fucked up royally.
She'd really expected him to forgo putting the food away, in favor of asking questions, and she was honestly surprised that he managed to get through filling the coffee cups before speaking. When she thought of Jack, she thought of lots of feelings and lots of words, and he wasn't giving her either right now. She almost missed that infuriating habit of his, the one that made everything about feelings worn on the sleeve. But not knowing what was going on in his head made her tense, and tension didn't help with her migraine. She rubbed at her temple, and she watched him, trying to figure out from his posture if he was being pitying; it would be easier if she could hear him say something, anything.
She took the coffee when he handed it out, and she took a long, grateful swallow of the bitter-burn liquid. "It was work. Shut up, Corvus. There's no one for you to go after. Sit down." It was all rushed together, and she rolled the chair back with one hand on the wheel, using the cup to point to the couch; she didn't like anyone towering above her. She was having trouble getting used to that, to people being taller than her, and it showed on her face when she made the command. "And don't bother feeling guilty. The kid didn't know either, until I told him. Apparently, I do a good job of hiding from people for four months."
Jack sat down when Max asked him to. He hadn't thought about the fact that he was looking down on her until she asked him to, but then again, that wasn't exactly at the top of the list of things on his mind right now. He set the coffee aside without touching it. He looked at the wheels of the chair, her clothes, her tired eyes. It was clear that her telling him not to feel guilty was going to have about as much effect as telling clouds not to rain. "I should have come here," he said. "I should have come to see you when you told me not to." But he hadn't, because he hadn't wanted to press her, and now here there were. And all those things he'd said in France - his heart dropped into his stomach. This made them even worse. He wanted to fall into a hole in the ground.
She followed his gaze to the wheels and up, and by the time he reached her face, her jaw had tensed. She hated that, being a wheelchair first, being herself second, and she could almost see the thoughts whirring around in his mind. There was pity all over him, guilt, and the fact that he had no idea what to say or do. It pissed her off, and she took another swallow of the coffee to keep from telling him just how much it pissed her off. He'd just pretend he didn't see the chair if she did that, but she'd know. And hadn't this been the entire reason she didn't want to see him? That she hadn't wanted him to come. "Corvus, shut up, alright? Coming here wouldn't have changed anything. Not coming here was honest. You're pissed at me. You have issues with the shit I've done. I don't mind that. I mind you sitting there like you don't know what to say or do."
Crap. She hadn't meant to say that.
She set the coffee on the end table, and she rolled further back, putting more space between them. "You had your reasons for not coming, for thinking what you thought. Me being in this chair doesn't change any of that. It doesn't suddenly make me a saint, and I'll shoot your leg off if you pretend it does."
What were they going to do? Put her in jail for it? Doubtful. She rubbed her eyes tiredly. "Anyway, it's done. Did you need something?"
It wasn't pity. Jack had known Max for too long to feel sorry for her in a situation like this. It was anger on her behalf, at whoever had been responsible for this, at himself for taking what she'd said at face value and letting himself be so totally owned by the madness through the door. It was shame, too, in his own behavior. He could see her growing angry with him, and he leaned forward when she began to roll away. "No - I know you're not a saint. I know that. And I know you can handle this, however bad it is." He pulled back a little. "You're the toughest person I've ever met," he said. If anyone could make it through this and come out the other side even tougher, it was Max.
Did he need something? "No," he said, a little surprised, unsure again. "I just wanted to...I wanted to apologize to you in person. We left things badly on the comm, and I wanted to see you and really talk to you. I know what an idiot I was, and I'm sorry. It's not self-sacrifice, and it's not an act. You deserved a real apology, regardless of anything else. I know you don’t think so, but I do. I was wrong. Obviously, I was even more wrong that I thought.”
She wanted to throw the coffee cup. She had no idea what she wanted from him, but this politeness was making her head pound even more than before. She knew, too, that she had to take it easy. Despite the pills, the pain, and her mood, she needed to take it easy. The kid was already worried that Corvus was one step away from diving off a building, and she couldn't make that worse, not when she didn't have any physical way to pull him back from it herself. She wanted to contradict him, to tell him that, no, really, she wasn't that tough. But she managed not to throw the cup, and she managed not to bite his head off. It was a close thing, but she managed.
"I told you, Corvus, that I don't need an apology from you. Christ, what's it going to take to make you understand that I just want you to go back to being normal around me? Fuck the chair. I'm not talking about the chair. I'm talking about before. I want that polite uncertainty gone. I want you to say what you're thinking, even if you aren't sure if I'm going to like it. I want you to stop talking to me like there's a polite gauzy curtain between us. And I don't want this chair to make that worse."
Alright, so much for not biting his head off.
Jack leaned back a little in his seat on the couch, and felt, very distinctly, like he shouldn't have come here. Maybe he'd been right from the first, whatever his faulty reasoning. If Max wanted to be left alone, even if it was just because she feared changing things with people because she was in the chair, maybe he should have respected that.
But that was just conjecture, and that wasn't helping anything any. Assuming things had just pissed her off and made her more and more frustrated. "Why did you want me to stay away?" he asked. He wanted to hear it from her, this time, because he obviously kept saying the wrong thing over and over, and he couldn't figure out whether to be angry or just dissolve firmly into shame. It made his insides twist. He was getting so tired of not knowing what to feel about what, of feeling terrible when he wasn't feeling dead, of feeling like he'd taken every wrong turn with everything year after year in a spiral leading forever down.
Max had known Corvus long enough to know that he was twisting all this shit around, making it all about something he'd done wrong. His question on verified that for her, and she wished she had something stronger than the coffee. "What kind of a question is that?" she asked. Didn't he know her well enough yet to realize that perceived weakness would be enough for her to keep everyone at bay. She'd built an entire life on her physical skill, and she dealt with all her problems by using physical outlets. How couldn't he see why this, this chair would be a problem? She sighed, trying to tamp down the growing anger that constantly threatened to bubble over since December. "Corvus," she said calmly, "this isn't about you. For once, this shit is about me. Stop making everything about your own shit."
And she knew that he would take it badly. She knew it. But she was so fucking tired. "Why can't we just have a conversation anymore?" she finally added, sounding tired. They'd been able to do that once, but they couldn't any more, and she had no idea why.
The question hadn't been an attempt to reframe the blame for things around himself - Jack had been trying to ask questions instead of just assume, since his assumptions seemed to be part of the problem. But even that had been wrong - even trying to clarify was getting him nowhere. Jack was at a loss. He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. "I don't know," he said. He was circling around hopeless, at this point. "I feel like I can't say anything right. So far, everything I've tried has just pissed you off more." It was a vicious cycle - she demanded honesty of him, he tried to reciprocate, and she found fault in every attempt he made. And he didn’t even have the energy to be frustrated with it.
"I feel like all you do is apologize and second guess and be so damn self-sacrificing that it makes me want to shoot you, so you'll at least be pissed off. When you're pissed off, I know you're being honest with me. Otherwise, it all feels fake to me, Corvus," she explained, wheeling the chair back, toward the kitchen island, away. "And I'm pissed, alright? I'm pissed that you don't even know me well enough to know when something's wrong. I thought you could see me, but you can't. You're too wrapped up in your own hurt to know who I am." She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not in a great mood lately, and I am so sick of pretending I'm alright." She reached for the phone, discarded on the kitchen island at some point in the evening. "You need to talk this out with someone who you won't pull punches with. Are you calling the kid, or am I?"
Jack listened to Max, watching her wheel away toward the kitchen. There was going to be no winning today, and maybe not ever. All she did was verify what he'd suspected anyway - that he'd fucked up by believing her. He'd fucked up so badly that now she didn't even think he knew her anymore at all. Maybe he didn't. Maybe after five years, he still didn't understand her, not really.
He stood. "I want to talk to you," he said. "I wouldn't have come here if I didn't. But if you can't trust anything I say, then I guess I don't have anything else to tell you until you're willing to believe me." The prospect of her calling Luke just made him feel so profoundly pathetic that he couldn't even stand himself. He began to stride toward the door, and there, at last, was a flicker of anger. "I'm not five, Max. You're not calling anyone for me."
She'd call the kid as soon as he left.
"Come back when you don't want to apologize, Corvus. When you don't want to sling shit. When you actually have something to say when I tell you I'm not feeling great, because you're so afraid of saying the wrong thing that we don't even get to talk about anything that matters." It was simple, plain and true. They hadn't talked about them since Seattle. Here? Here was everything about Luke, or it wasn't about anything. And when she could get around, when she had her pride and felt like she was good at something, well, that was enough then. It wasn't anymore. As much as she wanted to pretend that this accident hadn't changed her, it had.
She considered telling him about the FBI threat, but she didn't. He had eyes in his head, if he could see past his own misery to see it. Half the office was walking wounded. He was the only person in the place who hadn't been desked. He could put it together on his own.
"Reed says you're good in the field," she said instead. It sounded like a compliment, one touched by jealousy, but a compliment all the same. Those were her jobs, but she was stuck behind a desk, being useless. "I knew you would be, once you got out there."
Jack stood in the foyer, stopped for a moment, staring across at the stairs instead of looking at her. That flicker of anger was intensifying in a way that made it clear he should remove himself from the situation. He was being selfish, thinking about his own feelings when Max clearly was in a much worse position than he was. Or was he being self-sacrificing again? He could hardly keep it all straight anymore.
He really was starting to feel like he was losing his mind, in a way that had nothing to do with anything through a door or anything that could be blamed on anyone else. He was guilty, he was angry, and he couldn't even settle on a single opinion about what he had or hadn't done wrong. He wanted to lash out and immediately felt ashamed for wanting to. He was going to go insane if things kept on this way much longer.
"It's so nice to be approved of," he said, more curt than he intended to be. He hadn't wanted this job, hadn't asked for it. He'd taken it because the other option was prison, so he had better be good at it. Theoretically, his freedom relied on his performance. If the Agency ever wanted to get rid of him, all it had to do was unearth the evidence against him.
At this point, though, maybe that would be better for all concerned. He wanted, badly, to punch something. "If you do talk to Luke, you can tell him I won't be back for a while," he said, turning toward the door. He couldn't go home right now. Not like this.