Cycles of Persephone
By Geogirl
AN: The Season 3 finale left me thinking and opened up a perfect opportunity for what might be considered a continuation of my story "Raising Atlantis" from Season 1. You do not have to read that to understand this, but I would ask that if you haven't read it, give a try.
I hope you enjoy. And as always, feedback (both positive and negative) is encouraged.
He stands in the shadows, feeling safe there. He always feels safe in the shadows, in the space between light and dark, between good and evil; whether literal or figurative it makes no difference. It is just easier then stepping either way, fully into the light or fully into the dark. This space has its own rules, its own justifications that best fit his agenda and keeps the wall he has built around himself safe. Here, in this realm, every dream is possible and every betrayal is bearable. Here blood doesn't seem so red and joy doesn't seem so luminous. In this place he reigns supreme, and most of the time that is enough.
The black light casts eerie planes across her face, playing tricks on his mind. In a blink of his eye and the trembling of her hand, the bones of her face come to life. Images flit though his mind's eye of opening her casket and seeing only the bones of what she had been staring up at him. They pierce the small remnant of his heart with an accusing, non- evasive stare. The prism of her tears shake away that image, yet cut like laser beams.
He had been here before; too many times in her life and in his. All he ever seems to do is hurt her and all she ever gives him is unconditional love. Even during the years of indifference and betrayal, he knew she loved him because only someone that she loved could wound her so deeply. Always him.
Just days ago she had been happy; happier than she had been in a long time and that had made him as close to happy as he could remember. These past few years had caused him nothing but pain, mostly of his own making. But what had cut him to the quick, what had added grey to his hair and his heart was watching her immersed in such profound sadness and despair. There were times, as he watched from the black shadows just outside her window, that he felt he was keeping suicide watch.
Too many times he has hurt the ones he loves and he wonders if that might be his fate. Will he be known for that at the end of his life, the pain he's caused those he loved?
She's flipping through the pages now, increasing speed with the number of questions and tears. He sees the minor tremor in her lips, just as a foreshock of the devastating earthquake about to hit their lives. He wills himself not to breathe as she approaches the final page. He feels time slowing to the waning tick of the clock, asymptotic to the infinite, never reaching that endpoint. She gasps with the final wounds the words inflict and he is drawn to her, part wanting to offer solace, part to offer an explanation.
Silently, like death, he slips from the embrace of the shadows and speaks. "You were never supposed to read those," and he is devastated by her eyes.
He is looking into eyes that contain more hurt, more misery, and more anguish than he saw there many years ago, when she was only a child and he told her that her mother was never coming home. He sees more anger, resignation and defeat than when he first looked upon her face after two years separated from her light. Here are the eyes of a child loosing another parent, the vision of a teenager becoming acquainted with the futility of the real world, the sorrow of a young adult after their first heartbreak and the despair of an old woman after the death of her husband of decades. In those eyes, so like her mother's, smolders volcanic anger, a quest for revenge and deep melancholy.
"Dad?" she asks. Her voice strong as one wronged too many times before, though knowing full well there is no answer to satisfy.
"I can explain," he starts and then stops, for he knows that there will never be enough words to quench the fire there or to dam the rushing waters. Her shoulders slump with the weariness of Atlas and he is undone.
His arm raises and her hand reaches for her neck; the feathers of the tranquilizer dart slip between her fingers like bloodstains.
"Daddy?" her voice is now as soft as a kitten and so reminiscent of the broken-hearted six-year old.
She slumps in the chair and he picks up the documents, slipping them into his jacket. His hand instinctively stokes her hair, the wig foreign to his touch, and he kisses her forehead in benediction and in an act of contrition.
Back he slips into the embrace of the shadows as an "I'm sorry" lingers in the air.