losttheright | (no subject)

The awful thing is, at first, she believes him. It doesn't change how fucked up his leaving seems, or how abandoned she feels, but Lee tells her that he'll be back, and Molly doesn't have any reason not to take him at his word. Even when she gives in and lets herself break down the way she's been trying not to for what feels like an eternity — waiting just long enough, once Lee has closed the door behind him, that he should be safely down the hall and out of earshot — it's not because she thinks he's gone for good. Whatever worries she might have, they aren't really his fault, and it's not fair, or so she tells herself, to attribute them to him now. She can't blame him for being upset about this when she is, too, and everything that's happened, however far from reassuring, makes sense under the circumstances.

That's what she wants to think, anyway. For a little while, she manages it. But minutes turn too quickly into an hour, and then one hour turns into two, and the more time passes, the harder it is to trust that he'd meant what he told her. Needing some space to process this is one thing, but even so, it doesn't take hours to get some air, and to go that long without so much as a fucking word makes it seem all the more unlikely that that's actually what's happening here. Besides, it wouldn't be the first time someone said something like that without meaning it. Stephen told her he'd come back, too, and by the time he finally did, it was too fucking late. Things aren't going to end the same way this time, but knowing that makes her no less uneasy about where she and Lee stand now.

Under any other circumstances, she'd call him, or at least text, but as it is, she's not sure she could take it if she didn't get an answer. Too much of this is too familiar as it is, and she's not looking to make that any worse for herself, which is the only thing that would accomplish. She just also isn't sure, as the night wears on, how much longer she can sit around waiting for him, feeling like she's going out of her fucking mind. It's with that in mind that she goes into the bedroom and starts to get some things together, thinking she'll go stay somewhere else for the night. Halfway through doing so, though, she realizes there's no one she'd want to talk to about this, and gives it up, leaving her partly-packed bag on the bed and heading for the kitchen.

She means to just have one drink. One drink, she thinks, in a fit of desperation, can't do any real damage. She's only just found out, after all, and she'd have been drinking tonight if she hadn't taken that stupid test yet, and it's hard to imagine that making any real difference. One drink, though, as it turns out, isn't nearly enough to take her mind off everything going on, and it isn't long before one becomes several becomes what's left of their bottle of scotch, left empty on the table when she dozes off on the couch, still dressed in yesterday's clothes.

If falling asleep had been too easy, then waking up proves to be the opposite, her head pounding before she even opens her eyes. Molly hasn't been hungover like this in a while as it is, and remembering the events of the night before doesn't help at all on that front. Even then, though it should be fairly obvious that she's still there alone, judging by the fact that she's still fully dressed on the couch, a part of her can't help hoping that maybe, just maybe, Lee will have come back during the night and this will all have been one big fucking misunderstanding. One look around the apartment, and that part of her is very quickly let down. Lee's coat and keys are still gone, and everything is still where she left it the night before, from the empty bottle on the coffee table to the bag she'd started to pack before she wound up drinking instead.

From there, everything she does feels like nothing more than going through the motions. She throws up all she'd had to drink the night before in the bathroom, thinking bitterly that she's going to have to get used to doing so anyway, brushes her teeth, takes a couple aspirin and drinks some water, throws out the empty bottle and puts her glass from the night before in the sink. She's in the middle of straightening up the couch when she hears the door open, and though she knows there's really only one person it could be, she's still visibly stunned when she stops and turns to see Lee coming inside. For what at least feels like a long moment, she can't do anything but stare. Then, finally, as if she can't quite wrap her head around the fact of it, she says, "You're back."

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Though this probably isn't a conversation they should have from separate rooms and she knows it, Molly isn't expecting Lee to come into the kitchen before she can walk out, and she sure as hell isn't expecting him to reach for her hand. For a moment, she's tempted to pull away, but she doesn't. Angry or not, she needs to get this out before she picks a fight or circles back around to that, and she's too caught up in her own head to switch gears like that now anyway. She's known since yesterday that she was going to have to tell him about this, but that doesn't make her any more prepared to now. It just isn't something she talks about, and with good reason. But it's relevant now in a way she never imagined it would be, and especially in the face of what he's had to say, there isn't really any getting around it.

"Back home, I slept with my boss," she says, figuring she might as well cut to the chase on that front, not yet lifting her gaze. "This guy running for president, whose campaign I was working on. He was married, had a kid. It wasn't supposed to be a big deal. I mean, it was just the one time, and he's the one who came on to me, and it wasn't like it meant anything. Except I wound up pregnant." She swallows hard, taking a deep, unsteady breath before she continues. "It was a liability. I was a liability. His career, my career, my dad's career, they all would have been ruined if it ever got out. So... I had an abortion."

She's wondered sometimes what she would have done if it were anyone else's. At twenty, she'd been even less ready to have a baby than she thinks she is now, but she can't really see herself making the same decision under any other circumstances, either. The situation being what it was, she hadn't really had one at all. Now, she does, and however much she might not want it, whatever damage has already been done here, the one thing she is certain of is that she won't do the same thing this time.

Finally, she looks up at Lee, swiping her free hand over her cheeks as she lets out a laugh with no humor behind it. "You know, the really funny thing is, the guy who took me to the clinic? When he dropped me off, he said he'd be back. I waited around all night for him, too."

"Gods," Lee says, and it's a lot to take in. They've both been on their respective sides of this before, and if he'd known, then there's a good chance he wouldn't have left last night. But as it is, knowing now can't take back the fact that he ran out on her and spent the night drinking with Kara. It sure as hell doesn't do anything for his pounding hangover.

It's not something he can fault her for, though. Not considering his own past, what he and Kara did to Dee and Anders back when they were with the fleet. Kara in Darrow might not remember it, but Lee does. The guilt he felt about it every day. For him, maybe it was something worse than what Molly did, though. Because at the time, it had meant something to him. It had been a big deal. But the two of them had gotten out of it easy, all things considered.

"I'm sorry," he says again, "I... I didn't know."

On one hand, Molly is aware that his response probably makes her lucky, in a way. Not everyone would take so kindly to the idea of her sleeping with some married guy, even without her mentioning that he wasn't her first. Starting a relationship with Lee while he'd still been wearing his ring was a different story; maybe it still said something about her, but she'd spent enough time around him then to know that whatever had gone on there, his wife wasn't in the picture anymore. This is something else, and she doesn't think she would have been able to blame him if it changed the way he saw her. She may not have been the only one who fucked up that night, or even the one who initiated things, but she'd still been a willing participant. That it doesn't seem to be a point of contention now is something she thinks she ought to be grateful for.

Then again, it's not like that's her reason for talking about this, only the necessary context for why she did what she did back then. It does nothing to fix things with her and Lee, nor does it give her any sort of idea about what to do now, on an immediate or longterm scale. She wants to push Lee away as badly as she wants to pull him close, and it takes everything she's got in her to do neither.

"I was gonna tell you last night," she says, shrugging somewhat awkwardly. "But you took off before I had a chance." She knows that's got to be at least in part why he's apologizing again now, and that she probably shouldn't keep holding it against him. Hearing that he's sorry, though, while something that does help, doesn't change what the past night has done to her. "I'd ask if it would've made a difference, but I don't think I'd want to hear the answer either way."

"And I don't know if I have one for you," Lee says, though he wishes he could say definitively that he wouldn't have left. What's done is done now. You make your mistakes and you live with them. You learn from them. In that moment, he's reminded of President Roslin and the Olympic Carrier, of that slip of paper she kept in her pocket to remember her mistakes.

"I wish I'd given you a chance to tell me."

He'd left to clear his head and try to get a grasp on all of this, but even after spending all night out, and basically getting his ass handed to him by Kara, he's still not completely sure where he stands.

"Yeah," Molly says with a sigh, hardly about to disagree with him there, and not about to pretend otherwise. "Yeah, I really wish you had, too." It wouldn't change how she feels about this, how conflicted she is, how difficult it is to figure out what to do, but at least she'd feel like she has him. For that alone, it would be somewhat easier to deal with. He may have said that he's not going anywhere, but she still can't quite manage to take that to heart. Instead, even with him this close to her, she feels so fucking alone that she can't bear it.

All at once, she can't bear just standing here crying in front of him, either, and abruptly draws away, leaving her glass of water abandoned on the counter and walking down the hall to the bedroom. She'd almost forgotten about the bag she left there the night before, and now, she isn't sure what to do with it, if she should finish packing or unpack, if she wants to leave or if she can handle staying. She doesn't get to run away from this the way he did, but she doesn't know how to get past what happened last night, or how to fix this. Hell, for all she knows, there won't be any fixing it, a thought that's far from comforting.

She stares at the bag on the bed for a long few seconds, only to find herself still at a loss, and that it's only making her feel worse. Not particularly caring, in the moment, if Lee follows her or not, she takes a seat beside it, shoulders slumping forward. As recently as yesterday morning, they'd been happy. Somehow, the thought of that just makes all of this seem even worse.

Molly pulls away, leaving the room, and there's a split second where Lee thinks about following her. But with the way this conversation has gone so far, with Molly keeping her distance and then pulling away, he figures she probably needs her space. And he can't really blame her. He's not sure where they stand with this, and from the looks of things, where they even stand with each other right now.

Lee came back for a reason, though. He intends to stand by her through this, no matter how it turns out. It's not her burden to bear alone. And maybe he frakked up, monumentally it seems, but that doesn't mean his feelings for her have changed at all.

With a sigh of his own, Lee goes to pour himself a glass of water, hopeful that he can rehydrate and stop his head from pounding. And while he doesn't have a lot of faith in his ability to concentrate on anything else today, he figures he should probably at least try to finish the reading he was in the middle of last night.