Private Finished Angelo "Mage Killer" Genovese

Shay wanted to tell Angelo 'but you're a good man.' She wanted to cling to him and shed tears, confess sins. But Shay wasn't stupid enough to do that. Her heard hurt. She wanted the screaming to stop.

She smiled in a visibly forced way and patted his arm. "Well, you tried. That counts for something." Then Shay sighed.

Right. She was done and through. Getting married to a criminal. She was never really going to leave it all behind. Things didn't work like that. You had to want to leave everything behind to do it and Shay didn't. Not really.

To Shay, it was painfully clear that if She told Angelo all her badness, gave him even a peek at it, he'd leave. He'd hate her and leave. Maybe use that pretty gun on her. Probably, Derry, too, and that was the most lonely thought Shay had ever had.

The idea that there was no one: Not Theo. Not Angelo. Not Derry. No one, that Shay could be completely and brutally honest with who would accept it.

"I think I'm going to take a nap here if that's cool?"

Shay was not about to admit to murdering someone to Angelo. Even if that weighed on her. She would never talk about it to anyone ever. That was how you didn't go to jail. But there were plenty of other things that scared her all the same.

Shay didn't move to go take that nap. Not after he spoke and there was this awkward air between them. God, she was exhausted. All the mental stress of everything was getting to her. Being close to people was hard fucking work.

Shay wasn't about to confess murder, so she said the next best thing. "Are we going to pretend our last conversation never happened?"

She had thought she'd be fine never bringing it up again. Leaving it a skeleton amongst all the others in her closet, but Angelo acting... well normal around her had thrown her off. As if he hadn't looked at her with that complete horror on his face before. Were they both in some weird state of denial? The thought killed her.

Maybe Angelo couldn't help her with her crippling abandonment issues (and hey, no one but her and Valli could) but he could sure as Hell give insight into them. Whatever she and Angelo were. They'd always been in this weird sort of limbo. Not friends, she'd learned quickly enough, but something.

"What are we doing, Angelo?" she asked, using his real name to let him know she was utterly serious now. "Why... I am why are we even here? I know I asked you once, a while ago, but I was angry them. I'm not now. But..." She rubbed her arm.

"We weren't friends. We weren't anything. It seemed like you'd have liked to stay as far from me as possible. The only reason you used to talk to me was to get Klaus talking. So why are we here?"

"I don't want to pretend like it didn't happen," she told him. "I don't want to fight about it, but I don't want to sweep it all under the rug either. It makes me feel... unseen." Which was the best way Shay could put it. Like she was a glorified lie Angelo could see and interact with.

"I guess I always assumed you didn't want me leaning on you. After Klaus came around, things just got harder and harder. I really liked you the first time we met." She paused, speaking a little lower. "You made me feel safe and you were one of the only adults I knew – still know – who had boundaries.

"And then Klaus was there and everything got fucky. It still feels fucky. I think it'll always be a little fucky. You believe in me so much, like I got all of this good in me, but I'm not good. A good kid wouldn't have gone with Klaus so easily in the first place. A good kid wouldn't have gotten mixed up in the Billy Graham stuff, or adapted to gang life that easily.

"Truth is, I don't deserve you. I don't deserve Fitz. I don't deserve an idyllicc life but here I am getting it anyway. I think I'll get bored with it."

Shay wished a chair were closer, or more comfortable. She opted to walk a little ways until she could plop back on a nearby couch and rest her arm over her face. "I'm fucking terrified of everything, Angelo, and I've never felt more alone."

And just as she'd recalled telling him before, Shay said, "and let's face it, if people want to see you as dirty. They'll do it. They have plenty of reason even now. You adopted all the Rosales kids. Managed to take down one of Manta Carlos' biggest gangs in, like, a day. That's suspicious as fuck. But who cares. You're a good cop."

"I believe people are... more complicated than good and bad," Shay corrected with a face that didn't give much confidence to what she was saying. "Like, how can we say there's this sliding scale of good and bad. Maybe they're just they're own piles. You do all these bad things, but doing the good might not erase those. Our decisions are impactful.

"If you told me," Shay inhaled here, "that Nick was trying to straighten out his life. Like that he actually wanted to and he was going for it. It wouldn't matter how much good he'd do from there on in. He'd still r– done what he'd done to me. My life and the trauma I carry will always be affected. I'd never forgive him. All those women he'd killed are still dead and their families would never forgive him. It's not fair, but maybe that's the real Hell of bad decisions. It's here, on Earth, where we have to live with the things we've done."

Shay laughed a little. Self-esteem issues were one way of putting it. "Danger magnet, too. I never much thought of it as a self-fulfilling prophecy, I'd kind of thought a Greed Demon would stick it out no matter what. But that's very telling. Truth is, I don't blame you when you get that look when I start talking about shit. I'd probably get that look at me too."

Now it felt awkward. Shay wanted a hug and she hated asking. It always felt so odd to ask someone for that, especially someone you didn't hug a lot. She rubbed removed her arm from her face and sat up slowly, in a small voice, asking, "can I get a hug?"

"It's not," Shay agreed once Angelo had hugged her and she was comfortably hugging him back. It felt weird, but not a bad weird; she was trying not to think about it too hard. "Just 'cause bad things stick with us doesn't mean good things don't. There are certain things in the world people have a harder time accepting: rape, Liches, that sort of things. And then, there are things like you did. But people still view you as this hero and pinnacle of rightness."

Shay pulled back her face to try and replicate the worried expression he always got in a comical manner. "You don't get it when we talk about philosophy! Usually."

Shay was feeling more relaxed than when she'd first came here, but that didn't stop her from being tired or sick to her stomach. It was amazing the ways a person could pretend to be alright and it wasn't like a kid like her hadn't perfected methods of that all their life.

"Surprised you haven't turned my room into an exercising room. Or a gun range for you new totally-not-a-scythe gun that I think you're wrong about but whatevernotmycall."