Disclaimer: Bla di bla..
Thanks for all the lovely reviews, guys. And thanks for not throwing rotten tomatoes. Don't throw any after this chapter either!
This one is rated R . Warning, there is rape and slash in here, and if you can't handle it, skip the entire passage between the two asterisks. I can't help myself, I just love doing dark stories. If you do think you can handle it however, this entire dark vignette is dedicated to AliasJaneDoe, whose original character from her wonderful story, The Name of Science, inspired this. Thanks Jane.
Apologies for being late. I was having writer's block. Someone I was chatting to over the net, another MX fan, has been killed in the recent war. Although I hardly knew him, it was a terrible tragedy. He was so young and so nice. Another thing that added to my depression (a lot less important than the first) was that I had erroneously been informed by some journalists that Matrix Reloaded, a movie I have been waiting with bated breath for over 4 years, might be banned over here. This was of course quashed immediately by Warner, who sent out press invites for next week. My spirits lifted overnight as I managed to inveigle my journalist friends into taking me along. Very lame, I know.
Chapter 12 (penultimate)
Of course he would have an idea like that, to go back to the very same motel where they had made love for the very first time; like a full circle, an epilogue for their final date. The thought of that simultaneously disheartened and piqued her; he was a true romantic in so many ways and that made the impending loss of his intimacy all the more agonizing. It was truly beyond depressing. Unless she could do something about it, which she fully intended to.
Take a leaf from Shalimar, she told herself, clasping her hands nervously. Have courage.
He too was nervous. He was at the wheel of his Camaro, staring straight ahead; invoking in her a weird sense of déjà vu. To complete the nostalgia, all the night needed was a little thunder and rain and shadows of trees swooping all over the car like a haunting.
'So what did happen?' she asked, finally breaking the silence.
'Huh?' For a moment, he looked alarmed. She understood the reason for it; he thought she had found out about Shal. The fact that he actually cared enough to keep that from her, although they were not officially dating, filled her with a curious sense of warmth. It actually made her want to smile. Oh Brennan, she thought. It's things like these that make me have no regrets about loving you.
'I meant about what happened to you when you were twenty-three. Did you get Murder One?' She patted his hand reassuringly. 'I'm not terribly worried as you can see, because you are right here. So I know you couldn't have been found guilty.'
'As a matter of fact, I was.' He glanced at her. 'But not for murder. Thank goodness for forensics, they found out I had nothing to do with it. I didn't talk about Maddie though. If I had, I knew I'd be as good as dead. But I did go to prison. They stuck me with five years for unlawful possession of firearms.'
'Five years,' she breathed. 'You did that much time? I had no idea.'
'I actually didn't do five years. But it's not a pretty story. It's about deception and betrayal. You sure you want to hear it?'
She knew it was the final story he would tell. Naturally it would be about betrayal. How ironic. She had betrayed Shalimar by having him. He had betrayed her by having Shal. 'I'd like to hear it anyway,' she said. She had spent so many nights listening to his story; it was only apt that on this final night she would hear him complete it.
'Okay.' He turned contemplative, and if the night wasn't so dark, she could have sworn he was blushing. 'I met someone in prison, who touched me in a way I didn't know I could be touched.'
*
* Five years. That was hell of a long time. Of course, there was always the possibility of early parole, but the thought of that did not dispel his feeling of utter gloom and despondency as he was led into a state penitentiary. At least, if he were to look on the bright side, he could take refuge from Maddie for a while. He'd let her simmer and maybe she would forget all about him and find some new boy toy to wreck her fantasies on. Prison as a sanctuary. He almost laughed out loud. Who ever would have thought of that?
The very first day he arrived, they did a full body search on him. Then they ushered him to see the prison doctor, whom - to his surprise - was a pleasant-faced, bespectacled man in his mid-thirties. He had always thought people who worked in prison were all toughs. But this doctor looked sensitive and patient; and in fact, his eyes reminded Brennan of Maria Lipinski.
'You ever had venereal disease? Asthma? Allergies? Diabetes?'
'No.' He felt funny lying naked on the bed, being prodded all over. The doctor was examining him like he was some specimen, and taking an extra long time over it too. But maybe that was just prison.
'You have a great body.' Brennan thought that was a strange thing for a doctor to say. He looked up to see the doctor curiously licking his lips, nervous-like. 'I mean to say you're pretty fit. You work out?'
'I used to. If there's a gym here, show me where to sign up for it.'
The doctor smiled suddenly, lighting up his whole face. ''You have a sense of humor. Keep it up. My name is Glen, by the way. If you have problems or anything... you can always ask to see me.'
Brennan got up, rubbed his arms unselfconsciously - boy, the room was cold - and bent down to retrieve his clothes. 'Yeah. But I doubt very much I'd have problems.'
*
He had spoken too soon. They flooded him in the laundry room, led by a big black guy called Jed Crohn who was doing life for killing two people. There were nine of them, all hardcore criminals. He had been told they formed an entire faction in the prison community. And as a newbie, he was fresh meat. Careful, he told himself. Don't show them any fear.
They were circling him, making catcalls and kissing noises. 'Hey pretty boy, you wanna be my bitch?' 'Look at him. Purtiest thing y'ever saw.' 'Yeah, take him Jed. Fuck him real good.'
He knew it wasn't about sex. These guys weren't even homosexuals, they had wives and girlfriends outside. It was all about power; and in prison, rape was the ultimate form of domination. Nevertheless, all this discourse was not going to help him. He had to do something about it.
They lunged.
Find that node within you, he thought calmly, and channel. Whirling himself in the air, he executed a series of kicks that brought down the two closest to him. Lashing out his fists, he made contact with someone's nose, and was gratified to hear it crack. A well-placed elbow took out someone behind him. He pivoted, and smashed his foot into somebody's groin, not caring if he fought dirty.
And still they came, swamping him, enraged now to find he was no easy prey. Dimly, he wondered where the guards were, or if they had been bribed to keep away. No, he had to fight this out. He ducked when he saw a fist swinging at him and threw a punch at somebody's solar plexus. His feet smashed into more faces, and he felt an arm break somewhere. He could not afford to lose this brawl because he knew their vengeance would be terrible.
'The damned fuck,' he heard somebody say, spitting out teeth. 'Kill him.'
You have to take them out cold, as many as you can, he told himself. It was the only way to even the odds. He had already taken out three, their bodies were sprawling on the floor. Six more to go. He felt someone club him on the back of his neck, and for a moment, he reeled. Not fair, he thought. They were using truncheons - and where the hell did they get those? Taking a deep breath, he spun, aiming a side blow at somebody's neck four down and grabbed the truncheon from the victim's hands before it could fall. He now had a weapon.
He found himself facing off Jed, who was gazing at him with a newfound respect. 'Ya got moxie, kid. I'll give ya that. But it ain't gonna save ya.'
'Come and get me then,' Brennan said between his teeth.
They circled him warily, aware that he was dangerous. One of them swung a metal bar at his head, which he avoided, grabbing at his assailant's arm instead and twisting it. Again, he felt another snap. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another truncheon descend and sidestepped it neatly, using his previous victim as a shield. There was a sickening crack as metal contacted with skull. Five down, he hazily thought.
He didn't wait this time. He attacked, smashing the truncheon into somebody's face six down. The remaining three came at him all at once, flooring him, crushing him with their combined weight. He couldn't swing his weapon, it was at too close quarters, so he fought them however he could, kicking and biting. He felt something tear under his teeth - it was an ear - but before he could throw whoever it was on top of him off, something heavy descended onto his head. He heard the bone crack dully, the sound resonating in his brain.
As he blacked out, his last thought was, At least I won't feel a thing.
*
He found himself waking up to bright lights in a place he barely recognized. It was only when the doctor - what was his name? Glen? - shimmered into view that he realized he was in the prison infirmary.
A smile broke on Glen's tired face. 'Good morning. I was afraid you wouldn't wake up.'
He felt weird, zombied out, as though he was floating in some para- universe. He tried to get up, but found that he could not move. His head and body were swathed in tubes and bandages. Glen was placing a steady hand on his shoulder, pressing him down. 'Don't even try. You're hurt pretty bad. We had to transfer you to state hospital, but you're back now. You've had surgery.'
He attempted to move his tongue, which felt as swollen as though it had been stung by a bee. His voice came out gargled, but he was glad to know he could still talk. 'How long have I been out?'
'Three weeks.'
Three weeks! 'Wow,' he marveled. 'That must have been some fight.'
Glen smiled. 'You pretty much filled up a ward upstate.'
That made him want to chuckle, but his throat was swollen too. 'Maybe they'll think twice about messing with me. Pity. I would've liked to finish the fight. Maybe they'll give me a rematch.'
Glen looked horrified. 'You don't mean that.' He paused, seemingly uncertain. 'Is the fight the only thing you remembered? Was there. anything else?'
He wasn't naïve. Although his memory was fuzzy, he knew what had happened to him. He was only glad he had been out the whole time. That way he could pretend it all had blurred into one big beating. 'No, I don't remember.'
'That's probably a good thing.' Glen sat down next to him. 'However if you should remember, or if you need to talk about it, I'm right here.'
'I said I don't remember,' Brennan said shortly.
Glen looked away, embarrassed.
Throughout the next few weeks, Glen was at his side, changing his bandages, ministering antiseptic to his wounds, giving his limbs physiotherapy, sponge bathing him in bed. He thought that was odd, because the doctor had a couple of male assistants - in his previous experience in hospitals, that kind of stuff was usually left to who doctors considered lesser mortals. He was taking a long time to recover nevertheless. He had had a cracked skull, a chipped cervical disc; multiple upper limb and rib fractures and so many soft tissue bruises all over that he lost count of them.
It was a very humiliating experience, having to be fed and taken care of in every single way, as though he was a newborn. He couldn't feed himself as both his arms had been broken and were in slings, so Glen fed him. Every meal, spooning gruel into his mouth and making sure he swallowed it.
'Why are you so good to me?' He asked Glen one day. 'Don't you have any other patients?'
He was surprised to see the doctor's face coloring. Glen seemed to ponder this before replying. And when he did, it was in the form of a question. 'Do you have family? Mother? Brothers?'
'Nope, everyone's either died or deserted me. And considering my girlfriend put me in here, I think it's official we've broken up. So it's just me and the world.' He said this as a matter-of-factly, with no inflection of self-pity in his voice or thoughts. And he found this to be true. He had fended for himself for so long that he couldn't see it any other way. Nor did he think anyone would care if he died.
Glen's eyes softened. 'Well, that's part of your answer. Most people here, they have someone who cares about them. But I've looked through your records and you don't seem to have anyone. And there's something about that which...touches people, I guess.'
He was chagrined. 'And so you feel sorry for me?'
'I didn't say that.' Glen's eyes met his. There was an undercurrent of something Brennan didn't want to address just yet, so he was the first to look away.
When he was finally discharged from the prison ward, he had already done five months of his sentence. Strangely, the rape didn't bother him as much as he thought it would, probably because he had not been conscious through it. And he did have the ability to detach himself from painful experiences, pushing them to a secret corner in his mind so he didn't have to think about them; simply because life had too unbearable at times. It was at moments like these that he felt like an otherworldly spectator, looking on disinterestedly at the ravaged, despairing wreck that was his body.
It frightened him sometimes, this apathy, this impersonal un-emotion; almost as though he were numb to all pain. He wondered if he was turning into something subhuman.
He knew that the episode with Jed was far from over. After about a month, they cornered him again in the laundry room (where else, since he had been perpetually put on laundry duty). He counted the nine of them again, with countenances that ranged from the wary to the baleful.
'Mebbe we should just kill him this time, Jed,' someone said.
'Yeah, he's too fuckin' much trouble. Earned us one month solitary last time.'
Jed said, 'Why don't ya bend over, kid? Be nice 'n' 'comodatin' like, so we don't hafta kill ya.'
'And I'm thinking prison life's made you soft, Jed,' Brennan said. 'Turning you queer and all. I've heard about you. You grew up on the streets, just like me. And maybe you've forgotten the rules.' He gestured around him. 'You gonna hide behind your goons, or you gonna face me like a man - one on one?'
He had thrown down the gauntlet. It was his best chance of ending this.
'If I win, you and your queers leave me alone - forever. Unless of course, you don't think you can take me.' He watched Jed's face carefully. It was mottling. The big man was of a height with him - about 6' 4" - but a lot bulkier; particularly because he had lost a lot of weight during his convalescence.
'Ya tryin' ta cut a deal, kid?'
'Like you said, I've got moxie. And everyone's here a witness.'
The big man eyed him in what seemed like an interminable silence. Probably no one had challenged him in a long time. 'Ya got it,' he finally said softly. 'Stan' back, all 'f ya. I'm gonna teach this kid a less'n.'
They faced off, squaring off each other like two gladiators in a ring. Jed was the first to attack, a fist smashing straight for Brennan's face, which he averted and countered with a blow to Jed's ribs. Spinning, he aimed a high kick at the black man's face and he felt a crunch. He was gambling that Jed was a streetfighter through and through, relying on his size and strength to win him most fights without the added discipline of a martial arts regime. He had drawn first blood. Jed spat out a tooth and glared at him.
They traded blows again, feinting, tackling, holding nothing back. Jed was no easy pushover. He didn't get to be the leader of prison bullies for nothing. He had no particular style of fighting, but his strength was devastating; and when his blows landed, Brennan felt the wind knocked completely out of him. Within fifteen minutes of sparring, they had both bloodied each other. A purple bruise was forming around Jed's eye, and when Brennan licked his mouth, he tasted the coppery tang of blood. Any chance of ending this early dissipated when he realized they were evenly matched.
Jed seemed to realize this too. 'Ya bin takin' lessons, kid.'
Around them, there were whistles and catcalls. 'End it, Jed.' 'Yeah, cut up the kid. Then we'll have a go at him.' Someone threw a knife onto the floor, and it clattered across the cheap tiles, stopping right in front of Jed.
'Street rules bin changin'.' Jed bent down, picking the knife up. ' 'ere, we make them rules.'
He slashed suddenly, and Brennan ducked too late, the tip of the knife catching him agonizingly on the flesh of his arm and across his chest. The blood welled, staining his shirt. He saw the knife descending again, and grabbed hold of Jed's wrist with both his hands. God, but the man was excruciatingly strong. With his other fist, Jed was pummeling his stomach to make him let go, but he knew if he did, he was as good as dead.
He wondered...just wondered if he should do it. And decided he would. To hell with playing fair. His opponent wasn't doing it anyway and he had to even out the odds. Channeling, he summoned a blast of electricity. It wasn't enough to fry the big man he had made sure it couldn't even be seen but Jed dropped his knife in surprise, his arm literally petrified.
Before he could recover, Brennan struck, grabbing his outstretched arm and twisting it into an unnatural angle. There was a sickening crack. 'That's for not playing fair.' Still holding on to Jed's arm, he dealt a near fatal blow to the black man's neck, blocking off the carotid artery. And that's for the rape, he grimly thought, as Jed fell onto his knees, and then face down to the floor with a thud.
*
They flung him into solitary for two months, passing his food through a slit on the door. He had a lamp, a broken toilet, a moldy mattress covered with bedbugs that brings back memories, he wryly thought, but nothing else. There was nothing to do but look at the graffiti on the walls and nit pick his own thoughts. He was amused to note that graffiti in solitary rooms were usually obscene, but those that covered the cell walls where the prisoners lived were meticulously crafted, like decorative works of art. It mattered if you had to live with it, looking at it day after day.
He thought solitary meant truly being solitary, so he was surprised when the door opened and Glen came in, carrying a medical bag.
'I got them to let me come in daily and dress your wounds,' Glen explained. 'I told them if I didn't treat you, you would turn septic and they would have your death on their hands.'
Brennan grinned. 'And here I was thinking you came because you missed me.' It amused him to see Glen color. Everything seemed to be amusing him greatly since the fight, because it felt so fucking good to beat the bastard, and if he had to do it again, he would.
Glen came every day to swab iodine on his extensive gash and to check on his stitches. 'I'm getting them to let you go shower at least every other day, or you'll get pus on this thing. It's not so bad but he smiled they won't know if you don't tell them.'
It had been on the back of Brennan's mind since the first day he arrived, but he hadn't wanted to explore it. Now it seems, he had to. It wouldn't be fair otherwise to someone who had been so good to him. 'Glen, he asked carefully. 'Would you mind me asking if you're gay?'
There was an expectant pause as the air between them hung heavy. With equal care, Glen replied, 'And if I am?'
'Do you...have any designs on me?'
Glen's eyes met his, looking like dark moons behind his spectacles. 'And...and if I did.... what would you say?'
He truly did not know what to say. He didn't know what made it worse - because he was half-expecting it or because it came from someone who had helped give him his life back. If it hadn't been Glen, he would have rejected the notion outright without a second thought. He would never turn gay - he liked women too much for that - but if he had to reject Glen, he wanted to do it in the nicest way possible.
'You do know that I'm straight, right?' He remembered his own painful episode with Maria, and he didn't want someone as nice as Glen to go through that.
'Yes,' Glen said quietly.
There was a tortured silence.
Glen looked up, his eyes a kaleidoscope of emotions. 'Would you be frightened if I told you that I've loved you since the day I saw you?'
Brennan held his breath. 'You love me?'
'Is that so difficult to believe? When I first saw you, I thought you were the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. But that's not all. There's something about you that's so much like a Greek tragedy.. you're tough and yet so vulnerable, and I don't think you know it. It just makes one want to take you away from yourself and hold you.'
Brennan flinched. He couldn't help himself.
Glen smiled sadly. 'I thought that would be your reaction. But just think about it okay? I was straight once, and someone showed me that love transcended all races, and even genders. It was a revelation to me and it was the most rewarding thing I've ever experienced. I hope you would experience that one day, the pure joy of love for love's sake.' He touched Brennan lightly on the cheek. 'I would do anything for you, you know. Anything. All you have to do is ask. So just think about it. You've got lots of time. I can't see you anymore after this, till you come out of solitary.'
When Glen leaned over to give him a parting kiss on the lips, something made him not pull back.
He had a lot of time to think about it. He thought about it when he did his morning push-ups, when he went through his training routines, both physical and mental. And he felt thoroughly ashamed of himself at the end of every day. Because he was not thinking about how he could reciprocate the love of somebody who was deeply enamoured of him, but how he could manipulate that love to his advantage. He couldn't believe how low he had sunk, and he had no excuse, other than he was weary of being beaten down by life.
And when someone offers you a lifeline, he thought, you yank on it and pull him down with you. He wondered if he could ever look at himself in a mirror again.
Any doubts he had about this duplicity were dispelled when, almost at the end of his solitary tenure, the guard tapped on his door. 'Word's out you're gonna get killed as soon as you walk out of here. Jed's recovered and he's mad. You made him lose face in front of his cronies, and he has do something to establish his hold again.'
He felt blood draining from his head. 'Aren't you guys going to protect me?'
'We don't know when he'll strike. You gotta understand Jed's doing life already and he's got nothing to lose. If he kills you, he's still doing life, no skin off his nose. But then you'd be dead.'
His thoughts were racing. This was all going wrong, terribly wrong. He had gambled on street honor, but with the likes of Jed, there was no street honor. For chrissake, the man had killed two people in cold blood. He should have realized it when Jed had picked the knife up.
'Could you do something for me?' He asked the guard. 'I ..uh..need medical attention.'
When Glen came with his customary medical bag, Brennan took a deep breath and said, 'I thought about what you told me. And I...need your help. There's going to be a hit on me. I have to escape.'
Glen searched his eyes. 'And if I helped you? Would I ever see you again?'
He looked away. 'I..don't really know what you want from me...but I can..do whatever it is you want me to do.' It's not so bad, he told himself. You've sold yourself plenty of times over - to the mob, to anyone who pays you to do something for them. This wasn't so different. And besides, it wasn't as though he was a total virgin in this.
Glen said sadly, 'You miss the whole point completely. My love for you isn't about sex, though I can't deny that I desire you. All I want is for us to see each other after this - to talk and maybe even date a little. I just want you to give us a chance. You won't know unless you've tried.'
He wanted to crawl away for even thinking the thoughts he was thinking. 'Okay, I can do that.'
'Then when you get out of here, make an excuse to come see me. I'll have a plan.'
Several days later, behind the locked doors of the infirmary's examination room, Glen gave him a vial, a tourniquet and an empty syringe. He listened carefully as the doctor outlined what he had to do. Even he had to admit it was risky. But he had to escape. He was a sitting duck in here. Out there, even if he was hunted down like a fugitive, at least he had a chance.
'Remember,' Glen said, leaning over to give Brennan another full kiss on the lips, soft, slow and searching. 'You have to trust me okay? I love you and I won't let anything bad happen to you.'
When he walked out, his mind was in turmoil. Everything was happening at once, and he wished he could just wipe the slate clean and start all over again. Well, he was about to be given a chance. He looked all round, ensuring no one saw him and ducked into a toilet. Locking himself in one of the stalls, he withdrew the syringe from inside his shirt, emptied the contents of the vial with it and wrapped the tourniquet around his left arm. This is how a junkie feels like, he thought, as he injected the liquid into his bulging vein. Here goes nothing.
'It'll take some time to work,' Glen's voice echoed in his mind as he flushed away the vial, tourniquet and syringe, making sure the bowl was empty. 'Now walk out into the courtyard. Make sure there are at least several guards standing round. Make sure they can see you.'
He walked out, feeling strange, squinting in the sunlight. The liquid was ebbing in his veins, a cool and yet fiery presence. His legs were beginning to feel leaden. In the periphery of his blurring vision, he saw Jed in a corner of the yard, walking over to him. He's going to kill me, he thought faintly, as his knees buckled and he fell onto the ground in a sudden paralysis.
'Prisoner down!' someone yelled. 'We need help here.' He heard several footsteps running towards him and saw faces peering down. He could not speak or move his limbs. 'Call medic quickly.' His chest felt constricted, and his breathing became labored and painful. For a terrifying second, he thought: I need air. I can't breathe. Oh God, Glen's in with them. They're all trying to kill me.
A veil descended across his vision as his eye muscles relaxed, closing his eyes. He could still hear what was happening though, and see the gathering shadows through the reddish haze of his eyelids. After what seemed like an eternity, he heard Glen's voice. 'Stand back, this man's not breathing.' He felt someone lifting his neck up so that his head fell backwards, and his mouth being prised open. A metal object was inserted into his throat and a tube painfully stuck deep into it. His brain was clouding with little bursts of light and speckles, and he remembered thinking, This is what oxygen deprivation feels like. There was a sudden whoosh of air into his lungs and he heard Glen say to someone, 'You keep pumping this air bag.' Then he felt a prick in his forearm, and he knew no more.
When he awoke, it was like a reversal of the process he had been through. Again, he could hear voices while his eyelids remained stubbornly shut. Glen was saying, '..safe to put down cause of death as cerebral aneurysm. And you can put down little details in it. You were always better at that than me.'
Someone else's voice. 'Is he worth it? He is a con, you know, and he's straight. I just don't want you to get hurt.'
'Yeah, he's worth it.'
Brennan flickered his eyes open. He was lying naked on a cold slab with a thin white sheet over him. He found he could turn his head. Glen was looking down at him along with a thin Asian man. 'Look who's back from the dead. Brennan, this is my coroner friend I was telling you about.'
'Do I get a discount for cremation?' Brennan said weakly.
They exited the morgue quietly in Glen's car, with Glen driving and him hiding in the back seat. 'We'll have to build you a whole new identity since you're officially dead,' Glen was saying. 'A new name, a new life. And you won't ever have to worry about money, I'll take care of everything.'
I have plenty of money, he thought. I just need a way to access it. 'Why don't you stop the car? I'll get into the front seat with you.'
The car drew to a halt by the side of the road. As soon as he slid in, he was met with a clasping of hands, a passionate kiss. 'I love you,' Glen said. 'I can't help myself, but I really do..no matter what happens.' There was a sadness in his voice, as though he knew what Brennan was about to do.
He felt something stir within his chest. If you have to do it, do it quickly. Summoning a tesla coil, he said, 'I'm sorry, but you can see what a monster I really am. I'm not even fully human. Thank you for everything, but I can't stay with you.' He gently brought down his palm onto Glen's cheek, electrocuting his would-be lover into a painful slumber and laying him to rest on the seat.
'And that,' Brennan told Emma, 'is how I betrayed yet another person who loved me. For three years, I didn't use my real name; not only for the obvious reason but because it sickened me.'
*
* Only he would think of things like that. Room 211. The very same motel room they had first made love in. She wanted to hug him 'Oh Brennan, you remembered' but he hugged her instead, 'I want to make this special. We're going to stay awake all night together.'
He opened the door and it was just as she remembered it. The threadbare carpet, the fluorescent light overhead that flickered a few times before it caught, droning a lazy but comforting buzz. The armchair in the corner on which they had hung their jackets. The television facing the bed, the one that had twenty-four cable channels, with porn served after midnight. And most of all, the bed with the same dull green bedspread, underneath which was tucked a rough green blanket that mildly scratched.
The sense of déjà vu threatened to overwhelm her, only she knew it wasn't déjà vu at all. She had been here, like a virgin bride on her honeymoon, quivering with trepidation as she awaited him in the bed. And now this would be full closure, a Ferris wheel arriving at its stopping point. Here they would make the choice to disembark or hop on for a further whirlwind ride, their worlds spinning out of sync while those left behind remained at the bottom, looking on wistfully, their upturned faces crestfallen.
No matter what happened tonight, she knew somebody was going to get hurt.
He undressed carefully, starting with his jacket. He was wearing yet another tatty tank top, and he peeled that off as well. He was about to unbuckle his belt, when she stopped him. 'Brennan, we really need to talk.'
He looked half-scared, as though he too realized that what she said tonight would change their lives forever, and he was afraid to face it. She almost felt sorry for him. But she couldn't put this off any longer. She had delayed it long enough to her own detriment, and she only hoped like Shal that it wasn't too late.
They sat on the bed, holding hands timorously. She liked his hands. They were rough, a workman's hands with calluses, but she knew they could be so gentle. Kissing them, she felt her heart wrench within her; she was about to offer it to him, blood red and beating. Pulsing with tremulous hope and the dread of an icy-cold dagger of rejection.
'Brennan,' she said, a heavy pain in her chest, 'I love you. I'm in love with you. I know I said I wouldn't fall in love with you, but I did, somewhere in the middle. I'm sorry.'
There followed an ominous silence. He did not look surprised - she was right, he had expected it. She searched his face, but his expression was implaceable. His eyes took on a thoughtful cast, and his lips parted slightly, as though he was about to say something, but decided against it.
She expected to feel instant agony - the fact he did not reciprocate immediately, that left so many speculations, open-ended or otherwise - but there was a curious numbness instead, as though she had been waiting for this reaction so long that she had been anesthetized against it.
Unable to bear it any further, she reached out with her mind. Remembering the mental barricade he had unconsciously put up earlier, she was surprised to find his mind now soft and porous, like a sponge. Oh, but he was vulnerable right now, extremely vulnerable; and she seized the advantage, probing deeper and flinging out with her tentacles.
She found herself being sucked right into him.
*
Brennan gazed at Emma; she was so beautiful, so demure, so pure. Her declaration of love for him had not come as a surprise; he had known it the moment she had called him on her com-ring. 'We have to talk,' she had said. From his own experience, when women wanted to talk, it usually meant admissions of love. Or hatred, for what he had put them through. Sometimes both.
It had scared him. It was something he had not consciously prepared himself for. She was his best friend, the only female best friend he ever had in his life. He remembered the day he met her at the club so long ago, when she had sent him a distress signal out of all the people around them and he had felt an instant connection. It was as though he had found..family. Perhaps two months ago he would still have affectionately referred to her as the sister he never had, but in light of recent events...no. She had transcended that bond.
He had started this because she was in need. It was normal for him to offer his help to women in need. Ever since Dash, he had made it a life mission to be chivalric - and if they wanted to offer him something in return, who was he to turn it down? Even if they didn't offer him anything, that was all right too. He got pleasure out of just being with them. Women seemed to realize that too. It was an innate, invisible and yet tangible portion of his charm; they told him that was part of the reason why they found him so attractive.
When he had offered to make love to Emma, he had thought it would be just that - making love for one night, then going back to the real world; them being best friends again, laughing, holding hands, hugging. Part of him that wanted to scream out, Don't be an idiot. You know it's different for women. Sex for most of them goes beyond sex...they have more connections in their brain than you do, so their physical is juxtaposed with their emotional; and after a while, they can't separate sex from love anymore, or love from lust. How many times have you been the brunt of a love affair gone awry?
He had wanted to believe it was different with Emma. After all, they had been friends who had always been there for each other. With other women, the (usually sexual/romantic) relationship from the start had been established upfront - the lines were drawn very clearly. When the affairs had ended, he had not retained any friendships, he usually found this as awkward as they did. He had had no experience with friends turned lovers, simply because he didn't have that many women friends. He was now to find the boundaries were tenuous.
This was an experiment for him in many ways, not that he was conscious of it from the start. He was now wishing it didn't involve Emma. Not if she was to end up hurt.
And now, questioning himself, perhaps subconsciously he had wanted Emma to fall in love with him. Perhaps, just perhaps, he had wanted them to cement their bond into something neither of them could walk away easily from. Having lost his mother, he had this seen happen with Maria - who in many ways was a substitute mother figure; and that had not stopped him from falling in love with her, and wanting her to fall in love with him. Perhaps he suffered from some sort of Freudian complex; he wasn't sure if this one was called Oedipal. His subconscious motives had always been vague, even to him, mostly because he had closed up so many parts of himself along the years. With Emma, she had been a sister figure; and perhaps his self- preservation motives - to bind the one who takes care of you - had again manifested.
Nonetheless, he would like to believe that he was driven by a yearning to love and be loved, like all human beings. Somehow that didn't make him sound like such a psych case.
Perhaps if it had only been for one night, none of what subsequently happened would have happened. As it was, he had prolonged their love affair. Mea culpa, he thought, I am guilty. He had enjoyed their intimacy, hugely because she was so young and inexperienced, and it had given him pleasure to introduce her - like a Svengali with his favorite pupil - to matters he was expert in. She reminded him of Dash in so many ways, and they always say the first time, that first brush of unsullied innocence, was also the most memorable. He had truly enjoyed making love to Emma.
If he were to question himself - was he in love with her - that was truly something he could not answer. In that respect, he had been truthful with her. He loved her, he did not doubt it. But it wasn't the head-over- heels, topsy-turvy, worlds-spinning sort of love he had only experienced once. Then again, perhaps he was kidding himself. That sort of love did not exist, not in the real world outside books and magazine material. It didn't matter however, she was someone he could live with the rest of his life and be perfectly happy. She knew him so well, inside out, and he was certain she loved him for something he possessed far beyond the physical, only he wasn't sure what it was. He had poured out his life story to her partly because she had told him hers, and mostly because he needed to tell someone. He couldn't see himself telling anyone else.
If only she had come to him earlier.
If only Shalimar had not come into the picture. Though if he had to be honest, she had never left it. Again, that open-ended question - was he in love with Shalimar? He could not answer that as well, but if love meant a quickening of his heartbeat, a moistening of his palms, a hardening of his loins every time she gazed in his direction, then he would be in love with her.
What he felt for Shalimar was totally different from what he felt for Emma. Shal was someone he had instantly acknowledged as a physical equal when he had met her. Beautiful, he had thought, Proud. She was going to resent his presence in the team, because she was such a dominant. Along the way however, being paired up with her constantly on team missions, he had come to respect and trust her. Though he would never be as comfortable with her as he was with Emma, she kept him too much on edge. She was exciting and limitless, he could watch her for hours, admiring her athletic, lithe beauty that was so much a part of her that he could not help but be bedazzled by it. She was truly the epitome of his fantasy woman.
Part of what made Shal so attractive was her inaccessibility, as though she was an unattainable statue on a pedestal, like Galatea in the Pygmalion story. When Galatea was made flesh, like Shalimar every time her Amazonian façade crumbled, allowing him a glimpse of the soft, pliant woman beneath; he wanted to hold her in his arms and take her away. (What was it Glen had said?) Yes. Take her away from herself.
Like the other day, when she had held him and told him she loved him. It was something he had waited so long to hear that he had almost given up hope. His heart had melted; he literally felt it liquefy into a pulpy, gelatinous mass that resembled something in the romance novels he sometimes picked up just to understand women better; and he had responded the only way he knew how. Physically. This was not something he had felt when Emma had told him pretty much the same thing. What he felt with Emma was..he couldn't really describe it..a tangible warmth all over, a rush of protectiveness for sweet innocence, like he wanted to envelop her in a cocoon and shield her from the rest of the world.
If he had to sum it up, Emma would be the one he would choose with his mind, if he set himself thinking about it; and Shalimar would be the one he would choose with his heart and body. Both mind and heart were equally important to him.
Together, merged into one, Em and Shal would be, for him, the perfect woman.
If only he could have them both.
He had even thought about it. Yesterday, when he was out alone, cruising the bars for a final fling. His intuition told him it would be final because tonight he would have to make a choice; and that prospect had frightened him somewhat, but not to the extent of giving him cold feet.
Women just didn't view sex the same way he did. He saw it more as recreation, something he had done so often it became routine. He could be perfectly deep in a relationship with one woman and still be having occasional sex with someone who caught his fancy for an hour, and the latter would not have meant anything to him. But no, his girlfriends were terribly antsy about things like these, so he made sure they never found out. He could never make them understand it was really no big deal, and that it didn't make him care for them any less. But since it mattered to them...oh well, he'd play along and keep mum about it. And he figured both Emma and Shalimar would probably think it was a very big deal.
He had ended up at a hotel bar, sipping a grasshopper, wincing at the salt when a woman approached him. She was a blonde and she spoke with an accent. 'Two hundred dollars,' she had said. He had retorted, 'That's expensive.' It was not as though he hadn't frequented hookers before. He didn't need to, with all the free sex thrown his way, but sometimes it was less complicated, especially when he needed release and wanted to walk away unscathed. This was something he would never tell Emma or any other woman he was involved with. They wouldn't understand.
'No,' the blonde said. 'I will pay you two hundred if you will have sex with me. And my friend will give you another two hundred if you do her as well.' She nodded at a redhead sitting in a corner, eyeing their exchange.
Instead of being outraged, he was amused. They thought he was a hooker? Did he have that kind of look? He figured they were European tourists or something, so maybe that would be forgivable. The blonde and the redhead part was admittedly tantalizing.
'Tell you what. I'll have sex with you and your friend, together, and you don't have to pay me anything. Deal?' He liked threesomes, not that he would ever tell either Emma or Shalimar. After skipping out of prison, he had left the state he was born and incarcerated in, never to return. He had drifted for a while, assuming a new wild child identity; partying all night, doing booze and drugs though he would like to reassure himself he had never gone to the pharmacopoeia extreme and plenty of orgies, though he had always drawn the line at men. He had sobered up after a couple of years, but it was still nice to reminisce about the good old days.
They took him up the hotel room they shared - they were indeed Scandinavian tourists, and they thought he looked exotically Latino - and he had made love to both of them, wildly, hotly. Somewhere between giving head to the blonde while being straddled by the red, he thought about Emma and Shalimar and how wonderful it was to have them both. The thought was not oeuvre, he did love them both in special, different ways. He wondered what they would think of it.
It was with this proposal that he now faced Emma, whose eyes were a little glazed, like she too was terribly preoccupied - he hoped she wasn't too disappointed he hadn't replied all at once. 'I love you, Emma. I really do, believe me. But...is it possible,' he asked timidly, 'that I could have you and Shalimar both? I love you both equally. And I really don't know how to choose between the two of you.'
He waited nervously. He would not be surprised if she chose to claw his eyes out. Women were unfathomable that way; and though he knew Emma better than most, there was always that wild streak of unpredictability about them. It made them exciting, but also a little terrifying.
There was the sharp intake of her breath. He wished he had her gift, the ability to look into one's mind. Then he would know what she was thinking of right this moment.
'Brennan,' she said after a long pause. 'You know that's really not possible. It would never work out.' Was she disappointed that he had even suggested it? She looked away, not meeting his eyes. 'You will have to choose.'
He was afraid she would say that, though ultimately he knew it would be the only path. Choose. He closed his eyes. He didn't want to hurt either of them. But it was too late. A wretched little voice inside of him, You should have thought of that sooner, you two-timing creep.
You know too that you would choose Shalimar, even though you will have a longer and happier relationship with Emma. You would choose Shal because you've been pining for her for, like, forever and you have to try, no matter how much you will hurt each other in the end. You've always been a little frightened of Emma; she can read you like a book and you've got too many uncomfortable secrets to hide. You are not proud of yourself but you don't want to reveal that repeatedly to a lover. You want to maintain a little mystery in the relationship, you don't want your lover to look at you in pity as someone too vulnerable. And you don't think you can have that with Emma, even if she loves you in spite of yourself.
God, but you're so shallow. You're not ready for something as deep and complete as what you can have with Emma.
And yet, you don't want to hurt her, because you're responsible for all this, for her falling in love with you. You would never forgive yourself if you hurt her.
His heart heavy with regret, he finally said, 'I've been thinking about it. And I've decided I can't really choose. So I won't choose. I don't want to hurt either you or Shal, so I'll just...not be with either of you. It isn't so bad. We've lived together, all three of us, without being involved for so long. We can just go back to where we were again, just like none of this had ever happened.'
Even as he said that, he wondered if it were mere wishful thinking. He couldn't erase what had happened. Nobody could, it will forever be indelibly etched in their memories. But it was for the best. That way, by not getting involved, he wouldn't have to hurt either of them terminally.
*
With a gasp, Emma extricated herself.
She couldn't believe what she had just heard. As she lost herself in his mental Diaspora, her emotions had alternated from hope, to understanding, to chagrin (when she discovered the extent of what he hid from her and the rest of them) and finally to acceptance. She understood why he chose Shal, it was not unexpected; the very act of her invading his mind without his permission attested to it. Even though she understood the reason for it, it disappointed her deeply. There was no way she could not be hurt by it, she loved him too much; though it had hurt a lot less than she originally thought it would, mostly because she had prepared herself for it. She knew there had been a reason for her overt pessimism; as an empath, anticipatory grief could almost be taken for precognition.
But his sudden sacrificial act in the end - or was it redemption? - surprised her. He was forgoing a possible relationship with Shal, whom he had worshipped for so very long, just so he could protect them from further destruction.
Oh the foolish, foolish man. But he was oh so loveable. This declaration of his touched her more deeply that she would ever have thought possible. That he cared about her enough to make a sacrifice.. if it was possible, she found herself loving him more than ever.
If she loved him, she couldn't let him do it. And she did love him, in spite of him choosing Shal over her.
If you love him, her heart told her, then let him go.
'Brennan,' she took his face in her hands and looked deeply into his eyes. 'I love you. I love you so much that I'm telling you this now. You must never be afraid to choose. So I'm doing this for you, because you're afraid to do it for yourself. Whatever happens, know that I will always love you.'
And with that, she entered his mind again, ravaging through it in a way she was barely conscious of, looking for that little kernel, that moist little node that only she could nudge. She found it in the tangled neurofibrillary synapses of his brain, and began to erase all his memories of tonight, up to the point prior to her love declaration.
With a fullness in her chest so heavy she thought her heart would be crushed, she planted a final suggestion in his mind. A mental whisper: You love Shalimar. Don't deny yourself. You deserve it, for everything that's ever happened to you. Go to her. She loves you.
As she exited, almost collapsing in exhaustion, she wondered why an act of nobility could prove so bleak.
TBC
P/s: Sigh...I love this Emma character. She's so charitable. I don't know if I'd be so nice.
Thanks for all the lovely reviews, guys. And thanks for not throwing rotten tomatoes. Don't throw any after this chapter either!
This one is rated R . Warning, there is rape and slash in here, and if you can't handle it, skip the entire passage between the two asterisks. I can't help myself, I just love doing dark stories. If you do think you can handle it however, this entire dark vignette is dedicated to AliasJaneDoe, whose original character from her wonderful story, The Name of Science, inspired this. Thanks Jane.
Apologies for being late. I was having writer's block. Someone I was chatting to over the net, another MX fan, has been killed in the recent war. Although I hardly knew him, it was a terrible tragedy. He was so young and so nice. Another thing that added to my depression (a lot less important than the first) was that I had erroneously been informed by some journalists that Matrix Reloaded, a movie I have been waiting with bated breath for over 4 years, might be banned over here. This was of course quashed immediately by Warner, who sent out press invites for next week. My spirits lifted overnight as I managed to inveigle my journalist friends into taking me along. Very lame, I know.
Chapter 12 (penultimate)
Of course he would have an idea like that, to go back to the very same motel where they had made love for the very first time; like a full circle, an epilogue for their final date. The thought of that simultaneously disheartened and piqued her; he was a true romantic in so many ways and that made the impending loss of his intimacy all the more agonizing. It was truly beyond depressing. Unless she could do something about it, which she fully intended to.
Take a leaf from Shalimar, she told herself, clasping her hands nervously. Have courage.
He too was nervous. He was at the wheel of his Camaro, staring straight ahead; invoking in her a weird sense of déjà vu. To complete the nostalgia, all the night needed was a little thunder and rain and shadows of trees swooping all over the car like a haunting.
'So what did happen?' she asked, finally breaking the silence.
'Huh?' For a moment, he looked alarmed. She understood the reason for it; he thought she had found out about Shal. The fact that he actually cared enough to keep that from her, although they were not officially dating, filled her with a curious sense of warmth. It actually made her want to smile. Oh Brennan, she thought. It's things like these that make me have no regrets about loving you.
'I meant about what happened to you when you were twenty-three. Did you get Murder One?' She patted his hand reassuringly. 'I'm not terribly worried as you can see, because you are right here. So I know you couldn't have been found guilty.'
'As a matter of fact, I was.' He glanced at her. 'But not for murder. Thank goodness for forensics, they found out I had nothing to do with it. I didn't talk about Maddie though. If I had, I knew I'd be as good as dead. But I did go to prison. They stuck me with five years for unlawful possession of firearms.'
'Five years,' she breathed. 'You did that much time? I had no idea.'
'I actually didn't do five years. But it's not a pretty story. It's about deception and betrayal. You sure you want to hear it?'
She knew it was the final story he would tell. Naturally it would be about betrayal. How ironic. She had betrayed Shalimar by having him. He had betrayed her by having Shal. 'I'd like to hear it anyway,' she said. She had spent so many nights listening to his story; it was only apt that on this final night she would hear him complete it.
'Okay.' He turned contemplative, and if the night wasn't so dark, she could have sworn he was blushing. 'I met someone in prison, who touched me in a way I didn't know I could be touched.'
*
* Five years. That was hell of a long time. Of course, there was always the possibility of early parole, but the thought of that did not dispel his feeling of utter gloom and despondency as he was led into a state penitentiary. At least, if he were to look on the bright side, he could take refuge from Maddie for a while. He'd let her simmer and maybe she would forget all about him and find some new boy toy to wreck her fantasies on. Prison as a sanctuary. He almost laughed out loud. Who ever would have thought of that?
The very first day he arrived, they did a full body search on him. Then they ushered him to see the prison doctor, whom - to his surprise - was a pleasant-faced, bespectacled man in his mid-thirties. He had always thought people who worked in prison were all toughs. But this doctor looked sensitive and patient; and in fact, his eyes reminded Brennan of Maria Lipinski.
'You ever had venereal disease? Asthma? Allergies? Diabetes?'
'No.' He felt funny lying naked on the bed, being prodded all over. The doctor was examining him like he was some specimen, and taking an extra long time over it too. But maybe that was just prison.
'You have a great body.' Brennan thought that was a strange thing for a doctor to say. He looked up to see the doctor curiously licking his lips, nervous-like. 'I mean to say you're pretty fit. You work out?'
'I used to. If there's a gym here, show me where to sign up for it.'
The doctor smiled suddenly, lighting up his whole face. ''You have a sense of humor. Keep it up. My name is Glen, by the way. If you have problems or anything... you can always ask to see me.'
Brennan got up, rubbed his arms unselfconsciously - boy, the room was cold - and bent down to retrieve his clothes. 'Yeah. But I doubt very much I'd have problems.'
*
He had spoken too soon. They flooded him in the laundry room, led by a big black guy called Jed Crohn who was doing life for killing two people. There were nine of them, all hardcore criminals. He had been told they formed an entire faction in the prison community. And as a newbie, he was fresh meat. Careful, he told himself. Don't show them any fear.
They were circling him, making catcalls and kissing noises. 'Hey pretty boy, you wanna be my bitch?' 'Look at him. Purtiest thing y'ever saw.' 'Yeah, take him Jed. Fuck him real good.'
He knew it wasn't about sex. These guys weren't even homosexuals, they had wives and girlfriends outside. It was all about power; and in prison, rape was the ultimate form of domination. Nevertheless, all this discourse was not going to help him. He had to do something about it.
They lunged.
Find that node within you, he thought calmly, and channel. Whirling himself in the air, he executed a series of kicks that brought down the two closest to him. Lashing out his fists, he made contact with someone's nose, and was gratified to hear it crack. A well-placed elbow took out someone behind him. He pivoted, and smashed his foot into somebody's groin, not caring if he fought dirty.
And still they came, swamping him, enraged now to find he was no easy prey. Dimly, he wondered where the guards were, or if they had been bribed to keep away. No, he had to fight this out. He ducked when he saw a fist swinging at him and threw a punch at somebody's solar plexus. His feet smashed into more faces, and he felt an arm break somewhere. He could not afford to lose this brawl because he knew their vengeance would be terrible.
'The damned fuck,' he heard somebody say, spitting out teeth. 'Kill him.'
You have to take them out cold, as many as you can, he told himself. It was the only way to even the odds. He had already taken out three, their bodies were sprawling on the floor. Six more to go. He felt someone club him on the back of his neck, and for a moment, he reeled. Not fair, he thought. They were using truncheons - and where the hell did they get those? Taking a deep breath, he spun, aiming a side blow at somebody's neck four down and grabbed the truncheon from the victim's hands before it could fall. He now had a weapon.
He found himself facing off Jed, who was gazing at him with a newfound respect. 'Ya got moxie, kid. I'll give ya that. But it ain't gonna save ya.'
'Come and get me then,' Brennan said between his teeth.
They circled him warily, aware that he was dangerous. One of them swung a metal bar at his head, which he avoided, grabbing at his assailant's arm instead and twisting it. Again, he felt another snap. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another truncheon descend and sidestepped it neatly, using his previous victim as a shield. There was a sickening crack as metal contacted with skull. Five down, he hazily thought.
He didn't wait this time. He attacked, smashing the truncheon into somebody's face six down. The remaining three came at him all at once, flooring him, crushing him with their combined weight. He couldn't swing his weapon, it was at too close quarters, so he fought them however he could, kicking and biting. He felt something tear under his teeth - it was an ear - but before he could throw whoever it was on top of him off, something heavy descended onto his head. He heard the bone crack dully, the sound resonating in his brain.
As he blacked out, his last thought was, At least I won't feel a thing.
*
He found himself waking up to bright lights in a place he barely recognized. It was only when the doctor - what was his name? Glen? - shimmered into view that he realized he was in the prison infirmary.
A smile broke on Glen's tired face. 'Good morning. I was afraid you wouldn't wake up.'
He felt weird, zombied out, as though he was floating in some para- universe. He tried to get up, but found that he could not move. His head and body were swathed in tubes and bandages. Glen was placing a steady hand on his shoulder, pressing him down. 'Don't even try. You're hurt pretty bad. We had to transfer you to state hospital, but you're back now. You've had surgery.'
He attempted to move his tongue, which felt as swollen as though it had been stung by a bee. His voice came out gargled, but he was glad to know he could still talk. 'How long have I been out?'
'Three weeks.'
Three weeks! 'Wow,' he marveled. 'That must have been some fight.'
Glen smiled. 'You pretty much filled up a ward upstate.'
That made him want to chuckle, but his throat was swollen too. 'Maybe they'll think twice about messing with me. Pity. I would've liked to finish the fight. Maybe they'll give me a rematch.'
Glen looked horrified. 'You don't mean that.' He paused, seemingly uncertain. 'Is the fight the only thing you remembered? Was there. anything else?'
He wasn't naïve. Although his memory was fuzzy, he knew what had happened to him. He was only glad he had been out the whole time. That way he could pretend it all had blurred into one big beating. 'No, I don't remember.'
'That's probably a good thing.' Glen sat down next to him. 'However if you should remember, or if you need to talk about it, I'm right here.'
'I said I don't remember,' Brennan said shortly.
Glen looked away, embarrassed.
Throughout the next few weeks, Glen was at his side, changing his bandages, ministering antiseptic to his wounds, giving his limbs physiotherapy, sponge bathing him in bed. He thought that was odd, because the doctor had a couple of male assistants - in his previous experience in hospitals, that kind of stuff was usually left to who doctors considered lesser mortals. He was taking a long time to recover nevertheless. He had had a cracked skull, a chipped cervical disc; multiple upper limb and rib fractures and so many soft tissue bruises all over that he lost count of them.
It was a very humiliating experience, having to be fed and taken care of in every single way, as though he was a newborn. He couldn't feed himself as both his arms had been broken and were in slings, so Glen fed him. Every meal, spooning gruel into his mouth and making sure he swallowed it.
'Why are you so good to me?' He asked Glen one day. 'Don't you have any other patients?'
He was surprised to see the doctor's face coloring. Glen seemed to ponder this before replying. And when he did, it was in the form of a question. 'Do you have family? Mother? Brothers?'
'Nope, everyone's either died or deserted me. And considering my girlfriend put me in here, I think it's official we've broken up. So it's just me and the world.' He said this as a matter-of-factly, with no inflection of self-pity in his voice or thoughts. And he found this to be true. He had fended for himself for so long that he couldn't see it any other way. Nor did he think anyone would care if he died.
Glen's eyes softened. 'Well, that's part of your answer. Most people here, they have someone who cares about them. But I've looked through your records and you don't seem to have anyone. And there's something about that which...touches people, I guess.'
He was chagrined. 'And so you feel sorry for me?'
'I didn't say that.' Glen's eyes met his. There was an undercurrent of something Brennan didn't want to address just yet, so he was the first to look away.
When he was finally discharged from the prison ward, he had already done five months of his sentence. Strangely, the rape didn't bother him as much as he thought it would, probably because he had not been conscious through it. And he did have the ability to detach himself from painful experiences, pushing them to a secret corner in his mind so he didn't have to think about them; simply because life had too unbearable at times. It was at moments like these that he felt like an otherworldly spectator, looking on disinterestedly at the ravaged, despairing wreck that was his body.
It frightened him sometimes, this apathy, this impersonal un-emotion; almost as though he were numb to all pain. He wondered if he was turning into something subhuman.
He knew that the episode with Jed was far from over. After about a month, they cornered him again in the laundry room (where else, since he had been perpetually put on laundry duty). He counted the nine of them again, with countenances that ranged from the wary to the baleful.
'Mebbe we should just kill him this time, Jed,' someone said.
'Yeah, he's too fuckin' much trouble. Earned us one month solitary last time.'
Jed said, 'Why don't ya bend over, kid? Be nice 'n' 'comodatin' like, so we don't hafta kill ya.'
'And I'm thinking prison life's made you soft, Jed,' Brennan said. 'Turning you queer and all. I've heard about you. You grew up on the streets, just like me. And maybe you've forgotten the rules.' He gestured around him. 'You gonna hide behind your goons, or you gonna face me like a man - one on one?'
He had thrown down the gauntlet. It was his best chance of ending this.
'If I win, you and your queers leave me alone - forever. Unless of course, you don't think you can take me.' He watched Jed's face carefully. It was mottling. The big man was of a height with him - about 6' 4" - but a lot bulkier; particularly because he had lost a lot of weight during his convalescence.
'Ya tryin' ta cut a deal, kid?'
'Like you said, I've got moxie. And everyone's here a witness.'
The big man eyed him in what seemed like an interminable silence. Probably no one had challenged him in a long time. 'Ya got it,' he finally said softly. 'Stan' back, all 'f ya. I'm gonna teach this kid a less'n.'
They faced off, squaring off each other like two gladiators in a ring. Jed was the first to attack, a fist smashing straight for Brennan's face, which he averted and countered with a blow to Jed's ribs. Spinning, he aimed a high kick at the black man's face and he felt a crunch. He was gambling that Jed was a streetfighter through and through, relying on his size and strength to win him most fights without the added discipline of a martial arts regime. He had drawn first blood. Jed spat out a tooth and glared at him.
They traded blows again, feinting, tackling, holding nothing back. Jed was no easy pushover. He didn't get to be the leader of prison bullies for nothing. He had no particular style of fighting, but his strength was devastating; and when his blows landed, Brennan felt the wind knocked completely out of him. Within fifteen minutes of sparring, they had both bloodied each other. A purple bruise was forming around Jed's eye, and when Brennan licked his mouth, he tasted the coppery tang of blood. Any chance of ending this early dissipated when he realized they were evenly matched.
Jed seemed to realize this too. 'Ya bin takin' lessons, kid.'
Around them, there were whistles and catcalls. 'End it, Jed.' 'Yeah, cut up the kid. Then we'll have a go at him.' Someone threw a knife onto the floor, and it clattered across the cheap tiles, stopping right in front of Jed.
'Street rules bin changin'.' Jed bent down, picking the knife up. ' 'ere, we make them rules.'
He slashed suddenly, and Brennan ducked too late, the tip of the knife catching him agonizingly on the flesh of his arm and across his chest. The blood welled, staining his shirt. He saw the knife descending again, and grabbed hold of Jed's wrist with both his hands. God, but the man was excruciatingly strong. With his other fist, Jed was pummeling his stomach to make him let go, but he knew if he did, he was as good as dead.
He wondered...just wondered if he should do it. And decided he would. To hell with playing fair. His opponent wasn't doing it anyway and he had to even out the odds. Channeling, he summoned a blast of electricity. It wasn't enough to fry the big man he had made sure it couldn't even be seen but Jed dropped his knife in surprise, his arm literally petrified.
Before he could recover, Brennan struck, grabbing his outstretched arm and twisting it into an unnatural angle. There was a sickening crack. 'That's for not playing fair.' Still holding on to Jed's arm, he dealt a near fatal blow to the black man's neck, blocking off the carotid artery. And that's for the rape, he grimly thought, as Jed fell onto his knees, and then face down to the floor with a thud.
*
They flung him into solitary for two months, passing his food through a slit on the door. He had a lamp, a broken toilet, a moldy mattress covered with bedbugs that brings back memories, he wryly thought, but nothing else. There was nothing to do but look at the graffiti on the walls and nit pick his own thoughts. He was amused to note that graffiti in solitary rooms were usually obscene, but those that covered the cell walls where the prisoners lived were meticulously crafted, like decorative works of art. It mattered if you had to live with it, looking at it day after day.
He thought solitary meant truly being solitary, so he was surprised when the door opened and Glen came in, carrying a medical bag.
'I got them to let me come in daily and dress your wounds,' Glen explained. 'I told them if I didn't treat you, you would turn septic and they would have your death on their hands.'
Brennan grinned. 'And here I was thinking you came because you missed me.' It amused him to see Glen color. Everything seemed to be amusing him greatly since the fight, because it felt so fucking good to beat the bastard, and if he had to do it again, he would.
Glen came every day to swab iodine on his extensive gash and to check on his stitches. 'I'm getting them to let you go shower at least every other day, or you'll get pus on this thing. It's not so bad but he smiled they won't know if you don't tell them.'
It had been on the back of Brennan's mind since the first day he arrived, but he hadn't wanted to explore it. Now it seems, he had to. It wouldn't be fair otherwise to someone who had been so good to him. 'Glen, he asked carefully. 'Would you mind me asking if you're gay?'
There was an expectant pause as the air between them hung heavy. With equal care, Glen replied, 'And if I am?'
'Do you...have any designs on me?'
Glen's eyes met his, looking like dark moons behind his spectacles. 'And...and if I did.... what would you say?'
He truly did not know what to say. He didn't know what made it worse - because he was half-expecting it or because it came from someone who had helped give him his life back. If it hadn't been Glen, he would have rejected the notion outright without a second thought. He would never turn gay - he liked women too much for that - but if he had to reject Glen, he wanted to do it in the nicest way possible.
'You do know that I'm straight, right?' He remembered his own painful episode with Maria, and he didn't want someone as nice as Glen to go through that.
'Yes,' Glen said quietly.
There was a tortured silence.
Glen looked up, his eyes a kaleidoscope of emotions. 'Would you be frightened if I told you that I've loved you since the day I saw you?'
Brennan held his breath. 'You love me?'
'Is that so difficult to believe? When I first saw you, I thought you were the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. But that's not all. There's something about you that's so much like a Greek tragedy.. you're tough and yet so vulnerable, and I don't think you know it. It just makes one want to take you away from yourself and hold you.'
Brennan flinched. He couldn't help himself.
Glen smiled sadly. 'I thought that would be your reaction. But just think about it okay? I was straight once, and someone showed me that love transcended all races, and even genders. It was a revelation to me and it was the most rewarding thing I've ever experienced. I hope you would experience that one day, the pure joy of love for love's sake.' He touched Brennan lightly on the cheek. 'I would do anything for you, you know. Anything. All you have to do is ask. So just think about it. You've got lots of time. I can't see you anymore after this, till you come out of solitary.'
When Glen leaned over to give him a parting kiss on the lips, something made him not pull back.
He had a lot of time to think about it. He thought about it when he did his morning push-ups, when he went through his training routines, both physical and mental. And he felt thoroughly ashamed of himself at the end of every day. Because he was not thinking about how he could reciprocate the love of somebody who was deeply enamoured of him, but how he could manipulate that love to his advantage. He couldn't believe how low he had sunk, and he had no excuse, other than he was weary of being beaten down by life.
And when someone offers you a lifeline, he thought, you yank on it and pull him down with you. He wondered if he could ever look at himself in a mirror again.
Any doubts he had about this duplicity were dispelled when, almost at the end of his solitary tenure, the guard tapped on his door. 'Word's out you're gonna get killed as soon as you walk out of here. Jed's recovered and he's mad. You made him lose face in front of his cronies, and he has do something to establish his hold again.'
He felt blood draining from his head. 'Aren't you guys going to protect me?'
'We don't know when he'll strike. You gotta understand Jed's doing life already and he's got nothing to lose. If he kills you, he's still doing life, no skin off his nose. But then you'd be dead.'
His thoughts were racing. This was all going wrong, terribly wrong. He had gambled on street honor, but with the likes of Jed, there was no street honor. For chrissake, the man had killed two people in cold blood. He should have realized it when Jed had picked the knife up.
'Could you do something for me?' He asked the guard. 'I ..uh..need medical attention.'
When Glen came with his customary medical bag, Brennan took a deep breath and said, 'I thought about what you told me. And I...need your help. There's going to be a hit on me. I have to escape.'
Glen searched his eyes. 'And if I helped you? Would I ever see you again?'
He looked away. 'I..don't really know what you want from me...but I can..do whatever it is you want me to do.' It's not so bad, he told himself. You've sold yourself plenty of times over - to the mob, to anyone who pays you to do something for them. This wasn't so different. And besides, it wasn't as though he was a total virgin in this.
Glen said sadly, 'You miss the whole point completely. My love for you isn't about sex, though I can't deny that I desire you. All I want is for us to see each other after this - to talk and maybe even date a little. I just want you to give us a chance. You won't know unless you've tried.'
He wanted to crawl away for even thinking the thoughts he was thinking. 'Okay, I can do that.'
'Then when you get out of here, make an excuse to come see me. I'll have a plan.'
Several days later, behind the locked doors of the infirmary's examination room, Glen gave him a vial, a tourniquet and an empty syringe. He listened carefully as the doctor outlined what he had to do. Even he had to admit it was risky. But he had to escape. He was a sitting duck in here. Out there, even if he was hunted down like a fugitive, at least he had a chance.
'Remember,' Glen said, leaning over to give Brennan another full kiss on the lips, soft, slow and searching. 'You have to trust me okay? I love you and I won't let anything bad happen to you.'
When he walked out, his mind was in turmoil. Everything was happening at once, and he wished he could just wipe the slate clean and start all over again. Well, he was about to be given a chance. He looked all round, ensuring no one saw him and ducked into a toilet. Locking himself in one of the stalls, he withdrew the syringe from inside his shirt, emptied the contents of the vial with it and wrapped the tourniquet around his left arm. This is how a junkie feels like, he thought, as he injected the liquid into his bulging vein. Here goes nothing.
'It'll take some time to work,' Glen's voice echoed in his mind as he flushed away the vial, tourniquet and syringe, making sure the bowl was empty. 'Now walk out into the courtyard. Make sure there are at least several guards standing round. Make sure they can see you.'
He walked out, feeling strange, squinting in the sunlight. The liquid was ebbing in his veins, a cool and yet fiery presence. His legs were beginning to feel leaden. In the periphery of his blurring vision, he saw Jed in a corner of the yard, walking over to him. He's going to kill me, he thought faintly, as his knees buckled and he fell onto the ground in a sudden paralysis.
'Prisoner down!' someone yelled. 'We need help here.' He heard several footsteps running towards him and saw faces peering down. He could not speak or move his limbs. 'Call medic quickly.' His chest felt constricted, and his breathing became labored and painful. For a terrifying second, he thought: I need air. I can't breathe. Oh God, Glen's in with them. They're all trying to kill me.
A veil descended across his vision as his eye muscles relaxed, closing his eyes. He could still hear what was happening though, and see the gathering shadows through the reddish haze of his eyelids. After what seemed like an eternity, he heard Glen's voice. 'Stand back, this man's not breathing.' He felt someone lifting his neck up so that his head fell backwards, and his mouth being prised open. A metal object was inserted into his throat and a tube painfully stuck deep into it. His brain was clouding with little bursts of light and speckles, and he remembered thinking, This is what oxygen deprivation feels like. There was a sudden whoosh of air into his lungs and he heard Glen say to someone, 'You keep pumping this air bag.' Then he felt a prick in his forearm, and he knew no more.
When he awoke, it was like a reversal of the process he had been through. Again, he could hear voices while his eyelids remained stubbornly shut. Glen was saying, '..safe to put down cause of death as cerebral aneurysm. And you can put down little details in it. You were always better at that than me.'
Someone else's voice. 'Is he worth it? He is a con, you know, and he's straight. I just don't want you to get hurt.'
'Yeah, he's worth it.'
Brennan flickered his eyes open. He was lying naked on a cold slab with a thin white sheet over him. He found he could turn his head. Glen was looking down at him along with a thin Asian man. 'Look who's back from the dead. Brennan, this is my coroner friend I was telling you about.'
'Do I get a discount for cremation?' Brennan said weakly.
They exited the morgue quietly in Glen's car, with Glen driving and him hiding in the back seat. 'We'll have to build you a whole new identity since you're officially dead,' Glen was saying. 'A new name, a new life. And you won't ever have to worry about money, I'll take care of everything.'
I have plenty of money, he thought. I just need a way to access it. 'Why don't you stop the car? I'll get into the front seat with you.'
The car drew to a halt by the side of the road. As soon as he slid in, he was met with a clasping of hands, a passionate kiss. 'I love you,' Glen said. 'I can't help myself, but I really do..no matter what happens.' There was a sadness in his voice, as though he knew what Brennan was about to do.
He felt something stir within his chest. If you have to do it, do it quickly. Summoning a tesla coil, he said, 'I'm sorry, but you can see what a monster I really am. I'm not even fully human. Thank you for everything, but I can't stay with you.' He gently brought down his palm onto Glen's cheek, electrocuting his would-be lover into a painful slumber and laying him to rest on the seat.
'And that,' Brennan told Emma, 'is how I betrayed yet another person who loved me. For three years, I didn't use my real name; not only for the obvious reason but because it sickened me.'
*
* Only he would think of things like that. Room 211. The very same motel room they had first made love in. She wanted to hug him 'Oh Brennan, you remembered' but he hugged her instead, 'I want to make this special. We're going to stay awake all night together.'
He opened the door and it was just as she remembered it. The threadbare carpet, the fluorescent light overhead that flickered a few times before it caught, droning a lazy but comforting buzz. The armchair in the corner on which they had hung their jackets. The television facing the bed, the one that had twenty-four cable channels, with porn served after midnight. And most of all, the bed with the same dull green bedspread, underneath which was tucked a rough green blanket that mildly scratched.
The sense of déjà vu threatened to overwhelm her, only she knew it wasn't déjà vu at all. She had been here, like a virgin bride on her honeymoon, quivering with trepidation as she awaited him in the bed. And now this would be full closure, a Ferris wheel arriving at its stopping point. Here they would make the choice to disembark or hop on for a further whirlwind ride, their worlds spinning out of sync while those left behind remained at the bottom, looking on wistfully, their upturned faces crestfallen.
No matter what happened tonight, she knew somebody was going to get hurt.
He undressed carefully, starting with his jacket. He was wearing yet another tatty tank top, and he peeled that off as well. He was about to unbuckle his belt, when she stopped him. 'Brennan, we really need to talk.'
He looked half-scared, as though he too realized that what she said tonight would change their lives forever, and he was afraid to face it. She almost felt sorry for him. But she couldn't put this off any longer. She had delayed it long enough to her own detriment, and she only hoped like Shal that it wasn't too late.
They sat on the bed, holding hands timorously. She liked his hands. They were rough, a workman's hands with calluses, but she knew they could be so gentle. Kissing them, she felt her heart wrench within her; she was about to offer it to him, blood red and beating. Pulsing with tremulous hope and the dread of an icy-cold dagger of rejection.
'Brennan,' she said, a heavy pain in her chest, 'I love you. I'm in love with you. I know I said I wouldn't fall in love with you, but I did, somewhere in the middle. I'm sorry.'
There followed an ominous silence. He did not look surprised - she was right, he had expected it. She searched his face, but his expression was implaceable. His eyes took on a thoughtful cast, and his lips parted slightly, as though he was about to say something, but decided against it.
She expected to feel instant agony - the fact he did not reciprocate immediately, that left so many speculations, open-ended or otherwise - but there was a curious numbness instead, as though she had been waiting for this reaction so long that she had been anesthetized against it.
Unable to bear it any further, she reached out with her mind. Remembering the mental barricade he had unconsciously put up earlier, she was surprised to find his mind now soft and porous, like a sponge. Oh, but he was vulnerable right now, extremely vulnerable; and she seized the advantage, probing deeper and flinging out with her tentacles.
She found herself being sucked right into him.
*
Brennan gazed at Emma; she was so beautiful, so demure, so pure. Her declaration of love for him had not come as a surprise; he had known it the moment she had called him on her com-ring. 'We have to talk,' she had said. From his own experience, when women wanted to talk, it usually meant admissions of love. Or hatred, for what he had put them through. Sometimes both.
It had scared him. It was something he had not consciously prepared himself for. She was his best friend, the only female best friend he ever had in his life. He remembered the day he met her at the club so long ago, when she had sent him a distress signal out of all the people around them and he had felt an instant connection. It was as though he had found..family. Perhaps two months ago he would still have affectionately referred to her as the sister he never had, but in light of recent events...no. She had transcended that bond.
He had started this because she was in need. It was normal for him to offer his help to women in need. Ever since Dash, he had made it a life mission to be chivalric - and if they wanted to offer him something in return, who was he to turn it down? Even if they didn't offer him anything, that was all right too. He got pleasure out of just being with them. Women seemed to realize that too. It was an innate, invisible and yet tangible portion of his charm; they told him that was part of the reason why they found him so attractive.
When he had offered to make love to Emma, he had thought it would be just that - making love for one night, then going back to the real world; them being best friends again, laughing, holding hands, hugging. Part of him that wanted to scream out, Don't be an idiot. You know it's different for women. Sex for most of them goes beyond sex...they have more connections in their brain than you do, so their physical is juxtaposed with their emotional; and after a while, they can't separate sex from love anymore, or love from lust. How many times have you been the brunt of a love affair gone awry?
He had wanted to believe it was different with Emma. After all, they had been friends who had always been there for each other. With other women, the (usually sexual/romantic) relationship from the start had been established upfront - the lines were drawn very clearly. When the affairs had ended, he had not retained any friendships, he usually found this as awkward as they did. He had had no experience with friends turned lovers, simply because he didn't have that many women friends. He was now to find the boundaries were tenuous.
This was an experiment for him in many ways, not that he was conscious of it from the start. He was now wishing it didn't involve Emma. Not if she was to end up hurt.
And now, questioning himself, perhaps subconsciously he had wanted Emma to fall in love with him. Perhaps, just perhaps, he had wanted them to cement their bond into something neither of them could walk away easily from. Having lost his mother, he had this seen happen with Maria - who in many ways was a substitute mother figure; and that had not stopped him from falling in love with her, and wanting her to fall in love with him. Perhaps he suffered from some sort of Freudian complex; he wasn't sure if this one was called Oedipal. His subconscious motives had always been vague, even to him, mostly because he had closed up so many parts of himself along the years. With Emma, she had been a sister figure; and perhaps his self- preservation motives - to bind the one who takes care of you - had again manifested.
Nonetheless, he would like to believe that he was driven by a yearning to love and be loved, like all human beings. Somehow that didn't make him sound like such a psych case.
Perhaps if it had only been for one night, none of what subsequently happened would have happened. As it was, he had prolonged their love affair. Mea culpa, he thought, I am guilty. He had enjoyed their intimacy, hugely because she was so young and inexperienced, and it had given him pleasure to introduce her - like a Svengali with his favorite pupil - to matters he was expert in. She reminded him of Dash in so many ways, and they always say the first time, that first brush of unsullied innocence, was also the most memorable. He had truly enjoyed making love to Emma.
If he were to question himself - was he in love with her - that was truly something he could not answer. In that respect, he had been truthful with her. He loved her, he did not doubt it. But it wasn't the head-over- heels, topsy-turvy, worlds-spinning sort of love he had only experienced once. Then again, perhaps he was kidding himself. That sort of love did not exist, not in the real world outside books and magazine material. It didn't matter however, she was someone he could live with the rest of his life and be perfectly happy. She knew him so well, inside out, and he was certain she loved him for something he possessed far beyond the physical, only he wasn't sure what it was. He had poured out his life story to her partly because she had told him hers, and mostly because he needed to tell someone. He couldn't see himself telling anyone else.
If only she had come to him earlier.
If only Shalimar had not come into the picture. Though if he had to be honest, she had never left it. Again, that open-ended question - was he in love with Shalimar? He could not answer that as well, but if love meant a quickening of his heartbeat, a moistening of his palms, a hardening of his loins every time she gazed in his direction, then he would be in love with her.
What he felt for Shalimar was totally different from what he felt for Emma. Shal was someone he had instantly acknowledged as a physical equal when he had met her. Beautiful, he had thought, Proud. She was going to resent his presence in the team, because she was such a dominant. Along the way however, being paired up with her constantly on team missions, he had come to respect and trust her. Though he would never be as comfortable with her as he was with Emma, she kept him too much on edge. She was exciting and limitless, he could watch her for hours, admiring her athletic, lithe beauty that was so much a part of her that he could not help but be bedazzled by it. She was truly the epitome of his fantasy woman.
Part of what made Shal so attractive was her inaccessibility, as though she was an unattainable statue on a pedestal, like Galatea in the Pygmalion story. When Galatea was made flesh, like Shalimar every time her Amazonian façade crumbled, allowing him a glimpse of the soft, pliant woman beneath; he wanted to hold her in his arms and take her away. (What was it Glen had said?) Yes. Take her away from herself.
Like the other day, when she had held him and told him she loved him. It was something he had waited so long to hear that he had almost given up hope. His heart had melted; he literally felt it liquefy into a pulpy, gelatinous mass that resembled something in the romance novels he sometimes picked up just to understand women better; and he had responded the only way he knew how. Physically. This was not something he had felt when Emma had told him pretty much the same thing. What he felt with Emma was..he couldn't really describe it..a tangible warmth all over, a rush of protectiveness for sweet innocence, like he wanted to envelop her in a cocoon and shield her from the rest of the world.
If he had to sum it up, Emma would be the one he would choose with his mind, if he set himself thinking about it; and Shalimar would be the one he would choose with his heart and body. Both mind and heart were equally important to him.
Together, merged into one, Em and Shal would be, for him, the perfect woman.
If only he could have them both.
He had even thought about it. Yesterday, when he was out alone, cruising the bars for a final fling. His intuition told him it would be final because tonight he would have to make a choice; and that prospect had frightened him somewhat, but not to the extent of giving him cold feet.
Women just didn't view sex the same way he did. He saw it more as recreation, something he had done so often it became routine. He could be perfectly deep in a relationship with one woman and still be having occasional sex with someone who caught his fancy for an hour, and the latter would not have meant anything to him. But no, his girlfriends were terribly antsy about things like these, so he made sure they never found out. He could never make them understand it was really no big deal, and that it didn't make him care for them any less. But since it mattered to them...oh well, he'd play along and keep mum about it. And he figured both Emma and Shalimar would probably think it was a very big deal.
He had ended up at a hotel bar, sipping a grasshopper, wincing at the salt when a woman approached him. She was a blonde and she spoke with an accent. 'Two hundred dollars,' she had said. He had retorted, 'That's expensive.' It was not as though he hadn't frequented hookers before. He didn't need to, with all the free sex thrown his way, but sometimes it was less complicated, especially when he needed release and wanted to walk away unscathed. This was something he would never tell Emma or any other woman he was involved with. They wouldn't understand.
'No,' the blonde said. 'I will pay you two hundred if you will have sex with me. And my friend will give you another two hundred if you do her as well.' She nodded at a redhead sitting in a corner, eyeing their exchange.
Instead of being outraged, he was amused. They thought he was a hooker? Did he have that kind of look? He figured they were European tourists or something, so maybe that would be forgivable. The blonde and the redhead part was admittedly tantalizing.
'Tell you what. I'll have sex with you and your friend, together, and you don't have to pay me anything. Deal?' He liked threesomes, not that he would ever tell either Emma or Shalimar. After skipping out of prison, he had left the state he was born and incarcerated in, never to return. He had drifted for a while, assuming a new wild child identity; partying all night, doing booze and drugs though he would like to reassure himself he had never gone to the pharmacopoeia extreme and plenty of orgies, though he had always drawn the line at men. He had sobered up after a couple of years, but it was still nice to reminisce about the good old days.
They took him up the hotel room they shared - they were indeed Scandinavian tourists, and they thought he looked exotically Latino - and he had made love to both of them, wildly, hotly. Somewhere between giving head to the blonde while being straddled by the red, he thought about Emma and Shalimar and how wonderful it was to have them both. The thought was not oeuvre, he did love them both in special, different ways. He wondered what they would think of it.
It was with this proposal that he now faced Emma, whose eyes were a little glazed, like she too was terribly preoccupied - he hoped she wasn't too disappointed he hadn't replied all at once. 'I love you, Emma. I really do, believe me. But...is it possible,' he asked timidly, 'that I could have you and Shalimar both? I love you both equally. And I really don't know how to choose between the two of you.'
He waited nervously. He would not be surprised if she chose to claw his eyes out. Women were unfathomable that way; and though he knew Emma better than most, there was always that wild streak of unpredictability about them. It made them exciting, but also a little terrifying.
There was the sharp intake of her breath. He wished he had her gift, the ability to look into one's mind. Then he would know what she was thinking of right this moment.
'Brennan,' she said after a long pause. 'You know that's really not possible. It would never work out.' Was she disappointed that he had even suggested it? She looked away, not meeting his eyes. 'You will have to choose.'
He was afraid she would say that, though ultimately he knew it would be the only path. Choose. He closed his eyes. He didn't want to hurt either of them. But it was too late. A wretched little voice inside of him, You should have thought of that sooner, you two-timing creep.
You know too that you would choose Shalimar, even though you will have a longer and happier relationship with Emma. You would choose Shal because you've been pining for her for, like, forever and you have to try, no matter how much you will hurt each other in the end. You've always been a little frightened of Emma; she can read you like a book and you've got too many uncomfortable secrets to hide. You are not proud of yourself but you don't want to reveal that repeatedly to a lover. You want to maintain a little mystery in the relationship, you don't want your lover to look at you in pity as someone too vulnerable. And you don't think you can have that with Emma, even if she loves you in spite of yourself.
God, but you're so shallow. You're not ready for something as deep and complete as what you can have with Emma.
And yet, you don't want to hurt her, because you're responsible for all this, for her falling in love with you. You would never forgive yourself if you hurt her.
His heart heavy with regret, he finally said, 'I've been thinking about it. And I've decided I can't really choose. So I won't choose. I don't want to hurt either you or Shal, so I'll just...not be with either of you. It isn't so bad. We've lived together, all three of us, without being involved for so long. We can just go back to where we were again, just like none of this had ever happened.'
Even as he said that, he wondered if it were mere wishful thinking. He couldn't erase what had happened. Nobody could, it will forever be indelibly etched in their memories. But it was for the best. That way, by not getting involved, he wouldn't have to hurt either of them terminally.
*
With a gasp, Emma extricated herself.
She couldn't believe what she had just heard. As she lost herself in his mental Diaspora, her emotions had alternated from hope, to understanding, to chagrin (when she discovered the extent of what he hid from her and the rest of them) and finally to acceptance. She understood why he chose Shal, it was not unexpected; the very act of her invading his mind without his permission attested to it. Even though she understood the reason for it, it disappointed her deeply. There was no way she could not be hurt by it, she loved him too much; though it had hurt a lot less than she originally thought it would, mostly because she had prepared herself for it. She knew there had been a reason for her overt pessimism; as an empath, anticipatory grief could almost be taken for precognition.
But his sudden sacrificial act in the end - or was it redemption? - surprised her. He was forgoing a possible relationship with Shal, whom he had worshipped for so very long, just so he could protect them from further destruction.
Oh the foolish, foolish man. But he was oh so loveable. This declaration of his touched her more deeply that she would ever have thought possible. That he cared about her enough to make a sacrifice.. if it was possible, she found herself loving him more than ever.
If she loved him, she couldn't let him do it. And she did love him, in spite of him choosing Shal over her.
If you love him, her heart told her, then let him go.
'Brennan,' she took his face in her hands and looked deeply into his eyes. 'I love you. I love you so much that I'm telling you this now. You must never be afraid to choose. So I'm doing this for you, because you're afraid to do it for yourself. Whatever happens, know that I will always love you.'
And with that, she entered his mind again, ravaging through it in a way she was barely conscious of, looking for that little kernel, that moist little node that only she could nudge. She found it in the tangled neurofibrillary synapses of his brain, and began to erase all his memories of tonight, up to the point prior to her love declaration.
With a fullness in her chest so heavy she thought her heart would be crushed, she planted a final suggestion in his mind. A mental whisper: You love Shalimar. Don't deny yourself. You deserve it, for everything that's ever happened to you. Go to her. She loves you.
As she exited, almost collapsing in exhaustion, she wondered why an act of nobility could prove so bleak.
TBC
P/s: Sigh...I love this Emma character. She's so charitable. I don't know if I'd be so nice.