This is my first Ethina fic so be gentle and let me know if I should keep going. This was a nutty idea that I had when I was listening to this song by Sia called "I'm in here"...funny how those little bunnies can turn into a chapter story. I anticipate this having about a dozen or so chapters.
Chapter One
"We have two choices." Ethan cocked a smile as he adjusted the books, one in each hand, balancing them easily as he looked expectantly, his heart still entertaining an abundance of hope as he explained the choices. "Molly voted for 'Pride and Prejudice' but I'm not sure I can stomach the thought." Ethan held up the large hardbound maroon volume as if to show off the option in real physical form before he lowered the tome and raised the other with a gleam of mischief. "I on the other hand, sticking to my promises of classics, am submitting 'Treasure Island' as my official selection."
Ethan's voice dropped off and he waited a moment as if there was some preset amount of time that should be allotted before going on. All the wait his chipperness was waning as though that abundance of hope was being depleted with the flicker of disappointment that he tried to blink from his sight. "So I'm taking the vote now." His chuckle was soft, strained with the emotion he was holding back behind the fortress wall he built to shield just how deep his still waters ran. He was determined to keep the dark tides of doubt and fears hidden. "All for 'Pride and Prejudice' give an, Aye."
There was another pause, mostly for effect before he swallowed back the shimmy that sent splinters of lightening through his already cracked heart. "If you'll be abstaining again than I have no choice but to pass my selection as our next big read, luv." Again silence was all that greeted him. " ' Treasure Island', it is." Ethan set "Pride and Prejudice" down on the bedside table and gingerly slid his fingers over Kristina's pale motionless hand that rested inches from his knee against the soft white of the comforter. His voice dropped to a whisper as his hand lingered over hers. "That's alright, luv. I'll be here to listen when you've found your voice." He promised her.
And in a heartbeat the moment was gone, swept under Ethan's need for stoicism and the ability to lighten the room. He wasn't sure if he was trying to bolster her spirit or his anymore as he sank back in the chair and got comfortable. Ethan opened the book as he did every night and had for the last three months. He licked his lips before he got started. "Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17_ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof..."
"We have two choices..."
His voice floated in over the storm ravaged waves, a beacon in the night, bleary at first but soon booming with promise. She'd been mesmerized by the surrounding seas for what seemed like days, feet dipping off the impressive front porch into the murky waters below, when she finally heard him again.
"Molly voted for 'Pride and Prejudice' but I'm not sure I can stomach the thought."
A smile lit her lips as she realized the culprit in a hazy shade of dulled thoughts still fighting to find some sense of sobriety. It was hard to think, hard to move, hard to rationalize the very idea of how time passed for her now.
But that didn't matter.
Ethan was back.
Kristina climbed to her feet, the creaking white washed boards of the sea locked cottage like prison scratching her bare feet as she spun around and headed inside to see if she could find him. Through out the vacant house there were mirrors, mirrors that held images not reflections. She would have called them windows but they never behaved as such. Kristina stopped, her smile growing as her eyes locked onto an oval mirror with gold encrusted molding to frame it in what she'd deemed the observatory.
She called it such because their was no roof and it was usually here that she could sit and look at the stars should she be longing for another word or touch in her loneliness. It was here over a bricked up fireplace that Ethan's image came to her in the mirror there.
"I, on the other hand, sticking to my promises of classics am submitting 'Treasure Island' as my official selection."
A laugh escaped her lips as she heard his selection and found it perfectly fitting. She gave a light shake of her head as he paused. "Sounds more like you." She chuckled as she approached the glass. "Adventure, treasure, intrigue." She leaned against the low fireplace and let out a slow sigh of disappointment at the barrier between. "I'm sure it's a lovely story,"
"So I'm taking the vote now."
She leaned lazily as her smile returned, her fingers now ever so gently dancing over the glass as if she could somehow get closer to him.
"All for 'Pride and Prejudice' give an, Aye."
Kristina scoffed. "You'll get no Aye from me. Let Molly read it." She teased him.
"If you'll be abstaining again than I have no choice but to pass my selection as our next big read, luv."
"You can call it abstaining. I call it a coma."
" ' Treasure Island', it is."
Kristina's smile slowly faded as her reality began to sink in again. She felt her eyes drawn to Ethan as ghostly wisps of warmth flittered over her hand and she flattened it against the glass, closing her eyes so that she could pretend in a tear soaked moment that it was real, that she could really feel him. That there was this connection, some connection, any connection.
"That's alright, luv. I'll be here to listen when you've found your voice."
"I know you will," Kristina ran her tongue over her teeth, curling her fingers as though she could grasp his hand, but it wasn't working and soon it was gone replaced with the comfort of Ethan's voice as he started the first chapter. Kristina turned slowly until her back rested against the wall, letting her imagination swell as his melodic tale warmed her.
He may never have realized but he had become her tether to reality, the only thing that was keeping her sane in this mad house that had become her mind. He grounded her, but it was still a fight for sanity. She'd been in this hell for three months, but having him with her made it bearable. He wasn't the only the one that visited but he was the only one aside from her family that visited her daily.
"I followed him in, and I remember observing the contrast the neat, bright doctor, with his powder as white as snow and his bright, black eyes and pleasant manners, made with the coltish country folk, and above all, with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours, sitting, far gone in rum, with his arms on the table. Suddenly he-the captain, that is-began to pipe up his eternal song:
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
Sam McCall smiled as she leaned against the wall just past the door frame to Krissy's bedroom, her shoulder and elbow helping her to maintain her sideways slant as she listened to the passion in Ethan's deliverance of "Treasure Island". Any doubts about Ethan and Kristina's relationship had slipped away over the last three heartbreaking months. She'd watched his facade of friendship crumbling, the years between them no longer an acceptable deterrent. "He's got a lovely singing voice." Sam broke from her guilt at her part in keeping the two apart to glance to her left, seeing that Molly was now at her side. Sam pushed off the wall and wound her arm around her little sister, letting a squeeze of a hug pass between them as she nodded gently to Molly's observation.
"I suppose I can forgive him not taking my reading suggestion." A light laugh escaped from Molly, but the tremors of it were barely felt as Sam hugged her close.
"I think he likes the pace of adventures." Sam sighed as she heard a hint of footsteps light behind them. She turned in time to see the live-in nurse, Simone Andrews, making her always punctual appearance to tend to Kristina. Sam tugged Molly out of the way to allow the lithe brunette access to the door. "Excuse us." She kept her voice low trying not to disturb anyone as she led Molly away from their sister's room, Ethan's voice fading to the background.
"How was school?" Sam asked partially out of curiosity and partly to get their minds off the ever present reality that Kristina may never wake up. Sam had already choked back the tickle that always seemed to stir in her brain whenever she saw Simone, the constant reminder that Krissy wasn't just sleeping. Sam felt Molly tense beside her, not answering the question as she heard Sonny and Alexis's latest battle drift into earshot.
Sam instantly steered them towards Molly's room, anger welling up as she heard the muffled murmurs. Molly's mind was now no where near the answer to her question as Sam closed the door behind them and looked to her little sister's falling face. "I don't understand why they can't get along. You would think that Kristina's condition would bring them closer together." Molly whispered verging on tears as Sam gingerly moved to console her. "I know Sweety," Sam whispered as she hugged her closely.
"Until you prove to me that that your out of the life you have no business here, Sonny." Alexis seethed as she met Sonny's eyes in a tense stand against everything that came to contribute to Kristina's current condition.
"It's not something you just step out of one day, Alexis." Sonny's retort was just as empowered as Alexis's conviction, the both of them passionately stating their cases as guilt settled heavy over the both of them.
Alexis wasn't having this run around that Sonny kept giving her. She'd seen first hand just deep the bullet of his life lay as she watched her daughter gunned down in front of her, retribution for something that her father did to Zacchara's, though that was never proven, nor the gunman found breathing. The PCPD found a whole pile of evidence that linked the tragedy to a rash of burglaries and attributed the shooting to a local thug that had recently been found murdered.
While Mac and Dante wanted to pursue the Zacchara's as an angle they were getting heavy opposition from the courts to wrap up the investigation with the solid evidence that they had and simply to follow the leads on this new murder. Sonny had another coming if he thought he was going to walk into her house, leaving a trail of body guards so that he could visit his daughter. A daughter that she felt lost all connections to him the moment she almost died in her mother's arms because of him.
This was a weekly, sometimes daily battle on the verge of a restraining order that Alexis had recently put into the works when it became clear that Sonny wasn't going to drop trying to see Kristina and certainly wasn't going to try and change his ways. "Take your goons and get out. This conversation is over." Alexis got out between clenched teeth.
"It's not over, but I'll go for now." Sonny conceded finally as he caught a glimpse of Dante walking up the front walk.
Ethan had just emblazoned his way through the third chapter when Simone walked into Kristina's bedroom already palming a couple of syringes from the pockets of her ivory scrub top. "Don't mind me." She told him with soft disarming smile, quietly making her way to dispense the medicine to her comatose patient. "That doesn't sound like 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' ", did you finish it last night?" Simone asked quietly as Ethan had folded the book on his lap awaiting her departure.
She uncapped the first syringe and slowly began to dispense the medicine into Kristina's port as she looked to Ethan. "We did." He flashed that charming smile that came so easily and let out an easy breath. "It's 'Treasure Island' " Ethan wasn't sure why, for there was no real reason in the last three months that she'd done one thing out of the ordinary, but no matter how many times he passed it off as the nurse representing Kristina's state he knew that she unnerved him on another level. It was just an inkling of a feeling but it was enough. "What's that?" He gave the slightest of head nods towards the medicine that she was pumping into Kristina.
"Just the usual nightly vitamin solution." She replied without a worry in her voice.
Ethan still couldn't put his finger on what it was about the woman that was peaking his well honed instincts, but he'd been trying to figure it out. He'd checked her impeccable references. He'd looked into any connections she might have with anyone that was on the outs with Sonny and his organization. And despite all the digging there was nothing to scream that he was right. There was nothing to even hint that he was right. Still every time she walked into the room for this nightly ritual he felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck.
Ethan popped the book back open when Simone looked over her shoulder and smiled as if to say 'Please, don't let me stop you.' He didn't want to carry on with a strained conversation even if he could fake the pleasantness. "The neighborhood, to our ears, seemed haunted by approaching footsteps; and what between the dead body of the captain on the parlor floor and the thought of that detestable blind beggar hovering near at hand and ready to return, there were moments when, as the saying goes, I jumped in my skin for terror. Something must speedily be resolved upon, and it occurred to us at last to go forth together and seek help in the neighboring hamlet. No sooner said than done. Bare-headed as we were, we ran out at once in the gathering evening and the frosty fog."
She was lost in the comfort of his voice, having slid down the wall to rest against the hearth, the mirror now situated on the floor so that she could still see him. When the lull happened she wasn't immediately concerned, but a chill soon began to creep into the room, a wave of stiff frigid air rolling in from the seas beyond. Kristina hugged her arms around her with a shiver and waited for the story to continue, praying that Ethan could breath some warmth into the room somehow.
All hope for reprieve from the cold soon began to abate as Kristina saw a flicker of a ghostly shape shimmy in and out of site through the large bay windows that bore a view of the front porch. "The rain bringer." Kristina whispered in terror. Any doubt that the shade was but a hallucination was soon lost as she heard the terror shrill whisper of the horror's voice.
"Don't mind me."
"No." Kristina felt like her world was about to shatter. She knew what was coming and it scared her to no end. She scrambled to her feet, fumbling to pick up the mirror that held Ethan's visage as she whirled, the chill going straight through her as the first pelt of black rain began to fall. The spatter of black landed a few inches away from her feet and her gaze was wrenched upward in blind terror that the deluge was at hand.
Kristina hugged the mirror to her chest as she ran from the observatory, now flooding with the torrents of rain that fell at her back through the open ceiling but no matter how fast she moved she could never outrun the flood that came with it. The black rain was like nothing she'd ever seen before, felt, it was like death, just a kiss of it, just enough to send her scrambled half in and out of life. She couldn't do this again. By the time she made it to the bathroom the water was already up to her waist and her sobs were coming so hard that she could barely force in a breath.
It was in that moment of terror, the moment of panic that always came before the inevitable that she looked blearily to Ethan in the mirror. She screamed his name, praying that somehow he heard her, that he could stop this. But her voice fell on deaf ears as his voice soon boomed mockingly over the storm raining in all around her.
"The neighborhood, to our ears, seemed haunted by approaching footsteps; and what between the dead body of the captain on the parlor floor and the thought of that detestable blind beggar hovering near at hand and ready to return, there were moments when, as the saying goes, I jumped in my skin for terror. Something must speedily be resolved upon, and it occurred to us at last to go forth together and seek help in the neighboring hamlet. No sooner said than done. Bare-headed as we were, we ran out at once in the gathering evening and the frosty fog."
Kristin felt the undertow drag her down into the icy waters from hell and slowly felt what semblance of consciousness she had been clinging to slip from her grasp once more.