Breaking the Broken
Sixteen
Scars of the Suffering
The world is full of suffering. Birth is suffering, decrepitude is suffering, sickness and death are sufferings. To face a man of hatred is suffering, to be separated from a beloved one is suffering, to be vainly struggling to satisfy one's own needs is suffering. In fact, life that is not free from desire and passion is always involved with suffering.
Buddha (B.C. 568-488)
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Suffering takes many forms, and lives in the hearts of even the happiest of men. However not many live with the physical day to day agony, the kind that washed over the frail form of Juliette Merteuil with shocking regularity. Deep throated coughs wracked her frame in the wee hours of the morning, strangling the breath from her tiny body, and leaving all around her with the fear that it would be for the last time. It was a trait she spun to her advantage most of the time, her birthright indicating that it was something she could do, her blood demanding it. Yet every once in a while, it was this same blood that would spurt out through her pale pink lips, shocking even her and warranting visit after visit to the hospital to the point where there was a room reserved strictly for the young Merteuil.
This morning, the moonlight illuminating the suite found the girl's luxurious blonde curls spread across the lap of a WASPish girl, no older than twenty. Her tiny hand would jut out in a sort of awkward way, smoothing the young child's hair and rubbing her back in an affectionate way that didn't seem to fit her quite right. The grateful glimmer in the younger girl's bright blue eyes let her know that she appreciated the thought behind it, seeing right through her actions and deciphering her intentions in a glance. As Juliette drifted off to sleep, another few restless hours in which the girl would toss and turn, boxing her fears that she would never dare voice, the elder girl made her way back to the bedroom, opening the door without a sound. Ignoring the vast space provided by the king sized bed, she slid in beside a blond boy. Even subconsciously, he was attune to her, rolling over to spoon himself against her, sighing slightly into her glossy brown hair. Kathryn Merteuil knew well, as she stared at her stepbrother's sleeping form, that there were so many other ways to suffer. Being so close and yet so far to someone you love might even be worse.
Not far from the hotel, but in a world that seemed all its own, Jason Argyle meandered his way back to his dorm room. Still coming down from the high he had experienced that night, from both drugs and a certain three-some with some of Prestridge's sluttiest co-eds, the path he walked wasn't exactly a straight line, but that term was relevant for many aspects of his life. Jason found himself physically unable to live straight-edge, always meandering into the gray areas occupied by sex and drugs and games. Still powerless to wipe the cocky smirk from his face, it slid away of its own accord as his eyes wandered to a second story window. Staring out at him, impassive as always, stood Cassidy Merteuil in all her splendor. Her white satin robe hung limply over her gaunt shoulders, the security lights of the building casting a luminous glow about her form, a heavenly creature in her own right. Exiting her balcony without a second glance at the boy she had come to trust, Cassidy tucked herself into bed that night knowing well that there were many ways to suffer, but betrayal stung deep, a wound salting itself over and over again. There were many ways to suffer, and she intended him to feel many of them.
One floor down, but worlds away, a beautiful blonde rocked gently in her chair. The moon provided her with her only company as she hummed softly to herself, clutching to her chest an expensive leather-bound book. A single tear made its path from her pretty blue eyes down to her chin, and she congratulated herself. She was making a lot of progress this way, for all nights before this had been accompanied by more sobs than she could count. A fire roared welcomingly in the hearth, pointedly out of season, as the flames heated the room and flushed her cheeks.
"He's no you, but Patrick seems really nice," she whispered to the dark corners of the room, the shadows where she hoped his spirit might be lurking. That would contain a certain brand of irony, coupled with the way his soul was shrouded in secrecy, a fog of disillusion, when he was alive.
"I just… I feel like maybe it's time for me to try and live again…" her voice was thick with tears as her hand lashed out at them. "But I don't want to… not when you can't…"
Kneeling on the hardwood floor, she could feel the grains imprinting themselves in the smooth skin as she tremblingly held out the book. It was now or never, this one moment in which she could set aside her past and try to build up from the ashes. By ridding herself of this book, she could begin a new chapter. But by doing so, she would be not only closing the book on unimaginable pain but on the first great love of her life. Tossing it away would provide her the opportunity to have another great love, but maybe just that one would be enough for her. Whipping open the cover in a desperate search for answers, her hunt was fruitless for the most part until she fell upon a picture of herself. Her and him. It was in here, towards the back, and reminded her of everything she had loved, and lost. Loved and lost him. She would keep this book, keep this chapter of her life, keep this wound gaping wide open if only to remember that moment clearly.
Unpolished fingernails racked through the pages, finding their new destination in a page located very much towards the front. Clawing a single page out of the book, the dwindling embers of the fire stoked at its contact with the paper. As flames licked the hauntingly beautiful likeness of Kathryn Merteuil, the blonde thought maybe she could finally get some sleep tonight. Annette Hargrove could tell you from experience that few things were as painful as suffering the loss of someone you loved, with no hope of them returning to you. It would be even more painful should the pretty girl know that the boy she had shed so many tears over lie sleeping peacefully in a luxury suite only miles away, intertwined with the girl she hated more than anything. But Annette had suffered enough for one night, and so the universe would not reveal its venomous secrets to her just yet. But the world we live in only protects its own for so long.
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She had often wondered why the hell she put up with Lucy Kensington. The redhead was tiny and ill-tempered, a gigantic stereotype. Even worse, she was nosy as hell, and Cassidy Merteuil found herself regretting the friendship they had maintained during their years at Prestridge deeply. After an hour of being pumped for information as to what really went down at the club, Lucy chattered on.
"Wouldn't it be funny if you and Jason hooked up?" she laughed, seemingly at random. Cassidy wheeled about, noticing the tall, dark and handsome boy lurking about the courtyard and rolled her eyes.
"Not as funny as it would be if you fell into an open sewer and died," Cassidy replied with a large grin bearing all her teeth, eyebrow arched at the uncovered manhole in the street. Lucy laughed nervously, inching farther away from it as they continued to walk.
"The funny part is, I don't know whether you're kidding or not," the redhead frowned. Cassidy noted, with tiny frown lines marring her forehead, that she wasn't sure either.
"Oh my gosh, I totally forgot to mention why I was asking you about the club in the first place!" Lucy squealed, typical of her Valley Girl upbringing. It was all Cassidy could do not to roll her eyes, and as soon as Lucy's back was turned, she did so anyway.
There were certain lengths that all must go through to preserve a friendship. Sometimes that meant laughter and bonding, and sometimes it was a constant struggle to keep from pushing others away. Friendship was a length that Cassidy Merteuil suffered through, a means to justify an end. As Lucy delivered her next words, that end crashed all around her, a thousand new beginning born in the moment where the one had died.
"That Desmond guy? Apparently his roommates found him with the shit beat out of him. They said it was some blonde guy with a hot car. Isn't that hot?" Lucy chirped, eyes shining in delight at having the scoop on all the comings and goings about the campus, and Cassidy was instantly reminded of exactly why the hell she put up with Lucy Kensington.
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Food had always been an enemy to Kathryn Merteuil, her constant struggle to be the best extending further than anyone would have imagined. While still in the preteen ages, she and Cassidy had hit what would be their awkward stages together. Both had always been naturally thin, but it was no longer enough. Kathryn needed to be thinner than Cassidy. The lines between them were blurred now, friends and enemies, family and foes, but their rivalry had developed long before their mutual attractions to Sebastian Valmont.
The petite brunette could remember the time, so long ago, when she had first recognized food as her adversary. Yes, an even larger one than Cassidy was proving to be. She had suffered in silence for years, swallowing the outraged response of her body, forcing down the rebellion of her stomach. 'Beauty is pain,' her own mother had slurred often, usually when she caught someone popping painkillers after yet another face lift. Tiffani Merteuil had never been equipped to deal with pain, not the way that Kathryn was. Now, as she sat across the glass table in the suite's small kitchen from her cousin, she wondered how she had ever fallen into that destructive cycle.
The six year old shoveled food into her mouth as if it were the last meal she would ever eat. The ominous thought circled around Kathryn until she was thoroughly perturbed and completely relishing the sight of Juliette, in good health, eating mountains of bacon. The beauty marveled at the young girl's ability to thoroughly enjoy eating, without sparing a thought to the calories that made their way down her raw throat. Although, she cast an appraised glance, calories might be good for the stick thin girl.
"'Ant da 'uff'n?" Juliette swallowed, cleared her throat, and repeated her question. "Want a muffin?"
"No thanks, Juliette. How are you feeling today?" Kathryn asked, skirting to a degree the fact that she had held the shaking girl during the rare hours Sebastian dozed off this morning, trying to coax her into a state peaceful enough for her to sleep. If this were Cassidy, or Isabelle, or any of the Merteuils for that matter, the question would be avoided completely. Signs of human weakness routinely had a blind eye turned towards them. However, Juliette was not like the rest of them. Perhaps she had just spent too much time with Valmont, but there was a blunt truth in the air about her that signified that she really didn't give a damn about what was proper and what wasn't. Good breeding couldn't counter instinct.
"Better. Did you sleep well?" she inquired politely.
"Yes, I did," smiled Kathryn.
"That's because Sebastian was there," Juliette grinned triumphantly. Kathryn rolled her eyes but didn't bother with a scathing reply. There was no beating this child. A gift bestowed on her at birth, Juliette Merteuil, when she wasn't winning an argument, would merely talk circles around you until you were so dizzy you couldn't see your original point. It was far too early in the morning for that kind of confusion.
"Speaking of… where is Sebastian?" Juliette asked, brow furrowing slightly as she realized what had been blatantly obvious for the last half hour. Kathryn smiled faintly, memories swirling of a groggy goodbye an hour earlier, a tender kiss placed to her forehead followed by the quiet CLICK of the door locking. When Kathryn had awoken, for real this time, she had rolled over to regain the warmth she had been missing dearly, only to fall into cold space. Feeling a crinkling below her, she retrieved a note from Sebastian in the place where he had slept.
Morning Kat,
I do know how you detest waking up early, so I thought I'd leave you this note instead. I already ordered breakfast to be delivered. Julie's probably going to be starving, and the girl can eat like nobody's business. They should also deliver those scones that you like, so I hope you'll eat at least one of them. And digest it. I'll be home before you know it.
Sebastian
She had grinned at just how well he seemed to know her and Juliette. Better than they knew themselves, it seemed. It was bizarre that he should retain such details about two girls he hadn't seen in so long, especially because Sebastian was someone widely viewed as self-centered. But he wasn't, not really. He just liked to pretend he didn't care.
"Sebastian went out early this morning. Probably for a walk," Kathryn explained, guiltily taking a tiny bit out of the scone as she recalled the letter.
"Why didn't he wait for us? We'd have walked with him," Juliette protested, and both were immediately stricken by a vision of the three of them walking together in the local park.
"Sebastian likes to think," the brunette said slowly, weighing her words carefully in an attempt to explain what her stepbrother really did in the moments when he was truly alone.
"Really? That's weird," Juliette's tiny nose crinkled, and Kathryn couldn't help but laugh. It was kind of "weird", as her cousin had so eloquently put it. "So it's up to you to entertain me for today?"
Startled, Kathryn sat up a little bit straighter. It wasn't much of a difference, as her perfect posture prevented slouching on her part, but the muscles in her body seemed to tense at the thought. So that must've been Sebastian's real goal, to get them to spend time together. Well, he was a sly bastard, she'd give him that.
"I guess so," Kathryn drawled, biting her lower lip in thought. She had always prided herself on being Manhattan's best hostess-in-training (among other things…), obvious successor to her mother's title. However, six year olds had never been her expertise, and Kathryn Merteuil found herself at a loss as to what to do.
"Want to shop?" Juliette eyed her cousin knowingly, and Kathryn internally let out a relieved sigh. Finally, a girl after her own heart.
"Yes."
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As two Merteuils exited through the hotel's expensive front door, they just missed the smirking blonde boy in the built-in café. By doing so, they just missed colliding with California's other Merteuil, the one with a more established residence. Heels pounding against the expensive Italian marble, a concerned hotelier rushed over to scold her for scuffing up the floor, but changed tacks with only a glance from the curly haired brunette. Pausing outside the massive glass door, she took a deep breath, smoothing her skirt and attempting to regain some semblance of composure before stepping inside.
"Read anything interesting?" she taunted. "Because there's a fascinating little ditty in the Police Blotter."
Calmly laying down his newspaper, Sebastian Valmont smiled charmingly at his new companion. "Nope, slow day for the newspaper industry. But no news is good news, I suppose."
"It was you, wasn't it?" she asked, her voice a hollow whisper as Cassidy Merteuil plopped into the chair opposite him. Something about her presence made him vaguely uneasy, but there was something indiscernible in her large brown eyes. It read of hope, desperation, gratefulness, confusion. Particularly experienced in the art of analysis of others, Sebastian found himself more intrigued than wary.
"Who did what?" he asked with an entirely misplaced innocence, a tone that he could not have used truthfully for many, many years. The laughter in his eyes betrayed the tone, and she smiled.
"I don't know why you did that. But I appreciate it."
There were many central differences in the relationships Sebastian Valmont had with the women of the Merteuil family. Juliette was a sort of extension of himself, a sister in every way except blood. Kathryn was his sister in no way except legally, his passion, his desire, his everything. Most of the time, he didn't have to voice his thoughts to her, she just knew. The key that differentiates his relationship with this brunette and the one before him was that Cassidy could in no way, shape or form read his mind. But she was one of the few people he was willing to spell the thoughts out to. It could be hard to say which means more.
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Laughter echoed all about the hotel suite as the two lithe women burst through the doorway, arms full of as many bags as they could carry. The rest would be set up later. The afternoon had gone far better than expected, and for the first time in her life, Kathryn Merteuil felt a sort of kinship with the cute blonde who bore her last name.
"Let's eat something," Juliette said eagerly, and her grin widened as Kathryn smiled and nodded. Smarter and far more observant than she appeared, it was another trait she had in common with Valmont. While both appeared callous and far more concerned with themselves than anyone else, they were both finely in tune with the nuances of Kathryn Merteuil. It had only taken Juliette a day or two to get it that way. It had been her plot since seeing the flare of delight in her cousin's deep green eyes when shopping was mentioned, that she could trick her in a sense, into getting worked up over something. It turned out that they had had a wonderful afternoon anyway, but now that she was caught up in the moment, Juliette saw her in. She would get her cousin to fucking eat if it was the last thing she did.
Of course, this was much less funny considering her history.
"So, do you want like chocolate or maybe cake?" Kathryn asked, voice muffled, her head buried in the small kitchen cabinets.
"Both!" Juliette squealed. A sharp knock sounded through the room.
"Sebastian probably locked himself out. Let him in, Juliette?"
"Well, duh," the tiny blonde laughed, skipping her way to the colossal door and hauling it open with all her might.
There were many ways to suffer. There is painful separation from the ones you love which so many people deal with, day to day. There is the never-ceasing sting of betrayal, the biting sense that retribution was necessary before you could breathe again. To suffer an illness was one of the most painful sufferings of all, to pair your external ailments with internal turmoil. All humans deal with suffering in the form of a constant struggle to achieve your goals, to feel fulfilled if only for a moment. Yet none of these sufferings comes with quite the shock as does the one of your past coming back to haunt you.
Shocked blue eyes met wide gray ones as the happy smile on Juliette Merteuil's face dropped to be replaced quickly with an expression that one could only register as astonishment.
"Belinda!"
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Hey guys. I'm not sure how this came out, but I've had it in my head for a while, so I thought that I'd try and write it. And post the chapter some time this year. Lol. So please review and let me know what you think. I didn't get too many reviews last chapter and was considering holding out on posting until Katie made me realize that I need to post for the people who do review. That girl's a wise one.
Ocfan108- I love you, you know that? Lol, don't worry, I'm not going to stalk you. But you really get what I'm trying to do with this story. I'm glad that you loved the tea scene, and the bond between the girls, because honestly, I love it too. I made them family for a reason, guys lol.
Katie- one day, Iwill read Gone with the Wind, just for you. Glad you liked last chapter, and that you appreciated Jason's POV. It's a bitch to write lol.
Y-x- I determined that I don't actually have issues, but it's nice to know your feelings on the subject. But I certainly wouldn't mind killing "Desmond" in any of these chapters. Trust me, you would too if he did to you what he did to me. Yes, it legally constitutes sexual harassment. Poor guy? Don't think so. Haha. But yeah, I'm almost positive that's the last we'll ever see of him. If only life imitated art… haha. Anyway, glad you liked the k/s. Let's see if you mirror it, shall we? Hahah. By the way, I'm furious with you over your latest chapter.
WashedOut- thank you. You know, your reviews make me really nervous…
Thanks for reading, guys!
Xo Sam
And because I'm not sure whether The Birds will become an extended story or not, I shall reply to all my beloved reviewers right here lol. By the way, thank you guys so much for reading and reviewing that. I always find it touching that people have enough faith in me to read more than one of my stories lol.
Unfeeling- I'll definitely think about one from Sebastian's POV. It depends on response, I guess. But I'll probably have to get a bit farther in this story before I attempt another chappie one. There's always the risk of being burnt at the stake. Hahah
Keri- Humm… another reviewer that I love. Lol even as I was writing the story, I asked myself that same question—"What the fuck does this have to do with birds!" But it did come together in the end, and for that I was grateful to my muse. Very clever of you to notice my Oscar Wilde knock-off in there! Haha
Ocfan108- I seriously love hearing what you got out of each of my stories. You totally got the concept in that story, and for that reason alone I thought about adding on lol. I'm actually just kind of relieved that it made sense to somebody other than me.
Katie- Ohh, Katie. You have to bolster my self-confidence constantly. Hahaha. So thank you for always reading, reviewing, helping, and putting up with me lol.
yx- Apparently it was. Lol.