MHA #6, Thursday Evening

[firstofitskind]

Apparently, there was only so long Liam could actually avoid the apartment, before things like 'needing a change of clothes' became an issue.

So here he was, letting himself in, maybe moving a little more stiffly and gingerly than usual, thanks to the morning's sparring session with Beau. He hoped that Verity was wasn't home, so he could avoid that bit of awkwardness and heartache that was sure to come from seeing her. He missed her, god, so much, but at the same time... he'd just be in the way. She deserved that time alone to heal.

[ooc: for that girl!]

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[firstofitskind]

"Please," Liam scoffed. "Like you'd have to go so far as to piss Beau off to get her to hit you." Which had kind of been the appeal for Liam, honestly, that she'd do it without asking too many questions.

[arboreal_priestess]

"...I've never met her," Verity admitted.

She didn't get out much because I am failsauce spent a lot of time in Baltimore, chasing cryptids and nursing her failing dance career.

[firstofitskind]

"She's fun. You two'd get along great," Liam said, a fleeting, though genuine, smile appearing on his face briefly. For a moment, things almost felt normal again.

And then reality settled back in.

[arboreal_priestess]

"So...okay. What the hell's been going on in your head lately?" Verity asked, since that seemed to sum up, well...everything.

[firstofitskind]

The problem was Liam didn't know exactly how to put it all into words.

"Well. Robert's memories, for starters. Mostly of what he did to you." Which made a twisted sort of sense, because those would be the memories that Liam would have the strongest connection to, and thus the easiest time 'remembering'. "But it's more than that. I have my parents' memories. They're part of what makes me who I am. What if- what if he becomes a part of me too?"

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity frowned. "You have Sandoval's memories," she pointed out. "But that doesn't make you like him. If anything, they're more like an elaborate 'what not to do' in any given situation. Right?"

[firstofitskind]

"He still influences how I think," Liam replied. "Even things I like or dislike."

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity shuddered. "Still. Those memories were with you when you formed. These weren't. By definition, these can't be as...as foundational."

Dammit, Sarah, why did you have to be so far away?

[firstofitskind]

"No," Liam agreed. "But I don't know what they will do. And that's what scares me. Because he hurt you, and that's the last thing I'd want to do." His gaze dropped down to his hands, twisting in his lap as he pressed a thumb into the palm of one hand, and then repeated the action with the other. "What I ended up doing anyway," he acknowledged.

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity had thought that, but wasn't going to say it aloud. Perversely, though, she was glad he had said it. Because he had hurt her and she wanted him to know it.

"Do you think he ever could?" she asked quietly. "Make you hurt me? Make you go for the blood pressure cuff and the needles, or the drumsticks and the soles of my feet or the--"

There were a lot of options. Robert had been thorough.

[firstofitskind]

Liam flinched with each mention of the various methods he'd used to cause Verity pain.

"If I can't find some way to stop those memories from surfacing when I don't want them to?" Because unhappy as he was at having those memories at all, there was a coldly logical part of him- ironically, Sandoval's influence- that had to admit that having access to the kind of knowledge that Robert Bullard had regarding the Covenant's operation could, potentially, be useful.

[arboreal_priestess]

Robert had used. Not Liam. Robert.

"So, like...sleepwalking?" Verity asked. "He's in control and suddenly you're looking for the dental floss and ground glass?"

[firstofitskind]

"I have no idea," Liam said, sounding lost. "There's no handbook." Or rather, there was, but it was buried in millions of years of racial memory that had a harder time swimming to the surface than any of the human memories Liam had access to.

[arboreal_priestess]

"And what if I do this?" Verity asked, and blurred into movement, reaching out to lay a hand on his face, summoning up all the fear and horror she had at the very idea of going through that again.

She didn't have to dig very far. It was right there, after all.

[firstofitskind]

Liam let out a choked out cry at the touch, sounding for all the world like a wounded animal.

The connection wasn't nearly as strong as if she'd taken his hand, but they'd shared (and Shared) so much that that fear and horror slammed right in to him anyway.

But beyond that? It didn't pull Robert up from Liam's unconscious, and it didn't make his other fear manifest, either: his body didn't change to mirror Verity's.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Would that stop you, you think?" Verity asked, voice quiet. "Could you really do...those things...if you felt that?"

[firstofitskind]

"No," Liam shook his head. Something- the tension he'd been carrying for the past three days- in him snapped, and he collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

But it was a good kind of collapse, because now he also finally knew the answer to the question that had been haunting him since Monday night. "Not to you. Never to you."

[arboreal_priestess]

"You ever lose yourself in someone else's memories, I'm here to snap you back out again," Verity murmured. "That's what partners do. They trust each other enough to know that if one of them makes a leap, the other will be there to catch them."

[firstofitskind]

"I'm sorry," he choked out. "I was scared and I ran and I'm so sorry because you were scared too and I left you."

[arboreal_priestess]

"You left me," Verity agreed. "You left me to the dark and to the memories and to the pain. I'm hurt and I'm mad and I'm sad and I'm upset--" She shook her head, tears standing in her eyes. "And I'm now extra mad, because I should just be mad at you for leaving me and instead part of me is glad because you're not here to pack up all your stuff and go."

[firstofitskind]

"I'm not going anywhere," Liam promised. "I'm staying, as long as you'll have me, I'm staying." And he was pulling one of those gloves off and holding out a hand, tentatively, to her.

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity was tempted to shrug it off, to see how he liked reaching out and being left behind.

The rest of her was already reaching for him, clutching at his hand with hers.

[firstofitskind]

Liam would've been the first to admit he'd have deserved it, had she done that.

But she hadn't, and so he poured all the relief and regret, and, woven through it all, the all-encompassing love he felt for her through that connection.

[arboreal_priestess]

Something in her face eased at that and her shoulders loosened. The emotions she sent back were more mixed - fear and hurt and anger, yes. So much anger, mostly to cover up that hurt. So much fear.

But under it all - an around it, and through it - that solid core of love.

[firstofitskind]

I'm sorry, he repeated, albeit not out loud this time. And then he was shifting positions on the couch, closing the physical distance between them.

Sorrysorrysorry.

He kept up that mental litany as he pulled her in to a hug.