This is the second time I have written this (grumbles) Stupid internet.
Guys. I am SO sorry for the delay. Thank you for your patience and to those who are still here and reading and to those lovely people who review even more for updates: thank you so so much. It really does work and encourages me greatly so thank you so so much (huggle)
IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm changing a few things. Firstly my pen name so watch out for that nugget. I am also switching the rating of this fic back to pg-13 just to let you know :P
Also, for future reference I also archive this on SD-1. They are updated in tandem so don't worry: if I update here there will be updated too but I have a few more fics which you might like to check out if you have nothing to do.
I wish I could thank you all personally with giant bear hugs and specially wrapped Vaughn kisses but I can't... so for now all I can do is thank you from the bottom of my heart- Danielle xxx
Chapter 25: Revelations
"Michael-" she warned with a shaking voice as she commanded her body to jerk free from him and his demand. Lose control? She wasn't sure she could anymore. She though she had happily swallowed all her emotions, that as they were together now her feelings from the yesterday she longed to forget had died deep within a while ago. But she knew they were there; lying, waiting. He was the trigger that would let the bullet fly and if his heart were his desired target, so be it. She was only in control of repressing her feelings, not what would occur or be said if she let them breathe from their months-long suffocation.
"Not until you tell me-"
"You promised-"
"I said I'd try- tell me Sydney. You've compartmentalised and compartmentalised and compartmentalised." He said his voice getting softer as he went on "but you have never shouted and screamed at me- you've never hurt me. You need to lose control." He whispered
"And is that what you want?" she asked "For me to let loose -hurt you?" she asked desperately, incredulousness staining her voice with its purple bruise
"If that's what you need"
"No what I need is for you to drop this" she laughed angrily standing suddenly and turning to face him
"The only person who knows you better in this world than I do is you and we both know what's in the back of your mind." He said sliding his body up and sitting on the edge of the couch, leaning forwards and clasping his hands, his forearms resting on his knees. "We can't move past last year until this happens. You have to" he inhaled deeply and shook his head as he tried to think of the right words "to vent. Too much has been lost to our obstinacy and plain refusal to acknowledge our own feelings Sydney. Look at everything you have faced and come through to get to this moment." He soothed in a gentle voice, his eyes still imploring and strong "You not getting all this out is a sure road to self-destruction. We can't start again on top of all this resentment and darkness" he concluded watching her brow knit as she cocked her head and looked at him with indiscernible emotions. He felt adrenaline course through him and his heart was striking so quickly he felt his body unwillingly jerk a few times. He never let on to his hidden inner-torrent; the fear and desperation he felt sizzling in his mind making him swallow and shudder in a breath as he waited for her to start the sentence he could see forming on her tongue.
"I don't want to hurt you," She whispered. Upset was something she couldn't face; the inevitable terror of doing so was evident in the gentle fierceness of her voice.
"I think its only fair" he breathed as he slowly stood to face her, recalling everything with difficulty; the promises, the looks, the touches, the kisses, embedded declarations, Lauren, lies, betrayal, marriage, deception, infidelity, lust, coldness, grief, guilt, jealousy, pain, hate, forgiveness, absolution, bitterness, countless mixed signals. Love. He deserved to be on the receiving end this time. The inflicted should have the right to become the perpetrator. It seemed just.
She simply nodded sorrowfully, looking down and pursing her lips as her brow creased desperately again. She simply gave one more unperceivable nod before defiantly raising her head and looking at him with a deep and serious glance from where she stood directly opposite him and in conflict. This was it. This was going to be everything.
"You know" she breathed, her tone colloquial but sad "it wasn't that you had moved on and had become involved with someone else, I mean for all I knew we could have broken up and- and that could have happened anyway" she shrugged with silent difficulty. "It was that you'd moved on enough to get married, that you'd forgotten me so fantastically. Losing someone you love like that, it does something to you you know, and I thought maybe it was just because you had needed someone to fill that gap so you didn't feel that desperation and loneliness that could sometimes be so so suffocating.
"But then I saw you together. I saw the-" she frowned and shook her head "the tenderness and the laughter and whispers that you had once reserved only for me- or rather what I had only ever seen to be only for me-" she added "and I just knew that was it. That was the real deal. You loved her." she said in a pained matter-of fact manner that broke her all over again as she re-lived her first moment of realisation with him "That was when I started to think maybe what we had really wasn't that extraordinary after all, or if it was you were hollow and devoid of any possible emotion." she said slowly and with a quiet ferocity that made his spine shiver once with acceptance and sorrow. "I mean I liked to think that we were pretty serious you know?" she said gesturing with a quick flash of her palm to the ceiling.
"I know," he breathed back gently to her rhetoric
"That what we had was pretty God damn special, because when it came to my experience- when I lost Danny- a man I loved so so much but no where near as much as I had you" she admitted painfully as great guilt stung her flesh, "even when I was with you I missed him enough to make me feel some sort of remorse and shame for loving someone else." She explained silently imploring and asking him if he had felt that too. "Before SD-6 fell and we could be together, it wasn't just protocol that was keeping me back, it was him. There is no way what we shared comes close to what you and I do now and I feel terrible for saying that Michael" she broke "but it's the truth," she explained with a trembling voice and bright and shining eyes "and so to come back from living a life I had no recollection of- to see you married Vaughn. I mean-" she cried "we had only just started dating when I was taken, we were only just a couple Vaughn and we'd been close for two years prior to that; I'd loved you so long before we were together. But you and Lauren had been married for nearly a year! Married" she repeated with an emphatic frown. She started to pace, placing her palms momentarily on her temples as her fingers embedded themselves in her hair
"You made me believe I was your past and your present and I was going to be the only thing in your future." she said, her voice becoming harder throught upset as the volume sloly and subtly grew "But when I came back, you made it seem like a fling- a bit of fun. And then at night when I was alone in this house, I would think back and I would think 'Huh. Maybe it was just a bit of fun. Perhaps it meant nothing after all.'" She said with a tiny and swallowed laugh as the pain whipped her with small fibres. Every part of her felt it.
"You cheapened us." She said frowning and furious, her quietness unnerving him "And you cheapened me. I mean our relationship was fun Vaughn and I liked to believe it was profound too- I mean we flirted and we teased each other- maybe it just wasn't as serious as I had made it out to be in my head. Maybe it was only in retrospect that it became something special- perhaps those incredible things we shared every day didn't happen- I just created them through loneliness and desperation and self-pity.
"But then you would tease me with these words- these things you would tell me- things that you had no right to say- 'there's only one person in my life Sydney' 'Lauren and I are separating Sydney'. You deceived me- lead me on to qualm your guilt and make you feel better." She said her voice shaking and husky "I never ever thought of you as a selfish person, if anything I would have said that you were selfless to the point of carelessness, but when I was returned to you and you came to me in Hong Kong, I had to revaluate every moment-every gesture and declaration, because from then on, to me you were the most selfish, uncompassionate, self-pitying misleading " she quaked "man I had the misfortune of meeting. You made me reconsider every beautiful thing we shared and I hated you for that." She yelled carefully. A sigh the strength of a laugh but far more melancholy escaped her as she evaluated the moment.
"You'd offer me things you had no right to- that cup of coffee we never had, your shoulder to cry on. You called us friends- told me that I could still trust you. But it was all different Vaughn. Everything was screwed up and not just us. I mean for Christ sake's Michael! I needed you and not my boyfriend, but that sweet, gentle, funny, caring man from the warehouse who would always listen to me, who I could call day or night. The guy who was the only person in the world that I could speak to. I didn't need you last year as a lover Vaughn, I needed you as a friend. I needed you as you." she cried softly
There was a pause as she gathered her thoughts from where the had thrown them haphazardly in her mind. She paced once more, back and forth once before turning to face him. His body stance was neutral, his expression open and honest and she vaguely noted him swallow once.
"Francie and Will." She whispered to herself, shaking her head as her voice cracked with grief and unrestrained sorrow. How she missed them "I- God I mean Will, Vaughn. His life is so screwed up -because of me- and I go and see him thinking there was a single person who actually cherished my existence except my father and maybe Eric. I go to him and" she laughed "all I speak of is you." she said softly in recollection "And he sees my heartache and my loneliness and my desperation- all of which you have caused- and he knows what it feels like, to be deprived of everything and everyone you love, to know they are alive and happy but to also know you cannot touch them, you cannot talk to them, you cannot be around them and even if you are its not the same, the dynamics have changed everything is wrong." She explained frowning, her physicalisations and tone frustrated as her angular movements became more desperate.
"But the people are the same." she whispered shaking her head "Their eyes are colder and their words aren't as soft and genuine as before but it's still them but you wish it wasn't Vaughn. You catch yourself wishing you didn't know them- that you had never met them because the version you see everyday mars and defiles that idyllic image you had of them. It poisons your feelings and you wish that you hadn't come back not because of what you've lost, but what you've gained and learnt from knowing them in that way in that time and in that circumstance.
"Will... God. Will was the only Damn person who understood, who knew exactly what it was like. And then to hear of your envy in Korea- envy Vaughn! You were jealous that I had slept with him- a man who didn't abandon me who didn't give empty promises. How dare you feel that way- you had know right Vaughn! You had renounced any connection to me- cut me loose from you and your life- you were married to a woman who I had to sit next to- to work with everyday- see you kissing and hushing words to, to see you -you holding and joking with. And you think you have the right to express jealousy over me and Will?" she laughed in incredulity
"And yet what really got to me, what really hurt was that night, every second, every kiss, all I could think of and all I could feel was you. And he knew that!" she cried" her brow furrowing "He saw that." she said nodded, her voice tender "That night was devastating because I realised." She breathed her emotions violating her voice into a whisper "I realised that whatever I said and however much I wanted it- however cruel you were to me- I would never be able move on. You had scarred me in the way only you could. Even if you didn't want me I would always be yours. You made me and then you ruined me.
"I love you Michael" she said with a soft desperate voice, stepping towards him, her palms up facing and open "I do, I really do. And I'm not going to...I can't say I forgive you"
He nodded slightly and lowered his head, the chambers of his heart seeming as if they were going to implode through the overload of adrenaline and emotion that thumped in his chest like a hammer.
"Because ...I'm not overly sure there is anything I need to forgive you for" she breathed in a loving twist. Michael raised his eyes to her shockingly soft ones seeing a tiny smile tickle her lips. "Vaughn" she sighed. "I was dead," she said in a voice as gentle as their twilight caresses, "You moved on" she said feeling something sting her pupils as acceptance and closure swirled within her "I'm not sure- although I'd like to think otherwise- that I wouldn't have done the same. And while it hurt" she said her voice cracking. Oh how it had hurt. "I was gone. I had left you just as you in turn had left me" she said as her voice rose momentarily, a result of her swallowing the emotion in her throat. "You are a good man" she shrugged. "You are a gentle, caring, strong, funny, inelegant, giving man and I believe that every time you hurt me over the past year... I know" she nodded in correction, "I know, that you were only trying to do the right, the honourable and kind thing. And I love you for that. Forgiving you would throw me in the wrong... because..." she swallowed and bit her lip "forgiving someone for loving is like forgiving them for living.
"This cruel hand we have been dealt with...in some ways... has been a blessing. Because now" she said her soul gaping and stinging in the air. "I know you are the only person I need to carry on. When I'm with you" she said a shining and proud glimmer of emotion plummeting from her eyelashes "I don't need air, I don't need anything." she smiled through a watery shrug "I never believed in soulmates- in trusting someone else with you existence, with knowing that without that one person you would have and be nothing. You are my other half and light and I love you and will love you with my dying breath and on" she smiled through her emotional factuality as another silver tear plunged and warmed her jaw "and on" she whispered "and on" she breathed.
"Last year" she shrugged briefly looking up at the ceiling as she tried to calm the ferocious sting of her eyes, shaking her head "was meant to be. I'm not sure I would feel the appreciation, understanding and need to be with you without it. What I feel is infinite and I'm not sure me being without you" her voice broke "this long long year hasn't been what has helped me realise that." She quickly swiped the back of her palm against her skin, feeling tears catch there. "You're all I need to get by." She shrugged. Watching something clear and small and wet plummet from his eyes silently. "And you're all I want to get by with" she cried "and I want to get by Vaughn." she sobbed "I want you" she breathed, hot emotion stinging every cell of her "I want life. I want our life. I want us."
"You have us" he softly cried, quickly moving towards her "You've always had us" he pacified with a small inaudible sob as they pulled each other into a arduous and devastated kiss. She squeezed her eyes closed further, the emotion of the moment burning her soul with its fiery tendrils. First degree. His lips brushed hers as they moved, his warm velvet tongue soothing her very essence. Second degree. He felt his heart weep at her declarations, his fingers digging into her gently as he coiled his arm around her waist, pressing their bodies together. Third degree. He felt his brow furrow and more tears descend. Love, passion, adoration, desperation, grief, forgiveness, remorse, tenderness, affection, kindness, compassion, warmth; it surged through them like electricity, their desperation for each other the strongest conductant ever forged. Deeper it surged, snaking down and down into their very cores, scorching their bones and scarring their spirits with gentle colours.
This was them. This was everything. This was the now.
This was the beginning.