Things are quiet over the next two weeks – not case wise, its never quiet for long in Chicago – but emotionally. Mouse's nightmares are indistinct, manageable. The strange tension between Mouse and Jay begins to dissipate. Erin's watchfulness over Mouse declines. Dinners proceed as usual. Mouse doesn't say anything to Jay about his epiphany.
But Mouse watches Jay with new eyes, subtly scrutinizing his reaction to cases, the moments when he zones out, his posture and expression when he thinks no one's watching… It's like looking in the mirror, reading his own mind in the way Jay holds himself. Jay is very good at looking like he's fine, but tension uncurls itself and moves beneath his skin. Mouse wonders if Erin sees the way it coils, wonders, not for the first time, how deep her perception goes, what Jay has told or shown her and what he hasn't. He wants to ask if she sees what he does, if she's as afraid of broaching the subject with Jay as he is, if she tries anyway… But just like before, he knows that it's not his place.
It's a clear night, the evening air crisp. Mouse eats dinner alone at his little dining table with a book, feeling the ghostly press of cold emanating from the window. When he finishes eating, he peers out the window at the street below, then impulsively slips on his shoes and grabs his jacket. Mouse wanders the streets slowly, hands in pockets, watching the people hurrying past. He spends so little time with people outside of Intelligence, there's something foreign but also so familiar about immersing himself with the people on the streets. He remembers how people once became reduced to single crucial observations – kind, cruel, oblivious, who's a threat, who isn't. Now he watches them and wonders about their stories.
It's invigorating and unsettling, to be let himself be with the people on the streets, to not be going anywhere, but just being part of the world. He goes home almost an hour later with a flush on his cheeks from more than just the chill, and climbs the stairs to his apartment. He's looking down, rummaging for his keys in his pocket as he turns the corner and starts down the hall to his door. He looks up, and stops. Erin?
She's standing by his door, leaning against the wall, and she looks up as he approaches. Her face is tense, her hands worrying at the hem of her shirt where there's a loose thread.
"Hey," he says curiously when he gets close enough to see the thread wrapped around her finger, the redness of cut-off circulation.
"Hey." Her voice is strained. Mouse sticks his key in the lock and opens the door, ushering Erin in. She hovers uncertainly in the hall while he pulls off his coat, and then he leads her to the couch. She perches on the cushions, and Mouse leaves her to grab two glasses of water from the kitchen. When he comes back in, she has settled into the couch a bit more, and he catches the flash of bronze between her fingers. She's flipping the coin he gave her over and over between finger and thumb. He places one of the glasses of water in front of her on the coffee table, the other near him, and he settles into the couch, leaving just enough space that they aren't touching, but are easily within reach. Her brows are furrowed and she doesn't look at him at first, but he pulls his legs up to sit cross legged facing her and waits.
"I was driving home, and I was stopped behind some cars at a light, and I looked over down this alley, and there was a buy going down, and this girl… for a second I swear it was Nadia, and then she turned, and I remembered, and it was like it was hitting me all over again. And then the light turned green and I hit the gas, and it was only when I stopped that I realized I hadn't gone home – I was in the parking lot of a bar."
He sees her fingers tighten around the coin, and he knows that the edges will be pressing into her skin.
"Did you go in?" he asks softly. She shakes her head jerkily.
"But I wanted to. I wanted to forget." Her mouth thins. "It's so stupid, it's been months and I've been fine!"
"You know it doesn't work like that," Mouse says softly. "Pushing something away doesn't make it not exist, even if you're pushing it away in a way that looks healthier than drugs and alcohol."
"You think I've been pushing it away?" She turns to look at him. He shrugs.
"Maybe. I think that maybe in a way, you did exactly what I did when Jay and I got back. Jay was hurt, and it gave you something to focus on that wasn't your own loss, so you clung to the need to support him. And then the need to support me. But that didn't make it go away, and it had to catch up eventually." He pulls his own coin out of his pocket, flipping it between his fingers. "But even if that's not what happened, grief and trauma aren't logical. They don't follow the rules."
"How do you know the difference between pushing it away, and being okay?"
Mouse rubs his thumb along the surface of the coin, brow furrowed.
"I don't know. You'll have to let me know if you figure it out first."
Erin huffs out a frustrated breath and draws her knees up to her chest.
"Why is it so damn hard? Nadia got clean, Nadia would want me to stay clean and sober, and I should want that, so why is it so damn hard?" She directs the bitter question to the ceiling.
"Because she's not here." Mouse says quietly, mind wandering to the brothers he left behind in the desert. Erin turns to look at him with watery eyes. "We made a pact, our unit. After the first suicide in our camp. We promised that no matter what happened, no matter how bad it got, we'd never give up. We'd never throw away the lives that our brothers died to let us keep. Sometimes I think the idea of the shame of breaking that pact is the only thing that kept me alive. Or maybe it was knowing that Jay would be the one who had to identify my body. But not actively dying… it's not the same as living. It took a long time for me to find… the strength, I guess, to face life." He pauses, his skin itching with the echo of hospital blankets. "I guess my point is that just because you know that she'd want you to be okay, to be happy, it doesn't change the fact that grief and guilt are volatile. It doesn't make it any less hard to face. And wanting to escape doesn't make you weak." He furrows his brow, wrinkling up his nose. "That didn't make much sense."
Erin chuckles, the sound catching a little in her throat, and pats his hand.
"It made enough sense." She shifts closer on the couch so her leg presses up against his knees. "I can go a whole day without thinking about it, and then some little thing reminds me and it's like being hit from behind. Is it still like that for you?"
Mouse hums, a soft rumble in his throat.
"Sort of. It's hard to separate grief from… from trauma. They're tangled up together. Sometimes it's like you said, but in a way, it's never not, I don't know, affecting me?" He shrugs. "Completely apart from being better or not, what happened, what I've done and been through… it's part of who I am, and it never won't be. It's too much, too big, to not be part of me." Erin nods in minute movement as he speaks, studying the coin in her hands.
"One of the things that people say is that being an addict doesn't define you…" Erin says slowly. "But it does. Even when I'm clean, even if I'm clean for the rest of my life, I'm still an addict. It does define me. It's just that it doesn't define all of me."
"Nadia defines part of you too," Mouse ventures hesitantly. "Having her, and having lost her… it's okay to own that and carry it with you forever. As long as, just as with addiction, you don't start thinking it's the only thing that defines you."
"I guess the hard part," Erin continues, "is finding a way to carry the important stuff without drowning in it."
"Good thing we've got people to keep our heads above water." Mouse's lips tug up in a half smile. Erin glances over, hair swishing over her shoulder, and returns the soft smile.
"Yeah, we do."
Why did you come here instead of Jay's? Mouse thinks briefly. His thumb brushes over the surface of his coin, and he sees her do the same. The question fades away.
AN; It's been too long, I know! This chapter didn't want to cooperate. As always, reviews make me infinitely happy
