Lena did lock the door to her room, though she later went to sleep at Zoe's.
She probably didn't even hear a lot of the knocking that went on, either from Lucky or anyone else, because she spent most of the night scrubbing herself clean in the shower and previous to that, plucking little shards of glass out of her legs with a tweezer. She doesn't need anyone taking care of her. She doesn't need anyone wanting to. And she certainly doesn't need to talk about this with any of the rest ever. It's gonna take a lot more than that to break her, alright. Besides, the key turned out to be the right one, and Carl, Vlad, and his buddies are probably being shipped to Russian Interpol as we speak.
She saw some of the entries that were locked to her and some of the missed phone calls. She answered one journal entry, to let him know she was okay because not informing him of that would be cruel. Since that's all he asks, she limits herself to assuring she's fine and she doesn't look to see if it got a reply.
As far as she's concerned, his moving out speaks well enough for itself.
Sonny and the rest are probably feeling like pins and needles around her, since she shuts down the subject before it can be addressed. This gets her a nice studio out of the deal, right across teh bar. It'll be nice to have a project to focus on and to have space of her own if she ever needs it. She doesn't plan on moving out of the Crowbar any time soon but it's nice to have something that's just hers. She spent most of Saturday painting the walls on it without getting much sleep.
Distractions are so important to people with a strong Calling, and it's easy to immerse herself in it completely until she loses track of time.
It's Sunday and Lena has decided the wall on the left will become a mural. She's kept a lot of the polaroids Elena took over the years, along with some of the polaroids Lou has taken recently. She wants a mural of them and that's what she plans to work on for the day. Never mind she isn't very good at painting walls or making murals. It's just soothing to do so.
She's wearing baggy overalls and a thin black tee, and against her better judgment, the Beatles bracelets she was given on Valentine's Day. There are several boxes of Chinese takeout on one of the tables at the center, still unopened. She isn't expecting anybody since she was quite firm about wanting to do this on her own. Of course, she doesn't know John has summoned Lucky to the studio to meet up and discuss something of utmost important!!! (yes, John probably used three exclamation points in his entry.)
Both he and Zoe apparently decided it was intervention time. :x
Lucky spent most of his days drinking when he wasn't writing to her or calling her on the phone. There was nothing else to do except go on monster hunts with those at the Tower who went on patrol, which was never the same as fighting monsters with her or with John or with anyone from the Crowbar. It didn't give him much of a sense of fulfillment. He didn't feel like he was where he should be, but it was something to do other than drinking.
By this last day, he started to assume that she didn't want anything to do with him, but it didn't stop him from writing or calling still. Lucky told her that he would fight for her, for them, and he meant it.
He should have been suspicious when he saw John's entry, but he hadn't even considered that an intervention might be in the works. The first thing that came to his mind since he had spent so long worrying about Lena that she was hurt or in grave danger. If it wasn't her, it would have to be someone else.
Lucky was worried and in Chicago, it's not exactly paranoid to be worried so he didn't waste much time examining the reasons why John could have written him. He was worried that Lena was in danger. Although she had responded to his entry to say that she was okay, it was hard to believe that and she didn't talk to him any further than that so he knew she didn't want to have anything to do with him. Lucky wasn't willing to push himself on her still so it-- he had to stick to writing and calling, several times a day.
It's not enough to say he's sorry and to know that she has read that. He needed to say more, to explain in depth why he was sorry even if it didn't change anything afterwards. Even if she still wanted nothing to do with him, he'd still be writing every day. It isn't in him to stop.
When Lucky steps into the studio, he is not expecting to find Lena there, because it was John that had written him. Miraculously and thankfully, he is sober, his last drink was a few hours ago. Lucky freezes at the sight of her, standing there in clothes that he associates with her and surrounded by paint and Chinese takeout boxes. It's a beautiful sight, and his heart aches with it. Before he can think of what to say or what to do, he hears the door lock behind him and he closes his eyes, wincing.
He clears his throat before he opens his eyes again, scanning the apartment.
"John told me that he had to meet me here to discuss something... important," Lucky says, and it almost sounds like an apology. If she doesn't want to see him yet, he shouldn't... be here invading her space. "I'm going to guess that he's not here at all."
It was so strange. She's now so used to him being the first thing she sees when she wakes up and the last thing she sees when she goes to bed. She's used to not even using her bed and always ending up in his, stealing one of his shirts to sleep in. It felt wrong not seeing him there, much as her pride wouldn't allow her to admit it.
She's placing a can of white paint on the floor when the door opens, and when she straightens up to see who it is, she freezes too, half-way. It's one thing to will yourself not to open up your journal to see what someone wrote. It's one thing to turn your cell phone off so you don't know when someone is calling.
It's another to have them standing in front of you. All she kind of wants to do is hug him right now. It's not fair.
"Oh, he's here." Lena closes her eyes at the sound of the door locking, finding it infinitely easy to put two and two together. When she opens them, she points toward the window where John is waving at them enthusiastically [ ] and not the least bit apologetic. He lifts up his hand to reveal the studio keys are in its grasp, and then he's off, tugging someone behind him.
Lena only has to look at the blur of curly black hair to know who the traitor is.
She sticks both hands into the back pockets of the overalls she's wearing, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She is acutely aware of his presence and how small the studio is. "...Hey," she says quietly, for lack of anything better to say. She opens her mouth and closes it several times. "I didn't... answer any of the calls. Not because I didn't want to--okay so at first I didn't want to--but mostly it was because I didn't.... know what to say."
At first it had been a matter of pride and the fact she was furious, but then one day turned to two turned to three turned to five and nothing at all felt like a good thing to say, or the right thing to say, least of all through a journal or on the phone. She still doesn't, but she'd be lying if she said she wasn't relieved to see him.
It was incredibly strange, and Lucky wasn't able to fulfill the promises that he had made to her. He promised to kiss her every morning and every night. He made quite a few promises. There was something about that that made him feel almost as terrible as the rest, but he had been unwilling to come back until he had some sign that she was ready to talk to him again.
As much as the Crowbar has become his family too, it's hers. They will always be more her family than his own, and it should be that way. She was the reason that he was able to find and meet them. They would all remind him of her, and he couldn't stay knowing what had happened.
His hands slip into his pockets too. It's a relief to see her as much as it aches. He'd wanted to see her in the flesh, needed that reassurance before he could fully convince himself that she was okay, and he turns his head when she points only to see John on the other side of the glass with what is quite obviously Zoe in toe. Lucky sighs heavily, pressing a hand against his face and letting it slide down to remain by his side instead.
"Hi," Lucky says, and he is still standing with his back against the door in an attempt to navigate this situation without doing anything that he shouldn't do.
He takes in a breath at what she says next. It's good to know that it's not that she didn't want to talk to him, and he looks down at the floor between them. Lucky swallows and takes a tentative step forward, raising his gaze again so he can face her.
"I thought you didn't want to see me, and I didn't want to... force myself on you if you didn't want to have anything to do with me," Lucky says, and he pulls his hands from his pockets to fold his arms across his chest, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. "After what happened, I didn't really feel like I had that... right."
It felt like a violation to her. It felt like he wouldn't be respecting her like he should have.
It's not like she didn't make a few promises herself she hasn't kept as a result. And she has to wonder if love is a feeling you can really trust when it's that easy to break promises and it can be drowned out entirely by anger. And there was no love that night that she could feel. No love and no regard and no partnership. She can't remember the last time she'd felt so small, and she honestly never thought it'd happen to them. Or of it did, it'd be because of the Calling.
There's a slight frown on her face, and she keeps her hands on the back pockets she'd placed them in, for lack of having anything to do with them. She only slides one of out of the pockets to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, the bangles jingling against each other at the motion. "You... wouldn't ever force me to do anything. I know that. That's not--that's not what it was about at all."
The entries were about apologizing, not about seeing each other, as far as she could tell.
Part of her keeping silent and distanced from the rest came with her wanting to be sure she wouldn't fall back into old patterns. She'd do it with Rick all the time. Twist herself into painful knots and apologize for things that weren't her fault, do whatever it took to make it right again whether it was her place to or not. She never wants to be that girl anymore, as much as she knows this isn't the same situation at all.
She doesn't know what she is anymore, except maybe miserable.
Lena keeps her gaze on his arms as they fold across his chest. She doesn't know how you can feel distant from someone when they're in the same room. "Lucky, we all have our dark moments and we all have our demons. We all do things we're not proud of and we can't always hold back when the wrong buttons are pushed. You're not the first and you're not the last it's happened to. We're all... made of light and shadows, remember? None of us expect you not to have those moments and neither of us... knew it'd get that bad."
She did not expect him to not have reactions to what he was seeing all around him, which was heinous. She doesn't think any less of him and that's--Sonny has taught her that. She, of all people, would understand what it's like to be held in the grasp of something that gives you no control and being sorry for it later because it felt like a completely different person.
Whether it's a feeling that can be trusted or not, Lucky does trust it. He wasn't built another way. He cannot take that love away. Even in the anger, he loved her. It doesn't stop as much as it can be drowned out by other feelings, as much as he treated her in a way that he will never forgive himself for.
It's the sound of the jangle that brings his attention to her wrist and to the bracelets that are there. It almost makes him smile but then it doesn't because Valentine's Day feels like so long ago when it wasn't at all. "I don't know that... I didn't want you to have to see me unless you wanted to, I guess. Even if it was only long enough to tell me to go away again."
He didn't know how angry she was with him, and Lucky recognized that his yelling at her after what she had been through, it had put him in line with someone he never wanted to be, someone that could make her feel terrible. It is a part of love too... or apparently, it's apart of his previous relationships.
Lucky steps toward her again, and his arms fall down again after she speaks. He looks away from her again, swallowing past the tightening in his throat. "Whether it's expected or not, I'm still-- I'm sorry for it. I'm so sorry. I never wanted you to see that side of me, and I never, ever wanted you to be on the other side of it. The way I treated you after it had happened. I couldn't see straight. I just--"
He sucks in a sharp breath, and it hurts. It burns and the burning reflects in his eyes, jaw locked.
"You did everything right, and I did everything wrong that day. It was never about not trusting your judgement, and I'm sorry that I gave you that impression. I didn't know where he was taking you or who he was. I saw his hands on you like that, and I couldn't-- It was like I couldn't breathe. There was just this red, and I kept seeing what could have happened to you because of this man that doesn't think anything of women, that thinks they're-- merchandise."
It makes him sick to say it out loud. It makes him physically ill.
Couldn't stop seeing Elizabeth in the snow or hearing his father admit to what he'd done.
Lucky looks back up at her. "I'm sorry, Lena." He never wanted to make her feel like he knows he must have made her feel after that.
Lena isn't sure she trusts it anymore. She always used to. Or maybe what she's fixating on isn't love at all. They said they made each other better and that's what love means. How amazing and how terrible that in five days, in one night, that can all be placed in such a far away thing that's out of her reach. Maybe he does love her. Maybe he's mistaken it for something else.
She just can't feel it since that night. Maybe she hasn't let herself. She honestly doesn't know.
"I was..." Lena takes a deep breath and looks away, wiping at her cheek. "I was furious and I was confused and on top of all of that, I felt like the scraped gum at the back of someone's shoe. And on top of all of that, I was scared. Do you--do you even realize if you hadn't been wearing that ring, you'd be dead? You'd be dead."
Her voice cracks on the last word and she can't help it. That's what got to her the most. It wasn't the yelling, because she was yelling and berating him herself, and what happened with Vlad had taken a back seat to the pure panic that took over when she literally thought he'd die. That they wouldn't make it out alive. That Sonny would be told he's lost one or two more of his family.
It isn't that she doesn't trust his abilities or she doesn't think he's good at what he does. But when it came down to it, they were outnumbered and a good chunk of them were demons, wired to be inhumanly strong and he was the one they'd attack with the intent to kill since he was the one that threw the first punch. The thought of losing him--that is what made her physically ill.
Lena only looks back his way once he starts explaining. She starts to get that feeling again as the pieces click into place. It's a pattern, it's a trigger, something similar if not on a lesser scale happened with Rick and that strip joint. His anger wasn't really about her and Vlad. She'd ask what it is, what happened to him or someone he's loved. She'd press if she had any idea where they stand. But she doesn't, and the uncertainty wins. And maybe it's important that she accept the apology before she knows the exact reasons.
It requires a level of faith that isn't always in someone to give. But she'd want that. She'd want someone to see the demon and still care and see something not ugly. Still look and see Lena despite whatever else she did or felt or said. There isn't a more difficult test in love, she thinks.
"I don't--" she shakes her head and curses herself inwardly for the blur of tears that don't let her see straight. "I don't know what impression you gave me anymore. Everything about that night is just a big blotch. I know how difficult it must've been for you to see someone you care about being treated that way. It was a horrible mission where nothing went right and I never want to do any thing similar to that again. Sonny and Gates and John, none of them would've reacted any differently if they'd seen me or Zoe like that. Not even Lou."
Some of them would've reacted worse. Especially John if it'd been Zoe. There'd have been murder, no questions asked.
She sighs and turns to look at him, face crumpling slightly at the burn in his eyes that mirrors her own. I'm sorry, Lena. "I know you are. And I forgive you for it, for all of it. You're still Lucky to me, I just didn't have the words till now."
Lucky would fight to prove it to her if she ever tried to say that what he felt for her isn't love, if he ever understood that she thought that for even a moment. He knows in his heart that it isn't a mistake.
He knows that you can love someone so much and anger can drown it out for a short time and then it can return, but it doesn't take anything away from that love. It doesn't mean that what it isn't love. He had to learn that the hard way and multiple times. It's no easy lesson.
Love is a perfect notion. People expect too much out of it.
People are flawed. People fail. I fail. Regularly.
It comes to him suddenly, how much he misses his father, how much he'd like to hear his words right now and hear that faith that his father had in him in his darkest moments. Somehow Luke who had done the worst of things could look at him and know that he wouldn't follow that same path.
Lucky cannot watch her wipe that tear away and not move even closer to her, closing the distance between them. Do you even realize if you hadn't been wearing that ring, you'd be dead?. "I know," he says, and his voice sounds as shaky as he feels. "I know. I didn't... I didn't think about that before I jumped at him, and there's no excuse for it. I realize that I put you at risk too, and that it was a miracle that we got... out of there alive, that you got out of there alive, and that's on me."
In any other situation, he would have thought of something else to do instead of running at him. He would have thought of some subtle way to get back there. Lucky studied the plans too, and he could have realized where they were going. He could have moved closer to the office to listen for sounds of a struggle.
If he'd been thinking, he never would have been so reckless. Never. There hadn't been room for thought in his head. He saw that man with his hands on her like that, forcing himself on her even if all logic told him that she was playing a role and that she could take care of herself in a one-on-one situation with him.
"I never want to-- I don't think Sonny will be running missions like that ever... again. From the conversation, he had with me. It seemed like he-- like he wouldn't put anyone in that position again, you or Zoe or anyone else. It was terrifying to see you treated like that, and it was painful, and sickening and-- Sonny didn't sound like he'd be running those missions again at all."
He sounded guilty, not as guilty as Lucky felt but close enough. Through the yelling, there'd been guilt.
When her face crumples, Lucky does not keep his distance at all. He hasn't been questioning what she feels or where they stand if only because, he still trusts in it. He trusts that he loves her and she loves him beyond everything else. Lucky steps forward, cupping the side of her face.
His throat tightens further, and tears slip down his face as he breathes her in. "I shouldn't have left either, but I didn't--" Lucky breathes out and breathes in again, breathes her in again, reminding himself of the familiarity of his hand against the side of her face, the warmth of it. "I didn't know what else to do."
What he went through in his life to make that a trigger for him is something he will tell her. He feels that he can, that he wants to, and that he has to, but it's a matter of finding the words.
It's not something she'd have been able to take without losing parts of herself to the demon for good. She's known this for a while now, that she wouldn't be able to bury someone else in their family without being damaged beyond repair.
And she was doing so well, with not being afraid of what could happen down the line, with not letting that rule her life or her decisions, but she feels like she's back at square one.
Lena doesn't answer when he says he knows. She believes he does, but it doesn't take away the dread of knowing how differently the outcome could've been.
People do expect too much of love. That it's stronger than anything. That it can save you. That it can be enough against each and every odd stacked against you in some other corner that's too big to be any sort of competition to your own. "It's not about pointing the finger, Lucky. It's not about who's to blame. or holding someone accountable. It's the fact you could've died and I wouldn't have been able to live with that."
She was the one that brought him to the Crowbar. She was the one that started it all in motion, knowing how dark it can get and knowing, as good as it can be, how many demons can be brought out by the work they do and the life they lead. She's known it. She's known it from the start, but it's always been a step up from the life she had.
"They're important," she says, running a hand through her face, shaking her head in refusal. It's not aimed at him, but at the decision. "I agreed to the mission and I knew what I was getting myself into. It's not like I ever thought it'd be a walk in the park, but it's important. He doesn't have to send us to anything similar ever again, but we did a good thing. You can't do the right thing without getting your hands dirty sometimes."
And she'll talk to Sonny about it, and she'll be honest with how hard it was but how she does not regret doing it, not for one moment.
So many girls live their whole lives thinking they're not worth loving. They afall into abusive relationships like Lena, or they're sold to the highest bidder, or they grow up without zero sense of self-worth. They believe that there isn't a God, there isn't anything to save them, there isn't anything but these animals that ship them from one place to another, making them do horrible things starting from the age of ten. She doesn't regret it at all, despite what she believes it's cost her.
Lena's face crumples further when he cups the side of her face, and her cheeks are suddenly flooded with warm tears. She's practically radiating the doubt and the fear and the paralyzing thoughts in her head. She doesn't want him blaming himself or thinking she hates him. But as for the rest?
"Maybe you had the right idea." In leaving. In getting away from them.
Lena looks down at the space between them and works at the lump in her throat before she tries to speak again, before she has the courage to look back up at him now that he's so close. "I'm not suggesting this because I'm mad at you or I want to hurt you or because I don't love you anymore. I said it to you once. There's more to this life here than the Crowbar. There's more to it than the job we do and the people living there and... me. Maybe this happened as some sort of stop signal. To avoid more hurt in the long run or to help you find something better or before you get killed."
She inhales sharply and says the words quickly before she can't get them out at all. "You just don't belong with me, after all."
Lucky knows that she lost so much and that she wouldn't be able to take his loss on top of all the other losses in her life.
It hadn't occurred to him in that moment. If he had been able to take a moment to think about it, he would have realized the dangers that were present not only to himself but to her if he dared making a wrong move.
He could have died then. He could have died two days ago when he fought a monster on the sidewalk during patrol. As long as he lives, he has a chance of dying. He will always be human, always be more vulnerable than the rest to death.
"You could've died too, Lena," Lucky says quietly. "Every day that we fight and every day that we don't fight, there's a chance that we could die."
If she had said that out loud, he would argue it. He made the choice to stay. He followed her down during her mission and he needed something more. There is no doubt in his mind that if she hadn't found him, he would have found something worse. What could be better than a family?
It's all he has ever wanted in his life.
"They are important. I don't think he is stopping the missions to go in after those people, just stopping the ones that force someone to be in the position that you were in," Lucky says, and he doesn't think those are missions that the Crowbar can do if all the men would react violently to Zoe or Lena being treated that way. "I know... we did a good thing. I was almost afraid the key would be wrong, and I'd have... but it was the right key."
Thank God, it was the right key. Lucky is not a women, but he has seen the treatment that so many of the women in his life have suffered through. Elizabeth, his mother, his grandmother was kidnapped by the Cassadine brothers and drugged for years, Maxie was assaulted, his sister had an abortion and was kidnapped by Franco. He saw the other women at that bar, and he wanted to save them all, wanted that place to never exist.
When her face crumples further, he presses his hand against her face further, fingers slipping back into her hair and leaning forward to rest his forehead against hers.
Maybe you had the right idea. Lucky almost takes a step back, but he doesn't. He doesn't. His hand remains against the side of her face.
He shakes his head instead, insistently, and his hand slides down until both hands are holding on to her shoulders. "No, no, that's not why this happened. It wasn't a sign. You're saying that because you're scared, and I told you that I would fight you, fight for us, and I meant it-- It's not you that almost got me killed, Lena. It was my decision to join the Crowbar, and it was my mistake, my inability to take a step back."
You just don't belong with me, after all.
That hurts. That hurts more than he could have anticipated it hurting, because he never expected her to say it. It feels like a knife has buried itself in his chest, and he still shakes his head, tears in his eyes, spilling down his face.
"That isn't true," Lucky says when he can speak through it, and he wipes his own face, but he hasn't created any further distance between the two of them. He remains that breath away from her with his hands against her shoulders still to keep her centered, to keep them both centered. "Do you know what I did for the five days that I wasn't here? I was drinking. I went on patrols with people at the Tower to find monsters because there was nothing else to do, and I drank, and I didn't feel like I belonged or like I had a purpose at all or like it mattered if I had a purpose or if I didn't. It was just... it was existing, and I missed you and I missed that place and I missed having a family. I don't know if... I had my doubts about whether or not I can do this job after how much I screwed up five days ago. I thought I would be a liability to everyone here, to you, but--"
His breath hitches, and he shuts his eyes before opening them again to look at her.
"If I don't belong here with you, where my heart is, where am I supposed to belong?"
Silence, thick and sharp and crackling like muted static.
It takes a moment for his words to roll over her, but she doesn't recoil. It doesn't have the same impact it does when they speak of his death. She's going to die soon, no matter what. A bitter voice wants to say, it'll only have come a year early, anyway.
She doesn't. But it's true, a tiny voice says.
You don't know that, Lena argues internally instead.
She bites the insides of her cheeks until she tastes blood.
"I know I would've," Lena says instead, considerably calm considering the conversation they are having. It's real, like any other conversation they've ever had, but nothing's ever hurt as much, she doesn't think. Nothing has ever felt as uncertain and it's like navigating through very, very thick fog with not a lighthouse in sight. "I wouldn't have wanted to make it out alive if you didn't."
And she doesn't care if that makes her weak or not because at least it's honest.
As for Sonny, she says nothing further. She nods in agreement and scrubs a hand against her cheek in exhaustion. She's slept less in the past five days. Less than she usually does, even.
It was hard to when she was thinking about him.
Do you know what I did for the five days that I wasn't here?
Lena shakes her head, stifling a noise that sounds suspiciously like a sob cut off by her teeth biting down on her lower lip when he answers. What he says hurts. Picturing him drinking without any sort of purpose hurts. There's some relief he was at the Kashtta instead of the many other places that would've loved to get their hands on him instead, but most of all there's just this raw, constant ache that keeps pushing at every wall in her chest.
There's a quiet, quiet voice that wants tear it all down, his pain and hers both.
If it can't take anyone else's pain and use it, if Lena keeps depriving it of what it wants, it'll eat itself from the inside out. Until they're both mad. Won't it? "I know what I feel and I know what I think and they're not the same thing," Lena finally says shakily. She doesn't remember what it's like anymore to live without that division of demon and human. She doesn't remember what it's like to experience love without that something else. "I know what I--what I want to say, and I know what a part of me... that isn't me wants to say" (demon) "and it's not the same thing, either."
And she's fighting, she's fighting past that ugly voice that's twisting everything beautiful she could possibly feel for him into something that isn't beautiful anymore, that says it doesn't want it anymore, that says it wants to kill it. That's bathing in the hurt and the guilt and the anger because the rest feels so far away. She isn't insignificant. This isn't insignificant. It isn't ugly. It's not. It's not.
Lena rests her forehead against his gently somewhere amidst the silence. She breathes out, breathes in, lets the tears flood down. I don't want to hurt you, she thinks. I would never want to hurt you.
And she just did. She sees it in his face, in his eyes when she opens her own to look into them. He hasn't moved away and surprisingly, she hasn't either. There's still that breath-away-only distance and she breathes out, the soft warmth of it fanning across his cheek. It's meant to steady her, ground her, but his hands on her shoulders do that more than anything else.
"We broke so many promises to each other, Lucky," she whispers brokenly. She can still remember when she made hers, and they feel so long ago when it was just over a month ago.
Lucky notices the difference in reactions from her reaction to his death to her reaction to her own. It's glaring, but he knows that her death hurts him so much more than the thought of his own so he understands. She doesn't actually say the words, but it is like he can hear them in the thick silence between them. It would have only come a year early.
He'd asked her how much time she had, and she had said one to five years. He will always remember that. Lucky will always remember how it felt to hear her tell him how limited her time truly was. While he isn't constantly aware of it (if he was, he would drive himself crazy with it), he knows.
She was dealt a terrible hand, and it's why it's important that she get the most out of what time she does have. They all should. No one has guarantees, but most people don't have expiration dates like hers either.
Lucky closes his eyes at her words, and he's not-- It isn't a surprise to him that she has said it, because she has told him before that she couldn't handle another loss. After losing six of their family, he doesn't know that any of them can handle another person in their family dying. He doesn't know how the world can expect them to continue on.
"I know," he says again, quieter this time, at trying to imagine them both dying in that bar together, at how the Crowbar would have reacted when they found out. "The world couldn't ask any more of you."
She has already been through so much more in a few years than what most people go through in a lifetime. She has already lost so much more than most people will ever have to lose.
Lucky reads the exhaustion on her face. He is certain that neither of them have been sleeping or eating much in their time apart. They're better together. He meant that when he said it.
The noise that she makes cuts something deep within his heart, and he tightens his hold on her to reassure her. He's here, and he's not drunk. He didn't tell her what he did to hurt her. Lucky would never do anything with that wanting to hurt her, but he told her so she could see how the Crowbar grounds him, how she does. Why it's so good that she stumbled into him that night in October after he'd just fallen through.
He could have ended up somewhere else. There are more bad places for wanderers to get sucked into than good ones in this city. Whatever kind of person he is, he has demons of his own and darkness of his own, and he had already been at the end of his rope when he fell through the rift.
I know what I-- what I want to say, and I know what a part of me... that isn't me wants to say and it's not the same thing, either.
A sharp pain hits in the center of his chest, because he understands what she means without her saying it. Demon. Lucky doesn't tell her that he wants to know what she wants to say, that that is what he wants to hear, because he knows that she knows it and that she is fighting with all that she can to send that demon's wants and words away.
It's why instead of telling her to say it. Say it., he reaches for her face and kisses her, intensely, hard. It's still there. The good is still there, more than the bad. Love hurts but it heals too, but it feels like this kiss feels, and he prays to God that she will feel it, feel what he feels when he so much as thinks of her.
The love that pushes up above all the rest, all the pain and regret and guilt. It's not ugly. It's beautiful, and he wants her to remember that and not that mission, not the person that he was then because it wasn't him and it was.
Lucky rests his forehead back against hers, hands still cradling her face and sliding along her cheeks to wipe away the tears. His hands slide back down against her shoulders, holding her in place again.
He winces at that broken whisper, and it hurts as much as the sob did, and he wants to apologize again but doesn't. Lucky's hands slide down her arms. "We did, but that's... It will happen. You can love someone so much, and you can still hurt them. You can still break the promises that you made to them, and it doesn't mean that you didn't mean those promises or it takes away from those promises. I'm... going to tell you something that my dad told me after the affair that I thought destroyed my ability to love. I stopped believing in it, and my dad told me that... love is a perfect notion. People expect too much from it. People are flawed. They fail." Lucky pauses, because the rest is him and not his father. "I fail. Frequently. We will both fail, but that doesn't take away from what that love means, from what we mean to each other. If it was always happy and perfect, it wouldn't be real."
This next part is harder to say.
"This is not the first time that I'll hurt you," Lucky says, and it's the hardest thing that he's said tonight, because the thought of hurting her hurts him like nothing else could. Her pain hits him more powerfully, more intense than his own does. "If that's something you... don't want in your life despite knowing what goes with it, knowing what we do for each other, I..." He has to swallow past the tightening in his throat, "understand. It hurts sometimes. It can hurt more than anything, but I think it's always-- it's always worth the hurt. It's the most powerful feeling there is, and it's not-- it won't always be good."
She isn't proud that it's true and she isn't proud that he knows.
It feels like weakness but more than that, it feels selfish. Lena knows what it would do to the Crowbar, she knows what it would do to Sonny, and that she'd still prefer to die than to face it goes to show she's a lot more terrible than she's ever given credit for.
That she was dealt the terrible hand, that she got the short end of the stick, it doesn't excuse it. Nothing excuses it when she loves them so much. She doesn't care what the world would ask of her, but she does look up at him at that, gaze sweeping across his face. "What are you asking of me?"
She isn't asking what he has the right to ask of her or not. She wants to know what he'd ask regardless.
"You're sorry. I know you're sorry. From the bottom of my heart, I know it and I do not hold anything against you. My fear and what I can and cannot handle is not on you. That's all me."
She always does sleep better when it's with him. He's had a way of holding her in the past that makes her feel safe and cherished, and the time she spends with him is the time she allows herself to slow down. It allows her to savor life the way it's meant to be savored, and she honestly couldn't say that about herself up until a few months ago.
Lena wasn't really living, either. She'd been existing, and she'd been making some really poor choices, and she'd been distancing herself from those that only had her best interests at heart. She doesn't want to know what would have happened had she botched the mission and she hadn't met him halfway through it. She just doesn't. And when she isn't bogged down by the fresh sting of what's happened or the weight of the doubts clouding everything else, she does see it clearly. She sees how good they are for each other and how much they help each other. There's adventure but there's also stability, and there's trust and there's honesty.
She wouldn't want to lose that, and she knows it, is starting to remember it even before he kisses her. She isn't expecting it and it hits her like an open bruise, but in the best way. Her hands had remained unwillingly at her sides, or in her pockets, hesitant to even reach out but once he reaches for her they reach out in turn, too.
They frame either side of his face and when she kisses him back it's not the way she usually kisses him. There isn't playfulness and an edge of softness to round out the intensity. It's just as hard and it's full of bare need. Her hands remain there, curved over his jawline, and she uses her thumbs to wipe at his cheeks, as well. Her mouth brushes against his cheekbone and she closes her eyes, feeling the fresh tears there. It says what she can't find in words. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I love you.
Lena doesn't flinch, but she feels it somewhere inside, the jolt in her chest that's already raw and aching.
It's not as if he has said something that isn't true. This won't be the last time he hurts her. This won't be the last time she hurts him. It may hurt just as bad as this and she can't imagine anything ever making it hurt like it hurts right now but life gets creative on you in that sense. It will hurt just as bad. It may hurt even worse. At some point, one of them is going to have to grieve the other. Whether they stay together or not, that's going to be true.
"It wasn't... my feelings I was worried about." Lena shudders quietly, and when she speaks again, it's just as impossible and hard to say them. "This is not the last time I will hurt you. This is not the last time I will have a knee-jerk reaction of pushing you away and saying what I know will wound deep. I just don't want there to come a time when something inside me is going to want--" she cuts herself off and it's not me she wants to add, but it is, in a way. It is. "It won't want to just hurt you. It'd want to destroy what you feel and how you feel it. It wouldn't just hurt. It'd twist into something unrecognizable so you don't remember it was ever good at all."
And I just want to be normal. And they've talked about it and she hasn't told him anything he doesn't know but then, she knows all of this, too. Or she thought she did. She really did need to hear the words. She wasn't trusting anything anymore, not even her own feelings because which were those?
"I know you'll hurt me," she whispers, voice raspy and tired and something close to bittersweet. "I know you won't want to. I've never once thought it wasn't worth it. Even after--what happened, I don't think differently of it or of you. I don't feel differently." It's important that he know that. She doesn't see him differently and she isn't scared of him or what darkness he could possess.
How could she when she's so intimately acquainted with her own? "Lucky, I..." and she lets out a shaky breath. She wants to bet on them. She does. As vividly as she is aware of all of the rest, as much as she struggles with it, the struggle never has to do with doubting what she feels and what she wants. Her hands curve on either side of his face again and she leans up in tiptoes to kiss him.
Softly this time, but just as intense, in a way. "Come home," she whispers against his mouth, fingers threading into his hair at the nape. "Come home, please."
Lucky doesn't think any less of her for wanting it even though she thinks less of herself for it. He doesn't think that he can. Would it be better for them to watch her reaction to his death? If she got so scared from his brush with death on this mission, how much more powerfully would she react to his actual death if she had lost him but survived?
It's not that he thinks himself so self important that he doesn't think she can make it through his death, but he knows that she has already lost so much and he knows what grief can do to a person. He has seen it. He has felt the effects of it himself and watched his father suffer through the grief of losing Laura, how he spiraled into alcoholism so quickly after that.
What are you asking of me? It's that question when she looks at him like that that almost steals the air from his chest. It's the way that she looks that makes it hard to breathe for a moment. He sucks in a breath when he can manage it. "For you to be with me for as long as possible. I promised you forever, and I thought that promise went both ways," Lucky says and there's a small smile on his face, because he remembers her making that promise and he is trying to hold back the tears instead because it will never be forever. "I'm asking you to not hold your love back from me, not an inch of it. you never have before, and it's all that I want from you. I want you."
It's the only way that he knows how to put it. He would ask of her what they've always had even if it felt like they were in danger of losing that these past five days, when he watched her walk away from him.
"Okay," Lucky says, and he nods because she has forgiven him. She understands that he's sorry but she has doesn't hold it against him. It is easier to really believe it, the more times that he hears it.
The way that she is in his arms, the feel of her close to him makes it easier for him to sleep too. He is reminded that she is near, that he knows where he is in this universe that he doesn't technically exist in. There's no being lost, searching for a path that cannot be found.
His path is with her. His journey is here. It centers him, stabilizes him, and he is able to sleep. They are so good for each other, and he can remember that because as painful as it feels right now, it's better than the aching, emptiness, lost feeling that he had in the five days that he spent without her.
Lena kisses him back with intensity and need, and he meets it with need of his own, with the strength of his feelings in his chest without holding any of it back. He dives into that kiss as intensely as she does, because he didn't know. He didn't know that they'd be back here again like this after what had happened. There had been moments that he had been terrified that that was it. I love you, the kiss says back to her, his hands say to her skin. I will always love you. And this is love, what he is feeling. It is so much more than lust, beyond friendship, past anything else. It's love, and he can feel it breathing through the whole of him as he grabs hold of her like if he doesn't, the rest of the world will rip her away.
She probably didn't even hear a lot of the knocking that went on, either from Lucky or anyone else, because she spent most of the night scrubbing herself clean in the shower and previous to that, plucking little shards of glass out of her legs with a tweezer. She doesn't need anyone taking care of her. She doesn't need anyone wanting to. And she certainly doesn't need to talk about this with any of the rest ever. It's gonna take a lot more than that to break her, alright. Besides, the key turned out to be the right one, and Carl, Vlad, and his buddies are probably being shipped to Russian Interpol as we speak.
She saw some of the entries that were locked to her and some of the missed phone calls. She answered one journal entry, to let him know she was okay because not informing him of that would be cruel. Since that's all he asks, she limits herself to assuring she's fine and she doesn't look to see if it got a reply.
As far as she's concerned, his moving out speaks well enough for itself.
Sonny and the rest are probably feeling like pins and needles around her, since she shuts down the subject before it can be addressed. This gets her a nice studio out of the deal, right across teh bar. It'll be nice to have a project to focus on and to have space of her own if she ever needs it. She doesn't plan on moving out of the Crowbar any time soon but it's nice to have something that's just hers. She spent most of Saturday painting the walls on it without getting much sleep.
Distractions are so important to people with a strong Calling, and it's easy to immerse herself in it completely until she loses track of time.
It's Sunday and Lena has decided the wall on the left will become a mural. She's kept a lot of the polaroids Elena took over the years, along with some of the polaroids Lou has taken recently. She wants a mural of them and that's what she plans to work on for the day. Never mind she isn't very good at painting walls or making murals. It's just soothing to do so.
She's wearing baggy overalls and a thin black tee, and against her better judgment, the Beatles bracelets she was given on Valentine's Day. There are several boxes of Chinese takeout on one of the tables at the center, still unopened. She isn't expecting anybody since she was quite firm about wanting to do this on her own. Of course, she doesn't know John has summoned Lucky to the studio to meet up and discuss something of utmost important!!! (yes, John probably used three exclamation points in his entry.)
Both he and Zoe apparently decided it was intervention time. :x
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By this last day, he started to assume that she didn't want anything to do with him, but it didn't stop him from writing or calling still. Lucky told her that he would fight for her, for them, and he meant it.
He should have been suspicious when he saw John's entry, but he hadn't even considered that an intervention might be in the works. The first thing that came to his mind since he had spent so long worrying about Lena that she was hurt or in grave danger. If it wasn't her, it would have to be someone else.
Lucky was worried and in Chicago, it's not exactly paranoid to be worried so he didn't waste much time examining the reasons why John could have written him. He was worried that Lena was in danger. Although she had responded to his entry to say that she was okay, it was hard to believe that and she didn't talk to him any further than that so he knew she didn't want to have anything to do with him. Lucky wasn't willing to push himself on her still so it-- he had to stick to writing and calling, several times a day.
It's not enough to say he's sorry and to know that she has read that. He needed to say more, to explain in depth why he was sorry even if it didn't change anything afterwards. Even if she still wanted nothing to do with him, he'd still be writing every day. It isn't in him to stop.
When Lucky steps into the studio, he is not expecting to find Lena there, because it was John that had written him. Miraculously and thankfully, he is sober, his last drink was a few hours ago. Lucky freezes at the sight of her, standing there in clothes that he associates with her and surrounded by paint and Chinese takeout boxes. It's a beautiful sight, and his heart aches with it. Before he can think of what to say or what to do, he hears the door lock behind him and he closes his eyes, wincing.
He clears his throat before he opens his eyes again, scanning the apartment.
"John told me that he had to meet me here to discuss something... important," Lucky says, and it almost sounds like an apology. If she doesn't want to see him yet, he shouldn't... be here invading her space. "I'm going to guess that he's not here at all."
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She's placing a can of white paint on the floor when the door opens, and when she straightens up to see who it is, she freezes too, half-way. It's one thing to will yourself not to open up your journal to see what someone wrote. It's one thing to turn your cell phone off so you don't know when someone is calling.
It's another to have them standing in front of you. All she kind of wants to do is hug him right now. It's not fair.
"Oh, he's here." Lena closes her eyes at the sound of the door locking, finding it infinitely easy to put two and two together. When she opens them, she points toward the window where John is waving at them enthusiastically [
] and not the least bit apologetic. He lifts up his hand to reveal the studio keys are in its grasp, and then he's off, tugging someone behind him.
Lena only has to look at the blur of curly black hair to know who the traitor is.
She sticks both hands into the back pockets of the overalls she's wearing, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She is acutely aware of his presence and how small the studio is. "...Hey," she says quietly, for lack of anything better to say. She opens her mouth and closes it several times. "I didn't... answer any of the calls. Not because I didn't want to--okay so at first I didn't want to--but mostly it was because I didn't.... know what to say."
At first it had been a matter of pride and the fact she was furious, but then one day turned to two turned to three turned to five and nothing at all felt like a good thing to say, or the right thing to say, least of all through a journal or on the phone. She still doesn't, but she'd be lying if she said she wasn't relieved to see him.
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As much as the Crowbar has become his family too, it's hers. They will always be more her family than his own, and it should be that way. She was the reason that he was able to find and meet them. They would all remind him of her, and he couldn't stay knowing what had happened.
His hands slip into his pockets too. It's a relief to see her as much as it aches. He'd wanted to see her in the flesh, needed that reassurance before he could fully convince himself that she was okay, and he turns his head when she points only to see John on the other side of the glass with what is quite obviously Zoe in toe. Lucky sighs heavily, pressing a hand against his face and letting it slide down to remain by his side instead.
"Hi," Lucky says, and he is still standing with his back against the door in an attempt to navigate this situation without doing anything that he shouldn't do.
He takes in a breath at what she says next. It's good to know that it's not that she didn't want to talk to him, and he looks down at the floor between them. Lucky swallows and takes a tentative step forward, raising his gaze again so he can face her.
"I thought you didn't want to see me, and I didn't want to... force myself on you if you didn't want to have anything to do with me," Lucky says, and he pulls his hands from his pockets to fold his arms across his chest, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. "After what happened, I didn't really feel like I had that... right."
It felt like a violation to her. It felt like he wouldn't be respecting her like he should have.
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There's a slight frown on her face, and she keeps her hands on the back pockets she'd placed them in, for lack of having anything to do with them. She only slides one of out of the pockets to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, the bangles jingling against each other at the motion. "You... wouldn't ever force me to do anything. I know that. That's not--that's not what it was about at all."
The entries were about apologizing, not about seeing each other, as far as she could tell.
Part of her keeping silent and distanced from the rest came with her wanting to be sure she wouldn't fall back into old patterns. She'd do it with Rick all the time. Twist herself into painful knots and apologize for things that weren't her fault, do whatever it took to make it right again whether it was her place to or not. She never wants to be that girl anymore, as much as she knows this isn't the same situation at all.
She doesn't know what she is anymore, except maybe miserable.
Lena keeps her gaze on his arms as they fold across his chest. She doesn't know how you can feel distant from someone when they're in the same room. "Lucky, we all have our dark moments and we all have our demons. We all do things we're not proud of and we can't always hold back when the wrong buttons are pushed. You're not the first and you're not the last it's happened to. We're all... made of light and shadows, remember? None of us expect you not to have those moments and neither of us... knew it'd get that bad."
She did not expect him to not have reactions to what he was seeing all around him, which was heinous. She doesn't think any less of him and that's--Sonny has taught her that. She, of all people, would understand what it's like to be held in the grasp of something that gives you no control and being sorry for it later because it felt like a completely different person.
In a way, it is.
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It's the sound of the jangle that brings his attention to her wrist and to the bracelets that are there. It almost makes him smile but then it doesn't because Valentine's Day feels like so long ago when it wasn't at all. "I don't know that... I didn't want you to have to see me unless you wanted to, I guess. Even if it was only long enough to tell me to go away again."
He didn't know how angry she was with him, and Lucky recognized that his yelling at her after what she had been through, it had put him in line with someone he never wanted to be, someone that could make her feel terrible. It is a part of love too... or apparently, it's apart of his previous relationships.
Lucky steps toward her again, and his arms fall down again after she speaks. He looks away from her again, swallowing past the tightening in his throat. "Whether it's expected or not, I'm still-- I'm sorry for it. I'm so sorry. I never wanted you to see that side of me, and I never, ever wanted you to be on the other side of it. The way I treated you after it had happened. I couldn't see straight. I just--"
He sucks in a sharp breath, and it hurts. It burns and the burning reflects in his eyes, jaw locked.
"You did everything right, and I did everything wrong that day. It was never about not trusting your judgement, and I'm sorry that I gave you that impression. I didn't know where he was taking you or who he was. I saw his hands on you like that, and I couldn't-- It was like I couldn't breathe. There was just this red, and I kept seeing what could have happened to you because of this man that doesn't think anything of women, that thinks they're-- merchandise."
It makes him sick to say it out loud. It makes him physically ill.
Couldn't stop seeing Elizabeth in the snow or hearing his father admit to what he'd done.
Lucky looks back up at her. "I'm sorry, Lena." He never wanted to make her feel like he knows he must have made her feel after that.
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She just can't feel it since that night. Maybe she hasn't let herself. She honestly doesn't know.
"I was..." Lena takes a deep breath and looks away, wiping at her cheek. "I was furious and I was confused and on top of all of that, I felt like the scraped gum at the back of someone's shoe. And on top of all of that, I was scared. Do you--do you even realize if you hadn't been wearing that ring, you'd be dead? You'd be dead."
Her voice cracks on the last word and she can't help it. That's what got to her the most. It wasn't the yelling, because she was yelling and berating him herself, and what happened with Vlad had taken a back seat to the pure panic that took over when she literally thought he'd die. That they wouldn't make it out alive. That Sonny would be told he's lost one or two more of his family.
It isn't that she doesn't trust his abilities or she doesn't think he's good at what he does. But when it came down to it, they were outnumbered and a good chunk of them were demons, wired to be inhumanly strong and he was the one they'd attack with the intent to kill since he was the one that threw the first punch. The thought of losing him--that is what made her physically ill.
Lena only looks back his way once he starts explaining. She starts to get that feeling again as the pieces click into place. It's a pattern, it's a trigger, something similar if not on a lesser scale happened with Rick and that strip joint. His anger wasn't really about her and Vlad. She'd ask what it is, what happened to him or someone he's loved. She'd press if she had any idea where they stand. But she doesn't, and the uncertainty wins. And maybe it's important that she accept the apology before she knows the exact reasons.
It requires a level of faith that isn't always in someone to give. But she'd want that. She'd want someone to see the demon and still care and see something not ugly. Still look and see Lena despite whatever else she did or felt or said. There isn't a more difficult test in love, she thinks.
"I don't--" she shakes her head and curses herself inwardly for the blur of tears that don't let her see straight. "I don't know what impression you gave me anymore. Everything about that night is just a big blotch. I know how difficult it must've been for you to see someone you care about being treated that way. It was a horrible mission where nothing went right and I never want to do any thing similar to that again. Sonny and Gates and John, none of them would've reacted any differently if they'd seen me or Zoe like that. Not even Lou."
Some of them would've reacted worse. Especially John if it'd been Zoe. There'd have been murder, no questions asked.
She sighs and turns to look at him, face crumpling slightly at the burn in his eyes that mirrors her own. I'm sorry, Lena. "I know you are. And I forgive you for it, for all of it. You're still Lucky to me, I just didn't have the words till now."
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He knows that you can love someone so much and anger can drown it out for a short time and then it can return, but it doesn't take anything away from that love. It doesn't mean that what it isn't love. He had to learn that the hard way and multiple times. It's no easy lesson.
Love is a perfect notion. People expect too much out of it.
People are flawed. People fail. I fail. Regularly.
It comes to him suddenly, how much he misses his father, how much he'd like to hear his words right now and hear that faith that his father had in him in his darkest moments. Somehow Luke who had done the worst of things could look at him and know that he wouldn't follow that same path.
Lucky cannot watch her wipe that tear away and not move even closer to her, closing the distance between them. Do you even realize if you hadn't been wearing that ring, you'd be dead?. "I know," he says, and his voice sounds as shaky as he feels. "I know. I didn't... I didn't think about that before I jumped at him, and there's no excuse for it. I realize that I put you at risk too, and that it was a miracle that we got... out of there alive, that you got out of there alive, and that's on me."
In any other situation, he would have thought of something else to do instead of running at him. He would have thought of some subtle way to get back there. Lucky studied the plans too, and he could have realized where they were going. He could have moved closer to the office to listen for sounds of a struggle.
If he'd been thinking, he never would have been so reckless. Never. There hadn't been room for thought in his head. He saw that man with his hands on her like that, forcing himself on her even if all logic told him that she was playing a role and that she could take care of herself in a one-on-one situation with him.
"I never want to-- I don't think Sonny will be running missions like that ever... again. From the conversation, he had with me. It seemed like he-- like he wouldn't put anyone in that position again, you or Zoe or anyone else. It was terrifying to see you treated like that, and it was painful, and sickening and-- Sonny didn't sound like he'd be running those missions again at all."
He sounded guilty, not as guilty as Lucky felt but close enough. Through the yelling, there'd been guilt.
When her face crumples, Lucky does not keep his distance at all. He hasn't been questioning what she feels or where they stand if only because, he still trusts in it. He trusts that he loves her and she loves him beyond everything else. Lucky steps forward, cupping the side of her face.
His throat tightens further, and tears slip down his face as he breathes her in. "I shouldn't have left either, but I didn't--" Lucky breathes out and breathes in again, breathes her in again, reminding himself of the familiarity of his hand against the side of her face, the warmth of it. "I didn't know what else to do."
What he went through in his life to make that a trigger for him is something he will tell her. He feels that he can, that he wants to, and that he has to, but it's a matter of finding the words.
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And she was doing so well, with not being afraid of what could happen down the line, with not letting that rule her life or her decisions, but she feels like she's back at square one.
Lena doesn't answer when he says he knows. She believes he does, but it doesn't take away the dread of knowing how differently the outcome could've been.
People do expect too much of love. That it's stronger than anything. That it can save you. That it can be enough against each and every odd stacked against you in some other corner that's too big to be any sort of competition to your own. "It's not about pointing the finger, Lucky. It's not about who's to blame. or holding someone accountable. It's the fact you could've died and I wouldn't have been able to live with that."
She was the one that brought him to the Crowbar. She was the one that started it all in motion, knowing how dark it can get and knowing, as good as it can be, how many demons can be brought out by the work they do and the life they lead. She's known it. She's known it from the start, but it's always been a step up from the life she had.
"They're important," she says, running a hand through her face, shaking her head in refusal. It's not aimed at him, but at the decision. "I agreed to the mission and I knew what I was getting myself into. It's not like I ever thought it'd be a walk in the park, but it's important. He doesn't have to send us to anything similar ever again, but we did a good thing. You can't do the right thing without getting your hands dirty sometimes."
And she'll talk to Sonny about it, and she'll be honest with how hard it was but how she does not regret doing it, not for one moment.
So many girls live their whole lives thinking they're not worth loving. They afall into abusive relationships like Lena, or they're sold to the highest bidder, or they grow up without zero sense of self-worth. They believe that there isn't a God, there isn't anything to save them, there isn't anything but these animals that ship them from one place to another, making them do horrible things starting from the age of ten. She doesn't regret it at all, despite what she believes it's cost her.
Lena's face crumples further when he cups the side of her face, and her cheeks are suddenly flooded with warm tears. She's practically radiating the doubt and the fear and the paralyzing thoughts in her head. She doesn't want him blaming himself or thinking she hates him. But as for the rest?
"Maybe you had the right idea." In leaving. In getting away from them.
Lena looks down at the space between them and works at the lump in her throat before she tries to speak again, before she has the courage to look back up at him now that he's so close. "I'm not suggesting this because I'm mad at you or I want to hurt you or because I don't love you anymore. I said it to you once. There's more to this life here than the Crowbar. There's more to it than the job we do and the people living there and... me. Maybe this happened as some sort of stop signal. To avoid more hurt in the long run or to help you find something better or before you get killed."
She inhales sharply and says the words quickly before she can't get them out at all. "You just don't belong with me, after all."
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It hadn't occurred to him in that moment. If he had been able to take a moment to think about it, he would have realized the dangers that were present not only to himself but to her if he dared making a wrong move.
He could have died then. He could have died two days ago when he fought a monster on the sidewalk during patrol. As long as he lives, he has a chance of dying. He will always be human, always be more vulnerable than the rest to death.
"You could've died too, Lena," Lucky says quietly. "Every day that we fight and every day that we don't fight, there's a chance that we could die."
If she had said that out loud, he would argue it. He made the choice to stay. He followed her down during her mission and he needed something more. There is no doubt in his mind that if she hadn't found him, he would have found something worse. What could be better than a family?
It's all he has ever wanted in his life.
"They are important. I don't think he is stopping the missions to go in after those people, just stopping the ones that force someone to be in the position that you were in," Lucky says, and he doesn't think those are missions that the Crowbar can do if all the men would react violently to Zoe or Lena being treated that way. "I know... we did a good thing. I was almost afraid the key would be wrong, and I'd have... but it was the right key."
Thank God, it was the right key. Lucky is not a women, but he has seen the treatment that so many of the women in his life have suffered through. Elizabeth, his mother, his grandmother was kidnapped by the Cassadine brothers and drugged for years, Maxie was assaulted, his sister had an abortion and was kidnapped by Franco. He saw the other women at that bar, and he wanted to save them all, wanted that place to never exist.
When her face crumples further, he presses his hand against her face further, fingers slipping back into her hair and leaning forward to rest his forehead against hers.
Maybe you had the right idea. Lucky almost takes a step back, but he doesn't. He doesn't. His hand remains against the side of her face.
He shakes his head instead, insistently, and his hand slides down until both hands are holding on to her shoulders. "No, no, that's not why this happened. It wasn't a sign. You're saying that because you're scared, and I told you that I would fight you, fight for us, and I meant it-- It's not you that almost got me killed, Lena. It was my decision to join the Crowbar, and it was my mistake, my inability to take a step back."
You just don't belong with me, after all.
That hurts. That hurts more than he could have anticipated it hurting, because he never expected her to say it. It feels like a knife has buried itself in his chest, and he still shakes his head, tears in his eyes, spilling down his face.
"That isn't true," Lucky says when he can speak through it, and he wipes his own face, but he hasn't created any further distance between the two of them. He remains that breath away from her with his hands against her shoulders still to keep her centered, to keep them both centered. "Do you know what I did for the five days that I wasn't here? I was drinking. I went on patrols with people at the Tower to find monsters because there was nothing else to do, and I drank, and I didn't feel like I belonged or like I had a purpose at all or like it mattered if I had a purpose or if I didn't. It was just... it was existing, and I missed you and I missed that place and I missed having a family. I don't know if... I had my doubts about whether or not I can do this job after how much I screwed up five days ago. I thought I would be a liability to everyone here, to you, but--"
His breath hitches, and he shuts his eyes before opening them again to look at her.
"If I don't belong here with you, where my heart is, where am I supposed to belong?"
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It takes a moment for his words to roll over her, but she doesn't recoil. It doesn't have the same impact it does when they speak of his death. She's going to die soon, no matter what. A bitter voice wants to say, it'll only have come a year early, anyway.
She doesn't. But it's true, a tiny voice says.
You don't know that, Lena argues internally instead.
She bites the insides of her cheeks until she tastes blood.
"I know I would've," Lena says instead, considerably calm considering the conversation they are having. It's real, like any other conversation they've ever had, but nothing's ever hurt as much, she doesn't think. Nothing has ever felt as uncertain and it's like navigating through very, very thick fog with not a lighthouse in sight. "I wouldn't have wanted to make it out alive if you didn't."
And she doesn't care if that makes her weak or not because at least it's honest.
As for Sonny, she says nothing further. She nods in agreement and scrubs a hand against her cheek in exhaustion. She's slept less in the past five days. Less than she usually does, even.
It was hard to when she was thinking about him.
Do you know what I did for the five days that I wasn't here?
Lena shakes her head, stifling a noise that sounds suspiciously like a sob cut off by her teeth biting down on her lower lip when he answers. What he says hurts. Picturing him drinking without any sort of purpose hurts. There's some relief he was at the Kashtta instead of the many other places that would've loved to get their hands on him instead, but most of all there's just this raw, constant ache that keeps pushing at every wall in her chest.
There's a quiet, quiet voice that wants tear it all down, his pain and hers both.
If it can't take anyone else's pain and use it, if Lena keeps depriving it of what it wants, it'll eat itself from the inside out. Until they're both mad. Won't it? "I know what I feel and I know what I think and they're not the same thing," Lena finally says shakily. She doesn't remember what it's like anymore to live without that division of demon and human. She doesn't remember what it's like to experience love without that something else. "I know what I--what I want to say, and I know what a part of me... that isn't me wants to say" (demon) "and it's not the same thing, either."
And she's fighting, she's fighting past that ugly voice that's twisting everything beautiful she could possibly feel for him into something that isn't beautiful anymore, that says it doesn't want it anymore, that says it wants to kill it. That's bathing in the hurt and the guilt and the anger because the rest feels so far away. She isn't insignificant. This isn't insignificant. It isn't ugly. It's not. It's not.
Lena rests her forehead against his gently somewhere amidst the silence. She breathes out, breathes in, lets the tears flood down. I don't want to hurt you, she thinks. I would never want to hurt you.
And she just did. She sees it in his face, in his eyes when she opens her own to look into them. He hasn't moved away and surprisingly, she hasn't either. There's still that breath-away-only distance and she breathes out, the soft warmth of it fanning across his cheek. It's meant to steady her, ground her, but his hands on her shoulders do that more than anything else.
"We broke so many promises to each other, Lucky," she whispers brokenly. She can still remember when she made hers, and they feel so long ago when it was just over a month ago.
They'd been so happy and in love.
Where is that? Where is it?
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He'd asked her how much time she had, and she had said one to five years. He will always remember that. Lucky will always remember how it felt to hear her tell him how limited her time truly was. While he isn't constantly aware of it (if he was, he would drive himself crazy with it), he knows.
She was dealt a terrible hand, and it's why it's important that she get the most out of what time she does have. They all should. No one has guarantees, but most people don't have expiration dates like hers either.
Lucky closes his eyes at her words, and he's not-- It isn't a surprise to him that she has said it, because she has told him before that she couldn't handle another loss. After losing six of their family, he doesn't know that any of them can handle another person in their family dying. He doesn't know how the world can expect them to continue on.
"I know," he says again, quieter this time, at trying to imagine them both dying in that bar together, at how the Crowbar would have reacted when they found out. "The world couldn't ask any more of you."
She has already been through so much more in a few years than what most people go through in a lifetime. She has already lost so much more than most people will ever have to lose.
Lucky reads the exhaustion on her face. He is certain that neither of them have been sleeping or eating much in their time apart. They're better together. He meant that when he said it.
The noise that she makes cuts something deep within his heart, and he tightens his hold on her to reassure her. He's here, and he's not drunk. He didn't tell her what he did to hurt her. Lucky would never do anything with that wanting to hurt her, but he told her so she could see how the Crowbar grounds him, how she does. Why it's so good that she stumbled into him that night in October after he'd just fallen through.
He could have ended up somewhere else. There are more bad places for wanderers to get sucked into than good ones in this city. Whatever kind of person he is, he has demons of his own and darkness of his own, and he had already been at the end of his rope when he fell through the rift.
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A sharp pain hits in the center of his chest, because he understands what she means without her saying it. Demon. Lucky doesn't tell her that he wants to know what she wants to say, that that is what he wants to hear, because he knows that she knows it and that she is fighting with all that she can to send that demon's wants and words away.
It's why instead of telling her to say it. Say it., he reaches for her face and kisses her, intensely, hard. It's still there. The good is still there, more than the bad. Love hurts but it heals too, but it feels like this kiss feels, and he prays to God that she will feel it, feel what he feels when he so much as thinks of her.
The love that pushes up above all the rest, all the pain and regret and guilt. It's not ugly. It's beautiful, and he wants her to remember that and not that mission, not the person that he was then because it wasn't him and it was.
Lucky rests his forehead back against hers, hands still cradling her face and sliding along her cheeks to wipe away the tears. His hands slide back down against her shoulders, holding her in place again.
He winces at that broken whisper, and it hurts as much as the sob did, and he wants to apologize again but doesn't. Lucky's hands slide down her arms. "We did, but that's... It will happen. You can love someone so much, and you can still hurt them. You can still break the promises that you made to them, and it doesn't mean that you didn't mean those promises or it takes away from those promises. I'm... going to tell you something that my dad told me after the affair that I thought destroyed my ability to love. I stopped believing in it, and my dad told me that... love is a perfect notion. People expect too much from it. People are flawed. They fail." Lucky pauses, because the rest is him and not his father. "I fail. Frequently. We will both fail, but that doesn't take away from what that love means, from what we mean to each other. If it was always happy and perfect, it wouldn't be real."
This next part is harder to say.
"This is not the first time that I'll hurt you," Lucky says, and it's the hardest thing that he's said tonight, because the thought of hurting her hurts him like nothing else could. Her pain hits him more powerfully, more intense than his own does. "If that's something you... don't want in your life despite knowing what goes with it, knowing what we do for each other, I..." He has to swallow past the tightening in his throat, "understand. It hurts sometimes. It can hurt more than anything, but I think it's always-- it's always worth the hurt. It's the most powerful feeling there is, and it's not-- it won't always be good."
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It feels like weakness but more than that, it feels selfish. Lena knows what it would do to the Crowbar, she knows what it would do to Sonny, and that she'd still prefer to die than to face it goes to show she's a lot more terrible than she's ever given credit for.
That she was dealt the terrible hand, that she got the short end of the stick, it doesn't excuse it. Nothing excuses it when she loves them so much. She doesn't care what the world would ask of her, but she does look up at him at that, gaze sweeping across his face. "What are you asking of me?"
She isn't asking what he has the right to ask of her or not. She wants to know what he'd ask regardless.
"You're sorry. I know you're sorry. From the bottom of my heart, I know it and I do not hold anything against you. My fear and what I can and cannot handle is not on you. That's all me."
She always does sleep better when it's with him. He's had a way of holding her in the past that makes her feel safe and cherished, and the time she spends with him is the time she allows herself to slow down. It allows her to savor life the way it's meant to be savored, and she honestly couldn't say that about herself up until a few months ago.
Lena wasn't really living, either. She'd been existing, and she'd been making some really poor choices, and she'd been distancing herself from those that only had her best interests at heart. She doesn't want to know what would have happened had she botched the mission and she hadn't met him halfway through it. She just doesn't. And when she isn't bogged down by the fresh sting of what's happened or the weight of the doubts clouding everything else, she does see it clearly. She sees how good they are for each other and how much they help each other. There's adventure but there's also stability, and there's trust and there's honesty.
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They frame either side of his face and when she kisses him back it's not the way she usually kisses him. There isn't playfulness and an edge of softness to round out the intensity. It's just as hard and it's full of bare need. Her hands remain there, curved over his jawline, and she uses her thumbs to wipe at his cheeks, as well. Her mouth brushes against his cheekbone and she closes her eyes, feeling the fresh tears there. It says what she can't find in words. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I love you.
Lena doesn't flinch, but she feels it somewhere inside, the jolt in her chest that's already raw and aching.
It's not as if he has said something that isn't true. This won't be the last time he hurts her. This won't be the last time she hurts him. It may hurt just as bad as this and she can't imagine anything ever making it hurt like it hurts right now but life gets creative on you in that sense. It will hurt just as bad. It may hurt even worse. At some point, one of them is going to have to grieve the other. Whether they stay together or not, that's going to be true.
"It wasn't... my feelings I was worried about." Lena shudders quietly, and when she speaks again, it's just as impossible and hard to say them. "This is not the last time I will hurt you. This is not the last time I will have a knee-jerk reaction of pushing you away and saying what I know will wound deep. I just don't want there to come a time when something inside me is going to want--" she cuts herself off and it's not me she wants to add, but it is, in a way. It is. "It won't want to just hurt you. It'd want to destroy what you feel and how you feel it. It wouldn't just hurt. It'd twist into something unrecognizable so you don't remember it was ever good at all."
And I just want to be normal. And they've talked about it and she hasn't told him anything he doesn't know but then, she knows all of this, too. Or she thought she did. She really did need to hear the words. She wasn't trusting anything anymore, not even her own feelings because which were those?
"I know you'll hurt me," she whispers, voice raspy and tired and something close to bittersweet. "I know you won't want to. I've never once thought it wasn't worth it. Even after--what happened, I don't think differently of it or of you. I don't feel differently." It's important that he know that. She doesn't see him differently and she isn't scared of him or what darkness he could possess.
How could she when she's so intimately acquainted with her own? "Lucky, I..." and she lets out a shaky breath. She wants to bet on them. She does. As vividly as she is aware of all of the rest, as much as she struggles with it, the struggle never has to do with doubting what she feels and what she wants. Her hands curve on either side of his face again and she leans up in tiptoes to kiss him.
Softly this time, but just as intense, in a way. "Come home," she whispers against his mouth, fingers threading into his hair at the nape. "Come home, please."
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It's not that he thinks himself so self important that he doesn't think she can make it through his death, but he knows that she has already lost so much and he knows what grief can do to a person. He has seen it. He has felt the effects of it himself and watched his father suffer through the grief of losing Laura, how he spiraled into alcoholism so quickly after that.
What are you asking of me? It's that question when she looks at him like that that almost steals the air from his chest. It's the way that she looks that makes it hard to breathe for a moment. He sucks in a breath when he can manage it. "For you to be with me for as long as possible. I promised you forever, and I thought that promise went both ways," Lucky says and there's a small smile on his face, because he remembers her making that promise and he is trying to hold back the tears instead because it will never be forever. "I'm asking you to not hold your love back from me, not an inch of it. you never have before, and it's all that I want from you. I want you."
It's the only way that he knows how to put it. He would ask of her what they've always had even if it felt like they were in danger of losing that these past five days, when he watched her walk away from him.
"Okay," Lucky says, and he nods because she has forgiven him. She understands that he's sorry but she has doesn't hold it against him. It is easier to really believe it, the more times that he hears it.
The way that she is in his arms, the feel of her close to him makes it easier for him to sleep too. He is reminded that she is near, that he knows where he is in this universe that he doesn't technically exist in. There's no being lost, searching for a path that cannot be found.
His path is with her. His journey is here. It centers him, stabilizes him, and he is able to sleep. They are so good for each other, and he can remember that because as painful as it feels right now, it's better than the aching, emptiness, lost feeling that he had in the five days that he spent without her.
Lena kisses him back with intensity and need, and he meets it with need of his own, with the strength of his feelings in his chest without holding any of it back. He dives into that kiss as intensely as she does, because he didn't know. He didn't know that they'd be back here again like this after what had happened. There had been moments that he had been terrified that that was it. I love you, the kiss says back to her, his hands say to her skin. I will always love you. And this is love, what he is feeling. It is so much more than lust, beyond friendship, past anything else. It's love, and he can feel it breathing through the whole of him as he grabs hold of her like if he doesn't, the rest of the world will rip her away.
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