knife_bender | MHA #2 | Wednesday Morning

Entry tags:

MHA #2 | Wednesday Morning

Diego tried his very best to not be That Guy and demand he know his wife's every move. She was an adult, he knew she was with friends, and she was fine during that whole Rey thing back in August. He was sure she was fine.

But come on, a phone call would be appreciated!

He was just going to be pacing the apartment, trying to think of logical reasons of why she hadn't called rather than convening an emergency meeting of The Umbrella Academy to solve the mystery of "where the fuck did my wife go and why hasn't she called me?".

[For one! That Annie came home looking rough is fine for broadcast but specifics on Wanda's shenanigans are NFB]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"A zombie took your shoe," Diego said lightly. "One of the cooler ways to lose a shoe, I think."

"My shoe got stuck in a zombie," Annie corrected, making a little face and clearly trying for levity herself. "It was gross. I also got roofied for a little while."

That covered...pretty much all the bases, right? She'd skipped over a few things -- though surely sometime over the next few weeks, the other pieces would work their way out (the, 'Oh, I saw a minotaur!' and, 'Wanda folded herself up like origami and came out of a gong,' of it all, you know), but. For now, and for as sad and shaky and tired as she was, that was probably enough.

"I was so scared I wouldn't make it back to you," she added, sliding a hand over Diego's knee. "Or that I'd make it back to a different version of you, after all this."

Maybe one with an eyepatch or something.

"I was worried too." Obviously not to the extent she was, but he'd be doing more research the next time one of Annie's friends asked for a favor. "I'm so glad you're okay."

Physically. He knew that emotionally was a whole other thing.

"Mostly," Annie replied lightly. "I've got some bumps, but nothing worse than what your brother or Black Noir's done before."

And what she wasn't saying -- because she didn't want to think about it, and maybe that was something to be covered if she ever did get someone's phone number from Wong -- was that the thing that hurt the most about the damage she'd taken was that she knew a lot of it was the result of Wanda taking no care with puppeteering Annie's body for her.

It made everything hurt more with every twinge, and she would just have to...deal with that.

Diego leaned in close enough to press a kiss against her temple. "This really sucks."

Look, Annie, you didn't marry this man for his eloquence.

Nah. She married him for his sensitivity (amongst other things), and he was right: it did suck, and there wasn't really anything that was going to make it better. She didn't have to pretend it was okay, with Diego, and that was worth everything right now.

"It'll suck less eventually, right?" she tried with a sniffle, closing her eyes and just taking stock of how it felt to be home and with Diego again, after all that. "Everything fades with time."

But.

"But I'm really going to miss her." And that came out very quiet, like Annie didn't know how to feel about her grief.

"I get that. It's normal," he said. "If I had never seen Viktor again, and the last memory I had of him was him blowing up the moon, I'd still miss him."

"Yeah." That was a good comparison, especially given how very angry Viktor had been during all of that. "It doesn't -- like, doing something awful doesn't erase all the good things they did before. People are more complex than that."

But it did recontextualize Wanda as someone willing to kill a teenager to get what she wanted, and Annie would never be able to divorce her friend's memory from that fact. Her motivations helped, but Annie had spent too much time with America to pretend they were justified.

(At least Viktor hadn't meant to blow up the moon, you know? Accidents happened!)

Yeah, but before the moon blew up he had very purposely lifted up his brothers with his life sucking tentacles and tried to kill them.

"You can miss her," Diego said. "Missing her doesn't mean you forgive her. Nobody's going to judge you."

Yeah, those hadn't been accidental tentacles, had they? Whoops.

Annie could not fathom ever forgiving Wanda, right now -- but she also knew, without having to think about it too hard, that she eventually would. Forgiveness was in her nature, even if her faith had taken a beating. It was just going to take a long time. All of this would.

"Don't tell anyone?" she requested softly. "I mean, not that you would, but like...I don't want this to be other people's memory of her."

"Of course I won't," he assured her. "It's not my place. I didn't really know her."

"I don't think it's really my place, either," Annie noted with a little frown, reaching up to rub a hand across her forehead tiredly. "I mean, maybe it is. People should know. She had a lot of other friends here. But no one but us needs to know the -- details. Right?"

Abruptly she remembered that she had told Steven she'd say hi to Wanda for him, and everything suddenly felt very overwhelming. She could deal with all of that in time. Wanda wasn't going anywhere.

"Right," he said. "But you don't have to do anything right away. Just focus on yourself first, okay?"

"Okay." Annie could agree with that. "Then...that bath sounded nice. And maybe a snack? I'm not sure when I last ate, actually."

She could see to her immediate needs right now -- which also included another White Claw -- and then, after getting clean and eating and sleeping and probably incessantly touching her husband for reassurance through all of it...maybe then she could see about dealing with how all of this felt. (Or maybe she'd just not -- but that didn't seem like a great way to move forward, and the fact that she even had that impulse was a great reason to get in touch with a mental health professional, right there.)

"Bath," he said, reluctantly pulling away so he could stand. "And I will order you food while you're relaxing."

"You're wonderful," Annie told him, her tiredness coming through on the emphasis of how wonderful he was as she stood and wrapped an arm around Diego's waist. "This never gets easier."

Alex, then Maeve, then Wanda, all over the course of one year. It had been a hard year for losing friends -- not to mention the friends who hadn't died (or 'died,' in some cases), but she'd lost anyway.

"I know," he said. "We should put bubble wrap around Summer."

"I was just thinking that," Annie told him with a tired little laugh. Especially since she was redheaded, and didn't things come in threes? "I kinda want to go the bar tonight to see her, but I also...."

She shrugged. She also didn't want to try to muscle her way through complimenting jello shots and making small talk with anyone else at the bar. "I don't know if I can be normal enough."

She might not be normal for awhile, and that was okay. (Or, at least, she'd tell herself it was.)

"Nope, you're not doing anything tonight," Diego said, tugging her along to the bathroom. "Summer gets enough people at the bar that someone would sound an alarm if she didn't show."

"Maybe," Annie agreed, allowing herself to be led. "That conversation is probably not one for, like, Tino's ears, anyway."

Because Annie was likely to start crying again, and she didn't really want to do that where everyone and their jello shots could see.

(She was probably going to do a bit more if it in the tub, as it was.)

"Yeah, Tino doesn't need to hear shit. Or Tiny for matter." No NPC bartenders!

He moved to sit Annie down on the toilet so he could move to turn the water on in the bathtub. "You craving anything in particular? I can just do a Doordash roulette and let my finger just stop somewhere on the list."

Annie actually gave it some real thought for a moment as she reached up to pull her hair out of its bun with a slight wince. Her right shoulder hurt more than she'd initially thought, and there was probably going to be a lot of that in the next few days. "...carbs? Something with lots of carbohydrates. I'm not picky otherwise." She was already tired but the idea of just eating bread or pasta until she fell asleep also held a whole lot of incredibly comforting appeal.

The way Diego was maneuvering her around and taking care of her was also very sweet, and something she found appealing in a way she couldn't quite articulate at the moment. Maybe it was just one of those things where after everything she'd gone through, and all the emotional pain she'd witnessed -- Wanda's, yes, but also America's and Stephen's -- it was nice to be so openly, transparently loved.

And this was all a good reminder not to take any of that for granted.

Edited 2022-12-07 19:52 (UTC)

"Carbs it is," he said, standing up straight now that the tub was being filled. "Do you have one of those weird fizzy bombs for the bathtub around? "

"You're so cute," Annie told him, weirdly maybe about to cry some more over how cute he was? Or maybe it was more just that his cuteness was making it easier for her to shoulder the weight of everything else that had happened. Something like that. Feelings were messy and stupid, sometimes. "In here."

She reached over -- moving as little and as gingerly as she could -- to open a drawer and reveal, voila! A ridiculous number of bath bombs.

(Look. Annie had her coping mechanisms, and at least two of them were fizzy. Her other coping mechanism was tree nut-based, hidden in the kitchen on a shelf she'd have to stand on a chair to reach, and she was probably going to eat the whole bag tonight.)

"Holy shit we've got a treasure trove." How did he miss that?

(Easy, he took showers, not baths.)

Diego took one at random and unwrapped it, unable to keep amused look off his face when he dropped it into the tub. That was so cool.

He did turn his attention back to Annie after a moment or two. "Need help getting your clothes off? What hurts the worst?"

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject