>FAIRFIELD, ID
>SOBEL’S RESIDENCE
>0725
>16.NOV.2019

There was a certain peace in the morning that Donnelley hadn’t felt in such a long time. It almost felt like something new, something yet undiscovered by the rest of humanity and sorely needing to be told to everyone else, as if he’d discovered something as important and amazing as fire. The smell of the bread when Ava had taken it from the oven reminded him of his late Aunt’s biscuits in the morning, calling him and his uncle inside for breakfast as they’d long been up and working in the small hours of the day.

He’d told Ava all about that life while they worked in the kitchen and waited for the small pieces of bread shaped like rabbits to be done. She’d sat and listened, laughed when he’d told her about the first time he’d tried to ride a horse, let alone break one. After that was done, she’d taken a few pieces back to her and Dave’s room. That left Donnelley alone with his few pieces.

He now sat in the kitchen soaking up the sun coming in from between the slats of the blinds in the windows. Both tranquil, and yet softly paralyzed by the prospect of seeing Laine. Of trying to cross the cracked boards on that bridge between him and her. As always, he reminded himself of all the things he’d have never done if he let his fear and uncertainty dictate everything. He rose from the creaking stool in Sobel’s kitchen with the confidence of a child in front of a dark hallway. His footsteps creaked along Sobel’s floors, until he was standing in front of Laine’s room. He slowly raised one hand, a bunny shaped piece of bread roughly the size of his palm in the other, still warm. He swallowed anxiety and knocked on Laine’s door, and waited.

Laine still lay on the bed, the early sunlight crossing her body in stripes through the blinds. Another sunrise, she observed through half slitted eyes. Not only the promise of a new day but more importantly proof of making it through another night. Her thoughts flit back to the last meeting with her boss back at the office in Quantico and she frowned, then rubbed her hands over her face and pulled a pillow over her head. The two parts of her life were colliding and the struggle to keep one from infecting the other was becoming a losing battle. 

The knock caught her by surprise and she tossed the pillow aside. Laine sait up and grabbed the pair of jeans she wore yesterday and pulled them on, leaving the t-shirt on that she had slept in. It was a faded out band shirt that had worked its way into the last days of sleep wear. The collar had been cut out, leaving it to hang over one shoulder and the Cramps logo crackled but still recognizable. Her bare feet whispered against the rug as she crossed the room and opened the door, peering through it. 

She smelled the bread as she registered who it was, not Ava coming to fetch her for breakfast but Donnelley. Laine shut the door, running a quick hand through sleep tousled hair and rubbing her eyes, smearing the remains of yesterday’s mascara even worse. Laine sighed then opened the door again, and held it wider, but not enough to be inviting yet. 

“Hey,” she said, glancing down from his eyes to the bread in his hand, “Who’s your friend?”

Donnelley looked up and tried to erase the subtle hurt from his face when the door opened again. At Laine’s question, he paused, looking down at the bread. He cleared his throat, raising his eyes back to hers and trying a small smile, “I don’t know, but he wanted to talk to you.”

Laine met his blue eyes, everything he held behind them she had seen laid bare and a hint of that vulnerability flickered in their depths as he spoke. 

She smiled a little then stepped back, opening the door enough to welcome him in. Laine closed it behind him then shoved her hands in her back pockets and stayed quiet, first looking him over then pointedly at the rabbit shaped bread. 

"A bunny bun," she said, smiling slightly, "Trust Ava to make puns for breakfast."

Laine cleared her throat and shrugged, then gestured with her chin at the wooden chair draped by her coat. "If you want to sit."

Letting him decide, she shook herself internally and forced calm to her expression and body language. She dropped her hands from her back pockets and said, "So, Mr Bunny, what is on your mind?"

After Donnelley internally let go a sigh of relief that Laine was slowly opening back up to him, he took the offered seat. Even so, he still didn’t want to make himself too comfortable. He could feel it in the way Laine held herself, as if she was still keeping her distance from the family dog that had bitten her too many times. Just like the dog, Donnelley kept his eyes on the ground.

“I stayed up all night with Ava. Just like we used to.” Donnelley said, offering the bunny bun to Laine, “I missed her. I told her as much, after we were done huggin’ and gettin’ all wet in the eye.”

“And…” He shrugged, swallowed, “I just miss you too.”

Laine listened before reaching out to pluck the bread bunny from his hand. The buttery soft pastry with some kind of dried fruit for eyes. Maybe blueberries. She glanced up at Donnelley and asked, "Remember the chocolate rabbits at Easter? Did you bite their ears or feet first?"

Laine bit the bread, taking the head off at the neck and chewed as she watched him. "Either way, I always felt a little bad. There was no way to make it nice, but the chocolate was too good to not take a bite."

She gazed at him and shrugged a little, taking another bite. Laine rubbed her thumb across her bottom lip to wipe away the crumbs.

"I do, too," she admitted, "I can't help myself. I love you." 

Donnelley lifted his eyes from the floor and looked at Laine. He took her face in as if it was the first time he’d ever seen it, beauty anew in his eyes. Some part of him felt like it was too easy, that he didn’t have to fight for her love as hard as he thought he should have to. Or maybe that’s just how it is, and normal people didn’t just yell at each other and scare their daughter under her covers.

He knew he had a lot of love to earn back from a lot of people. He knew he had to teach himself to take the victories as they came, big or small. So, he smiled at Laine and rose from his seat. He looked her over as she ate the bunny bun, those same eyes holding the same look. Hunger, passion, lust. Most of all, love.

“I love you too.” Donnelley said, quiet, as if their love was a house of cards built on sand and his voice could topple it, “More than you know, Laine.”

“I’m sorry for everythin’.” He said, “For all the things I know I’ve done, and all the things I don’t.”

He smiled a bit, “I’m just wonderin’ why the hell you stick with me.”

Laine met his gaze and nodded, finishing her bite of the bread. “Probably because you’re not the only one that can make decisions that you know are a dangerous gamble but you do it because you could not do anything else.”

She brushed her hair back behind her ear, the manicured nails a black pearl. “I knew it would be trouble, you would be...the wrong choice. But I couldn’t help it, no matter how I fought it and tried to change course. My path always leads back to you, since that night you put your jacket around my shoulders and explained why you fought against such evil.” 

Her green eyes flashed up at him, “I know I’ll pay for the decisions I am making. Whether it’s you hurting me or losing my job. Or dying, again.”

Laine cleared her throat, “My boss, he’s been on me since I got back. He hates that he’s been left in the dark, he’s tried enlisting my coworkers to spy for him, undermining my work, threatening my position and my place at the Bureau. He can’t fire me so he’s forcing me out of the BSU, transferring me to some field office in the sticks. Last I heard it was Salt Lake City.” 

“I’m sorry.” He said, looking down and away from her, his hands coming together and fingers interlacing, “You don’t deserve this. It comes with the job, but you don’t deserve the job neither.”

He shook his head slow, “No one does.” He looked at her again, “I did what I had to do to make sure that Dave and Ava could get out. I ain’t afraid to do it again to make sure you can.”

Laine watched him, her gaze sliding over the burn scar which cut down his cheek, something that defined him. Marked as a broken man but also a survivor. She looked down at his hands, hands that had killed and had soothed down her back as they made love. 

"I keep going around in circles," she said slowly, "Thinking that I can get away, forget you and UMBRA, about the horror and injustice. Things that should not be but are. Things I don't think we could ever defeat but the circle tightens."

Laine made a gesture with her finger, swirling the air. "That circle I talk myself into closes in and chokes me with the knowledge. I already know what I will do, it's just the doing of it that's hard."

She drew in a trembling breath, and felt the prick of tears in her eyes before blinking hard, resenting them. "I know we won't have a happy ending, Donnelley. We won't ride off into the sunset together. But we may yet hold back the night to see another sunrise, together."

Laine sighed a little sound between a laugh and a sob, then bit her lip slightly. "I'm living on borrowed time anyway, this life is not just my own. I took an innocent to come back and I owe it to her and the others lost to these monsters to keep fighting. I owe it to you, to the team. To give my sanity, my life... again."

She met his eyes, "The circle closes now. I am in this until whatever end waits for me. And it scares the shit out of me." 

Laine moved towards him, seeking an embrace, her black polished nails digging in. 

“Fuck, it scares me too-“ Donnelley stopped abruptly from what would have been his response, taken by surprise at Laine’s sudden embrace.

He stopped cold in his tracks, even holding his breath until he let it out, nuzzling his face into Laine’s neck. He wrapped his arms around his love, accepting the silence if it meant this closeness wouldn’t end. He drew in another breath, “I thought I’d ruined this.” He said, “Ruined me and you, ruined the team, ruined everythin’.”

His hand moved to the nape of Laine’s neck and he held her close like they’d been apart for years, “All I remember in Alaska was just tryin’ to get my hand ‘round yours before I died. I was so scared I was the only one to come back, that I’d never fuckin’ see you again…” He squeezed her gently, “We’re here. Ipiktok needed us here. We owe it to him to make sure his dream was true… whatever it was.”