Work Text:
“Please don’t. Rick. Don’t! Stop!”
The monkey’s off my back, he told her. Happiness is a possibility after all those years of hurt and pain, after all those years of being an orphan, of growing in the middle of violence, alcohol and drugs, of being surrounded by darkness. Another life was possible, one with a ray of sunshine. “That’s the plan.” Yeah, the plan is to be with this sunshine.
“Please don’t. Rick. Don’t! Stop!”
Happiness is a possibility so he should stop. He could totally stop.
But he doesn’t.
Seeing his face and his smile was like a tsunami, a violent wave that erases every new emotion he’s just found. All the beautiful images from the last hours disappear in a second. Her running towards him on the beach, throwing herself in his arms, kissing him, telling him how much she missed him. Her taking off his shirt, dragging him to their bed and making love with him as if it was the first time. Her face when she came, her voice when she said his name and the burst inside his heart when seeing her how happy she is…with him. Such an angel-like vision. Such beautiful images.
They disappear, replaced by horror visions. His mother’s laid on her deathbed, his poor heartbroken mother who had lost every chance of hope and turned her whole life to alcohol, booze, violent men and drugs. When not completely fucked up, his mother could be so nice and so sweet. She was so beautiful when happy and her smile, oh her smile. She would have been the perfect mother, but those instants had been so rare.
“Please don’t. Rick. Don’t! Stop!”
He would have. But his mother’s smile. His mother’s tears. The pain on her face every single day and her body at the hospital…. Why? Why her?
So, he doesn’t stop. Rick walks straight to that damn man, that fucking man who destroyed his whole life, destroyed his mother’s life and does what he must do. Why would this man be happy? Why him? After everything he did! That’s not fair. He lets anger, pain and all his trauma take over him and in an instant that was it. All is over.
But it’s not all over.
There are more gunshots he barely registers. His mind suddenly reminds him that he is not alone that she is standing right behind him, scared, sad and disappointed.
“I didn’t kill anyone,” he told her, and she had been so happy. And he had been proud to make her happy, to have fulfilled his promise to her. He failed completely. The man he wanted to become for her, the future he wanted to offer her all vanish.
They run. There are more gunshots, distant gunshots and closed gunshots. And then there’s blood. So much blood. His father’s blood. That bodyguard’s blood. Her blood.
“No. No. No. Nooooo,” he yells as he tries to stop the bleeding failing to keep his promise again as he tells her she’s going to be ok. But she won’t be ok. He knows it. He’s already seeing the life living her body as she is keeping her eyes on his. Her beautiful eyes. Last night they’ve been so full of hope as he told her they would spend their whole life together. “That’s the plan”.
Yeah. That was the plan.
He thought of it that whole evening in Bangkok and then on the plane back to the island. He thought of their home in California, that little house he bought years ago without thinking about building a life in it because all he needed at that time was a place to get away from all the shit going on in his life. It was supposed to be nothing but just some secret place where he could rest a little. Nothing else. That house. The one where he brought her once because they needed a place to stay one night without imagining that a month later, her luggage would disappear in the garage, her clothes having found a place in drawers and a closet while her toothbrush and her beauty products neatly ordered next to his in the bathroom. That house that smells like her. Her perfume everywhere, in every room.
Their home. Their future.
The plan. Going back home together and being a better man for her, the man she deserves, the boyfriend he’s never been. Yeah, he would be a better man. A great husband. That was the plan. That was supposed to be the plan. But then that murderer arrived at the White Lotus and the plan vanished. Images of her in one of her summer dresses, walking on the beach near their house and the sound of her laughing. All vanished, replaced by her body in his arms, his heart broken.
Amor Fati.
“Please don’t!”
Her smile. Her blood. Her laugh. Her heart not beating under his hand. Her eyes. The darkness taking over the light.
Amor Fati.
Jim Hollinger’s smile. All the words he said about his mother. The arrogance in his voice. The life he has stolen from him! He destroyed his life. It wasn’t fair! It was NOT fair! The past he never had, the mother he never had, the love he never had. Love. The house. Yeah, the house. The warm Californian wind, the sun bathing every room, the smell of citrus and lavender, her laugh. Her laugh.
One hour. Just one fucking tiny hour.
“Rick.”
He shakes, the horror in his head fades away as he turns his head, his eyes leaving that bastard of Hollinger, leaving that image behind his head and falling on her instead. Her. Her heart still beating. No blood on her clothes. No blood. No darkness.
Light. Hope.
One hour, he thinks as his body makes his way toward her. Just wait for one hour. It was so little compared to forever. One hour.
That’s the plan.