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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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."

"Oh, fuck you," Molly snaps before she can help herself, so angry she's trembling with it, hands curled into fists at her sides so tight she can feel the impressions her nails are leaving in her palms. She could slap him for that like she's been thinking about, he's given her the perfect opportunity, but now that they're here, now that he's actually close enough to touch, she can't actually bring herself to go through with it. It wouldn't fix anything, and it probably wouldn't be as satisfying as it is in her imagination, anyway. He would still deserve it, there's no question about that. The thing about Stephen, though, is that he's a smart guy, too fucking smart for the rest of them and maybe even for his own good, even if he was dumb enough to take that meeting with Duffy. Whatever explanation he might be trying to give himself, she doubts there's a chance in hell that he would be this close to her and not weighing the possibility of her hitting him. If he really wanted to avoid it, he would, so as far as she can tell, just the threat of it accomplishes enough for now.

She thinks she's too shaken to follow through on it, anyway, at least for the moment. After holding back for so long, there's not a thing she can do now about the tears that spill down her cheeks, as much for being furious with him as anything else (what they've both managed not to say, what she isn't going to let them dance around any longer). "You know as well as I do that it's too late for me to be fucking thanking anyone," she points out, not sounding as steady as she'd have liked, though the anger in her voice hasn't dissipated in the least. For that matter, she doesn't actually have confirmation of his knowing that yet, but it seems unlikely that he wouldn't, between the way he's looked at her and the story he's told, the fact that her death is the sort of thing that would get attention. If he doesn't, it's about time he fucking did. She may not be able to blame him for it entirely, but he's just laid out the reasons why she can and does in part. She trusted him, and worse, she liked him, and she's not sure now which was the bigger lapse of judgment on her part. What it means that the story never actually got to Duffy, she's also not sure, too riled up to stop and through that yet (mostly because she knows she won't like the conclusion she gets to, but also because it's easier to focus on hating him for now than on her own mistakes). There's enough she is certain of, like the attempted betrayal on his part, to keep her going for now, anyway.

Scoffing, she shakes her head, then gives in and shoves him hard before she speaks again. It's not as violent as her initial impulse, actually feels strangely childish a moment after the fact, but it's good, too, some sort of release for the adrenaline she's dizzy with. He's all but just confirmed that she never mattered to him in the first place, so it probably shouldn't make a difference now what his opinion of her is. "God, do you even realize how fucked up you are?" she asks, not expecting the answer to be yes, but not waiting to hear what it is. "You flip at the idea of someone saying you were working for Duffy, but you — you still went, you still tried to sell me out, and that, you have no problem with? Jesus fucking Christ, Stephen, I thought you actually —" A breath catches in her throat and she falters, visibly this time, but she presses on, lifting one hand briefly to rub at her eyes, a useless attempt to slow falling tears. "Anyway, it doesn't matter what I thought, or who you think I should be thanking. That's all over."

"What, you think I don't know that?" Stephen asks, almost grateful for the heat of anger flaring up again after the way her tears almost killed that, too. He doesn't want to hurt her, he never wanted to hurt her, no matter how furious he was with her before, but it's too late by far to spare her now. She may not be some dewy-eyed innocent, but she's fucking naive and if there's anything he can do for her now, it's educate her. It's too late for them both, so they may as well harden up and try to live with that. At least she gets to at all. That doesn't mean she gets to just decide how he felt and what he thought, to assign blame wherever she wants and not take some for herself.

He can almost feel her hands still rough against his chest, feet grounded to keep him from stumbling if she tries it again. "Go on and act like a fucking martyr," he says, fingers flexing, curling into fists, just to keep himself from reaching out and shaking her. For weeks, he's been reined in so tight that saying anything at all leaves his head spinning, the growing loss of control threatening to bowl him over. Once it starts, he can't pull it back in, voice rising. He should keep it down, but he can't even begin to give a fuck about the neighbors right now. "It's all me, that's right, come on, Molly. How fucked up am I? Go ahead, tell me. You didn't decide to kill yourself, it just happened. I told you to take all those fucking pills and finish it off with a nightcap, sure, that was me. I don't have any problem with the fact I tried to fuck you over, that's why I went looking for you, that's why I brought you back here, because I don't fucking care about you."

"That is not what I said," Molly grits out, all she can do to hold back a sob. Keeping herself together is a possibility long since past, but she still doesn't want to fall apart completely, both for her own dignity and because of who she's in front of now. It doesn't matter what Stephen already thinks of her. She's lost too much to completely give up her pride, too; she might let go more easily than she ought to, but not here and now, not with this, maybe even more so for the fact that he isn't wrong. He's not right, either, too harsh and probably a fucking liar, but he isn't completely off-base, and she has no intention of ignoring that, despite how much it hurts. That's the least she can do. She can't take it back, but she can own up to it, shaking her head emphatically, hand running through her hair so she won't reach out for him again, breach the distance that save for her one lapse has been distinctly enforced since she spotted him in the bar. She's not sure what she'd do if she did, if it would be more violent a reaction or if she would just wind up clinging to him, desperate for something, anything, one person to have on her side again. If there's absolution to be found, it sure as fuck won't be in Stephen, but sickly satisfying as his anger is, she would much rather have someone telling her it will all be okay. She hasn't felt for a long time like it could be, though she's done a damn good job of pretending otherwise.

Furious though so vicious a response makes her all over again, there's something a little softer in her tone when she speaks again, voice breaking. "Look, I know what I did, alright?" she tells him, swallowing hard with the realization that she feels like she's about to be sick. "And for as long as I'm here, I'm going to have to fucking live with that. But that doesn't —" It sinks in a moment too late, what he's said and what that means, what she thinks she's been trying to avoid learning this whole time. She still finds it difficult to believe that he gives a damn about her, especially with the way he can yell about the end of her goddamn life, but she can't ignore anymore what this has been leading up to, the part that came after. Tears flowing more steadily, she draws in a shaky breath as she looks up at him, eyes wide. It's all she can do not to step back and away, but there's nowhere to go to. "What do you mean?" she asks, wary rather than accusatory, like she was aiming for. "What do you mean, you went looking for me?"

He stares at her for several long seconds, hand half-raised as if waiting for an explanation. It falls to his side, but his gaze stays fixed on her. "The clinic," he says. "The — I was late, I know, it was closed when I got there. I was — you know, I was angry, I was crazy with it, so I was late, and then I get there and you're gone, and I — I went to your hotel."

The wave of lightheadedness takes Stephen by surprise, his eyes closing for a minute. It feels too much like letting his guard down. He has trouble caring. If she's going to strike him, come at him somehow when he isn't looking, let her. He's too fucking tired for this shit. "I was too late," he mutters again, a slow sigh dragging out of him as he shakes his head.

She's a problem. She's just a girl, one of dozens of interns they have, an inconvenience to the campaign before her death and a nightmare after, a girl who happened to be born to just the right man to bring the floodlights down on them. But that's it. She's a tragedy, but she's just some girl who made trouble. A good fuck, but not the love of his life or whatever sentimental bullshit it might be if they were other people. And it isn't that he's heartless, that he wouldn't have felt bad for any girl in her position, but this, her, it's something else, and he doesn't know what to do anymore, how to stop feeling so goddamn exhausted when he's in a whole different world from the campaign. How to stop feeling haunted by her when she's standing right in front of him.

Though it's probably what this whole conversation has been leading up to, what she ought to have known was coming as soon as he told her that no one else knew, the words hit hard anyway, sharp and painful in a way that catches Molly off-guard. She gasps to hear it, a shaky hand lifting to her mouth, no longer able to worry about what he'll think of her for it. There's no more pretending, not in the face of something like this, neither to convince herself that she's okay nor to make Stephen think that she's got it together. They're a few simple words, but they're enough to turn her whole goddamn world upside down, too, leaving her standing on unsteady legs, torn between stumbling back against the nearest wall or pitching forward and hoping he'll hold her up. She does neither, though. She can't lean on Stephen, having learned from experience that doing so will just leave her feeling even more alone again, but somehow, she doesn't want to rule out that possibility, either. That whole last day, she wanted nothing more than to have some sign from him, any indication that he might have cared. Now, she really shouldn't still want it, not when he isn't blameless in what happened to her, but she can't help it. She'd rather have him than no one, and she wouldn't push him away at a time like this. Her pride doesn't extend that far.

"No," she gets out, all she can manage before she's sobbing outright, shoulders hunched forward and vision blurring. It isn't that she doesn't believe him. The problem is that she does, even though she doesn't want to, the look on his face making clear enough that this isn't some ploy to win her over or to shift any blame away from himself. She could accuse him of lying anyway, just for the sake of it, or yell and ask why the fuck he never picked up his phone if he cared enough to go back for her, but it wouldn't do any good anymore. What happened happened, and they're here now, and however much it might have seemed like her only option at the time, she died for nothing. Asking why he didn't call or didn't get there sooner wouldn't change that. "Oh, God, Stephen, what did I do?"

"You know what you did," Stephen says, more tired now than anything else. She knows what they both did. He was so fucking caught up in himself and his career, and he can't be sorry for that, because it's who he is, but she didn't know that, didn't know him well enough to be forewarned. He'd stay away from Duffy if he could do it again, hurry to find her. At least leave his fucking phone with the volume on. It isn't even that he made conscious choices, thought about ways to shut out the rest of the world, including her; he just did things the way he does, and that, being him, put her on that edge. She might have been the one to take the leap and he's not the reason she was knocked up to begin with, but he left her standing there alone, and that's just him.

He wants to reach out to her, with how unsteady she looks, but he can't do it. He put up those walls and he doesn't get to be the one to tear them down again. "Come on, Molly," he says, a little softer now. It's already over, done, and she can't change it. Mostly he can't stand to see her crying like this, cringing inwardly, put too much in mind of the night her phone rang and everything started turning to shit. "Come on, come sit down. You should sit. You want — you want water or something? Tissues? I..." He doesn't know how to do this. Comforting people isn't exactly his strong point even when it's minor things, bumps and bruises. This kind of thing, it never heals and it can't be put right, and he feels like he's not allowed to touch her, like there's a wall standing thick between them, his own anger still simmering somewhere under the bewilderment and the concern.

He's right, of course. Molly is entirely, painfully aware of what she did: she fucked up, in a big, irreversible way, and the fact that she isn't the only one for whom that's the case doesn't do anything to lessen the weight of that. Stephen was right, too, when he pointed out that no one made her do it. She had no other fucking choice, not with the situation being what it appeared to be, but she still did it, and she was wrong, and there are no excuses for suicide. It was one thing when she thought what she'd have been avoiding was worse, when it seemed like the best thing to do for all parties involved, given that the last thing she ever wanted was for anyone to get hurt. Knowing that she was wrong, that if she'd only waited a few more minutes then everything would have been alright, it's more than she can bear, and his reminder doesn't fucking help with that. He's part of what got her where she was, and no revelations about her having had the wrong idea will make her forget that; she's not sure anything could.

Still, he's also all she's got, and if what he's saying is true (it has to be, Stephen is a dick but he isn't that cruel, and he owned up to enough that there's no reason why he wouldn't have done the same in this case, when it would have just been a simple agreement, nothing she hadn't already spelled out), then she isn't as inconsequential to him as she thought she was. She had no intention of sitting when she got here, or getting comfortable at all, but everything was different then, and she's too unsteady now to stay on her feet. Nodding, she sniffles, head staying lowered for a moment so she won't have to look at him. It's humiliating to let him see her like this, but it can't be helped, either, and she can't help wishing that he would hold her or something, anything to let her know that it might be alright (it won't, it never will be). "Yeah," she chokes out, glancing up to step towards the couch. "That would — thanks, I — I didn't want to do this, I'm sorry."

To some extent, Stephen has been waiting for an apology from her, though he knows he owes her one of his own, but it isn't until he hears one that he realizes he doesn't want it after all. "For what?" he asks. "Don't apologize to me." She made a stupid, stupid mistake, but they all did, everyone in this equation, and she's the only one whose motivations were even remotely pure. He realizes after he turns away that he doesn't actually have any tissues in the apartment. He grabs the handkerchief from his jacket instead, heading over to hand it to her.

He doesn't even know how to start to comfort her, not least when the reason she's upset is so big, so impossible to fix, and at least partly his fault. "I should have been there," he says, quiet, not looking at her. "I was upset, I lost track of time, I... I didn't think it'd get back to you. I didn't think. But I should have, and I should've been there."

After counting on him before and having him fall through, it's been a struggle, these past minutes, not to expect too little of Stephen, something Molly has just learned she doesn't have so much of a reason to do. Still, the words come as a shock, making her go stock still, head tipped up so she can stare at him with red-rimmed eyes. Now, in the face of this, it shouldn't be so startling and she knows it, but the way she's seen things this whole time is so far from the truth that it's still more than she can wrap her head around, and it's all she can do then not to let it bring on a fresh burst of tears. He should have been there, it's true, but a few minutes longer and he would have been. She can't completely blame him for that, no matter how hard she's tried to hate him or how much he got wrong, too.

"Yeah," she murmurs, taking the handkerchief from him before sitting down on the couch, looking at it for a moment like she's not quite sure what to do with it. (It's self-explanatory enough, of course, but it's his, and though it's a weird thing to think, it also seems like a strangely personal gesture.) She won't disagree with him, because he really fucking should have been there and she still hates that he wasn't, but the anger is gone from her voice now. It wouldn't do either of them any good when there's no taking back what happened, no way to undo the mistakes they both made. "I wish you had been."

That, she won't lie about, either. Still, almost as if meant to be a peace offering or some shit like that, she bites her lip before she speaks again, gaze still fixed on him even if he won't look at her. "I just meant... sorry for making a scene like this. And for what I said." She pauses, swallows hard. "For a lot of things, really."

"There's no one here," Stephen says. "It's just us. There's no scene." It's not like she doesn't have cause to be upset, with the way things have gone, and she has a passionate, if volatile, personality. Fireworks of one kind or another were just about inevitable. Slipping his hands in his pocket, he sits on the arm of the chair across from her, not wanting to get too close yet when she's still so unhappy. He should reach out, but even with her apologizing, there are boundaries here which didn't exist before. He doesn't want to cross them.

He hesitates, shrugs, pushes himself to look up. He doesn't expect her to be looking right back at him, although he probably should have. In the brief time he's known her, he hasn't seen her be the kind to flinch. "I'm sorry for a lot of things, too." It's too fucking little. There's too much to be sorry about and nothing he can do to put it right, nothing that an apology can ever fix, but it still feels like he has to rip it out of his own chest, though they both know there's plenty to be sorry for.

Molly nods, the only real response she can have to something like that. Sorry doesn't fix anything, doesn't change where she wound up and why, but it's still more than she hoped for when she saw him in the bar and asked if they could leave, agreed to come back to his place with him. It's more than she'd have gotten anywhere else, too, and though the knowledge of that sits heavy in the pit of her stomach, she's calmed down enough now that she can at least appreciate that for what it is. And maybe that, by some strange twist of fate, makes him the bigger person for the fact that she doesn't have it in her to tell him not to apologize, but she thinks she was owed at least this much. She doesn't know what it means or where they go from here, but it's something.

Slipping off her shoes, finally, so she can tuck her legs up against her chest, feet curling against the edge of the couch cushion, she summons up a faint, watery smile. She wants to ask what it's just us is supposed to mean when she has even less of an idea what that us is than she did back home (there wasn't one, really, but there could have been, she thinks, if things had worked out differently, if he hadn't answered her phone that night or if she'd made her move a few days later. If nothing else, at least she can rest assured now that she wasn't wrong about him from the start, as the end made her believe she was), but she doesn't. There probably wouldn't be a point, especially not when he's still so far away, that distance seemingly unbreachable. She still wishes he'd come hold her, but it's too much to ask for when she's already gotten so much more than she thought she would. "Okay," she says, holding his gaze. It isn't, nothing is, but all they can do is work with what they've got. "I, um — do you have anything real to drink, actually? I think I could use something stronger than water."

Stephen's just about grateful for the request, one he knows how to do something about. It's not that he's bad with emotion or he doesn't understand, that he lacks empathy; it's just, he's spent so long making so much about the job, he's not entirely sure anymore what to do when that isn't part of the equation. Looking back at her, beautiful even with tears streaked down her cheeks, he's not sure he ever did. He funneled too much of his understanding into his work too young.

Or maybe that's an excuse. Maybe it's nothing at all to do with work. Maybe it's the moment when all that fell away and he could have had something with her. He's not so blind he doesn't know that, or hope it, or whatever that is, that fragile sense that something more existed there between them, some shred of feeling, in spite of what he said about not wanting her to mistake it for more than it was. She was so young and he was so busy, so blind to the rest of the world, and he wasted it, and that isn't the kind of thing he gets a second chance at, even if he was sure he wanted one. That it ever existed, if only in his mind, in fleeting moments, feels like reason enough to keep his distance now.

"Yeah," he says, nodding. "I think I've got — give me a second, I'll find something."

"Thanks," Molly says, unsure for a moment if she's done as much already or not yet. Everything is still hazy, her head spinning from news she's not sure she can fully process yet and the sudden surge of emotion brought about by it, making it difficult for her to keep a grasp on things like that. She doesn't think it matters, anyway. In the grand scheme of things, compared to the rest of it, whether she thanks him once or twice or five times is irrelevant. Mostly, she just feels like she needs to say something, to prevent a silence from lapsing too long between them, like that even means anything now. She should probably just go, already having gotten more than she was looking for when she came here in the first place, when there's nothing more they could really get from one another, no way of undoing the past or righting their mutual wrongs; instead, she takes off her jacket, too, and sets her purse on the floor, curled against the arm of the couch as she watches him.

It's a funny thing, or it would be if it weren't tied to something so serious. She's the one who made the decision to end her own life, but he did help get her there, left her on her own when she needed him most. By all logic, she should be uncomfortable just being around him. Contrarily, though, it's here with him that she feels safest, at least now, like she's clinging to the last vestiges of something, unwilling to leave until absolutely necessary, and not just because she still feels so shaky. Whatever potential they might have had before, she doesn't think there's any chance of going back to that, but there's something about him even so. He did come back for her, after all, even if it was too late.

"I did mean it, you know," she blurts out a moment later, this time without meaning to. It has to be done, though, she knows that, perhaps the one thing she can possibly make up for now. "I shouldn't have said those things about you."

Stephen shakes his head, sighing. He doesn't have much in the way of alcohol, since that isn't exactly high on his list of priorities when he's new to the place. That said, being new to the place kind of brought on the need to have some on hand. A couple glasses of Scotch might not have made any of this feel any more real or understandable, but it sure as hell made it easier to handle for a little while. It's not something he does too often, though, drinking alone, in no small part because drinking in company is so much more enjoyable and, up until this place, for reasons of professionalism. There's no downtime during a campaign, and for the big boys, the serious candidates, no matter the news cycle, every year is a campaign year.

He brings her a glass with ice in it, but not otherwise watered down. He gets the feeling when she says strong, she means it. "I deserved it," he admits. "Not sure I can say I've been called worse before, but there's a chance, and I, uh, I think I deserved this most. Anyway, doesn't matter." It's not like anything she says or takes back will change circumstances any. If lashing out at him brings her a little peace, he can live with it, no matter how brutal it gets.

He's probably right. That, too, is one more thing that the circumstances that led them here have made irrelevant, a few strong words thrown between them not enough to change what happened. Still, Molly wouldn't feel right if she didn't own what she could. She fucked up too, and the least she can do is apologize for the assumptions she made, even if some of what she said really was deserved (she can barely remember any of it now that the anger's worn down). Stephen is fucked up, and she can't forget that he was about to sell her out, even if he never got to go through with it. He's still not the uncaring monster she made him out to be. It's that whole world that's twisted, something she's wised up to in her own death.

Besides, for that matter, he isn't the only one who screwed her over. She won't play the role of the helpless innocent who got betrayed at every turn, but it's Morris who fucked her and then left her on her own to deal with the consequences, writing it all off as if it never happened when she was, for a brief time, carrying his child. Stephen had no obligation to her and he tried to help anyway, even if he left her stranded in the end, too. The part that came after doesn't negate the part that came before; the same holds true in reverse, too. He's an ally, just one who let her down. She doesn't know what that means.

Her fingers graze his as she reaches for the glass, and it's not deliberate, but she doesn't look away, nor does she apologize. For this, there's no need. They haven't touched at all save for when she shoved him, something that hasn't escaped her notice, and when the distance has seemed so impossible to breach, she might as well let him know that it doesn't have to be. She'd rather have him here beside her, anyway. "Still," she says, pausing to sip her drink, eyes closing briefly as she swallows. It burns, but that's good. "I shouldn't... I might have gone a little overboard. I'm sorry I pushed you, too. I thought about slapping you, but I couldn't."

"Oh, well, I'm glad for that," Stephen says, hiding the way her touch hits him behind a raise of his brow. He'd probably have deserved that, too, to be honest, but that doesn't make him any less relieved to have escaped it. Willing though he is to take what she dishes out, to a point, he doesn't have to like any of it, and he isn't a masochist, isn't asking to be punished for sins real or imagined. He's racked up too much of a list in his thirty short years anyway. He doesn't have that kind of free time, even here.

He flashes her a brief, crooked smile. "Was never really into that. And don't worry, wasn't much of a push." At least she seems to be feeling a little more in control, if not better. He doubts there's anything much he can do to make her feel better anyway. After another moment of hesitating, he bites back another sigh, sinking onto the other side of the couch from her. "I'm just... I'm bad at this, I'm sorry. The whole..." He stops and licks his lips, thoughtful, but he's not even sure what this is exactly. He knows for certain he's never dealt with anything like it. "Well, apologizing, for one, which I should probably work on."

"Might be a good idea," Molly replies, the closest she's come to teasing since she first laid eyes on him in the bar at all. It isn't much, but when her head's still spinning, her throat thick from crying and her face streaked with dried tears, at least it's something. She hopes he recognizes that for what it is before she catches herself, remembering that there's no reason for that. She doesn't know what they are to each other to be able to make a call like that, whether they're friends now or he's just humoring her (pitying her?) because he feels partly responsible for her death. They never even got the chance to be anything back home, just a hell of a lot of potential that never went anywhere because circumstances got in the way. That much, at least, she doesn't think she imagined. Like he said earlier, he's not quite that good a liar.

Shifting her position on the couch, she angles half-towards him, legs bent up beside her so she can lean sideways against the back of his couch. It still feels like he's impossibly far away and like that's got to be on purpose, but the distance isn't as significant now as it has been, and that helps. "I've heard it's a good skill to have." She wants to ask about him, how he's been doing, what he plans to do here, what happened after, but it suddenly seems like too much, words on the tip of her tongue she can't give voice to. Once upon a time, she might have been good at that, but making small talk with Stephen isn't something she knows how to do anymore, even sitting here with him on his couch. (She wonders how many other girls he's brought up here, thinks that she probably shouldn't care.)

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