Jiskastya

Penny in the Well (Jiskastya x Igraine)

For a moment Ethan remained sitting on the ground, staring blankly at her hand. Thoughts and numbers whirled in his head, competing for attention. And, as he always did whenever the situation got even remotely tricky, Ethan turned to the numbers to better understand what course of action he should take. They were the only thing in his life on which he could rely with complete certainty. Even his own mind had betrayed him before this point.

The one thing for certainty he knew was that he wanted his life to go back to normal. Ethan knew how to crave excitement, but there was a whole realm of difference between excitement and fear. And running from the FBI would only ever lead to more fear, paranoia that around every corner he turned he would find another battle with the police. Now that Bree was no longer going to be on his trail it was entirely possible that the numbers would be enough to keep him from ever running into someone who was looking for him, but that would still keep him constantly on the move, constantly on guard. He could say with certainty that was not what he wanted.

He barely even reacted to her humorous attempt at imitation, barely even flicked his eyes as she continued to speak to him, explaining what his options were. He didn't need her explanations. The numbers told him everything he needed to know. Not that he wanted her to know that.

There was no doubt that the best way for him to return to his former life was for him to accept Bree's offer, to let her escort him to the FBI, and answer their questions willingly. He had run the last time because he knew that they would be looking close. They would try and dig up everything about him, and would find the many secrets that Ethan had scattered around the country. At that time they would almost certainly have found the multiple identities he possessed, and the millions of dollars that were scattered in various banks across the country. And every time they tried to get one layer closer to the truth they would find more and more reasons to hold him, to keep looking deeper. He would have come out looking like the worst kind of criminal.

Now... now it was far more likely to be a wrap up. Bree would vouch for him, and there would be far fewer reasons for them to try and find out about him. It would be far less effort for them to just accept whatever information he gave them, and let him go. It would be one more case closed, and any people who had been put on his case could be withdrawn, and put to better uses than chasing him across the country. He would pick one of his most innocuous identities, and just keep his eye on the numbers. He would act carefully, do his best to appear perfectly honest, and keep things going in the direction that would get him out of questioning the fastest.

His hand reached out blindly, and closed over Bree's fingers. Now he finally looked at her, and even though his eyes were distant, he really was looking at her. "Fine," he agreed, pulling himself up onto wobbling legs with her helping hand. "But we will need to make a stop in Denver on the way to Virginia. I need to pick up some identification."

Penny in the Well (Jiskastya x Igraine)

"I don't do unlucky," Ethan replied, a touch of humorous snark entering his tone. It was enough to finally get him to smile, an honest and somewhat surprised expression. The flow of blood finally seemed to have come to a halt, and he wiped is face one more time, looking down at her bloodstained shirt. No, Ethan didn't do unlucky. Maybe, when it came to Bree, there was no such thing as lucky or unlucky. It just... was.

"We seem to have come full circle," Ethan said a moment later. "What now, Bree?" They had gotten a brief chance to talk on the roof of that building in Chicago, but that could hardly be called a real conversation. But now they had spoken enough to get the most important questions in their relationship out of the way, and the buzz that had been keeping Ethan awake and functioning was starting to fade. More than anything, he wanted to return to his hotel room, change into a dry pair of clothes, and sleep until his pounding headache went away.

He couldn't tell, though, whether or not he wanted to get away from Bree. This was the second time she had pushed him to use his abilities in a way he had never used them before. Probability was the bounds of what was possible. Luck was pushing the impossible into the realm of probability. Both of the times he had saved her life, he had been forced to step over that edge. It frightened him, but it also intrigued him. The dark lure of power. Perhaps the best way to stay away from that darkness was just to get as far away from Bree as possible.

"If you try and arrest me, I will run again. I'm not going to jail. I'm not going to go sit in an interrogation room in some FBI compound. And, as you have already told me, you will be obliged to chase me. We will be starting our little game of cat and mouse all over again, and next time it may not end until one of us is dead."

This, That, and The Other Thing ~ PopeAlessandros x Jiskastya

Cool. Thanks.

I'll try and get you a reply with all haste, but I apparently suck at that.

Penny in the Well (Jiskastya x Igraine)

t might have almost been funny, if the whole situation hadn't been so lacking in any humor. Him, try to kill her? No. That was the last thing he had done. It hadn't even been a possibility, that little shard of a bullet that would enter into her body. It had been such a small number that he had dismissed it, for it had felt like the same chance as him waking up tomorrow to realize he had gone blind. Now he knew that something about Bree made the numbers different. It was like there was a little warp around her, and it made the impossible happen. Surely there was no one else in the world who could be sitting with him, right here, right now.

"No," he said. "I did not want you dead. I did not even know you would be hit." And that was all he could say. It was all he could offer, and it was probably the most honest thing he had said for as long as they had been talking.

And I saved your life. He added silently, a trace of bitterness in his mental voice. You don't know it, but you were supposed to die then. And I didn't let it happen. This whole chase, the whole distortion of his life, in the end it was all his fault. His actions, and Bree, who was somehow able to find him over and over, stand right next to him in the one city in America where he just happened to be, one day before he was planning on leaving.

"My turn for a question," he finally said. "Why didn't you let me go? Why did you even start chasing me in the first place? How did you keep finding me?"

It was, in a way, only one question. The first one was the obvious one, but the last one was the one to which he really wanted to know the answer. They were directly connected to each other in Ethan's mind, and the last could not have been asked without the first.

But, underneath it all, there was a touch of relief. She had accepted his explanation about what he could do. He wouldn't need to make up more excuses, more lies. Maybe, at the end of this all, they would be able to separate, and never see each other again.

Penny in the Well (Jiskastya x Igraine)

He let her talk. Ethan didn’t interrupt her flow of words, the words that had been building inside of her since they met four months ago on that fateful raid. That one desperate question that had haunted the both of them was finally out in the air, and there was no avoiding it.

He had known what he was going to tell her for a long time now. The answer had been building inside his subconscious since she had shouted that question to him for the first time, just over three months ago as he glided away on the ferry bound to Seattle. For a moment he tried to find a way around them, around the dishonesty that burned within them. Technically his words would be the truth, but they would be skirting so far around his desperate desire to avoid the truth of his ability that they might as well be an outright lie. Why did he care about lying to her? Where in this absurd game of cat and mouse had she become more than the hunter, and he more than the prey?

“The mob was already there, Bree,” he told her gently, softly. Would she break? Would the answer to her question take away the few supports that kept her upright? “That is why I was wearing the uniform. I was there to make money. Knowing what cards you are going to get is the ultimate gambling technique. I didn’t need the money.

“When I noticed the raid coming I tried to leave. The last thing I wanted to be was caught by the police. But when I tried to leave I noticed the presence of the mob. If I’d actually walked out of the building I would have been shot. So I decided to take advantage of the raid.

“You weren’t supposed to notice me. I was supposed to be one of the many workers taken away. I’d answer the questions, and no one would look twice at me. But then you gave me a personal escort, and I had to find another way to get away.

“The mob had left one hitman. Just in case the off chance of a shot presented itself. There was a clean line between him and Victor. The only thing blocking his sight was... me. And I just... stepped aside. It was one little move, and it seemed so easy. Everything is easy in your head. Reality is a lot harsher. It didn’t feel like murder when it was just an idea.

"I didn’t do anything to the bullet. It took its course. All I did was step aside.”

And it was true. He was the only thing blocking the hitman’s line of sight, and he did simply step to the side. But he didn’t tell Bree that he had set things up. He didn’t tell her that the only reason the mob had left a hitman in the first place was because he fixed the numbers. That the only reason that there was a clear line of sight was because he had made sure that it would be there.

But he hadn’t lied about the numbers. It hadn’t felt like murder. It wasn’t as though he had pulled the trigger. But Ethan had accepted that darkness on that very same ferry ride. He had accepted the pride within him that let him believe he had the right to manipulate the course of events. That he had the right to change things however he wanted to promote his own desires.

Somewhere in that raging waterfall a stroke of relief had found him. His crime wasn’t any less, but there was atonement waiting for him. It didn’t make what he had done any better, but it still freed him.

He had saved her life twice. But she had saved him, too. She had saved him, and she had shown him himself. Perhaps they were even.

Penny in the Well (Jiskastya x Igraine)

The leaf?

For a moment he had been so close, so close he had honestly allowed himself to believe he was free. He had relaxed, watched her slowly process the information that he had given her, watched as the numbers reassured him that this was it. She might not have truly believed he was telling her everything, but she was willing to let it go. Or so he had believed.

The human brain was a fickle thing. It made connections that even the numbers couldn't predict. It made sudden connections, and whole paradigms could shift. And so it was with Bree at that moment. She found something to keep her looking.

The leaf.

It took Ethan a moment to even remember about what she was speaking. The little games he played with the world around him were so second nature by now that he didn't even notice them. It was like a comedian telling a joke in his head and laughing out loud, or a musician who tapped out the keys to a song of which they were particularly fond on a solid surface. It was an unconscious gesture, his way of interacting with the world. Finally he was able to pick out the memory, a memory that he would never have remembered after all of the excitement if she hadn't pointed it out to him.

He had grabbed the leaf because the water had been so easy, madly spitting all over the place, every which way. The same water that had allowed him to jump into it, had carried him all the way through the rapids without ever bashing his prone form against the rock.

She was staring at him, and the longer he hesitated the less she was going to believe the next partial truth he would feed her.

He shook his head side to side, a motion somewhere between complete denial and a desperate attempt to placate her. "The leaf wasn't floating. The water spat it out, and I grabbed it. It is easy to do when you can predict where it is going." That wasn't enough. She didn't trust his words. Why would she? Well, perhaps she would trust her eyes. "Here. Look."

With one hand, Ethan picked up a pebble, with the other, he held out his hand, palm up, mutely asking for Bree's own hand. As soon as he had it, he looked around, tossing the pebble lightly up and down, up and down. He studied the numbers, doing exactly that which he was pretending was all he could do. Read the numbers, observe and predict, but not alter. As soon as he found the perfect moment, he threw the pebble wildly up into the air at an angle that made it seem impossible it could ever come back. The pebble quickly disappeared from sight, but, up higher, a small gust of wind grabbed the light rock, sending it skidding back in Ethan's direction.

His eyes never breaking contact with the pebble, Ethan negotiated Bree's hand with deft movements. The pebble bounced off the rock, and landed lightly in Bree's palm. It rolled slightly, but stayed balanced in the center of her palm.

"Gravity works the way gravity works. Nothing can change that. But gravity and wind, they always do the same thing. Just like water. That makes them easy to predict."

Now he had her convinced. He had to have her convinced. This was getting far too close to the truth for comfort.

Penny in the Well (Jiskastya x Igraine)

He had to tell her something. The numbers told him that much. That fact calmed the twisting in his stomach and dissolved the lump in the back of his throat. He had something that he needed to do, and it calmed him down. All he had to do was focus on this one, last task.

If he didn't say anything now he could make her go away. Eventually she would just get up and leave. But it was impossible that she would leave him forever. The hunt would not be over until she found an answer that would satisfy her. And that was what he needed to find. An answer that would satisfy her. She was done with this hunt; as done with it at this moment as she could ever be. But if he left her with nothing that fire would kindle within her again, and they would be right back to where they had begun.

He had saved her life. She knew it, and he knew it. That act had changed something between them. If he could just find the right words now he could end this. The numbers answered his subconscious plea, and he longed to close his eyes, to devote his complete attention to them. He had to find a solution, one that could get him out of this situation for good. That was all that concerned him.

"It..." he began, stumbling over the words. How could he say something? But his mind latched on to something she had said, only moments ago, something that he had dismissed without even recognizing it. "You said it yourself. Probability. It was probability." That wasn't enough. It wouldn't be enough to satisfy her. But this was where he had to be careful. He had to pay the strictest attention to what he said, and what implications were, or, more importantly, were not, in his words.

"I've always been good at making predictions about the world. Looking at something, and... quantifying what is going to happen. Water is a very predictable substance. It doesn't do things randomly. It is always affected by gravity and is always influenced by the path and the landscape surrounding it. I just made sure we were in the correct spots at the correct time."

Not once in his short speech did he imply that he could actually alter the probability of something happening. That was far too dangerous. Things happen all the time, and if there was something odd or exceptional, well, that was life. And that was ok. Other people were ok with that. It was ok for him to win thousands of dollars at a casino, because sometimes people just got lucky. So long as he lost more than he ultimately took away, he was safe. If he just happened to walk out of a police station, so be it. But as soon as he implied that he was responsible for it, then things always got out of hand. It was alright if the exceptional happened around him. It was not if he made the exceptional happen through the power of his own will.

Penny in the Well (Jiskastya x Igraine)

Ethan did not wish to begrudge Bree her sarcasm, but he did anyways. Consciously he understood that it was her way of coping with the fact that everything she believed, everything she had been taught about the world since birth, was being shattered. He understood that. At the same time he resented it. He resented the obligation that she represented, and he resented her for putting this burden on him.

After all, physically, Ethan had been alone since he had left his parents at age eighteen. But, emotionally, the child Ethan had been abandoned before the age of ten. Now, for the first time in a very long time, he was expected to confide in another human. He was expected to be accommodating, and truthful. And he didn’t want to. He didn't know how.

So he chose to linger in silence, waiting for something to arise and save him. He didn’t even realize that he was still scanning the numbers, was looking for something that could get him away, until he saw the chance to run. He took in a small breath, startled, before sighing. Was that really what he wanted to do? Did he really want to go back to running, with no goal in mind, glancing over his shoulder constantly, waiting for the world to fling him back towards Bree?

If it meant that he wouldn’t have to tell her anything, maybe. He let out a small snort of laughter, before picking up the shirt she flung at him and wringing it out. The watered down blood dripped onto the rock in a small torrent, and he stared at it blankly. He stuck the shirt back under his nose, wiping away the blood that had pooled in the corners of his eyes and in his ears with the hem.

For a moment there was silence, and he tried to relax. He tried to prepare himself so as to be able to answer her questions. But when she finally spoke again, he broke.

“What,” he said, voice dripping with pained sarcasm. “You want to know what I am?” He let out a harsh bark of a laugh, before tossing her shirt back at her. “Do you want me to say I’m a monster? That I sold my soul to the devil?” He was silent for just a moment, turning his eyes back to the water.

“Well, I didn’t,” he finally managed to spit out. “And I’m not. I’m a man. Just...” he choked slightly, gagging over the lump that had formed in the back of his throat. He swallowed hard, biting the inside of his lip, before choking out his final words. “Just a man who wants to live his life.”

Penny in the Well (Jiskastya x Igraine)

Her voice pulled Ethan the rest of the way into reality, and he slowly lifted his head off of her arms, glancing around. He carefully undid the tight lace of his fingers, wincing slightly as the blood rushed back into the appendages. And then he set about extracting himself from Bree. He did it warily, carefully, almost as though he had woken up to find himself sleeping with a poisonous snake, and one wrong movement might cause it to strike. But nor was he inclined to stay still, to leave himself wrapped in her arms. Perhaps it was fear, perhaps it was weakness, but he was not going to stay there. She was touching him almost like a lover, something that Ethan had not experienced in a long time, and it was making him uncomfortable.

He pulled himself a few inches away from her, sitting up carefully and tucking his knees up to his chest. He wiped at his nose, smearing the trails of blood across his upper lip and over his hand. He glanced down, using this as an excuse to not meet her eyes, before shaking his head slightly.

"No," he agreed wearily, almost blankly. "No more running. There's no point in it anymore."

He was silent for a few moments, unwilling to continue. One of his hands had slipped off his knee and was trailing gently in the piles of pebbled that lay on top of the rock. He rolled one between his fingers, taking comfort in the sensation. And then, finally, he looked up at Bree.

She had taken her shirt off, and his eyes traced briefly over her scar. A small flicker of disappointment flashed through him at the mass of scar tissue. He would have hoped that his efforts had done a better job than that. Yet the fact that she was alive at all after a wound like that should have been more than reward enough. His eyes traced up the curve of her throat, and finally came to rest on her own eyes.

Still he was silent. She had finally asked the question that he knew had been burning inside her, perhaps for even longer than she had known. She wanted to know what he could do. And Ethan had promised to himself that he would explain. Yet he still sat there, silent, and his eyes unconsciously dropped away once more.

What was he? That was hardly a question he was going to be able to answer. As far as he was aware, he was human. His parents had been human, as far as he could tell, as they had never been able to find an answer to the strange things that seemed to follow their son. Yet perhaps he wasn't human, simply because no human should be able to do what he did.

"Are you going to arrest me now?" he asked, a touch of humor staining his bland tone. It was a diversion, and he knew that. Bree would probably know that as well, but it was also something that needed answering. Right now, if she said she was, perhaps he might even go quietly, despite his assertion on the top of that fifteen story building in Chicago. At least, he would be quiet for a little while, until he once more managed to convince himself that he had found the perfect way out, and he got another person killed. He had told Bree the truth. He was done running. There seemed to be no point in it anymore.

Penny in the Well (Jiskastya x Igraine)

Ethan was floating somewhere between waking and oblivion. It was peaceful in a way that he had not understood since very early childhood, when his brain had finally matured enough to comprehend his ability and manifest it in a way his mind could understand; that of basic numbers. In this place somewhere between, there were no numbers. His mind was perfectly still, no longer needing to comprehend every single microscopic thing about him.

It was boring.

Peace was not Ethan's strong suit. He had never once in his life sought out peace. He lived in the moment, in the thick of things, in the constantly changing flux of reality. What use did he have for stillness? Stillness had no potential, had no room for change or growth. Stillness was cease, and Ethan was, in no way, shape, or form, ready for cease. In a moment where he could have been reveling in his first true experience of serenity he was searching for the one thing that had always complicated his life, and had made it truly unique. He was looking for the numbers. He was pulling them back towards him, and was, at the same time, pulling himself towards them, and towards what they represented. He was pulling himself towards the ever changing existence that was life.

He was not going to stay still. He was not going to let the world go on changing without him to affect it. He was going to pull as hard as he could, until he dragged himself right back out of oblivion. Because there was nothing for him here. Nothing that he would ever want to find.

The cold water of the river was a shock, but his body was too weary for him to move even so much as an eyelid. He could feel the strain vibrating through every muscle in his body, but he could also feel something warm and solid, something that thrummed with life. Bree.

So, she had survived their tumble through the rapids. He had known that, but somehow it was reassuring to feel it, to comprehend it with a certainty that mere "knowing" could never bring. She was alive. He was alive. Against all the improbability, against everything that the laws of reality dictated, they had survived. Both of them.

He knew that the pain in his head would come later. Perhaps it might stay away an hour, maybe two, but it would come. That headache had haunted him as he had first fled across the country from Bree would not spare him indefinitely. He seemed to be winding up in this position a lot since he had met her.

Still, there was something very comforting in the familiar way she held him, in the way she spoke to him. She was probably only realizing now that they were tied together, even though such had been the case since that very first day they met. Briefly he wondered if he should tell her about that first time. Then he began to wonder what difference it made.

She dragged him out of the river behind her. He could feel the change of the air, even though he was still limp and vacant. If he hadn't been floating somewhere in semi-consciousness, had their roles been reversed, there was a very good chance he would be running now. He had done his duty, he had saved her life despite her foolishness in jumping in after him. Maybe then she would let him go.

But there was no going anywhere now. She wasn't about to let him go. He could feel that in the burning question she asked him. She might not arrest him, might not drag him to the nearest police station to ask him as many questions as she could, but that did not mean the interrogation would not happen. Could he avoid it? Did he have any right to? It was his life, what right did she have to change it?

She had already changed it. He had been running, desperate to avoid that very thought. It was too late, far, far too late to go back. He would if he could. But he couldn't. He was committed, and there was no avoiding that commitment. He would have to answer her questions, because there was no other option.

How was he going to explain it to her? She would never fully understand it. Not really. But maybe, over time, she might begin to. And he did not even consider the possibility that, over time, they might not be together, one way or another.

He was able to feel his fingers again. He twitched one experimentally, and was satisfied to feel it respond. He could feel Bree mopping his face, and he tried opening his eyes. The sky was very grey. That wasn't the way it was supposed to be when you came back from the brink. It was supposed to be a clear, perfect, spotless azure. But this was far from perfect.