AN -Deep breath- Okay, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna be brave and post a BDS fic. Many thanks to GoddessLaughs for her amazing beta skills (this story would be so inferior without her), to Akecheta for her encouragment and inspiration, and to my best friend NeverMindDream for everything best friends are for. This one's for you, ladies!
Even Though I Know
© 2007 Random Rose
Chapter 1
Evie bolted upright in the dingy motel bed, gasping for breath. Her heart pounded frantically in her chest as she stared, unblinking, into the dark room, her body tense and ready to confront the terror her dreams had convinced her lurked in the unfamiliar shadows.
She shuddered, still seeing images of contorted, evil faces lunging at her as lifeless hands reached out to choke the life from her.
After a few moments, the chaos in her mind slowly began to settle. She regained control of her breathing and began to take stock of her surroundings, forcing the shadows into recognizable shapes – a television, a table, a chair. She looked over at the bed beside her. Her sister, Anna, was still sleeping soundly, air whistling through her nose at intervals, seeming to confirm her earlier complaints of feeling sick. She ran a hand over her face before throwing the covers back and leaving the lumpy bed.
The clock on the nightstand told her it was 4:30 in the morning. She'd slept for a little over an hour – if you could call it sleep.
She hated sleeping. Nightmares lurked angrily even in her waking mind, but came to life, brutal and vicious, when she slept. She sighed heavily and cracked her neck before pulling a sweatshirt over her head and snatching her MP3 player off the nightstand. She secured the buds in her ears before slipping on her shoes and easing quietly onto the motel's balcony.
She turned the music's volume up until it drowned out her still raging, nightmarish thoughts. It had been sixteen years since her mother had been murdered and eleven since she'd run away from her abusive foster home, but the terror of those years still lingered and festered like a wound that would never completely heal.
She'd lost count of how many times she'd contemplated suicide. She'd even gone so far as to attempt it once. Even now, she fought the empty, aching desire to just end it all. To be done with the pain. Done with the nightmares. Done with the fear.
But it wasn't time yet. Soon, but not yet. There were things to be done first. She knocked a cigarette out of its carton and groped her pockets for a light.
"Fuck," she muttered softly, coming up empty.
A small flame suddenly burst near her face. She raised her eyes just enough to see a youngish man illuminated in the orange glow. She turned towards the flame and lit the end of the fag. She inhaled deeply and breathed out the smoke before nodding her thanks to the man. He nodded back, moving the lighter to the end of the cigarette resting between his own lips.
She watched him absently as he drew the smoke deep into his lungs, recognizing a fellow chain smoker when she saw one. It really was hard to place his age. There was a certain hardness to his blue eyes and premature lines etched into his otherwise young face. A lock of his sandy hair fell across his forehead when he nodded at her again and promptly retreated a little further down the balcony where he was joined by a second man. They disappeared into a room and she dismissed them from her mind for the time.
Taking another drag from her rapidly dwindling cigarette, she pulled out a scrap of paper from the front pocket of her sweatshirt. It was worn and ragged, having been folded and unfolded countless times. She stared at the address written there as though making sure it hadn't somehow changed on her before folding it up again and taking one last long inhale on her cigarette, stubbing it out in a nearby ashtray and heading down the stairs. Making her way out onto the road, she broke into a jog, giving her smoke-infested lungs a moment or two to catch up to the rest of her otherwise healthy, if sleep deprived body before breaking into a proper run.
The fall air was cool against her exposed skin, the night sky polluted by the orange glow of street lights. It didn't take long for the rhythm of her run to refocus the last remnants of her nightmarish thoughts, the steady thumping of her shoes against the pavement becoming a kind of mantra that translated into one word: revenge, revenge, revenge.
By the time she became aware of herself again, her legs were beginning to shake in protest of the lengths she'd pushed them. Her breathing was heavy and labored, years of chain smoking suddenly very apparent. She'd lost track of how long she'd run, but the sun was coming up on the horizon as she slowed to a walk in the motel's parking lot. She slipped soundlessly back into her room, stripping off her clothes as she made her way to the little bathroom. Anna was just waking up, writhing and stretching in the bed.
"Where did you go?" she mumbled sleepily.
"For a run," was all Evie gave her before closing the bathroom door behind her. She turned the water on and let the powerful stream rake over her now trembling muscles. If she could figure out a way to smoke in the shower, it would be the perfect haven for her.
----
Anna yawned and debated going back to sleep, but if Evie had been out running, it meant that this was going to be a busy, 'let's-make-sure-we-didn't-miss-anything' day. She knew her sister hardly slept – it had been that way for almost 16 years now – but the running thing was something new. It had only started in the last couple of years, ever since they had decided that the time had finally come for Evie to fulfill her vow to avenge their murdered mother. After a night of running, her normally quiet, introspective sister would become a single-focused, determined ball of energy – getting more done in a day than most normal people would care to tackle in a week.
Anna was only eight when their stepfather murdered their mother, Evie was ten. The man – Anna's could hardly even think his name without feeling nauseated – had returned home, angry and violent, from a night of heavy drinking and their mother had made the simple mistake of confronting him. Their fight went from yells to blows in mere seconds. Anna, young as she was, had always suspected that her stepfather hated her and Evie and that night, he proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt, dragging their mother into their room and beating her to a bloody pulp in front of them. Evie, always Anna's protector, had shoved her under the covers so she wouldn't see what was going on. Anna had screamed until she'd passed out, but Evie witnessed the whole thing; lived through every blow, suffered helplessly through every agonizing moment of their mother's brutal murder.
But no one wanted to believe a 10 year old. The man was charged with manslaughter and spent less than ten years in prison. The sisters were split up into separate foster homes and had minimal contact with each other until Evie ran away five years later. Evie wouldn't talk about those years, but Anna knew that something terrible had happened to her sister – she'd retreated so far into herself that some days she wouldn't even let Anna touch her. Anna's foster family had eventually taken Evie in until she moved out on her own, Anna joining her after she finished high school.
It wasn't until four years ago, however, that Evie had told her about the vow. Anna shuddered at the memory. Evie had tried to hang herself, and might have succeeded if Anna hadn't come home when she did. After Anna had screamed at her for an hour or more, Evie finally told her about the vow she'd made over their dying mother to make their stepfather pay for what he'd done. She had lost hope that she would ever be able to fulfill it and the agony of that hopelessness was more than she could live with.
And that's when they'd learned about the Saints of South Boston. Anna had read about them in the local paper after they had killed mafia boss, Papa Yakavetta, in front of a courtroom full of people. Here were real men carrying out real justice against evil people. It was like a light went on for Evie. There was suddenly hope that she too could see justice done.
Throwing on her jeans and a t-shirt, Anna whipped her auburn hair back and up and grabbed the car keys off the top of the TV. Evie was the self-proclaimed caregiver in their relationship and had real difficulty asking for or accepting help, so Anna had taken it upon herself to at least make sure she ate. It was funny, really. Evie was one of the most competent people she knew, but if Anna didn't put food in front of her once in a while, she would forget to eat, sometimes for days.
Anna put the car into gear and made for the nearest Burger King.
----
Evie had turned the hot water completely off and was resolutely standing under the cold spray. The things she did to stave off her demons of hatred, anger, and despair were many and varied. She'd tried self-flagellation once, only to decide that she'd experienced too many beatings already. Her mother's Catholicism wouldn't let her get away without some sort of penance, however, hence the daily shocking of her system with an ice-cold shower. She smiled dryly at the irony of it all. She was planning on an eternity in hell anyway.
She quickly dried off and wrapped the fraying motel towel around her body so she could open the bathroom door to let out the trapped steam. A cursory scan of the room revealed her sister to be missing. She wasn't surprised. Anna knew what she was like after running all night and had probably gone to get them some food so they could get the day started. She wiped the moisture off the mirror with one hand, reaching first for her MP3 player and then her wide-tooth comb with the other.
The green eyes looking back at her in the mirror were tired and cold. She sighed, wishing that just once, she could see even a glimmer of the life that flashed in her sister's eyes in her own. She knew this was of her own making. She knew she had chosen this. She knew that she had suffered and sacrificed much to protect the life in her sister's eyes. That knowledge didn't make it any easier to see death in her own every day, though.
Evie was dressed but still fighting to comb out her long black hair when Anna burst into the room, grey eyes bright with excitement, hands full of fast-food breakfast.
"They were here!" she declared triumphantly.
Evie screwed up her face, leaving the comb stuck in her hair and taking the bags and cups out of her sister's hands. "Who was here?" she asked.
"The Saints," her sister said, her voice breathy and reverent, reaching for the comb in her sister's hair.
Only a flicker that passed over Evie's face betrayed that this news had any effect on her. "How do you know?" she asked.
Anna stopped tugging on the comb to give her sister an incredulous look. "Did you not hear the sirens? There's gotta be half a dozen cop cars out there, not to mention an ambulance."
"Sorry," Evie shrugged. "Had my earphones in."
Anna shook her head and rolled her eyes. "You and your music," she muttered, attacking her sister's thick mass of hair again.
Evie picked up one of the cups and sipped carefully at the hot liquid.
"Anyway," Anna continued, carefully scrutinizing a small bird's nest of tangled hair and trying to pick it apart with her fingers before going at it again with the comb. "I know because I saw the body. Double tap, pennies over the eyes and everything."
Evie cocked an eyebrow at her sister. "'Double tap'? You watch too many crime shows. Besides, it could just be a copycat," she offered, not really wanting to believe they'd been so close.
"Pssh," Anna scoffed, tugging the comb through another stubborn knot. "As if. At any rate, the cop I talked to seemed pretty convinced it was them."
Evie winced and strained to keep her neck from breaking from Anna's efforts at detangling. "I'm afraid to ask, but how did you get it out of him?"
Anna laughed, finally starting to have some success with Evie's hair. "Well, when I got back and saw those cop cars all over the place, I went up to the room where they were and pretended I thought it was mine. Just sort of burst in, you know? Anyway, they asked me some questions and then I 'accidentally' brushed my boobs against one of the cop's arms and 'accidentally' brushed my hand near his crotch and it was pretty much full disclosure from there."
Evie shook her head and tried to take another sip of coffee. "I'm glad I wasn't there."
"Hey, don't diss my methods. They've got us this far, haven't they?"
Evie had to begrudgingly agree. Anna's antics had, for the most part, secured all the information they'd needed until now. She looked at her sister in the mirror, amazed again at how she was able to look so fresh faced and beautiful before even having a shower or putting any makeup on.
"I just – I can't believe they were actually here," Anna was saying. "I told you, didn't I? I told you we were destined to meet them here."
Evie fingered the silver cross at the end of the long chain around her neck. Providence. Maybe her sister was right. The Saints had kind of been the catalyst for all of this, after all. She winced as Anna tugged at another particularly tangled knot and thought about how badly she wanted a smoke. Suddenly, the image of the man from last night flashed in her mind. Could he have been..? No. That would be a little too coincidental, even for her.
Anna finally got Evie's hair untangled and quickly started plaiting the thick locks together. Ever since they were kids, Anna had always loved playing with Evie's hair. She'd got quite good at it, actually. Evie never knew what to do with her unruly hair and usually tied it back when Anna wasn't around. Anna, on the other hand, could shape and style it better than any hairdresser Evie had ever been to.
When Anna had finally secured the long braid with a hair elastic, she grabbed the unclaimed cup of coffee, kissed her sister's cheek and headed off into the bathroom.
Evie grabbed her jacket off the end of the bed, took her cigarettes out of her sweat shirt and made sure she had a lighter before stepping out onto the balcony again. She leaned against the rail as she lit up and took a long drag before looking over at the commotion to her left. A shiver ran down her spine when she noticed that it was indeed the same room she'd seen the two men enter last night.
A cop spotted her and made his way toward her. "Good morning," he greeted her, the cheeriness in his voice completely contrary to his cool, detached demeanor.
"Morning," Evie answered. "My sister tells me someone's been murdered," she said, cutting through any small talk the man might have thought he needed to engage in.
She didn't miss the blush creeping up the man's neck. She inwardly chuckled. She'd yet to meet a man impervious to her sister's charms.
"Yes, that's right," he answered, trying to feign indifference. "You hear anything last night?"
She shook her head, sucking back hard on the cigarette, a fidget that only someone who knew her would recognize as a nervous action. "Nope. I was out running."
"You weren't sleeping?" the cop asked, disbelief lacing his words.
She gave him a half-grin as she exhaled. "I don't sleep."
"What time did you leave?" he asked.
"4:00 am-ish," she lied. Not that it really mattered. She knew from her own mother's murder trial that there was no way to pinpoint an exact time of death, no matter how good the coroner.
"Did you see anyone?"
"Here or while I was running?" she asked.
"Both."
"No one here. Dead quiet…" she paused, wincing, catching her own bad pun. "Sorry."
He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "What about when you were running? Anyone suspicious drive by?"
She gave a wry chuckle. "Anyone out at four in the morning is suspicious, far as I'm concerned."
"Including you?" he asked, trying to trap her.
She grinned. "Absolutely." She tossed what was left of the cigarette over the side of the balcony and held out her hands to him. "Wanna test me for gunshot residue?"
He gave her a look that said smartass and waved one of the CSI's over. The young woman whipped out a cotton ball and a spritz bottle containing some sort of chemical. She ran the cotton ball over Evie's right hand and spritzed it lightly. Nothing happened. She took a new cotton ball and repeated the procedure on Evie's left hand. Still nothing.
Evie was still grinning coolly at the officer. "Anything else I can help you with?" she asked.
"No," he answered. She wondered for a minute whether he would ask about Anna. Instead, he pulled a business card out of his breast pocket and handed it to her. "If you think of anything else…" he said.
She accepted it with a nod and went back inside to eat her breakfast.