Standard Disclaimer

A/N: Sorry it took so long to update--I'm really only a day late, but I know I left two cliffhangars so I totally understand the impatience, it's actually flattering.

Truth

Claudia was normally very good at her job. But she had a serious flaw. At the worst times, she could make the simplest mistake.

It was very much a matter of overconfidence. She was good at talking down to her prey, breaking them up inside, exposing their weaknesses, making them vulnerable. She would whittle them down to nearly nothing, and many times she conquered in this way.

But occasionally, she met someone who did not cave when made to face the awful truth of their own humanity. Instead, this person would respond in exactly the opposite way. And if she wasn't aware of this fact, she could be caught off guard.

Like turning away to talk into the phone. She should never have done that. Victoria wasn't the fastest cutter in the world, but the knife was sharp. Vincent's ankles were free and only one wrist remained bound by the time Claudia turned back, aimed and fired.

Vincent stood up. Even though the chair was heavy, adrenaline and years of discipline made him extraordinarily strong and fast. He pulled the chair up by the arm he was still bound to, and swung it around. The heavy chair flew between them. The bullet hit the wood, right at the intersection of where the arm was attached to the back of the chair, shattering the connection. His wrist slipped free as gravity took hold of the wood.

Claudia fired again. Vincent had caught the remains of the chair with his other hand, and hurled them at her. The bullet hit them, and a split-second later, the chair hit her, knocking the gun from her hand.

Vincent's reflexes were like electric shocks jumping from neuron to neuron. He leapt at her, his hands out, going to her wrists before she could get to a hold-out pistol stored in her jacket. But Claudia was not one to go down lightly.

Victoria watched as Vincent tackled Claudia, hurling her onto the bed. His fist made heavy contact with her jaw, but Claudia's fingers found Vincent's nose and eye and left three wide scratches, half-blinding him for a moment. Then her fist came right up and knocked his jaw up into his head, slamming his teeth together so hard Victoria was sure she heard a tooth crack.

Vincent brought his hands together and rabbit punched her right in the gut, just as his head was being forced in the other direction. Even with her lack of hair, Claudia was able to get herself together enough to use Vincent's weight against him. She heaved up her legs, effectively tossing him right over her head and off the bed into a heap on the other side.

Victoria saw the gun lying on the floor, almost under the bed. She had managed to forget the slashes in her legs for the minute it took to throw herself across the floor and pick it up. As Claudia spring-boarded upright, Victoria rolled onto her back, gun pointed up. The second Claudia's face came over the edge of the bed, searching for the gun, Victoria fired.

She was a lousy shot, but she got a good squeal out of Claudia for her effort. She didn't see, but the bullet had torn her cheek, sending chunks of flesh flying across the bedspread. While not a serious wound, it was extremely ugly, and rather painful. Claudia reeled backwards, just in time for Vincent to get to his feet again and get her from behind by the scruff of her hair. He hauled her off the back of the bed and chopped her across his leg, his knee hitting her hard in the base of her spine. She crumpled into a heap at his feet. Without pausing, Vincent reached over and seized the lamp, yanking the cord out of the socket and the base. He flipped Claudia over and hog-tied her arms behind her back at an painful angle, then went for her feet. He tied off the cord to the corner of the heavy bed so she wouldn't be able to go anywhere.

Victoria recognized the sound of Vincent's effort, and managed to pull herself up to the edge of the bed, gun still in hand. She watched as Vincent, looking nearly ugly in his rage, did his work. He seemed ready to stop after she was tied, but as he stared down at the woman, a cruel twist came to his features. He pulled her upright and let her fall back, pinning her shoulders to the ground under his knees. He searched Claudia's jacket and found the blade she had used to slice up Victoria's feet before.

"Victoria," he called, "you want to come see this?"

Victoria whimpered. She looked down at her feet. All she really wanted at the moment was to go into the bathroom and clean herself off, see how bad the damage really was. But the thought of crossing the distance between the bed and the bathroom at that moment was temporarily unbearable.

Plus, she really, really, really didn't like the tone in Vincent's voice.

"See what?" she rasped back.

"What you did to Claudia's face."

Victoria flinched. "How bad?"

"She'll never win another beauty contest, that's for sure."

Claudia made a strange gargling noise, and Victoria caught the words, "Fuck you."

"Still tough, even though the shoe is on the other foot?" Vincent said, the tone getting worse. "You think you can just come in here and fuck with me and then walk away? What were you thinking?"

Victoria heard the sound of the blade being flicked out.

"Don't," she said, her voice too weak to carry. But Vincent heard it.

"Why not?"

"Just...don't."

Max, who had been half-hiding under the bed during the scuffle, slowly stuck his tiny nose out and sniffed at Victoria's knee. Lifting up his head, he looked at his mistress and gave a tiny, worried squeak. Then he trotted around to her feet, sniffed at the blood, and gave her toe a single lick with his pink tongue. Victoria reached out for him and he came to her. She cuddled him into her arms and lay back on the floor, all the life drained out of her.

After a minute, she heard the blade flick back inside its sheath. Vincent stood up and came around the bed. Without a word to her, he reached down and picked her up, one arm under her knees, the other around her back, and took her into the bathroom. He gently set her down on the toilet, reached for a washcloth and began to run the water.

From the look on his face, he was somewhere else. Somewhere deep inside that he didn't go too often. She didn't speak to him. If she'd had the energy, she wouldn't have asked what was going through his head. She merely sucked in her breath and Vincent wiped at the cuts, gently washing off the clotted blood, exposing the stripes for what they were.

Max rested his head in the crook of Victoria's neck, his cool nose and soft breath the only comfort she needed at the moment.

When Vincent was done, and the bleeding had seemed to stop, he wrapped her feet in a clean towel, got up and left the bathroom. When he returned, he bore some white wrapping gauze, a pair of socks, and a small white card.

He handed her the card. It took her a second of staring at it before she took it. Fanning's name was in clear black letters across the top.

Gently, Vincent removed the towel and began to wrap the gauze around her feet. Then he slid the socks on to keep the gauze in place. When he was done, he finally met her eyes.

"You want to call him, or should I?" he asked softly.

Without thinking, she reached out. Her hand went to the back of Vincent's head, her fingers threading through his thick, silver-gray hair. She pulled him closer, and her lips pressed gently to his forehead. Vincent closed his eyes and sighed under her caress. She turned her face so her cheek rested where her kiss had been placed, her arm going to rest across his shoulders, holding him close.

"I love you, Victoria," Vincent whispered.

She drew a deep, shuddering breath. Her eyes were still burning from her earlier tears, and they watered again in sweet relief. "I love you, too," she said, never meaning the words more than at that moment.

"He's not answering."

Vincent had been standing at the window, not looking at Claudia, who had gone uneasily quiet. Of course, the fact that she was bleeding into a widening pool on the carpet from her cheek didn't help her speaking skills. He turned and looked to Victoria, who was sitting by the phone in the remaining chair in the room.

"Well, maybe he's away."

She shook her head. "Vincent, I should probably tell you. I know Ray Fanning, a little, from a long time ago. One thing I learned in a fast time is that he's never away from his cel phone. It keeps ringing and ringing and then it goes to voice mail."

"Did you leave a message?"

She gave him a look.

Vincent looked down at Claudia. "Where is he?" he asked her, his voice restrained.

Claudia didn't answer.

"Something happened to him," Victoria said, almost to herself, from across the room. "When she came to see me before..." She rubbed her forehead, trying to access her memories through the haze of the last hour of her life. "She said he was waiting to bring us in. Which meant he had to be with her, somewhere. Probably listening in. If he's not answering, she probably did something to him."

"You sure we can trust him, after this?" Vincent asked, giving Victoria a look only she could decipher.

"He would never have gone along with this," Victoria said with surety. "She did something to him, I know it."

Vincent turned back to Claudia, stepped closer. "Claudia," he said.

She didn't answer, but he knew she could hear him.

"Claudia, what did you do with Fanning?"

No answer.

Vincent bent down. He was half out of sight of Victoria, but shot her an uneasy look. She understood, and looked away. He knelt down, pulling out the knife from before, flicking it open.

Victoria's face tightened.

Fanning was starting to get woozy. Lack of air in the trunk, that was it. It was a new car, no holes at all in the body, no rust, nothing. His eyes kept sliding shut, and his chest was getting tighter.

He heard the sound of feet in the gravel, close by. His eyes popped open, and he listened. No telling who it was. But he had nothing to lose. Summoning the last of his strength, he lifted up his feet and began to pound. It wasn't very hard, but it was something.

The footsteps got closer, then farther away. He heard a popping sound coming from in front of him, a crack of light, a gust of air. He lifted up his head but he's been cramped for so long and his arms and legs had nearly lost all their blood. Then a hand came around, pulling up the lid of the trunk, and bright sun blazed down into his face.

"Good morning," came a voice he had heard before, only once, asking him, "Having a good night?" He was amazed that he remembered it.

He couldn't see the face. The sun was too bright, blinding him, as he had been in the dark of the trunk for so long. Damn pupils weren't adjusting fast enough. It was painful, he was forced to close his eyes just to begin to recover.

He was being untied. His hands were nearly numb, and the man was shaking them, getting blood back into them again. Then his feet, only with less gusto. Finally, he was being pulled upright, head and shoulders above the rim. The hood was high enough, he didn't bump his skull.

"Come on, you've got to try to stand up," the man said, pulling his feet out and swinging them over the edge. "Come on."

Fanning pushed himself away from the trunk and onto his feet. He nearly fell, but the man caught him, walked him a few feet. Fanning began to hop and jump, kick his legs, and the needles came. They came so sharp and so fast it hurt and made his eyes water. He blinked, blinked constantly, shaking his arms, knowing how it must feel now to be a mummy awakened from a thousand year sleep. No wonder they were always so cranky.

"Victoria's upstairs," the man said, handing Fanning a keycard. "Room 217. Bridal suite."

Fanning was finally able to focus. He'd seen that face before, it run through his memory.

"Vincent," he whispered.

Blue-green eyes met his, indifferent on the surface, hiding something much more. "She's waiting," he said.

"Where are you going?" Fanning asked as Vincent let him go and started to walk away.

"Sorry, can't tell." Vincent walked toward the driver's door, pulled it open. He gave Fanning a look over his shoulder, similar to the one he'd given Max three months ago, after having helped him tell off his asshole-dispatcher. "Watch out for her, okay?"

Fanning was unarmed, so there was nothing he could do except watch as Vincent started up the car and left as quietly as he had come. Looking down at the keycard, Fanning murmured to himself, "Bridal suite. 217. Go figure." And he headed into the hotel.

When he got there, he slid the key into the door and it opened. Victoria was sitting on the foot of the bed, dressed casually, jeans and a T-shirt. They looked old, had the wrinkled look of being in a garment bag for too long. She looked up at him as if she'd expected him.

"Hello, Ray," she said. "It's been a long time."

Fanning nodded, walking to sit down beside her, then catching the acrid smell of blood. He stopped, went around her to the other side of the bed and saw Claudia, hog-tied and her face half-bloodied, some of her teeth showing through the tear in her cheek.

"Wow," he muttered.

"She's a real bitch," Victoria said without much passion. "Sliced up my feet pretty good. You may have to go request a wheelchair for me."

Fanning looked at her, blinking. His eyes were still sort of fucked from the heavy switches in light. Everything looked like it had a lime green outline. "What are we going to do with her?"

Victoria shrugged. "It's up to you, really. We could take her with us, back to the states, but I doubt it will do any good. If she's a government operative they'll deny even knowing her, or anything about any of this. She won't pay for what she did."

"What did she do?" Fanning whispered.

"I guess nothing that leaves visible scars," Victoria sighed. There was such a sorrow in her face, every line cut as if it had been made by a chisel in marble. "To the normal eye, anyway. My feet will heal. Her cheek will scar, I hope it makes her look fucking ugly. She hog-tied you - that has to be some kind of crime, since you're a cop."

"Not down here, I'm not."

"Well, then maybe we should call the Mexican authorities," Victoria suggested. "I mean, it would certainly make her disappear for a while. But then when she got out we'd have no idea where she was, if she was coming after us for revenge again." Victoria shrugged. Fanning looked down at her lap when she shifted her hands. He realized she was holding a gun. "Vincent wanted to kill her, but I wouldn't let him. I probably should have. Maybe I should just do it myself."

"No," Fanning said. "We can always hope the stereotype about Mexican prisons is true. I'm sure she won't get out anytime soon."

Victoria sighed, nodded. "Not much else we can do, huh? If we just leave her, people will thing she's the victim."

Fanning walked over to the phone. "Let me take care of it," he said.

And he did.

It was amazing, how good of a liar he could be when he had to be. It made him uncomfortable, but it was necessary. Claudia had fucked him, big time. It would do him no good to come clean.

"What do we do, now?" Fanning asked her, some time later, when the matter had been settled with the police and with the hotel, who had to clean up the mess. Victoria paid extra for the damages in spite of the fact that the hotel didn't want her to, blaming themselves that she had been accosted in such a way on her honeymoon. The fact that Fanning was now at her side instead of the silver-haired man was a fact they chose to ignore, for whatever reason. Victoria had a feeling that Vincent had paid them to not ask on his way out.

"Go back to the States," Victoria sighed, her fingers through the wide bars of Max's carrier, stroking the soft velvet of his ears. "We can buy a car."

"With what?"

"I have money."

"Vincent's money?"

Victoria looked around the lobby. There was a blessed circle of emptiness around them, everyone was leaving them utterly alone. "In a way," she murmured. "It's mine now. It's all I've got."

"You come back to the States, I have to arrest you," Fanning said.

She gave him a tired look. "You going to arrest a pregnant woman?"

He looked away, swearing under his breath in several languages.

"Besides, you don't always do what you have to," she reminded him.

"Yeah, you're right. Guess that would be a lousy way to repay your boyfriend for saving me from suffocation. Although if it wasn't for him I would never have been in that trunk in the first place."

"No, you were in that trunk because Claudia is a fucking psycho," Victoria said, her voice a total monotone.

"That, too," Fanning agreed. "So, you go back to the States. What do you do then? Start up another practice?"

"I've got my license back," she said. "Took a little bit, but Vincent knew people."

"I'll bet he did." Although Fanning couldn't help but admire the ability to get things done. "Where you going to go?"

"Not to L.A., that's for sure," Victoria sighed. "Maybe New Orleans. Or Chicago."

"World of difference."

"Probably New Orleans. I'm not a big fan of cold weather."

"Lots of corrupt cops in New Orleans."

"That'll make life a lot easier for me then," she said with a smirk that was more bitter than sweet.

Fanning looked at her. "I've missed you, you know," he said. "Talking to you."

She nodded, smiled at him. "It was always good, the things we'd talk about, wasn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I've got your card. I'll give you a call when we set up. We can talk again."

"Sounds good."

"Are you mad at me, Ray?"

"No, not really. Disappointed, but...no, I'm not mad."

"We can start talking on our ride back home," she said, standing up, offering him her hand. "Come on, let's go buy a car."

A/N: Sorry, still no time for responses. "Once Upon A Time In Mexico" is on and I haven't seen it yet. I'm gonna run---you REVIEW! :)