Crossing
By Tiriel
PG-13, m/m, angst
Part Six of Illusion, an Ian/Jake Witchblade series.
And with a sigh of relief I dodge the bullet of canon, while still preserving most of my original plans. How? Read it and see. This is it for now, folks. When (Woo HOOO, it's when, not if!) Witchblade returns, I'll write more for these lovely boys. But I'm going to call this the end of my first WB story arc. Just for the record, I'm now writing under the influence of wet, naked Jake (see Convergence for example). Dante and Irons both pawed him in Periculum and Dante was all over him in those later eps. Double Ew. Not that I can blame them, but still. *shudder*
Disclaimer: They are *so* not mine that it isn't even funny. I'm not making any money, here or elsewhere, so don't sue.
The season finale was incredible, improbable, mind-boggling, stunningly effective, and utterly perfect. My head is still spinning. Don't read if you haven't seen it. The season finale, that is. Not my spinning head.
Takes place kind of during but includes some events before the eleventh ep, "Transcendence" Boy, oh, boy, is time *ever* not linear in the Witchblade universe.
Great big hugs to D for all the research and Caly for all the ego strokes. You two have walked beside me through this series. Thank you.
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Crossing
By Tiriel
The water pulled at him, sucking him down deeper and deeper until there was no light, no air. Water had always been like home to him, but suddenly it seemed terrifying, dangerous, deadly.
He'd had a surfing accident. A bad one. Jake knew that he was in the hospital almost before he knew he was awake. The dim lighting of nighttime. A private room. Smells--medicine, cleanser. Definitely a hospital. But there was something else. Wet wool, warm leather. He smiled. Ian, and it must be raining outside.
"Have I told you lately that you're hot when you lurk?" His voice came out as a harsh croak. His throat hurt.
Silence. Something was wrong. The pain was wrong. His head hurt and his chest ached like they had then, after the accident, but that wasn't now. That was years ago. He was a cop now, more or less. And Ian was no longer his lover.
"Damn head injury. Got confused, thought I was back in Hawaii for a minute there. Come out where I can see you. I know you're here."
Ian stepped out of the shadows. Pieces of where he was and why were starting to come back to Jake, but most of it was still fuzzy. He did know one thing for certain. Ian had inflicted the injuries that had him lying in a hospital bed. Had it happened at the soccer field? Ian had definitely beaten the crap out of him there. But that somehow wasn't quite right.
"Come to finish the job?"
"No, Jake. I'm not here to kill you."
"But you tried."
"If I had tried, you would not have survived."
The words echoed in Jake's ears, and the world spun. Damn head injury. He was losing consciousness again.
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Jake lay stretched out on Ian's bed in the darkness, waiting. In his hand, he held a gun.
He hurt all over. His head, his chest, his throat, but he wasn't sure why. He raised the gun and pushed his confusion aside when he heard the doorknob turn. He was there for a reason.
Ian stepped into the room and turned on the lights. His face briefly registered shock and confusion at the sight of Jake. "What are you doing here?"
"You invited me, remember? When I was interrogating you. Quite the place you've got here." Jake's gesture encompassed the bare walls, the nearly nonexistent furnishings, the small size of the almost monastic room they were in.
"How did you get in?"
"That's not important." Truth was, he couldn't exactly remember. "But he doesn't know I'm here." Somehow he was sure of that much. Jake stood up and walked toward Ian. "You know, I'm not the open book you think I am. You've underestimated me. I'm used to it from everybody else. I make good use of it, in fact. But I didn't expect it from you."
Ian watched his approach silently. "And how exactly have I underestimated you?"
"I'm not a White Bull." Jake moved into Ian's space, knowing that at any second the gun could be ripped from his fingers, but somehow sure that it wouldn't be. "I've been working to bring them down. And that's not all."
Ian's eyes went wide, but his voice was as calm as ever. "You didn't tell me."
"I thought you knew. I thought you knew me." Jake circled Ian as he spoke, resting the barrel of the gun against his neck. It drew an invisible line on Ian's skin. "Would it have made a difference?"
"Are you going to shoot at me again, Detective? Like you did at the television station?"
Jake slid the gun along the back of Ian's neck and down his spine. He leaned in and whispered into Ian's ear. "I knew I wouldn't hit you. And besides, you tried to kill me at the soccer field."
Ian blinked hard once, but remained otherwise motionless. "If I had tried, you would not have survived."
A wave of dizziness. Jake tilted his head and brought the gun to rest at the small of Ian's back. "Fine. You were going to kill me. Same thing."
"Yes. But it seems that I won't be allowed to do that."
"Allowed?" Jake's tone of voice was full of exaggerated confusion.
"You are a part of things now, Jake. Perhaps that is my fault. It must have a use for you."
"It?"
Ian was silent.
"Do you mean the Witchblade?"
Ian's head snapped to the side, his face full of shock. He stared into Jake's eyes.
"Yes, Ian, I know. I have for a while now. I told you you'd underestimated me. I know a lot of things. When I shot at you at the tv station, I knew I wouldn't hit you. You were a Black Dragon. You can dodge bullets. The witness to your fight with Mobius and the others even said you caught bullets in your hands. And Sara's friend Gabriel isn't the only one who knows how to do research. I know your strengths and your weaknesses. When we met at the club, you didn't get a sudden headache. The strobe lights nearly brought on a seizure. You gave me the first clue that night, at the club. You told me you'd been researching Joan of Arc. 'Tell only the lies that are necessary,' isn't that your rule? That was the first piece of the puzzle. Elizabeth Bronte. Dominique Boucher. The way mysterious sword wounds seem to follow Sara around these days. Eventually I had everything I needed to put the pieces together." Jake had chosen his next words carefully, pitched them to wound, to draw blood if there was any left in Ian's veins. "I opened the door so many times for you, Ian, waiting for you to tell me. Waiting for you to trust me. And you never did." He felt sadness well up inside him, the words wounding him more than they seemed to affect Ian. He paused. "The only piece I can't quite make fit is Kenneth Irons."
Ian looked away and lowered his head.
Jake heard another voice begin to speak and looked around quickly. No one else was in the room, but it was Irons' voice. "By the way, Ian, I know you didn't come home last night. I don't care whose bed you were in, what you do for entertainment is your own business. Just make sure he or she doesn't distract you from your duties. Understood?"
Jake frowned, confused, letting the hand that held the gun fall to his side. "What--"
Irons' voice spoke again and Jake somehow knew that these words came from a different conversation, one that had taken place just after he'd come to see Irons to confirm Sara's alibi for the Irish Massacre. "Detective McCartey is a fine specimen, isn't he? Attractive in that California kind of way. I can see why you've kept him around all this time. And now he is in my debt."
Jake glanced around again. He and Ian were still alone. "That doesn't tell me how he fits in with the Witchblade. All it tells me is that you wanted to protect me from him."
"And how do you draw that conclusion?"
"On the night you ended things between us, you told me not just once, but twice to leave town. If it's true that you never cared about me, why should you care where I am?"
"I don't. But I brought you here. I didn't think you'd have a reason to stay without me."
"And that's where you were wrong. You were trying to protect me. That was your plan. But then you believed the worst of me and that plan changed. You were going to kill me at the soccer field, but you didn't do it because of Sara." Another wave of dizziness washed over him and he closed his eyes for a moment. Damn head injury.
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Jake stood at the edge of the soccer field, one hand pointing to the spot where he had knelt, a bullet between his teeth, waiting for the killing strike of Ian's fist. "You were going to kill me, right there. But you didn't do it because of Sara."
"She stopped me, yes."
"She didn't want me dead. And you wouldn't do anything that might hurt her. You love her."
"It's more complicated than that."
"Whatever. She'll never love you, Ian."
Voices sounded around them. Jake and Sara, a conversation they'd had at the station, not long after Jake and Ian's fight at the soccer field.
Sara's voice. "You've got to be kidding me, McCartey."
"I'm serious, Sara. I think Nottingham has a thing for you. And he's one scary dude. You should watch out for him."
"Jake, Ian Nottingham is the kind of guy who would bring you the head of your enemy instead of flowers and chocolates. You can't seriously think--"
"Hey, just trying to look out for my partner."
"Well, your partner can take care of herself."
The voices faded away. "You could have told me about the Witchblade, Ian. You could have told me all of it." Jake looked down, scuffing his shoe against one of the white lines on the grass.
Ian's voice was soft. "Would it have been different if I had?"
Jake shook his head. "Maybe. Maybe then I would have told you about the White Bulls. But you should have known. You should have known that I wouldn't really join them. And you didn't. She may have stopped you here, but you just kept on coming." He closed his eyes and sighed.
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When he opened his eyes, they were standing outside the entrance to Irons' mansion. "She said you were dead. And then I saw you here. And you attacked me."
"It wasn't me."
"Look," Jake said, pointing. Off to the side, like it was happening to someone else, his confrontation with Ian began to play out. He approached the mansion. Ian appeared. They began to fight.
"That's not me," Ian said. "That couldn't be. It must be another. Which means..." Ian trailed off, a look of intense concentration on his face.
An image appeared on the other side of them. Ian, hands in his coat like he was about to draw a weapon. He flung his arms wide, his hands empty. Bullet after bullet slammed into his body, and he fell to the ground, dead. The image faded.
"I couldn't have been here, because I was dead."
"How--" Jake turned back to look at the other image, where he was fighting with Ian, the other Ian. He couldn't breathe. Dead. His Ian was dead. And it all fell into place. He'd never been to Ian's room, he'd only imagined what it would be like to go there, to confront him, surprise him. He'd never done it, though. He'd decided it was too risky. And he'd never made it to the hospital. Ian, the other Ian, had killed him. Right there, outside Irons' mansion. And it was happening again. He watched as he was pinned to the ground, as the gloved hand closed on his throat, choking the life from his body. And then that image faded, too, and they were alone. "We're dead."
"So it would seem."
"Why? Why would you let them kill you? You could have stopped it."
"I didn't want to stop it. There was too much confusion, too much pain. Too many divided loyalties. I couldn't think of any other way to make it stop."
Jake breathed deeply and stepped closer to Ian. "You could have come to me."
"No. I couldn't have." Ian looked down.
Jake closed his eyes against the sting of tears and swallowed hard. "I guess not. It isn't fair."
Ian didn't answer.
He'd never said it. The words had always seemed off-limits somehow. And he couldn't say it now, either. Not quite. "I loved you, Ian."
"And I you."
Jake inhaled sharply. He hadn't expected that answer. "And maybe I still do. But there's just been too much. It all went too far. Too wrong. And what can we do about it now, anyway? I mean, we're dead." He opened his eyes. Ian was taking off his gloves, letting them fall to the ground. Jake moved closer and grasped Ian's arms, pulling him in for a kiss that tasted of tears. "I really wish things had turned out differently."
A strange look came over Ian's face, as if he were listening to something only he could hear. He took Jake's hands in his. "Maybe they will next time."
Jake didn't even have time to wonder what Ian meant. The world spun. Everything blurred and seemed to go counterclockwise. Time ran backward.
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Jake stood at the pay phone near the old Rialto. Sara hadn't let him go along on the stakeout, but he'd decided to come anyway. It was his tip, after all. She couldn't keep him from showing up. He'd been a little bored since he'd come to New York. It seemed like that might be about to change. And maybe, if he was lucky, Ian would show up at his apartment tonight.
The End, The Beginning, The End.