Glass Waltz: Chapter 92 (036. Hell.)
Title: Glass Waltz (92)
Fandoms: House/24/MI5
Characters/Pairing: Greg House/Brittany House, referenced Brittany House/Michael Colefield and one-sided Brittany House/Jacob Lindsay
Prompt: 036. Hell.
Word Count: 1026
Rating: PG-13 for language, violence, and adult subject matter.
Spoilers: None for this part
Summary: A killer's dying wish brings his last victim to life.
Author's Notes: The ninety-second chapter of an ongoing novel. All chapter subtitles are from the song "30 Minutes" by TATU.
Ninety-Two.
Constitution.
thirty minutes / to finally decide
June 21, 2011
9:00 A.M. EST
Atlantic City, New Jersey
As they're getting their luggage loaded into the car for the drive home, Coach Brittany House is checking her phone messages, wary of the oncoming storm.
The media circus has pretty much died down over five years; she's a female coach in a man's game and she hasn't quit, so the story is moot now, when there are other things to cover, like Charles Barkley's induction into the Hall of Fame, and Team USA's embarrassing loss to Greece in the world championships. But telling your superiors at an Ivy League university that you used to work for the federal government in its most hot-button agency is no small story either.
Danny's at the summer camp. Coach Scott's on some recruiting trip. As far as business goes, there's just silence. Too bad, she could've used the distraction.
She's never liked the idea of history repeating itself.
"Anything?" her husband asks her, and she shakes her head. "Nothing. That's the problem," she replies, walking back toward the car.
He eyes her over the roof, sympathetically. "Brittany, everything's gonna be okay."
"It'll be okay when I forget that all this happened," she tells him, "and I have a very long memory." She gets into the car, and doesn't say another word about it.
She has, more or less, moved on from the early years she spent in the precarious position of trying to play hero. New job, new friends, new lifestyle, new precedent. None of the articles or interviews mention that she used to work in counterterrorism, merely that she had a civil service position out of high school. That's the way she wanted it. Not letting her present being overshadowed by her past. Not letting any paranoid questions come up about whether Princeton basketball games would be disrupted by crazed maniacs with bombs strapped to their chests.
It was a good plan, for six years.
What to do now? Would things change? Would people look at her differently? She doesn't know. She does know, that she was happy until all this shit happened.
"It's time to just go home," she said to no one in particular. "Go home, and go back to work."
June 21, 2011
4:00 P.M. EST
Princeton, New Jersey
She's standing in her kitchen in the middle of the evening. She's home, but it isn't seeming any clearer. She's back to seeing shadows around every corner. It feels almost like she's been playing house for five years and the game is up now.
Greg is doing his best to support her, but he's got his own issues to struggle with. You don't just get over being buried alive. He's been to therapy appointments. She's been to therapy appointments. But she needs more help than he does, because she feels responsible for what happened. She was the woman whose name was on that will.
Her hand drifts to the phone. She wants to call Michael. To see how he's doing, or just to hear the sound of his voice. But she won't. Because she knows he's gone from her life. Maybe he'll come back someday, but now he wants his space and time and it's really over between them.
He's really gone.
Part of her still regrets ever divorcing him. She'll always think she didn't do well by him. She will always miss him. She'll always love him, because he was her first love, and he will always love her.
She's never quite imagined a world without her ex-husband.
Maybe because he's always been there from day one, moment one, when all this crazy shit started. She was in a park, in London, freezing and scared, and there he was, quiet and strong, keeping her safe. He gave her everything that he had to give. He was willing to die for her, and most of all, he was willing to turn his whole life around for her.
She'll never forget that haunted look on his face, eyes wide and tears threatening, the night she said "I want a divorce." The one that said I've given you everything, and I can't give you any more.
She's still tormented by that look.
He's the real casualty of this, she thinks. Thinking he needs to push himself away from me. And he's right. He's the real loser, him and Taylor O'Connell, who's probably killed himself by now, I hope not but I'll never know.
Maybe that was the point of this whole affair. Maybe that's what Jacob Lindsay saw. How much lifelong causes can wreck a life. He needed her help to end his obsession, and in so doing, he gave her a chance to save another tortured soul. To let another one go. And to save her own.
She'd better have saved somebody, after all that.
She goes to the hall closet and pulls down the photo albums. Tucked in the back are her first wedding photos. She had married Michael when she was twenty. She looked so much younger then. Happier. Counting back in her head, she recalls that there were less scars on her body. If there was a big one, it'd be the dent in her first wedding band. The band he gave back to her six years ago, tucked in a box in the back of her nightstand.
If she'd stayed married to him, she knows she never would have gotten out of the game. She knows she'd never have a son. So in the end, the demise of their marriage was the right thing, at least for her. But that doesn't mean it won't hurt, especially not knowing what it will all mean for him.
"I'm going to miss you, old friend," she says quietly.
Then she cries, because she can't hold it in any longer. Can't hold in the sense that they're all trapped in some variation of hell, left wrestling with their own mistakes. Her and Taylor O'Connell and Michael and even her husband and Jacob Lindsay. They're all living with mistakes.
Brittany House never has been able to let go.
Fandoms: House/24/MI5
Characters/Pairing: Greg House/Brittany House, referenced Brittany House/Michael Colefield and one-sided Brittany House/Jacob Lindsay
Prompt: 036. Hell.
Word Count: 1026
Rating: PG-13 for language, violence, and adult subject matter.
Spoilers: None for this part
Summary: A killer's dying wish brings his last victim to life.
Author's Notes: The ninety-second chapter of an ongoing novel. All chapter subtitles are from the song "30 Minutes" by TATU.
Ninety-Two.
Constitution.
thirty minutes / to finally decide
June 21, 2011
9:00 A.M. EST
Atlantic City, New Jersey
As they're getting their luggage loaded into the car for the drive home, Coach Brittany House is checking her phone messages, wary of the oncoming storm.
The media circus has pretty much died down over five years; she's a female coach in a man's game and she hasn't quit, so the story is moot now, when there are other things to cover, like Charles Barkley's induction into the Hall of Fame, and Team USA's embarrassing loss to Greece in the world championships. But telling your superiors at an Ivy League university that you used to work for the federal government in its most hot-button agency is no small story either.
Danny's at the summer camp. Coach Scott's on some recruiting trip. As far as business goes, there's just silence. Too bad, she could've used the distraction.
She's never liked the idea of history repeating itself.
"Anything?" her husband asks her, and she shakes her head. "Nothing. That's the problem," she replies, walking back toward the car.
He eyes her over the roof, sympathetically. "Brittany, everything's gonna be okay."
"It'll be okay when I forget that all this happened," she tells him, "and I have a very long memory." She gets into the car, and doesn't say another word about it.
She has, more or less, moved on from the early years she spent in the precarious position of trying to play hero. New job, new friends, new lifestyle, new precedent. None of the articles or interviews mention that she used to work in counterterrorism, merely that she had a civil service position out of high school. That's the way she wanted it. Not letting her present being overshadowed by her past. Not letting any paranoid questions come up about whether Princeton basketball games would be disrupted by crazed maniacs with bombs strapped to their chests.
It was a good plan, for six years.
What to do now? Would things change? Would people look at her differently? She doesn't know. She does know, that she was happy until all this shit happened.
"It's time to just go home," she said to no one in particular. "Go home, and go back to work."
June 21, 2011
4:00 P.M. EST
Princeton, New Jersey
She's standing in her kitchen in the middle of the evening. She's home, but it isn't seeming any clearer. She's back to seeing shadows around every corner. It feels almost like she's been playing house for five years and the game is up now.
Greg is doing his best to support her, but he's got his own issues to struggle with. You don't just get over being buried alive. He's been to therapy appointments. She's been to therapy appointments. But she needs more help than he does, because she feels responsible for what happened. She was the woman whose name was on that will.
Her hand drifts to the phone. She wants to call Michael. To see how he's doing, or just to hear the sound of his voice. But she won't. Because she knows he's gone from her life. Maybe he'll come back someday, but now he wants his space and time and it's really over between them.
He's really gone.
Part of her still regrets ever divorcing him. She'll always think she didn't do well by him. She will always miss him. She'll always love him, because he was her first love, and he will always love her.
She's never quite imagined a world without her ex-husband.
Maybe because he's always been there from day one, moment one, when all this crazy shit started. She was in a park, in London, freezing and scared, and there he was, quiet and strong, keeping her safe. He gave her everything that he had to give. He was willing to die for her, and most of all, he was willing to turn his whole life around for her.
She'll never forget that haunted look on his face, eyes wide and tears threatening, the night she said "I want a divorce." The one that said I've given you everything, and I can't give you any more.
She's still tormented by that look.
He's the real casualty of this, she thinks. Thinking he needs to push himself away from me. And he's right. He's the real loser, him and Taylor O'Connell, who's probably killed himself by now, I hope not but I'll never know.
Maybe that was the point of this whole affair. Maybe that's what Jacob Lindsay saw. How much lifelong causes can wreck a life. He needed her help to end his obsession, and in so doing, he gave her a chance to save another tortured soul. To let another one go. And to save her own.
She'd better have saved somebody, after all that.
She goes to the hall closet and pulls down the photo albums. Tucked in the back are her first wedding photos. She had married Michael when she was twenty. She looked so much younger then. Happier. Counting back in her head, she recalls that there were less scars on her body. If there was a big one, it'd be the dent in her first wedding band. The band he gave back to her six years ago, tucked in a box in the back of her nightstand.
If she'd stayed married to him, she knows she never would have gotten out of the game. She knows she'd never have a son. So in the end, the demise of their marriage was the right thing, at least for her. But that doesn't mean it won't hurt, especially not knowing what it will all mean for him.
"I'm going to miss you, old friend," she says quietly.
Then she cries, because she can't hold it in any longer. Can't hold in the sense that they're all trapped in some variation of hell, left wrestling with their own mistakes. Her and Taylor O'Connell and Michael and even her husband and Jacob Lindsay. They're all living with mistakes.
Brittany House never has been able to let go.