Perception
Author's Note: A quick fic, likely a one shot, to try to fix this whole mess. Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely loving season 2, but I really need some Mitch and Jamie goodness before the season's done. I'm considering a second part for this fic, framing the whole conversation in Mitch's point of view.
Spoilers: up to and including episode 2.09 "Sins of the Father"
Disclaimer: I own and/or control nothing. If I did, Jamie and Mitch would have been together from 2.01.
Jamie Campbell woke with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Perhaps it was stress. Or maybe the fact that the few hours she'd slept had been fitful and restless. No, she knew, no…it was Mitch. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw him with that woman, his hands and lips on her flesh.
I'm such a fool…what was I thinking? Why did I keep pushing him away?
Stop blaming yourself-he's the cheating jackass!
No, he's not. I gave him absolutely no reason to think there was any hope at all for us. He's a free agent.
He never cared at all, he was just playing you. Just like Logan. Once again, you were gullible and naïve.
No, that's not true. He did care. I saw it in his eyes. I heard it in his voice. I felt it in his embrace in Caraquet. But I hurt him. I hurt him bad. Maybe he's just as mixed up and turned around as I am.
She poured her morning coffee and headed downstairs to see if anything new about Jackson had developed in the last few hours. Just outside the lab area, she stopped short. What would she say to him? Should she just can the whole idea?
She retreated to the bar, where she sat trying to process everything. Her own role in the situation was now readily apparent. How could she not have seen how much pressure he was under? Dear Lord, the man had so much on his plate. The truth was that she'd been so wrapped up in feeling sorry for herself that she hadn't bothered to look around her and see how her friends were suffering. She'd behaved as if she had some sort of monopoly on pain, but the reality was that everyone was in pain. The sorrow in Abe's eyes as he relayed the truth about Jackson's mother haunted her. Jackson's diseased psyche was held together by gum and paper clips; on top of that he'd been forced to confront the realities of Chloe's death, his fathers's deception and the horror of what had become of his mother. And Mitch? Well, Mitch was tasked with keeping everyone else from falling apart while simultaneously holding the fate of the entire animal kingdom in his hands. The odds of success were very small. If anyone can do it, he can. She shuddered to think of what he must be going through now. If he failed to do the impossible, they were all going to die. No pressure there. It felt like a dagger in her heart to think how she had treated him, how she had continued to pile stress upon him.
Well, Campbell, you know what you have to do. Tell him the truth, all of it, and let the chips fall where they may.
She found him still in the lab, leaning over his hands flat on the exam table. He glanced over at her as she entered. His handsome face looked as though he'd aged ten years.
"Where are Abe and Dariela?" She broke the ice.
"They went to try to pick up Jackson's trail. One man in a sea of millions. Shouldn't be too difficult."
Just do it, Jamie. "Take a break," she said.
Mitch gave her a confused stare. "What?"
Emboldened, she put her hand over his and repeated herself kindly yet firmly. "Take a break."
"Jamie, we have less than…uh…" He glanced at his watch, "eighty hours here before every animal, including human, meets General Davies' ghastly gas."
"You've gotten all you're going to get from these bones. You know what it is, and where we might find it. Abe and Dariela are looking for Jackson. The machines are all buzzing, so I assume all your tests are running," she smiled amiably. "There's nothing more that you can do for a while."
He continued to stare at her, clearly trying to catch up.
"So let's take a break. Let's go sit someplace comfortable and talk," she insisted.
He stiffened his back and exhaled slowly. "I can't handle any more problems right now."
"I'm not going to give you any," she reassured. "I actually want to help solve one or two. So, uh, let's talk."
He followed upstairs to the living area where they settled into the soft sofas.
"So, uh," Jamie began, "I have a lot to say, and I'm not sure where to start. If I start at the beginning, it's going to sound very very negative. But if I start at the end, it won't make any sense."
"So start at the beginning. I'm running a special on 'negative' this week."
She nodded, and swallowed hard. How could it be that she hadn't even started and the tears were already threatening to escape?
"The thing is, I'm gonna need you to let me totally finish before you interject, because if I stop I might lose my nerve and not be able to start again."
"Ok."
"I'm gonna start by saying that I love you, Mitch…and I'm so, so sorry for the way I've been acting. It's like I needed to lash out at someone and the safest bet is always the person that's least likely to hit back," she explained, the lump in her throat growing by the second. "And the person that's least likely to hit back is gonna be the one who cares the most, which makes attacking that person an even shittier thing to do. Again, I'm really sorry, Mitch." There, it's out there. The most important part.
She studied his face, trying to get a read. It was fruitless; his expression lead her about six different directions at once. He moved to speak, so she quickly silenced him.
"Let me get through all of it, ok? It's long…and its ugly, and parts may not even be factually correct, but its how I perceived things and my perception is what shaped my thought processes and actions."
She covered her eyes with her hand for a moment while she gathered her thoughts, then she continued.
"After the plane crash, I was basically unconscious until mid December. When I woke up, I didn't know where I was, or when it was. I didn't know if you guys were alive or dead. When Anik, the man who found me, brought me that sat phone, it was a lifeline. The moment I heard your voice, I knew that everything was going to be ok. The cure was found, Reiden was busted, unicorns were singing and we are all going to live happily ever after."
"And then I waited. I knew that you guys would be there quickly. I had the leopard all crated up and ready to go. Anik, he went outside—I don't know why. He didn't speak English, and I don't even know what language he was speaking. But he went out, and I turned and I saw it, there on the shelf, just looking at me. I don't know what the hell it was, I'd never seen an animal like that in my life, but it was kind of cute….seemed harmless enough, but I knew it shouldn't be there in the house. The door opened, and Anik fell backward through the doorway. He was dead. There were bears and wolves on the porch. They'd breached the fence. They came for the leopard, and I'll be damned if I was going to let that happen. I slammed the door shut and stashed the leopard in the basement. I figured the fewer entries and exits to protect, the better."
She paused to collect herself again. Mitch watched her intently.
"So then I decided to draw the animals away from the house, you know, so the leopard would be safer. I went outside and I got them to follow me. I hid in a thicket and waited for the wolves and the buffalo to move on." She bit down on her lower lip. "I heard a helicopter. Yay! I'm saved, they're here. It was so close I could almost touch as it flew over me."
She noted the rush of anguish that clouded Mitch's face.
"I couldn't believe it. You guys got the leopard….and you left me." The tears finally began to flow, and she hastily brushed them away. "Whether it's fair or not, I don't know, but I felt so abandoned and insignificant. Expendable. I told myself 'no, no, there must be something else going on. Mitch wouldn't just leave you here to die. He cares about you, you didn't imagine all of that in the lab and on the plane. He'll be back..' So I went back to the house. I boarded up the windows. I fixed the fence. I buried Anik. And I waited. I just knew that any moment, you guys would be back." She shook her head sadly, her voice trailing off to scarcely more than a whisper as she added " But no one came."
Mitch clearly wanted to say something, so she help up her hand.
"Please let me get through all of it. Morning came, but no people. No helicopter, no truck…nothing."
"I made sure that all of the animals were gone before I boarded up the house. But I heard a noise, and there it was again! That same cute but terrifying little guy. I don't know how he got in, but I knew then that I wasn't any safer inside than I would be outside—warmer, maybe, but not safer. So I decided to try to get to civilization. I studied the map, found what looked to be the nearest town, packed a bag and I set out for Caraquet. I left a message, visible from the air, so that just in case you came, you'd know where to find me."
"As it started to get dark on that first day, I looked down and noticed that I was leaving a trail of blood. There was a freaking nail all the way through my foot, and I didn't even feel it, that's how numb it was from the cold. That's when I saw the black toe. But I had to keep going, you know? I didn't have a choice. In my head, there was always this dialog, playing on a loop: 'they left you. They didn't give a damn about you. They left you.' I tried so hard to not let myself go there, but it was getting more and more difficult to deny. Soon after dark, I came around a bend and and there was a car just sitting there, a police car. Oh my God! I'm saved! I looked in the window and, um, there was a bunch of raccoons feasting on the body of the cop. Now the old Jamie, she would have been squicked out by that, eww, but Jamie 2.0? She had no problem yanking the poor man's corpse out of the car. Even the raccoons ran from her. But I'm so naïve, I still thought I was saved. I turned that key and…nothing. Of course it wouldn't start."
She looked up at Mitch, his expression once again virtually unreadable due to the myriad of emotions represented. She sniffled and started again, not wanting to lose her momentum.
"I was still the littlest bit optimistic then, though, so I thought, hey, at least you have shelter for the night. And in the morning I set out again. And I walked all day until it was dark again. I was thinking about where to start the fire when I turned around and ran smack into Logan."
Even saying his name brought rage and the pain of betrayal to the surface again. How could she tell Mitch this part and expect him to view her as anything other than a fool?
"He didn't even have a coat, or a hat. Nothing but a small duffle bag. I gave him the jacket I took off of the dead cop. He said that he was a bush pilot, hired by some hunters to bring them up there, but the plane crashed in the forest, and he was the only survivor. I asked why he didn't have anything warm to wear in that bag and he told me all that was in it was cash. Something about his girlfriend Kelly not trusting banks." She rolled her eyes at how embarrassingly absurd the story sounded to her now.
"Damn, I bought the whole thing." She gave a quick, sarcastic laugh. "There must be someone somewhere who wants to sell me a bridge in Brooklyn."
"When we got going in the morning, I don't remember the exact conversation that sparked it, but I do remember saying 'what we need is a gun.' He didn't really have anything to say about that. Later, when we were trying to figure out how we got off-course, he turned just right, and I saw it. Right there in his waist band. A gun. And he hadn't said a word , even when I'd pointed out how useful one might be. He could have been all 'a gun? Hey, check this out, it's your lucky day!' But he didn't. He chose not to tell me he had it. So then of course, the red flag went up. I figured I needed to find out what was really in his bag…it was beavers, by the way."
The amused eyebrow lift Mitch flashed her made her quickly realize she had skipped something. She rushed to clarify.
"Not in the bag! How we got off-course. Beavers. They diverted the river. We ended up seven miles in the wrong direction. A very very disheartening thing when you're cold, hungry and hobbling on a bad foot. We found a rocky hill that seemed like it would have a good vantage point to maybe see the correct route, match it up with the landmarks on the map. Logan, um, he volunteered to make the climb after I pretended like I couldn't because of my foot. It worked—he left the bag where I could get to it as soon as he was out of view. There was the cash, sure, but there was something else, too: pictures. Of me. Me outside Anik's house. Me in newspaper articles from last year. A chill went through me. I didn't know who he was, but clearly he was in those woods looking for me. Why? What was his angle? I knew I had to ditch him."
"We found an old barn or shed that night. It was starting to rain so I used it as an excuse to send Logan to get firewood, you know, before it could get too wet. He went out the front door, and I went out the back. But I didn't get far. I tripped. And he was there, standing over me with the gun in his hand. He wasn't pointing it at me, just holding it. He knew. He said so calmly, 'ok, so you looked in the bag.'"
"And I confronted him. 'Who are you? What do you want from me?' He said that it wasn't about me at all, it was about the leopard. The men who hired him weren't hunters. They hired him to fly them up there so they could get the leopard. He claimed he didn't know who they were, or how then even knew about the leopard. He said he lied because he was afraid I would bolt if I knew the truth. And I did just that. He begged me to trust him. I told him if he wanted me to trust me, he had to give me the gun. So he did. Pretty heads-up play on his part, really. He gives me the gun to gain my trust, then he gets the gun back because I trust him. Hey, maybe I should just forget the bridge and go for the magic beans, right? Too bad I couldn't have seen through it then. But I didn't, I went back to the barn with him. He wanted to look at the foot, see if there was anything to be done about it. It was worse. The black area had spread. I told him to chop it off, and he said he couldn't. So I pointed the gun at him and told him he had to. And that was that. And there, in the back of my mind, no matter how hard I tried to fight it: 'they left you. Mitch left you. Just…left you.'"
"Damn, did I mention this story is long?"
Mitch nodded.
"It's about to get a whole lot uglier. We're getting to the parts I'm afraid to talk about; afraid it'll force me to relive it. Afraid of what you'll think of me. And if I'm being honest, afraid of what I'll think of me. But it has to be said. Keeping it all in has been kind of toxic for both of us. But here goes nothing…"
She hesitated a moment, her hands noticeably began to shake.
"The next day, I think was the coldest. Absolutely miserable. And there wasn't a dry piece of wood anywhere. By the time night fell, I knew we were gonna die if we couldn't make a fire. I convinced Logan that we had to burn the only dry flammable thing we had: the money. We got a pretty nice little fire going, and we talked. About lots of things. We talked about you, actually. I told him I was confident that you would come through for me. He thought it would be nearly impossible for my friends to find me out there. 'You don't know Mitch,' I said."
"Like a mirage, I saw lights in the distance. Headlights. A car, yay! I'm saved! But Logan freaked out, doused the fire, said we had to run. 'Maybe I didn't tell you everything', he said. So we ran. When we'd made it what we thought was a safe distance, I demanded an explanation. And he gave me one. Probably a complete load of bullshit, but an explanation nonetheless. He told me that the men didn't give him the money as much as he just took it. And now their friends wanted it back. Small problem: the money was now a pile of ashes. I never heard them coming. Suddenly they were surrounding us, four of them. They had guns and knives, demanded the money. I told them we burned it, but I don't think they believed me. The one guy, he pointed the gun at Logan and I pushed it away. Can you believe it? I actually saved that bastard's life." She snorted at the irony of it all.
"Everything happened so fast that it's kind of jumbled now. From out of nowhere, the wolves came. But they didn't bother with me. They jumped the guys and left me alone. Kind of like the leopards in Zambia with those, um, African Hells Angels. The wolves attacked the bad guys and ignored me. Almost like they were purposely protecting me, as crazy as that sounds. So I ran. And I ran. And as far as I knew, Logan and the other men were as good as dead and I was all alone again. I came to a clearing where I stopped to catch my breath."
Each word became a struggle as she subconsciously clutched the pendant of her necklace.
"Next thing I knew, I was on the ground, and Rooney, the leader I guess of the men, the one who did all of the talking, he was on top of me with a knife to my throat. He was, like, twice my size. I don't know where I got the strength—maybe it's like when a mother can lift a car off her kid—somehow I got the knife away from him and I plunged it into his heart. Logan said it was Gwen, but I think it was right then that it happened. When something inside of me became irretrievably broken and I became a different person. I think that was the moment when I stopped believing in the fairy tale that I had anyone in my corner. I realized that I'm the only person on this screwed up planet that I can count on."
Mitch clearly wanted to protest, but she shushed him. "Look, I'm not saying that's what happened with the helicopter. The truth is, I don't know what happened. I'm telling you how it looked and felt to me at the time. And that belief, that perception impacted everything. Perception stains reality, right? What I do know is that I was seconds away from being on that chopper, seconds away from none of this ever happening. The situation was too unsafe for six guys with machine guns and a helicopter, but it was apparently deemed ok for one unarmed woman on foot. Well, I'm not ok with that, and I don't know that I'll ever be ok again."
"Chivalry truly is dead. It's a lie I'll never believe in again. When I said I'd been blisteringly naïve, I wasn't talking about Reiden, or the cure, or even fate. I was talking about you. I learned that no matter how close I think I am to someone, When push comes to shove, nobody's gonna have my back but me. In the end, everyone will abandon me to suit their own agendas. That's the mindset under which I've been operating these last weeks."
She knew that Mitch was reeling, his face contorted, his eyes misting; but if they were ever going to resolve their issues, they needed to get everything out on the table. The tears began to flow freely now, and she made no attempt to squelch them.
"I'm not trying to be a bitch. I'm not trying to pile on. I'm just trying to , believe it or not, the story gets worse. Should I continue?"
Mitch nodded glumly. "Yeah, I need all of it. Warts and all."
"Ok, well, I stabbed Rooney. He lay there dying and I laid there defeated. I couldn't do it anymore. I was all out of fight. No one had come for me and the animals were still attacking, which meant that I could no longer believe that I may have been sacrificed for a higher purpose. If the cure hadn't been distributed, then I was sacrificed for nothing."
Should I tell him about Chloe? I don't really understand myself what happened there. Ultimately, she decided she was more comfortable keeping that part private—for now.
"Then there, in the moonlight, I saw the car keys just lying there on the ground. I was almost afraid to believe it. Yay! I'm saved! In the distance, I heard Logan calling my name. How survived the wolves unscathed I still don't know. But now we had transportation. And, and heat. Things were looking up! We hopped into the nice warm car and motored toward Caraquet. But nothing good can last, so of course the car broke down, and Caraquet was in flames. And loaded with people who'd crawled straight out of a Stephen king novel. They denied having any working phones, but they gave us a hot meal and a shower to use. Yay! I'm saved! Stop me if you've heard this before. Ha ha, the joke was on me yet again. They weren't being nice, they were just happy to have strangers to feed to the polar bears."
"It seems they'd been holed up at the school for several months, periodically choosing a rube to appease the bears. They totally believed that they were staving off the attacks that way. The woman in charge was a battle ax named Gwen. Not only was she cool with condemning a stranger, someone who'd done absolutely nothing to her, but she was positively gleeful about it. I needed to save myself, again, so I got hold of a small can of propane and slipped it into Logan's pocket. I wasn't gonna go down without making sure that bitch knew she'd been in a fight. I didn't care who might get hurt as a result, I was going to defend myself at any cost."
"Along the perimeter fence, they had these barrels with bonfires in them. I told Logan to throw the can into one. It worked. There was an explosion, the fence came down and the bears attacked the townspeople. Men, women, old, young—it didn't matter. They could have stayed inside the school, but they all came out for the entertainment value of watching me and Maddie, who was one of their own, get mutilated by polar bears. So, in my new mentality, it was their choice to die like that."
Was he still with her? Would he hate her after he knew all of this? Would he ever be able to look at her the same way?
"Logan, Maddie and I made it onto the bus. I tried to close the door, but it wouldn't shut because Gwen was behind me with her arm through the door. She was begging me 'Jamie, please! Let me in. Help me!' I could see the bears coming up fast. I was safe then; Gwen was no longer a threat to anyone. I could have saved her life. But I chose not to. Instead, I pushed her out and closed the door. I barely flinched when it mauled her. Gwen wasn't the first person I killed, but she was the first one I killed for nothing but revenge, pure and simple. I killed Logan, too," she confessed. "Did you know that?"
Mitch shook his head, his face lined with concern.
"I killed him in cold blood then I came back and picked a fight with you, threw out cheap shots about your daughter. Stay classy, Campbell."
She swallowed hard. "Anyway, back in Caraquet, I told Logan and Maddie to go out the back of the bus; I was gonna draw the bears away so they could be safe. I felt responsible for the situation they were in, you know, because I brought Logan to that place, and Maddie was chosen to die because she tried to help us."
Regaining a tiny portion of her composure, she forged ahead.
"I stepped off that bus, and I saw you there, coming out of the mist. I couldn't believe it. It was everything I wanted, yet…hollow, somehow. Chloe was dead, the cure had failed, life had passed me by at a dizzying pace…it was like I didn't even know who you guys were anymore. Like I didn't belong there. And all of those feelings of abandonment, betrayal, isolation, hopelessness…they descended like a ton of bricks. I was angry, and hurt, and confused. So inside out that I couldn't even tell which way was up. I was just in a free fall, staring at the rocks below."
"I'm sorry that it taken me so long to sort it all out, but I think I'm almost there. Curiously, meeting Max yesterday provided a lot of clarity. I wish I could explain how, but I really can't. It kind of gave me a reality check; a slap upside the head to remind me that I'm not the only one in pain."
Tell him this part, or don't tell him this part? Tell him, get it all out there.
"I was looking for,you last night. I wanted to tell you, well, all of this. I knocked on your door, but there was no answer. I thought you were sleeping, but I needed to talk to you. I really, really wish I'd walked away and not opened that door. But I did. And I saw you. With her. And my heart broke, and it's all my own damn fault."
Mitch's face turned ghostly white.
"I know you're with her now, but I still needed to tell you everything. And to apologize."
"May I? Now?" Mitch asked softly.
"Yeah, yeah, shoot."
"First of all, I am not with her. I made a huge mistake last night; a mistake born from sadness, and pain, and loneliness and the confusion that always ensues when I have to deal with Max. I'm sorry that happened, and I'm sorry that you had to see that. Second, and this is huge: I never left you. And I never would have. I refused to get on that helicopter, I refused to leave without you. Nothing was more important to me than getting you back. I was dragged, against my will, onto the helicopter. You can ask Abe."
"When that plane crashed, my whole world crashed with it. I spent months mired in depression, drinking myself numb every day. Not a single day went by that I didn't regret having chickened out of telling you that I was in love with you when I had the chance. I wanted to, in that hospital lab in Zimbabwe, but you seemed a little freaked out about the other stuff I said, so I backed down. When I heard your voice come through that telephone line, it was like being given an oxygen mask. And when we missed you at the farmhouse, I was devastated. All I thought about was finding you, holding you in my arms."
"For what it's worth, I think you're being too hard on yourself. I'm sorry that you're hurting, it tears me apart to see it, but I'm selfishly grateful for everything you did out there. Because it brought you back to me."
"You don't think I'm some kind of monster?"
"You're not out on the street trolling for innocent victims, Jamie," he consoled. "You didn't hurt anyone who didn't try to hurt you first."
With no further words, she collapsed into his arms, burying her face in his neck as he held her. The sobs rocked both of their bodies as they cried.
"I love you, Jamie."
"And I love you."