Title: The Noise
Author: Skylarcat
Classification: Venn One-Shot
Rating: H for Hurt
Feedback: It's a lovely thought.
Summary: Angie's Point Of View of the six months spent away from Vega and how she coped.
Note: Flynn and Vega are characters that do not belong to me. Yes, I have used them without permission. So hire me to write for the show and that way I can have permission. Sounds like a win-win to me!
...
She found comfort in noise, the ricocheting of sound that surrounded her like a warm blanket. She avoided silence, avoided that, in which, could not distract her from herself. She had this habit of ungracefully tripping on her own flaws when she wasn't paying attention. And it was just like him to sneak inside her thoughts when things got too quiet.
She was to blame, she knew. No one's fault, but her own. She had left him for reasons hard to understand, even for herself; falsely misguided by some moral code. She ruined the things that she loved the most and he just happened to be one of them; the unintended collateral damage to the mess that she had created.
Her tongue was dry from fabricating excuses, from trying to make her wrong right. He kept her awake at nights. The ramblings of her heart that only spoke in his language, how it cried out for him now. She used to be a whole person. Before all of this. Before him. Now she was splintered in half, divided in what felt like two different people.
All the things she wanted to tell him, needed to say, bunched and collected at the back of her throat. She swallowed them away, along with the dozen or so unspoken apologies; swallowed them like thick marbles. They burned their way down her esophagus and scraped along the pit of her stomach, the pain a welcome companion. How could she explain to him that she had to hurt him because it was the only way she could hurt herself in return?
To continue to live in this world without him meant every day felt like a slow building suicide. When she signed her resignation, her name in thick ink, she might as well have been holding a razor to her wrists.
The first several days were the hardest. She spent hours crying her life away in wads of tissue that she left as evidence of her pain, to litter on her floor. At night, she bowed her head over the toilet bowl, choking on the regurgitated ache of not having him near. She would bite her fingernails until they bled, wondering if it would ever get easier, if she even wanted it to.
She thought a new beginning would do her good, would help her forget. So she sold her house and moved to a quiet, nice neighborhood, in a cute house with a lovely view. She had hoped that putting some distance between them would somehow make abandoning him easier. But it only compared to that of a severed limb; a piece of her that was always missing.
She longed to call him, finding his name in her contacts. Her finger would linger over the dial button for what felt like hours, till her morning coffee would became stale, until her finger would become sore from the hesitation and she would finally give up, thinking of all the ways he must hate her by now.
She had broken his heart, so she could feel. She was at fault, having waved that little white flag before they even had a chance to begin. She was a carcass of regrets and wrongs that she could never fix, no matter how desperately she wanted to. There were some wounds a person couldn't heal from, and she had made certain that this one hurt, that there would be no coming back from it.
She avoided mirrors; hating the image of her reflection, calling treason of the crime that she had willingly committed. Her hands were no longer cleaned, stained in his blood. She had wounded him by pushing him away, by placing the knife to his back. And then it was done; what they shared snuffed out like a candle, leaving her alone to drown in the darkness.
Everything had an expiration date anymore. So of course one existed for them. Time curdled everything it touched and they were no different. Except that he was the victim, and she, the perpetrator. And what had expired, resulted from her choices, her mistakes.
There were the nights that she preferred the rain. Where she would sit by the window, her hand pressed against the glass, tracing zigzags in the mist. Some sad song would play on the radio, as if written just for them and she would close her eyes and listen, seeing his image burned behind her eyelids. She cussed the way he haunted her, counted all the ghosts he left behind. She always plucked the scab from her thumb because the cut was shaped like his smile.
And before she would close the curtain, tucking herself away for another night, she would whisper forgive me to no one in particular, and watch the rain fall, knowing somehow her words would reach him. She could almost hear his soft reply, nothing to forgive, in that voice of his, like warm honey, that caused goosebumps to speckle her skin. And for one night, she would be able to sleep soundly.
Mostly, she was just a shell of the person that she used to be. Hallowed out and covered in bruised skin and nothing but bones. Bones so brittle, that his words alone could break them on impact. She moved from reflex, out of routine. And some days, when the pain inside became too heavy, she barely moved at all.
She was slowly falling apart, scorching away. Becoming ashes, like those of the letter she burned over the stove, the one begging him for forgiveness, the one she promised to send. She abandoned him to destroy herself and now she waited for death.
On occasion, Betty would convince her to go out for drinks, and the two would aimlessly catch up, until her good friend would always manage to turn the topic to him. As though he was soaked in gasoline and she molded from flint, she would burn with the need to know everything that there was to know. Devouring the crumbs of information that Betty would offer, starving for more with her probing questions. "You could always come back, Angie. He misses you." The last part would hang between them, and she would almost smile from the thought, and then it was gone, like a shadow cast in light or a drift coming in from beneath the door. He was better off without her.
There would be no coming back, the damage done. The distance between them stretched for miles, might as well have been oceans between them. How could he forgive her when she couldn't forgive herself? Her heart was in tangles, a web of nonsense that even she could not decipher. It would beat faster just at the mention of his name and get lodged in the back of her throat.
He had gotten too close, held her broken pieces within his hands, and as a result she became too safe, almost letting her walls fall down. She was a match, one spark and she would explode, destroying everything and everyone in her path. It was her history. It was what she did. And he didn't deserve it. And she didn't deserve him, or the way he looked at her with all the intentions of loving her completely.
She wasn't as strong as she pretended to be. Her body a patchwork quilt of the pain of her past, a scar here and there, one regrettable tattoo, and that hallow point of her neck, where he once rested his head.
There was a darkness that existed inside her, careful to tiptoe along the edge, but being with him cast her in hues of light, turned her around to face the sun, and suddenly she was viewing the world with kaleidoscope eyes.
And it scared her, to know that he knew her better than she knew herself, that he saw her completely, could recite the formation of her bare bones from memory alone and without ever having seen her naked. She was poetry in motion and he wrote each verse carefully. She couldn't remember a line, in which, didn't include him.
Now she was rewriting herself, erasing him from her story, blurring the sharp lines until they merged. His memory hidden in the silent spaces between parentheses, merely a footnote.
It was the best she could do, in the process of tearing down and rebuilding herself. She needed to forget, to not remember. So when she was ready she forced herself to go back to work. Boyd secured her a place working in recruitment. It was on an entirely different floor than homicide and the chances of running into him were slim to none, but she found comfort in knowing he was near.
She found her new line of work to be unfulfilling, only granting her a distraction. She stayed late into the nights, completing whatever paperwork that needed to be filed, only leaving when she thought he would already be gone. She would search for his car in the parking lot, attempting to mask the excitement which would form in the pit of her stomach every time she spotted it.
On the nights, when it became too much, where she had trouble just breathing and getting her limbs to corporate, she would sneak over to where his car was parked, resting her hand against the hood as though it was pressed against his chest, feeling the warmth of the engine, like the beating of his heart. She would trace her fingers along the windows, along the mirror. Somehow, scribbling the three words that she dared never say aloud, there along the glass.
She always read the paper, finding solitude in following homicide cases. It was merely a small thread, but it kept them tangled together. Made her feel connected to the life that she had left behind, even if it was just a corner she occupied. On several occasions, Boyd would join her for lunch, giving bits of information that she collected and stored away in the dusty files of her mind. When she couldn't sleep, she pulled them out, picking through the details with a fine point comb.
She almost missed being a detective as much as she missed him. She missed the thrill and rush of unraveling the mystery. It was one of the few things she had actually been good at. And he was the only partner that ever fit her, working their magic in perfect union. But she had dug these holes herself; dropping in land mines and waited. And every time she fell into one, she found herself surprised when it blew up in her face.
What right did she have to miss him this badly? To miss him to the point her lungs would condense and shrivel into raisins, robbing the ability to breathe. A million questions haunted her. Was he alright? Was he dating anyone? Was Lucas his sole partner now or did they replace her? Did he miss her?
But what she really wanted to know was if he, too, carried a giant hole in his chest, where his heart once resided, because she did and no matter what she tried, nothing could ever fill the emptiness. She wore a vacancy sign around her neck, knowing her heart was reserved solely for him now. And waited to the day, that maybe she would dare allow him entry.
One night, the hurt reared its angry head again, so she made the long trip down to where the homicide office was located. Finding comfort in the familiarity of the place she once referred to as her second home. She discovered all the lights were shut off and almost turned around, when something caught her eye. He was sitting at his desk, the only light coming from the glow of his computer screen. She saw the silhouette of the bottle, assuming it was bourbon, his drink of choice. Her heart broke inside her chest, seeing him looking so completely devastated and knowing it was her fault. She watched him through the glass for what felt like hours, pressing her forehead against pane and dropping to her knees. She would find no redemption that night.
The truth of the matter was that she had failed him. It was that simple. She should have been a better friend, a better partner. But she didn't know how to be the person that he deserved. She didn't know how to give him what she had been holding on to so tightly all these years. She had been silent for so long, holding all the secrets there beneath her tongue, so securely that the words would cut her lips each time she attempted to speak them aloud. If she were to give them a voice then they would be out there in the world, alive and real. And he would know.
So she didn't tell him that she loved him, because it would hurt too much to tell him the truth. And everything that hurt left too soon. Everything except words; they stayed forever. Words that keep coming up like vile, resting in the back of her throat, choking on confessions the size of the Grand Canyon, ones that broke every bone in her body each time they resurfaced. How her body would bend and contort to avoid giving herself over to him so completely.
That night at the precinct, when they were alone, sitting in the dark, after he had shot and killed Slater to save her, she knew. They shared a bottle of cheap scotch as she whispered to him, "I'm a mess, I'm always going to be a mess," but really what she meant to say was, "I love you for how human you are." How was he to know that her heart was a grenade and that he held the pin between his fingers, and at any given moment, could blow them both up?
It was so easy to count all the separate times that she had fallen in love with him, recall them all in vivid detail. They came and went, leaving her disoriented in their wake. They made her feel too much, when she didn't want to feel anything at all. She wanted to be numb. She wanted a world where it wasn't so hard.
Then Boyd appeared on her doorstep, carrying a bottle of alcohol. And she saw her way out; a chance to use and be used. Common sense told her it was wrong, her heart protested violently against her chest, but she stepped back, holding the door opened for him. Her life was already complicated enough, she didn't need a relationship. What she needed was to be violated, detached sex that made her body feel good, but destroyed her insides. She had to ruin herself, because that's what she did. She caused destruction and everything she touched turned to shambles.
So she followed him to the couch, where she poured them two glasses. They drank in silence, knowing where the night was leading. Electricity sizzled in the air around them as they swallowed empty promises, signing their names along the invisible contract. This would mean nothing. And then he kissed her and she kissed him back. Wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him closer against her, not because she wanted him, but because she knew she could never love him and that she had to make this hurt. She had to make Vega hate her enough to leave her so far behind, that she would never cross his mind again.
Boyd told her that she was beautiful; his words warm and bright and splashed across her skin like watercolors. She wanted to believe him, but he only saw the outside. He wasn't looking closely enough to see how revolting she truly was. How she hurt those that she loved simply because she could. So she took off her shirt and he took off his.
In her attempt to desperately feel something other than pain, she gave her body away, but not her soul. And in the morning, when she woke up with an almost stranger, their limbs tangled together; she pulled herself from the weight of his body and dropped her shamed bones into the shower, where she scrubbed her skin raw, trying to remove the scent of him off of her.
She allowed another man to screw her, to hurt him. To make him hate her so much, that he could never forgive her. And all she wanted was to leave her body there among the soiled sheets to rot away.
It happened more than she liked to admit, the giving herself away sexually. She allowed Boyd to use her body because it voided her from any emotion and she was finally numb enough to breathe.
It afforded her time; time to rebuild those walls that her partner had managed to slam his way through. She was determined to make them indestructible, steel and concrete. And so high that they would block out the light, making her forget the way the sun felt on her face, making her forget how his hands felt when they held her. She would be so safe in her own cocoon of self-deprivation, where no one could ever reach her again.
Six months passed and it might as well have been six years, every second more painful than the last. She was learning how to breathe again, how to walk, how to live. She got up each morning, placed one foot in front of the other, somehow finding the strength to move. Everything was used just as a means to distract herself. Her boring job that she could care less about, Boyd; none of it mattered, it only helped her make it through the endless days and longer nights. And for a time, the hurt wasn't as paralyzing.
But that all changed the day Boyd stood in her office, informing her that there was a case that personally impacted Vega. She held her breath as her heart slammed against her chest. She tried to show no reaction as she asked how Vega was holding up, but knew her voice trembled just slightly at the mention of his name. She placed her shaking hands in her lap and whispered, "I'm here if needed." She dared not stand, knowing her weak legs would give out on her, and she would be a heap on the floor.
She waited for him to reach out to her. But he never called or texted. He never came to her office, not that she could blame him. She could always reach out to him, but the fear of rejection always gave her pause. She wouldn't be able to survive him pushing her away. Not that she deserved to survive it, that's exactly what she had done to him.
All she wanted was to see him, to know that he was okay. She wanted to wrap her arms around him, to tell him she was sorry. To hold him close to her and whisper, "Please, forgive me. I won't ever leave again." And she would mean it this time.
Of course, he would do his best to push her away, but she would be like a statue, feet firmly planted into the ground, unrelenting. She would earn back the gift that he gave her freely, knowing there was a chance he may never return it again.
When she received the news that she would be returning to homicide to help with the case, she turned off all the lights in her office and sat in the corner of the room, trying to collect her thoughts. How could she possibly get him to understand? What words could be said to mend all that she had broken?
And then it was happening. The last one to greet her, in a long line of happy faces, he was always reserved like that. "Look at you," He stated, his voice bitter and hitting her like a bullet to the heart. They stood quietly observing one another, making mental notes of how they changed in appearances, reliving the memories that they had gnawed over for the last six months. The hurt was sketched along his features and she could follow the lines as though reading a map, traveling to all the places where she had hurt him, beginning with his heart.
They worked the case as they always had, but the distance between them was palpable. She tried to squeeze into whatever space that he allowed her in, needing to have him near. She knew then that this is where she belonged, with him. It was time that she finally came home.
"l don't think things can go back to the way they were, but I don't think that's a bad thing," he simply said.
She was only a collection of broken pieces, sharp splintered edges; it was all she had, but she would give them all to him. And maybe, in time, one day he could help glue her pieces back together and make her whole once more. It wasn't much, but it was a start, and all they needed was a start.
...
The End.