healing - brit/mallick [saw v]: fic + icons

[immolate_the_silence]

Brit & Mallick:



And an extra:

*Images courtesy of imdb

And my fic below (also posted on AO3):

Title: Healing

Author: OpheliacAngel

Pairing: Brit/Mallick

Fandom: Saw V

Genres: Angst/Hurt/Comfort/Romance/Friendship

Rating: Teen

Summary: It was the decent thing to do, she supposed, saying goodbye to Mallick, seeing how he was, acknowledging him instead of running away like he had never been in that room at all. It wasn’t… hard, it just felt dangerous. It felt like something she needed but that she shouldn’t be doing.

Warnings: Major Injury Recovery, Burns, Depression, PTSD, Nightmares, Smoking, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Arson, Implied/Referenced Murder, Implied/Referenced Torture

A/N: Written for h/c_bingo as a cross-square extra for the prompts Scars and Chronic Pain/Illness.

A/N 2: I’ve been wanting to write something on these two for a while and I have to admit, it was therapeutic. I definitely think they should have ended up together, even despite that they’re bad people who did terrible things. Brit could have killed Mallick in any one of those traps, she could have even knocked him out or killed him and made him give all his blood so that she wouldn’t have to give any… so why didn’t she? Their obvious connection is one of the reasons why they’re my favorite Saw characters; in fact, the main reason why I like this film despite not watching/liking horror movies. I really liked how they interacted and treated each other and also their kinda friendship. Like most of my writing lately, it went from something I thought I’d never be able to write to something with an insane amount of words.

Soundtrack: Science by The Birthday Massacre

…

~I’m not the only one who’s bleeding

Before the past is done repeating

Gets underneath my skin, it won’t die

This time if I can’t win, then I won’t try to carry on~

 

…

 

Support groups had never really been her thing; then again, she’d never been faced with potentially needing one either.

Brit figured that if you couldn’t pick yourself back up and go on, then what good were you? If you had to depend on the insights of others just to get through your day, just to be able to live with yourself, was it all really worth it?

Still, the more she put it off, the more it lingered in the back of her mind as a legitimate choice. It wasn’t something she had to stick with or even get anything from. It was just… an option.

She sat in a small, uncomfortable chair closest to the door, just in case she found a reason to leave that was more practical than a reason to stay. She had no hope in this really, had only reasoned with herself enough to try, had only built herself up just enough to see whether something would be said here that would put her one step closer to healing. Not a lot to ask for, right?

The moment her wandering gaze found Mallick, sitting across the room from her and hunched in on himself, face pinched in anxiety and discomfort, she forced herself to look away. She smoothed out her skirt and surveyed the room more attentively, despite not giving a damn about anybody else in that room. No one held her attention long enough, not even those whose injuries were obviously permanent. That got her thinking dangerously about Mallick, about his arm and the cast he had been wearing and before she could stop herself she peered over at him again, delicately and not intensely, despite the fire of warning she could feel inside.

Her entire body tingling, sharp but familiar, Brit also felt sick to her stomach.

She hadn’t not expected him to be here, though she hadn’t really thought about it at all. Did she not want to see him, was she not curious as to how he was doing? Was the truth worth anymore than a lie, really?

How could she say that after the lesson she had been taught?

Brit fidgeted on her chair, smoothed out her skirt again and when she granted Mallick a third look, she waited only a beat before he found her actively watching him, eyes lighting up instantaneously just for her, face taking just that moment longer to brighten, though not noticeably so. She appreciated that; she wanted to be anonymous as much as possible.

He didn’t talk that night, not even after she had spoken and relayed a brief account of her experiences in the traps and an update on her life after, the life she was supposed to be carving out for herself now, but there was something in his eyes and the way they rested on her easily and with such intensely intimate knowledge yet with no judgment that spoke dizzying magnitudes.

 

…

Brit was the first one out and yet she hovered outside, jacket too thin for this weather but bearing it regardless, smiling forcefully while she exchanged brief goodbyes with everyone as they left. It hadn’t been a terrible night; everyone had seemed nice as they shared their own stories, everyone supportive and understanding.

She wasn’t sure she needed those things though, she wasn’t sure whether it wasn’t just better to move on and not keep reliving it, working through it, learning from it.

It was the decent thing to do, she supposed, saying goodbye to Mallick, seeing how he was, acknowledging him instead of running away like he had never been in that room at all. It wasn’t… hard, it just felt dangerous. It felt like something she needed but that she shouldn’t be doing.

She waited long after she should have and wondered whether that had been intentional on his part; then again, how could he know that she would wait? He had seen her flee quickly, out the door and down the steps before the door had finally slammed shut behind her.

She had given him nothing of the future in that room before he had passed out from blood loss beside her. She had given him no indication that she ever wanted to see him again. No indication that he was anything more than some junkie scumbag that she had attacked, killed someone for, that she had protected, that she had shed half her blood for just to keep him alive, just to keep him with her in that horrible room that maybe they were never meant to get out of at all, that they never deserved to get out of…

“Hey.”

She turned, arms crossed, cold wind whipping her hair this way and that. He was still on the last step as if waiting for her to give him the go ahead, as if waiting for her to say something that would shatter his world and rebuild it all in one miracle flash.

“Hi, Brit,” he tried again, louder and more unsure this time.

Taking pity on him, or at least, that was the only name she had for it, she stepped closer, hand brushing against his uninjured arm in greeting, smiling gently at him even if she didn’t know what the hell she was doing.

"Hi, Mallick.”

…

They leaned side-by-side against the brick wall, just resting there and breathing in the cold night air and occasionally talking, about simple, non-invasive things like the weather and food and job hunting. Mallick had offered her his coat and had somehow managed to fit it snug across her shoulders with just one available hand. Her curious, sympathetic eyes tried not to stray to his cast, not wanting to make him feel uncomfortable.

Warmth soaking through the back of her neck, in return she shared her cigarette, settling it in-between his fingers or at times pressing it to his lips every time she thought he needed it.

Brit had never smoked before; she hadn’t done a lot of things before that she was doing now.

Two years ago, she never would have comprehended standing here and smoking a cigarette with someone she would have considered a lowlife. Hell, she wouldn’t have exchanged five words with him. Something in those rooms, in those series of traps, had changed her.

She offered him the cigarette again, not for the first time noticed his hand shaking, saw how he tried to hide it but then realized the only pockets he had were in his coat and that he had already given it to her. He smiled shakily, apologetically over at her. “Sorry. My arm still hurts sometimes.” Brit tried not to look too closely at the burn scars encasing Mallick’s wrist, scars she knew extended up both arms. He had been the only one of their group of five to physically suffer for his mistakes prior to their time in Jigsaw’s carefully constructed hell scape. Both his arms were a mess of ravaged skin and a brutal reminder of the consequences of blind addiction, but they hadn’t been horrifically ugly when Brit had laid eyes on them in the hospital. Nothing about Mallick was ugly, inside or out. “Doc says it’s only phantom pain now, I guess.”

Brit tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “It’s okay.” She took a long drag and then pressed the small bit that was left to his lips, a gesture of friendship and maybe something more, an acknowledgment of something tangible between them, something she couldn’t name or explain, a twinge of the feeling she had experienced in that room where she had given her blood and nearly her life. “I don’t mind.”

He thought himself weak but when Brit took him in with cautious, needful eyes, that wasn’t what she saw before her.

She tried to think of Mallick before all this, before she’d been condemned to hell. She tried to imagine fire consuming his every waking thought, his clothes reeking of ash and smoke, tried to imagine him pining after drugs, shooting up in vacant alleyways and in filthy, darkened, smoke-shrouded rooms, chasing after every available high, on his knees begging and pleading for another hit.

And she tried to imagine even a fraction of his guilt, knowing what he had done, blinded by hunger and need. Just another druggie, just another casualty.

Those people he had killed unknowingly for his own selfish desires.

No, she wasn’t the same as him. She wasn’t addicted, wasn’t careless, wasn’t stupid.

No, she was worse.

She could feel his breath against her fingers as he pulled the smoke into his mouth, past his throat and down into his lungs, and something crumbled in her. It was late, they’d been standing here forty-five minutes or more when really they should have gone somewhere warmer, somewhere inside, but even more so she should just be gone, not waiting for something, not waiting for Mallick to say what he wanted to say and then maybe she would find the right words too, for closure or something similar, for a closure that maybe didn’t even matter.

Whatever crumbled in her, her resolve, her determination to leave, all it did was bring her right back into that room. Into their panic. Into her determination to get them both out alive.

It took her a moment before she realized Mallick had finished. “What took you so long?”

Brit took back what was left of the cigarette and stamped it out beneath her heel. “I don’t know. This isn’t really my thing. Talking, sharing, opening up to other people. It’s the last thing I should be doing really.”

Mallick turned to her, breathing and smiling more easily now. “Well, I’m glad you’re here. I think it’s important that you came and that you talked.” He breathed out, gently moving his coat further up her shoulder, fingers briefly against her skin a warm imprint. “I kept hoping that one day I’d look up and you’d be there.”

What was she supposed to say to that? You’re welcome? I’ll be back? To make him promises that she would selfishly never intend on keeping?

Then again, why should he expect anything from her?

He didn’t seem to expect a response from her for he carried on, once more initiating and holding up most of their conversation. It was funny really, how every minute or so she would realize how late it was and yet find no reason to leave, even now when there were no cigarettes left in her pack, nothing left to occupy her fingers.

“So, how are you doing?”

She caught him out of the corner of her eye, taking her in as discreetly as possible. She found she didn’t mind. “I’m alright. Holding up, I guess. How about you?”

Mallick shrugged, though it was awkward with one arm in a sling and the other reluctant to move much. His shoulders seemed stiff, the rest of him did too, and not for the first time Brit wondered how much pain he was in and how high he was or could get on the pain medication he was no doubt on. “Holding up. I didn’t think these meetings would be such a good idea, drudging up everything, you know, but it’s getting me out of my apartment, which is good, I guess.”

Brit shifted a few inches closer, wanting to know more. She knew how she was holding up, so she figured it made a reasonable amount of sense needing to know how the one other person that went through everything you did, the only person other than you that survived, was faring. She had been released from the hospital before he had and they had never stayed in touch. She could have exchanged a phone number with him, gave him something he might later need, but as soon as she was discharged she had fled just as surely as she had fled the building at her back an hour prior, but that time she hadn’t waited. Initially, she thought it was better that way; now, she wasn’t so sure.

She had trouble going outside too, even when staying put was just as worse sometimes, knowing that she could be taken again at any time… “You have trouble leaving?”

“Yeah, I do, but I don’t like being alone either.”

Alone. That was all she had been lately. It was necessary, deserved even, though she felt guilty now knowing Mallick had been alone, hearing it from his own mouth. She might want to suffer but she didn’t want him to. “I know what that’s like.”

“You don’t have a boyfriend or anything?”

It didn’t take her off guard and it didn’t repulse or scare her either. “No,” Brit smiled over at him knowingly. “Not for a long time.” She shifted, about to give him a small shred of hope she had no right to offer. “Are you still using?”

His eyes widened not in shame but in a frantic desperation to convince her. “No! I haven’t since….” He licked his lips, hand smoothing over his pants worryingly, fingernails occasionally clenching against his palm. “I’ll never willingly touch drugs again. How could I, knowing what I did?” Brit put her hand on his uninjured arm again and kept it there. There were so many things she wanted to say to reassure him, though the fear of saying them was greater than the fear of not saying anything at all. He turned toward her, pressing closer, calming a fraction of an inch at her touch. “I mean, they had me on some pain meds for a while, but I always took less than what they prescribed me. It was hard. It was hard until I realized the pain actually made me stop thinking.”

Brit strangely enough got that. “At least you were high when you did what you did. I can’t boast the same thing.” Wrong word choice. “I have no excuse,” she corrected.

A spark lit inside him. “Yeah, but everything we do is a choice. Me taking drugs and burning…,” he swallowed, unable to finish the sentence, knowing he didn’t need to. “And you, doing what you did. They were all choices. The wrong choices.” She thought about that, hand lightly squeezing his arm, feeling the bite of the wind more palpably against her. He obviously felt it too. “Look, are you doing anything tonight?”

She sighed, trying to find the right words to push him away, the ones that would let him down easy. But did she really want to go back to her big, cold house, to her life full of lies, to the quiet and the memories and the constant reminders that she deserved all her pain, all her misery, all her guilt? “Not really,” she admitted. The second the words left her mouth, she knew she had spoken the truth.

What scared Brit was that she had spoken it to Mallick.

His hand brushed against her arm, briefly cupping her elbow before shying away. She wondered then how much she would let him get away with. “Wanna come home with me then? Maybe not be alone for one night?” It was a plea, a different kind of plea but one Brit knew Mallick was used to all the same.

She could almost beg herself not to go back to that looming house, once a dream and now a nightmare.

“That actually sounds nice.”

…

Mallick’s apartment was small and sparse, a far cry from her own house which might as well have been a mansion compared to this, bursting with designer furniture and art, neither of which meant anything to her anymore. As a result, she surveyed the cramped, dingy space - odd for a spoiled, rich kid but who knew, maybe it was Mallick’s form of penance - a great deal less harshly then she usually would.

There was no amount of usually left in her. Everything she did now wasn’t what she would have normally done before. She thought before she acted and most of the time didn’t act at all, too caught up in uncertainty and panic and the basest of fears. She didn’t talk to the same kind of people she always had, didn’t keep in touch with anyone from before, couldn’t make decisions even on the smallest things like what to wear or what to cook for dinner.

If anything, her experiences had paralyzed her.

“Can I get you anything to drink?”

That was something else she wouldn’t touch either; she’d lose her mind if she ever dulled her senses. “Just water, thanks.”

“Same for me.”

Brit waited near the door in the near darkness, wanting to throw some light into the room but for the life of her not prepared to search for a switch. Mallick handed her a water bottle and made his way through his rooms, flicking on every available light until Brit relaxed, shedding his coat and draping it over a nearby chair. She walked around slowly, admiring more than judging, needing to do something other than just stand there and think about how the hell she had ended up here.

And why the hell she had let herself end up here.

The water was cool and soft as it slid down her throat; it worked every bit in calming her as a shot would for anyone else.

Mallick cleared his throat and she glanced up in alarm, feeling oddly exposed in her mid-thigh skirt and short-sleeved shirt that was far too delicate and expensive for this space. And yet she wanted to feel the burn of Mallick’s fingers on her skin, soothing her racing heart.

“So, uh, what do you normally do at night? Usually I just try to find something to watch. I only have the basic cable channels though. I probably have some magazines laying around here somewhere too. Maybe even a board game. Or we could just sit and talk.”

No wonder he got so lonely. At least Brit had more things to occupy her mind with, not that she was interested in most of them anymore.

Even though it was far from necessary, she admired Mallick’s boyish eagerness to please her. “Please, don’t feel the need to entertain me.” God knows I wouldn’t know how to entertain you if I invited you over to my place. She should have said that, didn’t know why she hadn’t, nervousness maybe. “We can do anything you like to do.” Brit had never been the easiest person to please, far from it, but now all she really wanted to do was sit around and not have to worry or stress about anything.

“Really?”

“Really,” she affirmed, slipping off her heels. “Do you mind?”

Mallick shook his head, hurriedly clearing off the couch while she set her heels down near the door. She checked twice to make sure that it was, indeed, locked, not to mention all the windows as well. Though of course Mallick was no doubt the same way, obsessively checking every door and window half a dozen times or so until he was satisfied. It was just a sad, necessary fact of life for them now. Not that he couldn’t get at either one of them again if he was determined enough to.

There was plenty of room for the two of them on the couch; even so, Brit surprisingly didn’t take the far end. She sat close to Mallick, trusting him as she always had for a reason she couldn’t explain other than as instinct. Rather than cross her legs, she curled them underneath her, glancing over at Mallick every few moments or so until he flicked on the TV, its droning noise easing out some of the room’s awkwardness.

It was ten minutes maximum before he turned it off again, Brit breathing a sigh of relief along with him. “It doesn’t always help, does it?” Mallick grieved, palm trying to smooth out the creases in his forehead, fidgety as she had remembered him and that was important, how none of Brit’s memories had been tampered with, how just one good thing could come out of such bloodshed and how it gave her strength and meaning. Brit shared with him a knowing glance, shoulder brushing ever so lightly against his cast.

She didn’t know what she had come here tonight for, knew she didn’t want to lead Mallick on, but it was nice being with someone that she didn’t have to explain herself to. Dating had been beyond a nightmare for her; she’d only gone out twice before she had labeled that area of her life impossible. Judging by the dishes piling up at Mallick’s sink, by the clothes strewn in small patches over the floor and the emptiness of his apartment, it must have been the same for him.

Brit could barely live with herself carrying the paranoia, guilt and pain she did, waking up screaming multiple times in the middle of the night believing she was still there, about to go into a new room with a new gruesome trap, having to fight for her life when she knew somewhere not so deep down that she didn’t deserve to live.

Needing to remain in the here and now, Brit shifted closer, refusing to shy away from Mallick’s speechless, partially terrified gaze.

She kept her voice low, her eyes soft. “Can I see?”

Mallick could have bolted, if Brit couldn’t see how desperate he was to please her, to have her. “No!” He nearly wrenched his arm away, probably would have if Brit hadn’t pulled herself back. This hadn’t been her goal, pushing Mallick away. His eyes were now full of an apology she didn’t need and certainly didn’t deserve; she should have proceeded more carefully, but instead she had selfishly jumped head first into something she didn’t understand. “No, not yet. It’s still healing,” he explained. His words were bitter and pitiable and only whispered. “I think it’ll always be healing.”

Mallick, ravaged by a fire of his own making and by a blade that had nearly robbed him of an entire arm.

Brit, ravaged by guilt, with Mallick being the only thing she didn’t feel guilty about, leaving, abandoning maybe but not protecting, not saving.

She wanted to remind him that she had already seen the worst of it, that nothing she could see now would be worse than what he had shown her in that butcher’s room. She wanted to reassure him that he wouldn’t scare her, that she wouldn’t cringe away in revulsion, that he needn’t try to impress her, that she was okay just being here, just talking, just baring their scars.

He had needed her in that room and she had responded with sympathy, with empathy even, and she could feel the need from him now and it didn’t push her away. Mallick was gentle, sweet even, and she had believed him when he said he hadn’t known there were people in that building. He said he had punished himself after what he’d done, even with his arms bearing the effects of his foolish and blind desperation, but had she? Or had she just moved on like what she had done meant nothing?

If anyone deserved to be punished, it was her.

“Okay. That’s okay.” Her arm rested on the back of the couch, close to him, feeling the heat of his skin but not touching. “Do you wear the cast to bed at night?”

“Yeah. Can’t have me laying on my arm and crushing it in my sleep.”

A wave of compassion washed through her. There were scars on her hands, between her fingers where the blade… but she tried not to look at them. Easier said than done. Mallick, on the other hand, couldn’t hide his wounds so easily, his scars far worse than hers. The arm that was salvageable and yet, as with the other, laden with burns he had admitted still pained him, and he might not regain full use of his other arm - the one that blade had butchered for his blood - for a very long time. That hurt her in a way she hadn’t expected. “And does it hurt?”

“Not so much anymore, I take pills to help with that. Half dosages, like I said, and mainly just aspirin now. Sometimes though, in the middle of the night, I wake up from it. It’s hard to go back to sleep after that.”

“I bet,” she whispered, gentle and understanding.

Mallick laid a grateful hand over her arm and, encouraged, Brit tried again, resting a hand lightly over his cast and smoothing over it gently, a predictable and featherlight back and forth motion. Mallick sucked in a harsh breath and yet his eyes seemed to soften at her touch, body further relaxing back against the couch. If she could help him relax even a fraction more than he could on his own, then she’d leave here knowing this hadn’t been a waste, that she had done something for someone other than herself, someone she cared about. “You know, I’ve never stopped thinking about that place, about him. I’ve never…”

“Stopped thinking about you,” Mallick finished, boldly, for her.

He moved closer until she could feel him breathing, soft puffs of air warming her cheeks. She hadn’t been this close to anyone since… When Brit tightened her hold, providing a palpable weight against his cast and the arm mutilated underneath, he let her. “It’s sick, isn’t it? I mean, it’s something I need psych treatment for. It’s natural to keep going back to that night, day, whatever, it’ll haunt me for the rest of my life, but I don’t think it’s natural to want to.”

“Because you weren’t alone, because we had each other. In that way, we could share the responsibility, share the fear. I think too that in that place, in his trap, we finally understood ourselves. We finally wanted to be better people. Whether we like it or not, we learned our lesson. And maybe… maybe that’s the only way we can accept and move on from what he did to us, what he took from us.” She could tell how desperately he believed that, how often he told himself that she was the answer, but there was truly nothing she was the answer to.

There were some who might say they deserved each other.

Brit, however, felt that he deserved better than her. How could he pine away at her like this, hold onto her after all this time? What could he see in a monster like her?

And what could she see in a drug addled arsonist like him?

She couldn’t remember ever truly caring about someone before Mallick. She had been so self-absorbed, so corrupted and narcissistic, but then when she stopped and looked and noticed everyone trying to kill Mallick, to beat him down so that he couldn’t get back up, something incredibly human and protective rose up within her. He wasn’t the type of person to make it out alive, maybe he just wasn’t strong enough, but that didn’t mean he deserved to be left behind either. He wasn’t inhuman the way the others were; he wouldn’t kill just so he could make it out alive.

And besides, she was already doing what everyone else had started as she turned the tables on anyone who went after him.

If getting out alive meant killing anyone, everyone, then they didn’t deserve to get out at all.

On the other hand, she could make them suffer for resorting to their cruel and basest of survival instincts. She could prove that she was better than them, that she didn’t prey on someone right in front of her who chose not to defend himself because defending himself meant either killing someone else or attacking them and leaving them for dead.

They could be better than that, couldn’t they?

She could be better than that.

…

Time crept on as quietly and comfortably as it had outside in that cold wind.

They laid there for a while: Brit’s head resting on Mallick’s arm on the couch, Mallick smiling contentedly at her until Brit drifted, eyes closing of their own volition, for once not consumed with the fear of memories and nightmares. She was almost completely out until she felt the couch move around her, Mallick shifting uncomfortably. She opened her eyes to see him cupping his cast with a trembling hand, forehead having broken out in sweat. Brit pulled back, giving him some room. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, ‘m fine,” he panted, easing himself up, wincing as he stood. “I’m sorry, but I think I need to go lay down.” He hesitated as if trying to figure out what to say, yet quite clearly not wanting to say goodbye this way. “God, I’m terrible company, aren’t I?”

“It’s okay.” She stood then, her bare feet moving across the carpet in two strides, standing close to him in case he should stumble or fall. “And no, you’re not. Don’t strain yourself for my sake. Go lay down, please.”

He nodded, grateful though also hopeful. “Come with me?” There was such desperation in his words and in his eyes that it made her heart hurt. He held out a hand and Brit took it, flattered that he had offered judging by the fluttering butterflies in her stomach. She hadn’t really wanted to leave anyway; she felt… cozy here, like she wasn’t itching to get out of her own skin. It was easy to be with Mallick. He was the first guy she’d been with in a long time that didn’t expect anything from her other than simply wanting her around.

“Alright.” When Brit grasped his hand it was clammy, even though she could feel heat emanating from his cast. Not knowing the way, she guided him as best she could, relieved when the room immediately to her left revealed itself to be a small bedroom. She eased him onto the bed, removing his shoes and pulling a blanket up to his knees, biting her lip at what should be done about the cast. He kept it on during the night, true, but she really wanted to make sure his arm was okay, maybe cool it down in some way if needed.

Still, Mallick didn’t appear concerned, and he did look a great deal more comfortable laid out on his back. With his eyes closed, Brit almost felt as if she were intruding.

“Do you need anything, Mallick? Water, aspirin…?” She was almost about to ask if he had any heavy duty pain meds still lying about somewhere, judging by how much pain he was trying to conceal from her and not succeeding much in. Brit could see how he was struggling, how he was still trying to impress her, but really she just wanted him to be okay. “I could… try to ease some of the tension in your arm? Maybe a massage? It might help.”

“You don’t have to, Brit.”

That was all the go ahead she needed. “No, I don’t, but I want to. I want to help, so let me, please.” Before he could speak another word, Brit had rolled up her sleeves, tucked wayward hair behind her ears and was carefully removing Mallick’s cast. She kept her ministrations slow and predictable, not wanting to startle the man who lay so open and vulnerable beneath her.

For Brit, this wasn’t sick fascination or self-punishment. This was confirmation of what had been done to her and to Mallick, to the both of them. This was Brit convincing herself that they were okay, reminding herself that they had suffered, reassuring herself that they would heal in time.

It wasn’t fair of her to placate Mallick into revealing his scars, to manipulate his rapt fascination for her.

But Brit was a selfish, greedy person through and through. That was what had put her in his trap, after all.

She glanced down at what her fingers dared not to touch without sight and nearly crumbled as his arm was finally laid bare. It was… gruesome and horrible and indescribable.

Mallick peered up at her through heavily lidded eyes. “You shouldn’t have to see that.” Brit wondered whether the cast was a legitimate excuse for him to not have to see it either. “It’s okay if you want to throw up, other girls have.”

How many? She could have asked but oh, that would have been cruel.

Brit swallowed heavily, furious at the wave of bile she was forced to swallow down. Only two meaningless words escaped past her lips, “Oh, Mallick.”

Don’t leave him like this. It’ll be the second worst thing you’ve ever done.

Steeling herself, her fingers found the remnants of flesh - uneven and scaly and rough in so many places - and focused on making the man below her feel less self-conscious and less cognizant of his own pain.

“Never had any girls do this for me before.”

Brit decided to play along; no matter how strained his voice was, Mallick was obviously teasing her. It was odd how it made her feel normal, even though what she was currently doing was anything but. “Never, huh? Never’s a long time.”

He breathed out and it sounded more like a laugh. “You’re not just any girl, Brit.”

She sighed, her hands pausing in their ministrations. He had called her a monster in that room, though not even two minutes later when it was time to pay their penance in blood, it was like he had never said the words at all. She had been lost in her head, wallowing in her own self-pity and he had pulled her out with frantic child-like words, pleading with her that he couldn’t do it alone.

That was when Brit had remembered that she wasn’t alone. They could both make it out.

Brit would risk the chance that she wouldn’t survive the blood loss. She would be a better person.

Funny how it was Mallick in the end, someone she never would have looked twice at before it all, someone who had remained on the roller coaster ride through hell alongside her, someone she had trusted right off the bat and why?

It didn’t matter; she still let the other three die, even taking one of them out herself with her own hands. She’d still be going to hell.

Somehow, she couldn’t face him. “I was. If you had met me before…”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m not the same as I was either. I never even think about getting high anymore, it’s so far at the back of my mind. Too whittled down by regret… or pain maybe.” It was so horrible what had happened to him, what was still happening to him. She bit her lip, drifted for a long moment and then came back to herself and realized Mallick was holding her hand. She didn’t pull it away.

“You’re really beautiful, Brit, you know that? Even though you do have a tendency to dress all in black.”

Something like a laugh bubbled up within her, almost escaping if not for her tampering it down. It was so easy with Mallick; he knew how deep her pain ran. Maybe he even knew her confusion too; maybe all that certainty he was exuding was just a ruse. “What’s wrong with black, huh?”

“Nothing,” he smiled, crooked but admirable. “You’ve got such pretty hair too. And you haven’t changed it.” No, she should have maybe, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to change it, to change anything about her physical appearance really. It was almost like she was stuck sometimes. “God, I want this to be real. I want to wake up in the morning and know that this was real.”

“It is real,” she murmured, pressing a kiss into his shoulder and resting her cheek there for a moment. Having eased some of the hurt out of his mangled arm, she left it bare and curled up tight against him, feeling safe and secure as he held her with his other heavily scarred arm, loosely, tremors running underneath his skin every now and then, but it was proof enough that neither of them were completely broken. They were still here, still breathing, still struggling. He cared about her enough to think of her, all this time, and she him.

“I still don’t understand why you did what you did in there.”

“Did what?” She knew exactly what he was talking about. It wouldn’t do to say that Mallick had been the only one she had trusted, a gut instinct, because by the end it didn’t matter if she trusted no one other than herself. She could have gotten rid of him, yes, but did she really want to leave that room alone?

What would that make her if she was the only one who made it out alive?

What Mallick wanted: an answer, closure… she couldn’t give him. She didn’t know the reason for any of it herself, for anything she did in there. She didn’t want to think about it, but Brit also realized that whatever reasons she had had, once learned, would unlock a part of herself she had never even known about. Something unfamiliar.

She didn’t want the unfamiliar or the unexpected and yet here she was, day in and day out, surrounding herself with familiar things and they weren’t helping her. She wasn’t getting better, wasn’t getting anymore sleep, wasn’t coping any better than she had been months ago.

Mallick was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, someone for her to selfishly latch onto both physically and emotionally.

And she couldn’t afford it.

Brit lifted her head to find him quietly watching her; that bold, trusting look both unnerved and excited her. “Why you gave such a damn about me. Why you still do.”

“I didn’t go to the support group tonight just to see you again.” Why had she gone? Just because it was an option? Had she deep down wanted to see Mallick there, just to convince herself that she wasn’t alone? That in a world full of billions of people she wasn’t alone?

How could she have been bonded to him so thoroughly and not even realized it until now?

“Didn’t you?” His voice was so small, so soft in that eerily silent room, so unlike what Brit was expecting.

She didn’t know what to say for a long time, so she tucked her head underneath Mallick’s chin, rested a hand over the one clasping her arm and listened to him drift away from her.

…

The sound was unmistakable.

The piercing whir of saws would cut through her every dream, no matter how far she made it away from that place, no matter what corners she turned down or how many happy memories of a time long gone that she clung to.

Sometimes she would hear Mallick and always she could never find him. He would scream at her, plead at her: ‘Don’t leave me please! I can’t do this without you, I can’t! Don’t leave me to go through this alone!’

It pulled at something vital inside her.

But everywhere she ran there was fire: a glorious, eye-splitting, raging fire.

…

The morning wasn’t kind to Brit and in return, she was not kind to Mallick: the man offering to cook her breakfast, the man offering her a safe space where she could wallow or vent or just be.

The man whose life was somehow entangled around her own.

She woke disoriented and angry, angry at herself for having taken things this far, for having followed Mallick back to his apartment and given him hope and led him on. There was no life for them.

There was no happy, normal ending for her.

Brit shut down all of Mallick’s attempts at conversation, skirting around them and then exerting more force until he took the hint. She almost thought that he would shy away from her and let her go without a fight, but there was a determination in his eyes and a set to his shoulders that told her Mallick was no longer the type of person to be pushed away, to accept that she had just used him and was now attempting to toss him away.

That wasn’t what Brit had done, really, but it was what she would do if she stayed, if she came back and continued with this game that she would absolutely not be the orchestrator of.

“I think I should go,” she finally settled on. “And I don’t think I’ll be coming back.”

Mallick put down his mug of coffee and asked the single most devastating question he could have asked her. “Why?”

Because… because what? Because I don’t care about you? Because last night was a mistake, a ruse, a pathetic excuse to make me feel better? Because it’s none of your business? Because you’re needy and weak and everything I’m not?

But she wouldn’t use lies to hurt him; if anything hurt Mallick, if he deserved anything it would be the truth.

“Because neither of us deserve to be happy.” It was a truth he could argue all he wanted with her, but he would never convince her otherwise. They had been put in that trap for a reason: to pay for what they had done. But he’d also wanted them to change and they had failed horribly at it, which was why their suffering in the final trap had been increased from minimal to near fatal butchery.

They had proved time and time again that they would always resort to their worst selves, their greedy, selfish, cruel selves.

At least now, Brit could place herself firmly in a tight circle of atonement, forbidding herself from any version of a happy ending. Mallick, on the other hand, took her words differently than she thought he would.

“Speak for yourself!” He spat, voice raised, eyes glowering. Brit was alarmed at how angry and hurt he sounded, like she had taken a knife and attacked him out of the blue, slicing him so deep, as deep as those blades…

She put her steel barriers up again, guarding against him cutting into her the same way. “What, you honestly think that after what we did, we deserve to have this? Some version of a happy ending?”

Mallick pressed on as she feared he would. He had changed in the relatively small time span since they had separated, since she had left him in that hospital room without saying goodbye like it was the normal, kindest thing to do. Now… he was fighting for her and she didn’t want him to. She wasn’t worth fighting for, didn’t he get that? “Have you ever stopped to think that maybe we were supposed to end up here? That maybe there was a reason for the two of us getting out of there?”

It was a question she could tolerate no longer, one that had uncomfortably pricked at her skin last night. “Yeah, a stupid, fucked up reason.”

“That maybe we’re supposed to be together?”

She turned toward him, disbelieving, livid. “What, like all we’ll ever deserve is each other? Me, a a corrupt realtor who just had to have her way and you, a junkie?” She regretted the word as soon as it left her mouth.

“Ex junkie,” he corrected with a growl.

Brit watched him sag against the counter-top as if she were slowly draining the life out of him. She remembered how he had held her the night before, barely at all but protective all the same, his touch rough but soft at the same time, desiring but not persistent. It was a comfort she hadn’t realized she needed.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” he protested, voice strained and desperate and exhausted. He sounded as if he was losing everything and also realizing at the same time that he had already lost. “I really like you, Brit. Yeah, I think what you did was horrible, monstrous even, but what I did was monstrous too.” Brit shivered at the words, at the memory of them in that room, realizing what the other really was, what they had done. “Everyone makes mistakes, I just… don’t think we should make ourselves suffer for them. He’s already made us suffer enough, don’t you think? Do you want to keep playing his game, even though we’re not there anymore?”

He was right in a way and she knew it. They had a right to stop going back there, to stop reliving it, maybe there was just a part of her that didn’t want to. “I can’t be this selfish. I don’t deserve this, any of it.”

“And I’m telling you that you do,” he insisted, tear-filled eyes trying to open her up, to carve out her bitterness so that he could crawl his way inside. “I’m telling you that you deserve something more than whatever it is you’ve been settling for.”

Brit felt as if she were a tape being rewound. This morning, last night, outside in that bitter, cold wind where every one of her excuses suddenly failed to give voice… right now she could leave and forget it all.

All she had to do was walk out that door and not say one. more. word.

Mallick stepped out from behind the counter, hand half-reaching for her before pulling back and lowering his eyes. She could see the scars criss-crossing his wrist and the even deeper burns marring the lower half of his arm from where she stood, Mallick trusting her enough not to recoil or change her mind. He had put the cast back on his other arm before she had woken and Brit wondered now if that had been unconscious or deliberate.

Maybe it was the fact that she didn’t take another backward step or say another word that convinced Mallick to look up at her again, to keep trying even when he looked like she had shredded his hope and tossed it out the window. “Brit, please, don’t leave. Not like this. Not thinking that all of last night was a mistake. I liked having you here. Without you, I never would have made it out of there alive. I owe you my life. You could have killed me or let me be killed in any one of those trials, but you didn’t. Why didn’t you?”

“It wouldn’t have been right. He put us there to teach us a lesson. Or to make us realize that we couldn’t change.”

“So did saving me, did keeping me alive make you feel worthy enough to get out?”

Mallick’s words had softened her as much as she hadn’t wanted them to. Oddly enough, the door felt a great deal further away than it had moments before. “Something like that. But I didn’t like them picking on you either, it proved what monsters we really were. We’d done something bad, yes, something evil and cruel and inhumane, but while we were under his thumb we didn’t have to keep acting that way. We could choose to be better people. We could show him that we weren’t all bad, that we could change. That the lesson was learned.”

Of course, trust, or rather, a lack of it had stood in the way of most of her good intentions. Most of their good intentions.

She turned, reaching for the door handle…

“Brit…”

She couldn’t leave him like this: lost, broken, rejected… “I’ll check in, every once in a while, but I’m not ready to be in a relationship, Mallick.” She didn’t know what made her say it, the words that would convince him that it was her, not him, that there was nothing wrong with him, just that he cared too much about her getting things she had no business getting. Living a life that she had no right living.

Mallick could have been like every other man, could have held the door refusing to let her open it, could have grabbed her hand and pulled her back, could have called her horrible names and said horrible things, blaming her, shaming her. Maybe it was the lack of any one of those things that held her back. Maybe it was the fact that she knew he had so many words, just for her. “It doesn’t matter. We can just… hang out. We can just…”

“What, me, crying on your shoulder, over your fucking butchered arm and you trying to keep it together for me? Trying to be strong? Do you honestly think that sounds healthy?”

If we stay together, we’ll always be trapped there. We’ll never be able to escape it, escape him. We’ll never be free…

And she could almost hear his response: But at least we’ll be together.

And did she really feel better now: alone?

She had heard somewhere once: ‘People can bond from devastating circumstances. It’s unfortunate, but it happens.’ Where had she heard that?

“I think we’re the only two that could ever understand what the other is going through. I think that something between us kept us alive in there, some instinct we had which led us to a choice to preserve both our lives. I don’t think that needed to end in that room.”

It was her last half-hearted attempt, but she didn’t know that fully yet. “Mallick…”

His hand brushed against her arm, so lightly and so quickly she could have denied it. Every time he’d reached out to her, she’d never pushed him away. Maybe she didn’t have the heart to. Maybe she needed him to reach out to her because she couldn’t reach out to him, because she didn’t have the capability to. “I’ve been so lonely, Brit. Something tells me you’ve been too. I’m not pressuring you into anything just… stay, please.”

“If I stay,” she told him, knowing he would never ask her for more than she could give, never take from her what she wouldn’t already willingly offer. “If I stay then I need space. I need slow, Mallick, because I can’t handle fast right now.” He nodded and sank down to his knees, gazing up at her in stunned gratitude and trust and admiration and all these things that she didn’t have enough spaces in her heart for. She ran a hand through his hair, petting him, calming him and maybe trying to calm herself in the process.

There are so many scars, so many scars how can they ever be healed…?

“Together,” Mallick answered, his heart bleeding out all over her. He rose like a brand new man, absolutely sure of what he wanted. His broken arms enveloped her, cast discarded next to her heels, and every one of his intentions suffocated her enough to force her to start breathing again.

For now, maybe not for long, maybe long enough to make it feel like forever, Brit would stay.

FIN