Re: Chinatown Apt: Robert/Selina
"Or I could leave it," she suggested, and it was a response to the tension in the room. She'd hoped - god, she'd hoped - that telling him what she needed would help. But there was something in the air, something different. She thought, maybe, that it was unhappiness, roiling off him in waves, and she was so good at doing that to people lately. She hadn't meant to, but it was there now, and she was too tired to know how to flippant and cajole and roll back the hands of time. "I could leave it, and maybe he'll realize he can't treat the people he wants to keep in his life that way." But she didn't actually feel that way, and she rubbed her eyes again, as if that would somehow change the outlook.
She listened to his very logical explanation of Helena's situation, and she laughed a cracked and broken laugh. "Is being pragmatic above or below compartmentalization on your list of emotional coping mechanisms?"
His comment about Damian's hurt made her gaze snap up, and she looked at him. "Damian and I weren't together. I scared him sexually, and he shut me down. I didn't give him the recording. Oracle did that. He threatened to curbstomp me after. It was a thing." Because it sounded so much like criticism. "I talked to him before he died. He was miserable, and it didn't have anything to do with me. He hated that he didn't have a purpose, and he hated that the family had fallen apart. That family? It was everything to Damian. Damian was ten one day, and then he was here, eighteen the next. He didn't get the years between, and he didn't have all the coping skills you learn along the way."
She looked at his hand on her shoulder, and she took a deep breath. "I'm going to take a shower and, when I come out, we're going to hash this out once and for all." Because talking about other things? Talking obviously wasn't going to work.
She pushed herself to her feet, grabbed the clean clothes, and she closed the bathroom door.