Inamorata (20/36) – WMC fic

PAIRING: Lindsay/Cindy
DISCLAIMER: Characters, not mine. Story, mine.

“Lindsay, pull the car over.”

The command was matter-of-fact, and she found it easy to do as she was told. It was nice to be given orders for once. She was rather tired of doling them out, of trying to figure out what the next step should be. If she were completely honest, it was rare that she felt as certain as she pretended. All of her directives were really just founded in best guesses.

Jacobi wanted to help her too. She could feel her foot pressing them to a stop, but once they ceased moving, he eliminated options by moving the shifter up to the little ‘P’ for her. She wasn’t sure why exactly, but it was thoughtful, so she smiled at him.

There was a somewhat hazy recollection of something falling from her hand, her phone maybe. And there was a time. 7:04. She must have glanced at a clock somewhere.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s in shock.”

She could tell that they were talking about her.

“No I’m not.”

It was an odd accusation. Why did they think that?

She looked for Claire where she remembered seeing her before, in the little mirror, but Claire wasn’t in the mirror anymore. There was a loud noise, a door opening. She gave a start and then Claire was right beside her.

“Lindsay, I’m going to lay your seat back.”

“No, don’t. Why?”

Her words sounded garbled. Her mouth felt funny.

“You’re in shock,” Claire repeated.

“I’m not in shock, Claire,” she told her again, laughing this time. “I don’t think these seats lay back.”

Lindsay ran her hand down beside her, over the booth’s vinyl covering, regretting it immensely when she came away with something sticky. Syrup, more than likely.

“She’s right. You are so in shock,” Cindy backed Claire up, grabbing a crispy fry from the community plate and biting into it.

Lindsay shook her head. She couldn’t believe that Cindy was taking Claire’s side in this. Not now. Not after everything. With the change in their relationship status, wasn’t it a rule that Cindy side with her?

“You are too,” Cindy asserted.

Apparently not.

“You never thought that you would fall in love with me. You thought I was an annoying little kid.”

“I never said that,” Lindsay replied, disappointed when Cindy’s hand abandoned her inner thigh to fiddle with the straw in her milkshake.

Jill flagging the waitress down caught Lindsay’s eye. She could also use a refill.

“You didn’t have to say it. You made it plenty obvious,” Cindy uttered.

Screw the drink. Were Cindy’s feelings really hurt? She turned back to make amends, but Cindy was smiling. It was only her preoccupation with the straw that made her declaration sound out of the ordinary.

Damn, her smile was beautiful.

She leaned forward, drawing a big drink from her milkshake, and Lindsay’s smirk was automatic.

That little kid comparison wasn’t totally erroneous.

“Lindsay, can you hear me?”

Something blinding flashed before her. She tried to keep her eyes closed against it, but it was as if a powerful force was attempting to wrench them open for her.

And why was she hearing Claire’s voice in here? At this time of night? Maybe it was the lingering effects of that strange dream she’d had.

As much as she didn’t want to wake up, the light finally got to her. She groaned as she opened her eyes, utterly irritated, until she looked over and saw that Cindy was already awake beside her. She must have been watching her sleep. Cindy grinned sheepishly in reaction to being caught at it.

There was that smile again.

She was on her side, facing Lindsay, the sheet regrettably covering her total nudity, but her arms and chest bare, red hair flowing over her shoulders. What exactly was it that had Lindsay thinking there was anything childlike about Cindy again? It was hardly an assessment that she could earn now.

“It’s storming,” Cindy told her, gesturing in the direction of the window.

Lightning flared, on cue, followed by a low rumbling of thunder, the unwelcome flashes somewhat explained, but Lindsay was just going to have to trust Cindy’s evaluation of the situation. She couldn’t pull her focus from Cindy’s captivating form, fleetingly bathed in the white light from outside, to consider it too fully on her own.

“There aren’t supposed to be any more storms,” she said off-handedly.

“There have to be storms,” Cindy whispered. “They pass through. Remember?”

Lindsay raised her palm to Cindy’s cheek, smoothing her fingers across warm skin.

“I’m so glad it’s over,” she husked. “You know, a couple of times I actually thought that we might not find you.”

“Way to stay optimistic,” Cindy murmured, reaching across the space between them to play with a strand of her hair. The slight tug caused chills along Lindsay’s scalp.

“That’s your style.”

“And yours is to anticipate the worst.”

“Things got bad,” she explained to Cindy. “You have no idea how bad they got.”

“You’re right. I was busy being held captive by a psycho-killer.”

“You shouldn’t joke about that.”

“Who’s joking?”

Cindy’s voice changed. The hair she was twirling fell from her fingers. This was no tease. She was angry for real. At her. It stole Lindsay’s breath.

“I tried to protect you,” she swore quietly.

“Bang up job,” Cindy returned.

Lindsay opened her mouth to reply, but she didn’t have any excuse. Even if she did, she wouldn’t be able to get it out.

“I can’t breathe.”

“No?”

She was hyperventilating. Her heart… she could feel it racing, and then it didn’t want to beat at all. It was coming to a slow, measured halt.

Cindy was wholly indifferent.

“Lindsay, damn it.”

This time, it was Jacobi’s voice, low and desperate, that came out of nowhere.

And Cindy was fading, disappearing before her eyes.

“Where are you going?” Lindsay panted.

“I died, Linds.” Cindy was chillingly relaxed. “Don’t you remember that either?”

“No.”

“Well, not right away. There was a fair amount of foreplay first.”

“No.”

That’s not how it happened. Cindy was right there with her. She could see her. Kind of. Not as well as she could a few seconds before.

“You can’t protect me.”

“I can,” Lindsay vowed, but it came out breathlessly, and sounded unimpressive.

Pathetic.

It didn’t matter. Cindy was no longer around to hear it.

“Cindy?”

Lindsay tried to sit up, to go and look for her, she couldn’t have gone far, but something was holding her down. The temperature must have fallen by thirty degrees. It was so cold all of a sudden. Had her bed always been this cold without Cindy in it?

“Lindsay!”

Claire was there. She could see her now. She was shadowy. But present.

“Come on, Linds,” she heard Jill’s voice, felt a hand smooth over her forehead.

There was another hand holding hers, clutching firmly. It was a lot larger than her own. Considerably more rough. Definitely not Cindy’s.

She struggled for each breath. For an iota of comprehension. Maybe she was in two places at once?

Claire became clearer. Jill. Then Jacobi. His head. There were bandages. Old blood. Masked pain. He’d been shot. She remembered that now.

And Cindy.

Oh God. It was real…

But it wasn’t over. Not yet. It was still happening. It was happening now. There was still hope. And there was still time. At least there had been time. But she was so weak. What in the hell was wrong with her?

“How much time?” Lindsay fought to sit up against Claire’s attempts to keep her down.

Claire had plenty of intent, but she lacked the physical capability to keep Lindsay in check. Lindsay powered herself up to sitting, looking for the numbers on the dash.

“How much time?”

“It’s only been about twenty minutes.”

“That’s a lot of time.”

She was slipping again. She could feel it. She hated it, but she couldn’t seem to stop it. It was just… this fear… she didn’t understand it. She knew fear, she did, but she had never known this kind of fear. It gripped, it seized. It was stronger than she was.

“Lindsay, listen to me!” Claire’s strength was there now. It turned her sharply and she was looking into caring, worried eyes. “You haven’t had any sleep. You haven’t eaten. You are under an extraordinary amount of stress. This is not surprising. You have to fight it. For Cindy.”

Because Cindy was counting on her. Trusting in her ability to come through. Like she always did. Waiting for her. Like she always would.

Waiting. With Ashe. He had gone to all of this trouble just to make it back to her, with a purpose that couldn’t possibly be virtuous.

But where was back?

Where would Ashe go? She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything about him. Tom would find out all of that, send people to Ashe’s house, other places he might deem important, look for properties he owned, places that Ashe knew well.

Tom would search the city building too, up and down. He would think to do that, because that’s where the story happened, hers and Cindy’s, but Ashe would be insane to be inside there. While he was clearly a psychopath, he wasn’t stupid.

Tom would go to places that had meaning for Cindy, like her apartment and The Register.

They were probably already checking Lindsay’s apartment too. Her old apartment anyway. She would never live there again.

But Ashe would know that they would check those places first. If Ashe had taken Cindy anywhere completely logical, they would have already discovered her. He knew better.

They needed to think outside the usual scope of law enforcement. They needed to think outside the box. They needed to think like Kiss-Me-Not would think. Like Cindy would tell them to think. And they needed to do it fast, because Ashe had twenty minutes on them, courtesy of her.

“What are the key elements of the story?”

She still felt confused, shaky, but she could breathe again. It was enough to get the words out.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine Jill. What about the story?”

Claire’s voice was a marked contrast to her own, even and consoling as always.

“There’s a book in my bag, Jill.”

“The rose… the callas,” Lindsay started without waiting for Jill to locate the book. “The girl who maintains optimism despite the circumstances, who offers herself as a willing sacrifice.’

Just like Cindy offered herself. It really was their story.

Lindsay’s throat tightened. She fought the panic. It wasn’t easy. It was like a tumor, a physical entity. It was doing its damnedest to contaminate.

“Linds,” Claire softly called her back.

Jacobi’s hand squeezed hers. Though the physical presence hadn’t changed, she’d forgotten he was holding it. When she looked over at him, he nodded, as if to say they had things under control, but he knew as well as she did that they didn’t. They had four and a half hours and they didn’t even know where Cindy was. Four and a half hours, in which Ashe could do with Cindy whatever he pleased, and everything he would choose to do would hurt. Because that was Kiss-Me-Not’s blueprint. He would follow it to a tee.

“Flower, Beauty, beast,” Jill said. “Curse… castle.”

“Wait,” Lindsay whispered, begging silence, which they all gave without question.

She just needed a moment. There was a thought, a memory, right there. She closed her eyes, clutched the steering wheel to keep the vertigo from prevailing.

“Castle,” she whispered.

But not Ashe’s castle. It was her castle. She was the beast. It had to be the castle where the curse came into existence.

“Oh my God.” Her eyes opened without seeing. “I know where she is.”