CONTAINS CONTENT:
Mild language, adult themes, sensuality, threat.
{{Unedited}}
When Austin pulled up to Marielle’s apartment building and parked the car, he left the engine running for a moment, and neither of them moved. His eyes followed a path to her apartment building, which looked like a prison in his mind. He was about to say goodbye to “them” for real, wasn’t he? “What if…” he began, then he paused, dragging his palm down his face and starting over. “What if we just always agreed that we listened to one another’s mouths and not our thoughts? That no always meant no if from the mouth, and yes, the same?” She was silent in her thoughts and with her mouth as she stared blankly ahead. “Marielle, please,” he said with a heavy sigh as he put the back of his head to the headrest. “We can do this.”
“I don’t want to try.” The words felt like knives, slowly pressing into his chest. “You’re leaving soon. We don’t have time to try and work this out,” she said, coldly.
He stroked his chin for a moment, trying in vain not to let more tears make their way into his expression. “If I come back in a year or two and you’re not with Vincent… can we try again?” There was no reply. “Will you give me another chance?”
She flicked her gaze to him, away again, then started to dig in her purse for her keys. “Can you honestly tell me after everything that you wouldn’t be tempted by someone else right now?”
Austin was silent for a moment as he processed her words, “No, look… the problem is with your wording. Would I be tempted by someone else? Yes. Would I do it? No.”
“That’s really your answer?” She cut her eyes to him. “That’s it? You’re just done with your past self?”
He exhaled slowly, and leaned his temple against his knuckles. “I want to be,” he replied. She quickly found her keys and leapt from the car. He dashed out after her. “No, listen to me, I really do want to be. I want to be done.” She had taken her bag from the backseat, and was walking toward her apartment. “No, Marielle, please listen to me… I really do want to be! I can’t just say that I am.” He followed her all the way up to the front door of her apartment. “Please, darling, please…” he was whispering as she opened her door and went in. He dared in after her, if only to sit on her couch for a moment and pet Felix.
After she dragged her luggage to the bedroom and checked her phone, which had beeped, she went and sat down on the opposite side from him. “That was Vincent, he’s getting on the plane, he’ll be here in the morning.”
“Can I stay with you tonight?” he begged, rubbing his right arm. His tattoo must be bothering him. She hadn’t scratched at hers, but they were bothering her as well. This hurt. He was regressing with every beg, plea, and cry.
“Why are you pushing this?” She asked, coldly.
“Because I can’t believe that what caused our end was a stupid dream,” he hissed, looking away. Felix rubbed against his ankles and he looked down at the kitty who jumped up into his lap. He pet Felix for a minute. “I can’t believe that…”
She was glaring at him like he was dumb. “You understand that it’s about more than the dream, right?”
“Of course, I do. But it was some kind of final straw for you that I just…” His voice trailed off.
“Do you know how much it hurts?” She hissed tightly. He stared at her and shrugged after a moment with an eyeroll. “Do you know how much it hurts?” She repeated louder. “Can you bear to imagine me…dream of me with another man?”
He looked down for a moment. “Marielle,” he whispered. “I’ve had to live that reality since it became clear to me that I was in love with you because you’re with Vincent,” he bit back.
“I know, and I understand,” she replied, pressing her lips together for a moment as if stopping herself from speaking, but her mind continued. -But I finally confessed to you how I feel about you fully, Austin. Or did you not catch all of that behind your parents’ house? I’m obsessed with you. I’m addicted to you. You’re in my very soul. I love you so damn much that it hurts.
He turned his body a little more toward her, hand dangling in the air for a moment. “So, let me get this straight; you love me so much that you can’t be with me. Do you know how stupid that sounds?”
She closed the gap between the two of them lightning fast, and placed her hands on either side of his head. In an instant, his head was filled with images of her and Vincent. Their first time together in the offices at the top of the work building. It was her point of view, so what he saw was the way that Vincent was looking at her, adoring her, worshipping her body.
Looking at her with tempered rage, Austin pulled her hands down gently by the wrists as silent tears dropped from his eyes. “You don’t understand, darling…” he breathed darkly. “I’m more open to you than you are to me. I’ve already seen all of that.” Her face contorted in shock, then agony as she broke down, crying again. “It’s my personal hell.”
She fell into the pillows, face first and hid. “And you still want to be with me?”
“More than you can possibly imagine.”
“So when were you going to tell me that you’ve already seen all of that?” She growled embarrassed and frustrated.
“I figured that you knew. I’m sorry,” he said, genuinely. He wasn’t lying. “Remember, we stayed within feet of each other in Italy. Vincent wanted me to feel it… wanted me to know that you’re his.” She was buried in the couch, sobbing. He leaned over her a little, searching for her eyes. “I didn’t want to embarrass you,” he whispered. Then he lifted a hand and gently stroked down her back. “You have walls up against me, you always have. I’ve never had any up against you.” He lifted a hand and shrugged his shoulder. “I’m open to you. I’m with you.” She wouldn’t look at him, and he continued to gently caress her. “But if it’s any consolation, Marielle… I don’t watch or stare. I do my best to look away. Those are your personal thoughts and I always thought that you knew that I could see them, so I always stepped away.” He snuck his fingertips up into the base of her neck and hair, and gently tugged and combed. Her hair was so soft and comforting.
Pausing her sobs, she looked away and swallowed trying to control her embarrassment, she wanted off that topic instantly. “Why didn’t you change your name?” Marielle asked.
He jerked his face back in confusion. “What? What does that have to do with what we’re talking about?”
“Nothing. It has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. Your father told me to ask you why you didn’t want to change your name,” she growled, glaring at him.
He cleared his throat lightly and screwed his eyes up in thought like he was trying to recall whatever it was that he told his dad. “I don’t know, I guess… I think part of me always wanted to redeem it someday,” he stammered.
She processed for a moment, then shook her head into the pillows. “You need to leave. I need to be alone…”
“Marielle,” he barely whispered. “We can work this out. We can do it. You and I are so good together. We work so well together… we can do anything.” There was silence for a moment as she processed. “We can do anything,” he reiterated. “Please. I’m with you.”
Marielle let out a jerky breath, hearing the desperation in his voice, felt the tug at her own soul and how much she wanted to agree with him. She just couldn’t find it in herself to agree, at least not out loud. “No, you need to go,” she said quietly. A pained sound passed through his lips. “Please go, Austin. Please don’t make this any harder than we’ve already made it.”
Slowly, he sat up, resigning himself to his fate once again, but knowing deep down that it was for the last time. He glanced around her apartment, absentmindedly taking it in. They’d shared Chinese food on this couch, had their first passionate kiss. He’d laid in front of that fireplace where she’d told him that he was sexy. He glanced at the door where he’d come back after she’d called him and told him to and they made out so passionately that he thought that he was going to die from the ecstasy that he felt. They’d sat on this very couch when she’d told him what happened with Sabine, Morgan, John and Peter and he’d told her about Erin.
Shakily, he stood, glancing down at her back as she was still buried in the couch and he went to the piano where he played the first few notes from Touch by Sleeping at Last; the same song that he’d lost her to the night that she slept with Vincent.
-Bleeding… is so much easier than losing you. He whispered feeling his heart collapse in on itself as well as his lungs.
He glanced around the apartment one last time, feeling like a lingering spirit… all he was doing now was haunting the space. It wasn’t his. This wasn’t his home. Technically, he had no home… scratch that. -You’re my home.
And with that, he left and closed the door, refusing to think or feel anything else until he got into his car, drove away, and finally let out the tears that had been hanging onto his eyelashes for several minutes.
Once he was gone, Marielle finally sat up, feeling lost, confused, and undecided. She couldn’t hear or feel Austin anymore, so she knew that he was far away. Where? She hoped that it wasn’t somewhere where he’d hurt himself.
After feeding Felix like a zombie, and dragging herself to her room, she opened her closet to put her clothing away and paused when her eyes fell on a bit of red sticking out near the back. She pulled her and Austin’s red dress from the pole and lay it on the bed before slipping out of her clothing and pulling it on over her small frame.
Then she sat on the bed, inhaled, and breathed out slowly.
Austin reached over and took her hand in his. “You’re wearing our dress,” he said, tenderly.
She opened her eyes and gave him a faint smile, now present in the fantasy more than the truth of reality. “I know.”
“Tell me that you want me again… I think I could listen to you say that all day every day and never get tired of it,” he sighed, dreamily as he put an arm behind his head.
She leaned over him, straddling his middle. “I want you so badly, it hurts.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in, then let it out slowly. “You screwed up, darling,” he whispered. “You were supposed to be making me do this all alone. You gave into me.”
She nodded. “I know, but I think that I had to to understand certain things about myself, too.”
“You’re afraid that you’re a murderer.”
“I’m afraid that I’ll make you one. Technically – in a sense – you already are. We’ve both killed people, now. In this fight, in Kingdom, in self-defense…” she reminded. “You kill people for a living sometimes, Austin.” She looked distant. “I don’t know. What I do know is that I am so in love with you that it goes beyond reason…”
“And you were supposed to leave me alone.”
“I couldn’t help that, Vincent told me to go with you.”
“You could have said no,” he sat up and leaned into her face, dark, but teasing. “You’ve been a bad girl…if I were Vincent, I’d punish you,” he said biting his bottom lip into a grin. She flushed and looked down rolling her lips in. He reached up and cupped her cheek. “Oh, how I love you.” She shook her head. He paused, his eyes brimming with tears. “But you need to make it clear that you’re going to be with Vincent now and not speak to me again after I leave.”
“What if Vincent and I aren’t together?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” He leaned over her, forcing her back to the mattress. “I have to experience the full weight of losing you if I’m going to make my final changes within myself.” She nodded, biting back tears. “So go take this dress off… put on something that he loves, fall asleep dreaming of him, be secure in your decision, and when you see him next…after some hard conversations, put the ring on your finger and say yes.”
She processed for a moment. “So, I don’t get you, then,” she said, weakly.
He smiled at her brokenly. “Oh, darling… I’m not sure why you ever thought that you were going to,” he whispered, taking her forehead against his chest.
Then he was gone and she was alone again to cry.
Shakily, she went to her hidden space in her drawer and opened it, looking down into all the little trinkets and items that she’d saved there where they were secret. There were ticket stubs to the opera, there was a little note that he’d scrawled out to her, all that it said was, “see you after work.” There was a little bit of sand from under the pier in a vial that she’d saved. The red jewelry that said “Austin’s.” What did she do with all this now? When did she get rid of it all and move on? She wanted to at this moment, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. So, she closed the false drawer up, curled onto her side, and cried, feeling the tingling and itching from her tattoos and wishing that he were there to rub them for her.
Somehow sleep found her, and in her dreams, she was looking at the faceless, stumbling shadow that was Tundra as he lumbered toward her. When he reached her, she thrust her fist through his chest, and removed his heart. He fell, dead.
Then blackness and a strange sort of deep, sad, peace came over the rest of her dreams as she buried the memory of the nightmare.
She woke up to the sound of the key in the door and jumped up quickly realizing that she had accidentally fallen asleep in her and Austin’s dress. She dropped out of it in a flash, clumsily put it on the hanger, and buried it in the back of the closet. Then she slipped on one of Vincent’s t-shirts and resettled herself on the bed in a resting position and pretending to be asleep as he came, tiredly into the room.
He paused for a moment, leaning on the doorframe, and staring at her. She could feel his eyes as they moved over her bare legs and the rest of her body. Purposefully, she stirred, and opened her eyes to look at him, noticing the silver shimmer up the back of her arms at his presence. Stretching, she sat up a little. “Hi,” she said with a smile.
He smiled, sadly. “Bonjour,” he whispered. Then he dragged his suitcase to the corner of the room near her nightstand and settled it there before sitting on the end of the bed, facing away from her as he loosened and removed his tie. Silence past between them for a few moments. Then he exhaled, heavily. “Did you sleep with Austin?”
Her eyes welled as he turned to look at her. “Yes,” she replied, sadly. She watched his expression start to crack. “In his arms, only,” she clarified. He cocked his head at her, and came onto the bed a little more, drawing his eyebrows in inquisitively. She exhaled raggedly, and tears fell from her eyes. “I… I couldn’t tell you this in a text or over the phone,” she begged. “Please, understand.” He looked concerned again, but she knew that it was for the wrong reasons. Her breath caught in her chest before she choked out, “I lost our son.”
For a moment, he looked like he hadn’t heard her. Or perhaps he had, but the words were not connecting the way that they were meant to; as if he was thinking, she’d lost whose son? Austin’s? No… that wasn’t what she’d said. Then his shoulders fell and his eyes fluttered closed with an exhale. His head hung down between his shoulders. “Masin…” he breathed. Then he looked back up; her face tight and red. “No,” he whispered. She nodded through tears. “No,” he repeated.
She nodded again, sniffling. “Yeah.”
“You…” It still hadn’t entirely hit him.
“Friday night,” she explained. “Austin held me the rest of the nights,” she explained. “I didn’t kiss him, or- he didn’t like touch me inappropriately, or anything,” she paused, momentarily trying to talk about anything other than the loss of her child. “Although, I have to tell you this was extremely hard not to be involved with him. He knows that I love him, and how much I wanted him during this week.” She buried her face into her knees for a moment. “But I told him that I wanted to be home. I wanted you.”
Vincent crawled up the bed to her, and took her into his arms as he leaned back against the wall; everything that might have happened between her and Austin a distant thought, now. He didn’t care, all that mattered was her and her feelings in this moment. “I understand. You were traumatized…you still are, love.” He shook his head and cursed several times under his breath in French as he gently rocked her. “I- I’m so sorry, Masin,” he breathed, tears filling his eyes. “I should have- I should have been more careful,” he stammered. He removed his glasses and dashed the tears from his eyes.
She cried against him for a few moments before she spoke again. “Were you trying to get me pregnant?”
His chest rose and fell. “Oui.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew that you wanted it. But after Cory told me… I- I tried to be careful.”
She shook her head against his strong chest. “Wouldn’t have mattered,” she replied, distantly. “Doctor said I was about ten weeks along.”
“Oh my God,” he sighed and he briefly caged his face before he dragged his fingertips down it. There was a pause. “How do you know it was a boy?”
She shook her head. “Austin.” He cocked his head at her, inquisitively. “He said that he felt it… Vincent, Austin felt our child die. He was the one who knew something was wrong and rushed me to the hospital. He said that he didn’t know how- but he knew that it was a boy.”
Vincent rubbed his face for a moment, then palmed his mouth. “Adelard,” he whispered. She looked up at him curiously. Then nodded. “You told me that’s what you wanted to name a son when we were trying.” He leaned his head fully back against the wall. “God, Masin, how could I have been so stupid.”
“You didn’t know.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he growled. “I’ve hurt you now in more ways than…” his voice trailed off and he looked out the window. “I’ll go,” he whispered, sadly.
She shook her head, and clamped down harder. “No, no that’s not what I want.”
He let out a long, drawn-out sigh. “How can you possibly want to stay with me after all of this?” he asked.
“I want you to listen to me,” she said, pulling back and looking deeply into his eyes. “I told Austin no.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You told him no?”
“I told him that my answer was no. I can’t be with him right now. That’s the end of it.”
He looked like he was processing this and tried to hide a very thin smile. It didn’t work, but he didn’t let it bloom, either. He cocked his head at her, leaning in a little. “What do you need, Masin?” he pressed. “Do you want to talk about this? Or do you want to leave it behind?”
She took in a deep breath as she thought. “I don’t think that I want to talk about it anymore. I mean if I need to-,”
He cut her off, “Sure, sure…” He nodded, taking her close to him for a moment, again.
“But I want some time alone,” she said, making the decision then and there. “I know you’re scared about Cory attacking me again, and I’ll be honest, I am, too… It sounds like he’s got all of Kingdom on his side now.”
“They’re working together to bring in more doubles,” he explained with a bob of his head. “That much was obvious, and Chamber confirmed it while we were in Dubai.”
“I – I know,” she stammered. “Austin and I ran into… another Austin in New York.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “We – well, I – convinced him to abandon Cory’s mission, go back to his home world, and leave us be.”
“How did you do that?”
She shrugged, and looked off distantly. “He loves me.”
Vincent sighed and stroked his chin in thought. “I fear for you and what Cory might do. But I don’t think he’ll be back tonight.”
“Then leave me alone for the next twenty-four hours,” she said. He blinked a few times, processing. “I’ll stay here; I won’t go anywhere except work. I just need time to clear my head. I’ll call you the moment anything out of the ordinary happens. Remember, Cory didn’t get my address, he doesn’t know where I am, anyways.” Vincent nodded, agreeing with her. “Go to Valorant and stay in room ten for the night. I’m not leaving you right now, I just need to be alone. I need to cry, and think, and reorganize.”
“I’ll agree to this,” he explained then he leaned into her face, a predatory smile creeping across his expression, “on one condition…” Her cheeks filled with color, grew hot and she glanced away. “I missed you,” he whispered, as his fingertips moved through her hair, brushing it back from her face. Then he pinched her chin, causing her to look more deeply into his eyes. “Let me comfort you,” he breathed against her lips.
“Will you leave me alone if I don’t let you make love to me?”
He narrowed his eyebrows at her. “You don’t want me, Masin?”
She smirked and met eyes with him again, both knew what she was about to say. “I always want you, Vincent.”
He grinned through the remaining tears and kissed her before he gently lay her out on the mattress before him, leaning down and placing his lips on the space between her hip bone and her bellybutton. She shuddered in a good way and her eyes closed as her back arched a little. He smiled at her vulnerability even though sadness was still moving through both. “I’ll be careful,” he whispered, assuring her.
When they were done, he begged her to let him take care of her; make her breakfast, promising that he’d leave shortly after a quick shower. She agreed, and after she showered and got back into bed, he came back into the room with two plates of eggs and toast with coffee for her.
Then he sat down on the end of the bed with a sigh as she began eating. “Do you know the one thing that really just… sucks… for me?” She watched him in interest. “I got you. I got you, and loved you, and we had an amazing marriage, and then I lost you. And I was so broken by it that I started a journey to try and find you again…” He was poking at his food, and eventually pushed the plate away. “Only to discover that in every other world you were dead, and in every world that you were not? You were desperately in love with Austin; his wife in most of them. I contemplated, weighed things… I could just kill him? Just take aim, then fire from a mile or two away and no one would know. Quick, clean; no pain for him. One shot, and that would be the end of the snake Austin Rancor.”
She cleared her throat and looked at him darkly. “Then why didn’t you?”
He cut his gaze to her. “Did I not make it clear that I love you?”
That was the only answer she needed. She chewed and swallowed. “So, you… you’ve never killed him?”
He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I got close once; toward the beginning of my search. I wanted no evidence, nothing that linked it to me. So, I made a poison- posed as a waiter during an event you were both at; dropped it into his water. The moment that he reached for it I knew that I couldn’t do it. I stopped him… and neither of you ever saw me again.” He rubbed his hands between his knees. “I went as far as to save his life once. Shoved him out of the way of an oncoming car.” His shoulders fell, and his head fell between them. “It doesn’t matter now… they’re all gone,” he whispered distantly. “Every Austin I ever tried to save is dead, and almost all of you.” Marielle stopped for a moment as if she didn’t understand, but then recalled that Chamber had saved one of her doubles. “In my world, you had this eternal hope that if you just loved Austin enough that he could be the man that you need him to be.”
Marielle drank some of the coffee, and forked a bit of the eggs into her mouth. “Can he be?”
Vincent sighed exasperatedly. “Don’t ask me that…”
“Vincent…” She reached out and trailed her fingers down his shoulder. “Can he be?”
He met eyes with her knowing that he could no longer lie, or get out of answers. “Yes… And now here I am. In the same predicament that I’ve always been in. I can’t love you enough, or save him enough to see to it that you always pick me.” He lifted his open hands and shrugged. “I can’t lie to you anymore, Masin. I never wanted to to begin with.” He shook his head. “I planned on telling you some version of what happened and who you were to me that day we were attacked at the fountain.” He stood and put his jacket on. “I understand that you need your time. I’ll see you later today at work, but will stay there for tonight to give you space.”
“Thank you.”
He finished his own coffee and stood, putting his jacket back on. “Marielle,” he knelt by the side of the bed. “I know that you need time, and I am agreeing to it, but I want to reiterate to you that I am…” he squeezed his eyes shut. “I am so very sorry, and I’m also broken over this. This was my child, too.” She nodded, reaching out and stroking through his hair. Then she drew him against her lower stomach and after a moment, he quietly sobbed as if realizing that what once existed there now no longer did and he brushed his fingers against the place and whispered, “I’m sorry.” They were quiet for a moment.
“Can I ask you something that I’ve been thinking about a little bit?”
“Masin, you may ask me anything, now.”
“If Chamber was always the Chamber from this world, why didn’t you just start with this world? And how did you end up here?”
He breathed and sat back. “Chamber was not fully aware of what I was trying to do when I left. He didn’t know you, or our marriage or relationship too well. He didn’t know you yet in this world either. It wasn’t like he just hung out with us in the other dimension, occasionally I called for him and he came. It was usually mission related, and we didn’t speak much about things that were too personal. He only knew that you died, not much about you as a person.” He breathed out slowly, and looked off for a moment before shaking his head and letting it fall between his shoulders. “It was more irony than anything. I promise you that. Maybe fate? He said as much in Dubai.” He stood, and straightened his jacket. “Also… the Chamber from this world? Wasn’t always the Chamber that I worked with,” he noted. She took a moment to consider that and he gave her a diminutive smile and a look that said, I’ll give you time to process that, and left.
***
Austin found himself on the edge of his bed staring at his computer screen. It was the three best photos he’d taken of her over on repeat. He wanted to cling to the way that she was looking at him. He wanted to devour every moment even though it stung each time.
What an odd mix it was… pain…pleasure… pain again. Something sharp felt like it was crawling up the inside of his left arm, which caused him to panic a little bit. “I’m going to have a heart attack, aren’t I?” he thought, absently. But it never came, only the feeling that it would. He twisted the ring on his left hand. When was the right time to stop wearing this? He’d told Han that if she didn’t choose him then he was a widower, right? He was grieving the loss of what could have been his, but wasn’t. When did he just let go? Soon… He stared at her photos and felt the wave of emotions all over again…but not yet.
He had no idea what he’d been thinking, she’d made it pretty clear to him that she wasn’t going to choose him in the end. Then why did this final blow hurt so much? Why did it feel like she was slicing into him; carving his heart out?
‘Because…’ a voice said from behind. ‘You know that you did it.’ He turned to his mother, sitting at the head of the bed, staring at him. ‘The reasons don’t matter, the finer details don’t matter, either. You did it. You created your own problem. You got too close to love and perfection, so you needed to screw it up.’
“I screwed it up a long time ago, Isotta. Now I’m trying to do better.”
‘But you can’t, can you?’ His eyes ping ponged around the room, as he felt his pulse begin to race. ‘Addict. I told you that that was all you were good for. What? You wanted a family? Love? You don’t need love, you’re a god. You’re already loved.’
Another voice broke in and he glanced left; an altogether too familiar face…his. ‘Yeah, like, what’s with all the pretending, Austin? You’re me…’
“No,” he growled back, “And you’re dead.”
‘Am I?’ Tundra mocked, narrowing his eyes at Austin. Then slowly leaning his right cheek down into Isotta’s lap, he smirked at Austin. She smiled down at him, and began to gently run her fingers through his dark hair. ‘Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted?’ he asked, looking up at Isotta, lovingly. ‘Mommy to accept and love you? To please her?’ Isotta smiled at him adoringly, and trailed her fingers down his face to his chest. ‘I please her.’ He said, darkly.
Other voices were starting to crowd Austin’s mind. Women… so, so many women begging for him, crying for him. Just the echoes of them felt like knives to Marielle. He’d felt it, too. He wanted to cut them all out of him; erase them from his past. If only they’d never happened. If only he could be free of them! If only he could remove them and help Marielle see that he only wanted her. It feels like knives… it feels like… he looked down. How did he have a kitchen knife in his hand? When had he gotten up and retrieved it? He lifted the blade shakily, examining it. ‘You know…’ Tundra whispered, biting his bottom lip mischievously. ‘You could start with Alisa.’ The prostitute that he’d been with back in August. With a horrified gasp Austin opened his hand and the gleaming silver clanked to the ground as he looked back up at the two of them.
Tundra crawled toward him, his movements like he was attempting to seduce Austin. Austin watched him in terror until Tundra stopped just short of what felt like kissing him. ‘You know that this is the life that you’ve secretly always wanted.’
Shakily, Austin looked down at the knife on the ground. But there was no knife. Where had it gone? He looked at both of his hands just to make sure, his anxiety pulsing through him at breakneck speeds. He shook his head. “No… no, this is the life that I believe that I’m good for…” he whispered staring into his empty hands. Then he turned back to Tundra, who had moved back up to sit with Isotta. He pointed a finger at both. “I want you two to listen to me carefully because this will be the last time that I ever even acknowledge you both,” he growled. “I promise.” Isotta’s lip curled in anger. “My future is mine.” He pointed to his mother. “You don’t get to create it,” he pointed to Tundra, “and you do not get to guide it.” Then he said the words that had been said to him by both Erin, and Marielle. “I’m done.”
And he sat up in bed, taking a deep breath of air in as he realized that he’d been dreaming. He flopped back against the mattress, telling himself that he was alone. He had never wanted to kill anyone in the way that they were suggesting and he wasn’t going to. The subconscious was a weird thing.
He looked up at Marielle’s photos as he sat alone in the dark, and held his pillow close, molding it against his body. “I miss you,” he whispered. Then he resettled and tried to go back to sleep.
***
Marielle was sitting in her office looking at Hazal. “I think I’m doing better,” she said with a nod. “The situation with Cory really shook me. But I feel like I’m coming along. I am amazed that I was able to sleep after Doctor Rancor helped me,” Hazal explained.
Marielle smiled and glanced at the wall. Austin was in there, but he was keeping his thoughts locked up tight today, and she couldn’t blame him. She was trying to do the same after what had happened during their last bit of time together.
Vincent had taken an overnight bag and left before she had. He’d come here and she hadn’t seen him yet, either.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Marielle said with a forced smile.
“But you don’t look like you’re doing well,” Hazal replied. There was a brief pause, “I see fear in your eyes.” Hazal opened her hands in her lap towards Marielle. “Would you like to give it to me?”
“No, Hazal.” Marielle lifted a hand as if to stop her as she offered Hazal a diminutive smile.
“You’re still so afraid for Doctor Rancor,” Hazal said, distantly.
Marielle closed her eyes and again glanced at the wall. “You know, Hazal, he is a doctor, but he’s so much more. You don’t need to call him that.”
Hazal shrugged as she put her clasped hands over her crossed knee, “I know. But I think it’s respect. He’s a good man.”
Marielle’s gaze flicked up to her, quietly inquiring. Then back down. “Is he?” she whispered.
Hazal nodded. “Can’t you tell? He has fears… deep fears… fears about himself and who he is… and he chooses a different way. That’s what being human is all about.”
“I had some of those same fears this week.”
“I know. I see it.” Hazal stood and reached a hand out to Marielle. “You’re afraid you can’t have this bond with anyone else. Would you like to try with me? Maybe it’s fear based. If anyone would know, I would.”
Marielle hugged herself around the middle and looked down, realizing the mirroring happening with Hazal’s other self. Vincent had told her that her male counterpart had said the same thing. “Do you want me to try with you?” She asked. She cocked her head. “Why? Wouldn’t that create a lot of extra fear in me if I could hear and see your thoughts?”
“I never thought about that… let’s not try,” Hazal said, giving her a chuckle full of dread.
“I’m honored, though; that you’d want to create that bond with someone like me.”
“I’ve never had a best friend,” Hazal explained. Marielle looked down. “I think it would be a little something like that. Would it not?”
Marielle grinned. “I don’t know… Austin and Han are both good friends but…” her eyes started to water, so she had to stop. She cleared her throat as her mind drifted to Vincent. Something occurred to her then that she never had thought of before. As the question came to her, she noted Hazal saying that she needed to get going under her breath. Marielle nodded in response. “Did – did you know that I was his wife?” Marielle dared. Hazal looked over at her with curiosity in her eyes. Her expression seemed like maybe she didn’t understand the question. “Back at the beginning of August when you tortured Vincent. Did you see me in there?”
Hazal paused. “I wondered when you were going to ask me about that. Yes. But I didn’t know that you were his wife.”
Marielle leaned over her desk a little curiously. “Why? What did you see?”
She looked down, biting her lip and hesitating as if she didn’t want Marielle to know, or didn’t want to tell her. “Maybe let it go,” she whispered.
Marielle went to her, and took Hazal’s hand, “Hazal, please.” She paused, “I need to know. What was Vincent’s greatest fear?”
“He saw you marrying Austin,” she explained and then she stood and left.
Marielle closed her eyes as silent tears streamed.