Who: Max What: Narrative (and a note) Where: Aubade When: Tonight Warnings: None
Max did go see Amanda.
She was still drunk when she got there, swaying slightly and trying to make as little noise as she could. The baby was asleep, which was unsurprising given the hour, and she didn’t wake her. She was too drunk to pick her up, anyway, and she knew it. She leaned over the crib, and she watched her sleep, trying not to make noise. She didn’t want to wake Luke; she didn’t want him to see her like she was, and she was sober enough to realize that.
Alina was awake, but she didn’t say a word. The woman hovered near the door, protective and guarding, and Max’s fingers gripped the crib railing tight and hard. She had known, she reminded herself, that Thomas wasn’t going to forgive her for this. She had known, and she’d done it anyway. The alternative was no alternative, after all. Jail for him, a broken life for Amanda and Luke. She knew why she’d done it, but it didn’t make dealing with the fallout any easier. And she hadn’t thought she’d lose Amanda over it, she’d never thought that. She’d thought he would be mad, but that they would all shoulder the blame in the end and that he would understand.
That hadn’t happened.
She asked Alina to meet her in the park at noon on weekdays with Amanda, and the woman agreed. The park was across the street; safe and gated. An hour, Monday through Friday for her participation in Amanda’s life. She wouldn’t ask for more, not after Thomas’ implication that she was trying to take the baby. And in the end, Amanda was safer here. It was a better life than Bathos and an apartment where she didn’t even have a room of her own, even if Max missed her so much it ached. The irony wasn’t lost on her, the fact that she hadn’t wanted to be a mother, hadn’t thought she could be one, and now she was losing it all. Everything was unraveling, everything that mattered, Thomas and the kids, and she didn’t think it was going to wind itself up again, not this time.
She wanted to stay until Amanda woke up, but she didn’t want Thomas to catch her there. She padded quietly to the Master Bedroom, and she left her comm on the nightstand on his side of the bed. Keeping it would only keep her involved, and being involved meant she would always make the choice that protected the people she loved. The temptation to lie down, to turn back time three short months was so tempting that she almost ached with it. But that wasn’t an option, no matter how much she wanted it to be. She’d gone too far, and she knew it.
Alina cleared her throat at the door, and Max looked back at her and took a shaking breath. “Stay, child,” the older woman said, and the kindness almost did Max in. Her knees buckled, and she sat on the edge of the bed, fingers gripping the mattress so tightly that her fingernails left crescents in the sheets.
Alina left quietly when she heard the downstairs door opening, Luke moving around, and Max pulled a slip of paper from the nightstand and wrote a note to leave with the comm.
I only did it because I love you, because I love them, because I wanted you all safe. I wanted to come back. I always wanted to come back. I told you that over and over, but you didn’t listen. I left once, just once, because you said you didn’t want me. I wanted you to want me back, and I thought you did again that night in the warehouse. I believed it.
But you can’t forgive me for this, can you? I’d do anything to keep you safe, to keep them safe. I think you can understand that, wanting to keep them safe, so why can’t you understand this? You think of it as a betrayal. I think of it as protecting what you worked so hard to create. You've always said the Bat had to be more than a man. And, yes, it was selfish, too. I did it for you, for them, for us.
And then, in script that was less shaking, the indent firmer on the paper, the strike-through readable, the final request a selfish one. Can I have her on weekends? I want her on weekends. I'll fall apart otherwise.
She left the note beneath the comm, and she set her key beside it, and she waited until she was sure Luke was in his room. She couldn’t talk to him, not without involving herself in his life in a way that Thomas didn’t want, and so she waited until it was clear. She looked in on Amanda one last time, and then she slipped out of the apartment. There was still time for a few more drinks before she went home. And then she’d get up in the morning, and she’d remind herself that she spent seven years in Hell; she could get through this, too, even if it felt like she was dying.