downward spiral

who: eris and brett
where: her place
when: late night

Eris had gotten herself a bottle of the cheapest rotgut whiskey she could find and managed to get home again sometime during the afternoon. She'd found after her talk with Eric that she was sitting in her apartment getting more and more depressed as the time ticked on. She'd tried to take her meds, but didn't know if she'd taken them before or what ones she was even meant to be taking. They were morning and night, and she was lost. She'd done so much better when she'd had Brett's notes to go by. But she didn't have those anymore.

Either way she had gone back out to get whiskey, and she did that, heading back to the apartment. She started drinking, lit some candles in the bathroom, took a bath which was a much worse idea than originally considered, because of her injuries and state of inebriation. Eventually she gave up, drained the tub, dried it out and climbed into it to try and sleep again, bottle hugged to her chest like a teddybear.

Brett hammered on her apartment door, enough that he knew he'd probably woken the neighbours, but not giving a damn about it. It had been late when he had got home from work. He headed inside the run down building, only to be met by the super who opened his ground floor apartment door as the cop headed passed, just cracking the door open enough to deliver the message, and when he'd heard it, something had cracked. He'd done well staying away up until that moment, but the tone of what she'd said - and he had no problems believing that that was, in fact, exactly what she'd said - had been too much and he'd headed straight back out into the night. The streets were strangely empty - most of the city was enjoying the carnival tonight, but she was in - he'd seen the light in her apartment window as he'd abandoned the car across the street and headed up to her door.

It was sort of distantly that Eris became aware of the pounding on the door. And at first she mistook it for the neighbors, or someone down the hall. Maybe even upstairs. But once she came a little more into herself, she realized that it wasn't elsewhere, it was her apartment door that was being rattled in it's frame. She sat up in the bath tub, and she stared at the dark hall she could see from where the bathroom door was open. She had to wonder if she'd done that, if she'd left it open. Normally she would have shut it, but she was in a bit of a haze. It wasn't like she could trust herself to be making perfectly coherent decisions.

Her other thought was that Patrick had found her. Hunted her down, maybe to finish her off. In that moment she didn't know what to do. There was a thread of fear that skated through her, though it was far duller than it should have been. Maybe if she stayed very quiet, whoever was there would go away. Patrick was easily distracted, right? He'd get bored fast. She went to reach for a knife, but realized dully that she was reaching for a knife that wasn't there. She was thinking about being at Gray's house, where she had had something in the tub with her at all times. Why she expected it to be there now, she didn't know, but it very much wasn't. All she had were blankets and a bottle of whiskey. Neither would help her out in this situation.

When she didn't answer the door, Brett tried the handle - and his mood wasn't much improved to find the door unlocked. He stepped inside, closing and this time locking it behind him, noting that either the locksmith he'd hired hadn't called, or she'd sent the guy on his way. Given the message she'd left for him, he was going to figure it was the latter. Stubborn fucking woman. "Eris," he called, sharply, crossing the tiny, dingy apartment.

She really probably hadn't taken her meds correctly. Because for just a split second there, she almost had an intense fear that it was her dad coming home, and he was angry with her. It was that tone that did it, and the location. But even so, for a heartbeat, she was sure that was what was happening. Then she came back to reality and recognized it was Brett. She drew in a breath and hoped her voice didn't come out too sloppy when she spoke. "You don't listen very well." she said, feeling a little like she tripped on words, but they weren't too terrible. She also hadn't projected her voice much, but the apartment was pathetically small, and she figured he'd hear her.

When he heard the voice, he changed direction for the bathroom, until he was standing, looking down at her in the bath. It wasn't the first time, but this time it was a different bath. "No, I don't," he said, the anger draining away as he saw her there. She always looked so damn pathetic, hiding in the tub - something she always did when she was frightened. He reached down for her, intending to help her out, the way he'd done many times before. "Come on," he offered, holding out his hand.

She felt pretty damn pathetic to go along with how she looked. One eye still black and blue, puffed up and nearly sealed shut, though it was getting a little better. She could see out of it a little. Her hand was still bandaged, and there were the bruises all over. Eris even actually reached out for him, but reached with her bandaged hand, and she let it drop back into her lap. She shook her head instead. "No." she said. "You need to go." she told him, not looking at him anymore. Instead she was looking at the inside of the tub, where the small cracks in the paint were apparent. Or maybe that was grime and she just thought they were cracks. She wasn't entirely sure.

"No, I really don't," he told her, not moving back at all. "Because if I go, this time I really am going to put Patrick O'Malley in the hospital." He'd backed off last time, because there was too much at stake. But seeing her like this, seeing the evidence of what he'd been crowing about, Brett couldn't promise he'd be able to keep his growing anger in check enough not to head straight over to the Round and follow through on his threat to rip the guy's throat out.

She made a face, and looked back up at him again. "That would be very stupid, Brett. You are not a stupid man." He wasn't. He was stubborn as all hell, and occasionally needed a good kick in the ass, but he wasn't dumb. "Besides, you don't really think I was some innocent bystander, do you? You know me better than that." In no way was she going to start sobbing about how unfair it was. She'd baited the guy. And she'd lost on that whole deal. There wasn't any honor to avenge, there was no slight. Not in her book, anyhow. There was a reason she hadn't pressed charges and it wasn't because she knew they'd probably get 'lost' in the system.

"No, I'm not a stupid man - which is why I'm not leaving," he told her, though there was at least part of him who had him down as a fool for coming here in the first place anyway. They were over - he should be walking away. He should simply be leaving her to her own devices and putting all his energies into forgetting her. But he couldn't, she was always there, always with him. He never stopped thinking about her, even if the thoughts were not always exactly pleasant. "And maybe I know you better than that, but you know me better than to think it would make a difference. You know how I feel about men who hit women. Now come on, get out of the tub. I know it's not comfortable," he added, taking a tack that had worked on her in the past, reaching for her uninjured hand. He wanted to know exactly what the guy had done to her, but he wasn't asking. Not yet, anyway.

He had her there. It wasn't comfortable. She didn't fight him on reaching for her hand, but didn't help him, either. "How do you know?" she asked, because she was stubborn, a little fluffy-minded because of the meds and alcohol, and she didn't really think standing was going to be fun times. "It could be comfortable. I have blankets." she pointed out, like that was going to make all the difference, and would somehow negate the fact that she was sitting in a cramped, hard lined space with some thin blankets for padding. When he had her hand, she tried to pull him down towards her, though it was a move she didn't think out in the slightest. She was sort of done thinking overly much today.

"Yeah, shitty blankets that smell of mould, in a cold tub with a tap that's probably going to start dripping sooner or later." Brett observed, going with the pull, but only for long enough that he could get into position to put his free hand around her back and ease her forward. "Come on, sweetheart, let's get you up," he told her, as stubborn as she was and not giving up on his goal. He remembered the days when he used to do this several times a week. In a way, he wished he was back there again. At least he had something ahead of him. But, he supposed, really it was just the same - either way, the future looked pretty damn bleak.

She knew she needed to resist. She needed to get back to the throwing him out thing, and remember how she'd started her day so pissed at him. But it was hard to call up when she was close enough to catch that him-scent that she missed so much, and she recalled him doing this with her before too. It was fuzzy in her head, but there was a familiarity to it that she recognized. She stood, though a lot of it was only due to his doing a lot of the work. She looked at him, once she was standing, with a little height added due to the tub, and she didn't know what to say. She spoke anyhow, though. "You need to go." she told him, voice quiet.

"Yeah," he agreed, once she was standing, though he made no move to let her go. "I do." He did, because he hadn't forgiven her for what she'd done. Because he didn't know how to. And because that fact didn't actually mean he felt anything less for her as a result, and that made this dangerous ground. He didn't sound much like he had any intention of following through with his acknowledgement of the reality of the situation though.

She pushed a little at his shoulders, even if it gave her a twinge in her hand. But she didn't so much let go either, half because she was aware she could potentially fall, and half because she didn't want to. She wasn't all that good at being away from him. In fact she sucked at it. Her life had revolved around him in one way or another for a long time now, ever since she'd woken up a different person, and she didn't know how to get along without him. She didn't want to get along without him. Eris just was very aware she needed to. "Don't send anyone else here, okay?" she said, that thought straying into the path of her vocal cords. "I don't want them here." she shook her head. "I don't like it." Which sounded wrong to her ears, it wasn't quite what she meant.

"Can't promise that," he told her. "You can't live in a place like this - nobody can. You need things fixed up, proper furniture. I don't have the time to do it myself, and the business has the money that we can get other people to do it instead," he told her, not going into the whys and wherefores of any of that. "Which reminds me - I know what you tried to do with the bank. I talked to them, they told me you'd signed everything over to me. That's not how it's going to go," he told her, ignoring her push at him and instead moving a little to encourage her to step out of the bath. "I talked to a girl today, got management experience. Gonna meet with her with an eye to her running the business. And then I'll set up the bank to pay half to you, half to me. Not gonna leave you penniless." And he doubted that she would have accepted the whole lot. An equal share may go down better, or that was his thinking, anyhow.

She stepped out of the bath, more to keep her balance, even if she didn't actually think he'd let her fall. Why, she wouldn't have been able to answer, but she trusted him not to do that. Even if at the very same time she thought he was punishing her for everything, twisting the knife because he could. She set her bare feet down on the cold tile, but wasn't sure where to go from there. "I don't want them here. I don't want the money. Pay the girls better with my half or...something." she said, not having the presence of mind to come up with a proper plan. Frowning at his shoulder for a long moment, her eyes cleared some and she looked back up at him. "Why are you doing this to me?" she asked, voice a light whisper. "It's cruel." she said, though it lacked accusation. It was a lot more reflective of how she felt. Like she understood she probably deserved it, but she didn't understand it at the same time.

Cruel for who? Brett thought to himself. he knew he was just torturing himself, to keep coming back like this, but staying away was just as painful, and equally impossible. He hadn't meant to come here tonight, but he knew he'd very definitely meant everything he'd done to try and help fix this place up, if only by proxy. "I'm not very good at just walking away. Not when this is what I'm leaving behind me," he told her, though he didn't define 'this'. It could have been the state she was in, or it could have been just her generally. In reality, it was both, though for different reasons.

Eris took it as the state of things. Her place, the condition it was in. And she still wanted to summon up the anger she'd felt earlier, but it wasn't there. It had died out again, she couldn't hold onto it long. "You have to." she told him, nodding like that would help him accept her point. "I can't do this." she continued. "I can't deal with you, being there but not being there. I can't deal with your shadow. It just hurts." she told him. "Is that why you're doing it? Isn't not letting me turn myself in bad enough?" she asked, really wanting to know. She was a little too off to throw any venom at him, so it came out sounding like some plea for the truth, for clarity she couldn't grasp herself.

Brett stared at her for a moment, uncomprehendingly, speechless. "No," he said, with some feeling when he finally found his voice once more. "Hell no, that's not why I'm doing this. Is that what you think? That I would - that all of this is because of... Fuck I don't even know what it would be because of, Eris. Seriously. Really? That's really..." Clearly, he couldn't quite wrap his head around where she was coming at this from. It didn't actually make sense to him, he didn't understand why someone would want to do that.

Julia. Went through her mind, but she'd dropped that. He'd dropped it. It was a familiarity they weren't sharing these days, though it still made her twitch to hear 'Eris' out of him. She pulled back away from him--which was less actual pulling and more she sat on the edge of the tub heavily, looking down at the floor, at his boots. "If you're trying to keep me wounded you're doing an excellent job." she told him, voice quiet. There was a drained quality to it, void of most markers that would indicate emotion where it should have been. But it wasn't entirely flat, either. Her body language said different things. "You know I don't want to be here." she told him, looking up again. "You know that. You know I don't want you to fix this place. It sucked when I was a kid, and it sucks now, and I don't want it to be any better." She bit at her lower lip a touch, then continued. "And I miss you so much sometimes I feel like I can't breathe. So I can't deal with people coming here, when I know you sent them. Like you used to do but it's not you anymore. I can't deal with seeing you, knowing you're just going to leave." She was quiet for a moment, reaching up to wipe at her good eye a little. "It's like you've locked me in this little private prison. And all it does is hurt."

"And if I just left you? What then?" he asked her, his voice quiet. He couldn't be angry with her. He used to get angry with her so easily, but these days, he couldn't summon it. Not even now. It would be easier, but the best he could manage with her was frustration, and that just wasn't the same.

She didn't know a good answer for him. "I disappear?" she suggested, not sure what else to say. It would probably be for the best. For both of them. She could get lost pretty easily. Hell, she got lost just walking up the street. It wouldn't take long before that turned into something like a permanent thing. And she knew it would mean she'd get lost and then she'd be over and done with in fairly short order, but there wasn't much of a survival instinct left in her. She didn't have the desire to rebuild her life. She didn't think even if she had the desire that she was capable of it, with her particular handicaps. And it still all added up to being her own fault, all around. Every aspect of this was her own doing. Or, every aspect but the being made to stick around enduring the ghost of him in her life. That was him, but she knew that was only a small part. The majority of it all was on her.

"And, in disappearing, would you be alright?" he asked her, wanting to pin her down on the specifics. "Or would you just go somewhere else and give up?" That would be what he'd put money on. That was why he couldn't walk away. Maybe he'd be able to manage it if he thought she'd be okay. At least, he'd have a start to be able to lie to himself. But right now there was no lie big enough to make him believe that she would even try and take care of herself.

"Yeah, I'll be okay." Eris said, knowing that was what he needed to hear. It was utterly untrue, but if that was what he had to hear to let go, move on with his life, forget about her and leave her to it, then that was what she was going to tell him. She reached out to take his hand for a moment, but didn't know what she planned on doing with it so she let go again. "I'll be fine. And you can do whatever it is you're going to do with your life. And you'll be fine too."

"You show me any evidence to back that up, and maybe I'll believe you," he told her. "Until then - I can't do it. I'm not trying to torture you, Pri... Sweetheart. I just - I can't walk away and leave you like this."

There was definitely a little twist of pain on her features when he almost called her Princess. It was her favorite. They'd started out calling each other pet names as viciously as possible, but things had settled differently over time. And when he was being nice, he called her Princess. "I'm not a case, Brett." she said, thinking she called him 'baby' when she was being nice. Then she tried standing again, and she looked back into the tub for her bottle. "This can't be good for you either. I know you haven't been very good at letting go before, but can't you treat me like your old girlfriends?" she asked him, finally fetching the bottle and she uncapped it to take a drink. "You burned your bridges there just fine. Why am I different? I screwed everything up. I probably did worse things than any of them did, can't you just...hate me, and cut me out entirely and get it over with?" she asked, stepping back close to him before she could think better of it.

He reached to take the bottle from her hands, instinctively so, never liking to see her drink, knowing she drank too much. "No, I can't just hate you. I can't just cut you out entirely. I can't just get it over with," he told her. "Would be easier if I could, but I've tried. And this - you, all of this... It doesn't make it any easier. I didn't want any of this. None of it. You did this. You caused this. And no, I can't just fix things to be how you want them to be. This is how they are. This is how I am. You broke things - you broke everything, but, dammit I still... How I... Fuck, I can't... You're just going to have to live with it. Accept it. You're not them - you told me that enough times yourself. You're not them, and you're never going to be them," he said, struggling over the feelings for her he still had, and yet had never actually expressed to her, before giving up and bludgeoning his way through the rest, riding roughshod over everything in a bid to get away from the emotional part.

"I know it's my fault. I know it is. I get that. And if I could fix it, I would, I promise, I would, but I know there isn't any fixing it, it's not like I can bring the dead back to life. And even if I could do that, I wouldn't, and it still wouldn't take away the fact that I killed someone." she said. "Though I did that well before I ever met you." she added, in a sort of half-mutter. Then she shook her head as well, realizing only belatedly that she hadn't fought him in the slightest on his taking the bottle away from her. She was used to doing that. She drank, he relieved her of the alcohol. she reached out to put her hand over his on the bottle neck, pulling at it a little to see if he'd give it back up. "Can't you pretend?" she asked him, looking him in the eyes even if she was still trying to get the bottle back. "Can't you just...be really mad at me? You used to be mad at me all the time, and you didn't have good reasons before, now that you've got one, why aren't you telling me how much of a bitch I am?"

He pulled the bottle back out of her grasp again and upended it to pour the contents into the bath, though he didn't take his eyes off her. "I don't want to hate you," he admitted to her. "It would - things are bad enough right now. Don't want them to get worse." This hurt, all of this hurt like hell and maybe, in the long run, things would be easier if he just hated her, if he just built those walls back up again brick by brick off the back of that, but to get there, he'd have to break himself again, he'd have to shatter everything, he'd have to go through the hell of that, and he'd lose her more entirely than he had done even now. He wasn't ready to let go like that.

She looked back over her shoulder as he dumped the bottle out. "...I don't have any other blankets." she told him. They were now whiskey-blankets. But she didn't actually sound like she cared, either. Looking back at him, she didn't say anything for a moment. "Why would it be worse than this?" she asked. "C'mon, baby, you know your lines. You've said it all a thousand times. You expected me to disappoint you and I did. I proved you right." she said, stepping closer.

"And now you'll have to get new ones - those blankets were only fit for burning anyway," he said, taking a half step back as she approached, wary of getting too close, though she was only a few inches away anyhow, with where he'd been standing. He simply maintained that same distance. It didn't help that she called him 'baby'. He'd always liked it when she called him that. He didn't rise to her other comments, knowing she was trying to start a fight.

"I don't want new ones." she told him, taking another step. "I don't want a new place, I don't want a new door, I don't want new locks." she continued. She didn't want a new life, period. She wanted her old one, she just knew that was off the table. "It's all wasted on me." she said. "Don't waste it on me." She reached one hand out, to try to brush her fingers against the back of his hand. "Don't waste anything on me. Time, energy, thought, money. All of this, is my fault. You were right about me the whole time. You need to come to terms with that."

"Don't," he said, moving his hand away from hers and taking another step back, maintaining the distance between them, small though it was. But the word was directed towards what she was saying, more than what she was doing. He felt like he was hanging by his fingernails off the edge of a cliff and she was there, prying away his grip one digit at a time. And she'd pushed him off the damn cliff in the first place. Wasn't it enough that he slipped. Did he have to fall completely into that dark pit.

"I'm trying to help you." she told him. And in her way, she believed that. She unwound the bandage from around her hand to show him the wound there, turning her hand over so he could see both sides. "I did this to someone once." she said. "It's just coming back on me. I baited Patrick, he just didn't finish the job. I thought maybe he'd just fucked me up more, for a little bit there, but I don't know. I don't think he did." she continued. "You're a good man, and you got led down the wrong path." She kept up advancing on him, a slow pace but clear. Funny, how her head seemed to be zeroing in on everything now, the fuzzy edges were farther away. "It wasn't your fault, and whatever you might've learned from me that wasn't fucked up, you can still hold onto that. I want you to. Just...leave me behind. You should have a long time ago."

"You have a really fucked up way of trying to help people," Brett snapped at her. "You really think breaking me the rest of the way's gonna help?" he asked as he finally stopped backing off, but only so that he could take her hand, taking a closer look at the damage. "Press charges," he told her, looking from her hand to her face. He was serious. "Press charges, we'll make them stick. He's got no allies now, and I'm flavour of the month, even if it's not my department. We can lock him up, throw away the key." It wasn't exactly what they were talking about right now, but he could see what he'd done, what he'd done on top of the bruises that he'd given her. It wasn't helping Brett's mental state at all, that was for certain.

"No, I don't." she said. "I think you need to get away from me. I want you to get away from me, find yourself a nice girl, and do whatever it is you're going to want to do with your life. Just pick a woman with a moral compass this time." she said. She didn't stop him from taking her hand, though she shook her head. "No." she said. "What good is it going to do? And again--I baited him. Practically asked for it. I did everything but spit in his face." she told him.

"Someone like Bull, you didn't need to bait him. You just need to look at him wrong. Or be breathing. Dammit, Eris - if you won't do this for you, do it for the next girl he decides to have a go at," Brett told her, but his heart wasn't in the argument as he dropped her hand. "I don't want a nice girl. Don't you get that? I wanted you. I just... You're always there. I think about you all the damn time. And knowing that you're here, in this dump - that doesn't help. If I thought... You didn't... You know - there's lots of ways that you're not one of them, the other girls. None of them really needed me."

She spoke before she could think not to, a gut reaction to what he told her. "I'm always going to need you." she said, Then she winced, squeezing her eyes shut a moment, the pain in her black one actually helping her clarity in that moment. She drew in a breath, and let it out slowly. "I..." she started, then she stopped again. "Should I torture myself and actually ask the question?" she asked, though it was rhetorical. She'd said over and over again that there wasn't a way to fix things. But she supposed she'd never actually asked. She just didn't want to hear it, she knew. She'd rather assume the worst than actually hear the words. But maybe if he said them out loud, that would click things home for him. She looked down, and reached for his hand again, taking it, gingerly between hers. She brushed her fingertips along his skin, ghosting upwards and she traced along where the dragon would be even if it was hidden beneath his clothing. "Is there anything I can do to fix this?" she asked. "Can I make this better?"

He shook his head, slowly. "I don't know how to forgive you," he said, admitting in that something of the fact that he'd thought about it. He'd considered it, he'd tried. She'd killed someone, premeditated and in cold blood, for him, and he'd contemplated forgiveness, contemplated whether it was possible to give up everything he held sacred voluntarily, for her. And it was only in considering that that he'd discovered that it just wasn't possible, even if he'd wanted it. He’d given all he could. He’d burned evidence, talked her out of giving herself up, refused to bring a murderer to justice. He just couldn’t do any more. "And, its more than that. It's that - you did this because of me. Because someone did me wrong. Which means this brings this down on me. And it brings it down on me to make sure that this doesn't happen again. We can't be together, Julia," he said, relenting and finally using her name, something he'd been purposefully avoiding until now. "Even if - my feelings for you haven't changed. But, I can't risk it. Just don't ask me to stop caring for you," he told her. It had been a battle for him to admit that he even felt that much for her, even to himself, but he'd admitted it, that wall had crumbled, along with several others, and it had left him having to adjust to the changes. Now, he didn't know how to adjust back again.

There had been a reason she hadn't asked. And that was why. Because even if he'd given her more or less the answer she expected all along, it was crushing to hear. She hadn't thought things could hurt worse, but she'd been wrong. It was a little like something died in her, that she'd sort of figured was already dead and gone, only apparently not. Hope was probably the worst thing in the world, she decided, in that very moment. Having it die on you even if you didn't know you had it was harder than anything she'd dealt with before. Knowing that he still felt about her the same way he had seemed to make it worse, too. Rubbed salt in the wounds. Which she deserved, and maybe she'd been looking for it, but that didn't make it easier to deal with. When she spoke her voice was rough, and she couldn't stop tears from sliding down her cheeks. But she was trying to get her thoughts out. "It isn't on you. You didn't dictate my behavior. This isn't your fault. He's not dead because of anything you did. Please don't think like that." she told him, voice wavering a whole lot. That meant a lot to her, she'd never meant for him to think that at all. It was an important point.

He gave her a slightly pitying look, though it was more sympathetic than his usual withering glares. Sometimes, she really didn't get it. "If you hadn't cared about me, you wouldn't have done what you did. Maybe he's not dead because of anything I did, but in the future... What if another one of him comes along again? Maybe not that extreme, but... I can't put either of us in that position," he told her, completely ignoring the fact that he'd had a strong impulse to go and beat the living hell out of Patrick the moment he'd truly seen what the guy had done to her. Before that, even - when he'd simply told him that he'd done anything to her at all.

"Unless you have someone else in your past that utterly destroyed your life because he was fucking bored, I think we're in the clear." she said. She moved towards the wall, still holding onto his hand, and she slid down it, looking up at him. "He ruined your life because he was bored. he was...laughing about it. Like...tee-hee, you caught me, what a fun joke." she continued, sniffling sightly, and she wiped at her eyes, wincing at the pressure on her black one.

"Right up until the moment he realized something was the matter, he was an arrogant, evil son of a bitch." she said with feeling, something that came across despite the waver to her tone. "He fucked with the wrong person. He fucked with me. He fucked with what was mine." And he wasn't anymore, but he had been at the time, and there was a very strong note to her voice on the word. "You were nothing to him. Just like I'm sure there are people scattered in this city who meant just as little, and he destroyed either way." She was quiet for a long moment, staring at a middle distance before she looked back up at him again. "I killed before." she said. "Just once. My old man. I'm on the police report. I was..." she frowned slightly, her memory fogging over a little on a detail. "Young." she settled on. "Things were bad, and I made them stop." She paused again, lost in her thoughts, but she picked her thread back up.

"I've never been all that impulsive. I'm not some...trigger waiting to go off. We're talking about the single most fucked up event in your life. That's what I couldn't handle in another way." She realized her thoughts were disjointed as she spoke to him, but she kept going, thinking he'd just have to deal with it. It wasn't like he hadn't before. "If I just killed people for no reason I wouldn't have wound up in that alley. I never would have rose to power in the first place. I'd have bumped someone off and they would have bumped me off." She smiled a little. "I won't say I don't get overly defensive of your good name," she said. "I do. But I wouldn't axe someone over it. I'd do things my way. And only if it was something that couldn't be handled in a much cleaner manner. Murder isn't nearly so profitable as the mobs seem to think. It's never really..." she trailed off, losing her train of thought there. "He deserved it." she said. "I don't think I can think of an offense that would make me think someone else did." The odd part was, she clearly wasn’t trying to plead her case. She seemed to just be talking, getting things out of her head that hadn’t had a chance to be shared yet.

She hadn't given him details before. She hadn't told him anything about what she'd been going to do until it was too late for him to stop her. And after the fact - everything had gone downhill so fast. She'd just never come home. She'd left him a note, anticipating his reaction, and she'd left. And to hear it now, from her, it once again hammered home how far removed she'd made him about someone who had so greatly impacted on his life. She'd taken that all away from him.

He took his hand back from her, leaving her on the floor. "I should have been involved," he told her, before holding up a hand, this time anticipating her. "I get why you didn't - I don't need to hear it. But this is my life. Starting with him, everyone's had a piece, tossed me from pillar to post, and what I wanted didn't mean dick. You knew that. You knew I was trying to put my life back together again. But you still went ahead without me." He knew he was jumping around with reasonings, and that she may have trouble putting the whole picture together, but there was no one simple thing he could pull out and say 'here, this is it, this is the only factor, the one thing that caused our breakup' and that one thing could be justified and fix everything. It couldn't. Life didn't work like that.

She nodded, not trying to defend herself against it. She understood. "We didn't have enough." she said, voice soft. "There wasn't enough there. I looked. I promise, I looked. But nothing we had would have held up in court. Nothing would have helped. And with him sitting in the commissioner's seat, he'd bury it all. And you. And me." She was quiet again for a moment. "You'd take a shot for me." she said. Then she smiled, but it lacked anything like humor. "You would have." she corrected herself. "And I...you didn't deserve that. Any of it. And I know you. You would have wanted to try and get him from another angle. But I've worked angles in this city for a long, long time, and I know them all. And there wasn't one. Not one that would have worked. I'm sorry, for...for cutting you out. I did know you were trying to put your life back together. I didn't think you'd be able to, being involved in any of this. You let things eat you, Brett." she said.

"Like you know I'm self destructive, and you try to get in my way. Like you're doing now. You're not listening to what I want, because what I want isn't really acceptable to you, is it. You don't want me to crash and burn. I feel like I'm done. I don't want to wander through my days in a fog. I don't want to wake up without you. I don't want to never have a screaming match with you again because we've got that matching level of passion for things, and that's how we deal with it. I don't want to wind up fucking myself up more, because I can't handle my meds. And I'm so tired of being lost, Brett." she said, wiping at her eye again. "I lived here from birth to my early teens and I'm still lost. I walk up the street and I don't know where I am. I got called on it today. Some guy, he bought me a drink, then followed, me, I guess he noticed I didn't know where the fuck I was going. He helped me here, but..." she realized she was off track. So she drew in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "I don't want to hang on to some existence that's a joke. And that's all my life amounts to. But you don't want to let me go." Her tone lacked accusation. She was just talking, feeling through it all, showing him he might have some of the same tendencies, even if he didn't see it like that.

What Brett had been going to say died on his lips at the mention of another guy, chased away by dual spikes of jealousy and concern. Jealousy that there as another guy, any other guy. And concern because, who the hell knew who he was. He could have been anyone. He could have hurt her. Who's the guy, what guy, tell me about the guy, "What guy?" he asked, though he hadn't intended to. He'd intended to keep his damn mouth shut on the matter, because it was none of his business. Save that everything she did felt like his business still.

Eris looked up at him, and blinked a moment, then actually smiled, just for a moment before it died. "Just a guy." she said. She thought a moment. "Eric." she landed on. "I think." She wasn't positive. "Out of everything I just said, that's what you pick out to comment on?" she asked him. She reached up, making a half hearted attempt to take one of his hands and tug him down to the floor with her, though she had no hopes that it would work.

"Nothing else is really news, is it?" Brett pointed out, not joining her on the floor, as expected. "There was no real answer, and now we have to deal with everything. You did what you thought you had to do. I didn't, don't, can't like it. But you couldn't do what I would have wanted you to do. And now I can't do what you'd want me to do. And what we do, we do for each other. And what we do makes each other miserable. We both know that, but we can't live with the alternative. So - the guy is the only real news." And, because he was feeling especially masochistic today, and because it was a conclusion he tended to jump to when it came to her, men, and his jealous streak that ran about a mile wide, he added, "You seeing him again?"

"From the way you say it it sounds like we're even." Eris said, and she knew she shouldn't be surprised that he got entirely sidetracked by the very idea of Eric, but part of her was. Especially since he wanted to cut through them talking through the major life altering events going on between the two of them to discuss a guy she'd met on the street and had one conversation with. "You realize that I don't even know if I would recognize him if I saw him again, right?" she asked. She pushed herself back to her feet, because she wanted to be closer to him, and that was the only way she was going to get that. And she did step closer, watching his eyes. "Why?" she asked.

"Not even, no. Just in a situation that nothing's going to change," he observed, half reaching out to help her to her feet, and then dropping his hand. He'd give anything to change how things were, but he'd come to the realisation that nothing was going to change that. Maybe, if one talked about the stages of grief, he'd finally reached acceptance. Not that that helped him in letting her go, of course. "As for why - making conversation?" he suggested, lying through his teeth at that.

"Bullshit." Eris said, still watching his eyes, and she moved right up into his personal space, close enough that she very lightly brushed against him. "You're jealous." she said. "You don't want anyone else potentially sniffing around what's yours." Part of her felt good, seeing that jealous streak. But she knew it didn't mean anything. He'd already told her that he still cared about her, that he was going to continue to care about her, and he just couldn't forgive her or get over things. He was perfectly clear on it. "Do you think I'd kill someone again? Do you really think that? Seemed like it was an issue. I thought I addressed it."

He had another lie, a better one, an almost believable one, all lined up. Except she could always see right through him, she would know it for what it was. It would just be words, and he'd only be hurting himself to say them. "I don't know," he said, addressing her question instead, knowing he should step back once more and deciding that he would. In a moment. "You might. I didn't think you would this time. I didn't think you would go that far." He'd thought that they were coming to an understanding, to some kind of equilibrium between his world and hers. He'd been wrong.

"I wouldn't. Not unless it was a life or death situation. An imminent one. As in someone had a gun on you." she said. She'd taken out the biggest issue, she'd done what she intended. She wasn't a murderer at heart, she was just capable of it. "He was a soldier." she told him, keeping herself right there in his space, and she pushed herself up on the balls of her feet a little, not fully thinking her actions through.

It took far too much willpower to take a step backward as she did that, just enough to ease himself out of her personal space. It felt different. What she said, combined with her movement, more information on the other man. It felt like she was starting to try to change his mind. And if anyone could get to him, she could. Only he knew it wouldn't last. If he weakened, if he relented, it would only be for a matter of time. Until he woke up the next morning and had to deal with the fallout. Had to deal with leaving all over again.

She followed, knowing the end result could be that he turned and left entirely. That he just cut out right then and there. But she couldn't help it, really. She didn't want to help it. Reaching up, she slid her good hand up the front of his chest, a very light motion, much lighter than she ever would have in the past. Almost like she was merely reacquainting herself with the feel of the motion. "I wouldn't do anything like that again. I'm not a rampant murderer. You know that. Even in my history when I was an evil bitch, you know I didn't do that. I didn't bump people off. The circumstances are different, the playing field has been leveled. And I learn from my mistakes." she added. "I learn. Slowly, but I do. At least the important things." And he was very important. "I am yours, you know. You made me tell you that once, in so many words. It was true. It still is."

He put his hand over hers, stopping it against his chest for a moment, and then pulling it back, lifting her hand away from him before letting her go. "It's too late, Eris," he told her, though his tone was soft, regretful. It was clear he wasn't happy about what he felt he had to say. "I hope you do learn, I really do, but it's too late. Because every time I look at you, I'm always going to remember. And I'm always going to wonder. And neither of us can live like that. That's not something that you can ignore. Not and still have a life together."

She was quiet for a moment, studying him. She didn't try to touch him again, keeping herself that little bit separate. "I think we're both miserable without each other." she said. "And I don't think that's a life either." She didn't know when she'd decided to start fighting for what they had. It was almost like some sleeping survival mechanism, but it was more than that. It ran deeper. It stemmed from someplace else. "You never used to trust me and you changed your mind." she said. "I was working on it too. It's not like trust issues are anything we've not dealt with extensively before." she pointed out. "We've always had things to overcome. It was just always worth it." Only now she was aware it wasn't, for him, and maybe she was waiting for that axe to fall once more, cut down the little spark that got ignited somewhere in her and she still wasn't sure where or how.

"I'm sorry Princess. This isn't like the other times," he told her, taking another step back. He swallowed and forced himself to carry on, not knowing how else to cope with what she was trying, with the temptation it put in his path. "Maybe you should try and find your soldier. Sure he could look after you," he said, not quiet meeting her eyes, though it was a good approximation thereof as he focused about half an inch upwards, nearer to her hairline.

Eris shook her head. "It's not there." she said. "There's only you." She drew in a breath, and she let it out in a rush. "This is why." she said, looking at the floor for a moment. Even if he didn't make eye contact properly, his suggesting she went and found someone else defeated something in her. But she'd tossed caution to the wind a while back, she was a trainwreck in progress. She stepped closer again, though she made herself keep that bare distance so there wasn't contact, as she pushed herself up on her toes. She leaned closer, to brush a kiss across his cheek. "I can't handle you in my life, if you're not going to be a part of it." she said in a soft whisper. "I can't do it. I can't separate myself out, I can't accept you being just out of reach. It's all or nothing. And I know what your answer is. Just don't as me to stop wanting you back, or needing you. Because I am always going to."

"You have no life," he told her, turning his face towards hers so very slightly. "This, right now, is no life. If you had a life, maybe I could leave, not need to be a part of it. But I can't just walk away, leave you to crumble. I can't."

She stayed in closer where she was, maybe nuzzling his cheek the tiniest bit. "You can't make me want a life without you." she told him. She gave him another little kiss, closer to his lips this time, partially due to his movement, partially due to a minute movement of her own. She still kept herself physically apart from him even if it would have been far easier to lean against him. "You're not leaving me to crumble, I already have. And it wasn't your fault."

"I can't be the only thing in your life either," Brett said, closing his eyes slightly, feeling her against his skin, smooth where his two day growth was rough. "Whether I'm there or not shouldn't make all the difference." Only that was what she was saying, and here was he considering it. Considering it, even though he knew it was a bad idea. God, how many women over the years had he met, who went back to relationships they should have run screaming from, just because they were told by their other half that he'd die without them. And here was he, finding himself in much the same situation. What, exactly, did that make him?

"You're not the only thing. But you were the key element. You know we had dreams, things we wanted to do. Or, I made you come up with a dream, so we could follow through. You know I loved to sing. I was finding out what belonged in my life. But the reason I had the ability to do it at all was because you were there with me. I knew you'd have my back. And if I messed up, or did something wrong, you'd correct me. Because you were always watching. I need you." she said. "You made the world make sense. Made it a place I wanted to be in." She did kiss him then, even if she kept it as light as the kisses she'd been giving him. It wasn't what she wanted to do, especially because she was aware that it might be the last, but that was what happened when she reached up to tilt his face towards hers the rest of the way. It came out soft, light. She was expecting him to pull away the second she started.

He did pull away, though it was a beat after he knew he should have done. “I don’t trust you,” he told her, being honest about that, though he knew it would hardly be news to her.

"You never did." she told him. "Not for a long time. And I don't know if you fully did even before all of this happened." She kept her eyes on him. "I made your life someplace worth being too." she said. "Before...you just floated, miserable all the time. I helped change that."

"You did," he agreed, feeling the loss of her more with that admission, even if she was still there, right before him, offering herself up again. "But that doesn't change what happened. Before, not trusting you - it was acceptable. Now, it's not."

"What would I have to do for you to trust me?" she asked. "What hoops would I have to jump? Is it even possible? Do I get to try?" She really hadn't thought she'd be doing this. Be making that try for him, for them. But it was the only thing worth while in her life. It was the only thing she really wanted. She'd realized that when she was with him. That they could do anything, they could go anywhere, all of the outside factors in their lives could change, and she was okay with that so long as he was still there with her. She was just going back to that idea now, she was latching back onto it. She didn't think it would work. He was resisting, though she did know that if everything was completely lost he would have left already. He would have pushed her away by now.

"I don't know," he told her, because he really didn't. He couldn't imagine anything she could do. He'd trusted her, eventually, despite how hard he'd fought against it, despite the fact he'd sworn never to trust anyone again, and she'd broken that trust. And yet - he knew he should tell her he could never trust her again, but that was so final. And, with her, she got him to do things he'd swore would never be done again. he never truly knew where he was with her. He couldn't say never.

It wasn't a no. There was that killer inside, back again. Hope. She didn't do well with it. But in this case, she needed to hang onto something. "I'd do anything you wanted." she told him. "Follow any rules you wanted me to. I can follow when I have to." In this case, she definitely thought she did. It was required. "I'm not asking for everything to go back to normal, or for you to trust me again tomorrow, I'm willing to work for it." she promised. "I'm willing to put in the time." she said, shifting a little to stand fully in front of him, moving so she interrupted his line of sight. "If you'll let me."

"Now you're the one who's not being fair," he said,stepping back and making himself turn away as a response to her placement of herself. He looked around the room, glanced out into the hallway, then looked back at her. "You know what I could say to that. Pick yourself back up, actually try and live your life. Try. But I don't use people like that. I won't say that, make you think it would make a difference when I don't know whether it even would or not. I know I don't want to be in a relationship where I'm staying because you'll just give up if I go. I need to know that's not why I'm there. But that's not it, not the real reason. I can't be with you, and be waiting for you to betray me again. I'd rather not be with you at all than that."

"I didn't betray you in the first place, I did something you didn't approve of." Eris said. "But I never betrayed you. There's a difference." She was quiet for a moment. "I get that it was major, it wasn't like I just didn't come home one night and you don't know where I've been--but I told you that, too. Through all of this, I haven't lied to you. I was up front about everything. Granted, I expected you to do something different with the information you had, but that's not the point. I left because I knew where I was headed and didn't want to drag you down with me, and knew you'd never agree with what I was doing. But I didn't betray you."

He turned back to her fully then, for the first time actually taking a step toward her, rather than away. “You made me choose,” he said, his voice tightening, deepening in that familiar way that said she’d finally gotten to him. “You did what you thought you had to do, but you left it to me to choose - between you and everything I’d once stood for. As big a joke as that is, right? Given the last few years. But I thought that maybe I could get that back. You showed me that. I’d thought the guy I’d once been was fucking dead, for all I was walking around, living and fucking breathing. And you showed me I was wrong. Made me believe that I could maybe get back to that. At least some way. And then you fucking made me choose. Either I turned you in, lost you completely, fucking destroyed you. Or I took that hit myself and gave it up. So yeah, maybe you’re right again. Maybe you didn’t betray me. I made that choice - I betrayed me. For you.” And the worst of it all was that he knew he’d still do it again. That was why he couldn’t go back. If she chose to, she could lead him down the fucking rabbit hole and he’d be lost forever.

"It wasn't supposed to be a choice at all." Eris snapped. "I never in a million years thought you wouldn't turn me in. And if no one had come for me, I'd have gone myself. This wasn't some manipulation, where I just wanted to torture you, I thought you could end it. Maybe I took part of it out of your hands, but I gave it back." She was quiet for a moment, staring at him. "You betrayed you, and that's my fault." she said, reading that from what he said to her. "It's not too late." she told him. "You could haul me in. Right now. You'd get a full confession. I wouldn't fight you. Then you wouldn't have betrayed yourself, you would have had a momentary lapse of judgment."

“No, I couldn’t. And no, I didn’t - have a momentary lapse of judgement. I couldn’t do it and, dammit, I still couldn’t do it. I don’t want a full confession, Eris, and I don’t want to have to live the rest of my life knowing what happened to you. You might not have meant it as a choice, but it always was. You do things to me, sweetheart. You’re in my life and you make me want to throw away everything and be something else, someone else.” Even now, he knew, he was being someone else because of her. Going back to being a cop was because of her, but at least it was familiar ground. At least he felt like he had some semblance of control, though he doubted he’d ever be happy with it. But he’d lost the expectation of happiness a long time ago now.

"Who do you want to be?" she asked, noting, of course, that he went back to 'Eris' and 'sweetheart' but she expected it. He was mad, and that was how he reacted to that. She was okay with it for the time being. "What do you want to do?" If she made him want different things, she wanted to know what they were.

"It doesn't matter any more," he told her, but he knew that she hadn't quite grasped what the truth of the situation was. She'd touched on it before, of course, but nothing more. Without her, he just didn't care. He didn't 'want' to be anything in particular at all. She could direct him when they were together because he wanted to be whatever would be best for her. And when he stood back and thought about that objectively, logically, that was a damn scary thought. But he could still remember how right it felt, and he still had that huge pull towards just going with it.

"Yes it does." she said. "Your life isn't over, is it. Maybe you can't be with me. Maybe you don't want to be, or don't want to try. I have to accept that, but that doesn't mean you can't take what you got from being with me and ditch it. If you don't want to be who you are you change that, and if you don't want to be doing what you are you do something else. You've done it before, you can do it again."

"You should take your own advice at times, sweetheart," Brett advised her. She always could see a clear path for him, never for herself. Possibly he was much the same way when it came to her. They could have worked, being like that, he knew, though he rejected the thought - he really was just torturing himself.

"One of us is a fully capable human being with the ability to function on a day to day basis without help." Eris pointed out. "That would be the you part of this equation. You can do this. You can do anything you want. So, what do you want, who do you want to be? If there weren't any limitations." she prodded, keeping on the track she was on. Even if it did mean she wasn't pushing for them. She had another deal for him, but she wasn't handing it over until she was done pursuing this line of questioning.

He laughed a little at that. "There are always limitations, Princess," he told her, the pet name slipping out despite his intentions. Sometimes, it just felt natural. But that was the killer in all of this: everything always felt so natural, until he remembered he was back waiting for the axe to fall, and this time he had the knowledge that it actually could.

She started to walk out of the room, drawing in a deep breath as she did so. "The only limitations you've got is your own pissy nature." she told him. "Quit stalling. Answer the questions." she told him, stopping at the window in the hall and she opened it up. The heavy smell of whiskey soaked blankets was starting to get to her, so she needed a little air. Sitting on the sill, she looked back towards him, absently picking a little at the stitches from the knife wound on her hand.

He watched her for a moment, before he spoke. "No. no - I'd be doing neither of us any favours. What I want is off the cards now. Has to be off the cards now. Otherwise it's just a different kind of torture. And you might think my only limitations is my own pissy nature, but that's who I am, and for me my limitations are that I don't want much. I don't have big dreams, I don't reach for the stars, I've never been like that. Not even when I was a kid. My dreams are pretty small, pretty damn normal, and I'm not too bothered about the detail. I don't have ambition like you do, I never have done. I just want the quiet life."

"I didn't ask if you wanted some flashy life, I said 'anything'." Eris said. "That includes a quiet life. If that's what you wanted, you could have that too. Find a better place than your old one, maybe a town house or something, live off the profits of the business, and...do whatever you want in your spare time. Get a dog. Buy a tiny bar and only open when you feel like it. Go for long walks if you want to, but you could do it. You even have the means. The business'll run itself. It doesn't really require either of us. You could have a quiet life."

The look he gave her was almost pitying. "A dog. Right. Yeah," he said, realising just how much she didn't get it. And there was no way he was going to spell it out for her, that really would just be twisting the knife. For him, anyway. For her - maybe not, not if she couldn't already read between the lines. It was almost ironic, really. She was the one who was pushing to give things another go, after all, and yet here she was having no problems at all in assuming that his dreams for the future were so easily redrawn without her in them.

"Yeah, it'd be like having me around only with less impossibility tossed in there." Eris told him. He wouldn't have to worry about trusting a dog. But he liked being needed. She knew that about him. He liked knowing he was required. She still needed him. She wasn't going to be getting along without him. "Less irritation, you'd probably never have to hide the whiskey bottles from a dog." she told him, ignoring the look. "Why wouldn't you go for that?"

He heard what she had to say, he just couldn't believe that she'd actually said it at first. But she had, he knew she had, and he knew he shouldn't actually be surprised. He took a deep breath and then turned to go. He was fooling himself here, there was nothing he could do, nothing that he could achieve, not that would make any difference, not that he could allow.

She stood and got into his path, not quite sure what she missed there. But it was something. "Where are you going?" she asked. "We're not--" she started then stopped. Then she shook her head and finished what she was going to say. "We're not done here." She didn't know when she would feel finished, but it wasn't right now.

The expression on his face when he looked round at her was cold. "We were done the moment that you suggested that I could replace you with a fucking dog," he told her. Nevermind he didn't want to replace her at all, the suggestion that there had been so little there that some animal could take that place, could fill that hole she'd left behind. It was insulting.

She still didn't quite understand what he was upset about, but she could see he was. "Brett, I just don't want you to be alone. I don't want you living some life you don't want to be. Through everything, all I've ever wanted is what's going to make your life better. I want to try with you. I want to fight for us, but if I can't, if you won't let me, then I want to at least know you're not rotting away doing things you don't want to be doing. That's what you were doing before you met me. And you can, you can have a life different than the one you're living now. I didn't mean to make you angry." she said, honesty in her tone. "It's my issue, okay? Sometimes I think your average pet would be easier than dealing with me. Cleaning up after my messes is pretty catastrophic, and I feel like I'm not exactly worth the trouble. Especially lately, when it's being highlighted so incredibly sharply just how fucked I really am. I didn't mean to upset you."

"We're over, Eris," he told her, appearing unmoved by what she had to say. "You were the one who decided that in the first place, remember - and now you're changing your mind, you want to 'fight' for us? Now you're deciding that it's me who doesn't want to play ball here. At the end of the day, if it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't be alone. My life would be better, different to what it is now. And it would have been my decision about whether you were worth the trouble, and I'm pretty much convinced that the evidence was all pointing to the fact that you were." He kept trying to convince himself it was for the best, that he needed to be objective, that it would be easier to just consider himself lucky, to concentrate on how in deep he'd been. And, sometimes, he could manage it for a while. It worked better than trying to be angry at her. But, at the end of the day, he just wished none of this had ever happened. He just wanted to go back to where they'd been, and that was the one thing that they couldn't do. There was no undoing this.

"You were supposed to turn me in." she said. "I didn't think there was anything to fight for. That there'd be anything left. Why did you come here tonight?" she asked. Since they hadn't actually gotten to that. He'd showed up, and got her out of the tub eventually but he hadn't actually said why he'd come by. She'd even called to tell him to stay away. And now he was here. It seemed rather important in light of everything else.

"I got your message," he told her, though he didn't add that it had pissed him off. Or that it had been the flipping point, given that he'd spent all of yesterday just about managing to stay away, despite the fact he'd been worried as hell following his encounter with Patrick O'Malley. That there was only so much a guy could take.

"And your response to my message was to do the polar opposite?" Eris asked. "Or did you come here to tell me you were going to back off, and didn't get around to it?" she continued, walking over to him again, so she could tilt her head back and look him in the eye. "What did you come here for? Why are you here?"

Brett's eyes narrowed and his jaw flexed, clearly he was unhappy with responding to her questions, but respond he did. "I ran into Bull O'Malley the other night and he was all about what he'd done to you. First telling me he'd finished off what had been started, then that he'd fucked you up good when he realised you weren't dead. Which he knew because I'd spent some time at the morgue that day and things would have gone very differently if I'd found you there. And then to come home to that - to... It had been hard enough to stay away before then."

There was a flicker over her features, something that was hard to read with her face in the condition it was in, but it was there. "What would you have done if you'd have found me there?" she asked, voice quieter than it had been, by quite a bit. She got it, he'd been worried about her. Like Eric's idea of leveling the playing field would have been great if it hadn't involved something that could hurt Brett. She'd have signed on in a heartbeat if it wasn't for that detail, and she wouldn't compromise on that point.

"Probably something that was very definitely not going to make my life better," he told her, echoing her words from earlier, about her wish for him. The answer was he didn't exactly know, he didn't know how far matters would have been taken, but there would have been violence. And blood spilled. And he knew that the very thought of her on a slab made him want to throw up at the same time as make someone pay. Whatever he would have done, if he'd found her there, it wouldn't have been pleasant.

She exhaled, and let her eyes fall shut for a long moment. "I think you need me gone." she said, voice still soft. "Really gone, so you can move forward, or...something. I wish you'd go for what you want. I really do. And I wish I could share that with you. If I had a chance I would try. But I don't want to keep doing this to you, either. Even if I'm not actually there." She looked away, eyes stinging, though she didn't start actively crying again. "Do you want me gone?" she asked. "Would that make everything easier?"

"Nothing is going to make this easier," he told her. "I... If you were gone, I - I don't know. Sometimes - What I've been trying is that - sometimes I think that if I know where you are, if I know you're doing alright. Then that would help. But the idea of you just gone? Right now, that doesn't feel easier at all. That feels so much worse."

Eris exhaled, at a loss. "I was going to offer." she said, looking down at the floor, at her bare feet and his boots. She stepped closer, to lean her forehead against his chest a little. "I was going to tell you if you'd follow through, go do something you wanted with your life, I'd take the next train out of here. I'd just disappear. I wouldn't be in this city anymore, you wouldn't have to wonder what happens the next time I run into Bull. You wouldn't have to look for me in the morgue. You wouldn't have to worry about what kinds of conditions I was living in."

He knew it was a bad idea, but he still brought an arm up and round, placing his hand against her back, holding her lightly that way. "Yeah, I would," he said, looking down at her dark hair. "I'd just be wondering what city, and if there was another Bull, or another morgue. Other conditions. Only then I wouldn't be able to check. It'd just be me and my imagination. And I'd always be wondering, and it'd never be over." He'd never actually know what had happened to her.

Eris closed her eyes and kept them shut, just giving herself a minute to feel his arm around her. To try and memorize that moment, even if it was a futile sort of thing. She had a million things going through her mind, though none of them seemed the thing to say. She didn't know what to say. It seemed like there were dead ends everywhere she turned. She hated feeling so helpless. She had to deal with that on a daily basis due to the brain damage, but she didn't usually have to deal with it like this. Turned out it sucked even worse. In the end she slid her arms around him and just stayed standing where she was.

"Let me help you," he said, after a long period of silence in which they both just stood there. "Can you at least try? You said you wanted whatever would make my life better. Right now, that would make my life better. It kills me to think of you just giving up. You living like this. You're worth so much more."

"You were the only one who ever thought that." she said, voice breaking just a little. She didn't move, she didn't want to. Pulling away from him was something she felt physically incapable of doing in that moment. "I can't deal with the idea of you being there but out of reach." she told him, not trying to be a bitch, not trying to even shoot him down. She just wanted to be honest. "I keep waiting for you. And I know that's stupid. And I know I shouldn't. I don't even expect it. I'm surprised you're even here now." She fell quiet again, before she continued. "I spend my days just waiting for you. Thinking about you, and worrying about you, and waiting. And I drink, and I try to get my meds taken but I know I fuck that up. I don't even try to but somewhere in my head, it's so tied to you I keep thinking that you'll do that. There's a..." she didn't quite know how to word it. So she went for what seemed to be closest. "A disconnect, I think. Between what I know, and what I'm wired for."

"Yeah, well, the rest of the world is blind and stupid and can't see what's before their eyes," he told her, meaning that despite everything. She even got a momentary little smile with it, a passing softening of his expression. "If I helped you, would you try? If it was me, rather than people I send, would that work?" It would be hard, he knew, especially for him. But it was eminently preferable to trying to walk away and leaving her to fall apart. Hard was better than impossible.

"You always saw better things in me than anyone else. I still think maybe you were the blind one.” Look at where we are right now, how can you even entertain the idea that I’m somehow still worth anything? “I don't think it would work for you." she said. "I don't know if it would work for me. I do know I wouldn't be able to resist trying. With you, I mean. That wouldn't change. I know me. I tried my hardest not to get involved with you in the first place, and it was futile. I cared more about you than anything well before I ever even admitted it to myself. Seeing you..." she trailed off, sure he'd be able to follow her logic. It was a fair warning. She didn't want him even thinking about signing on for something without knowing that first. She didn't want to put him through that. Hell, she wasn't sure she wanted to put either of them through this. She still wanted it to be game over, story done, on her part.

He didn't want to consider whether there was anything in her first statement and so, instead, as was his way, he simply ignored it. "I'm not seeing any alternatives. I tried to help you hands off and you told me to back off. I - I can't just walk away and leave you." He didn't approach anything about his returned feelings. He'd told her they hadn't changed, and right now he didn't want to go into more detail, or define that any further. He didn't trust her not to use it against him. Especially not now.

"That's why I was thinking of leaving." she said. "What if I promised?" she asked, finally looking up at him again, though she didn't let go or step back. "What if I promised I'd be okay, and I'd find someplace to be, and I'd make a go of it somewhere?" she asked. The worst part of everything was the idea that they still cared about each other as much as they did. That it was really painfully clear that they did. But this was why Eris hadn't ever believed in anything like 'love' before. Nothing ever worked out. Things always crashed and burned. Nothing ever truly went right, not for very long. She'd proved herself right, not that she was happy with that. But she didn't want to hurt him anymore, and she didn't think his showing up to help her would be good for him. Like it wouldn't be good for her either, even if there was a part of her that wanted to immediately jump at the idea. To latch on and tell him yes, please, that was just fine, she'd take it.

"I wouldn't believe you," he told her, honestly, though his tone was rather bleak as he said it.

It got a smile out of her, though it matched his tone. "Yeah." she agreed, resting her head against his chest again. "I want there to be a way out." she said, voice still quiet. She drew in the scent of him, holding it in her lungs for a moment before she exhaled. "I want to be able to do something. Anything. I always feel helpless in some ways. Like today, when I was lost again, and I got caught. I can't even tell you what that's like. What it was like to listen to him talk about soldiers who got tagged on the battlefield, how they can bounce back. How he'd make me...tags." she made a motion at her neck, so he'd know what she was talking about while she found the word. "Dog tags." For soldiers and dogs. "I'd literally have some kind of collar on just so I could get home again. There's nothing that quite makes you feel worse than understanding that you're that fucked, and there isn't anything to help that." she said. "I hate feeling it here. I hate feeling like it's the same thing. I know it is, I know it's broken, and I broke it, and now I have to deal with that, I just...don't think I'm equipped to do that anymore."

Brett wasn’t entirely certain whether she was talking about them anymore, or just about her life in general. She’d been lost when he’d found her, after all, and there had only ever been so much she would let him do for her. In the end, he spoke without thinking his words through first. “I don’t know what... scares me most,” he told her, hesitating over the wording as he said it, though there was nothing else there to replace it. “Facing a future without you in it. Or facing one with you in it.”

You don’t need me like I need you. Went through her mind, but she didn’t say it out loud. She didn’t know how he’d take it, and she didn’t want to set him off again. She wanted to know what he meant about her being in it, but didn’t ask. She figured it was best to assume he meant ‘at the fringes’ like he showed up to help her out now and then, but that was all. Quiet for a moment, she gave herself a second before she spoke. “You’re a very capable man. You can endure just about anything, and come out the other side. You can do anything you want. You just have to choose what direction you want and stick to that.” She finally looked back up at him to make eye contact. She gave him a light little smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, and she reached up to brush her thumb across his cheek, just above the beard growth. “You don’t need me anymore.” she told him. “You might have before, because you were stuck in a rut, but you’ve been out of that for a while now.” she said. “You just needed the catalyst to get going, but you did that. You’ll be okay.”

Endure. That was the operative word there. And in that, she was right. He’d live through hell, because it wasn’t in him to give up, roll over and die. But, recently, with her, he’d begun to hope for more, to think that his life could actually be something, rather than just a long string of days he had to live through, in the knowledge that tomorrow would be just the same. Then that hope died, and he was right back where he started again. He thought that she was wrong. He thought that maybe he did, in fact, need her. That was what scared him the most now.

She waited for him to answer, then a flicker of a frown went over her features. "What are you thinking?" she asked, voice still light. She wanted to know, always wanted to know, but now it seemed pretty damn important.

“I’m not sure I should tell you,” he admitted, after a moment or two. She’d already said she’d try and use things, that she wouldn’t give up. He’d just be giving her ammunition for that. He should just do the other thing she wanted - the sensible thing - he should just walk away and forget about her, but he couldn’t. He knew he’d made it work in the past, that he’d walked away, that he’d determinedly put up walls and used that deep well of anger to stop him ever going near them again, but he also knew what he had to do to achieve that, and where it would leave her - both in actuality and in his head. He couldn’t face that process, which left him with this, this situation which was no good for either of them, stuck in some kind of limbo.

"Tell me anyway." she said, wondering what was giving him pause. He wasn't a guy who held back, a lot of the time. Or, well, she guessed that was categorically untrue. Emotional stuff he tended to hold back on. It had been a source of tension between them before. Anger, that was what he didn't hold in check. But because of everything, she thought it probably meant she needed to know even more.

There was another hesitation, but in the end he continued, despite his better judgement. Maybe it was because, whilst he thought it would probably make things worse - or at least not help anything - somehow it needed to be said. "When I was with you, my life started to feel like it wasn't just something to endure any more. Like there was more to it than that, other than getting through today and dreading tomorrow. And now... Now you're not there, which means that tomorrow is back to all the other tomorrows before. Something to endure. But, if you were there, then what? Do I get a life that I don't just have to endure? Sure, but I'm also always going to be waiting. Because I don't trust you, because I hear what you say about what you're like and what you will and won't do and I can't trust that you're right about that, that I can just take you at your word. And I'm afraid that it would just become endurance of a different kind." He hated using words like that - words like 'scared' and 'afraid'. Once upon a time he never would have done, he would have refused to show vulnerability to her, and even now it clearly made him uncomfortable. But she had got to him, she got to see parts of him that nobody else did, even now.

She didn't take offense to what he was saying, she understood it more than well enough. "You don't see a life for yourself that isn't just day in day out without me?" she asked, wanting to be clear on that. She tried to look at it logically, for him. Just pick apart the issue, so she could come up with something better, while trying not to sabotage the entire thing with her own bullshit. But she did have one huge drive in her, which helped that process. She wanted what was best for him. Eris had wanted that for ages now, and that hadn't changed. "What did I change that made the difference?" she asked. She'd get to the other part of things in a minute, that detail needed to be figured out first.

"So you can try and find a replacement?" Brett asked her, rather than actually answering her question. She was such a contradictory mix at times. One moment saying that she wouldn't stop fighting for them, the next trying to find ways to write herself out of his life entirely. All or nothing.

Eris winced faintly. "So I can try to find a way through this for you." she said, thinking the wording on that was important. "It's what I do. I find ways through things for you. You did the same thing for me. You got in my way, and made me come up with something else." she said, though she wasn't thinking about her own situation. She started to lean back a little, reaching down to hook a finger through his belt loop. "Let's go sit down." she said, thinking that staying in the hallway wasn't the place to have that discussion. And she might have not had much in the way of furniture, but she didn't care about that right now. "Think about it for me. Forget everything else, just...what did I change that made the difference?"

He glanced down at her finger, then back up at her face as he reached to remove it. Given that they'd just been standing so close, it wasn't the proximity he had a problem with, he simply refused to be led. He stepped round her and headed into the room, waiting until he was actually seated, albeit uncomfortably on the broken down sofa, before he answered her. "That made the difference," he told her. The time had also given him the chance to think about it. "You gave me something to get in the way of. You did things for me, things I wouldn't have done for myself. And I did things for you. Things I wouldn't have done for myself, and that you wouldn't do for yourself." And if he was just looking at things objectively, that would be the reason.

She hadn't thought about what she was doing with the tug, and she didn't try to do anything about it. She merely followed, and when he was sat down, she sat on the floor near him, but not touching. Eris didn't trust herself to sit next to him, so she didn't let herself. She just sat on the floor, shifted so she was crossing her arms on the cushion next to him, head cradled on them. Silent while she considered. It wasn't really a great answer. It wasn't something she thought she could find a substitute for. That didn't mean she didn't try, though. Maybe he just needed someone else with a boatload of damage. She imagined that suggestion would be met with nothing but anger, though. In the end, she tried to come at it from a different angle. "You'd need a cause?" she suggested, ticking her gaze up to him to see if she was on the right track or not.

"No, I don't need a cause," he told her, leaning back, then leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees as he realised there was a broken spring in the back of the couch. "A cause wouldn't give a damn about me - you're only looking at one half of the equation, sweetheart."

There was the briefest of smiles on the corner of her lips before it died. "I'm trying to find a solution." she said. "So you need someone who...you need to help, and who cares about you?" she suggested. "Work with me here, baby, I'm really trying to find something for you that'll work. Something that'll help." she said, reaching out to pick at a stray thread on his pants. "These need mending." she told him, even if it was entirely separate from what they were discussing.

"I don't want to find a solution," he told her, outwardly ignoring her comment about his pants - in the past, she wouldn't have said anything, they would have just been quietly mended. They could both be strangely domestic in their own ways, though a song and dance was never made about it. "I don't just want to be able to pluck an answer out of the air." That would be too easy, would make a mockery of everything.

"Sweetheart," he replied to her. "Just because I can't be with you - it doesn't mean I want to replace you. Just like you were saying earlier that you couldn't replace me with soldier boy. Doesn't work that way."

"Something's got to work." she said. "I think you need it. I don't want to think about you just wandering through life doing nothing with your time, or existing someplace you hate. And if I can't be there to push you when you need it, then someone should be. Or something needs to take that place. My place. You'd be able to let go, move forward with your life." she said. "That is what you want, right?"

"I don't want to talk about this right now," he told her, rejecting what she was saying out of hand. "And I definitely don't want to talk about it with you. Stop trying to write yourself out of my life, Princess. What happens will happen and in the meantime just... Don't," he said, getting to his feet. It had been a while now since he'd last felt the need to leave, to run away, but he felt it right now. Yet, at the same time, he knew he was avoiding going. It was a conflict he didn't know how to deal with.

"Because this is only about you?" she asked. "It's not. And I don't care if you don't want to talk about it, either right now or with me, it's about the both of us. And you pissing off right now isn't going to make any of it better. It's still going to be there." She was quiet for a moment. "And let's not forget that you don't want me anymore." she stressed, though there was no malice in it. No blame. It was simply an important point. "So yes, I'm trying to write myself out of your life in a way you'll accept. I don't think that's unreasonable, considering the circumstances." She reached up to wrap her good fingers around his hand, just looking up at him. "Don't leave yet." she said. There was an unspoken 'please' on the end, though it never made it to articulation.

"Yes, actually - this is only about me," he told her, looking down as he removed his hand from hers. "Because let's not forget that I'm the wronged party here. Because of what you did, there is no 'us'. And I'm not going to apologise about having a hard time adjusting to that, to all of this. And, honestly, I don't give a damn about what you want me to do, when I've told you what I want you to do and you have absolutely no intention of doing it. My life, was about what was best for you. And you left, to put it mildly. Now it's about what's best for me." Which, unfortunately and confusingly and which he didn't voice aloud also involved wanting her to be able to want what was best for herself, to fill that gap he'd left.

"And you wonder why I think I'm being punished." Eris said. She kept her eyes on him, though. "I know you're the wronged party. I'm trying to do what I can to damage control. And by the way? I shouldn't have to put effort into writing myself out of your life, I should already be written out. That's generally how things work when someone was wronged. They get the hell away from the person who wronged them. But you're not doing that, you're still messing with my life. You still showed up here out of the blue and cost me a bottle of whiskey and ruined my bedding. What is this for you? If you aren't just twisting the knife for me, are you twisting it for yourself? I thought I was the masochistic one." She shook her head. "I'm trying to put the focus on you. To take care of you. You're not letting me. So--pick something, Brett. What are you doing? What do you want? Because it sure as hell isn't me but you seem unwilling to let go, either. It's not fair. Not when I'm trying to make things easier. Not when I'm trying to help. So let's make this about you--make it about you. What exactly does that entail? Because I'm confused."

"I want the impossible - I want things back the way they were, dammit. I don't want to write you out of my life, I don't want to have to find something new to fill the hole you left, I don't want to do damage control, or try and piece back together what was broken. I just want all this never to have happened. Nothing will make this easier, because none of the options available are what I want. I fought my feelings for you every step of the way, and lost every step of the way. They're pretty much not going anywhere, and it's been pretty much proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there's fuck all I can do about that. So here we are. You know I don't do well at walking away, and god, Julia, I can't do it. I can't do what it would take to really burn those bridges."

Standing up, she walked closer to him, but kept a decent distance. Not the distance of a stranger, but not as close as she usually stood. "Then let me." she said. "Let me go, buy me that train ticket. It won't be forever. Days will go by, it'll suck, and you'll think about me, but you'll go about your business, because that's what you do. You don't let people down, and you do your job, whatever that happens to be. Date people. Meet people at your party tomorrow, and remember names. You won't get turned down. You don't even have to want to do it, or like them, just do it. I'll fade." she promised. "I know you don't think that, but I will. Eventually maybe you'll get back around to where you should be, and thinking I'm a bitch. Eventually you'll find someone else. And you probably won't have to worry about little things like if she'll up and kill someone someday." she told him.

"You think that's what'll happen?" Brett asked her. "That I should just got out and pretend, fake it until it happens and suddenly I'll, what? Meet someone and live happily ever after? You know it doesn't work like that. You, of all people, knows it doesn't work like that." He circled round her, to her other side, keeping that distance, his eyes never leaving her. "You remember the bet - the one you won. You know the reasons behind that. You had to deal with me. And yeah, we dealt with that, but that doesn't mean those issues have actually gone away. But if you'd feel better, believing that it's just a matter of time... Well, arguing against that is just making you feel like you're being punished, isn't it?" And maybe he was actually punishing her, maybe he just wanted to make her hurt like he did, even if she'd been crying before, even though he knew she already did. Or maybe it was just that he wanted her to know just how much he was hurting right now, and her saying he would get over it made it feel like she didn't realise.

"You think you're not unique?" Brett asked, picking that out because he didn't want to start contradicting her about the subject of their relationship and feelings. Or on his ability to find someone else, or even give that a chance.

"I'm fairly positive you could find a woman around who can hold her own in an argument, and let's not get into the murdering whore part of it all." she said. "Because I know, you'll get mad. Plus I know you wouldn't ever actively go for someone like that if you were in your right mind and could do it all over." she added. "The only things that might make me less than run of the mill aren't exactly good qualities, and I'm pretty sure you don't like me for my crippling mental issues. And caring about you isn’t hard. Not caring is far more difficult. Proved impossible to me."

"I think any woman I've ever met would argue the toss with you on that one. I'd think you need a whole lot more than being able to hold your own in an argument to get on with me. Most women would run a mile, and generally speaking, the ones that argue back - I pretty much always end up making them cry," he pointed out.

"So what are you saying, I'm it? You're done now, you're never going to find another woman in the entire world who will put up with you and not burst into tears at every turn?" she asked. She sighed, dragging her fingers through her hair but she forgot about her hand and hissed when she flexed it, letting it drop back to her side. She looked back at him. "I'm the end all?"

"I'm saying I'd given up looking a hell of a long time before you came on the scene. And that the circumstances of what we had was fairly - completely - unique. Like lining up dominoes. You can't replicate that," he told her, aware that it was a poor analogy, but figuring that she would probably get what he meant anyhow, though she would inevitably argue the point.

"And just because it's over doesn't mean you have to just revert back to being a miserable bastard all the time." Eris snapped. "You've got a different life now, you're not under the O'Malley's thumb, you're a goddamn hero cop. Your name is clear. You've got connections in high fucking society, and you have changed, in your time with me. Thinking that you'll just go back to what you used to be is ridiculous. You're better than that. Obviously you were wrong about some things, and learned that from me, but that doesn't mean I'm the only one it can be applied to." She looked away for a moment, shaking her head. "God do I not want to be giving you a 'you'll find someone else' pep talk right now." she muttered.

"Then don't give it - why the hell is it so important to you anyway?" Brett snapped at her. "Leave it." He brought a hand to his head for a moment, kneeding at his temples harshly, then dropped it again. "We should both just leave it," he told her, sounding tired. He looked at her. "I should go."

"Because you are important to me." She said, sighing as well. "Because I know I fucked up, and I know I can't have you and don't deserve you but all I've ever really wanted was what was best for you. Because if anyone in this entire hell hole of a city deserves it, you do. So I'm not going to tell you what I want to tell you, I'm going to tell you everything else. I..." she trailed off. "I just need to keep what I have going on in my head to myself and try to do the right thing. You make me want to do the right thing. You make me believe in something beyond me, in a greater good, I suppose. And okay, my greater good extends exactly as far as you, but that’s huge for me. I’ve never cared before. But for you..."

"I love you," Brett told her, finally saying what he'd avoided up until now. Because he assumed she felt the same way, because that's what he heard in her unfinished sentences as she spoke, as much good as it was for either of them. Putting it out there wouldn't accomplish anything, but right now he couldn't deny it either.

For Eris, it felt like all the air was sucked out of the room. Like very abruptly, she couldn't breathe. She stilled entirely, not moving at all for what felt like forever as she stared at him. Once that quiet moment passed for her, it felt like emotional landmines were going off all around her. She felt sucker punched, like she needed to hear that again and at the same time, she knew perfectly goddamn well what it was he'd said. He'd said 'love'.

Eris didn't believe in love. It was a sham, a total lie. It didn't exist. She drew in a sharp breath, sort of having to breathe, since she'd definitely stopped doing that, and she felt like she needed to sit down. So she did, it just happened right where she stood. Her eyes were on him, and it looked quite a lot like he'd just wounded her.

As he watched her react to that, he wasn't sure what to think. He didn't know whether it was just too much, that acknowledgement after they were over. Or, conversely, that that hadn't been what she'd meant at all, and he'd just put something out there that he would have been better off keeping firmly to himself. Either way, his natural fallback defenses came into play, abruptly changing his approach to one far more hostile. "So don't fucking tell me to get over you," he snapped and, ignoring the fact she'd basically just collapsed, he turned and headed for the exit.

"Why would you say that to me?" she asked, voice a quiet little whisper, even if she wasn't fully caught up with current events. Not really. She didn't believe in love. She didn't. She never had. But he did. And he was saying that to her? And now? She'd been fairly certain that she couldn't handle things before, and with that laid on top of everything else, she was positive she couldn't. She felt broken, in a way that she'd never experienced before.

Because it's true. "It was a mistake. I shouldn't've said anything," Brett told her, not turning back around, still headed for the door. Whatever the reason for her reaction, he should have kept his mouth shut. Nothing had been achieved by it. I thought you felt the same way. Maybe she did - he didn't know. And he wasn't asking. But the darker parts of him, where his deep seated depression made its home, was already saying that she didn't share those feelings, that she never had.

She was aware he was leaving. She could practically feel it without the visual. And it all felt over. Like a door had been slammed that wasn't ever getting opened back up again. Every time she thought she was done, that she'd hit that final stage of loss, there was another one. "How do you know?" she asked, even if it wasn't to what he said at all, even if it could be taken that way. He might not even answer her, he might walk out and she'd never see him again. God, how long had it been since she'd felt that? Since she'd known he was leaving and every fiber of her being wanted to stop that from happening? It had been a long time but that feeling flooded in and it was all too familiar. She felt emotionally stripped, raw and bare.

He slowed, turning his face half back to her. “Because otherwise it wouldn’t hurt so much,” he told her, though he knew that his feelings stemmed back further than that. The kicker was, they didn’t stem back that much further. The realisation had been fairly recent, and it had been brought on by another - he’d been happy. Maybe, for someone else, that wouldn’t have been much. That would have been setting the bar pretty damn low, in fact, but not for Brett. he’d never thought he’d feel happiness ever again.

She didn't know what to do with that answer. Did that mean he just decided that now? Was it only gauged by pain levels? She didn't know. She kept looking at him, pure vulnerability there in her eyes. She shook her head then. "No, you can't." she said. "I don't believe in love. it doesn't...it's..." she started but she tripped over all of her words. "What is it to you?"

There it was, that confirmation, that backing for those darker parts. He looked away, back towards the door. It only took another couple of steps to get there and he stopped, his hand resting on the handle. “You don’t have to,” he said, though he wasn’t answering her question. That he didn’t try to do.

"What is it?" she asked again. Like everything about her hinged on that. And it was possible it did. He was leaving, and she wasn't going to see him again. Some part of her was certain of that. That for some reason she had a choice to make here, and she was fucking it up. So what came out of her mouth was pure truth for her. "I can't lose you." So much for trying to take the higher road. For trying to do what was best. And the stupidest part was she knew she already had.

He closed his eyes and exhaled, slowly. “What is it you expect me to do here, Julia? You spend half the time trying to rebuild my life and the other half of the time...” Though he was no better. He, though - he felt he had justification for it. He dropped that line and turned around, though he kept a hand on the door. “I was happy. With you. With us. All that shit you were worrying about? I was getting over it. And that had everything to do with you and what we had and nothing to do with anyone else. And now there’s this.”

"I don't know." she said, voice almost inaudible. She didn't know what she expected him to do. Or more, he kept defying everything she expected at pretty much every turn. Which, actually she felt after a moment she should say. "Everything I expect you just..." she reached up to wipe at her eye with an angry sort of swipe of her wrist. "Every time I think I know what's happening, every time I sit and think about you, and what's going to happen, you surprise me. And I don't know when that happened, because I used to be able to see right through you. Right through you. Only now I can't, and I...god sometimes I want so desperately to be wrong, and then I am, and..." she broke off, stilling herself again, or trying to.

"I didn't know you were happy." she added, since that thought sort of wandered in and cut in line in her head. "I wanted you to be. I wanted you to be happy so much. I just didn't know that you were. And none of that has anything to do with this, I'm not saying I did what I did because I didn't know you were happy, I didn't." The last thing she wanted to do was make excuses for herself, especially untrue ones. "God, I want to go home." she said, wiping at her eyes again and she stood. She didn't know where she was going, though. In another place she would have put a record on. She didn't have any music here though. "I just want to go home, with you." To their place. She doubted he'd sold it yet. She was silent for a few long moments. "I don't function without you. I don't want to." She looked over at him. "I think I'm kind of a shell." she told him. "Or one of those toys with the key in the back. I can't turn it myself, but you do. I can keep going with you, even on the days where I can't stand my own reflection--and that's a lot of days, Brett. There are days I look and just see everything there is to hate about myself. But you make me feel different. Sometimes I even see it. Or a part of it, maybe. That person I'd rather be. And I want to be her. And when I'm with you, the days ahead don't look like one long downward spiral where at the end I'm nothing but a shell with nothing left driving the car. I can't even describe the mind numbing terror that goes through me whenever I think about that. For a little while I thought it was happening after I woke up in that dumpster. I thought there was always going to be a fog over everything. But you make me feel like I can deal with that. Because I'm not by myself, and you promised me, and I trusted you'd keep that promise. I felt so much better when you told me that, I can't even..." she broke off again.

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. "I'm off track." she said. "I'm sorry." She drew in a breath and told the truth again. "I feel like I have to say everything right now because you're going to walk out that door, and I'm never going to see you again. And I realize there's a lot of things I didn't say, or maybe I did, and I just don't remember. I gave you everything in that box. The locket, everything, they were the only things that held importance to me, and I wanted you to have them.” She was sure that said something, but she didn’t know what. It had been monumental for her. Then she moved forward. “Like I know you were upset with me the day I bought you those cufflinks, but I don't remember why. And I should, I should know why you were mad, but it's not there." she said, making a vague gesture at her head. "I just know I put them in with your things and I don't know if you ever saw them." She still wanted to go home. In those moments, that was all she wanted. Even if they didn't say another word the entire night, she just wanted to go home with him. She just knew it wasn't going to happen. Especially not with her going off and rambling like she'd lost her fucking mind. But it felt quite a bit like that was exactly what had happened.

Brett frowned. She’d bought him cufflinks? He’d always got a little lost with everything that he’d had that was new. Half the time the tailor he’d hired seemed to just slip things in and bill them later, and it wasn’t like Brett was a dedicated follower of fashion, so he’d just gone with it. “I got mad at you a lot,” he reminded her, covering up for his confusion. The rest of what she said had him turning back though, and he crossed to her. “Why can’t you see through me any more?” he asked her. “What changed?”

At his mentioning that he got mad at her a lot, she nodded, because she knew that was true. She still thought that she should remember why on that day. It still seemed important. When he crossed back to her, she wished she had a better answer for him, and the fact that she was at a loss was clear on her features. "I don't know." she said honestly. "Maybe things changed and I haven't adapted?" she suggested. "You know I don't adapt very well." Not anymore. "Maybe I'm worse and haven't realized?" she shook her head. She was honestly trying to come up with reasons, but she didn't know the answer. "I just know that I used to be able to see your motivations, or I'd be able to predict what you'd do. Not all the time, you'd surprise me sometimes. But I think I've been wrong for a long time now. I thought you'd turn me in, I thought I'd never see you again after the last time..." she trailed off, and drew in a shakey breath, letting it out slowly. "I've got a blind spot and I don't know why." She was silent for a moment. "It's one thing to know I can't trust myself in the grand scheme, I knew you'd always steer me back in line if I veered too far off the path. It's something else to find out that I'm becoming so wrong about you. I feel like..." she sighed. "I don't know."

Brett looked at her for a moment. "Do you actually want to talk about this?" he asked her. He didn't think it would do much good. It wasn't like to was really going to change anything, after all. But it did occur to him that if she wouldn't let him do anything for the rest of her life, to make it better, maybe this would at least help her head.

"I don't know." she said. "Does it matter?" she asked, because she honestly didn't know, and needed his opinion to guide her by. "I didn't think you'd be back. I didn't think you'd start messing with my life, I didn't think there was anything. I didn't think you'd burn the letter. I didn't think you'd not turn me in." she said. "All of that was wrong."

"Yeah," Brett agreed, not backing away from that. "Yeah, it was. Why did you think that." He had his theories, but he wanted to hear her say it. What he wasn't sure about was whether he wanted to hear it so he could dispel her misconceptions about him, or to feed the monster inside that was still of the opinion that things would be easier if he was angry at her. Before - or even now, with anyone else - there would have been no question that it was the latter. But, with her, that monster had been slowly dying. That didn't mean he wouldn't fight her on anything, but he didn't feel the drive to pick fights the way he had done. He didn't want to push her away. Not any more. Not for several weeks now. It was a breakthrough that, seemingly, had come at exactly the wrong time.

Eris had to give herself a moment to think first before she answered. When she did it was slowly, her language halting as she tried to get through it. "I didn't think you'd be back because of how things ended last time." she said. "I thought you hated me, or would hate me." she continued. "I thought it would mean you'd wash your hands of me, and not pay any attention to what I might be doing anymore. I...I thought you would turn me in because we'd just talked about it all, and that was how you felt on things. I didn't think I was going to be an exception to the rule. You're pretty rigid with your rules, your ideals. I didn't think you'd go against that. It never occurred to me you would. I still don't really understand it." she admitted.

"I don't approve of what you did," Brett told her, which really was putting it mildly. "I'm not okay with what you did. And I know that in the past we've had conversations where I've told you that you deserved to go to jail for the things you've done in the past. But - there's a difference between me saying that was what you deserved when I'm measuring it against you saying that you deserved what was done to you, and me actually wanting to see you arrested and locked up. And I don't hate you. If you're basing that off my opinion of the women in my past? I could see how you'd get there, but - I worked at that. Like you wouldn't fucking believe. I put all my energy into making sure of that. And I'm standing here now, and I don't want to do that with you." It wouldn't be easy with her. He wasn't angry enough at her. She'd broken down those walls. So, if he was going to hate her, he'd have to destroy to do it - himself as well as her. He was too aware of how he was now. She'd done that.

She listened, and she guessed it made sense, but in a way she didn't put together on her own well. Quiet for a long few moments, she shut her eyes and rubbed at them a little as she tried to get her thoughts together. "Maybe I'm wrong with everything because I didn't take into account...what you said. How you feel." she said. Because that definitely hadn't gone into her reasoning at all, and she had trouble even voicing it now. Opening her eyes again to look at him, she drew in a breath, and let it out slowly. "What does it mean to you?" she asked. "Because as far as I've understood the concept in my entire life, it's all been bullshit. But I don't think you'd say that to me just to fuck with my head." she told him. “No one has ever...” she shook her head and didn’t finish the statement.

She may have had trouble voicing it, but Brett had no intention of ever actually repeating himself in that way again. "Yeah, well, shitty time to start," Brett said, somewhat dismissively. There was a stab of something which didn't appreciate being called bullshit, even if she'd immediately clarified that she didn't think it applied to him.

"I'm trying to understand." she said. "I don't know what it entails. I don't know what makes it different from anything else, I just know it does. That it changes things and I don't know how. All I've ever thought about the entire thing was that it was supposed to be...fluffy and perfect, and I don't know. Pure." she told him. "Which, ironically, is how I kind of view you. But that's not the point, I just...or does it not matter? Is it all over? Is everything over? Are you really done right now?" she asked, feeling like she was drowning. Like she was trying to keep up and just couldn't.

"Nothing in life's pure, sweetheart. And definitely not me. Any trash that movies have delivered about things being all sunshine and rainbows and there being a cure for all of life's ills - there's your bullshit. There's no cure all and just because... Sometimes, it's just not enough. Just gotta use your head." 'I love you' was not a good enough reason to stay when your head told you you needed to get out of there.

"So you told me that, and you're telling me it still doesn't make a difference." Eris said. He certainly wasn't doing anything for her belief in the L word. "I can't use my head, my head is fucked." she added. "Just like everything else about me. But I went over that, didn't I. I don't work. Not without you." She was quiet for a moment, then continued. "And you're purer than anyone else I've ever met. There's still something deep down that just can't be corrupted. I always saw it, even if you never did. It's why I used to be able to see through you. Because I knew deep down you weren't what you said you were. Even if you fully bought into what you were saying, I knew different."

"Was a generic 'you' sweetheart, not you specifically. Maybe that's your problem - you're used to being faced with a wall of bullshit, having to look through it. And I dropped that with you a while back now. Case you didn't notice. But you're still trying to look to see what's there, behind what's right in front of you. Problem is, now it's right in front of you, there's detail there, and things aren't so simple any more. As for what I'm telling you..." Brett wasn't entirely sure what to say to that, and it showed in his expression. "No, it doesn't make a difference in that way," he admitted to her. "It just makes everything harder. And it still leaves me caring about what happens to you."

“I noticed.” she said. "Things got easier. They changed." she said. The relationship thing happened, when he hadn't wanted that in the first place. "Brett, I don't accept that us, two of the most stubborn people in the entire fucking world, are just going to accept 'oh well, everything sucks we can't do anything about it, I guess we're just going to be miserable forever now' as an answer." she said. "It's not how either of us works. It's never been in either one of our natures to just lie down and die, and alright, I have a little of that going on for me right now, but I can get better. I just...need..." she sighed. "You." she said, looking at him. "I need you." She looked away then back. "So neither of us can wind the clock back. Understood. But that doesn't mean we can't do anything, or at least try something. I don't even know what. I don't have a suggestion. But there's got to be something we can do that isn't..." she made a vague gesture around the room. "This."

Brett gave her a look for that. “Really? You really think that I am a person that would never accept that everything sucks and I’m going to be miserable for that rest of my life?” he asked, since they both knew that, when he’d met her, that was exactly what he’d already decided about his life. “No, it’s not in my nature to roll over and die, but it’s not exactly me to do something about anything either,” he pointed out, though he didn’t sound at all like he was arguing with her. He paused for a moment, then exhaled. “I don’t know. Any of this - I just don’t know.” It was as good as he could give her right now.

"And I'm not asking you to know, I'm asking you to at least leave the door open for something." She said. "At least then you have a legitimate excuse to check on me and we can still be around and figuring things out without feeling like the world is ending." she said. She didn't really know what the hell she was trying to propose here, just that she'd take anything at this point.

Brett was quiet for a long time. He didn’t know - right now, he didn’t even know what it was he didn’t know. The only thing he would be able to say for sure was that he was as confused as hell. He didn’t know whether they could go forward, or even if he’d want to if they could. No matter what he’d told her about how he felt, or how honest he’d been being there, he couldn't forgive her. He just couldn’t. He didn’t know how. And if he did - really, what kind of a man would that make him if he said that murder was okay? And not just heat of the moment, or self defence, but planned and premeditated.

She sighed as he didn't answer her. She sat down on the couch, and looked at the floor for a long moment, feeling like the wind was yanked out of her sails again. She only had fits and starts of being able to go for things. She didn't have the drive she used to. "When you're at your ball, you'll get pulled aside or asked outright about what happened with me." she told him, not looking at him. "You're going to need to tell them I was just a part of your investigation, and nothing more. Throw me under the bus." she said. "I was an informant, or whatever you want to term it as, but don't, under any circumstances, even hint that what people thought about us might have been the truth."

He looked down at her, almost relieved to have something different to focus on. “And what would be the problem with telling people that you were the intended victim of the O’Malley’s? Or would you prefer not to have the word ‘victim’ linked with yourself?” Even as he spoke, though, he could see it. He could tell the truth, if he wanted, it would easily enough fit with the story, yet... What everyone else would see would be the police officer who took up with the madam, the whore. That would be all anyone else would see. It was allowable before, last week, when he was on the up and up for a whole different reason. When they were set up in business. Then, what she had been was less gossipworthy for people. But now - now it would matter.

He didn't say it, but she did. "Right, because you hanging around with a whore is acceptable." she said dryly, shaking her head. "Beyond that, dear, there's the little detail of the fact that we set me up as taking credit. Which makes me a liar. And now everyone in high society knows it. Regardless of how you want to try and spin that, I'm done. Never going to be able to show my face in those circles again, not that I planned to. But the point I'm trying to make is you need to damage control that before they're slamming you. It won't be pretty and your bosses'll hate that and I'm sure it'll come down on your head. So whatever you do, make sure you distance yourself from me as much as humanly possible. It'd probably be better if you just made some whore comments and made people laugh, it would help your standing. But either way...I'm fucked on this, you really need not to be."

His eyes slid closed and it was apparent that up until now he hadn’t thought through the real consequences of all of this for her. “I’m sorry,” he said, meaning that. When he’d gone back, cleared his name, everything had just snowballed, though he knew he hadn’t done a whole lot to fight that. It had gotten him where he’d wanted to be easily enough, letting it happen. He’d gotten back on the force, in the position he’d wanted. All he’d had to do was to stand by and not contradict the people who had decided they could put everything together, that they already could ‘see’ what had happened.

"Don't apologize to me." Eris said, shaking her head. "Just don't shoot yourself in the foot on it all, do the smart thing." she told him, getting up and walking across to the window, sitting down on the sill. There would be potential consequences for her depending on what he did say--such as if he did go for telling people she was an informant it could put a price on her head. But she was willing to bet people would be hard pressed to actually find her. Plus she didn't care. Consequences leveled against her she figured were just another aspect of that karmic bitchslap her entire life seemed to be entailing lately. "You should find the cufflinks. It'd be a shame if they never got worn."

He watched her for a moment, then crossed over to the window, stopping just short of her, and a little behind her. “Apparently I’m pretty bad at that. Doing the smart thing. But, I’ll give it a go. An informant would be bad though” he told her, unknowingly stating what she'd been thinking herself. “That kind of thing gives you a reputation that will never go away.” He considered it for a moment. “No – I just used you. You had no idea who I really was. I used you, I knew you wanted them, and wanted them bad. You were useful to me.” He hated the lie, both because it cheapened what they'd had, and because it was something that he wouldn't have actually done. Looking back at it, he was probably the worst person to send undercover. He'd only really achieved what he had because he'd been forced to do things he normally would never have done. “What do the cufflinks look like?” he asked her, knowing that he'd wear them tomorrow night. That seemed right – offset the lies he'd have to tell. That was important to him right now, a fact that didn't make him any less confused at all about where things were going, or what to do about the future.

She could feel him there behind her, like she usually could. She was always so aware of him, just in general. She could see his reflection in the glass, and she let her eyes fall on that, the sort of ghostly representation of him. "Sweetheart, I already have a reputation that won't go away. I'm a whore, a liar, and now a gutter dweller. Informant isn't really going to sully my good name." she told him. "Maybe you should find out what they actually have me listed as in the official records. Some reporter might try to dig it up and I'm sure they'd find someone to hand over the goods. But don't do that. Don't try to make me seem like some innocent party here, or idiot woman who just let herself get used like that. I know you want to ease that down a little but it won't come off any better." she told him, being honest there. "You're dealing with social jackals. They'd just take that and go off in entirely different directions, none of which are good either. Not to mention it'll darken your image and you need to not do that. It's not worth it, Brett. There's no up side to that." she told him. Then she shrugged one shoulder. "I don't remember exactly. I remember they're in a black box. I remember they had blue on them, because I wanted them to bring out your eyes." she said. "Sapphires, maybe?" she suggested. "I think they were very dark." she frowned a little, trying to call up the full mental image, but just like she couldn't remember why he'd been angry with her the day she'd brought them home, she couldn't quite remember what they looked like. Just that they'd been very nice, expensive, and she'd bought them because she'd wanted to get him a gift.

“I'll think of something,” he told her, meeting her eyes in the glass. “But I'm not going to just sell you down the river simply to make myself look good. I'll find a way through it.” He paused, uncertain, then ploughed forward. “Wouldn't wanna burn bridges, right?” he said, forcefully, his tone taking on a bullishness for a second, though it was gone when he continued speaking. “What you said before. About us. I... Don't know. Seriously, I have no idea. It's all – fuck it, it's a mess,” he admitted, going for honesty above explanation. “I can't promise you anything, either way. Right now, I don't even know whether we should try. Hell, I don't know whether we should not either. That's all I got – I don't know.”

It was better than the non-answer he'd given her before, but she was down again, and therefore she took it less as something hopeful and more as him just being confused right now, or unsure, and he'd come to his senses again later and decided there wasn't any real reason he should try anything with her. She managed to hold onto his gaze for a moment in the reflection, but then just looked back down at the chipped paint on the windowsill. "There's no good in not selling me down the river." she told him, voice light. "Socially, that ship has sailed. There isn't really a way back from the PD taking all the credit. Some things you can't undo. That'll be one of them." She gave a sad little smile. "Like some other things that we've discussed today, huh." she said, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ears. "Just go, baby. You're not doing yourself any good being here." she said, tone light. But she felt like she was right, too. That he wasn't doing himself any favors. Not right now. He was officially off the hook from her insane attempts at even some form of reconciliation. She wasn't pushing for an answer, she wasn't pushing for anything.

He continued to stare at her in the window, even thought she'd looked away. He couldn't keep up with this. First she wanted it over, then she wouldn't give up, then she wanted it over again. He was confused enough abut the entire situation without her changing her mind every two seconds. He couldn't cope with this, couldn't keep up with it, had no idea how to handle it. “So far, I've not told anyone anything,” he said, falling back on keeping with the original topic of the ball and their story. It was easier. “They ask, I tell them they read the papers, and they get to deal with my charming personality. And if they want to ask around about why I'm not giving, they find out that being told to fuck off in so many words isn't a new approach to me. Sometimes being me has its benefits.”

"You needed me in the social end of things before because you don't know how it all fits together all the time. Just...trust me on this, okay? Please?" she asked. "Just on this last thing. If you don't give an answer that'll just make people want to know what you're hiding. It'll have them hounding you, it'll have them trying to dig me up. Just tell them what I told you to. It'll give them enough dirt to smile about, and they won't feel like they're getting cheated from their entertainment." she told him. She turned her face back towards him but didn't look higher than his hand. "Please, just do what I said. It'll be over faster."

“We'll see,” Brett said, not able to promise anything at all right now. Right now he knew he was having trouble keeping his head on straight. Hell, she had brain damage and he was fairly sure that she could run rings round him at the moment. “And you? In the meantime – what about you?” he asked her.

"I don't know, Brett. What do you want me to say?" she asked. "Don't worry about it. I'll figure something out." she promised, even if she didn't even know where to start. "Just go, do what you need to do, and go find your cufflinks." she said, reaching out to touch his hand, but in the end she let her hand drop back down to her lap without completing the motion.

“I want you to say that you’ll try,” he told her, noting the reach, but not making any move to reach for her in return. “Told you before – I'm not going to make any promises on that basis. Wouldn't lie to you, sweetheart. Don't know where I am, or where things are going and I don't know if anything'll make a difference. So anything you do, you do because – not because you think it'll be for this. But you can't live like this. And you don't have to – so do something about it. The guys I sent, they'll come again if you want me to call them. Or organise your own. There's money for it. Just don't just stop, waiting to see. One thing I do know – I can't be the be all and end all in your life. If your life just... ends... if I'm not in it – fuck, I've seen far too many damn relationships like that over the years and no matter what, they don't end well. No matter what, I need to know there's something in your life, something that's not me.”

"I'm not asking you to give me an answer. I walked away. You're off the hook, okay?" Eris asked, not trying to manipulate him. Her tone was light, soft, not pointed in the slightest. She heard him, as well, she understood what he was saying. And she guessed she needed to tell him that. "I understand." she added, looking back out the window. She didn't know what she'd do. She didn't know what she had available. The only thing she had even slight skill with was whoring, and she was pretty sure he wouldn't approve of her going back to her previous profession. She didn't want to, either, but she felt like her limitations were a little more than other people's. She didn't know what she'd be capable of, and she knew that this city ate the weak like rabid wolves. That was something else she was afraid of, part of the reason she didn't see a future for herself, period. Her expression flickered lightly, as she considered it all. "I'm not trying to put pressure on you." she added. "I'm sorry if that's how it's come through."

“Wanna make sure you know – I'm not offering a deal. I'm not trying to make you believe that if you do this, I'll do that. This – things aren't that simple, and I want to make sure... Like I said. I don't use people. I'm not gonna lead you on. And I'm sure – hell, if you think I'm some kind of fucking pure person – won't surprise you. I just know that there's that one thing that's not even connected to the rest, but I've seen too many people who should have got out but they're trapped by someone who says they can't go on without them. That's a whole other level of fucked. It's something else. I can't get involved with that.”

"I know what you're talking about. I get it." she said. "Brett, you know I've been trying to let you go here. I know, I've slipped, I'm not quite..." she waved a hand at her head. "I don't think I'm with it. Not really." she added. "So I'm sorry about that. I don't want you to feel trapped. It was never like that, with us. It wasn't ever just about you, it just...I didn't feel like I was going to fall. I didn't feel like my head was going to fuck me over, and people would know that I'm damaged. I needed you, but just being there helped. I had the confidence to do things. At this point, right now, I don't have anything to fall back on. I'm not just sitting here, dying without you, I don't see a path in front of me. I don't see a way to go. I don't have any real skills I can use anymore. I couldn't even do things like waitress, or clerk somewhere, because I wouldn't be able to remember things well enough. The only thing I was ever actually good at is something I'm not willing to go back to. ...do you see where I'm looking at everything from?" she asked.

“And yet you've been sitting there, telling me that the business will run itself enough for me to retire on the proceeds,” Brett pointed out. “That works both ways, Princess. You don't have to do anything. I told you – I'm interviewing a girl to put in as manager. She can run the thing and I'll set it up that we get paid. Hell, I have a steady income from the force now, if half what the business brings in isn't enough, you can have the whole damn lot, much as I care. You don't need 'skills', money's not going to be an issue.”

"Do you really think leaving me day in day out by myself, left to my own devices is going to work?" she asked, though again, it wasn't pointed. "I just..." she frowned, sighing as she dragged her fingers through her hair. "If you want me to have a life and do something then what is just sitting around collecting a paycheck and doing nothing with it going to prove?" she asked. She realized that even if he'd just told her he wasn't trying to manipulate her, she could see an end game here. She got convinced to move on, to get her life together, and he felt better about it and therefore was able to leave entirely. She wondered if she could put up a good front long enough then disappear. Take that train ticket sort of out. She didn't know. “What is going to make you feel better?”

“Knowing that I'm not going to wake up tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that and you're going to be... gone,” he told her, with utmost honesty. She could see the end game, but it didn't appear to him like that, even if it had actually occurred to him previously that he might be able to get over her, if only he didn't have that, have the fact that she would just... stop, hanging over his head.

"How do I do that when you don't trust me?" she asked, also being honest. If he didn't trust her not to kill anyone ever again, then she didn't know how he was going to trust that she wasn't going to kill herself, or just let go enough that the end result was death.

He frowned at that, not quite understanding what she meant. “You just... do it. Try. I can help, if you want, though I don't think you want. You say you're not dying without me, so – show me that that's the case. Stop living in this place like it's some kind of squat that's all you can manage above the street. Fix it up, make it livable. It shouldn't depend on what I think at all – that's the whole point.”

"I get that." she said. "But you don't trust me. You've said that. Even if nothing ever happens again, even if you know I was never homicidal before, and that in this case it was a unique, extreme circumstance, you won't trust me. So, why is this going to be different?" she asked, honestly asking. She didn't know what the difference was, where the lines were.

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out for a moment as he considered that. “Maybe it won't be,” he admitted, because for a moment, he was stumped. “But – I'll be able to see evidence. Of what's going on. This place – real furniture, a lock on the door. Proper things.” It wasn't a whole lot, but right now, they were lacking.

"I hate this place." she said, looking out in to the main room. "But understood." she told him. She guessed she'd do it. If for nothing else than because she was still sort of in the process of giving up, but if that made him happy, then she'd do that. Maybe he would let go then. Drift off, decide it was fine, and then she'd...yeah she didn't know. She'd figure it out, she guessed.

“Then don’t make it this place, find somewhere else,” he suggested to her, though he didn’t push - he assumed she’d come back here because it was familiar to her, because with her memory issues, that maybe made things easier. She’d always said she could remember things from before that night okay. And this would be one of those places. After all, she’d burned Babylon to he ground, so that familiarity was gone.

"I'm not going to remember anywhere else. I even get lost around here, but I remember the building number and the apartment." she confirmed. "For obvious reasons I can't go back to the Round." she said, holding up her injured hand again, before she set it back in her lap. She still wasn't looking at him, and part of her wondered what he was still doing there. She'd said she'd do what he wanted, she'd told him she understood--what was he waiting for?

His expression tightened for a moment as she brought that up - not that he’d forgotten at all. Eventually he was going to find a way to make Bull O’Malley pay for that - he just needed to find a way to make it seem legitimate. But a dick like that, a dick with no brains - he’d step out of line sooner or later, and with someone who would actually want to take it further. “Right, he agreed, a moment or two longer than he should have taken to answer.

The pause before he answered had her finally looking up to his face again. She didn't say anything for a moment, then sighed lightly. "I'm fine. I'll live. I don't think he fucked up my head any more than it was already, and I baited him." she said, tone light. "I'll try to stay out of the Round." she added, since his big concern was finding her in the morgue. Maybe that was what he was looking for. More confirmation that she wasn't going to go looking for trouble.

“Not the point, Princess. But yeah, you should stay out of the Round,” he told her, hating that she was seemingly making light of things, and that it came back to her baiting him, like that made it okay. Like just because you were winding someone up, it gave them full rights to drive a fucking knife through your hand. He could feel himself getting increasingly worked up just thinking about it. “I should go,” he told her. Before he thought about this more. Before he decided that when he left here, the Round was exactly where he was going. That would be very very bad.

It wasn't like she couldn't see that he was tense. Brett hadn't ever really been a master of subtlety on that score. She'd been waiting for him to leave, but him saying he should go made her want to keep him there. She just didn't. Instead she nodded. "Try not to have a bad time at the ball." she told him, since she knew he didn't really like big social events. She wouldn't be there at all to help him out with that. "And remember what I told you." she added. "Wear black, it looks good on you." She said, then paused, still looking at him. "Blue tie, though. Should go with the cufflinks." She almost reached out again but didn't actually touch him. "Goodnight." she said, not looking him in the eye again.

He had to smile a little a that. She was better at the whole appearance thing than he was - blue tie. He could do that, and it would mean that he wouldn’t have to do battle with trying to work out how the fuck to tie that damn bow tie that was meant to go with his tux. She’d done that for him before, which had been the only thing that had stopped him tearing it into little shreds. “Sure, you too,” he told her, not knowing what else to say. He wasn’t sure of anything right now. He knew he had to leave, yet he didn’t know what he was leaving, where he was going, or anything about where to go from here. He hated this feeling. He liked things to be certain, set out. It didn’t matter how hard the road was, as long as he could see it. And right now, he felt like he was in the middle of a fucking swamp. He looked at her for a moment longer, then determinedly turned away.

Eris clamped her teeth down on her lip so she didn't say something to stop his departure. The same feeling she used to get swept through her, a familiar one even if it wasn't a good one. When she'd been living above the Round, for a long time, whenever he left, she'd always been certain she'd never see him again. That this was it, everything was done, and she'd have to get along without him. It was back with a terrible sort of nostalgia, one that left her feeling a little sick. Back then she'd had something to look forward to, even if she hadn't known it, and she didn't now.

Hope was a terrible thing, sometimes, and she didn't think she could really allow herself to have it here. If she did, if she built up in her mind that she could somehow make up for things, and get him back and it didn't happen, that was going to be a crushing sort of blow she was absolutely dead certain she wasn't going to be able to take. He hadn't given her any reason to hope. He'd just made a lot of 'I don't know' noises at her, and usually when Brett said he didn't know, he meant no. Or that was her experience with most people, and she was applying it to him. No where had he said he even wanted to try. He'd even disclaimered that part of it, that he didn't know if he wanted that. So she couldn't really latch onto the idea that anything was going to happen. In her mind, she was going to go through with what he wanted her to do, enough that he'd feel better about it, and go on his way. After that...she didn't know. But at least she had a goal now, some point to ride it out til. Something finite, not just an endless stretch of days ahead of her that she couldn't face. All she needed was to make it a little ways to satisfy him that it was okay to leave entirely. That was all.