Those Who Are Dead : Garrison and Adrienne

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

After the ladies leave, Adrienne decides she's on a roll for confrontations tonight and calls Garrison to come over. They both confront some issues.


After the ice cream and most of the vodka was gone, and after assuring her friends that she was going to call a cleaning crew right away and that they needn't bother staying to help, Adrienne surveyed the penthouse warily, concentrating on the mess rather than the events of the night. Her first order of business was to pick a half-empty vodka bottle up from the corner of the room and screw the cap off, then take a swig from the bottle. "Okay," she said to herself. It was a little odd to be talking to herself, especially now that she really was the only one in the penthouse, but the sound of her own voice steadied her a little. "Let's get this cleaned up." Another survey of the room had her sitting down on the floor. She took another swig of vodka. The task looked impossible.

But it wasn't impossible. Compared to what she'd dealt with today already, what she'd faced in the past month, this was nothing. She could do this. This was easy, honest work. She'd fought Steven, confronted him, told him what she'd never been able to say when he'd been alive, stood up for herself in front of him for the first time ever. If she could do that, she could do anything. Even, she realized, confront another man who'd been on her mind almost constantly in the past month. She could tell him what she felt, stand up to him too.

With another fortifying gulp of vodka, Adrienne pulled her phone out of a pocket, wincing when it brushed the cut and bruise on her cheekbone, and dialed Garrison's number, not thinking on how early it was. She told him that she had to speak to him, now, worried she would lose her nerve if too much time lapsed. Best to do it now while she was still feeling so powerful, so confrontational, so honest. After asking him to come, adding a please, and telling him where she was, she leaned back against a leg of the couch to wait, feeling like if she moved she would lose this feeling of utter clarity, the complete calm and sense of righteousness and a desire to say what she felt

The call had jangled Kane out of a sound sleep, and he'd groggily agreed to head into the city before his brain really had time to engage. The trip in was quick, the roads only lightly traveled, and he found himself at the door of Adrienne's apartment before he had a chance to really think about what he was doing.

His conversation with Wanda had rattled him, showing just how deeply Garrison had thrust aside his own feelings. In the process, he'd failed to identify basic feelings like jealousy, which had turned toxic and eventually caused what appeared to be an insurmountable rift.

Except now he was on the top floor of her office building, seeing the sun just starting to grey the horizon, about to knock on the door of the person he was pretty sure he'd driven away. Kane's first rap on the door actually swung it up, swinging drunkenly on only two hinges. Beyond it was a disaster scene, and he took a few careful steps inside.

"Adrienne?" Kane said questioningly, and his slow tread took him through the destruction and into the living room, were she was sitting. "You alright? I mean, if you're inviting over guests, you could have picked the place up a bit." The last comment was an obvious joke, but it was also hiding his anxiety.

She gave him a smile, wincing as she aggravated her swollen, bruised and cut cheek, but could not be derailed from her current state of mind by jokes. However, she did feel she owed him an explanation for the state of the room. "I had a visit from my dead husband," she explained. "Don't ask me how. Something to do with Wanda's... or Amanda's powers? I don't know. But he was here. I could see him. The others couldn't. He did this. It was one of his favourite ways of stress management when we were married," she stated ruefully, "when I wasn't home. Or when I was but hitting me wasn't enough of a rush for him." She waved the thought away absentmindedly, as if talking about the weather. There was mess all around her, and her head was a mess, but talking unrestrained about what was in her head would fix that. It had to. She had to get everything she was thinking out, the way she had with Steven.



"Anyway, I stood up to him. For the first time. And now he's gone forever. He can't hurt me anymore. I confronted him. And then I realized I had to confront you."

"I kind of hope you don't use the same methods." Kane said, looking around at the destroyed room, his mind turning over what she'd said. She'd explained the history between her husband and her; the violence, the threats, the fear that had eventually driven her to have him killed before he could fulfill the future she'd seen by killing her first. Oddly enough, the idea of a psychic ghost or whatever was the least odd part of the tale. Obviously the mansion was driving him insane.
"I didn't do this," Adrienne reiterated. "I would never." Staring at the mess around her, she smiled wryly. Everything was wrecked. Everything. All that she had in the apartment, all that she had thought and believed about herself, about the people in her life was in pieces.



She had absolutely nothing to lose anymore.



"I wanted to confront you to tell you that you were right," she informed Garrison, looking up with that same smile on her face. "About the Hellfire Club. You said I was focused on what I could get out of it, that I was getting into something that part of me wasn't comfortable with. I didn't want to believe you." Despite the copious amounts of alcohol she'd had, Adrienne couldn't remember a time when she'd ever been thinking so clearly. "I thought I could pay the price they wanted for power, and I thought that if I couldn't, it was because I was weak. That I was lacking something. But tonight I realized it's not because I lack something that I can't be like them anymore. It's because I found something. I found my integrity- the line I won't cross. It's not the same as Emma's. She has a diamond shell, literally and figuratively. She's drawn a different line." She wanted to hate Emma for that, for being able to play the powermongering games of the Hellfire Club while Adrienne was admitting that she couldn't. But if anything, she respected her sister more for it. And she didn't count her newfound boundaries to mean she was weaker than her sister. All it meant was that they had different goals.



"I'm not Emma. I'm not going to play the Hellfire Club's games for power. I don't need or want the power that Emma has. I won't go through what Emma had to do to get her power- the murders, the seductions. I'm done with playing that game." She nearly added 'I'm better than that,' but even though Emma wasn't around to hear, she refrained. It wasn't true. And it seemed too unfair to Emma. "But that doesn't mean I'm weak, or lacking something.



"And I think maybe you figured that out before I did." Her brow furrowed as she frowned. Was this what he'd been trying to explain to her in Florida, what she hadn't realized before meeting Jason Wyngarde, before she'd confronted Steven? "And I held that against you. I'm sorry." The smile went from being wry to being genuine. "I was so wrong. About you. About everything."



"But I'm not quitting the Hellfire Club," she added, as if they were in a negotiation over the running over her life and he had any say in it. "I enjoy socializing, and I'm not a quitter. And I believe I am in a position to help the White Court not only keep Shaw in check, but help to ruin him. I genuinely want to do so, not for the recognition or to take the power for myself, but because I believe he and Wyngarde need to be stopped. I fucking care, about Emma, even Doug and Manny, which I hate admitting."


"Wow. Uh- I mean..." Kane trailed off in the face of the honest admission. Obviously it wasn't just a destroyed apartment that was driving things. Again his brain bounced off the whole psychic ghost idea, but only a fool would discount it in the life that they led. "Wait, who's Wyngarde? I get the feeling that I'm the only one that didn't get the whole script here. What's happened, Adrienne?"


Adrienne gave him a dazed look before sipping at the vodka bottle and reminding herself that she hadn't spoken to Garrison in close to a month- not since before the fateful night she'd gone to the Black Court party. "Sorry," she mumbled with a wry laugh. "I'm feeling all this honestly and transparency- I forgot I'd been hiding it from you in the first place. Sit down," she offered with a smile, indicating that she wasn't going to mince words. "Wyngarde is an associate of Sebastian Shaw, the Black King of the Hellfire Club. Balliol International. VP of North America, or something." She knew his exact title, but didn't want Garrison to think she cared what it was. Because she no longer did. "They're close. I met him the night of the Black Court party. The last time you and I met at Harry's. The night I left the mansion.

"At the party, I was trying to manipulate Wyngarde into helping me secure power in the court, by trying to seduce him, and..." she trailed off for a moment, looking around the room. She wasn't going to keep it from him, but needed a moment, taking time to remind herself that the mess in the room was the symbol of the personal victory she'd won tonight and of the realization she'd finally had about the person she wanted to be. She wanted to start over with Garrison, by leaving all the unpleasantness behind.

"In the course of the evening it was made clear to me that power in the Black Court came from sacrificing whatever Shaw and Wyngarde deemed necessary to sacrifice. That night it was meant to be my body," she explained, a furrow in her brow the only sign of discomfort at explaining that part of her story, "but Wyngarde explained that it could be anything, including my integrity. I hated him for saying that, and for implying that no matter who I was I was nothing except what he allowed me to be. But I'd gotten used to that, while I'd been married, at the same time I gained power from building my business. I had both the pain and the happiness then, and I couldn't decide if I wanted to go through all the pain again for what Wyngarde could offer in terms of power within the Club. I didn't know if that power would make me happy this time.

"Tonight, because of Wanda's powers, and something to do with mine and my memories, Steven's ghost returned to haunt me. Wanda and Lil and Amanda are fine, though," she added quickly, not wanting to worry him. "I was nothing again, like I was with Wyngarde. But having him back allowed me to finally realize something." She smiled widely at him, setting the vodka bottle down. "I finally figured out what everyone at the mansion has been trying to tell me since I joined the Club. The power it holds won't make me happy. It isn't worth being hurt again. I'm not comfortable being the person I was with Steven, and even though you tried to tell me that months ago, I didn't get it until tonight. I was so fucking pissed off at you because I thought that meant I was weak. Now I know it doesn't. I should be pissed off at you for figuring me out before I figured me out," she grinned, "but I'm sick of being pissed off at you, so I'll just be confused instead. Chalk it up to cop's intuition, I suppose, huh?"

"There are many things I believe you to be, Adrienne, including crazier than a bag full of weasels and a symbol for all that is wrong with America for cheering for Boston. But I've never thought you were weak." Kane said, and then stopped, cocking his head. "No, that's a lie. I did think you were weak that last night, when you decided to go to the Hellfire Club. I thought you'd decided that the image of power was too important to give up, even though you knew that it involved hurting others to achieve it and use it."

Kane shook his head and sat down on the arm of the ruined couch. "Maybe part of that was my fault too. It was easier to give up, and assume that you'd already made your decision and nothing I was going to say would stop you. Not exactly a shining moment as a friend."



"Yes well, apparently it takes longer for us crazy people to come to realizations that cops can grasp quite easily. Or friends," she added, her smile a little shy now. "I wanted you to tell me not to go," she admitted, not accusingly, but in keeping with the spirit of honestly that was still pervading her thoughts. "I wanted you to fight with me. When I realized you gave up on me, it hurt. I knew I wasn't worth fighting with, I wasn't worth standing by. But I still went. There was still that one tiny, stubborn, stupid thought that I was right, that I still wanted what I'd always wanted and that I was still who I used to be. I suppose I had to go, or I'd have never figured out that I don't want to be who I was.

"I was still wrestling with everything, before Steven came back. He really caused the epiphany," she confessed. "I hope I would have figured it out on my own, but I might never have done, and that scares me a little. I would have pushed everyone I've met in the past year away. Disappointed them all. And for what? Hellfire Club power. Nothing, really. Hurting people for power." She gave him a nod in acknowledgment of the line he'd used."I'm sick of being someone that good people give up on."

"There's a line between being supportive and telling someone what to do, I guess. After all, you're not a kid, Adrienne. One of my unfortunate habits is the delusion that I can save people, when the reality is that people can only save themselves." He laced his fingers together, tapping his hands on his knees. "I'm glad that you did it yourself. Any other way and I don't know if you'd have really believed it."


"Exactly," she agreed. "You're right. About everything. If you'd talked me out of going, I would have always wondered if I would regret it, or I would have just gone to another event, to see if you were really right. Plus, if I'd learned the truth about them and hadn't gone, I would have felt indebted to you for being right, and no offense," she added with a smirk, "but I'm not sure I want to think of anyone as my saviour. I don't think I really 'did it', though, in the way that I'm saved now. I'd hate to think that. People who are flawless are utterly boring, if you want to know the truth."


"Yeah, we are a trial to the world." Kane joked lightly, although it was obvious that it was more of his defense mechanism than anything else. "I don't know. I don't think you needed anyone other than yourself to save you. Just occasionally to trust your instincts ahead of your bullshit, eh? You keep talking about cop perception, but really, I was just reacting to the person who you kept showing yourself as to me. Maybe it helps you didn't feel the need to lie to me as much as yourself."


Adrienne sipped at the vodka and then offered the bottle to Kane, frowning in thought. "Why is that, I wonder?" She gave it another moment's pause before chalking it up to a question she would never be able to answer and waved it away. "Anyway, I just had to tell you that you were right about the Hellfire Club. Sorry I got you out of bed for it. I suppose that's it for me and the confessional booth."


"That's all you wanted to talk to me about?" Kane said, taking the proffered bottle from her, but simply turning it over in his hands instead of drinking from it.


Staring at him incredulously, Adrienne whacked him in the side with a pillow, spraying fluff around the room. "I just poured out my soul to you about my dead husband coming back from hell to try and beat me to death and how I've had this life-changing epiphany and your response is 'that's all you wanted to talk to me about?'!" She frowned, green eyes piercing into his brown ones, trying to fathom what he meant. "What did you think I was going to talk to you about? What made you come?"


"Hey, enough with the fluff things!" Kane put up his hands, batting away the further swings of the pillow. "I didn't mean it like it didn't matter. You know better than that. I just- getting me up at four in the morning to dash into the city just to say I'm right doesn't sound like the whole story is all!" He backed off a step, putting the couch between them.

"Wait, he came back from hell? Scratch that. I don't want to know the answer, and Amanda will just tell me one night when I'm drunk in any case. Also, I have the vodka. No more hitting or I keep the vodka."

"I can always tell you one night when you're drunk, too," she offered. The effect of the night's events were slowly beginning to wear off, bringing Adrienne back on her guard- she didn't really want to tell him all the particulars about her encounter with Steven's ghost. "That is, if we're... friends again. And feel free to keep the vodka- I've had quite enough for one night and it was a present from Wanda, so I'm sure she wouldn't mind you taking it. You never answered my question," she reminded him with a cool glance. "We hadn't talked in weeks. I moved out of the mansion because I couldn't face you. You gave up on me. I call you at four a.m., drunk, yet you 'dash into the city.' Why did you do it? Because you're the Boy Scout, and you thought I needed saving? Why?" She tried her best not to sound pretentious, accusing, or incredulous as she said it. She just wanted to know.


"I thought you needed me to." Kane said slowly, feeling out the words before he said them. "I don't know. I figured that if you were calling me at this time, instead of Morgan or Jake or-- well, I didn't think you just needed someone. That's all."

"I didn't just need someone," Adrienne answered, just as careful with her own words. "I needed you. To talk to you, I mean," she corrected quickly. "I did need you to come. When I fucked things up with Morgan, and with Jake, I had to make it right. And I fucked things up with you, so I had to make things right between us, too. Plus," she shrugged, and figured she could always claim alcohol intake as an excuse if he responded strangely, "I... guess I missed you."

The green eyes scrutinized him again. "The way you phrased that, saying you thought I would go to Morgan or Jake and that you didn't think I 'just' needed 'someone'... " She frowned, playing idly with stuffing from the cushion she still sat on, "you sounded almost jealous there, Boy Scout." It didn't really come out in the teasing tone she'd been going for.


"Yeah, well... it's complicated." He said, obviously uncomfortable. "I'm not used to jealousy, so I don't really recognize it until I'm suddenly shouting in a hallway at three in the morning."


Adrienne's eyes went wide. She was also obviously uncomfortable. "You were jealous? Over me?" It just didn't add up in her brain. "But you were with Wanda... why would you be jealous of me when you have her?" And then there was the little matter of Morgan nearly admitting to Adrienne that she loved Garrison... Shit. What the hell was going on? How much vodka had she consumed? "You don't have to answer that, by the way," she added, realizing that it would only make both of them more uncomfortable.

"I don't have Wanda, Adrienne. She's just a good friend, who happens to have the sexual morality of an alley cat. It's one of her best features at times." Kane said, with a bit of a shrug. "I guess I got used to our closeness, and after everything you'd said, suddenly you were with Jake and-- yeah, I resented it, and because I didn't have any justification to resent it, I buried it until it festered. At least, that's my best guess after following all those Doctor Phil links the temp at Snow Valley keeps spamming the mansion mailing list with."


He shook his head. "So you can chalk up 'irrational jealousy' under 'Things I am not good at'. Add getting stomped on by the Bosox to that list, and it made it easier just to blame you in the end for it."

"Completely irrational jealousy," she murmured, struggling to keep the disappointment out of her voice. "I mean, right, you didn't have any justification for it. And you sleep with Wanda, even though you admit we have a... closeness... and I'm not jealous, am I? Nope. Because it's completely irrational. I mean, it's not as if being close really means anything more than that." She was struggling with the parameters of their relationship, still foreign to the entire concept of having friends. Especially a male one. "It's all fine. As long as you don't do it again the next time I date someone." She frowned. "Not that I have any intention of even thinking about that one right now, being all hopped up on female empowerment as I am."



"Alright, I slept with Wanda. It's not like it's an ongoing thing." Kane said, clarifying Adrienne's persistent misunderstanding of his relationship with the other woman. "As for the jealousy, it's irrational because not only do I normally never get jealous, being full of the belief in my own munificence, but I had taken for granted that, well, you'd be there. Hiding behind the nun shield, ignoring offers so instead you could come out for a drink with me. I didn't ask. I just... expected. Which meant when things changed, I didn't have anyone to blame but myself, and couldn't own up to that fact."


"I wasn't accusing you," Adrienne protested gently in response to his self-defense about Wanda. "I was trying to explain about how I wasn't jealous." Except she sort of was. Irrationally. "I'm sorry you thought I'd always ignore other offers and stay a nun," she mumbled, downing more vodka. Her good mood was beginning to deflate a little. "But, you should know by now. Not to expect things of me." Maybe she hadn't won as big a victory tonight as she'd thought.



"Hey, Adrienne, you know that's not true." Kane stopped her gently. "I expected a lot of things from you, and a lot of those you apparently proved right tonight. I expected you to act with strength. I expected when you made a decision, it would come from the person that you are, and not any bullshit that you use to hide behind against some people. And yeah, I expected you to continue to drop your shields and be there next to me because that was what I wanted. The person that I-- okay, I guess maybe the person that I didn't have to share. And when you proved that you were the strong person that I expected you to be, making your own choices and taking risks, I acted like a spoiled child breaking his toys in a tantrum."


She grinned up at him out of the corner of her mouth, then glanced down quickly, embarrassed by the fact that she was blushing. "That was a really nice speech up until you compared me to a toy you broke," she teased. "And I'm not entirely sure how I feel about you admitting that you thought you wouldn't have to share me." It sounded just a little too close to Steven's obsession for comfort, though she knew Garrison would never mean it in the same context.

"But you sort of don't, you know. Have to share me. Well, I mean, there's Morgan, and my other friends." The word 'friends' seemed even nicer when she wasn't using it as a joke or part of a sarcastic remark or making it sound like an affliction, the way she'd usually done in the past. "But I'm still going to be next to you, you know. I'm not going anywhere. Who would I harangue about the Jays? Plus, a lot of this whole new leaf thing that I turned over tonight was because of you, and I'm still going to need lots of advice as I adjust to it. It doesn't mean I'm going to just accept it blindly, but I do always want to hear what you expect of me. Because you're usually always right," she grinned.


"Nah, but if you're sanctimonious about things enough, you sound like you know what you're talking about. Even when you're being selfish and jealous." Garrison grinned back at her. He crossed the ruined living room and put his hands on her shoulders, looking her in the eyes. "It's good to have you back, you know. And I am proud about what you've done."


She didn't flinch at the contact, smiling back happily. "Thank you. Everyone seems proud. Well, the people who matter. Steven didn't seem so happy. But that means a lot to me. I thought it would be terrifying to have other peoples' expectations to live up to, to feel like I had to make people proud, but I'm enjoying it a lot more than I'm comfortable admitting to you. It's a little bit more satisfying than stomping on someone to take power for myself," she joked, then glanced around the room once again. "I suppose I should be happy I don't look as bad as the room does," she pointed out, wincing again as too-much smiling had re-opened the cut on her cheek. "Think I should call a cleaning crew, or does new-leaf me clean her dead husband's parting gift herself? And, the more important question, can I finish before the game this afternoon? And a nap?"

Kane touched the bruise on her cheek lightly, almost tsking in mild reproach. "Why don't we get you cleaned up first, and then I can give you a hand with the rest?"


"Amanda already nursed me half to death," she grumbled, although halfheartedly. What woman would say no to being cleaned up by Garrison? "But I will take you up on the cleaning, what with your super strength and all. Except I don't think I have any maple syrup. How will you power yourself up?"

"I've already summoned all the moose and beavers in a two hundred kilometre radius to come and give us a hand."