Wren and Selina have claws (laminette) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-05-17 21:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, catwoman |
Who: Wren and Luke
What: Part II: Luke's "addiction"
Where: A park
When: Recentish
Warnings/Rating: Quick, find a lifeboat before you drown
She closed her eyes when he pressed his forehead to hers, and it was an unthinking thing to lean into him and let him bear her weight, especially drunk and unsteady as she was. Her hand didn’t move from where it was, from the crook of his shoulder and the hint of skin beneath his collar, and her other hand was twisting the fabric of her dress in that old familiar way, a habit she’d managed to get under control around everyone but him. It took her a few moments of silence to be able to formulate words, because she’d gotten lost in listening to him, to the cadence of his voice, to the crack and break in the words. She’d seen men get caught for things in her life - generally for being with her - and she’d seen them drop to their knees and beg their wives to forgive them. Grown men, tears streaming down their faces, no different than his tears now, and she wondered if she was like those wives in her desire to believe him. But he sounded so hurt, and he sounded so broken, and even if he was lying, the hurt was real. She didn’t believe he could feign that, not Luke. He’d never been a very good actor - not then, not now.
Her hand slid up from his collar to his cheek, and she was crying in earnest now, her fingers just resting along his jaw and barely moving in a caress. She wasn’t sure what he meant he was sorry about, but she knew he was. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have another run-in with Brielle, that he wouldn’t fall into her arms, no matter what he said. Only time would prove that, and that was what scared her - the fact that she’d have to open herself up to it, to that possibility. “I know you’re sorry, Luke,” she finally said softly, because that was the truth. “Whatever happened, whatever you feel for her, whatever you agreed to, I know you’re sorry.” She moved her fingers to his lips, so he wouldn’t interrupt, because it was hard enough to get the words out without that. “But she’s here, and chances are you’ll see her again somewhere, and I don’t want her to be something forbidden that you avoid just because of me. That’s how things grow wings, and I don’t want to be the one who makes her look an angel.” There was a hint of her own bitterness, of anger at Brielle, at the past. “If it’s true, if you haven’t seen her again since you two decided to lie, then you have no idea how you’ll feel when you see her again.” She shook her head sadly, and she moved back just a hint, just a step, not moving her fingers from his lips. “I’ve seen men that love women to the moon and back who still can’t be faithful. I’ve seen them cry and beg and nearly die over their loss, and yet they still ended up back in my bed.”
Her hand slid down over his neck, over his shirt, and her fingers slid beneath fabric and up to splay over his heart, fingertips shaking against his skin. The bunched fabric of his shirt was between them, but she didn’t look down at it. Her drunk, unfocused gaze was entirely on him. “I want this,” she told him, fingers thumping against his chest. “But I want more than that too. I want all of it, not bits and pieces of you.” It was a reference to Brielle, true, but it was also a reference to whatever other secrets he was hiding from her. She was too drunk to pry, to push and make it stick, but she knew there was something else.
Luke might have based a great deal of his life upon pretense in recent years, but she was right in pinning him as a poor actor. He could pretend to be a good one, but he wasn’t, and in a situation like this he couldn’t even try. Even so, he was only good at feigning a lack of emotions. He didn’t know how to fake things like happiness, or anger; the latter came too easily to him, and the former only appeared in glimpses, short-lived and not particularly common.
In all the years he’d known her, he had never liked to see Wren cry, and he hated knowing that he was the cause of her tears. He’d always had a tendency to blame himself in the past, but this time he was right to do so, and he wasn’t shouldering a weight that didn’t rightfully belong to him. This was what he’d caused, like a whole series of events set into motion by a simple push to one small, seemingly insignificant cog in the bigger picture. The fact that she knew he was sorry, that had to mean something, but he was too afraid to hope, and her fingers were against his lips before he could say anything in response. It wasn’t easy to stay quiet, but he managed, and he let her say what she wanted to say before allowing himself to speak. “I’m not going to go out of my way to see her,” he told her, because he didn’t understand why she was telling him not to avoid Brielle, when he really had no desire for them to cross paths again. He had nothing to say to her, and there was nothing for them to discuss, so why not try to avoid an awkward meeting that wouldn’t lead to anything constructive? “I don’t want that. She’s not this... this forbidden thing I want that I can’t have, Wren, and I don’t need to see her again to know how I feel. I didn’t not tell you about her because I was sneaking around behind your back. It wasn’t like that, and I know you don’t believe me, but that is the truth. I’m not in love with her. I never have been, and I’m not going to be, because I’m in love with you.” Even if she didn’t mean it as such, he saw the head shake as a sort of rejection, which made him desperate all over again, and he moved forward when she moved back. “I’ve never been unfaithful to you. I won’t be. All that time in Seattle and in New York, I never cheated, and I haven’t now,” he insisted, and maybe it was strange, that he’d taken lives, but remaining faithful to Wren was more important than committing murder. Betraying her like that was the one thing he wouldn’t be able to live with himself for afterward, which said a lot about his morals, which were well-intentioned but often skewed.
His breath caught in his throat when her fingers slid beneath his shirt, and the touch was more than he expected, more than he dared to hope for, which was painfully clear in the way he looked at her. “You already have all of it,” he breathed. “I’m yours, all yours, if you want me. Even if you don’t, you’ll still have me. You’ve had me for years, Wren.” His voice was all somber sincerity before he hesitated, and he assumed she was referring to the secret he still kept, but maybe she had a right to know. Even if it might mean losing Gus, she would find out eventually, wouldn’t she? Leaving it that long had never boded well. “You deserve to know that some parts of me, they’re not... they’re not good,” he admitted. “I don’t know if you’d still want me if-- if you knew.”
He didn’t understand. She knew he didn’t, and she knew it wasn’t really his fault. Her life had shaped her, created her fears, just like it created everything else. He didn’t understand that she feared not knowing if he was seeing Brielle more than knowing he was, that she feared the unexpected pain of this all over again more than she feared a constant ache. And, too, that wasn’t even a true thing. It was a girl’s solution to a woman’s problem, which meant that it was no solution at all, not really. “If she’s not forbidden, and you still don’t go to her,” she began, sounding young and naive, when she shouldn’t be anything of the sort; she didn’t have any right to hold onto naivete with the life she’d led. “If she’s not forbidden, and you still don’t go to her, then maybe it means you really don’t want her,” she suggested. It was putting it all on him. Giving him permission to have something, but watching for it all the same. She smiled a little at his comment about not cheating on her in Seattle, a sad, drunk thing of a smile. “I know you didn’t cheat on me in Seattle,” she said, because she believed that. Maybe if she thought about it too long she would start doubting, but he hadn’t known anything about sex then. Every single thing they did was new to him, and there was no way he could have faked all that wonderment. But that was different now, and the changes in him that thrilled her, the ones that made him a confident lover instead of a scared boy, those were the same things that scared her now that doubt had wormed its way in. “You can’t be unfaithful if I give you permission,” she said, gray eyes too knowing, as they always had been. “And if you’re still mine in the end- If we’re still each other’s-” Here her breath caught, hitched on a sob, and she swayed a little, fingers curling against his chest for balance; she didn’t finish the sentence.
“I want you,” she said instead, a response to his assurance that she had him if she wanted him. “I’ve wanted you since I stitched your shoulder up above a bar, when you didn’t know what you were doing in an alley, and when you wanted girls that were much sweeter and better than me, before you even knew what want really was.” Because she knew that too, that his interest in her had come with his own fall; she knew that. His confession, though, that made her blink. He wasn’t talking about Brielle, and even drunk she could tell that. She almost felt the blood seep from her face, some kind of dread making her cold and making it impossible to turn away. Maybe being so drunk added a strange level of clarity, because she noticed this time - really noticed that he was serious about this. Wren had seen all manner of things that weren’t good, and she couldn’t imagine any of them living in him. “That’s not true, Luke,” she said. “There’s nothing that could make me not want you.” Even this thing with Brielle, it didn’t make her not want him. It made her hurt, and ache, and want to cry and never stop, but that wasn’t the same as not wanting him.
Perhaps the one advantage Luke had was that he was sober, but that didn’t mean he was thinking clearly, and it didn’t mean that he was displaying as much control as he usually was. Alcohol would have loosened his tongue, yes, but fear and the sheer pain of loving her so much and having done this to her had a similar effect. He watched, and he listened, because he wanted to do this right so badly if there was any chance at all that he could fix things. It took him a moment to realize what she was saying, that she was giving him permission to see Brielle, but he didn’t care, because he didn’t want to see her. “Are you-- I don’t want her, Wren, and I don’t want to go to her. Even if you give me permission, I’m still not going to go,” he said, and maybe there was no way to prove that without time, but he could wait. If he had to, he would. Her words, the belief that he hadn’t cheated on her in Seattle but not here, stung, and it showed, but he knew he deserved it. Intentional or not, he’d given her reason to doubt him. If he’d known what she was thinking, about the change from uncertainty to skill, he would have told her that it had more to do with a lack of fear than experience; he’d taught himself not to be afraid, at least until now, and sex was tied to that. As a teenager, his inexperience had been tied to fear-- a fear of doing something wrong, yes, but he’d been silly and naive back then. “Permission or not, I still won’t,” he insisted. “I’m not going to-- to go with her, or be with her, even if you say I can. I don’t expect you to believe me right now, but I’ll prove it to you.” He paused, then, because he didn’t like that if, and he wondered if she was giving herself permission to see other men in the process. Silver was his first thought, and he couldn’t hide the spark of jealousy at the mental image of the two of them together. “I’ll always be yours, Wren. I-- what do you mean, if we’re still each other’s? What then?”
He smiled at the memory of when they first meant, even if it was heavy with nostalgia and tears he fought to keep from falling. “I remember,” he said. “But you were still sweet and good, Wren. You never saw that in yourself, but I did.” Back then he had been good; better, at least, than he was now. Luke didn’t want to lie to her, not all over again, but he didn’t know how to tell her the truth, and he wondered if it would still count if she was drunk rather than sober. She might not remember... but then again, she might not remember any of this, and it would all have been for nothing. He didn’t even want to consider that possibility. “I didn’t mean to,” he said, aware that starting off like this would be disjointed, but it was easier that way. “At first, it was-- it was an accident. Things got out of control. I tried to go back, but it was so hard, and I just... stopped fighting.” Until then, he’d been bearing her weight, but now he leaned into her, and he never wanted to let go. He knew it wasn’t a full confession, but it was something, wasn’t it? Once she was sober, she might ask again, and then he could tell her properly. Maybe. Thomas knew, he was sure of that, and while he couldn’t be sure he lived plagued by the fear that he hated him for it.
“If you don’t want her, if you don’t want to go to her, then you won’t,” she said simply. She probably would have complicated that statement had she been sober. She would have tied it up in words and her own fear at the offer she was making. “I’m drunk,” she said, as if could possibly have missed the sway and slur. “If I was sober, I don’t think I could give you that option,” she admitted, raising one hand to her cheek to brush away tears. “I would be too scared you’d take me up on it, but- But that’s the old saying, isn’t it? If you love something, let it go? And if it’s really yours then it’ll come back to you?” She repeated the phrase in French, the way her Maman had done when she was still alive, and she shrugged delicate shoulders, helpless shoulders. “A chance. You asked for a chance.” She nodded, as if she needed to remind herself why she was doing this. “If you can have her, and you come back to me, then you’re really mine.” It was simplistic and, possibly, just another sign that they were so broken, the two of them. The jealousy in his voice drew her out of the attempt at explanation, though, and her hand slid from beneath his shirt reluctantly to rest on his hip for balance. She knew it was Silver he was thinking about, because who else could it be? She shook her head, blonde hair slipping over his hand on her shoulder. “Silver doesn’t know me, Luke. He wouldn’t like me nearly as much if he did.” Which was the truth. Silver saw what she showed the world, not what she really was. “If he even knew I was here, he would lose all the respect he has for me.” It was probably too honest, but the alcohol was making her tired, and the tiredness made her freer with her words. His what then? was harder to find a response for that made sense. “I don’t know. I don’t want to dream about that, not until- Not until you’re still here, saying these same things, after having a chance to change your mind.” The sentence ended up sad, lost in tears and her near inability to say the words.
When he leaned against her, that had the same effect as the chilling words from before, and she wished for sobriety. But no, maybe she wished for just the opposite, for so much alcohol that she wouldn’t remember any of it in the morning. But she wasn’t the forgetful kind of drunk, and it might be fuzzy in the morning, but it would still be there, the memory. He was warm and solid, and she had to lean back against the tree not to stumble under his weight. And she should have pushed him away, she knew that, but she couldn’t. It took longer than it normally would have to understand what he was saying, and she blinked confused gray eyes in an attempt to focus. “You didn’t mean to?” she asked, because it was disjointed, and it was hard to follow. “What accident?” That was a little sharper, the question more focused and accompanied by hands along his torso and chest, fingers shaking, as if it was a new accident and she was looking for injuries. Sober, she would have understood, would have known that whatever was in his eyes just then wasn’t new. But she wasn’t sober, and she tugged at the ends of his jacket and tipped her head up to look at him. “Stopped fighting what, Luke?” she asked fearfully.
Luke was beginning to realize that this was the best he was going to get, and as simplified as the statement might be, she was right. He didn’t want Brielle, and he didn’t want to go to her, so he wouldn’t. It wasn’t something he could prove overnight, as much as he wished he could, but he could prove it, which would have to be enough. “You’re right,” he agreed. “I won’t.” He said nothing when she asserted she was drunk, because he could see as much, and secretly he was relieved, since it seemed he wouldn’t have had the chance she was currently giving him otherwise. “I don’t want you to let me go,” he said, and it sounded young and sad in a way he normally didn’t, but there was understanding there too; understanding of why this was the way things had to be. “But I did ask for a chance. I’ll come back, Wren. I’ll always come back, because I am yours. I don’t want anyone else.” Secretly he’d been hoping for some sort of reassurance that she wasn’t interested in Silver, but he heard none of that in her response, and it make his fear spike all over again. He sucked in a breath when she said he’d lose all respect for her if he knew she was there, and it took him a few moments to find his voice without sounding hurt, or jealous, or both. “Does that... matter to you, losing his respect?” He swallowed heavily and shook his head. “He still wants you. I know that, and you know that. I probably have no right to ask you this, but-- would you... I mean, are you going to--” He knew what he wanted to ask; whether she would give Silver a chance because of what he’d done, to see what it was like to be with him, in case she wanted to change her mind, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, and so he looked down at her, and he waited. “I’ll still be here,” he told her, because she sounded so sad, like she thought he might not be, but he would. No matter what happened, he would. “And I won’t change my mind. You’ll see.”
This was a very, very bad idea. If she’d been sober, she might have put the pieces together on her own, but she wasn’t, and that meant he was going to have to spell it out for her. He didn’t know if he could do that, and her questions made him shake his head, which wasn’t much of an answer at all. “You don’t want to know,” he told her, all agony, and caught her hands with his when she tugged on the ends of his jacket. What if she told Silver, and he had Gus taken away? What if she told Jack, or Roger, and they turned on him? It was too much, and he wasn’t sure she’d keep it a secret, not right now, but he’d already come so far and somehow the words just wouldn’t stay back even though he knew they should. “You don’t know what it was like after you left,” he said, pulling away so he could pace, back and forth, over the grass. “Thomas wasn’t there. He was a voice in my ear at night, telling me what to do, telling me how to do it, but he wasn’t there.” He shook his head again, hard enough to spark a flare of pain from behind his eyes. “It wasn’t fair, Wren, what he asked me to do. I never had a choice. How could I say no? I would’ve done anything for him, anything he wanted, and he knew that!” His voice rose to a yell and cracked, and he thought it fortunate that they were alone, rather than somewhere his erratic explanation might garner unwanted attention.
“It really was a mistake,” he continued, quieter. “I-- things just went so wrong, and I didn’t have a choice. They were shooting at me, and I couldn’t fight them off on my own, and I had no backup. What was I supposed to do? The gun was there, and I-- I just did what I had to do. I didn’t want to, god, I didn’t, but I didn’t want to die either. Not then.” He stopped pacing and, rather suddenly, dropped to his knees right there in the grass, as though he no longer had the energy to keep himself standing upright. “He was so angry,” he whispered. Perhaps things hadn’t gone quite as he was describing them now, but in his mind it was twisted, all hurt and betrayal, and so of course his viewpoint might have been skewed. “I tried to explain, and I told him I was sorry, but-- but he didn’t understand. After everything I did for him, after everything I gave up just to keep his stupid ideals going, he was angry at me. That was when-- I don’t know. I couldn’t do it anymore. I think I hated him then, and when I left he didn’t follow. He didn’t even call. Do you-- do you remember, Wren, when I said I was only as good as the people around me? You said that wasn’t true.” He laughed, a strangled, humorless sound. “But it was. I tried, I did, but I couldn’t be as perfect and moral as Thomas. I saw what was out there, what people were like, and I couldn’t. Innocent people kept suffering and the guilty kept getting away with it, and it was too much,” he said, burying his face in his hands. When he spoke again his voice was muffled, barely audible. “But then... then I couldn’t stop.”
When he said that he’d come back, she wanted to call it all off. Even with the layer of alcohol covering the pain, she still panicked; her fingers wound tight in his shirt. “That sounds so final,” she said of that one, tiny word. Back. If he sounded sad, she sounded like she might fall apart right there, and if she was sober she would have called it all off, because it depended so very much on his willpower, on his ability not to take comfort that Wren was sure Brielle would offer. Her fingers on his shirt were so tight that the collar pulled painfully at the back of his neck, and it didn’t loosen when he began asking about Silver. “I know he wants me,” she said, because she had made a living out of knowing when men desired her. “He’s a good friend, and I trust him, but I’m not in love with him. I’m in love with you.”
But then he was telling her that she didn’t want to know whatever he was hiding, and Silver became somehow unimportant. She’d known Luke had a secret; she’d known. She’d known it had something to do with all the moving around he’d done since New York. But she assumed it was Thomas. His relationship with the older man had always been volatile, and Wren knew Luke well enough to know that he’d blame himself for whatever went wrong there. But whatever was in his eyes just then, the way he looked when he caught her hands, that wasn’t something as simple as Thomas, and she had to swallow deeply to keep herself from pulling away and fleeing from whatever this was going to be. She managed a very quiet, very slurred, “this is going to be as bad as me keeping Gus a secret, isn’t it?” before he started talking and oh, God, she knew she was going to be right, even before the first word left his lips.
The beginning, about how she didn’t understand how it had been after she’d left, it was a gut-punch, and she dragged in a shaky breath, wondering just how much damage she’d wrought with her scared choice to run, but she she didn’t get a chance to concentrate on it, because fixing on his words was hard in her current state, especially with that layer of fear coating everything and making her want to run before he could finish talking. Then he pulled away, and she took a stumbled step forward, as if grabbing him back could hold back the words. Suddenly, Brielle didn’t matter any more. There were no words to express how much the other woman didn’t matter, and maybe that meant somewhere, deep down, Wren already knew what was coming. She didn’t wince when he yelled, and she didn’t interrupt, though she wanted to. He was right, she knew.Thomas had never understood just how much Luke looked up to him, just how much Luke would do to please him. And, too, he’d never understood that Luke had been too inherently good for the things he’d been asked to do. She closed her eyes, and she could still see his movement behind her closed lids. Watching him pacing like that, it wasn’t something she could just close her eyes and forget. When he fell to his knees, the sound alone made her push away from the tree, and she managed to get halfway to him before he mentioned the gun, and all she could see in her mind was that boy in Seattle, the one bent over a woman’s body, with a shard of glass in his hand.
“Luke,” she began to interrupt, voice determined despite the slur, “it was just once. It’s okay. It’s okay to save yourself. I’ve killed two-” she began, because she had killed two people in her life - once for him, on a roof, and that knife she’d thrown had killed Jude before he ever managed - and she didn’t regret them. Thomas had his morals, but she would rather have Luke alive than dead for someone else’s morals. “It was self-defense-” But he was still talking, and she realized that he didn’t mean he’d done it once. It wasn’t just once. She stopped, feet soft and quiet on the grass. She was close enough to touch him now, but she hadn’t dropped to her knees like she’d been intending when she first moved closer to him. Her expression wasn’t one of anger. This was nothing like her feelings about him and Brielle. Oh, God, that was nothing compared to this, because this wasn’t about them. This was about him. And, when everything was said and done, what she felt for him was stronger than any them. She stopped close enough so that her shaking was actually an audible thing, shoes making a soft sound with it in the grass. She looked down at him, and she didn’t bother to brush the tears from her face as she let the night go quiet and settle around them. “I want the rest,” she finally managed, through tears and slur and an uneven sway that resulted in her touching his shoulder for balance every few seconds, before letting go when she righted herself again. “You didn’t stop. I want the rest.” How many? How long? How bad was it? How many people were going to come after him? How many deaths were out there looking to be repaid? Those things first. Those things, and then the rest, she thought, trying to keep calm.
Luke didn’t understand how it sounded final, or why it was a bad thing, but the tightness of her grip on his shirt told him that she wasn’t reassured by his promises. “It’s not final,” he said, puzzled. “I mean-- you’re saying you want your space, don’t you? And I’m going to give it to you, and when you’re ready I’ll come back, because I won’t have left in the first place.” That logic seemed sound enough to him. While he didn’t exactly like hearing her confirm that Silver wanted her, he was somewhat relieved when she said she wasn’t in love with him, and he took that to mean that nothing would happen between them. He nodded, because that was all he could do, and Silver completely ceased to matter a moment later, in light of his impromptu confession.
Her faith in him, in the initial assumption that he’d only killed once in self-defense, made him want to laugh and cry simultaneously. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her, but he didn’t need to in order to know that she hadn’t been expecting this. Like Thomas, she was probably disappointed in him, and since he’d managed to convince himself that the man hated him, he was well on his way to assuming the same about Wren. It was quiet after he stopped talking, enough so that he could hear her footsteps on the grass, and while he knew she was close he couldn’t look up at her. Instead Luke kept his gaze on the ground, as though he could make everything go away just by hiding behind his hands, but it didn’t work. The truth was out there now, and he had no idea what she would do with it. He might have just destroyed everything; not only his relationship with Wren, but his custody of Gus, and even what fragile connections he had with the few people he was close to. Despite that, a very, very small part of him was relieved. He didn’t have to hide it anymore, didn’t have to pretend to be the sort of tragic hero she believed him to be. Now she knew why he’d denied that he was beautiful, and all those times he’d tried to warn her what he was, in his own way.
He wanted to move back when she touched his shoulder, however brief the contact was, but he wanted more of it too, and his mind and his body couldn’t seem to agree on a single course of action. “The rest,” he repeated, his voice gone dull and flat, and he was silent afterward for so long that it seemed he might not answer at all. “In the beginning, I tried to-- I tried to give them a chance. I went after the ones who escaped justice, who didn’t get what they deserved, but they just did it again. Like they were monsters, and not men at all.” He rubbed his hands over his face and continued staring downward, at the ground between his knees. “It got worse with time. I never stopped hating myself, but at some point I just... stopped feeling it. Like the pain, it all went numb. I couldn’t stop, and I had nothing else, and if I kept running I thought I could stay one step ahead,” he said, and maybe it didn’t make sense, but nothing in his head had made sense back then. It was all jumbled up, and he hadn’t been able to sort it out. “I didn’t see a way out, and... and sometimes I just wished it would end, that one day a bullet would hit the wrong spot or a knife would go too deep and I’d bleed out in an alley somewhere. You know why, Wren? You know what the worst part was?” He took a few deep breaths, shaky and uneven, before continuing. “I liked it. Not all the time, but sometimes, and those were the times when I wanted someone to finally just kill me and put me out of my misery.”
Had he been thinking clearly, he would have realized that he shouldn’t have been saying any of this, not now, not to her, and the understanding of the consequences crept in slowly. When it did sink in, the sudden panic made him look up, and he tugged on the hem of her dress from his kneeling position like a frantic child. “But-- but I stopped, Wren, I did. Once I found out about Gus I knew I couldn’t let myself be around him if I was still doing that. It’s hard, but I haven’t gone out since, and even Thomas made me promise I’d stop before he agreed to help.”
Even before he continued, the fact that he wouldn’t look up at her let her know that it was exactly as bad as she feared it was. She only managed to shake her head about his statement about needing time, because that wasn’t the right way to put it, but it didn’t matter anymore - not in the face of this. She managed to stay perfectly still while he went on, even controlling her drunken sway for the stretch of his words. Inside, she was begging him to stop talking, to stop making it worse with every word. But he didn’t stop, and she was ready for the confession that he liked it by the time it came. Ready, but not numb to it, because she was having trouble processing that Luke was kneeling there, telling her that he enjoyed killing people. Luke, who hadn’t even been able to kill the people she thought deserved it, not intentionally. Briggs had walked away, after hurting all those kids, after hurting her, after hurting MK. He hadn’t been able to kill him. And Jude, Jude only died because there was no other way to walk out of that dining room alive; Wren knew that. To imagine that boy, the boy he’d been finding people, hunting them down, and enjoying their deaths. She almost couldn’t believe it, like it was a nightmare, and maybe she would wake up from it suddenly. But there was no waking from this, and his confession that he’d wanted to die in an alley somewhere because he’d liked killing, that just made something break inside her.
She was looking down at him when he looked up, when he tugged on the end of her dress like a little boy, and he looked so much like Gus just then that it hurt. She tried to imagine him at 19, so young, so lost, hurting anyone at all, and she couldn’t, not then. She drew in a shaky sob, and the effort not to sway was lost in a buckle of knees that ended up with her kneeling just a few feet in front of him. She sat back on her heels, and she rubbed her face, an unwitting echo of what he’d done moments earlier, and she knew she should stand and leave; she couldn’t. She knew, too, that maybe neither of them deserved to be anyone’s parents. A murderer and a hooker, and Gus deserved better than that. When she spoke, it was a with a strange calm, one that felt like the eye of a storm, the quiet before everything smashed and shattered. “When was the last time?” she asked. “Who knows?” she asked. “Other than Thomas, who knows?” Because both of those were immediate concerns, and with the calmly asked questions came everything else that went alongside those fears. Her fingers tugged so hard at the fabric of the dress at her thighs that it almost tore from the pressure alone, and she rocked a little against her heels, as if that would calm her, center her, keep her from spiraling out of control and screaming at the top of her lungs like she wanted to just then. It didn’t work, the rocking, and mere seconds later she was close enough to punch his shoulders with closed fists. “Dammit,” she sobbed, the floodgates breaking. “How many? How many? Because if anyone traces it back, you’ll end up in a chair somewhere, Luke,” she told him, fists coming harder against his shoulders, despite the intentionally hushed despair of her voice. “Dammit,” and her fingers yanked at the fabric covering his shoulders, angry pulls at the fabric. She felt guilty, responsible, scared. “If I’d just stayed-” she began, but what was the point in that, in five years worth of recriminations that already torn them apart in more ways than she could have ever imagined when she made the choice. “Does Jack know?” she demanded. “Brielle? Who?” Because that’s what scared her the most, and maybe it shouldn’t have been her first concern. Maybe she should have been worried about the morality of it, but all she could think about was having to watch him be executed, and she didn’t think she could make it through that, selfish as the thought was. The thought, that fear, it wrapped itself around her like a vice, and she stopped yanking at fabric to hit again, open handed, at his shoulders, his neck, his face, until she didn’t have the energy for it anymore, and there was just wrecked sobbing as she knelt there.
He almost wished she would scream at him, because at least then he would have known how she felt. This eerie sense of calm, though, it was unsettling, and he didn’t like it. Maybe what he’d done meant that he was unfit to be a parent, but Luke knew he could change now. He’d never had reason to before, but Gus was enough, even if he couldn’t ever manage to erase his past. He drew his hands back and watched her when she knelt, apprehension of how she might react at any given moment written all over his half-shadowed features. “The last time... a month ago,” he said, after a moment. Mark Oakley. He remembered every second of it, kneeling there in the grass, and he shuddered at the memory. Some part of him had enjoyed it, yes, but there was always another part that felt sick afterward. It had never truly gone away-- gotten quieter, yes, less noticeable, but never fully disappeared. As for who knew, that was easy too, but the words didn’t come as quickly as he would have liked and he only managed a stammered half-answer before her fists were raining down on his shoulders. “I-- Wren, stop, please-- I don’t know how many, I didn’t keep count.” It was a terrible confession, and he didn’t have the energy to fight her off. He let her hit him, because it was only a sliver of what he believed he deserved, and he couldn’t manage to keep hold of her wrists whenever he did manage to catch them. “No one can trace it back to me. I--I never showed my face, and there was no evidence. I’m not-- I’m not proud of what I did, and I thought it was right at first... at least I tried to tell myself it was, but I know it’s not, I know, but I was careful. I was always careful. Maybe I deserve it, but no one’s going to execute me, Wren,” he told her, because he knew that was what she was scared of, even if it had never been as much of a reality for him.
The rest was a blur, and he didn’t feel any of the blows, as weak and ineffective as they were, and he wasn’t sure if the choked sobs he heard came from him or from her; maybe both. He could have said no one knew, could have lied, but there was so much truth in what he’d already said that there was no point. “Jack doesn’t know. Roger doesn’t either, and Brielle-- goddammit, Wren, of course she doesn’t know. No one does. Only-- only Adam knows,” he admitted, voice hushed. “But he’d never tell anyone.” He’d been a bad influence, Adam, and even he realized that, as reluctant as he was to admit it. When the blows stopped coming he inched forward carefully, bit by bit, and wound his arms gingerly around her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, expecting to be pushed away, voice hoarse from pained sobs and tears he rarely allowed to fall. Despite everything, he’d never wanted to end up like this.
A month ago. She didn’t even notice his attempts to catch her wrists, and she barely heard the things he said immediately after that admission. A month ago. Wren knew Jack had always killed, had always been lethal. She’d never gone that far herself, but she understood the desire to and, once she started breathing again, she could let herself believe that Luke could step over that line, tumble over without realizing he had gone too far. It was the fact that he said he liked it that was rapidly growing as a concern in her mind. That and practical concerns, and maybe those were a result of growing older, of knowing how things worked, of too many brushes with the law and the concern with Gus’ custody. But none of it, none of it made her hate him, and maybe that said more about her, than about him.
“A month ago,” she repeated, needing to hear it aloud, because that meant she couldn’t fix it, that hunger in him. “I don’t make it any better then?” she asked, and she sounded young then, too young for this conversation. Her eyes were still unfocused, and the question came with enough slur to be hard to understand, despite everything. But it was Adam’s name that made her cling once he hugged her, that made her hold onto him like the world might end right there, right then. Oh, God, if there was anyone she didn’t trust in any way, it was Adam. She went, in that one moment, from disliking Adam to hating him. Adam had known Luke when Luke was just a kid, and there was no way the other man didn’t know that this was a cry of some sort, some indication that Luke was hurting. “I bet he didn’t do anything to help you,” she said, and though it was a whisper it was one filled with enough anger that it might have as well been a scream. Just like he doesn’t help MK, was the thought that followed, but she didn’t voice it. And she didn’t trust Adam not to say anything. He might trust Adam, but she didn’t. “Look at me,” she said when he apologized, tugging back and cupping his cheeks with trembling fingers, all without pulling out of his arms. “Dammit, Luke, you listen to me, and I swear to-” She had to stop, to calm the sobbing tears, to continue. “No more lies. None. If you do this again, you tell me.” They needed to find a way to at least get her partial custody, that was her next thought, but she just pressed her forehead to his and closed her eyes, swaying heavily against him with her fingers still spanning his cheeks. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay,” she repeated, the words as much reassurance for her as for him. When she was sober, they’d figure it out. Right now, the concerns were much more immediate, and she dragged in a breath. “Do you still want to?” To kill, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the word.
It took him a few minutes to backtrack, to understand that she was still fixated on the fact that he’d killed someone while he was with her. He didn’t know how to explain that sometimes it wasn’t enough; Jack hadn’t been able to stop for Max, after all, even though he’d cared about her. It had nothing to do with Wren, because she was everything he needed and more. It was just him. “No,” he insisted, dismayed. “I mean, yes, you do. You make me want to stop, Wren. No one else did, not even Thomas.” He’d tried, in his defense, but after having become so dependant upon that he couldn’t find a way to stop. Some found addiction in needles or amber-filled bottles, while he found it in murdering criminals, and he realized that he should have known better, having seen Jack follow the same path first. He was too focused on the fact that she hadn’t pulled away when she hugged him to really listen to what she said about Adam, or censor his own disjointed response. “He didn’t think it was wrong,” he said, pressing his forehead against the hollow of her neck in a failed attempt to give himself some comfort and, perhaps, her as well. “He understood, and he did help, but not... not in the way you would’ve wanted him to.” No, Adam had helped him continue rather than stop. It hadn’t been done maliciously, and Luke believed that, though it should have occurred to him that Wren wouldn’t, and at some point she might tell MK.
He managed to look up at her somehow when she asked (though it was more of a demand, really), aided by the way her fingers cupped his cheeks. There was something trusting in his gaze, like the boy he’d once been, and he nodded along to everything she said like a child willing to agree with someone they knew would never lead them astray. “No more lies,” he repeated. “I’ll tell you, but it can’t happen again, Wren, I know it can’t. I’d never let myself be around Gus if it did. Bruce can-- if it gets really bad, he’d be able to stop me. I’d let him.” It wasn’t a perfect solution, or really one at all, but it was something, because giving up custody now would probably just end up pushing him over the edge all over again. “I haven’t gone out since I found out about him,” he added, which probably explained a lot about some aspects of his behavior since then. Luke wanted so desperately to believe her reassurances, and his hands slid up from her shoulders to her wrists, where he could keep her hands against his face rather than risk losing the contact. Her question made him wince, and he didn’t want to answer, but after a moment he managed to form some semblance of a response. “Yes and no,” he admitted. “It’s how I used to cope. I can’t help it. But-- but I don’t want to be like that anymore.”
She wasn’t addicted to anything, well, unless he counted as an addiction. But she’d known plenty of girls who were addicts, had spent time with them in countless jail cells across the country, and she knew what addicts sounded like, what they said, how they wanted to stop but couldn’t. Just about then, she realized that’s what this was - an addiction, and the very realization made her tremble, because that made it so much more terrifying than if this was all about something external. She grit her teeth when he mentioned Adam’s idea of help, and she shook her head quickly. “No more Adam, Luke,” she insisted, because that would only make it harder, if Adam was around encouraging him. MK was a problem, because Wren wouldn’t risk telling anyone about what Luke had done, and warning MK about Adam would involve a confession she wasn’t willing to make, wasn’t willing to risk. It scared her, too, the realization of how far she would go to keep him from being found out. Despite his reassurances, she imagined him strapped to a chair, and her trembling only worsened with the unwanted image.
His hands on her wrists steadied her strangely, and she wished she was having this conversation sober. “If I forget in the morning, any of this, if I forget it, you have to remind me,” she said, finally realizing she might forget. But that was unimportant a second later, because he was promising, and she wasn’t sure if she believed these promises any more than she did the ones about Brielle, though these were so different, so very different. These scared her, and not because she thought he would do anything to her. “I wanted to a lot, with the men I marked,” she said, not really thinking, just talking. “I never did, because you were better than me, and I thought you wouldn’t be able to stand me if you knew I’d even wanted to.” But that’s when they were kids, and while she didn’t doubt she could kill if someone she loved was in danger, she was pretty sure she couldn’t do it under any other circumstance. She forced her thoughts back to him, to the grip on her wrists, to the way he looked, like a scared boy looking to her for answers. It reminded her of a freezer, way back and a world away, and she moved her hands from his cheeks and wrapped them around his shoulders instead. She rested her cheek carefully against his chest, just beneath his chin, and she wanted to stay there forever, to pretend none of this had happened. She wanted them to be children again, to get a chance to do it over, but that couldn’t happen either. One of her hands slid down and wound around his waist, and she breathed against the warm skin of his neck. “Then you tell me when you want to,” she said of it being his way to cope, “and we’ll find a way to make that want go away when it’s bad.” And maybe she should run. Maybe she should get up, run as fast and as far as her feet could take her, but she didn’t. It didn’t change things with Brielle, and it didn’t change the fact that she wasn’t sure he wouldn’t go to her. If anything, it made her more worried that Brielle might be a weak moment in the future, just like the killing was, but it wouldn’t make him feel any better to hear her say that, not just then, and she was worried enough about him going home like this, now.
She looked up at him, gray eyes still damp, still unfocused. “You go home, and you put Gus to bed, and you get some sleep. Promise. Nothing else.” She looked worried, because she was worried. “I’m not going to tell anyone, and we’ll talk tomorrow, okay? Once I’m sober, and once we’re calm, we’ll talk.” The hand at his shoulder lifted, fingers along his jaw. “I still think you’re beautiful,” she said, voice cracking.
Maybe it wasn’t fair to Adam, because he wasn’t a bad person, not really, but Luke couldn’t bring himself to argue. The situation felt precarious enough as it was, as if one wrong move might snap whatever frayed string was holding them together. The last thing he wanted was to make it worse. “No more Adam,” he agreed, even though he wasn’t sure what he was going to tell him. The fact that they didn’t exactly talk on a regular basis did make things a little easier, at least. Reminding her of all this in the morning if she forgot, now that was going to be a lot harder. Getting through it once had been bad enough; how was he supposed to do it all over again? He couldn’t tell her no, but he didn’t know how to agree either, so he simply nodded against her and hoped that would be enough. If she didn’t remember, he’d deal with it in the morning, not now. “I always said you were the better one,” he whispered, “and I was right.” She’d gone through far worse than he had, after all, and yet she’d never crossed that line, not like he had. Self-defense was different. There was a brief moment of panic when she pulled her hands back and he thought she might have changed her mind and decided she wanted nothing to do with him, but then she was warm and solid against him, and a strangled sob caught in his throat as he clung to her. “Okay,” he said, taking her use of we and holding it close. Brielle was, admittedly, the last thing on his mind, and all he could think about was that she was still here, regardless of it all.
He wasn’t blind to the concern in her gaze, like she thought he might do something else instead of going home, but he knew he deserved that. “Promise. He’ll be wondering where I am, and-- I’ll go home. I wouldn’t go anywhere else.” The prospect of talking to her when she was sober terrified him, but he couldn’t just ignore her or pretend none of this had happened. All he could do was hope that she didn’t decide she hated him once she was thinking clearly. “I didn’t think you’d want anything to do with me if you knew,” he told her, leaning into the feel of her fingers along his jaw. “I thought you’d hate me for sure. I don’t understand how you can still think I’m beautiful, Wren. I--I don’t deserve you, I really don’t.”
Wren, admittedly, didn’t care about Adam, and she would tell him that if given the chance. She might not be able to warn MK, not without putting Luke in danger, but she could absolutely tell him what she thought of him. Maybe that had changed over the years too; she really wasn’t the scared little girl she’d been, not around anyone but Luke. Adam already knew that, and he already disliked her for it; now the dislike was simply mutual. She shook her head when he said she was better. “No, Luke. I’m not,” assured him, because she knew that he’d ended up here because he was too good to handle the things life had handed him. He should have never faced any of those things, that boy she’d met in the alley, the one who hadn’t known that life was terrible. “I just got used to being a broken a long time before you did. That’s all. I’m too good at being numb, but that doesn’t make me better. When I was with you, I tried to be better for you. After Gus was born, I had something to fight for.” She pushed his hair away from his face, and she brushed her thumbs along his temple. “I would kill someone in a second, if they threatened the right people. I’ve always been willing to do that, and I’ve always been too willing to sacrifice. That’s how we ended up here.” Because whatever else she told herself, she couldn’t deny that this might have never happened if she had stayed in New York, and that was her responsibility to bear. It might eat her up in the morning, once sobriety hit, but she acknowledged it just then; she knew.
When her fingers slid to his jaw and he leaned into the touch, she smiled a little, unfocused and still so, so drunk. “I’m scared,” she admitted, “about a lot of things, but I could never hate you, Luke. Haven’t you realized that yet?” she asked softly, fingers brushing against his lower lip. “Go on,” she said, but she didn’t move, couldn’t bear to let him go. She didn’t know where any of this left them, even in her drunkenness, but she knew she would protect him no matter what it took. She knew, too, that she wasn’t doing it just for Gus, that it wasn’t just to ensure her son had a home. She wasn’t going to lie to herself about that, though she wasn’t sure exactly what it said about her. Maybe she wasn’t good, like Brielle. Maybe that’s what had drawn him to her cousine, but she had never had that chance, and despite all the hell that was going on, she would get through somehow. “No more secrets?” she asked, finally forcing herself to unwind her arms from his body, a reluctant movement. She sounded scared to even pose the question, as if something else might come to light that would threaten the fake calm she had managed to acquire with alcohol. She didn’t stand, though she nudged at his shoulder once. “Give Gus a kiss for me?”
For her, Luke would agree to just about anything, but not this, not that he was better. Not now. “You never had to be anything for me,” he insisted. “I loved you just the way you were, Wren. I still do.” He knew, though, that it had never been enough back then, no matter how many times he tried to reassure her. Whatever she might say, it wasn’t because of her that they were here, that he’d become what he had; he couldn’t put the blame on anyone else. “No. No, that’s not why we’re here. It’s-- too many things happened. You can’t put it all on yourself.” His fingers fisted in the fabric of her dress, reluctant to let go, and when her fingers brushed against his lip he wanted nothing more than to kiss her. It was painfully obvious, but he didn’t think he deserved that, not now, and he couldn’t just take what he wanted after everything he’d put her through. “I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “I guess I feel like you should hate me. I don’t want you to, but most people would if they knew the things you do.” He didn’t move, even when she told him to go and unwound her arms from around his shoulders. No, there were no more secrets, because this had been the big one, the one he’d been so scared to tell her ever since he learned she was back in Vegas. “No, no more. You know everything now.” He didn’t expect her to believe him, but it was the truth; there was nothing that she didn’t know. She knew about the scars, knew about Brielle, knew about his falling out with Thomas and what he’d done during the past five years. No one else knew as much as she did.
He drew back with obvious reluctance, running his fingers along her arms until he found her hands and tugged ever so lightly. “I will,” he promised. There was more he felt like he should say, but he didn’t want to make it worse, and he was pretty sure nothing he said now could make it better. After a long moment of silence he simply touched his forehead to hers again before standing, fighting to maintain a sense of steadiness. He felt drained, like there was nothing more he wanted to do than sleep for days, and he ran a hand along his jaw as he half-turned away from her. “Bye, Wren. Get home safe.”
Somehow he made it out of the park without losing his composure, but it took him a good ten minutes to calm himself down enough once he reached his motorcycle before he thought himself capable of driving anywhere. He knew he had to keep it together in front of Gus, though, and that was the most important thing.
She almost dragged him back. She almost ignored all the hurt, and the uncertainty, and the fact that she wasn’t sober enough to make any decisions about anything just then. She almost gave in when he wanted to kiss her, too, and it was oh, so obvious. It took everything she had not to just give in,not to fold herself up in his arms and give and take comfort the way they’d been doing since they’d been locked in a freezer with death waiting just over the next sunrise. But she didn’t give in, and she waited until he was out of sight, until the motorcycle had started in the distance, forcing herself through sit through those ten minutes of silence without going to him. She waited, and once she was sure he was gone, once the night air was quiet, the runners all gone home to their loved ones, the trail abandoned, she bent over at the stomach and sobbed, her entire body wracked with the force of the ache. Her fingers clutched at the grass, fisting around green and earth, and she yanked until there was no grass left, until her fingernails were stained with dirt underneath, and until she had cried herself ragged, cheek pressed against the ground and the entire world crashing down around her shoulders in spasms of tears and pain.