Well, I am on a streak for coming up with random one-shots as I read a series . . .
My first 39 Clues fic, yaaayy! XD Disclaimer; I only wish I were Scholastic, or one of the fortunate authors who worked for them in creating this franchise.
Inspired by my realization of the fact that Evan's parents never fully confront Amy for the whole story (I simply don't understand how they can be satisfied with bits and pieces), Doomsday and Nowhere to Run, the fact that 39 Clues is a very malleable book 'verse, the chapter "Truthsong" from Diane Duane's Deep Wizardry, and my very sentimental muse! (Also, I'm depressing, and demanding when it comes to plot holes.)
Sorry if this defies all/any canon. 39 Clues canon is ALWAYS CHANGING. I SWEAR. (Also, the sheer quantity of the books' material is ridiculous. I am not searching through all that for one detail. Although I did so very conveniently come across Evan's parents' names in Breakaway just before I started writing this . . .)
Happy belated Christmas/Hanukkah / winter break / holidays/New Year's, fanficcers! :D
But, without further ado:
Unforgivable
The door.
Amy knows exactly how it looks now. Every stroke of the hand-applied paint, every sworl in the wood, reflected in the golden light of the setting Midwest sun, undeterred by clouds nor mountains. They are so good with their hands, every bit as brilliant as their son.
Amy's vision blurs as she stares at the door, tears threatening to slip into existence.
It eats her alive, the fact that she has never stepped beyond it.
Haven.
The Tollivers had moved here to hide from the past. It's their new refuge, somewhere to run to, a place where the world is willing to look away.
Amy can only wish for such a place, but with the remnants of Pierce's lies still flying, there will never be an end to the eyes prying the Cahills. She is glad they do, at least.
But she cannot let this rest.
Slowly, hesitantly, Amy raises a hand to knock.
The sound rings through the air.
Intrusion.
"Is she at the door again, Terrence?"
Terrence Tolliver sighs and flicks his gaze from the paper. What is this, the second time this week?
"Who else could it be?"
The waiting, the waiting, the waiting . . .
Amy gazes at the walls.
She wonders, still, at how life keeps moving no matter what happens beneath its hostile glare. How the Tollivers bought a house, moved, and still live their lives, despite the fact that their son no longer can. The walls are pristine-white, tinted pale gold with the setting sun's light. A welcoming little one-story, a lone island in a sea of grass.
It can be called beautiful. Pastoral, scenic.
But every inch of it screams, Evan could have been living here. Evan could have had a life here, could have gone to school, grown up, got a job, raised his own family. Even could have had a future! If it hadn't been for you.
Yes, it is beautiful. But even beautiful things can be cold and shunning, holding dark secrets behind fortress gates.
Amy bites her lip and waits, feeling sorry for their mailman.
Beyond the gates.
There's a heavy sigh as Terrence's wife emerged from the kitchen, scowling. "Well, what are you waiting for? Go tell her to leave us alone."
"That won't work and you know it."
"Then what?" Letitia is shouting now. "Can't she just leave us alone? Will she never be done?!"
Terrence waits for her temper to die down. She grits her teeth and passes her hands over her eyes.
"Fine. Tell her that she should leave, do whatever she likes. Go ruin another family." Letitia takes a deep breath and glares at the door through tearing eyes as she turns and leaves for the kitchen. "She's done more than enough in ours."
Seeing.
Amy closes her eyes. It still isn't too late to take flight and leave—she can still abort this hopeless mission.
But no. She is a Cahill, and it is in her very blood to see things through.
She opens her eyes only at the sound of a lock turning.
All the things you cannot know.
Click.
Amy braces herself to the ground when the door edges open.
It doesn't make a single sound. The hinges are too new for that. Amy hadn't expected any noise—she'd been here often enough to familiarize herself with the silence of their door opening.
Terrence Tolliver stands in front of her, defeated but glowering. He might seem meek and helpless in his sweats to anyone else, but to Amy he is as intimidating as ever.
"What do you want, girl?"
She can't help but wince.
"Mr. Tolliver . . ." Amy swallows, hard. "And Mrs. Tolliver, if you're there . . . I just want to tell you the truth. What you deserve to hear. Please, give me a chance . . ."
Terrence grunts and begins closing the door. They're lines too similar to what she'd recited the other days—nothing worth listening to here.
"Show up again and I'm calling the police. You hear?"
At first, Amy just sighs quietly and closes her eyes. Fine. Let them slam the door in her face, again. Let them push away her offer, again.
Let them reject her, again.
But . . .
If not today, then when ever?
I'm sorry, Evan.
"It's what he would have wanted," she whispers, eyes still shut.
Somehow the words carries, and the door stops, less than an inch away from the frame. They wedge into the space and force their way into the fortress, going where Amy cannot—doing what she could never do, every time she tried.
Hearing.
"Is she gone yet?"
He doesn't move.
It's what he would have wanted . . .
"Terrence?"
Evan would have wanted . . .
"Terrence Tolliver, what on earth is going on?"
He gasps and stumbles back a little, startled from the words that held him in their death grip. Letitia watches him, her own eyes unsteady.
"Let— Let her in," says Terrence at last. "Let her explain—"
Letitia's eyes widen and fury steals her features in a storm. "And just why should we do that?" she asks icily.
Terrence's stance sags, and he stares at the door.
He wants to tell her, that it's what Evan would have wanted.
Terrence doesn't realize that it slipped from his lips until Letitia closes the door.
The lock.
Click.
Letitia locks the door with finality. "He isn't here anymore," she hisses, "and all because of that girl! She doesn't deserve anyone's sympathy, much less—much less ours!"
But there's glistening in her eyes, and Terrence knows that it's a feeble attempt against the inevitable.
Maybe hearing her out will stop these visits, he thinks. If we let her have her say, she won't bother us again.
He reaches around and unlocks the door, hoping he's right.
Click.
Hoping she is right.
Through.
When the door opens, Amy almost doesn't believe what she sees.
Almost.
One side of the room is occupied by a storm with crossed arms, and the other by the sun trying to shine through that storm's clouds.
It's the sun that stuns Amy. Who knew that it still existed, above these treacherous thunderheads?
The moment she steps over the threshold, wordless, the storm rumbles accusation.
"What do you want?"
Amy meets Letitia's glare steadily, but her feet have gone cold. "Th-the truth," she stammers, and somewhere in the back of her mind she realizes her hands are shaking. "I w-want to tell you the truth."
Listen.
Terrence nods.
Letitia isn't so accepting.
"Don't lie to us," she snaps, making sure her message sinks in by glaring the Cahill girl straight in the eye. "The entire world knows the truth! Don't you think for a second that you shouldn't be held responsible—"
"Letitia. Listen to her."
She stares at him, frozen at her name. Those words, that tone, they mean betrayal.
"You said you let her in because it's what he would've wanted," says Letitia, deadly quiet. "But it's more than that, isn't it."
Too long.
Amy can only stare as the sun goes nova.
"Of course it's more!" Terrence explodes, throwing his hands into the air helplessly. "It's been two years! Two years for me to think about the whole thing, and somewhere along that I realized the pieces don't fit!" His hands drop to rub his face as two years' worth of mourning rises to the surface.
Two years of sadness is behind his voice when he whispers into the storm-charged air, "You're who needs to see, Letitia. Grief's what's blinding you, and grief was what blinded me. We never had the whole story. What we got was just . . . just bits. Pieces. And they don't make sense—not the way everyone else has told it." Terrence Tolliver takes a shuddering breath, and it seems everyone else holds it. "It's been too long. Just let her explain, and maybe everything will make sense."
The calm before the storm permeates the room, taking away whatever homeliness or coziness it held.
Amy's hands go cold, and suddenly her windbreaker doesn't seem to feel as warm as it should be.
"Fine." Letitia barely seems daunted by her husband's outbreak. "Spit it out, then."
Amy is only half surprised when Letitia takes Terrence's arm, both of them settling into a couch.
That leaves Amy, standing.
Awkwardly, she perches on the armchair across the Tollivers, the only thing separating them now being a fine wood coffee table. So much less than a fortress door.
Relive.
Amy clears her throat, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. Much less speak.
"The truth . . . The truth is, I don't blame you for hating me at all." She swallows, fighting down the emotions that rise at her own empathy. Deaths flash behind her eyes, but she clamps them down. No. Not now. This is too important.
Letitia makes a disbelieving noise, but Terrence stays quiet. Both their eyes are fixed to a point on a wall far from Amy's eyes.
"I— I know how it feels. Or, at least, to some extent." Amy takes a breath. "I've almost died. My brother's almost died. My parents died right in front of me, and their murderer almost got to me too. And not for the reasons everyone else seems to think."
They're silent. She is thrashing, but quietly—these tears will not give pause without a struggle.
"My family . . . the Cahills . . . we're not what the news have made us. Cahills make up a lot of the people that go down in history, but that's all there is to us: we have talents that were enhanced long ago, by an invention of the first Cahills." Amy's floundering for words, but that's all right. The truth is what matters; the truth will find a way.
"That invention was a powerful serum, made of thirty-nine ingredients that can be mixed to make the serum in a lab. The ingredients were hidden all over the world; no one knew the names to all of them, or how much you needed. Clues were planted everywhere as instructions, and Cahills were the only ones who knew—"
"What does all this have to do with our son?" Letitia is a storm again, threatening to strike lightning. "We're not here to listen to the history of your extended family, girl!"
Amy closes her eyes, but it is not out of exasperation. It is out of grief, a way to stop the tears from spilling.
"We're a competitive family, Cahills. We couldn't stand the thought of one branch taking the serum for themselves to rule the world. The serum was that powerful. My brother and I . . . We were thrown into this hunt, while everyone else had trained all their lives for it. Everyone was after us. We had no idea who was an enemy and who was a friend."
Irina Spasky's face flashes behind the darkness of Amy's eyes, but she forces it away. Soon, she thinks to it. Soon. But not yet.
"Eventually—somehow—we won the serum. We destroyed it, because we knew no one should ever have something like that in their hands. But some people didn't agree."
And everything comes out in a torrent of words and suppressed tears. How Evan stayed at headquarters in Attleboro to help, Damien Vesper's Doomsday plan, her desperate race to find the ingredients of the serum's antidote, the deaths and near deaths of her family. Everything that haunts her every moment, relived. Everything that everyone misunderstands as the doings of mere thrill junkies.
She never meant to say so much, but it all tumbles out of her. They needed to be voiced.
"Why should we believe you?"
Amy is stunned to realize that the speaker is Terrence and not Letitia. But even as his voice accuses, his eyes are a different story. They pity.
Amy glances at his wife and isn't surprised to see that her storm is back. She obviously agrees with Terrence's question.
Amy takes a deep breath and stands, her arms wrapped around herself. "I watched my parents die in front of me," she whispers, her voice raspy in the silence. "I stood by helpless as my brother nearly died next to me, multiple times. I saw my guardians get shot, in captivity, held hostage. I watched as my cousin died at her mother's hands. My uncle died and I thought it was because of me. I don't even know how many family members I've lost, or nearly lost."
She meets their eyes for the first time, and she finally allows her tears to show true. "Do you really think I can make all that up? You can go ahead and ask Nellie; she still has a scar from the time the Vespers kept her hostage and shot her in the arm because I outsmarted them. Or Ian Kabra; he still remembers what it was like to see his mom kill his sister!" Amy stops, because this reckless plowing isn't doing her any good. She needs to explain; she needs to get done what she came for.
"Don't you see? Evan realized what I was going through. I didn't tell him, I didn't ask him. I wanted him safe, I tried to keep him away!"
Come on, come on. She's almost done here, but so is her energy.
"But Evan was smart enough to find his way in himself, and put together the whole story. He insisted on helping. I told him it wasn't safe, he might die. I tried to keep him at headquarters, where he'd be safe. But he came." Her voice is a whisper. "He came, trying to help, and I couldn't stop him, and—and he died!"
And then Amy finds she can keep it back no longer, and she lets herself sob into her hands.
She feels herself sink back into the armchair from which she rose. And she's beyond caring.
Her weakness is a payment long overdue.
Revelation.
Terrence is, to say, stunned.
He expected a lengthy explanation, yes. He expected a sob story, yes. And yes, he did expect excuses.
But nothing quite like this.
Adamant.
Letitia is unimpressed.
This changes nothing. The girl is making excuses for her son's death.
Nothing can ever excuse that.
Taking effect.
When Amy gets a hold on herself and her grief—only a minute or so—she stands and heads for the door. She is ready to leave this sea of a house, filled to the brim with sadness and anger. More than ready.
But before she steps back into the moving world around this still home, she stops. "I'm sorry," she says, willing her voice to carry. "I'm sorry because I know that the truth won't ever be enough, because it can't bring him back. And I'm sorry because you're right. There's no one else who should be held responsible but me."
Amy opens the door and leaves, easing it shut behind her.
She doesn't look back.
Aftermath.
"Do you believe what she just told us?"
"It's not the believing that's important," replies Terrence, staring out at curtained windows.
Letitia knows it too. But that doesn't mean she'll admit it.
"Not old enough to love as yet,
But old enough to die, indeed—
The death-fear bites at my throat and heart . . ."
"—yet what I do now binds to [death]
a gift I feel of equal worth:
I take Death with me, out of Time
And make a of it a path, a birth!"
—"The Song of the Twelve," verses from the Silent Lord's part; Deep Wizardry by Diane Duane
A/N:
Finished!
At long last, and about time. (Originally I had a lot of this written out, but then I took a forced vacation from FFN and it deleted my file. T.T)
But anyway. I'm pretty darn satisfied with this, and it didn't stray too far from my basic layout. Whee!
And also: This is my first time using this format, with the little sub-titles heading drabble-like chapter-y sections of the story throughout. I don't quite know what made the story come out this way, but the author is loyal to her story, not traditional formatting. XD
Oh, before I forget . . . Those last quotes right above this A/N are from the book that played a huge role in getting this fic out. I'd tell you to go ahead and check out the first book in the series (So You Want to Be a Wizard; if that title doesn't catch your eye I don't know what will), but I get that people have lives to live. (. . . Okay, not really. GO READ THE YOUNG WIZARDS SERIES! :P)
Drop your twopence in the box below! (Nice shiny review box!) It can be anything from a novella to a one-worder, you know the author won't ever mind. Flames welcome, because I find them so highly amusing and, rest assured, will come up with a comeback. (Hah. I amuse myself.) Anyway! What I'm trying to say is: Review! :D