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Oh, I can see you somewhere up the road
There’s a weight you carry you’re trying to let go
And you know that if I could, I would take it all away from you
How dare you love me like you’ve never known fear
When you’ve got more troubles than minutes in the year
And a voice like your father’s tells you nothing good’s for free
Well that may be, but you’re walking home to me
“Home to Me,” Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
____________________
After the chaos is over and Scorpia is finished, Alex sits at home in the garden in the misting rain, and tries to breathe.
It’s very quiet out here. Free for the first time in months, Alex just lets the peace wash over him. It doesn’t feel quite real yet. There is literal bruising around his heart, his world has been turned upside down and then righted again so many times he’s lost count, and he still can’t quite catch a deep breath and let everything go.
He used to be good at this. Focusing, meditating - Ian taught him all the skills he’d need to follow him, if Alex so chose. He used to be able to sink into calm doing yoga, controlling his breathing, compartmentalising. But now the pieces of himself feel shattered, and he’s having trouble picking them up.
He cups his hands around his favourite blue mug, watching the steam rise from his tea in the dim light that spills from the kitchen window. Tom had fixed everyone a cuppa while Kyra helped Alex get cleaned up, quietly swearing under her breath about useless Security Services medics, her eyes hard and furious at the layers of bruising covering Alex’s body, new purple marks on top of sickly yellow-green old ones. Alex thinks she’s not quite being fair. The once-over they gave him before they let him go home had covered the essentials. He wasn’t dying, and he’d convinced them he just wanted to go home. Kyra wouldn’t hear any excuses for them, and honestly Alex is too tired to argue. Or perhaps he just doesn’t care that much. He’s still alive, isn’t he?
The anger Kyra holds towards the Department on his behalf isn’t going to fade anytime soon. Kyra is fiercely protective and holds a grudge incredibly tight when she chooses to. He’d almost been on the receiving end of that anger. The betrayal in Kyra’s face when she demanded answers about Scorpia isn’t something he will soon forget. He deserved that.
The pain as Kyra had wrapped cracked ribs, gently washed blood from his face, applied butterfly bandages to the worst cut that had reopened - it all felt like something Alex deserved. He doesn’t deserve her fingers ghosting gently across his skin, nor Jack’s tight hugs, nor Tom’s mug of tea exactly the way Alex likes, with three sugars and a splash of milk. His throat had felt thick and choking and he had made an excuse to go outside and be alone. Try to settle.
The quiet isn’t helping. Alex sits in the garden among Ian’s rosebushes which are somehow still alive despite his and Jack’s best efforts to take care of them, on the swing which he and Ian had built together. Feels the damp of the slight rain, but not the chill. Everything is a little numb, now that he’s past the adrenaline crash. Probably he should listen to Jack’s advice and go to bed. He could sleep for a week. Except that he can’t stop his brain circling around and around the same thoughts, excoriating and full of blame.
The kitchen door opens, Jack and Tom’s voices in the kitchen spilling out with the clatter of dishes being washed. Kyra slips through the door and closes it quietly behind her, cutting off the sound. She’s in sock feet, despite the rain, and wearing one of Alex’s jumpers, the green one with a hole in the cuff. Some of Alex’s sadness melts away at the sight of her, the tightness in his chest easing.
“You okay?” Kyra asks quietly, crossing to stand next to him.
“Mostly.”
Kyra regards Alex, hands in her pockets and head tilted to the side.
“You’re moping,” she decides. “Come on, shove over.”
Alex shuffles over on the swing to make room. “I’m not moping!”
Intent brown eyes pin him with a look of exasperated fondness. “Okay. Tell me you weren’t sitting out here in the dark just beating yourself up about the Scorpia stuff, and I’ll believe you.”
Alex looks down, hands clenched together in his lap, unable to meet Kyra’s gaze. “I fucked up. So much.”
Kyra sits down on the swing next to him, hesitates, and then, as if she’s not sure she’s allowed to, leans into Alex’s shoulder. Her words, though, are anything but hesitant. “Okay. You fucked up. And then you fixed it.”
“It’s not that simple!” It shouldn’t be that simple. He almost killed someone.
Kyra tucks her feet up onto the swing and then, confidently, as if she’s been doing this forever, takes one of his hands, fingers twining firmly between his. “Trust me. It is.”
Somehow, that might be getting easier to believe. To trust that actually, he’s done the best he can. Alex takes a deep breath.
“Okay.” It comes out sounding choked.
Kyra settles back against Alex’s side, gripping his hand, careful of the cuts on his knuckles. Alex tips his head back, stares up at the sky, trying not to let the tears fall. The stars are too dim to see. Kyra is a solid warmth at his side. They’ve always been in each others’ space a little more than is strictly polite, pulled together by a magnetism Alex has felt since he met her. He could follow the lodestone of her and never lose his way home. The feeling of her fingers in his is both exhilarating and grounding.
“What did they do to you?” she asks softly.
Usually, they can just sit and be quiet together. It’s something Alex has always loved about Kyra - knowing that she trusts him with her silences, that he can trust her with his thoughts. Now, it seems, she needs to talk. He can give her that.
“Julia played me,” he says, staring down at their linked hands. “She knew exactly what to tell me to get me to do what she wanted. Point me and make me her weapon and then throw me away after. And the worst part is, part of me knew that she was probably doing that, and I didn’t care.” He pushes off the ground with one foot, setting the swing moving gently. “I thought I could keep my hands clean and end the Department, and then I helped Yassen murder Max and nearly killed Mrs. Jones. I said I wanted to help Scorpia, and a whole city nearly died. Maybe some people even did.” His free hand comes up to rub at his heart. Kyra’s grip tightens on his fingers, like she’s reassuring herself of him.
“You almost died too,” she says quietly. “Didn’t you?”
Alex takes a deep breath, then nods. Kyra’s ability to read him always cuts right through any front he tries to put up.
“We knew something was wrong when you called,” she says. “You sounded like – like someone going off to die.” Her voice sounds teary. Alex has known for a long time that Kyra hides her emotions deep, under blunt words and a tough exterior. He’s never blamed her for that. He’s just touched that he is who she chooses to show them to.
Kyra takes a long breath, exhales shakily, and then turns to face him on the swing, untucking her feet from under her and swinging them over Alex’s lap instead, pinning him in place. Her face is grave.
“No more self-sacrificing hero, okay?” A tear slides down her cheek. Tentatively, Alex reaches up to brush it away, thumb skating across her cheekbone. Her skin is soft. She leans into his hand, and Alex has to close his eyes under the weight of the trust in her gaze.
“Okay,” he says. He’s a tired boy with a tired heart, scar tissue thick, bruises tender, and he can trust her with all of that. After all, Kyra trusts him with all of her wounds, too.
They settle into each other in the quiet. Alex traces Kyra’s hands, grounds himself with the warm weight of her legs over his. He wants – well, he wants so much, but right now he’s so tired, and it’s enough just to sit together. Kyra’s thumb presses into the pulse point of Alex’s wrist. He lets his gaze wander across the soft lines of her face, the blunt edges of her bangs, down to where a familiar piece of metal hangs on a cord over her shirt. The washer from Point Blanc. She’s kept it all this time, and Alex can’t help but smile. Then, through the haze of exhaustion, he notices again that she’s wearing his favourite jumper, and laughs.
“What,” Kyra asks, smiling back. It lights up her whole face. Alex wants to look at her forever.
“Nothing,” he answers. He feels unaccountably shy, affection spreading all through him like a heartbeat. “Just – we’ve been doing… this,” he gestures between the two of them with their linked hands, “for like, a day, and you’re already stealing my clothes. I thought it’d take longer.” He grins at her. Kyra pulls the sleeves of his jumper down over her hands, her rings, and pushes at his shoulder. Alex rocks back easily.
“Shut up, Spyboy.”
The kitchen door opens in a flood of light, and Jack is standing there, framed against the bright kitchen. Behind her is Tom, obviously trying not to hover and not at all succeeding.
“Hey, you two,” Jack says. “Stop being sweet and come inside. There’s dessert.”
Alex lets Kyra hop to her feet first and then follows her down the path. Everything still hurts, and he’s going to crash very, very soon. But he feels warm, and happy, and for the first time in a very long time, like everything in his life is going to be okay.
He’s home.