A/N: So I had to replace the last chapter after I found a typo. Usually I'll let one or two typos slide, but this one was just too Freudian: Elliot, looking for his keys, begins "patting myself down." LOL. I've got to stop publishing at midnight…and stop obsessing over Detective Stabler.
I own nothing.
Lionel was waiting. He paced nervously back and forth, multiplying himself in Janey's wavering vision, making her feel seasick. Her body was shutting down; she barely had the strength to lift her head when, once, he got too close.
He had something in his hands which he occasionally played with – threw and caught, or rubbed thoughtfully. A wallet? Janey couldn't be sure. The basement had taken on a dream-like quality in her fading lucidity. Lionel now seemed unnaturally, unreasonably tall. From her low position on the floor and the warping of her perspective, he was a giant. At any second he would notice her and crush her with one foot like a bug.
"Do not be afraid, Maureen," he said. "Your story is not over. There is still time…for all of us."
All of who? God, her throat and wrists hurt so badly, why couldn't she pass out? Survival mechanism, probably: Stay awake when you're dying of thirst, because you don't have any time to waste on rest. Suffer so you'll be motivated to find water.
A mirage tortured her; the blue glow of the Windex she had thrown up wobbled playfully, like it was the top of a river. Janey was possessed by a mad desire to stretch her neck down and lap it up. It looked cool, fresh. She actually moved to drink it, but her wrists, no longer mercifully numb, jolted her entire body with pain when she tried to bend over. Crushed, she slumped back into the wall.
Then, still staring at the puddle, she saw something else. The blue shifted and swirled; suddenly it looked like a pair of bright pale eyes staring straight into hers. Their gaze was intense, strong. She recognized them from her dream.
Mr. Stabler's eyes.
He wasn't gone, he hadn't given up. He was coming for her.
"He is coming!" Lionel barked loudly. Had he heard Janey's thoughts? What was going on?
"He found my gift just this minute. I know he did. He is turning around. Soon he will be back for us."
It struck Janey that she might not be going crazy. If Lionel had seen Mr. Stabler too, was it possible they had both developed the same connection to him? Could wanting to see the same person badly enough actually have given them a mental bond?
More likely, Lionel's insanity was contagious.
His pacing doubled in speed. "Do you know, Maureen, your father came for me once when I had another beautiful girl as my guest? She did not care for me at first either. She, too, had to learn to like me. The day she learned to like me was the day your father met us."
Flashing, snapping images, as if on an old film reel, flashed before Janey; her dimming mind conjured up a play of what must have happened, long ago.
Another girl, dark-haired and beautiful, chained to a wall. Broken. Bleeding. Lionel on top of her. Mr. Stabler, strong and righteous, yanking Lionel away, slamming him down onto the floor. She saw Lionel's nose crumple like paper under Mr. Stabler's fist; knowing Lionel's inability to deal with shame, she saw him curl up screaming on the floor, trying to hide his nakedness and his broken face. Business shoes continued to ram into his broad back. Large hands yanked him to his feet, bare knuckles slammed into stomach, face, genitals. The beating was crazy. Ruthless.
There was no reason for her to believe what she saw, but unresisting, she took it as fact. The strong saving angel of her dream morphed into an avenging angel. It made her sad – she didn't like to think of Mr. Stabler as a cruel man; no matter what he had done to her the sight of Lionel's face being crushed brought her no satisfaction.
All she wanted was relief.
Leather met sensitive flesh with a jolt; Lionel had thrown the wallet at her head to wake her up. It slapped loudly into the puddle of Windex and blood. "Do you recognize that?"
No, but her brain hadn't shut off so completely that she forgot her role. "Dad's wallet," she whispered.
"He is so close, Maureen. I left the door open for him."
Why? Why did he want Mr. Stabler to find him?
The sound of yelling above their heads. Pounding footsteps. A man's voice, which Janey knew to be Mr. Stabler's:
"Sachet! We know you're in here! Let her go, we won't have to hurt you! Sachet!"
Lionel smiled. He pulled the gun out of his back pocket and laid it carefully on the ground, like he was displaying a piece of art. He turned it a few times before, apparently satisfied, he approached Janey.
From another pocket of his jeans he pulled out a small key. It flashed cleanly in the single light bulb's glare, and he waved it before her eyes as if it was a treat. When her eyes managed to focus and track it he brought it up to the cuff at her left wrist. Slowly, gently her arm was released from the wall; then the other. When her arms dropped below her heart for the first time in days, the return of circulation was like fire; Janey moaned in agony and slumped over in fetal position, wounded wrists pressed to her chest.
Strong arms wrapped around her. Janey felt tiny, brittle, as Lionel raised her to his broad chest. She was carried to the open center of the basement, and laid onto the cool stone floor next to the gun in the middle of the light bulb's glow.
Lionel knelt beside her, helping her to sit up; he stroked what was left of her hair and rocked her gently. The frantic pounding continued upstairs.A low woman's voice was raised along with Mr. Stabler's.
"It is perfect," Lionel whispered in Janey's ear. "It is so much the same, for them, for us. The time is right." His lips touched the shell of her ear, drifting down her chin, her neck. "Now you have learned to like me, and we can finish this."
The movement from the wall had roused Janey somewhat; as Lionel's hands ran down her sides and bare chest, and his lips met hers, she understood what was happening. He was recreating the moment when Mr. Stabler had caught him years ago. Finishing what he started. The other girl was gone, probably dead; and she, as Mr. Stabler's daughter, was the logical replacement.
Lionel was trying to make this moment end differently. Correctly. To erase his shame.
Damned if she was going to let him.
Two days ago she had made up her mind to fight, even if it meant her death, and she was not going to let this go on any longer while she had the power to stop it. She only hoped Mr. Stabler would forgive her for not surviving long enough to be rescued; but it was for his sake as well as her own. If Lionel raped her now she knew she would break, and better for Mr. Stabler to find her dead than broken.
Her body was unresponsive; she couldn't move to resist as Lionel propped her against him and removed his shirt. She had to wait until he laid her back and pressed her into the ground, kissed her stomach, discarded his pants and underwear, raised her back up, and held her face to his; only then was his ear close enough to her mouth that she could whisper and be sure he could hear her failing gasp of a voice.
"I'm not her. I'm not Maureen Stabler."
She thought the two of them must make a picturesque tableau as Lionel froze. His eyes snapped open, looking wider, greener, and more wild than Janey had ever seen them.
"It was Maureen you shot in our doom room. My name is Janey." She coughed harshly, splitting her chapped lips. "You murdered her, and you're never going to finish this because you can't get her back. Do what you want to me, but you won't win. And when you've lost, Mr. Stabler's going to kill you, you son of a bitch."
For a full thirty seconds Lionel didn't move. Other than his eyes, his face was immobile. It was like she had slapped him.
Then he lost it.
In pain and terror Janey found a reserve of strength which spent itself in a body-ripping scream.
Gun drawn, Elliot was in the living room of the little house when he heard the scream. It came from a broom closet with its door slightly ajar. He threw the door open so hard it actually came off its hinges; in the closet, one of the wood panels on the wall was pulled back, revealing a dark hole – the basement entrance he had been so sure existed.
Coming through the hole were the sounds of a vicious struggle – pounding, scratching, crying, yelling.
"OLIVIA!" Elliot yelled as he threw himself through the open slot. "HERE!"
He entered the basement at the top of a staircase; in the second before his eyes could adjust to the switch in lighting he felt a pull at his knee. The wooden panel behind him swung shut with a bang. Tripwire.
Behind him he could hear Olivia shouting, hitting the wall of the closet, but Elliot couldn't wait. She would find her way in.
And now he could see what was happening.
In the center of a circle of light on the basement floor, Sachet was on top of Janey. They were both naked, but he was not raping her. He was beating her to death.
As Elliot raced down the stairs Sachet, holding Janey by the shoulders, slammed her head into the ground again and again. Screaming inarticulate curses, he hit her face, drove his knees into her chest, crushing her.
"Get off her! Police! GET OFF HER!" Elliot swung around the landing and raced towards them. Blood rushed through him like flames; a wild strength took him over and he flew at Lionel, mad, ready to shoot, ready to tear the man apart.
He never saw the gun lying on the ground beside Lionel and Janey; didn't even register when Lionel grabbed it, threw up his arm, and fired, screaming like a creature damned.
The bullet couldn't stop his momentum. He knocked Lionel over as he fell, dropping his gun.
Lionel rose; Elliot didn't. Though he couldn't know it, his liver and spleen were in tatters. Thick dark blood oozed from the belly wound, soaking his shirt.
Janey's eyes, partially blocked by her blackened, swollen lids, met Elliot's as they lay prostrate beside each other: he on his stomach, she on her back. Her eyes were cloudy, sleepy; but he would have sworn he saw a spark there – of recognition, happiness. Then her gaze drifted down to the swiftly spreading blood puddle beneath him, and her lips parted. Her breath escaped in a quiet, despairing, "No…"
Lionel's laughter filled the basement. It was the laughter of a true madman, and to Elliot it sounded like sobbing.
A/N: Yes, I am evil. No, this is NOT how it ends. Hope the update was worth the wait.