Fic - Broken Trust
Title: Broken Trust
author: cornerofmadness
Characters/Pairings: Malcolm Bright Dani Powell
Disclaimer: Not mine, Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver owns it
Summary: She knows she hurt him and wants to make it better. Malcolm knows he’s at the end of his rope but what if at that end there’s a life preserver?
Rating: teen
Notes: written for darkmoore in comment_fic for the prompt of Prodigal Son, Malcom Bright: "The movie in my mind" - Miss Saigon, for the prompt of nausea in the hc_bingo, for the prompt of acts of kindness in allbingo and for the prompt of blue in the sunshine_challenge
You can find it on AO3 here if that's your preference.
Malcolm’s hand shook as he left Gil’s hospital room. It had been days since Gil’d been stabbed but Malcolm had spent them still under house arrest until the team had flipped the forensic company who had framed him and got them to give evidence that spoke to all the horrors Endicott had done. He’d been shaking for days if he were honest. His mother had shattered in front of him. She’d made it through his arrest, Gil’s attack but when she learned what Ainsley had done, she broke. He was thankful that she threw herself into sitting with Gil, watching over him protectively and talking to her lawyers, which had resulted in Ainsley being in a secure, private mental health facility instead of prison. Her diving into a bottle was the other alternative Malcolm had imagined.
The movie in his mind kept showing him his father dead in Rikers - but he was on his way back to Claremont. He saw himself in Rikers. Ainsley in prison too. Gil dead and his mother following him. They were all destroyed both in his head and nearly in real life. He wasn’t sleeping. He was too nauseated to eat, hadn’t had more than a few mouthfuls of anything in days.
“Bright.”
Hearing Dani, he whipped around. Her eyes widened seeing him. He looked bad and he knew it. He hadn’t shaved in days, and he hadn’t even put on a suit to visit Gil, just one of his long-sleeved shirts and cargo pants.
“How was Gil?”
“Sleeping now. Doc said he’s getting stronger.” He swallowed hard, trying to not think about the alternative.
“You should probably get some sleep yourself.”
“Can’t. My stomach’s roiling and my head won’t let me sleep.”
“That movie theatre you told me about?” she asked, and he nodded. “I guess you have reason enough for that. Can you and I talk?”
For a moment he considered saying no. Everyone had seen the evidence against him. Even JT dragged his heels about accusing him. Edrisa defended him to the end, gave him the key to saving himself. Dani had been the one to turn from him the quickest. He’d forgiven her for the most part because he needed to. He knew what the job meant to Dani. He knew what being honest meant and he had lied. Maybe he wouldn’t have if they had believed in him, listened to him. There was no changing any of it anyhow. “Okay.”
“Come on, I know a place.”
She took him to a small Filipino restaurant back close to the station. He balked in the doorway.
“I’m not up to eating, Dani. I’m so nauseated I’ll throw up on you.”
“Gil loves this place. He said they have a chicken and ginger soup,”
“Tinola,” he interrupted.
“Right. I thought that might be good on your stomach. You can’t keep going like this, Bright. You’re becoming a ghost. Even the blue in your eyes is a faded grey at this point.”
He scrubbed a hand over his eyes and gave in. “Okay, maybe you’re right.” Malcolm braced himself, stepping inside. The smell put his stomach in a vice.
Dani put a hand on his back. “Bright?”
“I’m not good, Dani.”
“I know and I can’t make it better, at least not most of it. Should we go?”
He shook his head, and she spoke to the hostess who sat them in a corner. He didn’t even look at the menu. He’d just get the soup and be done with it. Dani perused it quickly and ordered for them both.
“I’m sorry,” she said without preamble.
He looked at her, knowing what she meant or at least he thought he did but he wanted her to say it.
“I’m sorry that you’re going through all this. How is your sister?”
“Still confused about what happened but she’s out of her fugue.”
Dani frowned, her eyes sheened with tears, probably not for Ainsley but maybe, just maybe for him, or maybe for her own pain and guilt. “I’m sorry I didn’t…” She bit the sentence off, her jaw working. “I didn’t think you killed Eddie, I just couldn’t imagine it but I couldn’t ignore the evidence. Also, JT and I thought if we worked the case, we could…I don’t know, find out the truth because we cared about it more. Another set of detectives wouldn’t have been invested in what happened to you.”
“I appreciate that, I do but you did seem convinced of my guilt when Edrisa gave you the autopsy report,” he said and at her stunned expression added, “Don’t be angry at Edrisa for hiding me in the morgue. Not everyone has her blind faith in me. I know that and I know you have your trust issues. I did lie to you and I’m sorry for that but I didn’t see any other way out of the cage Endicott had made for me. I owe Edrisa for letting me listen in. Being there gave her and I the key to figuring out how Endicott framed me.”
“Gil was beside himself, trying to figure out how you were framed. He never believed you were guilty. You have to know that.”
“I never doubted it. Gil knows me too well…always trying to convince me I’m not my father and he’s right. I’m not a killer. Ainsley was stronger than me. If not for her…” He looked away. “Endicott would have destroyed us.” He didn’t know any more if he meant that literally or not. Endicott probably wouldn’t have killed them but that was their story and they weren’t about to waiver. Endicott was terrible and he needed to put him in the past. Too bad he failed routinely at keeping the past in the past.
“I can’t imagine witnessing that. I wanted…” Dani paused, pained. “I should have been talking to you before this.”
“We have. We’ve spoken in Gil’s room.”
“You know what I mean. We haven’t talked about this.” Dani glanced up as the waitress came back with her chicken afritada, slipping the tomato and garlic rich stew in front of her before giving him his big bowl of chicken and ginger soup.
The smell of the tinola should have made him hungry but it didn’t. He clamped his jaw against the water brash that flooded his mouth. Dani reached across the table and put a hand over his.
“Was this a bad idea? I can get this to go.”
“No.” He picked up his spoon and sipped some of the broth. He wasn’t up to eating an actual piece of chicken yet. The warmth filled him. Malcolm ate another spoonful. “This is good. I’m sorry. I know I’m not being easy to be with right now.”
“I didn’t come here thinking you would be. I know you’re hurting, Malcolm. I wanted to help because I know I’m part of what’s been tearing you up.” Dani pushed her own food to the side. “But maybe eating and talking was dumb.”
“We can be done talking about it. I’m not holding it against you.”
She cocked up her eyebrows in disbelief. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he believed himself. “I put you in cuffs twice.”
“And probably would have a third time because I know they were putting out a murder warrant on me. You told me at the start of this why. I accept that. You and JT haven’t always wanted me on the team. I know that too.” Malcolm spooned up more soup. The ginger was settling his stomach and he was getting hungry.
“That’s not…okay, it’s true but Gil told us you were one of us and he was right.”
“You two will never know just how much I appreciate the chance you gave me. You made it the best job I’ve had. You saw how the FBI treated me. You and JT were never that mean to me. I can either forgive and move on and hope to reclaim what we had or I can hold onto a grudge and lose that. We don’t have to hold on to all this guilt and pain. It’s exhausting me. I have a sister in trouble, a mother who is holding on by a thread, a father who somehow survived a prison riot he probably started, my dad is in the hospital, barely alive and I lost a woman a cared about. I don’t have the energy to keep being angry at you and JT. Just…I have to know. It was hard, right?”
She reared back. “You can ask me that?”
“Because it’s in that terrible movie in my head, that it wasn’t hard, that it was easy enough to be rid of me. Because that’s the story of my life, Dani. My father tried to kill me. My friends left me. My coworkers betrayed me more than once in Quantico. Just once, I was hoping it was hard to abandon me.”
“It was one of the hardest things we’ve ever had to do. We didn’t want to do it but it had to be done. We tried to protect you as much a we could but…Endicott did the job right.” Her eyes glistened. “Maybe I didn’t show how hard it was for me to think you could have killed Eddie but you did care about Eve and someone stole everything from you both. You wouldn’t be the first to want revenge.”
“True.”
“I didn’t want it to be what it looked like and you certainly didn’t make things easier when you pried off the ankle monitor and took off. And then…” Dani pushed her hair back and then met his gaze directly. “You came to the hospital and took care of me in spite of everything.”
“Because you care about Gil as much as I do. You’ve lost your father and you were afraid you’d lose Gil too. And I care about you. Mother was wrong when she said you weren’t my friend. Of course, she was pissed at the time.”
“She told me I was your best friend once.”
“That’s much closer to the truth. You’re my friend and you were scared and I didn’t need to be angry with you then. You needed me to be kind.”
“You were afraid you’d lose him too.” Dani smiled faintly. “Do you realize you called him your dad?”
“I know. By now you and JT realize that’s true. My father’s figured it out as well which isn’t good but Gil has taken care of me since I was ten years old. This week I learned my mother’s had feelings for him since those first days, which is deeply weird for me because when I was a kid that’s what I wanted but now…I don’t know how I missed it.” He managed a little more soup. “But if what you wanted to hear when you asked me here is I forgive you, then yes we’re good.”
Dani wet her lips and pulled her plate back to her. “Good but more than forgiveness I was also thinking that you need help and that we should have been looking out for you since all this happened. You’re dealing with more than anyone should. It’s good just to see you eating a little.”
“The ginger is helping my stomach. I’m glad you brought me here. I needed this.”
“Keep eating then. We can talk about something better…like this bombshell about your mom.” She smiled.
He winced. “I am not sure I’m ready to have Mom dating Gil once he leaves the hospital and she has plans. This is going to be so weird.” He attempted a piece of the chicken.
“It’s going to be amusing…probably to everyone who isn’t you.”
“I can hear you and JT giggling now.”
“Well, isn’t that better than what your weird mind theater shows you?”
“Mother and Gil alive, well and driving off in his next muscle car to do god knows what? It’s good but no less scary.” He smiled and she snorted. “Hey, Dani.”
“Yeah?”
“Want to split some halo-halo with me?”
She broke out into a wide grin. “You want to skip right to dessert?”
“Always.” He could almost taste the ube ice cream in the layered dessert.
“I brought you here because you needed a little kindness and just look at you. Your eyes are blue again.”
“They’re always blue.”
She shook her head. “When you’re sad, they’re almost gray. You picturing something sweet and they’re practically the color of the sky. Your eyes are expressive, more so than anyone I know and yes, I’ll have dessert. I’ll box up the rest of my lunch. You, on the other hand, keep drinking yours. It’s doing you good.”
“You’re what’s doing me good,” he replied and she gave his hand a squeeze. He took all the comfort from that as he could. Malcolm couldn’t eat the meat in his soup but he drained all the broth. Halo-Halo would be so good after that. The dessert was like the team, a bunch of different things that maybe shouldn’t go together but really did work well when paired up. He was content the bad was behind them. He wasn’t good yet but he was on the path. This time he wasn’t walking it alone and that was more than he’d had in so long. Dani might not fully realize what this simple act of kindness, a bowl of soup, some sweets and an apology truly meant to him but he hoped she did. He needed for them to heal the rift in the team and this was the first, best step. For the first time in many days, Malcolm found hope and held onto it tight.
author: cornerofmadness
Characters/Pairings: Malcolm Bright Dani Powell
Disclaimer: Not mine, Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver owns it
Summary: She knows she hurt him and wants to make it better. Malcolm knows he’s at the end of his rope but what if at that end there’s a life preserver?
Rating: teen
Notes: written for darkmoore in comment_fic for the prompt of Prodigal Son, Malcom Bright: "The movie in my mind" - Miss Saigon, for the prompt of nausea in the hc_bingo, for the prompt of acts of kindness in allbingo and for the prompt of blue in the sunshine_challenge
You can find it on AO3 here if that's your preference.
Malcolm’s hand shook as he left Gil’s hospital room. It had been days since Gil’d been stabbed but Malcolm had spent them still under house arrest until the team had flipped the forensic company who had framed him and got them to give evidence that spoke to all the horrors Endicott had done. He’d been shaking for days if he were honest. His mother had shattered in front of him. She’d made it through his arrest, Gil’s attack but when she learned what Ainsley had done, she broke. He was thankful that she threw herself into sitting with Gil, watching over him protectively and talking to her lawyers, which had resulted in Ainsley being in a secure, private mental health facility instead of prison. Her diving into a bottle was the other alternative Malcolm had imagined.
The movie in his mind kept showing him his father dead in Rikers - but he was on his way back to Claremont. He saw himself in Rikers. Ainsley in prison too. Gil dead and his mother following him. They were all destroyed both in his head and nearly in real life. He wasn’t sleeping. He was too nauseated to eat, hadn’t had more than a few mouthfuls of anything in days.
“Bright.”
Hearing Dani, he whipped around. Her eyes widened seeing him. He looked bad and he knew it. He hadn’t shaved in days, and he hadn’t even put on a suit to visit Gil, just one of his long-sleeved shirts and cargo pants.
“How was Gil?”
“Sleeping now. Doc said he’s getting stronger.” He swallowed hard, trying to not think about the alternative.
“You should probably get some sleep yourself.”
“Can’t. My stomach’s roiling and my head won’t let me sleep.”
“That movie theatre you told me about?” she asked, and he nodded. “I guess you have reason enough for that. Can you and I talk?”
For a moment he considered saying no. Everyone had seen the evidence against him. Even JT dragged his heels about accusing him. Edrisa defended him to the end, gave him the key to saving himself. Dani had been the one to turn from him the quickest. He’d forgiven her for the most part because he needed to. He knew what the job meant to Dani. He knew what being honest meant and he had lied. Maybe he wouldn’t have if they had believed in him, listened to him. There was no changing any of it anyhow. “Okay.”
“Come on, I know a place.”
She took him to a small Filipino restaurant back close to the station. He balked in the doorway.
“I’m not up to eating, Dani. I’m so nauseated I’ll throw up on you.”
“Gil loves this place. He said they have a chicken and ginger soup,”
“Tinola,” he interrupted.
“Right. I thought that might be good on your stomach. You can’t keep going like this, Bright. You’re becoming a ghost. Even the blue in your eyes is a faded grey at this point.”
He scrubbed a hand over his eyes and gave in. “Okay, maybe you’re right.” Malcolm braced himself, stepping inside. The smell put his stomach in a vice.
Dani put a hand on his back. “Bright?”
“I’m not good, Dani.”
“I know and I can’t make it better, at least not most of it. Should we go?”
He shook his head, and she spoke to the hostess who sat them in a corner. He didn’t even look at the menu. He’d just get the soup and be done with it. Dani perused it quickly and ordered for them both.
“I’m sorry,” she said without preamble.
He looked at her, knowing what she meant or at least he thought he did but he wanted her to say it.
“I’m sorry that you’re going through all this. How is your sister?”
“Still confused about what happened but she’s out of her fugue.”
Dani frowned, her eyes sheened with tears, probably not for Ainsley but maybe, just maybe for him, or maybe for her own pain and guilt. “I’m sorry I didn’t…” She bit the sentence off, her jaw working. “I didn’t think you killed Eddie, I just couldn’t imagine it but I couldn’t ignore the evidence. Also, JT and I thought if we worked the case, we could…I don’t know, find out the truth because we cared about it more. Another set of detectives wouldn’t have been invested in what happened to you.”
“I appreciate that, I do but you did seem convinced of my guilt when Edrisa gave you the autopsy report,” he said and at her stunned expression added, “Don’t be angry at Edrisa for hiding me in the morgue. Not everyone has her blind faith in me. I know that and I know you have your trust issues. I did lie to you and I’m sorry for that but I didn’t see any other way out of the cage Endicott had made for me. I owe Edrisa for letting me listen in. Being there gave her and I the key to figuring out how Endicott framed me.”
“Gil was beside himself, trying to figure out how you were framed. He never believed you were guilty. You have to know that.”
“I never doubted it. Gil knows me too well…always trying to convince me I’m not my father and he’s right. I’m not a killer. Ainsley was stronger than me. If not for her…” He looked away. “Endicott would have destroyed us.” He didn’t know any more if he meant that literally or not. Endicott probably wouldn’t have killed them but that was their story and they weren’t about to waiver. Endicott was terrible and he needed to put him in the past. Too bad he failed routinely at keeping the past in the past.
“I can’t imagine witnessing that. I wanted…” Dani paused, pained. “I should have been talking to you before this.”
“We have. We’ve spoken in Gil’s room.”
“You know what I mean. We haven’t talked about this.” Dani glanced up as the waitress came back with her chicken afritada, slipping the tomato and garlic rich stew in front of her before giving him his big bowl of chicken and ginger soup.
The smell of the tinola should have made him hungry but it didn’t. He clamped his jaw against the water brash that flooded his mouth. Dani reached across the table and put a hand over his.
“Was this a bad idea? I can get this to go.”
“No.” He picked up his spoon and sipped some of the broth. He wasn’t up to eating an actual piece of chicken yet. The warmth filled him. Malcolm ate another spoonful. “This is good. I’m sorry. I know I’m not being easy to be with right now.”
“I didn’t come here thinking you would be. I know you’re hurting, Malcolm. I wanted to help because I know I’m part of what’s been tearing you up.” Dani pushed her own food to the side. “But maybe eating and talking was dumb.”
“We can be done talking about it. I’m not holding it against you.”
She cocked up her eyebrows in disbelief. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he believed himself. “I put you in cuffs twice.”
“And probably would have a third time because I know they were putting out a murder warrant on me. You told me at the start of this why. I accept that. You and JT haven’t always wanted me on the team. I know that too.” Malcolm spooned up more soup. The ginger was settling his stomach and he was getting hungry.
“That’s not…okay, it’s true but Gil told us you were one of us and he was right.”
“You two will never know just how much I appreciate the chance you gave me. You made it the best job I’ve had. You saw how the FBI treated me. You and JT were never that mean to me. I can either forgive and move on and hope to reclaim what we had or I can hold onto a grudge and lose that. We don’t have to hold on to all this guilt and pain. It’s exhausting me. I have a sister in trouble, a mother who is holding on by a thread, a father who somehow survived a prison riot he probably started, my dad is in the hospital, barely alive and I lost a woman a cared about. I don’t have the energy to keep being angry at you and JT. Just…I have to know. It was hard, right?”
She reared back. “You can ask me that?”
“Because it’s in that terrible movie in my head, that it wasn’t hard, that it was easy enough to be rid of me. Because that’s the story of my life, Dani. My father tried to kill me. My friends left me. My coworkers betrayed me more than once in Quantico. Just once, I was hoping it was hard to abandon me.”
“It was one of the hardest things we’ve ever had to do. We didn’t want to do it but it had to be done. We tried to protect you as much a we could but…Endicott did the job right.” Her eyes glistened. “Maybe I didn’t show how hard it was for me to think you could have killed Eddie but you did care about Eve and someone stole everything from you both. You wouldn’t be the first to want revenge.”
“True.”
“I didn’t want it to be what it looked like and you certainly didn’t make things easier when you pried off the ankle monitor and took off. And then…” Dani pushed her hair back and then met his gaze directly. “You came to the hospital and took care of me in spite of everything.”
“Because you care about Gil as much as I do. You’ve lost your father and you were afraid you’d lose Gil too. And I care about you. Mother was wrong when she said you weren’t my friend. Of course, she was pissed at the time.”
“She told me I was your best friend once.”
“That’s much closer to the truth. You’re my friend and you were scared and I didn’t need to be angry with you then. You needed me to be kind.”
“You were afraid you’d lose him too.” Dani smiled faintly. “Do you realize you called him your dad?”
“I know. By now you and JT realize that’s true. My father’s figured it out as well which isn’t good but Gil has taken care of me since I was ten years old. This week I learned my mother’s had feelings for him since those first days, which is deeply weird for me because when I was a kid that’s what I wanted but now…I don’t know how I missed it.” He managed a little more soup. “But if what you wanted to hear when you asked me here is I forgive you, then yes we’re good.”
Dani wet her lips and pulled her plate back to her. “Good but more than forgiveness I was also thinking that you need help and that we should have been looking out for you since all this happened. You’re dealing with more than anyone should. It’s good just to see you eating a little.”
“The ginger is helping my stomach. I’m glad you brought me here. I needed this.”
“Keep eating then. We can talk about something better…like this bombshell about your mom.” She smiled.
He winced. “I am not sure I’m ready to have Mom dating Gil once he leaves the hospital and she has plans. This is going to be so weird.” He attempted a piece of the chicken.
“It’s going to be amusing…probably to everyone who isn’t you.”
“I can hear you and JT giggling now.”
“Well, isn’t that better than what your weird mind theater shows you?”
“Mother and Gil alive, well and driving off in his next muscle car to do god knows what? It’s good but no less scary.” He smiled and she snorted. “Hey, Dani.”
“Yeah?”
“Want to split some halo-halo with me?”
She broke out into a wide grin. “You want to skip right to dessert?”
“Always.” He could almost taste the ube ice cream in the layered dessert.
“I brought you here because you needed a little kindness and just look at you. Your eyes are blue again.”
“They’re always blue.”
She shook her head. “When you’re sad, they’re almost gray. You picturing something sweet and they’re practically the color of the sky. Your eyes are expressive, more so than anyone I know and yes, I’ll have dessert. I’ll box up the rest of my lunch. You, on the other hand, keep drinking yours. It’s doing you good.”
“You’re what’s doing me good,” he replied and she gave his hand a squeeze. He took all the comfort from that as he could. Malcolm couldn’t eat the meat in his soup but he drained all the broth. Halo-Halo would be so good after that. The dessert was like the team, a bunch of different things that maybe shouldn’t go together but really did work well when paired up. He was content the bad was behind them. He wasn’t good yet but he was on the path. This time he wasn’t walking it alone and that was more than he’d had in so long. Dani might not fully realize what this simple act of kindness, a bowl of soup, some sweets and an apology truly meant to him but he hoped she did. He needed for them to heal the rift in the team and this was the first, best step. For the first time in many days, Malcolm found hope and held onto it tight.