Angsty season 3 drabbles because I needed to over-analyse my poor suffering ship.
….
There are certain things you expect.
You expect thickened anger edged with dismay. You expect bitterness and frustration.
You expect never to be forgiven. Instead, you expect - anticipate - to end up subject to a dark, twisted retribution that snaps at your bones and scratches at your heart, as Alex unravels you, piece by delicate piece, until you're left ruined and broken and finally even.
That is of course, if she's figured it out.
But nothing really prepares you for the blank, almost comatose expression that wears into her features, and it doesn't seem to reflect her at all. And Christ, she looks hurt and a more than a little crushed and it absolutely kills you to see her like that.
In a way, you figure you should have been prepared. All the times you went over this, stressed yourself over how Alex would look and what Alex would say. Some kind of mental preparation should have been established that barricaded or blocked surprise. Luschek mentioned it. Nicky mentioned it. You knew this was coming. But somehow, you're just as unprepared as the day you stumbled to the phone, blood choked with pure, stifling fear for Alex, and you had to do it. You had to get her back.
You really don't know how you'd survive without her. Which always seems to snag at an inward contradiction, because you went years without Alex. You went years without hearing her voice as the very first sound that hit you in the mornings. You went years without her fingertips closing around your jumper. But you never really stopped thinking. You never broke out of your old habits (and secretly, maybe you never wanted to). There were still times your heart jumped when your phone buzzed with a message. Despite the fact it's a completely different ringtone and a completely different phone and your number has changed three times over. You clung to hope and refused to let fragments of your heart heal over. And maybe you weren't really surviving at all.
But you're not making that mistake again.
That's not to say you're not making mistakes. But at least they're different ones. At least you're trying, even if it's a scramble and your vision now seems permanently blurred between right and wrong, and the feeling in your gut never clenches at you quite as strong. But it's something and it's enough just to see Alex walk into the cafeteria on this completely insignificant day that now drips with consequence.
You're not prepared.
You're really, really not.
You feel like everyone is looking. And part of you wonders if they know. If they know it was you that made this happen, that you are the entire, solitary reason why she's standing in that very spot. You did this.
Your breath coasts over a hi as you wrap your arms around her, and it's so soft she probably can't catch it anyway. But it's buried and forgotten and left without an imprint; because her warmth filters into yours and her chin tucks against your shoulder, and you slowly open up to how real she is.
It's then that the practised part comes in. The material you forced yourself to learn and learn again. But as you dig for the words you repeated, they come up all at once, and it's messy and rather flat, and as you plough through the string of memorised words, you just hope Alex doesn't pick up on how rehearsed it sounds.
But then you stop, because you see Alex's face clearly for the first time, and something in your throat collapses. And you trip right into the real.
She closes her eyes over and shakes her head as she tells you lockup, and all your mind can process is how much that bruise has to ache and throb right against her skull. Guilt bubbles up, too, because you're responsible, really. You push it back, try not to stare.
It's an incredibly stupid thought that slinks into your brain, wondering if there's any ice in the freezer of Alex's apartment. You shut that down, too. And you feel stupid and defeated and wishing you could go back to that apartment. See Alex's fresh face absent of pain and absent of age and absent of everything that went wrong.
Because surely they could find their wrong turn and change the course of their completely fucked up relationship.
You remember telling yourself to ask the what did you do question early, so you don't raise curiosity to why you haven't asked why she's landed back in prison. So you formulate the words and push them off your resisting tongue, and so much of you is wishing you didn't have to do this.
The way Alex's voice cracks and falters brings back too many memories – of horrible words and tortuous arguments and tearing each other apart and leaving – and you wonder if Alex remembers. You're so consumed listening to her sound torn and disoriented as she slips into a barely-there whisper that you only just catch on to the fact she's starting to blame herself.
That was the one thing never accounted for in all your weeks of theorising. Because, why should that cross your mind? You never knew what went on when Alex disappeared behind doors and through bars and into the unreachable corners of her mind. She never let you access that. It didn't ever stop you wondering – and you did that a lot. Perhaps it was self-preservation, or maybe you were just bruised, but you always thought Alex blamed you. Silently. You thought that was what lingered in the back of her mind, as she processed your every word you later wished you could take back.
Maybe you were wrong about that. Maybe you were wrong about a lot of things.
You adjust your tactic – you're good at that. You can play along to this. And as each moment passes that she doesn't immediately meet your eye and just know it was you is a moment you're silently grateful for.
But.
The words how am I back here slip through Alex's suffering lips and you almost crack. You feel torn and frayed in two different directions - and Alex's face is searching yours for the answer, and something in you breaks at how desperately terrified she is. She's coming to you for the answer. And what's worse, you have it.
But you can't tell her that, because it would crush whatever is left of her. And you don't have it in you to do that.
You don't like lying. It's a dreadful thing. Part of you wishes you didn't have to. Save yourself from the knotted guilt that tugs and tugs and tugs and never really lets go. But this is about saving Alex of pain, not you. Because she's already in so much.
So you shut the question down and call it yours.
And you hope she doesn't find out for a while. Because damage control takes time, and you need to coax Alex back to herself, catch her before she falls. Because she's so vulnerable standing in front of you, eyes unfocused and voice shattered into a million fractured emotions that she's struggling to keep track of.
You feel like you could crumble at any minute as you press your fingers into the small of her back and guide her out the cafeteria.
All you do is hold your breath and hope.
….
I tried super hard to stay away from writing angsty s3 stuff, and it's probably tipping the scales of feeling out of character. But I promise to stay away from turning this into even more of a train wreck.
