Disclaimer - I own only the plot. Please don't steal.
Timeline - I wrote this before the whole Rome storyline began and I became infatuated with the beauty that is Lancy. I'm not sure why I never posted this, except that it's incredibly morbid and disturbing. But whatever.
Inspiration - The Fray's "Over My Head (Cable Car)". The chorus particularly pertains to part two of this story, I think, and the third verse is reflected a bit in the final scene. And I probably just ruined that song for a bunch of people. Sorry.
"Are you fucking crazy?"
She just stares at him with that same, blank expression of a woman who knows that, one way or another, she's going to get what she wants. "Those are dangerous words to say to a woman like me, Noah. I'd watch your mouth next time."
He brushes off her words like a pesky fly. "I don't give a damn; this... this is insane, Lena. I can't do this."
"Funny," she comments after a moment, eyeing his crotch, "you look able enough to me."
His face turns bright red as he fumbles for the words to make her see that this is ludicrous, preposterous. She, however, speaks first: "I don't understand, Noah. I thought you said that you don't care about her? That she means nothing to you?"
"Yes!" he cries, eager to keep up the façade. "I did, and I don't; she means nothing to me. But that doesn't mean that I'd wish this on her!"
"Noah..." Lena purrs, placing her hand on his shoulder, "you can't think of it that way. Look at her. She's a beautiful girl - young, vital, in great shape. You can't tell me that you don't miss all that."
He stares at her inert body, lying haphazardly atop the large mahogany bed. She's wearing a strappy little white dress, sharply contrasting the black silk sheets; her golden tresses glow against her tanned skin, and he can't think of any time prior when he'd witnessed such perfection, such utter beauty. God, he's missed her so much; he wants her so badly, but not like this. Any way but like this.
"All right, she was a great lay," he admits, inwardly cringing at his word choice, "but I love Maya. Besides, this is - "
" - what you have to do if you want to save Maya's neck - and your own," Lena interrupts, withdrawing her gun from her side. "Hers too," she adds, gesturing towards Fancy's motionless body, "though that should be of little importance to you." She steps back into the hallway and lowers her gun. "Now have fun," she sneers. "We'll be watching you." She shuts the door behind her, and a few seconds later he hears the unmistakable sound of a number of locks and deadbolts being secured and fastened.
He looks around the room. There are no windows, no other doors. There's only the bed. And her.
She's occupied his dreams for the last several months now, denied the tangible thing. Seeing her here, so beautiful, so close - it's driving him crazy. He wants her so badly, but he wants her to want him, too. He wants to feel her nails raking against his back, her tongue tracing the outline of his earlobe, her hot breath on his neck; he yearns for the sound of her sweet voice crying out his name as she climaxes, breathless. He doesn't want her lying there, drugged into submission, just taking everything he dishes out.
But they're trapped with only two options - betrayal and life, or fidelity and death - and he loves her far too much to let her die at these bastards' hands. And perhaps it will be better this way. Perhaps, this way, she won't remember anything, won't be haunted by the memories of his betrayal. Yes. A semblance of fidelity and life - much better this way.
He sits down beside her on the bed, and it groans, sinks beneath his weight. He fingers the hem of her dress, feels its softness against his skin, and slowly, slowly begins to inch it up her thighs...
... until her blue-frosted eyelids flutter open.
Her lips curve weakly into a soft, small smile. "Noah..." she whispers, and no, this is all wrong. He immediately pulls his hand back to his side and scoots closer to her waist, reaching to gently stroke her golden locks, fanned out around her head like shimmering sunrays. No no no no no. She's not supposed to be awake; she can't be awake, conscious, able to remember this horrible thing that he's about to do to her.
He should say something, anything to her, but he can't seem to force his voice to work. Why is she still awake? Why won't she just drift away once more?
Her eyes narrow as she struggles to sit up. "What are you doing here?" He presses his hand against her chest, and she falls back onto the bed, still obviously feeling the effects of whatever drug Lena and her pals introduced to her system. Her eyes dart sloppily around the room, taking in the stark, white walls, the single, metal door. "What's going on? Let go of me!" she demands, fighting to free herself from his grip.
He straddles her thighs, tightening his grasp around her wrists, pressing them down into the soft, yielding mattress. A look of pure terror engulfs her eyes and face as she amplifies her attempts to escape. He should explain, try to make her understand what's going on, but he can't find the words, and they're watching, listening; there's no way out, no way to soften the blow.
He forces his knees between her legs and pries them apart, and she cries with such force that he thinks that he actually feels her pain, physically. "Stop it, Noah! Please!" she screams, and her voice, her words cut through his heart like a knife, so sharp, and hot, and long. But this is the only way; her pain will secure her life. This is the only way.
This is the only way.
She's crying. Her tears have formed little streams from her eyes to her chin, tainted black from her mascara. She's silent, still; he's broken her. This fact is irrefutable.
He leans over her and presses a kiss into her forehead, softly and slowly. "I'm so sorry, baby," he whispers, his own tears splashing onto her golden halo of hair. "I'm so sorry."
There's a sudden jangling at the door, and he leaps away from the bed, tugging his pants up and furiously wiping his eyes. Lena appears moments later, donning a satisfied smile, and stalks over to Fancy and presses a handkerchief, reeking of chloroform, into the younger woman's nose. Noah hears her inhale deeply several times before her eyes flutter shut, her breathing becomes soft and rhythmic once more.
Lena turns back to him and smiles broadly. "That wasn't so bad, now, was it?"
Everything seems so perfect after so long a period of trouble and turmoil. But they all surround the dining room table like a dream, his family - his father and stepmother, Ethan and Gwen and Jane, Kay and Fox and Maria, even Jessica. They're all smiling, all happy, all here - all but one. Her absence is glaring, weighing down his spirits, and they can't help but notice.
"She's just... I don't know," Ivy sighs, patting his hand reassuringly. "She's just being silly is all."
Let go of me!
"Yeah, you know Fancy," Ethan chimes in between airplane noises as he "flies" the spoonful of mashed potatoes into Janey's mouth with a whoosh. "She's stubborn, proud. She'll come around."
Stop it, Noah! Please!
"I'm going to have a chat with her tomorrow, make her see reason," Ivy smiles. "After all, it's not like you meant those horrible things you said to her."
I'm so sorry, baby.
He feels something in his hand give way, and Maria and Jane both start to cry. He blinks, and the fragments of his wineglass are scattered on the table, on the floor, white wine dripping from his fingers. In the light, he can see his own reflection in each of the tiny pieces, tens of hundreds of times.
"Okay, that's it," Ivy jokes, standing up from the table. "No more wine for you tonight."
He nods, numbly. "Yeah," he mumbles. "I guess... I guess I just had one too many."
"Are you sure that's all?" Sam quietly questions. Ivy stops sweeping the broken glass to look up at her husband while Fox stops his forkful of asparagus mid-air and Gwen freezes, her hand on her roll.
Sam knows him better than possibly anyone on this earth, the only exception being Fancy. He knows that the lie will not convince his father of anything, but the lie, at least, is far more comforting than the truth. "Yeah," he replies. "I guess I just celebrated my return home a little too much, that's all."
I'm so sorry.
"What are you doing here?"
There's a terror in her eyes that he's seen only once before, a time that he's tried long and hard to forget. She's backtracking, slowly inching her way backwards to her office wall, as if searching for some sort of sanctuary there, away from the here and the now. He can hear her breathing, abnormally fast, panicked; she's hyperventilating. Her skin is so pale, and she's grown so thin. He's afraid that she might pass out; he steps toward her, reaching out, but she shrinks away from him, trembling.
"Please!" she begs, close to tears. "Leave me alone!"
He withdraws, crestfallen. "I - I'm sorry," he whispers. "I just - I need you to understand why."
"I understand!" she cries, throwing her hands up into the air. She walks over to her shelf full of pictures, thus placing her desk between them. "I get it! I really do. Will you please just go already?"
He pauses, wondering if he should just leave. He should, he knows. It's what she wants, and after what he did to her, he really has no say in the matter. But, for whatever reason, he can't. "Fancy, I... I just - I need for you to know how sorry I am. I didn't want this. I love you."
She laughs, hollow, the light reflecting off of her dark red lips. "And that's supposed to make it all better? An 'I love you' and an apology, and I'm just supposed to forget? I'm sorry, Noah, but it doesn't work that way."
He sighs, running his hand through his frizzy brown hair. "I know we can't just go back to the way things were; really, I do, but we can't just give up. We - we can go see a counselor, or something."
"A counselor?" She stares at him with this incredulous look plastered across her face, as if someone's just told her that the sky is pink. "This isn't something we can just fix after a few sessions of lying on a couch and talking about our mothers," she screams. "You raped me." She's crying. She was crying then, too. In the tiniest of voices, between tears, she whispers, "You used to be the object of my greatest, most passionate dreams; now you're the subject of my nightmares."
Her words cut him to the core, and he begins to wonder if he's trapped in a nightmare, too, if he's going to wake up from it all in just a minute, Fancy lying beside him, sleeping peacefully. But it's not fading away, instead staying as harsh and real as ever - her tear-stained cheeks, red eyes, trembling body.
"So that's it?" he asks, and realizes that his own voice is just slightly choked up. "This is the end? The fact that I love you - that I did it to protect you - it's all irrelevant? I mean, for God's sake, Fancy, they were going to kill you! What was I supposed to do, let you die?"
She looks up from the pictures and languidly brushes a teardrop from her eye. "I wish you had," she says, sotto voce.
She crumbles to the ground, now making no effort to restrain her sobs, and he slowly, slowly exits the room.