Pamela is made of (hemlockandhoney) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-05-09 02:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | catwoman, poison ivy |
Who: Les cousines! Wren & Brielle.
What: Ruh-roh.
When: Very recently, but after Brielle's conversations with Jack & Alex, which I don't feel like linking to.
Where: Caesar's.
Warnings: Epi & I completely destroyed a relationship, a family, and our own characters in less than 2 hours. PAAARTAY. Also known as the Birdemic of logs.
Wren was as exhausted as she could ever remember being. Even nights in Seattle weren’t as tiring as the work shifts she was pulling, and her aching shoulders were the only thing that proved to her that, yes, she was alive. Nothing else mattered, and she was starting to give up hope that it would. Less than a week in, and she was a pale memory of herself. She missed Gus so badly that everything hurt, and there was no one to talk to, no one to cry on, and no one to tell about how badly Alexander’s recording had shaken her. She wondered, then, how she’d done it for years, been alone, without anyone but clients. It helped that she spent no time in the suite, no time in Las Vegas, really, that wasn’t working or checking in with the police department and her lawyers to prove she hadn’t skipped bail. She gave Selina everything else, from the time to sleep, to the time to play. Sleeping in Gotham seemed to work just as well as here, and it had the added bonus that she didn’t remember any nightmares she had there.
It was unexpected, being in the suite that early. Wren’s last client had rescheduled, and she had wandered down to the villa, expecting the same quiet emptiness that was always there now. She still hadn’t straightened anything up, and the living room was quickly becoming a dust covered memory to two weeks of life that would never be recaptured. But there was a light in Brielle’s room, and Wren felt a moment of hope. She hadn’t seen her cousin since the night she’d stitched her up, and the light promised the possibility of a friendly face.
Wren walked down the hall, and she looked in the open room. The door was mostly ajar, and she had to step all the way inside to see Brielle asleep on the bed. When Wren moved closer, it was to take a look at her cousin’s arm (which was bared) to make sure there weren’t lines of red around the stitches, but something else caught her attention. Closed in Brielle’s hand were two polaroids, and Wren’s first thought was to wonder that polaroids still existed, because these looked fairly new, maybe a year old at most? But that thought had barely formed before she noticed the subject of the pictures that were clutched in her cousin’s hand, lovingly, like they mattered more than anything else in her cousin’s mostly non-existent possessions.
Luke. The first picture was of him asleep, shirtless, from the torso up. The second picture was of him smiling at the camera, happy.
Time stopped, and Wren would have backed out of the room, turned and gone and fallen apart somewhere else, in a bottle, in Gotham, somewhere not here, but in her rush to turn, she almost tripped over a shoe that was tossed in the center of the room. She caught herself on the nightstand, wincing at the sound the lamp made as it crashed onto the tile floor, and then she straightened.
Time collapsed in on itself when the exhaustion came ringing its bell toll through Brielle’s bones. Such things led to all kinds of inopportune naps and late hours. A slanted stack of milk white limbs tangled in the briar patch of a rose patterned dress. Her hair was a shadow cast half across her face after some dream spun shift onto her side. Closer to those pictures caught betwixt piano fingers. Brielle had never truly forgotten that she had the pictures. They were a short stack that huddled at the bottom of her purse within a rubberband's grip. It was a chronicling of her freedom - or had been, until she'd had to sell the camera for a quick fifteen bucks while traveling through West Texas. Only two pictures featured Luke, but those were the only two she'd dug free before crawling atop the bed's duvet. Contrary to how close she held the pictures while in rest, she'd called upon them only in worry before drifting off to sleep. After seeing Luke again, it was difficult not to worry. She could feel the static crawl of anxiety all over her body, even in sleep.
Maybe that accounted for the dream. Dreams shouldn't have been so dark, but this one was stark and colorless. Brielle had been poisoned, in the dream she knew that much. Death would be coming soon. She could feel life leaving her.. not, not life, other things. Humanity, emotion, fear..
Crash.
Startled into awakening, Brielle nearly tumbled off of the bed entirely. Getting thrown out of the dream and back to the wolves of fear was a strange, gut-wrenching experience. It spun the world on its head, and Brielle had to blink twice in the midst of her scramble to find upright posture. Then she spotted Wren. "Cousine?"
Confused, still muddy in the narcotic dregs of sleep, Brielle frowned. "What happened?" Something in Wren's expression made her more alert instantly. "What's wrong?" Then, in French. "Qu'est-ce qui ne va pas?" The polaroids were on their celluloid stomachs now, but Brielle's attention dropped to their lily white backs and her hand fell atop them in a quick conceal that she knew was already too late. "Let me explain.." Oh God, she didn't want to do that either.
Wren watched that hand, that attempt to conceal the photo, the secret, and that put the nail in the coffin. She straightened, the hopeful smile that had graced her pale features moments earlier gone, replaced by something that struggled for distance and failed. “Qu'est-ce qu'il y a d'expliquer?” she asked, because what explanation could there need to be? She knew Luke better than she knew herself most days. She knew his expressions, she knew what each one meant, she knew his features down to the point of nuance. She knew what she’d seen in those photos. He’d told her nothing had mattered, no one had mattered. But the Luke she knew wouldn’t smile like that at someone who’d only been a night in a dark corner, no. And he wouldn’t trust anyone to sleep beside them like that either, to not wake as a camera clicked. No. It wasn’t the fact that it had happened, because she couldn’t begrudge him that, but she could begrudge him the lie.
“You’ve seen him?” Wren asked, meaning since Brielle had been in Las Vegas, and it was a hunch, but a very good one. She’d given Luke Brielle’s name, and Brielle wasn’t anything common - no Nancy, no Jane, no Amy. And there was no way he wouldn’t have made the connection, not with the French spattering of words and the name. No. Not with him coming to this suite every night while she worked for the past two weeks to check on Gus. “Who decided to keep it from me, cousine?” she asked.
Pain delved into her eyes, although Brielle knew that she had no right to be hurt. She just didn't like that flicker of betrayal in Wren's expression, she could see it lurking even now, in the corners of the mouth and between sleek eyebrows as the questions came. "Yes.." The admission rose hesitantly, paired with the sour wine of shrinking shoulders. Brielle wasn't sure if she should elaborate on that or not. Her mouth opened and lips fumbled with words that never came. She didn't know what to say, but her eyes lit up at the follow-up question. "Nobody.. we weren't keeping it from you--" But that wasn't true, was it? "Everything happened so fast," teeth found her lower lip and dragged it pale and bloodless as she struggled to find ground. "We didn't know how to tell you." Then, "I'm sorry."
It was the we that stung the most, and Wren flinched back from it, away, almost tripping on the shoe from earlier again. That we didn’t know how to tell you. It was lies layered on top of lies, scabs on wounds that hadn’t healed, and she was too broken to stand there and pretend it didn’t hurt as badly as it did.
We.
Wren didn’t ask what they had, if it had been love, if it had been more. She didn’t need to. Those pictures said a thousand words, and there was no erasing them. She’d fled New York, but she’d never lied, and she looked away for a moment and tried to find her voice. When she did, it was husky and thick with tears that were clinging to her lashes in defiance. “Maman, you remember my maman, cousine? Maman always said there was no trusting a man, not when it came to other women. I did not learn that lesson well.”
She turned to go then, Wren, hand on the door and one glance back at the polaroids. Her gaze lifted back to Brielle then, gray and quickly going cold, a light going out behind black irises, something lost that would never come back. A last bit of trust, of belief, or something that tasted of hope. “Which of you mentioned it first? Keeping it from me? Was it his idea, or did he just agree with you?” There was no indication what the right response was, and maybe that’s because there was none.
There wasn't fear here, not with Wren, but this moment held the same numb vacancy of words. Of voice, of ability to know what to say to make it better. To make it stop. Brielle closed her eyes at the sound of Wren's voice clouding with tears, wishing it away. Make this all part of the dream. "Wren," she sighed, "please." Opening her eyes, Brielle slid off of the bed in advance of her retreating cousin. She wanted to explain that it wasn't like that. This wasn't an act of deceit.. she didn't know quite what it was, but it wasn't that.
When Wren faced her again, it was the cold that stopped Brielle in her tracks. She hesitated, realizing for the first moment that this might be what it felt like to be truly hated. "I don't know," she admitted on a shallow inhale. There was the need to straighten, to remain composed, to match the cold.. but she couldn't do it. Brielle licked her lip and shook her head, casting hazel eyes away to the window. "It was me." It probably was, she couldn't remember. "I didn't want to see you hurt.." There was a pause, a clenching of her teeth. ".. like this."
Wren shook her head when Brielle slid off the bed. No, was the sentiment, as Wren moved back into the doorway completely, hands up in a don’t touch me gesture that was universal. Wren didn’t believe her, she found, about who’d decided and who’d agreed. But it didn’t matter, not really. “No,” she told her cousin. It wasn’t that simple, and it wasn’t about her being hurt. Maybe it was, on some level, but it was still a lie, and she wondered how long they would have kept it if she hadn’t walked in with her cousin’s fingers clutched around those pictures. “It’s not that it happened. If you’d told me, it would have been fine. It’s that you decided together, after seeing each other, to lie, Brielle.” But the words weren’t even angry. They were cold, distant, numb and ice, and she shook her head one last time. “That he decided to lie.”
Maybe the normal thing to do would be to scream, Wren thought, to rant and cry and call Luke and fight until it was better. To kick Brielle out, to tell her that she never wanted to see her face again. All that bravado about telling other women to stay away, all that whispered pillow-talk with Luke, it all hinged on his desire, his want, and now that was all lost in secrets and lies and polaroids. She didn’t tell Brielle to go, and she didn’t scream. She couldn’t call Luke, and she figured Brielle probably would as soon as she was alone. Like every woman who thinks she’s been cheated on, Wren imagined secret rendezvous and assignations, but she didn’t ask.
It was all Wren could do to turn around, and to leave the room without collapsing and losing what remained of her pride. Gotham, she decided. Selina could stay in Gotham as long as she wanted. She’d lose the suite, but she didn’t care. Brielle would have somewhere to go, she thought, swallowing back a sob with a fist shoved against her lips.
In the end, Brielle didn't go after her. She didn't call Luke either. She just sat back on the edge of the bed, beside the incriminating evidence of those pictures, and she watched the empty hallway of the bedroom door for a long moment. Not her door, because no matter her sleeping in here, Brielle had never felt entitled to Wren's hospitality. Probably because she'd always known the truth. That she'd betrayed her blood. Not just the incident with Luke, but before even that. Back in Florida when Brielle should have tried to of helped her more, but helped in shipping her off to Nevada and hoping for the best.
It felt like an hour, but it was probably only minutes, that she watched the door. At some point, she'd slid to the floor on fair knees. Brielle finally blinked the wet out of her eyes, keeping tears of shame from falling with a quick swipe of her fingers. She didn't really deserve the tears anyway, and it was the easiest thing in the world to get to her feet. To slip on her shoes, to shove the pictures back into her purse, and to head with it all out the door. Coming to this city had been a mistake, she just didn't know if Ivy would let her leave.