Eviction!
Episode expansion of: Siege
By TunnelsOfTheSouth
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She's evicted me from my life! I can't really believe it, or understand how it happened so easily. But there's no other way to look at it.
I'd succeeded very well in remaking myself, becoming someone in this damn, cut-throat town. I came to New York to build. I needed nothing, and no-one. I was the complete master of my own fate, content with my lot.
Until I met Catherine Chandler. In one incredible night, she changed everything I believed about myself. She also managed to destroy the biggest project I'd been working on, night and day for the last three years, with one single, harsh sentence.
'The building stays!'
I stood there like a prize chump, making no move to stop her as she walked away from me, and out of my life. She didn't even look back. "Case closed," as they say. Move on, Elliot Burch, there's nothing more for you, here.
I'm only writing this down now in an attempt to restore some kind of order to my chaotic thoughts. My life goes on, but I feel out of control. I'm trying to get over her. Erase her soft beauty from my memory. Ask me how that's going, and I'll tell you a bald-faced lie.
More than a few shots of whisky have helped, but I can still feel the ordered threads of my life unravelling before my eyes, unwinding out of my control. We were so good together! How could I have been so wrong? So blind to how much she affected me?
A few days ago, I was foolish enough to reach out to her, trying to make amends. She refused to take my calls. I must've called her a dozen times, that day. My pride took a whipping, but I didn't care. Then she returned my gift, and my note, both unopened.
I'm at my wit's end.
I swear I was ready to give her everything. Do anything she wanted. All she had to do was ask, and I would've bought the world for her. Couldn't she see that?
I just don't understand any of it. There's been a terrible misunderstanding over my motives. I was building for the future, creating thousands of jobs, reviving a whole neighbourhood. But Cathy refused to understand my side. To comprehend what I have to offer her. All for the sake of a few, stubborn old people who refused to move out of a crumbling, old tenement.
My great building project was to be my crowning achievement, next to loving her. It would've signalled I'd truly arrived. I had visions of us up in the penthouse I'd put in, toasting the sunset with champagne… and maybe later, the sunrise. It was all planned, so neatly wrapped up in everything I was ready to become, for her.
When I first met Cathy, I got the uneasy sense there was someone else in her life. I didn't know for sure I couldn't prove anything. I put my best men on it, but they found nothing. The thought remains, like a damnable itch I can't reach. She was, and is, seeing someone else. Deep down inside, I'm convinced of that fact, if nothing else.
Tonight, I finally realised I've been taken for a fool. I've been dreaming, but now I'm awake. And that dark side of me that holds onto to anything I've ever possessed, watches and waits.
I will go on. I will build other skyscrapers and date other women. I'll make myself content. I will store up all these chaotic feelings and emotions, against the day she comes back to me, looking for something. And she will come back.
Then, she will truly know me. Then, she will see how much she has misjudged me. Me, Elliot Burch, the man who's become used to making things happen, no matter the cost.
And then, if there is another man, he'd better not stand in my way…
Elliot