Where We Are Now Chapter 8 Ruthless, an in a heartbeat fanfic

A/N: Okay, okay, I've been properly chastened. I'll try not to let so much time go between updates again… I've got no desire to lose my readership, just when I figured out that you guys still existed. Anyway, enjoy this latest installment. Lyrics are bolded and disregard most grammatical conventions. Large blocks of Italics once again indicate past time, but in this case, it's in dream form. Complicated system, I know. There are only so many font effects.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Characters are Disney's and the song is "Ruthless" by Something Corporate, an oldie, but the only song relentlessly angsty enough to move this chapter along. Enjoy.

Chapter Eight

Ruthless

this is the only lonely picture

waiting on my floor

littering my shore

this is the last true burning letter

given to a girl, written by a boy

It was a one punch K.O.

Taking all the facts into numeric consideration, Tyler should have seen that coming. For the 155 lb math teacher, getting caught in the jaw by the bodyguard's right hook was roughly equivalent to getting kissed by a 16 pound sledgehammer.

He crumpled to the floor, tasting blood and what he imagined was brain matter.

There was just enough time to hear the sound of the door slamming open and Val gasping his name before he blinked out of consciousness.

living in a world, created to destroy

"What the hell did you hit him for?!" Val shrieked, swooping down to cradle Tyler's blooded head in her lap. She frowned and ran her fingers along the rapidly darkening skin of his cheek, then glared fiercely back up at Royce, who was calmly examining the reddened skin of his knuckles.

"He said he wouldn't move till I knocked him out. So I knocked him out." He stared incredulously down at the blonde actress, who'd pulled the sketch ball off of the floor and was cradling him in a disturbingly gentle manner. "You did want him gone, right? 'S what that whole, 'Goodbye' rigmarole was about?" She shot him her most dangerous glare in response, leaving the bodyguard feeling suddenly defensive. "Hey, Princess… I was doing MY FUCKING JOB. For all YOU let me know, this fucknut was givin' you trouble this morning, so fuckin' sue me if I misunderstood the situation and tried to get him to clear out. I didn't know that you were trying to play hard-to-fucking-get." On the defensive, the color returned to his normally genteel speech. He also said fuck. A lot. By the end of his tirade, Val's eyes were wide as tea saucers, but she stood her angry ground.

"Help me get him into the room." She hissed, her lower lip trembling only slightly in the face of Royce's righteous fury. "Or we can always wait here and let you get arrested for disturbing the peace." She peered down the hall, as if anticipating the arrival of hotel security. "Whaddya think… one more f-bomb outburst/ public fist fight oughta do it, right?" Royce scowled and stooped down to lift the still-unconscious Tyler and toss him ignominiously over his broad shoulders in a fireman's carry.

"You're such a pain in the ass, you know that Pumpkin?" he growled, nevertheless holding his hand out to tug her to her feet before trudging back into the suite, Tyler in tow. "Ya know… word on the street is Britney's lookin' for a new babysitter. Couple more stellar mornings like this one and you might be watching your own ass." He unceremoniously dropped the limp body down onto the sectional sofa, and plopped down on the floor next to it with a huff.

The teacher moaned, but didn't stir. Val carefully edged in next to him, once again gently resting his head on her lap and running her fingers through his bloodied blonde curls. "You have anger issues!" she fired back primly. Royce threw up his hands in frustration, but nevertheless stomped towards the suite's mini-fridge in search of a cold compress for the unfortunate body on the couch. Val glanced tenderly down at Tyler's black and blue face. "And you, you are too stupid to know when to quit." She whispered.

but if i built you a city

would you let me?

would you tear it down?

"P-points for standing my ground though, right?" Tyler kept his eyes shut despite his return to consciousness. "Your boyfriend is quite the scary, jealous bastard."

"Not my boyfriend. My bodyguard… of course that's much worse 'cause he's getting paid to be a scary, jealous bast-ARGH! Ouch!" A chemical ice pack tossed with sharp shooter accuracy bounced off of her shoulder. "If that bruises, you're totally fired!" she shrieked. Her volume and pitch made Tyler cringe as his already sore head began to throb. Val noticed his discomfort and dropped her voice back to an apologetic whisper as she dabbed the ice pack against his tender temple. "Sorry…so… you about ready to open those eyes then?" Eyes tightly jammed shut, he replied

"Depends… if I do are you gonna kick me out?" She shrugged, a careful lifting of her shoulder blades so as not to jostle him again.

"I'd let you have coffee first."

He responded with a loud, fake snore.

"Maybe you can nap off your concussion too." She conceded. Too woozy to expend the mental energy needed to continue this line of banter, Tyler cautiously opened his eyes. Val was startled by the intensity she saw in his pale grey stare.

"I just came down because I needed to see if—I mean, I wanted to say I'm sorry." Val smiled tightly, her fingers still tracing invisible patterns through his hair.

"I got as much before Royce sent you into Neverland. And like I said before, it's not a big deal."

"No. This is a big deal. With you I'll always assume it's a big deal, because the last time I said something, and then you stormed out of the restaurant and then eight years later your bodyguard knocks me out." Agitated, he pushed himself up off her lap, admiring his strength in not stumbling to his knees immediately afterwards.

Royce tightened his hold on the edge of the countertop, watching but not yet acting, as his charge's personal psycho/savior/boyfriend/whatever began to pace in circles around the small living room.

"al-Vay e's-hay a-ay utball-nay" he hissed. Val rolled her eyes but nevertheless began to edge herself towards the end of the couch nearest to the kitchen counter. Tyler, still pacing silently, failed to notice. Both guard and actress jumped when he came to an abrupt stop and then whirled to face her.

"Have dinner with me."

but there you go for the last time

i finally know now what i should have known then

and i could still be ruthless if you let me

Val stared him down, slightly exasperated, slightly terrified. "Tyler, you know that isn't a great idea." He made to take a step closer to her, but stopped when he saw her shrink further back into the couch cushions. She composed herself and went on. "We tried coffee…in the diner? You dared me to throw it on you."

"Words for which I have, rightfully so, come to apologize."

"That's not the point. The point is we made a disaster of coffee. That's just a beverage. You can successfully share beverages with co-workers that you don't really even like. I'm not even gonna risk adding food." Royce snickered at the comment, before remembering that he and Val had shared coffee that very morning. Successfully.

"Well wait just a minute…" he interrupted.

"Royce, sweetheart, would you please be so kind as to excuse yourself from this convo? Like, for a second?!" she snapped. Grateful for to break in tension as she was, Val shot him another Glare'o Death until the bodyguard, defeated, slouched out of the room.

"Bitch." He muttered, kicking the door shut behind him. "See if I dive to take the next bullet for you."

"Love you too!" She yelled at the closed bedroom door. Mercifully 310 lb distraction free, she turned her attention back to her restless ex-boyfriend. Who remained pretty singular-minded.

"All I want is dinner." He repeated, then paused to consider a minute. "No. Actually, no. All I want is closure. We sit, we talk, and then we walk away. End it way it was supposed to end, you know?"

An avalanche of eight year old guilt crashed down unto her shoulders. "Well, that was manipulative." She whispered, voice tight. She steeled her jaw, reflexively tightening her muscles so as not to betray any more emotion.

Tyler tore his gaze away from her eyes and down to the carpet, ashamed to be playing what he knew to be a highly effective guilt card. He didn't look great suited in desperation, but at this point, he ignored self image in favor of need.

"At least give me a chance to walk away this time too."

"Really friggin' manipulative." She chuckled, but it came out sounding forced. "I'd have to get Helen to check my schedule, but I think I'm free tonight. For an hour or so, at least." It was a concession. Tyler knew to take whatever he could get. With a minimal amount of wobbling he started to make his way out of the suite.

"I'll leave my number at the front desk then?" Val nodded wordlessly, making no move to get off of the sofa and walk him out the door. "Right. I'll try to get a reservation somewhere before eight. You know that—"

"—Nothing in this zip code serves after nine on a weekday. Yeah. I remember." She stared down at weaving in the slip cover on the couch, in which her manicured fingernails had managed to bore a small hole. "I'll call you this afternoon." She didn't dare look up until the door slammed shut, signaling that he'd already gone.

Royce popped his head out of her bedroom doorway only a second later.

"Well, that went well." He said gruffly. "Had I known that the easiest way to get rid of a psycho-stalker was to agree to date him, well, I'd have encouraged all my clients to do so years ago. Probably would have been awkward for Travolta though…" He stared down at the couch, where he was distressed to find his charge slumped despondently, a small line of tears trailing down her cheeks. "Oh, doll, don't do that. I can't fix things if you cry…" She sniffled, and that was all it took to break the last vestiges of his annoyance. He sat down next to her and pulled her into a large, brotherly hug. "I can have him disappeared if you like, huh? You like that?" Another large sniffle into his t-shirt sleeve as she shook her head no.

"I'm sorry I was so mean." She muttered finally. Royce shrugged, seemingly unconcerned about the mess she was making of his shirt sleeve.

"Well, like I said, it'll make me feel less bad if this wacko kills you and makes a lampshade of your skin." She giggled, and it made him feel less frantic. "He makes you cry again though, well, that's three and then I kill him."

Royce waited till Val had settled in for a trauma induced nap to call Helen and inform her of the morning's developments. Her reaction was calm, but definite.

"Absolutely not." She said, grimly vetoing her client's dinner plans.

"Yeah, you see, that's what I said. But she's not having it. You can talk to her, but I'm pretty sure she's going no matter what you say." The door to the suite flew open, and Royce, startled, dropped the phone as Helen stormed her way into the room, still lecturing into her cell phone.

"—And WHAT the hell does she think is gonna happen here? Who IS this guy?" She snapped her phone shut and glared her reproach at the bodyguard, and Royce felt all 6 feet and 4 inches of himself shiver. "Are those pancakes?" she hissed dangerously.

Tyler's cell phone rang ten minutes after he walked through his front door. The caller ID read UNKNOWN and he answered it wearily. "I said no freaking comment, all right you vultures?"

"For all of our sakes, let's hope you stay that discreet." A tired, unfamiliar voice replied.

"I'm sorry, who is this?"

"This is Helen Neal, I work for Val Lanier." His grip on the phone tightened, but he kept his voice steady, matching her steel with his own.

"Right, Val said that you'd be—"

"I'll bet she did. Listen here buddy, what the fuck are you aiming at?" Tyler wondered if Val purposely surrounded herself with the most hostile, over-protective people in the world.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. What. The fuck. Do you want." her tone was clipped, and she barreled on without letting him respond. "Is this some publicity stunt? I mean, what, you've got some fan blog or some nonsense that needs a boost? Look, I'm more than aware that my client sells papers, but if you had any human decency left in you, if you knew the hell that she's been through, you'd just drop this right now. Crawl back into whatever hole you crawled out of, and leave my girl alone, all right?"

"Fan blog? Publicity stunt?!" Tyler summoned all of the aggression and frustration that an under-paid, over-worked and disrespected high school teacher could muster, and unleashed it on the unsuspecting manager waiting for a response on the other end of the line. "Listen you, I don't know WHAT kind of people Val surrounds herself with these days, but if you think, for even a freaking second, that I'm enjoying any of this attention, then let me clear something up for you right the hell now. I can't sleep, because my phone has been ringing off the damn hook for 12 hours. I've had to skip work, I'm contemplating changing my phone number, and I'm pretty sure I'm being stalked by a van full of photographers. Now there is only ONE reason why I'd tolerate this rather unprecedented disruption of my day-to-day, and SHE'S IT. You get that? Not because she's a celebrity, not because she sells magazines, but because she's Val. Now will you just. Tell me. When and where we're going to dinner. Please. I just need to get back to my life, preferably the happy one I had before she came crashing back into it." He took a deep breath, counted to fifteen and waited for the rude woman to speak.

"So what, dinner, then you're just gonna walk away?" Helen's voice was subdued, she sounded chastened.

"Ideally, yeah. We've got some issues to talk through, cliché as it sounds. After that, she can do whatever the hell she wants." Harsh as that sounded, Tyler knew that he'd said nothing but the truth. The realist in him knew that closure was about all that he could expect from this meeting, and he surprised himself with the realization that closure was all he really wanted. No matter what he saw in her eyes before, the girl he met up in that suite wasn't Val, just as sure as he wasn't Tyler. At least not that Tyler. Not now, not anymore.

The sooner both of them knew that, the faster life could move on.

but there you go and i'm not done

you're waving goodbye

well, at least you're having fun

the rising tide will not let you forget me

forget me

"I suppose that's what's best for all involved." Helen cleared her throat loudly into the phone speaker. "I made reservations already, Café Gardens on 13th St., 8 PM. They agreed to shut down the dining room for you." Tyler smiled at the choice of restaurant, knowing that the owners, Frances and Nancy, hadn't had such a stroke of good fortune in years. No doubt tonight's dinner would be the centerpiece of their ad campaign for years to come.

"That sounds fine. I'll be there." The clock on his microwave read 12:30, giving him a good seven and a half hours to fill until dinnertime. He decided to kill time and get chatty. "Say, what are you guys in town here for anyway? I mean… Kingsport, Hollywood of the East it's not." There was a sigh on the other end of the line, clearly, the manager intended for this conversation to be over with, yesterday.

"Not that you have any real business knowing, but we're filming a couple of episodes of Val's show, you know, the one you don't really care about, at the local high school here. Give the show a little hometown authenticity." Another weighty sigh, then "I'll make sure she's at Café Gardens at 8. Screw any of this up, and I'll personally make sure you disappear quietly, suddenly, and painfully." The line clicked, the conversation clearly over.

Tyler stared at the now silent phone, pondering this latest development. Val and her crew, wandering the halls of Kingsport High.

Clearly, none of this could turn out particularly well.

At five thirty, Royce pressed his ear against Val's bedroom door, only cracking it open to take a peek when he heard her deep, shuddering gasp.

The actress lay in bed, still sleeping deeply despite the twin tracks of tears pooling around the sharp contours of her face. Her expression was twisted in a tragic mask of pain, the small twitches of her eyes behind their shut lids the only indication that it was just a dream.

this is your ghost that kneels before me

razors on her tongue

a body full of oxygen

The edges of butcher paper covering the foam padding of the examination table jabbed at her skin every time she restlessly tapped her legs against the side. Upon later examination she knew she'd find a small cut there, at the back of her knee. It had been the only scar left from the events of the day. Well, that anyone could see anyway.

She liked to think that maybe, if she could stop the restless shaking of her legs at that moment, if she could, maybe, prevent that very first cut it would lead to the derailment of the course of events that would follow. The deeper cuts, the sharper pain.

This was a thought she'd had before.

This was a dream she'd had before.

Months after the fact, she'd had this dream at least three times a week. Each time she'd wake up in pain, not entirely sure whether it was all purely psychological. The first few weeks the dream would leave her incapacitated for hours, to the point that getting up, going to school, work, even to the bathroom became all but impossible. Now, eight years after the fact, she'd learned to shake off the paralysis, internalizing the familiar sharp stab and carrying it with her through the day.

More than once she'd thought of thanking that charity clinic doctor in her award acceptance speeches. Pain made a great actress, if not a healthily functioning human being.

it won't be the last time she'll ignore me

the thinning of my skin

without the strength to go

the winter's setting in, to cover you in snow

Her legs tapped a sharp staccato against the steel drawers of the examination table. The doctor reentered the room, but now, unlike then, Val knew not take hope from his thin, sad smile.

"That's a tarantella a guy can dance to." He joked lamely, doing a little hop and twisting his hands in the air to bring a smile to the pretty blonde's face.

It worked, she giggled. (Again)

Suddenly everything was serious again. The whimsy of the old doctor's dance faded from the room as he shuffled over to take her hand in his. "My dear, you knew something was going on, that's why you came to see me today." As she had eight years before, Val stared down at her feet and nodded.

"I thought that maybe, it was just nerves, you know, the big move coming up, boyfriend problems…"

"I did the blood test to be sure, Miss Valerie. It's undeniable. You're about eight and a half weeks along." He sighed, and Val sat, unshakable on the table. Her legs slowed in their rhythmic swing. "This boyfriend of yours, he's the father?" Another nod, she remembered how dry her mouth had gotten at that point, how impossible it had become to swallow, much less answer. The gentle squeeze of the doctor's hand gave little comfort. "I'm sorry to complicate an already tumultuous situation, but have you thought about what you were going to do?"

In the dream, as it was then, there was no hesitation. She lifted her head to reveal eyes too dry to shed a tear. "I can't. I mean, I'm only eighteen." Her chest heaved, but she still didn't cry. "I can't have this baby."

but if i built you a city

would you let me?

would you tear it down?

The doctor nodded, his gaze far away, at the time she'd thought that she could feel the weight of his judgment in the absence of his answer. "Of course, young girl like you, who needs such problems? You've got so much more to do yet, you don't need a baby." He was doing something in his head, calculations, scheduling… his taxes for all she knew. "You don't live near here, do you?" She shook her head no, and he tapped the side of his nose knowingly. "Thought so. I've worked at this clinic for 15 years, in this town for 30. I know everyone there is to know here. And I don't know you, Miss Valerie." He paused, thoughtfully. "I want to help you out, young lady, I really do. You seem like a smart girl, got all your ducks in a row-- except for this small hiccup here." The doctor began nodding again, agreeing with whatever thought had popped into his head. "I'm going to check with my nurse, see if we can do something to help you out today." Val barely had time to whisper a thank you before the doctor shuffled out the door, and he paused at the doorway to shoot her a warm, sympathetic smile.

That genuine, undeserved sympathy would ever after color her memory of the experience. Every time she dared sum it up, every time she dreamed, the doctor's sympathetic voice washed over her spine, bringing with it fresh, familiar pain.

"Don't worry, Miss Valerie. A couple of days, a couple of weeks? All this will be gone, nothing more than a bad dream."

It was at this point that she always woke up, face wet from crying and chest aching with sobs that she could never let go of.