| "Deep Down" | ||
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A hundred days have made me older since the last time that I saw your pretty face. A thousand lives have made me colder and I don't think I can look at this the same. All the miles that separate, disappear when I'm dreaming of your face. I'm here without you baby, but you're still on my lonely mind. I think about you baby, and I dream about you all the time. I'm here without you baby but you're still with me in my dreams And tonight, girl, it's only you and me... ~ Here Without You, by 3 Doors Down Paige's Place July 9, 2008 2350 hours "Almost midnight," he sighed. Joshua sat alone on Paige's balcony. He was disappointed that he missed her and right now she was on her way across the pond for another mission. He knew about this mission, hell, he had authorized additional Section personnel to go with them. It just happened to work out the way it did with resources being shuffled around still and he wasn't quite sure what he thought of it as of yet. For safety's reasons, he was glad Jaime was with them. Jaime was the best shot in Section, a team player, one of the good guys. There was that other thing, though. Joshua was quite aware of the history between Jaime and Paige, had been told the stories, read the files, heard the rumors, and all that. And even though he was confident in the mutual ownership himself and Paige shared, there was a little jaded part of him, somewhere deep down, where he was just the tiniest bit insecure. What Jaime and Paige had, or so he heard, had been quite intense, of course, he would expect nothing less from Paige. She had that unbridled intensity that rested deep within her that she offered to so precious few. And when you got down on those levels with individuals it was hard telling where the dividing line was between outright lust and love. Love could be a very powerful emotion and he had seen people do very bizarre things when consumed with it. Love was a destructive frightening beast, it was figuratively something that was alive and it consumed, it just ate people up from the inside out. The worst part about it, the thing that made him almost cringe with the word itself, was that love was something that didn't last and when one took its final punishment, its loss, god, the scars were unbearably ugly. He knew first hand what those scars looked like, how they felt. How after time you could get the bleeding stopped but there was always the scars left behind. Painful unbearable scars that you thought were thick, thick enough to function again. But then if that old feeling took hold that thickness could be shredded in a heartbeat and those old wounds would bleed freely. That's why he was frightened just a little bit, for Paige, for himself. He wasn't quite certain what level Paige and Jaime had gotten to. What they'd been through, in New York, then California, together was intense in itself and love enjoyed taking advantage of emotional situations like that, capitalizing on vulnerability, making something where there was nothing. Love was a weed that grew in the center of a huge empty parking lot, grew between the scorched sun and the burning macadam, heaven and hell. Love was always somewhere, always looking for a place to grow, it was never a straggler, never stood on the shoreline watching the tide. It always dove right in, head first, waiting to take hold of a person and pull them under until they drowned. Love was death, and there was no way around that. No fucking way. So, he wasn't quite sure where Jaime and Paige stood between each other, what level they had reached, if there was any love there. But if there was, Joshua would have a difficult time with her. He'd hoped he'd gotten to her first, gotten to her before she'd ever loved, before she'd a chance to feel the pain and the numbness, before she got her scars. But he'd been too late, she had loved somewhere along the line, the scars surfacing easily under his touch. It was then when he'd fallen under her spell, when he'd tried to save her from himself, and he couldn't. It was too far. He'd shown her the right way, taught her that raw emotion was so much better, so much more real, so much more forever than love could ever even wish to be. What they had could stand any test of time, any shadows of doubt, anything the fucked up world they lived in could throw at them. They could be together, forever and forever, and nothing could stop them. Except now, maybe Jaime. Not so much Jaime himself, because even though he had yet to meet him face to face, Joshua thought Jaime was a nice enough guy, but what the man represented. What Jaime represented could be a problem. If Paige felt even a little of that love, what if she tried to get it back? What if she hadn't listened to Joshua or heeded his warnings so many times already that that kind of love was bullshit? What if she fell again? What if love scarred her so badly this time? Joshua would be in trouble, that's what would happen. She would come back, he knew that eventually she would come back to him. It might take years for her to realize the error of her ways, but she'd come back. He owned her. She owed him that much. Years...he couldn't live without her for that long. He resolved himself then to wait and see what happened between the two. There was no sense in trying to manipulate things because there might be a lesson learned in there for Paige. He had no right to direct her feelings, had nothing against Jaime (yet), so he would sit back and wait. And if things got out of hand, he'd simply eliminate the problem. Paige was, after all, his prized possession, and he would, to the death, defend his possession. It was hard for him to explain it to himself, to articulate the words that'd describe her, him, them. What she was...was almost impossible. And that got to him, it always had, because it made him notice every little thing she did. Every time she moved he'd see it. Every time she licked her lips or scratched an eyebrow or stretched or shifted position or tilted her head or yawned or any fucking thing at all he'd notice. Every time she spoke he'd drop what he was doing and listen, even if he was in the middle of a sentence or eating or fucking breathing he'd stop what he was doing. His breath would catch in his throat and he'd listen to her voice, even if he couldn't hear the words. He couldn't function normally around her. Everything she did caught his eye and that just made being around her almost impossible. But all of that was nothing compared to when he wasn't around her. That was just unbearable, suffocating, because she had burned him so badly. It was exhausting to feel that way all the time. Living every second of every minute of every hour of every day with that, that...that burning inside, it was more than anyone should have to. It was like he was cracking apart because of it and it was spilling out of him so he tried to hold himself together so he didn't lose it. He didn't want to lose it. It was the best and the worst he'd ever had. It was beautiful and it was twisted. It was once in a lifetime. When he was with her, when he was inside her, when she was in his arms, it was worth it. It was worth him giving more than he got. It was worth him giving more than he had to give. And it was the same for her. He saw it when she looked at him, and it scared him. He had looked into her eyes and saw what it was doing to her. He had looked into her eyes and he had seen that she was torn and broken up inside because she wanted this and she wanted him so much that she couldn't let it go. They would stay together, even though they knew what it was doing to them. They never had a chance. She hurt him. He hurt her. He knew he did. What they had, had gotten a hold of them and would never let them go, not until it killed them. It wasn't love, it wasn't a weed, because weeds die. What they had would never die. Every touch felt like flames. Every heartbeat felt like a lifetime. They would bleed their pain into each other, hold onto it and they would let it twist them like it twisted itself. They'd be together, holding on because they were so scared of what they'd be like without each other, so scared that they'd never feel anything as breathtaking as what they had ever again. That was theirs. That was what they had. That was all they had. Maybe that was all they'd ever have. Maybe that was all they were ever supposed to have. Maybe they were supposed to drown in that together, all tied and bound and bloody. Maybe, an indescribable feeling and a pain so deep that it was there in everything they did and a lack of the right words to define it all...was what they were always supposed to get. Maybe it was destiny. Joshua snorted out loud. Destiny. His destiny was to go to hell and how he got there was entirely up to him. He certainly didn't choose Paige to come with him, Paige volunteered herself. They were two of a kind, one half of the whole, she was the female version of himself, even if it left a bad taste in her mouth...that was the way it was. He'd known it for some time. Not all the time, not since he was around her so much, not until she showed him that unbridled intensity that left him gasping for breath and reeling on the verge of insanity. He wondered if Jaime ever got to see that. Joshua was pretty sure Jaime had. And that was fine, Joshua was okay with that. Jaime could have what he wanted, how he wanted it, and as many times as he wanted it...but he would never have Paige. Paige belonged to Joshua, her soul and every breath she breathed belonged to him. Solely. Exclusively. He missed her. His cell phone ringing startled him and the beer bottle he was holding almost slipped from his hands. "Dammit," he whispered as he put the now warm bottle on the little table and retrieved his phone from his jeans pocket. "Yeah," he said evenly not checking the number. "It's me," the soft voice said. "What?" Joshua said getting up and moving inside. He didn't mean to be curt, but he was, he had to admit, thinking about her, smelling her, being in her apartment, it was driving him crazy. "We have all of the information from Rhines," Michael said quietly. Joshua's eyes narrowed as pulled out another beer and looked for the bottle opener that he'd used just before. "I told you to cancel him." And he'd thought he made himself explicitly clear with the order. "I did," Michael retorted. "After you interogated him?" Joshua looked around for the opener, "fucking bottle opener," he muttered. "What?" Michael asked clearly not understanding the uttered words. "Nothing, answer the question," he scowled as he spied the opener in the sink. Why the fuck had he put it in the sink? He snatched it, a little too roughly and it slid from his hands landing with a clatter on the floor. "Mother fucker," he hissed. "What are you doing?" Michael asked again. "Motherfucking bottle opener slipped...just...the question?" he almost growled into the phone as he snatched up the bottle opener from the floor and pulled the cap off his beer. "I had him questioned. We had to know for sure." "Had to know for sure," Joshua smirked, "we DID know for sure," he hissed into the phone and popped open his beer. And they had. Rhines had tapped into the Section database and somehow got hold of the Operative's file that had worked under Proteus, his Paige, and her would be accomplice, that being Safara, and proceeded to contact them. He'd only succeeded in contacting Saf for whatever reason, or at least, Paige had not told Joshua she had been contacted. But the connection was clear and the example was made and operatives would not contact former operatives, period. "Yes. A complete investigation, our standard procedure, that we set up." Joshua did not appreciate the tone in Michael's voice. "Oh, don't throw your standard procedure shit in my face right now. He broke into our fucking computers and contacted an operative...a former operative...you were supposed to fucking cancel him..." "And I did..." "...without an investigation. Or do you just enjoy pissing me off?" There was silence on the other end. "If I give an order I expect you to carry it out. I don't trust many people, I have even less I can rely on, and you Michael are the exception to both of those." "I understand..." his voice trailed off. Joshua walked back out to the balcony. "Why don't you say what's really on your mind?" "Would it make a difference?" Joshua shrugged to himself and sat down heavily in the chair. "It might." "If it were another operative besides Paige, would you have ordered the cancellation without an investigation?" Good question, Joshua sighed taking a sip of his beer. "So it comes down to Paige." "You're too close." "And you would be, what? The leading expert on getting involved with operatives? Or did Nikita quit or something?" The statement was harsh and he really wished he could have been in Michael's presence to see his otherwise blank face crack an emotion. Michael's silence was just somehow not enough to satisfy him. "I'm not in close. There's nothing between us. I had a mission and an objective, our objective let me remind you, and I completed it. That's it." "Fine," Michael said. "Fine," Joshua retorted back. They sat in silence for a moment. Michael finally spoke. "We have the intel on Iolah. I'll send it to your laptop." "Good, I'm fucking bored here. Anything else?" "No." "Good. I'll look through the intel and call you later." "Of course," Michael responded flatly. "Have a night," Joshua said not bothering for a reply as he hung up the phone. Now he was really pissed off and he took a huge gulp of his beer. Michael knew him well, knew, suspected that maybe he was in too close. But he wasn't. It wasn't like that at all. Man, he wished Paige was there. Why couldn't he just not feel this way? Why couldn't he just not love her? He grimaced wondering how that word slipped past his personal censor. Love was not the word used to describe what he had with Paige. Love would be a word he would never, ever, use to describe how he felt ever again. There was a reason why he thought the way he did. It was stupid, but it was real. He always thought, growing up, that he'd fall in love and it'd last forever. He thought it'd be love at first sight, never fading, never changing, always passion and fire and electricity until the end of his life. He thought he'd fall for someone and they'd love him just that way until the day they died. He thought it'd be just like the movies. He'd love someone and they'd grow old together and they'd never lose any of that spark. They'd be just as passionate on their deathbeds as they were in the beginning. But he'd never loved like that. He'd loved and then it changed into something paler, something less fierce. That's not what he wanted. He wanted passion. But passion always seemed to die, even with that person he thought he'd loved more than any other. The rest of his life he spent from one lover to the next, from one bed to the next bed, looking for someone who could love the way he wanted to. He'd been with a lot of people, loved and been loved, but it always faded. It was supposed to stay intense, so strong he couldn't think straight, so overwhelming, he couldn't keep his eyes or his hands off his lover. And in the beginning it was always like that, but afterwards, it would wear off and he'd be disappointed. He was always disappointed. And he'd leave. He looked but he never found her, never found that matching intensity. So, he had forgotten what it was like, had beat the love down into a tiny place, bricked it away so that it would never see the light of day again. Ever. He would never love again...it just hurt too much. He would never bother to look again either, the final pay off was not as good as the bet. Love, he smirked staring at the dark clouds hanging over the water and listening to the rain as it began to fall. Love was for fools. Love was for people that watched the movies and believed they were real. Love was for suckers, lay people, love was for other people. Love was not for people like him...or Paige. Return |
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