Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
By
E. S. Young
Chapter Thirty-Three: Of Moxie, Manikins, and Memories
Many flashbacks in this chapter, ones that I hope are enjoyable. I think I've said this before but it has been unbelievably hard to insert childhood memories into this story. During Home, it was easier because they were necessary; they served a purpose. The scenes about Sands and Lynné's childhood told a lot about who they were and, more importantly, why they act the way they do. In this story, however, it's a little harder because, while they are fun to write, they don't fit with what's going on. Dream sequences containing Sands and Ajedrez's relationship, former loves . . . those kind of things slip into the plot easier than childhood memories do. They relate to what's going on, whereas the memories sorta don't. But I'm trying my best to fit them in anyway, so I hope you guys enjoy them. :)
VVV". . . and then, I rolled down my window . . . and chucked the bouquet right before Sands drove off." Lynné smiled at the memory, adjusting the knob of her pistol leisurely. "And that was my wedding day."
"Nice," commented the man who was supposed to have killed her long ago. "Can't say I can relate. I've yet to find that 'special someone.'"
"You make it sound like Timmy Rhodes was him." She gave a short, dry laugh and shook her head. "He wasn't. Not for me, anyway. My stepsister, however . . . now, she would say different."
"Would she?" he asked lightly.
"Hope so," Lynné replied with another wry grin. "He's her husband."
Her would-be assassin took his eyes away from the night sky to give her an intrigued side-glance.
"So tell me, the night before your wedding . . . were you going around singing I'm Getting Married in the Morning?" He shrugged absently. "It sounds likely after you told me you liked musicals."
She smirked, taking a sip of her Tom Collins and staring out at the same star he was. "As a matter of fact . . ."
They shared a quiet laugh but it ended quickly. While they were both exceptional marksmen, neither of them had much experience in the area of good-natured humor. Decided to break the icy moment of silence, the hired hit man made a proposal.
"So, how was your childhood?"
Lynné snorted. "Why d'you wanna know?"
He gave another mild shrug, not offended by the sharpness of her tone in the least. "I told you about mine. Wouldn't you say it's only fair for you to fill me in on yours?"
"No, because I never asked about yours," she countered pointedly. "You just launched into a story without my consent. So don't try and pull that shit with me, because people have been using it on me for years and, quite frankly, it's gettin' kinda old."
Holding up his hands in defense, he nodded, understanding this.
"Very well," he said reasonably. "Does that mean you're not gonna tell me?"
Rolling her eyes but obliging nonetheless, Lynné sighed, "I grew up in Colorado. My mom died when I was three. I have a drunk for a stepmom, one obnoxious stepsister who I cannot wait to kill, one stepsister who is fairly tolerable when she finally stops crying, a darling older brother who's a corrupt, amoral bastard, and then there's my father." Her voice became several octaves lower as a dark look clouded her wan face.
"What was he like?" the assassin asked quietly.
"Loud, tyrannical, pushy, closed-minded, unaffectionate, sexist . . . the works. He didn't and still doesn't like me because I'm female." She sighed once more, narrowing her eyes at something off in the distance.
"Least you didn't kill yours," he said fairly, though Lynné thought she detected a hint of resentment in his tone.
"If I recall correctly, you said that your dad died of liver failure. And besides . . ." She took a long, slow drink of her beverage, savoring its tangy flavor. "I never said I didn't try to ax mine."
"Tried?" he prodded curiously.
She waved a careless hand at him. "Long story. Basically, I was pissed at him, we had an argument, I started telling him what I thought of his parenting skills, and then he hit me." She paused, examining her fingernails nonchalantly. "That was a new method for him. Usually when I go off on a tangent, he'll yell until I box him into a situation he can't get out of. But this time . . . I must've struck a nerve, cuz he was not a happy camper.
"Tell me," she began, the conversation taking a sudden turn, "would you mind if I asked you something?"
"Depends on what you wanna ask," he explained smoothly.
She shrugged wearing an expression of bored indifference. "Just a proposal of my own. More of an offer, if you think about it."
"And what're you offering?" he asked, holding out a hand expectantly.
"Kill him," she stated simply. "Get on a plane, fly out to Colorado, and shoot my father."
"Lyn –" he began tiredly.
"It wouldn't be hard," she assured him with the utmost confidence. "He doesn't even have one of those state of the art security systems, which is stupid once you think about it cuz he a governor, that and the fact that everyone he's ever met wants to kill him."
"I still don't think –"
"I'll pay you," Lynné offered, trying a new tactic.
He shook his head. "I'm a top-ranking hit man, Lynné. You can't afford me."
"You'd be surpris – " Lynné's words were cut off abruptly, letting her half-finished sentence hovering awkwardly in the air. Pushing all of her concentration to the limit, she honed in on a lone object that was drawing ever closer. Noticing her silence and the intensity in her eyes as she glared down at growing the vehicle, the assassin stood, careful not to lose his balance on slick shingles of the roof. It was a car – a SUV. But from the distance it resembled a big, hulking, blue box on wheels instead of a car. Box or not, he never took his eyes from the vehicle as it slowly moved towards the rented home.
"That's Fusco," he heard Lynné mutter.
Turning his head sharply, he demanded, "Who's that?"
"The rookie the CIA stuck me with," she answered, a sour expression crossing her face. "My partner in crime, so to speak." She shook her head as a cloud drifted through the sky and temporarily eclipsed the moon, darkening the already shadowy mask that Lynné wore.
"What's he doing here?" he demanded, on edge and already reaching for his gun. "It's three in the fucking morning."
"Don't have a Goddamn clue," Lynné murmured, shaking her head in confusion. "You'd better skeedaddle, though, sweetie pie. Don't wanna be caught by America's intelligence agency, do ya?"
She winked and he allowed her to see a brief smile before the sound of crunching gravel sliced through the peaceful quiet of the night. Her attention snared, Lynné's head snapped around. She felt her eyes narrow as she watched the SUV roll to a stop. No sooner had its headlights gone out when the tall figure of Agent Fusco emerged from the large blue vehicle. Lynné saw him cast a few nervous glances around the perimeter, almost as if afraid that he had been followed. Or is being watched, she mused silently. She shook her head at the twitchy agent, sizing him up as he tried to enter the house.
Deciding that he was of no threat (at the moment), she thought it best to leave him be. He was an obsequious, intelligent young boy; he'd be able to figure out how to break into a house on his own. At the moment, she had a more interesting being to deal with. A being that she had to see off. When she turned around, however, she was a second too late. Her killer was gone, blending perfectly against the black and silvery-grays of the night.
VVVGod, why did you let him slip away like that? Do you know how hard it is to find a man like him these days? Do you? The voice was livid and it wasn't making a single attempt to contain its anger. But while Lynné silently agreed and was kicking herself over it, she was not about to admit anything.
He was a crude, amoral asshole who wanted to get in my pants. Yes, it is so very hard to find a man like that anymore.
He was more than that, Lynné, the voice murmured seriously. You know that. His childhood was just as fucked up as yours was. Worse, even. He lived the same life of neglect and antipathy that you've lived. And because of that, he saw things on the same level you did. He was someone you could relate to and, more importantly, talk to without being taken for a total nut case.
I don't care if people think I'm a little deranged, all right? I never have.
I know, the voice assured her feigning understanding. What I'm saying is, he was the only person who would've taken your word for something. He knew that, no matter how insane you may have seemed, you had your priorities together. Well . . . 'til you fuck up, of course.
Lynné sighed and closed her eyes as she tilted her head back against the headboard of her bed.
You're never gonna let that one slide, are ya?
I should hope not, the voice groused disgustedly. Face it, Lynnie, you fucked things up. You knew that three years ago the moment Harrington hung up on you. And as soon as Barillo's limousine pulled up in front of you, things started to go downhill. And that had an impact on the both of us. So let's see . . . should I forgive you? I think not.
Reluctantly, Lynné cast a miserable glance at the empty folds of her dress. Instead of one, there should have been two hills in the crimson material that indicated where each of her legs lay. But there was only one, and there was nothing she could do about it. She still had her spare prosthetic limb with her, but it wasn't the right one. No, the one that had been taken had been the one Liam's brother had made for her. The one that looked real – as real as it could get. There was no way it hell it could have ever made up for her real leg, her first leg, her own leg. The one with the ivy vine that looped around her ankle. . . . Or the tattoo she had on the bottom of her foot that spelled out in neat script LS. . . . Or the clunky, cork-heeled shoe with the black leather straps that criss-crossed all the way around her foot and up until they wrapped twice around her ankle. . . . That was the leg she was thinking of. The one she mourned for.
Fuck. Mourn? I'm losing my edge . . .
But why shouldn't she when all she had to work with was a peach colored plastic model that grew painful after only five hours of wear? The false limb was so obviously fake, she had always thought spitefully, that to look at it, one would think she had stolen it from one of the manikins at JC Penny's.
VVVEyes darting fretfully and fingernails in his mouth, Liam treaded across the floor of the living room, retracing his steps over and over again in one continuous patter. First he would walk towards the left of the room, but then, just as he reached the TV, he would make a sharp pivot and, in the opposite direction, stride until he reached the large, red reclining chair in the corner. He was going to wear a hole in the rug if he kept pacing like that, but that was his last concern.
How could I have let them just do that? Why couldn't I have saved it? They didn't need to take it . . . they had no reason to.
But they're mobsters, he reminded himself. They're sick like that. They don't need any reason to do anything aside from knowing that it'll make someone out there miserable.
He slowly came to a stop in the middle of the room. He looked around the room, searching for anything that could steal his attention away from the problem he was now facing, but it was no use. Nothing grabbed him, nothing had him hooked; it was all so bland, now. The warmth and homey vibes of the living room had vanished, only to be replaced by a chill so eerie it scared Liam to be in the room. Or perhaps that was the guilt he was feeling for having done what he did. It had been a terrible, horrible, blasphemous thing, after all.
VVVThe moment Sands sat up, he wanted to lie back down again. In front of him, everything was moving in circles. The oranges, tans, and yellows of his bedroom had been slammed together in a constantly spiraling vortex of color. The dark brown furniture that filled his room had been picked up, thrown, and collided with each other, spinning and morphing effortlessly. By now his room looked less like a bedroom and more like a tye-dyed T-shirt that may have shown up in the beginning of The Wizard of Oz when everyone was still trapped in a world where everything was brown.
He fell back onto his bed, closing his eyes and wishing that something – anything – would make the spinning stop. And then, quite suddenly, it did. The world around him came to an abrupt halt, and although his eyes were closed, Sands felt it. His lids slowly flickering open, he pushed himself into a sitting position, taking care not to jar his already dizzy mind.
Carefully, he rose completely and slipped off of the bed. As soon as his bare feet touched the icy cold floor beneath them, his automatic instinct was to jump back into his wonderfully warm bed. The idea was tempting, but he knew that if he went through with it, someone – most likely a very angry someone – would soon come barging through the door, demanding he get up.
So Sands decided to suffer through the cold and made the long, frozen trek from the bed to the door, his feet growing stiffer with every step.
When at last he reached the kitchen, his entire body was numb with cold but Sands ignored it, figuring that once he had eaten something heated, he'd be fine. The spoon weighed his hand down greatly when he picked it up, so much that Sands had to struggle to keep from dropping it.
His father had barely acknowledged him when he entered the kitchen. But that was normal. The most Sands ever got out of him in the morning was a short nod or a disapproving glare that was usually directed towards his hair or clothing. If his mother had any kind of greeting for him – for she usually did – Sands never noticed it. As for his sister, she was preoccupied with her own agenda, which was to diligently and correctly form words from her Alphabits Cereal. Already Sands could see that she had successfully managed to spell out several words.
Stupid brat. Why does she have to be so smart?
Eyeing the little girl beadily from over the top of his newspaper, his father grunted a "Don't play with your food, Beatrice," and went back to his reading.
Lynné looked up at him, her dark eyes large, and blinked. Her expression remained one of bemused surprise before her brows narrowed and she stuck her tongue out at the front of the Wednesday paper. Sands saw the corners of her mother's mouth twitch as she tried to hold back a smile whereas his father made no sign to show that he had even seen Lynné's action.
Shaking his head at the little girl's immature behavior – he had outgrown making faces years ago – Sands tuned them all out by turning his attention to his breakfast. As soon as his eyes fell onto the plate before him, he had an immediate sense of regret. He was still freezing but somehow the thought of eating anything, warm or cold, seemed like a bad idea. The scent of scrambled eggs already sent his head spinning, but to be seeing the whipped, yellow, brain-like substance right in front of him . . . Sands shut his eyes tightly, hugging his sides. He didn't want to look anymore. He felt sick and the smell of eggs wasn't helping.
"Sweetie? Are you all right?" In an instant, his mother was at his side, having abandoned her attempts to get Lynné to actually eat her cereal to swoop down on her son instead. He felt her hand on his chin as she gently lifted his face upward. Blearily, Sands opened his eyes to see that his mother's beautiful face was lined with concern.
His only answer was a small cough, but that was enough for her. After a second with her hand on his forehead she scooped him up and hurried out of the kitchen.
Lynné had watched the scene with interest, but now that her mother and sibling had departed, she was bored. She scanned the room, looking for anything to occupy her mind with, when her eyes trailed downward and lead her to her cereal bowl.
She sat there for a few moments, looking the bowl up and down before finally seizing a handful of Alphabits in her tiny fist and hurling them across the table at her father's newspaper. The black and white print was slammed down immediately, revealing her father's face. It was livid with fury as it glared out at the world, searching for the source of the disturbance and completely oblivious to the scattered letters/cereal in front of him. Delighted by his ignorance, Lynné laughed.
Upstairs, a dark haired woman gently pulled the covers around him with every ounce of a mother's care. That made sense. She was, after all, his mother. A sympathetic smile and pure solace was all she could offer him at the moment, but it wasn't like he was asking for anything else.
"I think you may have a cold, sweetheart," she told him, not one to hide the truth from her children. "Probably the flu. It's going around."
"Are you gonna make me go to the doctor?" he asked warily. Even though he had only been alive for seven years, he was already suspicious of medical personnel of any brand.
The sad smile, now lined with amusement, was back on her face for a brief moment while she sat down on the edge of his bed. Carefully smoothing down her dark gray skirt, she answered his question.
"Only if it gets really bad, and it doesn't look that way. You just need to rest for a while, that's all. And I'll pick up some Tylenol on the way home from work."
Sands sat up at this.
"You're not gonna stay?" he asked, hating the urgency that made his voice rise a few octaves.
"I can't, honey, you know that. Besides, Rivka be here –"
"Stupid maid . . ." Sands muttered crossly, drawing the blankets more tightly around him. "I can't even tell what she's saying."
"Which is one of the reasons I keep pushing for teaching Russian in schools," his mother retorted calmly, the corners of her mouth twitching as her son scowled up at her.
"Get some sleep, darling," she murmured softly as she bent down and kissed his slightly torrid forehead.
"Only if you stay," he protested, making vain attempts to stay awake that only resulted in partial success. He wanted to hear her response, although he knew before she spoke what her answer would be. It didn't matter. He still wanted to hear her. She was fading quickly; drifting away from him like a bright cloud in a storm. Everything else had turned black, while she alone remained white, a combination of every color in the world.
She had said something. He knew she had. But the words had been so muggy . . . It was as if they weren't words at all just an odd combination of noises that had been strung together to form one blurred noise. If his mother had said anything at all, Sands hadn't heard a word, having already succumbed to sleep's extraordinary power.
VVV
Sands had been asleep for nearly thirty-two hours. Over the long course of time, he had been fading in and out of consciousness but even when he was awake he had had nothing to say to Zebbidy. It wasn't that he had been quiet. During his brief spells of awareness, he had called out to many people, but she had never met a single one of them, and none of them were she.
He had been writing in his bed, twisting and turning every which way and muttering a series of words that she didn't understand. Zebbidy bit her lip, feeling a lump rising in her throat. She shoved it back down at once, determined and refusing to be shaken by anxiety.
Throughout her medical studies she had often seen young children with blazing temperatures, but despite the intensity of their conditions, she had been able to treat them all easily. Looking back on it, she didn't think that those children had been as sick as she had first assumed. Those cases had been nothing more than a game of Doctor compared to what had been shoved into her hands now. She had never known a fever to rage like the one that tormented Sands, especially inside of an adult.
Zebbidy bit her lip, her mind a giant mass of worry and confusion as she took in the image of a man in the midst of unbearable suffering. Bullet wounds . . . blood loss . . . shock . . . fever . . . possibility of infection – she couldn't be sure that she had removed all of the wood from Sands' shoulder. All of those things had been thrown on top of Sands unasked for and unwanted.
There's something else, though, she thought, concern shining within her vibrant green orbs. She couldn't blame him. If she had learned anything over the past five months it was that Sands trusted no one. No one at all. Not even his own sister, not entirely. From what she had gathered, the agent had always been that way, but something had increased his distrust in people. But what the hell is it??
She didn't know, and from the looks of things, she never would.
If I could just dig into his pas –
Zebbidy never finished. She didn't have the chance to. At that moment, an image hit her with a force that sent her body flying, her arms flailing, and her mind reeling.
VVVWell, it's 3:13 in the morning, my eyes are bloodshot, I'm probably gonna sleep the rest of the day away, but at least I'm done. 6.6;; God, I don't know why this chapter took so long to write. I knew from the start what I was gonna put in it and yet by the time Friday night rolled around I only had scenes One and Three partially finished. Everything else still had yet to be written. 9.6; Blah . . . I never thought I'd say this, but . . . I need sleep. O.e
Author's Thanks and Review Responses:
Lynx Ryder: It's so nice to hear that you think Zeb seems like an actual person. Especially since I'm constantly worry about her Mary Sue-nes 9.6; I know what you mean about the characters being unaware, but, it's true, if I didn't like it to a point, I wouldn't keep putting those kind of situations in the story, right? Same thing goes for dream sequences and flashbacks, although I don't hate those at all :D
Dawnie-7: I can't remember the last time I was truly sick like that, but I do remember that nasty taste in my mouth XP Really, I just went from what came to mind on that scene, and, with a little help from my good friend the thesaurus, learned about twenty different ways to say 'throw up' ;D
fanfiction fanatic: Haha, yes, uhhh . . . concentration is the key (shrug) Or something like that. Oh! And you liked the chapter :) Always good to hear that.
morph: Oddly enough, writing out Sands' pain is rather easy once I get started. Is that right? It can't be right. u.u;; Anyway, you know what they say, getting there is half the fun – but being shot and reliving a nightmare isn't exactly fun, is it? I would think not. Ah well, it's 3am like I said, so I'm not surprised if I'm a bit incoherent.
DragonHunter200: Good to know you thought I described everything well. o.o; Like I said earlier, I can barely remember being as sick as Sands was in the last chapter and for something like that I really think you have to go from experience, it was a little difficult. I know, Thompson's amazing, isn't he? I love his writing style. Like you said, thought provoking yet funny. How does he do it?? One of life's mysteries, I suppose. Hoped you liked the childhood flashbacks! :D
o