Work Text:
We do have reputations
We keep it secret
Won’t let them have it
It happens after the second attempt on her life.
She’s left shaking in her dressing room, Terry posted outside as a personal bouncer as he shouts orders at the rest of her security. She had somehow missed it, the man in the fifth row, the gun tucked away in his jacket. She had gotten so good at monitoring the crowd, of keeping everyone in check. It had become second nature to crawl into the audience’s minds and discover their secrets. But she had gotten too comfortable, too lax.
That was how she missed it. Missed him. James Proctor, a 27 year old from Arizona, member of the Agnus Dei. Before she knew what was happening, there had been a crack in the air. He fired four shots, three of which were aimed at her. One hit the front of the stage, one hit the backdrop behind her, and the other found its mark in a security guard that had rushed on stage leaving her blood splattered and reeling. The fourth lodged itself in his skull, the barrel pressed into his own temple before someone could stop him.
That left her in the dressing room, the rest of the theater evacuated and being swept for anything out of place. Her palms are scraped from throwing herself down at the first shot, the skin angry and red. On top of that her hands are shaking so badly that she can barely unbutton her blood splattered blazer to shed herself of The Silver Witch. She’s not The Silver Witch, not now. Right now she just feels like a scared little girl. Like that time in 4th grade when she’d gotten lost playing in the woods behind her house. She’d sat and cried until nightfall, before picking herself up, and finding her way back. Her mom hadn’t even noticed she was gone.
This is scarier. She doesn’t think she can pick herself up this time.
There’s no one else that can though. Andie is currently overseas on a negotiation, bringing Earth one step closer to world peace. Kris is shooting his new movie in Antarctica with limited service and a practically flipped time zone. It's a sobering realization of her own loneliness.
That leaves Amy alone, in her dressing room, like that scared little girl in the woods. She doesn’t need to put on a show, keep up the carefully curated mask she’s constructed. So she cries, ugly, heaving sobs. She lets herself lose all composure, lets herself crumple as she sits with her back against the wall. The coolness of the dry wall cuts through the tank top she’d worn under her blazer, making her shiver. Distantly she can hear shouting from down the hall, likely press or police, but neither are her concern at the moment.
Her sobs have just subsided into quiet hiccups when a knock sounds at the door.
“Ma’am? You uh, you have a visitor.” Terry’s low voice comes through the door, unintentionally reassuring in the way he always is.
“Who is it?” She curses how warbled her voice is as she calls out. For Terry to even be telling her someone is there means they have to be important. A politician? A police chief? God what has her life become.
“He insisted I let him in, but I thought I’d better check with you first,” Terry responds and for a moment she lets herself hope that Kris has somehow gotten there. Kris is stable. Familiar. Something to tether her. “It’s Dr. Blackwell ma’am.”
That knocks the breath from her. Adam? Why in the fuck would Adam of all people be there?
But then again of course he would be. He’s frustratingly been there since the beginning, hasn't he? Since that day at Sinclair all those years ago when his patronizing comment had first gotten under her skin.
Of course when Amy is stranded in the forest, her unwanted search party would be Adam fucking Blackwell. The universe’s sense of humor never failed to make her the butt of the joke.
“Ma’am?” Terry’s voice snaps her from her thoughts.
“Uh one second!” She should tell him to fuck off, tell Terry to throw him out.
She doesn’t.
Instead she stands, scrubbing at her eyes as she does. She pulls on an old sweatshirt, checks to make sure she looks composed enough, and cracks open the door. She’s met with Adam standing in the hallway, his eyes wide, and hair askew as if he’d been running his fingers through it like he used to while working on a hard translation. He’s a little out of breath and he’s mid argument with Terry when he sees her. For once in his entire life, he’s speechless for a moment.
“Amy.” He sounds relieved. “You’re okay.”
“Yeah. Yeah I’m fine. Adam, what are you doing here?”
“I heard there was another shooting. There were headlines saying you were hit and- and photos of you covered in blood I just-” He cuts himself off as he lifts a hand to his hair, running his fingers through it in a practiced motion. “Sorry. I’ll go, I just had to make sure.”
“Do you want to come in?” The words burst out of her before she can stop them.
“Yeah. Sure.”
Terry steps aside to allow him to enter as Amy pulls the door open wider. He steps past her, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. She stands just as awkwardly with her back pressed against the door.
“So…” She begins.
“So…” Adam echoes.
“What were you doing in Houston?” She crosses to her vanity, pulling out her makeup wipes to have something to do with her hands. They’re still shaking and she clenches her jaw, straining to steady them.
“What?” He sounds surprised, like it's a weird question for her to ask.
“Houston? The city that we are currently in? Were you here for a conference or something?” Her focus is on the mirror as she scrubs at a spot of blood on her cheek that makes her stomach lurch. After a long moment of silence, she turns back to him, eyes now free of smudged mascara, feeling a little bit more put together. He suddenly looks nervous, eyes dancing around the room, looking everywhere but at her. “Adam?”
“Yeah I…I wasn’t in Houston. I was in my office.” It takes a second for the implications to hit her, but it feels like a tsunami when they do.
“What?” She lets herself rest against the vanity, knees buckling from the information. “That’s not-”
“Possible? I didn’t think so either.” Adam has the audacity to look sheepish. Like he didn’t just do something unthinkable, something that shouldn’t be possible, even for him. “Amy, do you need to sit down?”
“I’m fine.” But even as she chokes out the retort, she knows she isn’t. She thought the adrenaline had worn off, that she could tamp everything down until she was alone again, but it rises in her stomach and before she knows it, she’s heaving into the trashcan in the corner of the room.
When she stands, Adam extends a napkin and her water bottle toward her. It's the same worn blue metal bottle from grad school and seeing Adam hand it to her gives a rush of deja vu.
“Thanks.” She feels vulnerable, especially under his gaze, like a specimen under observation. He guides her to the couch and she lets him. Her limbs feel heavy, her body tired. Adam loiters to the side like a skittish animal. “You can sit down, I won’t bite.”
“Maybe not this time,” he mutters, but he moves to sit anyway.
“So you can teleport now.” She lets her head tip against the back of the couch as she looks at the ceiling.
“Yeah I guess I can.” Her peripheral vision tells her that he is mirroring her position.
“Shit.”
“Yeah…shit.”
“How’d you figure that out?”
“I don’t know-” That causes her to look at him, well his weird sideways side profile from the angle of her neck.
“You don’t know?” Her eyebrows are halfway up her forehead as she looks at him, baffled.
“I mean, I don’t remember exactly what I said. One minute I was checking the news in my office, the next minute I’m standing in front of the theater.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I don’t think I’m fit to carry that mantle yet.”
“Oh fuck off Adam.”
The banter comes as easily as breathing to them, a practiced dance. It sets her at ease.
Her hand slides off her stomach to rest against the couch, her knuckle just barely brushing his. She doesn’t move her hand and neither does he.
“Thank you, I guess. For showing up.” For caring goes unspoken.
“Of course Amy. I thought- I thought something had really happened this time. And as much as we fight and hate each other, we’re the only people right now who have this in common.” She supposes it’s a fair statement given the current elusiveness of The Doomscroller. They are the only two people in the world who can relate in this specific way, the glinting rings on their hands a stubborn reminder of their eternal entwinement.
“I don’t…I don’t actually hate you Adam.” The words feel weird coming out of her mouth and she tries not to think about why.
“I don’t hate you either Amy.”
They sit in silence for a moment and Amy feels strangely at peace. She’s left the woods, Adam holding the flashlight in front of them to guide them out. She feels her eyes droop as the exhaustion overtakes her.
“I’ll let you get some rest, you should probably get some sleep.” Adam begins to stand and she realizes she doesn’t want him to leave, she doesn’t want to be alone.
She can’t tell him that though. They’ve already pushed it too far tonight. There’s been a shift, in a way she can’t articulate, but it feels dangerous and real.
“Right. Of course. I’m sure I can get you a flight back tonight, just let me talk to Terry.” She stands as well, moving toward the door.
“It’s fine really, I can just-”
“Adam. Let me do this. Please. Besides, it's not like you know how to teleport yourself back.” She feels like she owes him a debt now, and she can’t live with that.
“Alright.” He relinquishes with a sigh as he sits down again.
Amy cracks the door and explains the situation to Terry. He tells her they can have a plane ready within the hour and can get a car to take him to the airfield. She’s relieved, knowing that he’ll be back in time for his 8:30 AM intro course. He never liked missing classes before and she can only imagine what he’s like as a professor.
She informs him of the plan and he stands once more as he thanks her. It’s only then that she takes in the deep eyebags he’s sporting and the permanent weariness that seems to etch itself into every surface of him.
“You really should sleep more Adam. You’re not a grad student who can survive on energy drinks and all nighters anymore.” The statement is chastising yet affectionate. She sort of wants to throw up again.
“Yeah alright. And you should really stop getting almost shot, you know.” An unexpected laugh bubbles from her, morphing into a scoff at the end.
“Fuck you Adam Blackwell.” The words leave her mouth as easy as an exhale, practiced from years of repetition. But this time, there isn’t any malice or true anger. It’s a routine, one that keeps the other at arms length, lest they get too close and get burned again.
“Goodbye Amy.”
As she sleeps she receives three missed calls and voicemails. One from Kris, demanding for her to call him back and let him know she’s okay. The second from Andie, begging her to call her when she gets a second, that she just wants to hear her voice to be sure. The third is from Terry, informing her that Dr. Blackwell was safely delivered back to Sinclair early that morning.
When she wakes, she swallows thickly at the message from Kris, smiles fondly at the message from Andie, and silently blinks at the message from Terry.
There’s also an unread text message staring at her, daring her to open it. When she does, she’s met with an emotion she can’t and won’t pause to decipher for herself.
Adam Fucking Blackwell.
Come inside and be with me, alone with me
Alone, with me alone
If you would let me give you pinky promise kisses
Then I wouldn’t have to scream your name