Who: Sentinel and Max What: Bullet wounds hurt Where: Seedy Motel by Southcenter When: night of the penguin plot Warnings: Sentinel sounds like a schizo?
After Thomas had left, Max had finally heard from Sentinel. She was still exhausted, and the next day promised to be a long one, but she knew he was just like Thomas at the end of the day. He was probably bleeding all over something somewhere and unwilling to go get help. Admittedly, she had no idea who Sentinel was during daytime hours. He did a better job of hiding his identity than the other vigilantes did, and she knew that meant he wouldn’t go to a hospital.
She had packed a backpack with supplies, and she had climbed out the fire escape that Thomas had recently bugged, and she’d made quick work of the bike ride to the hotel. Dressed in jeans and a cable knit sweater, she probably looked like someone meeting a married man, possibly married herself, harmless at the end of the day - and that was the intention.
She found the room easily, and she rapped on the door once with her knuckles. “Room service,” she said, knowing he would recognize her voice. After all, he’d been showing up whenever she was in trouble for months now. That fact hadn’t gone unnoticed either.
He wasn’t bleeding all over everything, as a matter of fact he had stopped at a drug store, gotten his own supplies and was intent on doctoring himself up. He didn’t want to risk being seen in the building with blood all over his jacket, so he’d opted for a seedy motel. He checked in with no consequence, and he was cleaning the wound before preparing to remove the bullet.
Truth be told he was glad Max was coming over, though he wanted more than anything to tell her the truth, but that would end the playful camaraderie he’d come to depend on. He didn’t want to lose it, he didn’t want “Johnny” to lose Max Main, which was what drove him to look after her, and he couldn’t have “Sentinel” lose Cipher either. It was a dangerous game for now, but it would have to do.
His bloody jacket was on the back of a chair and his bloody shirt was in the sink, when he heard the knock at the door he pressed a towel up against the wound and smiled when heard her voice. He opened the door and smirked a bit, “No snacks? Worst room service ever.” He said closing the door behind her.
Max didn’t even bother putting down her bag before she started looking him over. She pressed her hands to the center of his bare chest, and she nudged him toward the bed. “Sit down and quit complaining,” she told him, looking for signs of how much blood that towel was soaking up. “You’re as bad as the Bat,” she said, because that made two men she cared about bleeding in one evening, and that was just two too many.
She tossed her bag on the bed, and she looked down at him, all smirk and lack of concern for his own safety. “Can we get Copeland to hug you?” she asked. “Will that make you more careful?” Oh, sure, he was all charming and shirtless, but she was angry and tired, and she had no intention of melting for that smile. She reached for the edge of the towel, and she peeled it back slightly, her other hand on his opposite shoulder to keep him still while she looked at the damage.
He rolled his eyes but did as she said and sat down, his mouth formed a thin line when she mentioned the Bat and he shook his head, “I do know how to mend a bullet wound,” he said even though she seemed intent on fussing. “Oh please, I am nowhere near as bad as him, he’s all kevlar, ego and brood. I’m way more fun.”
“Johnny hugs me all the time, he’s like Mr. Rogers that one. But so far no, it hasn’t made me more careful.” He grinned, still charming. Still shirtless. Her tired and angry didn’t phase him one bit.
She noticed his displeasure at the Bat mention, and if it surprised her she didn’t show it. Instead, she rolled her eyes right back at him. “And you don’t have any ego, Sentinel?” she asked, but the smile was a teasing one. He sure as hell didn’t brood, not this one.
She was standing between his thighs, and she reached for the bag she’d brought with her, letting go of the towel for a moment and closing her fingers around his wrist to bring his hand back up against the towel. She concentrated on sterilizing the tweezers she’d brought with her, even as she kept chattering. No, lecturing. “Knowing how to mend a bullet wound doesn’t mean you should need to,” she said. “Do you have any fucking idea how many injuries we’ve all taken in the past month?” The criticism wasn’t really for him, no, it was for herself. “Stupid choices,” she muttered, putting aside the sterilizing solution she’d been using. “Pull the towel back,” she said, meeting his eyes.
“Of course I do,” he answered easily. “Which is why it gets a little bruised when you get shot,” he said chuckling. “But I don’t brood. And I don’t do kevlar...Which might have come in handy, but I think he’s got that market cornered. The brooding and kevlar market that is.”
He nodded, “It’s getting bad out there, we need a medic, and we need people to not be so fool hardy. I’m not eager to arm myself, the minute we start doing that is the minute we’re the real bad guys.” He pulled the towel back a bit, it was soaked with blood, but it didn’t make him worry too much, it hadn’t hit a vital organ that was what mattered to him.
Max had no issue with weapons. The gun tucked into the back of her jeans was loaded, and she would have no problem firing it if the need arose. It was one of the things she had found fault with most of the vigilantes on. When your opponent was armed, hand-to-hand combat wasn’t a sound choice. You had to get close enough to do damage, and the chance of taking a bullet was way too damn high. “Arming ourselves doesn’t make us what they are, Sentinel. It evens the playing field,” she said, and she obviously felt strongly about it. “But we do need a medic. Hell if I know who I’d trust in that capacity, though.”
She was glad to see that the blood flow was sluggish. “Good job at taking a hit,” she told him, an honest compliment, and she relaxed slightly with the realization that he wasn’t going to die in this shitty motel room. She used his opposite shoulder to keep herself still this time, her hand less than steady with her tiredness, and she held up a bottle of diluted rubbing alcohol. “Ready?” she asked, looking over at his face. Her fingers twitched on his shoulder in anticipation of the pain she was about to cause, but it would be quick and over.
“For us maybe, but guns kill people, I don’t want that kind of power,” he said simply. “I’m not doing this to kill people.” He had a few ideas off hand, doctors he’d seen, or talked to. He’d think more on it, but for now he’d let the situation rest. “I’ll look around,” is what he left it at.
He smirked at her again, “It’s what they teach us at Vigilante primary school. How to take a fall, and how to take a hit.” She held up the rubbing alcohol and he nodded, “I did in the bathroom earlier, I can hack it again I’m sure.” It wasn’t going to be fun, but it was necessary. He was pretty damn tough, and it paid off in situations like this.
She didn’t hesitate before following through with a long, fast pour of alcohol against the torn skin of his shoulder. She watched it with the detached eye of someone accustomed to gunshot wounds and the pain that came from treating them, and the dampness had barely air-dried before she was taking the tweezers to the torn flesh. The bullet was deep, despite a good move that had kept it from doing any significant harm, and she had to put her arm into pulling it out. She was all business during the extraction, unconcerned by the smell of blood or the sight of torn edges of skin. In that moment, the wound was a clinical thing, and she managed to keep down the bile that rose in her throat as the bullet came free with a sickening slick sound.
She pulled a plastic container out of her bag, and she dropped the bullet inside for later analysis, and then she poured a fresh stream of alcohol on the newly bleeding wound. She would love a doctor right then, some good stitches over the Handistrips she kept on hand. She didn’t have those, though, and the strips would have to do. “I’m not saying you kill anyone, but I think it’s plain stupid to fight sawed off rifles with your bare hands,” she said, glancing over at his face as she pressed the strips into place. “All of you.”
He clenched his jaw and took deep calming breaths. His fists clenched and for just the slightest half second he thought he might just hit something. But he kept it together and when she got the bullet out he exhaled heavily, the worst bit was over.
“That may be, but I’m not going to shoot a gun,” he answered. “So carrying one is just going to weigh me down.”
Bandages followed the strips, and she pressed the edges down firmly and carefully, fingers sure along the skin of his collarbone and clavicle and shoulder. Once she was done, once she was sure he was taken care of, that he wouldn’t die on her watch, she smacked his good arm once. “Don’t you ever listen to me in a firefight. I’m used to looking out for myself, and I’m used to calling shots, but not for a team,” she admitted, and she gave him an apologetic look before dropping to sit on the bed beside him with a grateful, tired sound. “What would Copeland say?” she asked, grinning over at him.
He chuckled when she smacked his arm and flexed the hand on his bad arm hoping to get blood flowing again, “Then stop calling the shots, or get better at it. Look...” he turned to face her. “We all screwed up, it’s not going to be the last time. We were lucky, but we’re lucky every damn night. “This sucks, and I don’t think any of us know how to play nicely,” he said putting his hand on her leg and squeezing her knee . “Don’t kick yourself. It’s going to get worse before it gets better, but it will get better.”
She laughed, the sound warm and husky in the shitty hotel room, and the only thing that kept her from using his shoulder as a headrest was the gauze on the warm skin. “That isn’t what Copeland would say,” she told him, because it wasn’t. Her expression turned serious then, and she rested her hand over his on her knee. “Don’t you worry he’ll turn you in? He hates what you do, what all of us do. How the hell can you even trust that?” She asked, because that had been at the forefront of her mind recently - how much it was safe to tell Johnny about things.
“Probably not,” he answered softly, again the urge to tell the truth was spilling over. But he sucked it up, she wouldn’t be able to reconcile the two anyway, she wouldn’t be able to understand. It would put her in more danger than she managed to get into on her own. He shook his head, “He’s not going to turn me in, and he doesn’t hate it. He doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t need to, it’s not his place to understand it. It’s his job to question it, we do it so he doesn’t have to. But I’m telling you now, I’d trust him with my life, he’s a good egg. Just a misguided one, a normal one.”
“Oh, I know he’s a good egg,” she said, and she didn’t hesitate before saying it. She did know that. Johnny was nothing if not good. He was moral in a way that was undeniable, that always made her feel like she’d fucked something up by not being moral enough. And the funny thing was that the bastard was still likable, even after all that. “I told him I was emotionally unavailable, and he still asked me out,” she said, and she sounded surprised he would bother. She shook her head a moment later, and she moved her hand from the back of his to his shoulder, fingers poking around the bandaging to make sure it was holding. “Don’t think he could understand me, either,” she said, looking at him, expression honest. “Not anymore than he can understand you.”
Johnny nodded, listening, taking in what she said. It made sense, and she wasn’t wrong. He didn’t understand this part of him. He pushed it aside and Sentinel looked briefly at her hand that was on his shoulder. He took a deep breath and smiled at her, “We’re all a little emotionally unavailable,” he said his voice low. “No one more than Johnny Copeland,” he added. He moved his hand to her arm, and held onto it gently. “Do you understand me?” he asked curiously.
She didn’t agree with him, and so she shook her head. “No, Sentinel,” she told him. “Johnny is... he lives in the fucking light. We live-” she motioned at the dingy hotel room, at the bandage on his arm, “we live in this,” she said. “He’s about as emotionally available as you can get. He wants football games, and kisses, and barbecues,” she explained, not moving away from the gentle pressure on her arm. “I’m guns and vigilantes and a million fucking opinions he never agrees with.” She sighed, and she let her hand fall to her lap. “And I’m invested in someone who doesn’t feel the same way about me as I do about him, and Copeland just wouldn’t understand that at all.” She didn’t explain that it was the Bat, because she knew Sentinel already had ideas about that. She just didn’t confirm them for him.
“Football games, kisses and barbecues...Come on, that’s about as functional as guns and vigilantes,” he said rolling his eyes. “Believe me, he wants to be available, but he’s not. He doesn’t know which end is up. But that’s okay, it works for him. He’ll figure it out.” He couldn’t help but smile when she mentioned that Johnny wouldn’t understand being invested in someone who didn’t feel the same way, and he gave her a bit of a knowing look, “And you don’t think Copeland would understand that?” he asked as if to say ‘come on, think a little harder.’ He took her hand again, liking the contact, and feeling brave enough to let himself have this. “I think that if you look close enough you’ll see that we’re different from them, and we live in the dark, but they’re just as broken as the rest of us. The truth is no one knows which end is up, but it’s our job to save them from themselves. They need us, Copeland needs us, even if they need us to blame for things. Or to hero worship us...We need them just as much.”
She didn’t think anything of him taking her hand, not when he seemed to be selling her on Johnny, while sitting there, on a hotel bed with no shirt on. “I think Copeland finds as much to criticize about me he as he finds to like,” she told him, but her fondness for the insufferable Johnny was in the admission. She didn’t, however, agree with the rest of his statement, and she shook her head. “I’m not a vigilante,” she reminded him. “I don’t save anyone. Does Copeland know your opinion on this hero worship thing is completely opposed to his own?” she asked, smiling. “You should let me represent you in the press going forward, Sentinel. I can do a much better job.” She looked down, her hair falling across her cheek, and when she looked up at him it was with a sad smile. “Johnny’s a good catch,” she admitted. She didn’t know what the hell she would tell him when she started showing, but that didn’t change the fact that he was a good catch. “I think my roommate is half in love with him,” she added.
“I think that the same could be said about you,” he countered quickly, “You find plenty to criticize there too, neither of your are blameless.” He finished. He did roll his eyes when she said she wasn’t a vigilante. He didn’t know what she thought she was, running around in the dark with a gun and scouting places out, she was just as much on the vigilante track as any of them, saving people or not. She helped, it counted. She could tell herself that all she wanted, but she was blind.
“I don’t want to be hero worshipped,” he responded. “I want to keep people safe, and the best way I can do that is without a fan club.” He couldn’t help himself when she looked back up at him and his hand went to the side of her face softly. Johnny was a good catch, he supposed, he had strength of character, a good moral compass, and like Sentinel...He just wanted to help people. Johnny understood the hardships involved of his chosen lifestyle, he wanted to be willing to accept them, but this woman was making him crazy. She made it hard to do his day job, and now, here on his night job, she’d vexed him all over again.
His hand had lightly been touching her cheek, but his hand became more sure of itself his hand actually moving to cup her face gently and hold her gaze, “You’re a catch too, for a lot of the same reasons he is, and if he can’t see it, or mystery man can’t see it...Neither of them are worth your time.”
The touch, gentle and then more sure, surprised her, and the reaction flickered in her brown eyes as she looked at him. She closed her eyes then, tired and trusting, and she pressed her cheek against his palm for a moment. Oh, God, life just got more complicated by the day. She knew nothing about this man. This wasn’t Johnny, with his do-gooder grin and his carbon footprint friendly car. And it wasn’t Thomas, who she would have given anything to have sitting across from her like this on bed, showing concern for her that wasn’t caused by her pregnancy. She opened her eyes, then, and she looked at him. “Aren’t you the charmer?” she asked, a touch of banter and tease in the question. Her voice softened. “I have feelings for someone else, someone you don’t like very much,” she reminded him, remembering the incident at the masquerade. She didn’t move away. She didn’t reach, or grab, or encourage, but she didn’t move away. She could at least be more honest with him than with Johnny, at least there was that, without betraying anything, she could be honest. “And before you ask, we haven’t talked about it. The way I feel isn’t his fault. He hasn’t encouraged me, or done anything to make me think he was emotionally invested, and I don’t want him to find out and get uncomfortable.” It was, she realized, the most she had ever said, aloud, about what was happening.
He didn’t know why everything had to be so complicated, secret identities, secrets, love, lust, whatever it all was. He just wanted to go back to normal, back to a time before any of this was a problem. Instead, he gave her a charming smile and shook his head, “No, no I’m not a charmer,” he answered softly. “And it’s not that I don’t like him, don’t go spreading that rumor around,” he said rubbing her cheek slightly but eventually dropping his hand. “You don’t have to defend him, or yourself, or your feelings, it’s nothing he can control. Hell it’s probably nothing you can control either. Chips fall where they do. But don’t you ever get sick of feeling crappy and just want to feel good for a little while? This line of work sucks and you know it. Hell I’d venture a guess that even your day job sucks from time to time. Dealing with Johnny without being able to tell him anything, your roommate who obviously drives you crazy, then you go out at night and have to deal with getting shot at, being snapped at by men dressed as giant bats and who refuse to show you their faces? Don’t you think that warrants some kind of feel good pass once in a while?”
She watched his hand fall away when it did, let her gaze linger on his fingers without even realizing she was doing it, and then she looked up at him and grinned. “Oh, you’re a charmer, alright,” she assured him. She let herself lie back on the bed while he was talking about life sucking, arm thrown over her head, hair a mess against the mildew-scented bedspread. She looked up at him as he finished, at the strong expanse of bare shoulders and back, and she nudged his thigh with her booted foot when he was done. “You know, when I crossed over, I did it to get exactly what you’re talking about. I was tired of missions and ops and shooting people and being shot at. And I was so fucking scared, and I wasn’t in a profession where you could show that, where it was okay to be scared. I figured I would run away, over here, and I’d be a reporter and write the truth and have the normal life my younger sister had. I’d plant a garden, marry a lawyer, buy a golden retriever, have some kids.” The last part made her smile softly, and her fingers twitched beside her on the bed before she unwittingly rested her forearm against her stomach. “Know what I figured out once I got here? Yeah, that’s not me. No matter how much I want it to be me, that’s not me. I can shoot someone’s brains out and not think twice about it - I don’t think people like me get picket fences or passes.”
He watched her lie back on the bed, mostly out of the corner of his eye, and he continued looking at the wall in front o him as he spoke. He turned slightly to look at her when he felt her nudge his leg, his hand almost automatically moving back to her leg. He smiled a bit as she spoke. He was listening but he was looking too. Certainly never leering, but clearly appreciating. He shook his head, “I’m not talking about picket fences, none of us are going to get picket fences, and I still hold firm to my belief that I am certainly not going to settle down. That requires a level of intimacy that isn’t safe or fair to another person,” he gave her a pointed look, “You know how I feel about the subject.”
He sighed and looked away for a moment before training his eyes on her again. “Everyone knew who I was in Musings, they loved me. They’ll love you until you fail. Then they come after you like an angry mob. Then the actual angry mob goes after the people you love, no picket fences aren’t for us. But passes, I can get behind passes.”
“I know how you feel about the subject,” she agreed, and she rolled onto her side, wanting to get a better look at him as they had this conversation. “But sometimes you can’t avoid that sort of intimacy, Sentinel. Sometimes it just happens. I get what you’re saying, I do. Not having connections is a hell of a lot safer in our business. In Musings, I was trained not to give a shit about anyone on a mission. The main priority was getting the information and getting out, not helping other people. We were all trained to help ourselves, to the exclusion of all else,” she explained. “Here, I give a shit. I care. I didn’t ask to care, and I didn’t want to care, but I care. And maybe I care about the vigilantes more than I do about the casuals, but it doesn’t change the fact that it changes the way I make decisions. You can try to avoid that like the plague, but sometimes you just can’t manage it.” She grinned at him. “Those are the breaks, Sentinel.”
She paused a moment, squeezed his hand with her own. “What do you consider a pass? Pretending? Is a pass your version of beer and a good looking man in a cowboy hat?” she asked curiously. “Escape, without any ties?”
“Here that whole secret identity thing is essential,” he admitted easily. “I can’t have people knowing,” the Bat knew, but that had been a mistake that he wouldn’t let happen again.
He took risk then and stretched his body to lay next to hers, propping his good arm up and supporting his head in his hand. He toyed with her fingers and looked at her seriously, “You’re supposed to care,” he said quietly. “That’s what this job is about, I care so much it hurts, but I that doesn’t leave much caring left to care much about me, and I can’t afford to care much about what might become ‘me and mine’ if you know what I mean.”
He nodded, “Pretending, is good, I like pretending. Playing house I guess. In my life, in my fake life...I’m a joke, but I’m allowed to feel something, and sometimes I slip and feel a little too much for a little too long. But it’s a good kind of pass. But that part of me doesn’t need a pass, sometimes it’s this part that does and that’ll never happen.”
She had a hard time imagining this man as a joke, and she looked down at his his fingers on hers before looking up at him. Her cheek was pillowed on the inside of her upper arm, and she still managed to shake her head. “You’re making yourself sound like the worst kind of fucking dangerous, Sentinel,” she told him bluntly. “You can’t expect people to just stop caring at the point that you think it isn’t safe anymore. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t compartmentalize this way either. Trust me. It doesn’t do a bit of fucking good. Take Copeland, for example, it doesn’t matter how much I like him, I can’t tell him what I do. No, no, that isn’t true. I can put myself out there until the cows come home, but I can’t trust him with you, or the Bat, or Corbinian, or Robin, or Oracle, or...” she trailed off there, leaving something unsaid, something important. There’s a whole huge fucking part of my life that I can’t share with him. That’s just fact. But people who are like us, people involved, there’s no reason to keep them at bay. You’re not going to convince me there is,” she said firmly, and she meant it. Even with the way her eyes were going heavy with sleep, she sounded fierce, determined.
Her eyes closed, and she settled into that place of almost sleep, trusting and exhausted, but then she looked at him again, as if she’d just remembered something important. “You said they loved you in Musings. What happened to change that?”
“I mean I care about other people, strangers, everyone...They need the help and I want to provide it, so I care about them. I spend all my extra caring energy on them,” he smirked a bit, “I’m going to take advice from someone as crazy as the rest of us?” he bit back, but gently.
He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling for a long moment. “I screwed up, someone died, they turn on you fast. Everyone makes mistakes, I’m only human...But...They turn on you fast.”
“I’m not as fatalistic as you and the Bat,” she said, looking over at him. “Probably a good thing, too,” she added. “You can’t give up hope of a life, Sentinel. I get saving people, I get sacrifice, I get that we’re all on borrowed fucking time here. That isn’t going to change if you let someone in along the way. You might worry more, sure, and trust me, I worry, but it isn’t going to make me shut it all down, just so I don’t get hurt if something happens.” She rubbed his shoulder, just below the bandage. No hesitation, no worry about how the touch was being perceived. He reminded her of Johnny that way, she thought, the idea fleeting and gone as soon as it had come. It wasn’t the nervousness she felt around Thomas; it was different.
She watched him roll over. “How?” she asked, plain, blunt and simple.
“I don’t want to argue about it anymore,” he said finally. She had her opinion, he had his experience. If he had his way he’d show her right now just why he didn’t want to get involved. He’d tell her everything, would it really put her in more danger than she seemed intent to put herself in? Would it make any difference? Would she find Johnny interesting then? Most of all would she finally understand? He doubted it.
“How does anything like this happen? You make a bad decision in the split second you have to make that decision and it turns out to be the wrong one. You underestimate the capacity of another person to kill someone and it blows up right in your face.”
“Let me write it?” she asked him, looking up at his face with tired eyes, her arm gone still on his arm. “I can do a better job than Copeland.”
He frowned, “Go ahead and write it, but Copeland was only doing what I told him to do.” he said softly as he looked over at her.
“Stop making excuses for him.” She smiled, even as her eyes drifted closed again, the exhaustion finally catching up to her in a way she could not fight. If she could, she would have remembered she didn’t have her alarm clock, she shouldn’t sleep in an non-secure location, her gun was loaded at her back and wedged between sweater and skin. But she didn’t remember any of those things as she drifted off, she just rolled onto her back, arm draping protectively over her stomach, and her breathing evened, slow and trusting.