Disclaimer – I do not own Passions, Fancy Crane, Harmony – none of it. They all, sadly, belong to NBC, James E. Reilly, and Outpost Productions. I own only these words and the plot behind them.
Author's Note – I love Ivy dearly, I really do, but I really hate it whenever she goes on about all of the lives that Fancy "ruined". I was thinking about this the other day, and I started wondering, 'What if Fancy started to believe that she really did destroy lives wherever she went? How would she handle that?' Thus, this fic was born. (Although, I must admit, I just really wanted to write this pairing. It's too dirty and wrong not to exist on the Internet somewhere.)
RESPONSIBLE"You - you are an unthinking fool, you know, a self-absorbed problem child that I helped create!"
I remember exactly when my mother told me that. It was a chilly October night – the night that the FBI told Aunt Sheridan that Luis was dead. Noah and I had just broken up because I'd tried to help him out financially by getting him a job with Grandfather, and I was lamenting the loss of my love at the wharf. I ran into Mother there, and confided my problems in her, only to have her inform me of my conceited, destructive nature.
Though I tried to hide it, my mother's words cut into my heart like broken glass. Surely I couldn't be as horrible as she made me sound! I had never set out to hurt anybody – at least none of the people that she claimed that I had maimed so terribly.
This is what I had told myself my entire life. Every time Mother pointed out the delicate lives that were so carelessly crushed beneath my pedicured feet, I told myself that it wasn't my fault. I hadn't tried to hurt anybody. I was innocent. But today, as I watch the casket being lowered into the cold, wet earth, I realize that I am wrong. It's all my fault. Everything is my fault.
I killed Sam Bennett. I am responsible for his death.
Sam's children surround the hole in which he will remain for all eternity, expressions of varying emotions splashed haphazardly upon their faces. My big, strong brother, Ethan, the brother I love and adore so much, follows his father's descending casket with eyes blazing with anger. He holds his black umbrella above his head, as well as those of Gwen and Ashley, with a steady arm. His wife looks up at him with worried eyes, concerned that the anger and hatred so evident in her husband's eyes might never leave, that he might never come to forgive his father for his sins.
Will Ethan ever forgive me for my transgressions? I doubt it. Even if he did find it in himself to forgive me, I'm not sure I could accept his forgiveness. I'm not sure I deserve it.
Turning my attention to Noah, I notice that he and Ethan have never looked more alike than they do in this moment. The only difference is that while Ethan's hand remains steady in his cool, deep anger, Noah's hand shakes violently, spraying water from his umbrella everywhere. Otherwise, they are the same. Noah's eyes, the eyes that he shares with Ethan, bestowed upon him by Sam, reflect the very same emotions present in our mutual half-brother's eyes – pain, loss, sorrow, anger, hatred. Hatred for Sam. Hatred for me.
I put those emotions there. I put those emotions in the eyes of the man I love more than life itself. I put those emotions in my brother's eyes, the man that I've aspired to be like my entire life. My mother was wrong. I'm not a problem child – I'm worse.
Kay completes the pathetic little circle of broken Bennett children. With Fox shielding her and Maria from the rain with their own black mourning umbrella, she watches the unfolding events with softer eyes. The anger is still present, but the volatile emotion is overshadowed by confusion and hurt.
Jessica hasn't even bothered showing up. She's probably off getting high and whoring herself. Once she discovered what a hypocrite her father was, she swore him off all together. Not even Ethan, Noah, and Kay's most adamant pleas can change her mind.
I did that to her, too. I've hurt Jessica. I've hurt Ethan. I've hurt Noah, and Kay. I've killed Sam.
I've hurt my mother, too.
My mother stands far behind the circle of children, as I do. We are both trespassers, unwanted guests at such a difficult time for such utterly destroyed children. Across the circle, my mother locks eyes with me. Though she is far away, the anger and loathing both shine brightly from her eyes like the most brilliant stars in the night sky.
I've hurt them all. I've hurt them so much. And yet, I never meant to. I never set out to hurt any of them. But I did. And I can't change it.
It was 1998, and I was sixteen years old. I was traveling the country with Veronica and Esmé when we decided to stop for a while in Los Angeles. We were three rich, selfish, spoiled teenage girls concerned only with having a good time before we began our hellish eleventh grade year together in the ever-encroaching autumn. It was there in a club that I met a man named David. He was a good deal older than I was – as old as my father was, maybe. When he told me he was a photographer, I asked him to come back to my hotel room to take some pictures of me. He did, only they turned out less like a school portrait and more like Rose from Titanic. Then, once he was done, I, being the lolita that I was, climbed into bed with him. The next morning, he left. And that was the last of David the Photographer.
Time marched on in its steel-toe boots, and I wound up in a relationship with Noah Bennett. Months later, we were constantly fighting – over my grandfather, over Theresa, over everything. On top of it all, Jessica, whom everyone thought had already hit rock bottom, kept spiraling further and further out of control, and this unreadable emotion in my mother's eyes grew with each passing day. Finally, she could no longer bear the guilt and she told Sam all about her evil scheme to win him back. How Grace's "husband", David, was really my David, David the Photographer.
I never asked my mother how she'd found out about us. I never thought to, not after Sam's furious call to Italy yielded only the devastating news of David and Grace's tragic deaths in an automobile accident earlier that week. The Bennetts were destroyed. Sam swore my mother off, Jessica sank even further into drugs and depression, and the truth about my brief but sordid past with David finished my floundering relationship with Noah.
I think Sam blamed me for Grace's death. He hated me, I am sure. I gave my mother a reason to blackmail David Hastings. Because of this, my mother was able to force David to swoop in and steal Grace from him, only to take her to her death in Tuscany.
Sam hated me. He hated me so much that he fucked me.
I'm not sure how Sam was in bed with my mother or Grace, but I'm quite positive that it was nothing like how he was with me. With me, he was harsh and rough, the ragged edges of his broken heart shredding me to pieces night after night after night. He never whispered sweet nothings in my ear afterwards. We never cuddled. We never said, "I love you".
With me, Sam Bennett would take one of my tiny, dainty wrists into each of his large, callused hands and pin them into the mattress above my head, leaving bruises that sometimes lingered for a week. With me, he left my entire body aching and sore for weeks on end. With me, he left marks around my neck that required me to add a scarf to my daily attire. With me, he laid by my side afterwards for only a few moments to catch his breath before leaving me to go shower and cleanse himself of me.
With me, Sam Bennett was not saccharine – he was vitriolic.
With me, Sam Bennett was not the kind, loving ex-police chief that everybody thought they knew – he was an angry and bitter individual.
With me, Sam Bennett did not aim to love – he aimed to punish.
I knew this. I knew he was punishing me, and, like any good little girl, I accepted my punishment willingly and without complaint. I had killed his wife, after all. I had destroyed his family. I was responsible. Me.
But that Sam Bennett was punishing me was not the only thing I knew. I also knew that if Ethan or Noah ever found out what we were doing, they would be furious – with both of us. Sam had to have known this as well, but he either didn't care or thought that we'd never be caught. Either way, were he still alive, I'm sure he'd alter his opinion.
It was seven days ago that we were discovered. Sam was naked, straddling my equally naked thighs, one hand pinning my wrists above my head and the other clasped around my throat, when Ethan opened the door. I thought I had seen my big brother irate before, but, then again, I had never seen my big brother walk in on his father simultaneously choking and fucking his baby half-sister before.
Sam was off of me in an instant, grabbing a stray pair of jeans and hastily jumping into them while I struggled to untangle the sheets at my feet and cover myself with them. Ethan just stood in the doorway, his face slowly turning from white to pink, and then to red and purple. "Ethan…" Sam started, the desperation in his voice weighing down the two short syllables.
Ethan's sudden flying fist silenced his father's words. Sam staggered and fell to the ground, blood flowing freely from his nose. But Ethan didn't stop there – he pulled his father off of the ground and punched him again and again. I started screaming.
My screams were what brought Noah running. He obviously didn't realize what was going on, because he pulled Ethan off of Sam and started shouting at his brother, asking him if he'd gone crazy. But then he noticed me. His eyes traveled from me, wrapped in his father's white sheet, to his father, half-naked, and he understood. He gave me a look of pure disgust, a look that left me frozen inside, and left. I heard him throw something in the living room, something that shattered into thousands of pieces, and I wasn't sure if it was his heart or mine.
Ethan still stood over his beaten and bloodied father, chest heaving from his exertion. He cast Sam one last look of repugnance before snatching my white dress off the floor and throwing it at me. "Get dressed," he commanded, his eyes filled with a burning anger towards me, too. "I'm taking you back to the mansion."
The ride home was spent in complete and utter silence. Ethan gripped the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles turned a ghostly white shade. Ethan's silent treatment, however, was preferable to what I received at home. Grandfather was furious at my actions and immediately declared that I was no longer his granddaughter. Father and Fox met me with looks of utmost horror. Mother's face twisted with insurmountable rage before screaming "GET OUT!" so loudly that her voice echoed throughout the mansion.
When I woke up the next morning, I turned on the news to find that Sam Bennett had gone missing. The following morning, Gene and Cassie on channel seven interrupted Ellen to tell me that Sam's body had been found on the beach. The police questioned me later, but even if I really had killed Sam, there was nothing they could do. The rough Atlantic waters had removed all trace evidence from his corpse; the case was, no pun intended, dead in the water.
Now, Sam will just be dead in the cold, unforgiving earth. I should be the one lying in that casket. I should be the one being lowered into the cold, unforgiving earth. I should be the one dead. Not Sam.
I've forgotten my umbrella, and the cool, steady rain soaks my hair, skin, and clothes until there is not an inch of me that is dry. In the movies, rain always symbolizes cleansing and rebirth. Whenever people in the movies or on TV stand out in the rain and get utterly and completely drenched, they suddenly receive enlightenment, or are given a fresh new start at life. But this is reality, and this rain is not my second chance. It is not my enlightenment. It's my punishment.
My whole life, the only person I ever really cared about was Fancy Crane. I never cared if I shattered innocent lives in the process. I never cared about who I hurt, or how. I never even looked back at the people trying to glue the shards of their lives back together – I never even offered to help.
The funeral is over now, and Ethan, Gwen, Noah, Kay, and Fox are all delicately traipsing through the wet, muddy grass and back to their cars. Ashley and Maria are the only ones who attempt to make eye contact with me; their parents walk on past me without a word. My mother is the only one left, besides me. She lovingly traces the grooves in Sam's coffin with one finger, and presses her lips to it. A single tear splashes onto the honey-colored wood, and it runs down the side before falling to the ground to mix with the rain and dirt.
My mother stops a couple feet in front of me on her journey to Ethan and Gwen's SVU and meets my eyes for the first time in a week. Her emotions are all reflected in her eyes, are etched in the lines of her face. She hates me. She loathes me. She feels hurt and betrayed. She loved Sam Bennett more than anything on this earth, Ethan being the possible exception, and I killed him. I am responsible for his death.
My mother leaves, her umbrella spraying me with water, and I hear her climb into the back of Ethan and Gwen's SVU with Ashley and drive away. I listen to the sound of the wheels sloshing through the puddles of water covering the road, and I suddenly remember that I left the hood of my convertible down. I wonder if the sheets of cold rain falling from the angry gray sky have ruined it by now, or if it's at all salvageable.
I don't move, though. I remain where I am, watching a group of men lower Sam's casket into the ground and try to cover it with dirt that instantly becomes soup once hitting the pool of water at the bottom of the grave.
I'm not sure how long I stand there. Twenty minutes, maybe? Thirty? An hour? All that I know is the rhythmic beat of the raindrops on my head and their eventual course down my cheeks to the edge of my chin, where they dangle precariously before plummeting to the collar of my thoroughly drenched black coat.
Suddenly the raindrops are gone and a shadow is cast over me. I turn around to find my father with an umbrella held over my head, his face full of concern. "Good Lord, Fancy!" he cries, noting my wet state. Thrusting the umbrella handle into my hand, he yanks off his jacket and wraps it around my shaking shoulders. "You're going to catch your death out here!" he scolds, taking the umbrella back from me.
I'm unable to say anything, so I look at the ground instead. I wish I'd catch my death out here. I wish I'd just die here and now so that the raging rain can just carry me far away from everything.
Father lifts my chin so that I meet his gaze. "This," he says, gesturing to Sam's partially buried casket, "is not your fault, Fancy. None of this is your fault."
I shake my head, partially from the cold and partially in disagreement. "I killed him, Daddy. He died because of me!"
"Sam Bennett was a grown man, Fancy," Father says, grabbing my shoulders and forcing me to maintain eye contact with him. "Grace's death was not your fault. Nobody, not even your mother, could have foreseen her death in Italy. It was a tragic accident, one that could have happened right here in Harmony. Sam should have had the common sense to realize that it wasn't your fault instead of using you to vent his anger and frustration at the situation."
As my father says this, I watch his face intently, and, for the first time, notice a deep gash about two inches long near his left eye. As he speaks, venom dripping from every word relating to Sam, I realize where it came from. "Oh, Daddy," I cry, tears springing forth from my eyes and following the trail that the rain had previously dug. "Daddy, no. Daddy…"
Father pulls me into his arms, and I'm too exhausted to push him away. "You did not kill Grace," he says sternly, as if ordering me to believe this. "You were a child when you were involved with David Hastings. He was the adult. He should have known better."
I never told him I was sixteen. I let him believe I was legal.
"Sam Bennett should have known that. He was hurting you and punishing you for something that was not and could never be your fault, Fancy. You're innocent in all of this."
Innocent? Me? I'm not innocent. I could never dream of being innocent. I am responsible. I am responsible for all of this.
Father rocks me back and forth, stroking my wet, tangled hair as he does so. "This is not your fault," he whispers.
I killed Grace. I am responsible.
"This is not your fault," Father repeats earnestly.
I killed Sam. I am responsible.
"This is not your fault."
I ruined Noah's life. I ruined Ethan's life, too. And Kay's life, and Jessica's, too.
"This is not your fault."
I turned my father into a murderer.
"This is not your fault."
I am responsible.