ART OF THE DARK - PART 34
Silence drops on the Atherton property like a bomb, exploding all over the place-affecting everyone in the blast radius; but especially RJ, who's never heard a silence quite like this. He's always lived in cities-noisy, smelly, congested urban jungles. Coming to Montana was like landing on another planet-the anti-city. But even though it's so not him, he thanks the lord that this is where they landed. If the shitstorm was going to hit anywhere, what better place than a remote house surrounded by woods and no other people around for at least twenty miles? He sighs at that, his first little bit of relief.
It's all over, finally...OVER.
He looks down at Evan, so tiny in his big arms. He bounces him gently, trying to get a reaction from him. He then looks at the crusted blood on the baby's neck, where the Wicked Witch of the East Coast had managed to mark him. He shakes his head, wondering how anybody could get to that point, where they'd punish a baby for merely being a certain person's child. But that thought draws his eyes to the boy's father, lying unconscious on the ground and covered in the witch's blood.
Well...actually...maybe I COULD see how, after all.
Then his eyes follow the trail of destruction to Shelton, a life-size, lifeless doll in Téa's arms. She clutches him, keeps readjusting her hold on him, pulling on him as if she could fold him into her. Her cries have lessened in strength and volume, but as RJ looks at her, he can tell she's not about to let him go. He looks up at the changing sky, the shift in colors telling him that time marches on, even though worlds have ended. His thoughtful mood suddenly switches back to that of the career criminal-back to the business at hand. With Evan in one arm, he bends a bit closer to Téa and shakes her shoulder.
No response.
"Tea," he says, unable to see her face. She lies over Shelton's body like a puppet whose strings have been cut. RJ reaches over and shakes her shoulder again, calling her name again, but still, she refuses to lift her head.
So finally, he does it for her in an unusually harsh way: using the flat of his palm, he force her forehead up. Her face breaks his heart all over again, streaked with tears, weeping brown eyes, her face drawn beneath a sea of grief and shock.
It takes RJ a moment to regain focus, knowing he can't be sucked in...
...not anymore.
"Let's go, baby, come on, get up."
She just stares at him like he's speaking another language, unfocused, confused.
"LET'S GO," he repeats, firmer. "Get the kids back in the house." He grabs her upper arm with one hand and starts to pull her up but she won't move. Instead, her grip tightens on Dean, her arms locking around him.
"No...I'm not leaving him," she finally says, her voice weak...just above a whisper.
RJ looks Dean over for a second, and checks his watch. Shit. The lateness strengthens his resolve. He grabs Téa's shoulder, gripping her coat to yank her up. She fights him all the way, still refusing to let go.
"Goddammit, woman, get your ass UP!" he hisses at her which stuns her, long enough for him to get her on her feet. He shoves Evan into her arms before she can say anything and then bends down to pick Shelton up.
"Wh-wh-what're you doing?" she asks, bewildered and starting to get angry now. "Stop it! Don't touch him!"
"I said get the kids in the house."
"No! Not until you tell me what happened!" Téa seems to have found her voice again but RJ ignores her, hurriedly lifting Shelton's body up and over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Téa tries to stop him but RJ shrugs her away and she just stands there with quiet Evan in her arms, watching him walk over to the car and put Dean in the front seat with no particular gentleness or consideration, handling him like a sack of potatoes, basically.
"What are you DOING? ANSWER ME!" she yells, getting more upset.
But again RJ ignores her, buckling the seatbelt across Dean's waist and reclining it back. He shuts the door and starts to walk away, over toward the spot where Roseanne lies. He glances back over his shoulder and sees Téa still standing there, so he stops for just a second to look at her.
"Téa ...for once in your goddamned life will you just DO WHAT I SAY? GET THE FUCK BACK IN THE HOUSE! NOW!" he shouts, pointing towards the house itself-then he continues off into the yard, blending in with the lengthening evening shadows.
Téa stands there frozen, absolutely numb with shock and maddening confusion at RJ's sudden harshness. But after another moment, she complies, taking the boys and their seats out of the car and bringing them up onto the back steps. She examines her sons, touching them gently. She makes sure Evan isn't bleeding anymore, using some spit on her finger to try and clean him up a bit. They're both so still and so very calm considering what they just went through. They should be all she thinks about, all that matters.
But those responsible, maternal thoughts are constantly interrupted now, with images of a man whose blood now covers her palms. She turns them up to look at them, fair skin stained red, with her own blood, Evan's blood, Todd's...and...
She starts crying again, immediately, unable to even think his name. God, it hurts so bad...so bad it can't possibly be true. Except it is. He's dead...Dean is dead. His time on the planet ended, cut short, by whom she isn't sure. She wants nothing more than to run over to the car and take him back. But she knows RJ is collecting Roseanne so he can take them both and dispose of the bodies. The very word, the very idea of Dean ending up buried in some miscellaneous hole next to Roseanne, infuriates and weighs on Téa like a two-ton anvil.
No...he deserves better...I can't let RJ do this.
She stands up as RJ finishes putting Roseanne's body in the trunk, throwing a blanket over her rapidly-cooling corpse, before slamming the lid down. He walks over to Téa, a bloody hand out… which she cringes at.
"Keys," he says and she shakes her head.
"I don't have them. D-Dean...has...HAD them," she answers, her voice shaky and full of such excruciating pain that RJ's face changes for a second at her whole self...fuckin' tragic.
"Oh, no...wait," she then says, feeling a lump in her pants pocket. She digs out the keys, holding them tightly in her fist, hard enough to hurt.
RJ sighs, nodding, taking them from her gently. "Look," he says, "I'm sorry I yelled at you. But I gotta get them outta here, NOW."
"Please don't take him… don't take him from me...please, RJ," she tearfully begs and he just lets out a hard breath, looking upward for a second in renewed frustration...then he shakes his head at her.
"Téa ...STOP, okay? Just stop it right now. IT'S OVER, you understand that? O - VER," he says firmly, and she shakes her head right back, grabbing onto his arms.
"What happened? You have to tell me...who...who killed him...?"
RJ stares into her eyes, a bit of sympathy returning, but not enough to change his rock-hard resolve and his own personal urge to get clear of her, of Todd...of this whole...fucking...mess. He pulls out of her grasp roughly, letting his hands fly up before pointing at her.
"I don't HAVE to tell you anything...and I'm not going to. Y'know why? Because it's not gonna CHANGE anything. Baby… you need to take a minute, an hour, a day, a fucking year, WHATEVER… but you need to take some time out and GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER. You need to get it through your head that IT IS OVER." He moves a step closer, a step that makes her recoil a bit.
"Wh-why are you talking like this? What did I DO?"
"You made your CHOICE! THAT'S what you did! And NOW you gotta live with it. Get your fuckin' head outta your ass, girl, and MOVE ON. You have two kids over there, go take care of 'em. You have a husband over THERE… go take care of HIM. And quit whining about the DEAD MAN in the front seat of that car... 'cause I'll tell ya, he AIN'T COMIN' BACK. That CLEAR ENOUGH for ya?"
Téa's anger flares at that. She has no idea where RJ's coming from right now, and she doesn't care. She slaps him hard, the sting of it hurting her more than it does him. RJ's head slowly turns back to face her, his eyes squinting as he puts a hand to his cheek.
"How could you even talk to me like that? You KNOW how important he is to me! What's gotten INTO YOU?" She flushes with anger that heats her tears as they continue to dig tracks in her skin.
RJ gazes at her, stoic and seemingly unmoved. After a second or two, though, he says, "Shelton is DEAD...and the sooner you accept that fact, the easier it'll be. Now I'm gonna take Todd inside and you're gonna tend to him while I go take care of things."
With that, he turns on his heel and walks away. Téa watches helplessly as he collects Todd in the same way he did Dean, and carries him into the house. She hears his footsteps receding, leaving her in a sudden, thick silence. She wants to collapse, shatter into a million pieces on the ground or turn into a puddle that will sink into the earth, never to be seen again...like Roseanne, like...Dean.
She turns her head slowly, to look into the car. She sees him lying there, looking merely asleep from where she stands. She starts to make her way over to him, but RJ comes up behind her fast and grabs her. Téa lets out a harsh breath as he pulls her away and gives her a shove up the steps. She stumbles, turning around and glaring at him; and RJ glares right back…
"You want me to TEND to him after all he did?! After everything HE DID?!"
RJ marches up the stairs and looks hard at her, pointing towards the door, towards Todd inside… "Woman… ALL HE DID… was 'cause a'YOU. He lost his every-lovin' mind because YOU left without a goddamn word. He doesn't, didn't know… SHIT. So yes, go take care o'him. You don't gotta stay with him, I am not relieving him of his responsibility for any of his wrongs… but we would not be here if it wasn't for you NOT taking the normal, goddamn path… to HELP! You coulda called ME. I would have done ANYTHING to help you. But naaah… you had to do THIS. So yeah, sister… go TEND him. Get him well enough to get hospitalized or some shit… whatever is right."
Something seems on the tip of his tongue, a flicker of something in his eyes besides disgust. She has no idea what it is, though, and he's not saying.
"I'll be back as soon as I can," is all he says before getting in the car. She watches him start it up and drive off, a cloud of dirt kicking up behind him, and she feels a pulling on her insides...like a cord stretching as the car gets farther away. She doesn't want to let go, but it stretches farther and farther, grows thinner and thinner...her hold on Dean fraying, unraveling and finally snapping.
She doesn't hear the car anymore. He's gone...he's really gone...oh god...
She sinks down on the steps, pulls her knees up, buries her face and cries there next to her sons...with Todd passed out in the house somewhere.
The Mannings...back together again...one big happy family.
An hour or so later, RJ walks out of an unmarked, rundown building in the middle of a clearing in the woods. He's a stone's throw from the Canadian border, at a little spot belonging to his Jamaican associates. He wipes his hands on a bloody cloth, staring out at a pile of wood that's been set up some yards away.
He carries the cloth in one hand as he walks toward it, stopping again a few feet away. Roseanne's body lies on top of the pyre, wrapped up in the blanket he'd thrown over her. He shakes his head, at so many things, but mostly at the fact that he's here at all.
Never in a million years did he think he'd be doing this. It frightens him like few things can and saddens him as he knows what it means. He's taken a huge responsibility on himself, one he would rather not have. But there was no one else to take it.
The only saving grace is that he fixed everything. Fixed it all for the better. And after today, they had to be. He hates to think he is cutting himself off from his best friend for nothing. He sighs, long and loud, then picks up the can of gasoline by the base of the pyre. He opens it with the bloody cloth protecting his fingers and pours it over the wood, splashing it everywhere, soaking the blanket covering Roseanne. He shakes the can until it's empty and then tosses it aside. He gives Rosie one last look, as if he could see her through the blanket.
"Do us all a favor, girl, and stay dead," he mutters as he backs up a bit. Then he uses the lighter he fished out of Dean's jacket to light the cloth in his hand. He has to hit the lighter a few times to get it to spark but it finally catches, the orange flame grabbing onto the fabric. RJ watches it burn for a second, then throws the cloth. It floats in the air, landing on the very base of the pyre...and with an audible whoosh, the whole thing goes up. Flames race everywhere the gas has been poured...and RJ steps back farther, feeling the intense heat. He watches Roseanne's body disappear in front of him, the fire working quickly to reduce the witch to a harmless pile of ash.
He looks up at the quicksilver fading into the dark blue sky, imagining her miserable spirit dissipating as well...
...hoping it, anyway.
The plain paneled walls of the guest room are simple pale wood with random knots which mock living trees. They're as offensive to Téa as antlers lashed above a fireplace, as cruel as butterflies caught beneath glass or pinned to an artist's corkboard. Wasted beauty.
The boys sleep soundly, not a peep coming from their cozy nests in Joely's office. They've been fed, bathed, changed, kissed and held. The process has allowed numbness to wash over Téa, flowing through her. She sits now on top of maroon-colored bed covers, pressed tightly against the modest headboard, next to an equally sound Todd who still hasn't roused from RJ's quelling of his intended violence.
He must be injured to be this unconscious. Perhaps he'd never wake, perhaps, he's as dead as he looks. She runs her hands up and down her legs through the slacks she wears in an attempt to squeeze out the strain cramping her muscles. She's all about the sensation of emptiness at the moment, all about feeling drained of energy and emotion, drained of prospects for the next second, the next minute, the next hour. She knows better though. The emotion hasn't gone anywhere-it's been anaesthetized.
She splays her fingers and counts the fingers from the thumb to her pinky.
"One-two-three-" All the way to five, she counts. She raises her other hand and counts the digits out loud. Kicking off her shoes, she counts her toes, her voice fading at the number ten. She touches her hair, her face, her neck. She's mostly whole, she thinks. All parts of her body are intact, the bullet wound on her arm is hardly anything, the oozing flow having ended.
The wholeness ends there, though. Everything else has been blown apart and away, her insides dragged out and spread under the Montana sky, stardust, now. Irreparably disintegrated.
Her eyes slide over to Todd's body. Dried blood splashes his cheeks, neck, eyelids like warpaint. Scratches mar the skin. Full lips are parted and he breathes gently. There is an angry gash above his eyebrow, the skin swelling slightly making the damage look like banks embracing a muddied ruby stream. His hands lie carelessly at his side, dried blood there, too, beneath his fingernails, on his palms, his wrists. Clouds of red disappear under the coat's cuffs. The black wool coat covers his body, the coat with the wind-blown flaps that haunted her dreams for so long, black wings in the wind on a sandy beach, ending up on Roseanne.
We would not be here if it wasn't for you NOT taking the normal, goddamn path… to HELP! You coulda called ME. I would have done ANYTHING to help you. But naaah… you had to do THIS. So yeah, sister… go TEND him.
"You weren't their killer but you're a killer just the same," she whispers. She can't think beyond certain facts and his sacrifice seems distant. Almost irrelevant. Why? Why can't she bring forth what he lost and the reasons behind it? Why can't she remember love? The boys are nothing beyond the boys.
They're fine, they're safe. It's all that matters.
He looks so helpless, lying there. She could easily cut his throat, she could easily press a gun against his temple and finish him off. For as long as she's known him, she wanted him saved from his demons but… but he's dead now.
Yes, he's dead, like Roseanne, like, like Dean, like the reality I once knew.
Glancing around her, she concludes that everything has the essence of a completed nightmare. Something has happened, and yet, nothing has. There's relief in the air alongside lingering disruption. Life won't be the same, yet it will.
HE is dead.
But he swims, just the same, through a black sea of nothingness, hearing muffled noises-above him? He can't tell where the noise comes from but still, he continues onward, upward, trying to make his way toward them, out of this awful, life-sucking muck that's enclosing him.
Téa gets to her knees and spreads Todd's coat open. Struggling, grunting with the effort, she jerks it off his shoulders, and yanks it down, down beneath him, pulling it out from under his legs frantically and throwing it to the floor.
The crumpled fabric screams harmlessness, meaningless this way. It terrified her for weeks and weeks and now it's dead.
She straddles his hips and sits there, looking at him, still out. She bends to carefully unbutton the forest-green shirt he wears, the cloth thick and rough, a kind of rawness to it. He likes this type of clothing, rejecting anything too soft, too slick. When he's exposed, she rests her hands flat on his chest, feeling the soft rise and fall, the illusion of life.
She kneads his pectoral muscles, moving both her hands to one spot slightly off-center, thinking she's going to massage his heart to liven it up, to get it pumping again. He doesn't react. Nothing changes
"Hopeless," she says aloud. "Time of death: 7:20 p.m. I'm so sorry."
A flash of white rips through the blackness, in time with a heartbeat, HIS heartbeat. A first and powerful thump that jolts his whole body, but it's ONLY a jolt. Not enough to keep the heart beating on its own. He feels himself sinking back down into the murky sea even though he has no sense of down...or up...or surface or a bottom. He's left with a sense of being lost in something he cannot find his way out of alone.
Tea pulls the shirt off of Todd and drops it on top of the coat. She then unbuttons his dirt-encrusted jeans, noticing for the first time a billowing blossom of dried blood there. She takes the edge of the jeans right along with the boxer-briefs he wears and pulls downward, using every bit of her strength to get them off. She works the clinging clothes all the way to his ankles, where she runs into his boots.
She scrambles off the bed and pulls those heavy leather things off, socks, too, and then at last frees him of his jeans. She stands a while, observing him, seeing the tangle of straight cuts on his belly, the curls of hair having taken on a new redness, a darkness. His penis seems harmless, lying to the side. It's as innocuous as the coat is now, like his hands.
He looks like a corpse and the cuts on his belly are autopsy scars. The color of his skin is a stiff's gray beneath the brackish red. The bruising on his ribs only confirms her belief.
"I should clean you, my love. I should wash away the day. Tend to you. Prepare you for burial."
Another jolt, another flash of lightning and he feels himself being pulled upwards toward what must be the surface, closer this time, one beat, two, then a pause. It's erratic and the muscle tries to pick up the rhythm, but it's still too weak and it hurts when it stops as if a weight has been dropped on him and he's falling again. But he's hip to the game now and he starts to fight, to push himself up toward that surface. Hit me again…
As if sleepwalking, Téa leaves Todd and looks down the murky hallway, seeing the light from other rooms, from Joely's office where the boys are. Brendan and Evan are undisturbed. Peaceful.
She enters the kitchen and a memory of Dean begins to take form, but she shuts it down. He's dead, gone. A nightmare where nothing happened yet everything happened.
She needs to clean his body.
She searches the cupboards until she gathers what she needs: towels, soap, and a large bowl for warm water. The faucet runs a while and when she has enough water, as if there ever could be enough for the job she has to do, she carries her supplies back to the bedroom, water splashing up the sides of the porcelain bowl and onto the wood floors.
She hesitates, glancing down at the wooden slats, thinking more mockery. Dead trees cut down in their prime only to be stepped on.
Moving forward, she reaches the room and sees that the corpse hasn't shifted positions. He's still on his back, still unclean.
When she's arranged herself comfortably, she dips the towel into the hot, soapy water and wrings the cloth out. She cleans his face with careful, tender touches, an echo of love, she thinks. The hair is left because she finds the process too hard, too difficult. She spends time washing his hands, his arms, especially the fingernails.
What had he done to get the blood so deep beneath? It never seems to go away. Maybe it's not supposed to.
She washes his feet, his legs, and she cleans the cuts on his abdomen, moving to his unresponsive genitals. She washes his chest, his neck. She turns him on his side and washes his back, his shoulders, and his backside.
When she's done, once she lays him on his back again on the now-wet sheets, she glimpses her work and he's better. Looks better. Ready for another journey.
A breeze stirs outside and she hears the trees rustling with life. She can't see them but she can picture them and she whispers an apology for their losses here in the house.
Sorry for the floors, sorry for the walls, sorry for your skeleton that's used without consideration for you.
She wishes she knew the majestic sources of the wood before their violent, earsplitting deaths. She senses their spirits, she senses their sadness.
He hears a sound, a definite sound of something being powered up. It goes from low to high-a rising electrical pulse. He hears voices, and then another hard jolt. His whole body convulses with the shock, struck by lightning for a third time and as the saying goes, it's the charm. The tired muscle grabs onto the power surge and holds it, pumping again, once, twice, three, four, five times. Finally, a rhythm.
Téa stands up and removes her sweater, her blouse, her socks, jeans. She's in her panties and bra and she touches her belly, softer now than before the boys. She feels the repairing wound from the c-section at the top of her pubis, an attempt at disguise. As if such scars can be hidden. Men must have come up with that idea.
Don't they know a woman is forever different? Burying the cut means nothing. She will never be restored to her previous self. She crawls onto the bed and lies on his body, feeling all his parts under her.
"You're dead," she says without emotion. She kisses his chest, his pinkish nipple, runs her tongue along his skin to his other one. Smashing her cheek and her ear against a spot where his heart should be. She listens for a heartbeat, only hears nothing. No thumps.
"You weren't strong enough," she says. "You were supposed to save me but you never said you'd have to be lost to do it. You never said I'D have to be lost. What kind of rescue is that?"
Blood races to all of his limbs again. He can feel the flow. It makes his arms and legs straighten out and his head tip back. His mouth opens and he gasps. His eyes open but don't really see. The lightning has pulled him back to the surface but now he feels like a fish on the deck, fighting for air this time.
Breathe.
She grabs his upper arms and lifts her head to see into his face. She remembers and the memory brings with it a shadow of emotion, a brush of it. She wants to love this body one more time before he's sunk into the ground. She wants to show him a sliver of what she felt before he's a rifling in her hair when she stands on a hilltop, a song of a lonely dove watching a field from a tree top, the lapping of water against the sides of a brook.
She places her hands on the bed and raises herself up, placing her legs on the outside of his. She rubs her body against his, dipping her head down, letting her hair tickle his skin, able to feel him through the ends, in the way her hair shifts. She writhes on top of him and recalls a grasp of her body in his hard hands, recalls sighed words and a release of the outside world in the way he entered her.
Breathe, he tells himself, trying to instruct his lungs...but they falter and lose the beat the heart picked up...and it hurts like hell. Oh god, breathe! Pick it up, pick it up, and it's then that he sees her. He can SEE her! She's right there! No, no, wait. He's only remembering her. His brain is trying to kickstart itself along with everything else, firing out random memories as it sputters back to life. He can hear her though, as if she were right there whispering in his ear:
Thank you. I mean it. Thank you.
Soon she feels a hand lightly touching her back and when she glances up, it's blue eyes she's looking at, it's an intense stare she's seeing, an expression of slight bewilderment. She reaches down, grasping onto his sleeping cock, pulling at its ropy thickness, stroking it to a distinctly non-harmless state. The body is alive again and he rocks his head back in sexual agony.
"Sorry to disturb your final rest," Téa says to him, kissing his chin, his cheeks, his lips now, "I couldn't let you go yet."
His tongue is hesitant as she kisses him, everything is hesitant and she blames it on his only just coming to after being dead and it's then she acknowledges that maybe he's not really alive, that this might only be memory or an essence of who he was.
Yes, yes, it's only a reflection, a view in a mirror or on a glass-like surface of a mountain lake.
The spiritual reflection then slips his hands beneath her panties and squeezes her soft, round rump to him, rubbing her perfectly placed, cotton-covered vulva rhythmically against his erection. Still passive in his act, not wanting to touch forbidden fruit. His fingers don't roam, he's so gentle, fearful even.
Colors start to flash around him now, whizzing by at dizzying speeds that disorient him. Coupled with the many layers of sensations going through him, all he can do is lie there and wonder hether it's real or not. No idea. Is it imagination or memory. No fucking clue but god, he can FEEL a maddening mix of pain and heightened sensitivity. He was on top of her once and even though he's the one on his back now, he can feel her as if she were there, as if her skin was moving against his all over again.
A hand finds her bra-covered breast and she feels the strap being edged off, the rest of it being removed. The act is tentative, shy, but then she's lifted upwards with surprising strength, surprising assertiveness, so he can mouth her bare nipple this time, so he can suckle at her unproductive breasts. A growl emanates from the depths of his throat and it's familiar in its hunger, in its mewling of growing dissatisfaction.
Téa closes her eyes, and clasps onto his hair. It's so long in her fingers which isn't right, no, no, he's not gone, he's right beneath her. She cleansed his prone body before he could be taken forever. No, no, no, it can't be true, it's a nightmare, just a bad dream.
The hesitancy, the gentleness, is ending and in one breathless moment, she's fiercely rolled over onto her back and her panties are being pulled at, yanked at, until finally she feels the delicate lace give and tear away. Surprising aggression, but maybe, maybe, he knows they're short on time. She hears hard breaths, feels his weight on top of her, his heavy cock on her thigh, wedging himself between her legs, his face hot and flush against hers. She tastes salty wetness on her lips. He's sad, too, sorry to have to leave her so unexpectedly. His eagerness must be a grasping onto fleeting life.
He wants to say her name, but he can't speak. His vocal chords just won't work. His heart, lungs and brain take all his energy, but he CAN cry… and he does. Whether it's an involuntary reaction, a response to physical pain, or a profound sadness at having lost someone so important to him, he doesn't know. He's not allowed to know yet. He's not ready to restart the process of knowing. Everything hurts and all he can do is concentrate on breathing.
Breathe, just breathe.
She wants to let him know that she won't forget this one last time, this one last moment together… and she's going to make promises to live for him, to embrace every heartbeat and every breath. She's going to feel sunlight on her cheeks and raindrops on her hand and get giddy in the fog and never… never… be afraid or give up. And when she opens her eyes… to say all that...
It's Todd she's staring at, Todd's wounded, fiery gaze, those hazel-colored eyes that have a lifeless quality despite his obvious awakeness. Yes, yes, it's Todd's impossible heaviness pressing into her. He dips his head, burying his mouth in the warmth of her neck, groaning as he does it. That's when he thrusts himself further between her legs, forcing her to open wider for him as Téa holds onto him, hands loose around his neck. There is a remnant of pain sprouting inside and it feels like a tearing at the center of her. He slides his knee upwards and reaches down, touching himself, pressing the tip of his cock against her sex, considering, waiting, for what, she doesn't know.
He raises his eyes to look into her cold ones.
"Todd," she whispers. Just his name.
"Say yes,"
he rumbles, breathing hard like he's running from something. She scans his hard, sharp-edged features, searching, evaluating, but she doesn't find what she wants. She looks away, and relieves him of wrongness.
"Yes."
There's no gentleness as he plunges into her, moving in short, heated, uneven strokes. She releases her hold of him, her arms falling back, her knees apart, clinical presence.
"What have you done to us?" she says, not sure who she's speaking to, but it doesn't matter. He doesn't hear her because her voice isn't forceful enough to overcome Todd's fury.
He's angry with her, he's so angry at everything. He's a ghost of himself. Téa feels the wet sheets underneath her, their coolness fading with the increasing friction, quickly turning into unbearable heat. She holds onto the linens, folding them into her tightened fists to keep from hitting the top of the bed.
She only wants him to finish, to end the torment of her, of himself.
"Oh god," she cries out, her own lifeless body betraying her with an approaching orgasm. She wraps her legs around him and drapes her arms around his tense shoulders, hugging him in a boxer's desire for a break in the battle. He's relentless though. He's claiming her one last time, marking her one last time, and she's soon moaning as the waves of what should be bliss roll through her.
"I hate you," he growls, "I love you." He then chokes out a ragged, "you're killing me."
Téa doesn't think anything in response, doesn't feel anything as she's coming down from the physical euphoria her body greedily jumped into without her permission. She breathes in his blood-scented hair, tastes a renewed glistening of sweat at the base of his throat and rests her cheek against his hot skin. She waits for his end, feeling herself sliding upwards, the sheets burning her.
Moments later, grunting at each spurt of wetness he pumps into her, it's finally over. He doesn't stop the thrusts until there's nothing left of him, no wetness and no will to continue. Then he simply lies on top of her, heaving with emotional ruination. Death is everywhere, destruction everywhere.
He's crying silently against her, shuddering still from the orgasm. They ARE tied together, Téa says to herself, there's no escaping it. It's madness they should be intertwined this way considering the nightmare that has happened...that didn't.
She'd been imagining a burial of Dean...but maybe this is a burial of everyone. Téa tries to push him off her, but she's too lax. She wants to get out from under him, just get out, period.
So she hits and shoves and kicks and it's only then that he gives in. He adjusts himself on the bed, glaring at her from a half-sitting position. She moves away and off the bed, standing and watching him. Blood has begun seeping from the cuts on his stomach and Tea looks down at herself, seeing her own skin reddened, then back up at him.
"You wanna blame me for all this, for everything, you and RJ," she says, "Fine."
"I don't blame you," he answers. She thinks the hatred is fading from his gaze, but she's not sure. She can't tell love or hate on him. They look the same. She wishes she could feel such hatred, such love, wishes she could cry like he does.
"That's a lie," she argues, "it's MY fault I ran away, my fault you left to follow me, my fault you believed you needed Roseanne, my fault you ended up raping her. My fault you killed her."
Todd chuckles bitterly...briefly...before closing his eyes. Perhaps he closes them so Téa can't read him, perhaps it's because he can read HER and doesn't want to anymore. His face creases with pain and Téa gets close to him again, getting on her knees to watch him experience the hurt.
"I'm not feeling anything right now," she says. "Nothing for you, for US...I just...I wanna take the boys and go. That's all I want."
"Liar," he whispers, not opening his eyes, still not looking at her.
"What do you want from me?"
He finally gazes in her direction and says, "Don't want anything. I came here to let you go, Téa. But things...went wrong…"
Téa looks away...nods.
"I said I wouldn't ever let you go, but that's not true. I walked up that road...and I was going to tell you to take care of yourself, the boys...that I was wrong for what happened with Starr, for not understanding you… for not trying to understand...but then something exploded in my head and…" He rubs his face and lets his hand fall to his side, not finishing his sentence.
"Will you let me go NOW?" she asks, having to look back at him to get the answer.
He nods.
"Do you mean that? Or am I gonna find you following me tomorrow?"
"Just call Viki and tell her where you are. I just want to know you and the boys are safe."
"You won't come after us?"
"No," he whispers. His eyes water again and he's as open and as hopeless as she's ever seen.
"You're a monster," she says.
He smiles again...bitterly. "Yeah...you got that right. How does that song go?" In a raspy voice, he sings a phrase from an old, old tune he heard when he was a boy, growing up in a monster's home, "I can see clearly now, the rain has gone…"
Téa slams down a trickle of sadness inching into her chest, from somewhere outside of her. She realizes there's a possibility he'll not survive the night, the next day, or the day after. There's a chance he's going to walk out of this place and lay his body down somewhere and never wake up again. As penance.
In the past, she might have stayed with him to prevent it from happening, to kiss his hurts, to take the blame, to absolve him of his strikes against society and people who hurt him.
No more.
"I'm going to the guest house with the boys," she says.
With that, she gathers her clothes and dresses in front of him. She doesn't look at him and she leaves the room. As she walks the hall, she hears him say, "Sweet dreams, Delgado," and she bites her tongue. so she can feel something.
Todd looks down at the newly opened scabs and rubs the blood around, sticking his reddened fingers into his mouth, tasting the viscous liquid slicked onto his skin. He lies there until he hears the slamming of the back door, until he hears silence. It wasn't him letting go of her.
They let go of each other.
To be continued...