This chapter is mostly introspective filler and for that I apologise. I tried a bunch of different things for it but ultimately decided this was the length and content that the chapter needed to have. It's been edited a few different times but overall it is the same material. Thanks for continuing to read! I'll post a proper chapter tomorrow to make up for this one!

Wick's POV

Until the night at the restaurant everything had been muddled, yet easy enough to navigate. Befriending Raven was hardly an easy road; somehow Wick had made it work so far regardless. After though, after that night everything is dark and confusing and yet also clear. Some aspects make sense, as much as he hates it, while others are further buried into mystery.

One thing is clear-Raven had been abandoned. First it had been by someone's choice. Then it was by the sort of force that was unstoppable, despite what anyone may want. This knowledge shouldn't change anything; he knows she wouldn't want it to. But now he thinks more before he speaks. He considers her viewpoint before he judges. Things had changed, maybe only for him, but he hardly expected them to shift back.

Tuesday morning hadn't started great. He slept through his alarm and then he realised the milk was expired and of course there's construction on the road he tries to take to Raven's. He's amped before he even gets to her house and then she's panicked and it throws his own heart into overdrive, getting worried for her.

Her mom had been both everything he had expected and nothing that he had hoped. A better person might step in. He just stands there dumbly throughout their whole interaction. He notices the defeat in Raven's voice and the concern in her glance. Once they're both in the truck and driving away, he doesn't miss how she turns in her seat, watching her mother until they've turned the corner and she's gone from sight.

Because he knows things he shouldn't, there are words he wants to say. There were apologies that nearly burst with desperation to be spoken. Her life had been so unfair. Her losses had been so great.

He was sorry that her mom wasn't a proper mom. He was sorry that her dad was nowhere in sight. He was sorry that the one person who cared about her first left her and then died on her. He was so damn sorry about so many things and he knew she would hate every apology. He knew she would resent him for every pitying thought and sympathizing glance. So he doesn't delve into specifics. He doesn't ask if she's okay as she sits in his truck with tears pooling in her eyes and her hand tap, tap tapping on her brace. He says two words that mean nothing at all and yet say everything he needs. "I'm sorry."

She doesn't answer.

Stick and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me. The dumb childhood chant repeats in his mind. All the while his stomach clenches and his head aches so bad he feels like it might just explode. He analyses the line over again, picking apart each lie from the stupid thing. Words hurt. Rejection stung. Failing left a pile of wreckage.

He had tried to do everything right. He put water on to boil so she could have something warm to drink and he gave her that jacket. That damn jacket that had sat in a box for years now, useless but needed for whatever reason. He wanted to stay with her. Her morning had clearly been even worse than his. Leaving her there felt like a dick move.

She would hate the way he thinks, how he thinks of abandonment when he considers leaving her out in the cold while he sits inside his toasty apartment. But he can't help it. So he fights her. He fights her in a way that he normally wouldn't because she wants this dammit. She wants someone to stay with her. He knows she must…right?

He has far less conviction after her words pierce his heart and cause all of his feelings to stagger back.

"You are not my friend," she had stated with venom in her voice and fire in her eyes. They were the words that struck him down and shot all of his ideals dead. One sentence and he already felt weaker.

"You are not my knight in shining armour," she declared, as though she had seen his very thoughts. Raven knew what he assumed. She must see the hope in his eyes, the desire in his smile, and the sadness in his heart. She knows what he wants for her and she resents him for it. Maybe because she doesn't want it for herself. More likely it's because she thinks she can't have it.

"Or the light at the end of the goddamn tunnel." You can't save me, she implies. Darkness is what she's comfortable with. He is hardly the one to lead her out. She never asked for that. She doesn't believe it could happen. Maybe, she doesn't even want it to happen.

"Give up your romantic notions." The chivalrous thoughts and hopeful plans. She doesn't want him to think that way. She doesn't want him to expect anything to change. Especially not because of him.

"Get the fuck away from me." Those words were the ones he didn't question. That was where the warning was buried and the demand was clear. There was no need for interpretation. He followed instructions, feeling a bit like a puppy who'd been smacked on the nose with a newspaper as he walked away.

Her words had been harsh. Maybe he should have been expecting it, she was rough around the edges after all, but so much of his life had been consumed by her as of recent that he struggled to consider she might feel this way.

After his night out with the guys Wick worried that he was turning Raven into another Emily, a senseless infatuation that consumed his very being with someone else. He was worried that he had turned Raven into some mystery to be solved or a case to crack. That he was stripping away her humanity in his attempt to discover what made her the way she is.

It was a senseless worry he ultimately decided. She wasn't just something to be uncovered, she was something to be cherished. For Wick, her past wasn't the priority. He wanted to help her have a better future. So many times he felt locked in where he was. A job that was going nowhere but up was great, except that now it felt like there was no other choice and now more than ever he wanted something different, something more.

Watching Raven turn in on herself, disappear behind a wall of her own making, it made him worry she would never break out. He didn't want her future to remain stuck behind a desk at the local hospital.

But sometimes he needed to be reminded that she wasn't his to worry about. Maybe she didn't have anyone else but, as she so eloquently pointed out today, that didn't mean that he was elected by default. She had other friends; he saw how much they cared about her. Surely if she wanted someone to look out for her and if she wanted someone to lean on, she could have found them before now. He wasn't anything special. He didn't care any more or less than her other friends even. He just hadn't experienced her cold, determined rejection.

Not until this morning at least.

Maybe he had the best of intentions, but they did neither of them any good if she wanted nothing more than to be left alone.

Something broke between them today. But maybe it was through the breaking that something real could be forged. It might take time, healing always did after all, but Wick was optimistic. She could shut him out all she wanted, that didn't mean he was going to stop trying to get in.

The harsh reality was that things were not right for Raven Reyes. Wick could see that. Sure there were the obvious things, like her leg or the encounter with her mother, but also in the way her pants always hung off her hips a little too much and the heavy bags that were a constant beneath her eyes. He'd be damned if he didn't do what he could, what she would let him, to try and improve those things.

He waits inside, just in the vestibule. He didn't want her to have to trek up the steps when she was done just to announce that she'd finished and then limp her way back downstairs so he could drive her home. Plus he didn't like the idea of her being out there on her own all this time. Sure, it wasn't that bad of a neighbourhood, but she was vulnerable and people had the potential to suck everywhere.

After a few hours of sitting on stairs and drumming his fingers on the banister, Wick does make his way back up to his apartment. Despite how much he knows Raven will hate him for it, he dumps a can of soup into a pot and lets it slowly heat. He was starving and by now she must be a literal ice cube. It was a win/win sort of meal. Well, aside from the part where she dumped it on him for bringing it to her.

He pours them both a bowl and sticks a spoon in each one. Getting them outside was the real struggle. Wick nearly ended up with a tomato soup bath on his foot as he tried to open the door. He makes it out there somehow and walks toward where he had left Raven and his truck.

The toolbox sits on the curb and the empty plastic bag is sandwiched in place beneath it. Wick looks for Raven, setting the bowls down and peering under the truck as well as checking the inside, even in the bed of the truck. She's not there. He's about to go back inside, search for her there and see if he somehow missed her on his journey outside. Finally the paper struggling beneath the windshield wiper garners his attention.

He snatches it off, recognising it as the receipt that had been in the plastic bag.

"Should be all fixed. Hope she runs well for you."

She signed her name at the bottom and wrote nothing else. He realises then that it's because she's gone. She ran away without goodbye. He expected a lot of different reactions from her. Somehow he never considered that her leaving would be the outcome.