Chapter Text
The one night you needed Vincent home on time and where is he? Nowhere to be found. God only knows and even then, given your well-kept quiet disbelief in the deity, you’re not sure even he would know.
The one singular night in the entire time you’ve known Vincent- let alone been married to him- that you needed him home on time and yet here you are! Standing underneath the blinking streetlamp outside of the studio, key in hand as you slink down the shadowed alleyway and jam it into the hole with perhaps a bit more force than necessary.
You can’t rightly say if it’s the nerves that’s making you antsy- cranky- or the eerie quiet of the building as you step inside. The quiet was, of course, not unexpected logically- but you cannot help but think there is something wrong with a place you have only ever known to be full of sound and chatter and people to be empty.
The key to the studio slides into the waistband pocket of your skirt just as you finish locking the door behind you and start to make your way to Vincent’s office. It hadn’t occurred to you to check and see if his car was in the front parking lot before poking around the building and you really hope this won’t all be for naught.
Surely he’ll be happy to see you if he was in fact, still here. He’d called earlier- to see how your appointment went, you figure… and to lament how Richard roped him into some time sensitive affair that he couldn’t skip at the absolutely last minute. You hadn’t picked up despite being home to take it… listening to it ring endlessly and shrill while you wallowed on the couch.
Truly, you hadn’t wanted to ruin his day- or inadvertently ruin his broadcast. Surely, if you burst into tears over the phone he would have come running, or worried endlessly stuck in the studio. It was for the best you chose the lesser or two evils, in your mind.
Hopefully it didn’t worry him too terribly that you hadn’t picked up- and in fact, much to your relief, you suspect it hadn’t given that he did not come home on time…!
Perhaps he merely thought to give himself a break from your most unbecoming of moods as of late… and that is something you couldn’t really blame him for, either. At least now… at least now you knew what it stemmed from.
However, now nearly midnight or thereabouts- you had long surpassed your own anxiety and then your patience... you need your husband. Unlike earlier in the day when you were first wrestling with the news, you’d like to have this talk about the child- the child you were currently growing inside of you, bizarre as that was- as soon as possible.
Even if it meant traversing the darkened studio you considered a facet of your home for years and years now- from before even meeting Vincent, although he certainly made it worth staying...
At the far end of the hallway, you hear a noise that doesn’t sound quite right. It almost sounds like a plea, although- no, you’re being quite foolish, skittish. The high pitched yowl of the sound makes it easy to pretend it's some poor stray cat.
You take a few tentative steps forward, and all the same, shifting your weight to rest some of it on the wall and mitigate the click of your heels as you move forward.
It occurs to you, at the same moment that the now unmistakably human noises of distress that you hear is punctuated with a somehow worse sounding crunch, that it’s a fairly poor idea on your part to wander about here in isolation. In a place that is quite infamous for begetting untimely deaths no less…
Wincing at your own foolhardiness, you quickly set to work peeling your heels off as you backpedal out of the narrow hallway to instead dart through the thick curtains bracketing in the main staging areas. Sinking into the almost pitch black backbays, the tension in your shoulders melts away- your fingers brush fabric and machinery alike, softly, confidently maneuvering until you feel a mite bit safer.
You know you’d be a fairly easy target if half-blind wasn’t nearly the natural state back here- and this was where you were most at home. Maneuvering your much smaller frame through narrow configurations that were as familiar as they were necessary was perfectly natural to you though.
Crouching in the darkness, you consider your options- the thought occurs to you that you’re being ridiculous, perhaps this was all a misunderstanding- but then- you’d rather be safe than sorry. Especially now that you’re pregnant- for God’s sake… when you get out of here you’re keeping your little escapade to yourself, that’s for sure.
The side entrance that you snuck in through is closest- the quickest way out of the building- but situated in an area that’s far too open Not to mention it forces you to put your back to the larger, open area to unlock the door. Fool that you were, you’d locked the door behind you, not thinking anything of it and now-
Deep breath, inhale slow- exhale slower. Quiet as a mouse, keep moving.
You decide to navigate to the back entrance, mostly used by the camera crew in any case. Your keys will still work for that lock and as an added bonus, you won’t have to stand out in the open like a frightened rabbit while you fumble with it. Sure, it’ll spit you off on the other side of the block, of course, but you could navigate back to the other side of the street easily enough. Even having to maneuver through the tightly cramped back halls and equipment, that exit was only a short distance from the titular News Room stage, you’d just have to pass some of the segment stages-
The only unfortunate part of your plan was that it meant backtracking around the studio and towards the source of the unsettling noises.
You could stay here. You supposed. Pinned to this dark spot and be very quiet. That was something you were good at. Surely, they- whoever they were- wouldn’t notice. You weren’t on Vincent’s arm, after all. Nobody seemed to pay you much mind unless you were, and that suited you just fine… this was not a company party however- and you would, ultimately, take your chances with running all the way home to somewhere that felt safe... So that's what you do, you carefully slide through narrow configurations of equiptment. The blackness of the backbays giving way to a hazy, almost comforting grey, as you continue to move carefully and quietly.
Footsteps, heavy against the floor, makes you freeze behind a curtain. An overhead light on the main stage flickers on with a wheezing whistle of sound, hazy golden light slinks under the slightest break in between the thick black curtains and the floor. Shadows break it up intermittently, stretching to almost monstrous proportions across the floor right in front of you.
The sound of fabric catching makes your shoulders jump, it rips with a raucous tear that breaks through the otherwise silent air. You hear someone huffing with exertion, before he makes a soft sound- a faint scoff.
A familiar scoff. Your blood runs colder still, you freeze in place, your escape attempt forgotten. It’s a familiar cadence of heavy breathing that you recognize and if that were not bad enough- faint annoyed muttering that you know as well as you know your own heartbeat.
Deep down you know it is in your best interest to put it out of your mind entirely and tiptoe out the back as you had planned, but the fingers of your free hand, with a mind of their own, crack open the curtain ever so slightly.
As handsome as ever, stands Vincent, with his back to your hiding place and looking for all the world like he belonged in the flickering pool of light created by the single overhead spotlight. Even standing over what you were now sure was a body.
Your eyes follow the silhouette naturally, the sharp line of his nose. You watch a bead of blood drip from the tip, catch on the cleft of Vincent’s chin. He rubs at his jaw without thinking- like batting away a fly- smears it across his pale skin.
Motes of dust that cascading from the ceiling highlight his ruffled hair, no longer slick and defined- the sharp line of his broad shoulders that heave with each heavy inhale and exhale, his fists loosening at his sides.
Until you get to the space beyond his pristine wingtips there’s hardly any surprises in what you see…Blood seeps from the featureless shadow of expensive fabric- barely even man-shaped, you try to convince yourself- lying motionless at his feet. Your eyes blur when they land on it, the sight incomprehensible and made vague when you attempt to recall exactly what you were looking at. What you did not want to see nor to be true.
Your stomach turns when you think he still looks like an angel. A dark, avenging angel, perhaps, but an angel outlined in golden light nonetheless.
Vincent lifts his head with one final dark word thrown at the corpse. Casual as ever, he wipes at his brow, and even from this glimpse his glasses glint so harshly in the light that his eyes cannot be seen- he takes them off, gives them the faintest of shakes as if that will clean them of the dark, dripping splatters across the glass. It doesn't.
To your credit, you don’t gasp- you don’t make a noise at all, your voice trapped in your chest like a caged bird.
Not that you can really hear it through the pounding of blood in your ears and not that you stick around for Vincent to confirm anything at all- you slip through the shadows and flee out the back door. It remains slightly ajar as you sprint, barefoot down the street.
Somehow, by the grace of God himself, perhaps, finally taking real, genuine pity on his most wretched of creations- you manage to run all the way home without further incident.
You draw a bath to calm your nerves.
And to wash the blood and dirt off your feet, the sweat off your skin.
Where did your shoes go, anyhow? You can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. You don’t think it matters- at least- what matters is that you need to think straight and make a plan.
Surely the bath will help with that… Won’t it?
It feels like your reflection refuses to look you in the eye as you lower yourself into the water. That’s.. Fine. Surely that will sort itself out, but can you really blame it? You wouldn’t want to look yourself in the eye right now either. Coward that you are. The world feels as though it’s painted in colors you cannot recognize.
This is your bathroom. In your house. That you share with your wonderful husband. Your wonderful husband that, apparently, kills people. You know these things to be true.
It proves more difficult to sort your thoughts out than you would have hoped it would be.
You sink into the steaming water and you-
You… sit.
Mind blank, breathing rapidly and sharp- your fingertips come up to claw at your temples, rub your eyes.
You are sitting in the tub, skin stinging slightly at the height of the temperature- enveloped in steam. The atmosphere is hazy, almost dreamlike.
It’s- perhaps you should have taken your clothes off first. That would have been the thing to do.
Although it’s too late now. You’re afraid you’ll simply collapse if you try to get up.
You’ll just- sit here. Fully clothed. Submerged up around your collarbone in hot water like some kind of poor crustacean being boiled alive. Thinking. Just thinking.
The hot water is not settling your nerves any better than standing in the dark would. You should- you should get some things together. Go.
Where do you go?
There’s nowhere you can go, after all. Vincent is your world, not simply because he is your husband, but- you also love him, he was your world before he was your husband and you loved him like you’ve never loved anyone. Like you may have never gotten the chance to. He is your voice- a thing lost for so long that you never thought you’d find it again, that you thought you could do without… you can, but the problem is you don’t want to.
Not entirely insignificant, either, in this situation is that you have no money wholly your own, no other resources, and- again- nowhere else to go… and with a child? You were at a loss.
You bring your hand up to your mouth, worry your knuckles with your teeth.
What direction could you run? Towards what exactly could you run to? God only knows, but that’s what a normal, sane person would do. If they happened to find out that their husband was a murderer quite incidentally. For themselves and for the baby.
You’re not sure you’ve ever been normal, or sane, at this rate but-
A baby… it sounds somehow less real than it did several hours ago. You made a baby with this man who you love and has been killing people and nobody- including yourself! You!- has been the wiser the whole time-
You have no where to go. You will not go… back. Not home, the place that you were raised is not your home and never has been, not truly, but can you say that here is your home? Or more literally, can you still say that Vincent is still your home?
How would you know if you didn’t allow yourself to see him again? What are you more afraid of? To love him just the same- to feel safe- or to only ever see the blood on his hands and yet love him still?
The answer doesn’t actually matter. You’re still, in all the ways that matter in this life, stuck where you are, with him and by comparison to how you feel about leaving, this is strangely the more palatable of two evils. You absolutely, unequivocally, refuse to go back to the place you were raised. To the woman who raised you, if she yet lived. You would not beg her for her aid, you would not put your own child into her hands to do to her what she did to you and you-
You’d rather die. You would rather die than go back to that priory, pregnant or not, afraid of Vincent or not- of which you had not decided if you were yet. And wasn’t that a scary thought in and of itself?
The world tilts, your breathing- which had briefly settled to a steady pace long enough to keep you from hyperventilating to unconsciousness- picks up again, rabbit quick. The lights start to flicker. They really shouldn’t flicker like so- the wiring in the house is all new, all safe…
Yet the lights flicker as the chill of your conviction settles in your very bones. You would rather die.
There’s a straight razor balanced on the edge of the sink. It glints ominously in the bathroom’s overhead light as it blinks off and on- your eyes are drawn to it every time the intensity of the light increases.
Vincent must have left it out in a rush this morning- typical routine upset by the fact you weren’t joining him.
Your thoughts turn sharply, descending gruesomely without much warning in a fashion that freezes you in place, bundling your knees trapped in soggy cloth to your chest as if holding them there would protect you.
A pool of blood so red and so shiny, beneath the flickering overhead light- you would bleed just as brightly as that whoever, wouldn’t you? Would-
That wouldn’t be fair of you. That would be gruesome and messy and- You wouldn’t feel guilty, would you? You suppose you wouldn’t feel anything at all after a certain point. Why should you care how he feels now while you still can when-?
That’s unkind. That's terribly unkind. You should care. You do care and you would not hurt him, not ever- not on purpose, at least. Vincent has taken care of you, has been kind to you- treated you with more respect and kindness than you’ve ever been afforded your whole life. He loved you- that’s a truth that lives in your bones too- and he’s always been so sweet…
He used to be sweeter. Back then when he was still just a weatherman- but then, you used to be quieter, too. Painfully, obnoxiously so. Perhaps you had both grown together into-
Did- did you make him worse, somehow? Surely- you couldn’t have- but-
“It’s… my fault.” You say to the hazy air, staring at your reflection in the water- it meets your eye now, for what it’s worth- although the face reflected back at you is pinched into an accusing, ugly, scowl.
That- that just sounds right to you when you say it. It’s always your fault. That’s what you were always told until Vincent came along- fool man that he was believing that he and he alone could deny a fundamental law of the universe… gravity ensures things fall to the ground, and you are a wretched thing that inspires only misery and pain all around you whether you desire to or not.
You’re suddenly so irrevocably, horribly tired of trying to pretend otherwise. Perhaps it’d be better if you did leave. For the both of you- but at the same time you can’t stomach the idea of hurting him anymore- or your child. Nothing good can come from you, right?
Sliding backwards into the tub, you slide and you slide- eyes closing, you force your breathing to be even. You take a deep breath, ignore the way your water laden clothes squelch as you shift, and how the fabric scratches uncomfortably against your skin.
A minute. All you need is a minute. Just a minute to think, to put all other thoughts out of your mind- to make it blissfully, beautifully quiet just for a moment.
Just shy of dipping beneath the water, you take a deep breath, hold it and reach up sluggishly- your soaked blouse dragging through the water- to pinch your nose closed.
The world outside seems suddenly far away as you slip further down, whereas you are now insulated inside a water bubble of muted sounds, sensations. The pipes creak faintly, the fabric of your clothes is heavy and restraining- distracting.
You let your mind drift, lungs beginning to ache to burning- air is backed up behind your tightly puckered lips, your cheeks puff out momentarily.
Heartbeat steadily pounding harder, blood rushing in your ears and you-
You hear that little voice in the back of your head that sounds like her- that you fear will always sound like her.
I should have drowned you when you were a wee thing, my child, but I didn’t have the strength to.
Stunned to hear that so loud and so clear from beneath the water where such a sound should be muffled, garbled- your eyes pop open in pure shock. The ceiling tiles warble with the disturbed surface of the water as you tremble underneath it and your eyes, of course, burn.
What ensues is a clumsy, thrashing fight with the inanimate fabric holding you down- your mind garbles the sensation, and to you, it feels like many, many hands. There are hands pressing down upon your chest, pinning your arms to your sides.
Coughing violently, you burst through the rippling surface of the bath- huge torrents of water slap wetly against tiles like cracks of thunder.
“I’m sorry- I’m so sorry-” You gasp between ragged, terrified breaths, arms curled around your stomach, lower to your abdomen. Tears stream down your face- and not only from the sting of the bathwater. The cold, dirty bathwater.
Clumsily, fingers numb and shaking, you desperately peel wet clothes off of you without bothering to get up. You take your fingers under the seam of the pantyhose and rip them down to your ankles. Your elbow, your knee- several parts of you are undoubtedly bruised from the ordeal- you feel the soreness as you work without having to spy the marks.
As you finally manage to free yourself from the wet fabric, practically crawling out of the tub like some poor, pathetic wet beast. You spy your reflection in the water as you perch above it- wild-eyed and shaking and you think-
Well, you don’t think much of anything. You start to cough again as soon as you’re upright- hacking wetly- lungs already sore and that therein triggers the off again, on again nausea that leads to you simply vomiting up what little you managed to keep down today between the- the baby and the nerves, and the nerves about the baby, not to even mention that which you witnessed Vincent doing-
What a sight you must be. One foot in the tub, the other precariously balanced on the slippery tile- naked as the day you were born- and both hands gripping the edge of the sink for dear life as you puke into it.
The straight razor clatters to the ground loudly as you slip and slide your way fully out of the tub, standing on the soaked rug shaking.
Truly, you’d laugh. If it wasn’t disgusting. If you didn’t feel disgusting and wretched and-
What were you going to do? Curling up upon the tile and waiting for Vincent to come home wasn’t the ideal option but-
You’ll see him, you’ll- you’ll look him in the eye and that’ll decide things. You’re certain of it.
First though, you have to clean the sink. Rinse your mouth out. Throw some towels on the wet floor. Dry yourself off- put some kind of clothes on- you should probably do that first and… then you’ll…
Wait? You’ll just- like you thought before- you’ll see him when you see him and you’ll decide then. It'll be instantaneous, this decision. You're sure it will be given your none too stable disposition when it came to nervous flights of fancy... you like to think you have a good gut ins-
Well, you can’t say that at this point. You do not have a good gut instinct at all. Not even a little bit. In fact, you daresay it's quite bad... but that's life, isn't it?
You'll just have to see if you feel unsafe then- well- you suppose you’ll figure out a way to go… one way or another.
Still... what happens if you don’t? If you don’t feel unsafe…? Could you simply… stay put? Raise a child with him? Pretend? You were not the most graceful of actors, that's for certain... but perhaps...
You blink- scrub your hands through your wet hair. You suppose you deserve the awful turmoil pounding at your ribcage in having to answer those questions while you sit and wait like you should have done in the first place.
Now, waiting is really all you really can do.