Work Text:
Their ride home from the O’Brien residence was filled with silence. Eddie was so angry and sad she was practically vibrating with both emotions, and she feared if they began to discuss the day’s events while she was in that car, she would break into a thousand pieces right before her husband’s eyes. She didn’t want to do that, not until she was once again in the safety of her own home. She didn’t particularly want to feel weak on top of everything else she was feeling.
Jamie pulled in front of their building, put the car in park, and then leaned his head back against the seat with a weary sigh. He turned slightly to stare at her, though she continued to stare straight ahead. “You okay?” he questioned softly.
“Yeah,” she promised unconvincingly. “I just - I really want to get inside, order in pizza, and, you know, try to distract myself from everything that happened today.”
“We can do that,” Jamie agreed immediately, his tone suggesting he would’ve said the same if she’d requested they visit the moon. “I’ll put in a call to Juliana’s as soon as we get inside.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she sighed, climbing from the car and heading for the front door.
He called the restaurant the second the door had closed behind them, then settled onto the sofa beside her. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” he murmured, wrapping arm around her and pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
“Don’t apologize,” she pleaded softly. “You were trying to help your friend. You thought – you truly believed you were helping that girl, Jamie. You couldn’t have known.”
“Yeah, but you felt something was off…” he began, pausing when she shook her head.
“Feeling something is off and thinking someone’s outright lying are two different things,” she pointed out gently. “And I chose to see this through to the end. I just didn’t expect it to hit me this hard, that’s all.”
“She lied about going through something you actually went through.” Jamie shook his head. “It was an incredibly selfish thing for her to do.”
“Yes,” Eddie whispered, surprised to find herself blinking back tears. “That girl… I know she’s young, and she got her heart broken. I don’t want to be angry at her. But she still - she posted those pictures. It was her decision to do that, and when she chose to lie and say someone else violated her… she might not have known this when she did it, but she made it so much harder for the next girl who was violated in that way.”
“I know,” Jamie murmured into her hair.
“She’s still going through a lot, though. It doesn’t matter how the pictures got out there; all that matters is that they’re out there.” Eddie sighed, her eyes drifting shut. “Tell your friend that if she ever needs to talk to someone…”
“You don’t have to do that,” he tried to reassure her. “She’ll have her therapist, and she’ll have Connor.”
“Yeah, but her therapist and her dad haven’t been a teenage girl with nude photographs all over the internet,” Eddie sighed. “I want to help her. I do. She needs… you don’t do something like that for no reason. She needs help. And even if Luis didn’t do this to her, I’m just about the only person in her life that might be able to relate.”
“You know,” he said softly, gently pulling her closer, “you’re just about the best person I’ve ever met.”
“Because I want to help this kid?”
“Because you want to help everybody,” he corrected softly. “Even after everything you’ve seen, you still – you want to believe the best of people. You want to make their lives better.”
“I’m not a saint, Jamie. I just – I know what it feels like, to be looked at the way Caitlin’s going to be looked at. And at the end of the day, it’s going to be a thousand times worse for her when people find out the truth, when they find out she’s the one who posted the photos. I don’t want this to be the thing that makes that kid lose herself. No matter what she’s done, she doesn’t deserve what’s coming to her.”
“Like I said,” Jamie murmured, burying his face in her hair, “you’re just about the best person I’ve ever met, Edit Janko Reagan.”
She smiled, allowing her eyes to drift shut. “Right back at you.”