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1) The Ones Who Stop You From Falling From Your Ladder
In Canada, they’d stayed in Vancouver and she’d had black hair.
When they went to Guatemala, they’d lived in Tegucigalpa. She’d gone a light brown there.
They are in Johannesburg now, and she’s a redhead.
He’s scribbling in his notebook at three in the morning. It’s a building layout this time, or at least one floor of a building. The image is incomplete, but he can trace a route in and out of what he’s managed to map, and can pinpoint the locations of every security camera.
He hears footsteps behind him, and he puts his pen down so he can lean forward to rest his head in his hands. The headache is coming back.
Marie places a hand on his shoulder and plants a kiss on the top of his head. He reaches one hand to cover hers. The fingers of her free hand find the two small scars on his back – she knows his body intimately enough to find them even through his shirt – and she touches them softly.
It’s a reminder that she’s aware of who he is (perhaps even more than he is), that she doesn’t care, and it’s the closest thing to absolution that he ever thinks he’s going to get.
2) A Piece To Cross Me Over Or A Word To Guide Me In
When she woke up that morning at Eamon's, she saw him sitting across the room in a chair. It was a bizarre reflection of that morning back in Paris. Instead of looking at her though, and instead of gifting her with one of his rare, awkward and unpractised smiles, he was looking at the carpet. She watched him for a moment before speaking.
"You said you couldn't run with me."
His head snapped up.
"I want to," he answered, quietly. She thought of last night, in the kids' bedroom.
("I don't want to know who I am anymore. I don't care. I don't want to know. Everything I've found out I want to forget. I don't care who I am, or what I did. We have this money. We can hide. Could we do that? Is there any chance you could do that?")
He'd been wrecked and broken. She wasn't sure if she'd ever seen him so vulnerable.
Marie took a deep breath. "Okay then."
There. She'd gone and cast her lot, and of course it had to be with him. She wondered if there could ever have been another outcome. No, she realized. Not after everything.
His eyes widened in a kind of child-like wonder.
"I'll go make coffee," she said in response to his silence. "We can leave right after we eat something."
Later, when it all fell apart and the plan had to change --
("That's all I've got."
"No, That's not what I meant.")
-- she could only sit there in Eamon's truck, clutching that stupid red bag to her stomach and unsure if she should be angry or worried. It was never going to stop, Jason had said. He was trying to protect her. She tried to remind herself of this, but it didn't seem to work at all. She bit the inside of her cheek and tightened her grip on the bag as Eamon swore under his breath and barrelled towards the main road.
3) Remind Us All Of What We Could Have Been
"Excuse me," a voice from behind the two of them called.
Marie tensed at the voice. It was a habit she'd developed since she and Jason had left Greece. It was either that, or Jason's return to her life had resurrected the paranoia.
They turned to see a stranger gesturing towards the camera in Marie's hand. It had been Jason's idea to pose as tourists here, hers to get a cheap disposable camera to complete the look.
"Would you like me to take a picture of you two?" the man asked in broken English. She glanced through her peripheral vision towards Jason. She'd gotten good at that. She'd also gotten good at reading him, though that had become something of a necessity given their 'lifestyle'. She took his hand and squeezed it, asking the question. He squeezed back, giving an answer.
"Please," she answered politely, handing the stranger the camera.
Taking a step up on to a ledge behind Jason, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. His hand reached up to take her wrist, and while normally this would be an indicator that they needed to bolt, he didn't move.
The stranger grinned, lifting the camera and framing them.
"Smile."
4) There's High Water Everywhere, Lord The River Overflows
There's a moment between when his attempt to breathe air and life into her becomes a kiss goodbye that he just looks at her.
He's waiting for her to open her eyes, to look back at him in surprise, to grab on to him, and they'll kick back to the surface where they can both gasp for breath, and then they can...
Too late, a clinical voice that's his own tells him. Too late. Toolatetoolatetoolate.
Her eyes won't open. He saw the wound, saw the blood.
She is frozen even in the warm green water.
For that moment he is empty. It's not the empty automation with which he speaks languages, uses weapons, responds to threats. It's raw, something ripped open and draining out until there's nothing left, nothing at all, because it's toolatetoolatetoolate.
So he says his goodbye and it hurts like bullets: sharp, cutting, right to the chest.
He lets her go. Her body, not her, because that's an important distinction he forces himself to make right then and there and tells himself he's not allowed to forget.
He stays underwater watching her silhouette drift further and further away until he can't see it anymore. Maybe longer.
When his lungs start to burn, the empty automation takes over. He has to get further down the river so he won't be seen coming out of the water by anyone who saw the truck careening off the bridge.
He swims away like it's a reflex.