Work Text:
Indrid Cold, over the course of many, many years, learns to tune out the guilt he feels when innocent people die.
He learns to ignore the countless bad timelines that play out in his head and learns to ignore the gut wrenching feeling that comes with knowing things could have been better.
(And knowing in the abstract sense is one thing, but as he stares at disaster he sees what could have been done to prevent it taunting him every time he blinks; he stares at beauty and can sometimes only envision its demise.)
He’d have gone mad years ago if he didn't find ways of coping with that.
(And if he breaks down every once in a while in the privacy of his own home that’s his business alone. He picks himself back up and carries on and doesnt let it bother him again until his next breaking point. It's a good pattern. He’s got it down to nearly a science now.)
There are some things he finds harder to ignore than others, though.
One night he sees Duck die in far more timelines than he survives, the likelihood of him coming back so slim that it leaves Indrid shaken, hands trembling and mind racing.
(And he was the one that had helped get him and Ned and Aubrey the information that sends them out fighting. By the time he realizes what’s happening it's far too late, all he can do now is wait it out.)
Duck makes it back, worse for wear but alive and relatively safe. Indrid, upon seeing him, practically explodes.
He doesn't yell, isn’t even angry, but his speech is fast and impassioned as he tells Duck about how dumb what he did was and how badly it could’ve turned out and how lucky he was to be alive and it rapidly devolves into Indrid near shaking and telling Duck that he’s glad he’s alive while duck holds him wordlessly.
(And it's selfish, a part of him thinks. He didn't need to burden Duck with the knowledge of his own likely demise, but everything is spilling out of his mouth before he can stop it, fueled purely by a strange and gut wrenching mixture of fear and relief.)
They stay like that for a long time, slumped over in front of several space heaters with Indrid clinging to Duck like he’s going to disappear (like he saw him disappear) and Duck with his arms securely around Indrid.
(And Indrid tries his hardest not to let what he’d seen taint these precious moments, tries to breathe, just breathe, feel Duck alive, and revels in the fact that he gets to do so.)