Disclaimer - I'm a penniless little girl. I own nothing, including Passions. Please don't sue.
Author's Note - This fic was written as a challenge for LiveJournal's passionsnbc. The challenge was to write about Alistair Crane's murder, a murder in which the murderer would always be unknown. We were allowed to hint at the culprit, though, which is what I did. ;)
"Mondays"
It was a Monday. This seemed wrong to Noah Bennett, somehow. Mondays were harbingers of doom, gloom, and another five days of work. Mondays were gray and dismal, depressing one's soul from the first blaring of the morning alarm clock.
But that Monday, the sun pierced brightly through the fluffy white clouds decorating the azure sky. Little birds soared through the air, chirping of the jubilation felt all around the world as the citizens of Harmony took a day off of work to celebrate and be glad. Yes, it was a joyous day in the little town of Harmony – in the entire world – for Alistair Crane was dead.
The news of Alistair's death had first broken the previous Friday. Noah had been at the grocery store that evening, picking up some chicken noodle soup for his flu-stricken stepmother when he'd wound up in line between two gossiping brunettes. They'd been spurting forth some tale about Alistair and a bathtub that Noah had been quite sure he did not want to hear when the word "dead" had flown to his disbelieving ears. Ivy's soup forgotten, Noah had dashed to the Crane mansion, where the servants' excited greetings and Fox's enthusiastic embrace had told him all he'd needed to know.
Over the weekend, the circumstances surrounding Alistair's sudden demise had slowly begun to seep out to the public. Around four in the afternoon, the police said, one of Alistair's maids had found the all-powerful patriarch dead in the bathtub from – and this was what Noah loved best – poisoned bubble bath.
Finding out your archenemy has died? Roughly fifty dollars in snack foods, beer, and streamers. Finding out your archenemy routinely takes vanilla-scented bubble baths? Priceless.
Judging from the joking and laughing going on around him, Noah guessed that the rest of Harmony agreed with him. Behind him, Ethan and Fox were expressing, in tones bitter from years of emotional and psychological abuse, their hope that the toxic vanilla fumes had taken a tortuously slow time to suffocate the old bastard. Meanwhile, to his right, the recently reinstated Chief of Police – his father, Sam – was confiding in low tones to Martin and TC how the Harmony Police Department's façade of making Alistair Crane's murder its number one priority was just that – a façade. "I mean, really," Sam was saying, "who gives a damn that Alistair's dead?"
Noah wholeheartedly agreed with his father's sentiment. Alistair Crane had put his family through a living Hell. He'd fired Sam, held Ethan and Gwen under his thumb while allowing Theresa to tug away at his older half-brother, and sat back and watched as that piece of shit, Spike, had turned Jessica from a troubled teen into a drugged-up whore. He only wished that he could shake hands with Alistair's killer and congratulate him on a job well done. However, staring across the Cranes' living room at the young blonde tenderly smoothing her grandfather's snowy-white hair, Noah knew that there was one person who would disagree with Sam.
Cautiously approaching his girlfriend, Noah stopped a few feet short of Fancy in case, in her anger, she decided to try to strike him for the blatant lie perched on the tip of his tongue. "I'm sorry," he offered, forcing the words out in a low voice so as to prevent anyone from overhearing his blasphemous declaration. Truth be told, though, Noah was sorry – for Fancy. He loved her with all of his heart, and he hated seeing her in pain. As for Alistair, Noah only hoped that Satan was back in hell where he belonged.
When Fancy did not respond to him, Noah stepped closer, placing a loving hand on her shoulder. "Fancy?" he asked, fearful that she was angry with him again. Fancy stopped messing Alistair's hair and instead began straightening his tie, and Noah had a feeling that she was trying to prevent herself from crying.
"He was always there for me," she whispered, her voice raw from hours spent sobbing over her loss. "Whenever I needed someone to talk to, or a shoulder to cry on, he was there. He was always there." Noah pulled Fancy close, offering his own shoulder to the younger blonde. He felt her hot tears seep through his shirt onto his bare skin, and Noah suddenly understood why she'd never been able to believe any of the deplorable accusations against her grandfather.
Sniffling, Fancy straightened up, staring down at Alistair, lying in his mahogany casket, she added, "But he was never going to let us be together."
The words themselves were not offensive to Noah. Au contraire, they were true – Alistair would have died, no pun intended, before allowing Noah and Fancy to continue being a couple for much longer. He'd already started to drive a wedge between the two before his death.
The tone in which she'd said these words, one of regret and sadness, did not bother Noah, either. No, it was the expression on Fancy's face that unnerved him. It was a mixture of many emotions – he saw sorrow, regret, anger, and fear reflected in her lovely features all at once. But the one emotion that shone brighter than all of the others combined was that of guilt.
Noah had little time to reflect on this, however, because the expression was fleeting, gone in an instant. Fancy turned back to him, wiping the remaining tears from her eyes. "I don't think I can stand this anymore," she said, gesturing to the wake in progress around her. "Let's go get something to eat." Without waiting for his response, she headed towards the kitchen.
Noah didn't move, his feet frozen in place. He looked from Alistair's corpse to Fancy's retreating back several times, as if willing himself to forget what he'd just witnessed moments earlier. Fancy, realizing that Noah wasn't following her, stopped, and turned around. "Are you coming?" she asked, tilting her head questioningly.
"Yeah," Noah responded, willing his feet to carry him the short distance to the kitchen. His feet felt like they had anchors chained to them, however, and not even thoughts of the Crane cook's delectable double-chocolate cake could free them from their bondage.
It suddenly felt every bit the Monday that it was.