Hey everyone! Here's the next chapter!
TIMEPERIOD - Set during "Almost Thirty Years", with flashbacks to events in "Growth" [which was set during Rendezvous, albeit in an alternate universe...]
DISCLAIMER - I don't own them! The quote is by Sir Walter Scott [not Shakespeare as many believe!]
DEDICATION - To my most dedicated reader and reviewer, angela, [aka angvau57], who gives me incredibly long and detailed and quote-filled and inspiring and flattering reviews. :D Thanks again! :D
Evolution
Black Widow
Before you left the warehouse where he told you he was falling in love with you, you told him that you loved him.
Softly, quietly you whispered to him as you lay in his arms, feeling safe like you did nowhere else,
"I'm falling in love with you too, Vaughn."
Simple words, but they said all you needed to say.
You gathered up your clothes, and dressed slowly, almost ritualistically while he watched you.
That was the last time he would hold you in his arms, you think to yourself. The last time he would kiss you and nothing else would matter.
At least he died knowing you loved him as well, you think.
He had tried to stop you going. [He's contacted you, hasn't he? And he wants the page. You're going to give it to him.]
But when you insisted on going, he just said that he would come with you. [If you're doing what I think you're doing, I'm in if you need me.]
So you went to Taipei with him in those ridiculous disguises. You remember being far too pleased to see him shove the guy leering at you into a wall.
Then you separated. You went to find the device [Vaughn, it's bigger than I thought.]
He went to disable the cameras, to make your job that little bit easier like he always does.
Then you met up again, him in that leather jacket that made it hard to think
about what you really should have been doing when all you wanted was to shove
him up against the wall and do things to him that would be illegal in many,
many countries, you in that too-revealing-for-its-own-good outfit with the blue
hair that made you feel hideous, but when he looked at you, you could tell he
was having similar thoughts about the wall, and that made you feel a little bit
better….
You meet him at the end of a hallway, you running away from the water coming from the device, him running towards you. And he stops and you grab him and try and pull him down the hall and then you see the door and you open it and you see him running and you try and shut it and you can't and then it's his face up against the glass, and you watch him drown…
* * *
You sit in an uncomfortable position on an uncomfortable chair, your hands cuffed behind your back.
You're numb again.
The bloodstains have returned to your hands, and you can't feel anything and all you can see is his face up against the glass, those last few moments replayed over and over and over and over and over and ohgodi'vedoneitagaini'vekilledhim
Ohgodvaughnnonononononono
You have more blood on your hands.
What sort of a sick world is this, you wonder?
You hurt all those that you love. You curse them with your kiss, perhaps. Or maybe you [or your love] devour them. You remember doing a project on the black widow spider when you were younger [a science project, you think] and being both appalled and almost fascinated by how it ate its mate after their coupling.
You are a black widow, you think to yourself. You love a man and he dies.
Danny died in a bathtub for the crime of not knowing enough about the unseen shadows in this world to be careful about entrusting things to answering machines. [Can I live in the dark? And the answer is... the only answer I came up with, Sydney, was... was yes. Syd, I don't care. The whole world's a nightmare anywhere. It's all dangerous. No matter what we do.]
Yes, Danny, you think to yourself, the world is dangerous. Your world is dangerous above all others. It's dangerous, and it's a nightmare, and it's a dark place with evil in every corner. It's a place where you don't know if the next person you pass in the street could be a man planning to kill you. It's a place where people like you are victims. Where people like you [good men and women] are victims, and sacrificial lambs. Yes, you think to yourself, your world is a dangerous place.
A single tear rolls down your cheek as you remember the feeling of the grin on your face, the curious stares, and the cries of "Congratulations" after he got down on his knees and started to sing. [Why do you build me, build me up buttercup, just to let me down and mess me around? So build me, build me up buttercup, don't break my heart..]
But you broke his heart [someone put a knife through it] and he broke your heart, and you were only just starting to put it back together again, only just starting to breathe again, when you killed Noah.
Noah died because you killed him, because he was an assassin, because your love for him drove him into deep cover ops and into that line of work and because he had to do one more job…and you killed him. Killed him with your bare hands, in cold blood. Then you held his head in your hands and you cried because the bloodstains on your hands were darker now, and because you had, sometime, somewhere, actually cared for him, even a little, and at one time maybe you even loved him, you knew he loved you, because that's why he left, and because now you had killed another one you had loved and because you were so sick of this life and these deaths and the lies and the pain and the blood. So you held his head as he died. [I tried to keep you from this... I want you to know that...]
And another tear joins the one already on your cheek, and you blink back the tears as you sit in that chair.
Look at Will, you think. Tortured and beaten for hours for information about SD-6 he never had, then put in a CIA safe house, thinking that he was safe, thinking that maybe things would be all right, and then to be kidnapped by Sark from the place where he should have been safest.
He never would have been involved in any of this without you, never would have
even had a murder to investigate in the first place if it wasn't for you, never
would have been involved in this whole twisted maze of lies and pain that you
call your life if it wasn't for the fact that he cared for you, had a crush on
you…was in love with you.
Oh, you've known that Will's been in love with you for years now. It's flattering, in some ways…in other ways it's just…hard. Because you can't love him back the way that he would like, and you know that it broke his heart every time he saw you and Danny together, and you know that it'll break his heart again to meet Vaughn…[ohgodohgodohgodnopleasenonotvaughntakemeinstead]
The memories come rushing back, and then you're trapped inside a slow motion replay of his death.
You can see the water roaring up behind him, and you're screaming silently at him to run, run, run, run, get away, get away, get away, get away, but he's a thousand miles away and he can't hear you and he can't run fast enough anyway, and he's up against the door, and you're trying to get the door open, and your hands bleed from trying to force the door but that doesn't matter, because he's there, and you have to help him, you don't want [don't need] more blood on your hands, don't want to lose him, can't lose your rock in this world…
And then you're hit from behind, and it's all black, and then you're sitting on a chair with your arms handcuffed behind you, and you're almost drowning but you're numb and you can feel the emotions but you can't, you're hovering at the edge of a cliff, and there's a deep sea on one side and there's nothing on the other and you can either dive off and take your chances in the water [you wonder if even the deepest ocean could wash away this much blood] or if you should just surrender to the nothingness and give up.
You take your chances in the sea, and you surrender to the pain and you flounder around in the water for awhile and immerse yourself so deep in your emotions that all it is is emotion and that's all it is and the memories are gone, and it's just a stream of different emotions, each conjuring up a single different image…
Vaughnlovehuggingloveyouloveasloveyoulovecryloveinlovehislovearms
SloanehatetryinghatetohatejustifyhatekillinghateDanny
Hisdesirelipswantonneedyours
Bloodguiltonpainyourhurthands
You're crying now, from the sheer range of emotions you experience, but you don't care [don't know], and you've just let go of everything and you're in a kind of free fall, and there's nothing to hold onto [you're holding onto him for dear life because you don't know what else you can hold onto] because he's gone and he was the only thing keeping you sane, the only thing freeing you [even only temporarily] from your cage of lies, because he knew the truth about you [he knows you have blood on your hands], and he cared about you [he loves/loved you] anyway.
He was doing his job [and a little bit more] and he looked after you and he was your guardian angel and in the end it was the angel who ended up falling, and you're crying and shaking and sobbing because you loved him so much because he knew the truth, damnit, and you loved him and you wanted to have a normal life with him, you wanted to give him back his normal life [Did you know that I can't sleep when you're on missions?] and you wanted to be free with him, free to go to that hockey game, or even to look at him in public, and you just wanted to be free and he was that freedom, because he knew all your secrets and your lies and you didn't have to lie to him, and he didn't lie to you and it's all too much to bear and you want to cry and you are crying and it's out of control and you're flying and you're falling and you're drowning and all you feel is the emotion and little flashes of memory, little snippets of the twisted and tangled web of lies ironically called your "life".
Oh, what a tangled web we weave/when first we practice to deceive.
And then it stops.
He places a bowl of food in front of you. [You should eat something.]
You speak, but you don't remember what you say.
[Wait. I have questions for you.]
He replied, and some small part of your brain processed his words and formulated a response.
[You can ask my boss.]
[Your boss? I thought the Man was the boss.]
[Yes. Yes, but I am not the Man.]
Then a woman walks in, and your heart stops.
[I have waited almost thirty years for this.]
And you're flying again, back in the sea of emotions as you mutter/sob/shout/gasp/mumble/murmur "Mom?"
And then it all goes black.