song
part 10: is your love strong enough?
Spoilers: I don't even know at this point.
Author's note: We're coming to an end soon. This is the second-to-last section of 'Song'. Also, as for the L/R/J triangle I have promised in the as-yet-untitled sequel to 'Song', let's just say it's only going to be a triangle in the head of one of those three people.
Disclaimer: I don't own them, yadayadayada.
Rating: PG-13
Feedback: Please, I love it. I live for it, even. It makes me smile. Even if it's just a, 'Good job', I love it.
He had only just walked away from her, only turned his back and gone up the steps on the dock for a moment or two to take an important call. He was only gone a couple of seconds, but that was all it took.
Mortality was a strange thing. It lulled one into a false sense of security, created a masterful web and then destroyed itself, fading into nothingness.
It was not the first time she'd had a gun pointed at her.
It was the first time someone she loved had held the gun.
"Stand up, Elizabeth," Lucky said to her, but all she could see was the cold, hard barrel of the gun, growing larger and larger until all she could see was the blackness, surrounded by a dim fuzzy outline of someone who had once been a human being. Words failed her.
Lucky had been watching, waiting for her to come out of Kelly's, because he knew what would happen. He knew that Jason would lock her up, he knew that she would get sick of it, and he knew that she would come here.
"It's the people who love the most who hurt you the most," she whispered, and she stood slowly and put her mittened hands into the air.
"What?" Lucky asked, his tone harsh, his eyes foreign.
"Nothing," she said, almost shaking. "I was just wondering what you thought you were going to do with that gun."
Bravado, she remembered that. Bravado. If she couldn't have real strength, she'd use Ric's trick. Bravado. She could feel her hands shaking, though, and she knew that she would give herself away. How had this all happened? How in such a short period of time had things gotten so bad? Her life had once been normal, or as close to it as it could have been. How had everything changed so quickly?
And now the first boy she had ever loved was aiming a gun at her head.
"I was given an order, Elizabeth."
"I understand," she said to him quietly. "So where is he? He's got to be watching, right?"
Lucky blinked at her, seemingly confused. She watched him carefully, waiting for him to give her some sign of hesitation, because she could use that against him.
And where was Ric?
"Very good, Miss Webber," she heard, and she twisted her head over her shoulder to see Cesar Faison walking down the steps in his slow, methodical motion, and he pressed his hands together, pulled them apart, pressed them together, pulled them part in an exaggerated twist on a clap.
It was a terrifying moment. She had seen him in Kelly's, but her brain hadn't let her recognize him, hadn't let her truly see him. But now she saw him, plain as the cold, gray day, and he was truly frightening. He was a ghost, a shadow, someone who was never supposed to still be walking the earth.
She had never had a greater sense of her own mortality.
"I couldn't have asked for a better final subject," Faison said to her as he descended the steps, his voice thick with that strange accent. She realized that he, too, held a gun in his hand. "You are the final piece of the puzzle, Miss Webber."
"You can't just use people like this-" she started, but he cut her off as his feet hit the wood of the dock. His long gray hair hung loosely around his shoulders, his body was clad entirely in black, and all that she was focused on was the gun in his hand.
"Can't I?" he asked. "I've been doing it for . . . years. Helena Cassadine was my pawn, not the other way around. I am the puppet master."
"You're a lunatic," she couldn't help herself saying.
"Sanity is only relative," Faison replied as he stepped behind Lucky, whose arm had grown taut in the man's presence. "Have you not had nights when you have wanted to claw your face, tear down the walls?"
"I don't hurt people for fun. And you know what? They'll get over it-the people in my life. They'll get over whatever you do to me."
"They may get over it," he said languidly as he turned to look out at the black water in the gray day. "But will they be able to stand young Miss Elizabeth Webber shot by her ex-lover Lucky Spencer? Think of the shock, Miss Webber."
"Elizabeth?" she heard, and her heart froze.
"Ric, go!" she tried to cry, but it was too late. He had returned from the phone call, stepped onto the steps, and he had seen. She looked at him and saw his eyes widen, almost imperceptibly.
Bravado.
That was not what Ric had. He had strength, bravery.
She looked back at Faison, and she saw that his gun was now trained on Ric, and her heart began to pound. "Hands up, Mr. Lansing," Faison said to him.
"Well, hello, Faison," Ric said to him, his voice cold, his demeanor carefully restrained.
"Walk down the steps slowly. You are just in time to play witness to the murder of Elizabeth Webber."
"Let him go," she pleaded with Faison. "He has nothing to do with this. Your plan will still work if he's not here. Let him go."
She couldn't stand to look at Ric. The cold air whipped up around her and the fog seemed to grow thicker, but she was still acutely aware of the gun trained on her head.
Faison clucked at her. "He is a part of this. Do you think that anything was coincidence? The telephone call? How convenient that was, don't you agree? So that you would be left alone on this dock, left alone when you had a death threat against you?"
"Faison, this has nothing to do with her," Ric said steadily. "And if you even touch her, the amount of pain you will experience will be unfathomable."
"The good lawyer? Making death threats? How you have changed from the man I knew in South America, Mr. Lansing. How this girl has changed you." She watched Faison, watched him as he licked his lips, too a death breath, shoulders moving slightly. "No, this has everything to do with her, because it has everything to do with you."
Faison moved from behind Lucky and gestured with the gun for Ric to move further down the dock. "Can you see from that position?" Faison asked him. "Would you like to move closer so that perhaps a spatter of her blood might land on you? Wouldn't you be the tragic lover then? Mr. Spencer, you may proceed."
For the first time in her life, she could say that she was more afraid for another human being than she was for herself, even though she was the one in the most obvious danger. What would happen to Ric once Lucky had killed her? Would Faison kill him, too?
She couldn't risk that.
"Lucky," she said quietly. "Lucky, look at me."
His eyes tried to focus on her, those beautiful blue eyes, but they seemed to be unseeing, blind to a world that had rejected him, at least as far as he had been told.
"Lucky, you haven't killed anyone. You don't have it in you to kill anyone."
"I have an order, Elizabeth."
"Say no to him, Lucky. He can only control you if you let him. Tell him he has no power over you."
Lucky still did not really see her, was still avoiding her eyes, looking at her with glassy cataracts.
There had been a time when she would have given everything for Lucky Spencer. He had helped her so much and in so many ways. He had held her after the rape, he had kept her sane, he had kept her insides from bleeding out onto the floor, he had collected the pieces after she had shattered and he had lovingly reconstructed her. She was younger then, more afraid, less aware of who she was, but that didn't make what she had felt for him any less real, any less legitimate. He had still been her first love, no matter what. That was what was important, the no matter what. They had once had that-he would be there for her, no matter what.
Then Cesar Faison had come and destroyed everything. In one fell swoop he had destroyed everything she found to be good and pure in the world. He had destroyed the most beautiful human being she knew; he had taken it away from her, and from Luke, and from Laura and Nikolas and Lulu and Emily and everyone else who loved Lucky.
Faison had succeeded once; he was not going to succeed again.
In the same way that Lucky had given everything for her, she was prepared now to give everything for him.
Ric had given her the strength to do that. She was happy now, and in her happiness, she found courage. No more people would die, no more innocent people.
She took the first step towards Lucky, towards the gun, and she heard Ric cry out, but she knew that he understood what she had to do. That was the thing about Ric; he always understood.
"Do you remember the bracelet, Lucky? The guitar, the boxcar, the painting? New York? The purple tiles?" she asked him.
Lucky shook his head numbly.
"He took that all away from you," she said, and she knew that her voice sounded strangled, and she knew that there were tears in her eyes, but she had to continue. Each step that she took became more reluctant physically, and she had to force herself to continue, staring at the gun. "This is your decision now. You can stop all of this."
Lucky blinked.
"Stop it. Kill me, if it will make you realize what he's done to you."
"Elizabeth-" Lucky started, but then he seemed to choke on his own tongue.
"End this. End it for Brenda and Jason and Sonny and everyone. Just . . . end it."
She flinched, had to, could have no other reaction as he bent his thumb forward and switched off the safety on the gun, preparing to shoot. Peripherally, she could see Ric start to move forward, probably out of instinct.
"I'm sorry things had to end this way," she said to Lucky, a tear falling down her cheek and then another one. "Ric," she said softly, finally able to wrench her eyes away from the gun in her face, wrench her eyes away from the blue ones staring at her stonily from over the piece of metal. "Thank you. For-everything. I think . . . I think I love you."
The tears came freely, attacking her face, and she couldn't help the sobs as they pounded her body. Mortality was a funny thing.
She turned back to look at Lucky, who blinked.
His finger began to tighten on the trigger, and she thought she heard Ric call out her name, but all that she could hear was a roaring.
And then Lucky reaimed the gun, and he pointed it at Faison.
Faison never had a chance.
The bullet exploded first in Faison's hand, and the gun tumbled out and away from him. The second bullet attacked Faison's leg and he tumbled to the ground. He never made a noise, never cried out for help, and he fell to the wood of the dock, and Lucky fired a bullet into the man's shoulder.
Elizabeth felt her legs give out, felt herself tumble down, but she never hit the ground. Ric's arms were around her immediately, and she pulled herself into him, wanting to open up his chest and crawl inside and be safe forever.
Over.
It was over.
Finally.
She sobbed into Ric's chest, and he whispered into her ear that it was going to be okay, that it was all going to be okay-now. It was all going to be over, he told her. She watched mutely as Lucky fell to the ground too, and he crawled to the man who had held him captive for so many years, his hands covered in Faison's blood. Lucky looked at Elizabeth and Ric and he smiled, a sad shadow of a smile, and he said to them, "I have no sympathy for the devil."
Ric rained down kisses on her neck and her face, and she knew that it was going to be okay. As long as she was with him. She didn't need to fear any longer.
"I'm so sorry," Lucky began to say, and he wouldn't stop saying, only rocked back and forth on the dock, holding himself, tears in his eyes, apologizing over and over and over again.
Eventually they could hear the sound of the sirens.
To be continued . . .
"Just one beat of your heart
And stranger than fantasy
I knew from the start
It had to be the place for me
Someone that I would die for
There's no way I could ever leave
Is your love strong enough?"
-- 'Is Your Love Strong Enough?' by Brian Ferry
part 10: is your love strong enough?
Spoilers: I don't even know at this point.
Author's note: We're coming to an end soon. This is the second-to-last section of 'Song'. Also, as for the L/R/J triangle I have promised in the as-yet-untitled sequel to 'Song', let's just say it's only going to be a triangle in the head of one of those three people.
Disclaimer: I don't own them, yadayadayada.
Rating: PG-13
Feedback: Please, I love it. I live for it, even. It makes me smile. Even if it's just a, 'Good job', I love it.
He had only just walked away from her, only turned his back and gone up the steps on the dock for a moment or two to take an important call. He was only gone a couple of seconds, but that was all it took.
Mortality was a strange thing. It lulled one into a false sense of security, created a masterful web and then destroyed itself, fading into nothingness.
It was not the first time she'd had a gun pointed at her.
It was the first time someone she loved had held the gun.
"Stand up, Elizabeth," Lucky said to her, but all she could see was the cold, hard barrel of the gun, growing larger and larger until all she could see was the blackness, surrounded by a dim fuzzy outline of someone who had once been a human being. Words failed her.
Lucky had been watching, waiting for her to come out of Kelly's, because he knew what would happen. He knew that Jason would lock her up, he knew that she would get sick of it, and he knew that she would come here.
"It's the people who love the most who hurt you the most," she whispered, and she stood slowly and put her mittened hands into the air.
"What?" Lucky asked, his tone harsh, his eyes foreign.
"Nothing," she said, almost shaking. "I was just wondering what you thought you were going to do with that gun."
Bravado, she remembered that. Bravado. If she couldn't have real strength, she'd use Ric's trick. Bravado. She could feel her hands shaking, though, and she knew that she would give herself away. How had this all happened? How in such a short period of time had things gotten so bad? Her life had once been normal, or as close to it as it could have been. How had everything changed so quickly?
And now the first boy she had ever loved was aiming a gun at her head.
"I was given an order, Elizabeth."
"I understand," she said to him quietly. "So where is he? He's got to be watching, right?"
Lucky blinked at her, seemingly confused. She watched him carefully, waiting for him to give her some sign of hesitation, because she could use that against him.
And where was Ric?
"Very good, Miss Webber," she heard, and she twisted her head over her shoulder to see Cesar Faison walking down the steps in his slow, methodical motion, and he pressed his hands together, pulled them apart, pressed them together, pulled them part in an exaggerated twist on a clap.
It was a terrifying moment. She had seen him in Kelly's, but her brain hadn't let her recognize him, hadn't let her truly see him. But now she saw him, plain as the cold, gray day, and he was truly frightening. He was a ghost, a shadow, someone who was never supposed to still be walking the earth.
She had never had a greater sense of her own mortality.
"I couldn't have asked for a better final subject," Faison said to her as he descended the steps, his voice thick with that strange accent. She realized that he, too, held a gun in his hand. "You are the final piece of the puzzle, Miss Webber."
"You can't just use people like this-" she started, but he cut her off as his feet hit the wood of the dock. His long gray hair hung loosely around his shoulders, his body was clad entirely in black, and all that she was focused on was the gun in his hand.
"Can't I?" he asked. "I've been doing it for . . . years. Helena Cassadine was my pawn, not the other way around. I am the puppet master."
"You're a lunatic," she couldn't help herself saying.
"Sanity is only relative," Faison replied as he stepped behind Lucky, whose arm had grown taut in the man's presence. "Have you not had nights when you have wanted to claw your face, tear down the walls?"
"I don't hurt people for fun. And you know what? They'll get over it-the people in my life. They'll get over whatever you do to me."
"They may get over it," he said languidly as he turned to look out at the black water in the gray day. "But will they be able to stand young Miss Elizabeth Webber shot by her ex-lover Lucky Spencer? Think of the shock, Miss Webber."
"Elizabeth?" she heard, and her heart froze.
"Ric, go!" she tried to cry, but it was too late. He had returned from the phone call, stepped onto the steps, and he had seen. She looked at him and saw his eyes widen, almost imperceptibly.
Bravado.
That was not what Ric had. He had strength, bravery.
She looked back at Faison, and she saw that his gun was now trained on Ric, and her heart began to pound. "Hands up, Mr. Lansing," Faison said to him.
"Well, hello, Faison," Ric said to him, his voice cold, his demeanor carefully restrained.
"Walk down the steps slowly. You are just in time to play witness to the murder of Elizabeth Webber."
"Let him go," she pleaded with Faison. "He has nothing to do with this. Your plan will still work if he's not here. Let him go."
She couldn't stand to look at Ric. The cold air whipped up around her and the fog seemed to grow thicker, but she was still acutely aware of the gun trained on her head.
Faison clucked at her. "He is a part of this. Do you think that anything was coincidence? The telephone call? How convenient that was, don't you agree? So that you would be left alone on this dock, left alone when you had a death threat against you?"
"Faison, this has nothing to do with her," Ric said steadily. "And if you even touch her, the amount of pain you will experience will be unfathomable."
"The good lawyer? Making death threats? How you have changed from the man I knew in South America, Mr. Lansing. How this girl has changed you." She watched Faison, watched him as he licked his lips, too a death breath, shoulders moving slightly. "No, this has everything to do with her, because it has everything to do with you."
Faison moved from behind Lucky and gestured with the gun for Ric to move further down the dock. "Can you see from that position?" Faison asked him. "Would you like to move closer so that perhaps a spatter of her blood might land on you? Wouldn't you be the tragic lover then? Mr. Spencer, you may proceed."
For the first time in her life, she could say that she was more afraid for another human being than she was for herself, even though she was the one in the most obvious danger. What would happen to Ric once Lucky had killed her? Would Faison kill him, too?
She couldn't risk that.
"Lucky," she said quietly. "Lucky, look at me."
His eyes tried to focus on her, those beautiful blue eyes, but they seemed to be unseeing, blind to a world that had rejected him, at least as far as he had been told.
"Lucky, you haven't killed anyone. You don't have it in you to kill anyone."
"I have an order, Elizabeth."
"Say no to him, Lucky. He can only control you if you let him. Tell him he has no power over you."
Lucky still did not really see her, was still avoiding her eyes, looking at her with glassy cataracts.
There had been a time when she would have given everything for Lucky Spencer. He had helped her so much and in so many ways. He had held her after the rape, he had kept her sane, he had kept her insides from bleeding out onto the floor, he had collected the pieces after she had shattered and he had lovingly reconstructed her. She was younger then, more afraid, less aware of who she was, but that didn't make what she had felt for him any less real, any less legitimate. He had still been her first love, no matter what. That was what was important, the no matter what. They had once had that-he would be there for her, no matter what.
Then Cesar Faison had come and destroyed everything. In one fell swoop he had destroyed everything she found to be good and pure in the world. He had destroyed the most beautiful human being she knew; he had taken it away from her, and from Luke, and from Laura and Nikolas and Lulu and Emily and everyone else who loved Lucky.
Faison had succeeded once; he was not going to succeed again.
In the same way that Lucky had given everything for her, she was prepared now to give everything for him.
Ric had given her the strength to do that. She was happy now, and in her happiness, she found courage. No more people would die, no more innocent people.
She took the first step towards Lucky, towards the gun, and she heard Ric cry out, but she knew that he understood what she had to do. That was the thing about Ric; he always understood.
"Do you remember the bracelet, Lucky? The guitar, the boxcar, the painting? New York? The purple tiles?" she asked him.
Lucky shook his head numbly.
"He took that all away from you," she said, and she knew that her voice sounded strangled, and she knew that there were tears in her eyes, but she had to continue. Each step that she took became more reluctant physically, and she had to force herself to continue, staring at the gun. "This is your decision now. You can stop all of this."
Lucky blinked.
"Stop it. Kill me, if it will make you realize what he's done to you."
"Elizabeth-" Lucky started, but then he seemed to choke on his own tongue.
"End this. End it for Brenda and Jason and Sonny and everyone. Just . . . end it."
She flinched, had to, could have no other reaction as he bent his thumb forward and switched off the safety on the gun, preparing to shoot. Peripherally, she could see Ric start to move forward, probably out of instinct.
"I'm sorry things had to end this way," she said to Lucky, a tear falling down her cheek and then another one. "Ric," she said softly, finally able to wrench her eyes away from the gun in her face, wrench her eyes away from the blue ones staring at her stonily from over the piece of metal. "Thank you. For-everything. I think . . . I think I love you."
The tears came freely, attacking her face, and she couldn't help the sobs as they pounded her body. Mortality was a funny thing.
She turned back to look at Lucky, who blinked.
His finger began to tighten on the trigger, and she thought she heard Ric call out her name, but all that she could hear was a roaring.
And then Lucky reaimed the gun, and he pointed it at Faison.
Faison never had a chance.
The bullet exploded first in Faison's hand, and the gun tumbled out and away from him. The second bullet attacked Faison's leg and he tumbled to the ground. He never made a noise, never cried out for help, and he fell to the wood of the dock, and Lucky fired a bullet into the man's shoulder.
Elizabeth felt her legs give out, felt herself tumble down, but she never hit the ground. Ric's arms were around her immediately, and she pulled herself into him, wanting to open up his chest and crawl inside and be safe forever.
Over.
It was over.
Finally.
She sobbed into Ric's chest, and he whispered into her ear that it was going to be okay, that it was all going to be okay-now. It was all going to be over, he told her. She watched mutely as Lucky fell to the ground too, and he crawled to the man who had held him captive for so many years, his hands covered in Faison's blood. Lucky looked at Elizabeth and Ric and he smiled, a sad shadow of a smile, and he said to them, "I have no sympathy for the devil."
Ric rained down kisses on her neck and her face, and she knew that it was going to be okay. As long as she was with him. She didn't need to fear any longer.
"I'm so sorry," Lucky began to say, and he wouldn't stop saying, only rocked back and forth on the dock, holding himself, tears in his eyes, apologizing over and over and over again.
Eventually they could hear the sound of the sirens.
To be continued . . .
"Just one beat of your heart
And stranger than fantasy
I knew from the start
It had to be the place for me
Someone that I would die for
There's no way I could ever leave
Is your love strong enough?"
-- 'Is Your Love Strong Enough?' by Brian Ferry