Wishing Only Wounds The Heart 2/2

[deeperwonderment]

Title: Wishing Only Wounds The Heart
Author: shadowcat
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 13,115
Fandom: The Fast and Furious
Characters/Pairings: Mia Toretto
Challenge: Written for smallfandombang
Summary: When the rest of her family fled south of the border, Mia was left behind where she would be safe. However, Mia has no interest in being safe and out from the shadow of her older brother, Mia becomes a well-known street racer. So what happens when the man that tore her life apart, and the sister she always trusted both decide to come back into her life?
Disclaimer: I don't own the movies or Mia.
Author's Notes: I have always thought that Mia could be a badass in her own right and that she wouldn't have liked being left behind. Thank you so very much to queenmidalah for making me such awesome art for this.






The weekend after Brian's surprise visit, Mia was in three different races. Seeing Brian again after everything that had happened wreaked havoc with her emotions and her head wasn't completely in her game.

She won one race, lost one and almost wrecked in the third.

The wreck wouldn't have been her fault as the person she was racing lost control of their car, but her reflexes should have been enough to avoid it by a larger margin than she had. Of course, having worked with her for so long and knowing her as he did. Harry had read her the riot act the next time she came to his shop.

"What the hell happened out there, Mia? I've never seen you act like such a rank amateur before! You could have gotten hurt in that last race -- not to mention you could have destroyed your car."

"But I didn't do either," she said tiredly, bending over the engine of the car they were working on. "It won't happen again."

"What rattled you? Did one of the other drivers hit too close to home on something when you were making jibes at each other before the race?" The look Mia gave him spoke volumes. "So, what happened then? Either I get an honest answer or you're sidelined until you can prove to me that you won't let your reflexes slow down like that."

Mia sighed and then turned around so that she could lean against the side of the car and look at Harry as she talked to him. She shook her head, running her hand through her hair.

"I didn't know he could still get to me like that, Harry."

"Who got to you, Mia?" His voice was full of concern. "I need to know these things before I send you out on the circuit."

"It wasn't another racer, Harry," she said quietly. "And it wasn't a spectator or any of the customers here or at the garage."

"Then who was it? Who do I need to take a pipe or a gun to?"

She swallowed, looking down at the ground for a long moment without saying anything. Then she licked her bottom lip and sighed.

"O'Connor came to my place Thursday night."

Harry breathed in and then let it out through his teeth. "The buster came to your place? Did you hit him in the mouth?"

"And give him an excuse to lock me up so he could lure Dom back to town to spring me? I don't think so."

He sighed. "Fair enough. I wouldn't put the cops past something like that and we both know how Dom would react to the news of you getting arrested."

"Because the cops would make sure it was on every news show that Mia Toretto had been arrested for assaulting a cop," she said. "There would be no way that Dom wouldn't see that and he would lose his shit. He would be playing right into their hands when he stormed back into town to get me out and away."

Harry leaned against his workbench and nodded. "He'd kill someone for sure over that." He knew Dom's temper and he knew what would happen if someone arrested his baby sister.

"But I wanted to hit him, Harry. God knows I wanted to," she admitted. "I grabbed a wrench when I found him in my garage and I thought about swinging it at his face, consequences to me be damned."

"What stopped you?"

"The realization that it would make it easier for him to use me to get something from Dom again."

"Yeah, I can see how that would do it. What did he say he wanted?" There was always a difference in what someone like O'Connor said he wanted and what he was really after.

"He was looking for Dom, naturally," Mia responded.

"And he actually thought that you would tell him?" Harry's voice was incredulous. "I knew he was a dumb bastard after what he did, but I guess I didn't realize just how dumb of a buster he is."

"He flat out asked me where they all were. He didn't believe that they all left and I remained behind. I think he assumed that it was set up so that I would look like I was all alone, but that actually Dom or Vince would be near by to keep an eye on me." She sighed. "I can't believe that he thought my brother would be that foolish. He knows that cops would be keeping their eyes on me and the moment Dom showed his face, they would arrest him and haul his ass to jail."

"Dom's a lot of things, but that kind of a fool he is not. He'd be expecting there to be a trap at some point."

"And I think that in the hopes of getting Dom into a cell, he let that bit of knowledge escape his brain." She looked across at Harry. "And then he had the nerve to tell me that he had never planned on me getting hurt in all of what happened."

"He said what?" Harry's hand tensed on his workbench.

"He kept telling me that he didn't mean for me to get hurt and he hadn't expected a lot of the things that had happened. But what the hell did he think was going to happen? He was fucking me and pretending to care about me just so that he could get closer to my brother. He wanted Dom's trust and his secrets and I was the best way for him to get close to him and gain his trust." She shook her head. "All he cared about was getting into Dom's good graces so that he could shut down the side business he was involved in and then take him to prison. He knew that I would end up getting hurt when it was all said and done and he just didn't give a damn. He was too focused on getting his collar."

Harry shook his head and sighed. "I can't believe that he showed up at your place, Mia mine."

"He didn't even believe me when I said that they had left me behind when they pulled the disappearing act. He thought I was lying to protect them. I think I finally got him to believe me because he went right back to continuing to apologize to me and give me all of this nonsense about how he hadn't wanted me to get hurt."

"I can't believe that he actually thought any of that would really work on you."

"Or that I would tell him where they were just because he was there and asking me. Like I would tell O'Connor where they were even if I knew their location. As far as I'm concerned, he's the last person I would give a glass of water to if he was dying of thirst."

Harry nodded, smiling slightly. "He should have realized that you are just as much of a Toretto as your brother. It's more than a name. It's the blood that flows through the two you. One will not betray the other and any outsider that thinks to hurt one of them ends up calling up the fires of hell to avenge the actions."

"He should have gotten a clue from the way that Dom was willing to deal with Tran and his cousin over Jesse." She sighed. "O'Connor kept apologizing and telling me how much he had cared for me. I was a tool only at first and then he found that he was caring deeper and deeper for me."

"Tell me that you didn't believe that bullshit?"

"Of course I didn't, and I told him that I called bullshit on what he was saying. Then I told him he wasn't welcomed at my garage or my cafe and that if I was him, I wouldn't show up at your store any time in the near future, either."

"Be safer for him. I have a lead pipe that would really like to become best friends with his head."

"Shouldn't be a problem since I told him that if he showed up on my property again, I would file charges of harassment with his department."

"Good call, Mia, good call. If you couldn't let loose with violence on him, promise him retribution going through the same channels he would have gone through to get your brother thrown in jail."

"I figured that would be better than beating his face in with a wrench," she sighed.

"Did you ask him why he let Dom go that day?"

She shook her head. "No, he was so focused on finding out where my brother was for me to ask. I didn't want to give the idea that I was interested in him or cared about the reasons he had for doing all of the things that he had done. I just wanted to get some distance between he and I and his questions about Dom and the family's whereabouts."

Harry nodded. "If he comes back around, you'll let me know?"

"Of course."



After the visit from Brian and the conversation with Harry, Mia threw herself into her work. She needed the work to keep herself busy and off of the fact that Brian was somewhere in the area. She knew him well enough to know he wouldn't stay away from her just because she told him to do so.

During the day she worked on her classwork and the work at the diner or the garage. She used it to keep a watch on who might be coming and going in and out of the racing scene. If she could find out things early, it would help Harry out with his store. Of course, it would also give them advanced warning with any new modifications that people were making to their cars.

She and Sharyn had a lot of fun as they tinkered with engines and worked on tune-ups on vehicles that desperately needed it in their neighborhood. Mia had realized early on that sometimes it helped to be able to do things for people in the neighborhood -- and it didn't hurt that it guaranteed them to be owed favors for a later time.

On week nights when she wasn't hanging out with Sharyn or working with Harry, Mia was in the garage attached to the house. She was working on a new project and the safest place for her to do it was in her own place.

She was bent over the engine bay of her car, fastening a bolt when her hands froze. She cocked her head slightly, listening. Something had caused her to go on alert and she was trying to figure out what had disrupted her concentration.

There it was again, the sound of footsteps where there shouldn't be any. There was someone sneaking around the property outside. She made sure that her body was relaxed as she wrapped her hand more securely around the breaker bar that she had beneath the hood. The gait was different than Brian's and any one else would have called first.

Without a sound, she straightened from the car and turned around. Crouching next to the car, she turned the tool in her hand so that she could throw it as soon as the intruder decided to come into the garage.

The door opened and Mia watched, waiting.

"If you bust my head open with that breaker bar I am going to be really pissed off."

Mia let go of the tool in shock and heard it clatter to the ground, kicking up dirt as it did.

"Letty?!"

"Well, it's certainly not the Easter Bunny," Letty responded as she pulled the door shut behind her. "Glad to know that you're always prepared for anything, though." She looked at the dropped tool and then back at Mia. "Where the hell is your gun?"

"On the workbench," Mia responded, leaning down to pick up the breaker bar and place it back near the engine she had been working on. "Too easy for it to get knocked off onto the ground if I have it by the engine while I'm working."

"Dom got you that gun so that you would have the protection." Letty was frowning at her.

"And when I need it, I know exactly where it is."

"And what about when someone gets the drop on you? You can't exactly get to it over there if they already have you down."

Mia gave an exasperated snort. "They can't get the drop on me here. I heard you coming even before you were near the door. I was ready and waiting for someone to be foolish enough to try something." She shook her head. "You weren't as silent as you used to be, Letty. You must be losing your edge."

Letty scoffed. "I haven't started losing anything and you damn well know it."

Mia shrugged at her and turned back to the engine she was working on. "Doesn't matter what I know or don't know. That fact was made abundantly clear months ago."

Mia turned before she could see Letty's wince at the words.

"I told Dom that you'd still be pissed off."

Mia stiffened and forced herself not to look back at Letty. Instead, she went about loosening the bolts she had been working on getting out when she'd heard someone approaching.

"Pissed off? No, that's not an accurate description of what I'm feeling right now, Letty. Pissed off was when I discovered my fucking family had run off on me. Pissed off was when I realized that I had been left behind and was alone." She shook her head. "I passed the point of being pissed off a long time ago."

"You sound bitter, Mia. That's not like you."

"Yeah well, things change." Mia's voice was carefully flat.

"Mia, it was for your own good. We didn't have any other options at the time."

"You drugged me, Letty. Do you have any idea what I felt like when I put two and two together?" Mia was furiously working the wrench as she unscrewed the bolts. "You not only made my decisions for me, but you took away my ability choose what I wanted or needed. You drugged me and you and Dom -- my god damned brother -- ran off on me in the middle of the night. You left me a note and that was all."

"We did what we needed to do in order to keep you safe and keep you off of the cops' radar. You have a really good future ahead of you and we didn't want anything to run the risk of screwing things up for you."

"Yeah because that was more important to me than being with the people I loved." Mia shook her head. "I wouldn't have cared about anything else as long as I still had my family. Instead, I woke up one morning to find out that you had all left me behind and I was now on my own."

"We did what we thought was the best thing to do. We wanted to protect you and keep you safe." Letty snapped. "You can't be a bitch and fault us for that."

Mia slammed down her wrench beneath the hood and while the harsh sound was still reverberating through the garage, she spun and faced Letty. Her eyes were dark and it was very obvious that she was furious.

"You just don't get it, do you?" She demanded. "You guys have no right to make my decisions for me! I'm an adult, Letty! I can make up my own mind and choose my own path for my life. You took my control away and you guys once again didn't think to ask me what I wanted or how I felt! You just made the decision how everything was going to go and didn't once consult me. Just because you and Dominic think that something is for the best doesn't make it right!"

Letty stepped back, surprised over the fact that Mia was yelling at her. Once upon a time, the younger girl never would have raised her voice like this at any of them. However, it wasn't just Mia's voice that surprised her, it was the fact that she could see that the other woman's body was literally shaking with emotion. Mia had changed in more ways than one over the last several months, and Letty could see that very clearly. There was a hardness in her eyes that had never been there before, and for the first time, she was worried that Mia wouldn't forgive them for something that they had done.

"I get that you're really angry with us, Mia," Letty finally said quietly. "But Dominic really did think he was doing the right thing in trying to protect you."

"I'm not just angry, Letty. I'm hurt. After everything else that had happened, I trusted in that I would have my family around me to help me deal with things and to help me get up again. I trusted that no matter what happened, my family would always be there. You guys took that away from me." Mia looked at her. "At the end of the day, when it was really important that we all stick together, you guys abandoned me like I was some useless car that couldn't make the top speeds anymore."

Letty stepped back, staring at her. "Mia mine, that's not --"

"Save it, Letty," Mia cut her off. "You did what you did and there is no going back on that. You have to deal with the consequences just like I've had to do. You didn't want me with you and now I don't need you with me." Mia looked at her and then turned back to the engine she was working on. "I believe you know the way out."

Letty watched her for a moment and then sighed and walked out of the garage. Anger, they could deal with. Hell, hurt, they could even deal with. The fact that Mia no longer trusted any of them, well, that was an even bigger issue that none of them had thought about when they agreed to leave.

Once out in her car, she watched the garage for a few minutes, but Mia didn't follow her out like she would have before all of the shit with the cops and O'Connor went down. Shaking her head, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed a number. When the voice answered at the other end, Letty sighed.

"We've got a problem," she said softly. "And I don't know if it's a problem that we can even fix."



After the visit from Letty, Mia became more focused on what she was doing. If Brian had impacted her concentration, Letty had only sharpened it. The anger she was feeling after the visit was channeled into her races and the work she was doing for Harry. If Harry had any thoughts about the sudden change in how she approached everything, he never voiced them to her.

Harry knew all about having something riding you and driving you, after all. He also knew how Mia felt when O'Connor dropped back into her life and started interrogating her with a lot of questions about where Dominic Toretto had disappeared to. It stirred up a lot of memories about shit that Mia was trying to heal up from. It was healing that started slow, and Harry could see that it was still going to be a slow process since something else also set her off and caused the healing he had been helping her to do come undone.

Therefore, he wasn't all that happy to have someone drop in on him one night. It was someone that he really had never wanted to see again.

"You must have some kind of death wish, kid," Harry said, his tone not at all friendly. "There's nothing for you here, so I suggest that you find your way out the same way that you found your way in."

"I need to talk to you, Harry," Brian said quietly.

"No, you don't. Because of you, I watched the kids that I love like my own get hurt and torn apart. Because of you, I watched the heart of one of those kids be broken and saw her trying to deal with that and the loss of her family." He pointed to the door. "I have nothing to say to you and if you don't leave, I might forget you're a cop."

"I'm worried about Mia."

"You should have thought about that before you used her to get to her brother." Harry muttered before he turned his back on Brian.

"It was my job," Brian responded. "I didn't like it, but I didn't have any choice. Mia was the only way that I could get to know Dom better." He sighed. "She was the only way that I was able to save his life, later."

“And I know that she was grateful that you were able to stop them from getting killed,” Harry snapped. “However, that didn’t help her heart any when she found out that you had used her to get to her family and then her family left her. Because of you, she feels like they abandoned her because of her getting involved with you.”

Brian stared at him in confusion. “Dom wouldn’t have done that to Mia. He might have done that to anyone else in the world, but never to Mia. That was one of the things he always made clear – Mia was the most important person in his life and he would do whatever he had to do in order to keep her safe and untouched by the life he was living.”

“Funny how words aren’t as crystal clear as actions are. They all left her behind when they went on the run from cops like you. Now, with the exception of hijacking big rigs for kicks, Mia is doing exactly what the rest of them did. Only, she’s trying to use common sense and when she’s flying it’s the only time that she seems happy and at peace.”

“What are you talking about?”

Harry cursed and threw down the tool he was working with so that he could turn back around to face Brian.

“Mia’s a racer, Brian. She was born to the road and she’s planning on getting involved with more legal circuit racing.” Harry shrugged. “I’ve agreed to be her sponsor when she gets there.”

“Dominic never wanted Mia to race.”

“Mia makes up her own mind. She wanted to race and it’s helped her deal with all of the hurt and betrayal that she’s had to deal with since you came into her life.” Harry shook his head. “I was against it at first, because like you, I knew what Dom wanted and didn’t want for her. But, not only is she a natural at it, it was her decision and what she wanted to do. Once I realized that, I wasn’t going to stop her or stand in her way. Better she run with me to teach her and keep things safe than some idiot who was only in it for kicks.” He ran a hand through his gray hair. “It wasn’t about Dom and what he wanted, but about Mia and what she wanted.”

“What can I do to help her, Harry? What can I do to make amends to her for everything that happened?”

“Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said, kid? You can’t make amends for this. You can’t fix everything that you caused to get broken. Even if you could make some kind of amends to her for your part in what happened, you can’t fix the rest of what’s broken. You may have started the cracks, but you’re not the one who caused the complete break between Dom and Mia. The only one that can fix that is going to be Dom – and the rest of them for their part in making her feel like she wasn’t worth taking with them.”

“There has to be something that I can do for her, though,” Brian argued.

“There is,” Harry retorted coldly. “Leave her alone. Walk away – again – and pretend you never met her. Let her heal and move on. Let her stay in control of her own life and her own destiny. In her eyes, you cost her heart and her entire family. You’ve done more than enough and I don’t think she could handle any more of your kind of help.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“I’m pretty sure that he does,” a new voice said from behind Brian.

Brian turned and looked at the young woman standing there. “And you are?”

Sharyn shook her head and then looked at Harry. “This is the infamous Brian O’Connor? He looks pretty damn scrawny for as much trouble as he’s caused around here.”

“Yeah, well, Sharyn, we all know that looks can be deceiving,” Harry replied calmly. “Aren’t you supposed to be working at Mia’s today?”

“I am.” Sharyn nodded, then looked back at Brian. “We had a timing chain disintegrate on one of the customer’s cars and I came to purchase some parts so that we could fix it.” She shook her head. “The dude hadn’t had a tune up since before Jesus was a toddler.”

Harry’s lips quirked in a smile and then he laughed. “You know where the stuff is. Just write down the part numbers of what you take so I can put it on Mia’s account.”

“Sure thing, Uncle Harry.” She started to head into the store and then stopped, turning back to look at Brian. “Stay away from Mia or I’ll put a knife in you, cop or not.”



The wreck should never have happened.

Later, everyone who was close enough to see it would all agree in their statements that there was nothing Mia would have been able to do in order to avoid it.

However, as Harry was listening to Mia on the radio, they hadn’t gotten to that part yet. Everything sounded like it was going smoothly and nothing in Mia’s voice suggested that there was anything out of the ordinary going on inside the car.

He muted his headset and unclipped the second radio from his belt.

“Sharyn? How are things looking from where you’re sitting?”

“Everything looks awesome, Uncle Harry. Mia is only one car length behind the jackass showboat, but she’s gaining on him.”

“Do you see any sign of unwanted attention?”

“No, no sign of the cop from where I’m at. I don’t think his stupid ass would be dumb enough to show his face.”

“Don’t count on that. He seems very determined to straighten things out with Mia.”

“Yeah, maybe when hell freezes over. Mia has – what the fuck?! MIA!”

Harry jumped to attention when Sharyn let out the expletive. “Sharyn? Sharyn!”

“The fucker rammed her!”

“Who? Who rammed her?”

There was silence on the other end of the radio and that was when Harry heard Mia’s frightened voice come over his headset. He had never heard her sound so frightened and he was sure that he felt his heart freeze in his chest.

“Harry, I’m losing it!”

“Mia? Mia, remember, turn into the spin.”

Mia didn’t respond and Harry was already running towards the makeshift track when he heard the sound of a car colliding with something that had very little give.



Brian was the first person to the crash site. He had been driving one of the chase cars and had watched in horror as the driver Mia was passing suddenly swerved and rammed the front of his car into the side panel of Mia’s car. Before he could blink, Mia’s car flipped several times and then went skidding along the street on its roof. He slammed both feet on the brakes of his own car, not paying attention to the squealing sound the tires made – or the sound that his transmission made in response to his foot coming so quickly off the clutch. The car had barely skidded to a stop before he was out of it and running to where Mia’s car had come to a rest after colliding with the side of a building.

“MIA!” He yelled, trying to pull her door open.

He had the brief moment to thank God Harry had insisted that a five point harness was installed in her car. She was hanging from her seat, but at least she was still fastened in and hadn’t taken a ride around the inside of her car.

“Pull, Buster! Damn it, pull!”

In any other circumstance, suddenly hearing the voice of Dominic Toretto would have caused Brian to go on the defensive, but this was not the time. He was just glad that there was someone there to help him get Mia to safety. He saw in a swift glance that Dom and Vince were there and the three of them worked to pry open the driver’s side of Mia’s car. While they did that, Letty had managed to squeeze into the busted out window of the passenger’s side and she was making sure that she kept Mia secure in the harness. She reached up under the straps of the helmet Mia was wearing to feel for her pulse.

“She’s got a pulse!” Letty yelled. “It’s slower than I’d like, but it’s there.”

Brian felt the burn of his muscles in his back and arms as they pulled and then felt the door give. He didn’t even protest when Dom shoved past him and Vince and pushed the door off of the car with a loud screech of metal.

“Thank god Harry made her wear a helmet and installed the harness,” Vince said as he looked into the car. “If we can get the car back onto its tires, we should be able to keep her stable until we can get her to the hospital.”

“Are you nuts?” A new voice demanded and Brian recognized it as the girl from Harry’s shop. “You guys could hurt her even further if you move her wrong.”

“Look, cupcake,” Letty snapped. “The way she’s hanging in the harness is constricting her breathing and cutting into her neck. If we don’t get this damn thing righted, by the time those idiot paramedics get here – if they’ve even been called – she could be dying or dead. So shut up and either help us or go the fuck away.”

“Letty, it’s going to be a rough ride.” Dom cautioned her as he directed Brian and Vince to get in position to help him flip the car.

“I’ve had worse, Papi,” she assured him. “I’ll brace and you do what you do so we can get baby girl the help she needs.”



The next few minutes were a blur for Brian.

He remembered them getting the car right side up – and the fact that Letty was curled around Mia so that she wasn’t jostled too much. He remembered the three of them being pushed back as the paramedics got there. Once the paramedics got Mia out of the car and onto a stretcher, he started to become aware of other things.

He saw Dom in a quiet conversation with Harry and watched as he squeezed the other man’s shoulder and nodded. When Dom came back to where he was standing with Vince and Letty, he just stared at him for a moment.

“This is not the place or the time,” Dom finally said. “But you and I have some unfinished business we need to take care of.”

“Mia…”

“Harry and Sharyn are riding in the ambulance with her. We’ll follow. It would have been too much for Mia to wake up in the ambulance and see one of us there.” There was pain in his eyes as he said that, but his voice was carefully controlled.

“Why did Harry let her run in this race?” Vince demanded. “And why was she wearing a helmet and harness? Those things aren’t the norm for street racing.”

Dom ran a hand over his head. “Mia’s going legit.”

There was a shocked silence and then Brian heard his own voice.

“What?”

“Mia has a chance to do legit racing and Harry’s shop is sponsoring her. She’s been wearing the helmet and the five-point harness in order to get herself accustomed to the feel of them.” He sighed. “And thank god she was because that crash probably would have killed her on impact otherwise.”

“What about the other driver,” Vince demanded. “The one that wrecked her. What are we going to do about him?”

“We’ll find him and take of him later,” Dom said firmly. “Right now, we need to get to the hospital and be with Mia.”



It all seemed a little more surreal than he was used to.

Brian found himself driving Dominic to the hospital with him. He understood Dom’s reasoning – after all, he had the siren and the magnetic light he could put on his dash that would allow him to break every traffic law to keep up with the ambulance. It was just very strange for him to be in the same car with the other man.

When they got to the hospital, Brian tried to break off, but Dom stayed on his tail.

“Mia comes first,” Dom said. “If I don’t stay on you, Vince might get ideas that would piss off my sister.”

“Mia could care less what happens to me,” Brian said, shaking his head. “And I know I deserve it.”

“If you truly believe that, then you don’t know a damn thing about Mia. She still cares about you or she wouldn’t want to take a wrench to your skull. You hurt her and betrayed her.” Dom sighed, shaking his head. “Hell, so did I, only in a different way. She’s pissed off and wants to beat the hell out of each and every one of us, but she still cares.”

“I don’t care what she wants to do me,” Brian finally said. “All I care about is that she is alive to do it.”

“She will be. She’s a Toretto. That kind of toughness starts in the womb.”

Brian was quiet for a few moments as they made their way to the waiting area of the Emergency room. They had made good time – getting there right as the ambulance carrying Mia showed up. After they watched her be transported from the ambulance and then through the doors to the Emergency room, Brian looked at Dom.

“Why did you leave her behind, Dom? I thought she was the most important person in your world.”

“She is and that’s why I did it.” Dom leaned his head back against the wall he was standing at. “I didn’t want to take the chance that she would end up in jail or worse. I figured that by leaving her behind, I was protecting her and keeping her life stress free.”

“Losing her entire family didn’t exactly make her life stress free.” Brian’s voice was quiet. “I think it broke a part of her.” He swallowed. “It broke a part of her that I hadn’t already broken. Even with everything that I did, she was counting on being with you in order for her life to start making some sense again. When the rest of you left her behind…”

“I would ask you how you know so much about my sister, but you never have had the good sense to stay away from where you’re not wanted.”

“I wanted to talk to her, to explain why I did what I did. I wasn’t expecting forgiveness or anything, I just wanted her to know why I had done it and that my feelings for her were real.” He shook his head. “I certainly didn’t expect to find out that you had left her behind to punish her for trusting an outsider.”

“That wasn’t why we left her behind.”

“Yeah, maybe not but that’s what she believed.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because she told me that before she kicked me out of her garage.”

Dom sighed. “That wasn’t it at all and I thought I explained it so well in my letter to her.”

“Apparently not well enough,” Brian said dryly.

Before Dominic could respond, they saw Harry come through the double doors that Mia had disappeared through. The two of them moved away from the wall to intercept him.

“Harry?” Dominic’s voice was surprisingly gentle.

Harry looked up and his worn expression shifted to something that could have been an attempt at a smile. He ran a hand through his hair.

“She’s going to be okay,” he said quietly. “She’s got a concussion and is pretty bruised up from where her body got jerked around by the harness. She’s going to be sore for a little while, but there’s no broken bones and nothing internal was hurt.” He swallowed. “The helmet and the harness kept her neck from getting jerked around which could have caused problems for her with the way the car flipped and then collided with the building.” He let out a breath. “She regained consciousness for a little bit, and knew who she was and what year it is. She’s going to have to stay here a few days so the docs can make sure that there aren’t any injuries that they missed on their first go around, but they seem to think she’ll be fine.”

“So she’ll be back to training in a few weeks, then?” Dominic’s voice was calm.

Harry met Dom’s eyes and nodded firmly. “If that’s what she still wants to do after this, then I’m going to stick with her and make sure she has the best chance at success with it.”

“There’s no one besides myself that I’d trust her to,” Dominic said quietly. “Will they let me back to see her?”

“Yeah, it’s why I came out. Only two people are allowed with her and I’m not sure you’re going to get Sharyn to leave her side.”

“She’s going to have to when Letty gets here.”

Harry shrugged. “That’s between all of you. I did my part by coming to get you.”

Brian watched Dominic go to check on his sister and then went to drop down into one of the chairs that he’d been avoiding while they were waiting for news.

Mia was going to be all right.

He leaned forward to rest his head in his hands. Things were nowhere near perfect and he didn’t know if he’d ever get a chance to make things up to her. However, the more important thing was that she was going to be all right and there was no long term damage.

As long as he knew that, everything else could wait for another day.

And there would be another day for the two of them. Somehow, he’d make sure of it.

Comments

[senmut]

Very good tale. It's a good focus, well-rounded.

[deeperwonderment]

Thank you. :)

And I really love your icon!

[senmut]

I made it back when I was actively writing the pairing. Thank you.

[deeperwonderment]

And that's what I will be attempting to do. I've missed writing Mia and Mia/Letty. :D