Shelter
An Agents of SHIELD fanfic by Aisling Yinyr Ngaio
He knew what she would have said. It wasn't you. It was the staff that did it to you.
She didn't understand. He couldn't blame her. She was young, innocent, never had to make a hard call about taking another man's life, never seen the lifeblood of another flow onto the floor, his heart stopped forever, because of something she'd directly caused. Even with this atrocity, this sea of bodies he'd created, right in front of her eyes, she had refused to believe that he could've done this if not for external reasons.
Yes, perhaps the staff did increase his power, but the rage was all his own. Amplified, perhaps, but by unlocking his deepest hatred within him. Nothing had been created, only unleashed; it was all already within him. The hatred he'd tried hard to control over the twenty years since that first terrible day.
Someday, maybe, he would be ready to talk. But for a man who'd shut off and repressed those dark memories in order to survive, it wasn't easy. How did one explain the true horrors of the torture under his older brother more than he'd already revealed to her all those weeks ago? He'd been amazed that he'd even told her that much, when he'd never told anyone anything about that period of his life except for the psych profiling mandatory for all SHIELD agents. Yet… it was still impossible for her to understand the full extent of the scars his past had left him. No one could, except for the ones as scarred as himself.
So he politely declined her offer, refusing to be the one to taint her mind, and already feeling the exhaustion first experienced at the monastery creeping up heavily on him. The strength had faded, but his punishment still continued. There was no escape. Maybe there never would be.
Maybe that was why the only other surviving wielder of the staff had the same haunted look in her eyes, despite her better control over her rage. I see it every day, she'd said. Only now did he convert his admiration and respect for the tales of her exploits into empathy and understanding. And maybe, just for once, he didn't have to be the strong one all the time. After years of being on the defensive, of believing in no one's protection but his own two hands, maybe someone else was willing (and capable) of taking on that role of protector.
She entered her room after a loaded glance, armed with a bottle of whiskey, and left the door wide. An open invitation. Maybe they were too much alike, but for one night, he wanted the oblivion she was implicitly allowing him. As he walked towards his first night of deep sleep in a long time with the promise of safety, he recalled their last drink together, shared after the betrayal he'd unwittingly opened himself to. She'd only sat there, silently supportive, as if she'd been in his shoes a hundred times before. Amazing that she'd seen and lived through all that he was just starting to experience and more, yet was still standing strong, powerful and controlled, if a little messed up too.
Nobody was really surprised when the others found them in the same room the next morning, sprawled on identical arm chairs, still nursing glasses from the uncorked bottle of whiskey as the adrenaline induced exhaustion took their toll, and they slumbered on, for once dead to the living world and their haunted dreams.
- Finis -