Work Text:
He accepts their hugs, the relieved pats on his back, the squeezing of his shoulder that tells him he’s really, actually, truly home, but his eyes seek out the one person in the room who has yet to say something. The person who is standing frozen by the window.
The look on her face scares him and he’s suddenly very, very conscious of the fake tattoo that marks him out as someone different. Someone dangerous.
“Hey Kyra -“
“- hey Alex.”
She’s still not saying anything and it worries him. Because she never doesn’t say things. She’s always been so… annoyingly blunt.
Then slowly, far too slowly, he figures it out.
She’s seen the worst. She’s seen a boat explode with him supposedly inside. She’s seen him running from a building with a dead body in it. She’s seen him cooperating with Scorpia.
Since that one phone call when he first arrived in Malagosto he’s not been in touch with her. And then… after no contact for weeks, she’s seen him arrive home, dressed in strange clothes and disguised as someone else, giving absolutely no explanation as to what he has, or more importantly hasn’t, done.
Okay. He gets it. He’s not sure he’d know what to think if he was in her situation.
Jack says it’s okay, that they don’t need to know what happened. But he’s looking at Kyra and he knows that he owes her an explanation. Knows he needs to tell her everything because… he needs her to understand.
It surprises him how much it hurts that she’s looking at him like she doesn’t trust him anymore, because if there’s one person in the world he’s come to rely on, it’s Kyra.
Then she asks him the question he’s doesn’t want her to ask. Because the guilt of Max’s death looms large and he hates, hates, hates that he was part of it.
He can’t meet her gaze.
He caused Max’s death.
He all but murdered him.
It’s his fault.
“No, breaking into houses is not killing people. Different things. Everyone breaks into houses.”
He lets the ‘everyone breaks into houses’ slide because he’s so fucking relieved. She… She believes him?
“So, did it work? Are you one of them?”
He looks at her. Really and truly looks at her. This amazing woman who has saved him time and time again. But more than that. She’s just… Kyra… And he promises himself that someday, someday soon, he’ll actually tell her how much she means to him.
He can’t bear to break his gaze from hers. “No…”
.
Tom and Jack head out to the shops. Jack gives him a determined stare when she declares she’ll accompany Tom, looking first at Alex, then at Kyra, then back at Alex with a glare that he interprets as Jack saying “talk to her”. And then she gives him a wink. And quite frankly he doesn’t want to interpret what she means by that.
And so he goes to shower. He needs to get this day – and at the very least the fake tattoo – off him. Watching the grunge coloured water run down the drain is oddly therapeutic.
He changes and heads down to the kitchen to find Kyra, because inexplicably it’s her, and only her, he wants to see right now. It’s her he needs to explain himself to and it’s her he needs to… well, he promised himself he’d be more confident. Maybe he’ll tell her how he feels, maybe?
Maybe.
She’s pushing him. “Alex, you had a gun, you had a chance.”
"Don't remind me," he wants to say, but doesn't.
“Didn’t you want to, for your father?”
Yes. Oh God yes. But he can’t say those words either because they are too terrible to speak.
And in her curious gaze is her next, this time unspoken, question: "so, what stopped you?"
You. You did. The thought of you. And Jack. And Tom. And Ian. And my parents. But mostly you. It’s always you.
He can’t say it though, he doesn’t dare, but he wants to so much because he needs her to know just how much she means to him.
“I’m sorry.” The words come out without him wanting them to. He knows she hates it when he apologises like that.
“No, stop saying sorry, stop helping people who don’t deserve it.”
She’s so close to him now and he’s gone from wanting to explain himself to her to just being cross, because she’s shouting and he can’t understand why and then – oh…
Oh...
And suddenly it’s all okay again. Very, very okay.
Very, very, very okay.
At last.