baran feels worn thin, even with yolanda’s near permanent presence at trinity’s bedside, she still feels guilty that she can’t be there too
but her son can’t be expected to hold vigil waiting for trinity to drift in and out of consciousness, in and out of sleep as she recovers. she wouldn’t want him to see one of his favourite people like that either.
besides he needs rest too, even if all he walked away with was a small head laceration that was glued together, a skinned elbow and knees. miraculous given what could’ve been, what did happen to trinity
and baran doesn’t know how to feel because keyvan is her life and she’s beyond grateful he’s okay, but the price of that is trinity. trinity whose heart stopped, who was touch and go both during and post surgery, who is, according to both shamsi and walsh, through the worst of it now but is still holed up in a hospital bed broken
when she wakes after a fitful few hours to hear from yolanda that trinity had been more lucid, more aware overnight, it makes her heart sing with joy
but she doesn’t know how to face her as she waits for the elevator doors to open. how this woman that she loves could have died saving her son. how when keyvan came through the doors of the Pitt, that baran didn’t even question where trinity was. didn’t even think to ask what had happened to her, when she knew the pair had planned to walk to the nearby park that day
she peeks round the half open door, sees yolanda in the perpetual state of exhaustion they both inhabit now, scrolling on her phone. creeps in to see a sleeping trinity, a little different from a trinity that’s so dosed up on meds she doesn’t know which was is up. this trinity has her mouth open, palm splayed upwards where yolanda absentmindedly plays with her fingers with her free hand
hey baby, yolanda perks up at the sight of her, and baran goes willingly, when yolanda stands and opens her arms, she’s been asleep for a while, but shamsi said she’ll be checking in soon so we can wake her if you want
there’s no need, because trinity stirs gradually, face scrunching in a way baran usually finds adorable, now finds her stomach turning because she doesn’t know what to say
trinity’s eyes seem to focus slowly, first on yolanda who grins back with such relief at the mere sight of their youngest girlfriend looking at her once more, and then to baran
and to baran’s mortification, her bottom lip starts to tremble and tears fill her eyes. because trinity is alive and looking at her and for a few torturous days she didn’t think that would ever happen again
and those eyes are widening at her in alarm, a hand weakly reaching for her, and she doesn’t move so much in that yolanda guides her over until she’s hunched over the top of trinity, encompassing her without putting any weight on her
can feel trinity’s clumsy hand try to sooth her with irregular circles against her back. and baran is powerless to the messy hiccuping sobs that tear out of her, mumbling mostly to herself, thought id lost you, oh god trin, my love, don’t know what i’d do, what we’d do without you, keyvan is safe but i almost lost you, don’t know how i would’ve carried on.
and then yolanda’s hands on her again, guiding her upright, tucking her close against her side as baran sways on her feet a little, reaches out and grasps trinity’s hand in her own tightly
i’m okay, just a little banged up, trinity tells her, and yolanda snorts in disbelief, baran fails to find the humour in it which trinity must see because she’s asking quickly, when can i see kevyan, is he- yola said he’s okay, but i know i must’ve hurt him
and her sweet girl, her endlessly emphatic girl, i’ll get my ex to bring him, she won’t mind (and god bless the relatively civilised divorce the pair of them had) you didn’t hurt him, god trin, he’s alive because of you, he wants to see you too
yolanda is guiding her into a chair close enough that she can keep holding trinity’s hand, keeps pressing her lips to the back of it and squeezing her eyes shut so she can focus on the way trinity’s grip tightens around her. focuses on how alive she is despite the long recovery ahead
focuses on the way yolanda perches a little unsteadily on the arm of the chair, pulls baran’s head against her chest, whispers into the crown of her hair as trinity’s eyes grow heavy again, we’ve got her baran, she’s okay, we’re all okay, you can breathe now
—————
can i have my next forehead kiss now pls @itsallyuriagegap @lostamongthefearnes
did somebody say please drop the final part of you can't nice your way to being loved?
sorry it took so long lmao, you can read below the cut or here on AO3 like always! enjoy! its 4.1k words btw
Trinity's hand hovers over the doorbell for a long, cowardly moment before she forces herself to press it.
The door swings open to reveal Baran, and Trinity's chest constricts painfully at the sight of her. She's in sweatpants and an old t-shirt, hair pulled back messily, dark circles still smudged beneath her eyes. She looks like she hasn't slept properly in days. Maybe weeks. Maybe since Trinity walked out.
"Hey," Baran says softly, and steps aside to let her in. "Yolanda's already here."
Trinity nods, not trusting her voice, and follows Baran into the living room. The apartment looks different than she remembers—or maybe it's exactly the same, and she's the one who's changed. There are dishes in the sink, a blanket thrown haphazardly over the back of the sofa, mail piled up on the kitchen counter unopened. Baran is usually tidier than this.
Yolanda is standing by the window, arms crossed tightly over her chest, looking anywhere but at either of them. She's dressed in normal clothes, jeans and a simple t-shirt, which strikes Trinity as odd until she realises that over the past weeks she'd grown used to seeing her in the context of the hospital, the normalcy of her outfit feels jarring.
She doesn't sit. Doesn't think she's allowed to.
"Thank you," she starts, and her voice already sounds wrecked. She clears her throat, tries again. "For letting me come. Both of you."
Yolanda's jaw tightens, but she doesn't turn around. Baran has moved to the arm of the sofa, perching there like she's not quite sure if she's allowed to get comfortable in her own home. She gestures for Trinity to sit, but Trinity shakes her head.
"I'll stand. I need to-" She takes a shaky breath. She'd rehearsed this in the car, gone over it a dozen times during the quiet moments of her shift when the ED had lulled enough for her mind to wander. She'd imagined this conversation in a hundred different ways: them yelling, them crying, them telling her to leave and never come back. But now, faced with the reality of them both, all her carefully prepared words seem out of reach.
"I owe you both an explanation," she says, staring at a point on the floor between them because looking at either of them directly feels impossible right now. "I should have given you one when I left. I should have talked to you instead of just...running. But I didn't, and that's on me, and I'm sorry. I know sorry doesn't fix anything. I know it doesn't undo the past few weeks."
She pauses, swallows hard against the lump rising in her throat, tries to keep her voice steady, to not let the words run into one another like they often do when she's nervous.
"Do you remember that hike we went on? A few weeks before I left?" She doesn't wait for them to answer. "There was this woman. She was taking photos for her friends, and she said something to me about feeling like a personal photographer. About third-wheeling, like I was third-wheeling you guys."
Yolanda has turned slightly now, profile visible, and her expression is unreadable.
"And I don't know why it got to me the way it did," Trinity continues. "I've dealt with worse. I've heard worse. But something about it burrowed in. And once it was there, I couldn't get it out. I started seeing everything through this fucking lens. Every time you two laughed together, every time you talked about something I was too tired to contribute to, every time you touched each other in that easy way you have..."
She forces herself to look up, to meet Baran's eyes first because that's slightly easier. Tears are falling now, tracking silently down Baran's cheeks.
"You're so good together," Trinity says, and her voice cracks on the word. "You fit. You make each other laugh. You talk for hours about everything and nothing, and half the time I'm too exhausted to string a sentence together, let alone keep up with you. You could be open at work without it being an HR nightmare. You could drive in together. You could-" She stops, presses her eyes shut for a moment, tries to gather herself. "I convinced myself that you'd be better off without me. That I was just in the way. And instead of telling you that, instead of asking if it was true, I just decided it was and acted accordingly."
"Trin-" Baran starts, voice thick with tears.
"Please," Trinity says, and her own voice breaks now, "let me finish. If I stop I don't think I'll be able to start again."
"I pulled away," Trinity continues. "Deliberately. I made it look like I wanted space so you wouldn't offer for me to join you. I stopped letting you touch me the way you used to. I redirected everything away from myself and focused on making you both feel good because I knew how to do that without letting it destroy me."
She turns slightly, addressing Yolanda now, even though Yolanda still won't fully face her. "I saw you two in the kitchen once. You were cooking, and Baran came up behind you and wrapped her arms around your waist, and you started humming and swaying together. And I stood in the doorway and watched, and I waited for that feeling, that feeling that used to prove to me that I belonged here. But it didn't come. All I felt was empty. All I felt was that I didn't belong in that moment. That I was intruding on something private."
Yolanda's arms tighten across her chest.
"It wasn't your fault," Trinity says, addressing them both now, her voice growing more urgent. "That's what I need you to understand. It was never your fault. It's me. It's this...this thing inside me that's convinced I'm unlovable, that I'm always going to be the one on the outside looking in. I've felt it my whole life. With my parents, with friends, with everyone. And I thought I'd gotten past it, or at least learned to manage it, but then you two came along and you were so - so good - and some part of me just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Kept waiting for you to realise what I already knew. That I didn't quite fit."
She wipes at her own eyes now, impatiently, frustrated with herself for crying when she's supposed to be the one apologising.
"I should have told you. I should have let you in instead of making the decision for all three of us. But I was so scared of hearing you confirm what I already believed that I didn't give you the chance to prove me wrong. And that wasn't fair. To either of you. You deserved better than that. You deserved a conversation. And I took that away from you because I was a coward."
The silence that follows is suffocating. Trinity can hear the unsteady rhythm of her own breathing.
Baran is the first to move. She slides off the arm of the sofa, takes a step toward Trinity, then stops herself, as if unsure whether she's allowed. Her hand hovers in the space between them, not quite reaching.
"I didn't know," Baran whispers, and her voice is raw with guilt, roughened by tears. "I didn't know you felt like that. Any of that. I thought, God, Trin, I thought you were unhappy with us. That we'd done something wrong, or that you'd changed your mind about the three of us, or that the reality of what we were trying to build was too much. I kept trying to figure out what I'd done wrong, what we'd done wrong, and I couldn't- I couldn't find it, because you wouldn't talk to us."
She takes another half-step forward, and this time her hand does make contact, brushing against Trinity's wrist, feather-light. "We should have noticed. We should have pushed harder. You were pulling away and I just let you, and I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry you felt like that, that you thought for even one second that you were unlovable-"
"It's not your job to read my mind," Trinity says, shaking her head, even as her hand turns over instinctively, reaching for Baran's, pulls back at the last moment.
"It's our job to make sure you feel loved," Baran counters with a protective anger directed not at Trinity but at the situation, at herself. "That's exactly our job. That's the whole point. And we failed. I failed. I was so caught up in how happy I was, how happy I thought we all were."
"You didn't-"
"Stop." Yolanda's voice cuts her off.
Both Trinity and Baran turn to look at her. She's facing them fully now, no longer hiding behind her profile, and her eyes are bright with unshed tears that she is clearly fighting to contain. Her expression is hard, the same look Trinity has seen her deploy in the trauma bay when she's faced with a patient that reminds her of someone she loves, forces it all back to stop her composure shattering entirely.
"You don't get to do that," Yolanda says, and her voice is low, simmering."You don't get to just decide for us. You don't get to play judge and jury on our relationship and then walk out without giving us a chance to defend ourselves."
"I know," Trinity says quietly. "I'm sorry."
"You're sorry?" Yolanda's voice rises fractionally, just a hair, before she visibly reins it back in. Her hands drop to her sides, trembling. "You walked out of this apartment and left us standing here, Trinity. You just decided you knew best, pushed us away until we assumed you were tired of us and you left. Do you have any idea what that was like? Do you have any idea what these past few weeks have been like for us?"
Trinity doesn't defend herself. She just stands there, taking it, because Yolanda is right. Everything she's saying is right. Trinity has earned this.
"We couldn't manage," Yolanda continues, and now the anger is cracking at the edges, letting something rawer, more vulnerable through. "Just the two of us. Everything was wrong. We were snapping at each other constantly, at work, at home, everywhere. You heard about what happened at the hospital, I'm sure. The whole fucking department probably knows by now the way you all gossip down there."
She gestures sharply at Baran, who Trinity can hear suck in a shaky breath.
"I've been staying at Emery's. Did she tell you that? We're on a goddamn break because without you, nothing works. Nothing. The whole thing falls apart. We don't know how to be just the two of us anymore, and that's- that's terrifying, actually. It's terrifying to realise that we don't function without you."
Trinity feels about two inches tall, wants the ground to swallow her whole right this second actually.
"You thought we were perfect without you?" Yolanda laughs, and it's a bitter, hollow sound that holds no humour whatsoever. "You thought you were the third wheel? Trinity, we are a disaster without you. Baran and I love each other, yes, but we love you. The three of us. That's what works. And you left."
"Yola," Baran says softly, reaching for her. There are fresh tears on her face, and she looks torn between wanting to comfort Yolanda and wanting to stay near Trinity.
"No." Yolanda shakes her head frustratedly, her voice is wobbling now despite her best efforts to keep it steady. "She needs to hear this. She needs to understand what she did. Not to punish her, but because she spent weeks convincing herself that we'd be better off, and I need her to know exactly how wrong she was. You thought you were doing us a favour, Trinity? You weren't. You broke us. All three of us. You broke me. I've been sleeping on Samira's sofa because I can't stand to be in this apartment without you here, and Baran and I can't be in the same room for more than an hour without finding something to fight about."
She stops abruptly, pressing her lips together in that tight line Trinity knows so well, knows she's trying her hardest not to cry. When she speaks again, her voice is quieter, almost defeated, and it's somehow worse than the anger.
"I'm not angry at you. I mean, I am, but I'm not only angry at you. I'm angry at everything. I'm angry at myself for not seeing that you were hurting. I'm angry at Baran for not seeing it either. I'm angry at the situation. I'm angry that you felt like you couldn't talk to us, that we apparently made you feel like an outsider when all we ever wanted was to keep you as close as possible. I'm angry that you were standing in doorways watching us be happy and feeling like you didn't belong, and we had no idea." And then directed at Baran. "How did we have no idea?"
The tears spill over finally, tracking down Yolanda's cheeks, and Trinity watches the way her shoulders shake with the effort of keeping herself together. It's the most undone she's ever seen the surgeon.
"I never wanted to hurt you," Trinity whispers, and her own voice is barely recognisable now, thick with tears and exhaustion and regret. "Either of you. I thought, genuinely thought, you'd be happier. That it would be a relief. I didn't realise, I I didn't let myself consider..."
"That we love you?" Baran cuts in, and her voice is gentle despite the words. "That we need you? That you're not some optional extra we could take or leave?"
Trinity looks between them, Baran, tear-streaked and devastated and still reaching for her, Yolanda, furious and heartbroken and trying so hard to hold herself together, and the full weight of what she's done settles over her like a physical thing.
"I don't know how to fix this," she admits, voice barely above a whisper. "But I want to. If you'll let me. If there's anything left to fix. If you still want-" me "if there's still a chance-"
Silence.
Then Baran moves.
Holds out her hand properly. Palm up. It's the simplest gesture in the world, and it undoes Trinity completely.
Trinity stares at it for a long moment. She remembers all the times she's pulled away from this exact gesture, twisted herself out of reach, made herself look like she didn't want to be touched. Her own hand trembles violently as she reaches out, slides her palm against Baran's. Baran's fingers close around hers, warm and solid and real, and Trinity makes a sound somewhere between a gasp and a sob.
"Come here," Baran murmurs, tugging her gently forward.
And then Baran's arms are around her, and Trinity is pressed against her chest, and she can feel Baran's heartbeat against her cheek, can smell the familiar scent of her laundry detergent, can feel the way Baran's hands are gripping the back of her shirt like she's afraid Trinity might disappear if she lets go. Trinity is crying now too, properly crying, great heaving sobs that she's been holding back for weeks, for months, maybe for her entire life.
"I've got you," Baran whispers into her hair, and her voice is steady even though Trinity can feel her tears dripping onto her head. "I've got you. We've got you. You're not going anywhere."
Trinity feels a second set of hands, tentative at first, then firmer, on her back. Yolanda. Still angry, probably, but here. Touching her. Choosing to stay.
"I'm sorry," Trinity says again, muffled against Baran's shirt. "I'm so sorry. I should have talked to you. I should have trusted you. I should have-"
"We know," Yolanda says, and her voice is rough but steadier now. One of her hands moves up to rest on the back of Trinity's neck, a familiar gesture that makes Trinity cry harder. "We know. We're sorry too. We should have made sure you knew. We should have shown you better."
They stay like that for a long moment, the three of them tangled together in the middle of the living room, and Trinity lets herself be held. Lets herself believe, just for a moment, that maybe she was wrong. That maybe there is space for her here after all. That maybe she's been so focused on all the ways she doesn't fit that she missed all the ways they've been making room for her this entire time.
Eventually, the tears subside enough for them to move to the sofa. Trinity ends up in the middle, where she always used to sit, she realises now, because they always put her there. With Baran on one side still holding her hand and Yolanda on the other, close but not quite touching.
Trinity's head is pounding from the crying. She's been awake for far, far too long at this point. She's pretty sure she looks like absolute hell. But she also feels lighter than she has in weeks.
"So," Baran says, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled over them. She's still holding Trinity's hand, her thumb tracing absent patterns across Trinity's knuckles. "What now?"
Trinity wipes at her eyes with her free hand. Her face feels swollen and sticky with tears. "I don't know. I want..." She stops, swallows, forces herself to be brave. "I want to try again. If you both want that. If there's still a chance. I know I hurt you, and I know it's going to take time to rebuild trust, and I know I don't deserve-"
"Stop," Yolanda says, but it's gentler this time. "Stop telling us what you deserve. That's part of the problem, isn't it?"
Trinity snaps her mouth shut.
Baran looks at Yolanda. Some silent communication passes between them, the kind Trinity used to feel excluded from, the kind that used to make her feel like an outsider. But this time, Yolanda turns to include her in it, angling her body so Trinity can see her face, her expression.
"I want to try," Baran says, looking back at Trinity. "But we need something to change. We can't go back to the way things were. Not because the way things were was bad, but because obviously something wasn't working if you felt like you couldn't talk to us."
Trinity nods, exhausted. "I'll be better. I'll talk to you. I can't promise I'll be perfect at it. I'll try so hard."
"Promise us," Yolanda says, and her voice is still a little sharp, a little guarded. The anger hasn't fully dissipated, and Trinity knows it won't for a while. "Promise us that if you start feeling like this again you'll tell us. No more deciding things for us."
"I promise," Trinity says.
"And we'll try too," Baran adds, squeezing her hand. "To make sure you never feel like that again. To show you, not just assume you know. We got comfortable, I think. We all did. We assumed everything was fine because we wanted it to be, and we stopped checking in. We won't make that mistake again."
Yolanda nods, a short, sharp movement. She still looks tired, still looks raw around the edges, but some of the tension has bled out of her shoulders. "We'll do better. All three of us. And you," She points a finger at Trinity, and there's a ghost of her usual fire behind it. "You're going to let us. You're not going to argue when we tell you you're loved. You're not going to deflect when we try to take care of you. Understood?"
Trinity almost laughs. "That's going to be harder than you think."
"I know," Yolanda says, and her voice softens. "But we're not letting you get away with it anymore."
Trinity looks between them, her girls, still hers after everything, somehow, and feels something loosen in her chest. It's not fixed. Yolanda is still going to be angry for a while, and Baran is probably going to overcompensate with worry, and Trinity herself is going to have to fight against every instinct she has to retreat when things get hard.
But for the first time in weeks, she feels like maybe they can.
Then, because the tension is still thick and her heart is still raw and she needs something lighter to hold onto, something that won't make her start crying again, she asks: "Have either of you seen my old college sweater? With the hole in the left sleeve?"
She doesn't miss the way Baran's expression shifts into something that looks suspiciously like guilt.
"I couldn't find it when I picked up my stuff," Trinity continues, looking between them. "And I swear I had more clothes here than what was in those boxes. I figured I just miscounted, but now I'm starting to wonder."
Baran is very deliberately not making eye contact.
Trinity turns to look at Yolanda, who has gone very, very still.
"Yola?"
Yolanda doesn't meet her eyes. Colour spreading across her cheeks.
"Yolanda. Where's my sweater?"
There is a long, telling pause.
Then, with immense dignity, Yolanda says: "I may have kept it."
Trinity blinks. "What?"
"It smelled like you," Yolanda mutters, crossing her arms defensively. The effect is somewhat undermined by the fact that she's still visibly blushing. "And I was upset. And it was the only thing that helped me sleep for the first week after you left. So I kept it. It's in my bag. I brought it with me to Samira's. I'm not sorry."
Trinity stares at her.
Then she looks at Baran.
"Did you know about this?"
Baran's silence is very, very loud. She appears to have developed a sudden, intense interest in a loose thread on the sofa cushion.
"Oh my god," Trinity says. "You're both unbelievable."
"We were heartbroken!" Baran protests, finally looking up. "And it's a very soft sweater!"
"And I may have taken another one of your hoodies," Yolanda adds. "The blue one. With the-"
"Weird stain on the cuff I can't get out, yeah, I know the one," Trinity finishes. "I couldn't find that one either."
"Sorry," Yolanda says, not sounding remotely apologetic.
"Is there anything else I should know about?" Trinity asks, and her voice comes out steadier than she expected. There's something blooming in her chest, not the gnawing ache she's grown accustomed to, but something warmer. Something that feels dangerously close to hope. "Any other items of clothing you've pilfered?"
"I have your blue scarf," Baran admits, very quietly. "The one with the stripes."
Trinity lets out a sound that's half-laugh, half-sob. "You're both ridiculous. You're absolute menaces."
"Maybe," Baran says, and she's smiling now, small and tentative but real. "But you love us anyway."
Trinity looks at her, at both of them, her ridiculous, heartbroken, sweater-stealing girlfriends, and feels the truth of it settle into her bones.
"Yeah," she says, and the word comes out soft, tender. "Yeah, I really do."
Yolanda shifts closer on the sofa, close enough that her shoulder presses against Trinity's. It's a small gesture, barely anything at all, but after weeks of careful distance and deliberate avoidance, it feels monumental. Trinity leans into it, just slightly, and Yolanda doesn't pull away.
"Stay," Yolanda says. It's not a question. "Today. We can figure out the rest tomorrow. But today, just... stay."
Trinity looks at Baran, who nods, still holding her hand like she's afraid to let go.
"I don't have any clothes here," Trinity says, and it comes out a little watery. "Other than what you stole."
"You can borrow mine," Baran offers immediately. "I have plenty."
"Or you could just take back the ones we stole," Yolanda adds, with the air of someone making a tremendous concession. "If you really want them."
Trinity considers this. "No," she decides. "You can keep them. For now. But I want visiting rights."
"Negotiable," Yolanda says, but there's a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
They don't move from the sofa for a long while. Baran's thumb keeps tracing patterns on Trinity's knuckles. Yolanda's shoulder stays pressed against hers. Outside, the city is waking up properly now, morning light spilling through the windows, and somewhere in the distance a siren wails, and Trinity's head still hurts and her eyes are still sore from crying and she knows there are harder conversations ahead of them.
But for the first time in weeks, when she closes her eyes, the gnawing ache in her chest is quiet.
And when she eventually falls asleep, right there on the sofa, sandwiched between her two girls, she dreams of the kitchen, of humming, of someone's arms wrapping around her waist from behind, and this time, she's part of it.
yolanda who gets migraines, who sometimes just has to lie curled up in a ball in the darkness of their room and wait for them to pass as best she can
yolanda who cannot stand to be touched at all during them, can’t even stand baran or trinity being in the same room as her, sometimes the quiet rustle of clothes as they shift or the steady breaths of her girlfriends makes her want to tear her teeth out
so the pair of them sleep in the guest room when this happens, after baran has delivered water and rescue meds that yolanda insists don’t help, a cold compress for the base of her neck too and a quiet reminder that she’ll check on her in the night
and sometimes, yolanda’s migraine will finally leave her be in the small hours of the night, and she will groggy and achy and exhausted stumble her way with one hand on the wall to guide her towards the guest room
will gently stir baran to make some room because if she wakes trinity she’ll struggle to go back to sleep again.
and baran will shuffle backwards into trinity’s always waiting arms, smiling as she feels her youngest girlfriend tug her closer in her sleep and yolanda will squeeze in too. the guest room bed was never made to accommodate three grown bodies. and baran will draw yolanda against her body, and trinity even in her sleep will reach over baran and tangle her hand in yolanda’s shirt too
