Chapter Text
It takes Roman a long time to find the right words to say what he wants to say to Gerri after everything that went down. It’s been years, maybe his entire life, since he has had this much clarity, or felt as unburdened, and while the dust settled and he had sipped a martini, the one thing he knew he wanted was to fix things with her. So, the first draft apology began on a cocktail napkin which he found out pretty quickly was not big enough to contain even half of what feels crucial to say. There really is a lot he wants to say.
Apology_Draft3
I’m sorry. I need to start with that, because you deserve a million apologies from me, and I am sorry. For all of it. I know you owe me nothing, and if throwing this letter away is what you want to do, I understand. I’m sorry that I hurt you - I didn’t mean any of what I said to you that night, and my stupidity and ego wouldn’t let me see that you were, as always, absolutely right. The truth is that you have always been the best at your job, and I am an idiot, but I did know that, underneath all of the lashing out like a toddler. I do know it. I’m sorry that I didn’t listen, but I am so grateful that you gave me a chance that I didn’t deserve in the slightest. I don’t think I can properly explain to you what it means to me that you saw something good, or the potential for it, in me. But seeing as you might never speak to me again, I’m going to try.
Drafts four through seven are tucked away in his notes app, with draft eight deleted for the crime of making him cry into his lap while writing it.
He has a lot of time to think, now that the game is over and his siblings are dust in the wind, and he’s trying to heal his wounds the way he should have done in the first place. AA is Christian preachy bullshit most of the time, but the making amends to people you hurt step is a doozy of a thing, and Roman wants to try.
Apology6
Entitled, insufferable, attention seeking, lazy, impatient, greasy, inappropriate, impulsive, cowardly, disgusting, eunuch moron. Oh, and of course, a massive disappointment. All of that stuff is true, but so is the opposite. I guess what I’m trying to say is that all of the worst truths about me are things you already knew, had seen first hand, and you still gave me a chance. That must mean something.
He isn’t stupid, the chances that Gerri will even read his apology are slim as fuck, but the more drafts he does, the more he feels like he’s able to just be honest about everything, to offer up his vulnerable underbelly even though he’s always been so scared of the inevitable boot.
APOLOGY_9
The only part of all of this mess that I will never regret is having the chance to know you, in what small ways I did, and having you know me. The me I am, the me I have been, could never have lasted half as long without you seeing the possibility of him. I want to thank you. I have never met anyone who would bother before, and that it was you…This is the part where I’m going to say some things that I think you, sharp as you are, probably already know and are not interested in hearing from me. You can always stop reading and set this on fire at any point, but I’m sitting in that weirdly concrete bar two blocks over from the office, like I have been every day at 5 o’clock, and they mix a mean martini and I don’t think I can live with myself if I don’t get this out of me. Sorry.
Freedom, strange and unmooring though it is, lets him breathe again. Prompts him to ask himself what it is that he wants now, and what he is willing to do to be deserving of it. Makes him look at his empty life in its entirety for the little points of light that twinkle like stars in an otherwise vast and dark ocean of painful memories: Gerri. His fucking idiot siblings. Tabs, to a certain extent. But mostly Gerri. She is the only person who can say that all she ever was, was honest with him; which is something he didn’t truly appreciate about their connection until he had destroyed it.
Apology11
I want you to be happy - I know you’re probably scoffing at that, but it’s true. You deserve everything you want, and I hope Mattson is appreciating you properly for how integral you are to the company, but I also hope that you’re breathing a little easier now that there’s nothing to scrabble for. It’s weird how much easier it is to breathe these days. I miss my dad, of course I do, but I also can’t forgive that he hurt me, and you, and all of us, and being in Waystar would have meant I was always trapped inside the mausoleum with him. My very public breakdown, and everything that came after, woke me up to just how much bullshit I have let myself accept - from my family, and Waystar, but also from myself. How out of everyone, the only person who never did bullshit me is you.
Of all of it, that is the thing he regrets the most, losing her. It’s also the only thing he doesn’t know for certain he can take back.
Apology_Final_(13)
We hurt each other, is what I guess I’m realising, but I hope that you know that I have forgiven all of it, and if there was a way to get to here that didn’t hurt, I will always wish I had been able to get out of my own way and take that path. I hope you can forgive me someday too, because you’re the only part of my life there that I miss. The only person I have ever felt so connected to, so seen by. I know, like with most things, I fucked that up repeatedly. I’m dumb, but I’m smart enough to know that wanting to be yours changed me for the better, and it’s something that I’m going to carry with me forever. I think trying to be the person you saw in me is the first time I’ve ever really liked myself. That’s the person I’m working towards being now, without the scheming and the backstabbing and the fear that every room I walk into will have an angry man who can’t stand me inside of it. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with an angry man. I’m sorry I tried to be a bargain basement Logan, because I don’t want to be him, not that way. I was never a killer, and I think I’m going to admit to myself and you that I am soft. I’m a lover, not a fighter, not really. It’s what kept me going back for more my whole life. It’s what I am trying to let myself commit to now that I’m out of the meat mill. A life where I don’t really hurt anyone, where I am honest about how I feel. It’s a life I would really like to have you in, in whatever capacity you might be willing to allow. Because, I’m 90% sure you know exactly how I feel about you, and even if there’s a 0.1% chance that you don’t actually despise me, and that you might, god forbid, actually still have a soft spot for me, I would love to have the opportunity to be good to you.
Draft 14. Draft 14, written by hand on smooth pages, and boasting only three crossed out lines, is the one. He knows as soon as he finishes that this one is as close as he can ever come to saying both how sorry he is, how much he misses her, and how he still cares so much without it being in some way pressuring or gross or seeming like he’s making excuses for his behaviour. Like all the other drafts, he finishes it in the same barstool that he retreated to after signing away Waystar, with a martini at his elbow and the intrigued eyes of bartender Chris passing over him with regularity.
The truth is, if anyone asked me, I would do it all again (maybe a little differently) if it meant knowing you. I’d go through all of it again for you.
You owe me less than nothing, Gerri, and if this is the last you ever hear from me, if I never hear from you, I want to say again: I’m sorry, I’m so grateful, and I am maybe still a little bit the same selfish fool I’ve been, because I’m going to ask forgiveness for taking the cowards way out here by writing it rather than saying it out loud; I hope you don’t hate that I’m going to love you for the rest of my life. I certainly don’t.
Faithfully Yours,
Roman
Two weeks and three days after the deal goes through, he sends the letter to Gerri’s apartment, and hopes blindly that it will not end up in her shredder.