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thee-morrigan · 1 year

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the wayhaven chronicles | nate/holland (f!detective) | rated T | read on ao3

Holland is tired of feeling like she's being mollified. Set immediately after the last demo for Book 3 (so, reader beware: here be spoilers).

The ride back to the warehouse had been...tense, to say the least. After the unexpected turn of events with the Annunaki, there had been very little conversation. Even Felix hadn’t tried very hard to break the strange, thick silence that had descended. Muscle memory drove her hand into her bag in search of headphones, and Holland felt the smooth, rubbery tangle of cords under her fingers before it occurred to her that there was little point to them in a car full of vampires. She supposed, somewhat acidly, that she was just lucky they couldn’t overhear her brain, which was teeming: a roiling tumult of nerves and emotions ricocheting off of each other with nowhere to land.

She leaned her head against the window, half-watching the verdant blur of the tree line as Adam drove them past it, half-watching her own reflection in the tinted glass of the Agency’s sleek (ridiculous, she thought) SUV. Fingers at her throat, worrying the chain around her neck, the dull glint of the gold band hanging from it reflected in the window as she watched.

Her father’s police academy ring. The only time she’d ever seen him without it, she’d known, even then, tiny and overwhelmed and furious, that it was not him she was seeing. Not her father. Her father never lay still like that, in starched suits like that, quiet and unsmiling. Her father was — he was —

Her father was; this strange likeness set before her is. A permanent line in the sand, etched by time itself, deep and uncrossable as any chasm.

She’d spent so much of that day furious, her whole body full to bursting with it, the simmering, pent-up rage of children already weary of feeling impotent and either overlooked or overly looked at, frustrated with too many adults with too pitying faces peering down at hers, too many hands smoothing over her hair, squeezing her shoulders.

Poor thing, they’d said. Over and over, some variation of the same chorus: poor little thing. It made her want to scream. Part of her had wondered if anyone would actually notice if she did. Probably they would just keep repeating their mechanical mantra at her, going through the motions of smoothing over the wrinkles of her grief, draped over her like a mantle, her own shroud, the folds of it too bulky, its fabric much too heavy for her child’s body to bear.

She hadn’t screamed, of course. Hadn’t caused a scene. She’d stood there beside her mother and let herself be a poor little thing. Like an accessory to Widow Barbie. She’d spent that entire, awful day letting herself be a prop to the funereal spectacle. And then, when they’d finally returned home, she’d promptly snuck into her parents’ room (just her mother’s room, now, she remembered thinking) and stolen her father’s ring. Filched it out of her mother’s jewelry box while Rebecca was elsewhere and hid it in her room.

Her mother never actually found where she’d hidden it; Holland had already begun to develop a certain sense of secrecy about herself, although it would be years before anyone pointed out that trying to keep yourself tucked away wasn’t necessarily typical behavior. But, still, Rebecca knew immediately that it had been her daughter who spirited the totem away. She never asked about it outright: she knew, even then, that Holland wouldn’t have divulged the ring’s location, or even likely have confirmed it was in her possession. Instead, she gave Holland a small lacquered box a few days later, claiming to have found it when cleaning out some hall closet or another, and suggested it was a good place to store tiny treasures. Then, for Christmas that year, she’d given Holland the gold chain, suggesting it might be useful someday, too, for trinkets or charms.

She never suggested, on either occasion, that Rook’s ring, or any other ring for that matter, might be worth storing in the box or wearing on a chain. She never even mentioned it was missing from her own possessions. If she had, Holland never would have accepted either gift.

Even now, so many years after the fact, Holland tried not to think about how cleverly her mother had laid the groundwork for her to be able to keep both Rook’s ring and her own sense of pride about it. She knew what Rebecca was doing.

Even now, she couldn’t decide if she was madder at how deftly Rebecca had handled the whole thing or if she was simply irritated at herself for noticing�� and for caring. For the instinctive swell of sentimental gratitude that accompanied the knowledge that not only had Rebecca known immediately that she’d stolen the ring, but she’d also known her daughter well enough to know how to handle it. Most probably, Holland’s annoyance stemmed from some combination of all of the above.

She was almost surprised she hadn’t worn the engravings on the ring smooth by now, she fiddled with it so often, fingers worrying over the necklace like a rosary, the fine gold chain weighted down by the thick, solid mass of Rook’s ring. As if it were prayer beads or some kind of protective talisman.

Maybe it is, she thought wryly, almost smirking at her own reflection. It wouldn’t be the strangest thing to happen today. Or this year. And it might explain how a perfectly ordinary human woman had managed to survive a kidnapping, a supernatural blood transfusion, and several altercations over the past few months — including tonight’s failed abduction attempt.

She studied the shadowy smudge of her reflection in the car window, periodically brought into sharp relief by streaks of the streetlights. She did not look like a person who should have been able to physically overpower a being that was almost (maybe more than) twice her size. She looked fragile. At least, she did relative to the situations in which she continued to find herself.

She looked as incapable of protecting herself as Nate seemed to think she was. As, she supposed, they all probably thought she was. Although the only face she’d been watching in the clearing had been Nate’s, Holland imagined if she had looked at any of the rest of Unit Bravo, she would have seen various echoes of the same expression.

Poor thing. Poor little thing.

Even the beginnings of the almost-apology Nate had given her in the clearing had felt to Holland like nothing more than a verbal attempt to smooth her over. A hand passing over her hair, squeezing her shoulder, warm and sorrowful and suffocating.

She was out of the car before Adam switched the ignition off, barely after he’d shifted to park. She wondered if next she’d be warned about the dangers of opening the doors of not-quite-stopped cars. Maybe they could turn on the child locks, she thought, immediately hating it, hating her brain for having such a petulant thought so consciously. Too bad the car wasn’t actually moving; if it were, maybe it could’ve just put them all out of their misery and run her over.

“I’m taking a shower,” she called to no one in particular, waving a hand over her shoulder without so much as a backward glance. What she really wanted was a long run, but she didn’t have the energy to point out the existence of the indoor track on the second floor of the training room when the inevitable comment about her goddamned safety was made. So a scalding shower would have to suffice.

She half-heard Adam say something about a debriefing and the imminent arrival of her mother and paused to rub at the bridge of her nose. Christ almighty. If she had to sit and process her mother’s feelings and be subjected to another round of wounded-dog eyes because she was past the point in her life where she wanted her mom, she might track down and offer herself to the fucking bird-man if it meant a respite from feeling like a complete asshole.

He’d had terribly sad eyes too though, she remembered. And had called her a child. So maybe that wasn’t much of an alternative to a conversation with her mother.

“So meet without me,” she said flatly, then amended her suggestion at the look on Adam’s face. “Or wait, if that’s what you wanna do. Not my preference, but that’s your prerogative. I’m taking a shower. That’s mine.”

She turned and resumed walking towards the warehouse, feeling even more like a sulky kid retreating to her room.

This time, no one stopped her.

She stayed under the steaming spray until her whole body was flushed and tingling and her skin no longer felt too tight for the skeleton underneath.

She wondered if they’d had the debriefing without her and, if so, how long they might have (or might not have) waited before giving up. If there were etiquette standards regarding the acceptable length of time to await a person’s arrival at a meeting, Holland would bet money that both Nate and Adam would know them backward and forwards. Her mother probably would, too, for that matter.

Her mother.

Holland sighed. She wondered if her mother were still here. Assuming they hadn’t waited for her and had finished their meeting. She hoped they hadn’t waited. She wasn’t sure precisely how long she’d spent dissociating in the shower, but she’d guess it was the better part of an hour.

So much for a respite from feeling like a complete asshole. Not that she deserved one, since she was, in fact, being a total dick.

She rifled through the chaotic and limited selection of clothes she’d grabbed before leaving her newly waterlogged apartment, finally settling on an oversized t-shirt and a pair of running shorts. Christ knew what she’d unearth to wear to the office tomorrow, but at least she’d managed to find something approximating sleepwear that wasn’t too embarrassing to wear in common spaces. Although she doubted Rebecca (or Adam, for that matter) would find a shirt whose slogan referred to killing fascists particularly appropriate for most settings.

Now that she’d dressed, Holland debated whether she wanted to be a coward as well as an asshole by staying in her room all night, feeling the familiar anger-hangover of guilt and self-loathing kick in now that she no longer felt like shouting at ghosts.

She’d probably hate herself a bit less if she checked in tonight. Probably.

She rolled her shoulders once, twice, to loosen some of the tension that had begun to creep back in as her fingers closed around the door handle. Tugged the door open, only to give a choked yelp of surprise. The sentiment (if not the mortifying sound) seemed to be mirrored on the face of the person standing on the other side of her door.

Holland’s mouth twitched towards a smile reflexively, a breath of a laugh following at the surprise mirrored on Nate’s face, one hand frozen in the process of reaching forward to — presumably — knock.

He smiled back at her, probably also reflexively.

“Um. Hi.”

A brilliant start.

“Hi,” he echoed, lowering his half-raised hand and easing it into his pocket.

She stepped back from the open doorway, letting her own hand drop from the handle and fall to her side. Resisted the urge to twist her fingers in the hem of her t-shirt, anxious and off-balance. Summoned, instead, the cool charm on which she so heavily relied lately. If she’d thought about it, she might have realized how like her mother she was in this way, in this capacity for performative normalcy. (Which would have, of course, deeply annoyed her.)

She smoothed her smile into something warmer and less frayed, looking up at the man in her doorway, her head cocked. “The whole formal-invitation thing is a myth, right?”

Without waiting for a response, she backed further into her bedroom, immensely relieved when Nate huffed a laugh and followed her, letting the door shut behind him.

Holland made herself focus on immediate, mundane questions, like where to sit that wasn’t at the foot of her bed. Or any other section thereupon.

Her room here was much larger than her actual bedroom at home, and the extra space meant there was room for a loveseat in one corner. This seemed like a reasonably neutral place to land, so she sat there, curled in one plush corner, bare legs folded up underneath her.

“Do you wanna sit?” She tilted her head toward the other end of the loveseat. “You can sit. If you want to, I mean.”

Please stop talking, a tiny voice in her brain demanded tiredly.

Some of the lingering awkward tension seemed to dissipate with the flicker of pleased relief on Nate’s face as he crossed to join her, and for just a moment, Holland felt less like a scratch on a lens, distorting everything around her, making it look wrong from anywhere she stood.

The loveseat was small enough that it was impossible to sit for them to sit without touching, and it took so much of her flagging energy not to just let her body slump fully against his. He was warm, and he smelled good, and she was really, really tired.

She leaned mostly against the back cushion instead, twisting to face him, her cheek against the upholstery, shins pressed against his thigh.

“We should talk,” Nate started, then paused, seeming, for once, at a brief loss for words.

Holland sighed, eyes drifting up to meet his gaze. “Yeah, probably.”

Nate reached for her hand, kept his own soft and loose, his eyes on her face. Watching her reaction, seeing if she’d pull away. She didn’t.

(She wouldn’t.)

He was right, probably. They should talk about what had happened in the clearing, and everything after. She should apologize, probably. Definitely.

But she wasn’t sure if she had it in her to come up with the right words tonight. And if she couldn’t find the right ones, she’d probably use the wrong ones, the ones with the ugliest versions of the truth, turning meaner thoughts into words that too readily shot to kill when she didn’t take care. In her current state, she knew she was far too likely to say things she didn't mean. Or worse still: she might say things she did.

Gods, she was exhausted.

Or maybe just exhausting. She couldn’t decide which of the two she felt applied more to her at the current moment. Both, probably. She exhausted herself.

She wasn’t sure she had it in her to rehash the argument of what was or was not in her best interest, and whether it was reckless and foolhardy to throw herself into dangerous situations.

Not that it had been.

Another thing she decided against saying aloud. Nothing she’d done today was even close to reckless on the very well-established Townsend Scale of Reckless Endangerment and Dumbassery. But it wasn’t worth mentioning. If he thought defending herself was reckless, it probably wouldn’t be helpful to give him concrete examples of actual reckless behavior.

Not that it would have changed anything for her if it had been. She couldn’t have acted differently if she’d wanted to. The idea of choosing not to engage, to let others fight her battles for her, when she might be able to help?

(When she was the reason anyone was in danger in the first place.)

She pushed down the acid-sharp sting of that thought and recalibrated, shoving her mind back into the present, back into focus. Squeezed Nate’s fingers with her own, rubbed her fingertips along the slopes of his knuckles like an odd, living rosary.

“We should talk,” She agreed finally, voice quiet and hoarse with fatigue. “But can we do it tomorrow? Please?”

Tomorrow, when she might feel like less of an ass. Less maudlin. Less likely to want to apologize for not knowing how to be different than who she was.

And less worried about what that might mean for her relationship, still so new and fragile and good.

Maybe it was an inevitable truth of caring for another person. Sooner or later, you would wound them. Become both balm and bruise, desperately hoping to be more of one than the other, and forever unable to not think of its cost.

He lifted a hand to cup her face, long fingers stroking along her cheek, smoothing into her hairline. And maybe she looked as adrift as she felt, because a long moment later, “tomorrow,” was all he said.

#Holland really said 'i can fit so much self-loathing into this one small body!'#katie writes things #the wayhaven chronicles #twc #nate x detective #twc fics #oc: holland townsend #ship: your entire heart

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