It hits him hardest at night: a wave of terror crashing inside of him, constricting his throat until he feels he can no longer breathe and falls to his knees. Some nights, it passes easily. He learns to breathe again, feels more like himself, but some nights — such as this night — it digs its talons deep inside of him, twisting at his ribcage, pulling all the guilt, all the suffering, all the pain from the darkest parts of his mind.
Those nights he is thankful that no one can hear him, or see him for that matter. With tears dripping off of his chin and sobs muffled into the floor, he is thankful. Thankful that no one would be disappointed in him — because he's not sure he can take that, especially not from Enzo, Phong, Dot, or anyone — and yet infuriated because there's no one to tell. No one who would understand the horrors he has faced, how alone he feels, knowing that not even moving past those fears would not guarantee a safe passage home.
(But home doesn't feel the same anymore. Not to him, not to Matrix, not to Dot. Mainframe retains its appearance, but the façade reveals so much more underneath it.)
He spends the night with Dot when it happens, the both of them lying in bed with their backs turned to each other. It's been gradual, the strange plane between friendship and a relationship, a wall of absence built between them. They do not bother to demolish it or break it down, but instead slowly chip away the pieces. They attempt to amble themselves over the wall, but they have not the ability to quite yet make it to the other side.
But she likes it, and so does he. When they let the moments happen and the graze of her lips feels familiar to him, despite it being an entirely new experience. When he brushes a finger against the smooth crook of her arm and she pulls away with a chuckle because it tickles. When he's on the bathroom floor, his own sobs echoing the room, and all he can think is that he's disappointed her in some way she doesn't yet know.
He hears her quiet breathing behind him and wonders what would happen if (were he not a coward) he turned over and pressed his chest against her back, to let his arm curl around her waist, but he repeats the image over and over in his mind like a movie file that he finds himself even more reluctant to do it each time. That is when it hits him, the pang slowly growing in his chest that he recognizes will grow to something much larger, and he has to escape.
Bob rationalizes himself to quietly slide out from underneath the covers and fumbles his way through the dark. Does he trust himself to leave, wandering the streets like this? What if he harms someone who recognizes him and doesn't even realize it? It makes him sick to his stomach, how out of control of his own body he is now as he stumbles his way to the bathroom, not even cringing when he knocks something over as he grips the end of the sink. His teeth clench down and his knees feel weak that he can barely stand anymore. Not now, he thinks, or whispers to himself, he's not sure. Any time but now. Not even his own words can convince his body to keep from reacting.
His knees roughly hit the tile floor with a terrible, loud thud as he hunches over with his face buried in his hands, feeling the tears slip through them. He bites the heels of his palms to keep from waking Dot. He's thankful that Enzo is spending the night with his older self and AndrAIa, wondering how he could ever explain how damaged and broken his hero is now, and the guilt only consumes him even more. He sobs and digs his nails into the skin of his forehead — already scarred by his past sins like reminders branded into his skin — and he's not sure whether he is going to vomit or pass out first. He sorely hopes it's the latter.
Somewhere in the distance he hears his name being called, muddled by his own perceptions, and vaguely recalls it coming from Dot. He's unable to speak, he doesn't want to speak, and he thinks he could hate her forever if she walks in on him, shattered into pieces on the floor, with disappointment written in her eyes.
When he hears the door open behind him, he doesn't move; he continues to lie there, sobbing quietly, not even regarding her. He tries to imagine her, standing there behind him seeing him hunched over and wracked with sobs. He's not sure whether he imagines her saying "Oh, Bob..." in that always compassionate, always willing to be the pillar of strength voice of hers.
He is not sure how long it lasts or if she is still even there, but when the sobs fade and the darkness turns from a raging tsunami to the simple lapping of a tide against the shore, he feels like the weight of the world is resting on his shoulders. Bob lifts his head and sees her there, sitting on the floor five feet away with her legs tucked underneath her, fingers laced together, looking down at him sympathetically.
(He doesn't hate her.)
"I'm sorry," he croaks, embarrassed by the hoarseness of his own voice and the stains of his tears still painted on his cheeks. He means he's sorry for leaving her, for being the cause of what happened, for coming over and knocking things off her bathroom sink before crumpling onto the floor.
She shakes her head, not moving from her spot. "Don't be."
Weakly, he sits himself up, and feels his back thump against one of the cabinets. He has a hard time looking at her, even with the genuine kindness displayed in her eyes, his gaze downcast to the shapes in the tiles. The wall between them has become even taller as they listen to the sounds of silence — only disrupted by the whir of the air conditioner and a single call of a siren outside her complex.
Very slowly, she rises to her feet and pads her way over to him, lowering herself to his side. Her hands do not touch him, for fear that he does not yet want to be touched, but she does not seem to fear that there is any chance of him hurting her. He lifts his hands to lightly trace his fingers against the curve of her palm, ending at the middle of her wrist, before he lets it roughly fall back into his lap, far too tired to exert himself. It's a simple gesture to signal his assurance.
Dot smiles, reaching her hand out to brush the tears away from his cheeks. It pains him that, even though she does not know, she understands. He recognizes that, despite their different experiences, they're both hurt in ways that neither of them can fully explain, nor want to explain. The losses do not feel whole even with what they have been returned and what they have returned to.
One of his tears drips off his chin and onto her palm as she strokes a thumb against his cheek, feeling the coarse skin of his scars underneath her fingertip and he thinks that she is his saving grace. She is the one who led him on his journey home and she is the one he thinks of when he's left alone to the monster that is his guilt; she is beauty in nature and he is the dark sea that crashes against the sturdy rock that is her, both unwilling and relentless to fade away. There are things that may not make sense to them, that never will make sense to him, but with her, it doesn't matter if they do or don't.
He smiles back at her and kisses her palm where the stray tear lies.