Chris's heavy eyelids open slowly, puffy from the night before and no less exhausted.
The twisted images that plagued her sleep now sit fuzzy in her memory: the desert, Street, her family. The gut-wrenching fear is alive and well on her every nerve.
With the blinds drawn, her bedroom is dark despite it having to be long past sunrise. Chris is facing away from the alarm clock and her phone is still on her dresser across the room, probably dead, so she accepts without a fight not knowing the time. Her brain whirls. Bits and pieces of memories, skeletons no longer lying dormant in the closet, come to her mind, hot and vivid but gone too fast to hang onto anything or figure out what it means. She squeezes her eyes shut in the hopes that every sensation will fade out.
It works eventually, when Chris is disconnected with her body enough to forget it's there and the relentless thoughts turn into static. Sighing, she lets the feeling envelop her, adrift in the middle of a vast ocean and unable to care that drowning is an inevitability if someone doesn't throw her a rope fast.
Her eyes flutter open at the soft knock and sound of the door opening five minutes or three hours later. She can tell from the footfalls it's Street, and gathers that her family had to leave. The same feeling from last night, discomfort at him being so close to the parts of her that she's tried to burn away but never could, returns.
Looking at her back, the rise and fall of her shoulders means there's no way she's asleep, and there's no way she's missed him entering.
His body tells him to lie down next to her and pull her into him but Street refrains, worried about making Chris any more uncomfortable in space than she might already be. Though physical contact has never been something she's shied from, Street can feel the fragility in the air and avoids anything that might make her shut down further.
"Hey," Street says, standing at the side of the bed, careful of his tone. He sees Chris tense, and then the energy drains from her.
"I'm fine." She gets out. Having another person in the room means she has to be aware of what's going on, but she can hear her words and knows they're unconvincing at best.
He's not sure what to say. Her trying to deflect, to pretend that whatever's happening isn't, he expected, but he can't call her out as much as he can't let it lie.
"You're not," Street settles on the truth, not angry or judgmental, not even a sigh at the end.
"And that's okay. You're going through a lot right now. Can I help?"
Chris shrugs, mumbles something incoherent, and shakes her head when Street asks if she's hungry or thirsty.
Her lack of anything causes Street's pulse to pick up, and he takes another step closer. He needs to see her, to meet his eyes with hers and figure out what's in them and how he can relieve it.
"Is it okay if I sit?" He's moved to the foot of the bed, closer to the side she's facing.
"Sure."
Taking her permission, Street quietly walks around to see Chris's closed eyes. He pushes back the covers and slides under them, pillowing his head on a bent arm and resting the other on his side so he doesn't cradle her face.
"Helena said you had a nightmare?" He whispers. Each breath Chris takes is labored in her effort not to cry, a sharp inhale followed by a nod and a shaky exhale.
"I—" Chris tries, gripped by the same fear that kept her from telling Helena and Sarzo last night. But Street was the one who wrapped an arm around her and got her out of there. He might've been the one to shoot the man who hurt her in the first place.
"It was the desert," Chris says, voice uneven, eyes shut tight, and hands shaking as she wishes that the memories will turn back into static.
"Okay," Street encourages.
"Rafa shot me as you guys landed." She's getting louder, half-moon divots from her nails cutting into her palm. The static in her mind gets louder, too, and Chris realizes that it's always there, a low constant that drives distance between her and everyone she loves, and she has to tell Street before it's too loud not to listen to.
"I saw you. You and the team and my family but I didn't get to say goodbye. And that's what Rafa said, that he hoped I told everyone I loved them. But I didn't. And then I woke up, and I still couldn't. I don't know why."
Her voice grows quiet again as she speaks, ending at a whisper so that's so delicate, Street's sure he could break it if he says the wrong thing. It brings back the wind that was knocked out of him when Chris said she saw him, needing it to help her.
"Maybe Deacon's right," Chris confesses, and Deacon's as much of Street's family as any of them, but he's sure at this moment he'd take him down if he could.
The static is becoming overwhelming, pushing Chris into silence until Street's voice breaks through it all and makes it go quieter.
"About what, Chris?" He prods, eyes scanning her face and catching the way her lashes lift for a moment, her eyes opening but not able to look at him. Taking a deep breath, he reaches between them where her hands are balled into fists at her chest and sets the back of his palm against hers.
"Attachments," Chris says, tears building that she refuses to let fall. "Maybe I have them but not, not like everyone else does." She shrugs, more on her mind but she can't decipher how to untangle it into words.
Looking at her, hearing the gentle shake in her breath as she tries in vain to keep herself together, it settles on Street just how much pressure Chris feels all the time. He doesn't know where it comes from, probably originating in the same place as all the complexes he's got, and he bites his tongue to keep from speaking before he knows exactly what he wants to say.
He knows it isn't a contest, both having it harder than kids should've, but it's clear that where his shit manifested into rebellion and isolation, Chris's morphed into something just as sinister that keeps her always just on the outside razor's edge of the people she loves. Whenever she tries to get close like she wants, it sparks like an old outlet to drive her away, and it's become so normalized it feels like protective armor instead of the problem it is. Street's sure Chris knows it's a problem, and it's dwarfed by rationality failing at every turn to what the world has ingrained into every fiber of her. It has to be cut out like cancer.
"I love you."
Chris's eyes slam open. Her heart stops in her chest. The static is deafening.
"What?" She chokes out, hardly able to breathe.
"I love you," Street repeats, gaze as certain as ever and his hand wedging itself between hers. Chris's eyes flick down to them, but she doesn't pull away and he holds tighter.
"And I need you. Your family does, and so does the team."
Chris searches Street's eyes like she'll find the holy grail in him.
"We do," Street says, and it sounds like he's swearing it on a soft, nervous laugh. "It's okay for you to love and to need us, too, you're not supposed to be doing it all alone all the time."
His words cut straight through Chris. She doesn't know how he's figured all of her out. How he's able to see inside of her all the pieces that are broken or damaged and glue them together, dusting off parts of her she thought were too far gone to ever recover.
I've got you all figured out, she told him once, climbing over and digging around through all the crevices in his armor.
It shouldn't be a surprise that he's been doing the same over the last five years. Each giving the other openings afforded to no one else, and peeking around corners they come across because there's nothing they don't want to know about the other.
Street's brought himself voluntarily, eagerly, to the iron gates that stand around Chris's heart, with a sword in one hand and dirt for planting in the other, ready to face whatever lies beyond the latch.
And Chris is so tired of fighting, so bruised and beaten from an unwinnable, everlasting battle against an invisible monster. Of convincing herself that trying to protect the ones she loves has to be worth getting hurt, but not letting herself see that her pain hurts them worse.
His voice guides her to the lock, the key heavy in her shaking fist, to let him in so they can get through this together, and the strength in him overshadows the fear that she'll drag him down with her. Gives her hope that, maybe, when all is said and done, she can push the gate open further for the other people that are and have always been waiting on the other side for her. She takes a shaky inhale as the world continues to spin and the sun rises higher in the sky.
"I love you, too."
hello! thank you so so so much for reading! little bit of a shorter chapter but i also couldn't wait to post it lol. thank you to everyone who continues to read and comments/kudos? i know i say it after every chapter but i really do read (and reread) and cherish every one. very excited to hear everyone's thoughts on this one! totally agree with hoping that lina comes back for an ep, and that they really are able to all go out with a bang, even though it looks quite different than expected. won't think about the finale bc that will make me sad lol xo, A