FicWad

I woke up feeling warm, and comfortable but as I reached out to pull Rian closer to me I felt- nothing. I slowly opened my eyes, expecting to see her beautiful face. I didn’t. She was gone. The spot next to me was empty, as was the cell… and the door was closed.

“Rian?” I rubbed my eyes, exhausted. I’d slept pretty well, but I still needed more sleep. I needed this all to be over. I needed things to be okay. I’d messed up by trying to fix this all.

“I’m here.” Rian answered, from the couch outside of the cell. She was sitting there, curled up… looking completely vulnerable, and exhausted. The lights were on, though dim. I could see that she had been crying.

I stood, yawning… but as I reached for the cell door I realized the keys were no longer in place. “Where is the key?” I asked, out loud.

Rian held it up, before setting it down on the dresser beside the couch. It clanged against the wood. “How does it feel to be trapped?” She didn’t sound happy about the tables being turned, as most people would. She wasn’t happy about any of this.

I hadn’t been either, and still wasn’t.

“Let me out, Rian.” I was gentle with the command, unable to even get irritated with her. I was surprised, really. She had the chance… but she didn’t run from me, even with what I’d done to her, how I’d imprisoned her.

She stayed.

Rian shook her head. “You can’t just do this to people, Gerard.” I took a step back, sitting back down on her bed. I couldn’t fault her for leaving me in here, for however long she chose. “You can’t just lock them up…” She hesitated. “You can’t just murder them.”

There it was, out in the open. We’d never really discussed my dark tendencies. I knew she knew, since she’d witnessed one of the murders… and she’d admitted to knowing, when I had thought she had forgotten, but we’d never really laid it out for discussion.

I didn’t know what to say.

Rian was apparently at a loss as well, but eventually she overcame it and forced the words out. “Those people, I’m sure… I’m sure some of them were bad.” She cleared her throat, obviously uncomfortable. “But not all of them, not all of them could have been, and even if they were… that isn’t your place to judge, Gerard. That isn’t, but you’re trying- and it’s a sickness, even if you think it’s something more… it isn’t. It’s a sickness, and it’s taking it’s toll.”

“Why don’t you let me out?” I asked. “We can talk about this upstairs, over breakfast.” I didn’t want to talk about this anymore.

“No.” Rian forced the word out, as she shook her head. “You need to hear me, Gerard. I’m sure in the past you’ve listened to people, but have you ever heard them? I don’t think so. I don’t think you hear Mikey. I don’t think you hear what’s he’s saying, about how worried he is. I don’t think that you want to, but right now you have to. You locked me up, and now I’m locking you up. I’m locking you up, and you’re going to stay in there until you hear me, really hear me.”

I was stunned by her courage, though I shouldn’t have been. I always knew Rian was different, well not always, but I’d figured it out pretty quickly.

Rian looked at the room, pretty much looking anywhere but at me. She was avoiding my face, but I couldn’t look away from hers. She looked scared, but determined. It was a beautiful, fierce expression. I wanted to take a picture, and frame it.

“Those people all have families, Gerard.” The subject was obviously painful for her, and the tears were building in her eyes again. “They might have been bad when they died, but that doesn’t mean they were always bad.” Her voice cracked. “The more I think about it, the more it hurts. I think of my father, who is exactly the kind of man most people wouldn’t cry over… but he used to be different, and no one knows that, no one wants to remember that.”

I thought of Roger, wondering if anyone missed him. Did he matter to anyone?

“You can’t play the judge and jury.” Finally Rian looked at me. Her eyes sparkled with tears, which were pouring down her cheeks. “It’s ruining you, killing you. It’s wrong for a reason, Gerard.”

I knew that. I had always known that but I’d never thought about it the way that she did. I’d never… thought of my victims as people.

“I got so mad.” Rian’s voice became hard, but only temporarily. It quickly fell away to a more vulnerable tone. “I got so mad at you for doing this to me, for locking me up like an animal. I hated you, I hate you for it… I wanted to hurt you, for hurting me. I wanted to stop hurting. I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone before, Gerard.” Rian stood from the couch, as she played with her fingers… at a loss as to what she should do with them. “But I wanted to hurt you for how you made me feel. Does that make me bad, like your victims? Does that make me worth killing?”

I was shocked by the question. “I was never going to kill you.”

“You were going to.” Rian corrected me. “Before you knew me… and really, I’m not any different from any of your other victims. I just got lucky.”

She was right.

She was right, and that was frightening.

“So all those other people who weren’t lucky… they didn’t get the chance to meet their Gerard, and all those people… well, they never got to meet their Rian, and that might not matter to you, but it matters to me… and it matters to someone else out in the world, even if they never got to know it.”

She was right.

Rian cleared her throat again, as she took a step closer to the bars of the cell. Her fingers gripped them lightly, and she rested her head against the bars as she had done before from the other side. I stared at her, waiting, watching her.

“What happened?” She finally asked, and she sounded thoroughly exhausted.

“What do you mean?” My throat was dry, and the words felt weird coming out.

“What happened between us?” Rian asked. Her eyes scanned the small cell, as she once again looked at everything… but me. “What did I do wrong? … Was it the sex?”

“I-” I licked my lips, as my heart beat quickly against my chest. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.” Rian responded. She took a step back, away from the bars, and stared at me. “People don’t just wake up one day and decide to imprison their… their whatever I am to you. That doesn’t just happen. Something had to make you decide to do this. What happened?” Rian frowned, as she searched my expression for the truth. “Was the sex, was it terrible?” Her fear was fully on display, and I could see that she was terrified of being rejected… amongst other things.

“It was the best I’ve ever had.” I honestly answered, as I did before… when she’d informed me she didn’t feel good enough. It hurt then, and it hurt now. It hurt to know that I gave her this feeling of rejection, this fear… I didn’t want to hurt her, but that seemed to be all that I was doing.

“Then why?” The way Rian looked at me- with that bare, vulnerable, fierce look… I couldn’t lie to her, not when she looked at me like that.

“I didn’t use protection.”

Rian hesitated, obviously confused. “You didn’t… what?”

“You might be pregnant.” I looked towards the floor, ashamed for my actions… and for Rian having to find out like this, when I wasn’t even really sure. Mikey was right though. She deserved to know.

“What?” Rian whispered the word, as she took another involuntary step backwards.

“I was going to buy some pregnancy tests if your period didn’t come…” I felt so stupid, and so selfish now… for keeping this all to myself. “I didn’t want to scare you.” Yeah, so I decided to just lock you in my basement instead… you know, so that you could feel calm.

It was like a fucking vacation, the kind of vacation only the stupidest motherfucker could plan, and that stupid motherfucker was me.

Rian took another step away from me, and her knees buckled. I watched as her lips parted, but all that came out was air. She slid down to the floor, landing lightly on her butt. She brought her knees up to her chest, with a look of complete confusion upon her face.

I didn’t say anything.

I knew that even if I did… at this point she wouldn’t hear me. She wouldn’t hear anything, kind of like how I wouldn’t before.