Lev doesn't answer Seb Just sits there staring at the space she was standing in before, jaw tight, already hating himself more than anybody else at that table could manage to hate him right now. He hears some of the soldiers criticising him not caring to whisper anymore. They had started to warm up to her.
Suddenly he feels the loudest whack and a sharp sting on the back of his head and neck, he can't even tell if they were hit separately or at once. He looks up in pain to see Santiago looking at him like he's the dumbest muhfucka in the universe.
She doesn't come back down that night. Doesn't answer when he talks to her that night, doesn't answer his knocks on her door either, she had Emine move her to her own room so she wouldn't deal with him.
He knocks every night carefully, she ignores him until eventually he just stops trying and goes back to his own room feeling about as low as the poison's ever made him feel, and that's saying something.
The days after that are quiet in a way the house has never really been before.
Alex still does everything except cook, her way of showing her love. She would order in breakfast, lunch, dinner, or just wait for someone to do it. She still checks Lev's temp, still makes sure he eats, still makes sure he's taking his meds and tea and stuff, still plays with the kids, runs errands and handles every single thing that needs handling, but there's no talking in any of it anymore.
No humming while she works. No teasing him about his silent treatments or anything at all. She does the job and does it well, but with little to no conversation and then disappears the second it's done.
Everybody notices how she's changed and where she disappears to. It's a little cabana lounge area out past the pool, mostly forgotten, shaded, quiet, and she just sits out there by herself for hours at a time, knees pulled up, blanket around her.
Sometimes she's on her phone, sometimes on her laptop, sometimes just staring at nothing in particular and sometimes with the kids. They love her and are always reaching for her and looking for her. She finally learnt their names even though she still has no idea abt their story.
Nobody knows how to fix what has happened. Sebastian tries joking with her a couple of times but he keeps getting polite, short answers or sometimes nothing else, opposite to her usual quick funny comebacks or the usual bickering.
Dilara tries just sitting with her in silence one afternoon, and Alex lets her, doesn't ask her to leave, but doesn't open up either.
Lev watches all of it from a distance, feeling something close to sick every time he sees her out there alone. He's still angry at the whole situation, at Ghost, at the audio but most of all, at himself but none of that anger's ever once touched how much he still cares for her, and that's exactly what makes this worse.
He said ugly things out of exhaustion and fear and every bad feeling he'd been sitting on, and now the one person who fought all night to keep him breathing is sitting alone in a cabana avoiding him like he's a plague.
He feels stupid, like the biggest idiot in this entire house full of soldiers and killers and people who could actually do damage, because none of them managed to hurt her the way he did with his careless words and unmanaged emotions.
⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎
The house spends about a week playing the world's least subtle game of matchmaker, and it's mostly the soldiers and staff running the whole operation, since family would be too obvious that it would tip Alex off in about two seconds flat.
Niko starts it off first, casually mentioning to Alex that Lev's been "asking about her" when he absolutely was not, just to see if she'd react. She doesn't, just replies with a flat "okay" and keeps moving, which only makes Niko more determined.
