Work Text:
and I don't want to see what I've seen
to undo what has been done
turn off all the lights
let the morning come, come
Florence and the Machine - Over the Love
It’s worse at night. He could keep the sadness, the regret, the thoughts, he could keep them at bay when he was at work. The nights, though, he’d come to dread them. To dread the silence, and the whispered guilt that always followed it. He turns on the TV, the radio. The constant buzz does nothing to ease his loneliness but he turns them on anyway.
He’d given up drinking, along with his other addictions. The only solace he has left is in a pack of cigarettes and at the rate he’s going they won’t last the night.
“Holder, please, you don’t need to see this,” she had said and he knew, he knew nothing would ever be okay again.
It’s in the darkness that the memories come. They shift through him and over him. The truth, at least as he sees it, is that he deserves this. He deserves this pain, this emptiness. He’s earned it after a lifetime of letting people down.
He thought he had finally gotten it together. A good job, a steady girlfriend, a place to live. A car. He’s good at his job, or at least he thought he was. He let his emotions get the best of him, over and over. He wasn’t like Linden. He couldn’t read people, situations, he couldn’t feel it. Follow it. He couldn’t sense it. He couldn’t even tell when a street kid was lying to him anymore. He, of all people, should have.
He knows the streets better than the maze of his own veins.
He takes a long drag from the cigarette. He paces around the living room. His phone rings but he just throws it across the room. He’s sick to his stomach even though he can’t remember the last time he ate. He’s tried, he’s tried so damn hard to go through the motions. It’s been along time since it’s been this hard to just get through the day.
It’s like the first day being clean all over again. He can feel it, crawling under his skin. Itching just below the surface. God, it would be so easy. Just so easy to walk away from all of this. Go back to when everyone knew better than to rely on him and the only death on his hands would be his own.
He kicks the radio across the room. It slams against the wall and slides to the floor. It’s still playing, though lower and slower. He kicks it again for good measure. He stands over it, both hands on the wall. He’s panting and staring down at it. He rests his head against the wall and just stares.
He hasn’t slept in weeks. He doesn’t even try anymore. He’s jittery and restless from the coffee and the cigarettes. He can’t close his eyes. Any time he tries he lives it over and over again. He’s staring into her eyes. He’s standing in that damn garage, and he’s staring into her eyes. He retches all over the wall and the broken stereo and slumps down until he’s kneeling in front of it.
He doesn’t realize he’s crying. The darkness brings the memories. The memories bring the guilt. The guilt brings the anger, the shame, the frustration. The guilt brings more guilt, unrelenting, until the morning comes and he can try and push it away. It’s easier to ignore it when he’s with Linden. That doesn’t stop it though, from seeping into his day. Though, it’s worse at night.
He wipes his mouth the back of his hand and he gags. He’s heaving and panting all over the floor and the broken stereo. All he can taste is bile. He struggles to his feet and into the bathroom. He rinces out his mouth and looks up into the mirror. He’s shaking, barely holding himself up. He’s pale and sallow.
He’s alive though. He’s staring at his tattoo in the mirror. Serenity. He shakes his head and splashes water on his face. Bullet’s ‘tattoo’ had said Faith. Just another parallel. She reminded him so much of himself it had surprised him. He’d brushed her off at first, a few times, and she’d kept him accountable. She stayed on him. She’d been right, too. He still hasn’t listened to the message she left on his cellphone. He can’t bring himself to hear it.
It’s his fault, of course, it’s all his fault. He should have known better. He let it get personal, let his emotions run the show. Now, there’s the blood of a kid, God, she was just a kid and her blood is on his hands. They don’t make soap for that. They don’t make bleach for that. It should have been him. He should have been there.
His jaw snaps shut and he grinds his teeth. He yells out but it doesn’t make him feel any better. He slams his hand into the mirror, over and over again. It cracks and shatters under the force. There is blood splattered all over the walls, all over his face and all over his dirty undershirt.
He’s breathing heavy and there’s glass everywhere. He falls to his knees, surrounded by glass and blood and guilt, and he cries. Thick, heavy, shoulder wrenching sobs.
+
She had started with little reasons to go over to his house after work. She needed to borrow something, wanted to see something. She’d bought a new movie she thought he might like. He recorded some show she couldn’t miss. Eventually she gave up on excuses and just made her way over there at some point or another during the evening. It did nothing to soothe the worry, though, when he guided her out the door after an hour or so.
There was something broken inside him. She saw it snap and she just doesn’t know how to repair it. Something had broken in the world that day. She had never been good at fixing things. At first she had thought solving the case would help, and then perhaps a new case would help.
Nothing changed. He got thinner and quieter as the days wore on. Sure, he’d laugh and joke with the guys. He’d smile at her when he thought he was supposed to. She could see it though, the pain hiding underneath the surface. She’d never been good at holding it together, and she could see him unraveling at the seams.
She’s standing in line at the coffee shop by his apartment. He won’t eat the bagel but she orders it anyway. She can’t remember the last time she saw him eat. She fiddles with the zipper on her jacket. She’s not quite nervous, restless describes it better. She’s antsy. So antsy she didn’t even bother changing out of her running clothes.
She’d been running more lately. More than she probably should. She’d wake up restless and run. She’d run after work and after going to check on Holder. She’d run in the middle of the night if she couldn’t sleep. She’d run until she couldn’t run and she’d collapse on the grass, sweaty and heaving. She’d run until she threw up and then she’d run some more. The pavement usually brought her answers, and peace, but it’s been silent lately. Mourning with her.
They have to call her name twice before she grabs her order. She smiles before she heads out into the busy street. The walk is short and she’s lost in her thoughts. She almost walks right by the apartment. She just lets herself in.
The first thing she notices is the smell, followed closely by the groan of the broken stereo in the corner. “Holder?” she calls out, dropping the food on the floor. She walks over to the stereo. It’s dented and covered in vomit, “Holder?”
He’s sitting in the bathroom when she finds him. He barely glances up when she walks in. He’s gotten skinnier than she realized and the dark circles under his eyes seem darker in the dim light. There’s a crunch when she steps into the room. There’s glass and blood everywhere. She kneels in front of him, “you’re bleeding,” she says simply, trying to figure out where the blood is coming from.
“‘S nothing,” he wipes a hand across his face, leaving a crimson smudge.
She grabs his hand. The knuckles are almost shredded. They aren’t bleeding as bad as it looks from the blood on the floor. She strips off her running jacket and t-shirt. She wets the shirt in the sink before she starts to wipe away at his knuckles with quick precision.
He looks at her while she wraps his hand up in her shirt, “damn, Linden,” he says, “if I knew it was this easy to get you outta your clothes,” he tries to smile, to laugh it off.
“This isn’t funny,” she hisses. She tries to swallow her frustration and focus on the task at hand.
His eyes are dark and serious, “you’ve lost weight,” he says simply. He reaches out with his free hand and places it on her arm and it feels like it’s little more than skin and bone.
“You’re one to talk,” she leans back to meet his eyes, “you might need stitches.”
He shakes his head, wildly, like a petulant child. No hospitals. No doctors. He struggles to his feet, he’s dizzy and the room is starting to spin. She’s quick though. She wraps an arm around his waist and helps him to the bedroom. She pulls the blanket around him and brushes a stray hair off his forehead. She picks his sweater up off the floor and pulls it over her head.
She leaves him there, briefly, to pack up the stereo into a garbage bag and grab the food she brought with her. She sits on the bed beside him and hands him the bagel. He grimaces at the sight of it but takes a bite anyway. It’s almost funny to him, the way the tables turn. It wasn’t that long ago he was taking care of her and here she is, tucking him into bed and feeding him.
Everyone needs someone they can count on.
The bagel brings on a whole new wave of nausea but he swallows it back. She’s humming a song he’s never heard and she’s stroking his hair, “did you...?” the question dies on her lips. Normally she wouldn’t be afraid to bring up his past but he looks so small and broken in the bed that she can’t bare to say the words.
He shakes his head. God knows he thought about it though.
“That’s good,” she whispers.
It’s her humming that slowly lulls him towards sleep. He just focuses on her for a minute, on her hand and her breathing and he closes his eyes. He reaches out just as he’s about to fall asleep and he pulls her towards him. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t have to. She lets him wrap himself around her.
She stops humming when he’s asleep and lets her arm fall slack around his shoulders. She lets the steady repetition of his breathing drift her off. For the first time in weeks they both sleep soundlessly until the day starts to break.
+
It would be easy to say that’s all it took to move on. A little comfort and everyone’s okay. The truth is, at least as she sees it, is life is much more complex than that. It became a routine of sorts. She started leaving things like her toothbrush and her running shoes there in the morning. They didn’t talk about it, they didn’t talk about much aside from work.
Things improved though, slowly but surely. There were good days and bad days. Days where he would find himself coming home from work and standing over the stove, a stove he’d once barely used, making dinner for two. And days where he would turn on the TV and lay lifelessly on the couch until day break. There were days when she would laugh, and smile. Days where she would go out running two or three times and be gone for hours.
The worst were the days she didn’t come at all.
Still though, after a few months, he feels better. The bad days are fewer and further between. The guilt’s still there, he’s come to accept it. It’s the guilt that brings him to the tattoo parlor, two months and fourteen days since they found Bullet. The tattoo artist looks at him funny when he hands him the picture, but he doesn’t say anything, just shows him the chair and gets to work on his wrist.
The only sound comes from the buzz of the tattoo gun as it runs across his skin. He’s grateful for the silence, because for the first time in a long time he’s able to reflect. He’s able to remember her as she was, and not just as the broken child left abandoned in a cab. He smiles, remembering their first meeting. Her sass and her conviction. The tattoo isn’t perfect, it isn’t exactly how she would have drawn it but it’s enough.
Linden’s there when he gets home. She’s standing in the bedroom in a pair of jeans and a sweater. She’s brushing her hair, wet from a shower. She looks over at him, her eyes are wide and curious. He wants to show her the tattoo, he wants to tell her about it and how much it means to him. He wants to tell her to stay, and not just for the night.
He walks across the room tentatively, reaching out for her. He pulls her into his chest and holds her there for a long minute. Savoring the smell of her shampoo and the feel of her head, just below his chin. He exhales slowly and deliberately. He doesn’t want to let her go. She relaxes into him and he holds her, tight to his chest. He kisses the top of her head.
He will show it to her later, maybe after dinner. They could talk, for the first time in a long time. They could talk about Bullet. They could talk about the future. It’s taken him this whole life to learn that moving on doesn’t always mean forgetting. That losing someone isn’t about the pain or the guilt. It’s not about beating yourself up, or losing yourself. It’s about finding a way to remember. It’s about finding a way out of the darkness.
'cause you're a hard soul to save
with an ocean in the way
but I'll get around it
Florence + the Machine - Over the Love