InsaneJournal

Who: Faith and Pike
Where: Their motel room
When: After Pike makes his post explaining things.
Ratings: I’m going to go with fairly high, just to be safe.
Status: In Progress

Pike sighed, running one hand through his hair. He hadn’t slept yet. He hadn’t exactly wanted to call it a suicide watch, but in the back of his mind he recognized that he was worried. Faith’s clear self-hatred wasn’t doing a lot to ease his nerves on the whole potential-suicide front. Still, as tough as this was going to be, he was going to stick it out. Over the past several hours, he’d said a lot of words to a lot of people about why he was still here, about what he was doing, but ultimately, it all boiled down to one thing.

Faith was hard work, but she was totally worth it.

Faith couldn’t see it yet. Maybe she’d never be able to fully realize it. Pike, on the other hand, could see it clear as day. She was worth every single drop of blood, sweat, and tears he had, and then some. Whether she saw it or not, he wasn’t going to leave her. Not now, not ever.

He already knew what happened in that alley last night. He hadn’t needed anyone to tell him, once he’d seen it and seen how Faith was reacting to it. But Faith, and everyone else, had. So he’d waited. He’d kept quiet. And when Kate provided him with that last little bit of information, he’d climbed on his phone and posted a message to those he could think of off the top of his head that needed to know. He kept the tone as civil as possible, not wanting any of the stress he was feeling to inadvertently slip into the post and cause trouble.

After that, he dropped the phone back into his pocket and got up from the lone chair in the room. He’d let Faith have some time alone on the bed, but he needed to tell her what Kate had told him, and he wanted to be close when he did. “Hey,” he announced softly, before taking up a seat on the edge of the bed. “So I talked to Kate.” He kept his gaze, soft and compassionate, on her. “She found the guy. She also found the knife, with him. You didn’t do it, Faith. You couldn’t have. No way could he have gotten the knife back.” He braced himself for pretty much any reaction. Even for no reaction. He hoped hearing this news would help, but he was under no illusions about the way guilt worked. It was a good thing that she hadn’t killed the girl, he didn’t think even her vaunted denial skills could brush that one away, but she could easily just shift the guilt. Instead of ‘I killed her’ it could easily become ‘I should have been able to save her.’ This wasn’t going to be easy.

But nothing worthwhile ever was.