dawn is coming (open your eyes)
7x08 coda
Athena doesn’t ask him what happened, but as Bobby watches the desert slip past, the words come tumbling out anyway. Small things, at first—this is where I found the dead coyote—until there are enough pieces lying between them that he can pick them up and put them together into something cohesive.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she says, when he’s finished. “Going after Amir? You could have just waited for him to get back to the staging area.”
“No, I couldn’t,” Bobby says. “He was injured.”
“But you didn’t know that at the time, did you?”
“I knew he went out and didn’t come back,” Bobby says. “And that’s enough.”
“Yeah,” Athena murmurs, her gaze fixed somewhere far on the road ahead. “I know it is.”
She lets him sit in silence for a couple of miles, and when she asks the next question, he knows it’s the one she’s wanted to ask all along.
“You didn’t tell him? About Marcy. And the kids.”
Bobby sighs, and takes a long drink of water from the bottle he’s been clutching since the hospital. “No.”
“You didn’t tell him anything.” This one isn’t even pretending to be a question. “About what you lost, or what you planned to—”
“No,” Bobby says again. “It’s not about me.”
“He thinks you just walked away, Bobby,” Athena says. “Seems like it’s at least a little bit about you.”
“I told him I didn’t,” Bobby says, then clarifies, “Just walk away, I mean. But he doesn’t need to know the details. It’s not going to make him feel better to know exactly how I suffered. It’s not going to bring Ayanna back again, bring his old life back again.”
“But it would let him know—“
“All he needs is to know how much it still weighs on me,” Bobby says. “Because it does.”
Athena sighs. “I don’t know. I feel better knowing that Jeffrey’s going to be peeing into a bag for the rest of his life.”
Bobby huffs. “You know, so do I.”
Athena drums her fingers against the steering wheel. “Maybe it’s different, though,” she says, slowly. “Jeffrey wanted to hurt me. He doesn’t regret what he did, not one bit.” She turns to look at him, sidelong. “But you do. And you never meant to hurt anyone.”
“I didn’t tell him that, either,” Bobby says. “I don’t think it would have meant all that much to him.”
“Maybe not,” Athena says. “And maybe you’re right, maybe hearing about Marcy and the kids wouldn’t have helped either. But you told him what he needs to hear. Now I’m telling you what you need to hear.”
She holds out her hand, and Bobby takes it. She squeezes.
“You’re a good man, Bobby. If Amir got to know you, he’d see it too. Now, maybe he never will, but that’s okay. Because I know it. And I know you do, too.”
Bobby squeezes back, and he knows he doesn’t need to say the words collecting on his tongue. I love you. Because Athena knows.
