"I can't stay, Iris," he said softly, "I've been here too long already." Iris was barely able to fight back the tremors at the blunt and resigned way he said it. The quavering in her chest intensified. She shook her head again, or at least, she tried to as best she could given that his metal fingers still held her chin so that she was forced to meet his wretched gaze.

"Yes you can. You can stay," she whispered, a plea that she knew was pointless even as the words slipped past her lips, "I want you to stay." His eyes closed, hiding the flicker of sorrow that appeared in their steel-blue depths. His hand fell back to his lap as he turned, his jaw clenching as though fighting to keep something in.

"No, I can't," he ground out, "there are people searching for me, Iris. And they have good reason to be." Iris was taken aback, feeling a little like she had been slapped at the self-loathing in his voice. He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees as his face fell to his hands, another loaded, pained sigh growling out of his chest. Iris was so shocked that she couldn't move, though a single word wormed its way out of her thoughts and out into the quiet of the apartment.

"Why?" His hands fell slowly away from his face as her impulsive question hung in the air, his eyes hard and distant as his jaw tensed again, the muscle in his cheek working angrily. But he didn't answer, not right away. After a moment he stood, ignoring the blood-stained tee and snatching up the plaid shirt instead, worrying it in his hands for a moment before donning it in quick, angry movements, though he stopped short of buttoning it. Iris could only watch him as he scrubbed his real hand over his face, pacing out his agitation. Iris quickly regretted letting the word out, hating how conflicted and agitated it made him. She nearly began hoping he wouldn't answer, suddenly afraid of what he'd say. For him to look the way he did right now? Deep down, her gut told her it had to be bad to haunt him like this.

But that thought was cut short as he abruptly stopped pacing, his voice quiet but rushed at first before he forced himself to slow down.

"I don't remember huge chunks of my past," he confessed in a rush, pointedly not looking directly at her as the words tumbled out, "I wasn't even sure of my own name the first day you met me." He sounded almost detached and he sounded resigned, drawing a frown at first from Iris, distracting her from her apprehension at hearing the answer to her question.

It sounded outlandish as he said it. But as she processed the way he said it, it almost immediately didn't. More than that, he sounded like he had little hope that she'd believe him. If he noticed her incredulity at first he didn't let on. He just kept talking and soon it seemed like he barely even realized he was speaking anymore, like she wasn't there at all. He seemed almost lost inside his own head, yet there was no mistaking how oddly relieved he seemed to be letting it out.

"There are some things I just know, some things I think I remember and others that flash through my head like a film reel. I know I'm from Brooklyn, but I can't keep my memories about it straight. I think I remember joining the army, but I can't remember when or where or why. I remember flashes of growing up, of my brothers, my sister, of my best friend, of school and fighting and missions. I see faces I should know and know names I should be able to put faces to. I think I remember doing...horrible things...monstrous things...there are things I wish I didn't remember." She'd never heard him say so much about the not-so-secret darker aspects his past and, if she was being truthful with herself, a shiver of unease went through her at the blank, awful expression forming in his steel-blue eyes as he paused, his breathing ragged. He'd never even willfully brought it up before, always deflecting or avoiding.

But then it was as though something in him cracked, an equally horrible despondency taking over from the dead look, leaving him looking deflated and exhausted. Iris could only watch, transfixed at the constantly shifting shadows, real and metaphoric, passing over his face, her chest growing tight at how utterly wretched he sounded. She'd thought of him as tortured when she'd first met him, but until this moment she hadn't realized how heartbreakingly appropriate the term had been.

"There are huge blank spaces in my memory, but also not. Places in my head that are like—" he struggled for a moment to find the right words, "like there's a locked door between me and my past, a glass one that I can see through and I think I might be able to open, but one I'm not sure I can walk through; one I'm not sure I want to walk through. Not remembering what I do remember." Almost as soon as the analogy came out he looked dissatisfied with it, even outright frustrated with it, the crease between his brows furrowing deeper. But when nothing better seemed to come to mind he all but snarled out his frustration, his metal hand fisting with a quiet, squealing clunk that nevertheless seemed to echo through the room. Iris couldn't help but recoil at the sound, causing his face to twist further as, this time, he noticed her reaction. The silence seemed to build, pressing down on both of them, but on James heaviest of all. After a moment he sank back down onto the couch, as though he didn't have the will or the energy in the face of his admission to stand anymore, his whole body shaking. She reached out to touch him, to lay a hand against his arm but he flinched away, an anguished and desolate expression twisting his handsome features.

"I—I think I was ordered to kill him—my best friend—and I—I tried to do it. I didn't know him. But then I started to. He said my name and I started to remember. But then they tore it back out of me and ordered me to try again. I couldn't fight the order. I didn't even think to. I just obeyed. Not until he—he—I was nothing. Nothing but the mission...empty..." his voice broke and Iris was sure part of her heart broke with it. She could feel tears prickling behind her eyes but they didn't fall. They couldn't. It was as though the strength of his anguish and guilt was burning them away. If she had felt completely inadequate at comforting him that evening they ate dinner on the roof what felt like nearly a lifetime ago, that was nothing to the feeling she fought against now. Now, to an even more acute degree than that night, there was nothing she could say.

So she offered nothing but her presence. She stayed. She had listened and she'd let him get what he'd been holding in out, and as his breathing began to steady she knew that was what he'd needed more than words. She didn't tell him it'd be okay—that would have been a lie and they both knew it. And she didn't tell him she wasn't unnerved by what he'd said, because she was...but it didn't seem important, somehow. She edged a little closer, sliding off the couch to kneel between his knees so that her face was level with his. His head bowed lower, avoiding her. But Iris reached out, her hands tracing his jaw before lifting his face to hers and resting her forehead against his. A shuddering sigh rocked through him, his eyes squeezed shut as though trying to hold back the agonized tears she could see glimmering in the corners of his eyes.

After a moment that seemed to drag on for a year, his eyes opened to meet hers. The steel-blue depths still held his torment but it had eased, leaving only the James she'd come to care about. A shiver of relief ran through her to see that and Iris finally felt the worry pressing against her chest loosen. He shifted, his flesh hand rising to tangle itself in her short curls as the cybernetic one tentatively traced up her forearm and eased around her to rest in the hollow of her back. One of her own hands slipped down his neck until it rested against his collarbone as the other drifted down until it rested against the cool metal of his left shoulder. The hint of a smile appeared on his face at the gesture, but it didn't quite melt the haunted look in his eyes.

With another shuddering sigh, this one nowhere near as forceful as the last, he pulled away, leaning back onto the couch. The hand that had been tangled in her hair loosened and brushed down her neck to her shoulder. She didn't even need to feel the entreating pressure of his fingers to climb back onto the couch to settle against him, her head nestling into against the juncture of his neck and shoulder. She could feel his cheek lowering to rest against her hair, feeling him breathing deeply even as his arms curled around her.

It was a long time before he spoke again. So long that she was growing dangerously close to drifting off against him.

"They turned me into a weapon," he murmured, his voice lacking nearly all inflection, "They gave me—gave me this," She felt and heard his metal arm tense, seeing his hand fisting again, "and they broke into my head, scrambling and shredding my mind, locking away my memories. They made me a mindless weapon." His voice grew pained then. "They made me into a monster." Iris responded at first by burrowing closer into his side, her hand reaching out to trace over the cool metal of his cybernetic one until it loosened beneath her touch. It was only then that she spoke, her voice low and certain even as it grew sleepy.

"They may have made you into a weapon, but you're not a monster." And she realized she believed it too. A shaky breath expanded his chest beneath her, but he didn't object, even though she suspected he wanted to. She was glad for that. She was too tired to argue that point right now with the adrenaline long gone. She was too comfortable tucked within his embrace and it was slowly beginning to lull her to sleep; she felt protected there. "You saved my life, James. You're a good person. Just because you've done bad things it doesn't make you a monster.

"You make me feel safe." His only response to her murmur was to tighten his hold more securely around her. She sighed at that, snuggling further against him, her voice a faint, pleading whisper when she spoke again.

"Please stay." He didn't answer with words, but she felt it in the way his body relaxed next to hers.

It wasn't much longer before she had drifted off for real, still curled up against him.    

A/N: Thanks for reading!

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