Most stories began with the age-old cliché of "boy-meets-girl."

Of course, when had anything about her ever been normal?

She really could laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

She supposes it really shouldn't surprise her, that she's ended up like this.

With him.

In any other story, their relationship would have fallen into such strict, commonplace story devices as "love at first sight" or "happily-ever after." The redemption of the troubled "bad boy."

Or the emotionally broken, not-quite-fearless woman, for that matter.

But story arcs like that had no place in their…whatever the proper term for it was.

She doesn't know why she keeps coming back. To this…thing they have. Any other woman would tell her it's because she's in love.

She refuses to label it as such.

"Love" implies something normal. "Love" implies something understandable, something that fits into a little box with a neat, specific meaning. Something healthy.

Something that doesn't destroy everything she is.

Except, in an unfathomably twisted way, it makes her feel normal. She has someone who is on the same page as her. Someone who is actually capable of besting her. Someone who, against her better judgment (or her worse judgment, or any judgment at all, really), makes her feel like just a young, human girl with feelings she can't control. Someone who makes her feel as helpless and naïve as her gender is supposed to be in this day and age.

She's never been beaten at her own game before.

She's never let herself become emotionally dependent on anyone.

But with every good-bye, she finds herself metaphorically pulling him closer. With every scrap of physical contact that ends in the clashing of teeth and nails and hardened skin-both literal and metaphorical-she finds herself softening. And with every subsequent, intoxicating instance of release, she finds her heart binding itself more and more inextricably to whatever stands in the place of his.

And so on and so forth up the never-ending spiral staircase that has become their pattern of interaction.

It crosses her mind that, if it were anyone else, she would exercise nothing less than the coldest, most disgusted judgment.

But in coming to him, she has become the very type of woman she has always disdained. And he…he hasn't changed at all. He never will. She meant that when she said it, and she doesn't see herself ever changing her opinion on that particular matter. Everything they are is toxic: to each other, to themselves, to those around them.

They aren't the couple people are supposed to root for.

She doesn't want to be rooted for.

But she doesn't really know what she does want, except that she wants him.

God knows why.

And, in spite of everything he is and everything she is and everything both of them want to be, he wants her, too.

She had long given up on the idea that happiness existed. But his ability to play her game, to create the emotional paradox of making her feel both wanted and despised, both inferior and exceptional, gives her the closest thing she could imagine feeling.

Maybe he's just charismatic. Maybe some dark part of her finds God complexes or mental instability sexy. Maybe the universe is getting her back for refusing to be the polite, civil, demure, innocent girl people want her to be. Maybe the fact that he judges her based on her sardonic wit and abrasive personality, instead of her supposed sexual indiscretions or subversions of her gender role, merely provides her mind with the newness it has been so long starved for, to the point that she desperately latches onto him in order to preserve this outside perception of herself that is so refreshingly different.

She can feel herself breaking, but she can't bring herself to care enough to stop it.

She doesn't want to.

And this scares her. This man puts her in a place that is dark and unfamiliar and horrifying. He makes her helpless. He makes her realize just how damaged she really is. He makes her feel because some perverted part of her brain or her heart or whatever it is that's controlling her can't let go of the idea that he's just as screwed up as she is.

And she hates him for it.

She hates him so much that she can't possibly hate him anymore.

And the even more frightening thing is that she knows he can't hate her, either.

He may be strange, but he is by no means completely unreadable. She sees the way he looks at her. She sees the odd expression that comes over his face, the way his posture changes whenever her name is brought up. She can feel it every time he caves and brings himself to touch her. She knows what he wants. And she knows that she'll never give it to him.

Which, in reality, is what he actually wants.

Which means, then, that she has no choice but to give him what he wants.

She has always been calm, calculating, smooth. And for the first time in her life, she has no clue what she's doing.

And, being the adventurous, risky woman she is, she sees this more as a cause to rejoice than to run away.

But, being the perceptive, intelligent woman she is, she knows this is inadvisable. It's gruesome, it's stupid, and it's cruel. And the only thing it will do is wear her down to nothing, if it doesn't destroy him first.

With every glance, every stroke of his face, every wrinkle in her dress that results from activities she normally wouldn't be ashamed to admit, she swears it will be the last time, and she knows he does, too.

But they're both too stubborn, and underneath their cynical exteriors, there is a dysfunctional optimist waiting to come out who insists that something good can come from this and that maybe they can make it work.

This is the absolute worst thing she can do to herself. It's by far the worst idea she's ever had in her whole life.

But she knows that her heart will break the moment she decides it's time to walk away.

And so much of the world-and so, so much of her-is already broken that she can't allow that to happen.

So she treks to his flat in the dead of night.

And she knocks.

And, as he opens the door and lets her into his private space, she lets him, once more, for the [not] last time, into her life.

And the cycle begins again.

A/N: This is why I should not be allowed on the Internet. I discover new fandoms, and things like this happen when I should be being productive. I just needed fanfiction for this miniseries to exist. Title comes from a quote from the BBC's Jekyll.