Something about the casualness of it is both reassuring and nerve-wracking at the same time, but another breath takes care of that and she pushes the door open, dropping her bag by the door and kicking off her boots like she's just come home from the store, and not an entire month away.
(He's already cooking—because of what she wrote on her response?)
It feels so strange, being back in the house, but it's still the same. Signs of life scattered around and everything where she broadly remembers it being. Her couch, through the archway, but he said something about a bed. And the smell of food cooking through the other arch into the kitchen.
She steps through and— there he is, right where he said, dealing with the stove. It takes all her restraint not to risk burning one of them by immediately hugging him.
"...hey, asshole." She still somehow manages to make it sound like the most affectionate thing she could say.
(It was part her response, part because he's hungry. What's a better excuse for a big breakfast?)
Once all the pancakes are flipped, North practically tosses his spatula onto the counter and throws his arms around her. "Hey, dumbass," he says back, hugging the absolute hell out of her. "Welcome home."
She chokes on a laugh and wraps her arms back around him, squeezing him as tight as she possibly can and burying her face in his shoulder. He's real and he's solid and most importantly he's happy to see her, he's really happy to see her and she has never been so relieved in her life.
"M'so fucking happy to be home," she murmurs into the hug, breathing steady. "Fuck, I missed you. I-I know I said that already, before, but I'm saying it again. I-I never wanna do that again. I will do everything I fucking can not to do that again."
Four months total, between home and this last month, not getting to see or talk to him, hurt far too much. Whatever she has to do to fix this, to make it so he never needs space like this again, she will do.
"Like I said," he teases, mussing her hair, "next time, you have to kick my ass yourself. Got it?"
God, it's good to be whole again.
"Okay, I gotta finish breakfast. But we should talk out a couple more things, you know? Nothing heavy, no bad feelings, just stuff that I gotta communicate 'cause I wanna get better at that."
"Got it," she laughs, batting half-heartedly at his hand, and headbutts his shoulder before she reluctantly pulls away to let him get back to cooking. Still, she hovers as close as she possibly can without getting in his way.
She bites the inside of her cheek, but she meant what she said in the caverns as much as he did: she doesn't want to lose him because they don't fucking talk, so she nods. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. I mean. Fuck, there's uh— shit I should tell you, too, really. Can't promise that's not gonna get a little heavy eventually though."
But they can ease up to it, right? Work through it bit by bit.
North claps her shoulder appreciatively. "Thanks, Tash. Be right back."
He disappears into the kitchen, coming back later with a plate for each of them. Pancakes, real maple syrup, and some sliced fruit on the side. Clementines and pears, to be precise. North never would have guessed these things go to fruit in December and on.
"Enjoy!" He takes a seat. "So, uh--- how you been? Aside from the weirdness. I heard you picked up a job?"
South drops herself down into what was (and is, now, thank god) her usual seat and waits until he comes bearing plates, only fidgeting a little anxiously during the wait. When he does come through, she gives a thanks, Di and affectionately kicks him under the table.
God, the food looks good. She's eternally grateful to Lina for what she's done for her but neither of them are culinarily inclined people, so it wasn't entirely unlike being back in the military unless it was Gerry on cooking duty.
"Yeah, uh— Lina's close with the guys who run that Bizzyboys thing and one of 'em offered me a job with 'em. It's— it's been pretty fuckin' good. Lot of odd jobs helping people out. Keeps me busy—" she snorts, "no pun intended."
Stuffs a forkful of pancakes into her mouth. Yeah, that's good.
"Besides that, y'know—some good days, bad days..." Most of the details edge into the bigger discussions laid in front of them. "...you? On track with getting everything set up out here?"
"That's great! People have real good things to say about that group, it's not uncommon to hear people around town say, 'If you need help, find someone in a red jacket.' I hope it's been good for you," North enthuses, honestly relieved. She fell in with people with a good reputation. Maybe people will finally stop assuming she's trouble without knowing her. And North doesn't even have to try to make that happen himself.
"But yeah, I've been okay. The guys at Baker Ranch have been giving me some pointers, and I got some left-behind seeds and livestock from some farmers who left on the ferry."
She does smile, semi-consciously. "No, yeah, it's— it's definitely been kinda nice." Not something she's used to, yet, people actually being relieved to have her turn up, but... it's definitely not bad, even if sometimes she might have to take a second to be up in her feelings about it.
"And good. Good. Guess we'll be good once fuckin' spring comes around." She isn't going to live here again and not help more, when she can. With physical labour and building stuff, anyway—may as well make good use of the chisels he got her, right? "If anything else got busted when I was gone, I'll fix it up this week."
She's quiet, for a moment, as she keeps eating. Lets the mealtime companionship sit, for a bit, as she tries to gauge when normal chatter should become talking, where the line is or isn't. Eventually, after swallowing, offers a testing: "...I'm uh— I'm working on cutting down the fuckin'. Alcohol. Slowly."
Now that's a surprise--- and a huge relief. "Really? That's--- really good, South, I'm proud of you. That was one of my big worries. I don't want to, like, micromanage you, but I also get stressed out if you stay out till the middle of the night without warning or drink a ton."
"Yeah, uh— Lina put her foot down, like, day fucking one I was at her place, ha," South snorts. Christ, she owes Lina so much. "Tried to cut it to zero immediately, at first, which just made me violently fucking ill so— one of the docs gave me a, like, schedule? To cut down. So m'still drinking, but... a bit less every week or so?"
Even with an actual plan it's not pleasant, and she still bristles at the fact she had to have a doctor step in at all, but it's working, slowly. She feels a little clearer headed.
"Which means counting my drinks and shit, which is easier at home, so— yeah, no more late nights out without warning. Promise."
Holy shit, a doctor. Big step, to get a doctor involved. Especially for South. Fuck, he's so proud of her! He can't help but reach out and pat her arm. "Sounds like a plan."
And now the hard stuff.
"So, you got any other big stuff to talk about or should I go ahead?"
That familiar flash of validation rushes through her and she pats his hand in the moment it's there on her arm as a quiet acknowledgement, barely biting back a smile. She's trying. She's really fucking trying and it's— it's nice to be able to start showing it.
"Uh— you go ahead. I mean, there's, like, other shit, but... you go first. Sure I need to hear it."
After everything, it only seems fair. He had to set the terms of all this, after all, so... she braces, a little, to hear what he has to say, but she's ready as she'll ever be.
"So, CT came by while you were away. And before you freak out---- we weren't, like, talking shit. She came to tell me about something she found out, uh. Before she died. About us."
That's... not what she expected. Couldn't concretely say what she did expect—more talk of their communication problems, maybe, or how North wants her to handle certain things—but it wasn't that.
It's hard to miss the way she does, reflexively, bristle at the mention of CT—can't help the reflexive recoil at being talked about behind her back—but she gets that under control quickly enough, if not without a bit of effort. (Still, progress, right?)
North takes a slow breath. "So, uh. As it turns out, the stuff the Director and Counsellor were doing... The leaderboard, the missions, the AI. It was intentional," he says bluntly. Might as well get it out, no point in sugar coating. "We were an experiment, I guess. In what would happen if a matched pair of agents had one person treated with favoritism and the other sidelined. Basically for no reason, just to see what would happen."
The silence that falls over South is stark for how it contrasts everything else about her. She stares back at him, mouth just barely ajar, for a long, unnatural moment of what must seem to be calm before an inevitable storm, until, finally:
"...what?"
The word tries to die in her throat, caught by the overwhelming and yet unidentifiable emotion that strangles her, and so it comes out tight and small. She is still frozen in place.
Carolina told her, once, weeks ago, that she thought the way Command had always treated her was targeted. She hadn't known what to do with the feeling that hit her then, when it was just a theory, when it was just about her, when it was easy to write off as just another example of the ways people always saw her as a troublesome element needing punishment. But this—this is more than that, this is so much worse than that, this is—
Finally, motion. Sudden, but not violent—South seizes up from her seat and drags her hands over her face, through her hair, barely resisting the urge to grab and tug at the roots. Emotion that needs an outlet, the way she's always been, and yet so determined right now not to even risk lashing out.
"They— they were— they fucking broke me on purpose?!"
"...Yeah." North forces the word out. It makes him feel sick to see her like this. He reached out, dragging his knuckles over her back. "Yeah, they did. They drove a wedge between us. Tortured you for god knows how long, all but guaranteed I ended up paying for it. So they could watch. I--- I'm sorry that I didn't--- see it sooner."
Her muscles tense for barely a flash and then relax, looser than they were before, just that touch enough to sooth—not completely, no, but it's something. It's something.
The horrible, cruel part of her that she's got choked on a leash wants to bite back at him, snap that yeah, he should be fucking sorry, should be sorry for a lot of things— but no, no that's not how she feels, that's not how she really feels and she throttles that piece of her until it shuts the fuck up. The effort leaves her breathing heavy. For a split second, he might even recognise the way her hands draw back like they're going to ram against her skull, before she wrests them down without letting it happen.
"I— I-I thought... I-I thought I was going nuts. I knew I felt something, I knew... but none of the rest of you ever fucking saw it. There goes South, getting in fucking trouble again! What a pain in the ass, won't listen, won't— but I did good work. I did. But every time I made any fucking mistake—"
Mistakes other people never got permanent marks on their record for. Mistakes that should never have been enough to outweigh the work she did. What the fuck. What the fuck.
And worse than that—
She looks back down at him with his own eyes and swallows, hard. "...t-they turned me against you. I— I let them turn me against you. I— Di—"
"N-no, I... In a lot of ways--- I did see it," North confesses quietly, ashamed. "I just... thought it was more of the same. Y'know."
That double standard that had followed them their whole lives. It had grown so normal that North didn't think to do anything about it, no matter how frustrated he was. All he could do was keep supporting her, but the angrier she got, the less he wanted to. Like a boiled frog.
He should've stopped it.
"It wasn't like that," he insists. A goddamn hypocrite. It wasn't South's fault, she couldn't have known, but he should have. South, a victim. North, complicit. (Maybe he deserved to die for what he let them do to her.) "You didn't let anybody do anything, you were manipulated. It was a set-up. I-I mean, it's--- It still happened. You still made some bad choices. But you're not a monster for being a product of what was done to you."
South sits, stands, sits, buries her face in her hands and tries to breathe. Wants to pace around the room (wants to hit something) but doesn't want to walk away from him, right now; the idea of it feels wrong, of turning her back on him for even a second.
"But I did. I-I could've— I could've talked to you, I could've— I-I could've fucking trusted you and I didn't, I didn't. Fuck, they had me working fucking Recovery, told me to track you down, and I never even fucking told you!"
Playing both sides. At the time, she figured they didn't know she was with North, already, that they just believed her when she said she was on her own and willing to turn him in if she ever found him. Of course, she never did. She used them for information, and kept trying to convince North to leave Theta behind. And yet she never warned him. She came up with her stupid fucking plan, instead.
"They— they turned me against you. An-and I. Let them. And I-I hate that. I hate it. I hate—" me, fuck, she hates herself for letting this happen, at the same time as a part of her feels... vindicated, by the truth. They did this to her. They did this to her. It wasn't just her. It wasn't just her.
Breathe in, out.
"I-I hate them. I hate them. And I hate me. And I don't hate you. I can't— I could never hate you. Even back there, on the run, when I was so fucking angry with you I-I could never... I could never hate you." Maybe that comes out of nowhere. But it feels so suddenly important to say, in the moment.
South winces, drops her head back into her palms so she doesn't have to look at him. "...yeah. Since— since a few weeks after we left."
Should've told him the first time she explained this. (He's going to be hurt again. He's going to want her gone again—)
"They called me one night, when you were asleep. They didn't seem to know we were already fuckin' together, so they... assigned me to finding you and Theta. Promised me an AI if I did everything they asked. Honestly I— I didn't even believe that part, I just— figured it'd get me information. And so long as they didn't know I was with you. I-I could use that to keep us safe until... until I convinced you to give Theta up. Obviously, I know that was fucking stupid, now. Every fucking plan I made was fucking stupid."
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Something about the casualness of it is both reassuring and nerve-wracking at the same time, but another breath takes care of that and she pushes the door open, dropping her bag by the door and kicking off her boots like she's just come home from the store, and not an entire month away.
(He's already cooking—because of what she wrote on her response?)
It feels so strange, being back in the house, but it's still the same. Signs of life scattered around and everything where she broadly remembers it being. Her couch, through the archway, but he said something about a bed. And the smell of food cooking through the other arch into the kitchen.
She steps through and— there he is, right where he said, dealing with the stove. It takes all her restraint not to risk burning one of them by immediately hugging him.
"...hey, asshole." She still somehow manages to make it sound like the most affectionate thing she could say.
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Once all the pancakes are flipped, North practically tosses his spatula onto the counter and throws his arms around her. "Hey, dumbass," he says back, hugging the absolute hell out of her. "Welcome home."
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She chokes on a laugh and wraps her arms back around him, squeezing him as tight as she possibly can and burying her face in his shoulder. He's real and he's solid and most importantly he's happy to see her, he's really happy to see her and she has never been so relieved in her life.
"M'so fucking happy to be home," she murmurs into the hug, breathing steady. "Fuck, I missed you. I-I know I said that already, before, but I'm saying it again. I-I never wanna do that again. I will do everything I fucking can not to do that again."
Four months total, between home and this last month, not getting to see or talk to him, hurt far too much. Whatever she has to do to fix this, to make it so he never needs space like this again, she will do.
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God, it's good to be whole again.
"Okay, I gotta finish breakfast. But we should talk out a couple more things, you know? Nothing heavy, no bad feelings, just stuff that I gotta communicate 'cause I wanna get better at that."
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"Got it," she laughs, batting half-heartedly at his hand, and headbutts his shoulder before she reluctantly pulls away to let him get back to cooking. Still, she hovers as close as she possibly can without getting in his way.
She bites the inside of her cheek, but she meant what she said in the caverns as much as he did: she doesn't want to lose him because they don't fucking talk, so she nods. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. I mean. Fuck, there's uh— shit I should tell you, too, really. Can't promise that's not gonna get a little heavy eventually though."
But they can ease up to it, right? Work through it bit by bit.
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He disappears into the kitchen, coming back later with a plate for each of them. Pancakes, real maple syrup, and some sliced fruit on the side. Clementines and pears, to be precise. North never would have guessed these things go to fruit in December and on.
"Enjoy!" He takes a seat. "So, uh--- how you been? Aside from the weirdness. I heard you picked up a job?"
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South drops herself down into what was (and is, now, thank god) her usual seat and waits until he comes bearing plates, only fidgeting a little anxiously during the wait. When he does come through, she gives a thanks, Di and affectionately kicks him under the table.
God, the food looks good. She's eternally grateful to Lina for what she's done for her but neither of them are culinarily inclined people, so it wasn't entirely unlike being back in the military unless it was Gerry on cooking duty.
"Yeah, uh— Lina's close with the guys who run that Bizzyboys thing and one of 'em offered me a job with 'em. It's— it's been pretty fuckin' good. Lot of odd jobs helping people out. Keeps me busy—" she snorts, "no pun intended."
Stuffs a forkful of pancakes into her mouth. Yeah, that's good.
"Besides that, y'know—some good days, bad days..." Most of the details edge into the bigger discussions laid in front of them. "...you? On track with getting everything set up out here?"
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"But yeah, I've been okay. The guys at Baker Ranch have been giving me some pointers, and I got some left-behind seeds and livestock from some farmers who left on the ferry."
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She does smile, semi-consciously. "No, yeah, it's— it's definitely been kinda nice." Not something she's used to, yet, people actually being relieved to have her turn up, but... it's definitely not bad, even if sometimes she might have to take a second to be up in her feelings about it.
"And good. Good. Guess we'll be good once fuckin' spring comes around." She isn't going to live here again and not help more, when she can. With physical labour and building stuff, anyway—may as well make good use of the chisels he got her, right? "If anything else got busted when I was gone, I'll fix it up this week."
She's quiet, for a moment, as she keeps eating. Lets the mealtime companionship sit, for a bit, as she tries to gauge when normal chatter should become talking, where the line is or isn't. Eventually, after swallowing, offers a testing: "...I'm uh— I'm working on cutting down the fuckin'. Alcohol. Slowly."
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"Yeah, uh— Lina put her foot down, like, day fucking one I was at her place, ha," South snorts. Christ, she owes Lina so much. "Tried to cut it to zero immediately, at first, which just made me violently fucking ill so— one of the docs gave me a, like, schedule? To cut down. So m'still drinking, but... a bit less every week or so?"
Even with an actual plan it's not pleasant, and she still bristles at the fact she had to have a doctor step in at all, but it's working, slowly. She feels a little clearer headed.
"Which means counting my drinks and shit, which is easier at home, so— yeah, no more late nights out without warning. Promise."
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And now the hard stuff.
"So, you got any other big stuff to talk about or should I go ahead?"
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That familiar flash of validation rushes through her and she pats his hand in the moment it's there on her arm as a quiet acknowledgement, barely biting back a smile. She's trying. She's really fucking trying and it's— it's nice to be able to start showing it.
"Uh— you go ahead. I mean, there's, like, other shit, but... you go first. Sure I need to hear it."
After everything, it only seems fair. He had to set the terms of all this, after all, so... she braces, a little, to hear what he has to say, but she's ready as she'll ever be.
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"So, CT came by while you were away. And before you freak out---- we weren't, like, talking shit. She came to tell me about something she found out, uh. Before she died. About us."
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That's... not what she expected. Couldn't concretely say what she did expect—more talk of their communication problems, maybe, or how North wants her to handle certain things—but it wasn't that.
It's hard to miss the way she does, reflexively, bristle at the mention of CT—can't help the reflexive recoil at being talked about behind her back—but she gets that under control quickly enough, if not without a bit of effort. (Still, progress, right?)
"...like. What?"
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The silence that falls over South is stark for how it contrasts everything else about her. She stares back at him, mouth just barely ajar, for a long, unnatural moment of what must seem to be calm before an inevitable storm, until, finally:
"...what?"
The word tries to die in her throat, caught by the overwhelming and yet unidentifiable emotion that strangles her, and so it comes out tight and small. She is still frozen in place.
Carolina told her, once, weeks ago, that she thought the way Command had always treated her was targeted. She hadn't known what to do with the feeling that hit her then, when it was just a theory, when it was just about her, when it was easy to write off as just another example of the ways people always saw her as a troublesome element needing punishment. But this—this is more than that, this is so much worse than that, this is—
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Finally, motion. Sudden, but not violent—South seizes up from her seat and drags her hands over her face, through her hair, barely resisting the urge to grab and tug at the roots. Emotion that needs an outlet, the way she's always been, and yet so determined right now not to even risk lashing out.
"They— they were— they fucking broke me on purpose?!"
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Her muscles tense for barely a flash and then relax, looser than they were before, just that touch enough to sooth—not completely, no, but it's something. It's something.
The horrible, cruel part of her that she's got choked on a leash wants to bite back at him, snap that yeah, he should be fucking sorry, should be sorry for a lot of things— but no, no that's not how she feels, that's not how she really feels and she throttles that piece of her until it shuts the fuck up. The effort leaves her breathing heavy. For a split second, he might even recognise the way her hands draw back like they're going to ram against her skull, before she wrests them down without letting it happen.
"I— I-I thought... I-I thought I was going nuts. I knew I felt something, I knew... but none of the rest of you ever fucking saw it. There goes South, getting in fucking trouble again! What a pain in the ass, won't listen, won't— but I did good work. I did. But every time I made any fucking mistake—"
Mistakes other people never got permanent marks on their record for. Mistakes that should never have been enough to outweigh the work she did. What the fuck. What the fuck.
And worse than that—
She looks back down at him with his own eyes and swallows, hard. "...t-they turned me against you. I— I let them turn me against you. I— Di—"
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That double standard that had followed them their whole lives. It had grown so normal that North didn't think to do anything about it, no matter how frustrated he was. All he could do was keep supporting her, but the angrier she got, the less he wanted to. Like a boiled frog.
He should've stopped it.
"It wasn't like that," he insists. A goddamn hypocrite. It wasn't South's fault, she couldn't have known, but he should have. South, a victim. North, complicit. (Maybe he deserved to die for what he let them do to her.) "You didn't let anybody do anything, you were manipulated. It was a set-up. I-I mean, it's--- It still happened. You still made some bad choices. But you're not a monster for being a product of what was done to you."
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South sits, stands, sits, buries her face in her hands and tries to breathe. Wants to pace around the room (wants to hit something) but doesn't want to walk away from him, right now; the idea of it feels wrong, of turning her back on him for even a second.
"But I did. I-I could've— I could've talked to you, I could've— I-I could've fucking trusted you and I didn't, I didn't. Fuck, they had me working fucking Recovery, told me to track you down, and I never even fucking told you!"
Playing both sides. At the time, she figured they didn't know she was with North, already, that they just believed her when she said she was on her own and willing to turn him in if she ever found him. Of course, she never did. She used them for information, and kept trying to convince North to leave Theta behind. And yet she never warned him. She came up with her stupid fucking plan, instead.
"They— they turned me against you. An-and I. Let them. And I-I hate that. I hate it. I hate—" me, fuck, she hates herself for letting this happen, at the same time as a part of her feels... vindicated, by the truth. They did this to her. They did this to her. It wasn't just her. It wasn't just her.
Breathe in, out.
"I-I hate them. I hate them. And I hate me. And I don't hate you. I can't— I could never hate you. Even back there, on the run, when I was so fucking angry with you I-I could never... I could never hate you." Maybe that comes out of nowhere. But it feels so suddenly important to say, in the moment.
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"You were working Recovery?"
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South winces, drops her head back into her palms so she doesn't have to look at him. "...yeah. Since— since a few weeks after we left."
Should've told him the first time she explained this. (He's going to be hurt again. He's going to want her gone again—)
"They called me one night, when you were asleep. They didn't seem to know we were already fuckin' together, so they... assigned me to finding you and Theta. Promised me an AI if I did everything they asked. Honestly I— I didn't even believe that part, I just— figured it'd get me information. And so long as they didn't know I was with you. I-I could use that to keep us safe until... until I convinced you to give Theta up. Obviously, I know that was fucking stupid, now. Every fucking plan I made was fucking stupid."
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