Chapter Text
When Loona steps through the apartment door, having just returned from Moxxie and Millie’s first work assignment sans Blitz, she finds Blitz curled in a tight little ball on the couch. It strikes her as unusual given that he’s been splayed out on his back either staring vacantly at the ceiling or sleeping for the past week, so she wanders over to prod him just to make sure he’s okay.
“You good?”
“No,” comes the muffled reply.
“You need painkillers? I swiped some from the hospital when those asshole doctors weren’t looking since they wouldn’t prescribe you any.”
“They won’t help…”
“They might. If you’re still in pain–”
“I'm not in pain!” He unfurls from his ball and lifts his tear-streaked face for Loona to see.
“Yeah, I'm calling bullsh*t. So what'll it be? Vicodin?”
“I don't need anything! And even if I did, I wouldn’t f*cking deserve it…”
Loona sighs and places a hand on Blitz’s shoulder, “What circle of self-loathing are we in today?”
“The one where every bad thing that keeps happening all comes back to being my f*cking fault!” He wails.
“Okay, well let’s start by acknowledging that that’s a gross overgeneralization.”
“It’s the f*cking truth!” He’s on the verge of hyperventilating.
“Maybe we start by just breathing? And we look at the things that aren’t f*cked up before we look at the ones that are. For starters, you’re still physically in one piece. You’re lucid, albeit a little irrational right now, but we can work with that. I’m doing fine. Moxxie’s...himself. Millie’s on the mend and got to crack a few heads today over in the human world. And then, she and Moxxie have had nearly a full uninterrupted week of getting to make out in the office whenever they like without you being a freak about it and taking pictures. Uh, let’s see…what else? Oh, Fizzarolli stopped by with some extremely inappropriate get-well gifts that you might enjoy later.”
Blitz is visibly calmer, but his overall mood clearly hasn’t improved much. “And now do the f*cked up ones.”
“Well, the most f*cked up thing by a mile is my sleep schedule. Which is only a little bit your fault but mostly Octavia’s blow by blow account of how her dad is circling the drain and yet still can’t find it in him to stop asking how you’re doing every time she manages to get ahold of him with that weird telepathic sh*t you got him started on.”
Blitz blinks rapidly, processing.
“Now before you get all weepy and hopeful though, Stolas’ deal is middling to very f*cked up. Like, on a scale of 1 to 10, we’re looking at a solid 7. Which is bad but could be worse…if that’s any consolation.”
“Oh,” Blitz’s face falls. He draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them.
“I’m just trying to be straight with you. No bullsh*tting. That’s what you always say you want.”
“I appreciate it,” he rolls back over onto his side and curls into a fetal position.
“Did any of that help at all?”
Blitz considers a moment and then replies, “Not really…”
Loona is holding in a huff of exasperation, “Well, let it sit with you for a bit and maybe it will.”
Blitz is shaking his head, “I got something this morning. Well, technically I got it a few days ago when I was still out of it, and I’m guessing I was supposed to get right when this all started.”
Blitz is extracting his phone from where he’s jammed it in between the couch cushions.
“Those f*ckers who ambushed us at the canyon wanted to lure me out there with this, but it took too long to go through cause of the file size. I mean, we ended up going out there anyway, so it didn’t matter in the end that I didn’t get it until after the fact…but…”
He’s sitting up again and tapping through his phone to show her. She can see his hands are shaking.
“But it’s two hours long, and it, umm, it’s a video record of, uh, of all the horrible sh*t they did to Stolas while they had him and them explaining the why behind it. Turns out it was only a little bit about him but mostly about settling the score with me for f*cking up their power grabs in their little Overlord circle.”
He’s dragging the video cursor along the bottom of the screen, never playing it, but pausing periodically at various, blurred frames.
“And it’s bad…like really bad. And they kept taunting Stolas about being involved with me…like, physically involved…and they kept going back to how everything was my fault…but he kept defending me and throwing it back in their faces and smarting off like it was nothing…”
Blitz’s jabbing at the phone now with a single finger, skipping back and forth minutes at a time, the phone blaring shouts and screams and general chaos.
“And he didn’t have to do that…he shouldn’t have, actually, because they got so freaking pissed off, and it just got so much worse…but I’ve never seen anyone do that for me before…no one’s ever willingly made things sh*ttier for themselves for me…and I wasn’t even freaking around to see it, so there was no reason for him to do all that…but he did…and I–I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about that or what I’m supposed to do with it…”
The phone is shrieking, and Loona pries it out of Blitz’s hand and clicks it off. She pockets it.
“This is gonna stay with me until you’re done spiraling.”
“I’m not–” He’s lunging for his phone.
“Yeah, you are, and that’s–that’s okay. It’s a lot.”
“No sh*t. You think you know a guy and then suddenly you don’t, and now it’s all complicated… or maybe I’m just a dumbass reading something into nothing, but I don’t know, and I don’t get to know, and I’ll probably never know, and it’s not f*cking fair! It’s not f*cking fair, Loona, and I’m so f*cking tired…I don’t–I can’t–I can’t do this anymore! I hit my limit and then some, and I just can’t–”
He’s hopping off the couch and charging across the room towards the kitchen.
“Dad–”
Loona’s phone goes off. She hesitates, debating whether to even check who it is or simply ignore it, but her curiosity wins out. Octavia’s name is lighting up the screen.
“I think I should–can I take this?”
Blitz is rifling through their medication drawer.
“That a ‘yes’?”
He doesn’t answer, so she goes ahead and picks up.
Blitz, meanwhile, can’t seem to find what he’s looking for and rips out the entire drawer and dumps its contents on the floor. Most of what they have is either generic and useless or expired. He just needs something that’ll knock him out for a good f*cking while so he doesn’t have to think about anything. He’s chucking bottles as he goes in an attempt to delineate between what he’s already checked and rejected and what still needs sorting. The further in he gets, the more clouded his vision becomes and harder the labels are to read. He’s wiping at his eyes in frustration, and it dawns on him belatedly that his face is wet and that he started crying at some point, but he can’t recall exactly when.
Loona is stepping around the counter, her call ended.
“Hey, so I need to head over to the hospital. Octavia’s mom is being a bitch, no surprises there, and she needs a little backup. Did–did you maybe want to come with?”
Blitz blinks up at her, his whole face creasing. “I can’t…”
“Did you want to try anyway? You can always hang out in the van if worse comes to worst.”
“I just said I can’t.”
“Can I ask why? Because I kinda don’t think it’s a good idea for me to leave you alone right now.”
“Then call Moxxie and Millie to come babysit if it’s that big a deal. I’m not–I don’t care. How about that? I don’t want to go because I don’t actually give a sh*t about anyone but myself.”
Loona is mentally debating whether to push the issue or not, If she does, it might be just enough to help Blitz get over himself. Or, it might be too much, and he might actually snap.
She makes up her mind to err on the side of caution.
“Well, if you change your mind, you can call me from the landline. Or Moxxie and Millie can bring you. And I am going to ask them to come over. So if you could just go lie down until they get here, and I can clean up this mess when I get back…sound like a plan?”
Blitz snatches up a random pill bottle that looks vaguely like Tums and marches over to the couch and throws himself down on it.
“Whatever…,” Blitz mumbles, his voice muffled by the cushion he’s face-planted into.
“I’ll only be gone for like an hour or two. Okay?”
“Okay…”
“And you’re not gonna wander back over here and do something stupid like take a bunch of pills or mix your pills with alcohol or any sh*t like that because if you do, I will come back home and personally kick your ass–”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I got it.”
Loona makes the call to Moxxie and Millie and ensures they’re on their way before stepping out the apartment door. She briefly considers waiting until they arrive before she leaves the building, but a handful of insistent texts from Octavia make up her mind that Blitz can survive on his own for a little while.
Twenty minutes later, when Moxxie and Millie let themselves in with a key left under the front mat, they are greeted by an empty apartment. The window leading to the fire escape has been left wide open.
