Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.
Chapter Thirty: Zeus to Mount Ida
September 17th, 2011 5:32 PM
It felt weird as hell to be sneaking into the house. Not that the two weeks she had spent at Steph's place made her home alien to her, it was just that she hadn't felt the need to sneak in so long. As far as Chloe was concerned no one who lived within its walls had either the right or privilege to know where she went and when she came back. The one thing that Chloe knew for sure was that her step father was at the house. It had gotten around pretty quickly that David did not come in to work that day and while that had instantly stuck out at Chloe as making this a bad day to try to sneak back into the house and get more of her school and tabletop gear, there was at least one book up in her room that she needed for Friday and another that held two or three chapters she needed to read by the following Friday for a history quiz.
In short, Chloe told herself as she glanced over her shoulder once at her stepfather's car and then eased the front door shut behind her, needs must. Pausing just in the doorway she waited for her stepfather to come running but after two or three seconds he seemed to be completely unaware of her presence. She heard a television running in the living room but didn't think it was going to be quiet enough to mask the sounds she made once she finally got upstairs to her room. That's alright, she counseled, just lock the bedroom door when you get up there. Chloe took each step up the staircase with an agonizing slowness and when it came time even did her best to skip the sixth completely. Every staircase has that one that squeaks.
To make the slow climb a little less unbearable, each time she paused to listen for David's approach she recalled a line she had been asked to deliver for her audition for the school play. Keaton had been disappointed that she had no role picked out, but nonetheless at his prompting she had done her best to deliver various lines and by the end she remembered him eyeing her as if she had promise. That promise, Chloe thought personally as she took another slow step up the stairs, was probably to play another genderbent character. Or to play a character while genderbent myself. In truth Chloe couldn't be assed to be too concerned about it: Rachel was happy with her own audition and that was more than enough for Chloe. I hope she can beat out Juliet or Dana for Ophelia.
At the top of the stairs she shifted her empty backpack to one shoulder and walked calmly down the length of the hall. Still, there came no change in sound from below. Her bedroom door opened under her left hand and she was halfway to shutting it before she took in sight of the room. Last year, feeling unwanted and unsafe in her own home, Chloe had packed away most of her belongings and put them in the closet, the effect being that the room was mostly clean and orderly despite the graffiti'd walls, paper-stacked desk and a small pile of books in one corner. Now, all of these things and most of the contents of her closet were strewn about the room.
Mother fucker, Chloe thought, before shutting her bedroom door behind her. It felt eerie to be standing among the mess of the destroyed bedroom and more uncanny still to not recognize it as her own. She actually missed the soft beige walls and the thick comforter of the guest room at Steph's house. Not to mention the lack of reminder that David had no respect for her as a human being. Chloe was able to rescue a bit in the way of socks and underwear from the debris in her room (nice to know he has no lines, she thought, staring at the upturned drawers laying beside her dresser) before she began to fill the remaining space in her bookbag with a couple of necessary books (including the monster manual) and the papers scattered haphazardly about her desk. Several ideas she had sketched out were crumpled or torn, but they had survived David's manly little freak out mostly intact. The bag was approaching something like heavy when Chloe slipped from her room, convincing herself she had no reason to sneak out of the bedroom window: he was the one who had done wrong in violating her privacy. Sneaking will just make him look right. He is not right. He doesn't get to look right ever again.
Unfortunately when she turned, the 'he' in question was waiting for her at the top of the stairs, between her and her easy escape route. David Madsen was as broad shouldered and displeased as ever, though Chloe was confused by the odd red hue of the top half of his face, as if he had been lying in the sun with everything from his nose down covered and had received a minor sunburn. Her eyes traced to his and she tried to read the state of his mind. It was not good. David went from 0 to a hundred in a second flat, from calm to rage at the very sight of her with a fat backpack slung over one shoulder. Shit shit shit shit! Chloe kept toward the stairs but sidestepped at the last moment, putting her back to the wall not far from her mother's bedroom door, hoping he would take the hint and move out of her way without a word. It was a long shot and she knew it, so when David moved closer to her instead of getting out of her way, stepping around the bannister as if to intimidate her into staying in place with angry dark eyes, the irritated twitching of his ridiculous moustache and the furrowing brow.
I don't like where this is going, she thought. Alarms were going off in her head that maybe this wasn't the angriest she had ever seen David, but it was close and he had her backed against a wall and in a very tight space. And he's angry so fast. She hated herself in that moment for deciding not to bother Rachel or Steph, for deciding that if Max wasn't going to open up to her today then she wasn't going to bring Max along. Her stubbornness had gotten one of them in trouble before and today, today it looked like it was her. He won't just attack right off the bat will he? The man's fists were opening and closing, as if her very presence upset him. I just want to get away from you, just let me go and I won't come back again.
"What are you doing in my house? What are you taking out of my house?" One hand rose, a large, thick finger jabbing into her shoulder as he all but barked at her. "Well?" Chloe glanced up. So he wasn't off his rocker insane? No, she realized as she heard the slur in his words. Holy shit, he's drunk. She was moderately concerned about him being capable of violence before, but now she knew that she was in an unsafe situation. All I wanted was the fucking sketches of my god damned dungeon. In the past to get David to even half of the anger of this state, she would had to do something really horrible, like stand up for herself. Now her appearance was enough. "No? Nothing to say? Well that's new, isn't it, smart mouth?" Fuck it, she thought, fuck this.
As much as Chloe hated it, she had to press herself near him, shoulder actually bumping his as she sought to squeeze between him and the wall behind her. The stairs were only one or two steps away, if David just let her go they were both going to be fine. Well, he would probably walk away with a hangover, but that was on him. She managed to get about half of her body past the man before what she was doing registered in his mind. So intent on getting to the stairs, Chloe was trusting only in how rarely he had been moved to violence in the past to protect her. Today was, for some reason she was not entirely aware of, not an ordinary day for David.
She still wasn't used to the feeling of his calloused, meaty hand slamming shut around her wrist. The last time his grip had been tight and controlling. This time it wasn't about holding or redirecting, it was all about pain. It worked, too. A sharp pain shot up from the point of their connection, enough that she had some serious concern he might be capable of breaking it without much effort. He's not trying to hold me, he's trying to hurt me. He wants me to hurt. Her backpack dropped to the ground with a loud thunk as she groaned, freezing in her attempt to get past him. The man reached out with his free hand to grab hold of her shoulder and he was just pushing her back toward the wall behind her when she made the decision that she wasn't about to find out what else David might have in store for her when no one was around to see or hear.
Cocky and assured of his superiority, the growling, snarling man never saw the first blow coming. Chloe had been forced into enough situations where someone needed a very literal kicking to know that when her booted right foot swung up it did so with enough power to cause one very literal pain very easily. The thick, heavy toe of the boot found purchase on the man's groin and she watched the drunken guard's face screw up comical in pain. Any part of it that was not red shifted to something resembling the flesh of a tomato before her very eyes and sure enough, he released her, doubling forward in reaction to the pain.
Reasonably, Chloe would look back later and tell herself that she was fine, then as he was somewhat neutralized. She could have stepped around the man and hurried down the stairs, run to her truck and escaped without bothering to give a shit about her back. She could have left the bag behind, run out into the street and screamed for help. She could have locked herself in her truck and called 9-1-1. She could have done any of those things but she didn't. This man had pushed her around, hurt her, insulted her and insinuated any number of things about her for almost two years. When she added the thing he must have seen as a result of the little peepshow camera he hid in her closet, David Madsen struck her as a predator, regardless of the fact that his violence was not sexual. He was still violent. He was still openly abusive. He preyed on those who he either had power over or pretended he had power over. David Madsen was everything that Chloe hated and he had been a permanent fixture in her life for far too long. It didn't matter that he was married to her mother.
It doesn't matter, she realized the moment the man doubled over. It didn't matter because the family ties were cut. Perhaps that realization, the loss of her mother, the loss of her family was what made Chloe not escape David. Whatever the exact cause was, she struck with as much force as her right hand could muster and felt the snap of bone and cartilage as she broke her stepfather's nose. The rest happened in sharp detail and slow motion. David's hands went up to his nose and recoiled backward, away from the pain, crying out in response. A shattering noise, this one much louder than the breaking of his nose reached her ears. She understood its source in the same way you instinctively know to pull your hand away from fire. The bannister is giving out.
His recoil followed through and Chloe watched the man lean back far enough to go through the bannister. For reasons she could not understand she took one lunging step forward and grabbed David by his right hand and the collar of his shirt. If she did nothing he was going to take a long fall down just enough stairs to become seriously injured. She could not pull the heavy man forward so she threw herself at him and the force was enough, if only barely to press him against the wall beside the stairs as he landed on his ass with a mighty thud. David did not roll.
Instead, looking up at her from around an otherwise bloody face, David Madsen was shocked. She pulled herself to her feet as the man who had caused her to lock doors in the house, to shiver in fear, to actually cry once or twice stared up at her helpless and confused like an infant or a small animal. Chloe couldn't discern the source of his bewilderment, of his helplessness. A broken nose hurt but it didn't stop you from standing, from moving. She'd gotten into one too many fights to be mistaken about that. David just stared at her, weak, infantile. Chloe couldn't pull her eyes from the blood matting his moustache as she stood over him and when she smiled she understood Max's grin after putting Damon Merrick on his face in the junkyard because she felt every ounce of that hateful, vicious satisfaction and hated herself for every moment of it.
"What in tarnation?" From somewhere close to the sound of the television downstairs a woman was screaming. It instantly snapped Chloe from that mood, that grim satisfaction. The woman who gave birth to her was running toward the stairs full tilt, judging by the sound of footfalls. In no time at all, they would match eyes over David's half-prone, dumbfounded form. I should have let him fall, a part of her argued with the rest of her.
"If you ever," she said, her voice immediately at the top of her lungs, "ever touch me or someone I love, someone I consider my friend or fuck it, someone I hate even an ounce less than you again, I will tell everyone everything I know about you." Chloe made this a promise as she backed up toward her backpack. A head of blonde hair appeared just high enough for Joyce to turn and recognize her as David moved his legs, not to stand but to unfold his body from the uncomfortable, even dangerous position it laid in. "I mean everything," she promised David, lowering her head. "Do you understand me you sack of shit?"
"You know nothing," he spat at her, all anger and rage but no threat, arms flailing, unable to stand, unable to lean forward far enough to hurt her. He was nothing. He had always been nothing, all that was necessary was for someone to come along and teach him that. Chloe was savagely happy it had been her. "You always think you know everything, but you don't!" The yell was desperate, reaching, grasping. It was the wail of a baby for its mother's milk. It wasn't even particularly eloquent.
"You just sit right there and listen to a story," she told him, leaning slightly forward as if talking down to him like the child he was. Then she turned her eyes on the person who had raised her as an infant and realized that the ties that bound them had been cut. As far as she was concerned the woman in front of her was David's enabler, David's wife. The mechanical act of birth and the entirety of Chloe's childhood were weighed against the complete betrayal that enabling an abuser was and Chloe was the Anubis who found it wanting. Dad, forgive me. I'm so sorry. There must have been something I could have done but it's too late now. Don't hate me. Chloe lifted her backpack as her birthgiver called her name in soft confusion, something almost resembling fear. Her rage was keeping tears at bay, but it was not going to last forever, not now that David was on his ass. Adrenaline only held for so long without constant pressure. "I know you work for Sean Prescott, to protect his sack of shit son from the consequences of his actions. I know Nathan is sick, sick in the head and not getting the help he needs. I know he drugged someone and photographed them while they were out. I know that that is the kind of person you're taking money to protect. That's the trade off for mom's grand wedding, you making a deal with the devil. I'm not fucking stupid which is more than I can say for either of you." Chloe exhaled and then seized the bag at her feet.
"I know you would have punched me in the face on campus, with my head turned, not even seeing it coming if Ms. Grant hadn't come out of the cafeteria when she did, because you are a coward." Now she looked away from her stepfather to her mother, whose eyes were watering, but was no longer looking as if Chloe would grow a second head at any moment. "I know that David has cameras all over this house. He'd have one in my bedroom still but last week Rachel, Max and I found his setup and fucked with it. I know he was peeping on us, all of us." Glancing back, David had stopped drunkenly trying to grab and throttle her. It made him look less like a giant infant, but no less pathetic, lying there, chin pressed against his chest.
"I know you stalk me and the people I love. That's right, we found out a long time ago but that manilla folder on top of the cabinets in the garage proved it. Why aren't all the photos you take in there, too? Keep them for your personal fuckin' collection?" She didn't want to finish her grand soliloquy. She wanted to draw it out further, mock this man, make him feel as small as he was, so Chloe took a step forward until, leaning over the remains of the banister, she was looking down at him. David was confused now, no longer raging, just lost, as if he couldn't comprehend how this little girl got one over on him. Joyce was holding her breath two steps below him and when he reached out to her for help, the woman backed down a step. It did not make Chloe feel any more kindly toward the woman, but her heart warmed at the idea that David had no lifelines immediately in his presence.
"I know that you are a cowardly, sexist little pig. I know you pick on teenage girls to fuck with them because it makes you feel big, it makes you powerful again. You have people to order around again, now and you can threaten them because they will fear you. I know it helps you pretend your clinical paranoia is reasonable. I've known all of this for so long and I've tried to keep it mostly to myself, to deal with it, for her. But I'm done. She doesn't give a fuck about how I feel, and I don't give a shit about how she feels either." The lump began to rise in her throat, the rage gave way. She was not Rachel or Max. She did not have a storm inside her, she could not rage against everything in front of her until the end of time. Chloe took one long stride over the man which turned into a hop, one in which she landed with watering eyes on both feet somewhere on the third step, Joyce Madsen in front of her. "And I know that if either of you ever hurt Max Caulfield or Rachel Amber, I will burn your fucking world to the ground. Now get the fuck out of my way." At this, Joyce pressed against the wall to let Chloe past. She didn't have the grace or kindness to look scared or ashamed, just sad and self-pitying. I should have spoken up sooner, dad. I wish you were here. You would have known what to do.
The one thing Chloe knew for sure as she shut the front door behind her, bag full of stuff, was that she would never spend another night under this roof. This moment had been coming for two years and she had felt it time and time again. Little pieces of the way anger fought tears had danced across her relationship with Joyce and David Madsen for a long time. A hundred confrontations in which she wanted to yell at the blonde inside, a hundred arguments where Joyce pretended that Chloe was being crazy. A hundred conversations where she gaslit me rather than see what was right in front of her.
As Chloe threw her bag into the back and opened the driver's side door of the truck, the world blurred beneath tears. The front door of the home opened and Joyce Madsen strode out. She was there, a mosaic stained glass image in the distance as Chloe rolled her window down and gave the woman one last chance to save some face. She shoved her keys into the ignition and tried to blink the tears away. They came anyway, as she seethed, air hissing past her teeth. It was going to take time for them to fade. I am going to scream if I have to speak to them. I am going to cry. I am going to cry when I talk about this in a few minutes to Steph. This has always been coming.
"Where are you going?" Joyce Madsen asked.
"I'm going home," she told the woman. "You and your sick little family enjoy yourselves. Hope you've got a spycam kink, he's got you covered." The truck started and she squeezed her eyes tightly, then opened them. Her sight cleared enough that she felt comfortable to throw the vehicle in reverse. For what she sincerely hoped was the last time, she heard the man behind Joyce call her name and saw David appear in the doorway. Her left hand slid from the wheel and when she was sure they could both see her clearly, she flipped them off. She paused long enough to turn the radio up, to drown out anything either might say and then pulled away from the house. The voice in her head that had told her she should have let David fall went quiet under the onslaught of the music. For once in your life, she told herself, you did the right thing, even if it was way too late.
Chloe knocked on the door to the house. For the last two weeks she had been opening it up to let herself in, practically living there. The problem was that this was different. This time she was coming to beg for something big. Not a night, not even two weeks. Something much more. She still understood why Steph's face was twisted with confusion when the door finally opened almost half a minute later. Steph's mouth was open to ask what in the hell she was doing when Chloe realized that this was that 'in a few minutes' she had been thinking of as she drove away from the Madsen house. Did Steph see how completely she felt broken or did she see some sign of how angry she still was? Either way, confusion became concern and Chloe followed the line of the girl's eyes to the blood around the neck of her shirt or on her fist. Speak, Price.
"I-um," it took a lot for her to keep the heavy bag on her shoulder as she tried to match Steph's gaze. "I need to know if you think we can make this 'me staying here' thing a little more… long term." Chloe swallowed. The lump in her throat had never gone away and every last bit of pride she had squeaked by it with her words. If Steph said no, she was going to beg Rose Amber and she didn't know what the consequences of that would be. Steph's silence began to scare Chloe though the way her face hardened only confused her. This wasn't the kind of thing Steph would get mad about, she would just say 'no.'
"Chloe are you alright?" Steph asked, finally, leaving her front door wide open as she stepped down onto the porch. Chloe's eyes shot sideways to her favorite chair on the porch, one she often sat on when reading for class or the play in the afternoons. Her audition only about two hours ago felt so far away, like another lifetime. "Chloe, are you okay?" Chloe finally shook her head.
"No," she said. There was no pity in Steph's eyes. She had gotten better about that. Or maybe Steph had just gotten to know her. There was care though and this strange undercurrent of anger which Chloe thought it might be a bad idea to get on the wrong side of. "I don't think I have a home right now and short of the cops coming to pick me up, I'm not going to sleep under David's roof ever again." When Steph didn't speak, Chloe jumped to fill in some blanks, to try to convince her. "I promise I'll find work. I'll do whatever it takes, I just need somewhere to stay, even if it's just when your parents aren't here."
"Stop being stupid and come inside," Steph told her, tugging her insistently toward the door. "Fuck rent, just toss some cash toward food bills when you can and we're fine. Otherwise this house sits here empty and worthless." It's not empty, Chloe wanted to say, you're here, and that's enough. For the second time that day a hand closed around her sore, aching wrist. This one was soft and its gentle tug insisted that she come inside, come home. "You've been moved in for two weeks, Chloe. What the hell was supposed to change between now and then?"
"Now it's not temporary. I can't go back, I won't go back," she insisted as she followed the brunette inside. The sound of Steph reaching past her to close the door, that satisfying thud, was oddly comforting. Though she had been gone from the Madsen house for almost fifteen minutes, it only now felt like she had crossed the threshold.
"Doesn't matter, I never intended on letting you go back there, Chloe. It's only you being a hardheaded ass that made you not see that. Rachel knew it, Max knew it." Chloe shook her head but it was at the back of Steph's head as the girl pulled her again, still softly, still coaxingly as if she were a scared pet, toward the kitchen. "But you're going to have to tell me why you came home bloody." In an odd mirror of the day they discovered the cameras in the Madsen household, Steph led her into the kitchen and not to the table but over to the sink, where she insisted that Chloe wash the blood from her right hand. Perhaps it was that act of gentle care on top of everything else that pulled the stopper. Chloe stood over the sink, cold water running across her sore fist, knuckles torn and blubbered.
Any and all attempt at speaking came out a mix between a child's tantrum and the sound of an injured animal cry. As soon as Steph let go of her hand, she took it to mean that the blood was mostly gone and began to splash cold water across her face. Each time she found herself still unable to form a word, she splashed herself again, gasping against the frustrated sounds she was making. Steph's hand on her shoulder, her soft attempts to pull Chloe from the sink did nothing. Chloe was glad she didn't try to get more forceful about it. At some point the girl must have pulled Chloe's beanie from her head so it did not get soaked because Chloe spotted it on the counter out of the corner of her eye. After her fourth or fifth splash of water, Steph began to talk to her.
"Come on, come sit down." Chloe thought she was right. This wasn't helping, this wasn't doing anything. The stream of water died as she turned the knob and walked, cold trailing down her face to her ruined shirt and started for a kitchen chair. Steph redirected her quickly and Chloe let herself be lead to her favorite spot on the right end of the absurdly large brown couch. Steph sat beside her, but turned toward the back of the couch. Chloe looked down at her right hand. The blood was not gone without a trace, but at least she looked less like she had dipped her torn knuckles into a can of paint. Warmth settled around her shoulders and she looked to the side to see the comforter from the back of the couch around her. It was unnecessary but it reminded her of long summer nights sitting on Steph's back porch, doing nothing but listening to music and looking at the sky. It reminded her of time before she had confronted Max, before all of the issues weighing on her in that moment became monumental, giant stone monoliths of lore.
"I think that's better," Chloe finally said, after a few minutes.
"I texted Max and Rachel," Steph told her. Chloe couldn't remember the girl ever pulling her phone out, but then Chloe had no idea how long she had been sitting there. Maybe it had been a few minutes, maybe it had been an hour.
"Can I explain it all at once? To all three of you?" She turned enough to see the girl beside her nod and then asked, "Can I just have a fucking hug?" Steph nodded again, this time smiling sadly at her. Can I just sleep for a year?