A/N: I've been trying to get this out of my head for a while, but I finally had to write it, otherwise it was going to keep bothering me til January. Reviews welcome. :)
Born a native Cuban, she had never dreamt of Happily Ever After. The violence and apprehension woven into each moment of life didn't allow for fairytale endings. The notion that love conquered all and, somehow, having the man of her dreams and a family would banish the grave ills of this life - or at least obscure them from view - was an idiotic, infuriating fallacy. Some around her clung to love as a curative, desperately hoping that tomorrow would convey traces of a more auspicious future. Not her. Bringing herself to do so meant ignorance of reality, and she could not live like that. False hope ushered in only further pain and disappointment; faith without action meant nothing.
She witnessed far too often the inky stain borne on the soul of humanity. Was all too torturously aware of what humans were capable of. A man had never had a place in her chaotic life puzzle comprised of jagged pieces with diamond-sharp edges. She would only bloody him, leave him disfigured with scars snaking across his once perfect form.
But Boris had carved out a place. Without even meaning to, he had slipped with such ease into a minefield that would have destroyed anyone else. He smoothed her edges and crafted beauty where there had once reigned only pain and controlled chaos, utterly unaffected by the deleterious, destructive substance from which she was carved. Because he himself had become harsh and serrated by this life. He had allowed her to see a part of himself he didn't dare reveal.
The pain locked away deep in his eyes. Guarded from the world around him. Languidly, compassionately, he coaxed back her armor, allowing her to do the same for him, until every hideous scar lay exposed before his eyes. Even then, he still thought her beautiful.
A single moment could tear him away from her again.
The click of high heels resounded off the title floor in the silence of the all but deserted hospital. It was a blissful respite from the insanity of a day overwrought with needless hysterics and infuriating complications. Marisa drew a deep breath. Fifteen minutes. She could hold herself together around him for that long. Shoving the exam room door open with her shoulder, she smirked at her most irksome and stubborn patient. Boris looked so incredibly different in jeans.
"Buenas noches." Boris flashed her a smile that sent chills down her spine and leaned closer to kiss her on both cheeks.
"Buenas noches," she returned.
She swiftly dawned an air of professionalism and fished a pen from the pocket of her lab coat, scanning over the chart in her hand. The emotional distance was a necessity when half their professional contact consisted of her prodding him with sharp, shiny objects and causing him a great deal of discomfort. Though he never seemed to mind later…
Flipping open the file, Marisa tossed it onto the exam table next to him and began to elucidate the rows of numbers and figures from his most current labs.
Fifteen minutes. The sickening sensation creeping over her floating on his subtle cologne suggested otherwise.
Something about the way Boris kept staring at her sent her stomach tangling into hopeless knots. The near migraine that had besieged her all day pounded behind her eyes relentlessly in the harsh florescent light.
"Are you feeling ok?" Traces of pain and something he couldn't catch shadowed her features.
Suddenly, a cold wave of nausea swept over her as the subtle sent of his cinnamon cologne wrapped itself around her as he leaned closer. Taking a deep breath, she attempted to force down the bitter taste in the back of her throat with little success. He eyed her suspiciously, wary, watched as her elegant features turned yet another shade greener.
"Huh? Oh… Yes. I'm all right. Just a headache," she dismissed easily after a moment. "Too much stress."
"Are you sure it's not residual from-"
"It's ok. Don't worry about it." The words came out a bit harsher than she'd meant, but the last thing she needed was for him to start investigating. Cold air gradually filled her lungs, managing to deter it for the moment. "I'm all right. I promise."
He didn't quite believe it, but he let it go. A number of years had taught him the value of refraining from launching into every battle that presented itself; otherwise they would have killed each other by now. Still, his intuition screamed that something vital was awry. Boris examined the throbbing red slash highlighting his arm, contemplating whether or not to postpone it. In an instant, Marisa acted as if the exchange had never occurred, no trace of the guarded fear that had haunted her gaze only moments before.
A suspiciously sheepish look dawned his features. "Since we're here, can you take a look at this?" Boris extended his left arm to reveal a nasty gash running the length of his forearm. She shot him a glare.
"I'm afraid to ask… but what did you do?"
"Um…" The guilty look said enough.
"Never mind. I don't want to know. At least it wasn't a shark this time." Rolling her eyes, she gestured for him to let her see. "Needs stitches."
Unable to watch, Boris averted his gaze. Needles had never made the list of his favorite things. Instead, he focused on the woman in front of him. She looked amazing. Pinstriped black slacks accompanying his favorite pair of high heels made her legs seem incredibly long and an elegant top hugged her body in all the right places. It was enough to make any man's head spin. Silently, his conscience reprimanded him; he shouldn't be thinking of her like that here, especially not when she was in the middle of sewing his arm back together. She smirked teasingly at him, chuckling lightly.
"Anything else I should know about? Is the next thing you tell me going to be that you killed someone and you want me to clean up that mess too?" He slid down to his feet and pressed his lips to her cheek.
"Of course not. I'd get Hank to do that." Then, "Do you want to grab dinner?" Marisa glanced at her watch: 1805.
"I can't. I'm sorry. I still have some things I need to take care of. I'll see you at home?" Her tone made him uneasy; he couldn't help but get the feeling she was concealing something.
"Sure. Just don't stay too late, ok? I do want to actually see you tonight."
A weighty sigh escaped her as she watched Boris diaper out the glass doors. She could breathe again. She'd been avoiding him, finding excuses to work late, sometimes all night if she could engineer it. The feat had become increasingly difficult to manage as time wore on. And evidence of her secret continued to mount… A voice behind her nearly jolted her from her skin.
"Sorry. Did I scare you?"
"It's fine," she shook her head as she turned to face him. "I appreciate you being willing to do this even though it's rather late." Dr. Ndutu only grinned, relieving a set of brilliant teeth that shone against his deep brown skin.
"Not a problem. Happy to do whatever I can for you."
In the last weeks, he had attended to her four broken ribs, among various other injuries and blessedly hadn't inquired as to their cause. Over a decade in refugee camps in three civil war riddled East African countries had branded the marks of torture into his mind's eye.
At hearing her startled voice, Boris halted mid-step and spun on his heal to see what happened. He saw Marisa disappear into an exam room with another doctor, Ndutu wasn't it?
"How are you feeling, Marisa? Any better?"
"A little." A slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "Though I can't manage to eat much."
Slipping out into the icy black rain, he racked his memory for reasons she would need to see him, for her curious behavior. One kept gnawing at his stomach, blatantly refusing dismissal. She was sick. But what would keep her from telling him?
His affliction had brought their lives crashing together. Now hers threatened to rip them apart.
She found herself curled up on a black leather couch with her lover in his office, buried under the mountain of papers lording over a once pristine glass coffee table. Marisa allowed her eyes to drift shut for a moment, utterly exhausted. Sleep had evaded her with the skill of a champion martial artist. Food had become her constant enemy the past weeks. Despite her stomach's demands for appeasement, she'd discovered precious little yet to placate the morning sickness.
Reluctantly, she all but pried her eyes open again, letters swimming on the page before her in a sea of swirling ebony. Letting her head fall back, a contented sigh rushed from her lungs. The warm sun caressing her skin felt amazingly wonderful. Freedom felt wonderful. Her injuries were slowly mending. Abused muscles didn't protest as much, though they still screamed loudly each time she dared move in the wrong direction. Shifting to coax feeling back into her numbing legs, Marisa winced at the sharp stab of burning pain shooting through her ribs.
His world of opulence and blatant wealth felt so unsettling, alien. Stealing a glance at him from her peripheral vision, the weight of trepidation and fear settled over her again. Their disjointed union had plagued her for weeks, nothing and thousands of miles separating them all at once.
"Why are you so quiet, mí amor?" Boris' voice drifted past her rest desperate brain. The way he could see through her soul sent shivers down her spine.
Lethargically, Marisa lifted her gaze to discover a perturbed expression had overtaken his features. She nodded as he scrawled his name and propelled another file onto the glass table. Worry ate at him. She hadn't been able to keep food down for days, though she still insisted on working herself into the ground. Gently, slipped two fingers under her chin and lifted her dark brown gaze to meet his own, searching.
Tenderly, he leaned in and covered her mouth with his.
"Are you feeling any better?" She threw a dark look at his coffee next to the paperwork she had surmised was the culprit for her churning stomach, but held her silence.
"Sí. Estoy bien," she assured him, though he didn't quite believe it.
Covertly, he moved to kidnap all but the top piece of paper in her lap and held it hostage on his corner of the table.
"You don't need to help me with this, you know," he reminded her pointedly. "You should be sleeping, not enraging yourself with this chaos I've somehow managed." In response, she arched a perfect eyebrow at the man who had become so many things to her.
"And you do remember you have an actual desk, ¿sí?" He simply shrugged, dismissing it. Until last night, that too had been replete with flattened trees containing God only knew what. He wasn't inclined to repeat that monstrosity, however comical it may have become thanks to Marisa's speculation. The Keebler elves had apparently decided to extend their exploits to secretarial work. Somebody had to manage the magic cookie empire. And it sure as heck wasn't him.
Nervously, he stole sideways glances at her as they worked. Just say it! his conscience prodded him. There's no harm in it. You have a right to know. But courage failed him, fearful of the answers she might give.
How could he voice his need to be close to her? The terror that welled up in him at the thought of loosing her, when he had come so close already? Ghastly nightmares still plagued him of finding her lifeless, mangled body discarded somewhere deep in the forest. He couldn't begin to imagine what it must be like for her.
"What?" her terse, demanding question abruptly fractured the silence. "You've been staring at me like you want to ask me something. What is it?" Without warning, the words poured out as he met her gaze and he took her hand.
"I'm afraid of loosing you. I'm terrified that at any moment, I'll open my eyes to find that- that they killed you-." His voice caught, rough with emotion. "I'm sorry. I can't imagine what it must have been like." Then, "Why do you keep alienating me? Why are you holding me at arm's length?" Pen froze on paper as muscles tensed and Marisa slowly looked away.
"It is simpler this way." Shoving herself to her feet, she vanished.
She never cried. Streams of salty tears traversed down her cheeks, staining her clothing. She never cried. Memories of deathly low, jagged words slamming into her screamed in her head, overflowing. The fire searing his gray irises, bent on the course he had set for himself in life. He refused to sentence their children to watch their father torpidly slip from life's grasp as he had; she understood. But his case had been insufferable to hear when all had already been carved in stone. She never cried…
At last, he found her in the garden. Cautiously, Boris stepped closer. She stood frozen, arms wrapped around her midsection, sightlessly staring into the distance, what he could only guess were nightmares flashing before her vision. Imperceptibly, her muscles tensed, as if sensing his presence. For a moment, Marisa remained silent. He lovingly placed a hand on her shoulder and she spun to meet him.
In an instant, the fire he had come to know so intimately leapt back into her deep brown eyes, though it was tinged with an extrinsic brokeness.
"My parents died in prison." Her nearly melodic voice was laden with melancholy and long buried grief, each word measured. "When I was seven, my father was arrested for treason. Accused of assisting the Americans in another plot to overthrow the government." Blinking tears away, she failed to ward off their siege on her voice. "Soldiers came in the middle of the night with what I'm now sure were AK-47s, ordering him to come with them. When he refused, they threatened to shoot him in front of us. I saw him go pale in the moonlight as he turned to say good-bye."
Marisa reached up to erase tears from her cheeks, unwilling, even in that moment, to betray so much weakness. Fists clenched painfully tight in a bid to hold herself together. She could still hear the sharp crack of terrifying gunfire shot into the death-black night as a final warning. "I clung to him, pleading with him not to leave me. My mother finally tore me from his arms. A neighbor told us they put him before a firing squad five weeks later. When I was eighteen, they came for my mother. That time, I did not cry. I had nothing left in me. The sorrow was too much. Within a month, she was dead. Raped. Tortured to death. Her body flung into a ditch somewhere. Like my father's." She drew a shaky breath, searching for the strength to continue. "I knew I was destined to share their fate the moment I was arrested."