I'm not going to have another Soullessness repeat in which a ton of plot holes appear with no rational explanation until the eighteenth chapter or something, so I'm going to do my best to explain this story a little before things get too gritty. This story is not TOTALLY set in the plot of Heavy Rain-there are a few key differences to the way this story is set up:
1. Ethan was arrested and committed suicide.
2. Jayden rescued Shaun Mars.
3. Madison was never in love with Ethan in this story, unlike the course game; she was only intrigued by him here, as she only knew him for roughly a day or two.
There we go. If I feel the need to add anything else later, I will.
Please don't forget to drop a favorite or a review! It is hugely appreciated! Especially reviews-they contribute to my growth as a writer! Please enjoy :)
-Silent-Protagonist
()()()
Madison Paige grew up understanding that the best promises were the ones that easily fell flat. They were the most attractive because of the way they sounded on the lips of the one who reassured them, the manner in which the words shaped around their softly-spoken mouths drawing her into their false truths. For years, Madison had a tendency to trust people she shouldn't, simply because she was mesmerized by the way they spoke—language, to her, was a private circus, its acts changing from person to person. Men usually uttered in tongues of tiger taming, ringleaders of their own beasts, their flashy imagery and vivid colors hypnotic. On the other hand, certain women talked as if they were clowns, desperately trying to vie for attention with their antics—while others boomed with the commandeering speed and efficiency of acrobats swinging on ropes, or the careful assessments of a tightrope walker. Madison was interested in the mannerisms of people and the way that they carried themselves—which is why she most likely became a journalist.
But there was still no better promise-breaker than her father. His circus's main performance was a magician, for he often pulled fallacies out of his hat or let tall tales fly around him in the form of pure white doves, shedding their feathers on Madison as she watched in the audience below. He was a damn good liar—so many times he'd told her that he'd pick her up after school and take her out to dinner, only to leave her sitting alone outside in the harsh Philadelphia rain. So many times he'd sworn that he'd come with her to the park to play, but he always abandoned her on the swingset, her small pink shoes dragging in the mud as she enviously eyed other children and their smiling, chortling parents interact around her.
She was raised in the back ring of a new housing development in one of the multiple suburbs that surrounded Philadelphia, her two-story brick childhood home identical to the other fifty on that same four blocks or so. She could hardly remember a day when some form of precipitation wasn't pounding down on their grey tin roof and when she didn't have to stumble home from school in the midst of a late fall snow so violent that the skin of her arms and legs—though superbly bundled—stung from the cold. For the first few years of her life, Madison did not know her father except from the few tidbits that her mother—a cardiologist that was often away from home-explained to her. To that woman, he was a deserter and a bum that she wasted "too many years" of her life loving. She didn't know where she lived, what he was doing, or if he even wanted to see his daughter. For that, Madison despised her. Her mother, she thought, could never understand the delicate bond that she'd mentally forged with the man that didn't care—diaphanous, like silk, and so fragile that Madison was frantic to hold on.
"Your father is a coward," her mother had told her one exceptionally morning when she was twelve, stirring the mixture to a cake that Madison hadn't remembered tasting. "A no-good, scheming, deceiving coward. Never believe what he tells you, baby."
It was only years later that she wished she'd listened. Years after the disappointments started, years after he did not attend her high school or college graduations, or called to even congratulate her on new jobs. He didn't even remember birthdays or holidays. Until she was nineteen, Madison sat by the mailbox up to three days before Christmas, waiting for anything—a present, a package, or even a damn card. But nothing came. Nothing ever came, and one day, she simply gave up crucifying herself for a man that refused to be involved. And because of that, she started to avoid men as well. Tall men, short men, strong men, weak—she completely denied involvement with any of them beyond one-night stands, satisfaction that always left her emptier than when she began. In the very back of her mind, she knew that she was trying to fill the void that her father had left in his wake, but she did not dwell on the catalyst that could never be changed.
And then, in the midst of murder and a week of especially powerful rain, she met Ethan.
Her insomnia was very strong then; she constantly awoke after twenty minutes, drench in a cold sweat that bathed her from head to toe. She found refuge in hotels, sleeping in the empty beds of past anonymous guests. Somehow, it was easier to sleep there, between the sheets that had been God knows where, in an environment that served to curse more than comfort. This time, Madison chose the last motel that she'd yet to stay in—a decades-old overnight place with roaches making homes under the sinks and a neon sign with only two functional letters. Her motorcycle had purred beneath her as she blearily made her way through the pouring streets, running the occasional red light and cutting every corner that she could. She just needed sleep. Just sleep, or else the night terrors would return again.
Once she'd picked up her room key from the mouth-breathing cretin in the lobby office, trying to brush off his lecherous skirting of his eyes across her body, Madison exhaustedly climbed up the outdoor stairs. They curled beneath her low weight with each step, rustically threatening to snap and send her plummeting. Keeping her head bowed, her chin touching her prominent clavicle, Madison reached the top of the second floor balcony, praying that she would not find any close colleagues or anybody else from the paper here. She would never live this down—caught in a sleazy hooker-fucking place, removing herself from her work on the Origami Killer case. What the hell did she have to go off? The Philadelphia Police Department was locking everything in an internal chest so tight that Madison hardly doubted that she could pry it apart far enough to write even a meager story. Something inside her hated the newspaper for making her investigate this—she wasn't sleeping, wasn't eating, and now they wanted her to tread into dangerous territory and hunt a murderer for a damn scoop. She was a journalist, and still she believed that this was a private matter. A quiet issue between father and son, braving a storm for their offspring.
A storm that Madison's own father wouldn't fight.
When she glanced up at that very moment, she saw him, hunched over the railing as he coughed small, pinkish tendrils of blood into the soaking pavement below. His unfathomable stare was thickly brown and weary, as if he were defeated by a force that Madison could not see. Greasy chocolate locks stuck to his forehead from the rain and a stubbly beard framed his square jaw, spotted with spit and crimson red that would not wash away. She froze where she was, watching this struggling man claw at the horizontal bars that looked as if they'd betray and throw him over the edge. Once or twice, he coughed, wrapping an arm gingerly around his middle, wincing in obvious agony. Just as Madison thought she'd seen enough and galvanized herself to continue her march of shame, he flickered his gaze upward.
And he looked at her.
The minute their eyes met, Madison was slammed with a guilt that she could not name—oddly enough, it was not directed toward her hatred of her father or personal contempt, but overwhelming sadness for this total stranger. On the outside, he seemed plain and simple, perhaps living a life of relative luxury, but instantly, Madison saw through the flimsy shield of his façade. There was no end to the torture he suffered in his spirit. She could see it in his eyes, the everlasting journey that he appeared to have walked for a short but terrifying time now. She didn't know his name or the type of person he truly was, but right away, Madison knew that he was not like the other men. He was not her father. She could read him as well as the pages of a book, the large text of his psyche self-consciously glaring her back.
He was different.
But then again, she was quite the gullible girl.
()()()
"Shaun," he told her the first time, after she'd gotten him cleaned up and his mysterious wounds dressed. "I'm looking for Shaun."
Her recollection hazy from the lack of sleep that she'd been getting these last few days, Madison tiredly racked her brain for any mental cue that would lead her to recognize a name such as that. She was slow, but only a minute passed before she realized that this mysterious entity was searching for Shaun Mars—the most recent victim of the Origami Killer, a shy ten-year-old with wide blue eyes and soft hair who had disappeared two days prior and launched a manhunt of every single police force, local and federal, within a fifty-mile radius of Philadelphia. Every goddamn soul in the state at that time was glued to their televisions and radios, newspapers and computers, sending fruitless pleas to discourteous deities that this ordinary young man would survive the horror and the notoriety of the most elusive serial killer in New England history.
But this man did not even closely resemble a member of the police force, or even a private detective—he was too unkempt, and his semblance was far too removed and jittery to be the usual calm, collected stance of anybody in law enforcement. As a journalist, Madison had met hundreds of them in the past, often meeting with resistance or downright harsh rejection. She'd been called names and forced out of buildings and meetings, to the point where she did not question unless it was the best interest of safety. When she inquired as to why he was searching for Shaun Mars, however, she was surprised to find that he did not decline even the barest, most naked answer.
"I… I can't tell you," he replied, lightly touching his torso, where he'd reported a broken rib or two. He winced openly, gritting his teeth to swallow the pain. "I'm sorry. I need to be left alone."
She didn't leave him alone. She couldn't. Perhaps it was the inherent curiosity that came with being a reporter; perhaps it was something more. At first, she could not tell—her emotions toward this unknown, damaged man were as ambiguous as the rain that veiled the city that week. As he wished, she left him alone, but when she came back to check on him, she discovered that he was gone again. In the hours that followed, her inability to sleep became a minimal priority as she waited in her room not six doors down from his, pausing every time she heard a slam or a cough on the concrete terrace outside. Instead of listening to the raindrops that pattered like cat's paws on the roof above her, she paid attention to the sounds of indication. Sounds that would bring this newfound dreamer back to her.
To her astonishment, he did come back—covered in straight burns, blackening his chaste skin with their angry tattoos. Once more, Madison assisted him, disinfecting his abrasions, feeling the moist touch of the alcohol-soaked cotton ball in her waiflike fingers and the rumble of the man's discontent at the stinging pain. He was a determined but modest lion, humbly trying to reject her help in favor of pursuing something that Madison did not understand. "I have to go," he kept pleading, jerking away from her time and again as if he were being healed by a leper. "I have to go now. I'm sorry."
"Please don't leave," Madison begged. Was she really asking for someone to stay? She, a loner for a good portion of her life? Solitude was all she knew and all she thought she wanted to know. "Tell me who you are."
He did tell her. He told her who he was. His name, his motives, his endeavors for Shaun. And when he was finished, he looked at her with his disturbed gaze, his empty irises flickering from side to side, and Madison was sure of only one thing right now.
This man, Ethan Mars, was not her father.
He was not like all the others.
()()()
The best promises were the ones that fell flat the easiest, which is why Madison wasn't sure why she was so deliberately stunned when they arrested Ethan Mars on suspicion of being the Origami Killer a day after their initial meeting. For forty-eight deceptively blissful hours, she was frolicking in a dream that maybe there was one man out there that didn't perceive himself to be a selfish, needy bastard and truly cared for the outcome of his family. She'd admired that about this Ethan—his diligence to his loved ones, no matter the physical or sentimental cost to his own sanity. He'd lined up the origami figures supposedly sent to him by his son's captive on the sand-tinted desk in his room, muttering over and over that he'd dig holes into the center of the earth for Shaun and seek him out until there was no more land in the world to cover. To Madison, for a fleeting moment, Ethan's love for his son was genuine. That was how a father was meant to cherish his child. He opened that door of wholehearted trust to her, the one that had been firmly locked by her own kin.
But, like all the others—like her damned father—he betrayed her trust.
Upon finding his hotel room entrance slightly ajar and abandoned the next morning, she merely figured that he'd vanished once more to hunt for another lead on Shaun and went about her business, keeping him off her mind with the work she'd been neglecting ever since she arrived her. Right after that, she remembered that she'd heated up a cup of coffee in one of the retro ceramic white mugs they provided with the singular machine in the dingy motel lobby, taking care to ensure the warmth of the black liquid as she carried it back up to her room. As she crossed the threshold, a cockroach that had come out in her absence scuttled back into the dark confines of a cave-shaped hole in the stained carpet, the dim light from outdoors frightening it into hiding. Disgusted, Madison bitterly crushed the hole while she reached for the remote to the television, sitting on the cover of her bedspread from her nighttime CSI marathon from the night before, a show she often watched when she couldn't sleep. She switched the monitor on and the colors came to life, blending vibrantly in the moving picture of the local news.
And there was Ethan Mars, was plastered all over the screen, his mug shot wide-eyed and bristled with every palpable emotion—anger, hatred, sadness, and most of all, a tangible sense of guilt. Everything was perfectly readable in his brown gaze, as if he were looking directly at her as he did on the day they first met, studying her curvaceous form and combing through her short ebony hair. Below that face that Madison knew better than she'd expected sat the most forlorn phrase she had ever read in her life: "ORIGAMI KILLER APPREHENDED," in letters so red that she was afraid they would begin to leach blood and spill from the screen.
Madison dropped her mug, but before it even had time to shatter on the scarce carpet, she was already out the door. Behind sat the cup in literal pieces on the ground, the coffee burning its sinister complexion into the ice blue carpet. The cockroach came out again and tentatively touched the small puddle, hesitant as a child unwilling to play in the heavy rain that pounded beyond its walls.
She was at the police station—on the other side of downtown Philadelphia—in twenty minutes sharp, dully noting the enormous rabble gathering on the steps of the precinct to pester all that emerged from the building. The cluster of fifteen scattered news vans with milling staff reporters and cameramen forced Madison to park her motorcycle three blocks away; and even there, the streets were lined with curious and blatantly intrusive folk, trying to catch a glimpse of the team that had apprehended the infamous Origami Killer. But her now-instinctive press mentality was numb. Even though she had been in crowds like this before as a member of their invasive hunting, for the very first time, she found herself horrified at the prying of the media. She was finally close to being in the shoes of someone victimized by her career, and somehow, that made her stomach turn with nauseated odium.
Pushing through the throng of shouting women in stiletto heels ("fuck-me" heels, as Madison had always called them) and cleavage-flaunting shirts, holding microphones and notepads, Madison wished she'd brought an umbrella like everyone else. The sound of the precipitation slapping against the sheet plastic of the large number of the inverse sunshades nearly overwhelmed the cries of the journalists as they clamored to speak over one another. From a distance, the clutter of umbrellas looked like a field of dark daisies, stretching from one grey horizon of the station's front entrance to the other. Inside the swarm, however, there were just strangers, sopping wet as if they were rats, risen from the sewer.
I have to get inside, Madison thought quickly. I need answers. I need to know what happened to Ethan.
"None of you need to know a goddamn thing!" A voice, raspy and authoritative, boomed over the host of parasitic reporters with the strength of a loudspeaker, instantly silencing them with its angry urgency. Everyone's eyes shifted to the uppermost steps of the department, absorbing the imposing figure that stood in the form of a man taller than almost every soul present. He was trim but enormously muscular, to the point where he was perhaps twice the size of Madison in all respects. A coarse black beard, peppered with the intermittent strand of gray, sat well-kept on his hardened face, his unspeakably irritated stare making the eager newspapermen cower in fear. Madison felt a chill travel down her spine at his hot rage. She suddenly stopped in her tracks, too afraid of this sudden man to move forward any more.
At the snap of his burly fingers, the multitude visibly jumped. "There's a kid drowning in this frickin' rain, and all you idiots are doing is standing around and bitching for fodder for your stupid papers? I can't believe you. You want something? Fine. We've got a lead on the whereabouts of Shaun Mars, and we're about to dispatch a force to go looking for him." He narrowed his eyes. "Yes, we do have Ethan Mars in custody, and yes, he is completely secure. That's it. No more comments. Now go fuck off. We have work to do, and you're all getting in the way."
"Blake." A scolding rejoinder came from just inside the cocooned station in the form of a quiet, Boston-tinged lilt—delicate and almost effeminate, despite being deep enough to fit a man. With that single syllable materialized another body, this one even thinner and shorter than the obtrusive officer addressing them. He was at least a head junior to the former detective, barely reaching the man's shoulder with the top of his brown head, adorned in hair that appeared silken in the glistening atmosphere. Intelligent jade eyes assessed the assembly first before shifting to the bearded man, turning his head slightly to the right, revealing a long scar on his left cheek. The FBI badge around his neck showed a higher sense of authority, and his presence seemed to soften the rough semblance, smoothing over an edge made jagged. The journalists began to murmur among each other until the hard-eyed man snapped a glare at them again, imposing yet another effective hush.
"… The hell is it, Norman?" The bearded policeman's tone grew considerably less violent, but the hatred in his eyes only increased upon meeting eyes with the FBI agent. Madison only grew more agitated at this hinted exchange. Why, in the justice system, was there no love between men?
"Be gentle, Blake," the agent said. "They're just doin' their jobs too, ya know."
The bearded detective shot the collected man a look of pure disgust. "Screw off, princess," he hissed, purposefully not low enough for the crowd to miss. The confused reporters and Madison stood, watching this altercation with an ounce of interest until the FBI agent turned to them and calmly expressed that the department would not be taking any more interviews. With this, the pair began to make their way down the stairs to the sidewalk, heading to a waiting patrol car, its lights solemnly flashing, so grave that it seemed as if it were about to lead a funeral procession. Grippingly, not one hungry associate of the media tried to hound either of them against their wishes—instead, they parted, disciples of the Red Sea, letting the two through without any struggle. Madison tried to open her mouth to speak to them—supplicate to them, cry out in favor of Ethan's innocence. He's a father! She wanted to scream. He's not the killer! What kind of monster would slay his own children!? You're wrong! It's not him!
But by the time she managed the courage to speak, the agent and his bearded partner were already in the squad car, shifting into gear and pulling with a note of urgency away from the pavement, not hitting a single pothole on its path to Main Street. As the public dissipated, grumbling in annoyance from their dismissal, Madison stood alone, rooted in the very spot in which she'd stopped. The news reporters got back into their vans and cars, slowly trickling out of the parking lot, rainwater into a sluice or a storm drain, until she was the only one left. The rain thundered about her, immersing her clothing until she felt too heavy to walk, both from the water and her notion of total, utter defeat.
She wouldn't be surprised if she never slept again.
()()()
Ethan Mars was not a simple act in her circus of lies, standing alongside her father and everyone else she'd ever known.
He was the ringmaster.
And that destroyed her from the inside out.