Ivan Press

Hilary de Broqueville

"Are you serious," she says, without question, regarding the name of the place. She doesn't expect an answer. Hilary just sighs. "Fine."

And she just walks away from him then, turning on her heel, shaking her head as though she can't bear the trendiness. At least it's not an ampersand coffee shop; even she has noticed these things and is put off by the trend. Of course she is. Of course she carries a Dior bag. Of course she drives an Aston Martin. Of course she didn't buy it. These are all the things about her that anyone can see, and hate and envy and degrade and worship her for.

--

Hilary does get to 'Dollop' eventually. He has to wait for her in the end. She has taken off her sunglasses by the time he sees her, and she's crabby and tense and her mouth is tight. He is wearing sunglasses now; they traded. He doesn't smile and she at very least doesn't scowl, but he rises. And when she comes near, he touches her. Slides his arms around her and kisses her temple and she submits but grouses:

"It's gotten hot," and she's wearing that sweater. She sighs. "I want something with ice."

"You're wearing a sweater," Ivan points out, not unkindly, as he reaches out to pull the door open. The cafe is the opposite of those close, cozy, warm-woods indie coffeehouses. It's open, glossy, all pale wood and charcoal grey. Feels a bit like one of those Silicon Valley startups, all open-plan and modular and ultra-modern. Feels the opposite of intimate.

They step inside and the patrons suddenly breathe new air. They're electric, magnetic, just a touch threatening. She wants something with ice. Two months ago he would've just ordered for her. Wouldn't have thought twice about it.

He doesn't order for her. He steps up to the counter with her. There's a line, which he doesn't even look at. He slips his wallet out of his pocket with one hand -- the other still around Hilary's waist, see -- and he slides out a few random bills that he doesn't even look at because really, what does he know about how much a cup of coffee is supposed to cost? That's what his people are for. It might be five dollars on the counter there. It might be five thousand. He looks at the menu and frowns for a moment and makes eye contact with one of the baristas and just

starts

ordering, clearly under the assumption that someone will be taking it all down. He wants a hot drink. He wants a cold snack. He wants cocoa powder on his snack. Oh, he wants a turkey panini too; yes, that sounds good. He's finished; he looks at Hilary.

"And you, love?"

She glares at him. Not just that: she bares her teeth at him briefly, her eyes flashing. But they walk in, she before him, briskly, like she's ignoring him. It's air conditioned inside despite the cooling temperatures outside. She holds her head high. She always does.

People notice her. They wonder where they've seen her before but they haven't; they have no idea what she is, where she comes from, what she's worth.

Hilary takes a very long time to order. She stares at the board, which is covered in chalk art, frowning. She ends up getting the largest size they have. It is iced and topped with whipped cream and caramel drizzle. It has bits of toffee sprinked in it. One of the syrups supposedly tastes like toasted marshmallows. Hilary has never been at a campfire in her life, but that's the flavor she ends up picking.

At one point, ordering, she reaches down and shoves Ivan's arm off of her waist. She doesn't even look at him. But she lets him pay for her drink.

The baristas have no idea what to make of them. The man is younger and the woman is older and they think maybe he's her cabana boy except he's the one putting money down on the counter. The man orders fluently, thoughtlessly, with only that momentary glance at the menu, and god only knows if he keeps to what's written on it. Maybe he tries. He's pretending to be an ordinary citizen, currently. The woman takes absolutely forever to order, and mid-order she shoves the man's arm off her waist, so they're clearly lovers and they're clearly having a fight. The man retreats half-a-step to the side, but in the end the money on the counter covers both of them and then some.

Someone does take their order. Because there's so much money on the counter. Because they're so fucking bizarre, and so fucking extraordinary. Because they must be famous, or they should be, or something. Hilary wants something with an obscene amount of sugar in it, and Ivan wonders for a moment if he should warn her: it'll freeze her to the core, it'll hit her like a truck, it'll make her cranky thirty minutes later. He decides not to; there's a number of reasons, most of them good. When she's finished ordering, he turns on his heel and strolls over to a table by the window. Two chairs there. He pulls one out, has a seat, waits to be served.

They end up seating themselves. This is so gauche. They will be served, though. When asked for their names so they could come fetch their drinks at the counter, Hilary just gave them a withering, disgusted, bewildered Look, like they were speaking some foreign language that she found distasteful.

They will be served.

She sits across from Ivan. She doesn't speak. Hilary look into the distance. She still smells of cigarette smoke; he still smells of that fucking whore he was about to go upstairs and nail into the ground. So she sits, elbow on the arm of her chair, knuckles beneath her delicate chin. She doesn't look at him.

For some time, neither of them speak. She looks away from him and he looks at her, until eventually he too looks away. They stare out the window. Or perhaps he stares out the window, and she stares at the baristas or the other patrons until she makes them uncomfortable. He takes his sunglasses off after a while, folds them, sets them on the small table. The planks are the color of driftwood, aged and bleached.

Eventually they are served. Ivan gets his macchiato, his cheesecake slice dusted in cocoa. He gets a turkey panini and he decides at once he doesn't want it after all; it looks disgusting. Hilary gets her enormous, frigid, cream-topped, syrup-drizzled confection. Ivan looks at it wryly, distrustfully. When the barista leaves he raises his eyes to her face.

"Are you safe where you live, at least?"

"It's fine," she says tersely, picking up her twenty-ounce glass -- it comes in a glass, how novel -- and taking a sip through the wide black straw it's served with. She levels him with a stare.

"I lived in my own place for a year or so, if you recall. And I was perfectly fine."

"I do recall." That comes back a little faster, a little harder than it needs to. The edges of the words are sharp. He picks up his mug and he sips; then he picks up his fork and slashes the tip off his cake slice. Pops it in his mouth.

Chewing, "I'm not doubting your ability to survive alone. Clearly you've done that many times over. I was thinking of the Greys. I wanted to know you were safe." He clicks his fork down; levels a gaze at her. "That's all."

"You're awfully snappish," Hilary observes, leaning back with her glass in one hand, the straw beside her lips, "for someone still wearing last night's formalwear and some drunken slut's perfume."

She sips. "Oliver Grey hasn't raped me since the last time you saw me, nor has Edmund Grey. Is that enough for you to know I'm 'safe'?"

"Let it go, Hilary." He's angry; then he's simply weary. "I don't prod at your weaknesses and your mistakes over and over and over and over. Have a little courtesy not to jab at mine."

And: "I suppose it'll have to be enough."

Her eyebrows flick upward. "Yes you do," she says quietly. "Maybe you don't mean to, but you do."

She looks into her glass. "I've made you promises. But now I know that the moment I step aside to have a life of my own, you're going to --"

Those spots again, on her cheeks. High and soft, but such a bright pink. It isn't embarrassment or sweetness, coyness. It's anger. But more than that, it's hurt. She huffs out an exhale, sipping at her cold, cold drink. "The last time you did that was before Anton was born."

"I'm going to what?"

She's right. He does prod at her weaknesses. He does jab at her wounds. He doesn't mean to, or he doesn't know he's doing it, but he does: and he does it now, viciously, refusing to let her back away again from whatever it is she wouldn't say.

"I'm going to what, exactly?"

"Fuck everything that moves," she snaps, and it's loud, and several nearby tables look at her, look at the spike of anger between the two of them -- he with his ignored panini, his dusted cheesecake, her sugar-shock icy coma, their combined glory. They wonder if they're on the set of a reality show. A few look for cameras.

"Forget me. Forget your son. Turn both of us to dust as soon as you can. Behave as though I never was. As though none of it ever happened."

"Fine! Yes!" Now he's shouting. He's shouting in the middle of a cafe, as though no one else was there or no one else mattered, and people are staring and then they're too embarrassed to stare; they're ducking their heads and looking for outs. "I fucked everything that moved. The minute you stepped out of my life, I fucked every single cunt I could get my dick in. I did that. I admitted it. I'm sorry for it. But I did not, not for a day, not for a second, not for a single instant, forget about you.

"What's your excuse, then? What makes you such a saint that you get to throw stones at me? You made me promises. They meant nothing. You fucked Oliver Grey. I didn't go anywhere. I was right there, and I loved you, and you hated him, and you fucked him anyway. Why? Why did you do it? Why? You fucked him and then you came crawling back to me so I could clean his stink off of you because -- oh, that's right -- you can't live without me.

"You can't live without me. So I stayed with you. And I loved you still. And you drew away from me, day by day, hour by hour, until suddenly I was the monster and I wanted only to own and control you and you had to escape me, you brave, precious, heroic thing, you had to go live your own life, you had to cut me out of you and leave me with nothing--!"

The word cracks off the high ceilings. Ricochets off the broad windows. The cafe has cleared out; the baristas behind the bar are white.

"And now you're angry," soft now, "because I filled the space you left behind with a hundred sluts that meant nothing to me."

"You didn't go anywhere?" she throws back. "You left me that time, Ivan. After Novgorod, after Anton. You dropped me off and you were done with me. You weren't there. You weren't loving me. You were exhausted by me. You ran from me, and I didn't eat for lack of you."

She nearly snarls that: roars it, the word growling out of her. What she was like when they came back, when he escaped her for... however long he needed to. While she laid in her bed and forgot what it meant to live at all.

"I wanted a life of my own. That's all. Not to be kept like a garden, with the wolves around me like a wall," she quotes Edmund now, paraphrases him, and her skin is white as she does so, the blood draining even out of that sharp blush of anger. "Not to be followed, not to have trinkets left on my pillow or my wrist while I'm sleeping. And no matter how many times I told you what I wanted for my life, it only made you press harder, dig in deeper, hold tighter. Made you act more like one of them."

Hilary stares at him. "I don't think I'm brave or precious or heroic, Ivan. I just think you're blind. I told you that day I was leaving the house. Not you. You were the one who convinced yourself that you had nothing, that I'd cut you off. You were the one who dug the hole you so desperately needed to fill."

"Why did you fuck him?"

That's what he's caught on. After all this time -- months, now -- that wound is reopened, that festering casket unsealed. The rest of it: it passes him by; he doesn't even care anymore.

"Because I left you after Novgorod? Because you wanted a life of your own? Why?"

Not that night. Not when she sobbed on the floor of her dance studio, enraged and self-loathing, convinced he didn't, wouldn't, could not love her anymore, didn't love her at all. Not that night, when he simply told her not to do it again, that anything was okay but another wolf. Not when he picked her up and carried her and washed her, smoothed all of it away, and convinced her that she was pleasing him, forced her to ride him to please him. That night, he closed up the wound even though it wasn't clean inside. He left it to rot.

Say this for her: that's not what Hilary chooses to toss back at Ivan now. Turn it around, divert it: if he had such a fucking problem with it, why did he pretend to forgive her?

Tears spring to her eyes, hot and stinging and bright against the blackness she shares with their son. "Because I needed it, Ivan," she says, low and heavy, strained almost, like she's pulling a barge from a rope over her shoulder, dragging the truth to shore. "I needed it, and I needed you, and he wasn't you, and I swallowed glass,"

god, please let that be metaphor,

"because I thought it was going to be over after that. But you made it okay." She shudders; it's involuntary and apparently unnoticed. "I thought I was going to die, but I didn't, and you say --"

she affects a whining tone, a gasping one, and it's a vicious mockery,

"sorry sorry sorry sorry," and her teeth are on edge then. "But you want to see where I live then. You want to take me there, drenched in that whore's scent, so you can fuck me like it never mattered at all. At least I felt shame, you fucking bastard."

"I didn't want to fuck you," he interrupts, and that must sound like the worst sort of rejection coming from him -- hotblooded, avaricious, eternally-lustful him -- but it's not. "Stop assuming you know what I want. You don't. I wanted you to take me home again. I wanted to be close to you where you felt safe. I wanted to curl around you and feel you breathing, feel your heart beating. I wanted to feel like you still loved me.

"I do feel shame. I meant every fucking apology I gave you. I thought you understood that. I thought, for once in your life, you understood me. I thought we could start anew.

"Evidently, you only wanted to rake me over the coals again." He crumples a napkin in his hand, throws it atop his untouched panini, his barely-touched cheesecake. "I think I've had about enough of that for one day."

It does feel like rejection. As does everything else he says right after, though she doesn't know why. She doesn't understand why Ivan spitting that she doesn't know what he wants, she doesn't know him, feels so terrible. She just knows that she does feel terrible, and miserable, and for a moment that's enough.

For the day, that's enough for him. She hasn't been sipping her drink any longer. She sits there, as he tosses his napkin aside and tells her so. Hilary doesn't move. She sits there, and strangely her hands are folded between her knees, held together as though she's cold when moments ago she was complaining about the heat.

Beautifully, perfectly, she sheds one tear. She doesn't seem to notice it, but for a little blinking. It rolls out of the corner of her right eye, following the arch and slope of her cheekbones, her jawline. She thinks he's leaving: perhaps because he is. He's had enough of being raked over the coals for something that she knew about less than an hour ago, after all.

"Give me Anton, then," she whispers.

Stillness.

"Are you leaving me, then?"

Hilary throws the twenty-ounce pub-style glass full of frozen caffeinated confection down on the table between them. The liquid inside sloshes all over her hand, the table, her sleeve. The glass nearly cracks, but not -- the base was meant to be slammed onto tables, after all. She clutches her hand around it, tight, spasming.

"I left the house," she says, breathlessly tight. "I left the house I left the house I left the fucking house and I told you what I was doing I told you why I told you I wasn't leaving you I told you that you still had me I told you and I told you and I didn't leave you I left the fucking house, Ivan, that's all I did I left the house it never meant I didn't love you it never meant I was leaving you it didn't mean that you should --"

And then she starts hitting herself. Her sugar-soaked hand, cold and chocolate-caramel-whipped-cream drizzled, slapping her face so hard it whips her head around, one, two, three, and she was counting three should be enough but it's not enough so she keeps going. Her fingers curl inward, into a fist, knocking at her temple.

They're in a public place. They may have forgotten that; it's so easy for them to forget the little people, after all. But they are. It's a public place, there are onlookers, they have a captive audience in the form of those unfortunate baristas.

None of whom are looking around for hidden cameras now. All of whom are shocked, aghast, they don't know what to do, someone says hey in a tight, unhappy voice, but they're so far away and that woman is so crazy and

anyway they couldn't possibly compete with a werewolf's reflexes, a werewolf's speed. Hilary hits herself once, twice, and on the third time he has her wrist in hand and so she uses the other, it's a fist, she slams it against her skull where the bone is thinnest so he grabs that too. He grabs her hands in his; you'd think she's weak and easily overpowered but she's not, not like this. He has to fight her. He has to exert genuine effort to pull her hands down, keep her from scratching and gouging and striking and slashing, pin her with her arms at her sides and his arms around her, her back to his chest, twisting his neck to keep out of the way of her head snapping back.

"Stop," he says, teeth gritted, low, harsh. "Stop. Stop. Stop."

Arms pinned, breath labored, noises coming from her more animal than anything else, Hilary instead kicks sharply at the table they were sitting at, knocking it over, sending plates and glasses sliding towards concrete flooring. So industrial-chic. Things break. Split. Crash, splatter.

She whines; she doesn't even sound human. She barely is. And she is fighting him still; she doesn't submit so easily anymore at the first sign of dominance. She struggles. No one around them dares move; something dangerous pulses off of Ivan and something more familiar but no safer radiates out of Hilary. They are afraid she is having a seizure; they may not be far off. Her eyes have rolled back. They have no idea what they should do and they are scared to move to clean up the spilled food and drink, right the table, do anything, go anywhere near them.

"I'm allowed," she says, all but wailing it. She doesn't try to explain. She just sobs it, and starts to twitch, flinching, her body moving but not kicking, not striking. She can't anymore. She can't keep still, either. She fights, but she is fighting herself even more than Ivan. She is twisted up inside, clawing at the arms of her seat, hands stretching gauntly and flexing like folding knives. She draws her legs upward, as though to use her knees to beat her forehead in, but then stretches them out, long and lean and elegant, and in a minute or so,

she is worn out. She is relenting, crumbling, shivering.

Ivan says nothing at all in return. Nothing to her keening, nothing to her wailing. Nothing to those mysterious two words: she's allowed. He holds tight to her, as tight as he had at the base of his building; tighter. Not for the first time,

and probably not for the last,

he holds on until she wears herself out. Until that terrible mad strength goes out of her and she collapses against him, and into herself. Even then, he keeps his arms tight around her -- lists, leans, makes a slow-fall to the ground where he leans his back against one of those enormous windows, one knee updrawn to one side of her, the other leg outstretched.

His suit is hopelessly rumpled now. His breathing is harsh. Some of that is fear, anger, a boil of emotions. Some of that is genuine exertion.

"You are allowed to hurt yourself. You're allowed to slap yourself, give yourself a concussion, tear your face off, gouge your eyes out. You're allowed to throw yourself into traffic and kill yourself if you want; it's your body, your life. You can do all these things.

"But god damn it, Hilary. If you love me, if you really love me half as much as you say, you wouldn't. You wouldn't do that to yourself. For my sake, you wouldn't."

[BTW: -1 WP representing her getting herself calmed down.]

There is a chair back between her spine and his chest. There are her arms pinned to her sides and his body close to hers, close as he dares, for she shrieked at him when he tried to move her, tried to gnash and bite at his fucking ear. For all that, it wasn't him holding her down that calmed her -- not entirely. Surely it was part of it. But ultimately it came from inside of her. She tightened down on it. She pulled everything back towards herself, tried to hold it. The world shattered into a million pieces and for once, she was able to hold most of them in her hands, keep them still, keep herself from being lost in the cosmic shrapnel of her own mind.

He tells her she's allowed to hurt herself, but that isn't what she meant. She is limp now, her head turned, her face tear-stained, her cheeks pink and her breathing rapid but steady. He tells her that if she loves him, she won't hurt herself.

Hilary just shakes her head. She looks exhausted; that's because she is. She closes her eyes. "I'm allowed to be mad at you," she whispers, mutters. "For as long as I'm mad at you. And still want you to be faithful."

That's never happened before.

She's never been able to put herself back together before. Just as he was never before able to look upon his own flaws and say: yes, these are flaws. Just as she was never before able to demand for herself agency and volition, free will, a life of her own. Just as he has never before realized, felt, understood

just how much he needs her in return.

--

His arms are still around her, but not so crushingly tight now. She is exhausted. So is he. He bows his brow briefly to her shoulder. Exhales.

"Faithful," he repeats, soft. "I'll be faithful to you. And you to me."

She shudders. She rolls her head away from his shoulder, the back of the chair. She curls up, drawing her legs inward, pushing her brow against them. She smells like caramel and cigarettes. "I don't trust you right now," she says, the words themselves wincing. "I don't believe you. You..." she exhales; she's so tired. "You were going to leave."

Hilary lowers her legs once more. "If you had hated me that night, told me I was a whore and you couldn't stand to look at me, I wouldn't have thrown down my napkin and left." Her throat flashes white as she swallows, staring past the windows to the world around the cafe. "I hated myself. I would have understood if you did, too."

It's the truth. She thought he hated her then, anyway.

Some tired, tattered shred of a humorless laugh limps out of him. "I was leaving the conversation," he says; it is wry. "I wasn't leaving you."

A little time passes. He adds:

"I hated what you did. I hated that you did it. I hated that you told me, once, you were mine and mine alone. I hated that you made me feel foolish and gullible and betrayed. I hated that you hurt me so deeply. I even hated that I couldn't ... couldn't express any of this for fear of driving you mad. I hated that you hated yourself so much that my hatreds were impotent.

"But I could never hate you."

As is usual today, Hilary doesn't share his lightness, his laughter. She's angry; she feels mocked. Again. She feels dismissed. She feels furious at him for his wry little bit there: as though she was so silly to think he was leaving her! Ha ha ha. "How silly of me," comes the harsh whisper. "Perhaps not as silly as you thinking I was leaving you forever when I'd distinctly told you I wasn't," she snaps at him, but the snap is shredded, miserable, and quiet. Her hands had flexed into fists then, but uncurl. She forces them to.

He just holds her.

Holds her, and holds her, and turns his face against her neck; nuzzles her wordlessly there. He holds her and he waits,

waits until her fists uncurl. Waits a little longer still.

Then he continues.

Hilary is angry -- always so angry -- and flinches from the nuzzling, her teeth flashing for a moment. The seething anger goes unanswered, and so it stays.

He tells her that he hated what she did, and that she did it, and that she'd told him she was his. He tells her he hated how that made him feel, hated the hurt, and all of this is obvious enough by now but he also tells her something new: he was afraid to be anything but forgiving.

She says nothing for a while. Finally, then, perhaps more aware of the stares they are getting or simply worn on this, she mutters softly: "Let go of me, Ivan."

So he lets go of her.

And then he rises, and perhaps she should hate him for that flawless ease-of-motion, undisrupted even by the catastrophic force of their fight. He looks over at the baristas, the silent cafe. His eyes pass over them disinterestedly. He does not care that they are all staring.

She has begun to feel the wet stickiness of her sleeve and her hand now; she is disgusted. But she uncurls after he's moved away from her and she moves to stand, slowly. She looks at him, exhaling a sigh. "It's not my fault," Hilary says to him, "that you didn't tell me any of that weeks ago. And it's not my fault that you can't decide if you've forgiven me or if what I did with Oliver justifies what you've been doing with god knows how many the last few weeks. It's not my fault that when you have to get away from me, you don't have the decency to tell me that you're going -- you just vanish. It's not my fault that you can't tolerate my being angry with you, even when I have a right to be. Those are your demons."

Hilary picks up her bag. "However you felt after that night, I am not you. We are not the same. I am not afraid to tell you that I'm furious and betrayed, and I am not afraid to tell you that I have not forgiven you yet, even though it makes you angry and bruises your pride and makes you... smirk at me the way you do. I do not think I have to nuzzle you and coo at you as soon as you mention regret. I am still angry. I'm angry about the sluts. I'm angry about your snide remarks. I'm angry about the sneaking into the house trying to win me over. I'm angry about the man sent to trail me. I'm angry that you abandon me for weeks at a time with hardly a word. I'm angry that you don't seem to care about or think about or ever miss our son,"

those two words are whispered, harshly, even though people are anxiously Not Looking at them anymore, even though some poor waiter is coming over trying to clean up without disturbing them and a manager is staring their way. She hisses the words anyway, as though afraid they'll be overheard.

"I'm sorry," she snaps, in a tone that says anything but, "that you can't bear to need me, fearing that I don't need you, and that it makes you lose your mind." Hilary huffs. "I bear it, and I bear losing my mind over it to be with you. I give myself to you entirely, shamelessly, wholly, no matter how wrecked or degraded or miserable I am. The least you could do is --" she stops, exhaling. "I don't even know. I want to leave. My sweater is a mess and everyone is staring."

The least he can do is --

there she stops. There, at the crux of it: on the one thing he's wanted to ask her in one form or another since they walked into this cafe. Since he met her outside his building. Since she left him at the lakehouse. Since her anger first began to boil over:

"What do you want from me?"

That bursts out of him while she's complaining about her sweater, the audience, wanting to leave.

"What the hell do you want from me, Hilary? I don't know how to make you happy. I don't know how to exorcise your anger. What do you want me to do?"

"You don't get to exorcise it just because you don't like it!" Hilary tells him. At least there's this: she sounds more exasperated than enraged. "You have to be with me, and be faithful to me, and love me even when I'm not happy and even when I'm angry!" She can't hear herself; she can't marvel that she almost sounds sane. All she can do is roughly breathe out again, putting her fingertips to her brow. "Are you even capable."

Her fingertips go to her brow. His hands fly to his head; he squeezes his skull between his palms, grits his teeth, emits this wordless noise of frustration.

"I don't know. I try. I try and I try and I try, Hilary, but it's fucking hard. It's hardest of all to bear your goddamn, earth-scorching anger, because it goes on and on and there's nothing I can do to stop it. And you'd know how hard it is if you'd ever let me get angry at you. But you don't. If I get angry, or if I want to get away from your -- your fucking abuse, you lose your mind.

"That's how you exorcise my anger. Do you realize that? That's how you get me to stop: you frighten me out of my wits and force me to scramble to save you from yourself. So how the fuck do I get you to stop?"

Every time they get close again, every time one of them relents, the other explodes. Or so it seems. Even now, at his words, Hilary just recoils. Physically, psychically, in every way she crawls from his embrace, shuddering.

"Ivan, no," she all but shouts, all but wails, but the sound is too small and too weak to reach that sort of height. "It's not beautiful, Ivan!"

Hilary shudders, closing her mouth as though retching, as though each sob threatens to be more than a sob, threatens to turn her inside out entirely. Her hands are down, in fists against her legs, nails digging into palms, mascara smudged and running around her eyes. "This is ugly and terrible and wretched. We are wretched, Ivan. There is nothing beautiful about it. We're broken. We're broken."

Of course it's hard for him to hear that.

Of course it's hard for him to even frame the thoughts they've unearthed today. To face their own -- his own -- imperfections. Flaws. Ugliness. Brokenness. Mortality, fallibility, corruptibility.

Still he holds on to her. Still he holds her tight and hard and unrelenting against his side, one arm around her shoulders, one arm around her head. He kisses her again, yet again, as hard and near-brutal as his embraced.

"Maybe so," he allows; it's the most he can allow right now, "but I still love you."

Hilary grits her teeth and yanks away from him, pushing at his chest if she must, looking savagely at him. "Stop it," she snaps, she seethes. She trembles. "Don't you understand? I don't find this madness decadent and lovely and poetic, as you do. I hate it!" she tells him, awful, almost frantic.

"I hate what I am. I hate what I'm like. What it stops me from, what it does to me. I hate you for not loving Anton, I hate you for all those women, I hate myself for Oliver, I hate that nothing is ever, ever, ever right or good. I hate it, and --"

she is weeping so openly, so angrily, so helplessly, her lovely hands curled into bony white fists,

"-- and you made things all right. You made them right sometimes, and sometimes even good, and made me good, and made everything okay, everything tolerable -- as bad and wretched as it was."

Hilary is shaking her head, tears streaming, choking on them. "And now you won't, and you're telling me you can't, and there's nothing -- nothing!"

"I don't find this beautiful, Hilary!"

He is pushed away. He is shoved aside, and then he is rebounding, recoiling, shouting back at her all of a sudden.

"I don't find it decadent when you're writhing on the floor screaming like you're dying. I don't find it poetic when you're sobbing on a streetcorner, inconsolable. I don't find any of this beautiful, or entertaining, or good. Not in the least.

"I love you anyway. I've been trying to tell you. I love you when you're cool and distant and beautiful and cruel, when all the world would love you even if you broke them over your knee. But I love you, too, when you're like this, when no one in their right mind would dare look upon you. When you're completely unhinged, a madwoman, a trapped animal shrieking at me: I still love you. When I'm out there wasting all my money, fucking other women, pretending to forget you: I still love you. I love you even when everything's wrong and fucked up and twisted and rotten.

"And I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I can't make everything good and perfect and new. I'm sorry I'm not a god. I'm sorry I can't fix you. But if you hate me now for being what I am -- if you hate both of us now for being broken and twisted and bad, then -- then there really is nothing. Nothing left between us, and nothing left to say."

"You just said --" she begins, about to lash out again, but he shouts back at her. He is forward, lunging perhaps only with his voice, and his voice

does arrest her, even now.

Hilary flinches, panting a shaky exhale, ducking her chin like a child. In a way it hurts as much to hear him say it aloud: that this is not beautiful, entertaining, good. In a way, it feels like he is telling her she is none of those things, which she knew, she always knows, even when he made her feel that she was so. It hurts as much as hearing him say that they are terrible and beautiful, flawless and flawed.

He calls her a madwoman. Unhinged. A trapped animal, shrieking. Writhing on a floor, sobbing on a street corner. And he loves her. And he's sorry.

For a moment she feels mocked again: I'm sorry I'm not a god. And she flinches, visibly, wincing at the words. She's a raw nerve, she's always so raw, though perhaps seldom so aware of how raw she is. Somehow that makes it worse. Hilary tucks in on herself a bit, arms folded close, shrinking again, not under the brunt of his voice but simply because.

Because.

She feels small and weak. She always feels small and weak.

But,

then there really is nothing.

Hilary is quiet for a while. So numb, and small, and shrinking into some swirling black void in herself. She'll go find bottles of pills, a doctor, and take some, slip away for hours, days perhaps. It's how she got by, in the years before she met Ivan. It's how she still sometimes gets by, in the interim. It's how she floats in that void, how she survives in that endlessly cold darkness.

"You've only just now shown me what you are," she murmurs, her lips moving and barely a sound coming out, making her exhale, and try again, sighing the words. She shivers, though it isn't at all cold. "You've pretend to be something else, all this time. And you say I made you." Her head moves, barely a shake. "But I do hate what I am. And I hate what you are. I hate that we are like this. I wish we weren't.

"But there is still something between us. And you will give him to me, if there is nothing else."

Ivan grimaces -- winces -- one or the other. Looks away. He discovers he still has that cigarette in hand. She gave it to him. It's burnt down now, a column of ash. Maybe that should mean something. Could be it's the last thing she'll ever give him,

(she gave him: two years. eight seasons. countless pleasure trips to this lake, that city, this continent, that hemisphere. a hundred, a thousand mindblowing fucks. a whole new way to get off. a whole new understanding of himself, his true self, the part of him that paradoxically craves control and mastery and total responsibility. two years, eight seasons, a mad and maddening affair, her presence, her pleasure. her smile and her joy, rare as a thaw in a siberian winter. her son, their one and only. her trust. her adoration. true love.)

not that she ever gave him much. Right?

He flicks the cigarette into the street. He shakes his head once, briefly, as though in disgust, and he gets to his feet. "Whatever you say," he says, flippant, snarling. "Whatever you want. You want the boy? You think I have any attachment to him left, now that you're leaving?

"I don't. He's yours. You know where to find him."

It's no real gift, to be able to look for meaning in pain. To see the metaphor in ashes, to be present in the moment with all its anger and disgust and grief and yet still be able to place it within a greater context that, all the same, doesn't erase the present atrocity of emotion. Ivan may be a touch -- a hair, a glimmer -- more sane than Hilary, perhaps by virtue of blood or perhaps by simple virtue of his greater youth, but that's no gift.

But neither, really, is being lost in agony, unable to see or feel or imagine anything else.

When he rises, all the air lifts out of her lungs, but it's soundless. Hilary just lifts her chin, straining to take in replacement air. She cannot look at him. He tells her to take him. Go get him herself.

Hilary does not nod and tell him da, vladelets. She does not say anything at all, or move in such a way that indicates she heard, she understands, she agrees, she accepts. Or ignores, is confused, disagrees, denies. She just struggles a bit, just to breathe, and stares at faraway pavement.

If he leaves then, she does not stop him. It is not in her to do anything, just then, but breathe.