Chapter Text
JD leaned back from his computer and sighed, rubbing his eyes. The words on the screen were starting to blur. This last case had been hard -- correction, the last several cases had been hard. It had been one thing after another after another, ever since...
JD looked up and across the room. He could still see light from the lab. She'd been here when he came in that morning, and still showed no signs of stopping. He was beginning to think the kid never slept; if he left now, maybe he could catch some shut-eye and still be back before she'd left.
"Can't do that, mate," he reminded himself under his breath. As of late, she'd actually been leaving on time, something she'd never done before being taken to the compound. It wasn't hard to stay until she was done, to make sure she left alright, safe. If she even noticed he was doing it, she didn't say anything. It took a weight off his chest that he'd never realized was there, one that had been there since the day she walked into this building for the first time. The weight of knowing one of his people, even if he wouldn't have called her one of his at the time, didn't feel safe.
She'd been right, he figured. To not feel safe here. And it'd been his doing.
"It's not who she was. There is no Bluebird Gleeson, she made her up... based on those lies, she joined the AFP."
How quick he'd been to turn on her. To write her off, to shut the door on her. He'd chased her like a criminal because, to him, that was all she became.
Was he really that shortsighted?
"Does that sound like Blue to you?"
Mackey's words haunted him. He'd never given her a proper answer because he couldn't. How could he? She was nothing but a character made up in the mind of a traumatized teenager, built on the ideals of a song from a singer she idolized, alone and on the run and desperate, with dreams a mile high and wings clipped to nothing so she couldn't even get off the ground. Hope clipped, too, while those monsters were at it. And so he couldn't answer, because Bluebird Gleeson didn't exist.
And yet at the same time, here he was, at what Mackey would've termed oh-dark-thirty, waiting up for that person who didn't exist -- because the heart and soul behind the persona had always been the same, had always been the one who had wormed her way into all their hearts, who dragged them into karaoke and dancing and kept the good doctor company whether he would admit he needed it or not, who fell head over heels for cheeky birds and could add an artistic flair to anything. Who got so caught up in being replaced that she didn't realize she never could be. Who would expose herself to Ebola, just to try and save her teammate from himself, when none of the rest of them saw that he was even in danger to begin with.
A rose by any other name, and all that, he supposed.
Maybe that's why he was staying, why he'd arranged the under-the-table deal to get her back on his team. He knew what it'd mean, if they got caught in the whole scheme, but that was alright. An apology for the condemnation she didn't know he'd been ready to hand down. The thanks that words could never communicate, the sentiment he didn't know how to show her. He owed her. More than that, he protected his own, and that included her.
"Oh. She's beautiful."
In that moment, seeing her through her grandmother's eyes for the first time, he saw it, too. Quirky and awkward and anxious and sweet -- sincere in all she did, with the fiercest love for life he'd ever seen in a person. In spite of it all, nothing could extinguish that sparkle in her eyes for long.
He'd seen her at her worst, that was true, but he knew her at her best, and she shone all the brighter for where she'd been. That was why he had been willing to stick his neck out for someone that he was finding out he only barely knew; she was worth it. She was proving it over and over again.
"Oh, Bluebird," he murmured through a sigh. "What am I gonna do with you, kiddo?"
A shuffling sound from the other side of the room brought him out of his thoughts. "I've been wondering the same thing, myself," came the soft reply.