A/N: Another chapter coming your way. I wanted to really show the scheming going on between Richard and Carrie, so there is one scene in this chapter that I think will ultimately set up a lot of the coming events in this story. Just to keep that in mind :)
Thanks again to those who reviewed my pervious chapter, and of course the chapters before. You guys are awesome and you all deserve medals ;)
Disclaimer: Again, I don't own anything but the words.
On with the show…
Aftermath
Chapter Four: Waiting
He remembered waiting. He remembered the anxious dwelling on reasons, the flick of his gaze to his watch in uncomfortable impatience. He remembered sighing outwardly, exasperated and tired, eventually giving up. He remembered doing all of those things. For her.
Waiting was a perpetual cycle, one that would never be broken. They would always be waiting. Waiting for hope, waiting for love. Waiting for a bus, or a train. Waiting for each other. Whatever the reason, people would always be waiting.
He watched Death wait for Life. He watched as Jack Harper grew worried, glanced to the clock beside him, shifted on the bed, and waited. He watched this all with a pang of jealousy, one he was not able to place so easily.
It did hurt him, to see Life so defenceless in the arms of her opposite. Though Death was not her lover, he did wait for her as a lover would. Incessant, restless, anxious.
He watched on from above, silently hoping Life would not allow this forbidden merging with Death. He hoped she would know enough not to entangle herself with Death. He hoped she knew enough to be aware that if their bodies gave in, if they entwined gently with a lover's embrace, nothing would be the same. Chaos would creep further, treading heavily over everything Fate wanted kept apart.
He knew nothing would ever be the same again, if forbidden intimacy was explored, if love grew between these forces of equal power.
Nothing.
And so he waited. Waited for that collision, that bridging of a gap longing to be sewed at the seams. He waited with a nervous anticipation, for whatever was brewing, could not bring the world any balance. For surely, whatever was coming, was going to spill chaos and disorder in its wake. It was going to leave things destroyed in ruins. It was going to desolate the balance.
And he waited.
Jack was always waiting. He had always been waiting. Waiting for a chance. Waiting for salvation. Waiting for someone to remind him everything was okay. Waiting for someone.
Anxiety tugged at him like a taut rope. It pulled him in, embraced him tightly so he could not escape. Jack felt the nausea creep over him, fading him into the darkness of the corner in which he sat, motionless.
He sat on the edge of her bed, waiting. With his thumbs furled deep into the pocket his hands made when they pressed together, Jack thought uneasily about why she was keeping him waiting. Why wasn't she with him, like she said she would be? Why hadn't she come home, been home even, since that morning? What was keeping her?
Nerves rode on the backs of the questions that bombarded him. He couldn't help but feel powerless, even though he had every rightful power in his grasp.
Jack turned to the digital clock flashing red numbers at him. It read just before twelve. Midnight.
And still Tru kept him waiting.
He didn't know why. Perhaps she was avoiding him, like she had done the last couple of weeks. Ever since Jensen had been murdered by her hands.
No, that wasn't right.
She had been willing to fall into his arms, cry uncontrollably, stain his shirt with tears, after she had killed Jensen. No, this wasn't all about Jensen. This was about the night they had both finished a bottle of tequila between them, downing each glass with a knowing look. This was about the night he had forced his lips down on hers, pressed himself against her so she fought hard against the wall behind her.
This was about him, Jack knew. It wasn't about Jensen.
He had apologised. Before seemed like an eternity ago. It was probably only a couple of hours since he had knelt beside her, grasping her hand, promising her with his own lips that everything would be okay.
But she hadn't come back yet.
And he was still waiting.
The morgue whistled with a decaying emptiness. Nothing seemed to be alive. There was no sign of life; just the dreary, weary corpses lying dormant in their cold, steel drawers. It wasn't always this way. There was once a time, she remembered, when life filled the stale air with a vibrancy that seemed so old now. So embarrassing, so naïve in the wake of all that had happened.
She should have known; she surrounded herself with death, dealt with it every day. Why hadn't she seen this? Why had she been so blind to this inevitable collision of Fate?
Once, the sanitary morgue had been a sanctuary, a place where reality could drip away, where her worrying dread would disappear. She had invested herself in these people's lives, working tirelessly, sometimes more than twenty four hours a day, just to give them another chance. Back then, she didn't have to worry about drinking herself into a catatonic state. She didn't have to worry about the growing intensity of the relationship she shared with the one person she was supposed to truly hate. That was then, though. And this was now.
Davis inched. He always did whenever he was nervous. He inched away from her, his shuffling feet and rustling white coat scratching away the silence between them. Tru stared at him, this man she used to know as Davis, friend, trustee, employer. Now he was just a body. Just another body among many others.
The cold steel against her back etched into her skin. She felt it prickle, ache against her already raw flesh. She remained where she was. It didn't matter to her how uncomfortable or disquieted she was anymore. None of it mattered.
"Physical life isn't everlasting, Tru," Davis spoke in a quiet voice, his feet no longer shuffling in discomfort. He had finally found stable ground. "No matter what we want to believe, we all have to die. It's the order of the world. If we didn't die, the universe would be thrust into chaos."
Tru kept her eyes down; the dull fire in them dying in the night's drowning calm. "It already is possessed by chaos. This world, this place…there's no hope. I think we lost that a while ago."
"Or," Davis sucked in sharp breath, expelling cool air as he breathed through his teeth, "maybe you just lost it. I think that this, what you're going through, didn't start with Jensen. I think it started with your mother."
Shrugging with as much effort she could muster with her back pressed up against the solid drawers, Tru lifted her head enough to capture Davis' look of concern. "Maybe."
"You lost her at such a young age, and even if you didn't know it then, it has haunted you ever since."
Tru thought of that word. Haunted. It lingered in her mind's pocket, collecting stale images and drowning whispers. She was haunted. She could feel it.
Davis continued steadily, careful not to break that precious boundary between two little and too much, "And then Luc. His death brought out another side of you. You weren't going to lose anyone else to Jack. Not like that."
"But I killed Jensen," Tru finished what her mentor had begun, her train of thought running along the tracks at dangerous speeds, "I killed him. Jack didn't. That's the difference. That's what makes it harder. If Jack had pulled the trigger, I could just hate him for it. That would be so much easier than this."
Her tone was dead, though her heart pumped blood furiously. She could hear her pulse through her flesh. She knew she wasn't dead.
Davis swallowed, gently approaching her with tentative steps. "Tru…"
"I did this," her voice cracked. Trails of choking anguish leaked from her. "I killed him, Davis. I created a monster, and I had no choice but to kill him. I don't kill people, Davis, that's not who I am. I'm life. I give life. I don't do this."
A single sob echoed through the room. It faded quickly.
"I don't do this."
"This is what we do. We end lives that are no longer meant to be alive."
"Something occurred to me," her sultry voice flowed from her. Carrie sat straight in the leather chair, her arms draped over the smooth sides. "Jack died once. That's how all of this started, right?"
Richard Davies ran two of his splintered fingers down the edge of an unsheathed sword. It glistened in the dank light of the rounded lamp. "We went over this, remember?"
Frowning, Carrie pulled a hand from its comfortable slouch to relieve her face from the irritable scratching of her dark hair. "Jack does to others what should have happened to him. He shouldn't be alive. He preaches the deaths of those who defy fate. And yet, he was once one of them."
"What are you suggesting, Doctor Allen?" Richard mocked sarcastically her with a stern undertone. "We kill Death?"
She watched his sword's gleam dance in the poor light. "He's not playing the game, Richard. I saw him with her. He's falling for her."
There was silence. For a time, it remained.
Richard considered this, irony slicing through his skin, tearing at the shreds of his barely beating heart. "Do you know why I married her mother?"
It wasn't a question made to be answered.
"It wasn't because I loved her, or because I admired her," Richard paused, piercing the threshold of the sheath, and slicing the sword back into its grave. "It was because I was drawn to her."
Carrie took a steady breath. "How does that help our cause? I mean, look how you turned out."
"Careful, Doctor," Richard took a step, placed his sword onto its carved rack, and turned towards Carrie with a dangerous look, "wouldn't want there to be an accident."
Silence remained once again.
Unfazed by Richard's idle threat, Carrie stared ahead, perched in the chair like a bird stalking its prey. "We need to do something about this. I'm sure you won't like your daughter being taken advantage of. Although, not really much of a stretch, is it?"
"They say patience is a virtue," his smooth voice carried with it the edge of a broken man, long suffering. "Mine has almost expired. This problem with Jack, take care of it."
Her face brightened with a smile. Carrie Allen was brewing a storm among her thoughts. "Gladly."
Davis watched her retreat, sadness creeping over his worn features, fatigue stretching across his face wearily. Grief was natural; it was expected. It was a necessary part of the healing process, one that needed to mend the broken parts of the human emotional skeleton. But this, whatever it was, was certainly not grief. This was a deep, drowning depression. This was a resignation; a giving up on life. A vicious cycle that dealt Tru a cruel hand every time.
Her mother.
Luc.
Jensen.
It never ended. Not for her.
Davis watched with concerned eyes as Tru stumbled into the elevator, not bothering to meet Carrie's eyes as they met briefly while exchanging a step over that barrier between stability and refined gravity.
Carrie stepped with a stab of her heels from the elevator, glancing at Tru with a brief frown, before finding Davis – her Davis – staring. At nothing, seemingly. Though, Carrie knew what he had been staring at. That lost girl, the one too old to be young, yet who harboured a broken innocence. Though, Carrie knew, Tru had outgrown youth long ago.
Long before Tru herself had even known it.
Yes, Fate played a part in how things turned out. That was no secret. But it wasn't about whether Fate was to blame; it wasn't even about whether Fate even existed. For most, it was a question of belief.
Do I believe in Fate?
Do I want to believe in Fate?
Can I accept that there are forces out there among us that are stronger than anything else?
Can I accept that I do not control my life; that my destiny lies in the arms of Fate?
It always came back to belief. To faith. And it didn't matter the subject, or the circumstance. Belief was everything.
Davis didn't turn away when Carrie pressed her lips lightly against his. He didn't flinch, didn't even feel a blush. There was nothing. He just continued to stare out to the whitewashed walls, the clean tile and the sanitary smells of forced cleanliness.
His pure white lab coat clung tightly to his body, while beneath his façade, his faded blue shirt was wrinkled and worn loosely, a tan coffee stain outlining the threads of his collarbone.
He was still waiting even as Carrie took his hand in her own, and led him quietly into his cluttered office. He was still waiting for Tru to walk back in, full of life and excitement, clutching the joys of her existence tightly in her hand.
Still waiting.
Davis expelled a distraught sigh and slouched into his black leather chair, hunching over the arms with his own. "I don't know what to do, Carrie. I-I just…I can't think anymore. Everything's so unclear that I don't even know where to go from here."
"Grief is always unclear," Carrie began, a slight authoritative voice patronising the uncomfortable silence between them. "It affects different people in different ways. Not everyone cries to begin with; some people remain numb for a time. Some people remain normal; they get on with their lives as if nothing has happened. Others, grief comes quickly; painfully, but quickly."
Letting his hands fall from the edges of his face, Davis into her dark eyes. "And Tru? What about her grief?"
Dropping her hands to her sides, Carrie leant casually against the side of the wooden desk, sincerity clutching her suddenly. She was no longer the Mole; she was the Grief Counsellor. "She's drowning in it. Something that horrific, something forced upon her without being able to do anything about it, knowing she created a monster in Jensen…that's taken something out of her. Something she doesn't know how to get back."
"What will happen to her?"
Carrie moistened her suddenly parched lips with the tip of her tongue. She stared straight at Davis as she continued in a hushed voice, "She'll grieve, eventually. It will all come down on her. But until it does, she will remain in this state of denial. She'll be numb until she isn't."
Davis forced himself to swallow. "How long will that take?"
There was silence. They both waited for it to be broken, but it never was.
A growing anxiety pinched the stark silence. The apartment was dark, clean, like no one lived there. Jack sat, keeping his body still, on the edge of the bed, eyes lowered towards the polished floorboards. She still hadn't come. Hours had passed, and yet her existence was void in her own apartment.
Jack heard the scratching of a key pressing deep into the door, and he sat up suddenly, eyes locked on the pathway to the door. Tru revealed herself slowly, ragged and tired, exhausted of all spirit and emotion.
She yawned, a tired motion forced upon her. It was like she didn't even notice. She kept her eyes down, afraid of what she might see in her mind's eye…
…bloodstains painting her hands a sickly crimson, droplets spilling down onto her perfect cobalt dress. Her hands shook violently, her ragged fingers spread apart with disdained shock. They were caked with blood. Everything was. There was not a part of her unaffected by his blood. Everything was stained. Forever…
…Jack stood cautiously from the bed, a creak wailing out as he did so. His hands rested quietly beside him, eyes searching in the dark.
She saw him there. She saw him and continued walking, eyes down.
Like a predator, Jack moistened his lips, breaking through the parched cracks and flowing life into them.
Like his prey, Tru stepped towards him, intrigued and drawn.
They stood close, so close that they could smell the want. The temptation. The danger of letting everything fade and slip away. They both knew that couldn't happen, for the sake of humanity. For the sake of the universe. For Fate, and all of its plans.
Jack found her eyes in the darkness, painting a prison around them and trapping her behind his walls.
"I waited," he spoke in a whisper.
There was barely time for her to respond, as Jack's lips came crashing down on hers, forceful and dangerous, yet tender and passionate.
And Tru waited. She waited for that time when she could give in, when everything would fade away and she would be her again. She waited, even as she kissed him with as much passion as he kissed her, for a chance to be free. For a chance to let go.
She waited.
A/N: Fin. Please leave a review as they are appreciated and hopefully the next chapter will be up soon :)
Peace