Summary: Post 1.10 | Oscar is in their life now. Three people. Three entwined lives. All miserable.
I Was Tricked Into Believing You Are The Only One For Me (But I Can See Now My Lies Mirrored In Yours)
Jane.
She wonders what kind of dreams she used to dream before, when she was that other woman, hair long, skin unblemished, sleeping next to man she'd promised to spend the rest of her life with. She doesn't dream much now, not for the past six month, from that day she walked up naked in Times Square. She can count on one hand the number of times she remembers actually dreaming. She wonders if that was what it was like for her before, if some people are just made that way, made to spend their nights in a dark, empty abyss.
She remembers that first dream, the first time he'd violated her subconscious, the man she has come to know as Oscar, the man whose ring she once wore, the man with the ornate tree tattoo on his forearm. He'd invaded her sleep, found his way through every crevice of her sleeping mind, of her life as she slept, much like the other man, the man whose name she had made a part of her skin, had invaded her every waking moment, found his way to every moment of her conscious life.
It had all been clear at the beginning, a defined barrier between the two worlds, between the two men. The man with the tree tattoo came when she closed her eyes, in that world that she knew nothing about except that she was someone's fiancé, engaged to be married. That had been his world, a world she knew very little about, as mysterious as her present, an anchor in a time she can never return to, probably never remember, but a time that existed nonetheless.
The man with the blue eyes and unrelenting glare, he existed in the other world. In the world where she was an enigma, a woman with no name and no past, a murky future defined by what strangers deem allowed. In a world where her body holds puzzles that are capable of unlocking dangerous secrets, where she had no say in how this body is used or what it is used for, this man was the only thing that had kept her grounded, kept her anchored.
But those worlds no longer exist in parallel, separated by the one thing she can control. Those boundaries no longer exist. The collision had been shattering, erasing any barrier, any clear definition, and it brought her dream world into her real world. And nothing has been the same since. Now, when she closes her eyes, she cannot tell the difference between the two men. When she closes her eyes and sees arms wrapping around her and holding her close, when she expects to see the tree tattoo on the inside of his arm, she is surprised to see instead the mysterious tattoo written in Thai on Kurt's arm. When she dreams of a steady heart beating softly and looks up, expecting to find the warm hazel eyes she usually finds there, she finds herself staring deep in an ocean of blue.
And now, in her waking hours, when she slips out at night, when her phone buzzes with a time and an address and she sneaks out, she goes to meet him. She goes to meet Oscar. Those clandestine rendezvous are now his. Her secrets are shared with him now, her biggest secret being him. And when they meet, when he takes her hand, touches her, she doesn't know how she should react to his touch, to his skin against hers. She doesn't know if she should pull back or not. She doesn't know how she should feel about the feel of him against her. She knows how she would have reacted if this were a dream, she knows how the other her would react, how she would feel, but does that mean she should too? Should she welcome his touch, find warmth and comfort in it just because she did so once before? Should she try to find that feeling again, seek it out, fake it?
Would she be doing it for herself, trying to bring that woman back? Or would she be doing it for him? She sees the way he looks at her, and it is a look she had only been used to see in blue, never in hazel.
She feels uneasy, a woman stuck in a whirlwind between two worlds, every time he takes her hands in his. She balances between the two worlds, swaying back and forth, as the two fight each other, struggling for dominance. And she is stuck in between, neither here nor there, neither that woman nor this. The longer she stays awake, the less she knows, and the longer she sleeps, the moe painful her dreams become, as blue mixes with hazel, and she loses her grasp on both, lies threading on both sides. And she is stuck in between, holding on to anything, losing everything.
Oscar.
He's not a man who flirts with fairytales. He never dreamt that their lives would ever be normal. The white picket fence, the swing set and the minivan were never in their future. But at least, they would have had a future, that much he had allowed himself to dream of.
But now, all he can dream of is getting to see her, and not just watch her from a dark corner half a block away. At night, when its' dark and quiet and there's no one around, when even his demons have gone to sleep, he sometimes allows himself a different kind of dream, a dream where the ring he now wears around his neck is still on her finger, sometimes even joined with another. He sometimes allows himself to dream of the way she used to look at him, sometimes when she is standing right in front of him, he closes his eyes and tries to unearth that look, but when he opens them again, it is replaced with this new one, the one the woman in front of him, the woman with the tattooed skin who call herself Jane, looks at him. A look of wariness, misplaced confidence, one that wavers between mistrust and cautiousness. He hates that look.
He hates that look because he knows she is capable of another. And not just as the woman he had once proposed to, he knows that this new woman is also capable of another because he has seen it given to another man. It may have been months since, but he knows it is still in her some where.
He waits for her on the rooftop, anxious, because even though she has shown up every time since that first time, he is still waiting for that day she chooses she has had enough. He stands at the edge of the rooftop and watches her approach the building below.
She shoves her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket, something she does a lot, a defence mechanism, and she has plenty. He tries to smile, a pathetic attempt as he feels himself reaching deeper into nothingness. She's gone, he reminds himself, even as she stands right in front of him, looking at him, he knows she doesn't see him anymore.
Only the mission, he tells himself, reprimands himself, only the mission.
"You're being followed," he tells her.
"I know," she replies.
"He's been doing that a lot lately," he adds.
"I know," she repeats.
"You should find a way to make him stop," he says.
"Why?" she asks, "haven't you been doing the same thing for months?"
He clenches his jaw, swallows hard, and as much as it hurts, that's when he sees her. Those are the moments when she is mostly like her. "That's different," he says.
"Yes, because at least I know he's there," she says, "you were doing it without my knowing."
"That's not -" he says and she laughs.
"What? It's ok when you violate my privacy but no one else is allowed to do it?" she says humorously.
"I was just doing my job, following your orders," he says angrily.
"And he's just doing his," she argues, "he's also got a boss who gives him orders." She knows her words are harsh, too harsh, unnecessarily piercing, but she's tired of being pulled back and forth by everyone, tired of being told what team to play for, whose trust to gain and whose to lose. Tired of not being in control of her own life.
And she reminds him more and more of the woman he was in love with. Is still very much in love with.
"Just be careful," he relents, "find a way… you never know who to trust right now. You don't know if they still trust you." She scoffs at him, shaking her head, she turns around and walks away.
He tries to call after her, stopping before the name slips. He cannot call her by her real name. This has always been part of the plan, her plan. It would be too dangerous if she found out her real name, her true identity. It would be even more dangerous if anyone found that out.
And he can't call her by the name she calls herself now, the name they gave her. He cannot call her Jane. She is not Jane. She is someone who doesn't exist anymore.
He watches her leave, mission still on track. That is all that matters. Maybe tonight he will dream of her, maybe when he closes her eyes he will see his fiancé, the one with the long hair and the ring on her finger, or maybe he will dream of this new woman, skin covered in tattoos, anger and betrayal swimming in her eyes and a mission that took away his other dream.
Kurt.
He drops heavily into the bar stool. It squeaks under his weight, wobbling slightly with a loose screw on the side. He sighs and stares ahead of him, waiting for the bartender to find his way to him.
"What'll it be?" he finally asks, greeting him with a warm smile and gentle look, a trademark of Hal's.
"What's the strongest thing you've got?" Kurt says dryly.
"What is it you're trying to forget?" Hal leans towards him.
Kurt laughs, a thick, menacing rumble through his chest and he thinks, screw it. "A dream," he replies.
Hal shakes his head and reaches under the bar. "Damn, son, those are the hardest," he says, "never heard, in all my years, of a drink strong enough to make you forget those," he says as he pours the dark liquid into the clear glass, "how about something easier? A fight with your girl? A crappy day at the office? Those I can handle," Hal passes him the drink.
Kurt gives him a half hearted smile and signals for him to leave him the bottle. Hal nods. Anyone else he would have refused, but he knows Kurt, has known him long enough to know he wouldn't do anything stupid, and that he wouldn't be here if things weren't really really bad. A dream, Hal shakes his head, what has the kid gotten himself into?
Hal's question is answered almost immediately when a tall, green eyed woman walks into his bar and finds a seat next to Kurt. He looks between them, feels the tension, the awkwardness, and he feels the need to step back and pulls away, a suffocating force that he cannot deny.
She sits next to him, silently, and he does not turn to look at her, a newly adopted habit of his. Ambivalence, avoidance, as much as it hurts, it pains him even more to look. He stares at his drink, trying to find that answer, the forgetfulness, in the perfect ripples that form as he spends it in his hand. And she continues to sit quietly.
He downs his drink, clenching his jaw as the bitter liquid burns a path through him and reaches for the bottle, pouring himself another.
"So, you're following me now?" he says bitterly.
"No, that's your thing, apparently," she says.
"How'd you find me?" he asks, glancing briefly from the side of his eye before returning to search into his glass.
"Your sister," she says.
"You called my sister?" he asks angrily, looking up from his drink for a moment.
"No, Kurt," she spits, her anger gladly matching his, "your sister called me. She's worried about you."
He shakes his head and laugh, a laugh devoid of any amusement, of any humour. "She shouldn't have done that," he says.
"Well, she did," Jane repeats.
"You didn't have to come here," he says.
They sit quietly for another moment, a mumble escaping his lips that she cannot quite register, and he does not bother repeat the whispered apology.
"You haven't told her, have you?" she asks him then.
"Believe it or not, Jane, I don't talk to my sister about my cases," he says.
"Well, you weren't so by the rules when you thought I was Taylor," she says and his head snaps at that, and he turns to look at her, really look at her, for the first time in weeks.
"That's different," he hisses.
She shakes her head and it's her turn to laugh mirthlessly. "Of course it is," she says.
"What are you doing here, Jane?" He asks again, ignoring his drink and staring at her, maybe that's where the answer is. And her green eyes are more green than he remembers. Or maybe they've always been this green but he's forgotten. The last time he had really seen them was that evening on the sidewalk, before everything had fell apart.
"I told you, Sarah's worried about you," she says, and so am I, she wants to add but bites her lips before the words betray her.
"Well, I'm fine," he says, "you can leave if you want to."
She bites her lip, her reply ready on her tongue, equally harsh, equally scarring, and she's tried. She's tired of this back and forth, tired of this endless struggle. She's tired of tossing blame and anger back and forth.
"And if I don't want to?" she finally says, her hands twisting in her lap and his fingers itch to reach for her, to try to hang on to something from that shattered dream.
"It's a free country," he says, and she drops her head for a moment. He looks for Hal then and gets another glass. Silently, he pours her a drink, bringing the glass close to her.
She takes it, throwing it back, ignoring the stinging painful taste it leaves down her throat, all the way to her stomach. She puts her glass down, and he is ready with the refill.
"You once said that we're in this together," he says quietly.
She nods.
"You still believe that?" he asks.
And she nods again, "I want to."
"You could have just come to me," he says, flirting with the last of his drink, "before all this. You didn't have to go through all this. You could have just come to me and I would have believed you. I wold have helped."
She knows he is telling the truth. She knows him well enough by now to know he is. It's commendable, it's honourable. It's Kurt Weller. It's why she chose him. It's why his name is forever inked on her back.
"No, I couldn't," she admits.
He doesn't know the woman she was before, he barely knows the woman she is now, but he knows that if she believes that it's true then it must be. He just wonders if it will be worth it in the end. The sacrifices that have been made. The sacrifices she chose to make. The sacrifices Oscar agreed to make. The sacrifices he himself has been forced to make. He wonders if all these sacrifices will be worth it in the end. If all these shattered dreams will ever get a chance to be repaired.