Archive of Our Own ^beta

She knows exactly how many steps it will take to cross the room.

She shouldn't do. Knowledge is power, after all, but an hour earlier she had slipped past a security guard with a smile and an excuse, and had paced it out.

Thirteen.

Luckily, she had never been superstitious.

She had always liked to know things, for sure. When she was in a situation where she wasn't in control, when it was completely unavoidable, she gathered as much knowledge as she could. It gave her basis for decisions, the knowing, allowed her to start to think one step ahead. If she wasn't ahead she wasn't anywhere.

So her shadow had been here before, and made the short journey that she was dreading, so that she could know for sure what to expect.

Thirteen steps.

Now, it helped to calm the writhing nest of snakes in her stomach to count it out. Thirteen steps. Thirteen staccato clicks of high heel on wooden floor. Thirteen steps to not look anywhere but directly ahead of her.

Too soon though, they're over. Then she's climbing the (two) wooden steps and anchoring herself behind that podium. She can't look up, not yet, she meets the floor's gaze. Out of the corner of one eye she can see her hands gripping the wooden rail, her knuckles white from the exertion.

She focuses on her fingers, on the bruise like lines shining through translucent skin. On the slight chip in the (red, red) polish on her left thumb. She tries to let it fill her with irritation, to distract her, but someone is speaking, so she wrenches her head up to look across the room.'

'Could you please state your name for the court?'

'Victoria,' the word comes out raspy and strangled, comes out weaker than she would like, so she swallows and tries again, 'Victoria Chase.'

…

Someone had brought her a cup of coffee, but one sip was enough to tell her that it wasn't something she wanted to be putting in her body. She had been sat down on hard plastic chair and told to wait for the detective. To wait till she was needed. They were treating her like a child.

Her parents hadn't come to see her. Obviously. After all, it wasn't like she had been targeted for abduction by a deranged murderer. Or something.

Their family lawyer was here though, sitting opposite her, smiling at her with an awkward condescension that made her want to punch him in the teeth.

'Are you okay sweetheart?' He asked, again, and Victoria pictured walking over and pulling his (tacky, polyester) tie tight around his neck until his air ran out.

She nodded.

'There's nothing to worry about, they just want you to talk about what happened. Just be honest, and try not to leave anything out. You'll do a great job.' He tapped his pen against the documents on his lap, and in her mind Victoria picked it up and jammed it into his eye.

…

'And what was your relationship with the defendant?'

She takes two deep breaths, like she had been practising.

'He was my photography teacher.'

'And was that the full extent of your relationship?'

Victoria didn't want to watch the lawyer throw his smug words around the court room, didn't want to have to catch the small smiles he gave himself, but the alternative was unthinkable.

She knew who else was going to be in this room, and the idea of meeting his eyes sent a wave of coldness through her.

She realises she's been quiet for a moment too long, 'yes.'

'You never pursued a closer relationship?'

'No.'

'Your honour, I would like to submit the following audio recordings as exhibits 23-a and 23-b.'

…

The detective leaned out the interrogation room, 'we're ready for you now.'

She got to her feet, a little unsteadily, hating that, hating any evidence of weakness. She took a step towards the door, then froze. Deer in the headlights. Embarrassing.

Max had just stepped out of the office.

It took Victoria a second to recognise her, she was white pale and shaking, holding a wad of tissues up to her nose to try to hold back the steady spread of crimson. She didn't see Victoria, she didn't seem to see anyone, to know where she was at all.

The second her feet crossed the threshold a man and woman that had been sitting a little ways away jumped up and rushed over. Her parents, Victoria guessed. Come to make sure she's okay.

She made a noise in her throat, unconsciously, something that could be a cough or could be a sob or could be a growl, and Max looks up. They meet eyes, or lock eyes, or their eyes hit each other in a car crash of questions and understanding and hurt, and then Max is gone. Bundled away in a storm of hugs and parents and arms and promises to get some ice on that nose.

Victoria reminded herself not to hate Max. Again. Not to resent her for sucking the attention away from Victoria's roots. Max deserved it. Her best friend had actually died.

She put her face back on and walked into the detective's office.

…

'And your relationship with Nathan Prescott?'

The court room swells and contracts as Victoria breathes. She calls everything she had been told to her mind. Their plan. The strategy.

'He was a friend.'

'A close friend?'

'A friend.'

'Did you ever help him distribute controlled substances?'

'No.'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes.'

'Did you help him acquire controlled substances?'

'No.'

'Did you provide an environment that enabled him to distribute controlled substances.'

'No.'

She is stone. She is the wall paint. None of them can look at her. She is searing white light. She is an exploding star.

…

The detective was clearly exhausted, and Victoria felt herself cringe away from his stale coffee breath and the dark circles of sweat under his arms. She sat in the moulded plastic chair (too small, too close to the ground, too enclosed) and drummed her fingertips on the laminate table top.

'So,' he said, wiping a hand across his face to wake himself up. 'We've got a pretty clear idea of what was going on at that school of yours, but there are some,' he sucked his teeth and looked at the ceiling, 'conflicting narratives.'

'Okay.' Her tone was measured, her pulse was slow. She was determined that her tone would be measured and her pulse would be slow.

'This guy,' he shuffled through files, and Victoria couldn't help but crane her neck to see. Knowledge is power. 'This Nathan guy. He killed two girls, and drugged at least two others, and he claims that he was told to do it by his teacher. The teacher says that's horse shit.' The detective glanced up at her, 'sorry, ladies present.'

Victoria waved a hand, wishing she could shoo him away as easily. She wanted to be home. Home, home. In Seattle. She wanted city noise, and real coffee, and sleep, and God she wanted a cigarette.

'We can't find any evidence that connects Mark Jefferson to any of the abductions, no DNA or fingerprints even. So I'm looking at arresting a guy on the testimony of a teenager who just confessed to murder, and your friend Max out there.'

'She's not -' Victoria began, then cut herself off. Control. Calm. Keep it together.

The detective waited a moment for her to continue, then went on. 'She seems like a nice enough kid, but she also just saw her best friend get shot in a bathroom. She's not a flawless witness.' He looked at her again, more critically. She saw his eyes sweep over her, felt herself being weighed up. This, at least, was something she was used to.

'So,' she leaned her weight forward a little. 'What do you need?'

…

'My client,' the lawyer, 'has been accused of some of the most heinous crimes imaginable, on the word of some distressed children.'

Victoria could feel blood rush to her face, and inside her head she screamed herself back into line. If she lost control now everything was lost. She had to be a statue. She had to be perfect.

'Nathan Prescott,' the lawyer continued, 'is a drug dealer, a murderer, and a child with a dangerous fixation on my client.' Victoria could feel eyes on her. His eyes on her. She could distinguish them, like hearing your name in a crowd. They sent shivers across her back.'

'Ms. Chase, what possible reason do you have to believe that my client was involved in any way with Mr. Prescott's actions?'

…

He'd burst into her room like a freight train, like an avalanche of limbs and tears and sound, and it wasn't until she had grabbed his arms to hold him still that she realised he was holding a gun.

'Get off me!' He yelled, and he'd pushed her off, pushed her onto the ground, before he seemed to realise what was going on.

'What the fuck, Nathan? What's going on? Why do you have that?'

And he'd dropped down to his knees and held it out to her, like he was begging for forgiveness. Like he was praying. 'I don't know why I did it, Vic,' and his whole body shook with the words. 'My life is over, and I don't even know why.'

'What's going on? Nathan? Nate? You're scaring me, okay. This isn't funny.'

And he'd looked up at her, his eyes huge and blown out and red with tears, and he'd laughed. 'It's fucking hilarious Victoria,' and the laugh had sounded like a scream, like blood rattling in a punctured lung. 'Everything is over.'

'Nathan, please.'

'I killed her, Vic. I did it for him, but I killed her. I thought he'd protect me. That he cared about me. He said that I could be like him but he's a fucking liar just like everyone else.'

'Nathan you need to calm down, okay? You're going to hurt yourself. Or me.'

'I don't give a shit.'

'What did you do?'

And he held up the gun, and he stared at it like he was seeing it for the first time. 'It was so fucking easy.'

'Nathan, what do you mean you killed her? Who's her? What did you do?'

'I shot her in the stomach. I didn't think you died from that, but she did. Right in front of me, like a movie or something. It was an accident, I swear, okay? I just wanted her to keep her fucking mouth shut. I just wanted to protect us.'

'Us?'

'Me and him. He was going to show me so much Vic. He was going to show me everything. Then I fucked up with Rachel and I thought if I did more, if I brought him someone new he'd forgive me. But I'm a fuck up. I can't do anything Vic, I can't. It's all over.'

'Nathan, Nathan look at me. Who the fuck are you talking about?'

And he looked at her like he had suddenly sorted it all out in his mind. Like everything was going to be okay. He smiled at her, he smiled radiantly, and Victoria could see blood in his teeth, a raw wound where he had bit his own tongue. 'Mr. Jefferson Vic. He's a genius. He can figure this out, right? He'll help me. We need to find him, we need to k now what to do. He's going to have a plan for this, I know it.'

…

Calm, measured, in control.

'Nathan had problems, but he would never have done something like this on his own. He was looking for someone to guide him, and Mr-' her breath caught. Calm, measured, in control. 'And he was taken advantage of. Where would a teenager learn this stuff, know how to drug his friends and tie them up. Why would he want to?'

'Why would Mark Jefferson?'

'I-' but the plan was unravelling now. This was all so real, so present. She didn't know, that was the problem, knowing was everything, and everything was at stake. Her mind was full of other people's voices.

Nathan, collapsed on the floor of her bedroom, sobbing a half confession, a half apology.

Max, catching her wrist in a corridor as the police stepped out, her eyes wide, trying to explain how she knew what had happened, how she knew what she couldn't know.

Her dad, his voice distorted by static telling her to keep this clean, to give only facts and to remove herself as much as possible.

And his voice. His words, trapped like tape loop in the back of her brain ever since Nathan had spat out his name.

"Seriously though, I could frame any one of you in a dark corner, and capture you in a moment of desperation."
And Victoria looks up, finally, across the court room, and meets Mark Jefferson's eyes. And he smiles.

…

When she was fifteen, her English tutor had written a paper for her on Ovid.

He was a college student, Mason or Brandon or something, and that year he had written all her papers, nabbing her a 4.0 gpa in the process. She normally didn't bother to read them at all, but her lunch plans had fallen through, and bothering the staff seemed a fun way to kill an hour.

'So what's it about?' She asked, biting into a green apple and enjoying the way it cracked under her teeth.

He glanced up at her, surprised to be even acknowledged. 'You're reading Ovid's Metamorphoses.'

'I know that much, you know I'm not stupid, right? I was just wondering what my unique and insightful opinion was.'

He laughed, and Victoria bathed in it, in the knowledge that she could effect people. 'You're writing about Medusa,' he said, 'about her curse as a conscious choice and empowerment rather than an affliction.'

'Medusa scary snake head lady?'

'That's the one. She was beautiful, but after she's, umm, assaulted by Poseidon, she's cursed so that anyone who looks at her turns to stone.'

'A little harsh, don't you think?'

'There's this really good quote though, let me see…' he flipped through his papers, 'the Gorgon was made out of the terror, not the terror out of the Gorgon.'

'Mm-hmm.'

'So I, sorry, you, are writing about how she's not really a monster, she doesn't create terror, she's a wounded woman who shields herself from view, and uses aggression as her defence. When others go to attack her, they're the ones who get torn down.'

'Sounds like I'm getting an A.'

…

'So I ask you Ms Chase,' the lawyer's talking to her like a child again, all slow words and rounded vowels, and she wants to throw a chair at him. 'Why would Mark Jefferson do the nightmarish things you've accused him of?'

Calm, measured, in control. Ever since she met his gaze its been hard to look away. She's paralysed, by his smile, by his eyes, by her doubt. A week ago she worshipped the ground he stepped on, but now…

The thing was, the truth, the knowledge that was her power, was that she wasn't filled with doubt. She knows that he's guilty, sitting there in his suit like he was enjoying a cup of coffee at a pavement cafe, in control of the situation as per usual.

She knows he was the one photographing girls, because she had seen photographs of that dark room, and she had seen a folder with her name on it. Nathan was many things, few of them good, but he would never, could never, sit down and plan to hurt her like that. She believed that. She knew that.

Knowledge is power.

'He-,' a pause, a swallow, a plan of attack. 'Mark Jefferson kidnapped girls because he was obsessed with making perfect photographs, and he knew he wasn't good enough to rely on his own skill.'

The man sitting opposite her twitches, as if she'd struck him physically, and something inside her chest coils and smiles to itself.

'I beg your pardon.'

'Mark Jefferson was a talentless hack,' a bigger twitch, lines of tension forming in his face and throat, knotted rope, 'and he knew no one would be interested in his images if there wasn't some gory back story attached.'

'Ms Chase, might I remind that the witness stand is no place for ad hominem attacks and conjecture.'

'His work was so derivative, so lacking in any real substance, that he needed his models to suffer the worst kinds of abuse to express any emotion at all.'

'Ms Chase-' the lawyer said again, but Victoria couldn't hear him over Mr Jefferson getting to his feet, Mark Jefferson levelling a finger at her.

'You bitch!' and he thrust his finger forward as if he was making a point in a lecture, 'you stupid slut. I did what I did because I am the only person who could. Who was willing to make great art. Willing to do what it takes to reach perfection. Perhaps if you weren't a self-obsessed, mediocre little whore, you'd have been a part of my genius, but you're going to fade into obscurity, and my genius will,' he brings his fist down on the table in front of him, 'be,' a percussive strike, 'remembered!'

And there are a few seconds of total silence. And Victoria fixes Mr Jefferson with a stare, with a withering, pitying, hateful look. Before he can even realise what he's done, she has turned him to stone.

She makes her way back across the room. She does it in twelve steps.