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Title: Custodian 2: Black Guns on a Moonless Night (1/??)
Author: Alsike
Rating: M (But, sadly, not for eroticism)
Pairing: Still difficult, but in this volume I am working with elements of Heather/Lindsay, JJ/Emily, Claire(Alex)/Lorelai, Jill/Emily, Will/JJ... and anything else that may be read into it.
Disclaimer: Not mine, and yet, if they were, i would be just as unkind.
Warning: This, particularly the first chapter, may be difficult to understand if you have not read Custodian.  But I'm not going to force you or anything.

Summary: Jill, Emily, and Claire are sent to DC to find out what's wrong with the Cabot weapons smuggling operation.  But the wrongness may stretch from the heights of Ambassadorial Elegance to the heart of the family itself.

 

Black Guns on a Moonless Night

 

Heather didn’t know why she had sent the first letter, except that she remembered the shock and horror in Lindsay’s eyes when she told her the truth about Tom.  It had been covered up by anger and blame, but the murderous rage was gone.  Even when she had been lunging to knife Jill she hadn’t been an avenger anymore, just someone striking out because she couldn’t strike out at herself.  And Heather knew what it was like to have the stable ground of righteousness ripped out from under you and then see yourself, finally, clearly, and hate what you saw.

So she had sent the letter, asking Lindsay about her meds, therapy, roommates, accommodations, not really expecting a reply, but using it to work through the unexpected feelings of loss.  Tom didn’t come home.  He would never come home.  And somehow she had to tell little Lindsay that.  His pension was solid, but not enough to keep the house.  She could have asked the Gilmores for assistance, but she didn’t want their money.  They moved to an apartment closer to the school.  Heather had her job.  Linds was frightened and petulant and angry for a few months, but she would settle down eventually.

Being a widow was like being in prison.  So she wrote.

The first letter she received made her laugh until she cried.  It was an exercise in interesting ways to say, “I want to rip your entrails out with a spoon, twirl them around on a fork like spaghetti, and dip them in liquid nitrogen until they shatter on the pavement.”

Heather started the next letter with, “I wish you had died, because you ruined my life.”  But she asked about Lindsay’s health again, and gave her some humorous anecdotes to fill up the space.

Lindsay’s next one was long in coming.  She seemed to have been stymied by the first line.  She had ruined Heather’s life, and destroyed herself doing it.  She wrote about the psychiatric prison, about all the crazy people who were there.  Some tapped and chitched and then would suddenly try and strangle an orderly.  She said the meds made her fuzzy, but she didn’t get angry anymore.  She had gotten angry even before everything had happened, and the therapist was making her talk about her childhood, and she wasn’t planning on lying for the Cabots, but she doubted the therapist would believe her.  He had already given her extra drugs for her paranoid delusions when she had tried to explain about the Connecticut Mafia once.

The letter was punctuated with doubt, “why did you write me?”  “Are you trying to make me go even more insane?”  “Is this supposed to be a punishment?”  “I think you ought to be in here, not me!  Well, me too.”  There would be places where a sentence would trail off, and then pick up on a different topic in a firmer hand, and Heather wondered what she was thinking of.  But she knew it was Tom, because it was the same for her.

In the next letter, Heather wrote about what Tom had told her about Lindsay in the past, about the selfless things she had done, about the practical jokes they played on each other, about the dates that she had managed to bully Tom into telling her about.  Sometimes she wondered who it really was who had the obsession with Lindsay.

Lindsay didn’t write a letter back.  Instead Heather received a visitor’s form.

The room was barren, a fluorescent bulb lit the industrial carpet and frayed stuffed chairs that were bolted to the floor.  Heather sat down, tentatively. The orderly, a huge man in a white uniform gave her a curious look.

“The serials don’t usually get that many visitors.”

“Has she had others?”

The man frowned.  “One, he came a couple times.  She screamed at him until we had to drag her out.  But he hasn’t been around in a few months.”

Heather nodded, wondering if it had been a Cabot, trying to buy her silence.  They were lucky it was just screaming.

The other door opened and Lindsay was pushed in, struggling against the orderly.  “I told you, I don’t want to see him-“  She saw Heather and gaped.  “It’s you… you came.”

“It’s not every day I get invited to visit a serial killer in prison.”

Lindsay’s face hardened, and Heather used the time the orderly took to get her settled in the chair to study the woman who had held her at knifepoint a few months ago.  Her hair had been cut short and sloppily, but had grown out a bit and now hung unevenly around her face, down to her pointy cheekbones, which stuck out as much as ever.  She was still too skinny, but not skeletal, which was an improvement.

“You’re looking better.”

Lindsay gave her a suspicious look.  “No knives.”  She waved her empty hands.

“I meant you’ve put on some weight.”

“I lost a few pounds recently.  I finally caved and told the therapist that I was making all that Connecticut Mafia shit up and he took me off the Haldol and then put me on Zoloft for my ‘rage issues.’  I couldn’t eat for puking.”

“My aunt’s on Zoloft.”

“Yeah,” Lindsay rolled her eyes.  “I’m almost ‘functional’ now, if I hadn’t murdered six people in cold blood they could let me go.”

“I’m not holding my breath.”

“Good, ‘cause fleeing the country could be difficult to do while not breathing.”

“Am I still first on your list when you get out?”

Lindsay stared at her hands.  “I’m not getting out.  How many consecutive lifetimes am I supposed to serve again?  I just wait for your letters and wonder why I’m still alive.”

Heather looked away.  “I’ve done that.”

“Do you want some Zoloft, I’m sure there’s extra lying around somewhere.”

They laughed and then stopped, and wondered.  There was a long silence.  The orderlies shifted their feet.

“Why are you here?” asked Lindsay finally.  “Why did you write?”

Heather leaned back in her chair.  “I wanted to be a victim to you,” she said blandly.  “I didn’t want to take the blame.”

“Not any of it?  Not even using him and making me think he was…”

“I didn’t stick the knife in his gut.  That was you.”

“You’re not denying that you used him.”

“My using him didn’t hurt him.  I made him happy when you were gone, and he made me happy.  You should be thanking me.”

“He deserved better than you.”

“I deserved better than what I was given, but I turned it something worthwhile.  You deserved better than what you were given, but you turned it into crap.”

“Can you blame me?  Can you hate me for taking vengeance?  Even if what I did was a mistake… you’re all guilty.”

“There’s the avenger I know and love.”

“I don’t want to be out of control like that again.  But it felt so good to know.”

To know what is right and what is wrong, they both understood.

Heather sighed.  “I wish I could say I ever knew.  I didn’t want to work for the Gilmores.  I wanted out, even if it was for selfish reasons.”

Lindsay blinked.  “You?”

“I was ten when I watched my parents die, murdered by their rivals.  My aunt took me and we fled Russia to California, where she had connections with the Gilmores.  I was adopted by one of their families.  They were good to me, but I didn’t want the life that they promised.  I was in America, I wanted ‘American normal.’  I wanted a family, a job that wasn’t a career, and that wasn’t danger and death.  When they needed someone to get close to Tom, I jumped at the chance.”

“Did you ever love him?”

“I loved him more than I ever believed was possible.  But I knew I didn’t deserve it, so I was surprised every time he looked at me.  Surprised and honored.  But I’m not going to lie…”  Grey eyes seemed to burn and Lindsey tried to twist out of their path.  “He never made my heart race.”

***