Fic: Gossamer (16/18)
Mar. 14th, 2012 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sara_wolfTitle: Gossamer
Rating: PG
Warnings: some violence
Summary: "Paige, you're pregnant." Three weeks after her parents' death, Paige receives some surprising news. What she decides next will change the course of history, not only her own, but that of the family she doesn't even know exists...
*****
One year later
Paige came home to the sound of her daughter's laughter. Pax was running through the house, slipping on the hardwood floors in her footie pajamas. Her hair, pulled back in a pair of pigtails, was already coming loose, wisps of dark hair flying around her face.
Sneaking up behind the little girl, Paige scooped Pax up in her arms, her daughter's bright shriek of laughter filling her ears.
"Mama!" she cried, her arms flailing, wildly.
"I love you so much," Paige told her daughter, hugging her, tightly. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes when she felt a pair of small arms wind around her neck.
"Love you, Mama," Pax told her. "Wanna play hide and seek?"
"Isn't it a little late for you to be up?" Paige asked, a moment later, pulling back and looking down at Pax. "Why aren't you in bed? And where's your father?"
"I'm not tired," Pax told her, a hint of a whine in her voice. "And, Daddy's gone," she added, and Paige's eyebrows flew up in shock.
"Daddy's gone?" she repeated, incredulously. "And where exactly did Daddy go?"
"He left," was all the further answer she got out of her little girl.
"Did he ask Mrs. Weston to come and stay with you for a while?" she pressed, trying to get a bead on the situation. Pax shook her head, solemnly, and Paige felt her ire rise.
What kind of man had she married, that he'd apparently left the house in the middle of the night, leaving their daughter alone by herself? What the hell had he been thinking?
Forcing herself to put her husband's strange behavior out of her mind, Paige went through the routine of getting Pax ready for bed. After brushing her teeth, washing her face, and three bedtime stories, she finally settled Pax down to sleep.
Then, Paige headed toward Nick's study, determined to find some answers. Entering the empty room felt strange; Nick worked all hours of the night, and his study was never so silent. Flicking on the desk lamp, Paige started to go through the papers scattered carelessly across the top of the desk.
She was hoping to find something, anything that would indicate why he'd felt the need to run out in the middle of the night, abandoning their daughter. Documents from work, or evidence of some sort of shady business deal, or love notes to a girlfriend, or – actually, she was hoping not to find that last one. She didn't think her ego could take being cheated on.
Reading through the last of the papers and finding nothing, she turned her attention to the desk drawers. The first few drawers she opened were nothing out of the ordinary, more paperwork from Nick's office that she expected to be there. Then, in the lowest drawer on the left side, her questing fingers found a seam at the back of the drawer.
Wedging her fingernails into the crack, and mourning the loss of a perfectly good manicure, Paige pried at the seam until the false bottom came loose. Pulling it up with some trepidation, Paige wasn't sure if she felt relief or disappointment when the only thing she found in the hidden compartment was a small black book.
'Guess he's cheating on me, after all,' Paige thought, dismayed, as she plucked the book out of the drawer. 'The least he could have done was picked something less cliché to insult my pride and ruin our marriage with.'
Flipping the book open, Paige raised a shocked eyebrow at the list of names written in Nick's small, neat handwriting that filled the pages. There were addresses, phone numbers, even physical descriptions, and for one wild second, Paige was tempted to ring up the first number in the book and demand to know how long the woman had been sleeping with her husband.
But, as she gave the contents of the little notebook a more careful scrutiny, she realized that at least half of the names in the book were male. And quite a few of them had Xs by the names. It was like Nick was checking off a to-do list.
Pausing at one name, Paige frowned as she re-read the address. It was the apartment building that had been on the news, that morning, where a young girl had been found brutally murdered in her home. And when she looked at the name, again, it, too, sparked in her memory. After a few seconds, she realized that it was the name of the girl that Henry had been telling her about, his runaway parolee.
Paige felt sick as she stared down at the book, and at the dark X marked by the girl's name. She didn't want to think about the significance of the X – but she kept coming up with darker and darker possibilities.
'Evidence,' she told herself, firmly. 'I need more evidence than the address of a dead girl's murder site before I jump to any rash conclusions.'
Even though a part of her insisted that this was her husband she was talking about, that she should ignore everything and just leave the room, she forced herself to get up out of the chair and start prowling around the room. She went through everything in Nick's office, taking books off the bookshelves and flipping through the pages, uprooting the potted plant in the corner and sifting her fingers through the soil, even using Nick's silver letter opener to slash the cushions on his expensive swiveling chair and pulling out the stuffing.
The oil painting of Pax that she'd given him for his last birthday was the last place she looked, and Paige winced with a nearly-physical pain as she took the painting off the wall. She'd spent a lot of time on the painting, and it hurt her to think that Nick would use something so precious to hide his dirty little secrets.
She breathed a sigh of relief, though, when she saw a nearly-invisible seam in the wall that had been hidden behind the painting. She wasn't going to have to destroy her work, after all. Wedging the letter opener into the seam, she wiggled her impromptu crowbar back and forth slightly until the sheetrock of the wall gave under the pressure. She worked her way through all four seams, catching the section of wall when it fell into her arms.
'Most men have wall safes put in,' she thought, irritated with Nick on a whole new level. 'My husband chooses to use our home as a testing ground for his amateur carpentry skills.'
Straightening back up from her crouch, Paige sucked in a sharp breath at what she found in the hole in the wall. She pulled out a rust-colored hooded robe, a sharp, silver dagger, a chalice crusted over with flecks of dried blood, and an amulet set with a dark ruby in the center.
'What the hell?' she thought, incredulously, as she stared in horror at the bloodstained items hidden in the hole in the wall. 'Just what is Nick getting himself into?'
When she heard a noise from behind her, she whirled around to see Nick standing in the doorway, watching her with suspicious eyes.
"What are you doing in here?" he demanded, harshly. "I told you never to come into this room-"
"Why not?" she shot back, as a slow burn started in her chest.
She was furious. With Nick, for getting into something that put their daughter at risk, and with herself for not seeing that something was wrong, sooner.
"Didn't you want me finding this-" she snapped, stepping aside and stabbing a shaking finger at the hole in the wall, "-whatever the hell this is?"
Nick's eyes widened in momentary shock, and if she hadn't been watching him so closely to see his reaction, she would have missed it altogether. Then, his expression smoothed out into a blank mask, and he moved slowly into the room, clapping mockingly.
"Very good," he sneered. "Looks like you've found my little secret."
"What is this, Nick?" Paige demanded, furiously, glaring at him. "Why are there names crossed out in a book? Why is everything covered in blood?"
"Well, if you really need to spell it out for you-" Nick began, scornfully, and Paige slammed her hand down on his desk, silencing him, abruptly.
"Damn it, Nick, this isn't a game!" she shouted, as she glared across the room at him. "What the hell have you gotten into? What kind of monster are you?"
"A demon, actually," Nick said, casually, and Paige felt like the wind had just been knocked out of her.
"What?" she asked, in disbelief, completely floored. "You're-"
"A demon," Nick repeated, patiently. "You know, brimstone, hellfire, human sacrifice-"
"Those names in that book," she said, slowly, horror in her voice. "You killed them."
"Well, not just me," Nick told her. "But, yeah, I killed them."
"And, what?" Paige demanded, angrily. "Are you going to kill me, too?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Nick said, with a scornful laugh. "I can't kill you; that would raise too many suspicions."
"You can't possibly think that I'm okay with something like this," Paige retorted, incredulously.
"You don't have to be okay with it," Nick told her. "In fact, after I'm done, you won't remember any of it."
He reached for her, and Paige instinctively dodged out of the way. She reached blindly behind her, grabbing something sharp and heavy off his desk. Then, as Nick grabbed at her, again, she slammed the object into the side of his face with all of her strength.
Nick howled in pain, blood gushing down the side of his face where the heavy, crystal paperweight had struck him, and one hand flew up to cover his wounded eye. Paige darted out of the reach of his free hand, sprinting down the hallway to where Pax was sleeping in her bedroom. She slammed the door shut behind her, locking it with shaking hands, and then she turned to look at the little girl who was sitting up in bed, blinking at her in confusion.
"Mama?" she asked, sleepily.
"It's okay, baby," Paige said, soothingly, as she crossed the room to her daughter's side. "I didn't mean to wake you up."
Bending, she gathered Pax into her arms, staring apprehensively at the closed door. She didn't dare go back out into the hall; not when Nick was going to be waiting for her. And going out of the window was out of the question; they were two stories up, and she couldn't risk Pax getting hurt by the fall.
Nick slammed into the door, suddenly, from the other side, and she clutched Pax to her chest, making the little girl whimper.
"You can't hide from me, Paige!" Nick shouted, his voice menacing. "Why don't you just make this easier on yourself and come out, now?"
"Go to Hell!" Paige shouted, furiously.
In response, Nick slammed his fist into the door, again. The wood splintered, a long crack running up the length of the door, and Paige shrank back in instinctive fear. Another blow had the door flying open, slamming back against the wall, and then Nick appeared in the doorway, a dark expression on his face.
"You could have made this painless on yourself," he told her, as he stalked forward, slowly. "But, you stubborn little idiot, you just had to take the hard way, out."
Then, as Nick reached for her, she felt something swell up inside her. She felt his hand close, painfully, around her arm, and then the world disappeared in front of her eyes in a flash of white light…
Continued here
Rating: PG
Warnings: some violence
Summary: "Paige, you're pregnant." Three weeks after her parents' death, Paige receives some surprising news. What she decides next will change the course of history, not only her own, but that of the family she doesn't even know exists...
*****
One year later
Paige came home to the sound of her daughter's laughter. Pax was running through the house, slipping on the hardwood floors in her footie pajamas. Her hair, pulled back in a pair of pigtails, was already coming loose, wisps of dark hair flying around her face.
Sneaking up behind the little girl, Paige scooped Pax up in her arms, her daughter's bright shriek of laughter filling her ears.
"Mama!" she cried, her arms flailing, wildly.
"I love you so much," Paige told her daughter, hugging her, tightly. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes when she felt a pair of small arms wind around her neck.
"Love you, Mama," Pax told her. "Wanna play hide and seek?"
"Isn't it a little late for you to be up?" Paige asked, a moment later, pulling back and looking down at Pax. "Why aren't you in bed? And where's your father?"
"I'm not tired," Pax told her, a hint of a whine in her voice. "And, Daddy's gone," she added, and Paige's eyebrows flew up in shock.
"Daddy's gone?" she repeated, incredulously. "And where exactly did Daddy go?"
"He left," was all the further answer she got out of her little girl.
"Did he ask Mrs. Weston to come and stay with you for a while?" she pressed, trying to get a bead on the situation. Pax shook her head, solemnly, and Paige felt her ire rise.
What kind of man had she married, that he'd apparently left the house in the middle of the night, leaving their daughter alone by herself? What the hell had he been thinking?
Forcing herself to put her husband's strange behavior out of her mind, Paige went through the routine of getting Pax ready for bed. After brushing her teeth, washing her face, and three bedtime stories, she finally settled Pax down to sleep.
Then, Paige headed toward Nick's study, determined to find some answers. Entering the empty room felt strange; Nick worked all hours of the night, and his study was never so silent. Flicking on the desk lamp, Paige started to go through the papers scattered carelessly across the top of the desk.
She was hoping to find something, anything that would indicate why he'd felt the need to run out in the middle of the night, abandoning their daughter. Documents from work, or evidence of some sort of shady business deal, or love notes to a girlfriend, or – actually, she was hoping not to find that last one. She didn't think her ego could take being cheated on.
Reading through the last of the papers and finding nothing, she turned her attention to the desk drawers. The first few drawers she opened were nothing out of the ordinary, more paperwork from Nick's office that she expected to be there. Then, in the lowest drawer on the left side, her questing fingers found a seam at the back of the drawer.
Wedging her fingernails into the crack, and mourning the loss of a perfectly good manicure, Paige pried at the seam until the false bottom came loose. Pulling it up with some trepidation, Paige wasn't sure if she felt relief or disappointment when the only thing she found in the hidden compartment was a small black book.
'Guess he's cheating on me, after all,' Paige thought, dismayed, as she plucked the book out of the drawer. 'The least he could have done was picked something less cliché to insult my pride and ruin our marriage with.'
Flipping the book open, Paige raised a shocked eyebrow at the list of names written in Nick's small, neat handwriting that filled the pages. There were addresses, phone numbers, even physical descriptions, and for one wild second, Paige was tempted to ring up the first number in the book and demand to know how long the woman had been sleeping with her husband.
But, as she gave the contents of the little notebook a more careful scrutiny, she realized that at least half of the names in the book were male. And quite a few of them had Xs by the names. It was like Nick was checking off a to-do list.
Pausing at one name, Paige frowned as she re-read the address. It was the apartment building that had been on the news, that morning, where a young girl had been found brutally murdered in her home. And when she looked at the name, again, it, too, sparked in her memory. After a few seconds, she realized that it was the name of the girl that Henry had been telling her about, his runaway parolee.
Paige felt sick as she stared down at the book, and at the dark X marked by the girl's name. She didn't want to think about the significance of the X – but she kept coming up with darker and darker possibilities.
'Evidence,' she told herself, firmly. 'I need more evidence than the address of a dead girl's murder site before I jump to any rash conclusions.'
Even though a part of her insisted that this was her husband she was talking about, that she should ignore everything and just leave the room, she forced herself to get up out of the chair and start prowling around the room. She went through everything in Nick's office, taking books off the bookshelves and flipping through the pages, uprooting the potted plant in the corner and sifting her fingers through the soil, even using Nick's silver letter opener to slash the cushions on his expensive swiveling chair and pulling out the stuffing.
The oil painting of Pax that she'd given him for his last birthday was the last place she looked, and Paige winced with a nearly-physical pain as she took the painting off the wall. She'd spent a lot of time on the painting, and it hurt her to think that Nick would use something so precious to hide his dirty little secrets.
She breathed a sigh of relief, though, when she saw a nearly-invisible seam in the wall that had been hidden behind the painting. She wasn't going to have to destroy her work, after all. Wedging the letter opener into the seam, she wiggled her impromptu crowbar back and forth slightly until the sheetrock of the wall gave under the pressure. She worked her way through all four seams, catching the section of wall when it fell into her arms.
'Most men have wall safes put in,' she thought, irritated with Nick on a whole new level. 'My husband chooses to use our home as a testing ground for his amateur carpentry skills.'
Straightening back up from her crouch, Paige sucked in a sharp breath at what she found in the hole in the wall. She pulled out a rust-colored hooded robe, a sharp, silver dagger, a chalice crusted over with flecks of dried blood, and an amulet set with a dark ruby in the center.
'What the hell?' she thought, incredulously, as she stared in horror at the bloodstained items hidden in the hole in the wall. 'Just what is Nick getting himself into?'
When she heard a noise from behind her, she whirled around to see Nick standing in the doorway, watching her with suspicious eyes.
"What are you doing in here?" he demanded, harshly. "I told you never to come into this room-"
"Why not?" she shot back, as a slow burn started in her chest.
She was furious. With Nick, for getting into something that put their daughter at risk, and with herself for not seeing that something was wrong, sooner.
"Didn't you want me finding this-" she snapped, stepping aside and stabbing a shaking finger at the hole in the wall, "-whatever the hell this is?"
Nick's eyes widened in momentary shock, and if she hadn't been watching him so closely to see his reaction, she would have missed it altogether. Then, his expression smoothed out into a blank mask, and he moved slowly into the room, clapping mockingly.
"Very good," he sneered. "Looks like you've found my little secret."
"What is this, Nick?" Paige demanded, furiously, glaring at him. "Why are there names crossed out in a book? Why is everything covered in blood?"
"Well, if you really need to spell it out for you-" Nick began, scornfully, and Paige slammed her hand down on his desk, silencing him, abruptly.
"Damn it, Nick, this isn't a game!" she shouted, as she glared across the room at him. "What the hell have you gotten into? What kind of monster are you?"
"A demon, actually," Nick said, casually, and Paige felt like the wind had just been knocked out of her.
"What?" she asked, in disbelief, completely floored. "You're-"
"A demon," Nick repeated, patiently. "You know, brimstone, hellfire, human sacrifice-"
"Those names in that book," she said, slowly, horror in her voice. "You killed them."
"Well, not just me," Nick told her. "But, yeah, I killed them."
"And, what?" Paige demanded, angrily. "Are you going to kill me, too?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Nick said, with a scornful laugh. "I can't kill you; that would raise too many suspicions."
"You can't possibly think that I'm okay with something like this," Paige retorted, incredulously.
"You don't have to be okay with it," Nick told her. "In fact, after I'm done, you won't remember any of it."
He reached for her, and Paige instinctively dodged out of the way. She reached blindly behind her, grabbing something sharp and heavy off his desk. Then, as Nick grabbed at her, again, she slammed the object into the side of his face with all of her strength.
Nick howled in pain, blood gushing down the side of his face where the heavy, crystal paperweight had struck him, and one hand flew up to cover his wounded eye. Paige darted out of the reach of his free hand, sprinting down the hallway to where Pax was sleeping in her bedroom. She slammed the door shut behind her, locking it with shaking hands, and then she turned to look at the little girl who was sitting up in bed, blinking at her in confusion.
"Mama?" she asked, sleepily.
"It's okay, baby," Paige said, soothingly, as she crossed the room to her daughter's side. "I didn't mean to wake you up."
Bending, she gathered Pax into her arms, staring apprehensively at the closed door. She didn't dare go back out into the hall; not when Nick was going to be waiting for her. And going out of the window was out of the question; they were two stories up, and she couldn't risk Pax getting hurt by the fall.
Nick slammed into the door, suddenly, from the other side, and she clutched Pax to her chest, making the little girl whimper.
"You can't hide from me, Paige!" Nick shouted, his voice menacing. "Why don't you just make this easier on yourself and come out, now?"
"Go to Hell!" Paige shouted, furiously.
In response, Nick slammed his fist into the door, again. The wood splintered, a long crack running up the length of the door, and Paige shrank back in instinctive fear. Another blow had the door flying open, slamming back against the wall, and then Nick appeared in the doorway, a dark expression on his face.
"You could have made this painless on yourself," he told her, as he stalked forward, slowly. "But, you stubborn little idiot, you just had to take the hard way, out."
Then, as Nick reached for her, she felt something swell up inside her. She felt his hand close, painfully, around her arm, and then the world disappeared in front of her eyes in a flash of white light…
Continued here
