Hero
She only takes two steps outside before she turns around.
It's a conscience thing, maybe; it's hard to tell sometimes. But she can't just leave. She sighs, pushes through the heavy doors again, and walks down the hall. She listens to her heels against the floor; obscene, it seems to her, at this time of night.
Of course she knows he isn't going home. They've been together too long for her not to know when he's lying. But it's getting harder and harder for her to be able to tell when she should nod, let it go, pretend to accept what he's trying to pass off as truth, and when she should fight.
Tonight, it's the latter.
She looks neither left nor right as she climbs the stairs to the crib; there's no need. This is the only place he would be. She studies the steps instead, and they could use a good cleaning job.
His outline casts the vaguest of shadows against the opposite wall as she turns the doorknob and opens the door – slowly, so as to allow him to pretend to be waking up or just falling asleep. Whichever he prefers. She's willing to grant him this.
"'Livia." His voice is thick, heavy; maybe he isn't feigning sleep after all, she thinks, and now she's woken him, but then she sees him rub the back of his hand against his eyes, and this gives her a strange kind of courage.
"Can I come in?"
"Help yourself," he says, tonelessly, swinging his legs over to the side of the bunk and sitting up. It strikes her that maybe she should be grateful for this small act of acquiescence, but tonight she's a little too far beyond caring.
She's here, though. That has to count for something.
"What's a guy like you doing in a place like this?" she says, lightly, and it fails to break the mood spectacularly.
He addresses his knees. "Seems to fit."
"Elliot," she says, and it sounds like praying. "Look, I know it's hard."
He doesn't bother to stifle his laugh. "What can you possibly know?"
He's going to be sharp tonight; she can feel it. She doesn't mind; she has weapons of her own. It's simply that for now, she's willing to keep them sheathed. "I know what I see you go through," she says, and hopes it will be enough.
It isn't, of course. Neither of them are enough for the other these days, and it's exhausting, more than anything else. "Right," he says, his voice no longer completely flat. There's an edge, and it relieves her, in a way – this is the only way she can understand him. That little bit of anger in the corner that someone forgot to sweep out. Not like this, broken, in the dark.
She doesn't move to turn on the lights, though; that would be wrong, somehow. Harsh, blinding, and she knows as well as he does that the reason he's here in the first place is so that he doesn't have to see.
"What do you want?" he asks finally, after the silence has gone on a few seconds longer than is decent, and his voice is plaintive now. Like a little boy's, almost, and she fights the urge to wrap her arms around him. Stroke his hand. Hush now, it's all right.
He has to ask her to repeat herself, her voice is so low. "You back," she says, more strongly. "I want you back."
"What's left," he responds, and it's ambiguous, either a statement or a question, and she isn't quite sure.
She spreads her hands out on her knees; the foot of mattress space between them seems an unimaginable distance. "You're still there, you know."
"No. I don't." Belligerent, then. All right.
"Well, I do."
"No," he begins, then stops, as if embarrassed.
"No what?"
"You don't. You think you do. You try to play the hero, Olivia, every time."
Her shoulders stiffen slightly; the same could be said for any of them.
"Maybe some of us don't want to be saved." He says it calmly, conversationally, as though discussing the weather or the sports scores or whether she thinks the tomatoes this year will be any good. Not that they talked about such things; they did, once, she remembers, but it seems foggy, another lifetime ago. Someone else's world.
"Maybe some of us won't stop trying." She lays this, her offering, at his feet, and he can't reach for it. Not tonight.
"It's late," he says finally, "you should go."
She nods and stands up. "You're doing well, you know. On that case. I meant it."
He almost smiles, a half-shadow of whatever life he used to have. "Thanks."
She smiles back, murmurs a good night, and is walking towards the door when he calls her back.
"Liv."
She turns, expectant.
"You don't smile with your eyes anymore." It comes out in a rush, as though rehearsed, and now the schoolboy is afflicted with stage fright.
She looks at him. "And you don't smile at all."
(the end)