While Jackie stayed with Tony, Rose let herself be distracted by getting to know her father's girlfriend a bit better. They went back to the hotel her father was staying at for dinner and much to Rose's surprise she actually enjoyed their company. She could tell that Joan was really trying to make a connection now that the pale of Tony's illness had lifted as Joan grasped Rose's hand across the table at tea and smiled widely. Rose's new senses told her that Joan entertained a secret fantasy where Tony had died and she had Pete all to herself with no old family connections holding him down, but Rose also could tell that she also felt awful for having the fantasy and very relieved that Tony was better, small fantasy forgotten as if she never thought of it. Rose was surprised at her ability to detect it, but whatever touch telepathy that Jon had, it seemed she had also and she tried not to feel too guilty for prying.
Her father called in the morning and asked her if she wanted a ride to work, he had checked in with the hospital and Tony was showing marked improvement. Rose had no problem accepting his offer of a ride to work and she enjoyed the smooth ride of the car and the anticipation of a new normal day and the hope that Jon Carlisle was going to be part of it.
There was a small gathering of students at the gate and Pete remarked, "Looks like a school yard tussle, why couldn't you get a position at a better school, I'm sure there are many other places in the city take a talented girl like you."
Rose did not want to argue about proximity and status with her father, the man who'd spent the best part of her life running away from Peckham. The teacher at the gate trying to break up the fight was Jon Carlisle himself and her heart took a sudden lurch in her chest reminded of their encounter at the park and the sweet kiss before his family. Her gaze was locked on his profile quite awhile before she realized that the student in question who was the aggressor in the altercation was not a kid at all, but Prydon Burosa.
"Drop me here," she said to Pete. "Traffic has slowed to a crawl cause of the the gawkers, hang a left here at the alleyway and then a right, and you'll be back on High Street."
Pete had no desire to idle in traffic and gave Rose's arm a quick squeeze before pulling to the curb to let her out. "Have a good day," he paused before adding, "and while I have you all to myself for a moment, assuming Tony makes a complete recovery, how about coming to Cardiff on your break? I'd love you to see the flat, do some sight seeing?"
"When's the baby due? I should visit after it's born, give you and Julia a break and a night out," Rose said. "I'd like to meet my sibling while she's still a baby," she started out trying to be forgiving to her father but found herself genuinely interested in her younger sister. A sudden realization hit her the moment before the surprise in her confidence in the baby's gender, the realization that she wanted this relationship to mend and she really wanted a little sister to spoil.
"Sister, eh?" Pete asked. "That a prediction or a wager? I've got a tenner it's a boy with Julia's mum."
She stepped out of the car and waved, feeling every bit the good daughter until she turned around and faced the commotion outside the gate, her very countenance changing as she refocused her purpose.
"I must speak to the head-master," Burosa was demanding. "I will tell him of your lack of cooperation and un-professional manner."
"The office is at the east entrance," Jon pointed dismissively outside of the gate. "If you take you time and let him have his second cup of coffee it will go easier on you. Inside you lot!" he directed his order to a group of thirteen year-olds who had stopped their progress to watch what was going on. "Move it, before this old nutter decides you're his long lost grand kid."
Half the group broke off and entered the school only to be replaced by another half dozen or so attracted to the commotion.
"You and the girl! Bit young for you isn't she, old man? Have you told her yet?" Burosa shouted at the top of his lungs. "I'll tell the Board of Governors! Cavorting with a student!"
Rose had closed the distance quickly. Jon spared a glance for the students that had heard the accusations. "Save your voice, ya nutter, you don't have much time left, I wager." Burosa suddenly became aware of Rose, his whole demeanor changed from enraged to pitiful in a second. He was begging at her ankles before she had taken another two steps. The hair on the back of his head had fallen out and blacken cavities marked his skull. His eyes had sunken in, bit of his ear lobs and nostrils had pitted and the smell rising from his body was that of the grave.
"Girl," he gasped out, "the things I could show you. You could be immortal if you let me teach you." He pressed forward what was left of his formidable will and Rose could feel a compulsion surging down the line that connected them. He was weakening faster than Tony's recovery and Rose was determined to get every drop of vitality he had stolen returned to its rightful place. Burosa had no reserves to draw upon being so very old, and accustomed to absolute victory and having grown so choosy in victims, so he was forced to begging on is knees in a school yard. A gaggle of students looking on.
Rose tried not to be pleased in this reversal. She felt proud that Tony was on the mend as a result of her efforts, but she was not the type to revel in another's suffering. She could make him do anything, such was her power over him, but she was human and he was human no longer and she found herself bound to those social contracts that valued forgiveness and mercy over vengeance. Rose had a outlet for all the wrongs that had been done to her, the slights and the insults, an opportunity to punish the evil in with world and no one save Jon would know. Burosa groveled at her feet when the warning bell rang.
"The oldster's gone loony," a girl shouted.
"He's been at Dr. Carlisle, there, to tell him where you lived," her ginger friend added helpfully.
Rose found herself quickly improvising, trying to get the students moving in the direction of the door, "Didn't they arrest you? Pedophile in the candy store?" Burosa picked himself up and started limping down the pavement and back towards his silver car.
"That's it, getting too domestic. Everybody indoors!" Jon commanded. He followed Burosa a bit, escorting him off the grounds now that the student were cleared, a feat he accomplished on pure menace alone.
"He's going to bits, Tyler. You aren't playing with him are you?" Jon whispered above her ear as he returned from his escort quest. "Not that I'd blame you, considering."
Rose yearned to grab his hand in the school yard, knowing that, at least in this place, nothing had changed for her since a week ago. Knowing that next to her was a body which had held her at her most vulnerable, a body that had pressed into hers, cool lips and long fingers weaving into her hair. "Ah, Rose. You are transmitting quite loudly, you might want to siphon some of that energy back to your brother soon before we both lose our teaching positions to the things I am struggling not to think of right now."
Rose looked into Jon's face, and saw the darkened pupils and the flare of his nostrils before releasing the train of thought. "Sorry," she whispered.
"Can't say what I'd do managing the life force of three entities," Jon admitted. "I'm all for the bluster and run method of change. Rather save the work than destroy, me. Watching you go through this is a bit distressing. I've realized that I've become quite set in my ways."
"It isn't his life, Prydon Burosa. It's stolen," Rose said as they came to the junction that would lead them on their separate ways. "He isn't human."
"The longer this lingers on, the more I will worry about your humanity, Rose," Jon answered. "There are always two parties to abusive relationship," his voice lowered to a whisper as the final bell rang. "Gotta go!" he waved.
"Wait!" yelled Rose. "What do you mean?"
"I've seen it in myself more often than I'd like to admit, that's why I can see it in you. Don't confuse what you are doing as justice, because with you let cruelty enter into the punishment then the wickedness you are trying to eliminate from the outside world takes root inside you."
"I don't want to talk about it," Rose said defensively.
"Check on Tony," Jon said over his shoulder as he rounded the corner.
"Doctor Carlisle? You didn't tell me you know him," the voice of Stephen Willis purred at her side as he slide up next to her. They turned back towards their classroom, the cacophony of voices from the first hour chorus echoed down the hallway.
"I do now, I guess. Just met properly this weekend," Rose answered suddenly self-conscience.
"Properly, eh?" he teased. "Your secret is safe with me, Miss Rose and the Doctor, woulda thunk it" he said with a wink in his voice.
Rose had the day to think, prepping the various choirs for their end of year appearances. She thought on cruelty and Jon's words. Mo's niece had been given a large floppy bunny when her mother remarried with the specific instructions if she ever became mad or jealous of her step family that she could take it out on the stuffed animal. The animal was destroyed within a month, not because the child had any large amounts of envy and anger associated with the step-family, but merely because she had been permission to be cruel to something that couldn't fight back. Sudden Rose with her heightened senses could perceive the pain of the toy and she wondered for a moment if Jon was waiting on this resolution as a test of her character.
She popped out of the confines and poor cell-phone reception of the building between classes to check on her brother. His improvement baffled the staff, but no one was more happy to being party to a miracle then the members of pediatric ward.
"Modern medical marvel, he is," she told Willis.
"Clueless modern medical doctors, more like," was his reply.
"Nah, we had a nice doctor and the nurses where exemplary," Rose said observing Jon across the cafeteria talking to Christine DeSousa again. Modern workplace romances she mussed, all the freedom to be overwhelmed with envy but none of the the latitude to go displace Christine at his side. Across the room she held his attention though, his eyes sought her out constantly and he lost the thread of the conversation on more than one occasion. He was hiding again, had that shroud of normalcy up and running. She loaded up a box of music theory homework she had to grade this evening. Out her window she could see Burosa car still parked on the street. At the first bell after lunch, she dashed down to Jon's room during her prep period. She knocked on his door, pulling him out of his just beginning class and drawing a few catcalls from some of the more ribald students.
"What's the matter, Miss Tyler?" he asked, professional mask in place.
"You think I'm being unnecessarily harsh with him" she asked, "and you don't think the punishment fits the crime." For a moment something ancient and alien looked at her from behind his eyes.
"Frankly, I'm scared Tyler. He was one of us once and he got stuck like that. Maybe he ended up in a situation like you are in now and made the wrong choice," Jon looked around, fearing an unexpected audience. "I'm scared that once you cross the line from taking what was Tony's and meting out punishment that you'll get stuck too."
"Fair enough, I'll finish this today. He's waiting for me out there, but I can't meet him on the grounds. Can you take a message to him?" she asked. "That I'll meet him at Peckham Rye south entrance at four. I'd go myself, but I don't think I can trust myself at the moment."
"I'll do it on my prep," Jon said and added, "Want me to come along?"
"No, I have to do this alone," Rose answered, not wanting him to witness things if she couldn't keep control of her anger.
"Let me know how it goes, please?" he entreated, before turning back to his class which had become progressively unruly.
"How do I end it?" she whispered.
"I don't expect him to remain corporeal for much longer. He's just a collection of memories and hunger," Jon leaned out of his door frame.
"I just need to command him... to do what?" she asked in exasperation.
"Do it. Just tell him that he is dead. That he died a long time ago," Jon said. "You must convince him and you must be authoritative about it so he can't sneak away into another victim."
"He won't. I have him trapped!" Rose retorted.
"And he thought he had Tony," Jon supplied. "Oh and Rose, I took that painting down, the one with the red eyes."
She paused, a small smile on her face, and walked down the hall.
With no reason to stop by the daycare for Tony, she passed by the building. The children in his pre-school had all made card for him which had been delivered that morning. Jackie had read all the cards and declared them adorable. The kiosk was still open, the stylists seeming to manage the place just fine for a few days without their manager. For a moment it was distressing to think the the world would go on just fine if Rose, Jackie and Tony Tyler suddenly disappeared, but then thinking on it more she was heartened by the resiliency of human kind. For a change, she headed south, towards Peckham Rye.
She tried not to think of Burosa on her walk. She thought of her parents and their new love interests, how love flared, matured and then either faded or solidified. She had never had a relationship get to the point of love. Jimmy had been all lust and youthful adventure, a strike out for independence she had no business claiming. Mickey had been safe, undemanding,a bookmark in the stalled trajectory of her life. She'd experience sex with out love, sex based on fondness and she suddenly wondered what sex based on love might be like. Mrs. Hemmerling had six children, but would never mention sex or related biological or emotional subjects, but she could wax poetic on her hot flashes and change of life, like now she was over the threshold of fertility that those equally personal subjects where fair game.
Her mum believed in true love and had the Regency novel collection to prove it, but her true love loved and left her so many times that the book of their life was rather dog eared and tattered. Sudden Jason is a part of her life and the old is replace with the new. Julia is new for her father and life goes on. A baby sister will be born and Rose's family life will change again. There must be an unwritten rule of attraction that she hasn't been trained to pay attention to, something to explain the sudden clenching of her heart seeing Jon outside the gate this morning. Rose pulled her thin jacket about her as she approached Burosa's car outside the gate, protecting that particular memory for a moment longer.
He was out of the car, before she walked up to him, a snarl on his lip.
"Please..." I can teach you so much. "Immortality is in your grasp..."
Rose, who had begun the morning a good mood, suddenly felt numb. She had lost the motivation for her revenge. His countenance was horrible, but she could not find herself moved by his condition, for she was battling her own questions as real life resumed about her. He had lost most of his teeth, the sores on his cheeks were openly weeping, he was a shamble of a skeleton, held together with evil and force of will. He stood in contract to the beauty that was the Victorian garden behind him. Rose made for the dedication plaque for the garden club and Burosa shambled behind her.
"Leave!" she turned on him and shouted.
"Leave?" he cried, "after I've followed you all this way."
"You are dead. Nothing but a shambling corpse," she made her voice as authoritative as she could. "Become what you are and stop pretending to be alive."
"No!" he screamed. "You called me out here."
"And now I am telling you to go and get it over with," Rose said. "Jon warned me that it wasn't healthy to punish you slowly and now I believe him. You have a nice unmarked grave waiting for you if you will just drop the pretense and get it over with. I am done with you and you are nothing," she growled at him channeling the energy of the Bad Wolf into his dispersal.
Her words had immediate effect, the very flesh powdered to ash along his bones and he babbled a shrill litany. "I love the flesh, fine food, fine wine, the wind in my hair. You take it all for granted, you mortals. I'm human, I've been more human than you've been for centuries because I appreciate it more than you," he cried as the wind blew more of the the ash from the bones. His frame twitched again. "You don't even know the best bits yet girl, to hold new life, the sweat of a lover, the love of a grandchild...I...could...have...given...it...to...you...forever," he rasped as the last of the bone fell to ash.
She sat next to the puddle of clothing until the sun went down five and a half hours later, just to make sure he wasn't coming back. All the things he offered to her, she had already, or would have, in the normal course of human events. She hadn't experienced most of them yet. But she experienced one thing today. Her brother was recovered from a long illness and that was quite enough life for her to revel in.
Eventually she grew cold as the sun set a cream colored plimsoll came into view.
"Couldn't stay away. Come on Tyler, you've held your vigil," Jon's voice pulled her from her musings. "Just a pile of clothes," as he rummaged through the pockets. "Ah hah!" he exclaimed as his pulled a wallet and keys from the pocket. He pulled a wad of cash from the wallet and placed it in the donation box, put the wallet underneath an urn, and the keys he tossed into the koi pond. "I'll get to the clothes, they'll find the car and think the old nutter drowned himself in one of the ponds.
"Come away with me, Tyler," he held a arm down to her to pull her up. "Why'd you choose here of all places?"
"That's just it. This place is crawling with people on a nice day, but everyone is ignoring everyone else. It's actually quite lonely in that respect," she said keeping her place on the ground, not quite ready to leave.
"Definitely off my list for future dates now," Jon quipped.
"Don't go near the car," Rose warned.
"What? School teacher collared for disappearance of raving loon who was stalking his girlfriend," he did is best RP announcer voice as he walked over to the nearest set of bushes with the pile of clothing. He returned five minutes later a smile on his face. "There's a homeless camp hidden in the old hatchery, I think they'll appreciate the clothing. One of them greeted me with 'Heya, Harry! How's Ginny?' Potterheads can be homeless too, I guess."
"Perhaps he saw the movies," Rose said.
"Come on, Tyler! Up you go." he said, but Rose refused to move. Jon defeated, sat down next to her.
"He's gone, Tyler. Time to shift," he playfully bumped her shoulder. "Didn't your mum ever tell you that the cold ground will give you pimples on your bum? Oh, don't melt on me, Tyler! Man up and stand."
"I'm a better man where I'm at right now," Rose said, but finally gave into his pestering and moved.
He caught sight of the pair of shoes left behind. "We're done here, Tyler," he leaned over and arranged the shoes side by side. For the second time that day, she caught the ancient man behind is eyes, as he looped his arm in her and led her down the path to his car.
"Come back to the manor," he whispered. "You can give me a opinion on my bare spot on the wall and find you a shot of something to warm you..." He cast about a moment more, before adding, "or maybe cocoa. Something domestic. Oi! Don't give me that look, you won! Tony's on the mend, the bad guy is no more and if you wear a skirt to school again tomorrow, I think I'll go spare. Did I leave anything out?"
Rose broke out in a sob. But she was not unhappy, but relieved and filled with joy. Once that damn broke, she had a week's worth of unspent tears to release on Jon's shirtsleeves. Her eyes itches from the sobbing and she was suddenly warmed with the release of emotion.
"Hush, none of that!" he said. "No crying."
"I know, you're getting all the bad part of the relationship on the front end of things," Rose agreed still crying.
"Shut it will you. Don't remind me of the stupid, insensitive things I've said. I've changed, we've both changed since then. And please stop crying, cause it's contagious."
They were almost to his car, waiting for traffic to clear when he pulled her into a bus shelter. "Come out of the wind for a moment." In the dim florescent lights he started kissing her tears away. Then he captured her mouth so she tasted the salt of her tears on his lips. "I'll hold you tight, and you forget. Forget Burosa, forget your mum and dad and Tony and just be Rose...just think about being Rose..."
"Thought you forgot my first name," Rose finally woke from her stupor a few minutes later.
"Well, tis the best bit, save it for special occasions," he looked around the shelter. "Time to go. Not that I am not interested..., but I think you are a prime candidate for a good night's sleep."
"Thanks, I'm on the mend myself," Rose said wanting very much for Jon to kiss her again.
Much later Rose woke up on the old couch in the carriage house apartment, the patchwork pillow under her chin and a hand made afghan wrapped around her. Jon was not at his desk as she heard the telltale sounds of keyboard work, but at her feet on the floor working on a laptop. Rose watched as he hunted and pecked his way around the keyboard, fingers and equations flying.
Jon worked steadily and then said without acknowledging her waking, "Tyler, you mum rand your mobile and she said either she or your father would be by to pick you up. They're springing Tony from the hospital today. So you better start waking up and shoot Willis an email. We've less than two weeks as official co-workers to suffer through and you might as well get credit for good behavior when you deserve it," he gave her a grin that bordered on lascivious.
"Dark out still?" she asked.
"Yeah," Jon said, "and I have a final first hour that I didn't get re-written and I got word some smart-alec thinks he's got the answer key."
The small homeless camp in Peckham Rye housed about eight to twelve persons in the summer, one such ventured forth on a warming summer morning to encounter a rather nice pair of men's leather loafers. She considered them for a moment, looked at her own scuffed up and holey trainers for a moment before kicking them off and trying on the abandoned shoes. The fit wasn't perfect, and improved much when she turned them over and knocked out the last bit of ashes into the wind.
