For Lucy [ Dated 11/01]

[silverhammer]

He loses count of how many looks he gets on the way back to Oceanview. But it makes sense: his face is smeared with blood, one side of his face is all bruised and swollen and he's limping from where the faceless soldier fucked up his leg. He ignores the few people who manage to ask him if he's okay, mostly because he can't decide whether or not they're real or in his head.

He's not crazy enough to talk to people who aren't even fucking there. He's not.

Max hobbles through the complex to his apartment, leaving a palm-shaped red smear on the door as he pushes it open.

It's like it should be. Like it was that morning he got into his cab for his shift, before the ash. There's no overturned candle on the floor, no bullet holes in the walls from where he should have died.

Maybe he's so goddamned crazy he imagined it. Maybe that copper taste in his mouth and the pain in his leg and side and hand and head... maybe it's not even there at all.

"...fuck," Max breathes, and his voice is shaky and strained, his throat raw.

He walks back to his bedroom and curls up on the bed, the softness of the blanket feeling weirder underneath him than he remembers. He closes his eyes and tries to make the world go away, if only for a little while.

Comments

[silverhammer]

He doesn't want her to have to see him like this. Maybe Lucy doesn't remember it, but they've done this before. She's already helped put him back together when he didn't know up from down and she shouldn't have to fucking do it again.

Max shuts his eyes tight and clenches his fists, even though his knuckles still burn from where his hand scraped against the pavement, leaving some of the skin behind. At some point, he'll have to get up, have to take a shower and find some food, but he can't wrap his head around the idea of moving just yet.

It's another few minutes before he calms down, catching his breath and turning his face away from the mattress where he'd pressed it to try and muffle his sobs.

[radicalize]

There's not really anything Lucy can do but stay here close beside him, doing her best to fend off tears of her own, but for all that she doubts it's actually going to make much difference, at least she doesn't feel entirely useless. She can't fix this, can't take back whatever happened to him, not least when she can't even begin to imagine what that might have been, but she would if she could, and she can stay here beside him until then. Besides, it isn't as if she needs something to fight against when she wouldn't want to be anywhere but at her brother's side, her hand moving slowly over his back, touch featherlight.

She wants to ask who hurt him and where he was, but she doesn't. For one, she's pretty sure she knows the answer to the second. More importantly, though, he shouldn't have to talk about it if he doesn't want to. The details aren't what matter, not at a time like this.

"Hey," she murmurs when he turns his head, her stomach twisting when she gets a better look at him, though she doesn't let on as much. "Do you need — can I get you anything?"

[silverhammer]

Max wants to just tell her to go, because all of this is shit that she shouldn't have to deal with at all. It's shit she shouldn't even have to see. But the only other option means he's by himself for God only knows how long. Back in the jungle, back in the dark waiting to die.

He breathes in, and then out, long and drawn out so he can bring himself to speak.

"Can you just stay here a minute?" he asks.

[radicalize]

Without hesitating for so much as a moment, Lucy nods, blinking hard to try to clear her vision. (It doesn't work.) Even had he not asked her to, she wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else, and not just because it's been days since she's seen him, since she thought he vanished. Seeing him like this, it would only have hurt to leave his side. Given the shape he's in, though, it wouldn't have felt right not to ask. Now that she has, she doesn't have to worry that there might be something she's missing instead.

"Of course," she murmurs. "I'm not going anywhere." There are other things she should probably be dealing with, that she'll have to before too long, but right now, she isn't letting herself worry about that. It can all wait a little while longer, and then she'll figure it all out, make sure she can stay as long as he needs her.