Title: The Fine Print
Author: promisedblueskies
Rating: T, will eventually be M
Fandom: "Nine Lives of Chloe King," Chloe/Alek
Summary: At twenty-three, Chloe and Alek think they have their whole lives in front of them, and plan to spend them together. At twenty-eight, Chloe finds herself a widow and the mother of a young daughter who can't remember her father. A forgotten prophecy provides Chloe with a way to remedy this and bring Alek back to life.
Warnings: Character death, graphic violence.
Author's Note: The prologue and first chapter are both pretty short, in order to introduce the plot, so I'm going to post them together, but future chapters will likely be longer.
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It's a rainy day when she buries him. It's fairly typical of March in San Francisco, really, starting off bright and sunny but nothing is as it seems. Even early in the morning, when the sky hadn't posed a threat, there'd been a chill in the air. There hadn't been any rain in the forecast and yet it had started to drizzle as mourners filed into church, and by the time the hearse had arrived at the cemetery, the rain had fallen angrily from the sky in sheets.
She doesn't remember much from that day, though, or the days immediately preceding it. Even now, over five years later, the details are a blur. Bits and pieces float through her mind, disjointed, like snapshots when you're expecting a film. With Jasmine's help, she's been able to piece most of it together, but the memories themselves don't come.
Jasmine had been an invaluable resource in those early days, both in uncovering the details she couldn't remember and in keeping her safe. She does remember Jasmine flanking her as the casket was lowered into the ground, the other woman's arms coming up to rest on her shoulders as she draped a coat over them.
It's funny how memory works, though. She has flashes of moments where her memory is so clear it hurts, and then whole hours surrounding those flashes that she wants to remember and can't. She remembers the other time Jasmine slipped a coat over her shoulders, too, a few days earlier. It had been raining then, too, and the coat had been Jasmine's own. Jasmine had stood to her right, trying to block her view of the scene only yards away. It was all for naught, though, because they'd been standing at the bottom of the hill and she hadn't actually had to remember what had occurred at the top. Red streams swirled around their feet as rain mixed with blood above them.
She remembers the fear, too, so clearly that she still wakes up sweating in the middle of the night sometimes. She remembers the cool flash of mental against her skin, the trickle of blood running down her neck, and later, the shooting pain and iron smell as the blade sliced her abdomen, right before she passed out.
Her counselor tells her it's a defense mechanism, the lack of memory, that some things are just too painful to recall. She remembers the pain, though, all too clearly; the knife had been nothing in comparison to waking up in that dirty abandoned warehouse, alive and not much worse for the wear, all things considered, but surrounded by dead bodies. Her attacker had been killed, but it had taken four Mai to accomplish that feat, and among them was her husband.
She remembers his hand, reached out to her even in death, but doesn't remember anything else. She isn't sure if his eyes were open or closed, or what he was wearing, or even what position he was lying in. And for some reason, all those details matter.
And she remembers her tears as her hand cradled the swell of her belly, and felt the reassuring kick from within, assuring her that Alek's final sacrifice hadn't been in vain.
Perhaps most importantly, she remembers the promise she made then, to the future that could've been. When Alexia is old enough, Chloe will tell her that her daddy died to keep her alive.