flourish_or_perish | Outside MHA #8 | Late Saturday Morning

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Outside MHA #8 | Late Saturday Morning

It was a little weird how little time it had taken Faye to pack up everything important enough to take with her; she'd been here for a year, now, but there still wasn't all that much. A few odds and ends -- gifts she'd been given, dresses she'd worn to parties that she wanted to remember. A betamax tape, which was the whole reason she was even packing up her things.

It had been a good year. She'd needed a year like this, and she could admit that to herself, now -- but she could also acknowledge that it had been like hiding. An okay sort of hiding. An allowed, necessary kind of hiding. She'd needed this time -- and, fine, these people -- in order to get to...here.

But on that note, as tempted as she was to simply throw her bag over her shoulder and sneak off to her ship, her year of -- getting to here (what other, more willingly introspective people might call growth) meant that she didn't and, moreover, couldn't.

So here she was, knocking lightly on Stark's door, half-hoping that he wasn't home, and half-knowing that even if he wasn't she'd go find him to say goodbye properly.

[for the alien mentioned and, yes, this is Faye's last post in Fandom!]

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"You knocked," Stark said, giving her a curious look once he opened the door. "You have a key. You don't need to knock."

"Yeah," Faye agreed, and that was really just a reminder that she should probably give him that key before she left. "I'm not really planning on staying, though."

Like, in a general sense, as well as right at this moment.

Stark frowned and stepped back from the doorway so she could step inside.

"Why not? Is something wrong?"

Faye took a reluctant, careful step in, still carrying her bag. But this was clearly not going to be the quick, easy conversation she'd hoped for (some delusional habits died hard), and she sighed. "Not...wrong. I just -- Stark, I can't keep staying in Fandom. I'm not doing anything here. And it's nice, and I'm happy, but I'm also...not. I need to go find answers."

There was no universe in which this could ever have been a quick and easy conversation.

"You..." Stark started, then shook his head, reaching forward to shut the door. This wasn't an open door sort of talk.

"You're leaving? Again?" His voice had gotten very small. "But...will you sit? Please?"

"I can sit," Faye agreed, clearly still trying to retain her resolve. "But...yeah. But I'm not going without saying anything?"

See? Wasn't that better?

Even if it was in part that she knew if she left without saying anything, he'd probably come after her again, and she wanted to cut that impulse off at the pass, too.

Yes, it was better. But that was a very low bar to clear.

"You promised you wouldn't do that," Stark reminded her, looking down at the floor as he walked over to sit on the couch.

"And this is me keeping that promise," Faye acknowledged, taking a seat. "But I think it's really important that I go, even if part of me wishes I didn't have to. I'm just -- I've been here so long already. I never meant to stay this long."

And she had partly because of him, which was a bittersweet thing in and of itself.

"But you did stay. And you...I...I thought we were, that you were..."

There were a lot of things Stark wanted to say right now but words were difficult at the moment.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't really know yet," Faye admitted. "I need to find something I can watch this tape on, to start. And then from there, I...sort of want to see if maybe I can find the doctor who woke me up. Whitney's uncle. I just -- every day I stay here is a day I'm not trying to figure out who I am."

And, privately, a day she wasn't doing the things that made her feel the most like herself. Even if she never got answers but went back to bounty hunting -- well, maybe she'd come back to Fandom eventually. But the quiet and the coziness and the relative safety of this place felt more like confinement than security with every day that passed.

"We could find a way to watch it here," Stark pointed out. "I could help. Or I could help with the doctor. Or...I don't know. I could help. If you let me."

"You don't have to be alone," he added after a pause.

"But I do," Faye said, simply. "I need to. It's not that you're not wonderful -- it's nothing to do with you at all. This is something I need to do by myself. It's not your amnesia, or your identity or your...restlessness. It's mine."

"Of course it's something to do with me. You're leaving me. And the last time you left on your own you ended up ill and handcuffed on a bed!"

And Stark had been terrified and that, and feeling he was about to be abandoned, was why he was snapping at her now.

"I know I...I know this is yours to deal with. But that doesn't mean you can't have help."

"But what if I don't want help?" Faye asked, simply. She wasn't going to argue about it, and as much as it hurt her to see him hurt, she also wasn't going to budge.

"What if you need it? What if something happens? Something happened last time! I don't want anything to happen to you!"

There were any number of terrible scenarios running through Stark's mind right now.

"What if I need help?" he asked in a much quieter voice.

"You," Faye said, deciding to focus on that, "are going to be just fine. There are so many people here who care about you. It's going to suck for awhile for both of us, but -- Stark, you can help yourself. You don't need me."

And she didn't need him, either, but that didn't need saying right now.

"You don't get to decide what I need!"

That went both ways. Stark knew that.

"And you don't know I'll be fine. I wasn't before. I haven't been fine...often. I wasn't fine when I was left behind before."

"And I don't know that you will be. I want you to be. Will you let me know? Please? Don't just...please don't just disappear."

"Maybe you won't be fine, then," Faye said, verging on exasperation as she blew out a sigh. "I want you to be, though, and I think you can be. Can that be enough?"

She was not going to make a promise to stay in touch. She could try, but she wasn't willing to commit when she didn't know yet.

And it felt like a clean break might be a better idea, too.

Stark was not good at clean breaks. Or messy ones. He ought to be better at endings than he was, considering what he was, but letting go was never something he was good at.

"I don't think I have a choice," he said. "That has to be enough, doesn't it?"

"Unfortunately this is one of those things where it only takes one of us to decide it's the right thing to do," Faye agreed, as gently as she could. "But it doesn't mean what we had wasn't special, or that you aren't, or that I'm going to forget you. It's just something I need to do, for me."

"Are you sure?"

About leaving, or about it being the right choice, or about not forgetting. Or about all of that, and more.

"I'm sure," Faye told him.

Even if she hadn't been, she would have said as much. This was what she needed to do, and it was becoming even clearer by the minute.

"I would never want to keep you from doing something you need to do," Stark said softly. "I'm not going to try and stop you. But can you...would you stay a little while? Just a little. This isn't how I want to say goodbye. I don't want to say goodbye at all but I don't want to be angry and I don't want..."

If this was going to be the last time they saw each other he didn't want it to be just an argument. He'd regret that forever.

"I don't know if that's a good idea," Faye hedged, carefully. She didn't want to lose her resolve, and staying and spending the day together seemed like it would only prolong something she had really grappled with for awhile. "But I can stay a little while. I didn't want to argue, either."

There wasn't a lot of point, even aside from it not being how she wanted to leave things.

"A little while then." A little while was better than no time at all.

"I...can...I don't know how to do this," Stark admitted. "I've never..."

Zhaan had died and the other Zhaan had simply vanished without a word and he had no experience with this sort of ending.

"Would it be easier if I died?" Faye asked, quirking her mouth up in a half-smile. "Sometimes things just...end. I've never done this either, with the saying-goodbye part."

So there was that. Stark had warranted closure.

"No!" Stark's response was immediate and more vehement than was probably warranted.

"No." He shook his head. "It wouldn't. That's not easier I just know how to do it. But right now..."

Right now he wanted to move over and pull her into his arms and not let go until he had to.

"Right now this is a lot," Faye suggested, reaching over to lightly pat his arm.

Again, clean break. It was tempting to try to initiate more, as a goodbye and all, but she needed to keep this as uncomplicated as possible.

They were so very, very far past the point where this could have been uncomplicated.

Stark started to pull his arm away, then stopped. "It's...I would have done things differently. If I'd known. I would have...there's so much I would have done."

"I'm not sure it would have made a difference, if either of us had done anything differently," Faye offered, shrugging. "My mind's pretty made up, and I...this is something I need to do. For me."

"That's not what I meant," Stark protested. "Not trying to change your mind. I meant...I would have made sure we went somewhere warm, once. Like we'd talked about. Or just out somewhere. Things like that. I would have told you I sleep better with you here. Things I thought there would be time for. I would have made you more pancakes."

The pancakes were still not a euphemism.

"I would have told you more, out loud, that I love you." He'd always been a little worried about doing so, after what happened the first time.

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Outside MHA #8 | Late Saturday Morning

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