Into The Mystic (General Hospital- Ethan/Kristina, 11/?)
Yup, it's going to be that kind of day. Once again, there's a great more to this universe (though there is still not a The End). We'll see if we can't do anything about that...This part is pretty much 'fluff', as fluffy as this universe gets.
Title: Into The Mystic
Rating: pg-13
Word Count: 2,437 (11/?)
Summary: There is a moment, a split-second, an exact pinpoint in time that splits the child with the person he will be forever...
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Author's Note: This veers from GH canon in May of 2011. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. ^_^
Previous
Kristina kept an eye on the stew bubbling on the stove while she peeled onions. It felt good to be doing something so comforting and normal. Ethan was still asleep. She had woken up a few hours ago, curled into him like a shell, before stealing the car keys and going into town herself for supplies.
She had to let him sleep (he hadn’t let himself relax in far too long) and she knew he would have insisted on going himself. At this point though, either one of them were equally in danger of getting caught, and also he would have brought back more take-out, which she just couldn’t do, under any circumstances.
She took an experimental taste of the broth and added more pepper. Last night...It was the safest she’d felt in a long time. Maybe the happiest she’d ever been. Ethan was so gentle, so tender and loving...she had never imagined how wonderful it would feel to be so close to him.
She shook herself out of her thoughts when she heard him stirring and coming out of the bedroom. She shook her hair in front of her face to hide her blush. “Good morning,” she said, eyes cast down. “I made coffee.”
She glanced at him quickly, shoving his hair out of his face and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. It was boyish and cute and she bit her lip to keep from giggling at him. He grunted an approximation of morning back at her and busied himself with pouring a cup of coffee. There wasn’t much room in this tiny kitchen and when he sat down at the little round table, he felt very close to her.
“What are you doing?” he finally said, his voice still groggy.
“Boeuf bourguignon,” she answered, setting out a frying pan for the onions. He looked confused. “Beef stew.”
The coffee was starting to kick in for him. “But where did you get all...” It was starting to dawn on him. “Kristina...what did you do?”
She had to smile. “You don’t need to be so horrified. I took the car, went into town and got some supplies. We both need to eat, you needed to sleep, and I...”
“You?” Ethan prompted. “You what?”
She felt her blush start to creep back when his eyes went darker. She didn’t finish her line of thought. As surreally wonderful as it felt to wake up in Ethan’s arms, she’d had no idea how to behave, and taking some time for herself for the first time in God knew how long, somehow distancing herself for a bit, felt necessary. Not wanting to replace the memory of feeling perfectly safe with feeling awkward. She’d had enough of that.
Kristina shook her hair back from her face and smiled shyly. “I’m sorry- I don’t know how to act after...I mean...”
Ethan leaned back in his chair, studying her in a way that made her feel vulnerable. Not like last night. She was always safest when she was closer to him.
Then he smiled, and she caught a flash of this spring, before everything awful had happened. “God, you’re really gorgeous, you know that?” It was so unexpected, Kristina let out a frantic giggle, and Ethan’s smile softened. “And I must say, whatever that is smells amazing.”
Kristina grinned. “It still has a while to go. At least another hour or so.”
“Mmm, my stomach’s already growling.” He pouted like a little boy and she handed him a loaf of bread and stick of butter on a dish. He slathered two large slices, watching her move around the kitchen. “Where did you learn to cook like this?”
“My dad, actually,” Kristina smiled fondly, remembering standing on a kitchen chair at the stove and carefully dropping herbs into a tomato sauce.
“Really?” Ethan asked, genuine surprise in his voice.
She tilted her head. “Sure. It wasn’t always bullets and carbombs at the Corinthos house. And this was something I think he felt comfortable sharing with me. He probably thought it would be useful.”
Ethan shook his head. “Sonny Corinthos, secret chef. Who would have thought?”
Kristina laughed. “Turned out to be more useful than I bet he ever thought.”
***
After two large bowls of stew, Ethan pleasantly felt like he would burst. He leaned back in his chair, watching Kristina ladle leftover helpings into tupperware containers (it was probably a good thing she went to the store, since she really thought of everything). This had been far too pleasurable of a day, this illusion of domestic bliss. He woke up to find his little woman cooking a Sunday dinner for him, and as he sat and watched her be lovely and sweet, he kept getting flashes of the night before, bare skin and soft sighs and slick heat.
He had never, ever meant for this to happen. He was only supposed to keep her safe. But how had he even let it get to that point? He should never have even gone anywhere near her, like Johnny did with Lulu.
He’d just never been able to resist getting himself into trouble. Last night was inevitable, and it had been for a long time. Far longer than he cared to admit.
Kristina glanced at him over her shoulder, offering a pretty smile and his heart flip-flopped.
When she was done cleaning up, she came and sat back down at the table with him, carrying two more cups of coffee. It was still early, before sunset. “Were you able to get a message to Johnny?” she asked.
Ethan sighed. “I sent a message. I don’t know if he’ll get it. If he has to shut down a phone, it might be a while before I know how to get in touch with him again.”
“What did you say to him?” She took a sip with her pinky in the air. For all of her toughness he’d recognized over the past month, she was still a dainty princess.
“I just said we were okay- well, safe anyway,” Ethan answered. “There’s really not much I can tell him, is there?” She shrugged and looked down at the table, tracing imaginary patterns. “Krissy? What’s wrong?” He reached across and took her hand in his, laying the back of her hand in his palm and rubbing his thumb up and down.
“It’s nothing,” she said, far too quickly and timidly to sound anything like herself. “I just...my mother. Molly. I wish I could talk to them.” She looked up at him apologetically. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not fair. There’s nothing you can do about it and this is hard on you, too.”
“Fair has nothing to do with it,” Ethan shook his head. “And as far as missing your family...I know. And...as unhelpful as it might be to hear this, who knows when you’ll see them again? It’s okay to miss them. And it’s okay to talk about it.”
She tilts her head to one side, smiling softly and studying him carefully. “Then how come you don’t talk about it?”
He sighed. “Lucky and Lulu- it’s not the same for me. You know that.”
She bit her lip. “That’s not who I’m talking about.”
Ethan let go of her hand and exhaled sharply. He shoved his hair back from his face, if only so he could not look at her for a second. She laid him too bare, there was nowhere to hide with Kristina. “I don’t think about them because,” he hitched in his breath. “Because I made myself forget about them. That was wrong of me.”
She was silent across from him, clearly waiting for him to continue and for the first time in a long time, he found himself wanting to continue. “Where do I start?” he said, with a sad chuckle, and she laughed.
“From the beginning.”
And so he did. And Ethan surrprised himself by remembering more than he thought. When he’d left home, fifteen and scared and empty, he hadn’t even taken a photograph of his parents with him. He had just wanted to shut it all off, all the memories, all the pain. That, at least, he knew she understood.
“Have you ever been back?” she asked. It had gone dark outside the window.
He shrugged. “There’s nothing there any more. And even if there was, the town I grew up in was all but destroyed in the flood last year.” Heartbreaking compassion flashed in her eyes and he had to look away. “I mean, I’ve been gone so long, it dossn’t really feel like home any more. But still...it’s strange to think that everything I knew as a child is just gone, just gone.”
Kristina tucked her hair out of her face and sighed. Ethan recognized the action as his own nervous habit. “I can’t imagine,” she said quietly. “All that you’ve been through...”
All he’d been through. Though he could never say he was exactly proud, it gave him a certain sense of arrogance to know what he could survive. But still...
He shook his head. “No, it’s not only me who’s had it tough.” He recognized that now, for maybe the first time ever. That the world was not out to get him, that everyone had their own personal wars to fight. Some tougher than others.
Why had it taken him so long to catch on? No, the why wasn’t important any more. He’d let Kristina literally run him all over the country, fighting with everything in him to keep her at arm’s length, when he sould have known that she was inevitable.
Kristina’s life was going to work out and be wonderful.
He was going to make sure of that.
She tilted her head and cleared her throat and he realized he’d been quiet for some time now. Ethan stood and took her hand, helping her out of her chair to stand facing him. He could feel himself smiling, because she was smiling back, shyly. When he took her face in his hands, he felt her pulse flutter rapidly under his fingers. But he didn’t kiss her mouth first, letting his lips wander over her cheekbones and the tip of her nose. “Everything is different now, angel.”
“Everything?” she repeated, a hint of a gasping question in her voice as he ghosted his lips under her jaw.
He finally touched his mouth to hers. “Everything. I promise,” he whispered. “And we can’t go back again.”
***
They’d been gone for almost two months. And as scary as the first month was, these past few weeks Kristina had almost been...happy. She was happy. It was so easy to pretend here.
They found little mementos of Lucky’s childhood everywhere they looked- scratches on the wall showing his growth, a matchbox car he’d hidden under a loose floorboard on the stairs. They cooked dinner in the tiny kitchen and sat out in the back, listening to the quiet. Kristina expected Ethan, the rolling stone, to get bored very quickly, but he seemed more than content. He seemed happy too.
One day she found him trying to butcher his now shoulder-length hair and after the initial shock, she laughed at him and took the scissors away, situating herself behind him on a chair. “Do you know what you’re doing?” He asked, sounding more nervous than she ever heard him before.
“Do you?” She laughed. “At least I can see the back.”
Though she was certainly no professional, she thought he looked very sweet when she was done. It curled on his forehead and she found she couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to brush it back several times. He took her hand in his and kissed her palm when she did this. This was all still very new to her.
He made no more pretenses of going to sleep on the sofa any more. The second night they were there, the first time that this seemed to be happening ‘on purpose’, he took note of how shy she was and pulled her into his arms and held her all night, not moving, not pushing her, just letting her feel safe. And her shyness was quickly leaving her.
***
It was too easy to pretend that this was real life, not just escape. She had nightmares less frequently now, but sometimes they still came on, as strong as ever. She would wake up with a start and Ethan would stir around her, soothing her back to sleep with gentle kisses, his big warm hands running over her chilled skin. Her dreams were the one place she didn’t have Ethan to protect her.
That whole time was just a black emptiness in her mind. She walked into her father’s empty warehouse (and it was totally empty, she was sure of that) and then she was shaking in Ethan’s arms and he and Johnny were telling her to put down the gun. And in between, there was nothing. No gun, no Lisa...nothing at all about what really happened. Just that voice, saying her name. A dark, male voice, with no good intentions.
Sometimes Ethan tried to bring it up, probe her mind, help her remember. And he had done this ever increasingly since they got to the cabin, since the first time he’d touched her...it seemed the closer they got, the more desperately he tried to unlock this mystery. His urgency scared her, but the black hole in her mind scared her more.
It was unsaid, and she knew he didn’t think of it this way, but she had dragged him into this mess by her own faulty memory. Her own weakness.
She was frustrated and angry with herself, and also so scared. She remembered in excruciating detail everything about Kiefer- could feel her bones rattle when the fear threatened to overwhelm her. What could be so horrible that she would block it all out?
The longer it took her to remember, the harder it would be to go home. And the point of all of this was to go home- for both of them.
But it was so easy to escape with Ethan.
Kristina turned into him and he readjusted in his sleep to pull her in tighter. After being afraid for so long, it just felt too good to be safe.
<<<333
Title: Into The Mystic
Rating: pg-13
Word Count: 2,437 (11/?)
Summary: There is a moment, a split-second, an exact pinpoint in time that splits the child with the person he will be forever...
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Author's Note: This veers from GH canon in May of 2011. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. ^_^
Previous
Kristina kept an eye on the stew bubbling on the stove while she peeled onions. It felt good to be doing something so comforting and normal. Ethan was still asleep. She had woken up a few hours ago, curled into him like a shell, before stealing the car keys and going into town herself for supplies.
She had to let him sleep (he hadn’t let himself relax in far too long) and she knew he would have insisted on going himself. At this point though, either one of them were equally in danger of getting caught, and also he would have brought back more take-out, which she just couldn’t do, under any circumstances.
She took an experimental taste of the broth and added more pepper. Last night...It was the safest she’d felt in a long time. Maybe the happiest she’d ever been. Ethan was so gentle, so tender and loving...she had never imagined how wonderful it would feel to be so close to him.
She shook herself out of her thoughts when she heard him stirring and coming out of the bedroom. She shook her hair in front of her face to hide her blush. “Good morning,” she said, eyes cast down. “I made coffee.”
She glanced at him quickly, shoving his hair out of his face and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. It was boyish and cute and she bit her lip to keep from giggling at him. He grunted an approximation of morning back at her and busied himself with pouring a cup of coffee. There wasn’t much room in this tiny kitchen and when he sat down at the little round table, he felt very close to her.
“What are you doing?” he finally said, his voice still groggy.
“Boeuf bourguignon,” she answered, setting out a frying pan for the onions. He looked confused. “Beef stew.”
The coffee was starting to kick in for him. “But where did you get all...” It was starting to dawn on him. “Kristina...what did you do?”
She had to smile. “You don’t need to be so horrified. I took the car, went into town and got some supplies. We both need to eat, you needed to sleep, and I...”
“You?” Ethan prompted. “You what?”
She felt her blush start to creep back when his eyes went darker. She didn’t finish her line of thought. As surreally wonderful as it felt to wake up in Ethan’s arms, she’d had no idea how to behave, and taking some time for herself for the first time in God knew how long, somehow distancing herself for a bit, felt necessary. Not wanting to replace the memory of feeling perfectly safe with feeling awkward. She’d had enough of that.
Kristina shook her hair back from her face and smiled shyly. “I’m sorry- I don’t know how to act after...I mean...”
Ethan leaned back in his chair, studying her in a way that made her feel vulnerable. Not like last night. She was always safest when she was closer to him.
Then he smiled, and she caught a flash of this spring, before everything awful had happened. “God, you’re really gorgeous, you know that?” It was so unexpected, Kristina let out a frantic giggle, and Ethan’s smile softened. “And I must say, whatever that is smells amazing.”
Kristina grinned. “It still has a while to go. At least another hour or so.”
“Mmm, my stomach’s already growling.” He pouted like a little boy and she handed him a loaf of bread and stick of butter on a dish. He slathered two large slices, watching her move around the kitchen. “Where did you learn to cook like this?”
“My dad, actually,” Kristina smiled fondly, remembering standing on a kitchen chair at the stove and carefully dropping herbs into a tomato sauce.
“Really?” Ethan asked, genuine surprise in his voice.
She tilted her head. “Sure. It wasn’t always bullets and carbombs at the Corinthos house. And this was something I think he felt comfortable sharing with me. He probably thought it would be useful.”
Ethan shook his head. “Sonny Corinthos, secret chef. Who would have thought?”
Kristina laughed. “Turned out to be more useful than I bet he ever thought.”
***
After two large bowls of stew, Ethan pleasantly felt like he would burst. He leaned back in his chair, watching Kristina ladle leftover helpings into tupperware containers (it was probably a good thing she went to the store, since she really thought of everything). This had been far too pleasurable of a day, this illusion of domestic bliss. He woke up to find his little woman cooking a Sunday dinner for him, and as he sat and watched her be lovely and sweet, he kept getting flashes of the night before, bare skin and soft sighs and slick heat.
He had never, ever meant for this to happen. He was only supposed to keep her safe. But how had he even let it get to that point? He should never have even gone anywhere near her, like Johnny did with Lulu.
He’d just never been able to resist getting himself into trouble. Last night was inevitable, and it had been for a long time. Far longer than he cared to admit.
Kristina glanced at him over her shoulder, offering a pretty smile and his heart flip-flopped.
When she was done cleaning up, she came and sat back down at the table with him, carrying two more cups of coffee. It was still early, before sunset. “Were you able to get a message to Johnny?” she asked.
Ethan sighed. “I sent a message. I don’t know if he’ll get it. If he has to shut down a phone, it might be a while before I know how to get in touch with him again.”
“What did you say to him?” She took a sip with her pinky in the air. For all of her toughness he’d recognized over the past month, she was still a dainty princess.
“I just said we were okay- well, safe anyway,” Ethan answered. “There’s really not much I can tell him, is there?” She shrugged and looked down at the table, tracing imaginary patterns. “Krissy? What’s wrong?” He reached across and took her hand in his, laying the back of her hand in his palm and rubbing his thumb up and down.
“It’s nothing,” she said, far too quickly and timidly to sound anything like herself. “I just...my mother. Molly. I wish I could talk to them.” She looked up at him apologetically. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not fair. There’s nothing you can do about it and this is hard on you, too.”
“Fair has nothing to do with it,” Ethan shook his head. “And as far as missing your family...I know. And...as unhelpful as it might be to hear this, who knows when you’ll see them again? It’s okay to miss them. And it’s okay to talk about it.”
She tilts her head to one side, smiling softly and studying him carefully. “Then how come you don’t talk about it?”
He sighed. “Lucky and Lulu- it’s not the same for me. You know that.”
She bit her lip. “That’s not who I’m talking about.”
Ethan let go of her hand and exhaled sharply. He shoved his hair back from his face, if only so he could not look at her for a second. She laid him too bare, there was nowhere to hide with Kristina. “I don’t think about them because,” he hitched in his breath. “Because I made myself forget about them. That was wrong of me.”
She was silent across from him, clearly waiting for him to continue and for the first time in a long time, he found himself wanting to continue. “Where do I start?” he said, with a sad chuckle, and she laughed.
“From the beginning.”
And so he did. And Ethan surrprised himself by remembering more than he thought. When he’d left home, fifteen and scared and empty, he hadn’t even taken a photograph of his parents with him. He had just wanted to shut it all off, all the memories, all the pain. That, at least, he knew she understood.
“Have you ever been back?” she asked. It had gone dark outside the window.
He shrugged. “There’s nothing there any more. And even if there was, the town I grew up in was all but destroyed in the flood last year.” Heartbreaking compassion flashed in her eyes and he had to look away. “I mean, I’ve been gone so long, it dossn’t really feel like home any more. But still...it’s strange to think that everything I knew as a child is just gone, just gone.”
Kristina tucked her hair out of her face and sighed. Ethan recognized the action as his own nervous habit. “I can’t imagine,” she said quietly. “All that you’ve been through...”
All he’d been through. Though he could never say he was exactly proud, it gave him a certain sense of arrogance to know what he could survive. But still...
He shook his head. “No, it’s not only me who’s had it tough.” He recognized that now, for maybe the first time ever. That the world was not out to get him, that everyone had their own personal wars to fight. Some tougher than others.
Why had it taken him so long to catch on? No, the why wasn’t important any more. He’d let Kristina literally run him all over the country, fighting with everything in him to keep her at arm’s length, when he sould have known that she was inevitable.
Kristina’s life was going to work out and be wonderful.
He was going to make sure of that.
She tilted her head and cleared her throat and he realized he’d been quiet for some time now. Ethan stood and took her hand, helping her out of her chair to stand facing him. He could feel himself smiling, because she was smiling back, shyly. When he took her face in his hands, he felt her pulse flutter rapidly under his fingers. But he didn’t kiss her mouth first, letting his lips wander over her cheekbones and the tip of her nose. “Everything is different now, angel.”
“Everything?” she repeated, a hint of a gasping question in her voice as he ghosted his lips under her jaw.
He finally touched his mouth to hers. “Everything. I promise,” he whispered. “And we can’t go back again.”
***
They’d been gone for almost two months. And as scary as the first month was, these past few weeks Kristina had almost been...happy. She was happy. It was so easy to pretend here.
They found little mementos of Lucky’s childhood everywhere they looked- scratches on the wall showing his growth, a matchbox car he’d hidden under a loose floorboard on the stairs. They cooked dinner in the tiny kitchen and sat out in the back, listening to the quiet. Kristina expected Ethan, the rolling stone, to get bored very quickly, but he seemed more than content. He seemed happy too.
One day she found him trying to butcher his now shoulder-length hair and after the initial shock, she laughed at him and took the scissors away, situating herself behind him on a chair. “Do you know what you’re doing?” He asked, sounding more nervous than she ever heard him before.
“Do you?” She laughed. “At least I can see the back.”
Though she was certainly no professional, she thought he looked very sweet when she was done. It curled on his forehead and she found she couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to brush it back several times. He took her hand in his and kissed her palm when she did this. This was all still very new to her.
He made no more pretenses of going to sleep on the sofa any more. The second night they were there, the first time that this seemed to be happening ‘on purpose’, he took note of how shy she was and pulled her into his arms and held her all night, not moving, not pushing her, just letting her feel safe. And her shyness was quickly leaving her.
***
It was too easy to pretend that this was real life, not just escape. She had nightmares less frequently now, but sometimes they still came on, as strong as ever. She would wake up with a start and Ethan would stir around her, soothing her back to sleep with gentle kisses, his big warm hands running over her chilled skin. Her dreams were the one place she didn’t have Ethan to protect her.
That whole time was just a black emptiness in her mind. She walked into her father’s empty warehouse (and it was totally empty, she was sure of that) and then she was shaking in Ethan’s arms and he and Johnny were telling her to put down the gun. And in between, there was nothing. No gun, no Lisa...nothing at all about what really happened. Just that voice, saying her name. A dark, male voice, with no good intentions.
Sometimes Ethan tried to bring it up, probe her mind, help her remember. And he had done this ever increasingly since they got to the cabin, since the first time he’d touched her...it seemed the closer they got, the more desperately he tried to unlock this mystery. His urgency scared her, but the black hole in her mind scared her more.
It was unsaid, and she knew he didn’t think of it this way, but she had dragged him into this mess by her own faulty memory. Her own weakness.
She was frustrated and angry with herself, and also so scared. She remembered in excruciating detail everything about Kiefer- could feel her bones rattle when the fear threatened to overwhelm her. What could be so horrible that she would block it all out?
The longer it took her to remember, the harder it would be to go home. And the point of all of this was to go home- for both of them.
But it was so easy to escape with Ethan.
Kristina turned into him and he readjusted in his sleep to pull her in tighter. After being afraid for so long, it just felt too good to be safe.
<<<333