Savior | T. Drake ✔

[27]

When Tim woke up, Irina was still asleep with her head nestled close to his arm and her hand resting upon his. Even though her hair had fallen over her face, obscuring it from view, he still knew it was her because he could recognize those bruised knuckles anywhere.

Gently turning his hand that was under hers, he interlaced their fingers together, tips covering the slightly red knuckles. She must have sensed the movement as her body stirred delicately and she lifted her head up a little to look at him.

Seeing him awake, she sat up leaning back as if uncertain whether he would want her to be that close to him or not. But his grip on her hand tightened and she looked down at their entwined fingers.

"You came," he was looking at her with a smile on his face and his eyes had lit up in relief, "thank you."

"No, Tim," she spoke, green eyes still weighed down with both sleep and guilt, "you should be angry at me and yet you're thanking me? What I did is worthy of punishment not gratitude."

But his smile didn't falter as he brought up her hand to his mouth, gently kissing the back of her palm. A beautiful red shade tainted her features at that gesture. "How can I ever be angry at you?"

"I failed," she replied, "I had always promised to protect you but now I'm the reason you're here. I hurt you, Tim, and I know very well that I had been nowhere near lenient on you."

"You can't just blame yourself," he remarked, still holding her hand in his, "I lied to you and kept you in the dark. You had no idea it was me under the cowl. And given the situation, what you did to me was rather expected and a natural reaction from your side."

She shook her head, "when you knew that was going to be my reaction then why the hell did you face me on your own? Why didn't you tell me the truth then? You had been damaged really bad when you slipped that cowl off your head."

He nodded, "that's my fault. But I didn't tell you before because I knew you were too angry and I feared that if I told you, you would leave me forever."

Tears had started to prick at the corners of her eyes, "at least I wouldn't have hurt you."

"Maybe."

"I can never... I can't even bring myself to say it now because it feels like I'm being a hypocrite. I always said that I could never hurt my damsel in distress. Yet here we are."

She looked away but he gently tugged at her hand bringing her closer to him, "can't we just forget all this?"

"I wish it was that easy."

"Irina, about what happened to your father... Trust me, we had never meant for things to get so out of hand," he spoke up knowing that she deserved an explanation for that, "everything that came in the news was not how it actually happened."

"I know now. You were just doing your duty. Aunt Lena told me everything about what he was doing under the cover of LexCorp and I feel ashamed that I defended him even though he was risking the safety of the whole city."

"The press made a huge fuss of it but I want you to know that we didn't kill him. He died because his own suit malfunctioned. All the fire, the destruction, the mess it wasn't us even though the press highlighted it in that way. Still, I wanted to warn you. I really really wanted to tell you about him earlier so that you'd be prepared. But I didn't get the chance to do so and when we did meet, it had all gone up in flames."

"That's the sad part," she looked at him at last, "I had thought he had changed but that wasn't true. I thought you people were responsible for his death and that was wrong too. The tragedy is that I hurt the man I loved most for the man who had never even given me a second's thought."