AN 1: Two years later, I'm back in the saddle, and it feels so good! I'm still not in the best of situations, hence why updates to this story will take anything from 1-4 weeks, but at least I'm back. Not gonna lie, it's sad to see how many followers and faves I've lost in my hiatus, but I appreciate and accept that not every reader can hang around indefinitely. Two years is a long time. To those who have stayed the course, I tip my hat to you; and to any newcomers (is anyone still playing Far Cry 3 in 2017?), I extend the hand of welcome (make that "Amigos! Welcome!"- amigos just in case there's a male reader or several amongst the taco party).
AN 2: For those who haven't had the terror — sorry, pleasure — of experiencing them first hand, Leviathan, and Top Thrill Dragster, are roller coasters.
Track recommendations:
Parts 1 and 3: Killing Sound - Six Harmonies
Part 2: Yves De Mey - Metrics
CHAPTER 9
"Oh, Isabel. Siempre me ha gustado tu sentido del humor." I always liked your sense of humor.
Isabel didn't rise to it, instead saying nothing, staring blankly ahead and waiting... just... waiting... for whatever spiked curveball the intruder would throw at her next, as the clamor of her heart began to abate. Yet, absurdly, she found she no longer felt afraid — at least, not as afraid as she should be, she managed to reason.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, she remembered — thanks to her mother, rather than the Coolio song of her childhood — I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.
Hah. Not exactly.
That instance, seconds ago, of pure, nerve-shredding terror, had given way to a paradoxically jarring sense of...calm? Something like that. She couldn't be sure. No, not calm, exactly, not Psalm 23:4 level fortitude; closer to...just a lack of fear, an absence, as if the culmination of recent events had proved simply too much, causing something inside her mind to implode and leave only a hollow space, numb around the edges. There was no pain, no panic; no screaming; just...emptiness.
She wasn't frightened out of her wits of the armed trespasser at her back. She could think with relative clarity. She was present and lucid and in the moment. And although in some deep, murky recess of her psyche — the singularity at the core of that newborn black hole — it was this that frightened her more than anything, none of that fear quite bubbled to the surface. Had something fundamentally changed in her, she pondered briefly, found some inner resource she never knew she possessed? Or was it more a case of waiting for her real self — the self that absolutely would panic and cry and scream — to catch up, with inexorable solidity, like the ground to a skydiver whose parachute had failed?
Or perhaps...perhaps she truly had finally lost her mind?
We're all mad here...
Fucking...'Alice in Wonderland' again. Go away.
Not that it mattered, of course. She stood no more chance against this man now than she did two years ago. There were moments when she had felt something other than weak and timid then, too, when she could have almost let herself believe she had the upper hand. But underneath it all, she always knew, as she knew now, that the balance of power was weighted firmly in his favor, and that there was little to nothing she could do to change it. Head honcho of criminal operations on that godforsaken island he wasn't, she remembered, but he had the smarts and wiles of an accomplished mind-fucker, not to mention the weight and strength advantage. She wasn't possessed of the requisite cunning, manipulative, or even just plain old resourceful skills, to parry with someone like him psychologically, much less the corporeal strength or agility for any sort of physical combat.
But... what she had done back then, in that shack... wasn't that resourceful?
Of course it wasn't. Rather, it was instinctual — her mind and body's default survival strategy kicking in to protect her — just like she supposed her missing fear response was now... right?
Then why, during more than the occasional time of need and longing, had he come to her in her darkest fantasies? And why, although he appeared seemingly against her will, had she welcomed him? Like a vampire at her door, she had invited him in. Chosen to invite him in. And why, after coming down from the high of it all, had she felt such unimaginable shame? She would try to remonstrate with herself in a bid to keep him away, force herself to accept that this was the last time, this had to be the last time, because it was only perpetuating her malady... but he would always return sooner or later, and it always felt so good. So goddamn good that, when in the grip of such raging sickness, she never wanted it to end.
She could try and delude herself that it was simply her way of dealing with the trauma, maybe even perhaps a means of punishing herself for the abortion — or all three abortions, counting her relationship with Adam — out of some internalised, long-repressed Catholic belief. In her heart of hearts, however, she knew differently, and hated herself for it.
Him being here now, though — flesh and bone, tangible and warm and marijuana-scented, unlike the spectre of those fantasies — this was something else entirely. Here, she had no control over him here. This was reality, and one in which she was in very real, very present danger. He had told her there was no such thing as safety, and by all rights she should be terrified, and only terrified.
She knew why she wasn't, and it had nothing to do with survival strategies, or even emptiness. Because, just like the fear, the emptiness itself had vanished, alarmingly giving way just as rapidly to another emotion, and this one scared the hell out of her.
Her captor gave a curt whistle, turning a prompt 180 degrees and beginning to walk toward the shack previously behind them. Isabel followed, with Oat at her back, and the whoops and jeers of the pirate hoard bringing up the rear. The Mohawk-haired man led her through a narrow passage at the side of the building, out onto a wide, unleveled dirt road, painted luminous in the now full moonlight.
Night had fallen so quickly; it felt like only half an hour ago it had been broad daylight. Time seemed to be accelerating, and for an instant Isabel wondered if some sort of rift had occurred in spacetime, in the very fabric of the universe, causing her to have been captive on this island for days instead of hours, or weeks instead of days... and that by now her family and friends would know she had gone missing whilst in Indonesia and they would already be on the mainland searching for her and the local police would know and the Canadian police would know and even fucking Interpol would know and someone would be sure to gatecrash this hellish party and rescue her any moment—
The ground shuddered, pitching her forward and — Holy shit an earthquake a fucking earthquake no no no — into her captor's back.
"Careful," he interjected, snatching her from the universe her freewheeling train of thought had so urgently been trying to spirit her away to, "don't want you taking yourself out before I get a chance to."
He followed the quip with a snicker, and Isabel felt hot, stinging color suffuse her cheeks, realizing that the supposed earthquake she had been freaking out over was nothing more than a few pebbles she had absent-mindedly skidded on whilst forgetting which universe her feet were in.
For fucksake, hold it together. Hold it the fuck together, Izzy, or you will die out here, understand?!
I understand. I can do this. I can. I can. I have to.
Across the way, in both directions, sat an uneven row of structures — shacks, gazebos, and small pavilions — on a grassy bank; behind them the foliage and tall, tropical trees of the jungle. The party ventured right for about 10 shacks, past a wooden platform on the left, boasting a gallows, and lit in ominous ambience by two bare, red lightbulbs. As the sounds of merriment behind them grew fainter, the organic pulse of the island itself grew louder; birds calling, leaves rustling, and crickets engaging in a lively debate.
They traversed a chasm in the road — thank whatever deity did or didn't exist that Isabel hadn't been pondering the spacetime continuum at that point — crudely bridged by wooden planks and metal pipes. Ahead of them, at around 50 meters, the settlement appeared to end at the point where the road ascended a gentle slope, turning a left corner obscured by trees. A mountain rose up on the right, its height disguised by lush botany. But before Isabel could discover what was around that corner, her captor was already leading her up a tiny rise and into a small gazebo alongside the road hole. The structure's makeshift front wall consisted of nothing more than one tattered, blood-red sheet, with an equally decrepit white one set back a few feet, spanning its right side. Other torn pieces of material adorned the framework on its left side. Hanging from an exposed beam, three naked, violet color bulbs glowed, crackling almost imperceptibly. A large moth hovered around one of them, clumsily bumping its furred body into the glass repeatedly.
Violet's such a pretty color. Completely incongruous with—
Shut up. Stay on course.
The trio passed through a wide, hefty thatched door — or perhaps it was a makeshift wall, tilted to function as a door, because there wasn't much space on the other side of it — and into the pavilion's open back, which was more like a glorified ledge than a divided section of a room. A small kerosene lamp sat on the edge of the bare wood floor, to the right of more hanging, crimson rags. The Latino led them past the lamp, to the edge of the pavillion and down a small but steep bank that gave onto a dirt path. Beyond that, at barely five meters, lay the jungle, and darkness.
All of a sudden, the cool night air felt decidedly chilly. Isabel's guts churned, her skin turning to goose flesh. The sounds of merriment wafting over the airwaves seemed somehow to grow fainter, too, in comparison with the rising volume of her heart.
The Latino turned to face her, but didn't step away, so as to maximize the invasion of Isabel's personal space. Silently he beheld her, his expression unreadable, for several agonizing, elongated seconds. Studying her, she wondered? Scrutinizing her? Threatening her? Or simply because he could? She wished to God she knew what he was thinking, now so more than ever. If there was something she could latch onto, appeal to, maybe he would just... Just what? Let her go? Politely escort her to the shore and call for a water taxi back to the mainland? She was fresh out of luck, and had never felt so alone in her whole life.
She looked down, but could feel her captor's gaze linger on her, burning cold, like dry ice. Tough girls stood their ground; squared their shoulders; looked their adversaries right in the eyes. Isabel wasn't a tough girl.
Well you better fucking learn.
She didn't want to look at him, because every moment spent looking at him reminded her of how weak and small and puny she was. And how inconsequential. How mortal.
I repeat: You. Bet-ter. Fuc-king. Learn.
Her captor waited, seemingly content to give his quarry all the time she needed to stare at her feet. Crickets, crickets, chirping. Crickets. Crickets. Night birds warbling. Faint music. Male voices. Blood pounding in her ears. And him, his lean body a beacon of warmth in the cold.
What? Fuck...no. She'd rather be naked in a freezer than keeping warm next to him.
When awkwardness overcame her, rather than a summoning of strength, and she finally did bring her gaze back to his, he leaned in closer, so uncomfortably, intimately close she thought for a moment he might be going to kiss her. With the light at his back, his hazel irises looked black as obsidian; so unfathomably dark, perilous. And for the briefest of moments, something other than fear stirred deep within her: burning curiosity, and something...unmentionable. She wanted to know what had brought him to this place, this life, this mindset. Who he was, where he came from, why he had chosen to play this game with her.
His face mere milimeters from hers, he uttered softly "Run".
The man at her back remained there, a formless but very real entity, and identically mute as she herself. Not even his breathing was audible. Any moment now, something was going to happen, she was sure of it. She knew she ought to feel unnerved by all of those things.
"Run," he had said, back then, and she had been doing so ever since. Fleeing from him, and from herself — from that monstrous, black truth, with its gaping maw and shark teeth and its will to shred her to pieces and devour her if she didn't keep moving, keep on going. Now, though, she realised with unshakeable certainty, that she couldn't outrun her truth forever: as much as she had been running, she had been anticipating him, too. The bad seed he had planted in her head as well as her body had left her infected; and that part, that same part which governed her fantasies, couldn't be aborted, and had always hoped to see him again, irrational and stupid and wrong as it was.
She was sick. And sick and tired of running.
"I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction," she recited internally, like a long overdue mantra, "if a house is falling upon you, for instance—one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one's eyes and wait, come what may..." A quote from Dostoevsky's The Idiot; a novel she had studied for her major. Hah! Whoever said 19th century Russian literature was one big moot point in the modern world. The fools. What did they know, eh?
And so, she waited.
Wake up, NOW!, snapped a defiant voice in her head, wrenching her out of the moment.
What?, she asked it, befuddled. That Sensible Angel™ on her right shoulder had impeccable timing, the little fucker.
Emboldened, it continued: You heard me. If you give in now, you're done for.
How am I done for? What's the worst that could happen? If he wants to kill me he'll do it anyway. Might as well get some action before that happens.
Do you have any shred of dignity, Izzy? Think of everything he did to you two years ago: kidnapping you; holding you hostage; playing cat and mouse with you all over that fucking island; then, when he got bored chasing you, using your own goddamn desperation against you to get laid. Don't say that last part was mutual, because do you really think he would have taken no for an answer? Him? Remember how he behaved? That "fearful fucking symmetry" thing he said right at the beginning, and the way he looked at you when he said it? The guy's unhinged. And what about everything he's done in the last two weeks? There's a word for that: stalking. Oh, and home invasion. Y'know, not things decent people do. So now he stalks you, toys with you like a plaything, disables your car, breaks into your fucking house — and God knows whatever else he's got planned, because you can bet he has — and you welcome him with open arms?
Open legs, more like.
Izzy, are you insane? I mean really? This isn't a fucking romance novel.
It's just sex. I'm not in love with him.
Oh come on. If he were some random hot guy off the street then sure, that would be "just" sex. But the very nature of your relationship with him precludes it from being that. OK, maybe for him it is — although if he's followed you halfway across the globe then who the fuck knows — but not you. Think things are bad now? They'll be even worse if you have sex with him again.
It might buy me some time, though.
Grow a backbone, Izzy. You've turned into a fucking loser these last two years; now's the time to get some self respect and do what you couldn't do then: fight back.
Right. And get killed in the process.
If he's going to kill you anyway...?
Which is precisely why—
"Ayy, Isabel," the intruder cut in, with the tone of a mildly exasperated parent to a child, "por qué la ley del hielo, uh?" Why the silent treatment?
She didn't know what to say, or what to do, too afraid of the pestilence within herself, the roiling sea of conflicting emotions battering her hither and thither like a ping-pong ball, to make the next move. She had to do something, but what could she do? Neither Sensible Angel™ nor Dostoevsky could offer her any more guidance. Feign outrage, perhaps? A normal, healthy minded person would be, at the very least, outraged. No, a normal, mentally well person would be petrified first and foremost, every other emotion secondary. Besides, this guy enjoyed riling people up; why play into his hands even more, if she could help it?
Then, he moved. The leisurely, gentle thud of booted feet, toward the side of the sofa. Deliberately slow, prolonging the suspense.
Out of nowhere a Molotov cocktail of anxiety, anticipation, dread and expectation exploded in the pit of Isabel's stomach, followed by an almost debilitating wave of queasiness, like the moment before the first descent on a roller coaster, when you were teetering on the edge and all fired up for the rush, yet simultaneously realising the cold hard facts that you were some 300 feet off the ground and about to hurtle down at 90 mph... and you wanted that rush so badly, and you couldn't wait for it, but that if something were to go wrong you would die a messy, horrific death... and suddenly an enormous klaxon starts sounding over and over in your head STOP STOP NO NO NO I CAN'T DO THIS I CAN'T I CAN'T I CAN'T... But you were strapped in, and you couldn't turn back, your only remaining option to simply hold on tight and pray for the best.
If you were Isabel 2.0, that was, who honed in on the 1 in 300 million chance of Death By Roller Coaster; pre-Indonesia Isabel would have seen your Leviathan and raised you a Top Thrill Dragster.
Now her nerves were dancing on a knife edge.
You wanted to be scared, didn't you? a mocking little voice piped up. Well, careful what you wish for.
She simultaneously wanted and didn't want to see him. She was ready. She wasn't ready. Despite the fantasies and the repressed hopes this wasn't what she wanted at all, or was it? She didn't want to see him, because seeing him would consolidate his realness, and for him to be real meant she would have to face her own truth, her own demon, head on. But oh, how she did want to see him. How she couldn't wait. How it was high time she confronted her demon, or simply put her faith in Dostoevsky and let the whole fucking bungalow collapse and just go with it.
An ill-timed but hilarious thought struck her, nearly making her laugh out loud: that this whole situation may have played out very differently if the sofa she was sitting on was in a different position. Had it been against a wall, as opposed to in the approximate center of the room, she would have seen her stalker enter. But it couldn't have been anywhere else, really, because the TV, cable box, DVD and BluRay stack, with their serpents' nest of wires, was against one wall, and the center of the room happened to be the perfect, Goldilocks distance from the screen.
She didn't laugh, though; the man who had upended her world was standing in front of the TV, looking at her.
AN 3: Not directly related to the story, but I'm wondering how you readers imagine Vaas looks in this fic? Cover art version (if so; which)? In-game version? Far Cry Experience version? Voices of Insanity trailer version? Any other trailer version? A particular fan art rendering**? Mixture of any of the above? Feel free to PM me your answer. I find it interesting that there are so many versions of the guy, each looking slightly (or in some cases significantly) different. FTR I haven't drawn on one particular image when I've written him — his incarnation varies from scene to scene in my mind, except for his clothes (game version, 'cos I prefer jeans to cargo pants), and the color of his eyes, for which I went with the Far Cry Experience version (hazel) due to it essentially being a mix of the colors he has in the gamut of representations (seriously, he's had them all).
**If you haven't already seen them, two of my personal faves are:
www dot deadlyninja dot deviantart dot com slash art slash Vaas-Montenegro-349515400; and
www dot obsceneblue dot deviantart dot com slash art slash Vaas-Montenegro-346547523