Liturgy (by timydamonkey)
Disclaimer: Quantic Dream are the guys with the rights to Heavy Rain, not me. This is written as a fan, and is in no way for profit.
Author's Note: So it seems the next character on my list to receive a focused fic is Lauren! Whoo!
This is set after the A Mother's Revenge and Ethan's Grave epilogues. (And with that, any thoughts that I might have finally written a happy Heavy Rain fic go right out the window.) It quite possibly follows a strange mish-mash of endings, but it should be in continuity for those two.
I don't know where the idea for this one came from. I just thought Lauren'd have something to say about all of this mess. I hope I caught her thought process here. She's hurting. I like to try and aim at being as in character as possible.
Reviews are much appreciated, as ever.
Lauren Winter had never met Ethan Mars. She knew of him, and had followed the stories in the papers and their fickle tales that read like instalments of somebody's sick, private amusement:
Distraught parent Ethan Mars, potential killer Ethan Mars, martyr and saviour Ethan Mars. Each had been accompanied with their own articles, their own photographs. A solemn looking man, a grim and dangerous looking one, a smiling figure whose life had "tragically been cut short"… a scathing commentary on the police force.
A bit late for all that now, Lauren thought.
She'd never met him, but she knew he was a kindred soul, all the same.
She was on a grave run. She'd visited Scott's grave, and had expected to feel some kind of remorse. She'd actually liked the man at one point, and all that time he must have been laughing at her behind her back…! She'd just felt hollow and empty, a quietly smouldering rage of "my son's still gone, and nothing can replace him". Revenge, justice, it didn't fill in that hole, but it meant she could sleep at night without her breath catching whenever she heard the drumming of rain.
She'd also been to see her son. "I got him," she'd told him, "and now he won't be able to hurt anyone again."
There'd been no response, of course.
And now she was at the third grave. She hadn't planned to go there, but it was her feet had taken her. She knelt down and brushed her fingers lightly against the marble headstone.
"ETHAN MARS," it read. "Beloved father whose son meant the world to him. He will be missed."
In front of the grave were scattered tributes. She peered down at the crumpled one scrawled in childish handwriting; the son's, she'd imagine. It said:
"They say you're sleeping in the sky with Jason. I hope you are happy and I am sorry and thank you for helping me. I love you. I miss you."
It may not have been faring too well in the weather, but that letter was a veritable treasure trove. She felt oddly guilty for reading it, as if she'd intruded in a private moment. She shook herself. She wasn't there to read letters. She wanted to say she had no idea why she was there at all, but there was a thought creeping up in the back of her mind.
"Thank you," she said to the grave, "for trying."
Everybody knew that Ethan Mars had been shot by the police. What had emerged, however, was how much of a blunder it'd been: he'd been killed by the Origami Killer, a slight consolation in his death that his innocence had been proven based on Shaun's accounts. Scott may have been a careful man, but he'd never planned on leaving anybody alive who could dig up loose ends, and Shaun had been adamant. His father had saved him, and he wasn't just traumatised.
He was a good kid, Lauren thought, to have such unwavering loyalty to his father.
"It was very brave of you to give up so much for your son." She considered how to phrase the next bit, and then figured that since she was talking to a grave sensitivity really wasn't entirely needed. "I wish someone had been able to do that for Johnny." She folded her arms around herself in the bitter cold, consoled herself in feeling only slightly resentful of the fact that such a window of opportunity had been missed and her boy had died in the cold with his hope.
All the details of the cases were coming out, and the more she heard, the more she wished she'd shot Scott a few more times, the bastard. Once just wasn't enough.
Ethan had died in front of his son, in a dusty warehouse now closed off as a crime scene. He'd died with the man who'd left his shivering son for death. She couldn't change that, couldn't even bring herself to call out the police on being morons (if she could deduce enough to figure out how to trace the killer, to bring out the side of Scott that led to her suspicions and yet the police themselves couldn't, they were obviously incompetent). It was a waste of time, energy, and resources. The police would get off with an Error of Judgement and their lives would move on.
She couldn't fight that injustice, but she had fought Scott, and she'd won.
Fiercely, she murmured, "I finished it for you. I couldn't let him leave it at that. It wasn't just for me – it was for us all. For our sons. For everybody's sons." Her face didn't betray any expression, it was long past its grief and its empathy; she was just dead-eyed. She felt she'd killed a piece of herself with Scott, but that was okay.
It could be her sacrifice. It was nothing compared to a man losing his life, and she'd take it for the reassurance it brought her.
She didn't regret it. But sometimes she closed her eyes and all she saw was Scott, promising her help and charming her and killing her son.
She saw her reflection in the marble, and from those dead eyes, Scott seemed to look back.
Lauren pushed herself upwards to her feet. There was nothing else to say. They were strangers, even if circumstance had tried to deal them the same tragic blow, even if they'd both culminated in cracking this case. She felt oddly like she was a trespasser.
"Goodnight, Ethan Mars." She bid him farewell, and turned and stalked for the exit of the graveyard, trying not to think of memories of a recent graveyard jaunt.
So many people were dead. She couldn't afford to break now, because she was alive. She had to live.
It felt like a punishment.