Inamorata (25/36) – WMC fic

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

“Hold up,” Jacobi ordered.

Lindsay slowed without protest. She’d been waiting for just such a command. Jacobi never would have asked her to leave Cindy if he didn’t have a purpose.

She turned his chair a quarter circle, parking it against one wall in the deserted corridor and walked across the hallway to lean against the wall opposite him, still too drained to stand for any real length of time without some kind of prop.

Jacobi looked his age, older even, and sick and tired and a dozen other things suggesting he shouldn’t have made the voyage from his bed again to check on Cindy.

“How’s she doing?”

Lindsay took a deep breath, though it didn’t feel particularly cleansing, and let her eyes fall from his. She found focus on the contrast between the hospital-issued gown, exactly like the one they’d put Cindy in, and the white robe that had somehow come into his possession.

“Remarkably well… considering.”

Because it kept her vision occupied and her thoughts somewhat at bay, she stared at the same spot for so long that the gown’s pattern started swirling before her eyes. Jacobi’s focus, on the other hand, was steady when she glanced back up.

“It got bad, didn’t it?” he asked.

She just stared at him, until her gaze went through him, then dropped her head. The floor blurred instantly.

That was the question, that’s what everyone would want to know, how bad did it get?, and she would be the one to have to tell them. They would ask her, because they would never ask Cindy. No one would make Cindy relive it just so they could be well-informed, but, still, they would need the answer. If they were left to imagine, they would conceive far worse scenarios. She should know. And what happened was bad enough without adding falsehoods.

Now Jacobi was the one Lindsay wanted to lie to, but she couldn’t to him either.

“It got bad,” she whispered.

She made no effort to hide the tears that weren’t going to fall, but were very much present, as she raised her head again. There was no buffering of his reaction. It was plainly written in his features. If Ashe weren’t already dead, Jacobi would be getting up out of that chair again at this very second to go hunt him down.

But Ashe was dead. He had already seen to it.

“You didn’t have to shoot him” Lindsay uttered, with a ferocity that took even her by surprise. “I was going to.”

“I know,”Jacobi responded. “That’s why I shot him. I think you’re carrying around enough guilt without adding to it. Don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t have felt guilty about that,” she firmly stated.

“Not consciously. Consciously, you probably would have been somewhat pleased. But it would have weighed.”

“It won’t weigh on you?”

Like those times when he came face-to-face with individuals responsible for acts so horrific they didn’t deserve to see any human sentiment being directed at them, Jacobi’s face turned to stone.

“That bastard wasn’t about to see another day. It had to be one of us. I would rather it be me. I had as much right to it as you did.”

That part was true. He was entitled. But it was the other part of this discussion, the part that they weren’t going to have right now, that made her wish he’d just let her take the shot. The consequent part. There was no way that this was going to go down as a good shoot. As much as he deserved what he’d gotten, someone was going to pay for Ashe.

“Now let’s talk about that other guilt,” Jacobi quietly changed the subject to the one she highly suspected was the real reason they were engaging in this exchange at all.

“I don’t want to,” she said with what she hoped came across as finality, and crossed her arms, trying to appear impenetrable.

“Well I do.”

His words easily broke through. Because the defenses she had worked so hard to build up had been weakened. Possibly beyond repair. By Cindy.

“Don’t tell me that what happened to her isn’t my fault, Jacobi. I am the one he came here after. I’m the one who had what he wanted.”

“And you’re the one who let Cindy get close to you when you knew that it was dangerous.”

Lindsay turned her head toward the soft swish of pant legs, grateful for the disruption. The approaching orderly smiled and nodded, lingering on Jacobi for only a moment as he passed between them, and then they were alone again.

“What would have made you feel less guilty?” Jacobi picked up almost immediately once the man was out of sight. “If you had kept her at arms length, or further, Ashe had decided she was a good target anyway, taken her anyway, maybe killed her anyway.”

“Fuck, Jacobi!” Lindsay shouted, looking around to make sure she hadn’t drawn out any spectators, and seething in earnest as she looked back at him.

How could he even say that out loud?

“Yeah, it isn’t pretty, and it could have happened just like that.” He was furious too. She could hear it in his voice. He lifted a steady hand and pointed right at her, and suddenly he looked strong again. “The only difference would have been that you would have spent the last days not with her instead of with her, and then you would have felt guilty about that. He was determined to get in somewhere. When you were pushing people out of your life, thinking that would keep them safe, you also thought that it was someone who didn’t already have the inside knowledge. Ashe knew his options, Lindsay. Where in that situation could you have won? Do you really think that you would feel any less guilty if it had been Jill or Claire?”

“I don’t know,” she muttered. She really didn’t. “I should have just given him what he wanted in the first place. Then it might not have been anybody.”

Jacobi may or may not have understood that. He didn’t know about Ashe, that he wasn’t Kiss-Me-Not. Or maybe he did. It was hard to know what he knew, but she didn’t want to have the full question and answer session now, because it only prolonged her getting back to Cindy, something she was already well aware wasn’t going to happen until Jacobi had said his piece.

“Or it might have been. You can’t know. It might have even been you.”

“That would have been better.”

“Would it? Do you think that’s how Cindy feels?”

Lindsay kicked the floor, the sole of her shoe making a loud squeaking sound and a scuff mark on the linoleum. It was childish, but it provided her momentary solace.

Of course that’s not how Cindy would feel, because, from the very beginning, Cindy was far too munificent when it came to her. Even when she didn’t deserve it. Maybe more so when she was undeserving. Because Cindy loved her. Cindy had always loved her. Brazenly. From the start. And it didn’t take long to respond to it, open to it. She wanted it, Cindy’s love. She did. She needed it. But what if she didn’t have the capability to make good on an investment like that?

“I can’t help but think that she deserves better,” she breathed to the only person she would ever tell those fears.

Jacobi’s eyes were too attentive. It’s not like she hadn’t just put her insecurity on display, but why did he have to look so intently at it?

Finally, he gave a small shrug, effectively downplaying her doubts.

“Well, she wants you, so it doesn’t really matter what you think,” he returned, and Lindsay didn’t know if it made her feel better or worse. “Let me give you some advice.”

She didn’t want it… at all… but she looked up at him anyway.

“Get over it.”

The gruff statement shocked her into actually listening.

“You might have made some bad judgments. Or you might not have. It might have changed everything or it might have changed nothing. You did not put Cindy in that attic. You didn’t hurt her. Ashe did. She survived this and she is going to survive this, but to do that, she is going to need you to be there for her.”

“That’s all that I want to do.”

“Then do it.”

He made it seem so much simpler than it was, and she couldn’t stop the reflexive shake of her head as she looked away.

“You can’t do that for her?”

And that just made her angry. It made it sound like a choice, like she just wanted to walk away and leave Cindy to fend for herself, but when she opened her mouth to speak, she found that the anger wasn’t sustainable. It was replaced by the acrid taste of fear, burning her throat and chest. A few of the tears finally spilled over onto her cheeks. She wiped them quickly away.

“I don’t know how,” she admitted quietly.

She got no response, and by the time she found the courage to look at him again, Jacobi had lost all anger too. He looked almost as sad as she felt, and like he wanted to take it, the burden, from her. Hadn’t he already taken his share?

“He was going to take someone. He was going to do something. You’re right,” Lindsay conceded. “But, what he chose to do, Jacobi… it was because of me. He wanted me to see that. But I just had to see it. And I don’t know what to do for her.”

“Me neither,” Jacobi replied. It would have been truly valued wisdom if he did. “But I think she’ll let you know.”

Lindsay gave a slight nod. It was possible she guessed. The movement loosed another drop to make its way down her cheek. This time she didn’t bother to get rid of it.

This wasn’t supposed to be their conversation about Cindy. Jacobi had known, and she’d known that he’d known, but there was still supposed to be a conversation. Of courtesy. An instance of jubilant boasting. She found herself grieving that missing moment. And needing it.

“You know, Jacobi,” she husked, smiling a little. She didn’t have to fake it. Or force it. She just imagined what it could have been like in a favorable scenario, and remembered what it was like in the evidence room and Claire’s office and the late night phone conversations full of Cindy’s unique take on all things life. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’m kind of with Cindy.”

He squinted up at her. Maybe it was somewhat cruel to switch tracks on him like that when he had only a partially functional brain. But then he smiled too, slowly, just a little, and leaned toward her.

“With?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

“You know…” she said, her hand circling in a leading motion, “…with.”

“Ah.” Jacobi shifted back in his chair. “She finally got to you, huh?”

“She did,” Lindsay confessed.

“Who knew those walls were surmountable?”

It was a soft segue, carrying them back from the momentary delusion to their current reality.

“She did,” Lindsay responded in a hushed whisper.

And, with that, her soul was laid open. I love her so much it scares me… I don’t think I could live without her… I don’t know what I would have done if things had gone wrong… they were all present in the space between them, summed up concisely in two words. Because Cindy had done what no one else had been able to do.

Jacobi understood that.

“Now, wheel me on back, would you? I could really stand a return to my own pain meds.”

Primed to go at the moment she was dismissed, Lindsay kicked off the wall and walked around the wheelchair. Whatever guilt she was harboring, and she was, as undeserving as she may feel, she still wanted only to get back to Cindy. It was a strange paradox.

When she reached for his chair, Jacobi turned and grabbed her hand.

“You can do this,” he assured her, giving a firm squeeze before releasing her hand.

God, she hoped he was right.