A/N

Re-watching season 1. I love these two.

This is a conscious-stream kind of writing, all written in one sitting, and I didn't want to go back and poke too much at it because I was afraid it would ruin the feeling. Takes place the same evening that Theresa broke things off with Bernard. We all know that was a mistake. Theresa more than anyone, I think.

I hope you'll like it. I sure liked writing it. Feedback is welcome. :)

Theresa Cullen paced back and forth in her office, smoking one cigarette after another. It didn't calm her nerves. It didn't even make her less fidgety. She moved her ring from one finger to the other and back again. She played with her lighter. She tapped her fingernails against the metal of her cigarette case. She took out yet another cigarette, put it between her lips, chewed at its filterless end, almost put it back in the case, changed her mind, lit it, inhaled yet another unhealthy cloud of smoke, and resumed her pacing.

I have made a mistake.

That was ridiculous. The mistake had been getting emotionally involved with someone on the job in the first place. Not finally coming to her senses and breaking it off before it could hurt either of them in a professional way.

I have made a mistake.

Yes, she had. It had been a mistake to accept this job, pushed as she had been. It had been a mistake to allow her loneliness to corrupt her heart. She had genuinely believed she was past that kind of romantic nonsense years ago.

And to begin with she had been able to convince herself this "fling" she had with Bernard was just a physical thing. A bit of an exciting indiscretion to spice up her boring, demanding work life. Some "sexercise" to keep in shape and take the stress off at the same time. Knowing at least some of what really went on in Westworld, Theresa wouldn't dream of using her employee discount to go on some generic sex adventures in the park just to cool her physical needs a bit. But she had been alone a long time. And it wasn't just sex. It was something more. She wasn't willing to call it love, not even infatuation, but it was something…

Affection.

Yes. That was it. Ford had told her, rather condescendingly, to be careful with Bernard's sensitive disposition, and she understood why. To most people – to herself even, sometimes – she came across as a bulldozer of a woman, insensitive, callous, heartless; a bitch. What nobody really knew anymore was that it was a survival skill, many layers of shell weaved and hardened to protect a core that too was soft and sensitive. It was her only way to survive in a world where it was perfectly natural to create human replicas to rape and kill for fun.

Bernard was able and willing to see past that shell and give her the thing she really needed. It wasn't sex. It was affection. It was that unspoken thing in the air between them. It was that thing in the lingering touch as they both drifted off to sleep.

I'm still making that mistake.

Theresa put out the cigarette and blew a plume of blueish smoke into the air as she walked out of her office. Fuck this. Wasn't there some wise man who had once said that an error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it? Well, here was one woman who was going to correct her error and stop it from becoming the biggest mistake of her life.

Theresa took a deep breath, ran her hands down the front of her dress to smooth out any wrinkles, kind of wishing she could to the same to her face, and knocked on the door.

Bernard opened almost immediately. He peered at her over his glasses, not seeming surprised to see her, but not seeming too happy either. Her heart sank in her chest.

"I thought I'd catch you in the office before you left."

She tilted her head to the side, a tic she wasn't aware she had, but that Bernard had decoded long ago. It was a defiant "I may be little, but I am fierce – so don't fucking try me"-gesture that she had probably developed as far back as early childhood.

"I left early today. I didn't know you still required my services."

That stung. Theresa momentarily closed her eyes as she tried to collect her thoughts.

"May I come in?"

"You were very clear about our late-night visits, so I'm not sure what the point of that would be."

"Please."

Maybe there was more raw emotion in her voice than she intended for it to be, or maybe he was just being polite, but whatever the reason, he stepped aside and allowed her in. Theresa quickly went inside before he could change his mind. Bernard closed the door behind her, took a couple of steps back, and looked at her.

She looked back. A thousand words formed behind her lips and slipped away before she could say them out loud. She felt hot tears prick at her eyes and feared she would start to cry and turn into that melodramatic feminine stereotype that the Westworld visitors so desired. Soft and manageable. If she doesn't obey, give her a slap. If she cries, she's all yours to do with what you please. An old-fashioned view on women that kept mistaking a desire for affection for impersonal lack of will.

"I made a mistake, Bernard."

He said nothing. His dark eyes were locked on hers, firm brown on watery blue.

I'm not going to cry. I'm not weak. I'm not that cry-baby, not that brittle little girl anymore. I can take defeat. I can thrive in ruins. It's not like I haven't fucking done it before.

No, she had thrived in ruins before, because she hadn't had a choice. But she didn't want to anymore, and how was that equal to being weak? It was simple. It wasn't.

"Oh?"

His tone was politely interested, nothing more. 18-year-old Theresa would have turned around and fled. 48-year-old Theresa only did this in her imagination. Both versions would have had the same rationale; too much was at stake here.

Older Theresa had the experience to know some things were worth fighting for. Even when they hurt to the point where you thought you could never survive it. Younger Theresa had believed she knew the same things, but without the experience of pain, survival after and healing from it is only an untrustworthy illusion. When you had actually been through it, you knew. The only way through, was the truth.

"I thought I could walk away from this. I fooled myself this was a pastime."

He took off his glasses and cleaned them, then put them back on. Theresa watched his hands, his sensitive but strong hands, and God if that wasn't a cliché, what was? But it was nevertheless true. Those hands could hold her anchored to a world she no longer knew if she was even a part of, and they could caress her into worlds she didn't knew existed.

"And I hurt you. I hurt you, with that stupid, thoughtless, fucking fear of mine." She licked her lips in a futile attempt at keeping her facial features in check. Those unauthorised tears began to fill her eyes. "I'm so, so sorry. I… I'm sorry. I miss you. I wish I could take it back. Fuck this, I wish I wasn't so scared all the time!"

Bernard's brow furrowed.

"Scared? That's what you were?"

Theresa looked him straight in the eyes. One tear broke loose from the corner of her left eye and slowly traced its way down her cheek. She hardly noticed. She threw her arms out in a listless, almost childish gesture.

"That's what I am. I'm scared of fucking up. I'm scared of losing my ground. I'm scared of growing old. I'm scared of being alone." She took a tear-choked breath that almost caught in her throat. "And I'm so fucking scared of never again feeling the way you make me feel."

Bernard shook his head, reached out and pulled her into his arms. Once there, Theresa's shaky grasp at self-control shattered into a million pieces and she began to cry, a deep, hollow cry that both felt and sounded like it came from a well that was formed some forty years ago or so.

"Get that out, Theresa," he mumbled. "All of it. And then we're going to bed."

She nodded against his chest. He kissed her hair and wrapped his arms even tighter around her.

"I'm not a damsel in distress, Bernie," she said, still with her face pressed against his shirt.

"Good. Because God knows I'm not a knight in shining armour," he replied, and she chuckled thickly. "Can we take this for what it is and throw away the labels, at least for the time being?"

She nodded.

"Good," he said again, running a hand soothingly down her back. "I forgive you."

Her entire body shivered with relief, then almost went limp in his arms, as if she had spent all the strength she possessed.

"Now we're going to bed. We can talk about this in the morning," he said, almost amused despite himself. Most of the time Theresa had given off the impression of being able to carry mountains; now he got the opportunity to carry her.

No other gift was more valuable or powerful but the one she had given him tonight, by simply admitting her mistake and trying to change it.

Trust.

The foundation on which true love is built.