Part Six: The Pendulum Swings

It wasn't just the slight noise; it was that the slight noise prefaced the louder noise, and the louder noise became accompanied by banging on the door, rattling at the doorknob, and the rise of both of them from off the bed, her arms still clutched around his neck, his arm placed protectively around her waist, his hand reaching out, palm forward.

Stop.

Don't.

No.

In his eyes a useless denial, and a moment later, a look that makes her stomach churn and heave. Suspicion, and directed at her. She can't look at the door, which shakes and begins to buckle, she can only turn her face into his chest and cry again on his skin. She feels his fingers close on her hip, a desperate pulse of a heartbeat underneath her cheek, and he's standing, and away from her.

Stark naked and beautiful in the dim light, his slim scarred form moving towards the door with a tentativeness that she hasn't seen in him before. He's strangely unsure. He's been in this situation before, there's no doubt of it, but it catches him unawares every time, and he still doesn't know what to do about it.

There's no help for the door; its coming open, slow but sure. He turns away from it with his breath escaping harsh from his harmed throat, his eyes stare blankly, unseeingly at her, and he takes her by the arm, just below her elbow, and yanks her up off the bed.

"Did you," he says, without breath enough to finish question, but she knows what he's asking.

"No!" she cries, screams. "You have to believe me, Jackson! Its not because of me!"

He turns her loose and she rubs at her arm. He strides toward the window, twitching aside the curtain impatiently, and heaves it up.

"Whether you knew it or not," he says, leaning out to let down the fire escape from its trappings on the brick wall near him, "it is because of you."

She was already crying, she can't cry any harder, but she thinks her heart is going to escape from her mouth. She wraps the sheet around herself dumbly, watching with dull eyes as he twists away from the window. She sees the bullet hit before she hears the sound of its escape from the gun; it misses its intended target and strikes instead the clock radio on the table by the TV. She hadn't expected there to be so many sparks from such a small object, electronic or not. Without thinking, she blows in that direction, willing the spark into raging life as a fire to burn them down before they die.

The spark dies, instead.

Jackson's form is half-clothed now, as he pulls his trousers up and catches them swiftly around his waist, the zipper still undone. He's breathing hard, like he's been running, and his aching, exhausted body slumps at the shoulders, his arms hang loose at his sides, and he stares blankly at the unforgiving walls.

There's no tunnel to freedom, here.

His former adversary stands beside him, nearly naked, and just as frightened.

They look at each other, now, and know that there's no time left; they squandered what they had, or used it a different way than they could have, or maybe if they are allowed to look back on it years from now, they won't regret it at all. The everlasting knight stood there between them, stairs leading up and stairs leading down, all bases covered, all exits to freedom lost. The sword had hung at its height for as long as gravity could manage to allow, and now the door burst open and the blade began to fall.

Caught on the return.

She'd quested and searched and been followed.

She didn't know, she never quite found out, if it was police or his own former organization. The outcome was the same, and this time there was no sound at all; just the roaring in her ears, to see him at her feet,and life disappear, as the sword found its mark. She cried for timelessness as all around her people rushed and hurried, and cried because she was spared and he was not, and cried for all the everything that had gone wrong, because the whole time she'd known him, she hadn't ever gotten what she wanted.

A life with him.

Not a death; a life.

So she stood, the sheet still around her, and the marks of his fingers and his tears and his love still on her, more indelible than any scars. They, the inexplicable but undeniable They, wouldn't let her remain; but hustled her off and down the stairs and out into the street and into a car and along roads she didn't know and back into her father's arms, with admonitions that he watch her more closely this time. Her last sight before she closed her eyes for all of this was Jackson's face turned towards her, eyes still open though bloodied.

She let herself believe that he had blinked.

She told her father that she had wandered into oblivion and only just found her way back.

She lived her life in vain hope and hidden search.

She let herself believe.