A/N: No spoilers for season seven. Enjoy!
The next morning, Marka opened her eyes to the sound of Nicky banging around in the living room. With a wary glance towards the door, the older woman wrapped her robe around herself and padded out into the living room. To be honest, she was surprised that her daughter was still here and hadn't absconded in the night. She felt almost proud of herself for making that happen - but Nicky quickly dismissed this.
"I'm not staying long," Nicky said bluntly, throwing herself down onto the armchair that hadn't been used since she left. She hugged the bag she had packed in a hurry that contained only her phone, notebook and various other knickknacks she had collected in the previous few weeks. She'd changed out of the pajamas she'd worn last night, and Marka wondered when her night owl had turned into an early bird. "You know that, right?"
Marka rubbed her hand over her tired eyes. The whole night had been lost to tossing and turning, and she was feeling the affects of it now.
"No, I didn't expect you to," she conceded, resting a hand down onto the sideboard. Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, she looked at her only daughter with a look of loss in her eyes. "I've found a rehab programme for you...it's residential."
Nicky's head snapped up. "You brought me back here for that?" Nicky's voice dripped with contempt, and she sat up. "You know, I thought that maybe you cared when you came back for me. That's why I left Red's. But obviously I was wrong. You've spent my whole fucking life shipping me somewhere so you don't have to deal with me and it still hasn't stopped."
"Nicky-"
"Don't bother. It's my fault, really, I should have known that you didn't really care. Why change the habits of a lifetime, huh?"
"Nicky, just listen!" Marka snapped. "This isn't about me, it's about you. Do you really think I don't care? Wouldn't it have been easier for me to throw money at you? To sit back and let you kill yourself?"
Nicky set her mouth in a hard line, crossing her arms over herself. "You cut me off! I was practically homeless."
Marka scoffed. "Homeless? I didn't throw you out! You left!" Marka covered her face with her hands, the long and stressful yesterday taking its toll on her. "You are acting just like your father - he left every time things got difficult, too."
"You're comparing me to Les?" Nicky said, throwing herself forward and resting her elbows on her knees. "Now I know you really hate me."
Marka sighed. "I shouldn't have said that."
"Maybe you shouldn't have come back at all."
Sweeping carefully placed magazines aside, Marka perched on the coffee table. It was something she had nagged Nicky about a thousand times; 'if I don't allow glasses on the table, I certainly don't allow asses' yet she didn't seem to care as it creaked under her weight. She took a long hard look at Nicky, who squirmed under the scrutiny.
"Do you really think you're better, Nicky?"
Better. Was that the right word? Truly, she didn't know - and it annoyed her to think that Marka knew this already. Her hand brushed up her left arm, the skin uneven and raised in some places where countless needles had been stuck in, as doubt flooded her body.
Marka watched her reaction carefully. "Are you telling me you were clean the whole time you were with her? Nothing would make me happier than if you were, but…"
Nicky closed her eyes. Had she stopped, in the last few months, to think about what would happen after? After she was clean and doing good and Red decided she should stand on her own two feet? After she had spent far too long in what was once a stranger's guest bedroom?
No, she hadn't. She hadn't liked to think about the future, and for the longest time, she believed that she wouldn't really have one. And when she finally had a shred of hope that she would, she didn't like to think about it being separate from Red. She simply hadn't allowed herself to think that far ahead, and now she was paying for it.
Nicky lifted her head. Marka sounded so certain about her relapse. It could have been good judgement from the past, but Nicky sensed that it was more than that.
"Did Red tell you?"
Marka's mask slipped for a moment, and the look of disappointment told Nicky that she hadn't, or Marka wouldn't be surprised.
The older woman shook her head minutely. "No," she admitted. "She…" Marka hesitated. "She just didn't want to let you go."
"But she did," Nicky said needlessly.
"I know," Marka said uneasily. "If she believed you'd be fine with her, I don't think she would have let you go."
"She loves me," Nicky said defiantly, lifting her chin. "That's why."
"Maybe."
"Do you think I'm that unlovable that she couldn't?"
"Nicky, that's not what I meant. Sometimes love just isn't enough. And I think she knows that."
Nicky glared, disbelieving her. "Only because you forced her hand."
Marka heaved a sigh. "You know what? Why don't you take a taxi and go see her? Ask her what she thinks, if that will make you happy."
"It wouldn't make me happy, but…"
"I have a feeling she'll agree with me," Marka continued, ignoring Nicky's bad attitude. "Go and see her. If she agrees, will you come with me this morning? Even if you just look, it will be a start."
"If she agrees," Nicky said hesitantly. "I will think about it."
"That's all I ask," Marka said, looking heavenward in victory. She watched Nicky scramble from the couch to the door, and when she was sure she had left, lifted her purse from the table. From it, she unfurled a small piece of paper from one of the pockets. Grabbing her phone from the hook, she dialed in the scrawled out number.
A Russian accent came through almost immediately. "Is it Nicky?" she said, her voice steeped in concern. "Has she done something stupid?"
Marka squeezed her eyes closed. "No. She's coming to see you," she said. "She won't go to rehab without your blessing. Without you telling her that you think it's the right thing to do. Please, Red. Please tell her that. It could be the making of her, and she needs this."
Red's silence was deafening, but finally she nodded. She felt defeated. "If she asks me, I will tell her, yes."
Marka let out a breath on the other side of the line. "Thank you, Red...thank you."
Nicky looked through the cemetery gate, clutching a bouquet of flowers, and saw a flash of red hair through the shrubs. Dmitri said she was here, and he was right. He'd looked just as beaten down as she did now when she'd seen him this morning, but he'd squeezed her arm and offered her well wishes as she'd headed back down the apartment stairs.
She pushed down the feeling of betrayal and hurt and made her way down the path. Leaves crunched under her feet, and Red turned to face her before she could even reach her.
"Dmitri said you'd be here," Nicky said, the ghost of a smile on her face. She placed the bunch of roses down on the cross. "Sorry they're kinda dying already. They only had those."
"Anything is nice," she said, nodding. "I wanted to spend some time with Tricia. I missed you last night, dorogoy."
"I missed you too," Nicky admitted, pushing her hair back out of her eyes. "You know...Marka has found me a place on a residential programme. I don't want to go. I wanna stay here." With you, she added silently.
"I think you should go to the residential rehab. Give it a try, at least," Red encouraged. "It might be the making of you." She echoed Marka's words and tried to sound genuine.
Nicky chewed on her lip, clearly struggling with the idea. "You were the making of me," she said, the notion causing tears to pool in her eyes. "Why did you make me go back?"
"Because you are not my do-over," Red said. "You are not my if things were different or my what could have been. You're Nicky, and I love you for you, but I had to let you go." At least for now, she thought.
As Nicky's eyes focused on the small cross on the ground, her vision blurred with tears. Tricia's name smudged into a smear, and the girl she had never even known took up most of her head space again. Was it wrong that she wouldn't mind if she was? Living in a dead girl's shadow wouldn't be easy, but at least she had fucked up too. It would be nothing compared to living in the shadow of the person Marka wanted her to be. That bitch was perfect. Hair falling in her face, she looked up at Red.
"But that's why you wanted me, wasn't it?" Nicky wiped at the tears falling down her cheeks. "Because I was like her?" She jerked her chin in the direction of the grave. "Like Tricia?"
The way Nicky said her name made Red's breathing hitch.
She said nothing for a moment, and the silence that fell between them was deafening. In a way, Nicky was right, and Red couldn't argue. When she'd seen Nicky's huge eyes and wild mane of hair, she'd been taken back to first seeing Tricia. She was older, and a little more jaded, but the process of seeing her slowly get better had made the ache inside lessen slightly. It had unknotted the balls of grief in her stomach.
"No," she said finally. She closed her eyes, her hands fumbling to rest on the cross. The ugly looking thing had always bothered her, and it had never been straight, not since the day someone had haphazardly staked it into the ground. Nicky watched her struggle with it, but scoffed at her answer.
"Maybe in the beginning," she admitted. "I thought I could rewind time and patch up old wounds...but you are not her." She paused, drawing a long breath. "And I will not make the same mistakes."
Nicky buried her nose in her scarf. She looked sideways at Red, building up the courage to ask the question that had been nagging at her. "What did you do that was so wrong?" she asked. Her eyes fell to Tricia's gravestone...grave cross. It was pitiful. "What can't you forgive yourself for?"
"Nicky…"
"I know," she said, her face setting in an unfair glare. She crossed her arms, turning away. "You don't like talking about her."
"No." Red shook her head. "That's not true."
She did like talking about her children; every one of them. And however many other people thought she had; she knew she had five. Three boys and two girls - and she could talk endlessly about them all. Back then, she had. But when the worst happened, when she'd buried one of them...suddenly, people didn't want to hear her name anymore. An uncomfortable look crossed their faces, they squirmed as she would recount a happy memory. Each time it happened, it was like they chipped a piece of happiness from the event. Eventually, she just stopped talking about her. Put her things in a box, taped it up, and shoved it into a closet. The guilt she felt because of it was unimaginable, yet she couldn't bring herself to talk about her anymore. She didn't want people getting that look on their faces because of her beautiful girl. She couldn't understand why their eyes didn't light up at the thought of her, like hers did. It was unbearable to see her own grief reflected into other people's eyes. It had been so long that now Tricia's name caught in her throat when she even tried to say it.
Nicky pressed her lips together. "You barely ever say her name."
Red nodded, swallowing hard. "People don't like hearing about dead children, I've found." She blinked away tears. "If you have children someday you'll understand, but…" she took a deep breath.
Nicky fumbled for Red's hand. Her anger was dissipating, fizzling out as quickly as it had built up. The devastation was obvious on Red's face, and she hated herself for provoking that reaction in her. Especially after what Red had done for her. The betrayal of Red "giving her back" was still strong, but she was beginning to understand that it hadn't been an easy decision for her, either.
"You don't have to explain it to me."
"I want to," Red said truthfully. She squeezed Nicky's hand, her wedding band uncomfortably cold against the blonde's skin. "Nothing will make you prouder than your kids. Their achievements feel like yours, in a way...and every mother is guilty of talking about her children more than people probably care about. But they nod and smile, and add their two cents...when your child dies, you don't get smiles and nods anymore. You get pity. You get uncomfortable shuffles. Suddenly, your greatest achievement is something that people can't stand to think about."
Nicky nodded uncertainly. "You...you can talk about her to me."
Red turned away from the daughter she had lost and faced the one she had gained. Placing a hand on her shoulder, Red nodded. "Thank you, Nicky...I'll remember that."
Nicky didn't wriggle out of Red's grip like she might have a few weeks ago. Instead, she leaned against her, rubbing the top of her head against Red's cheek.
"It wasn't your fault, you know."
Red held Nicky close. "You don't know what happened," she replied, her voice hoarse. It was clear that it was taking everything in her to not cry. "That little girl died all alone."
"She died knowing you were the only person who wanted to help her. Who wanted her, period," Nicky said, peeking a look at Red's face. It was haunted, pain etched on her features.
"No," she whispered, shaking her head. "She died thinking I didn't want her. Because I gave her that impression. I thought she would just come back...the boys always just came home." Red closed her eyes, pinching her bottom lip and not seeming to care that the scarlet lipstick smudged. "She knew her limits, Nicky. It must have been on purpose. And all because of me. She had been doing so well…"
"That's addicts, Red...they don't know their limits. It happens all the time. They stay clean for months and then relapse..but their tolerance is down. Why would she kill herself? Why wouldn't she wanna come home to you?"
"I used to be harsher. I played tough with Tricia...and now she's cold and all alone with a shitty wooden cross for people to remember her by." Red's voice broke off. She looked to Nicky. "I would never tell you what I told her. I didn't mean it...I didn't mean any of it."
Tricia shoved unpainted nails into her pockets, a mess of blonde hair billowing in the wind. It was gearing up to be the first snowfall of the year, and the clouds above her didn't look like they were going to be forgiving to the fact that she'd left the house in a hurry with no jacket or scarf. She shivered but stood her ground, combat boots crunching the grit that had been thrown down like breadcrumbs to birds earlier that morning.
She checked her phone again. It was hard to believe that only ten minutes had passed, but soon a familiar face came into view.
"You got the stuff?" Tricia asked. Her voice was uncharacteristically shaky; her hands trembled as she reached out for the white baggie he was dangling in front of her.
The man whipped it away, grinning with a mouthful of rotten teeth. "You got my money?"
Tricia glared. Out of her pocket she fished a few bills, pushing down the guilt that she was spending Red's money on the thing she hated the most. It was only in the last few weeks she had trusted her to earn some money working down at the market. "Yeah, I got your fucking money." Then she paused, rubbing the bills together in thought. "Or...I could pay you in other ways."
He raised his eyebrows. "Other ways...sounds interesting."
Tricia looked over her shoulder, the frigid wind stinging her eyes. Would Red be proud of her right now? It was the question she asked herself when she knew she was making a bad decision - but she wasn't proud of her now anyway.
"It wasn't your fault, Red…" Nicky pulled the older woman into a hug, burying her head into her neck. "It wasn't your fault."
A/N:
I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Thank you for all of your reviews, they mean the world. I'm so tired my eyes are closing as I post this chapter, so hopefully there aren't any mistakes. Let me know what you thought in a review. Hope you're all well.
- Star xo