Lady Gaga - Speechless
"It's been a long week." Connor watched Taylor's shoulders hunch forward as she bent over, speaking into the phone. She was facing slightly away from him, her blonde hair gathered messily over one shoulder so that he could see the sun-kissed skin at her throat before it disappeared beneath the collar of her coat.
"I'm waiting to meet the stylist." Her head tilted slightly, elongating the line of her neck. The faint pattern of bruises left by her stepfather were still visible, the edges a soft yellow, the middles still tinted blue where his fingers had dug into her flesh. Connor swallowed. The arm not holding her phone was wrapped around her middle, and he could see the knuckles of her fingers blanched white from digging into her side.
"I'm okay." Four days. Four more sessions with Congress, and though the week had started on a high note, the constant back and forth was starting to wear on her. He could see the stress eating at her and had done what he could to help, to relieve some of that stress, to prepare her for the day to come. It felt like less than nothing, looking at her now.
"He's here. You talk to him." Taylor turned suddenly, her blue eyes finding his brown. She shoved the phone out in the space between them, gesturing for him to take it. "Here, it's Alex."
Connor blinked. Reluctantly, he accepted the device, pressing it against his ear. Those blue eyes were still on his when he said, "Hello?"
"Connor," Alex's voice on the line was strained. Frazzled. Taylor kept watching him, her lips puckered into the smallest frown. Her brows were scrunched, anxiety lining her brow. "How is she really?"
The hint of shadows played under the hollows of her eyes. He tried not to think of how little she was sleeping. A few fitful hours before she was up, pacing, writing countless notes. The more he watched her trying to hold herself together, the more he resented Markus for sending her here, an island in a storm.
"She's okay." He forced himself to say it. The grateful smile it earned him was the brightest expression he'd seen on her face in days. Almost worth the precarious sense of dread he felt at the deception.
"Do you remember what I told you before I left Detroit?" Alex didn't bother trying to push further. Resignation colored his tone. The conversation came back to Connor. Taylor being a good actress. Taylor burning everything she'd ever owned and lying effortlessly over the phone.
"I do."
"Just look after her, please." Alex sighed again. "I still don't like this. I won't feel any better about it until she's back home."
Connor felt himself frown, but Taylor was already reaching for the phone again, tugging it easily from his fingers. She pressed it against her ear again as she turned away to wrap up her conversation. Those two words kept echoing in his head. Back home.
"Thank you." He glanced up, the subject of his thoughts before him again. She had come closer while he was distracted, a small smile touching her lips, her phone tucked away. Stepping into him, she slid her arms around his middle, squeezing. His hands came up to her waist as he buried his nose in her hair.
"You acknowledge I was lying for you, then?" He murmured just above her ear. She pressed her forehead against his shoulder.
"I'm doing the best I can." Her voice was barely a whisper. His fingers tightened on her waist.
"I know. That's why I lied." He felt compelled to reassure her that Alex was just worried for her wellbeing, but he didn't think it was something he needed to tell her. It was going to take him a long time to figure out the dynamics of Taylor and Alex's relationship, if he ever did.
"I think that counts as a level up in your deviancy." He thought she was going to pull away as she moved in his arms. Instead, she shifted her face closer to his neck. Her breath was warm against his skin, and he could hear the teasing in her voice as she elaborated, "Lying."
"Oh dear, am I interrupting something?" They both jumped apart instantly. They'd been caught up in the moment and forgotten they were waiting on the stylist. Taylor had blanched white, but she turned and saw a familiar silhouette standing in the now open doorway, suppressing her laughter.
"Jen?"
"Thankfully." The redheaded nodded, finally dissolving into giggles as she looked between them. "This is my not shocked face, by the way."
"So glad to amuse you," Taylor said, huffing. "I am glad you're here though. Is Alex just flying you around the country?"
"Hardly. He asked if I would be interested before you even agreed to do the event. I of course said yes because you're my favorite client." Jen's laughter finally faded, and she arched a single eyebrow at the blonde. "You look good in everything and you don't complain."
"That is what I strive for, yes. You remember Connor?"
"Of course. Now come, come, we're wasting time and you look just about as well rested as you did in Detroit." Jen motioned for them to follow as she turned and headed back through the door. She glanced over her shoulder at Connor and pointed down a hallway to the left. "You go that way. Anton will deal with you."
"I'll see you after a few hours of torture?" Taylor smiled at him briefly before she was being pulled in the opposite direction. He watched her retreat, but she had already turned back to Jen to discuss what she wanted for the night.
Indeed, her words proved prophetic. Anton found him a suit quickly enough, though Connor had to spend some amount of time vetoing several outrageous colors and patterns. Following was another long discussion about how good Connor would look with some makeup and his own insistence on how it was completely unnecessary.
The rest of that time he spent, as before, seated back in the lobby where Jen had discovered them, waiting for Taylor to finish her considerably longer process of hair and makeup and whatever other strange rituals were involved that he didn't want to know about. That time, spent in silence, was the first he'd spent separate from Taylor in almost a week.
Connor began to go over the sessions with Congress again in his mind, trying to determine if they'd made any progress. Then he began to evaluate Taylor's mental state and wonder if that progress was worth it. More than anything, he tried to avoid that persistent thought that when this was over, she would be leaving.
He tried not to think of it, and yet it was all he could think of, in every moment of quiet, every break in the conversation. It was a catch-22 now, because he wanted this to be over for Taylor's sake, for the stress that she was under. On the other hand, selfishly, he never wanted it to end.
Perhaps he really was becoming human.
"I'm ready." Connor lifted his head from where he had been staring at the gleam on his shoes at the sound of Taylor's voice. He froze in his chair, his eyes widening.
The last time he had accompanied her to an event, it had been as a machine. He had called her beautiful, not knowing what the word meant. Because his social module told him it was the acceptable thing to say. You needed emotion to appreciate beauty as he felt it now.
Her blonde hair had been pulled over her left shoulder, twisted into an intricate braid that they had somehow pinned pearls into. The dress was black, the sleeves long. At first glance it appeared sheer, with lace appliques of flowers covering the front. The longer he stared, he realized it was an illusion and that he really couldn't see through the dress. It hugged every curve, not leaving much to the imagination.
Taylor raised her eyebrows, giving him a perplexed expression. Probably because he couldn't make himself move, and he wasn't sure how long he'd been staring now. He forced himself to stand and close the distance between them.
"You look..." He tried to find a word, something to do her justice. A smile tugged at her lips, painted a bright ruby red, as she watched him struggle.
"Thank you, Connor." He finally reached his hand out for her, and then he hesitated, hovering just inches away. Her smile widened. "I'm not going to break, I promise."
"You sure?" He tried to smile back, but as he finally managed to slide his arm around her waist, his fingers came in contact with the bare skin of her back and he realized the dress was backless. He swallowed. "I'm not sure I want to take you anywhere dressed like this."
She started to laugh then, that wonderful sound that caused his systems to hitch. "Now that is a compliment."
"You're going to be late. Scoot." Jen appeared behind them, handing Taylor her clutch and pushing them towards the door. Connor kept his arm around her waist as he pulled her to the exit. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"
Taylor snorted as the elevator doors shut.
"They want you to give your speech before the dancing starts. Five minutes?" Taylor was listening to the woman in front of them with wide eyes. Connor could feel her stress levels start to climb and he placed a hand on her elbow discreetly, squeezing.
"Oh. Sure." She nodded.
"Great. Just wait by the stage. Over there." Taylor stepped after her as she ushered them to the marker to wait, and Connor came with her, keeping his grip on her arm. Then the woman left them standing there alone while she bustled off to attend to another task.
"Are you alright?" He asked, watching her take a deep breath in her nose and out her mouth several times with her eyes closed.
"Yeah. I'm okay. I didn't write a speech." She opened her eyes again and smiled at him, trying to seem unaffected, but he could still feel her stress levels giving her away. "I'm just going to wing it."
"Oh." He blinked, surprised. Unsure what to say now. She had a flute of champagne in one of her hands, and she brought it to her lips, taking a sip. Then she pressed both it and the clutch in her opposite hand toward him.
"Hold these for me." She said, just as they were calling for silence in the room and someone was beckoning her onto the small, raised stage. They introduced her as she walked across, and the spotlight hit her, bouncing off the halo of her hair. She smiled, instantaneously, like a reflex, stepping up to the microphone.
"Good evening." She said as the clapping and cheers died down. "Thank you for having me. I want to start off by saying that I didn't prepare a speech, so please lower your expectations now."
Connor glanced out at the crowd of people as they laughed, wondering if they suspected the truth in her statement or not. Regardless, she smiled again, and he found himself wondering at the fact that she never failed to amaze him.
"It's been a busy week. Still, I did spend a little bit of time thinking about what I wanted to say tonight. As I'm sure some of you are aware, I've dedicated a good portion of my career to raising money in the name of domestic and sexual abuse. It isn't exactly new territory for me.
"So there isn't much I haven't already said." Her smile faded at the edges as she looked out over the crowd. They had gone reverently silent, listening with rapt attention. "Tonight, I want to talk about the unsaid things.
"Silence, in the face of abuse, is the greatest enemy. Silence takes lives. I was silent for four years while I was being abused, and after it was over, I was silent after that, too. When I was asked to make a speech, tonight, I thought about what that silence meant."
Taylor paused and shifted on her feet. He saw the briefest twitch of her fingers at her side. Connor could tell her levels of stress were still high, but they were no longer climbing. She had squared her shoulders and her voice was steady. Like she was born speaking into a microphone, and in a way, he supposed she was.
"Very recently, that silence almost took my life. Because I was unwilling to talk about what happened to me, people forgot, and the same person who took so much from me once came back to take everything else. It was only because of my fans, because of their resounding voices, that I am able to stand here tonight and tell you this."
He realized that the dress she had chosen did nothing to hide the bruises on her neck. He'd been observing them only hours before. Though they'd faded, they were still stark against her skin, telling the same story.
"I am not ashamed of what happened to me. No one is lesser for the things that are done to them. We are survivors." A small smile came to her face. "Indestructible. And we cannot be silenced."
The room went still, waiting to see if she was going to continue, but he could tell by the way she eased away from the microphone like she wanted to dart off the stage that she was through. Once the spattering of applause began, she turned and took measured steps back toward him, not bothering to bask in the praise.
Connor transferred the champagne in his left hand to the same hand as the clutch, making a show of helping her step down. He put his arm around the middle of her back and led her away. For once, she didn't protest, at least until they'd made it to a secluded hallway off of the main ballroom.
"Connor, I'm fine." True, her stress levels were already normalizing. He turned to face her, his hand coming to rest on her upper arm, not wanting to let her go. A look of amusement played just behind her eyes as she gazed up at him.
"I thought maybe you would like a moment. I counted seven people coming forward to speak to you as we were leaving." Her eyebrows jumped upward. She glanced at the door leading to the ballroom and back to him.
"Fair enough. We can't stay away for long, though." She reached up and adjusted his tie, let her hands linger on his collar. He leaned into her without even realizing what he was doing. "How did I do?"
"Considering you were making it up as you went along? Rather well." He smirked as she giggled. "I don't think they believed you when you said that."
"Maybe by the end." She returned, still smiling.
"Miss Kolbeck." Taylor stepped backwards, her hands falling away. Connor released her arm and turned, catching sight of the Secretary of Homeland Security Alexis Headley joining them in the hallway.
"Secretary Headley." Taylor kept her smile in place as the woman came closer. Her straight black hair was in a simple bun and she was wearing a red sheath dress, looking completely unabashed at intruding on their privacy.
"Thank you for accepting my invitation. I wasn't sure you would." A brief glance and small nod in Connor's direction were the only acknowledgment she gave him, but he returned the nod, nonetheless. "That was quite the speech."
"I'm sorry if it wasn't up to your standards." Taylor said, somewhat hesitant now.
"Not at all." Secretary Headley answered, her eyebrows raising in surprise. The two women stared at each other, and as the silence stretched on for a minute, Connor got the distinct feeling they were communicating something that he didn't quite understand.
"I appreciate you taking the time." The Secretary tried again, reiterating. "I do hope you enjoy the party."
"I'll be back in soon. Connor thought I needed a breather." Taylor smiled as she offered her hand. Secretary Headley took it, shaking hands, but her brown eyes had found him again, interested.
"How thoughtful." She said, studying him.
"He is." Taylor nodded, glancing in his direction. Then she said, in a vague attempt at a polite dismissal, "Thank you, Secretary Headley."
"You know," the Secretary was lingering now, like she had more to say. She turned her attentions back to the blonde, eyeing her up and down. "I was unfair to you. I'm not proud of it."
"I'm sorry?" Taylor almost stuttered. Her brows had drawn together, and she was clearly perplexed.
"I have been watching your progress this week, with the hearings. You've done remarkably well given the opposition." Secretary Headley's lips quirked into an almost smile that she quickly suppressed, amusement at a private joke, and Connor thought maybe she was avoiding comment on her political rivals.
"When I first got into politics, no one took me seriously either. 'Sexy Lexi' is what they used to call me." Another smile curled over the Secretary's lips, tinged with memory. "There are still people who use that name behind my back all over this city."
"Why are you telling me this?" Taylor asked softly. Her face had smoothed over, but there was still confusion behind her eyes.
"Because, like you said in that impromptu speech of yours, no one is lesser for the things that are done to them. And no one is lesser because of what other people think of them, either." Alexis Headley was still smiling, but it had changed into something that resembled real happiness, made all of her features soften.
Taylor's face had turned pink as the Secretary inclined her head. "You have my respect, Taylor Kolbeck."
With that, she turned and went back into the ballroom, leaving the two of them in silence. As soon as she was gone, Taylor reached over and grabbed his arm, turning to him with wide eyes. "Connor, did that really just happen? Tell me I'm still conscious."
"All of my systems are functioning at normal capacity." Connor returned her gaze, his lips twitching in amusement. "I can confirm that you are still conscious."
She gave him a dazzling smile, threw her arms around him for a hug. He returned it, disappointed when she pulled away almost immediately. "We better go back. People really will start getting suspicious."
"Of course."