losttheright | I can't help feeling we could have had it all

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stephen meyers

I can't help feeling we could have had it all

At first, when she sees him, Molly is certain that her eyes are playing tricks on her.

It was one thing when she showed up here, after all, when the world went black and she came to having exchanged one city for another, except this isn't anywhere she's heard of and it's missing a few things a real city would have, like, for example, a way out. That part is just as well, though. Even if there were somewhere else to go, she isn't sure how she would get there or what she would do once she got there. She's dead, she knows she is, or was, or whatever verb could be used to describe someone dying and then waking up having been magically fucking transported to some other world or something. There doesn't need to be anything outside of this because there was never even supposed to be this. Someday, maybe, she might even be able to count herself lucky for that. For now, she's just taking it as she can, doing her best to settle into this completely implausible extension of the life she cut short, trying not to dwell too much on the circumstances that caused her to do so in the first place (though that much is easier said than done). She's far away from that now, from Mike Morris and the rest of his fucking campaign, no one she's spoken to having even heard his name before, at least as much as she's been able to tell.

That is, she was supposed to be. Everything having been uprooted, she actually thought she'd have been okay with that. None of the past was going to have followed her here; she wasn't going to have to be the intern who fucked the married presidential candidate and got an abortion (the latter only applying where getting herself to a doctor has been concerned), like she knows she'd have wound up being back home after the other side got a hold of the story, and she wasn't going to be the girl who killed herself, either, and not even the daughter of the chairman of the DNC. Daunting as some of that has been, the idea is kind of refreshing, too. After all, if there's one thing she's ever been good at — and okay, she's good at a lot of things, including but not limited to fucking and fucking up — it's making sure she seems alright when she's anything but, and that's been the case here. In her own head, she'll never get away from what she did, knowing full well that screwing a married man, getting an abortion and killing oneself is supposed to be a one-way ticket straight to whatever Hell is, but at least she hasn't had to let it define her.

One glimpse of Stephen Meyers, and suddenly, she isn't so sure that's going to remain the case. Whether he's a figment of her imagination or not, or just a face she caught from the wrong angle and jumped to the worst conclusion about, it's like a sign that everything has really followed her after all, making the smile she'd plastered on fade and her stomach drop. Of all people from home she'd have wanted to turn up, he isn't last on the hypothetical list (that would be Morris), but anything else that seeing him might make her feel — and it is him, she's sure of it now, more so with every passing second — gets easily buried by residual fury, the sound of his stupid goddamn voicemail message echoing through her head. Jaw set, she swallows hard, not certain yet if he's seen her. The bar's all but empty, but the corner booth she's inhabited isn't the most visible. Either way, she's not about to slink off into the night. She told him once that she wasn't going away, and whether he even listened to the fucking message or not, she isn't going to do so now, either.

Standing, she stares at him and shakes her head, her own voice almost jarring as it cuts through the relative quiet. "No fucking way."

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It's her voice that cuts through him before he sees her. It's a voice Stephen knows better than he should after the brief while he knew Molly Stearns, in as much as he can say he knew her, and at the same time, it's already fading at the edges. It would be good if he didn't keep hearing her in his head at the wrong moment, that sweet, angry voice and its dreadful certainty. I'm not going away.

He wishes she fucking would, and that's probably wrong, you know, it's probably not the kind of thing you're supposed to wish on the dead (God rest her soul, if he even believes in God, which he might, it depends, who's asking?), but Stephen's not so good with supposed to anyway. It's supposed to take decades to build the kind of career he's got, but fuck that.

The kind of career he had.

He's been in the city long enough to know he's going to have to start all but from scratch again. He's been in the city long enough, too, to know that impossible has changed definitions since the last time he looked it up. Example: it should be impossible that the voice he hears actually belongs to the girl in question — not just her in his head, but with a corporeal form he can't forget either — but there she is, her expression hard and lovely, just the way he remembers it (there aren't even pictures).

He glances behind him, on the off chance this is one of those things, like those two guys who look like brothers but aren't, and she just looks and sounds like she's about to rip his head off and his heart out, and really she's just talking to or about someone else. There's not really anyone else here, though, the drink in his hand one he had to serve himself. He looks at her, brow raising, heart twisting, and for once, finds words deserting him. It could still be a mistake. He shouldn't even be kidding himself it isn't (it's already been established this isn't hell or any other kind of afterlife, though if they want to say he's not being punished, he knows that's a lie). There's impossible and then there's dead, and Molly Stearns is dead. She made damn sure of that.

Her heart's beating so fast in her chest it's a wonder it ever ceased to do so, though Molly has never once lost sight of the fact that it did. At times, she's sworn she can remember it happening, though that's entirely illogical, probably just her imagination bridging the gap between everything becoming hazy and waking up in an unfamiliar place. No one is supposed to be able to remember actually dying. But then, she was never supposed to be the kind of girl to kill herself at all, let alone what got her there in the first place, so maybe the point is moot.

Besides, it doesn't matter when she's staring at a man with Stephen Meyers' face, at once hoping that it is him and that it isn't. She knows it happens, that people can look alike with no apparent cause, like the officer who found her and the doctor she saw at the hospital. She'll have made a fool of herself if this is another situation like that, but then, there's no reason for her to have any real desire to see Stephen again after what he did (and what he didn't do) and what his presence here would seem to stand for. To her, he seems too like Stephen to not be him, but she clearly never really knew Stephen at all, so it's not like she really has anything to base that on. If it is him, though, feigning ignorance, looking at her like she's a stranger, then God, he's even more of a bastard than she thought. It almost doesn't seem fucking fair, except she's not sure she actually deserves more than this. He fucked her over, but it isn't as if she did nothing to get herself there.

Drawing in a shaky gasp of a breath, fighting off the sudden impulse to let her eyes fill with tears, she thinks she'd like to slap him so hard his goddamn teeth fall out, then realizes what she would rather do is curl against his chest and cry. For now, she does neither. "Tell me you're not him," she says, fixing him with a pleading, half-desperate look, one that feels too familiar where the person she thinks he is is concerned, her voice wavering. She doesn't want to speak too loudly when it's so fucking quiet (and she really doesn't want to make a scene, contrary to appearances. This wasn't supposed to have followed her here, and on the off-chance it is a mistake, it's one she'll put behind her as quickly as she can), but she's sure he'll hear her, that he'll get it. "Stephen."

Stephen closes his eyes and turns his head away, his name on her lips enough of a blow in itself. Okay, so this is impossible. So is being here at all. So is most of what goes on in this town. Possible or not, she's here and there's no mistaking that this is, in fact, her.

Even so, he considers lying, giving her what she wants just this once. He could claim he's someone else, get up and walk away. It wouldn't work, though. It doesn't matter where he is, he isn't the kind of guy who's just going to fade into the woodwork and never be seen again. She'll hear about him and know he lied, she'll think it was his way of brushing her off, wiping his slate clean. In a way, it would be, but it wouldn't be the real reason. And she deserves truth from someone.

"I would," he says, trying to maintain some semblance of calm, though he knows his eyes are going glassy already as he looks up at her, "but ironically, I'm not that good a liar." It's all wrong. What he should be doing is apologizing, but he can't do that here. What would he do, get on his knees and beg her forgiveness in a deserted bar? It'd be a pretty gesture, but he doesn't get to do that, not with her, act like the right words are going to fix this the way he's managed to use them to fix just about everything else over the years. He fucked up. She paid for it, he walked off with a raise. Begging wouldn't cut it. "I thought maybe you were someone else, too."

Edited 2012-04-04 20:11 (UTC)

It's a perfectly reasonable explanation, of course. At least, it would be coming from anyone else. Despite the way he looks, though — not all that different from the way she does, giving in and letting her eyes start to burn with unshed tears — it feels a little like adding insult to injury, the fact that they're in public the only thing that keeps Molly from showing how much it stings, fury hitting her hard and fast all over again, leaving her feeling like she's shaking, like her blood is actually boiling. He wasn't the worst of them, Stephen, not really, but just for the moment, buried under the shred of relief she feels at knowing that it actually is him, she hates him so much she doesn't know what to do with it, so much that it makes her miserable. They should leave, not do this here when she can't guarantee that she won't start screaming at him (if she doesn't fall apart first), but what the hell is she supposed to do, suggest that he come home with her? There would be no point. They aren't friends; they never were. She was probably only ever a good fuck to him at best, a stupid kid at worst, and some time after that, a perfect opportunity to get revenge, inconsequential except for what her story could do to Morris.

She hates him so much it hurts, but still not as much as she should.

"What, you figured you were rid of me that easily?" she asks with a scoff, lips pressing briefly into a sardonic smile. She can't make it last, though, instead reaching blindly for the drink she left on the table and taking a sip of it. It's a lot more needed now than it was when she first got it for herself; if anything, it's not strong enough. "Well, I'm here." This wasn't what she'd had in mind at all when she told him she wasn't going away, but she did mean it. "I — I didn't know you were."

"I haven't been here long," Stephen answers. The simplest thing is to focus on the facts, the few aspects of this that are clear, unclouded by emotion. "A couple weeks. They didn't give me a phonebook or anything." He wonders if her phone still works, if he could have called her that way. Then he remembers he still has her phone, or he did before he got here, and that that's information he should probably keep from her for now, until this has settled a little.

Scrubbing his hand over his face, he shakes his head. "I didn't know you were here either. It wasn't — it's kind of a big coincidence, I wasn't expecting it." Except he doesn't know how something like this could possibly be coincidence, the pair of them both in this damned city, in the same bar on the same night, no one else to be seen. It makes it that much harder to believe all this is even happening, that isn't just some kind of a hallucination, a manifestation of the guilt he's done his best to repress.

Edited 2012-04-04 20:40 (UTC)

"No," Molly says, a little quieter, head lowering briefly. "Why would you, right?" This time, she means it, and not just because it's a coincidence. It may have gone unspoken by both of them thus far, but there's no question in her mind that they both know she's dead, and why the hell would he expect to see a dead girl walking around, having a drink in a bar like everything's normal? If she wanted to, she could still pick a fight over it, but it would be grasping at straws, and she has more than enough to blame him for without seizing on something else when it's completely unnecessary. She doesn't really want to hate him, after all, though she does anyway. He could be the one person she has here. Then again, she remembers only too well how it ended the last time Stephen Meyers was the one person in her corner, whom she let herself rely on, and she would really rather avoid any kind of repeat of that.

She takes another sip of her drink and thinks about asking him to fix her a second one, but her stomach is twisting unpleasantly already, making it seem entirely not worth it. Instead, she blurts out without meaning to, "Look, can we go?" She looks more lost than she'd like, wide-eyed and shaken, but he's seen her look worse, and this was never going to be easy. Before he turned up, she could leave all of that behind her. Now, it's like being confronted with it all over again, and it fucking hurts, and at least for the moment, she can't pretend otherwise. With him here in front of her, seemingly so calm, it's too much for that. "I don't want to do this here."

"Molly..." It hits him again, uncomfortable on every possible level, that she's just a kid. Most of the time he knew her, Stephen couldn't see her that way, and not just because they were fucking. She seemed so confident, so sure of herself, and he wonders now how much of that was just because she's so damn young. She doesn't know any better, or she knows just enough to want to hide how little she's sure of, because, at the end of the day, she's a little girl, just twenty years old. He wants to reach out and hold her, just this once, like he would a sister or a friend, someone who just needs protection it's too late to offer, that was never his to give. He wants to hold her like more than that. He doesn't have the right, though, not to that, not with her.

"Yeah, of course," he says, voice dull as he gets to his feet. "Come on. Let's get you out of here."

There's a moment, after hearing him say that, that Molly nearly changes her mind, thinks about telling him instead that it doesn't matter and leaving on her own and letting him move on with his life the way he evidently intended to back home. If she didn't matter to him before, there isn't any good reason why she should now, and it isn't like there's anything she could get from him aside from maybe the satisfaction that would come from slapping him like she's still half-tempted to. The trouble is, though, the thing that both makes her want to walk away and keeps her where she is, nodding before she even realizes it, is that he sounds like he just might actually mean it, the choice of words seeming to imply something like actual concern about her after all . She thought he cared once, of course, and was dead wrong (in more ways than one, which really isn't fucking funny), but he doesn't really have anything to gain now either, and she doesn't know what to do with that. When just seeing him again is so overwhelming, that borders on too much, could potentially distort how she's been looking at everything in a way she isn't sure she'll want to deal with.

It has to happen, though, and she knows it. She may not usually believe in fate or anything like that, but they're both here now, and the odds of that are so slim that it's hard not to think that it might mean something. Besides, though she can't exactly look for closure when she's fucking dead, he might at least be able to answer a few of her questions. Leaving her drink on the table, she grabs the jacket and purse left in her booth before she starts for the door, glancing intermittently at Stephen all the while, just barely managing to curb the impulse to reach for his hand. (She shouldn't still want to hold on to him, but it's a little late for that.) "Okay," she says, jaw set and chin lifted, what might seem defiant if she weren't aware of what shaky ground she's on and the fact that she suspects he'll be able to see how difficult it is for her to keep herself together. Though she shouldn't, she adds when she's reached the door, "Thanks."

Stephen shakes his head, reaching to hold it open for her. He just barely curbs the urge to look back over his shoulder and see if they've been seen together, forcing himself to remember that, here, it doesn't matter, and there's no one to see anyway. They left all that back in the real world, and he's still not entirely sure he even really believes this is happening, that she's here. He hasn't touched her yet, not one brush of a fingertip against hers, no tangible evidence. He holds back, not sure if he wants to try or not, uncertain what answer he wants. This shouldn't be happening, but she's here.

And she shouldn't be thanking him for a damn thing.

"Around the corner," he says, nodding to the right. "You okay walking a little?" It's only a couple blocks, since he hasn't wandered too far from the new place yet, but she's as shaky as he feels. Whatever it is she needs, whatever she has to say, he doubts she wants to do it out here, but he doesn't want to push her. He's fucked up enough as it is. As far as he can tell, she's not as furious with him as he would have expected her to be, but he's still wary, and it wouldn't do him any good to find out he's wrong out where anyone can hear either. It may be a new city, but that's all the more reason to keep their dirty laundry buried deep as they can get it.

"Yeah," Molly says with a nod, a slight icy edge returning to her voice. "Of course." It's an instinctive response more than anything else, born of wanting to seem capable rather than as unsteady as she feels, but it's true even so. Here, physically speaking, she's alive and well, as if nothing ever happened. A few blocks isn't going to kill her (she already took care of that on her own). Besides, she doesn't need him trying to take care of her; she remembers too well what happened the last time he did, so much that she could almost laugh at the irony of this apparent concern coming from him now, when it's far too late for that. He's here now, but she's learned better than to let that mean anything. Leaning on him isn't something she can do. She just kind of wishes she could.

Slipping her jacket on, one that she brought with her more for show than anything else, she wraps her arms around herself, glancing in his direction when she thinks he won't see, though her gaze lingers longer than it should. She still can't tell if she's pleased to see him or not, unable to work through the mess of feelings she has where Stephen is concerned, and everything she hasn't yet dealt with since showing up. It was easy, when she was on her own, to leave it all in the past, but it isn't strictly her past anymore, not when she's being faced with this. She wants to say something, but whether it's to curse him out or ask why he's here beside her at all or apologize in her own right, she hasn't got a clue. The same goes for a lot of things, it seems. Though she's tempted to reach for his hand, his arm, to curl against his side, she doesn't do that, either. They aren't a couple and they never were (though there may have been a moment or two when she thought they could have been). "Where are we even going?"

Stephen keeps his hands in his pockets, too aware of her gaze on him to risk looking over in turn or letting his expression lapse into anything revealing how he feels, as though that could be summed up so simply. He doesn't know what's going on here, what he's supposed to do, what happens next. Looking ahead, seeing possible outcomes and how to avoid the worst of them, it's his job, but the thing is that the masses are a lot easier to predict — and, he thinks bitterly, to manipulate — than an individual is, and he has no desire to fuck around with Molly now. He's done enough damage. He won't blame himself for all of it, because in the end, he was a guy in the wrong place at the right time, but that doesn't mean he didn't make his share of mistakes, too.

Being sorry for that and angry with himself doesn't make him any less mad at her or Morris, any less upset every time he glimpses her, doesn't make him stop being bewildered this is even happening. He keeps thinking, maybe this next step, he'll trip and wake up. "My apartment," he says, faint dry humor in his tone at that. It's been a while since he actually stayed one place for long, swept up in the campaign, and he still doesn't understand how it's possible to turn up in a city and have a place waiting for him, money, everything. It isn't how he understands life to work, even if it feels exactly like a bribe. "If that's alright with you. I figured at least it's quiet."

"No, it's fine," Molly says, unable to keep the note of surprise out of her voice. It's the sort of thing that ought to be purely logical, but it still isn't what she'd have expected, leaving her again torn between grateful for this and wishing it weren't the case. If he cared, he should have done so fucking sooner. Now, it's too little, too late, except it's still more than she's gotten since she showed up here. He makes it too fucking difficult to hate him, and for that, she hates him that much more, everything at odds. She shouldn't want to go back to his place at all, should walk away and tell him she doesn't need anything from him after the way he left her, but she doesn't, can't, won't. Chances are, it's not a sign of anything anyway, just him doing what's easiest (or so she'd like to believe. It's been simpler to keep everything black and white in her head, to acknowledge that he had no reason to help her at all but to still make him out to be heartless, the guy who'd have fucked her over without a second thought. Now, with this, she doesn't really know what to think, if it was ever more complicated than that or if this is just the product of guilt).

Not wanting to stay silent, she bites her lip, gaze averting to her feet again. "I've been coming here a lot," she adds, certain that it's unhelpful. If nothing else, though, she knows the area well enough that she'll at least be able to make a quick exit if she needs to, once she's said what she means to (not that she has the first idea yet what that will be). It's probably something to keep in mind, anyway, that even in a city, their chances of running into each other again are fairly high. She'll decide how she feels about the possibility of that later. "So I guess it was only a matter of time before we saw each other."

"Of all the bars in all the cities in all the world," Stephen says, wry and weary. She's as young as ever, but the last few weeks have aged him a hundred years. She's right, that it was only going to be a matter of time, but that doesn't feel true, because this still doesn't feel real. It doesn't matter if it does or not, though, because it's happening, and he's learned that sometimes how you feel about a thing doesn't fucking matter. There isn't always the luxury of time to decipher how something feels, what's right or wrong or up or down, only whatever needs to be done to keep floating and, if you're lucky, to rise above, to appear to soar. It isn't so simple as just making things work now and cleaning up the cut corners later, either. There's no room for mistakes. He told her that once, not long ago, just a lifetime or so. The trouble is, everyone fucks up eventually.

"I should've given you more warning," he says, finally allowing himself to glance her way. "A little time to figure out what you're gonna say when you start yelling." It's not much of a joke. He expects it. She'll lose her head eventually, this sad timidity sliding back to that icy fury he glimpsed at first and as they left, and then he'll really get an earful. He'll probably deserve most of it, and he'll take the rest, too. If he'd known she would be there, he doesn't know if he would have gone tonight (no, he does, he would have, he knows). As it was, he thought she'd already turned into just a memory, or maybe replaced the conscience he dropped somewhere when he wasn't looking. Pushing open the door to his building, he gestures for her to head on in.

"Don't worry," Molly says, voice airy, though there's something dark in her tone too, something not quite genuine. "I've already been thinking about it." That she's come up with nothing so far except to ask where the fuck he was isn't something she feels the need to mention, certainly not now. She'll get there eventually, when she stops skipping back and forth between wanting to hold fast to him and to make him really fucking sorry. He hasn't said those words yet, and that hasn't escaped her, either. Maybe she ought to give him a chance to before she works up to yelling. He's brought her here, after all, when he could have pretended to be someone else or refused to leave with her. That counts for something. For that matter, so does the fact that he's prepared for her to yell at all. She doesn't trust Stephen Meyers as far as she can throw him, though, and can't be sure that this isn't just a ploy, some way of trying to mollify her, to win her back over. It won't work. She might not hate him as much as she should, but she does still hate him.

What she hates even more is that she can't bring herself to walk away, that being here with him now isn't just about getting closure or giving him a piece of her mind. She doesn't know quite what it is, but there's something. She can only hope that going along with this, whatever she's getting herself into now, will be enough to offer some insight, that it will be worth it. Head tipping up, she glances around the lobby, gaze settling back on Stephen after a moment, mostly for a lack of knowing what to do, what to say. "Doesn't have anything on the Millennium, but it's nice."

"It's got its charm," Stephen says. "No, it doesn't, not really, but I'd started to forget what it was like not living on the road." He's not sure he's all that thrilled to be reminded, and he's ready to kick himself for the fact he's even trying to talk like this is a normal day, but there's not a hell of a lot else to do. He's a pretty private person, always has been, a fact that serves him well in politics. Lately, he's just been given a whole lot more reasons to stay that way. Saying anything of meaning or worth out here where anyone could hear — well, maybe it doesn't mean much to anyone here. Maybe it does or could or will.

It's not like he started thinking five moves ahead when Paul fired him or Duffy called him — and what a laugh that is, to think of himself as some kind of master of the board when he got played so hard he'll never get his breath back — and he isn't going to stop just because he's here and she is, somehow, impossibly, alive. If he's stuck here, it doesn't matter. Wherever he is, he's got a future to consider. That she does, too, is just an unexpected and, admittedly, chilling bonus. The trouble is, from the moment Molly walked into his office, he hasn't been able to figure out where she fits on the board.

Leading her to the elevator, Stephen taps his foot, waiting for it to descend to the lobby. There are so many things he could say to her and a lot he should say to her, and a few of them even overlap, but for the moment, it's hard not to just stare at his shoes or stare at her (is she somehow more beautiful or is that just relief? And is that just another name for guilt?).

The bell dings, signifying its arrival. He nearly jumps out of his skin, swallows a breath. "After you."

Molly watches Stephen with her head turned over her shoulder as she steps past him into the elevator, not sure what she's waiting for, what she's worried about, whether the tension she thinks she feels is something legitimate or in her imagination. It's not like they're characters in a movie and she's going to get bumped off the second the doors slide closed; Stephen might be a lot of fucked up things, but he's not quite that kind of guy, and anyway, the situation was always a whole lot more complicated than that. She doesn't want this to have followed them here any more than she imagines he does, and no matter how furious with him she might be — so much she feels almost like she's trembling with it, though she was shaky already and it's so difficult to differentiate one from the other, everything too confusing for that — she wouldn't go talking about what happened because she'd only be hurting herself in the process (because she's not like him). She hopes he knows that, even opens her mouth to say so, but can't bring herself to. They're still practically in public, after all, even if the elevator and so much of this city is otherwise empty.

Standing with her back to the wall, she looks away from him only to glance from one corner to the other, not realizing until she's already done so that she's looking for a camera. It's so unbelievably fucking stupid, but she picked up that secrecy from him, from torn-up one-sentence notes and meetings in dark stairwells. There's nothing, anyway, and that's a relief. She could kiss him right now and no one else would ever know (but then, why would she want to? More importantly, what the hell reason would she even have to think he'd let her get that far? They might have had their fun before, but that was before, and the chances of him seeing her like he did then are slim to none).

"I guess that would be weird for you, huh," she says, not quite a question, something just slightly removed, guarded, in the tone of her voice. "Not that it's not weird anyway."

"It's definitely that." What happens after this, he doesn't know. That's the thing. Stephen hates not knowing. He's used to it, because there are always variables, but usually he can make enough of a guess to look like he knows, to at least appear in control. Then again, Molly never really fell for that bullshit anyway, so there's no point in trying to pull it on her now. He still can't let go of his guard, not enough to let her see just how fucked in the head he feels, watching her stand a few feet away.

He never had time to figure her out. He never had time to figure himself out when it came to her, just a few days of his life where she swept in and turned everything upside down and vanished again. They were what they were, whatever that was, and he was fine with that being a thing that wasn't a thing, because he's a busy guy, because she's not the kind to be held back, because neither of them was supposed to be looking for anything else, but that didn't mean she was nothing. Now whatever it is has faded away, marred by her death and his mistakes, the panic in her voice on his messages after she was already gone. Whatever it was, it won't ever be that again.

He thinks of telling her he went to the funeral. He thinks, it was a nice service. Her dad's not as much of an asshole as he thought. Even the chairman of the DNC's just a dad sometimes.

This isn't going to be easy. He never thought it would be, but then, he never thought it would happen either. Sometimes when it gets late and he's alone in his room with his work, in the brief while since her death, he's thought of her and the things he'd say if he could. Even in his head, she can't forgive him.

The building's not that tall and he's not that far up, just on the third floor. Maybe waiting for his apartment is an excuse to give him a chance to get his thoughts in order, but it doesn't achieve that end, everything still scattered as the doors open and he heads out, nods for her to follow.

Not for the first time, though probably for the last, given how close they must be to his apartment now, Molly considers just turning and walking away, ignoring whatever it is she's trying to accomplish here and leaving him be. Nothing he says or does now is going to change the fact that he wasn't fucking there when she needed him to be, or that she's a corpse back home and this is her one shot at continuing to have a life, and as much as she'd like to think that he owes her an explanation at the very least, the truth is, he doesn't. He can't owe her anything when she doubts she ever meant anything to him in the first place, when she was probably just an annoyance who was good in bed, a potential disaster who then became his fuel for the other team's fire. (It's funny, in the sort of way that isn't actually amusing at all. She was just about convinced of it before she saw him in the bar; now, the more she tries to think it, the less she actually believes it, details she buried coming to the surface again — the shirt of his she slept in and how it smelled, the way he kissed her head before he left the clinic. He should have fucking been there. It turns her stomach all over again.) She could go, they could put all of this behind them, but the thing is, she's pretty sure neither of them could ever actually forget. They won't be any better off if they don't have it out now, and she has to admit, she's curious, though it's all but unnoticeable under the tangle of other emotions, fury and guilt and a deep sadness. Any excuse he gives will be bullshit, but he's good at that. She can at least hear what he has to say.

She follows along quietly, shoulders curling slightly forward when she wraps her arms around herself again, though she keeps her chin lifted. She's just about as scared now as she's ever been, less for the situation itself and more for having to finally address all of this, but she doesn't want him to see her as some frightened, lost little girl. That she might be all of those things isn't the fucking point. There's nothing he can do about it now, and he probably wouldn't even if he could. That, she does believe. "So it's just down here?" she says, more for the sake of saying something in the first place than anything else, all the silence uncomfortable, even if she could probably use it to figure out just what the fuck she's going to say to him when she can barely get her own thoughts in order. She'll come up with something.

"Yeah."

He could be a little more talkative, Stephen knows that. Most of the time, he's good at that. He's charming, he knows he is, or he can be, and all it really takes is a little effort, a little observation, some intuition. Watching people, that's all it is, and being able to tell how to grease the wheels, so to speak. He's good with people and he's shit with them, and Molly's proof of both. Trying to turn on the charm now would go over like a Democrat in Orange County. She knows better.

Good for her, though. Someone should. She always did, to some extent, but now she really knows. He doesn't have the first fucking clue what to say to her, because he can think of about fifteen things he needs to say or should say, so he just doesn't say anything. She deserves better than whatever bullshit spin he could put on it heading down an empty hallway, more thought than he's had time to give it, though it isn't like he's planning on just lying down and taking whatever's coming his way.

He unlocks the door and steps aside, leaning back against it to let her in past him. "In fact, it's right here. Told you it wasn't far."

"Yeah, you did," Molly says on an exhale, unable to help wondering if that might be the first true thing he ever said to her at all. It wouldn't surprise her, really. Capable though this past little while — God, it can't be more than just a few minutes, though it somehow feels longer, silences stretching out to seem like an eternity — has left her of recognizing that her perspective is skewed, clouded by what he turned out to be rather than an accurate memory of how he really was, the facts still speak for themselves, and she couldn't let go of that if she wanted to. She doesn't, anyway. He's the one who told her that she had to wake the fuck up, and he's the one who made her do so. She wonders if maybe that was the point, the lesson he was trying to give her there, if it was even a warning of sorts. Either way, she knows now just what a dirty business politics is, had to learn that the hard way. It's something she doesn't want any further part of, though she's not entirely sure what that means she'll do instead, when she wasn't supposed to be able to do anything at all.

Head a cloudy mess, she glances over her shoulder as she walks inside, checking to make sure the hallway is still empty, like it even makes a difference now. What she really needs to do is come up with somewhere to start, sooner rather than later. She hasn't even decided yet if she wants to give him a chance to defend himself first. It might save her some time and energy, but she's not sure she'll even be able to believe a word that comes out of his mouth, at least not yet. He's brought her here, and that does count for something, but it doesn't change the past. Nothing can, not even the fact that she's alive here, inexplicably given a second chance that she really doesn't think she deserves. (He got her where she was, but in the end, that last decision was hers. That will always be with her, no matter what city or world or goddamn universe she winds up in.)

She doesn't go far once she's through the doorway, neither steps out of her shoes nor slides her jacket off, stays just a few feet from the exit. It isn't as if she thinks she's going to have to make a run for it, that would be fucking absurd, but she isn't here to make herself at home. This isn't a sleepover in his hotel room; it's a space that's decidedly not hers, that almost makes her skin crawl, though she has no intention of saying as much, not wanting him to take whatever excuse he can get to cut this short. He doesn't get that right, not now, after the way he left her.

Molly isn't even aware of the way her eyes are burning until she draws in a breath that winds up being shakier than she'd have liked. She could let him try to explain himself first, but she won't. Now that she's here, in Stephen's fucking apartment, finally facing the person she spent the last few hours of her life most wanting to see, she doesn't think she could. There are at least a dozen things she could say, questions she could ask, and she still hasn't given up on the idea of slapping him, but there are a few things that are more important, the ones she's barely been able to let go of since showing up here. That's the worst part, she thinks, about going the way she did: nothing's resolved, everything left uncertain. Then again, most people don't wake up after they die, so maybe it only applies in her case.

"Did you tell?" she asks when the door is closed, jaw set. No good would come from beating around the bush now; they both know why she's here, and it isn't for any more fucking small talk. "Does — does everyone know?"

Stephen gets the door closed before she speaks, locks it on second thought, the notion he might want to leave it otherwise so she can leave easier if she takes a mind to giving way to the idea that he might need the few extra seconds not to make it so easy for her to get the last word. He plans to ask if she's okay, since she seemed pretty shaky back at the bar, but then it occurs to him that's about the stupidest fucking thing he could ask, since yes, she's alive, so that's better than she is back home and, no, she clearly isn't.

He's not exactly surprised she jumps in the moment she can, doesn't give him the chance to cut in first, though the question surprises him more than it should. Brow raising, he shakes his head. "No."

Sucking in a deep breath, he sighs, shrugging off his jacket as he walks past her. He leaves it on the back of a chair and gets to the business of undoing the buttons on his cuffs, rolling up his sleeves like he's preparing for a fight, which he is. It doesn't do much to buy him time. "No one knows but the people who already knew," he says, looking up at her from his arm, his expression still impassive but for the degree of force it takes to keep it that way. "You, me and Morris."

It's not that he didn't try to change that fact, something he knows she deserves an apology for, but if she thinks he sold her out, then it's nothing she doesn't already know he's capable of. He's not ready yet to give her that kind of ammunition, even when he knows he deserves the fallout.

Despite the uncertainty implied in having asked a question at all, it isn't what Molly expects to hear, and she just barely manages to school her expression in time to keep from letting it show. When she's already been so unsteady, so visibly shaken, that isn't saying much, but if he can keep his cards close to his chest, then so can she. It's a sick, twisted game these people play and she doesn't want to play it, but she learned from the best how to do so. She wonders if Stephen knows that, if he'll recognize it in her or if he, too, will have too fully formed a perspective to see things for how they really are. He can't think that much of her, after all, she knows that, between the way he lectured her and then the way he cast her aside. Using that to her advantage is hardly ideal, but none of this was ever going to be in the first place, and it's not like she has many other choices. She isn't the girl she used to be, the one he fucked over, and it's time he figured that out. No matter how desperate she got back there, she's here now, and just like she said, she isn't going away, not about to leave this be so easily.

Still, the effort it takes not to show how caught off-guard she is is startling in its own right, chest tightening. She might have asked, but she'd been sure of what she was going to hear, and it wasn't that. It still doesn't necessarily mean much, not a confirmation of anything either way, but it throws her view of things even further off, leaves her that much less sure of what this means, where the two of them stand or how she's supposed to respond to that. As far as she'd been able to tell, he had told already. Maybe something stopped him; the alternative isn't something she has the first idea how to even consider.

(That it stings to even hear Morris' name isn't something she has any intention of letting him know, either. It's not like she ever had any feelings for him, or like all of it was his fault, but he was as much to blame in her getting knocked up as she was. Besides, Stephen isn't the only one who didn't answer his phone that night, though he's the one she was counting on to, whom she actually thought might come through. Him, she could have had feelings for, but whatever swell of emotion she feels just looking at him now, she's pretty sure any chance of that is now as dead as she is back home.)

"So what stopped you?" she asks. Her eyes are still burning, glassy with tears she doesn't want to let fall yet, but her voice is even, cold, gaze following him as he sheds his jacket and rolls up his sleeves. Though it could probably be taken as an invitation to do the same herself, she hasn't yet budged from where she stands. She has no intention of bolting, but there isn't a chance of her getting comfortable, so she doesn't want to go through the motions of doing so. That sort of pretending won't do either of them any good; if anything, it would just be going easy on him, and that isn't something she currently has it in her to do. "I know you were working with Duffy. Did he just not want to break the story when there would've been no way to prove it?" Something in her stomach twists at the memory of Stephen in the hotel room the night he answered her phone, trying to be so certain that no one had seen her. He could have been trying to do the opposite, working against her from the very beginning, an idea that's chilling this long after the fact.

It's not that her first question isn't completely, painfully valid. It's hard for Stephen to answer, though, when he can just about hear the rush of blood and adrenaline in his veins, the pure seething anger that roils up under his skin at her accusation, spoken as simply as a fact. Besides, righteous indignation has always been easier for him to stomach than guilt.

The trouble is, it's also more difficult to hide, not least because he doesn't have the presence of mind to stop himself before he moves closer, head snapping up again and lip curling in some mix of fury and disgust. Maybe he was willing to switch camps once he'd been kicked out, but that's not a crime and it isn't the betrayal she's suggesting, worse even than what Paul said. "No," he says, getting closer, though he stops short before he's anywhere near to touching her, "because he never heard it. Like I said, you, me and Morris. I wasn't fucking working with Duffy. I took one goddamn meeting at a — at a bar, because he called and he said it was important, and he tried to get me to sell out and I didn't do it, and Paul fired me for it. Who the fuck told you I was working for him?"

He can't fault her for believing he'd tell when he tried to, but that doesn't change anything. Under the fact he's livid, there's something pulling tight in him, nausea rocking him where he stands. Does it really matter why she thought he would do that to her if he's still capable of it either way? He might feel like shit for it now and for the fact he's used her to get ahead, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't do it again, play any card he had in hand to get back on the campaign and make this happen. She was a girl, just a girl, and though she was special or could have been, in the end, with her gone, she just wasn't enough to stand in the way and make him forget why he stood so staunchly behind Morris to begin with. The fucker seems barely human to him now, but that doesn't mean he can't change the world for the better, and none of the small, petty, disgusting games they play to get ahead or punish each other mean a thing next to that.

They've kept such a careful distance this entire time that Molly tenses instinctively when Stephen moves towards her, almost as if afraid he might do something to her, though she knows full well that's bullshit. In the brief time they knew each other — and it was that, half a week that seems like a lifetime and led to the end of hers — he was never really anything but tender with her, at least physically speaking. That kiss on her head was one hell of a goodbye. Still, uncharacteristic of him though it would be, she's been on the defensive ever since she showed up here, wanting to protect this one last thing she's got, and never more so than facing the man whom she holds partly responsible for how she wound up where she was. Being on her guard is only natural. She has no intention of acting scared, anyway, like some little girl who'll be easily run off, bullied into submission. If anything, all it does is make her more defiant, chin lifting, the look on her face practically daring him to get closer, to try to hurt her. All it would be is the excuse she needs to hit him so hard he never forgets how much it hurts, a sting to equal the one she felt when his phone sent her to voicemail for the dozenth time. (There were three messages, but many more calls.)

At least it's a reaction, something better than the passive-aggressive silence she got before she took matters into her own hands. Deep down, she wouldn't want him to be angry with her, and not just because he has no right to be now, but he was that anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter. Trying to convince herself that she doesn't give a shit about Stephen Meyers is a lost cause (she wouldn't be so upset otherwise, and she knows it. From Morris, she expected nothing, but from Stephen, getting it was a betrayal, because he mattered, because she felt something, though nothing she could put a name to), but that's absolutely no reason for her to shy away or try to talk him down from this now. They never got to have it out back home because he never gave her that fucking chance. This is an opportunity that can't be passed up.

It just isn't how she expected it would go, or, rather, what she thought his explanation would be, since she was never supposed to get this chance in the first place. It's unsettling, though whether that's more for the fact that she's not sure she believes him or what all of it implies, she hasn't got the first idea. Here, she has no choice but to take his word for it, and he would lie, she has no real doubt about that, if it meant protecting himself. But they're without the lives they left behind (or cut short, in her case), and it's not like there's anyone she would fucking tell in the first place when it would hurt her as much as it would hurt him to do so. If he were just trying to calm her down, to get her off his case and out of his life, then he wouldn't be so gloriously mad at her, and that knee-jerk response seemed genuine.

If he means it, though, what the fuck does that mean for her?

"Ben," she answers, standing her ground and refusing to look away from him, voice finally wavering from some combination of fury and fear of what he might tell her next. "He was there, you know, he heard everything, and he — he came to my room to tell me, God, that he got fucking promoted, but —" She cuts herself off with a shake of her head and a mirthless laugh, rolling her eyes. "He also said that you were apparently working with Duffy, and that when you got fired, you said you were taking everyone down with you. Everyone." Her face crumples a little, her attempts to keep herself together growing less successful as the subject strays closer to the real point, but she doesn't let it faze her. She might be on the verge of falling apart, but she won't give him that excuse to slow down or back off or treat her like some broken thing. She's been on her own this entire time, though she'd thought briefly that she might have had him in her corner too, and she can sure as fuck fend for herself now. "So if that's not the story, then what is, Stephen? Because you've said what didn't happen, but you haven't told me a thing yet that did."

"Ben's a fucking idiot," Stephen snaps, vehement on this in a way he wouldn't ordinarily be. Usually, though, Ben doesn't give him cause to be this pissed. The guy's not exactly a genius at his job, but he's good, competent, better than a lot of other assholes out there, otherwise they would have tossed him long ago. At least, that was what Stephen had thought previously, but if this is the way he acts, then he's clearly overestimated him. "It was a meeting, that's it. One meeting because I thought it was important."

That's as far as he can blame anyone else, though, one hand at his hip and the other pushing roughly through his hair as he turns away, pacing a few short steps. Maybe he wasn't exactly the demented lunatic Ben apparently made him out to be, but he can't deny that he said as much. Even he can't remember exactly how he put it now, too much caught up in the heat of his anger then to think as clearly as he should have, but he said it and meant it.

Tone cooling, but no less angry, he looks her right in the eye. "So Paul fires me. Ben goes back to you gloating. I'm a little pissed, so yeah, I make a couple threats. Paul thinks a meeting's disloyal, okay. I'll show him disloyal." He steps closer. "I went to Duffy, tried to get him to hire me. I was gonna take everyone down, yeah, I was gonna give Pullman the election on a silver plate. But he didn't want me. Just didn't want Paul to have me. And you. I'm so — so angry, you know, this is my life we're talking about, this is everything I've been working on, out from under me, so yeah, I forgot about you. You the person, I mean, not you the commodity. You, I try to sell out."

Even he isn't sure what he's doing, all but daring her to lash out. Hell, maybe they both deserve it, a little retribution for them both, some kind of punishment for him, payback for her. He's breathing hard, heart beating hard, and she hates him, he knows it, but that's good. Maybe now she'll listen to what he said and get the hell out of this world, take this impossible second chance and do something else with herself.

"But he won't hear word one. Unreliable source, you know. I guess you can thank him for that."

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