Resurrection of Hope: Chapter Seven pt1
Title: Resurrection of Hope
Author: poisonxangel
Rating: NC- 17
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own
Warnings: violence. damn! another spoiler!
Summary: Ville meets a new hope
A/N: I have to break this up... sorry; it's just too big for one post :(
“Wh-“ Ville started, and was interrupted again by Charli holding her hand up.
“Ville, you have to let me talk. If you interrupt, I’ll never be able to finish. I’m telling you things that will upset you, make you angry, and probably end whatever crazy relationship we have built. So that we can be fair to each other, you have to let me finish,” she said, looking at him.
Confused, he said, “I don’t think your past will stop how I’m feeling for you Charli. Put that out of your mind. That being said, I won’t say anything else.”
Charli regarded him for a minute, curious, but continued.
“I met my ex through a friend; well someone I thought was a friend, three years ago. I had been busy, trying to build my reputation and it was working; my Germany exhibit had just come out, and I was working on France. I was my regular self, causing mischief and trouble where I could. ‘My friend’ said he was sweet, had his ducks in a row, but still had a wild side to match mine and we’d have loads of fun together,” she rolled her eyes sarcastically with this comment, “So I went out with him. And for the first two months, she was right. He was sweet, and he did have his ducks in a row. I’m not saying we were perfect; I’d never carried baggage from my past and didn’t deal very well with the fact that he did. He still talked to his ex girlfriend often, and it didn’t really bother me too much; I knew the problems they’d had- or thought I did, anyway- and knew that because of his pride, he wouldn’t go back to her since she’d cheated on him. That’s what he’d told me, and that’s what I believed. But he still loved picking on her, and not in the ‘goofy- I-know- you’re- joking’ way that I pick on Amy. He was flat out mean to her. Called her fat, stupid, a bitch, and all these other names just to rile her up. I remember telling him once that I hoped I never got on his bad side, just joking around. He said, ‘Well, don’t get fat or stupid and don’t cheat on me, and you won’t have anything to worry about.’ But he was never light hearted with his insults, and until he turned them on me, I didn’t think much of it. He only picked on her.
“About two and a half months after we met, he quit his job, even though he told me that he’d failed a drug test and they fired him. I asked him what he was going to do, and he shrugged his shoulders. He never gave me an answer. He had two car payments and a mortgage on him, not to mention the day to day expenses. I didn’t know where he was going to get the money to pay for everything. The first time he asked me for money, I handed it to him blindly, thinking he’d pay me back when he got a new job. This was three weeks after his ‘firing’. The fifth week, I had to pay his mortgage. Normally, it wouldn’t be a problem, but I wanted to save for Hawaii for Christmas and this was in June. But I paid it, without complaint.
“I started to realize that he wanted me to pay his bills. I knew that when people got fired from a job they enjoyed, there was a period of depression, so I didn’t say anything and tried to let him get himself motivated. Until August, when he asked what I wanted for my birthday. ‘Just for you to find work,’ I told him. I saw the anger flash in his eyes and tried to cover by saying, ‘I only want you to find something you love to do so you’re not sitting here waiting on me to get home. And besides, I have to travel for work and it’s too expensive for me to cover us both sometimes.’ He said, ‘So you don’t want to be around me all the time?’ and he looked so deflated, I felt bad for him. I think it was then that I started to realize that I didn’t love him, but I stayed because he didn’t have anyone else. I thought he was a loner, but it turns out that everyone left him; they couldn’t deal with him for long.
“Then he started basically rolling in money. I knew he hadn’t found a job, and no relatives kept in contact with him, so he wouldn’t have had an inheritance. I could see his temper getting shorter, and I didn’t like the crowd he seemed to be with all the time; they made me inexplicably nervous. I started trying to distance myself, sensing that they were dangerous people. Granted, I’d never been too cautious about whom I associated myself with, nor had I really cared much about safety precautions, but this was a different type of dangerous. My worries were confirmed when I found a submachine gun in the backseat of his car once when I was cleaning it out. I asked him about it. He didn’t want to answer me, as I’d figured that out when he slapped me. I was stunned. I’d never been hit by anyone before, much less someone who claimed to love me as much as he did. Then I got really angry. I punched him in the face, and broke his nose. I told him that no one, absolutely no one would put their hands on me and not get a fight back. I didn’t even help him off the floor, just walked out, leaving everything I had- except my equipment that was in my car because I’d just gotten back from St. Louis- with him.
“I was fine with leaving just like that. Hell, I didn’t love him, especially not enough to stick around to see if he’d do it again. For three weeks, he called and texted every day, 20- 25 times a day. I ignored him. But then, I missed my period. I took a test, and I went to the doctor like I should, and my doctor informed me I was pregnant. Like it was a good thing. I knew that meant I’d be tied to him forever now, and it definitely wasn’t a happy thought. So, the next time he called, which was when I was still in the parking lot at the doctor’s office, I answered and told him we needed to talk. His speech was slurred, and I knew he was on something, but I met him for dinner that night anyway. And I told him I was pregnant. Tears welled up in his eyes, he was ecstatic. Me, not so much. He talked about us getting back together and getting married and giving the baby everything in life. He sweet talked me, and it worked. I became stupid. It shouldn’t have surprised me that taking him back would start the insults, but when I started showing, he would call me fat. When I would talk about renovations to the house for the nursery, I was stupid. When I called him while he was out with his shady friends, I was a bitch. I sat down with him one night, when I was seven and a half months and firmly told him I wouldn’t take it anymore. He was going to treat me like I was someone, or I was taking our baby boy and he’d only get to see him on weekends. He snarled back, ‘I’d like to see you try.’ I stood up, said, ‘Ok, watch this.’ And reached for my keys and my bag, but he jerked them out of my hands and said I wasn’t going anywhere without him, and I wasn’t taking his son anywhere. I got a little scared, and went and locked myself in the spare room, staying curled up on the bed until I knew he was asleep. Then I went for my bag and my keys again, but didn’t find them until I went into our room and he was sleeping, well, passed out, with them. I reached for them, and thankfully didn’t wake him. But when I tried to crank my car, it wouldn’t turn over. I didn’t see him come out of the house, and he scared the shit out of me when he knocked on the window, asking where I thought I was going. I locked the door and told him to go away, but he smashed the window in and unlocked it, then pulled me out of the car by my hair. I couldn’t fight back; I was too worried about the baby. Then he kicked me, in the head, holding me by my hair. He asked again where I thought I was going and I couldn’t answer through the pain. He’d put on his steel- toed work boots before he came out of the house. He got even angrier when I didn’t answer, so he slammed my head down on the pavement in the driveway. I could hear him say ‘This is only because you didn’t behave. I can’t trust you now.’ He dragged me back to the house by my hair and pushed me through the door, and I rammed into the corner cabinet in the kitchen. He laughed, saying I was weak, dead bolted the door, which had one of those locks that could only be locked or unlocked with a key? You know the kind?” she said, and getting confirmation from Ville, who looked ready to explode, took a breath and continued, “I heard him yell at me to get up and go get in the shower before I got blood all over his carpet. I did as I was told, hoping to keep away from him long enough to figure out what to do. But when I got in the shower, he came in and watched me, finally taking off his clothes and climbing in with me. He washed my hair, almost gently, but saying ‘You just need to behave better. I can’t have you running off with my child. We belong together, don’t we? DON’T WE?’ when I didn’t answer. ‘That’s what I thought’ after I’d nodded my head, crying. Then he started kissing my neck, and my shoulders, then…” she paused, looking guilty and hanging her head, unable to say what happened next. Ville moved off the bed, positioning himself, sitting in front of her on the floor. He slowly reached for her, touching first her knees, then taking his hands in hers, encouraging her with his eyes. She looked back, tears glinting against midnight, and nodded. She would continue, she just needed to breathe a minute.
“After that night, he took my money. Since I was pregnant, I wasn’t working, so he said I didn’t need money. I could only see friends when he was around, and none of my friends liked him, so I… lost a lot of friends. Except for Rosalie, who’d found out she was pregnant when I was seven months along. She never paid him any mind, always acted as if he weren’t in the room. He hated her. But he’d never tell me who I could and couldn’t be friends with, that was crossing the line. Rosalie saw the black eye I got that first night, and though she didn’t believe me when I told her I just ran into the cabinet, she couldn’t ask anything else, because he was right next to me. He made a joke about it, saying something like pregnancy must screw with equilibrium. She knew what was going on though, and she was the only one I called the night I lost my baby.
“He’d been drinking, which was becoming the norm. I felt the baby kick, but it hurt and I cringed and was basically paralyzed for about three minutes. When I was able to stand up straight, the rice I was steaming had burned, and it made dinner late to the table. I knew he’d be angry and I tried to explain what happened, but it made him angrier that I blamed my fuck up on his son. So he slapped me. Then he pushed me into the wall so hard I cracked the chair railing around the dining room. That made him angrier, and he threw me to the floor, saying if my fat ass wanted to break something, let it be bones in my own body. He kicked me. First in the head, then in the chest, then in the stomach. I cried for him to stop, he was going to hurt the baby, but he ignored me. He kicked me again in the stomach, then in the face. He only stopped when he saw the blood coming from around where my hips were, then seeing my completely blood soaked jeans, he stopped, sat down, and ate his dinner, telling me I’d better call 911 because I was bleeding pretty badly. I couldn’t move. I was in so much pain, and I knew that I’d already lost the baby. I could feel his heartbeat stop. I wished he would just go ahead and make mine stop too, so I wouldn’t be subjected to his pain anymore and I could cradle my son in my hands and hear him giggle and see him smile at me. But he didn’t. He let me lay there, in the floor bleeding, until I passed out before he called 911.
“When I woke up, I looked for him before I could breathe. I called Rosalie and told her I’d lost the baby, but I didn’t have time to tell her what happened before she was on her way. I told her that I’d fallen down the stairs. She knew what happened immediately. Fortunately, so did the doctors when I came in. They examined me and determined that I had been beaten. When they asked him what happened, he said we’d been alone all evening and I had gone upstairs to get something and fell back down the stairs. Since they already knew I’d been beaten, they got him to basically admit that he’d killed my baby and almost took me with it. He was arrested right there in the hospital, all before I’d woken up. When they brought my little boy to me, Rosalie cried, but I could only stare at him. He was eight and a half months developed, but he looked so tiny. I named him ‘Korey Bastien’, which means ‘lives in the hollow’ in Celtic- he lives in the hollow of my heart, and ‘Bastien’ is Greek for ‘revered’ and he kept my last name,” Charli couldn’t speak anymore; her voice was tight with tears, her head buried in her hands. Ville leaned up on his knees and pulled her close as she sobbed, his own salty tears dripping into her hair.
She quieted after about five minutes, giving a final sniff and setting resolve in her eyes. She pulled away from Ville, intent on finishing. The pain in her eyes made Ville’s heart break even more for her. He had been listening raptly for the last hour as she told her sad tale, anger brewing in his mind and a thirst for this man’s blood parched his tongue. But still, he needed more, as much as Charli could give him. She sat back in her chair, reaching for her now cold coffee and her cigarettes. As if on cue, a knock came at the door. Ville stiffened, hating whoever it was that interrupted them. Charli looked at the clock and said, “Can you answer that? It’s Amy with more coffee.”
Ville jumped up immediately at her request, and opened the door to find Amy holding two cups of warm brew, smiling sadly at him as if she knew what was being said and knew where they were in Charli’s past. “Here,” she said, handing Ville the cups, “You’re going to need these, too.” And handed Ville two packs of cigarettes, one for him and the other for Charli. She called into the room, “How ya holdin up, kid?” to Charli, and received a weak, “We’re good. Another hour, then more coffee, please.” Amy nodded her head and turned, leaving without seeing her friend.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Author: poisonxangel
Rating: NC- 17
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own
Warnings: violence. damn! another spoiler!
Summary: Ville meets a new hope
A/N: I have to break this up... sorry; it's just too big for one post :(
“Wh-“ Ville started, and was interrupted again by Charli holding her hand up.
“Ville, you have to let me talk. If you interrupt, I’ll never be able to finish. I’m telling you things that will upset you, make you angry, and probably end whatever crazy relationship we have built. So that we can be fair to each other, you have to let me finish,” she said, looking at him.
Confused, he said, “I don’t think your past will stop how I’m feeling for you Charli. Put that out of your mind. That being said, I won’t say anything else.”
Charli regarded him for a minute, curious, but continued.
“I met my ex through a friend; well someone I thought was a friend, three years ago. I had been busy, trying to build my reputation and it was working; my Germany exhibit had just come out, and I was working on France. I was my regular self, causing mischief and trouble where I could. ‘My friend’ said he was sweet, had his ducks in a row, but still had a wild side to match mine and we’d have loads of fun together,” she rolled her eyes sarcastically with this comment, “So I went out with him. And for the first two months, she was right. He was sweet, and he did have his ducks in a row. I’m not saying we were perfect; I’d never carried baggage from my past and didn’t deal very well with the fact that he did. He still talked to his ex girlfriend often, and it didn’t really bother me too much; I knew the problems they’d had- or thought I did, anyway- and knew that because of his pride, he wouldn’t go back to her since she’d cheated on him. That’s what he’d told me, and that’s what I believed. But he still loved picking on her, and not in the ‘goofy- I-know- you’re- joking’ way that I pick on Amy. He was flat out mean to her. Called her fat, stupid, a bitch, and all these other names just to rile her up. I remember telling him once that I hoped I never got on his bad side, just joking around. He said, ‘Well, don’t get fat or stupid and don’t cheat on me, and you won’t have anything to worry about.’ But he was never light hearted with his insults, and until he turned them on me, I didn’t think much of it. He only picked on her.
“About two and a half months after we met, he quit his job, even though he told me that he’d failed a drug test and they fired him. I asked him what he was going to do, and he shrugged his shoulders. He never gave me an answer. He had two car payments and a mortgage on him, not to mention the day to day expenses. I didn’t know where he was going to get the money to pay for everything. The first time he asked me for money, I handed it to him blindly, thinking he’d pay me back when he got a new job. This was three weeks after his ‘firing’. The fifth week, I had to pay his mortgage. Normally, it wouldn’t be a problem, but I wanted to save for Hawaii for Christmas and this was in June. But I paid it, without complaint.
“I started to realize that he wanted me to pay his bills. I knew that when people got fired from a job they enjoyed, there was a period of depression, so I didn’t say anything and tried to let him get himself motivated. Until August, when he asked what I wanted for my birthday. ‘Just for you to find work,’ I told him. I saw the anger flash in his eyes and tried to cover by saying, ‘I only want you to find something you love to do so you’re not sitting here waiting on me to get home. And besides, I have to travel for work and it’s too expensive for me to cover us both sometimes.’ He said, ‘So you don’t want to be around me all the time?’ and he looked so deflated, I felt bad for him. I think it was then that I started to realize that I didn’t love him, but I stayed because he didn’t have anyone else. I thought he was a loner, but it turns out that everyone left him; they couldn’t deal with him for long.
“Then he started basically rolling in money. I knew he hadn’t found a job, and no relatives kept in contact with him, so he wouldn’t have had an inheritance. I could see his temper getting shorter, and I didn’t like the crowd he seemed to be with all the time; they made me inexplicably nervous. I started trying to distance myself, sensing that they were dangerous people. Granted, I’d never been too cautious about whom I associated myself with, nor had I really cared much about safety precautions, but this was a different type of dangerous. My worries were confirmed when I found a submachine gun in the backseat of his car once when I was cleaning it out. I asked him about it. He didn’t want to answer me, as I’d figured that out when he slapped me. I was stunned. I’d never been hit by anyone before, much less someone who claimed to love me as much as he did. Then I got really angry. I punched him in the face, and broke his nose. I told him that no one, absolutely no one would put their hands on me and not get a fight back. I didn’t even help him off the floor, just walked out, leaving everything I had- except my equipment that was in my car because I’d just gotten back from St. Louis- with him.
“I was fine with leaving just like that. Hell, I didn’t love him, especially not enough to stick around to see if he’d do it again. For three weeks, he called and texted every day, 20- 25 times a day. I ignored him. But then, I missed my period. I took a test, and I went to the doctor like I should, and my doctor informed me I was pregnant. Like it was a good thing. I knew that meant I’d be tied to him forever now, and it definitely wasn’t a happy thought. So, the next time he called, which was when I was still in the parking lot at the doctor’s office, I answered and told him we needed to talk. His speech was slurred, and I knew he was on something, but I met him for dinner that night anyway. And I told him I was pregnant. Tears welled up in his eyes, he was ecstatic. Me, not so much. He talked about us getting back together and getting married and giving the baby everything in life. He sweet talked me, and it worked. I became stupid. It shouldn’t have surprised me that taking him back would start the insults, but when I started showing, he would call me fat. When I would talk about renovations to the house for the nursery, I was stupid. When I called him while he was out with his shady friends, I was a bitch. I sat down with him one night, when I was seven and a half months and firmly told him I wouldn’t take it anymore. He was going to treat me like I was someone, or I was taking our baby boy and he’d only get to see him on weekends. He snarled back, ‘I’d like to see you try.’ I stood up, said, ‘Ok, watch this.’ And reached for my keys and my bag, but he jerked them out of my hands and said I wasn’t going anywhere without him, and I wasn’t taking his son anywhere. I got a little scared, and went and locked myself in the spare room, staying curled up on the bed until I knew he was asleep. Then I went for my bag and my keys again, but didn’t find them until I went into our room and he was sleeping, well, passed out, with them. I reached for them, and thankfully didn’t wake him. But when I tried to crank my car, it wouldn’t turn over. I didn’t see him come out of the house, and he scared the shit out of me when he knocked on the window, asking where I thought I was going. I locked the door and told him to go away, but he smashed the window in and unlocked it, then pulled me out of the car by my hair. I couldn’t fight back; I was too worried about the baby. Then he kicked me, in the head, holding me by my hair. He asked again where I thought I was going and I couldn’t answer through the pain. He’d put on his steel- toed work boots before he came out of the house. He got even angrier when I didn’t answer, so he slammed my head down on the pavement in the driveway. I could hear him say ‘This is only because you didn’t behave. I can’t trust you now.’ He dragged me back to the house by my hair and pushed me through the door, and I rammed into the corner cabinet in the kitchen. He laughed, saying I was weak, dead bolted the door, which had one of those locks that could only be locked or unlocked with a key? You know the kind?” she said, and getting confirmation from Ville, who looked ready to explode, took a breath and continued, “I heard him yell at me to get up and go get in the shower before I got blood all over his carpet. I did as I was told, hoping to keep away from him long enough to figure out what to do. But when I got in the shower, he came in and watched me, finally taking off his clothes and climbing in with me. He washed my hair, almost gently, but saying ‘You just need to behave better. I can’t have you running off with my child. We belong together, don’t we? DON’T WE?’ when I didn’t answer. ‘That’s what I thought’ after I’d nodded my head, crying. Then he started kissing my neck, and my shoulders, then…” she paused, looking guilty and hanging her head, unable to say what happened next. Ville moved off the bed, positioning himself, sitting in front of her on the floor. He slowly reached for her, touching first her knees, then taking his hands in hers, encouraging her with his eyes. She looked back, tears glinting against midnight, and nodded. She would continue, she just needed to breathe a minute.
“After that night, he took my money. Since I was pregnant, I wasn’t working, so he said I didn’t need money. I could only see friends when he was around, and none of my friends liked him, so I… lost a lot of friends. Except for Rosalie, who’d found out she was pregnant when I was seven months along. She never paid him any mind, always acted as if he weren’t in the room. He hated her. But he’d never tell me who I could and couldn’t be friends with, that was crossing the line. Rosalie saw the black eye I got that first night, and though she didn’t believe me when I told her I just ran into the cabinet, she couldn’t ask anything else, because he was right next to me. He made a joke about it, saying something like pregnancy must screw with equilibrium. She knew what was going on though, and she was the only one I called the night I lost my baby.
“He’d been drinking, which was becoming the norm. I felt the baby kick, but it hurt and I cringed and was basically paralyzed for about three minutes. When I was able to stand up straight, the rice I was steaming had burned, and it made dinner late to the table. I knew he’d be angry and I tried to explain what happened, but it made him angrier that I blamed my fuck up on his son. So he slapped me. Then he pushed me into the wall so hard I cracked the chair railing around the dining room. That made him angrier, and he threw me to the floor, saying if my fat ass wanted to break something, let it be bones in my own body. He kicked me. First in the head, then in the chest, then in the stomach. I cried for him to stop, he was going to hurt the baby, but he ignored me. He kicked me again in the stomach, then in the face. He only stopped when he saw the blood coming from around where my hips were, then seeing my completely blood soaked jeans, he stopped, sat down, and ate his dinner, telling me I’d better call 911 because I was bleeding pretty badly. I couldn’t move. I was in so much pain, and I knew that I’d already lost the baby. I could feel his heartbeat stop. I wished he would just go ahead and make mine stop too, so I wouldn’t be subjected to his pain anymore and I could cradle my son in my hands and hear him giggle and see him smile at me. But he didn’t. He let me lay there, in the floor bleeding, until I passed out before he called 911.
“When I woke up, I looked for him before I could breathe. I called Rosalie and told her I’d lost the baby, but I didn’t have time to tell her what happened before she was on her way. I told her that I’d fallen down the stairs. She knew what happened immediately. Fortunately, so did the doctors when I came in. They examined me and determined that I had been beaten. When they asked him what happened, he said we’d been alone all evening and I had gone upstairs to get something and fell back down the stairs. Since they already knew I’d been beaten, they got him to basically admit that he’d killed my baby and almost took me with it. He was arrested right there in the hospital, all before I’d woken up. When they brought my little boy to me, Rosalie cried, but I could only stare at him. He was eight and a half months developed, but he looked so tiny. I named him ‘Korey Bastien’, which means ‘lives in the hollow’ in Celtic- he lives in the hollow of my heart, and ‘Bastien’ is Greek for ‘revered’ and he kept my last name,” Charli couldn’t speak anymore; her voice was tight with tears, her head buried in her hands. Ville leaned up on his knees and pulled her close as she sobbed, his own salty tears dripping into her hair.
She quieted after about five minutes, giving a final sniff and setting resolve in her eyes. She pulled away from Ville, intent on finishing. The pain in her eyes made Ville’s heart break even more for her. He had been listening raptly for the last hour as she told her sad tale, anger brewing in his mind and a thirst for this man’s blood parched his tongue. But still, he needed more, as much as Charli could give him. She sat back in her chair, reaching for her now cold coffee and her cigarettes. As if on cue, a knock came at the door. Ville stiffened, hating whoever it was that interrupted them. Charli looked at the clock and said, “Can you answer that? It’s Amy with more coffee.”
Ville jumped up immediately at her request, and opened the door to find Amy holding two cups of warm brew, smiling sadly at him as if she knew what was being said and knew where they were in Charli’s past. “Here,” she said, handing Ville the cups, “You’re going to need these, too.” And handed Ville two packs of cigarettes, one for him and the other for Charli. She called into the room, “How ya holdin up, kid?” to Charli, and received a weak, “We’re good. Another hour, then more coffee, please.” Amy nodded her head and turned, leaving without seeing her friend.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six