Disclaimer: I don't own Saw or any of the songs or movies I may reference.

Mama gripped onto the milkman's hand
And then she finally gave birth
Years go by and still I don't know
Who shall inherit this earth
And no one will know my name until it's on a stone
-Eels

PRESENT DAY

Lawrence Gordon sat in his living room before a crackling fire, and the only light in the room at this time of night. He stared into the flames, blinking away the heat and reflecting on his past actions as if the fire might cleanse his soul of his sins.

He had fulfilled John's last request—he had acted on his behalf and captured Mark Hoffman.

If Mark had somehow managed to escape from the bathroom, which was highly unlikely, wouldn't Lawrence have known by now? Wouldn't the detective have come to take his revenge?

The doctor tried not to allow himself to feel any sympathy for Mark, but he was only human (despite his best efforts). He couldn't stop the potential scenarios from running through his mind.

Best-case scenario, Mark had felt around in the darkness and found the broken hacksaw that had been thrown at the mirror by Adam all those years ago. He could have used what was left of the blade to saw off—not even his entire foot, but just his heel, and slipped through the shackle. A gruesome, painful possibility that could still lead to him bleeding out, but if he was smart and had tied a tourniquet around his ankle, he could, theoretically, have survived.

Second-worst case scenario was that he had tried to amputate his foot and HAD bled out. It would have been a painful death, but relatively quick, as blood loss would have taken his consciousness before it took his life.

And WORST-worst-case scenario, Mark hadn't made any attempt to free himself, and had resolved to just waste away. He would have died of dehydration and/or starvation, and that would have been the slowest, cruelest fate of all.

Whatever the case, if Mark Hoffman had died, there was no evidence of who had brought him there.

As far as Zep and Adam, the two other souls he had left in that room were concerned, their families deserved closure.

And so, that night, Lawrence typed up an anonymous note, giving the address of the old house and the dank dungeon beneath it, and paid a stranger to deliver it to the police.

Within days, he assumed, the world would know of the fate of the three men, Zep Hindle, Mark Hoffman and Adam.

He wasn't so naïve as to think it would be a big news story. It might not even make the news right away. If the police even took his tip seriously, maybe they would make the whole discovery into a documentary.

Well, that was a bit egocentric. There wouldn't be enough content to fill more than a half-hour. It would just be a big dead end. Or it wouldn't be family-friendly TV.

Family.

Lawrence hadn't seen his daughter and now ex-wife in over five years.

FLASHBACK, November 12, 2004

"What were you doing at that motel, Larry?" Alison asked coldly.

"Nothing, Ali. I promise you, nothing happened." Both parents tried in vain to keep their voices down for the sake of Diana, who was listening from her room.

"Larry, don't insult me," said Alison.

"I was paged, and—"

"And you abandoned your daughter when she needed you the most, to go screw around behind my back?"

"I didn't, Ali! I did not even touch her!"

"So you left the house in the middle of the night to go all the way out there just to tell you that you couldn't fuck her after all?!"

Diana cringed at her mother's use of profanity. Her parents never cursed unless it was a really serious fight.

"Ali, please—"

"It's not even the cheating, Larry. I could deal with the cheating. Men cheat, it's not some kind of secret! It's the faking, the lying, the outright CHOICE you made to turn your back on us, and you left us at the mercy of that psychopath!"

Lawrence stifled himself, knowing that his wife had more to say.

"Have you even thought about what you've done to her?! What you've exposed her to? There's no way to hide any of this from her, Larry! She's been scarred! She knows what kind of a man her father is!"

"I'm a killer, Ali. I know that. I'm a goddamn murder, but I did it for you. You and Diana."

"This is the end, Larry. This is it. There is nothing beyond this point. This is where it stops."

Somehow, in spite of all he was willing to allow her to say, allow her to feel, allow her to be, Lawrence felt a fuse inside him be lit at those words.

"You're a liar," he said coldly. "It was the end a long time ago. You just didn't have the guts to leave."

Alison's eyes widened. Was he really going to accuse her of cowardice now? After he had been sneaking around and skipping out on them?

"Why don't you just admit the truth, Alison?" he sneered. "You've been wanting a divorce for God knows how long. You accused me of pretending to be happy. You're the one who's been pretending."

Alison's nostrils flared at the accusation.

"This whole incident just makes it easier for you. I bet, on some level, you're glad this happened, so you can get out of this marriage and blame EVERYTHING on me!"

"You're right, Larry. You're right. I've wanted to leave, I've been sick of your lying face all this time, but I couldn't do that to Diana! I couldn't let her know the truth about her father; that he's a selfish, lecherous fraud. You don't save lives, Larry—you destroy them."

Lawrence felt his blood run cold.

"Your daughter is going to grow up now, ripped apart from the inside, with the knowledge that her father, the man who is supposed to be her hero, is a traitor and a murderer and a liar!"

"I never lied, Ali. I said I would never leave you two, and I meant it!"

"You left a long time ago, Larry. The second you gave that whore your number, the second you made that date at that motel—I don't care if you went through with it or not—you left us."

Lawrence said nothing.

"If you had just stayed, Christ, if you had just ignored that page, you could have been here to stop that animal Zep from terrorizing us. None of this would have happened if you were just a good man!" Tears were streaming down Alison's cheeks. "Is that really so hard? To be a decent person?!"

Lawrence knew he should cry, beg for forgiveness, grovel, apologize, everything he had already done over the phone while he was still chained up in that bathroom. But he felt something change within him at that moment.

He just didn't have it in him to go on. This wasn't like pulling himself through that dungeon with blood pouring from his ankle. This was his soul beginning to die inside his body. He looked into Alison's ocean-blue eyes—eyes that had once welcomed him with warmth and promise, but now were like a wrought iron gate being closed.

"It's over Lawrence," Alison declared with exhaustion. "I suggest you make peace with your daughter, because I can promise you, with everything I have on you, with every deplorable example you've set, the next time you see her will probably be from your deathbed."

"You can't decide that," Lawrence said softly. "You don't have the power."

"You're right. Legally, you're right. I can't make a judge forbid you from seeing her. But I doubt she will ever choose to be in your presence again."

"Diana, sweetie?" Lawrence said softly as he limped into his daughter's room. He had heard her sobbing this whole time, no doubt she had heard every horrific word exchanged between her parents.

"Go away!" she wailed.

"Diana, I'm so sorry," he said pathetically. He sat down on her bed where she was lying on her side. The pillow beneath her head was soaked with tears. Her face was red and flushed, her hair matted with sweat.

"You already said that," she informed him.

"You know there is nothing in this world that means more to me than you," he whispered, reaching out and stroking her hair. She recoiled and squirmed away from his touch.

"That's not true," she cried. "If that were true, you wouldn't lie! You wouldn't leave us! You wouldn't cheat on Mommy!"

"I never did—"

"Stop it! I'm not some stupid little girl, Daddy! I know what cheating is! I know what you did! And you lied to me about the bad man! You said there was no such thing!"

"The bad man is dead, Diana. I promise you that. I watched him die. I saw it with my own eyes. He is DEAD. He's never coming back."

"But you let him come in the first place!" Diana screamed. "He was in my room and you didn't believe me! You said you would never leave me and Mommy, and that's exactly what you did!"

"I will never stop being sorry for that, honey. Please. Please. Please understand that. I won't ever ask you to forgive me, but you have to know that. You must understand that."

"YOU ARE THE BAD MAN!" Diana screamed, pushing him away.

"No. Diana, I love you so much—"

"Just go away! I hate you!"

The child broke down again in a hysterical bout of tears.

Let her hate him. Let her have her hatred for him. She deserved to have that. She was entitled to her feelings.

"I love you. I will always love you," he sobbed quietly.

"Lawrence," came Alison's voice. He knew without looking that she was standing in the doorway, her eyes boring holes in the back of his head like a drill chiseling through ice.

He shakily stood up, balancing his weight on his cane, and limped out of his daughter's room, maybe for the last time.

He had no defense in court. His only argument as to why he should be awarded partial custody was the fact that he was her father. But Alison's lawyer had too much on him.

His infidelity, his willingness to desert them both, his demonstration of which was what had put his family in mortal danger. The fact that Zep was someone he'd worked with supported the argument that he brought dangerous people into their lives.

The most insidious factor that was presented to the judge, as to why Lawrence was an unfit parent, was the suggestion that he had not been all that forthcoming in his description of his experience.

Alison could tell, the police could tell, and Lawrence could not verbally deny that he was keeping something from the detectives about that night.

Lawrence never mentioned John Kramer, the man who had saved him.

He had fabricated, though it could never be proven that he had, a story in which he had sawed off his foot, escaped the bathroom, cauterized his wound on a steam pipe, passed out in the hall and then simply woken later with a prosthetic foot on his ankle.

No idea how he got it, no idea how long he'd been out, no idea how he even made it back up to the surface.

He had said he simply couldn't remember, and that he had woken up in the hospital with no memory of having escaped that underground chamber.

In the court's eyes, Lawrence was a liar, an adulterer, a danger to his wife and daughter, and quite possibly withholding information from the authorities. While only three of these arguments could be confirmed, they were more than enough to warrant an immediate divorce and a restraining order.

He was no longer allowed to come within one thousand feet of Alison and Diana.

Alison quickly increased that distance when she took Diana with her across the country to start a new life.

Lawrence Gordon had lost his family. The very thing he had mutilated himself and shot another person to keep, had disappeared from his life, possibly forever.

Diana wouldn't forgive him. He tried every chance he could to tell her he loved her, how sorry he was, and that if she ever needed anything, she had only but to ask.

But Diana had gone willingly. Both because his betrayal had cut her too deep, and also because that night, she had seen a strength in her mother she had never known was there.

In the darkest moment of their lives, it was Alison who had stepped up and handled the situation. Diana had watched her mother stealthily free herself from her binds and stab their captor with a pair of scissors. Alison was a hero. She was the hero that Lawrence should have been.

Diana admired her mother more than she could even understand, and when Alison had displayed even more strength in her decision to leave Lawrence, she had been enthusiastically willing to follow her. She would forever side with her mother, because her mother had inspired her with her resolve.

The house was sold, Alison taking most of the profit, and Lawrence had moved into a condo where he would spend day after day, night after night, alone with the echoing statement

"You failed."

END OF CHAPTER 03
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