Work Text:
“This is a shit idea.”
Cleon sighed, eyes on the papers she was straightening on her desk and not on where Ajax was leaning against her office door, arms crossed. “So you’ve said.”
“You’re asking us to go into enemy territory. Unarmed .”
“Yes,” Cleon said. “I am.” She smoothed the corner of a wrinkled yellow page torn out of a legal pad.
Ajax pushed off the wall to stand across the desk from Cleon. Cleon didn’t look up at her. She could see Ajax’s hands braced on either side of the old lace placemat she kept under her books.
“This is insane,” Ajax said.
“I know.”
“You’re insane.”
“Thank you for your input, Ajax,” Cleon deadpanned. “I’ll take it under advisement.”
“I’m serious, Cleon, this is- hey, look at me.” Ajax snatched the index card Cleon was trying to put away out of her hand.
“Don’t make me do this,” Ajax said. She didn’t look angry. Anger would have been easy. She looked worried. “Don’t make me choose like this.”
“I’m sorry,” Cleon whispered, and she really meant it. “But I have to.”
Ajax studied her for a long moment, until something in her expression gave way. “You really believe in her, huh? You really think this is going to work?”
Cleon closed her eyes. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”
It was the kind of thing she wouldn’t have said around the others. But the others weren’t here. Ajax was, and Ajax would know if she was lying. Ajax deserved the truth, if nothing else. “I think we have to try.”
“If this goes wrong,” Ajax said quietly. “I’m not going to be enough. This is bigger than me. This is bigger than all of us.”
“I know,” Cleon breathed. “I know. But I need to be there.”
And what was she supposed to say? When she opened her eyes, Ajax was still watching her. That if Ajax refused to go, the others would follow? That if Cyrus wasn’t enough, if Cleon had chosen wrong, she needed Ajax to protect the others from her failure? What did she have to offer?
What had Ajax always wanted from her? The truth. She reached out and wrapped her hand around Ajax’s wrist. She could feel Ajax’s heartbeat beneath her fingers. “I can’t do this without you.”
Something shifted, resettled in Ajax’s expression and the set of her shoulders. Cleon would never know what it was. That wasn’t her right to know, as leader. She wasn’t privy to all the workings of Ajax’s mind. All she got to see was Ajax putting the index card back on the desk.
“Okay, fuck,” she said, “We’re going to the Bronx.”
- - -
“You were right,” Cleon says, in her office, in the morning.
Like a peace offering: “I should have listened to you.”
Silence. Like a confession: “You shouldn't have listened to me.” More silence.
Like honesty, like what was true yesterday and the week before and had been true that night and would be true in the days to come, like the only thing she has left to give: “I can't do this without you.”
But the room is empty. The walls don't answer.