Disclaimer: Not mine. Post-"The Telling," but not concerned with Syd/Vaughn.
1.
"You know,
you pretend that you're angry with her now," Sloane said
indifferently, regarding the young man seated across from him
with suspicion.
"Why wouldn't I be angry with her?" he shrugged.
"She had me confined in a cell solely in order to keep me
from interfering with her plans to eliminate someone who was
close to me. Wouldn't you be angry?"
"Yeah, sure. Except I know what you've been doing these past
few months, so you'll forgive me if I'm a little suspicious of
your offer to join me. Again."
He thought: this is a trap; he wants to find out what I've been
doing, so he's pretending to already know. Does he think I'm so
gullible that I'll really fall for it, spill the beans? Sark kept
his cool.
"It doesn't bother me, exactly, what's been going on between
you," Sloane began, then hesitated. "Or--rather, it
wouldn't bother me, if I didn't know what I knew."
Riddles. Fabulous. He glanced at Sloane like a sulky teenager
waiting to be reprimanded, giving nothing away.
"I presume you know also," he said carefully, dancing
around his revelation, savoring the role he'd decided to play.
He would not ask.
"I mean, of course she would have told you." Drawing it
out. He could barely contain his delight. "Unless, of
course, she doesn't know--but then if I know about it, of course
she would know, wouldn't she?"
He regarded his fingernails with heightened interest, trying hard
to display apathy.
Sloane did not speak for several minutes.
Finally, Sark tossed away the paper, drumming his fingers on the
table in a last effort to affect nonchalance. "All right.
What?"
Sloane actually grinned as he slid a piece of paper across the
slick tabletop. Sark was careful not to touch it; instead he
leaned forward to read it.
"What?" Sloane asked, as Sark quickly retreated, the
paper wrinkled between his fingers. "You didn't know?"
Hours later, Sark could still hear him laughing from a hundred
miles away.
2.
As he drove
through the city, he glanced out of the shaded windows of his
rental car at everyone outside with their own destinations. He
could follow one of those men in a Lexus or an Infiniti, take on
his plans instead of his own. But there was only one place he
could go, only one road he could travel now. Finally free from
the city traffic, he knew where to find her, 80 miles outside of
town. Indeed, she was expecting him, having not known about his
excursion to see Arvin Sloane. He hadn't intended to tell her,
but now he supposed it would come out somehow.
It was easier to keep secrets now, easier to forget that Before,
she had been the only person whose trust he ever desired to keep;
After, he could almost not care less whether she trusted him or
not. In fact, he would almost rather have her believe she
couldn't trust him, because he knew how infuriated she would be
when she reached that conclusion.
Not that it mattered that he had gone to see Sloane without her
knowledge, considering this more urgent matter they now had to
discuss. He glanced at the paper, scanning it once more to make
sure the facts were actually there in black and white. It was
ridiculous to believe this might be the truth. Whatever she was,
and she was a lot of reprehensible things, if it was true then
she would have to know who he was, and if she'd known who he was
this wouldn't have happened in the first place. (And maybe
Allison, poor Allison who didn't deserve this, Allison who had
been his only hope of a world beyond these walls, would still be
alive.) Therefore, if it was true she didn't know, and if she
didn't know then it could not be true.
The temptation to burn holes where their names were printed-with
the car's cigarette lighter, perhaps, which had never seemed
particularly useful before--threatened to overtake him; he could
pick it up gingerly with two fingers and throw it out the window,
then return to her, pretending he'd never found out.
But he could not bring himself to burn it just yet.
That would have to come after.
3.
"Where were
you?"
The voice arrived before the face. He opened the door to find her
clutching the doorknob with one hand and a gun with the other.
Enforced seclusion had not been kind to her psychological
well-being, he noted, slightly amused. Nor mine.
"I had some business to tend to," he shrugged, because
he knew it would drive her mad. What business could he have that
was not related to her?
But she did not seem annoyed, or even surprised. She just nodded,
as if she had barely heard him, and set down the gun on a nearby
table.
"I have something for you to do as well," she said, as
if she had just remembered. She left the room abruptly and
returned moments later with a file folder, which she handed him
without meeting his eyes.
"I will," he promised. Without looking at its contents,
he tossed the folder on the table by the front door. He would
have to take it with him when he left.
"I think you'll enjoy it." Her voice was so low he
could not be sure she had spoken at all or if he had imagined it.
"There's something we should discuss first."
She glanced at the paper in his hand, and nodded. Perhaps she had
been expecting this day to come for many years now. She opened
her mouth to speak when a telephone rang from somewhere within
the house. She paused. It rang again, and then a third time. She
did not excuse herself when she left to answer it.
This had not been his intention, after he found a clever way to
release himself from confinement. He had not meant to return to
her, take up where they had left off. He had been quite
devastated to hear of the events that had occurred while he was
locked up. Afterward, during the long hours he spent awake in his
cell, he had mostly thought about how he would disappear after he
freed himself, never see her again.
Then it had occurred to him that this sort of betrayal could only
mean one of two things: one, she cared about him, or two, she
cared nothing bout him at all, and had staged everything to this
point as a way to achieve her own ambitions, murky and undefined
as they were. Did she seek reconciliation with her daughter, her
husband? Was she manipulating them in order to take Sydney, force
her to bend to her own will? Even he couldn't remember what the
point was anymore.
But that one possibility, the either/or, began to haunt even the
hours he spent asleep, and when he became free again, he let
himself be tracked down by someone carrying a message from her.
Then he had found himself yet again on the only road he could
take to the only destination he could seek, determined to
discover the answer. And after the weeks that had passed since
their reunion, he had not yet found it.
This discovery had not done much to make the answer clear;
perhaps, however, it had made the answer irrelevant.
4.
He gestured at the
glass of wine on the table that was intended for her. She took
her seat and stared at him expectantly.
He slid the paper across the table at her, mimicking Sloane's
earlier gesture. "Did you know?"
She did not answer, instead studying the paper; she read it once,
then again. "Where did you get this?" she murmured, as
if he had brought her a particularly interesting artifact.
"It doesn't matter."
She glanced up. "Arvin Sloane."
"Yes."
She leaned back in her chair, took a drink. "I don't
understand. You went to see him?"
"Answer my question and I'll answer yours."
"Well, of course it's not true. If it was true-Jesus, you
think I would have--" She laughed. "I'm sorry to
disappoint you, but there has only been one. I think I would
remember otherwise," she said carefully. "God. How
could you think--?"
Her manner was disturbing, too light to be anything but an act.
"To answer your question, then, yes, I did go to see
Sloane."
"Why?"
"It doesn't matter anymore."
5.
He shouldn't have
cared enough to spare her, but he did.
It likely wouldn't have mattered anyway. She would have been gone
in the morning if he had not done her the courtesy of leaving
first. He had seen the recognition wash over her face when she
first read the names. That moment of weakness had absolved her,
where this particular matter was concerned, at least.
Before he left, he paged through the folder, the last assignment
she would ever issue.
And with that, she absolved herself where another matter was
concerned.
An eye for an eye, a peace offering. Unless this had been her
plan all along, and this had all been contrived in order to have
him carry out what she couldn't finish thirty years ago. He
wouldn't be surprised if that were true.
He locked the door behind him when he left. He walked away
quickly, his eyes fixed on the sidewalk, humming a familiar tune.
I am the son, and the heir, of nothing in particular...
---
the end