Who: Jack and Wren What: A chat after Jack moves into the suite. Where: The suite at Caesar's. When: Before going to get Brielle from Passages. Warnings/Rating: None.
The suite was quiet, though Wren knew Jack was there somewhere. The new security system Luke had installed let her know which rooms in the suite were occupied, and it let her know which coded key had opened the doors. And so, despite the lull, she knew Jack was somewhere. If it had been someone else, she likely would have roused the sleeping boy from the couch, but she didn’t feel the need if it was Jack. Finch was asleep beside the slumbering child, and there was soft, soothing classical music playing from the living room speakers.
She walked into the kitchen, glancing up to ensure Gus hadn’t woken every few seconds, and she made herself a pot of tea. The scent of jasmine filled the kitchen, the brew expensive and steeped in an old clay pot, one that reminded her of the kind Maman favored when she was very young. She set out a tiny cup, because she was fond of delicate things, of expensive things, of rituals. It was the reason she kept a dressing table in her room, and the reason the classical music was playing. She’d always liked the more elegant things in life, and now that she could afford them they surrounded every part of her.
She leaned against the ridiculously expensive counter, and she sipped carefully, both hands on the flowered clay cup. She wore a robe that was white damask, and beneath a camisole and silk pajama bottoms with delicate cream thread lining them from hip to hem. She was soft and curved, and the entire outfit spoke of wealth, as did her perfectly cared for pale blonde hair and manicured nails. The tiny diamond ring Luke had given her all those years ago glinted on a long platinum chain, and she wore diamonds on her ears. In short, the poor girl from all those years ago was nowhere to be found, no strawberry blonde hair, no clothes from the thrift store, no cheap tea in a cracked cup. All of that, but she didn’t look happy. She had dark circles beneath her eyes, and she was too pale, and it all added to the illusion of delicate wealth, likely to shatter in a slight breeze.
Jack had moved his few things into the servant’s quarters in the back half of the suite. Even as just one part of the larger suite, it was worlds’ better than the apartment he’d been sleeping in since he’d arrived in Las Vegas. In fact, the whole place was, in general, much more lavish than anywhere he could remember living in his life. For a short while he’d shared a small apartment with a woman he loved, and that had been the best he’d ever lived, but they could have been a hole in the ground as long as she’d been there. The smooth sheets and soft carpet were strange, and he felt misplaced amongst the clean surfaces and bright fabrics. Of course, being the only man on the premises made him feel like a bit of an outsider as well, but he’d simply done his best thus far to not get in anyone’s way, and to keep an eye on the boy now sleeping in the couch, whom he’d already come to like a great deal.
All he’d brought with him were some clothes, a few well-hidden, well-worn weapons, and a guitar he’d picked up at an antique shop just off the highway between Atlanta and Las Vegas. It was ancient, but had maintained a nice, warm sound despite the pale, worn places along the body where someone had held it and played it habitually. It leaned against the wall in the room. There was little else there to mark his presence. There were some drawings, also, and a few scattered photographs he never left behind, but they were secure inside the duffle bag in the closet. He didn’t know how temporary his presence would be, but he’d gotten into the habit of travelling lightly when he’d been moving around the country over the past few years, anyway. He’d stay as long as he was needed.
He went out into the kitchen in search of some milk to borrow. He’d made coffee, but had neglected to buy any significant groceries yet. He hadn’t seen much of Wren since he’d moved in a few days before, and he was struck by what a different picture she made from the determined, often scared, always kind girl in his memory. She’d clad herself in beautiful things, and done her level best to wipe away the grit of the past with perfume and delicate china. He could understand the instinct absolutely.
As for himself, Jack had changed, and then not. He was older, of course, but that had set in strange ways. He reflected her look of exhaustion in the hollows under his eyes. The past five years had been about stasis rather than progress, it sometimes felt like, forcing himself to learn about smoothing anger over, even when he couldn’t let it go. The scar across his nose was a little more faded, but certainly still there, and he still didn’t wear a contact to hide his shattered left eye. He was realistic about his appearance, but not ashamed of it, and ultimately conscious of how much a distinctive physical feature, when erased, made someone forget how much you looked like someone else. He still wore a lot of black, though today it was a tank and dark jeans with hopelessly frayed cuffs. He didn’t look happy either - calmer, yes, but not happier.
“Hi,” Jack said, after stepping into the kitchen and finding her in front of him at the counter. The place was so quiet that he’d expected it was just still him and Gus. He kept his voice down, glancing past her to the sleeping boy on the couch. No, it didn’t look like he’d be waking any time soon. “Sorry,” he said, unsure if he’d disturbed her when she was looking for a quiet moment.
She made a soft sound, acknowledgement of his presence in the hum, and she turned and moved to the opposite counter and tugged the cabinet open. A second later, another tiny cup was sitting beside hers, and she was pouring him a cup of tea with an old, ingrained grace that came long before the money had. Once the teapot was set back on its trivet, she smiled at him, full lips and a hint of light in her gray eyes. “Bonjour, Jack,” she said, leaning her hip against the counter.
She looked him over with the kind of quiet confidence she’d developed in the intervening years, all woman and no child in the careful perusal. This man had seen her at her lowest, had helped Luke at his. He knew their secrets - all of them now (she thought) - and she couldn’t help but remember how much Thomas disapproved of him. But Jack was here, and Thomas wasn’t, and Wren thought that was telling too. She recalled all the drama that had always churned between him and Luke’s adoptive father, drama over ideals, over a woman, and it all seemed so long ago. But then she wasn’t the little girl who was scared of Thomas any longer, and she knew an ally when she saw one.
“You look good,” she finally said, voice a little lower, deeper and richer, quieter than the girl who had worn her heart on her sleeve for all to see. “Sad, but good. Have the years been better to you than they have for everyone else I’ve spoken to? I would hazard a guess that, no, they haven’t, but it would be very nice to hear otherwise.” Her smile there was warm, genuine, a hint of heat beneath the ice.
Jack had intended to walk around her to the refrigerator and let her have her quiet, but the cup was an invitation to linger, so he stayed. He picked it up carefully, holding it gingerly with rough fingertips, as intent on not breaking it as on drinking the tea. "Thank you."
There was no doubting it - Wren was different, and it wasn't just the quality of the clothes on her back that made her so. They were armor as much as her careful posture. That likely wasn't obvious unless the person observing her had known her the way she used to be, but she'd come too far for it to all simply be growing up. Wren had been about as grown as a girl could be at the age he'd met her. "Sad?" he said, smiling a little. "I hope I make a good tragic figure, at least." He took a sip of the tea. He didn't drink tea much, particularly not the good kind, and it was smooth, almost sweet, and herbal on the tongue. "I don't know how the years have been for everyone else," he said, "So I can only attest to my own experience, and they were just fine." He liked to see her smiling with a little of that old heat, and his own smile widened a touch. "I travelled quite a bit, I settled in Georgia for a while, and then I came here. I left Cerise there - I don't know if you ever met her."
“You’ve always made a good tragic figure,” she agreed, a hint of sadness behind the smile indicating that she knew the cost of those words. “I suppose a good tragic figure would look at me now and, as you have done, tell me they had fine years between then and now. I always hated that term - I’m fine - we said it too often, and we never meant it.” It was all spoken softly, but with a strength behind it that had definitely been missing all those years ago, and she looked toward the couch when the dog barked. But no, Gus didn’t wake, and she turned her attention back to the past, the one that was standing in her kitchen. “I never knew anyone named Cerise,” she admitted. “Did you love her?” the question was a curious one, because despite the careful distance and the cool facade, Wren still liked people more than she should, even if she didn’t trust most of them. But this man was an exception, and the question was a genuine one.
“You’ve seen Luke?” she asked a moment later, assuming he had, even if Luke hadn’t told her as much. But things had gotten tangled up lately in near-deaths and secrets, and there hadn’t been very much time for talking. She set the teacup aside, and she gave him her full attention.
Jack's smile turned a little more bittersweet at that. "I suppose I did," he said, and there was sadness in that, but wry, and with enough humor. "No, we didn't mean it. I do, though, as much as I can. Nothing terrible has happened in the last five years, and I think that's about what fine is."
The past standing in front of Wren looked unsurprised by her question about Cerise, because it was one he'd considered many times himself. "No," he said. There was regret to that, but not much else. Cerise would have been a good person to fall for. It would have been better for both of them if they could have been in love, most likely, both left behind by the people they wanted most. That would have been the poetic solution to their plight, but that wasn't how life worked. "I cared about her, and I wanted to make sure she was happy somewhere. I don't know if she's perfectly content but she's better now than she has been in a long while, and I thought I might as well let her go have that life." It sounded sad, now that he said it out loud, but it had seemed like the right thing to do. He had helped Cerise as much as he could. When Jason had reared his ugly head, he'd only provided the catalyst to leave. There had been no reason to stay, and serve as a reminder for her of days bad and old. She'd found a place for herself. He still had some looking to do.
Jack swallowed the rest of the tea, setting the cup gently on the counter beside the pot. "I have," he said. "Only briefly, but we had a chance to talk a little. He seems a little overworked, but good." Not wholly true, of course. Luke had seemed run down, and there had been something more, something else, something off. Jack didn't know what it was, but he expected he would find out.
“I wish I could say the same,” Wren said of the last five years, and there was something haunted in her gaze as she said the words. She knew she was the one who had brought it all crashing down on herself, and she knew no one thought she deserved any clemency, but that didn’t make the pain of it go away.
“I’m sorry,” she said of the fact that he hadn’t found someone he loved between Seattle and Las Vegas, and there wasn’t any pity lingering in the words; only the honest wish that he could have found someone. She knew he had it in him, had seen it with her own two eyes. His feelings, much like hers, had been painfully visible on his sleeve in Seattle. “You let her have her life, and you came looking for yours,” she suggested, though she suspected there was more to it than that. Selina hadn’t brought her to Vegas, but she knew that many of the people here had been brought by their counterparts.
His mention that Luke was good made her arch a brow at him, a contradiction without words. “I trust you. Don’t go ruining it by lying to me,” she said with a warm smile that softened the words. “He’s not good, but we both know that. I just don’t know what happened after New York to make that so.” She didn’t expect Jack to know either; Luke was too good at keeping his own secrets. She glanced to the couch again, intentionally this time, then back. “You haven’t asked,” she said of his ignoring the elephant in the room.
"So do I," he said, and while his gaze didn't fall on Gus, it was clear enough what he meant. It was a shame that things had gone so poorly for her and for Luke at the end, and what had happened to Gus was nothing short of tragic. He was here now, and that would help in time, but it didn't make up for what had been. He thought Wren had deserved better days after Seattle- for everything to have gone so wrong would have seemed unfair, were they all not so unlucky.
"Something like that," he said. It was a little more complex, yes, but it had been about time for him to leave Atlanta anyway, regardless of Jason. He shook his head. "I didn't mean to lie," he said. "I think we have different definitions of 'good.' He's healthy, and he's alive. He has a stable job, and he has you. To me, that's good. Maybe my standards are too low," he said. "I don't know what happened either, but I intend to find out." Whatever it was, he had a suspicion that it was tied to the missing piece with Luke, that extra something he seemed to be hiding, whatever it might be.
"I haven't," Jack agreed, looking over at Gus, then. "I assumed you'd explain it when you felt ready to." His smile flickered, briefly, as he watched the boy sleeping. He was angelic, no doubt about that. Jack had given up the thought that he might have children some day around the same time he'd given up all the rest of his hopes. The idea seemed ridiculous. "Anyone would be lucky to have him," he said, turning back to her, strange eyes intent. "And I can't understand anyone who would do him harm, nor do I want to." There was a hardening to the edge of his voice, just enough to state clearly that he had no more killed the person he'd been in Seattle than she had. "How did it happen?" he asked, leaning against the counter.
She poured herself a fresh cup of the tea, cooled now, but that hardly mattered. Her voice went quieter, in case the words could somehow filter into the sleeping child’s mind. “I was given wrong dates at the clinic I went to. I thought I became pregnant in the prison, with Jude’s men, and I wanted to spare Luke that, so I fled.” Jack, at least, would understand about Jude, would understand how Luke had been after. She shrugged. “I started working the streets again, and when I was eight months pregnant someone offered to help. It didn’t turn out as intended, and they took the baby and left. I found him two years later. I found out about the bruises a few days ago. Luke and I have only been speaking again for a few months. He had no idea about any of it until I took Gus.” It was a very abbreviated version of events, but Jack knew her and Luke well enough to fill in all the missing pieces, to paint the picture of how things had gone.
“And you? You didn’t consider going to New York and fighting for what you wanted?” she asked, because her curiosity won out in the end. She left Luke, but only because she thought he would have a better future without her; she wouldn’t have been able to go otherwise.
A few reactions crossed Jack's face immediately after Wren said that she thought she'd become pregnant in the prison - open surprise with a flash of shock, a second of anger, and then nothing, as he took a breath and put that away. Wren's story didn't get better the more he heard of it, and he had a mad, passing thought, wondering where those men were now.
But nevermind that. The rest was more like he'd expected, sad and unfortunate in ways that made him feel as if he should have stayed in Seattle and tried to do what he could to help. Of course, Wren would have refused, so it was all irrelevant, but it was always hard to hear a story like hers and feel helpless to have done more. He always tended to search for the ways in which he could have made a difference. If Luke couldn't, why should he have been able to? It didn't make sense, but it never did, his unending drive to do more, to be of use. It was why he did what he did, after all. There was a long moment of silence when she was done talking where Jack simply absorbed what she'd said, looking a little blankly at Gus while he thought. "But he knows now," Jack supplied. He smiled again, an attempt to be reassuring despite everything. "And you have Gus." Whatever had happened in the past, she was beginning to bring things back together again. "And what happened was unfortunate, but not your fault. You were afraid, and trying to protect someone you love." To him, her motivation needed no further explanation.
The words stung in a way Wren surely hadn't meant them to, and Jack thus tempered his response. "There was nothing for me to fight for," he said. This particular topic did peel away a few layers of carefully crafted calm to expose something still just as raw as before underneath. It hadn't healed. "I didn't think going to New York would make much any difference. Or that it would be right for me to challenge her decision." The words sounded well-practiced, echoing worn thoughts. As much pain as it had caused him, and as angry as it had made him at the time - as much of that he still felt - if Jack hadn't been able to win Max in a year and a half, he wouldn't have won her then, when she'd already decided to live with someone who didn't love her. If she was willing to do that, there was nothing he could have possibly said. Or so he told himself, at least, to make it sting less, the fact that he would have been unable to pressure her that hard regardless. He still had too much fear of coercing a woman into something she didn't want, a post-traumatic holdover that flashed into intensity every once in awhile.
There had been many a long night in the years since he'd left Seattle where, unable to sleep, he'd lain staring at the ceiling and thought he would go to New York and talk to Max. But, by the morning, he would convince himself that it was better that he not go. She'd chosen Thomas, and to go to her doorstep would just have upset her. It would have made him the sore loser, the spurned lover who couldn't accept 'no'. And how he had dreamed of her after she left, and wished he could forget about her. Five years on, and he still did.
"I considered it," he said. "Believe me."
“He knows now,” Wren agreed. “And I have Gus for now,” she added, a sigh following the words. “We’re both adults Jack, you and I. This is an interlude. It can’t last. I’m just trying to ensure whatever comes after doesn’t involve Gus going back to those people or going to foster care,” she explained, because that was the long and the short of it. Her smile, resigned as it was, said she expected nothing good for herself out of this, but she had always been too self-sacrificing by far. Not in the last five years, no, but now it was justified, she thought. Perhaps all of that had merely been practice for this. “I’m glad you’re here. Luke could use guidance from someone he trusts.” And it wasn’t that Wren didn’t trust Roger, because she did, but Roger didn’t know what had happened to Luke in Seattle, and he didn’t know just how broken his brother was. Jack, Jack understood that.
She was quiet through his confession about having nothing to fight for, and she reached out a hand when he was done and touched soft fingers to his cheek. “I know how that feels,” she said, because she did. She had had wanted Luke for so long back then, and he had wanted other people, hadn’t seen here there, and she knew what it was to not be wanted in return. She didn’t tell him he’d meet someone knew, and she didn’t tell him that he’d forget, because she knew better than all that. She just touched his cheek, and then she dropped her hand to his elbow and squeezed a little. “Moving, leaving, it doesn’t make it go away.” Because she knew that too.
She took a step back a moment later, and she set to rinsing out the teapot slowly, carefully, as if it might crack from the slightest bit of contact with anything. “I don’t know how much you know about the fear gas,” she said, her demeanor letting him know she was going to speak of something serious before she even opened her mouth again. “It was pumped into the suite’s vents last week. We have warning systems in place for anything like that now, but I thought you should know what you’ve gotten yourself into. Alice is a wonderful assistant, and she pretends to be very strong, but she’s young. Brielle, my cousin, is scared of her own shadow. MK-” A pause here, a very guilty one, “I don’t think she’ll be here very much longer.”
"We'll see," Jack said. There had to be a way to make sure Gus stayed with Wren. It wouldn't be easy, surely, but they would find a way, whatever it took. As for Luke, it had been such a long time since Seattle that he wasn't sure how much Luke cared about what he had to say. Still. "I'm going to do my best," he said. He wanted to see Luke get everything in order again, whatever had happened in New York, and whatever was happening now with Gus.
He didn't move when she touched his cheek, but he did look up at her. He didn't have any interest in pity, but he saw that it was empathy instead, and he appreciated that she didn't simply try to balm the pain with platitudes. "No," he said. "It doesn't." After what had happened with Max and then Helen before her, it was hard to believe that something wasn't sending him a sign.
Jack watched her sober and turn to the matter at hand, that of the safety of the occupants of the suite. He didn't know much about the fear gas at all, so he listened quietly while she explained the gist of what had happened. "I appreciate the warning," he said, "But I'm not afraid." Why should he be? What was there about the coward who had gassed the girls worth being scared of? The only thing that worried him was that they might return to harm the girls again, but that was why he was here, after all.
He hadn't met Brielle or Alice yet, but MK's name he did remember from Seattle. "Why?" he asked, then pulled back. "Nevermind, you don't have to answer that."
“Why?” she asked, confused about what it related to. “MK? We argued. You’ll find a lot of people are angry at me right now,” she said plainly, but there were cracks in the words, an indication that despite the cool, calm facade, she wasn’t calm at all. She hid the feeling that she would splinter at any moment very well, but it was visible there for a moment, and she knew it. The smile she gave him said as much, and it was apologetic. “My cousin, I think she’s running from something, though I have no idea what. We haven’t had a chance to speak, really.” Alice received a fond smile. “Alice is just... brave.” Which was a compliment, and it showed in the tone of her voice.
She took another deep breath. “Should I end up in jail, we’ll lose the suite. It comes with my job, and it requires a certain amount of income an evening, and if I’m not here then everyone will need to move. I already provided Alice with my safe and bank information. If it comes to that, can you ensure they find somewhere?” It was a lot to ask, but she feared Alice and Brielle would end up on the street. Not MK; MK was street savvy, and she had Adam and Simon.
On the couch, Gus stirred and peeked his head over the back cushions, blinking sleepy gray eyes and (obviously) trying to decide how he felt about the man in the kitchen. Finch growled, which made Wren roll her eyes. “Forgive him. He thinks he’s a guard dog in his old age. Gus, viens ici,” she called warmly.
"They'll make their way past it," Jack said. He saw her apologetic smile, but it wasn't necessary. Things were difficult for her, and she was upset. She might be less willing to show it now than she used to be, but that didn't change anything. "I'm not angry with you," he pointed out. "So, there's one less person you have to worry about."
"Of course. But you won't," he said, firmly. He was going to do his level best to make sure of that. "If you do, though, I'll make sure they have a place to stay." That was the least he could do, really, and he didn't imagine it would be all that difficult. He'd been able to find an apartment for himself when he moved to town with no notice and within 24 hours. They might not live as lavishly as they did right now, but there wouldn't be any trouble finding them somewhere in case the worst happened.
He might have said more, but the growling dog drew his attention to the couch, and half-awake Gus. He smiled at the boy, a little unsure of how best to present himself without being frightening. He'd spent a lot of time around younger kids when he was still in his teens back at home. His extended family had all been within a few blocks and exceedingly tight knit, so everyone's children had been in and out of their apartment constantly. It had been a long time since then, and he was a decidedly different person, but he thought he remembered the basics. Jack knelt down to eye level. "Hi, Gus. My name's Jack."
She smiled when he said he was one less person who was angry with her, because even that small thing helped, and the smile widened when he offered to make sure the girls were taken care of. Her responsibilities had shifted, and she didn’t like that she couldn’t put the people first that she was accustomed to putting first. But, she reminded herself, that was one thing she didn’t need to manage alone.
Gus was holding onto her leg by the time Jack knelt in front of him, little arms wound around her knee and cheek pressed against her thigh. She ruffled his messy brown hair, which she had already learned didn’t like to obey, and she watched as he ducked his head when Jack greeted him. “We’re shy,” she said fondly. “Jack is friend, mon bébé. A friend of mine, and Luke, and Finch,” she said, smiling as the little boy tipped his head back at her to confirm she was telling the truth. A second later, Gus smiled, a tiny, shy smile behind Wren’s leg, and she laughed a little.
“That’s high praise indeed,” she told Jack, because Gus was scared of nearly everything. “I better get him washed up before my work shift,” she added, smiling warmly at the man in front of her. “I’m very glad you’re here, that you took the job,” she said honestly, reaching out and squeezing his fingers with a graceful warmth that was more woman, than the little girl she had been.
It was impossible not to be endeared by that tiny smile, and the duck against Wren’s leg. It was difficult to imagine this boy had been living in an abusive home just a few days ago, and any worries he might have had about the effect that could have created in the boy were swiftly dispelled. “I appreciate it,” he said, smiling back at him. “I think we’ll get along just fine,” he said.
He stood up from the floor, and looked back to Wren after letting his eyes linger on Gus for a moment. When Wren’s fingers found his, he clasped hers back. She had changed, and though some of it might not be for the better, she was even stronger now than she had been then. However terrible the things had been that had made her that way, the end result was capable and tough. Gus was lucky to have her in his corner. “So am I,” he said.