flourish_or_perish | MHA #7

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MHA #7 | Monday Morning

So, Faye had spent a weekend in space.

She'd hopped from Mars to Ganymede and back again, looking for something that would make all of this feel better and -- unsurprisingly -- coming up empty.

Didn't mean she didn't try, though. Even if it did mean that 'trying' had looked like getting absolutely shitfaced and sleeping in her ship.

Monday morning found her winding her way through Fandom, still a little wobbly on her feet. Given how few unfamiliar faces she encountered as she stumbled her way towards her own apartment, she was fairly confident that whatever the hell had happened, it was over, now. Over enough that she could go back to her own apartment without worry of running into anyone. Especially if she was sneaky about it.

Granted, 'sneaky' and 'still drunk' did not go together great, so she was certainly not being quiet as she tried to fish out her keys from her pocket to get in. The fact that she was holding a flask in one hand and had a lit cigarette dangling from her mouth probably didn't help any, but you know what, Faye was in too much personal pain to pick a lane right now, thanks. Rude of you to ask, narrative.

[for one specifically but it's not like they're the only ones who live in the building if you want to object to the noise or the indoor smoking.]

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Stark had fallen asleep curled up on his couch last night after finally dragging himself home from the Devil's Nest after a not insignificant amount of whiskey. He hadn't slept well, for a number of reasons, and now there were odd noises coming from the hallway. Definitely not sneaky noises, sorry Faye.

He opened his door hesitantly, took one step out to get a better look and froze. "Oh. I..." Should he even be talking? "Are you alright?" Because you didn't look great, Faye.

"Shhhh." That was completely a reaction, because Faye had a really bad headache, and would have shushed anyone who tried to talk to her right now.

But, you know. She was also being addressed by one of the chief reasons she hadn't been home all weekend, and Faye wasn't really sure how she felt about anything right now.

"I'm fine," she added, barely glancing up before resuming work on trying to get the door open. Locks were impossible, obviously.

Well, feelings were hard and confusing at the best of times and this was not the best of times.

"You don't look fine," Stark said, keeping his voice low.

"Yeah, well, I am," Faye insisted softly, still not looking up as she fiddled with her keys. Her shoulders tensed up some, though, in a clear reflection of how deeply not fine she actually was. "Don't worry about me. I'm great."

She was not great.

Stark took another hesitant step toward her, started to reach out a hand and then dropped it.

"But I am worried."

Because she was very obviously not great or fine and he felt at least some responsibility for that.

"Don't be," Faye said, totally logically. That was how it worked, Stark: just tell yourself to stop having a feeling, and it would go away! Look how well it was working for Faye!

She sensed, rather than saw, his attempt to reach for her, and it just sort of spurred on her efforts to get the door open. Not because she didn't want him to touch her, but because everything was just such a tangled mess right now that she didn't know what she wanted.

"Have a nice weekend?" She actually made an effort to keep any venom out of her voice, because she didn't want him to think she hadn't sincerely given her blessing, there. It just didn't mean it all -- Zhaan, seeing him with Zhaan, the utter lack of Whitney or anyone else for Faye -- hadn't hurt.

Stark would live a very different life if he could just turn off his feelings on a whim.

"I..." He didn't want to lie. He also didn't want to say anything that was going to hurt. He wasn't sure how to respond. Maybe looking at the floor would help. "It's done now. But...yes. It...thank you."

"Good. I'm glad you had that time with her," Faye said, again meaning it and actually stopping with the goddamn door for a second to make sure she sounded serious. (As serious as she could while still tipsy.) "You're lucky."

Finally -- finally -- she got the door open. And...you know what, she was just going to leave it open as she finally stumbled inside.

It wasn't an invitation, exactly, so much as -- look, she wasn't going to shut the door in his face, come on.

"I am." For a number of reasons, including that she hadn't just shut a door in his face. Stark knew that, even if he didn't feel very lucky at the moment.

"You didn't have to do that." He knew that, too. Stark wasn't sure he would have been so gracious if their positions were reversed.

"Where did you go?" He stopped in the doorway, unsure if he ought to continue following or not. "You don't have to say. If you don't want to."

"Looking." Might as well be honest; she didn't really have either the inclination or even the energy right now to lie about it. "And then when I didn't find him, I went to Mars. And Ganymede. And then...nowhere."

She'd just turned off her engines in Jupiter's orbit and drifted, eating chocolate and drinking until she'd actually needed her nav systems to get back home.

(Faye had also, very irresponsibly, been a drunk pilot. But that also went hand-in-hand with how self-destructive she'd felt.)

"I don't know what I did wrong," she added, tossing her keys vaguely in the direction of a table before finally taking a drag off that cigarette and ashing it onto her own floor. Who cared.

"Wrong? I don't think you did anything wrong. I don't think it was you. Just...something that happened. Or didn't." Sometimes the universe just wasn't fair.

"I'm glad you came back." Stark would be horrified if he knew just how recklessly she'd been acting, off in space. It wouldn't help with the worrying.

"It's the part that didn't," Faye replied, going to just sort of collapse onto her couch. Again, she wasn't going to tell him to leave or anything, but she also wasn't exactly inviting Stark to come cuddle, either. "Why did you -- why didn't I get anyone? I could have gotten some answers."

Yes, seeing dead loved ones again was wonderful and all, but Faye was several hundred thousand woolongs in debt, with no idea of how she'd ended up there. Or who she was. Or anything prior to the last three and a half or so years.

And she would have also liked to have seen Whitney, yes. That was true, too.

Stark was just going to stay in the doorway for now. Hanging back seemed best.

"I don't know why," he said after a moment. "I don't know if there's a reason. I'm sorry. I wish I did." He knew a lot about dying and very little about coming back.

"It's fine. I'm fine." Ignore how incredibly obvious it was that this wasn't true. "I don't know what I would've even done if Whitney'd shown up, anyway."

She knew what she would have done. But Stark didn't need to hear it.

"She seemed great." There. She could manage an acknowledgement of his guest, too. Even if part of her very much wanted to just -- forget that she'd have to mentally compete with that from now on.

"You keep saying that," Stark pointed out, very gently. "That you're fine." He didn't believe you, Faye. "You don't have to be. I wouldn't be."

He wasn't, actually, but for different reasons. And he also had a good idea of what Faye would have done if Whitney had appeared and he wouldn't have liked it but he would have understood.

"And...she was. She is." Tenses were hard. "She...she told me to find you. Before she left."

"That was nice of her." Faye was just going to lie down and throw an arm over her eyes, thanks everyone. That was totally the appropriate way to behave right now. "But I made myself kinda hard to find, sorry."

You know, until now, when she'd actually nearly tried his door instead of her own a few minutes ago because she was that drunk.

"You don't need to apologize." At least, as far as Stark could tell, she hadn't done anything that warranted it.

"She's always been nice. Kind. Better than I deserved."

"That part isn't true, stop it," Faye murmured, waving a hand in the direction of his voice. "You deserve the nicest things. People."

Nicer than her, obviously. She'd been saying that since day one of this.

Did anyone deserve Zhaan, really?

Stark made a soft, noncommittal noise before taking a few steps towards the couch. "You deserve good things. And closure. And...I'm sorry he didn't come for you."

"Pff, closure. Closure's bullshit," Faye decided, but she wasn't pushing him away, figuratively or literally. "Closure's a thing we tell ourselves we need. It doesn't matter, does it? Doesn't change anything. I've been doing fine without closure."

Go ahead -- go find a dictionary, look up the word 'fine,' and observe Faye's face next to it, okay? Literally the picture of fine, over here.

"Closure helps," Stark countered. "Maybe it isn't needed. But it helps and it can change things."

"I...I don't know how to help. With this. How to make it better."

"You don't have to make it better," Faye told him, but she was still just kind of laying there. "Not everything needs to be better. Sometimes things just suck."

Maybe she should go back to space?

"I want to," Stark said stubbornly. "I know I don't have to. Sometimes things are terrible. They hurt. I know that." He knew that very well.

"Would you rather I left? I can go. If you want."

"I don't know what I want," Faye said, completely honestly. "But you don't have to go. I just -- I don't want to take away from...."

She gestured vaguely at him. His weekend. The gift he'd been given. The closure he'd found.

"You aren't!" Stark just stared helplessly for a moment.

"There's...you aren't. You couldn't. And it's done. She's gone, again." For the fourth time. "But you're here and you're hurting and I wish you weren't."

You could say you were fine all you wanted, Faye, he wasn't buying it.

Faye was quiet for a long moment.

And then, very softly, "I just thought it was all over. I was done. Past it. And then --"

She waved helplessly again, and now she wasn't saying more not because she didn't have the words, but because she was going to start crying and she could not let another person see her cry. No. Absolutely not. Not even Stark.

She was too drunk to hide it as well as she normally could, though.

"It doesn't go away," Stark said just as quietly. "Loss hurts. You can learn to live with it but it still hurts and sometimes old wounds are reopened when you least expect it and it hurts more. It's never really over because it doesn't end. They're still gone. You just...make room for that."

He wasn't helping. He was worried he was making it worse. Still, he stepped closer to where she was on the couch, trying not to fidget as much as he wanted to right now.

"I'm sorry."

"It does end," Faye insisted. "I saw the explosion. It doesn't end a lot more definitively than that. But having this -- this possibility that it isn't all over, that I might get some fucking answers, just made it all so much worse."

He was actually right about the closure, was the thing. She really did need it, and she'd thought she had it, but she didn't.

"It's not fair." And that was incredibly whiny, particularly because Faye was doing everything she could to not sound like she was on the verge of tears to absolutely no avail, but she also was sort of past caring at the moment.

Oh, Faye.

"I didn't know you were there. That's...it can be harder. Seeing it, feeling it. Not being able to stop it." He knew that all too well. Telling her that probably wouldn't help. This wasn't about him.

"Faye, I..." He sighed and took the last few steps so he was standing next to the couch. Close enough to touch but keeping his hands to himself now, in no small part because they were twisting together while he tried to choose his next words.

"No. It isn't fair. It's never fair. You deserve your closure and your answers and it's not fair you weren't given either."

"I was there. Close enough to see," Faye said, and oh god that was a sniffle.

She was hurting, but she knew he was too, and while Faye had never been an openly empathetic person -- she also knew that shutting him out entirely wasn't going to help any of this.

So she moved, just a little bit, to make room for him next to her. She didn't know how to ask for comfort, even if that was absolutely what she wanted right now no matter how resistant she was to the concept, but she could kind of just...make room for him, there.

"I'm sorry," Stark said again. He'd said that a lot already this morning. He probably wasn't done yet. Sometimes that was all he had to offer. "That isn't fair either."

He sat down carefully, slowly, on the edge of the cushions. That movement had been close enough to an invitation to stay to be recognizable.

"You can tell me. If you want. Or I can just sit here. If you want. Or...whatever you want."

What he wanted was to wrap her in his arms and shut out everything else. He settled for resting his hand, very gently, on her leg.

It was almost like doing that broke some kind of seal, because Faye was dropping her head onto Stark's shoulder with a soft sob that she would never, ever, ever, ever admit to.

Those were also fake tears, everyone! Fake crying. That was an imaginary wetness on your shoulder, Stark.

"You're too nice to me." It was all she could think to say right now, because it just felt deeply true. Especially after meeting Zhaan, and seeing how serene and kind she was, and then spending a good chunk of the weekend wondering what in the actual hell he saw in Faye, after that.

Don't worry, Faye. Stark wasn't going to tell anyone about the crying.

He was going to wrap his arm around her, perhaps a little more tightly than was strictly necessary.

"You deserve someone being nice to you," he whispered. "And I want to do it."

She wasn't going to argue, even if she felt like she probably didn't really deserve this kind of niceness. (Even Whitney hadn't been nice to her like this, but then, things with Whitney had been brief and intense and there had been very little opportunity for him to know her, all things considered.)

"Why?" she sniffled, needing to know but also totally unsure of the answer. "I'm not even nice to me."

Perhaps he had noticed?

Stark had noticed. Somehow.

"I want to," Stark repeated. "I try to be kind, when I can." To most people.

"And...I care. About you. For you. You make me happy, I told you that." He wanted to return the favor. And to make sure she understood how he felt.

"But this is hard," Faye pointed out, totally logically. Like, obviously he was going to ditch out when it got hard, right?

Did this maybe say something about Faye? Maybe a lot? Probably.

"This," she added, swiping up at her eyes, "is what I meant about how I'm a mess. All of this." And Zhaan had not seemed messy, like how Faye was.

"I know it's hard," Stark told her. Maybe he could get away with stroking her hair? He was going to try. "I wish it weren't."

"You're allowed to cry, you know. I cry." He'd cried plenty last night even. "And to be a mess. I...I do that too. Not as much as I used to. But I do it."

Zhaan had her own moments of messiness. The occasional murderous rage and all that.

Faye took a minute before answering. "You're the only person in my living memory I've let see me cry," she finally said, very softly, as she leaned into that hair-stroking. She was maybe a little touch-starved at the moment, even if -- in true Faye form -- she would argue that she was just fine, thanks. "It's a lot easier to...not."

And that made you very special, Stark.

"Thank you," Stark said quietly. "For trusting me." He did have some idea of how rare that was.

"I won't tell anyone," he promised, continuing to stroke her hair very gently. "Not a soul."

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MHA #7 | Monday Morning

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