A/N - Sorry for the huge wait in between chapters. I haven't abandoned this story - just went on quite the long vacation - and I'm back now so should be posting more frequently.
As a side note, I hope you're all safe after the devastation in Texas.
Enjoy this chapter x
A Fairytale By Another Name
Erin has no idea how long she stays there in that bedroom. Something must filter through into her brain at some point because she hears a noise - her name - strangled from a set of lungs she recognises only not to be hers or Charlie's.
Jay, she realises. Jay.
Unsure of what else to do, she heads numbly down the stairs to find him half dragging himself from the basement to the hallway. Unconsciously, she reaches for her gun but it isn't there - left somewhere else she suddenly realises she can't recall. He holds his hands up, a realisation of what she must suspect. "I tried…" he croaks out. "You were screaming."
"It's Charlie," she manages somehow, shuddering and feeling a strange mix of heaviness and light-headed. She tells him what she saw. What she knows.
"Get your son," he says, acknowledging the baby's cries from upstairs. "I won't...I can't."
She understands. He's too injured to get anywhere.
She has to pass the bedroom on her way but she pulls the door closed without looking. The image is imprinted on her brain anyway.
When she reaches Jack, she decides it'll be the last time he cries because of something like this. She's not going to subject him to any more of this kind of life, and if that means having someone so much better than her take care of him, then so be it. She'll give him a chance, Erin decides, to not be held back by her or this neighbourhood or the first hand he was dealt.
"You're gonna have the best life," she whispers, stroking the dark curls on his head. "I promise."
Jay is still in the hallway when she returns downstairs, watching her intensely. She stands there, Jack seated at her hip and leaning against her chest, warm and smelling of that delicious baby smell she loves so much.
"So what're you going to do?"
"Wait for the cops to come and arrest me."
"You're not going to run?" Jay's voice is so rough, she wonders how he's even managing to speak.
"Where would I go? I have no one to run to. And..." she looks at Jack, resting her lips on his crown "he deserves better than what I've given him."
"Erin…"
"I promised myself and him in that delivery theatre that I wouldn't be my mom," she sniffs, forcing back the tears and the lump in her throat. "And I'm worse."
"You're not…" he tries, groaning as he tries to move and his ribs and leg protest at the exertion. "You got a piece of paper and a pen?"
She nods dumbly.
"Write this down."
He grunts out an address in Wisconsin and Erin just about manages to scrawl it across the back of a gas bill envelope with a shaky hand. "You'll be safe there."
"What is it?"
"My cabin," Jay answers, wincing as he clutches his ribs. "It's…" another wince. "By the lake. It's quiet and there's running water." A third wince. "And wood for the fire."
She stares at him - at the bruises littering his skin and his red eyes and his soft lips that had kissed hers earlier. "Why -"
"-Because you can't stay here. 'Cause your kid needs a mom."
"I hurt you," she whispers.
"You didn't."
"I helped him hurt you."
Jay looks at her and she feels her heart stutter again, stop beating for a couple seconds while her breath catches and then it's hammering beats in such quick succession she's not entirely sure she's not having a heart attack.
"Erin," Jay's saying, and she feels light-headed and wobbly. Everything's spinning. "Erin, take a breath. Sit down."
She thinks she manages to comply, blinking the black spots in her vision away until she can see properly again. The man in front of her looks way more concerned than he should.
"You okay?"
He shouldn't be asking her that either.
"You need to go to the hospital," is what she says.
"Yeah."
She nods and then feels his hand on her leg, just above the top of her boot.
"Get everything you need. You can drop me off on your way."
Erin looks at Jack and then at Jay, then back at Jack again. "Okay."
She throws enough of her son's clothes to last a few days into a duffle bag, tops it with blankets and his favourite stuffed animal and the few diapers she has left. For herself, she grabs her toothbrush then takes a final glance around the top floor of the house, her gaze lingering on the bedroom door which remains shut. She decides against getting herself a change of clothes for obvious reasons and heads back downstairs with Jack on her hip.
Jay's face is screwed up on her return, the evidence of his pain clearly written into his eyes and clenched fists.
"Ready?" he asks.
"I need his formula," she tells him, heading to the cabinet to grab the small tin of powder. It fits into the duffle bag she's holding. It's only when she looks back at Jay that she feels the tears sting her eyes again. She doesn't let them fall: it's not fair for her to be the one giving in when the guy slumped against her living room wall (the same one who's been reduced to sleeping against a radiator, bound and beaten and freezing) had clawed his way up the basement stairs just to make sure she was okay.
"What are you going to tell them?" she chokes out. "At the hospital."
"Nothing."
"They'll be suspicious."
Jay shrugs and then very obviously regrets it. "You have my word."
His eyes are honest when he tells her that and Erin nods briefly. Again, a thank you is wholly inappropriate.
"You uh...you need to get rid of the rope and the ties from the basement."
"Okay." She looks at Jack and then at Jay, who seems to sense her thoughts.
"I won't hurt him Erin."
Nodding, she swallows. "Okay."
Setting him against Jay, who offers a gentle 'hey bud,' as he rests a hand on the baby's back, Erin takes a look at the two of them before heading down to the basement.
"The pillows and blankets too?"
He nods. "Yeah."
She does as he says, finding her son smiling at the man she'd held hostage in her basement when she returns, and feels a stab of something in her chest. It makes a sob rise in her throat but she stifles it before it can amount to anything audible.
The cable ties go in the trash, the rope looped and put in the cupboard with Charlie's tools and Erin then folds the blankets. "I got them from upstairs."
"Make it look like you left first. When the cops come, they'll assume that's the reason for his O.D."
Jack gurgles and Jay smiles and Erin hates herself for suddenly imagining a scenario where the dynamics of this are so vastly different. She forces herself to go upstairs before she can conjure up any more images.
X
The last time she drove the car was when she was driving Jay to the basement that fateful night. This time, he's in the front passenger seat and Jack is strapped into his carseat in the back, and it's almost normal - or at least, it appears almost normal.
Getting him into the car had been a struggle, though not more difficult than it had been to get him out of it the first time. Erin can still feel the weight of him against her shoulder, can still feel his warm breath heaving against her neck, can still smell that faint cinnamon/mint mix which should've been overpowered by blood and sweat, except it hasn't.
"The key's under the stone," he tells her, breaking the silence they've been driving in. "The one to the right of the porch."
"Okay."
"You know how to light a fire? It'll be cold."
"Yes."
It's a lie. She's not entirely sure she can remember the way the cub scouts recruiter showed them back in school, but she'll give it a try.
"There'll be some soup in cans in the kitchen, for when you get hungry," Jay adds. "Can't promise it'll taste great though."
"It'll be fine," she says, then feels insanely rude because actually, it's way more than fine. Certainly way more than she deserves. She doesn't tell him this.
"If you need anything else, you know, for him…"
"Jack," she tells him. "His name's Jack."
Jay smiles. "It's a good name."
Erin says nothing more, just checks her son in the rearview mirror.
"If you need anything else, there's a grocery store in town. Don't worry about money, just give them my name."
Her cheeks burn in shame. "I want you to hate me," she whispers.
Jay nods like he already knew this. He doesn't voice the fact that he doesn't hate her. Erin's grateful: it's taking everything she has not to scream.
He instructs her to pull over a half block from the hospital with the reason there are no security cameras, "just in case". Reluctantly, she slows to a stop and turns to look at him. Before she can ask him how he's going to manage, he simply says "I'll be fine." He follows those words with a press of his lips to her forehead and she decides she never wants to open her eyes. Staying like this forever would be fine, given the circumstances.
Eventually though, Jay pulls back and reaches for the door handle. Erin wants to tell him how grateful she is; how insanely good he is; how she hopes this last week won't ruin him.
She says nothing and neither does he.
X
It's pitch black when she rolls to a stop in the yard of what Jay had called a 'cabin', which in reality is a wood-clad house seated beside a frozen lake. The ground is covered in snow - so much of it than Erin's forced to park the car slightly on the road because it's the only clearing big enough.
Jack's asleep when she plucks him from the carseat, his breaths quick and even. She leaves the bag in the trunk for the time being, tripping slightly through the snow to the door. The overhang of the porch is enough that the stone hiding the key (not that it's hiding it well) isn't completely covered, and she plucks it from its resting place with freezing hands.
The cabin smells like wood and something that reminds her of old blankets - the cosy kind that are somehow comforting despite garish patchwork. It is, she decides in her subconscious, quintessentially Jay, that comfort element. He was right though, it's cold - maybe even colder than cold, and she needs to get the fire going despite the time.
There's a basket of logs and old newspapers beside the fireplace and she assumes there'll be matches somewhere if she looks hard enough. She finds them in a kitchen cabinet along with a torch and some batteries, and sets Jack against some of the couch cushions so she can make a start on lighting the fire.
It doesn't take too long before the flames are licking their way along the logs and she can feel the tentative heat start to filter out into the room.
She's exhausted but the bags are still in the car and she hasn't even figured out where she's going to set Jack so he can sleep properly. She doubts Jay would just have a spare crib lying around and decides that maybe, for tonight at least, he can stay where he is, comfortable against the cushions with the fire's warmth and the safety that comes from not living on Chicago's south side.
Erin doesn't sleep. Instead, she adds logs to the fire each time the last one turns close to ash and watches the night give way to day which brings no sun, only a snowstorm so heavy that by the time it lets up enough for her to retrieve the bags from the car, every one of her footprints from earlier is covered over.
Around lunch time, the phone rings. Erin's in the middle of feeding Jack and it makes her freeze. She doesn't answer it, just waits for the ringing to stop and then continues angling the bottle of formula so it flows freely into Jack's mouth. It rings again and her heart hammers in her chest.
Again, she lets it ring off, trying to concentrate on the way the white liquid bubbles up a little at the tip of the bottle but the harsh chirp of the phone sounds for the third time and so timidly, she picks it up, saying nothing at first.
"Erin?"
It's Jay's voice and she has to use the wall to prop herself up. "Jay?" She doesn't expect to sound so high-pitched or out-of-breath or relieved.
"Are you okay?" He's finally gotten out of that basement and he's calling to see if she's okay. "I saw there was a huge snowstorm up there. Wasn't sure if you'd made it."
She can't say anything because the lump in her throat is suffocating.
"Erin?"
"Yeah," she sniffs. "We made it. Are you...how was the…." she can't finish.
"A few cracked ribs," he says, sensing what she was trying to ask. "And my leg's….going to be okay."
She exhales her sigh of relief that - physically at least - he's going to be fine.
"I didn't tell them anything," Jay adds. "If you were wondering."
"I wouldn't blame you if you did. You should."
He doesn't say anything in reply and the line between them is silent for a few seconds. "Erin?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't do anything...don't…."
She thinks she knows what he's trying to say. It makes her chest ache. "I won't."
She doesn't deserve the easy way out anyway.
Jay gives her his number 'in case you need anything, or...whatever'. She tells him again that he's too good, but finds herself promising that she'll call if she does need anything.
She wants to cry after he hangs up: she actually misses him. She hopes he doesn't feel the same way.
X
A week passes. Erin visits the grocery store for diapers and formula and finds that the following day is Christmas Eve. She hadn't even realised. True to Jay's word, the lady behind the counter smiles when she mentions his name, following it with,
"Ah yes, he told me a friend of his was staying over."
She thinks friend might be the least accurate word to describe what she is, but Erin forces a smile with a 'thanks', and then heads back along the road to the cabin. The air seems cleaner in Wisconsin than it did in Chicago, and she finds herself taking deep lungfuls as she carts Jack back in his snowsuit and mittens, his dark eyes bright with wonder at the blue of the sky and the white of the surroundings.
She eats half a can of tomato soup for lunch, ignoring the slight feeling of hunger even once she's done. Having Jay help her out with stuff for Jack is one thing but she's not about to let him help her out anymore than he already has. There are enough cans to last her the next week if she limits herself to one per day.
It's while she's bathing Jack later that evening that she hears a noise like a key in a lock. Her ears feel like they're burning and her heart feels like it's in her mouth, but then all of it ceases when she hears the next sound.
"Erin?"
She plucks Jack from the bath despite his protests, which come in the form of a whine rather than a cry, and soon temper off when she wraps him in a towel and hands him the washcloth he appears to have taken to over the past week.
She knows the voice belongs to Jay, and she thinks she's ready to see him; thinks she'll be fine, but when she rounds the corner and finds him standing beside the fire, leg strapped in a plastic boot and several bags surrounding his feet, she realises she's far from it.
That's when she cries.
