Nothing Left
A/N: Just a warning, this is not my usual kind of writing. This story is not pleasant. It is not cute or cuddly. It also contains adult content and themes plus some language.
He woke up in the unfamiliar bed, blinking in the bright sunlight. The relative silence around him reminded him that he was in the country, in the home of Roman's cousins, the Usos. Yawning, he got out of bed and found the bathroom to start getting ready for Roman's wedding today.
Shaving for Dean was a meticulous process. As he carefully moved the razor over the slightly raised scar on his cheek, he thought again of Seth's insistence that he have plastic surgery done to erase the effects of his various run-ins with criminals. But Roman had always said, "Scars are cool."
Dean admitted that substantial parts of his history were written on his flesh – one cut on his cheek running down to his chin was from a fight in bar on Saint Patrick's Day. That one had actually healed the worst – it hadn't been properly treated at the time. Because of it, he noticed, his smile was slightly crooked. There were one or two faint scars from a few other fights he had encountered on the streets. One from a man who had been more heavy-handed than effective. Another from a slap on the side of the face with a pistol.
And one mark that ran down from between his eyebrows to under his right eye – barely noticeable, but he could make it out. That lovely jag had been courtesy of a Mr. Regal, from a blow with the butt end of a whip. Dean felt it lightly with his fingertips, amazed at how something that hurt so much at the time was now hardly noticeable.
He wondered idly if plastic surgery would have erased that one. But most of the scars from that unpleasant episode were not visible.
The parish Roman and his soon to be wife, Rose had chosen was a simple country church that had gone through far too many renovations to make it more modern, with painful results. The abstract art banners around the altar were appalling, even though their colors were no doubt liturgically correct.
Dean speculated what the church had looked like a hundred years ago when it was first built, and wondered why the artistic choices of those ancestors hadn't been respected, or at least investigated.
He tried to ignore his surroundings as he sat in the pew next to Seth, waiting, along with the congregation of friends and family – mostly Roman's family and friends – for the celebration to begin. He glanced over his shoulder at that brightly dressed throng once or twice. It was true in this case, Dean thought wryly, that the congregation was more artistically appealing than the church building.
Eventually there were soft cords of organ music, announcing that the bridal party was arriving. Dean looked at Roman, but his brother had already risen and was moving to the front of the church where he would meet his bride. Dean and Seth, along with the other groomsmen followed him.
Then came the bridesmaids down the aisle, all young girls dressed in pink gowns. The last of them being Renee whose hair was up in the front and fell in a cascade of curls down the back. She moved so slowly and regally that she seemed like a different person, serene and composed. Then she caught Dean's eye with an eager grin. He raised an eyebrow at her.
Then everyone rose for the bride, who exuded an air of true tranquility and poise. Rose, Dean admitted to himself, was gorgeous, and on this day she shone with a real radiance. Her red hair and fair skin contrasted with each other in a harmonious balance and there was barely a trace of timidity about her as she came down the aisle, unescorted and alone.
Roman went forward to take her arms – a bit early, but it seemed fitting – and led her up to the altar, where a gray-bearded priest with a gruff face stood blinking and smiling despite himself. Roman lifted Rose's veil and embraced her. Renee burst into tears and some in the congregation applauded.
Dean looked at the embracing couple and noted, on some level, how detached he felt from the whole scene. He knew logically, he should be joining in the sentimental swell of emotion. Instead, he felt nothing. Shouldn't he be feeling something at his best friend's wedding? Why did he sense only a dull blunted emptiness?
You know why. Because this will never be you.
Dean woke up in a sweat, and started. Had he been screaming? He quickly glanced around the room, but the house was quiet. His apartment was fairly secluded. Most likely, no one had heard him.
Grateful, he put his head back down on the pillow and prayed to go back to sleep. But the re-living of the ordeal had been too real.
I'm just nervous about my classes, he told himself, Extra stress. The beginning of the semester. That's what brought it all back.
He was teaching his first class for Dr. Helmsley tomorrow. Even though he had prepared thoroughly, he must still be on edge.
There was nothing to do but get out of bed. He pushed back the covers and got up. Rubbing his neck, which had been tense during the nightmare, he went out to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk. It was common, he had heard, for people in his situation to have vivid flashbacks of the torture experience. He wondered if it would be like this all his life, waking up in the night, standing dully in the kitchen, drinking milk, emotionally exhausted.
Regal is still having his revenge on me, he thought grimly, and smiled.
I'll go rock climbing this weekend, he told himself. Maybe he could get one of his classmates to go with him. I need to start exercising more often, to keep this kind of tension from building up. That's what I'll do. Can't be a graduate assistant if I have to deal with this kind of trauma every night.
Fortified with these resolutions, he returned to his bedroom and tried once more to sleep.
There had been a call from his lawyer that afternoon, with news Dean didn't enjoy hearing.
"I realize that you're in school just now," his lawyer had said. "Is it too difficult for you to make the trip?"
"No, I'll come," he said rubbing his temples, where he could feel a headache already beginning.
After hanging up, he got up and tried to return to the paper he had been writing. But what his mind wouldn't think about, his body traitorously wouldn't forget. Soon he had to get up and go searching for aspirin.
"Fuck!" he said to the wall in the bathroom.
After he had paced around the house restlessly, he gave up, grabbed his rock climbing backpack, a few other things, and took off for the woods.
He knotted his rope to a strong branch at the top of a cliff and slid down to the bottom, thirty feet below. This cliff face was particularly challenging, and he had never made it up before. Since he was working alone, he had an extra safety rope.
Painstakingly, he worked with his toes and fingers to find holds in the rock, and began inching his way upwards. He fell only once, near the bottom, and the ropes caught him. He swore more than he needed to, and started again.
…You're not worth much, boy. Wouldn't get more than five dollars in Times Square in the old days…
The fragment of past conversation flew out at him as a pebble he had dislodged hit him in the face. He frowned and tried to clamp his memory down by taking a more difficult way. But he found he only got more frustrated.
When he got halfway up, he realized he was at an impasse – the part where the rock jutted out above his head. He couldn't get any further without risking another fall. Relentlessly, he tried to work around it, ignoring the obvious, and soon found himself swinging in midair at the end of his ropes. He turned to catch himself with his hands before he smashed into the cliff face and steadied himself. No, this was not his day. It was getting dark, too. He gave up.
No good, boy. Still no good.
He couldn't go home yet. Packing up his gear, he trekked further into the forest, pressing on through the dark woods. At last, weary and getting chilly in the autumn night, he stopped and turned back home. He had to live with it, somehow. He had to go on.
There were twenty-one days until his errand. He entered the appointment into his planner and circled it, twice. Was there any way he could get out of it?
Scared, Ambrose? Oh, I can see you're scared now. Scared and you don't know where to run.
"Damn it!" Dean said to his planner and then slid it back into his briefcase. He should be studying. No point in taking all these extra classes if he wasn't studying for them.
Getting himself a cup of tea with sugar, he sat down at his desk and turned the pages of his anthology to "The Eve of St. Agnes," the long poem by John Keats.
Here was something to distract him. A romantic view of the Middle Ages, wonderfully executed, with lush imagery and vibrant language. Seeing as he had first read it while sitting in a prison cell in juvenile detention, the verse had seemed particularly powerful to him, a colorful contrast to the dreariness, banality, and senseless violence that had surrounded him then. Escapism? Or something more real than reality?
But according to the commentaries he had picked up from the library, the whole poem was actually the erotic fantasy of a severely repressed man, telling the story of a lying male predator who tricks his victim by twisting and exploiting her religious beliefs. It was depressing.
Dean had to admit that there was something a bit untoward about the situation: the hero creeping into his love's bedroom on St. Agnes Eve to present himself as the husband she is hoping to dream of, according to a pious custom. But the professors writing about the poem were so crass he was disgusted.
You'd think no one really believes in love any longer, he reflected to himself, thumbing the angry pages of one recently published commentary. Everyone seems as cynical as those teenaged criminals I used to know in juvie.
Maybe I'll just stick to doing an analysis of the medieval imagery since the meaning of the poem is controversial, he decided. He had always taken pleasure in literature. And being able to concentrate on it now was a welcome change from the larger issues in his life. He couldn't escape the effects of prison cells and captivity, even here.
Dean sat in the courtroom beside his lawyer, Christian, waiting. Presently the door to the courtroom opened, and the prisoner came forward.
There was a chill in Dean's spine, seeing him. After all, you couldn't look at the man who kidnapped you, tortured you, and tried to murder you without some feeling of repulsion. Dean kept his gaze set, and attempted a professional detachment. The man was shrunken, older. He had not weathered well in prison. His eyes were sunk into their sockets, and they were vacant.
Dean swallowed, but didn't move.
The prisoner shuffled to the stand, his shoulders slumped, and gazed around the courtroom before turning to face the judge. His eyes swept over Dean, and for a moment, the two of them locked gazes.
A brief, savage smile flitted across the old man's face, and Dean felt his palms sweat. He despised himself for the weakness, and did not move.
The judge, business-like, took his seat and the bailiff called for the opening of the hearing. "This hearing is to establish veracity for the defendant's request to transfer from the federal maximum security prison facility to a minimum security prison for health and medical reasons. Opening statements."
The lawyer of William Regal stood up and explained the reasons for the request. His client was ailing. His client was advancing in years. He pointed out that he would not be eligible for parole until he was ninety-three, and that in his current condition, he wasn't likely to live that long.
Christian rose, a high color in his face. He reiterated the crimes of the prisoner, including but not limited to three counts of kidnapping, two counts of assault, two counts of attempted murder, trafficking in controlled substances, and burglary. Dean listened intently to the statement, which he and the lawyer had prepared together. Christian also made a skilled aside to his client, Mr. Dean Ambrose, drawing the judge's attention to the fact that at least one of the prisoner's victims thought it was important enough to come to the hearing to make sure Mr. Regal stayed where he was for the rest of his life. When Dean's name was mentioned, the old man turned to look at him again, this time, his glance lingering. Dean met the gaze stolidly, without moving a muscle.
The hearing was short, but to Dean, each step seemed to take unnaturally long: for the prisoner and his doctor to be questioned about health issues, for Christian to derisively make little of their answers in his cross-examination, for the judge to recess and consider, and, at last, for the decision to be read. The judge found no substantial reasons for a transfer, and William Regal was returned to maximum-security prison for the duration of his fifty-year sentence.
As Regal was led out of the courtroom by the prison guards, he turned his head to Dean.
"Dean," the old man rasped his eyes glinting, "Given in yet?"
When Dean didn't respond, Regal emitted a cackle that continued as he exited the room, only ceasing as the door shut behind him.
Christian glanced at Dean in surprise, "What was that about?"
Dean attempted nonchalance, "Nothing important." He picked up his leather jacket. "Regal was always convinced I was going to end up just like him," he added as an explanation. Feeling he was saying too much, he shouldered on his jacket. "It's just a broken man's malice."
The older lawyer grimaced. "I'm sure," he said quietly. "Psychos like him are best kept locked away from society. I appreciate you coming down. Don't think it didn't help the judge's decision. When victims show up at these hearings, it seems to make an impression."
He and Dean exchanged some further pleasantries, and then Dean got into his car, and drove out of the city. The entire courtroom ordeal had been less than an hour.
But seeing Regal again had jarred some tectonic plates within, setting in motion some repercussions that he was going to have to endure for a while. He knew it.
He needed to do something. He pulled over at a deserted part in the woods and sat in his car. He turned on the light and pulled out his journal, something a psychiatrist had recommended to him once, and tried to write. But as he pushed past pages of his previous tormented writing, he couldn't stand it any longer.
Possessed with a sudden destructive urge, he got out of the car, grabbed the can of gasoline he kept in the back for emergencies and headed into the woods once more.
Gasoline wasn't as effective in starting a fire as he had hoped. In movies, as soon as a match went to something covered with gas, there was an inevitably a huge explosion and total annihilation rapidly followed. But when he threw a match into the small pile of brush and journal pages, which had been doused with gasoline, nothing exciting had happened. There was a moment where it blazed readily, but the flames didn't catch on the wood. After a few seconds, they went out.
Disgusted, he tried the process again. Maybe the wood was still damp. Maybe the paper was too synthetic. Maybe firemaking was more high-tech than he had thought. Obviously, I'm a city kid, he thought dourly when he failed to start his mini-inferno. He dug around in the woods, found some dry leaves and added them to the pile, sloshed gasoline on the whole, and lit a match. Finally, grudgingly, the pile began to burn.
He set the can down behind a tree and sat on the edge of the circle of the ground he had cleared. But after a moment he got up and began to wear a restless circle around the flaming mementos of his past.
Evil. It was evil. The stench, the smell, the apparent delight in inflicting suffering. The twisting of natural desires into monstrosities.
Now the flames burned higher and Dean, pacing around them, saw the world around grow blacker around its blaze. Evil hadn't left him alone, knowing it had a hook buried deep in his soul, and every once in a while, he could feel the insidious pull. Usually it fed upon his loneliness – not his solitude, because he had always preferred to be alone – but the sense of desolation, of abandonment.
The musty leaves and ink-stained paper and cardboard gave off an evocative smell. He looked away from the fire towards the darkness as it came back, inexorably. The images were lodged deep in his memory, and he didn't know how to get rid of them without doing violence to his brain.
His kidnapper might be in prison, but he was still in bondage. The captivity, the deep-set pain, the twisted torture went on. He recognized that part of it was self-inflicted, because of the shame he felt. And he wasn't sure that there was a real escape. All he could reasonably hope for was to get further and further away from it in time. And to avoid getting put into that situation again in the future.
He often felt that he had survived through ignorance, youthful zeal, pig-headedness and sheer dumb luck. If it happened again, he couldn't count on any of that to help him.
Suddenly, he was aware of a sound in the trees near him. Someone was coming. Instantly his hand went to his gun – only to remember that he had left it locked in his glove compartment when he went into the courtroom.
It was just as well. The man who had found him had a gun of his own, a rifle, pointed at him. "What are you doing on my land?" a gruff voice came through the trees. "You're trespassing."
With a groan, Dean raised his hands, "I'm sorry," he said, "I thought I was in the State Forest."
"That's a few miles back from here," the man said. "You can't come onto a man's land and built yourself a fire. Might have burnt down my whole lot. I'm calling the police."
Hadn't realized it was against the law to build a fire in New Jersey, Dean thought as he rode in the police car, twisting his cuffed hands behind his back restlessly and suppressing a groan.
He hated being cuffed. In this situation, he knew the police didn't need to handcuff him: he had come quietly. But he knew he had the sort of face that looked like a criminal's, and that made policemen cautious. He had found that out the first time he had been arrested: whatever the "criminal type" was, he definitely resembled it. Maybe it's because I'm dog-ugly, he thought with a grim smile.
In the holding cell at the station house, he called Roman, waking him up.
"Dean? What time is it?" his friend asked in sleepy surprise.
"Two o'clock and all's hell," Dean said gloomily. "I just got arrested. I'm down at the police station."
"What? All this time I thought you were downstairs sleeping on the couch."
"Yes, you might have thought. Instead, I was trying to defuse my pent-up psychological aggression in what I thought was a socially acceptable manner, and ran afoul of the 'no-burning' laws in New Jersey. This is the last time I see a psychiatrist and take his stupid advice. I'm afraid I need you to come and put in a good word for me."
Roman chuckled. "Sure," he said. "I'll be right over."
Forty-five minutes later, Roman was driving him back out to the woods to retrieve his car. "So can I ask how all this happened?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.
Dean sighed. "I saw Regal at the hearing today."
"You didn't tell me that was going to happen," said Roman.
"And it was tougher than I expected."
Roman frowned. "You should have let me go with you. I could have taken off work."
"I know. I was just trying to be tough, that's all. But apparently I'm not healthy enough for that."
The two men drove in silence for a few minutes.
"You ever talked to anyone about this?" Roman asked at last. "Besides Seth and I?"
"Oh I had that fucking counselor, although I barely told him anything. I quit after the first session."
"I didn't mean professionally. I meant someone like a friend," Roman said. "Have you tried talking to Renee about it?"
Dean blew out a breath. "That's the last person I'd tell. She probably doesn't even know evil like that exists in the world. I don't want to be the one to disturb her little universe."
"She might understand better than you think," remarked Roman.
Dean glanced up at Roman. He had always suspected Roman to trying to set him up with Renee and wondered if this was another ploy. But Roman looked completely serious.
"Just think about it," said Roman.
Dean really hadn't planned it but when he had asked Renee if she wanted to go on a hike with him and she had readily agreed, the two had fell into easy conversation. It was about a couple hours into the hike when Renee turned to Dean and gently caressed his scar with a question in her eyes.
"Do you ever think about the day we met – in the cellar?" she asked cautiously.
Dean nodded stiffly. I can't forget, he thought vehemently. "Do you?" he asked quietly, after all she had experienced some trauma of her own.
"I had a few nightmares in the beginning," said Renee, "but I've healed and gotten past it. But you haven't, have you? Something else happened to you before I got there."
She's definitely perceptive, thought Dean as he turned slightly away from her.
"Yes," he stated, perhaps Roman was right maybe he should confide in someone else other than him and Seth.
"So what is it that I don't know?" she asked, attempting to remain calm.
"Are you sure you want to know?" he asked, glancing over at her.
"Yes. If that's what it takes to be your friend."
For a long moment, he was silent, looking at the road ahead. "All right," he said, seeming to decide something. "When Regal kidnapped me – I thought I was tough then. I was twenty, thought I knew everything there was to know and didn't know that night that I would be drugged at a bar and dragged into the cellar by a man who had this unhealthy obsession with me."
Dean swallowed slightly then continued, "When Regal made me his prisoner in that cellar, he just stripped everything away from me, and got under my skin, the way he knew he could. I won't go into what he did to me. I wouldn't burden you with that. But he did try to twist my own words and make me admit that I was like him."
"How horrible," whispered Renee as she listened to him.
"Fortunately, he didn't get me to admit anything. I didn't give into him. Regal was going to kill me, you know, after he had finished degrading me in the worst ways possible." He paused, and added, almost as an afterthought, "And then you showed up to rescue me."
"You must have thought I was a foolish girl, didn't you?" she shuddered.
"I wouldn't say that. You did succeed. I owe you my life."
Of course, she thought to herself, she owed Dean her life as well. But it was polite of him not to bring that up.
Dean cocked his head at her. "Do you understand why I'm telling you all this?"
"Why?"
"Because I've had this feeling – ever since we came out of that cellar together – that I've been disappointing you. I have this idea that you expect me to turn into a knight in shining armor and whisk you away into the sunset on a white horse."
She blushed and dropped her eyes.
"And I admit I've avoided you because of that. But that was wrong of me. I should have faced the matter with you squarely and frankly a long time ago. I don't want you waiting around for me, Renee, expecting something that's just not going to happen."
She looked up at him with big, brown eyes, "Why not?"
He looked down the road and blew out his breath in exasperation. "Haven't I made you understand, Renee? I'm a broken man, with all sorts of psychological baggage. And your expectations of me are so high that I could never meet them."
"How do you know that?" said Renee trying in vain to hold back tears. "You've been hurt and you're struggling, and I want to help…"
Dean shook his head. She just didn't get it. "I will probably never be okay, Renee and you shouldn't waste any time on me. I don't want you waiting around for me, who's been used like a trash bin by too many thugs and criminals."
Renee set her jaw. "Dean, don't talk about yourself like that. You're not trash. And not a trash bin."
He looked at her mildly, then turned his eyes back to the path ahead. "I know," he said. "At least on one level. But there always seems to be that fundamental doubt."
He had an awful day.
A headache had wakened him, and he stiffly hobbled out of bed and went for the aspirin. He couldn't keep on using pain relievers like this. Addicted to aspirin, that's what I'll be. Got to get out and get some exercise.
But it was still raining. What he needed was to get out and go hiking, but he was reduced to going to the school gymnasium and bench pressing, trying to get his tightened muscles to relax.
After the rain had stopped in the late afternoon, he drove out to the rifle range outside of the city and practiced with his handgun. Normally he didn't like to handle a weapon when he was upset, because he didn't believe in shooting just because he needed to let off steam. He tried to focus on the challenge of skill and accuracy, hitting that far-off target, a tricky thing to do with a handgun.
"We're too much alike", Regal had said. "You know that, Dean. You've always known that."
He ignored the monster and fired the gun again, steadying his arm to take the kickback. Then he flexed his shoulders again. Fuck, I need the practice, but I'm going to get tense again. A vicious cycle.
After Dean had heard the news, his first instinct was to tell her and as fate would have it they had agreed to go hiking the next day. There were at a different park, on a different trail but Dean couldn't help but feel a certain sense of déjà vu.
"I got a call from my lawyer's office last night," he began after they had walked for a bit. "They told me that Regal is dead. From a heart attack."
There was a silence between them. After a moment, he felt something brush against his hand, and realized she was trying to hold his hand. It wasn't quite the right gesture for the moment, but he let her take it. Inside, he was remote from any real feelings.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
He scratched his nose, using the gesture to take his hand out of hers. "Safer," he said, and couldn't help smiling at the word.
"Were you still afraid of him?"
"No. Not really. Not in that way. It wasn't as though I was afraid he would escape from prison and hunt me down. He knew he wouldn't need to, first of all."
"What do you mean?"
"Because." He had told her once before, and he wasn't going to tell her again. Now he was recovering some feeling in his psyche, and it wasn't a pleasant feeling. He changed the topic slightly. "He always said I was just like him."
"Because you look alike?"
"Do we?" he paused and looked at her. "Do you really think that?"
She was silent for a moment, her eyes looking over his face. "No," she said. "Your eyes are different. You have a different kind of soul than he did."
"Do I?"
"Yes. I think, if we could see ourselves as we really are, in true reality, you would be able to see the difference between you and him more sharply."
"Thank you," he said at last, and turned away to continue down the rocky slope.
They drew to a stop at the rise of the hill, paused by another breathtaking view. His emotions were churning inside him again, but this time, the better feelings were winning out, buoyed up unexpectedly by Renee's words. Suddenly, he thought that this might be the moment for him to tell her…what? That he had a recent change of heart toward her? There was a silence between them that seemed to be his cue, but again, he couldn't think of how to begin. Or even what to say. What did he want to say? Why couldn't he be direct with her about what was going on in his heart? What was his problem? A word emerged from the turmoil, jeering. Impotent.
Irritably, he shut himself down. Leaving him cold and wooden.
"Should I walk you back?" he asked.
Dean walked her to her door and she waved one last time before she disappeared inside. A blank loneliness came over him, comfortless, and he turned away. He thought about going back to his car but settled on another walk since his mind was not at ease.
He passed a guy taking a furtive swig from a bottle on the street. The night breeze wafted the scent towards him, and his memory opened, relentlessly.
In the cellar, there had been a smell of mustiness, and alcohol.
Regal had been sitting in front of him, sloshing brandy from a bottle into a cup. His own hands were tied in front and suspended above him, around a hook on the far side of a wooden pillar, so that his arms hugged its angular side and his head was pulled up against the wood. His teeth gritted on the tight band of cloth that gagged him. He was kneeling, his ankles tied together, and he had been in that position for hours.
Now Regal raised the cup to his thin lips and drank it, watching him the entire time over the rim with sardonic eyes.
You still haven't told me yet, Dean.
Finishing his drink, Regal ran his tongue around the edge of his mouth, licked the rim of the cup, then deliberately spat into it. He tossed it away with a curse. It clanged on the cement floor and rolled against Dean's bare knee.
You can't hold out on me forever. You haven't the strength. You know that. We're equally matched, but I've got the better of you now.
Now Dean kicked at the bits of branches in the parking lot as he walked. Equally matched. Regal had always made a big deal about that. Partners, Regal used to say tauntingly.
Tell me now, or we're going to do this again.
He heard Regal's voice whispering in his ear as his face was pressed into the splintering wood, his own teeth clenched so tightly against the pain that he cut his cheeks, and the blood ran into his mouth.
Now you tell me.
And he had shaken his head violently, the only resistance he was still capable of making.
Then this will happen again. You know you can't win. You're just like me, though you don't want to face that fact. It's pitiful to see you denying it. Struggle will only prolong your agony. But perhaps you enjoy self-torture?
Dean paced savagely around his car, tired but almost afraid to stop moving. Regal had said someday he would beg for it. And at times it seemed to Dean that all his defiance had been useless, as useless as his first interrupted escape from the ropes, which had ended with his recapture and being beaten senseless. The hunger, thirst, and loneliness that Regal had cursed him with still dogged his heels, even now.
You're different from him, though. Renee's voice came back to him. Your eyes are different. You have a different kind of soul.
He looked up at her window. She was asleep in her apartment, her palace. But he was outside, cut off from the peace of her presence by a hedge of thorns, alone. And the thorns wouldn't part for him. If he dared them, he would only be torn to shreds.
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