A Mother's Love - Part Thirty Two
Nov. 13th, 2011 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigo_angelsSilas didn’t drive for long. Within ten minutes, he had stopped the car and popped the boot, making a point of dragging Face out as roughly as possible, while Face made a point of making no sound of pain at all. Even so, once he was dropped on his stomach on the ground in a dark, dank oil smelling garage, he had to take a minute to close his eyes, breathe long and deep and try to get the pain and the fear back under control.
Then Silas was back, and Face forced himself to watch while a silently terrified Adele was dragged in and tied to a metal girder, so she was now standing upright, just in front of Face. Silas was silent until he had finished his job of securing his prisoners and then he dropped down on his haunches, grabbing Face’s chin and yanking it up so they were eye to eye.
“Well then, Peck,” he said coldly, “this is goodbye.” Face just looked at him. “You know I’d have loved to kill you myself, slowly and very, very painfully. But I just can’t run the risk of Smith catching up with me,” he shook his head sadly. “No, that’s not in my plans for the day at all. So I’m just going to leave you here, with your mother for company, which, believe me, is punishment enough for anyone, and I’m just gonna leave this old car running.” He watched Face’s impassive expression carefully. “You know carbon monoxide poisoning isn’t such a bad way to go,” he said softly. “This has really worked in your favour, I’d have had you screaming and begging before the end if I’d had my chance.” Face bit back the retort he would have loved to make and instead just returned Silas’ stare.
“Ah, well,” Silas said, dropping Face’s chin and getting to his feet. “I suppose I had better get going. As much as I doubt that Smith will find you now I’ve switched venues, I’d really rather not take that chance, and so I feel I have to leave.” He looked down at Face again, and then with a hard swift kick to the bullet wound in his arm turned and left.
_____________________________
The pain was so intense that Face found himself swimming towards unconsciousness once more, but knowing that the engine of the car was spewing poisonous fumes towards him, he fought hard, worried that if he let himself go under now, he may never wake up again. He forced his head up off the floor, ignoring Adele who was calling his name repeatedly, and checked out their surroundings. Basically, they were in deep shit. The garage was sealed and there were no windows. It was also a fairly large building which made Face think that they were still in the business district, far fewer nosey neighbours to wonder why a car engine would be running for so long and then he turned to the car itself and his heart sank further.
Modern cars, with their catalytic convertors and carefully controlled combustion produced such a small amount of carbon monoxide that poisoning to the extreme of death would be a very rare occurrence indeed. Either Silas knew this fact, or the gods of fate were frowning at him, but from where he was laid he could see that this car was a Pontiac Sunfire, almost twenty years old he guessed; a perfect car to gas them both to death with. He glanced down at his blood smeared arm, the bullet having gone straight through, carving a heavily bleeding trough in his flesh as it did so, and knew he’d actually be lucky to be alive long enough to die of carbon monoxide poisoning.
“Danny!” Adele was still calling him and he eventually lifted his head in her direction, his levels of irritation with her just about as high as they could go.
“What?” he snapped, “What the fuck have you got to say to me that you think I would be in the slightest bit interested in hearing?”
She faltered into silence, seeming to be surprised by the venom in his voice, before finally coming out with, “I came back to help you...” as if that would make everything else disappear.
Face sighed. “It never occurred to you that I wouldn’t have been in that mess in the first place if it wasn’t for you?”
“I didn’t know he wanted to hurt you!” Adele shot back instantly.
“No, just rob me, that’s much better.” He let out a low mirthless chuckle, “And if you did know what he wanted, would you have stopped him? I doubt it. Not the first time that’s happened, eh? Mother...”
Adele slid into silence, that most unwelcome feeling of guilt starting up once again.
Face lay still and tried to ignore her and the various pains in his body as he wracked his brains for a way out of his predicament.
“So, what’s the plan?” Adele eventually asked him and he gritted his teeth, he’d hoped he’d shut her up for good before.
“Plan?” he snapped back.
“Yes, plan!” Adele had recovered enough to find some of her own snap again. “How are you getting us out of here?”
Face sighed and let his forehead rest on the cold concrete floor before speaking, very slowly and clearly to ensure she understood. “Adele. I’ve been drugged, whipped, beaten, knocked out, shot and hung from my wrists for hours. I’ve got broken ribs, a busted ankle, an eye that can’t see and I’m bleeding all over the floor. On top of that, I’ve been tied up in a way that means I’ll choke myself if I try to move. I hate to burst your bubble, but I won’t be getting you out of anything today.”
There was a minute of silence and Face hoped that meant that she wasn’t going to speak at all, but then his optimism was cruelly dashed. “But... we’ll die...” she whispered, “the fumes!” and somehow that was worse than her belligerent complaints from before because now she just sounded scared, absolutely and utterly terrified, and the part of Face that needed to help people struggled up to the front of his consciousness.
“The fumes won’t get me,” he told her in a dark attempt to lighten the mood, “I’ll bleed out before then.” He glanced up and saw her stark, terrified face and sighed once more, long and hard and wondered how she could manipulate him so damn easily. “Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “Hannibal will come for us.”
Another long pause came from Adele before, “He’s not coming...”
Face lifted his head, suddenly scared, suddenly so damn terrified for Hannibal and what the hell she had done to his team this time that the pounding of his blood made his head throb harder and the blood from his arm flow faster. “What do you mean?” he asked, low and lethal and Adele found she was even more scared than before. “What have you done?”
“Nothing!” she answered, a pleading note in her voice, “I’ve done nothing! I just told him where you were and the trouble you were in and he said he wasn’t coming!”
For a second the iciness of that statement threatened to absorb Face whole as he thought of that, Hannibal, knowing he needed him and not coming, not coming to save him. Not coming to claim him. But then he forcibly injected some rationality into the situation, this was Hannibal, and Face trusted him with everything he was made of. Never once had the boss abandoned him, or any of them, when they had needed him. Hannibal would come, he would. The only thing in doubt was whether Face would still be alive when he arrived...
“He’ll come,” Face told her firmly.
“But, Danny, I told you... I called him and he said-”
“He’ll come,” Face repeated.
She sighed, “Look, I know you think he loves you but when I-”
“He’ll come!” Face roared, feeling the rope tighten on his neck a touch with the tensing of his muscles. Adele swallod her words and stared at him. “And I don’t think he loves me, I know it for an absolute fact!” He turned away from her, her very face making him feel sick. “But I wouldn’t expect you to understand at all, Adele,” he whispered, “’cause no one has ever loved you in your whole empty life.”
“That’s not true!” Adele shot back, her eyes shining in tears. “You loved me! Before-”
She stopped dead and Face let out another mirthless laugh. “Before... Yes, that kind of sums it up nicely doesn’t it? Before you sold me for a few smokes.” He shook his head, “So, your small dependent child loved you, not much of a claim to fame that one is it? It’s not like I had any other options!”
“Your father loved me!” she spat out and the silence that followed was even heavier than anything that had come before.
Face raised his head, ignoring the dizziness that the move provoked and stared at her, the blank fear on her face that told him she knew she was rumbled and didn’t have a clue how to get herself out of her mess. “My father?” he asked quietly, lethally. “You told me you were raped. You told me you didn’t know who he was.”
“I... I... the gang, I did know them a bit. I-”
“Liar!!!” Face yelled and Adele froze as even the car engine seemed to falter in the wake of his anger. “You are a damn liar! Everything you ever tell me is utter crap! You told me you were raped; you put all of that guilt and pain onto me! You let me think I was a product of violence, the offspring of your terror, but they were all lies! More fucking lies!”
He had to stop, his head was swimming, the pain behind his eyes was thumping with his pulse and the cord around his neck fastened even tighter. Tears clouded the vision of his one good eye and he closed his lids, turning his face from her and letting his cheek rest on the cold floor, suddenly so unbelievably tired of this whole game and the things she could do to him with just a few words, so tired.
“Danny?” she whispered as she watched him sag in front of her, her own heart pounding in terror.
“Why do you hate me so much?” he whispered, his eyes closed, blessed numbness starting to seep through him.
“I don’t, hate you Danny, I really don’t.” Were those tears Face could hear in her voice? He wasn’t sure, but couldn’t find the energy to open his eyes and look. “I love you,” she whispered, “I did from the very moment I saw you. You were so little and so perfect and I knew I would never to able to look after you well enough.” Face frowned, shit; she was a good actress, that was a definite sob in her voice then. “And I was young, still a child myself and so selfish, and I knew I was hurting you... and you’d be better off without me.”
“You didn’t do it for me...” Face mumbled heavily.
“No. I didn’t. I did it for me. But in the end it worked out best for you though. Right? You were happy in the orphanage, they were good to you! Better than I would have been.”
Face’s eyes stayed closed. “No one wanted to adopt me,” he whispered, almost to himself. “They always picked me out, but as soon as they discovered I was a foundling, five years old and left out like the garbage, they started to worry about why. Father David tried not to tell them at first, wanted them to get to know me, hoping they’d see past that hurdle but that never worked.” A frown pulled at his brow. “That was worse, because they’d show me things, ‘This will be your bedroom when you come to live with us,’ ‘This can be your bike when you live here’ that type of thing, but then they found out the truth about me and never came back.”
“Danny...” Adele whispered.
“I started acting up,” Face didn’t seem to know she was there anymore; it was almost like he was talking to himself. “Went into juvie at ten, shouldn’t have gone in but I lied about my age, who I was. Thought it would get me off, but instead it got me locked up. And then I figured if people were gonna do what they wanted with me anyway, then why not just let them and make some money out of it as well? But of course all the money went on drink and drugs, shit, anything to help me forget what I was doing...”
Adele couldn’t speak now for the tears streaking her cheeks.
“Father David came looking for me, found me in some Salvation Army place. I’d been beaten up, drugged and raped and he told me if I didn’t go back with him I’d be dead in three months.” A wry smile tugged at his pale lips. “He was right of course. I agreed and he got me clean, helped me get into the army, he knew I needed that structure to keep me straight.” He sighed, pushing all that away from him again, all that fear and pain and despair, everything that was his life before Hannibal. “And that’s when I met John.”
He slid into silence, calmer now, thoughts of Hannibal filling his mind, how it felt to be held by him, kissed by him, loved by him. God, he really hoped all that wasn’t finished for him, he really hoped John would find him in time.
“I’m so sorry, Danny,” Adele whispered into the silence. “For every way I hurt you and all the damage I’ve done, I truly am sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Face told her simply; annoyed that she would interrupt his day dreaming like that. “I don’t love you, I don’t even like you. And after what you did to Murdock?” he shook his head, stopping as the movement tugged at the cord around his neck. “I’d go as far as saying I hate you, and I don’t hate anyone lightly.”
“But after this?” Adele asked him, the pleading tone to her voice clear, “We can try again? Start to get to know each other properly?”
“No.” Face told her flatly. “All you have ever caused me is pain. If I get out of this alive then I am celebrating by never seeing you again.”
“If?” Adele asked, and all that fear was back. “What do you mean, ‘if’? I thought you said John would come?”
“He will,” Face was struggling to get his mouth to work properly now. “I just don’t know if I’ll still be alive when he gets here...”
“Danny! Danny!” Face could hear her calling him, but couldn’t dredge up enough energy to respond or even look at her. He always knew he’d die a violent or unnatural death one day, he’d just hoped that he wouldn’t be alone when he went. Right now though, he’d give anything to be on his own. Dying with Adele had to be the worst possible scenario ever, and even worse, what if she followed him to the afterlife and bugged the hell out of him for all eternity? He shuddered.
“Danny!” he could hear she was crying and found it very hard to care. “Danny! Please don’t give up, don’t leave me here!”
He smiled an ironic little smile, thinking back to that new found memory of being left on the steps of the orphanage, pleading with her not to leave him. Seems life had come full circle for them now. She hadn’t cared when he’d begged her not to leave him all those years ago, so why the hell should he make the effort to stay with her now?
“Danny, please, stay awake!” Adele pleaded, but there was no answer. “Your father!” she called to him in desperation, “Let me tell you about your father! Stay and listen about him!”
“All lies...” Face whispered, just wanting the pain to go now.
“No! No, listen, no lies, I swear to you, Danny, listen to me!” Face ignored her letting the darkness come closer. “Please listen,” she begged, “let me tell you this, it’s the least I can give you.”
“Not interested,” Face murmured, wondering if it was the blood loss or the carbon monoxide that was making him feel so sick. He forced his fuzzy head up and looked at her. She was blurred and the light hurt his eyes, but she looked... broken somehow, all her usual front just gone. “Leave me alone,” he muttered, laying his cheek down on the ground once more, closing his eyes and wondering how long it would take him to die.
But Adele wasn’t giving up. Face could still hear her voice, but it sounded so far away that he thought he must have drifted into another room. She kept going though, and even through the constant droning of the engine, Face could hear her words even though he didn’t want to, even though he knew they would just grind him further into the dirt. Then somehow, they started to put pictures in his head, not of what she was talking about, but of himself, curled up on the bench of the trailer in his pyjamas while Adele read to him, some book that was far too advanced, way above his level of understanding, but he realised he didn’t care. All he cared about was that there was just the two of them, and she was reading to him, to him. Just for now, she was all his.
The warmth of that memory washed over him and took away all the pain and the emotional hurt. It took away the smell of the fumes and the blinding headache, and just like all those years ago, he let himself sink into her voice, not really listen to the words, just the sounds, the soothing cadence, and on that he started to drift.
“I met your father at a peace protest in San Francisco back in the summer of 1973,” her voice was softer than Face had heard it since that long ago day, and wistful, so, so, wistful. “He was called Arthur, I named you after him, and he was a student there. He’d been to Vietnam, a soldier, like you, but when he came back, he wanted to do some good, to change the world, make it a better place to live without the need for more war.”
Face felt like he was floating in a dark warm tank. Nothing hurt, he wasn’t scared anymore, he felt safe and wrapped up tight against the world.
“We fell in love,” Adele was still telling her story oblivious to her son drifting away right next to her. “He was so loving, so sweet and kind and considerate,” she smiled. “Just what I’d always wanted. But then, after we’d been together for nine months I found out I was pregnant,” she paused and Face was lucky that he couldn’t see the look on her face or even hear her words anymore. “I was devastated,” she whispered, “I went straight out to try and arrange an abortion but it was too late, I was too far along, so I did the only thing I could do and told Arthur.” She sighed. “He was thrilled. He was ten years older than me and a baby was just the icing on the cake as far as he was concerned. He proposed, I accepted and we started making wedding plans.”
For a long time she was silent, staring at the floor at her feet as she thought back to the mistakes she’d made and the different way her life might have turned out if she’d made better choices.
“But I got cold feet,” her voice had dropped into almost nothing and Face wouldn’t have been able to hear her even if he had still been awake. “So, I told him I’d miscarried, called off the wedding and moved to LA. I never saw him again.” Hot tears ran down her cheeks as she thought, for the very first time in all those years, how upset he would have been for her just to disappear like that. “He didn’t even know you were born,” she sobbed, regrets pouring out as fast as her tears, “he never got to see you and hold you and know how beautiful you are and how strong and brave and smart and good, just like him. Oh Danny, you are just like him and I never let him know, I never let you know...”
She tailed off into noisy sobs and cried until her eyes were sore and puffy and her cheeks were blotched with red, then she looked over at Face. “Danny?” she called cautiously, noticing for the first time that his legs had fallen to the side and that he was still - very, very still. “Danny!” she called again and yet again there was no answer. “Face!” she shouted at him and when he didn’t answer, when he didn’t even so much as twitch, she started to sob again, leaning back on the girder she was tied to as she prayed for her son’s life.
Next
Then Silas was back, and Face forced himself to watch while a silently terrified Adele was dragged in and tied to a metal girder, so she was now standing upright, just in front of Face. Silas was silent until he had finished his job of securing his prisoners and then he dropped down on his haunches, grabbing Face’s chin and yanking it up so they were eye to eye.
“Well then, Peck,” he said coldly, “this is goodbye.” Face just looked at him. “You know I’d have loved to kill you myself, slowly and very, very painfully. But I just can’t run the risk of Smith catching up with me,” he shook his head sadly. “No, that’s not in my plans for the day at all. So I’m just going to leave you here, with your mother for company, which, believe me, is punishment enough for anyone, and I’m just gonna leave this old car running.” He watched Face’s impassive expression carefully. “You know carbon monoxide poisoning isn’t such a bad way to go,” he said softly. “This has really worked in your favour, I’d have had you screaming and begging before the end if I’d had my chance.” Face bit back the retort he would have loved to make and instead just returned Silas’ stare.
“Ah, well,” Silas said, dropping Face’s chin and getting to his feet. “I suppose I had better get going. As much as I doubt that Smith will find you now I’ve switched venues, I’d really rather not take that chance, and so I feel I have to leave.” He looked down at Face again, and then with a hard swift kick to the bullet wound in his arm turned and left.
_____________________________
The pain was so intense that Face found himself swimming towards unconsciousness once more, but knowing that the engine of the car was spewing poisonous fumes towards him, he fought hard, worried that if he let himself go under now, he may never wake up again. He forced his head up off the floor, ignoring Adele who was calling his name repeatedly, and checked out their surroundings. Basically, they were in deep shit. The garage was sealed and there were no windows. It was also a fairly large building which made Face think that they were still in the business district, far fewer nosey neighbours to wonder why a car engine would be running for so long and then he turned to the car itself and his heart sank further.
Modern cars, with their catalytic convertors and carefully controlled combustion produced such a small amount of carbon monoxide that poisoning to the extreme of death would be a very rare occurrence indeed. Either Silas knew this fact, or the gods of fate were frowning at him, but from where he was laid he could see that this car was a Pontiac Sunfire, almost twenty years old he guessed; a perfect car to gas them both to death with. He glanced down at his blood smeared arm, the bullet having gone straight through, carving a heavily bleeding trough in his flesh as it did so, and knew he’d actually be lucky to be alive long enough to die of carbon monoxide poisoning.
“Danny!” Adele was still calling him and he eventually lifted his head in her direction, his levels of irritation with her just about as high as they could go.
“What?” he snapped, “What the fuck have you got to say to me that you think I would be in the slightest bit interested in hearing?”
She faltered into silence, seeming to be surprised by the venom in his voice, before finally coming out with, “I came back to help you...” as if that would make everything else disappear.
Face sighed. “It never occurred to you that I wouldn’t have been in that mess in the first place if it wasn’t for you?”
“I didn’t know he wanted to hurt you!” Adele shot back instantly.
“No, just rob me, that’s much better.” He let out a low mirthless chuckle, “And if you did know what he wanted, would you have stopped him? I doubt it. Not the first time that’s happened, eh? Mother...”
Adele slid into silence, that most unwelcome feeling of guilt starting up once again.
Face lay still and tried to ignore her and the various pains in his body as he wracked his brains for a way out of his predicament.
“So, what’s the plan?” Adele eventually asked him and he gritted his teeth, he’d hoped he’d shut her up for good before.
“Plan?” he snapped back.
“Yes, plan!” Adele had recovered enough to find some of her own snap again. “How are you getting us out of here?”
Face sighed and let his forehead rest on the cold concrete floor before speaking, very slowly and clearly to ensure she understood. “Adele. I’ve been drugged, whipped, beaten, knocked out, shot and hung from my wrists for hours. I’ve got broken ribs, a busted ankle, an eye that can’t see and I’m bleeding all over the floor. On top of that, I’ve been tied up in a way that means I’ll choke myself if I try to move. I hate to burst your bubble, but I won’t be getting you out of anything today.”
There was a minute of silence and Face hoped that meant that she wasn’t going to speak at all, but then his optimism was cruelly dashed. “But... we’ll die...” she whispered, “the fumes!” and somehow that was worse than her belligerent complaints from before because now she just sounded scared, absolutely and utterly terrified, and the part of Face that needed to help people struggled up to the front of his consciousness.
“The fumes won’t get me,” he told her in a dark attempt to lighten the mood, “I’ll bleed out before then.” He glanced up and saw her stark, terrified face and sighed once more, long and hard and wondered how she could manipulate him so damn easily. “Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “Hannibal will come for us.”
Another long pause came from Adele before, “He’s not coming...”
Face lifted his head, suddenly scared, suddenly so damn terrified for Hannibal and what the hell she had done to his team this time that the pounding of his blood made his head throb harder and the blood from his arm flow faster. “What do you mean?” he asked, low and lethal and Adele found she was even more scared than before. “What have you done?”
“Nothing!” she answered, a pleading note in her voice, “I’ve done nothing! I just told him where you were and the trouble you were in and he said he wasn’t coming!”
For a second the iciness of that statement threatened to absorb Face whole as he thought of that, Hannibal, knowing he needed him and not coming, not coming to save him. Not coming to claim him. But then he forcibly injected some rationality into the situation, this was Hannibal, and Face trusted him with everything he was made of. Never once had the boss abandoned him, or any of them, when they had needed him. Hannibal would come, he would. The only thing in doubt was whether Face would still be alive when he arrived...
“He’ll come,” Face told her firmly.
“But, Danny, I told you... I called him and he said-”
“He’ll come,” Face repeated.
She sighed, “Look, I know you think he loves you but when I-”
“He’ll come!” Face roared, feeling the rope tighten on his neck a touch with the tensing of his muscles. Adele swallod her words and stared at him. “And I don’t think he loves me, I know it for an absolute fact!” He turned away from her, her very face making him feel sick. “But I wouldn’t expect you to understand at all, Adele,” he whispered, “’cause no one has ever loved you in your whole empty life.”
“That’s not true!” Adele shot back, her eyes shining in tears. “You loved me! Before-”
She stopped dead and Face let out another mirthless laugh. “Before... Yes, that kind of sums it up nicely doesn’t it? Before you sold me for a few smokes.” He shook his head, “So, your small dependent child loved you, not much of a claim to fame that one is it? It’s not like I had any other options!”
“Your father loved me!” she spat out and the silence that followed was even heavier than anything that had come before.
Face raised his head, ignoring the dizziness that the move provoked and stared at her, the blank fear on her face that told him she knew she was rumbled and didn’t have a clue how to get herself out of her mess. “My father?” he asked quietly, lethally. “You told me you were raped. You told me you didn’t know who he was.”
“I... I... the gang, I did know them a bit. I-”
“Liar!!!” Face yelled and Adele froze as even the car engine seemed to falter in the wake of his anger. “You are a damn liar! Everything you ever tell me is utter crap! You told me you were raped; you put all of that guilt and pain onto me! You let me think I was a product of violence, the offspring of your terror, but they were all lies! More fucking lies!”
He had to stop, his head was swimming, the pain behind his eyes was thumping with his pulse and the cord around his neck fastened even tighter. Tears clouded the vision of his one good eye and he closed his lids, turning his face from her and letting his cheek rest on the cold floor, suddenly so unbelievably tired of this whole game and the things she could do to him with just a few words, so tired.
“Danny?” she whispered as she watched him sag in front of her, her own heart pounding in terror.
“Why do you hate me so much?” he whispered, his eyes closed, blessed numbness starting to seep through him.
“I don’t, hate you Danny, I really don’t.” Were those tears Face could hear in her voice? He wasn’t sure, but couldn’t find the energy to open his eyes and look. “I love you,” she whispered, “I did from the very moment I saw you. You were so little and so perfect and I knew I would never to able to look after you well enough.” Face frowned, shit; she was a good actress, that was a definite sob in her voice then. “And I was young, still a child myself and so selfish, and I knew I was hurting you... and you’d be better off without me.”
“You didn’t do it for me...” Face mumbled heavily.
“No. I didn’t. I did it for me. But in the end it worked out best for you though. Right? You were happy in the orphanage, they were good to you! Better than I would have been.”
Face’s eyes stayed closed. “No one wanted to adopt me,” he whispered, almost to himself. “They always picked me out, but as soon as they discovered I was a foundling, five years old and left out like the garbage, they started to worry about why. Father David tried not to tell them at first, wanted them to get to know me, hoping they’d see past that hurdle but that never worked.” A frown pulled at his brow. “That was worse, because they’d show me things, ‘This will be your bedroom when you come to live with us,’ ‘This can be your bike when you live here’ that type of thing, but then they found out the truth about me and never came back.”
“Danny...” Adele whispered.
“I started acting up,” Face didn’t seem to know she was there anymore; it was almost like he was talking to himself. “Went into juvie at ten, shouldn’t have gone in but I lied about my age, who I was. Thought it would get me off, but instead it got me locked up. And then I figured if people were gonna do what they wanted with me anyway, then why not just let them and make some money out of it as well? But of course all the money went on drink and drugs, shit, anything to help me forget what I was doing...”
Adele couldn’t speak now for the tears streaking her cheeks.
“Father David came looking for me, found me in some Salvation Army place. I’d been beaten up, drugged and raped and he told me if I didn’t go back with him I’d be dead in three months.” A wry smile tugged at his pale lips. “He was right of course. I agreed and he got me clean, helped me get into the army, he knew I needed that structure to keep me straight.” He sighed, pushing all that away from him again, all that fear and pain and despair, everything that was his life before Hannibal. “And that’s when I met John.”
He slid into silence, calmer now, thoughts of Hannibal filling his mind, how it felt to be held by him, kissed by him, loved by him. God, he really hoped all that wasn’t finished for him, he really hoped John would find him in time.
“I’m so sorry, Danny,” Adele whispered into the silence. “For every way I hurt you and all the damage I’ve done, I truly am sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Face told her simply; annoyed that she would interrupt his day dreaming like that. “I don’t love you, I don’t even like you. And after what you did to Murdock?” he shook his head, stopping as the movement tugged at the cord around his neck. “I’d go as far as saying I hate you, and I don’t hate anyone lightly.”
“But after this?” Adele asked him, the pleading tone to her voice clear, “We can try again? Start to get to know each other properly?”
“No.” Face told her flatly. “All you have ever caused me is pain. If I get out of this alive then I am celebrating by never seeing you again.”
“If?” Adele asked, and all that fear was back. “What do you mean, ‘if’? I thought you said John would come?”
“He will,” Face was struggling to get his mouth to work properly now. “I just don’t know if I’ll still be alive when he gets here...”
“Danny! Danny!” Face could hear her calling him, but couldn’t dredge up enough energy to respond or even look at her. He always knew he’d die a violent or unnatural death one day, he’d just hoped that he wouldn’t be alone when he went. Right now though, he’d give anything to be on his own. Dying with Adele had to be the worst possible scenario ever, and even worse, what if she followed him to the afterlife and bugged the hell out of him for all eternity? He shuddered.
“Danny!” he could hear she was crying and found it very hard to care. “Danny! Please don’t give up, don’t leave me here!”
He smiled an ironic little smile, thinking back to that new found memory of being left on the steps of the orphanage, pleading with her not to leave him. Seems life had come full circle for them now. She hadn’t cared when he’d begged her not to leave him all those years ago, so why the hell should he make the effort to stay with her now?
“Danny, please, stay awake!” Adele pleaded, but there was no answer. “Your father!” she called to him in desperation, “Let me tell you about your father! Stay and listen about him!”
“All lies...” Face whispered, just wanting the pain to go now.
“No! No, listen, no lies, I swear to you, Danny, listen to me!” Face ignored her letting the darkness come closer. “Please listen,” she begged, “let me tell you this, it’s the least I can give you.”
“Not interested,” Face murmured, wondering if it was the blood loss or the carbon monoxide that was making him feel so sick. He forced his fuzzy head up and looked at her. She was blurred and the light hurt his eyes, but she looked... broken somehow, all her usual front just gone. “Leave me alone,” he muttered, laying his cheek down on the ground once more, closing his eyes and wondering how long it would take him to die.
But Adele wasn’t giving up. Face could still hear her voice, but it sounded so far away that he thought he must have drifted into another room. She kept going though, and even through the constant droning of the engine, Face could hear her words even though he didn’t want to, even though he knew they would just grind him further into the dirt. Then somehow, they started to put pictures in his head, not of what she was talking about, but of himself, curled up on the bench of the trailer in his pyjamas while Adele read to him, some book that was far too advanced, way above his level of understanding, but he realised he didn’t care. All he cared about was that there was just the two of them, and she was reading to him, to him. Just for now, she was all his.
The warmth of that memory washed over him and took away all the pain and the emotional hurt. It took away the smell of the fumes and the blinding headache, and just like all those years ago, he let himself sink into her voice, not really listen to the words, just the sounds, the soothing cadence, and on that he started to drift.
“I met your father at a peace protest in San Francisco back in the summer of 1973,” her voice was softer than Face had heard it since that long ago day, and wistful, so, so, wistful. “He was called Arthur, I named you after him, and he was a student there. He’d been to Vietnam, a soldier, like you, but when he came back, he wanted to do some good, to change the world, make it a better place to live without the need for more war.”
Face felt like he was floating in a dark warm tank. Nothing hurt, he wasn’t scared anymore, he felt safe and wrapped up tight against the world.
“We fell in love,” Adele was still telling her story oblivious to her son drifting away right next to her. “He was so loving, so sweet and kind and considerate,” she smiled. “Just what I’d always wanted. But then, after we’d been together for nine months I found out I was pregnant,” she paused and Face was lucky that he couldn’t see the look on her face or even hear her words anymore. “I was devastated,” she whispered, “I went straight out to try and arrange an abortion but it was too late, I was too far along, so I did the only thing I could do and told Arthur.” She sighed. “He was thrilled. He was ten years older than me and a baby was just the icing on the cake as far as he was concerned. He proposed, I accepted and we started making wedding plans.”
For a long time she was silent, staring at the floor at her feet as she thought back to the mistakes she’d made and the different way her life might have turned out if she’d made better choices.
“But I got cold feet,” her voice had dropped into almost nothing and Face wouldn’t have been able to hear her even if he had still been awake. “So, I told him I’d miscarried, called off the wedding and moved to LA. I never saw him again.” Hot tears ran down her cheeks as she thought, for the very first time in all those years, how upset he would have been for her just to disappear like that. “He didn’t even know you were born,” she sobbed, regrets pouring out as fast as her tears, “he never got to see you and hold you and know how beautiful you are and how strong and brave and smart and good, just like him. Oh Danny, you are just like him and I never let him know, I never let you know...”
She tailed off into noisy sobs and cried until her eyes were sore and puffy and her cheeks were blotched with red, then she looked over at Face. “Danny?” she called cautiously, noticing for the first time that his legs had fallen to the side and that he was still - very, very still. “Danny!” she called again and yet again there was no answer. “Face!” she shouted at him and when he didn’t answer, when he didn’t even so much as twitch, she started to sob again, leaning back on the girder she was tied to as she prayed for her son’s life.
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