prestige

He bit back the urge to laugh at the fact that she thought he was upset at shacking up with someone else. He wasn’t upset at any of that. He didn’t like Axel. Ezri may have had some big come to Jesus moment but he didn’t share that. He hadn’t spoken to Axel since the shooting, he had no intention of breaking that silence and he was sure the situation was mutual. “You mean our friendship?” he said, “or the relationship you spent every day telling me you didn’t want?” His love life seemed to function in shades of grey but Kevin had learned to just fucking live with it, “Ezri is just as much my ex as you are. And yeah, I know she’s in love with Axel. She’s been in love with him for like ten years.” It didn’t surprise him that Ezri wanted to go back to Axel and had shut the door on them. It was perfect, poetic karma for all the fucked up shit he had done in his life. But he wanted her to be happy, more than he wanted to be happy himself. That was always how their relationship had gone. At least now he knew how to protect himself. “You know what my problem is with you living with the man who tried to kill me? Vanessa’s my problem with it.” Axel wasn’t coming within ten feet of his daughter. He wasn’t taking chances with Ezri, he wasn’t taking chances with Evelyn. Though Ezri seemed to want to be around the child more than her own mother. Kevin rolled her eyes at her comment about it being about her brother. They both knew she had found plenty of solace at the bottom of a bottle, but even he wasn’t low enough to throw that back in her face. “Gladly, let’s not do this again,” he said. He let the comment about everything being about him slide off his back. It was funny how you didn’t have to respond to something so wrong. Nothing was about him or he would have stayed just to fight for a while with her. But that was a door better left closed these days. 

“We had but you made a choice at the end of the day,” He had chosen Evelyn, she had thought that everything would’ve worked out with them and that one day down the road they would end up being friends. “I did. Not like me to actually fight for someone but you had already made a choice and I was too late. I think relationships are like that. The timing has to be right and you both have to make the choice to fight for it otherwise the moment just passes away from you and you lose it.” If Kevin and her had gotten together when they were teens, had they been honest from the start then Axel wouldn’t had stood a chance but then Axel came and roles started to change. “I don’t think he doesn’t love me. I just think that he doesn’t understand the concept of being together of actually being a couple you know? I want someone that is there for me during the good and the bad times – not just when things are easy and I want him to live a honest job,” which lord knew that was going to be the hardest thing for Axel to do if they ever did decide that they wanted to do this. As far as she knew she was still living in a dream land because none of this was going to be real, “And then I hear myself talking and know that I have to be real. And in the real world if Axel and I ever were meant to be then I will have to compromise a lot because a white picket fence is not a life for him – like having a kid – I don’t think that would be something that would fit with us. If there even is a us.” Which was such a far fetch dream that just made her moan as she buried her face in her hands, her fingertips pushing her forehead skin above, “I am not that great when it comes to being honest and I think I am just being an idiot. I see him Kev, and all I see is every pain he ever did and then when I don’t have him I just miss him. I miss him so much that sometimes I think I smell his scent – what if he’s now dating Evelyn?” 

“My room mate?” she raised her eyebrow as she looked at him, how did he even know about Axel? Were they suppose to keep track of each other? Had they not agreed to just stay out of each others lives completely? Why was she always the one that actually listened to what they said and did it – and then it got held against her? Touching her forehead without realizing it, a chuckle fell from her lips as she looked up straight in the eye, “You’re kidding right? You’ve been keeping tabs on me?” Having a blown out argument with Kevin had not been penciled in her agenda, then again most of the things she had to deal weren’t either. “I get it. I am a shitty mother, I get it. I am a terrible person because I walked out my child I get it. You’re right on all counts, Kevin. I am shit. I’m sorry for ever having entered your life and making it so complicated.” She knew that if she told Kevin how she had been told their child was dead, how she had felt how she had lost the child, the depression, the drinking and how she had barely gotten herself out of the oceans that had been drowning her while at the same time she was letting Kevin back in and helping Bonnie. How her own mental state didn’t matter to Kevin; not a little. Kevin thought that Evelyn should’ve bounced up and been over the moon to find out that their daughter was alive and be ok.  Maybe she should’ve, maybe something was broken in her. Which was why she had taken herself out but why waste time on the little things? “Not that it is any of your concern since we were never in love but I am not fucking Axel. He’s best friends with my brother and he’s helping him get his life together. My feelings never changed. Just forget it.” She would have to try and reach out to Bonnie and see if she had any idea. 

Kevin cringed at the mention. He hadn't forgotten, just kind of blocked it out. “I didn’t--” he stopped, “I was hurt, we both hurt each other,” he said. They had. She had left and he had tried to pull himself away from the other half of his heart. “Besides I didn’t think you really wanted to be with me,” he admitted. He hadn’t believed her, he just thought she missed having him around. After all he’d followed her there when she had told him to go and moved onto the couch . “I can’t imagine him not loving you after everything,” Kevin said. He’d seen how over the moon Ezri was about Axel. Which was a sharp contrast to how things had been when they had been sleeping with each other. He still couldn’t call what they had a relationship, but he supposed he couldn’t really call what he had with Evelyn that either. “You shouldn’t be having a mid life crisis. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you,” Kevin said, “and take it from someone who has a kid without her mom, you don’t want to rush into things.” It still broke his heart and his mom was a fucking nightmare. He was better off without either of his parents but he always hoped if he ever had kids he’d be able to give them something more than what he had. “You’ll figure it out. Maybe try talking to him and leave the weaponry at home.” He couldn’t believe that he was advising someone to talk to Axel without heavy artillery and a bullet proof vest but he knew that Ezri could handle herself and he doubted Axel would do anything to hurt her. “Best way out of a crisis is to start moving.”  

It took everything in him not to turn around and walk away before he did something stupid. There was no point in getting upset over someone who didn’t want anything to do with Vanessa. And the two of them were a packaged deal now. He’d thought dating him was full of baggage before, he had no idea what that word actually meant. “Great,” Kevin said. If she was too wrapped up in her own shit to hear him not really caring, he wasn’t going to waste his breath correcting her. Her question about him knowing illegal things almost got him to crack but he shoved it down. “You’re smart, I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” he said flatly, “you could also try asking your room mate, he tends to be good at finding illegal things.” Kevin hadn’t spoken to Axel since he shot him and he had no intention of speaking to him ever again. But if they were bullshitting he could do that to. It was better than demanding to know why she hadn’t asked about Vanessa even once. 

“Because I am not doing love triangles – especially not with your ex again,” That was not something she needed to do again, she actually wanted to just find someone that could love her and well that she could love as well. Maybe Kevin just didn’t really care, he had mentioned it a couple of times. Maybe if it was any other guy – or maybe if she wasn’t that fucked up she wouldn’t had given into doing all her research. “Besides no offense to you but he is more of her type. She did date Malachy. Watch they end up fucking and then I get a damn invitation to the fucking wedding,” she picked up a pen and twirled it in her fingers figuring out how this had all come to play. “I think I could make at least top four. – I would talk to him but you see whenever he pops in I end up stabbing him or drugging him – I can’t help it. It’s a reflex,” Not to mentioned before that she had shot him. “It doesn’t matter, I think this is just coming up because another doctor got engaged and now I am one out of three doctors who are not married – but the only one that is single and I am going to hit my thirties this year – so yeah.”

Evelyn looked exhausted and frayed and if it was any other situation Kevin would have had some kind of sympathy. Probably. He’d been trying to have sympathy for more people after everything. But he’d also been trying to be with Evelyn. And while that had been happening their daughter had been trapped with the fae. She’d been hurting. And respecting Evelyn’s wishes to do nothing had delayed her being rescued for almost a year. It was hard not to look at Evelyn and see those first few nights when Vanessa had wailed for the only home that she had ever known and whatever the fae had been putting in her system. It was hard not to see how he’d been doing this alone after Evelyn walked away. And it was hard to see her and not think about what she was doing with Axel. Kevin wasn’t sure he had a right to all of those things but he decided that he sure as hell had a right to be annoyed at the man who shot him in the chest a bunch of times after he had let him come so close. “Well I’m caring for Vanessa so I’m doing as well as any new single dad with a crying baby at home,” he said, “how are you?”

Evelyn shacking up with Axel was just salt in a very deep wound. Kevin could acknowledge that. After all the woman was free to shack up with whoever she wanted. He never saw the appeal in Axel but then again he’d never seen the appeal in himself either. And now everything had shifted. His own shit mattered a lot less now that he had a person to take care of. And raise. He be an example for. Jesus. It was a terrible thought matched only by the knowledge of how badly he had wanted a parent in his life. Someone to say he was worth the terror. That was the thing that kept him grounded and there. Rather than finding a good home for the kid he had no business raising. He now had babysitters a nanny, all of whom he knew way way too much about. But he was nothing if not thorough and doing things half asses had never really been Kevin’s forte. And just when Kevin felt like he had his feet somewhat under him, the sound of someone clearing their nose and tentatively speaking to him brought it all crashing down spectacularly. “Picking up some things. Surprised you’re still around. How’s the pizza business going?”

“Why are you being such a masochist about this?” Kevin questioned. Evelyn had slapped him and walked out on him and Vanessa while the latter was crying in her crib. “Maybe you and Evelyn can be in a love triangle with Axel. But be careful, he’s a heartbreaker. Or shooter.” Axel had murdered him and ruined his life in every way possible. There was a certain irony to the fact that the two people who had destroyed his life in very different ways wound up shacking up together. “You’d be great on one of those shows. You’re a hot doctor. They love that shit. Me and Vanessa will be here cheering you on in your quest for love.” It was odd to hear Ezri talk about going on one of those shows or even talk about dating again but Kevin pushed that feeling aside. “Radical idea but you could also talk to Axel and sort that out, if you know you wanted to date him again.” 

“You need to stop expecting such negativity,” Ezri ended up surprising herself when the words ended up coming out of her lips. The brunette had always expected that Kevin and Carter would be the ones to actually get their life together before she did. She had been the one to have fallen in love with a mass murderer or serial killer; whatever the political correct terminology was today. However here she was happy that Kevin was a father, hoping that the baby girl would be enough to drag him out of whatever hell hole he had managed to put himself into – and yes she said himself because he did have some say in how things were going. “You did. But I am not going to be hung up on that, Kevin. Look if I got hung up on everything you ever did wrong, everything Carter did wrong and everything I did wrong I would be as depressed as you look right now and I don’t want that. Maybe I am fucked up. I probably do accept that – I mean I am still in love with Axel so something has to be wrong right – and the cherry on top of everything is that I rather hurt him than admit that to him,” It was perhaps the first time that the woman had ever admitted it out loud. The shock was still left on her face for a couple of seconds before she decided to move along, it didn’t matter. Not like she would see Axel any time soon – not since she managed to stab him at the hospital completely ignoring the oath she had taken. It was amazing the things that Axel managed to bring out in her. “All I am saying is if I don’t hate you – and everyone else doesn’t hate you – at least the majority then you should probably just chill. Then maybe the mother is going through something and needs to figure it out especially since knowing you – you probably went to an extreme and just wanted to have her switch 100% right away.” Not to mention that when Kevin set his mind on something it didn’t matter what anyone said; it was too late to even change his mind. “She could’ve aborted your kid if we’re talking about the same woman,” The werewolf had heard about Evelyn, and there was nothing that she wouldn’t do for her own freedom so the fact that she had a kid probably did mean it was more than a like but who was she to voice anything on his love life, “Do what you want Kevin. Just be able to live with yourself. You’re going to be a good father, anyone that knows you knows that. Have some faith in yourself. If you want you can stay here – It’ll be nice to have some family here – and yes I still do consider you family. Let’s not get into another debate about that because I might just punch you and I’m really really working on my anger issues.”

“Would it really be that bad?” She didn’t understand why Kevin always had this low image of himself. Did he really not see how everyone else saw him and now everyone else cared about him? Not only cared but loved him? Was Kevin truly that blind to reality? Then again she knew the answer to that. Everyone that grew up with Katherine had that vision issue. Ezri thought she was trash; actually on a good day she thought that trash was better than her. After all this was Ezri, the woman that had lied to half the people she knew in her life and went by another name and another lifestyle because of the CIA – the woman who killed someone; and even though it was justified she felt that she never cleaned off the blood off her hands. Then she was the woman that had fallen in love three times with three different individual and had given up the notion of love happening for her because she didn’t believe she had anything to give away. Axel had taken the majority of her innocence and pure love, then Teddy just managed to take away the fighter she had once been and Kevin took the hope of romance and eternal love. Yet throughout the past years that she had learn that none of them were at fault for how cynical and afraid she was. This was a burden that she had to get over all on her own. “I just don’t think that it would be bad if she turned out to be like you. Which part are you ashamed of? How loyal you are? Honest? Sure, you have shit qualities too but we all do. And believe it or not your daughter will have them too. It’s part of being human. As long as you’re there for her and you love her unconditionally then that is all you can do. Isn’t that all we wanted from our said parents?” Lord knew that it had been for her, but she knew that not everyone shared that. “Maybe she does have the mother gene. Sometimes leaving is the motherly thing to do not many parents know when to walk away and damage their kids even further,” Lord knew that if her mother had actually struck around Ezri would be an entire different person – and not the good kind. “I think you’re doing a fantastic job, give yourself a damn break and whoever the mother is – give her a break too. There must have been a reason as to why you inserted your penis into her.”

It was easy for him to pass judgement with the information that he had; and if there was anything that Evelyn did for the people she loved it was just that. Roll out the carpet and give them a round of applause. Down the road she would perhaps regret it and some canvas images would actually reveal what she was feeling but his eyes would never lay on it. “I never asked you to.” She didn’t hold any resentment or bitterness towards Kevin; she loved him just like she had back then – perhaps even more now but it didn’t change various facts. “She’s all yours. I will never try to hold you back. I’m not playing any games here or holding anything against you.” The only thing she was not doing was offering any real explantation to her actions but that too would be forgotten throughout the years. “Then nothing you will have.” As she heard the voice of her daughter she stood paralyzed for a couple of seconds but what felt like an eternity to her before her fingers entangled around the knob and opened the door, within the few passing seconds she could’ve swore the door had managed to get heavier as she shut it behind her, pushing aside any emotion that dared to recount her steps

Ezri had not been drinking; she hadn’t drank in an entire year mostly because she prefer to be sober at least then she could owe up to all her decision making and yet she felt what she could remember as the sobering up effect. Because she was trying to figure out how the hell Kevin was standing in front of her and saying that she had a kid. This was wild; the notion that they were old enough to have their own kids though if she was being completely fair they were old enough to have kids a couple of years ago but to have families – to you know – do grown up stuff and be held accountable for it. “So you’re in charge of an entire mini me?” Ezri couldn’t even keep a lucky bamboo alive for a couple of months ago because they usually died within the third month mostly because she had forgotten that she even had one. And here was Kevin; the guy that couldn’t stay still for a more couple of months before he had an itch to move or an order to go to a new town, “So what you’re out of the CIA? They saw the kid and said bygones be bygones? Or have you hidden her from them as well? I am just trying to understand how you have managed to keep your life and include her in it – nothing against it. I am rather impressed that you have done it. I always thought you would be a good father – as I have said before,” Perhaps she was repeating herself too much. “Ah – so she’s not going to help you at all? Not everyone has you know the mother gene in them. Lord knows I don’t so I can understand – I mean it sucks but I guess it’s better to be taken out than fuck someone over.” Which is what would’ve happened if she would’ve been raised by her biological parents; at least that was what her brother had told her and the few minutes she met her parents she realized how right he was. “Perhaps you just have not met the right one. I have heard it takes a couple of tries.” she shared the wisdom that had been passed down towards her as she rubbed the palms against the side of her head