by Drucilla
Author's Note: All done! Thanks to everyone who reviewed, and especially to Sllea who kept giving me ideas. :) Still thinking up a sequel, I'll start posting when I figure it out. We'll see what that turns into. I hope everyone enjoys reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
"I don't know what he was thinking. I'm not the telepath, remember?" Angelique smiled wryly. Curled up in a blanket on the couch, she looked around at the walls of Sanctuary and thought wryly that if she had been in Adam's position, she wouldn't have made everything so damn… Star-Trek-like. It was nice, sanitized… and impersonal.
Adam sat at the other end of the couch, lounging easily. Everyone else had gone to bed, or at least pretended to while trying not to make their curious glances at Angelique too obvious. "Well, you know him as well as the rest of us," he said, "Possibly best of all of us."
She shook her head slowly. "I'm not sure I ever did. I think I saw what he wanted me to see, and nothing else. I can't believe I was so stupid… I can't believe I fell for it. For twenty-four years, I fell for it. And all this time he'd've just slapped me in a stasis pod if he'd known…" Angelique sighed. "I should have given the bastard syphilis," she said, although half-heartedly.
Adam was silent for a minute. "He also brought you out of the stasis pod," he pointed out. "Which … well, he had no reason to do it. Maybe you were right about him all along."
Angelique stared at the horrid pattern on the couch. She wondered what had possessed Adam to make him buy it. "I don't know why he does what he does anymore. I don't know… what happened to him? Was he always this much of a bastard, or did… did it all happen after…" She wasn't sure she wanted to talk about it. The only one who blamed anyone for the incident was Mason, and he blamed Adam. But that, she thought, could be as much out of bitterness as fact.
"I don't know. I know it did change him. But I was never as close to him as you were, I don't think. Not really." He thought about it. "And if I was… what happened changed all that."
"What happened to him changed all of us, I think," Angelique said absently, and then burst into tears for no reason she could discern. Adam blinked at her, concerned, and then reached across the expanse of couch to pull her into his arms and rock her back and forth, attempting to be comforting.
"Why'd he do it?" she asked quietly, still sobbing. "Why does he do it? He never was prejudiced, he was too intelligent for that. And he never… I don't know. Why does he do it? And why did he to it to me? I thought he cared."
Adam sighed and rocked his friend, the beautiful young woman he had met so long ago, who had fallen in love with his best friend and not with him. The woman who, now hurt by that same once-friend, cried heart-brokenly in his arms. Life was cruel, Adam thought, and so was Eckhart. He wondered what he'd do if the other man stood in front of him. He wondered if he'd care if he broke Eckhart's damn neck. The thought that right now he probably wouldn't, scared the hell out of him.
Angelique shifted slightly, and Adam shifted to accommodate her. She had been silent for a little while at least, though he wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing.
"Adam…"
"Angel?"
She took a deep breath. "Would you… do me a favor?"
Mason was sitting at his desk when the other man entered. He didn't even look up, although his
tone of voice when he finally spoke was decidedly annoyed. "Remind me to fire the entire security
team for today."
"She let me in," Adam said, knowing Mason would know who he meant. "She pulled some strings. She had a message for you."
Mason looked up, caught by surprise by the last person he'd expected and, at a distance, the only person who could surprise him that well. "I didn't think she still had access to the facilities."
"Only rudimentary access, but that was enough." Adam was staring at Mason with a look that promised dire futures. It wasn't a glare so much as a statement of fact: you hurt someone I care about, and you will pay the price for that. Mason leaned back, thinking how far they'd come since they'd parted company. Whether it was forward or backward travel, he didn't know.
"Well? What's the message?" he asked, when Adam didn't speak. "She didn't send you here just to punch me in the face. Again."
"Don't tempt me," Adam said very quietly. That, in and of itself, made Mason take notice. "She sent me to give you this."
An envelope landed on Mason's desk. His name was on the front, in careful (yet somehow shaky) calligraphy. Middle-range hand-made parchment, plain black ink. He recognized the writing. "What is it?" he asked, looking up at Adam. The other man didn't say anything. Mason sighed. "All right, you've delivered your message, now get out."
Adam thought about staying, and making sure Mason read the letter. He thought about what she had said. He'll read it. His curiosity will move him to. He'll read it without you forcing him to. He thought about everything that had happened the previous night. "You had better be worth it."
Mason arched eyebrows upwards at Adam. "Excuse me?"
"Letting you live had better be worth hearing her cry all last night over you," Adam said. He wasn't sure when the last time he'd felt so murderous was. "Because if it would make her feel better, I would hunt you down and kill you myself."
If this bit of information affected Mason he gave no sign. He watched Adam for a second, and then. "You know where the door is. Use it."
Adam stared at Mason for a few moments longer and then walked out.
Mason stared at the letter on his desk for nearly half an hour before reading it. When he finally
did pick it up he handled it gingerly, as though it would crumble from his fingers at the
slightest provocation. He stared at the writing on the front, remembering everything that had
been written by that hand. He didn't want to open it, not after the last few days. He set it
down again, and resumed working.
The letter stared at him like a guilty conscience. He glared at it, piled forms and reports on it, and kept working. It glared through the stack of paper. He really didn't want to read it. Finally, he had to. The letter was depressingly thin. If he was going to be ranted at, this wasn't enough paper to do it on. Thin letters from her were always the more dangerous ones. It didn't take many words to say "Stay the hell away from me." He opened the letter and read it.
Mason --
I loved you.
We were friends, once upon a time. I think I fell in love with you the day I first arrived, it
only took me a few years to notice. You never seemed to want that from me, though, so I never
told you. I thought we'd have all the time in the world. Then you and Adam began fighting, and
I didn't want to be a point of contention. You never saw me as I was, only as I could be used
against Adam. So I left.
Seeing you again was like having the sun shine down on me after fourteen long years of rain
and cold. I hadn't missed you so much until I saw you again. And I thought that, with the control
I had gained over the biokinesis, that I at last had a solution, however temporary, to your
condition. I allowed myself to hope that I could tell you what I should have told you years ago,
but was too afraid to. At least, I hoped that we could be friends again.
Instead, you assumed from two minutes of conversation that I had betrayed you to someone you
see as your worst enemy, you were silent for three days, and then you threw me into a stasis
pod. Really, Mason. You could have just sent flowers.
I don't know if I want to rip you apart with my bare hands and let my horses trample you, or
just never see you again. I don't even know why I'm sending this letter. Except to extend you
the same courtesy I am extending Adam and his students, because and only because of the
friendship we shared once. If you have need, come to the farm. Not as a GSA, not as a
representative of GenomeX, but as yourself, as Mason. Come to the farm, and we will talk, and
I will try and help you.
Do anything else and I will run you over with my biggest, heaviest horse.
I wish things had been different. I wish we had both handled this differently. I guess we'll
just have to live with things as they are now.
All my love, even now…
The signature was barely legible. He avoided the part of his thought processes that told him why, and what the damp smudges on the paper were. Carefully, he set the letter down on the farthest point of the desk from him. And then he leaned back in the chair, turned off the intercom, and closed his eyes.