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Aftermath in Two Parts / for Jack
July 10th, 2020 (late)
Anne limps slightly as she makes her way home, the aches of her scrap with Sweeney growing sharper and the haze of alcohol no longer dulling it, but she still feels satisfied, glad she made the challenge, pleased she held her own. Sweeney is as mad as he claims, but it don't put her off, not when she finds herself reflecting it back so easily. It was a good fight; she'll need to go easy for a while, but it was a good fight.
She doesn't think much about how Jack might react when he sees her like this until she's climbing the stairs to their apartment, digging around for her keys. She supposes he'll worry at first, but there's no vengeance to be claimed, no wrong been done. It was a fight she invited, and anyway, she's had worse.
Probably time to tell him about why, though. About Beverly and Rosie, the promises she made them. Been long enough.
Anne pushes the door open with a soft grunt, stepping inside and taking her hat off, wincing only slightly at the twinge that comes from lifting her arm. Fuck's sake. She needs to do this more often, lest she wants to start going soft.
Anne limps slightly as she makes her way home, the aches of her scrap with Sweeney growing sharper and the haze of alcohol no longer dulling it, but she still feels satisfied, glad she made the challenge, pleased she held her own. Sweeney is as mad as he claims, but it don't put her off, not when she finds herself reflecting it back so easily. It was a good fight; she'll need to go easy for a while, but it was a good fight.
She doesn't think much about how Jack might react when he sees her like this until she's climbing the stairs to their apartment, digging around for her keys. She supposes he'll worry at first, but there's no vengeance to be claimed, no wrong been done. It was a fight she invited, and anyway, she's had worse.
Probably time to tell him about why, though. About Beverly and Rosie, the promises she made them. Been long enough.
Anne pushes the door open with a soft grunt, stepping inside and taking her hat off, wincing only slightly at the twinge that comes from lifting her arm. Fuck's sake. She needs to do this more often, lest she wants to start going soft.
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"There's chicken leftover from yesterday, if you're hungry," he says, rubbing the bridge of his nose and pushing himself back from the mess in front of him.
Anne drops her hat on the table, and Jack's gaze shifts away from his work to stall at bloody knuckles. In a moment, he's on his feet, pulling his handkerchief from a pants pocket and taking in the rest of the damage. It's clear that she's been in a fight, and not an easy one.
"Jesus. Anne." Tension clenches in his chest, thinking that if it had gone worse, he might not have known where to look for her. "Sit down."
He goes and wets his handkerchief at the kitchen sink, then comes back, watching as Anne settles in at the table. She's moving carefully, and he assumes that she has more injuries that he can see. He pulls out another chair and sits, then reaches forward gently for her hand, focusing on dabbing at the blood on her knuckles. "What happened?"
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"Mad Sweeney," she says with a little smirk. "Asked him for a fight and he obliged."
A simple answer for what, to her, is a simple question. She lifts her head, letting Jack see that hint of a smile. "Fights like a wild animal. I wanted the practice." The smile disappears into a brief wince as she shifts her weight, feeling the tenderness along her ribs. "Needed it, clearly."
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He slides the handkerchief over her hands, removing any more traces of dirt from them, then gently cups her hands in his. That she seems pleased by this is worrying to Jack, and he wonders if this is a sign that she's not doing as well here in Darrow as he thought.
His brow furrowed, he tips his head a little to the side. "Anne."
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The ways he intones her name carries weight she wasn't prepared for, doesn't want and doesn't wish to acknowledge. Goes beyond the usual fussing, the heavy sigh and chiding lecture she'd expected. There's something far more serious in it and she doesn't want it, doesn't want to understand it. She blinks at him, part a genuine confusion and part playing the fool.
"Fuck's your problem," she says, more blunt and more stubborn than he deserves, too frustrated by this sharp turn away from calm and comfort to restrain herself.
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"What's my problem. Mmhn." He nods, trying to accept that this conversation isn't going to go the way that he'd expected it might. He sets aside the damp bloodied handkerchief and then brings his hand back to cup fully around hers. He doubts that she'll allow it for much longer, but he's not going to be the first one to pull away.
He hunches forward just a little and meets her eyes. He's trying to be tender, but when he speaks there's a new edge to his voice that he can't manage to conceal. "My problem is that you've gone to a half-mad demi-god and asked him to kick your face in. Don't you think that deserves some level of concern?"
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There's a hot flush of anger under her skin when he elaborates, flooding the part of her that might like to temper her harsher inclinations. She doesn't want this from him, not now, not when she walked into this knowing exactly what she was doing and she came out limping but alive, not in the sense of surviving, but awake.
"Asked him for a fight," she corrects curtly, and pulls her hands away. "And I held mine against him, just like I've done a hundred times before, against men who'd've seen me dead, and I don't remember you kicking up any fuss then. So I ask again, what the fuck's your problem?"
It's a chance for him to back down, to walk away, and she wants more than anything for him to take it, even though she knows him better than she knows anyone, and she knows he won't.
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He glances down at his hands, thinking of sitting next to Anne following his fight in the vanguard. She was right to chastise him then, for being reckless, for being too ready to die for Charles' memory.
"Darling, It doesn't matter if you held your own against him. You shouldn't have asked him to begin with." He sighs and lifts a hand up to rub at the side of his face. "Jesus, Anne, have you seen your face? This isn't nothing."
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Even with her uncharacteristic barrage of questions, she can't have this conversation, can't sit still. He's made just enough room now, leaning back, that she don't feel boxed in, and she gets up, stepping away from him, making for the kitchen instead. She'll clean her own damn face and it'll be back to normal soon enough.
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A year ago, he might have decided that he should give Anne her space and approach this topic another time, but now he's not so sure. His old approach didn't work for Anne, had ended up hurting her in ways that he didn't foresee. There's a tension in his chest that represents his renewed uncertainty when it comes to what's best for her, and in that moment he wonders what Max would have had to say about this. What would she do, here?
Jack pushes himself up from his chair and follows her to the kitchen. This doesn't feel right, but maybe helping Anne means that he's going to have to try some things that don't follow with what he might usually do. Shoulders hunched forward, he settles himself next to her. She's facing away, looking down at the sink, and he reaches out, his hand hovering behind her back for a moment before taking another tack instead. Gently, he brushes Anne's hair aside and tucks it behind her ear.
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"Don't," she snaps, continuing to back away as though he might reach out and try it again. This is too fucking confusing, first his reaction and now this, what, trying to pacify her? She doesn't understand why, why any of it, why this awful softness now when nothing's been settled and she's too full of bristling anger to take it. Answering it like this will only hurt him and she knows it, but that don't mean she can stop herself, and that just makes her angrier, like he's setting himself up for it on purpose.
"I'm fine," she insists, her tone hard as she forces herself to turn away from him. "I'm going back out. Need some fucking air."
She doesn't tell him — can't tell him not to follow. But she expects the message will be clear in the tight hunch of her shoulders and all that's just come between them. She leaves fast, feeling like she can't breathe, not certain what she'll do if he tries to stop her. But he doesn't, and before she has any sense of where she's going she finds her way back outside into the warm night.
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But she does make her way back and open that door, stepping in softly and taking her hat from her head.
"Jack," she says to announce herself, her tone quiet and gentle.
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As the door closes Jack exhales. He doesn't move to look at her or sit up, but some of the tension in his shoulders softens. Whatever is going to happen now, he's glad that Anne came back. He's glad that she's safe.
"I'll need to send Greta an apology in the morning," he says, echoing Anne's soft tone. "I left her a message. It wasn't much." He curls in a little, readjusting his arm under his head. It had been a mistake, leaving that voicemail for Greta at such a late hour, when he was so frustrated. He does still believe what he'd told Greta- it's stupid to make a deal with Sweeney, and being friends with the demi-god doesn't make any sense to him, but he owes it to Anne to get along with her.
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Jack hardly ever apologizes for anything, which is only part of the reason why it surprises her. After a long moment, Anne sets her hat aside and drifts over to him. There isn't room on the couch and she doesn't know if she's welcome there anyway, so she crouches beside it, waiting patiently for him to turn toward her.
"Went to see her," she says finally. "She seemed all right. But..." She lifts a shoulder, wanting to tread carefully, not sure exactly where to step. "I think she'd appreciate that."
But she doesn't want to talk about Greta, not right now.
"I'm sorry I left," she says, the words soft and just a little foreign. "Shouldn't have done that to you."
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It's very seldom that Anne apologizes. He sighs, acknowledging that it is a difficult thing for her to do, and worried that this means she has something worth feeling guilty about. After a moment, he pushes himself up from the couch, awkwardly moving around to sit upright and face her.
He looks down, frowning at the state of her face. She's still hurt, but at least it seems she got cleaned up while she was at Greta's. For all that he doesn't trust Greta or her relationship with Sweeney, she does seem to care for Anne and she is good at mothering. If Anne was looking for comfort, there's no doubt that she got it there.
"I don't know-" He fumbles for words for a moment before covering his face with his hands and rubbing at his eyes. In the time that she'd been gone his anger had ebbed away quickly, replaced by a tight unease lodged up under his ribs. He's worried for her and why she would seek out a fight, and scared that he can't provide whatever it is that she needs.
Since everything with Max, every day with Anne feels like he's been standing at shore, the sand sinking out from beneath his feet. He feels like he's losing her and fighting against it is like fighting the tide.
He groans and then drops his hands back to his lap. "I haven't been what you need. I thought if I tried-" Try to be better, to be gentler, to be more like Max. He glances towards the kitchen, then finds her gaze again. He raises his eyebrows and shrugs lightly, his expression conciliatory. It obviously hadn't gone how he'd hoped it might.
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"You are what I need," she says, slowly, picking her words with great care. "But I need you to be you with me. Not someone else." She sighs, averting her eyes, but only for a moment. She wishes she knew better how to speak gently, that she had Greta's gift for it, but she won't look away from him. "You don't have to be everything all at once. And I... I should've known you'd worry. Should've let you."
She wants to pull herself up beside him, to be closer, but she waits, letting him decide when and where and how close. She still feels a bit uncertain, not sure if she's said too much or too little, or the right or wrong thing. Not good at simply spilling it all out the way he does.
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He looks down at her, frowning, and decides that the answers to those questions would hurt too much today. He sighs and tugs lightly on her hand, suggesting that she join him. "Come up here." When she sits next to him, he wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close to him, tight against his side.
He plants a kiss to the top of her head. "After Charles...part of me wanted to join him. For a little while." He draws in a breath, bracing himself and trying to move quickly past mention both of Charles and of how he felt after his death. "You said you'd asked Mad Sweeney for a fight and...well. Darrow has been difficult for both of us. I worried. Perhaps it was a little ridiculous." Anne has always been stronger than him, anyway.
"Why did you do it?"
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He doesn't talk about Charles. She doesn't ask him. Don't know how. What he says doesn't surprise her, exactly, but she still don't like hearing it. And when he suggests that might've been why she did what she did...
She huffs softly and thinks a long while before answering.
"It wasn't that," she says, gentle and firm. "I don't want that. And if I did I wouldn't have gone to him." She hesitates a moment longer and sighs. "Not sure why I did it," she admits finally. "I just wanted to feel something familiar. Remind myself what I am. And it felt good. I enjoyed it. I won." She still feels a little bit of pride and satisfaction, despite everything.
She's quiet a moment longer, listening to Jack breathe. "Won't do it again, though," she says, certain she owes him that much. "Not like that."