CONTAINS CONTENT:
Language.
{{Unedited}}
“How are you?” Klara asked from behind Vincent as he tinkered with a metallic piece that he’d fit onto their spike.
He turned to her. “I’m okay, I guess.” He paused, crossing his arms over his chest. “How was the holiday?”
Klara shrugged a shoulder and went silent for a moment as she pushed her green beanie back. “Can I be honest?” He nodded, sitting against the stool to listen to her. “I’m scared.”
“What of?” he asked, cocking his head a little.
“All of it. Is there any way that we can extend the timer? I just… I don’t want anyone to be caught in the blast, you know?”
He nodded. “We can probably defuse it, but-”
“-The idea is to destroy Valorant too, the information, the data.”
He nodded again, looking distant. “We don’t want anyone else to have that information. The building needs to come down as well.”
Klara sighed and twisted her fingers together for a moment. “And that’s the part that I’m weary about, I guess…” She cussed under her breath in German.
“We’re not making a defuser… is that what concerns you, Klara?”
Klara shifted her weight anxiously, “I think so. I think it’s potential for too many things to go wrong.”
“For now, Klara… let’s just make sure that the spike is done well, and that the countdown is a little longer to be sure that everyone can clear the area.” He smiled at her. “I have two teleporters, now. If I plant the spike, I’ll be able to get out of there,” he reminded her and he thumbed her cheek for a moment before turning back to his computer.
“When are we trying to go?” Klara asked.
“In a few days,” he replied, but something about it was distant and sad.
She nodded, and wandered back to her work station.
Sabine entered and Vincent noticed a bit more color in her cheeks. That’s right, he thought. She’s remarried, now. He wasn’t sure what all that did for her, but it was evident that she was more content.
She shifted a few boxes around on her station, turned the snake brand off, and turned to him with a nod. “We’re going now, we’re taking Chamber. Wei Ling just healed him up, but she left,” she explained with a heavy sigh. “You know about all of this, don’t you?”
He nodded. “I do.”
“So, Jeanine existed in my world as well?”
“She did, Sabine. She died in that facility.”
Sabine looked down, shamefully, tears pricking the corners of her eyes. She lifted her head and straightened her back. “The team and I are going to try and get to her before Cory does. Although he might have already done so.”
“Fight well, and be safe,” he replied.
She left without another word.
He looked at his watch, and went down to the kitchen for a bottle of water, desperately wanting to visit Marielle, but knowing that she needed her time alone.
He found some water, and when he closed the refrigerator door, Austin startled him on the other side, but Vincent was good at keeping his demeanor calm.
Both men stared at one another for a moment and Vincent noted how raw Austin’s eyes were. Marielle had really rejected him, hadn’t she? Vincent took a large swallow of water, then wiped his chin with his elbow. “I wanted to thank you for how you took care of Masin.”
“Should have been you,” he snipped and for a moment, Vincent wasn’t sure whether Austin meant taking care of her, or dying.
Vincent flicked a brow. “You’re right. I should have been there.” He swallowed more water. “That’s why I’m giving this life up for her.”
Austin’s jaw tensed and his eyes became dark. “Good.” Austin squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “It’s not my job to pick up the broken pieces of the woman that you claim to love and put them back together.”
Vincent nodded, “You’re right.” There was more awkward silence and Vincent looked down into his open water bottle, raising a brow as he thought over the week that had past and what had occurred. “I’m sorry,” Vincent finally whispered, avoiding Austin’s strong gaze.
Austin scoffed and shook his head. “I don’t care who you are anymore… I don’t care about what you’ve done. What I care about is that Marielle is happy,” he said, brokenly. “So, you do me a favor…” He growled through clenched teeth, tears welling in his eyes as he closed some of the space between the two of them. “Stop hurting her,” he said tightly. “Because I swear– I’m on a tight leash right now, but if you make her cry one more time the way that I saw her cry in New York…” He left that hanging in the air, turned away and lifted a hand and dropped it as if swatting Vincent’s image from his view.
Vincent bristled and narrowed his eyes at Austin in a challenging way, “Or you’ll what?”
Austin paused, and looked at him over his right shoulder. “I don’t think that I need to explain myself. I have a feeling that you’ve lost to me several times in the past. You rely on trickery and planning to get yourself out of tight situations. I don’t. I don’t have to.” Austin disappeared down the corridor. “Just stop hurting her…” he hissed from the hallway.
***
Marielle was staring down at her agenda a little shocked. Normally, Liam wrote her schedule out and there was usually some kind of rhyme or reason to it… for instance, an incident during the week might prompt Liam to add someone to her list; someone might have broken down or been acting strangely. This was new, however; the next name on her list– and the appointment was only a few minutes from now was Vincent Fabron. -I guess I’ll be seeing you today, after all, Vincent.
-Did you say something? Austin’s voice came into her mind clearly.
-No… I mean, I did, but not to you.
There was a pause as if he was minorly offended. -You’re doing a good job of keeping those walls up, darling. It’s hard to read your thoughts today.
She looked over her dossier again and sighed heavily. -Maybe you should stop trying to.
He ignored her comment. -I have to be honest, I’m almost impressed.
-Almost? She leaned back and quirked a brow. -Can you stop calling me darling?
-Sure, Marielle.
She knew that he was impersonating Han Solo, and wanted to reply with the rest of the dialogue, but knew that it would take them somewhere that she didn’t want to go right now, and was now trying her hardest to never let that happen again.
She waited for him to argue her further, try to plead his case, beg back into her mind, or any such thing, and he didn’t. He did none of it and it not only shocked her, it scared her. She wasn’t sure how to react. -Are… are you okay?
-No.
There was a pause for a good two minutes. -I’m supposed to talk to Vincent.
-And I care because?
-No, he’s on my agenda… she leaned back in her chair and looked over her right shoulder at Chocolate, the bear. He was still sitting in the same place that he always was, looking down at her. -Is he on yours?
-I already talked to him today.
Her eyes widened and she looked at the wall as if Austin could see her through it. -What did you say?
-I told him to stop hurting you. Because honestly? I’m so over all of this.
-Do you want to be in here when we talk?
-Why the hell would I want that?
-I don’t know what it’s about…but I think I have a feeling.
A pause. -Maybe they just want you to read him.
-I’ve already read him.
-Before we all follow him somewhere and blow things up, and kill people.
-Maybe. I have an idea. Will you come in here if I ask you to? Silence. -Please Austin.
-I’ll do whatever you want, dar- Marielle.
As if on cue, there was a knock and the silver markings on her body pulsed and waved down her flesh.
Marielle didn’t know why she was nervous… this was the man that she gave her body to every time they went to bed together after all, but she felt tingles running up and down her spine.
“Come in,” she said, and Vincent… handsome, enigmatic, majestic Vincent came into the room, consuming it with his presence. He paused to look at her before he lifted his slacks a little at the knee and sat on the couch. “Do you know why I’m supposed to talk to you today?”
“I think you can probably manage a guess.”
“Is that a yes, or a no, Vincent?”
He blinked a few times as he thought. “I’m assuming that they want you to try and assess whether I’m full of shit or not.”
She filled her lungs with air and exhaled glancing right. “Yeah, that’s what Austin was just saying.” Vincent made a little sound in his throat and glanced down. “So, are you?”
“Am I-?”
“Full of shit?” She narrowed her eyes at him darkly.
“What do you want to know, Masin?” He asked crossing his left ankle over his right knee and leaned his temple onto his knuckles. She got a good look at his body that way and she suspected that this was what he wanted. He was in a fitted red button up shirt and black vest today with black slacks, and every bit of it made her want him. She could hear Austin rolling his eyes from the next room, but he said nothing.
“Are you?” She asked plainly.
He nodded, “Oui. I always have been.”
She sighed and wrote something down. “Can you expand on that?”
He was silent for a moment and as she jotted something else, he shifted his palm to cover his mouth. She suspected that this was to remind her of their first few weeks together… that night when she’d taken her shorts off in his presence and he was staring at her. He was looking at her in the same way, now and she offered him a small smile. His eyes glimmered back. “Not until you be a little more specific.”
Silence passed between the two of them for a moment and she tapped the end of her pen against the paper. “You asked me about artificial insemination the last time that we talked about children… you mentioned Chamber.”
“Oui.” He scratched at his left eyebrow for a moment.
She cleared her throat in a way that told him that she was about to get serious so he’d better listen. “Well, if you really know me, you know that I’m not a fan of needles or doctors, really.”
He nodded. “It was one of the hardest parts about you getting sick. You were so scared during the first few weeks. You settled more, but you were in a constant panicked state before that,” Vincent said and she thought she saw his eyes water a bit.
“So… what are you willing to do to keep me?” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Would you let him get me pregnant the natural way?” He stared for a moment as if he wasn’t processing what she’d just asked. “Would you let Chamber sleep with me to get me pregnant?” she said flatly.
He swallowed then sighed. “No.”
“Why?” she pressed.
-Where are you going with this? Austin’s voice broke in from his office. He was listening.
“He’s you, isn’t he?”
Vincent took a deep breath and exhaled sharply. “Yes, he’s me.”
She grew silent, her eyes growing dark. “Then am I …not… me?”
“You are my wife.”
“If I’m your wife… then am I not his wife, too?”
Vincent closed his eyes tightly, removed his glasses and rubbed the space between his eyes with his thumb, pointer, and middle finger. “Do you want Chamber?”
“That’s not what this is about…” Marielle scrawled something down, all business.
-Interesting… Austin interjected. She ignored him. After a moment Vincent replaced his glasses, pushed them back up and looked her over. “I want you to listen to me, Masin. I don’t care who you are anymore. I understand that you are not technically the woman that I married. I also understand that you are in many, many ways.” She glanced down. “But regardless of who you are, or are not, the real important thing is that I love you. You are very much like Marielle, and I want you to be my Marielle again.” He looked as if he was trying to work her out and as if he was realizing that she was testing him.
“Do you? Or are you dreaming?”
Vincent thought for a moment. “I know what I’ve done,” he whispered.
“What have you done?” She cleared her throat and straightened. “Tell me. I want to hear it, beginning to end, the whole story-” she looked right, “-Austin, come in here,” she said, loudly.
A moment later, Austin came in – the second consuming presence in the room – both men fought for dominance with merely their existence in the same space.
For a moment, he looked like he didn’t know where to go, then he settled himself on the couch next to Vincent, but avoided eye contact with him, and leaned to the opposite side on his palm. “Why did you call him in?”
“Because the whole story involves him, too…and I think that after everything that you’ve put him through, he deserves some answers as well; some closure.”
Austin briefly met red, tired eyes with her, then looked away. -Thank you.
Vincent nodded as if finally agreeing to the terms. “What do you want to know?”
She leaned back and looked at him down her nose. “Start at the top…”
Vincent rolled his hand for a moment. “In my world I came to Valorant chasing some information that was important to me. It is still there because I never had the ability to get it. Now, I do. One of my plans toward the beginning was to deceive everyone here, use them to help me get in there, and get it before I blew the place sky high.” The room fell deadly silent. But Austin looked up to the ceiling, shaking his head incredulously.
“Information on what, Vincent?” she asked him, tightly.
The room felt like it was haunted.
Vincent let out a long breath and slowly leaned back, putting his laced fingers behind his head.
Austin flashed him a look that said that he’d better talk, or Austin was going to take him apart.
Vincent cleared his throat. “Why are there so many dimensions, Marielle? Why are we infinite? Who did it? God?” He posed. She shrugged inquisitively. “No, not God. That makes no sense. God would get things right the first time.”
“Kingdom,” Austin broke in, flashing him another look.
“Oui,” Vincent whispered. Then he dropped his hands and put them on his knees. “Kingdom.” The room fell silent again for a beat. “We’re all experiments, Marielle. They’re using us,” he explained, flatly.
–We’re using you, Austin… flashed in Austin’s mind in Barbara’s voice. Marielle flicked her eyes to him, signaling that she heard that thought and that she remembered it, too. Another one from Barbara also flickered in his mind. – And you’re afraid that she’s just going to keep choosing Vincent, aren’t you? Let me spoil it for you… she is. And if not Vincent… Chamber.
Yup. She was, wasn’t she?
Marielle ignored all of that.
“The radianite,-” Vincent continued, “-Kingdom has been using it for years to do incredible things, but they did something that they were uncertain of, and it began a series of events that sparked First Light and simultaneously began creating universes. These universes are still being created, now, infinitely. This was sort of an accident, but once it occurred, Kingdom, and several other corporations started competing for dimensional control, control over radianite, and control over us… radiants,” he explained. She and Austin glanced at one another, stunned, and looked away. “They didn’t count on the fact that Kingdom in other dimensions would also turn against other dimensions, and that a war would start.” There was a pregnant pause. “In the dimension that I come from, Kingdom found some answers that would stop the infinite creation of worlds. Liam had this information hidden away somewhere safe because he used to work for them as did Sabine. I was being paid enormous amounts of money to find this information and get it for a certain… organization.”
“Which organization?”
The air seemed to grow colder, and it wasn’t because of Austin. “The Scions of Hourglass.”
Marielle sat back against the chair.
Austin sighed, heavily. He knew that ISO was associated with them once and his mind twisted with ideas and questions about what exactly he was getting himself into when he went to China.
“I’ve heard of them… they were around when Jeanine,-” she stopped herself.
“Yes, Jeanine Trench. I know all about her. Sabine, Chamber, and the others are going to get her now,” he explained, gesturing outside with his head. “Although, I’m certain that you already know that The Scions of Hourglass did not imprison Jeanine.”
“No, Sabine did,” she said, faintly.
He nodded. “They tried to kill Sabine for it; sent someone to do it for them… failed,-” he looked to Marielle, eyes conveying that she understood something that no one spoke of, ever, “-now, we don’t talk about John’s past,” he finished, looking down.
“I know that he was more than a lab tech, once.”
“Right. He was an assassin. But he doesn’t know that. To the finger point, he doesn’t care because he came out of all of that before he joined Valorant.”
The room felt still, like ghosts were trying to emerge from their hiding place and were being held back by unknown forces.
“Anyways, none of that matters right now. The point is that Kingdom is trying – and has been trying for many years – to experiment on the infinite radiants that exist. This is why you two were captured in the first place,” Vincent said under his breath.
Marielle forced herself to write something down and swallowed hard. “Why didn’t you get the information from Liam? What happened?”
“You,” he admitted, softly and when he said this, his expression softened to her, his eyes full of warmth and desire. “I was there, I could have done it. Killed people, ran. Then I met you by the fountain.” Austin rolled his eyes away and stared at her bookshelf. “I gave it up, and stayed to help instead of hurt.”
“Okay, start from there. How did you end up at Valorant?” she asked, remaining professional.
“I followed Sabine and Liam on a mission, which might have been why I don’t recall what they were after, because it wasn’t at Valorant, they had to travel for it. I called Chamber for backup. At that time at Valorant we could bring a person in, but we couldn’t get out, and that same person could be…” he looked like he was fighting for the right word, “pushed back through their own dimensional scar, back to where they came from. Now, Chamber was different, he already had certain technology and information to control his own actions a bit better, but we won’t get into all of that right now,” he sighed and looked up at Chocolate the bear as if noting it for the first time. He ignored it. Austin flicked his gaze to Vincent to watch him from the corner of his eye, but said nothing. “Liam was captured and I had to decide to either help him or abandon my mission… I can’t exactly explain why, as generally I am not known as helpful, but I decided to help him. Well, we did I mean.”
“You and Chamber?” Marielle asked.
He nodded. “I introduced myself; they took me back to Valorant. Chamber followed, but at a distance. The next night Chamber left, there was a party to celebrate Liam’s rescue… I met a beautiful woman,” he explained, his mind full of the memories of the two of them by the fountain and her lovely tear-soaked face.
“Me?”
He nodded again, and turned his gaze briefly to Austin. Austin didn’t acknowledge him. “You were crying…” he swallowed hard and loosened his tie. “Austin had already been at Valorant for a year or two. Similar to here, he wasn’t officially an agent, but the United States government had sent him to follow someone else for a time… Kiritani, I think – which, of course led him there.” He cleared his throat as he removed his tie. “I don’t know the whole story anymore, but what I do know is that Austin seduced Marielle early on, and at some point – I don’t know the time frame – you and him had created your,-” he looked like he was trying to hold back vomit, “-truly unique bond.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “I fell in love with Marielle instantly, I’m pretty sure that she knew this, both of our eyes spoke to one another of passion that night. She was attracted to me, too that was obvious. But she was loyal.” He raised an eyebrow ironically. “She was dating you and you were ten times the scum bag that you are here.”
“Were,” he growled in response, but he didn’t look at Vincent.
Vincent raised his hands in mock surrender. “That night I had been alone, wondering what I was doing there at all. Had I wanted to get away? Change my life? I have no idea. Chamber had already gone, and Marielle appeared out of nowhere gorgeous and pure, but crying her eyes out. Austin had been –” he bobbed his head, “I don’t remember exactly, but I believe he’d kissed Reyna. Or he was at least very…friendly.” Vincent’s eyes had become sarcastic slits when he said friendly. “I spent a few minutes with Marielle alone, I danced with her… I wanted her, but I did nothing. She forgave Austin as she always did, and life moved on.” He paused, as if merely remembering these things made his mind thick with fog. “I hung around Valorant for a while offering services, technology and the like, but one of my biggest desires of course was to be closer to Marielle.” He went quiet and closed his eyes. Then he opened them again. “I built friendships; minor and major. Liam became like a father figure to me, Hazal became one of my best friends, Cory was like a brother,-” he turned to Austin again, “-and so was Austin.”
“You built a relationship with Austin,” Marielle stated. She knew this already but wanted him to expand.
Vincent stared into nothing, “Oui. We fought together, side by side many times. I admit that one of my biggest reasons for wanting to be in his presence was his proximity to you. I wanted what I couldn’t have, but that didn’t stop me from wanting it.”
“And I’m the pervert,” Austin said under his breath, tears below the surface.
Vincent ignored him. “For about a year, I stayed, left, came back, strengthened my friendships…but I always wanted Marielle. No matter where I went, who I saw, who I killed, all that I ever thought about was her and my heart continually tested and crushed when Austin would cheat on her behind her back over and over again.
“Did he ever try to sleep with you?” Austin growled.
Vincent became strangely quiet as if recalling something that he didn’t want to, “I don’t want to talk about that.” There was a pause. “I was his friend. I loved him…” He cut his gaze to Austin, “the same way that I love you.” Austin scoffed and looked away shaking his head. “Don’t ask me why I love you, I couldn’t say… Chamber talks about fate a lot. I think it has something to do with it. Or maybe it’s simply that I see you-” Vincent looked at Marielle, tears forming in his eyes, “-through her eyes.” Austin closed his eyes again and swallowed hard. Marielle wiped a tear away at the realization that this might ring true. “Doesn’t matter… sooner or later it became obvious that I was in love with Marielle, and Austin became spiteful over the situation, doing everything that he could to rub it in my face. He had you, I didn’t. You were his…” Vincent’s eyes became dark. “You were always going to be his. He owned you.” He sniffed and looked off, stroking his bottom lip with his middle finger. “Then you two married, and everything continued to go downhill. You abused her – used her for that power to try and calm your anxiety, which you never worked out, so it only grew. And because it did, so did your addiction and your abuse. You didn’t get help, and long story longer, you eventually pushed her so far that she had to run from you. She ran to me. It wasn’t shocking, she knew that I loved her and wanted to protect her. It solidified our relationship as enemies… even though at times we had been like brothers.” The room fell quiet for a moment. “There was a night – the night that she finally came to me – that you came to my door, broke in, tried to claim her back for yourself. You were completely unhinged. Drunk? I don’t even know. Cory and Hazal came to help remove you from the property.” He paused for a moment. “After that night, Marielle and I casually dated, but I did nothing until the divorce was final. I promise you that.”
“I believe you,” Marielle said. Austin continued to say nothing, but his jaw tensed.
“Marielle and I married about six months later, and we had a beautiful marriage for almost three years.”
“We were like really young,” Marielle noted.
Vincent nodded, “I don’t know why but things had accelerated there. I believe it had something to do with the presence of Cory and Finola.” The room was quiet again. “I loved Marielle, she loved me… we had our differences, we fought like French,” he chuckled. “We laughed a lot.” Austin’s eyes were watering again and now he looked angry as his eyes slowly darted anywhere except Vincent or Marielle. They laughed a lot, too. “Austin was our shadow for a while, we eventually had to get a restraining order. But over time he seemed to vanish more. I always believed that he was nearby; just learned to hide himself better, but it seemed like he’d gone away. He was in and out of Valorant anyways, sometimes he’d gone to other countries. One time he was gone for over six months. Marielle and I lived our lives; had a passionate love life… and then one day she collapsed. We thought nothing of it at first,” he chuckled, ironically. “Heat stroke.” He shrugged. Vincent became serious again; dark. “Then it happened again… and again. Then one day, I didn’t recognize her immediately. We went to the doctor, and a series of tests confirmed the worst. She had an aggressive cancer in her left leg. If she was lucky, she’d get four to six months. Marielle is stubborn, but she accepted death quickly, and I took care of her the entire time that we endured. I died over and over again as I slowly lost her. Some of her last words were making me promise not to kill you. Austin. Tundra.”
“Ironic,” Austin growled flicking his blue eyes to Marielle, considering that she was the one who killed Tundra.
“Things spiraled for me. I lost all sense of myself, time? What was time? I never woke up feeling alive… just a shell. My only desire was to have Masin back. So, I quietly started fantasizing about what I was going to do to get you. We were working on different fusions, and one of our goals was to break into other dimensions. The leading technologists on this part of the equation were the O’Fallon’s… and the government wasn’t giving them the go ahead even though they knew what to do. So, I planned to steal the information to come and find you, and kill them in the process. At first, they were just thoughts. I don’t know when it moved from thoughts to action, but one moment I was realizing that everyone at Valorant was dying including me…and the next moment I was blowing up a factory with information that was vital for it all to succeed. I just wanted to run.”
“From them?” Marielle asked.
“From everything,” Vincent replied. “From myself. I’d lost myself entirely. I was once Chamber. Now I was empty…cracked… living in a dream. There was no cure, only suffering. And I don’t know how to explain this, maybe it was the radianite, maybe it was the sickness from it on our world, but slowly I began to realize that a lot of the people at Valorant were,-” he took a moment to purse his lips and shake his head, “-on my world? They were not good people. So much of who they really were came out. Murderous tendencies, desires for control, power, world domination. I wanted to get away and then the body of a young dark-haired prostitute was discovered locally and I don’t know how I knew, but…”
“Okay, enough,” Austin whispered, holding back a dry heave.
“It was what she looked like,” Vincent whispered. “She looked like Marielle.” Austin caged his face. “I just wanted to run. So, I did. It took me some time; about ten months, I think…but I did. I ran. I figured out the cure, and I ran.” He leaned the back of his head against the couch. “My goal was to find and help Marielle,” he explained. “Marielle actually wanted this as well. She knew what we were doing, and what the goal was; to cross to another world. She wanted me to find her again.” Vincent’s eyes became dark again. “And in every world that I went to, she was dead,” he growled. “And in every world where she was not… she was married to you… and to my shock and horror, you were a good guy and she was also happy.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Vincent flashed Austin a look, “I only knew Tundra, Austin.”
“You really want to see me hurt, don’t you?” Austin growled, silent tears on his face. “Like, you really want to see it.”
“I did,” Vincent admitted. “Not anymore.”
“What do you want now?” Marielle asked looking between them both.
Vincent looked into Marielle’s eyes, “I want you to be happy.”
“You wanted her to fall in love with me to hurt me when she chose you in the end.”
“I don’t control her, Austin. She could choose you now if she wanted to.” Neither man looked at each other.
-Darling, do you hear him? Please, choose me. Austin pinched his eyes shut, hating how his mind continued to beg even though he knew that it was done.
“All of this was always for you,” Vincent said to Marielle. “I planned to tell you either that day that we were first attacked, or sometime shortly after depending on how the rest of the day went. I wouldn’t have dropped all of it on you at once, but after we were attacked, I was forced to lie myself out of the situations.”
“No, you were going to lie to her anyways,” Austin growled. “Because you were going to conveniently leave out the part where you killed innocent people and went hopping through dimensions to find another her just to soothe yourself,” Austin hissed. -And I’m obsessive? “You knew that if you told her the whole story you were screwed anyway. That’s why you conveniently continued to tell her that she was your wife without telling her that actually… she’s mine,” Austin scoffed and he finally cut his dark eyes to Vincent’s. “In all dimensions. She’s mine.”
“Which is why she can choose you.”
Marielle was silent, watching the two of them and thinking on their words. “She never would have wasted her time with you if she knew who you really were.”
“Yes, and you came to Valorant to screw her, break her heart, and leave,” Vincent reminded, his body relaxing cooly. “So, I guess we both lose.”
Austin scoffed, let out an audible growl, stood, and paced for a moment. “Has no one else considered how difficult this has been for me? I was destined to come here and fall in love with her; something that I’ve never experienced in my life, mind you… and now I can’t have her.”
Vincent pulled his face back, incredulous. “Oh, I’m so sorry that you have to deal with the consequences of your own actions,” he scoffed, raising both hands and dropping them back to his knees. “I don’t feel sorry for you.”
“Well, of course you don’t! You win!” Austin barked. “But, I’m in her head! I know what she’s thinking and feeling… I felt your son die! I’m the fool of fortune, here! You’ve beaten me! The way that you’ve always wanted to, right, brother? And by the way you did it the way that you always do… with tricks. With smoke and mirrors!” he hissed spitefully. “There’s just one problem with your valorous plight,” he said sarcastically. “I’m… not… Tundra. So whatever anger you’ve taken out, you’ve pointed it at the wrong guy, you charlatan. I’m a screw up, but I am innocent in this.” He turned away from the couch, looking out the window and down at the fountain over Marielle’s left shoulder as he raked his black hair back from his reddening face.
Marielle glowered at Vincent. “And what do you have to say about that?”
Vincent looked her over coldly. “I have nothing to say about that. He’s right. You’ll get no arguments from me.”
“Damn right, I’m right. Every bit of you is fake,” Austin sniped.
“Not every bit, Austin… I love Masin and I will always love her. That is real. I also have worked hard in the last several weeks not to lie to her anymore, and I haven’t, she knows this. I’m not as fake as you want to believe I am. I was in a position that was difficult to work through.”
“Will you get off your throne? Will you stop trying to pretend that we’re not all just a bunch of chess pieces for you to mentally maneuver and move around so you eventually get everything that you want?” Austin seethed whirling back to Vincent again and pointing at him.
“You are right about all of those things, yes. I told you from the get go, I was going to use you or kill you.”
“And you’ve used me well.”
“Oh, yes, let us all go and have a good cry over Austin Rancor and the way that he’s decided to live his life…” Vincent replied coldly. He was so controlled. “You did this to yourself, brother! I practically gave her to you.”
“Hey, I am no one’s to give,” Marielle growled.
“You know what I meant, Masin,” Vincent said. “You know that I don’t think that I own you.”
“Well, you’ve got me, there,” Austin said, tightly. “But she’s stuck with me, and I’m stuck with her and she tells me that when I leave that we’ll be free of each other- but… I’m pretty sure that we both know that’s a farce. When I was putting a gun to my head, she still felt it despite there being more than fifty feet between the two of us. What is that,-” he glanced out the window as if trying to gauge it, “-ten miles? I hear her thoughts, Vincent…”
“And what is she thinking right now?” Vincent pressed calmly. This was all his show.
Austin met eyes with Marielle, who looked away from him with tears rimming her own. “She hates me.”
“Why does she hate you?”
“Because I’m the only one who can change her mind… ever can, ever could… I’m the only person who makes her question her decisions; makes her want to do things that she shouldn’t want to do…like cheat.” He turned back to the window and stared blankly. “And I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“No, you’re not,” Vincent hissed, eyebrows drawn together.
“I’m sorry because it was wrong and because it hurt you. I’m not sorry that I did it. I love her,” he explained. He looked down at Marielle who was searching his eyes. “I love her,” he whispered, saying it to her. He raised an eyebrow as his gaze drifted away and distant. “And it’s not enough,” he breathed. Marielle closed her eyes and wiped more tears away. Austin straightened and rebuttoned his tawny coat before clearing his throat, sniffing, and raking his hair again. “Do whatever you’re going to do. I’ll need to go at the end of the year and I’ll do my best to leave all of this behind although I think we all know how that’s going to go.”
“You’ll be fine, Austin,” Vincent replied, taciturnly.
Austin rolled his eyes upward, smiled ironically, and shook his head before he left the office without saying another word. -I can’t be in there anymore.
Marielle stared at her desk for a moment. “So, what are your real plans for in your dimension?”
“Kill Cory. Kill anyone who tries to kill us. Destroy Valorant. That’s it,” he replied flatly. Marielle wrote something down. Then paused, staring at it as if she’d just looked down and discovered a cockroach. “How do I know that you’re not going in there to get this information? How much were they planning on paying you?” She asked.
He stretched his back as his face twitched a little. “A billion dollars,” he said flatly.
Her eyes widened. “Holy…”
“Yeah. I gave it up.”
“Because you loved me? Even though I was someone else’s?”
“Oui,” he replied like that was all that there was to it. “I can’t explain it, Masin… The moment that I saw you, all that I wanted was to be better. Was to be a better man. You made me believe in good and love, and hope.” She glanced down as her silver tattoos waved over her skin. “So, what do you think, Masin?” Vincent said after a moment, “Am I full of it?”
She cleared her throat and met eyes with him. “As was before, you are… and you also are not.”