Author Notes: I wrote the bulk of this story back in March 2008 because I was irritated with the fact that, when the Blackmailer storyline reached its climax, the writers were cowards and never dealt with the fact that Vincent raped his half-sister. Granted, I'm sure that the writers probably forgot that Fancy and Vincent were related through Julian when they made Vincent the Blackmailer, but, still, that would have made for some amazing scenes. At any rate, this story sat on my hard drive for two-and-a-half years before I could come up with a conclusion, so I hope it works. :)
Story Notes: This story is set sometime in August or September 2007, after Luis finds out about Pretty but before the move to DirecTV and that ridiculous mind-control nose-chip nonsense.
Disclaimer: Passions is property of James E. Reilly and NBC/DirecTV. Lines of dialogue are taken from the December 18, 2006 episode. Sadly, I make no profit from this work of fiction.
She's not sure what provokes her sudden enlightenment; in one moment, she's lying in Luis's arms, drawing strength from his presence and joy from his reprieve, and then in the next realization dawns somewhere in her brain, its horrifying brilliance eclipsing all other thoughts and emotions. She bolts up in bed and opens her mouth to scream, but she can barely breathe from the pain of the blinding truth. Wrapping her arms around her body, she starts to sob.
Vincent is her father's son with Eve, making him her half-brother; she'd made this connection before. But Vincent is, or was, the Blackmailer — he blackmailed Theresa and railroaded Luis and Miguel and killed Rae and Dylan Flood and set fire to Dylan's apartment and...
She feels Luis's weight shift on the mattress as he sits up beside her; he reaches out to place his hand on her shoulder, but she wrenches her torso away and pulls herself to the side of the bed. "Fancy? Babe, what's wrong?" Luis whispers, reaching out to her once more. She tries to evade his grasp, but he hooks his arms under her armpits and pulls her back to his chest. "Don't fight, Fance, it's me."
That's it, fight back. I like it.
"Don't touch me!" she gasps, struggling against his hold. "Get off, please!" She can hear his raspy voice in her ear, feel his hellish breath against her neck, feel him tearing her apart inside, and oh God it hurts, and he's so heavy, and she has to get away, has to make him bleed, has to stop him from robbing her of everything that she holds dear. She flings her fists and thrusts her feet, and they both go tumbling to the ground; there's a sharp pain in her arm, but he's still on top of her, and she has to get away!
He shakes her, forces her to look him in the face, and it's Luis; they're on the floor next to her bed in a heap. "Shh..." He kisses her forehead and pulls her to his chest, shielding her body with his own, protecting her from her rapist and the world and everything but the nightmares inside of her head. "It's okay. You're safe now, baby."
Yeah, baby, that's it. You like it, don't you?
She breaks free from his embrace and twists away, retching on the carpet behind them. Her throat is left raw and a foul taste fills her mouth, but it's the realization, the memories, that bring the sobs back. Her entire body trembles, and it's all that she can do to keep herself sitting upright, to prevent herself from collapsing into her own vomit in agony.
"Fancy?" He wraps his fingers around her wrist, and her first reaction is to fight back, but she's suddenly so exhausted that she falls into his arms, tears mingling with their sweat on his bare chest. "It's gonna be okay, honey. You're all right. Everything's fine now."
She shakes her head, still clinging to him, to her rock. "No, it's not... it was Vincent, Luis. It was all Vincent — everything was Vincent."
After a pause, he pulls back; his brown eyes are full of disbelief, of denial. "Fancy..."
"It was Vincent, Luis!" she cries in between heaving sobs. "He's my half-brother, and he..."
She doesn't have to finish the sentence that she wants to erase from her mind; it finally all clicks together for Luis. His jaw drops slightly in a gasp, and there's a sadness in his eyes — a sadness for her — that makes her heart ache for a different reason. "Oh, Fancy... I'm so sorry..."
She's not sure how long he holds her, rocks her back and forth like a frightened child, before she feels him lift her into his arms and carry her back to her bed. "What're you doing, Luis?" Her voice sounds so small and dead, like a faint memory of years past.
He softly lays her down and fluffs a few pillows behind her head before casting her a strange but not unsympathetic look. "Your arm's bleeding."
She looks down at her left upper arm and, sure enough, there's a deep gash marring several inches of skin, and there's so much blood that she becomes light-headed. "Oh," she whispers, letting her head limply fall back onto the pillow.
"Don't pass out on me, okay?" he murmurs; she thinks that maybe she did, because he seems to have retrieved the first-aid kit from her bathroom, and he would have had to leave to do that, right? Or maybe she didn't pass out — maybe she's just losing her mind.
She sits up straight and wipes away her tears with the back of her hand. Meeting his gaze, she notices for the first time the angry red mark beneath his left eye, the beginnings of a purplish bruise beneath. Softly, she fingers the wound. "I did that to you, didn't I?"
He gives her a small smile. "Just don't tell anyone else — I don't think I'd ever be able to live it down if word got out that I was beat up by a girl."
She knows that his intention is to make her laugh, but all that his comment manages to do is to draw forth more tears. "I'm so sorry, Luis. I didn't mean to hurt you, I swear."
"Hey," he says, kissing the back of her hand, "you've been through hell tonight. You have nothing to apologize for." He presses a bandage to her cut and then lifts her arm above her head to help stop the bleeding.
It occurs to her for perhaps the billionth time since they started dating how lucky she is to have him in her life. Though she'd like to pretend that she's a normal girl, the reality of her situation is that she leads a very complicated, fucked-up life with which most men wouldn't have the patience or maturity to deal. Luis has been there for her through everything, though — of all of the people who have claimed to love her, Luis is the only one who's never betrayed her, the only one who makes her feel so completely and utterly loved.
When he lowers her arm and finds that the bleeding has stopped, he gently begins washing the dried blood away and rubs antiseptics over the wound. With a still-gravelly voice, she whispers, "My father knew." Luis looks back at her for a moment but soon continues tending to her arm. "My father knew what Vincent did to me and he... he didn't care, Luis. He picked the Crane image over me; he picked Vincent, his son with Eve, over me, his daughter with Ivy — just like my mother did with Ethan."
"I'm sure that your father didn't mean it that way," Luis says, wrapping gauze around her cut; she can tell by the bitter anger that seeps into his voice, the fiery glint of suppressed rage in his eyes, that he doesn't believe it.
"He might not have meant it that way, but that's what he did. He chose his murdering, raping son over his victimized daughter." With a dark laugh, she adds, "But he never really was a father; I'm not sure why I expected him to act like one now."
Luis is done by this point but still remains sitting next to her, willing to let her get every last feeling of betrayal and abandonment and anger off of her chest, willing to let her keep speaking so that this hollow, numb feeling won't overwhelm her. "Grampy was always so much more of a father to me, you know," she admits. She has to keep talking, has to get this one out, because it disturbs her more than the idea that her brother raped her, more than the idea that her father was willing to protect her rapist, and Luis is the only person who knows her well enough to understand. "My parents never gave a damn about me when I was a child — he was the only one who ever cared if I was happy or sad, if I preferred pink to purple, if I was afraid of the dark and the monsters under my bed."
Luis looks as if her tale is driving him to the brink of tears. Brushing her cheek with his fingers, he whispers, "He was the only person who didn't make you feel worthless, wasn't he?"
She nods. "He was everything to me when I was a little girl, but now... I realized that he was — is — evil, Luis, really..." she explains, "but he orchestrated this entire thing. He twisted Vincent and set him loose on Harmony to... to rape me, to frame you, to have you executed... it's as if everything were a lie, Luis. It's as if my entire childhood, as if everything I based my life on, were some sort of sick joke."
Luis swallows hard. He lets her words sink in for a moment, then finally murmurs, "I'm so sorry, baby. I wish... I wish there were something I could do to make it better, to make it all go away."
Fancy looks up at him, and her voice is small and childlike as she whispers, "Just stay with me? Please?"
He nods, lying down beside her and pulling her into his arms. He rubs his hands against her trembling arms and strokes her soft, blonde hair, trying to bring her some measure of serenity. Tears plummet from her eyes onto his bare chest, and his heart aches and breaks and bleeds for her.
Fancy tries to focus on her breathing, tries to think about anything but her family, but their faces keep flashing through her mind. Mother and father, absent and neglectful. Sheridan, cold and hateful. Pretty, unforgiving and deranged. Grandfather, controlling and manipulative. Vincent—
Luis kisses the top of her head, and his handsome face blossoms in her mind. Luis: kind, compassionate, loving, understanding, patient, and so much more than she ever deserved.
"Thank you," she murmurs into his chest, returning his kiss.
Luis pulls her closer and taps her chin so that she is staring directly into her eyes. "Anything for you, Fancy."
She smiles the smallest of smiles. She can still barely breathe from her family's betrayal, but for the first time all night, Fancy is certain that, in time, she's going to be okay.