Hello! I'm annoying, I know, but this came up on my mind this morning and couldn't get it out of my head. Hope you'll enjoy it
- xo, Mel
Carry on
"Mike…" Her tone was just above a whisper as she looked in front of her at the pale, skinny figure laying on the bed.
For weeks, she had been convinced that Briggs was hiding something, something big. But when she had decided to follow him on his umpteenth nightly sneak-out, she had expected everything but this.
Ducking down behind the black post mailbox on the street, she had seen him entering a suspicious apartment complex but never, ever in a billion years she would have thought that he was hiding Mike in a dirty, small flat. Illegal weapons, maybe. Tortured CI's. Even drugs. Certainly not Mike.
"How..."
She eyed him fully, taking into his appearance: he was lying down on the bed, wearing worn out blue jeans and only an open sweatshirt that showed his toned but rather skinnier torso. Spurts of light filtered through the blinds of the window above his head. His eyes, those baby blues that used to hold a twinkle, were shadowed by that gray opacity typical of sick people. His hair were longer and he looked like he hadn't shaved in a long time. His jaw was way more defined than she remembered, thanks to the loss of weight he had clearly suffered during that time: his cheekbones were poking firmly under his skin, resolving into sunken cheeks that made him look like a zombie.
He groaned, pulling himself up slightly, and rested his head against the wall, while palming his side. She quickly took a step forward, but stilled when he licked his lips to talk.
He had his eyes half open, staring at an undefined point behind her.
"Paul brought me here as soon as I was able to breathe on my own. He's been taking care of me ever since." He simply reasoned, leaving out the incredible story of how the nurses and the doctors had been able to grab him by the hair and pull him back from the dead, resuscitating him.
Paige covered her mouth and held back a sob.
"You're alive", she stated. She wanted to touch him, be sure it was him. Feel his pulse, his scent, his heart beating loud and rhythmically in his chest. She didn't want to just see him alive, she wanted to feel him alive. She had to.
She was about to speak , when Mike swung his legs over the side of the bed and slowly got up.
"Not thanks to you, for sure. You here to finish the job?"
He tested his feet on the barely carpeted floor and used the wall as a support to turn around, facing her.
He opened his arms wide, ignoring the deep and burning feeling at his side that signalled the distressed state his wound was going into.
"Go ahead,"
It had been like a cold shower with the window open in the middle of the night for Paige. Her whole body went still, as she stared into his unreadable eyes. He gave her a crooked grin. She let her hands fall at her side. He knew. Her shoulders fell and she held his emotionless stare. He mimicked her and let his arms fall at his sides.
"Yes, I know" Mike said, as if he had been able to read her mind. "You ratted me out."
"No,"she tried to defend herself, knowing full well there was no getting out of this. He knew.
Mike ignored her reply and took a step closer; his eyes never left hers as he spat words out at her like a snake spraying venom out of its teeth. His words were sharp, calibrated with held back resentment, bitterness and yes, hatred. But what hurt her the most was that beyond all that facade he was putting up, she could read right into his soul –where there once was nothing but care and affection for her- the deep and unsustainable nuance of disappointment and delusion.
"How could you?"
She couldn't stand that, but she had to keep her dignity and her pride just like she had back at Graceland, where everybody looked at her like a misfit. Like she was the reason the house was falling apart.
Maybe she had caused the house to fall after all, but the foundations had been crumbling way before her disastrous mistake.
"D'you sleep with him too, uh? To get what you wanted?"
"Oh, don't even go there, Mike. I'm not the one who's slept his way up to-", he cut her off by holding his hand up.
"He had reasons to kill me for. Man, everybody did. Briggs. Johnny, even Dale for Christ's sake. But you, Paige? Out of all the people?"
He looked at her intensely and she couldn't quite understand if he was expecting her to give him an answer or to take it all like a guilty kid. She ran a hand through her hair.
"Mike..."
"You served me on a silver plate as a turkey on Thanksgiving!"
Mike rubbed his dark circled eyes and sighed.
"Gosh, I can't even look at you right now"
A slight grimace of disgust flashed on his face and she simply couldn't get herself to shut up anymore. The anger, the regret and the sadness she had kept all in for days and days decided to burst out. She had to take it all out and she had to do it now or she never would have.
"Well, now you get what I've been feeling all this time!" Paige yelled out at him, throwing her hands in the air. She was done sitting back and watch everybody use her as a punching bag. 'Even though you deserve it', the little voice in her head said, but she threw it aside, hiding it in the depths of her pride.
If looks could kill, Mike would've already have her buried deep in the ground. He clenched his fists at his sides and took another step closer.
"Ah, I see. So it was all planned out, uh? When you came by to help at the warehouse... all that shitty talk about good men, bad men and being sorry... what was it exactly that you were sorry for? Betraying me or for what you knew was going to come? For being the responsible of my murder?"
It was like a sucker punch in the guts. It stung, it hurt. She knew it was the truth: she had done that; she had betrayed him, the house, her morals. She had gone against her own beliefs and intentionally pushed a heartless, corrupted cop to kill the only person who had been close to her in that house. Who had been there for her at times of need, even if she had resented that. She knew what he was saying was true: she was the responsible of his murder. Well, non-murder, seeing as he was standing in front of her well and alive, skin and bones. Scolding her.
Paige felt like shit. She had been feeling like that since the very first moment she had realised what she had done. Selling Mike out to Sid would always be the biggest regret of her life: she hadn't been thinking clearly when she had made that decision, too confused by the anger and the sadness Lina's fate had caused her. She hadn't been able to keep her promise and so she had turned to the one man closest to the case: Mike. She had reversed all her faults and her frustrations on him and he had taken all of it, knowingly and unknowingly.
But if Lina's death had destroyed her, Mike's left her as a hollow doll, incapable of moving. Of speaking. Of living.
If Lina's death had made her feeling useless and furious, Mike's had made her miserable. All she could feel was this poignant feeling that had cut her breath away.
She hadn't been herself, she hadn't been rational. But she should have, 'cause the thought of Mike lying dead in a hospital bed, alone, because of her... it had made her sick to her stomach the moment she had voiced it out loud to Briggs. As soon as he had been out of the door, she had sunk to the floor and tried to wake up from that nightmare.
Only it wasn't a nightmare. It was reality. A cruel reality she had deliberately created herself.
"You might've as well killed me yourself. You, Paige.
I was not only wrong about trusting you, but I was also wrong on who you are: you're not brave, nor strong. You're weak. So poorly weak that you had to have somebody else do your dirty job because you didn't have the courage to look me in the eye and end my life!"
Paige hadn't even realised he had been standing there in silence while she reflected on his previous words until he spat the last part in her face, raising his voice. It startled her and made her angry at the same time.
She was angry because he was voicing what she had been trying to ignore all this time. She was angry because he was there, alive, and she couldn't touch him. But most of all, she was angry at herself for ever even thinking about wanting him dead. Because she had thought she wanted that.
She had thought, not wanted.
In a sudden rush in the heat of the moment, Paige drew her gun and pointed it at his face. Mike was taken by surprise and jumped back, cursing under his breath at the sudden shot of pain coming from his bullet wound which was slowly, but painfully healing. The meds he had taken hours before were starting to wear off and the reminder of that day was making its presence known to both of them. She glanced down at his bandage, worrying at the growing spot of blood spreading on the gauze. She tried not to show it, though, as she looked back up at him and found him raising his hands. Slowly, with uncertainty.
She could clearly see the wheels of his mind creating thoughts about how she was going to put a bullet into his brains right there in cold blood, without scruples. She decided to use that at her own credit, as to finally talk without him interrupting her.
"What ar-" She cut him off, titling her gun.
"Shut up, Mike. Just shut up,"
He closed his mouth, but held his chin high. His eyes were cold and heartless on her, as she tried not to let that affect her while she spoke. There had been words left unspoken in the air for way too long now.
"I didn't plan to murder you, Mike. I did not want Sid to kill you. Why do you think I'd stop him at Sylmar during the raid?"
"That could've been easily a cover up so I wouldn't fin-"
"Don't you even dare to say that!" She raised her voice this time. "I did not want you to die, as I did not want Lina to die. But she did and so did you. You both died because of me. I should've kept my promise to her and I should've kept my promise to Graceland not to get involved with roommates. I had to fix that, I had to fix my mistakes. I chose the worst way possible and that's on me. I tried to fix them by making the biggest mistake of my entire life and I swear... I swear to God, Mike: that day, I died with you."
Paige felt a warm wetness at the top of her cheeks, as her eyes welled up. The weight of her choices was still heavy on her back, but it was slowly sliding down on the floor. She fought with all her strength so not to let those tears fall in front of him.
Mike didn't even flinch. Not even one of his face muscles dared to move as she spoke: not even one slight hint of any kind of emotion he could've been feeling was shown. He was like made of stone.
"I regret that stupid decision every damn second of every damn day since the moment I gave Sid that damn name! I wish I could do it all over again. I wish I had never followed that lead to Sylmar and right now, I wish I had never even been assigned to Graceland. I've sunk like a stone and I brought you down with me: I'm so sorry for that. But we're not shining stars, we're human. We're not invincible and we make mistakes. We make choices –stupid choices- that ruin us all. But we're the same Mike, we both did stupid things..."
By the time she reached that point, her tears were running freely on her skin, glistening under the thin ray of light coming from the window behind his back. The sun had risen fully into the sky now, it was a new day and after this, she knew they'd be a new Paige and a new Mike, too. The question was: would they ever go back to normal?
"You burned Lina and faked her escape on what – I'm sure- was the darkest day of your life. I screwed you on the darkest day of my life, a day I'll damn for the rest of my time. But as hard as it may sound, we need to carry on and forget all this. Please. We have to get over and done with all this..."
"...end it, then."
The words lingered in the air for a few minutes. Paige's tears stopped running and she stared at him speechless, still gripping the gun in her hands. She squeezed the handle hard, as she processed what he had just said.
Mike stepped closer, as fast as his wounded body allowed him to. He curled his fingers around the gun barrel and neared it to his chest. The tip of the gun touched the space between his pecs, slightly angled towards the left side, where his heart rest. He fixed his eyes into hers, piercing her with his powerful stare.
She couldn't move. She held her breath, as he removed the gun trigger safety for her.
"End it, shoot me. Take what's left of my heart" he spoke, huskily, never leaving her eyes. "It sure won't hurt more than how your name hurt when it left Sid's lips".
Paige's hands trembled and he reached out to keep the gun in place, determined to go through with this and see how she'd react. 'He's punishing you, just like you deserve', said the insistent voice in her head.
It had been the closest he had come to tell her he loved her. And it was such a terribly bittersweet feeling: it had took them to end up like this to finally hear it and not to just be feeling it through kisses and midnight escapades in each other's rooms.
They stayed like that for what seemed like hours, even though it had barely been a few minutes. When Mike felt her hands coming to a halt, he slowly moved his down and straightened his back, ready to take it.
She thought about Sid and how he was still out there, satisfied with the way he had swept Mike off the Earth as a coffee stain on the kitchen counter. She thought about the mistrustful stare she was eyed with back at Graceland. She was about to lower the gun, when suddenly the thought of Lina's burning body irrupted in her mind. She thought about her clean face. She thought about her sister, about her parents, about all the girls that had been in her place before.
She closed her eyes, took a deep and shaky breath and let her finger press on the trigger as a single tear slid on the outline of her face.
Boom.
When she reopened her eyes, it seemed like the world had changed. She saw everything from a whole new, different angle and, if that was even possible, even more vividly.
The hole in the opposite wall was small and irregular, due to the swift movement she had made to change the aim of her shoot. It was just like her soul: holed, raw, freshly wounded. But with time, it could be fixed. It just took a lot of willpower, work and especially forgiveness. Something she was planning to win from the man in front of her.
Mike was standing in front of her in the same position as before she shot: he hadn't flinched, nor moved from his spot. His eyes were still scanning hers.
Paige lowered her gun and used the back of her hand to wipe her cheek, breaking their stare. Sniffling, she looked back at him and opened her arms exasperatingly.
"We both paid for our sins, Mike. Can we just... at least... pretend?"
For the first time since she had entered the place he had been hiding for what she guessed had been weeks now, Mike let the corner of his lips curl up into a cynic grin.
"Pretend? I can't. That's not who I am Paige and you should know that... better than anyone"
She nodded, eyeing him carefully.
"Neither can I... but I'm willing to try"
"I have my doubts", he murmured and laid his hands on her shoulders – for support, she guessed; he probably was getting tired from standing for so long. He had been severely wounded, after all.
He touched his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. She did the same, content with being able to breathe into his scent again.
"We're not the same, Paige. There was a time I might have thought we were... but we aren't."
Mike let his lips brush hers for barely a second, before quickly pulling away. She took a hold of the strips of his open hoodie and tried to keep him close, afraid he was going to disappear like a ghost come back to taunt and torment her.
"I didn't kill Lina; you killed me"
The words cut through her skin like sharp knives when he whispered them against her lips. She knew he wasn't simply referring to the fact that Sid had been able to stop his heart thanks to her tipping him off: it was she who had betrayed him, and that was what had truly killed him in every possible way.
It was her. Her.
He moved past her and towards the door, pulling up both the zip and the hood of his blue sweatshirt on the way – the one she had worn the morning after their first time making love, when she had tried to fix things between DJ and Zelanski: maybe he was wearing it as a symbol of their final closure or maybe he hadn't even noticed it was that one when he had thrown it on. Although, knowing Mike, the first option was more plausible.
Paige took his hand. Electricity shook through her as the tips of his fingers brushed against the palm of her hand: she curled her fingers around his and tugged slightly. She gripped onto his hand for dear life and, even though he withdrew it as easily as she had grabbed it, he stopped dead in his tracks.
Mike didn't turn around, but simply looked at the door in front of him. Was he hesitating?
"Don't, Mike... I need you"
His bitter chuckle let the last few tears she had left in her dry eyes roll down her long lashes and fall onto her sun kissed cheekbones. She knew she had messed up –really messed up- but she had been unconsciously and secretly praying he'd be indulgent and forgive her. Give her another chance.
"You know what's the saddest and most ridiculous side of this?"
Paige closed her eyes, ready to take another stinging slap in the face. She had emotionally bared herself in front of him but his response hadn't been the one she had hoped for.
"That even after all this, I'm still the only one." He cryptically said, clicking his tongue afterwards.
Paige opened her eyes and looked at him quizzically, afraid of what he must've meant. He turned his head and looked dead straight into her eyes.
"I'll always need you more than you need me"
Mike was gone as soon as he had let those words fly free in the air and surround Paige's soul like a chainsaw, destroying it into little, bleeding pieces that nobody would probably ever be able to glue back together.
He had forgiven her.
And that's what hurt the most.