When Maura got home she was confronted by a surreal scene... Nick standing in the sunlight pouring through the unshuttered windows, LaCroix standing smouldering before him in the same light, assuring him that given the choice he'd choose the "disease" over the "cure" because the cure seemed to be driving Nicholas to more sickness and less control than his true nature had ever managed to do. On the dining room table were two discarded syringes, a collection of empty and one mostly-full medicine bottle. And a wine bottle drained of blood.
"You can't stand that I'm not yours anymore," Nick was sneering. Unbelievably, LaCroix took another step into the light. His pale skin was beginning to discolor.
"You will always be mine, Nicholas, no mortal drug can change that. Though you may not belong to yourself much longer..." Not looking back, he observed, "Look, Nicholas, your true love has returned. Has she guessed she's been replaced?" And then he was gone. Nick shifted his attention, and defenses, to Maura.
She took a good look at Nick and shook her head in disgust. The most beautiful man she'd ever known was now disheveled, one sleeve rolled up and half-buttoned shirt hanging loose, sweaty and unshaven, eyes empty of anything but what the drug had put there. "Shit, Nick, look at yourself. You call this a 'cure'?" She held grabbed the single remaining bottle of the drug and held it up in the light. "Not much, is it, to trade for every good thing you've done for yourself, for humanity, for the people who love you. I can't believe you're willing to dump it all for a fucking sunburn!" He took a step toward her.
"What do you know about it. You take the daylight for granted." His eyes were lit with something crazier than Maura wanted to imagine, but she was too driven to pay attention.
"Even if you're right, you know LaCroix doesn't. And he can see you disappearing beneath this just like I can, even since this morning, as you cling to the insistence you're cured of a disease that doesn't exist, when you can't even get through an hour without another shot. If you're so 'cured' what's that?" She indicated the empty wine bottle. "A sip down memory lane, even though you're so CURED?".
His eyes narrowed, voice segueing from suspicion to outright hostility. "You don't want me mortal, do you, you never did. You're like Janette and LaCroix, but not quite, are you, not quite mortal but not quite immortal, you'd like me to stay in limbo along with you, aping mortality but remaining immortal, exotic, someone you can control with your own drugged blood." In his drug-induced psychosis it was all becoming clear.
Maura shook her head in frustration, and barked a dismissive laugh. "Oh, keep digging, Nicolas, you must think you may find some logic if you plow under enough bullshit. But your thoughts aren't yours anymore, don't you get it? They come from here, now," and she held the bottle up again and shook it wildly. He watched it, hypnotized. She was out of wise words and simply insisted, "You need to stop."
He reached for the bottle. "You don't know what I need," he muttered, but she took a step back and hurled the bottle against he wall as if punishing it for everything that was happening.
"That's what you need, goddammit," and though his eyes went blank with rage as the bottle shattered, the danger still didn't quite register with Maura until his backhand knocked her off her feet. Mortal he may have been, but a strong one in spite of his drugged state or maybe because of it, and with no time to prepare she'd been defenseless. Blood poured from her cut lip. Lying there rather stupidly she expected him to be stunned by his actions, to come to her in abject apology. She was wrong, still not understanding this was Nick in appearance only, the man she knew replaced by a chemical changeling.
"You think you're strong enough, smart enough, to control me, to keep me in line?" he asked her sarcastically, "you think 'true love' and a bad attitude can handle anything, don't you? Always ready for a fight..." He reached down and jerked her to her feet by one wrist. One look in his eyes told Maura all she needed to know, and her long-buried instinct for self preservation kicked in.
"Nick for christsake, think. This isn't you!" She fought him frantically. Nothing mattered now but getting away.
"I'm 'nothing I shouldn't be', remember?" Nick locked his other arm around Maura's waist and what some would call a kiss was too brutal for the name. When he pulled back, he slowly licked her blood from his lips. "Who says you can't have it both ways?"
"Let me go, I'm outta here," she spat in his face and twisted furiously in his grip but was no match even for his human strength.
"Just like the good old days in the king's crusades," he purred in her ear, "been awhile since someone put up a struggle," he flung her to the sofa, "I'd forgotten how invigorating it can be." She was on her feet in a second, trying to break for the door, but he swung and connected with the side of her head, stunning her.
"Motherfucker!" Maura screamed and moved blindly to dodge past him, but he caught her again. Maura gritted her teeth and brought a knee up to try and nail him in the groin, but Nick was too fast and knocked her to the floor again, this time falling on top of her.
"Why don't you want to make nice? Now I'm just like you, remember?" His parody of intimate knowledge made her nauseous. She struggled wildly and he must have hit her a couple of more times because suddenly she was too dazed to continue the fight. He brought his lips close to her ear in a burlesque of the gentle whispers he often shared with her. "Now I'm really who I should be, and you want to take that away? I thought you loved me…"
"Let me go, Nick, just let me go, I don't care anymore what you think you need," she wheezed, his weight making it difficult to breathe. Both her forearms were pinned to the floor by his full weight on them as he straddled her.
"But I have mortal needs now, and after all you are my 'true love'," he held her down with an arm at her throat and tore at her clothes with the other, kissed and bit and clutched her so hard she thought her skin would burst under his fingers. He'd kill her, she was convinced, when he was through with her he'd kill her because he really believed he was entitled. She'd betrayed him by not supporting his "cure" and he'd kill her just because he could, his mind was that shattered by the drug. She tried to shut her brain off … "this isn't Nick, this isn't Nick" she repeated in her head over and over. She couldn't shut out his voice though, now possessed with a mindless rage, chanting "sweet, sweet, sweet," until he finished with her, biting into her shoulder and drawing blood, licking at the wound to mock her. She lay still, scarcely breathing for the pain and realized this was the first time she was ever truly afraid of him. He rose abruptly, leaning on her with one hand for leverage as if she were a piece of furniture. Then he yanked his jeans up, buttoned and tucked in his shirt. He leaned down for a moment and whispered coldly, "Was it good for you?" before striding to the door, presumably to find more drugs to replace the ones Maura had destroyed.
How long she lay there on the floor, immobilized by pain and shock, Maura had no idea. She struggled to process and not to process what just happened, Nick had brutalized her, but actually it was nobody she knew. His body, his voice, his eyes on fire, but it was nobody she knew. Before long she was seized with the fear that he'd return soon, and was frantic to leave. She struggled to her feet and dragged upstairs to change her ruined clothes and shower. It wasn't as if she could report this to the police, so she didn't worry about evidence. The bruises on her face were darkening already, her cut lip swelling. One eye was puffing rapidly. She tried not to look too closely at the rest of herself as she changed. God, it hurt, everything hurt, especially the small sharp stabbing in her side, she felt like she'd been hit by a truck. She slipped on her formal velvet cloak, covering her head and face with the generous hood, and called a cab to take her to Raven.
Not wanting to attract attention Maura slipped down the alley and knocked on the back door. "Janette! Janette it's Maura, let me in! Janette!" When no reply came her pounding became frenzied, her voice rising to a shrill edge. "Janette please, you have to let me in!" By the time the door was pulled open she was clutching her side and gasping with pain. Janette didn't recognize her at first.
"What is this about," she began, remaining in the shadows to avoid the daylight, maintaining a haughty demeanor until Maura raised the hood just enough to be known. Janette's face transformed into a stunned mask. "Mon dieu! Maura, what... mon dieu, come in," and she pulled her in and slammed and bolted the door. Now that she was safe, Maura hesitated to reveal herself. She honestly didn't want to know what she looked like. In the end Janette stepped up and carefully lifted back the hood of the cloak, her eyes widening at the sight.
"What has happened to you?"
Maura's swollen lip made it difficult to speak, and she couldn't manage to look Janette in the eye with her one good one. "Nick... he's taking so much of that drug, we had a fight, he..." she trailed off and Janette cut in with a gasp, "Nicolas did this to you?" Her tone seemed to demand confirmation, so Maura nodded painfully. God, everything hurt so much. "Come with me, cherie," and Maura stumbled as they made their way to the office, crying out as Janette caught her around the waist. She paused and lifted the side of Maura's shirt, grimacing as she saw the spreading red bruise.
"And this is what Nicolas calls a 'cure'? Before, at least, he only injured himself," she hissed in disgust. "Come, let's see what we can do for you."
In the private room off the office Janette had to help Maura get her clothes off piece by piece. She was covered with livid bruises and scrapes from the struggle and attack, a bite mark on her shoulder, and purple finger marks on her arms and collarbone where Nick had held her down.
"Oh cherie, we can manage with most of this but I fear there is something broken here," she indicated the bruise on Maura's ribs.
"I think I felt kind of a snap there when I fell," she admitted. Revulsion transformed Janette's elegant features.
"Redemption, he is always reaching for 'redemption', never minding the damage until it is done. It is one thing for him to pay for his own foolish choices, but this is too much."
Maura hesitated when she'd removed her jeans, and Janette saw.
"Maura, he didn't...?" For Janette rape was the most unspeakable crime, she had suffered it herself as a mortal and considered it a form of torture beside which all others paled. An "incomplete murder" she'd called it on more than one occasion.
Unable to answer, unable to nod, Maura stared mutely into Janette's horrified eyes.
"What has he become," Janette positively growled under her breath.
"Nothing that I made." LaCroix had appeared silently and now stood near the door, eyes discreetly averted.
"LaCroix, really!" Janette grabbed the kimono that hung on a nearby hook and hastily wrapped it around Maura. Once she'd secured the sash, LaCroix faced them both. "It seems I left too soon," he told them.
His face betrayed no expression at all that Maura could discern. "Or just in time," she responded coldly.
Did he falter, or was it her imagination? "You don't believe me of course, but I would have stopped him. Even I can admit when Nicholas has strayed beyond the pale."
Maura groaned as she lowered herself onto the Victorian fainting couch. Janette went into the bar in search of ice and clean towels and, unbeknownst to Maura, to call Natalie Lambert.
"Cheer up, LaCroix, finally there's something he can't blame you for." Maura didn't even care why he was there. Morbid curiosity, she supposed.
LaCroix leaned against the wall. "Do I hear the sound of true love faltering?"
For a moment she dropped her face in her hands, completely overcome by events. Then she raised her head to look LaCroix hard in the eye. "Can we just call off the pissing contest this once? You know we both want the same thing, we always have." Silence from her audience. He was going to make her say it, to admit it. "We both want what's best for Nick. Up til now he's overcome every single thing he's condemned himself for but he's still convinced the finish line is that freaking illusion he calls mortality." Go on, LaCroix's eyes said to her, tell me more.
"Nick told me what he was like before he came across, but I never really understood until today." She grimaced as she took a breath. Still no reply. "Okay, I'll say it, I'm beginning to realize you probably did him a favor, or the rest of the world anyway. You might have given him limitless life and power, but you also held the reins on it. Am I getting warm? He's seen mortality from the outside for 800 years, and by now those rose-colored glasses are welded to his face. He's so naive in some ways, LaCroix, he thinks all goodness and light comes only from mortality. How the hell did he come to that idiot conclusion?" Her frustration was crystallizing into words that she'd never thought to utter, because nobody else would have understood why they angered her so. "He spends every day cleaning up after 'mortal' savages. And what the hell made him think he'd make a GOOD mortal when all he'd ever been was a mortal barbarian, for christsake?"
Did LaCroix appear satisfied? Would he finally approach this rationally? At last he spoke in a quiet voice.
"When I made my bargain with Nicholas, it had far more to do with you than him. I saw a glimmer of awareness in his latest choice, a possibility that perhaps he would give up this foolish quest for illusion given sufficient time with someone of your... insight."
"A pretty word for cynicism. I've been balanced on the mortality fence long enough to know that the grass ain't all that green on either side."
LaCroix shrugged mildly. "You're not the first to arrive at that conclusion. Does this mean that we shall witness Nicholas' self-inflicted demise on equal footing?"
Maura wasn't convinced by the cool act. "We don't like each other much, LaCroix, that's another thing we agree on. But we know each other, maybe better than Nick does. And I don't believe for a minute you're enjoying his latest Grand Guignol tragedy. No matter how a child betrays him, a father can't enjoy the suffering of his son." Somehow she knew that LaCroix realized she wasn't baiting him.
"Ah, there's the rub." He stepped into the room then, looking down at Maura with an expression so unnatural she guessed it must be akin to sympathy. "But as we have both observed, Nicholas is not as I made him."
"But he could be again, couldn't he? You lured him away before, you could do it again even now, I'll bet. There's enough of a connection left, there has to be."
LaCroix pulled a distasteful face. "I'm not sure I like the term 'lure'. You could be right though, I believe 20th century Americans refer to it as 'deprogramming'."
Maura shook her head. "First he has to detox. Isolate him long enough to get the drug out of his system, then you can work on the Grand Delusion. Shouldn't be too hard, once he knows what he's done to me. Guilt has always been his Achilles heel."
LaCroix's mouth twitched in an appreciative smile. "My dear, it's a pity you can't be brought across. Armed with such clear-headed cynicism you would make a fearsome addition to my little family. You might even qualify as an Enforcer." He pondered a moment. "Yes, it might work. He's deranged enough that the mere promise of the drug could buy his cooperation. I believe he'd agree to anything."
"And let me tell you his paranoia won't stand in your way; he's so manic he thinks his genius is a match for anyone, even you."
La Croix's eyes narrowed. "But tell me, after Nicholas is 'detoxed' and 'deprogrammed' and back in the arms of his one true love, what becomes of his betrayed parent?"
"Listen close, LaCroix, if you can pry him away from this obsession of his," she winced as she ran a hand across her face, "you can keep him. Make him into a proper little creature of the night, take him on an endless party of debauchery, I don't care. But get him off this drug while there's still a shred of Nicholas Knight left to save, and I promise he's yours for eternity."
In spite of himself, LaCroix's mouth opened in disbelief. "I believe you may mean that." The distrustful look returned. "But if I do succeed, of course his first desire will be to 'make it up' to you."
Maura gestured at herself. "Look at me, will you?" She struggled to her feet and stood before him. "You're not stupid, you know our connection can't be broken. But I'm not stupid either. Nick is the romantic, not me, and I was never one to sacrifice myself on the altar of true love. I may have come into the Community a refugee, but I don't have to bargain my body for my life anymore. If you can save him, you can have him, no strings, no arguments. And when he comes back home I'll be as gone as I was before, only this time for good."
LaCroix still looked suspicious. Impatiently Maura yanked up one sleeve, exposing a colorful set of bruises, and thrust her wrist to within inches of LaCroix's mouth.
"Help yourself. Blood doesn't lie." Her eyes never left his.
They stood still and silent for a moment, each taking the measure of the other. Finally LaCroix took the proffered wrist in a near-gentle grip and lowered Maura's arm.
"That won't be necessary."
Maura was suddenly dizzy; LaCroix caught her before she fell to the floor in a dead faint. When Janette returned from making a phone call she was confronted with the spectacle of LaCroix laying Maura down on her "fainting couch".
"LaCroix! What are you up to?"
He barely looked over his shoulder as he arranged Maura on the couch. "Oh curb your imagination, Janette. Nicholas' true love fainted in the middle of our discussion."
Janette raised an eyebrow. "She is no longer his 'pet'?"
"Pets don't bargain away their owners." He shared Maura's and his conversation with Janette, who was surprised by Maura's willingness to concede to LaCroix.
"Au contraire, Janette, in the heat of battle I think we've at last found common ground." He headed for the door. "I'm off to 'detox' Nicholas, whatever that means."
Maura came to in a few minutes as Janette was putting towel-wrapped ice on her injured mouth and another compress on her eye.
"I have summoned a doctor, cherie." No further explanation.
"Who? Do I know him?"
"Someone who needs to see the fruits of her meddling first-hand."
"No! Not Natalie, Janette, for christsake!"
Janette was resolute. "And why should she not clean up the mess she has helped to cause?"
Maura just didn't have the strength left to argue; her debate with LaCroix had drained whatever was left. She slumped back on the couch to wait, holding the improvised ice packs against her throbbing face. They seemed at least to numb the pain a little.
"Janette, where's..." Natalie began, but stopped short when she saw Maura lying on the couch. The marks on her arms were plainly visible where the sleeves of the kimono had fallen back; one hand held the ice to her face but it didn't cover everything. "Oh my god..." She rushed to the couch and dropped her bag to the floor. "Maura, let me see..." she took the towel, blooming with pink bloodstains, from Maura and laid it on the floor next to her bag. Janette had said they'd had a fight, but she wasn't prepared for the face looking up at her.
"Oh god, Maura..."
"Don't waste our time, okay? You didn't expect this any more than I did." Her speech was slurred by the swelling on her lip.
"When did this happen?"
"I'm not sure, a few hours ago anyway. Is it still light out?"
"Barely. Here, let me clean this up," and she took disinfectant and gauze and began to work on the facial lacerations. "This is gonna sting."
"Sting..." Maura echoed drily, "that would be a step up." Natalie continued in silence. She found the hard bump on the side of Maura's head where Nick's hand had connected. "Are you having any dizziness, or disorientation?" she asked, concerned about possible concussion.
"I don't believe I'd know the difference right now. I see one of everything, anyway, but then only one eye is working all that well."
"The ice should help with that." Natalie examined the eye closely, "No real damage I can see, it should heal fine." When she'd put a butterfly closure on Maura's split lip – "You might have a scar there," she warned – she asked, "Can you sit up now?" With effort Maura turned sideways and sat upright, letting Natalie pull the kimono down off her shoulders.
Maura couldn't see her face, but heard the gasp. "You could say we danced the ugly dance this time," she said flatly.
Natalie cleaned out the bite that broke skin, and reached into her bag. "You need a tetanus shot..." she said automatically and pulled out the syringe, unwrapped it and expertly plunged it into Maura's upper arm. She didn't flinch. By now Natalie saw what Janette had referred to as "something we can't cope with ourselves", the deep red bruising on Maura's side that likely indicated at least one fractured rib. "I'm gonna need you to reach up." Maura did so, grimacing with pain as Natalie examined the area.
"I'd rather have an x-ray," Natalie mused but continued before Maura could protest, "but I know that's impossible. You've probably got a fracture here but I think it's minor with some bad bruising. Well I can do what they'd do in the ER either way, just tape you up." She wrapped some wide gauze around Maura's rib cage, following with a tight wrap of strapping and finishing with two or three ace wraps. By the time she was finished, lights were dancing in front of Maura's eyes.
"Tell me where else you're hurt," Natalie wanted to know.
"Do you have a gyno kit with you?" It seemed stupid to ask about a "rape" kit, since evidence was a moot point. Natalie just blinked at her.
"Gyno kit?"
"Yeah, Natalie, gyno kit. For the 'where else'."
"Oh god, he didn't," stunned into not completing the statement. Why is it nobody could manage to utter the word? For a moment Maura thought Natalie might actually vomit.
"Raped me. Yeah. Since I told him to stop I'd say it qualifies. I think I might be bleeding, but I'm not sure."
Natalie examined her carefully, applying antibiotic ointment. There were a few more bruises on Maura's legs, a sharp-edged laceration where she'd been kicked in the shin during their struggle. When Natalie had treated everything as best she could, she fell heavily into the velvet armchair as if completely spent by the experience.
"You could say I put up a fight, but by now the evidence on him would be gone," Maura commented.
"I can't believe Nick did this to you."
"That makes two of us."
"But it wasn't him, you know he's not capable of this in his right mind. It was the drug."
Maura lay back and shut her eyes, shook her head wearily. "No, Natalie, it wasn't him at all. But it wasn't just the drug, it was the delusion, the obsession that drove him to it. It always is. What made him lie to me and nearly got me killed by LaCroix when we first met, what makes him swallow every one of your concoctions and leaves me to take care of his sickness, what pushed him to near-suicide. Not guilt, not doubt, or depression, or the need to win an 800-year running argument with his maker. Nick's delusion of attainable mortal perfection did this to me. And we all know who his co-dependent in that river of denial is."
"You can't think I knew this would happen."
"Of course not, I may be crazy but I'm not stupid. But sometimes you two don't seem to think about much besides the finish line, do you? Look I hate to ask, given the whole drug issue, but can I have something for the pain? I feel like whatever isn't broken is on fire, and whatever isn't on fire is pounded to pulp."
Natalie pulled a syringe and bottle out of her bag, carefully read the label, and administered a shot. "This should take the edge off."
"You should assume he went to your lab to get more drugs," Maura advised.
"Security will deal with it, if they can. This was more important."
"LaCroix went after him too. Natalie, don't let them hurt him, okay? Just in case they can."
Natalie frowned down at the now-fading Maura. "You would say that, wouldn't you?" she muttered. Janette entered as Natalie reached for her trilling cell phone. "Okay. Thanks, I'll be right there." To Janette she said, "That was Schanke. Nick called him after collaring a couple of suspects. It sounds like he might be getting back to normal. I've gotta go," she cast an eye at the couch. "Janette, I swear I had no idea this would happen."
"I don't deal in absolution, doctor, but thank you for coming."
"She'll sleep for a while, I gave her something for the pain. See if you can keep her quiet for the next day, to see how that rib does. She got banged in the head, but I didn't find any evidence of concussion. Call me if anything changes, though. She'll probably feel worse tomorrow."
"I suspect she will not be the only one. Will you tell Nicolas about this?"
Natalie nodded grimly. "Somebody has to… why not me?" Janette didn't answer as Natalie gathered up her bag and coat and left.
