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Title: Black Edelweiss
Series: Zeitgeist
Follows: One Giant Leap
Wordcount: 2,001
Summary: Two weeks after Claire Bennet's televised leap from the Ferris wheel, the 12th handles it's first case delving into the strange world of specials. Evidence points the investigation toward a former Company Agent, a man Noah Bennet would swear up and down doesn't exist.
Details: Minimal details due to inflation. Full warnings and details in main post.
PREV: Interlude 20 // MAIN // NEXT: Epilogue
Chapter Thirty: Sum Ergo Sum
When two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion.
—Philip K. Dick, Lies, Inc.
It was late-afternoon—almost evening—by the time Kevin recovered enough courage to step out into the world again. Javier was waiting for him in the hallway, as promised.
It was more than a little eerie— The hallway, not Javier. Now that the buzzing of his earlier panic had settled down into a quieter, simmering sort of dread, Kevin was able to feel the atmosphere of the station. It felt...normal. God, that lulled calm that came toward the end of the day, just before nightfall when things started to pick up again felt so very normal. Familiar. So familiar Kevin almost thought that, if he just closed his eyes, for a second he might manage to forget that the past few days had even happened...
Damn, was that tempting.
But Kevin was quickly shaken free of those thoughts. Tracy Strauss—no, Barbara, he corrected himself with a sharp sting of alarm—stood engaged in a quiet conversation as she waited for the elevator. Her companion was a tall, dark-skinned man with a shaven head, and though even Kevin could see the tiredness and grief of her recent loss still weighing on her, it couldn't escape his attention that Barbara was smiling.
His heart skipped a startled beat when that smile slipped as Kevin and Javier passed by. And Kevin wished—just briefly, just for a moment—that he had some idea how Konrad had turned invisible during his escape, because if he had his choice he definitely would have done it then. She avoided his gaze and though she failed to hide it successfully, Kevin considered himself grateful that it was discomfort rather than fear that he so briefly saw in her eyes. The man on the other hand turned to study him silently with an expression that was almost impossible for Kevin to read, but what he did manage to see shocked his mouth dry.
Because what he saw was recognition.
It left Kevin speechless, helpless to inquire. And just before he and Barbara boarded the elevator, the man favored Kevin with a small nod and a slight, strange smile. The expression was startlingly knowing, almost conspiratorial, and for a moment it was as if—
But the doors of the elevator closed, and whatever it was that he almost knew was gone, out of Kevin's reach.
The encounter left Kevin with a very odd feeling, as though he had been asked to keep a secret. Kevin turned to look at his partner, hoping that Javier might offer another perspective on the exchange. Unfortunately, Kevin was forced to conclude that the other man hadn't noticed—though Javier seemed to have grown quite aware of Kevin's alarm. His partner was still watching him with the same unsettled scrutiny he had shown from the moment of Kevin's return. Javier seemed almost to have blinded himself to anyone else.
Kevin didn't know what to think about that, so he tried not to think about it, shoving it in amidst the incalculably large pile of other things he was also probably better off not thinking about.
He took a breath, and then another, and then he kept walking.
Walking brought them to the bullpen. Kevin didn't know if that had been a subconscious move on his part or simply coincidence. It wasn't important enough for him to care, so he let the question slip from his mind. If he started second-guessing everything he did—picking apart every thought and action, conscious or unconscious—he was going to wind up driving himself crazy. He certainly didn't need any help in that area.
Kevin found himself hesitating for a moment when he reached his desk.
Everything was more or less where he had left it, and it looked like it might have on any other day when he had just stepped away, certain he would return shortly. It was an illusion he was reluctant to disturb by touching it. But someone had left his keys on the blotter next to the keyboard, and Kevin knew he had given them to Javier, just before. Javier hadn't been involved in the sting they had run with Gabriel, so it had probably been Kate—and probably recently—which sank his momentary self-deception quite thoroughly.
Shaking his head with a faint breath, Kevin pulled out the chair and sat down, taking his keys to open the drawer where all his things had been locked away. His gun and his badge he left there—he wouldn't be needing them, at least not any time soon—but he retrieved his phone and his wallet. He stared at the phone for a moment, torn. He was a little bit afraid to turn it on—afraid to see how many calls he had missed, particularly from Jenny. She hadn't heard from him in two days. She had to be frantic—
God, how the hell would he even face her? How could he begin to explain any of this—
Though his earlier panic had been threatening to return, Kevin was interrupted from spiraling further into it when his effects were suddenly taken from his hands. Turning around, he looked up and watched Javier slip Kevin's phone and his keys into his own pocket.
"What are you doing?" Kevin asked, confused.
"I'm taking you home with me," Javier said, very simply.
As if it weren't an offer or a question, just a fact.
"What— I'm not—" Kevin cut off his aborted arguments with a slow breath, standing to look his partner in the eye. "Javier... I'm fine. I'm not going to...do anything. I don't need someone...watching me."
And he found himself swallowing past hurt and a sick horror, because Kevin couldn't imagine what he would even do if Javier couldn't trust him anymore. But Javier shook his head, laying a hand on his shoulder.
"No, bro, you are not fine," Javier said. "No one would be fine after something like this—I'm sure as hell not."
His grip tightened gently as he spoke, staring Kevin squarely in the eye.
"I know you, Kev," Javier continued. "I know that if I let you walk out that door, you're going to drive right home, and you're going to spend the whole night thinking about this when it's the last thing you should be doing. You'll drive yourself crazy with it—and I know you're probably halfway there right now, because who the hell wouldn't be?"
Javier looked briefly at the hand on Kevin's shoulder with a slight frown before he let it fall, taking a deep breath before he continued.
"And I know that if you talk to Jenny, you're going to tell her about all of it," Javier said, slowly. "Because it all just happened, and it's all right there, and I know you could never keep something like this from her. And I'm not saying you should lie, but until you've got this shit straightened out in your own head, just a little, I think trying to explain any of it would probably be a very bad idea."
Javier pressed the wallet he was still holding into Kevin's hands, raising a silent eyebrow, and Kevin thought that his partner was offering him the chance to argue the point. Unfortunately, it would have been impossible for him to refute any of what Javier had said with even the slightest bit of honesty and they both knew it.
"So...this is what we're going to do," Javier said finally, punctuating with a sharp nod. "We're going to do go to my place, and we're going to do the same thing we always do after a close call. We're going to get some good Chinese, and some cheap beer, and we're going to play videogames until we're both too stupid tired to think—even if it takes us all week, because the captain would have to be nuts to deny us a little time off after this bullshit."
And Javier paused, hesitating just a moment to wet his lips.
"And you let me talk to Jenny," Javier added slowly, softly. His expression seemed a little uncertain, though Kevin couldn't quite understand why. "I'll let her know you're alright, Kev, but you need some time to deal with this on your own first. Okay?"
Kevin was momentarily lost for a response. Uncertainty confused his thoughts—doubts and fears collecting into something as loud and as cloying as a cloud of flies. Yet somehow, in spite of this, his mind managed to latch onto one thing, and suddenly that one thing was all that he could think about.
It was a memory, only a few days old, from those first terrible hours after the truth about him had been revealed. Hours during which every answer they found had only uncovered more questions, and none of them had answered decisively the one that had weighed heaviest on Kevin's mind—the question of whether or not he was a murderer. Yet in spite of the terror that might otherwise have overwhelmed those moments, the thing that stood out the clearest in Kevin's recollection was the moment when Javier had looked at him and promised that things would be alright. And it might have seemed empty coming from almost anyone else, but Javier wasn't in the habit of making promises he didn't think he could keep.
And Javier had seemed so certain, when he said it—as if he had been incapable of even considering the alternative. That kind of certainty was something Kevin desperately needed right now, possibly more than he needed anything else...
"Okay," Kevin agreed.
=)
As valiant as it had been, Javier's determination had only kept him running for another six hours, but Kevin felt even that had been an accomplishment. It had been plain to him from the moment he first woke that Javier had been running on fumes, emotionally and physically, for a very long time. Imagining what he had gone through over the past two days—days full of desperate anxiety and uncertainty which Kevin realized he had, in a way, been spared—it was hard to begrudge his partner some well deserved rest.
Even if he was now using Kevin's shoulder as a pillow.
Though, in truth, there was something profoundly comforting in that. It was the simplest proof Kevin could ever have imagined that Javier still felt safe around him, in spite of everything that had happened—that Javier could accept him, even in the face of all that had been revealed. And for the first time, Kevin actually thought that maybe—
Because if he still had this—and if he still had Jenny, and if he could hold onto his job and his friends and the life he had made—then perhaps that meant that Kevin Ryan really did exist as more than some abstract and twisted philosophical sense. That who he was and everything he had done really did mean something.
Still, though Kevin was almost afraid to move and disturb him, he knew that if he left Javier like this it was going to absolutely kill his partner's neck. Kevin shifted slowly, sitting forward to rescue the game controller that was in danger of falling from his partner's hands. Javier took a deeper breath as he started to rouse, looking up at Kevin with a slight frown. It was more adorable than it had any right to be, and in spite of everything, Kevin smiled.
"Go to bed, dumbass," Kevin told him softly.
Javier's frown only deepened, but as he moved to sit up his wince rendered any arguments on Kevin's part unnecessary. Javier conceded his defeat with a faint groan, leaning back to work the tension out of his neck with an audible pop before turning to regard Kevin once more with a bleary expression.
It might have been one of the most vulnerable that Kevin had ever seen.
"You're going to stay, right?" Javier asked him quietly. For a moment, he seemed about to say something else, but he appeared to reconsider. "Please."
"Yeah, of course," Kevin said, managing another smile. "Go to bed. I'll be here."
I'll be here.
For the first time Kevin believed it.
PREV: Interlude 20 // MAIN // NEXT: Epilogue
