A/N
I know it's been forever, again. The reason is a combination of losing works due to a failing computer (and no backup, DO BACKUPS OFTEN!) and faltering self-confidence when it comes to writing this one. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it up better now, the writing and the confidence alike. If you like it, I'd be really happy if you left a comment and let me know. It's... kind of scary to write and not be sure if readers still like it after the initial chapters.
Recap: the last chapter ended with the way Blake left JJ all those years ago, leaving only a breakup note behind. The events in this chapter take place right after what happened in the last chapter, same evening/night.
Reuploaded because I managed to switch to past tense and had to rewrite it. Wow. Brainpower. *sigh*
DC, April, 2005
The house she has called a home for twelve years has never looked so unwelcoming. It's almost as if even her home disapproves of her actions lately in general, and tonight in particular.
Alex tells herself to stop; it's just a house and it can't convey either approval or disapproval. Nevertheless, that's how it feels to the ashamed, upset and teary-eyed linguistics professor when she unlocks the door and flees inside. The gloom indoors seems to perfectly mirror her mood, and she doesn't bother turning on the lights as she passes through the hall and up the stairs. Intense self-loathing boils and burns in her chest, gripping at every nerve ending.
It's past three in the morning, she's exhausted, but there's no way she'll be able to sleep now, with or without sleeping pills. She doesn't want to sleep in this bed tonight either way; for the first time in a long time does it feel like James is right here, and it's not a pleasant feeling.
"Oh God, what am I doing?" she whispers.
There is no answer. Certainly not from God, and even her own heart keeps silent, as if it's in shock. Somehow, she'll get through this night too, and the next day, the next night, the rest of her life, but the way she feels right now, she might just as well lay down and die. Surely it would not be a great loss to the world.
JJ wakes up to a pearl-grey morning light before six a.m. There's nothing odd about that. What is odd is that she's alone in the bed despite going to sleep with company. She reaches out for Alex, but where the other woman had been sleeping when JJ drifted off there are only cold sheets and pillow, telling her the spot has been empty for some time. Not just a quick trip to the bathroom, then.
"Alex?" she says out loud. Alex can sometimes be something of a night owl, staying up longer than JJ at night, but a voluntary early riser, she is not.
"Alex, are you okay?"
There's not a sound, apart from the low hum from the refrigerator. In the quiet of the night – and early mornings, evidently - you can hear it throughout the apartment. Although the silence tells JJ she's alone in the apartment, she still goes to look for her lover, refusing to believe she has snuck out without telling her.
She goes to the kitchen, turns on the lights, and her eyes are drawn to the single sheet of paper on the table. Her initial reaction is a strong urge to crumple it up without reading, then call Alex's cell phone and tell her to get the eff back to bed. Instead she picks it up and reads it, hoping against hope that Alex has just gotten an important phone call and had to leave and didn't want to wake her. She knows that isn't the case. She would have woken up if Alex's phone had been ringing.
It doesn't take long to read the message; it's brief, to the point, and plain cruel, written in an almost printed handwriting that's so very different from the sloppy, slanted way Alex writes on the whiteboard in class.
Jennifer,
What happened between us was a mistake and must end here.
Please don't contact me.
I'm sorry.
Alex
JJ reads it twice, crumples it up in a stiff, white-knuckled hand, only to smooth it out and read it again.
No. No, no, no, she can't do this, she can't do this, she can't…
It isn't until Agatha, still dressed in her outdoor clothing, puts an arm around her and asks "Who can't do what?" that JJ realises she's saying it out loud. Agatha snatches the note from JJ's hand, but JJ holds onto it so hard it tears a little. That doesn't matter. The words are stark and clear, standing out in sharp dark blue ink against the white lined paper.
As Agatha starts to make sense of the meaning, JJ's legs begin to shake and she has to hold onto Agatha's jacket to avoid collapsing.
"She's gone," JJ moans, "She just left," and then an unarticulated sound holding so much simple, unaltered pain escapes her that Agatha feels chilled to her soul. JJ fights the tears bravely but it's just too much; she breaks down crying. Agatha reads the words over again before putting both arms around her friend in an embrace that wants to be soothing but knows it's not enough.
"Oh, Alex Blake I'm going to kill you," she mumbles between her teeth. JJ's tears are hot against her neck, body almost limp in her arms. Agatha has comforted friends from heartache before, but this is worse than anything she has seen. It's like seeing fate being ripped to shreds like delicate fabric.
That note… the relationship was doomed from the start in one way or another, that's pretty self-explanatory, but a breakup like this one is so cold she nearly gets frostbite from reading the note alone, and it isn't something she would have expected from Alex, of all people. Sophisticated, well-articulated, mild-mannered Alex… if it feels like a slap in the face for Agatha, what doesn't it feel like to JJ? Her entire world is ending.
"I should've seen," JJ sobs, "I should've known, she distanced herself from me, why didn't I see it coming?"
Agatha only shakes her head and pulls JJ closer.
Monday morning
"Morning, Doctor Blake," a chilly voice speaks. Alex looks up from the essays she's grading and finds herself staring into deep blue eyes, every bit as cold as the voice.
"Morning," she says. She doesn't want to, it fully well shows her lack of authority, but she can't help breaking eye contact. There's too much accusation in those eyes. Maybe hate too, if she had thought the perky redhead being able to harbour such hard emotions.
"I noticed you had reassigned your first class today to another professor. Any particular reason?"
"Yes, Agatha," Alex says calmly, relieved to hear that her voice sounds completely in control. Maybe, if you listen very, very carefully, it has a somewhat thick quality, but that can easily be blamed on her allergies. It seems everything can be used for a purpose, or at least an excuse. Good to know. "And I think you know perfectly well what that reason is."
"Yes. I do." Agatha's upper lip curls slightly in a display of – Alex is sure of it – unknowing revulsion. "She thought the world of you. I admit, so did I."
"Well, that's never a wise move," Alex replies, and this time her voice is decidedly scratchy. She clears her throat. "The world is a harsh place."
"You're trying to play this off as if it never meant anything to you. As if Jennifer" – Alex jolts a little at the sound of her name, and Agatha smiles bitterly at the reaction – "was a pastime, a toy to fool around with. In time, she might even be able to convince herself that's all it was. A little joyride on the side for the professor, a little taste of glory for the student. I don't think she will, because she's too smart, but given enough time, she just might. And you… you will probably have a much easier time shrugging it off."
Alex wants to flip her desk over and punch the young woman in the face, but she knows a violent emotional reaction is exactly what Agatha tries to provoke, and forces herself to keep cool. But even as she sits still, her heart pounds in her chest and her fingernails dig into her palms.
"I'm not sure you're to blame, either. After all, it must be annoying watching all those clear-eyed, fresh-skinned students, moving onward and upward, some heading for careers the likes of which you could never dream of pursuing. Maybe part of you just wanted to take them down a notch. A bigger part of you was probably just drawn to how easy it would be to seduce a student; they look up to you, your husband is not around, so, you thought, hey, why not go for it? Or maybe it was the thrill of getting caught that pushed you to it?"
"You will make a very good prosecutor one day, I'm sure," Alex says evenly. "But you're forgetting something here; I'm not on trial."
Agatha leans forward, searching Alex's eyes and then locks them in a stronghold that the older woman can't tear herself away from.
"Actually, you are. Not legally, and not even in the court of public opinion, because if we opened this can of worms publicly, that would ruin Jen, and she is a wreck as it is. But in my eyes? Oh yeah, in my eyes, you are very much on trial."
She straightens again, knowing her point has made it across. Alex notices there's a blonde hair stuck on her shoulder and her heart flutters in her chest like a wounded bird at the image of JJ leaning against that shoulder. Crying. Crying because of what Alex has done.
Tell her I'm sorry. Or take me to her and I'll tell her myself. I'll crawl through ashes. I'll bring down the moon. I'll do anything. I want to be the shoulder she leans on.
She keeps her mouth shut to keep the words from spilling out, keeps it shut even as her eyes start to sting with tears. Agatha shakes her head at what she sees as a non-reaction.
"You are a cold woman with a heart of ice, and it's disgusting the way you've treated her."
"Are you done, Miss Christie?" Alex asks and picks up the pen again to demonstrate that she is. She can feel the tears starting to burn in the back of her throat and she struggles to keep from swallowing.
"Yeah. Yeah, I am. Goodbye, Doctor Blake. I hope you're proud of yourself."
The final look she gives Alex before walking off is the one that hurts the most. Not because it's angry, but because it's sad.
When Agatha leaves, Alex leans her face into both hands and bursts into tears.
She thinks she might feel better once she has finished crying, but she doesn't. She feels worse, physically sick, even, and decides to abandon the ungraded papers and go home. As she exits the building, she takes out her pack of smokes, puts one poison stick in her mouth and lights it, starting to cough almost immediately.
I'm slowly killing myself with these, she thinks as she pictures the sticky, black tar enveloping her lungs, coating them one layer at a time and gradually suffocating her.
Maybe that's no more than I deserve.
When Agatha returns after her classes that day, JJ is on the couch, staring blindly at the TV-screen at some mindless cartoon. Untouched ice-cream is melting in a bowl on the table.
"Did you see her?" JJ asks from the depths of blankets and pillows. She's too numb to move; she doesn't even raise her head.
"She had reassigned your class to another professor," Agatha replies, elegantly avoiding answering the question. "So you don't have to worry about meeting her when you're going back to class."
"I don't think linguistics is for me anyway," JJ says apathetically.
"Well," Agatha says, having decided not to let her friend get stuck in the murky waters of despair for too long, "the course in media ethics is still open. And starting next week, this FBI guy will give several guest lectures on serial killers and how to profile them. David Rossi? Heard of him before?"
"No," JJ says, but she sounds somewhat intrigued at least. That's good. Agatha hates hearing that deadness in her voice.
"I'm gonna go listen to his lecture anyway, and I think you should come with me."
JJ groans and wriggles deeper into her soft surrounding wall of cushions and blankets, as if showing that she doesn't plan on going with her roommate anywhere. Agatha smirks.
"Next week, Jen. This week, you're home sick."
"I really feel sick, you know," JJ says.
"I know that. Can I pour out your ice-cream soup and get you something else? More substantial, even?"
"Not hungry."
"That's not what I asked."
JJ glares at her friend, wanting to be mad at her the way she is with the entire universe, but Agatha makes it so damn hard. She just… understands, and it's almost impossible to go into any level of childish temper tantrum-mode with that soothing, cool glance regarding her.
"I hate you," JJ says and flips her pillow over before sinking back.
"No, you don't, but if you need to project those feelings onto me, go ahead," Agatha says and takes the bowl. "I'll fix you some cereal with milk. Not exactly real food, but it's better than…" she looks into the ice-cream goo. "I think this is a mashup of cookie-dough ice-cream with chocolate syrup, peanut butter and marshmallows. Wow, Jen. Suicide by sugar. And a slow one, at that."
"Leave me alone," JJ says into the pillow.
"Nope. You've been alone all day while I've been on campus, now I'm back to annoy you."
"Mission accomplished, then." But there is the smallest hint of a smile cracking through the mask of woe, and that's what Agatha wanted to see. JJ begins to sit up. It isn't easy; the amounts of bolsters she has built up around her keeps caving in, but eventually she reaches something reminiscent of an upright position.
"What really makes me mad is that she didn't even have the guts, oh what the hell, the common goddamn decency, to talk to me about it face to face!"
Agatha nods, puts the bowl back on the table and sits down on the couch next to her friend. Here it comes. Shock, denial, and now the anger. She listens while JJ calls Alex the most horrible names, remains motionless when JJ punches the armrest several times, and finally, when the blonde runs out of steam and begins to cry again, pulls her into a hug and holds her. Against her will – she truly is furious with Alex herself – she wonders if the high and mighty professor has someone to go to when she breaks down, because as cold as she acted, she will break. Agatha sincerely doubts it, but… that isn't her problem. Besides, Alex has deserved everything she gets. It's bought and paid for and will be delivered on a silver platter. Nobody can run away from guilt.
"James, please come home," Alex pleads over the phone that night. "Things are happening, and we need to talk. I need to talk to you."
"That sounds serious. Are you pregnant?"
Her jaw slackens.
"No!"
"Then I'm afraid it'll just have to wait, unless it's something we can talk about over the phone. It's not really a good time for me right now."
"It's never a good time anymore, is it?" she murmurs.
"Huh? What did you say? Oh, this damn connection…" he moves away from the phone and says something in either Persian or Arabic; she still isn't quite able to separate those two. Either way, it sounds urgent. Then he's back.
"Look, honey, if it's not a matter of life or death…"
She briefly thinks about her gun, then shoves the thought away with all her might. Not her; come what may, that is not the way she will go out. She forces the pieces of her shattered self back together.
"No. No, don't worry. I'll be fine."
"That's why I love you. You're my tough girl."
Alex licks her dry lips.
"Yeah." His tough girl. At least it sounds better than 'cold woman with a heart of ice'… doesn't it?
"Can I call you back sometime tomorrow, or something? I'm kind of busy," he asks, sounding like most of his focus is elsewhere already.
"Oh. Yeah, of course. Of course. Be careful."
"I'm always careful," he chuckles. "Love you honey!"
"I love you too." She isn't sure he hears it; he's already speaking eagerly to someone in Persian- now she's certain that is it - when he's hanging up. But that is okay; she isn't sure she meant it either way. She looks at the phone for a few seconds and then tosses it across the bed. It slides off the edge and hits the floor. She leans back and closes her eyes.
Do I have anyone else I can call?
She starts going through her mental list of associates and realises with rising horror that she doesn't. Friends, yes, some, but all of them too distant to talk emotions with, plus most of them she knows through James. Colleagues. Relatives that she's always more or less at odds with. There's her brother Scott, of course, at least he would never judge her… but Scott always makes her feel guilty for not calling more often, and she just can't deal with that right now.
Instead, she takes an Ambien and stares at the ceiling until she falls asleep. The shadows playing up there take on various forms until they all float together and there is only merciful, dreamless sleep.
The next day, she goes to work as if nothing happened, locking all her emotions up behind thick, strong walls, walls that instead of crumbling with time will only grow stronger.