Author's note:
This is the first fanfiction I've written for this fandom plus English is not my first language, but it's my favourite one. I'm meaning to say – there might be minor flaws. The idea of this fic is to explore how easily things could have been different had a minor thing been changed in the finale that left me deeply saddened. So this will ultimately have a happy ending, because Vanessa and Ethan never deserved to end up like this. Thank you in advance for comments and constructive criticism! Happy reading! The song's title is taken from the beautiful song "Falling" by singer ADRIA which to me describes how Vanessa has fallen deeply in love with Ethan. I can recommend a listen on SoundCloud or other such devices.
Never take the light
1
Consciousness is not enough to drag her up to the surface. There is darkness and everything feels heavy. Had someone brought her to the ocean? Is it the shifting of waves she feels, the familiar tugging at her very being?
Minas face appears in her mind. Still Mina?, she wonders numbly. Isn't Mina gone, did she not leave?
She's laughing, a little girl still, tiny pale feet dancing through the low water. Not long until she would fall over. But the ocean is silent and the first sound she becomes aware of is not the trusted rushing of cold waves, it is a voice.
"Stay", it utters. It does not sound like a command, neither like a plea. It takes effort, this single word, she can sense it in the tightness of this voice. Pressed, tense.
She looks over to where Mina still plays in the water. Did Mina speak to her? She does not see her face, only her golden hair, her innocence a visible, almost tangible thing surrounding her body like a halo. How far she had always been from this goodness, this entrancing purity, how immeasurable had this distance ever been.
The next thing she feels is a jolt of pure, unblemished pain that courses through her being and her instinctive scream is drowned out as she is being pulled underwater. She cannot but let go and float deep into the water's darkness, soundless and numb.
"Vanessa, stay with me!"
Out of the blue, the sound of this voice fills her ears again and she can hear it through the surface and this time, it is less cold, less detached, this voice. She senses the pain in it as she has felt her own pain straining her being. She cannot take on a stranger's pain as well. Who demands this of her? Isn't she already full of pain herself?
Leave me, she wants to utter. Then again, she does not want to be left, not with the darkness of the deep waters surrounding her, pulling at her.
"Vanessa, please!"
Her name, she finally understands. And this voice, this familiar voice stirs a memory within her. A memory of a dream that is. A fantasy. Suddenly, there is no ocean anymore, no dark waves, no unknown depths. Light fills her vision and she realises her eyes must have opened. The sudden flow of light hurts her and a sound must have left her lips she still cannot feel, because there is a movement, swift and soundless and when she looks again, something is hovering above her, shielding her from the brightness.
"Vanessa", she hears, a hoarse whisper, trusted warmth seeping through.
And there he is.
She sees him for the first time again, then, and there is blood on his face, this face that has become a constant element of her dreams, day and night, whenever she loses the well-trained hold on herself. She recognises the terrible gash stretching over his cheek. How it must still hurt. Her gaze shifts and she looks into his eyes, the beloved light brown clouded with…something. He should not look at her like this. He had been smiling, in her fantasy. In every single one of all those dreams.
"Ethan."
She has spoken instinctively and the sound of her own voice seems frail and far away. Her lips, cold and numb still, hardly followed her intention.
And yet, she sees his reaction in his eyes and hears it in the way his breathing changes and feels it in his touch, softly, hardly perceptible, on her temple. He suppresses something, she knows. The force of his reaction is grander, the feeling behind this careful touch deeper.
He should not look at her like this. He should be gone by now, off of her path that only ever led to more and more darkness, letting go of the disenfranchised mess that she was, the epitome of all things unique and horrible.
And still, he is looking at her and when his features slowly become clearer and clearer in front of her eyes, she sees a smile play around the corners of his mouth, tentatively at first, firmer then.
"I'm here", she hears him say.
"I'm not gonna leave you." His voice still sounds hoarse, his words an echo of a different time he spoke the same words, drenched with emotions his face will not show. Not now. Maybe not ever.
She wants to answer, but her throat feels dry and she is still unable to find her lips. Uttering his name had been an instinct almost akin to breathing, but everything beyond this seems impossible.
He must observe her struggle with her body, numb and heavy and out of her reach for he moves closer, slightly, without constraining her and when she feels his fingers on the sensitive skin near her temples, tenderly stroking stray strands of her hair, she closes her eyes again, easing into his touch and she feels weightless.
She hears a sound escape from his lips, relief poured into a rough sound that is so utterly him it helps her lips form what the small conscious part of her hopes is a smile.
Into their strangely intimate light-filled moment of peace breaks another voice, almost violently.
"We must move her now", someone says and she knows that she has heard this voice before, yet in this very moment it is that of an intruder, a threat to their nearness.
Instinctively, she wants to hide against him, cling to his arms, his skin, his smell.
Don't take him away from me, not again.
None of them could even begin to fathom how every fibre of her being craves his very presence, how she longs to only hear his breathing so close to her.
But when she tries to move, her body's numbness turns to pain in a flash and at once his hands are there, holding her, stopping her movement and thus her pain. His touch sends warmth through her body, calming, soothing. Deeply familiar.
"No", she hears him answer to whoever spoke, the beloved voice she has listened to in countless dreams, day and night, so low that it resembles more a growl than a human sound. More animal than man.
More than that and you know it.
At the edge of her vision, she sees a different face now, appearing next to Ethan and before the brightness, a face that is much older, harder in a certain way that reminds her of so many times she has been intimidated by it, so many memories of being scrutinised.
How cruel you are.
"She must be put somewhere she can be properly examined, Mr. Chandler. You need to let the doctors treat her."
She closes her eyes, strained already by only listening to this voice, a good heart well-hidden, she knows, but so much harshness shielding it.
"I won't leave her", she hears her protector reply, tersely and still in that low voice that does not quite sound human.
A sigh can be heard, though hardly audible and quickly suppressed, before the other man continues, even stricter and more commanding this time.
"Mr. Chandler, you must…!"
She feels something stirring and his warmth leaves her for a moment.
"Don't you dare fucking 'Mr. Chandler' me!"
It is Ethan's voice again, but the ferocity in it evidence of his second nature. Rugged breathing, anger and other such wild emotions only barely contained.
"You, of all people, will not make me leave her!"
She wants to open her eyes again, but a careful attempt immediately confronts her again with the painful brightness around her and for a split-second she is able to make out a small group of people before her and more than anything else she sees Ethan's tall figure, still so close to her, but facing the older man, his chest heaving with exasperated fury.
Both of these men have left her to her own devices time and time again, but she feels far too much for them, each in a completely different fashion, to hold grudges. She feels there is no point in placing the blame. She forgives everything now. If only the pain stops and the darkness vanishes. And the all-encompassing feeling of loneliness, of her heart numb and frozen in isolation she would never have chosen for herself.
She wants to move, to get up from where she is lying, and to touch both their hands, to make them understand that none of their differences matter anymore. That they matter. Whatever it is they have done. To her. To the world itself.
But pain and numbness weigh her down simultaneously and she is only so barely holding on to consciousness. But she is still present enough to watch a younger man appear like a ghost behind Ethan and the man she thinks is her father. He shoves his small, lithe frame between the two with an air of authority that makes him seem older than he is.
"This is neither the time nor the place for arguments", she hears him say and his voice matches what she perceives of his demeanour, there is a certain professionality in the way he sounds, court and calm.
"She must be taken upstairs immediately, we cannot afford to lose any more time. I'll still gladly watch you rip each other's head off later."
This dry humour is familiar. And something else is. Upstairs.
Now she knows where she is. Grandage Place. The dark, empty, lifeless place.
She remembers her room in the farthest corner of the house, at the end of the corridor, as if put away to a place where she could easily be forgotten. Back then, when she had taken this room as her own, she had been bound, tied down by her guilt, deeply believing that was exactly what she deserved. To be hidden away in the darkest corner, being the catalyst of all the darkness that had fallen upon Mina's family and her own. Naturally, her second father's view had never differentiated on this particular matter. Thus, the room had been kept as it had been, sparse, just a polite touch above sterile, with the exception of her mirror and the cross.
A brief vision of herself strikes her now, transfixed upon the old bed, her wrists cold from constantly brushing against the iron bars.
She even remembers what it looked like the morning after Ethan had performed on her what she had come to call an exorcism. The light, the peace she had felt.
And then she sees the other morning, after he had left, sorrow pulling her under, no horizons, no silver linings upon a deep, dark sea.
She realises she does not want to be in this room, not now, not again. If she can help it, not ever. She must tell them.
She snaps back to the present to see the two men slightly reluctantly break apart as if shaken from a trance by the younger man's efficiency and they both turn to face him instead.
"You", she hears him address only Ethan now in the same authoritative manner, "I must make use of your physical abilities. Keep tight pressure on the wound and carry her upstairs with utmost care."
"Of course", Ethan replies, the anger gone from his voice. "But please, Victor…" he begins anew and she is finally able to combine the efficient young man's figure with a name. Victor. Pale hair and those brilliantly blue eyes with the shadows underneath them.
The dear doctor. She has missed him. He has been gone from her life for so long. All of them have. Why is he with them as well? Has this been some tea gathering that she just can't seem to remember?
"I trust your skill with all I have", she hears Ethan continue in a low voice, as if to keep this from her. But of course she overhears it, attuned to the sound of his voice, bound to whatever fragment she gets of him, even just a sound.
"But I don't", Ethan says, hesitantly, "I can't leave her now."
With this, his voice seems once again thick and hoarse. It makes her want to reach out and touch him, his rough, calloused hands, to ease the worries that he cannot seem to put to rest.
In that moment, she sees a change in Victor's demeanour, something about his strict proficiency seems to soften, ever so slightly, as he puts a hand on Ethan's shoulder, a surgeon's hand, a hand she has held within her own on one of the doctor's darker days.
It is almost strange to her how, even when Victor has to look up to look into Ethan's eyes now, even when his physical appearance is so much more fragile and small, he still seems older, carrying knowledge and experience around with him that is simultaneously what stands between them and unites them. There is a shift in power, almost tangible in the air between the two men, as Victor replies:
"And I won't make you, I promise. But I need your promise in return that you let me do the work. Let me help her, Ethan."
His voice is low as well now and she has to concentrate to understand the words. But the quiet urgency, the empathy in it comes through.
She sees Ethan nod vehemently. "I will", he says and those words seem so familiar. Another dream of hers seeps into her mind, swiftly, a vision in black and white. A church, almost empty. A dress and white lace. Him, in black and white.
Will this ever happen now?, she wonders with a certain detachment, as if considering a stranger's life, another one she is to analyse the way she analysed Ethan's life that first time they had sat across from one another.
She wants to hear him say these words then, again, but this time in the church that is empty safe for their Grandage place company, their strange assortment of people that were alienated and lonely before they met each other in those unique ways.
"Besides", Victor's low voice shakes her out of the vision, "I think we all know that if there is someone she wants to have close to her right now, it is you."
It seems as if Ethan is motioning to embrace Victor, but he quickly backs away, his professionally distanced manner unbreached once again.
"Now, now. Let us do for her what we can."