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AMY

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@alphabet_soup – post rescue / text

[scathe]

[after the rescue, elias didn't stick around. he faded into the background, distanced himself from gwen and the rest of the crew who came to amy's rescue. he'd looked at it as another heist instead of another hostage. he'd looked at amy with the distant gaze of someone who's there for business, swept over her body for assurance of nothing fatal and moved to cut the ties from her wrists. if he looked at her in any other sense, he would've taken too long. would have seen too much in her eyes.]

Can I see you

[far from his usual statements of saying one thing and following through with it immediately, he hates asking for permission. but she's been violated, taken, and he can relate to that more than she'll ever realize.]

[begot]

[ He doesn't stick around, and in fairness, Amy doesn't really expect him to. He isn't the fawning type, and the significant thing is the effort — the fact that he helped look for her without being asked. The text surprises her more. Still, she responds immediately, never one to let a text or a call go unanswered, even now. ]

of course.

[ She looks from her phone to the book in her lap, to Rupert, dozing in bed. ]

i'm going to get some water.
walk me to the kitchen?

[ Walk me rather than meet me, when she's still a little leery of going anywhere alone. ]

– 🎬

[scathe]

OK

[walking with her, showing up in any sort of sense, is a type of seeing for elias, and amy is letting him in. they've been in each other's orbit for weeks, overlapping only by chance outside of their sessions together. asking how it happened seems too far when he doesn't need the answer, now hellbent on fixating his hatred at saltburnt toward angel, a deserving pawn who happened to fall into his line of sight.]

Here

[he doesn't knock. he leans against the wall across from the bedroom, amy's room strictly off-limits in his mind. he creates space for her to see what's around the two of them, puts himself smack-dab in the middle. when she opens the door, his demeanor toward her has changed significantly. expression is less hardened by the walls he puts up, eyes a little softer, though there is an absence of pity. elias hates pity.]

Hi, Amy.

[begot]

[ It only takes a moment — thirty seconds at most — for the door to open after his text goes through. She's always like this, punctual and prompt. The shift is in her demeanor: a little tense, like she's seen a raincloud in the distance and expects it to bolt across the sky. (In other words, what she expects people will expect from her. At least it's not the first time she's thought about how to present herself in the wake of an abduction, even if this one wasn't orchestrated by her own hand.) ]

Hi, Elias.

[ She doesn't fully smile, remembering their conversation in the portrait hall, but her expression still brightens upon seeing him. And that's genuine, at least, even if so much else isn't. ]

Can I—

[ Her fingers, curled into her sleeves, tighten in their hold. This is pushing an invisible line, she knows that, but things have changed.

He looks at her differently, now. ]

Can I hug you?

[scathe]

[she looks better in the sense of presentation. cleaned up and braced for being perceived through elias' eyes. he remembers what he'd done after the SLC, in the looking through a fogged window sense. he wasn't ever done right by anyone, so he forced his hand on the world that did him wrong. god's hand, because god was gone and it was his responsibility to weigh justice on a scale of his own making.

he looks both ways like he's waiting for oncoming traffic, like amy is the one crossing a four-lane high-speed highway to reach him. physical affection is difficult for him when it isn't between sheets, and approaching her is as deliberate and calculated as a feral animal experiencing tenderness for the first time. elias steps toward her, unblinking and watchful, outstretching his hand first. he thinks of how roza or isolde likes to be held. how women like to be held. how his mother held him as a child.

hand caressing her cheek, then sweeping gently through her hair to cradle the back of her head, his other arm wraps around her waist to pull her in to his chest for an embrace. amy is a warm comfort in his arms.]

[begot]

[ The important thing is this: he steps forward first. It's not the way she'd imagined it, him standing there like a mannequin and enduring a hug rather than drawing her into one. But it's— good. If she tenses a little, it's easy to write off — skittishness after having been abducted so recently — and it dissipates soon enough, anyway. Her arms circle around his neck as she lets out a long, shaky sigh.

Maybe that's an act, but allowing him close isn't. He trusts her. She trusts him. That's something, separated from their first halting encounters by lightyears, even further when she considers just how little he seems to trust anyone else. (How little she trusts anyone else, really, despite how easily she smiles, how easily she seems to get along with just about anyone who crosses her path.) ]

I was so scared.

[ A half-truth — enough of a truth for her to say it out loud. ]

I'm— I'm really glad you were there.

cw allusions to abuse sighs

[scathe]

[he predicts amy's body language as someone who's done the same. he imagines he'd be dead if angelus had decided to take him. her voice is soft in her ear and he can't rewrite the memory of how she'd sounded on the phone, the underlying panic laced in her voice, tucked between cheek and shoulder. the fear lingers in her voice and it lights a fire inside of him. roza had said there were better people here and maybe she was right, because he doesn't want amy to be hurt. doesn't want isolde to be hurt. and not wanting someone to hurt is more than he's felt for anyone in a long time.

elias is glad too, but he doesn't tell her. he holds her as a solid reassurance for as long as she needs, cheek pillowed against her head. the sentiment it will be okay doesn't cross his mind, either. nothing about what happened to amy is okay and those are fighting words, noise spilling from a guard's lips while they fisted a hand in his hair and he braced for impact. maybe time will be a better healer for her.]

Yeah, [the gruffness in his voice is gone, but the malice in what he says next is palpable.] I'll kill him if I see him again.

[begot]

[ God, it makes her want to smile.

She's been waiting for that, if she's being honest — the kind of honest that she keeps not on a tight leash but tucked away behind a curtain. A promise from someone, anyone, that there'll be blood shed, specifically in retribution for what'd been done to her. It's selfishness, sure, but she's entitled to that much. A little something to make up for being third- or fourth- billed in her own kidnapping. Whipped cream on the cake of the solidifying of— whatever this is.

In practice, she lets her breath hitch, the judder of it in tangible in her ribcage as she buries her face in his shoulder, working through the peaks and valleys of that kind of trauma. Her eyes are red when she finally pulls back, tears welling up and threatening to spill over even as she tilts her head upward, trying to blink them away. As it had been in the portrait hall, her first instinct is to laugh, like she's embarrassed, though, quickly— ]

I know, I don't have to. It's just—

[ Her smile dissipates a little uneasily — social armor, shed for his sake — a last, settling breath escaping her as she tries to shake the nervousness out of her hands. ]

Thanks. That's what I— what I should have said.

[scathe]

[she quivers in his arms, and he swears he can feel her lungs stutter when she's this close. his warm hand spreads open along her lower back, sliding to her waist when she pulls away. his other hand lingers on her face and he drags his thumb along her cheek one last time before it's his turn to retreat. nobody is supposed to look like this, torn apart and broken because of someone's cruelty, and amy is several miles and lock-ups before him, but it doesn't take a genius to know comparing pain is a no-man's land. useless.]

Don't worry about it.

[he takes her hand in his, more forward than he's been with her, since she's been the one to initiate contact before now. his connection is a bridge for the space she's made between them. amy's wet eyes are a window inside of her and he can't tear his own away– she listened to him, opened parts of herself for him to see, ones he insisted she didn't have to hide.]

Anybody else and I wouldn't give a shit. Okay? You understand? [his mouth slants, not quite a frown.] Don't tell nobody else I helped you. Not your girlfriends or your boyfriends or whatever you got. Make sure your man in there stays quiet about me, too.

[he's aware his help was broadcasted for everyone to see, but he's done a good job laying low and wants to keep it that way.]

[begot]

[ It feels like the snap of a puzzle piece being pressed into place, an image she's been able to picture in the abstract suddenly a little more concrete, a little better understood. It wasn't the fact of becoming a victim that changed things, or else he'd be having some version of this conversation with Rupert, too. There'd already been— something. Something, throughout the time he's been her trainer, through text exchanges she thinks they've both navigated like minefields.

(The question is: would he still feel this way about her, if he could see fully behind the veil? It's a question she asks herself, both more and less seriously, about all of the relationships she's formed since coming here.)

He hugs her, first. He takes her hand. And he looks right at her, not through her. In return, without protest: ] I— I understand.

[ Her fingers curl more tightly around his, her free hand rising to her face to wipe away the last of the tears that trail down her cheeks. ]

I'd try to do it for you, too. [ An address of the most important part of what he's said, to her, offered as she seems to steel herself. Anybody else and I wouldn't give a shit. ] You know that, right? If anything happened to you—

[ A sentiment that's more concrete, now, than when he'd texted her in the early hours of the morning and been unsure as to why she'd care if he was awake, if he was alright. ]

[scathe]

[in his mind, the two of them walk a tight-rope he's been reluctant to step toward (let alone on), but he secured it himself, and therefore can push her off whenever he wants. she's walking it regardless if he pushes her. that's the real securing; her trust in him to follow through with a promise, and her reciprocation in turn. elias isn't used to a confession like hers, filled to the brim with such raw honesty that it feels evocative in his core, and when she squeezes his hand and his eyes fall to their interlacing and up to her face, he is, in the knit of his brow, confused.]

Don't– no. Amy, don't, [he starts, stops. sighs, tilts his head back as though exasperation has flooded him so heavily he has to fight gravity from letting his focus find the floor instead. he hates these damn ceilings. i'd try to do it for you, too, but amy is fragile in ways he isn't, in ways he won't explain to her.] I get it, alright?

[elias is trouble and knows, lies like the air he breathes and isn't someone to expect anyone to exact revenge for. in comes amy with her promise, her care and worry and kindness, connection he stumbles over, the true appreciation of it hidden behind resistance, yet he won't let go of her hand.

she's a big girl and she's going to do whatever she wants but that won't stop him from lowering his gaze and telling her:]

Don't involve yourself in whatever mess I make.