TITLE: Between the Shadow and the Soul (10/24)
PAIRING: A veritable clusterfuck… but there is only one way it can end up.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Never was. Never will be. No profit. Just love.

*Pasted in haste on the way out the door. Hopefully it doesn’t result in any extra errors.

(Jill’s POV)

Lindsay living through all of this – finally standing face-to-face with the demon who’d shaped the last few years of her life and coming away the victor, even if it was in the most morbid sense of the word – didn’t mean that Lindsay was going to suddenly start liking her again. Lindsay faced demons on a daily basis. Regardless of the spell that Kiss-Me-Not had cast over her life, it wasn’t like ridding the world of this one demon was going to miraculously alter her entire outlook.

Or maybe it was exactly like that.

Because, when Lindsay came bounding up to meet them for dinner, it didn’t seem as if there was someone sitting at the table that she didn’t want to see. In fact, Lindsay appeared remarkably light and unburdened in a way that Jill hadn’t seen her in years. And when Lindsay began talking, it was like the start of a typical, casual conversation, as if negative feelings hadn’t been festering between them for days. It could have easily been two weeks ago, before Lindsay got angry.

Before Cindy got shot.

Eyes instantly moving to the redhead at the mere thought, Jill performed one of her regular, surreptitious assessments of Cindy’s condition. Finding no visible signs of trauma, she returned to the conversation as Claire was asking Lindsay about her goodbye with Pete.

Strangely on edge as she waited to hear the outcome, the sense of relief Jill felt at Lindsay’s response that “It wasn’t so much a goodbye as it was a continuation” was even more inexplicable.

“He’s staying,” Jill returned, feeling suddenly lighter herself.

Why it mattered so much that Lindsay and Pete continued seeing each other, Jill couldn’t really explain, even to herself. But, despite her past efforts to hook Lindsay up with anything that moved, whether or not Lindsay could find a lasting relationship had never been such a monumental concern.

Though, apparently, it was too much to ask.

“No,” Lindsay countered. “But he’s coming back from time to time.”

Which wasn’t nearly frequent enough.

“Eventually.”

Which wasn’t soon enough.

“It’s better than it sounds,” Lindsay lobbied when no one showed any sign of confidence in the arrangement. “It is.”

And it had to be. Because a long-distance relationship, throughout which Pete was thousands of miles away, wasn’t the kind of lasting relationship Jill meant. What she needed was someone close, someone who could keep Lindsay entertained, or just distracted, at least for a while. Lindsay’s intercontinental relationship with Pete sounded completely pointless. For all of them.

“He’s been pretty great so far,” Claire encouraged. But she too looked extraordinarily uncomfortable at the idea of Pete being at a distance. Which, for some unknown reason, made Jill even more uneasy.

“I can take some vacation time and go visit him,” Lindsay suggested.

While that seemed like a genius idea, and regardless of the fact that Lindsay smiled through the delivery, it sounded hollow somehow. Counterfeit. Like something that was never actually going to happen.

“When was the last time you took a vacation?” Jill prodded.

It could have passed for idle curiosity. Jill was sure that it did to everyone else at the table. But, if Lindsay went to visit Pete… soon… and for an extended period… maybe it would fix everything. Maybe they would be even more okay by the time Lindsay came back. At any rate, Jill would have time to get a little further down the road with Cindy, to a place where Lindsay’s disapproval would be less apt to impede the road ahead of them. Because, ever since she’d walked in on them in the hospital, Lindsay’s hostility felt like a giant roadblock. While, thus far, Jill had been stumbling over it alone, eventually it was going to be impossible to keep Cindy from realizing it was there. And Jill was fairly certain that Lindsay’s opposition wasn’t something that Cindy could ever take in stride. What Jill had been bumping along for days would pull Cindy to a dead stop. Jill liked where she and Cindy were headed. She really didn’t want to have to take a detour.

“You people have no faith in romance, or two people who care about each other,” Lindsay effectively ended the discussion as her phone rang on her hip and she reached for it.

Said under the guise of repartee, it didn’t feel like a joke. It felt like Lindsay had just knowingly and purposefully disregarded everything that Jill and Cindy had. Though, Lindsay had no way of knowing exactly what they had, because she hadn’t bothered to ask.

But, now that they were actually conversing like civilized people, like friends, maybe she finally would. Maybe they could actually talk about all of this, instead of avoiding it, and Jill would finally get the chance to explain to Lindsay that she did, in fact, have faith in romance and in two people who cared about each other. More faith than she’d realized. Maybe she could convince Lindsay that she wasn’t using Cindy or taking advantage of her or planning to hurt her. Maybe she could make Lindsay see that her feelings for Cindy were real, that she didn’t plan them, but that she couldn’t help it, and she wanted to do everything right this time. Maybe Lindsay would understand. Maybe Lindsay would actually be happy for her. Maybe Lindsay could still love her tomorrow.

Or, maybe the exhilaration of not being killed was like a drug and all of this was just a temporary high.

“I don’t understand,” Lindsay said into her phone, the bubbly high instantly bursting. “I thought he was fine. I thought it was nothing. Never mind. I’ll be right there.”

Though all eyes turned to her, Lindsay didn’t immediately update them. Staring down at the phone in her hand, she didn’t seem to actually be seeing anything.

“Linds?” Claire asked after a silent moment.

“It’s my dad,” Lindsay responded simply.

Recovering quickly from the unexpected announcement, Claire was already pulling enough money from her wallet to cover the bill. “I’ll drive you,” she said in a voice that left no room for Lindsay to fight her.

Lindsay’s eyes dropped back to the table. She looked so incredibly lost that Jill wanted nothing more than to forget all that had happened and reach out to her. But, the events of the prior days still fresh in her mind, the fear that her offering would be rejected kept her motionless in her seat.

Then, when Lindsay looked up again, Jill was held in place by something else entirely.

Lindsay didn’t look to her. Or to Claire. She raised her eyes, directly across the table, and caught Cindy’s eyes. As if transfixed, Lindsay just kept staring, intensely, like she was drawing something directly from Cindy’s eyes and into her own. It was almost as if Lindsay was willing Cindy to fix everything, or else to ease the fear. Which meant Lindsay believed that Cindy had the power to do that for her.

Jill was certain, at some point, one of them would grow uncomfortable and look away. But neither of them did. The longer Jill watched the stare, which had rapidly gone from lingering to unbreakable, the more enlightened she felt. And, as the seconds ticked by, her own personal discomfort rapidly went from something slightly uneasy to nearly unbearable.

“We’ll all come,” she announced, hoping to break the spell.

There was a delay in which Lindsay seemed hesitant to pull her gaze from Cindy’s. Then, Lindsay’s eyes finally did turn her way and Jill realized that nothing had changed between them. Except for a glimmer of awareness that Jill wished she could return.

“No,” Lindsay’s head gave a sharp shake of dissent.

“Linds…” Jill tried to appeal to their history, their old friendship, the one that she was once certain was solid.

“I don’t need you there,” Lindsay uttered quietly. Then, she got up without another word and walked off with the same amount of vigor with which she’d entered, though it had turned considerably darker.

Claire got up too, pausing to send an apologetic look Jill’s way, before hurrying to catch up with Lindsay. As sympathetically as it was intended, the unspoken apology made Jill feel worse. And made her wonder, against her will, just how much Claire knew.

Eyes dropping to the place where her plate should have been, if anything in their recent lives could go smoothly, Jill tried to gather her thoughts, which seemed to have scattered in a million, startling directions. Finally, feeling the weight of the wine glass still in her hand, she swallowed the remainder of the contents and set the empty glass down on the table. When she finally looked up, Cindy was watching her, patiently waiting for some kind of reaction to the callous words with which Lindsay had left the table.

But, at the moment, it was a conversation Jill simply couldn’t handle.

“Could you drop me off at the office so I can get my car?” she asked quietly instead.

“You don’t want to go to the hospital?” Cindy returned.

“You heard her, Cindy.”

“She was just saying that.”

“I don’t think so.”

Cindy was stung, and didn’t hide it particularly well. Not that she had reason to hide it.

“Okay,” she said, jaw clenching. “Then I guess we’ll just go to my place and wait… again.”

“Don’t you want to go to the hospital?” Jill queried, eyes once again dropping to the table.

“Well, yeah,” Cindy said softly. “It’s her dad and I know what that feels like… but if she doesn’t want us there.”

“I didn’t say she didn’t want us there,” Jill responded, the words coming out more harshly than she’d intended.

If what she thought was happening across the table was, in fact, happening, it was hardly Cindy’s fault. Though it would have felt a little less like Cindy were a party to it if she’d had the decency to become disconcerted by Lindsay’s unrelenting stare and look away.

For a moment that wouldn’t seem to send, Cindy just looked at her, as if she was trying to rationalize the situation. Like that was even possible at this point. “Jill, what is going on?” she finally pleaded.

But Jill didn’t have any answers. She shook her head, at a loss, though she wasn’t feeling nearly as lost as she was only minutes before, or as lost as she would still like to be. Suspicions she hadn’t even considered entertaining swarmed her head now, putting on a show and taking extended curtain calls.

And they made sense. They made more sense than Lindsay just not trusting her or thinking that she was bad for Cindy. If either of those things were the issue at hand, Lindsay would have given her a chance to plead her case. Deep down, Jill had known that. Deep down, she had known this.

But she could still be wrong. God, she hoped she was wrong.

“I don’t know,” Jill answered, and it didn’t feel like a lie, because suspicions weren’t facts. “I just know that she doesn’t want me there.”

When Cindy continued looking at her, as if she didn’t know what to do with that, Jill felt responsible for making a decision for her.

“You should go to the hospital,” she advised.

“But-”

“Cindy, she does want you there,” Jill cut her off, knowing that any argument Cindy made would sound like the perfect excuse in the moment. An excuse to keep Cindy away from Lindsay. “She needs you there.”

Clearly still wavering on the issue, Cindy finally sighed heavily. “Can I at least drop you off at home and give you a ride tomorrow? I don’t want you driving if you’re upset.”

In spite of everything, Jill smiled a little and put her hand over Cindy’s on the table. “That would be good.”

Staring into Cindy’s eyes, now filled with warring concern for both she and Lindsay, Jill felt herself plummet a little deeper into the depths of something that she was terrified to give name to. Especially now. The way down seemed far more briar-lined and chocked with other hazards than when she’d first started falling.

When Cindy’s hand turned up beneath hers and squeezed lightly though, it was an honest sentiment, and just knowing that Cindy really did care about her made it a little easier to accept the truth that Lindsay hated her right now.

The reason why Lindsay might hate her right now was slightly more difficult to bear.