A/N: This follows immediately from the previous chapter as it became too long to remain as is. All disclaimers stand, and some "M" rated themes are present. Again, thanks to those of you who have reviewed, it is most appreciated.
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"Ruth...Tell me about your father."
"He was...He was a good man. Its the part you want...I'll not blame you if you turn away, Harry. When you...know. I need you to know that, before I...Okay. My father. He was vibrant, and curious. Very cerebral and we were very much alike. I learned everything I know about emotions, people, from him. He was very sick, and towards the end, the cancer seemed to accelerate, it just ate him whole, like it sensed the feast would all come to an end quickly and it just wanted over with. The impatient tumor. That's what he called it, for me, to prepare me, I guess. The last few months were the worst of it. He was in so much pain, and left to our front room, in this mechanized bed. People came and went, medical people, but there was nothing left to be done but wait."
"I think he truly died, the light of him, that spark extinguished when he lost the ability to speak. It preceded his physical death by about a month, maybe two, and the light just sort of left his eyes when he realized it. He loved to communicate, words, he loved words, and what a person could do with them? Always encouraged me to be kind with them as they could be the most damaging weapons available. He was right, of course, though I'd little ability to understand it then, as a child. I think it's why I loved, well love, languages. It made it easy for me to learn and adopt as many as I have. It made Angela's accusations even more insidious, that. That she never knew is a small victory, I suppose."
"We had developed a means of communicating between us, a Morse code involving blinking, some pantomime, and he still had use of his hands, I loved the feeling when we would trace letters into each others palms, that I could still touch him, talk to him. There were times, more frequent towards the end, when he couldn't sleep, and he would write all his thoughts down. A journal. He made me promise never to look at it, and I did. I was willing to promise anything to make him happy, to remain at his side. We made a game of it. He liked games, too, so I come by it honestly. He would start blinking, and we would time how long it took me to decipher the book he wanted me to read from, the drink he'd like. I read to him for hours, and he just watched me, like he was memorizing me. Maybe he was."
"We were so much alike, he and I. It felt as though we could communicate without speaking, always had. Drove mother crazy, but it was something we shared, just us two, and he would just smile at her when she would chafe, wrap his arms around her and say, 'My lovely Elizabeth, I do love you so,' and she would let it lay. He always called her Elizabeth. He was the only one who ever did, and even at that age I understood there was some reason. I like to think it was the way her full name felt on his tongue because he would draw it out, slowly, with this look on his face, and she would smile as he did it. The habit predated me, but its effect remained potent between them. They loved each other, and they never thought to hide the depth from anyone. They never did."
"Mother was gone one afternoon, the market or some such, and we both knew she'd be awhile. I knew instantly that day had formed somehow different as he didn't want me to read to him, or make up some elaborate story to entertain him. He had his journal out...It was leather bound, had a leather button affixed to the front, and a strap you wound around to close it. Do you know the kind? Hand made. It was worn, and soft. Still is. I have it. I sometimes smell it, and I'm reminded of him, like he's there, with me."
"Its wonderfully worn and so smooth its almost shiny. It still smells of him, even after all these years. That smell is so much a part of my memories of him, the words he'd written inside...All that time spent not sleeping he had been writing things he wanted me to know. The first time he kissed my mother, the day he first held me in his arms. Why they chose my name. And more, so much...Stories from when he was a boy, how he felt when mother had rung him when I fell out of the tree, the fear that always sat just beneath the surface that I would come to harm. That fear, Harry, for your children, it was the same for him, and I think he would have liked you, and you him. He wrote then what he would tell me on my wedding day, wanting me to know I was meant to be treasured and loved. They were his last words to me, our very last conversation in the language he loved best. I would willingly walk through fire to retrieve it. Its the only possession, well, one of two, I would suffer a great deal of pain to keep safe. It sits next to your Ovid, Harry. I keep a picture inside of him. Of us both."
"That afternoon, it was open in front of him, and I remember hesitating at the door, and he looked up and smiled at me, and there was something about his face that looked so much like he had before...I thought...I thought maybe he would be fine. He beckoned me closer, motioning for me to sit, and he just handed me the journal. I just kept looking at him, as if I dared to look away, even for a second, the shine in his eyes would disappear. Amazing how much power you think you have as a child. That you could stop the course of illness simply by refusing to look away."
"Eventually, I looked down, began to read. I thought that's what he wanted, for me to read his journal to him. But I'd misinterpreted and realized, as I was reciting the words aloud, he had written down a number of specific medicines, listing them in amounts. It was like I understood, but didn't, or couldn't, the idea of what he was suggesting I do was so staggeringly wrong I failed to comprehend it absolutely. I don't know, the difference measured between theory and fact being the difference between innocence and fallen?"
"But he meant it, and I knew it for fact when I saw the numbers for the lock which rested against the cabinet in his office. He was one of precious few doctors willing to see people at home, so there was a room, on the first floor. And a locked cabinet. It was a date. The combination. Or, numbers easily slotted into a date. I've wondered my whole life since that day what they signified, but mother would never answer me. I still look at that page. I run my finger down the words thinking, I don't know, one day I'll understand what was in his mind and heart? And so..."
"He was in so much pain, Harry. Late at night, towards the ends, I would hear him, even though he tried to be quiet. I would sneak down the stairs and curl up just outside the door, where he couldn't see me. I just wanted him to know I was there, but I knew he would be more upset if he did. He never wanted me to see how much pain...Every morning, my mother would find me asleep in the hall. She had taken to sleeping on the couch, spent most of her nights up with him, trying to calm and sooth him. I don't think she ever told him, and she never asked that I stop. She had retreated into her own heart by then, and I'm not entirely sure she was conscious of anything outside of her own pain. We were, the two of us, walking on eggshells, and just trying not to step on something that would bring whatever tenuous hold we had crashing down around us, mother and I."
"I'd recognized some of the drugs listed, knew their effects. He had always been very open about what he did professionally, and imparting knowledge, to him, was as vital as words, conversations, emotions. I got the pills, Harry. I did. I ground them into a fine powder the way he had shown me. I added a bit of honey to cut the bitter, and the milk to help it emulsify so that he wouldn't choke on the chalk of it. He had done the same for an elderly woman on our street who had broken her hip, and gagged when she had to swallow a whole pill."
"Frightening, the things you observe when a child that would never occur to one's parents to prevent. Like, the idea that children are blind to the truths present around them, the things adults wouldn't deliberately chose to expose them to formed a barrier of some kind? That their belief in their continuing innocence was enough to make it fact? Children see everything, and can ferret a secret before an adult can even begin to contemplate the means by which to hide it. Children are mirrors. I set the kettle and, oddly, decided that this was an occasion for china. I wasn't even there, Harry. I wasn't there, and yet I chose a china cup and saucer to poison my father."
"I had left my mind. No, that's not right...it was...We had a game, he and I. A variation on 'I Spy," ironically enough. We would go out somewhere and find a spot to people watch. Did it all the time, at least once a week. Anyway, he would say something like, 'Tell me about the man in the red sweater, Bird,' and the game would begin. I would fabricate these long drawn out stories about these people that we watched. They were elaborate and detailed, sad or fanciful, owing to whatever mood I might be in. Over time they became less imaginary and more accurate, and we would watch as what I had thought to imagine would sometimes happen."
"He used to say, 'Always look underneath the skin, Ruth. Under the surface is where the person is, who they are, what they are capable of; Its in the eyes and hidden underneath, my little bird.' That was what he called me. His name for me. He said I was half magpie because I would find things as we walked, just discards from life, and look at them like treasures. I have them in an old wooden cheese box. So, maybe three things treasured enough to walk through fire for, yes? Anyway, I'd fallen from a tree trying to look into a nest, broke my arm in two places. He wrote about it in his journal, how he ran because traffic had been bad, some accident, and he had never felt that level of fear, but knew he had been preparing himself for from the moment I was born. I was really proud of that break. I guess you could say, in a strangely formative way, he had always been preparing me to be a spook. Had always known, somehow. That game is what makes me good at what I do, and down to him, if I'm honest."
"So, in the kitchen, that day, it was like that, while I was making the mixture he wanted. In my head, I was telling myself it was just a story, and we were having tea somewhere, and these people weren't us, but two other people, and if I looked hard enough I would see...under the surface...that it was love, an act of devotion and love what the girl was doing. It was easy, then, to distance myself because it wasn't me, but a girl who looked a lot like me. But not Bird, not a little bird."
"They call that a meta-moment now days, but then it was just me watching a shadow of myself from somewhere in the distance. I poured the tea into the cup, and watched as the milk wound its way through. I remember thinking it so peaceful, that image, like when smoke curls into the air, and just moves so effortlessly until it becomes a part of it. I used to watch smoke like clouds, trying to identify the shape it took. I think it was why I started smoking at Uni. I would just exhale, and watch the smoke with my head back, imagining the shapes."
"I entered the room, where he was, and he looked at me and smiled. I felt my heart stop and I was certain that I'd have no further use of it after that day. I intended to do it, Harry. I had tamped down every voice in my head, had hidden within myself so as not to alter course. I saw it then, as I got closer, saw the split second of fear in his eyes...I collapsed, inside, I couldn't move my legs, and my hands began to shake...When I looked underneath, as he had taught me, I saw the smile hadn't reached his eyes. I saw him try to hide it, but he had taught me too well, and he couldn't hide beneath from me."
"I think he was afraid for me, in the end, knowing he would no longer be there to fix what he'd hope wouldn't be broken with his request. If I could see my way to do it. He knew it would break me, too much for an eleven year old, too much...oh, God. I just wanted to make him better, but I...I failed. I turned the cup over, dumping the contents on the rug. If I close my eyes right now I can still see the wet circle, and the globule of white, misshapen and still chalky sitting in the center. I still see it. And I can hear the sounds he was making, trying to comfort me without being able to speak."
"There were fat tears rolling down the side of his face, into the fuzz of what was left of his hair. I remember watching them, mesmerized by their passage, but primarily by the fact that he cried. I'd never seen him cry, and it was down to me. He kept reaching for me, and I remember thinking, absurdly, 'I'll need to clean that before mother returns.' He nearly fell from his bed trying to reach me. I almost didn't get there in time. He took my hand...He took my hand and placed it...against his...heart. Blinking, that he loved me, that he was sorry. He asked me to forgive him. In my palm. his finger tracing the words. How...how could I not? He went very quickly after that, maybe two weeks to the day? It was quiet, in his sleep. I never saw his eyes shine again."
"That's what I told Peter, in Blackpool, and in an effort to make me feel...something, love, forgiveness, we chose something which became even worse than death for us both. An albatross which required feeding, like a cancer in itself. I don't regret it, but I do feel shame. How can there be both, Harry? I believe, to this day, I had a part in my father's death. I did, in the preparation and failure both. It hastened his end, his own shame working on him, feeding the feast. I was a part of it, I carry a portion of blame, so it seemed only natural to carry another portion for Peter's. Ironic, but I'm rather poisonous, when all is said and done. I kill the people who dare to love me in some way. Slowly, like a virus sitting dormant awaiting a catalyst. I didn't kill them both with my bare hands, that's true enough, but when you shake it out, it only uncovers my degree of culpability the more you examine it. She was vicious and cruel in what she said. But she had been right. Angela."
"More's the pity, that the entire conversation, all that you asked of me was for nothing. She hadn't even armed the damned thing, and I wrecked her for want of causing pain, wanting her to hurt like she had hurt me, and Peter, wanting her to suffocate as she had suffocated everything beautiful about him. It was for nothing. It wasn't the lies, Harry. It was the wanting that had me arguing with you. The fucking relish I took in causing another person to break apart before my eyes, and feeling nothing beyond wanting to bloody smile."
He had been afraid of this, if he were honest with himself. Had worried the longer she meditated the result she would eventually come to this feeling of futility and emptiness. The turning in on oneself when the adrenaline evaporates within. Proper little spook. He simply hadn't been able to gage how long in the making, what length of time he would be granted before he'd be forced to address it, forced to placate and fashion fictions to make her feel better. All designed, selfishly, to keep her with him.
How could she possibly have thought that her darkest secret would repulse him to the extent he couldn't see past it? Truth was, he loved her more for it, her ever present anguish and guilt forming the motivation for all she had hoped to surmount and accomplish since, so acutely characteristic, mirroring his own. She was his twin, in more ways than she'd ever thought to imagine, and he would never, regardless of what happened between now and in the future, regardless if this night proved to be a magical one-off, or if they remained cleaved together and breathing ever after, he could not imagine a circumstance wherein he would willingly part from her, excepting death.
And like that, the fictions he'd not thought to consider poured from him without a thought, the words spoken, to his surprise, more truth than fabrication to his ears.
"Ruth. My Ruth. It wasn't empty, what you had to do. Never that. Don't you see? Regardless the motivations, regardless the mechanism at work, Angela was as manipulated as you, in the end. And what you couldn't do for Peter, or your father, don't you see...you did for her? Maybe you would never have intended it, but you helped her...You helped her in the only way anyone left could help her. She wanted answers, Ruth. And you provided them. That was what she wanted...needed before she...died. She could have killed Adam if she had wanted. She had the rifle pointed at me, Ruth. I saw her. A clear shot, a clearer one couldn't have been provided. But she didn't pull the trigger, Ruth. And she only wounded Adam. She didn't want to kill any of us, not really. She had the means, and didn't."
Pulling her upright, he forced his legs into a cross legged position he'd earlier assumed quite beyond him, bringing her with him, forcing her to do the same, knees touching, his hands squeezing her upper arms, shaking her briefly to stop her retreat from him.
"No, don't turn away from me. Listen to me. Now, Ruth. She knew you would find the missing report. She knew that. And, for what its worth, I think she wanted us to find it, wanted us to stop it. It was her way to alert us to something bigger. We all suspect something working behind the curtains, and she...she warned us. Don't you see? She was only a part of a greater whole, and that because she wanted to know, finally, she wanted the truth. From you. She never once turned her back on the services, she used them as they used her, and got what she wanted. Its classic Angela Wells, really."
He watched as the tears of shame and guilt manifested, glistening before proving too much, bursting the dam of her eyes, each falling slowly as his eyes traced their descent, dropping to the insides of her exposed knees, and rolling further down to the blanket. He moved to wipe the trails they left from her cheeks, tilting his head and smiling into them, mesmerized as they changed color again, the blue green vibrant against the red forming, and he thought himself drowning.
"She loved you, Ruth. I believe that. How could she not? Jo said she confessed she could have loved you like a sister, too. Her words, Ruth. I think she did, and I think the entire history between you three was a terrible tragedy. But it happened, and she died...complete, Ruth. She died complete. It's sadly the most any of us can hope for. And that's down to you. Just you, and the wonderfully complex, paradoxical beauty of you. I'll not hear another word about it being empty or useless. Not another word, my Ruth."
Her face collapsed in on itself then, as he watched, memorizing the way it came on slowly, an orchestral movement of pain and relief, the crescendo of her sobs reverberating through his chest as he wrapped himself around her again, and lay them down, his shirt dampening as she allowed herself to let go of all that was within her wanting to scream.
He held her tightly to him. Would have done for the rest of his life. Wanted nothing more than to have his ears full of the sound of her soft hiccups as she crested and began to calm, his lips imparting gentle kisses across her crown, inhaling the scent of her deeply, forming the memory he would entertain when she was gone and he alone. He knew it a certainty, then. As he knew that he killed all that was beautiful in his life as surely as the sun would rise in a few hours time. The worst that she had done, the worst that she could conceive was an act of love offered a loving parent, and he'd not that measure of kindness in his voluminous history of despicable acts.
Regardless, he would tell her. Had to, it was the single act of decency he could hope for now.
"Ruth? I need to tell you something. About your father."
Perhaps, he thought quietly, it would be enough to warm him in the years that lay already cruelly defined spanning before him.
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