May You Find Comfort Here

Who: Maddy and Roy
Where: Roy's Vault
When: Afternoon-times

Maddy ignored the odd looks she got as she headed to the old bank, a big cross in one hand being the main reason, but Maddy was ignoring it. She was trying to ignore everything else really, because if she didn't, things were going to suck and she just did not, under any circumstances, want to cry anymore. At least today anyway.

So, dammit, something positive was going to happen. Hopefully. And that's what she kept telling as she nudged her way through the doors of the bank and headed up the stairs. She called out Roy's name, feeling guilty (even more so) if he was asleep or not, but you didn't just go sneaking up on people when they normally were alone.

Roy wasn't asleep. He was on the floor his vault was on, but he was sitting in the window, instead of inside it. There was a breeze blowing in, tossing his hair in messy sorts of waves, not that he noticed in the slightest. He was off in his own world, though the sound of his name roused him from it a little. From the fact that he felt cold and stiff, he realized in a dim fashion that he'd been spaced out there for quite some time, and hadn't even realized it. "...yeah?" he called, voice coming out hoarse. Jesus, when was the last time he'd spoken? When he talked to Maddy last? Could be. Whatever happened, his voice was not up to par really, and he cleared his throat and tried again. "Who's there?" he called. Because while he'd heard his name, that was only enough to pull him from his daydream world, he hadn't been aware enough to recognize a voice.

At Roy's distant response, Maddy's pace quickened up the steps. She was feeling emotional again, especially since he hadn't recognized her voice, but, Maddy reminded herself, her voice would've just been an echo. "It's Maddy," she called back before reaching the top of the steps. She didn't spot him at first, looking around for where he was before spotting him by a window. "Hey," she said, not coming towards him because now she was feeling kinna nervous. Maybe he didn't want to talk to her.

If asked, Roy wouldn't have been able to answer the question of whether or not he wanted to talk to her. He'd made the effort to leave the note, and the iron cross, which apparently she was feeling the need to lug around with her, and he wondered how long it had taken her. Even he'd found it heavy. He'd made the thing to last, after all. Either way, though, he was looking at her, and didn't move. Roy was aware he'd been kind of...shut down. He hadn't spoken to people, he'd gone about his day to day life, but there hadn't been much in it. He'd say he was depressed, if he thought that even started to describe things. "Hey." he greeted, belatedly, once he realized he hadn't said anything.

Relieved that he at least wasn't turning away, Maddy set the cross up against the wall. While she'd been carrying, she honestly hadn't thought about how heavy it had been, her mind too focused on other things that her arms felt like jelly and she was actually a little winded. "You didn't have to apologize to me. You don't me any apology. I owe you one." She bit her lip and shook her arms, trying to get the feeling back in them. "You were right. About Dodge."

Roy looked at her for a long moment, connecting her words together but it was still through a bit of a fog. His first thought was if he was the one owed an apology, why had she not spoken to him for days. But he didn't say it. He frowned a little when she mentioned Dodge, though. "...what do you mean?" he asked. That was wide open, he'd said a lot of things about Dodge.

"I haven't been a very good friend to you lately," she said quietly, coming closer to him so there wasn't so much distance between the two of them. She came up to his window, leaning against the wall so she could hear him better. "And I've kind of been going off the rails like a runaway train. And I know how frustrating I can be to you." Maddy sighed a little bit and ran her hands through her hair. "I got tried of the way he was treating me and... I sorta broke up with him? We weren't dating but I guess that's the best way to say what I did. I yelled at him a bunch. Then I left." She pursed her lips, still feeling like crap because it was hard to do that to a friend, even if it had been liberating. "I'm not a doll. He's the only one who treats me like one. He doesn't own me. He doesn't own anyone. You were right."

That was a lot to take in. He looked at her for another stretch of moments, catching up with everything. The news that she broke up with Dodge when they weren't dating didn't sit well. He wasn't sure how that worked, or how he was meant to take it. The last thing she said, though, that was what stood out best. That she wasn't a doll. He'd always been under the impression that Dodge viewed Madeline like a toy. He'd been saying it for a long time now, it just didn't seem like anyone else found anything wrong with shit. Only apparently now they did. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. "Did he hurt you?" he asked.

Maddy resisted tugging at her sleeves and look to see if the dark hand print was covered. "Emotionally, yeah," she confessed. "Things got... way too complicated and messy and I just reached a breaking point. Miscommunication and me letting him walk all over me and... yeah." She shrugged and leaned her head back against the wall to look at the ceiling. "He's my friend and it's hard but you were right." She looked at Roy, exhausted and sad but she tried to give him a little smile to let him know she was okay. Or at least going to be. "It just took awhile. And I'm sorry that you had to deal with my, uhm, issues."

Last I checked friends didn't do that to you. Roy said. But then again, an argument could be made that friends didn't yell at each other all the time, but that seemed to happen a lot between the two of them. He averted his gaze, and looked back out the window. That alone feeling was still strongly gripping him, and so far nothing was working against that. "I'm glad you stood up for yourself." he told her.

"I couldn't have done it without you," she told him softly, still looking at him even though he averted his gaze. It was definitely true. While Ethan may have given her that shoulder to cry on... "These past couple days I keep hearing you in my head telling me to quit being an idiot and stand up for myself. That I'm not a doll. Your voice tends to do that a lot." Maddy sighed and came closer so she could look out the window beside him. She didn't like the space between them, she couldn't handle it so while she may not have clung to him, she just needed to feel his presence beside her. "I do listen. I know it doesn't seem like it but I do. I just wish you weren't always right."

Roy couldn't tell if what she'd just said was a good thing or not. But then he was in a place where very little made sense to him anymore. He was off balance, in a profound way. Very profound. He was aware of her coming closer, but didn't look back at her. He wasn't even deliberately trying to make her feel cut out, he just...didn't know. He was quiet for a while, where it almost seemed like he wasn't going to answer her at all but then he did. "I don't like being right all the time." he told her, total, bare honesty in his tone.

Maddy bit her lip and looked down at the people on the street. Roy's behavior, while he wasn't loud or rowdy, was definitely quieter than usual and she thought back to the other day of their fight. "What's wrong?" she asked, skipping over the 'are you alright?' part because Roy definitely wasn't alright and she wasn't going to beat around the bush.

Roy blinked at that. And not because of surprise, so much as he blinked because his eyes burned for a second. "She never asked me that." he said. "I saw her, and it was right after Pepper, and you, and...she's been avoiding again, I get it, but I...she didn't even ask." he said, aware in a distant fashion that he hadn't clarified anything, and that he'd actually intended not to tell Madeline any of that. But it just happened.

At first she was confused, not knowing who Roy was talking about but then he said 'she's been avoiding again' and the only person that came to mind then was Marian. Maddy winced at his tone and she gently nudged his arm with hers. "I'm sad for you that you're having to go through that," she said, not sure what else to say because she wasn't sure how to make it better and she really wanted to make it better too.

He twitched a little when she touched him, like he wasn't expecting it, and that was very much why he did so. It had him looking slightly clearer, though and he looked back at her again finally. "It's probably nothing compared to what you're going through. That little bit of clarity had him remember why he didn't go into these things. It was Maddy, she was still a kid, and had her own problems. Apparently a lot of them, even. He couldn't drop things on her. "Are you doing okay? How did he take it when you yelled at him?" he asked, proving at least that he'd been paying attention even if he'd looked a million miles away.

Maddy shrugged and shook her head. "I'll be fine, I guess," she said with a frown. She wasn't sure if she should say that Ethan had decked Dodge earlier that day. "But I think he finally realizes how much of a humongous asshole he's been and hopefully he'll get better. He never used to be this bad, before. Maybe it has to do with what's gone on the past few months." With Patrick being arrested and whatever had gone on there. It couldn't be easy. "But my problems aren't more important than your problems. Don't try to make it seem like they are." She sounded pretty fierce about it and she turned to look at him and even though he twitched before, she reached for his hand. She knew that sometimes, all you needed was a hand to hold and Roy had provided a lot for her. "We're friends, right? And friends listen to each other. I can't be a good friend if you don't let me know what's wrong."

Roy gave her a look. "'I guess' isn't fine, and yours is more important, since it seems to be affecting your whole life, where I'm pretty sure I should just get over Marian's indifference. It's not like she hasn't been proving it over and over every fucking time she avoids me in the first place, right? It was just a matter of time. But you--you've been going off the rails, like you said. I haven't even seen you much in the past few weeks. And I'm betting it was because you were with him."

Even though she didn't think Roy intended it that way, she felt a stab of guilt right there in her gut when he pointed out how she hadn't been around. He was right, she had been spending a lot of her time with Dodge. "I'm not sure what you want me to say. I feel like every time we've hung out, I've been really super jerky and talked about Dodge a bunch. We always talk about my problems. Well, fine. I thought he might like me as much as I liked him and I was stupid and got in over my head and thought, well, I don't know what I thought or what I was expecting except that it was stupid to think things would be different in the first place." Her voice cracked, just a little bit there on the end and she took a deep breath to calm her nerves. "Have you talked to Marian about it? Cause if she doesn't know how her actions are affecting you, then they can't be fixed." Which was odd, coming from Maddy, but at this point, she was pretty certain this was going to be her new policy. Some of the time anyway.

When her voice cracked, he used the hand she'd taken hold of to pull her closer, and he gave her a hug. Usually she did that and he didn't, but she did spend a hell of a lot of her time talking about Dodge before. So he knew this had to be something that was rough on her. Very rough. At least he was feeling clearer. It had kicked him out of the fog. "No, I haven't." he answered her, but he didn't say more about it. "How did he take it? He's not...he won't go after you, will he?" he asked. When she'd been gone before he'd showed up to beat him up even if he had no information and had been sick. Dodge couldn't be counted on for being rational.

Maddy was never one to turn down hugs, and when it was initiated by someone else, and especially Roy hugging her? Maddy wasn't going to take that for granted and she wrapped her skinny arms around his middle and pressed her face against his chest. She didn't want to say anything, not until she was sure she wouldn't burst into tears or something. For a little while, she just clung to him, trembling a little bit while she worked as hard as she could on calming her nerves. "We're complicated," she said finally, turning her head so her bad ear was against his chest. "But I told him that it was done. I told him I couldn't do it anymore and that I loved him and we were done and he told me to go because if I stayed, he was just going to keep doing anything he could to get me to stay. But... no. He's not gonna come after me. He doesn't want to have anything to do with me anymore. But Roach decked him in the face on my account and he's already pretty beaten up from taking care of the guys who grabbed Pepper, so I'm pretty sure he's down for the count for awhile." and Maddy wondered if he'd come to apologize to Roy. That was a weird idea, and she wondered how that would go. "Maybe you should tell her. Marian may have her own issues, if she stays away from you, but she's your sister. You can't give up on your family."

Roy lightly rubbed her back, since that had seemed to work for him last time she was upset. He also listened, paying attention to what she was saying about everything. He cringed faintly at her saying she'd told Dodge she loved him. If he'd ever heard a 'here, manipulate me!' statement, that was it. He also wasn't sure where she got 'he doesn't want anything to do with me anymore' from. Walking away from a situation where a break up was happening was one thing, but was she forgetting this was the same guy who'd fucking kidnapped her, and beaten up someone already down for information they didn't even have over her? Nothing about that said to Roy that Dodge was just done because she said so. "...maybe you shouldn't stay at the theater for a little while." he suggested lightly. He ignored what she said about Marian for now.

His hand rubbing her back was soothing and Maddy held on just a touch tighter, relaxing a little bit. "I'm so stupid. I let him win the game and just god." Clearly, Maddy was pretty ticked off with herself about the whole thing. "It's stupid. It's all stupid. I'm sorry it's fucked up so many things. I'm sorry that you've had to deal with it." His final comment struck her and she frowned, looking up at him. "You think he's gonna come and kidnap me or something?" She wasn't sure what to think about that. Dodge had been pretty firm on the just 'go away, forget it'.

Roy hesitated before he answered. "I think nothing quite makes him crazier than you do." he told her. "And I don't think he'll just wander off and that'll be that. Not with how he is about you. You remember what he did to me, right?" he asked, knowing she did. "And he kidnapped you before."

Her frown was still firmly on her face and she pulled away slightly so she could look at Roy better. Maddy knew she was pretty amazing (most of the time) but what Roy was saying didn't feel like it made sense. "He kidnapped me to keep me going into the tunnels," she said. "It was annoying but I was pretty set on going into the tunnels. It was one of those situations where I wouldn't be surprised if you would've locked me up in a room," she pointed out because even though the whole kidnapping had been really damn annoying, she could see the reasoning behind it. "I ripped into him about that, by the way," she said, ducking her head. "If he ever wants to get back into my good graces, he won't lay a hand on you." Still, the frown was firmly on her face. "So I guess that's the long way of saying I'm not sure what you mean by me making him crazy." Maddy had a fairly high opinion of herself and so the prospect of driving boys crazy was part of that, but there was a lot about the Dodge situation that had her firmly doubting how 'important' Roy seemed to think she was to him.

Roy just stared at her. "...Madeline..." he started, shaking his head. "You've got to be willfully blind here if you don't see it. Come on. He beat the shit out of me for information I didn't even have. You were gone for a day and he totally lost his mind. And we talked about when he kidnapped you and I don't care if it was for some supposed good reason or not, he held you against your will. That's not a sane thing to do. You hit his unstable buttons."

"Well if he really cared about me, he wouldn't make me feel like some whore," she snapped, pulling away with a scowl and smacked the window sill. She winced, shaking her hurt hand and it just served to deepen the scowl. Hearing that you made someone you cared about irrational or unstable was... really not something she liked to hear.

Roy stared still. "Jesus fucking--what the fuck about what I just said to you says in any way that I think he cares?" he asked incredulously. "Saying you make him crazy and everything--that's not a good thing, Madeline, that's you making him fucking crazy. Do you think that's what all that was? Him 'caring'?" he asked, blinking at her not for the first time like he'd never seen her before.

"Huh?" She looked confused and glanced back at him. "I wouldn't make him so crazy if he didn't at least care a little bit, right?" She was getting really confused, because Dodge's girl(s) on the side meant, to Maddy, that he didn't care about her as much as she did him, but she wouldn't get under his skin so much (if what Roy was saying was right) if he didn't have some feeling for her.

Roy shook his head, eyes heavy on hers. "He sees you like a fucking doll." he said. "Are you emotionally connected to your toys? No. You're not. You don't care what they're doing when they're not with you. Dodge just doesn't want anyone else playing with his toys. That doesn't mean he cares. And his being fucking over the top and abusive and everything else just means he's a controlling asshole, and fucking crazy, not that he cares."

The waterworks that Maddy had plugged up pretty well for the past day broke then. She tried to keep the tears back but hearing that, having it laid out like that when she was already at the end of her rope, the last threads just snapped under the weight. It wasn't what she wanted to do when she came to see Roy. She wanted to patch things up and get things back to normal. to move on. But now she was sitting on the cold floor sobbing like someone wrung her puppy's neck in front of her. Huge, body shaking sobs coupled with hacking coughs and choking sounds as she tried to breathe. This wasn't happening. She was supposed to be done crying over him. This was all supposed to be done. She'd move on, work on changing her name. Not sitting here having someone lay it out for her that the guy she'd... tried really hard not to fall in love with in fact did not care about her. That it was all just a lie.

Roy hadn't meant to break her. He really hadn't. And in retrospect, he should have just kept his mouth shut, but he'd been so blindsided by what she was saying. He sat down next to her and pulled her in so she could at least cry on him, and not alone.

Maddy wanted to push Roy away, she really really did but she needed someone to hold her and that's what Roy was doing. That's what he was always doing. So Maddy took it, clinging to him tightly as she sobbed into his shirt. She felt like her stomach was in knots and she felt like she was going to throw up. This huge ball of not happy right there, heavy in her stomach. "I feel like I can't breathe," she hiccuped, crying harder. She couldn't. It was so hard to catch her breath and she didn't know if she'd ever be able to again. It felt like she was being ripped apart at the seams. Like a doll. Each stitch being taken out, her face smashed in on the rocks. Stuffing pouring out of the wounds.

He pulled her closer, into his lap, really, to have both arms around her properly. He didn't know what else to do, with her crying so hard like that. So he did that, and found himself rocking her back and forth a little as he did so, that automatic reaction he didn't even know when he started. "I'm sorry." he told her, voice very quiet. "I'm sorry." He didn't even know what he was apologizing for at this point. For making her cry? Telling her what he thought was the truth? For Dodge? He didn't know, all he knew was he certainly felt sorry.

"I want my brother," she wailed against his shoulder, her tears soaking his collar. "I want my brother." Jack used to hold her like this, tell her how sorry he was and keep her close. "I want Jack." She felt so alone then, even with Roy there. It was all so broken. All so messed up. Roy didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve all her issues dropped at his feet like this. "You're better off without me." But she still held on tight, unable to let go.

"I know, I'm sorry." Roy told her, keeping tight hold of her. And wishing he was Jack, at the moment. "And shut the fuck up." he told her to the last bit. "If I didn't have you I wouldn't really have anyone." he told her. Which was far more true than he would have liked. And it hurt to say, but that was how he felt right then.

Maddy lifted her head and looked at him. Her face was all wet and blotchy and her lips were quivery as she tried to calm down. She sniffed, which led to her turning her head away and coughing hard, shoulders wracked with the coughing instead of the sobs this time. Her head felt heavy and her eyes scratchy and hot. "I just know I-I've been a crap friend lately," she explained. At least she wasn't sobbing anymore.

"I don't care about that." Roy told her and in that moment, it was true. Right there, with her crying her eyes out at him, he couldn't have cared less. "Madeline, c'mon. Go lie down. There's warm blankets, and I'll turn the heat on, and it'll be safe, okay?" he told her, wanting to take care of her there. It was a natural reaction, like he'd had before. It was hard not to feel protective and accomodating when a girl was shaking like that against you.

She nodded, crying still but it was quieter now as she started losing steam. It was hard to keep up that level of emotional output for long and she was already so exhausted. "I know you don't like him. I know that... it's messed up but it still feels like he ripped my heart out," she explained. She didn't want him thinking that she didn't care about his feelings. "Will you stay here?" He didn't want her just tucking her in and then going off to go beat Dodge up or something. "Don't leave right away or something?"

"I'll stay." he promised. He didn't fancy leaving her alone right then, or any time soon, so he was all for staying. If he found Dodge later maybe he'd give a piece of his mind, or pick a fight, but his priority was her for the time being. "Promise, I'll be here. Okay? The whole time."

Maddy nodded again and slid out of his lap. She knelt on the floor beside him and rested her forehead against the wall, trying to breathe in and out. "I don't know if it's bad to think," because she was uncertain now if this particular thinking wasn't good. "But I don't know what I would do if you weren't here." She looked at him and pushed her hair out of her face, scrubbing at her reddened eyes, the blue clear and bright.

He looked back at her. He didn't say anything for a long moment, though, til he stood up, and reached out to bring her with him. "You don't have to." he told her. "I made a promise, remember?" he asked. He'd told her a long time ago that he wouldn't leave, that he'd not abandon her, even if she made wildly stupid decisions. He wanted to reiterate that though, thinking she needed that.

She grabbed his hands and let him help her up. "If you did though, if you left, I'd come find you. I'll always look for you." She wouldn't abandon him either, even when she didn't always follow his advice. She nudged him towards the vault, leaning against him because her knees felt wobbly.

Roy let her lean on him, leading her the short distance to the vault. He'd just look out for her. He could do that. It gave him something to do, the fog had cleared a lot now, and so he was going to hold onto having something to do. And she really needed it. She needed people around who were there for her, not just using her. He could sign on for that. At the end of the day, the reason he was so hard on her was because he cared, and a lot.