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rainbowfic2012-08-25 01:34 am
bookblather) wrote in rainbowfic2012-08-25 01:34 am
Faded Blue 27, Liver 17, Zing 9: Blur
Author: Kat
Title: Blur
Story: Shine Like It Does
Colors: Faded blue 27 (Only yesterday, when the world was young), liver 17 (stomach), zing 9 (if I throw a stick, will you leave?) with shadowsong's paint by numbers (It's the end of a long day, and Miranda just can't handle any more interruptions).
Supplies and Materials: Portrait, stained glass, reimaging (of a number of things, and Jossing a couple of other things), stain (“There’s one thing worse than having a family. Not having one.” - Hanne Holm), yarn (a falling star), glitter (You come face-to-face with your worst enemy. What happens?), glue (Unresolved feelings may add to your general uneasiness today because getting clarity about your current circumstances is tricky business.), chalk (bombing victims TRIGGER ALERT), novelty beads (A character is afraid).
Word Count: 5000
Rating: R.
Summary: Miranda gets stabbed.
Warnings: Violence.
Notes: THIS STORY GODDAMNIT. Dear characters: when the only one cooperating is the one who gets stabbed, we need to rethink our relationship.
miranda
Miranda was having the most wretched fucking day of her life, and the worst part was that she couldn't even show it.
She knew how the press was. One hair out of place, one trip to the office less than perfectly dressed, made up, and coiffed, and suddenly everyone was talking about your inevitable descent into alcoholism and rehab. Lord knew she'd seen it happen to Jack enough times, and she just could not deal with that now, with the rumors and the faux concern and people looking at her...
Worst of all, it might get back to Peter and then this entire exercise would have been for nothing.
So when she woke up with a hangover from the cheap wine-- Miranda did not waste good alcohol when she was just drinking to get drunk-- and a complete lack of desire to move from her comfortable, safe covers, she gritted her teeth and swung her legs out of bed anyway, wincing when her bare feet touched the cold floor.
It turned out to be the best part of her day.
"This was supposed to be finished two weeks ago," she said, in her best icy tones, staring at the shrinking novice attorney like a snake at something small and fluffy. She was quite proud of that glare, actually-- she'd worked hard to perfect it. "I was assured, two weeks ago, that it was finished. Help me to understand why you're coming to me now and saying that it isn't."
"Er." The hapless attorney shifted his stance and refused to meet her eyes. "Er. I thought it was done. I was assured..." He stopped immediately, but Miranda had already picked up the important word.
"Assured?" She lifted both her perfectly-arched eyebrows at him in a calculated move. "Do you mean to tell me that you did not write the contract I assigned you to write?"
He cringed, shifted again. "No, ma'am."
She sighed, shuffled the papers on her desk together into a neat pile. "Who did? Your paralegal? Well, it hardly matters, I'll find out on my own. Clear out your desk. Security will come in half an hour to escort you from the building."
He jerked, shock wiping out every other expression. Just like Peter looked when she told him-- Miranda shied away from that thought and composed her face. "Is something wrong?"
"You can't just fire me!" he said-- squeaked, rather. "You... all I did was..."
"Was attempt to claim credit for someone else's work," Miranda replied, briskly. "I don't really know what they did at the other law firms on your resume, but we do not encourage plagiarism." She tilted her head, slightly amused by his spluttering. Would he go to bluster or begging next? "Or did you forge that too?"
She'd have bet bluster, but he composed himself reasonably well and gave her a fairly good imitation of a contrite expression. Miranda might have been impressed if she hadn't been a much better actress herself.
"Please," he said. "Please, give me a second chance. I'll... you'll see, I'll really impress you."
She considered it for a bare moment, just long enough for the hope in his eyes to send her stomach sinking then shook her head. "No," she said, decisively. "There are no second chances here. Goodbye."
He at least had the dignity to leave, then, and didn't make her call for security.
Miranda sighed, and let herself go just enough to press her fingers together at the bridge of her nose. She really didn't enjoy firing people-- most of the time, anyway; firing the man who'd sexually harassed half the executive assistants had been a genuine pleasure. This attorney had at least accepted his fate with relative grace, but it was just the perfect capper.
Her hangover had faded around noon, but it had left a bitch of a headache behind, one that still throbbed behind her temples. She'd had to sit through a three-hour meeting with her least favorite clients, and missed lunch because one of them had buttonholed her afterwards to (clumsily and unsuccessfully) hit on her. That also told her that her breakup with Peter had become public, the one small mercy in the day-- she had enough warning to dodge her family's phone calls, because the very last thing she needed was misplaced sympathy.
She'd done this to herself, after all.
The snatched ham sandwich at her desk around three had not been a decent substitute for lunch. Nor had the constant stream of bad news-- this client dropping them, that one wondering where their contracts were. And now she'd had to fire someone, maybe two people, depending on who had really written the contract.
Finding that out could wait until tomorrow, though. It was still twenty minutes to five, but she had had so much more than enough of this day. She logged out of her computer, shut the whole thing down, and snatched her keys, looking forward to peace and quiet and please, God, a little time alone with no one bothering her. Miranda closed her eyes briefly, inhaled-- she could almost feel the relaxation sinking into her bones. Home was so close.
So of course her mother was waiting at her assistant's desk, toe tapping.
"Mrs. Hennessy," Julian said unnecessarily, and made good his escape. Lucky bastard.
Miranda gave her mother a rather milder version of her usual basilisk glare and said, "Yes?"
"You haven't been answering your phone," Isobel Hennessy replied-- in Spanish, lovely, which made this was a personal conversation, the very last thing she wanted right now. "Your brother says he can't reach you either. What is going on, Miranda?"
"Nothing." She walked past her mother, and out of her office suite, the click-click of her heels on the marble floors echoing in the hallway. "Nothing is wrong, Mama, it's just been a terrible day. I'm going home."
"Miranda," her mother said, and the clicks of her heels echoed down behind Miranda's, in slight counterpoint. "Miranda, do not walk away from me!"
"It's nothing, Mama!" she called over her shoulder, and sped up. "I just really want to go home."
"Miranda..." Her mother paused, frustration clear on her features, then followed her into the elevator, let the doors slide shut before she continued. "Miracita. You haven't been yourself these last few days."
Using her childhood nickname against her was blatantly unfair. Miranda barely kept herself from rolling her eyes, and replied, "I'm just tired. You know how business has been lately."
Her mother's eyes narrowed. "No more busy than usual." She paused a moment, then added almost casually, "Jack says you've left that nice young man you've been dating. Peter, was it?"
Damn Jack. Miranda was going to do something really terrible to him. "We weren't going anywhere. It didn't seem reasonable to continue dating." Which happened to be the honest truth, if not quite all of the truth.
"Reasonable?" Her mother sighed, as the elevator dinged and opened its doors on the lobby. "Love isn't about reasonable."
"All right then," she snapped, clicking out of the elevator, "then we weren't in love. It doesn't matter, Mama, it's over. Leave it."
"No." Her mother caught up to her, laid a hand on her elbow. "We're worried about you. I'm worried about you. I will not leave it."
"Mama..." She'd known that wouldn't work; her mother never gave up on anything in her life. Miranda checked for observers, found only a bored security guard, and let her shoulders slump, suddenly. "Mama, I just... I'm tired, please. We can talk about this later, I promise, but just not now."
Her mother eyed her for a moment, then gave in all at once, a sudden melting in her posture that Miranda well remembered from childhood scoldings. "All right, Miracita. But we will talk about this later."
Not if she had anything to say about it. "Of course, Mama."
She turned her cheek up for her mother's kiss, gave one back, then walked out the double glass doors into the smoggy heat of twilight. The sun was down but only just, and the concrete still baking when she stepped down onto the sidewalk. Two blocks to the garage she parked her car. Forty five minutes from getting her car to pulling into her apartment complex-- half an hour if she was lucky. Fifteen minutes from there to a cool bath, some ice cream, and maybe a glass of good wine, and then she could go to bed and have a good cry and forget that this day ever happened.
She barely felt the knife going in.
isobel
Isobel saw her daughter fall.
It was so quick she hardly realized what had happened at first. There was just Miranda, walking down the street with her head down and her shoulders tense-- and God but she was worried about her daughter as she walked away, so unhappy and trying so hard not to show it-- and then there was Miranda falling and a man falling on top of her, something flashing silver-bright in the sun, and blood spilling across the concrete.
She thought, later, that she screamed something at the receptionist about police and ambulances, but she didn't remember anything very well. It was all a blur of images and impressions and sheer horror skating between flashes of clear images, and the only thing she could see clearly was Miranda falling, endlessly, her black hair loose against the sky like ink, and her blood everywhere.
The next thing she remembered with any clarity was kneeling beside her daughter, God, her daughter, sprawled on the pavement. She didn't know what had happened to the man with the knife, and didn't especially care just so long as he didn't get away with this. People were crowding around, most of them on cell phones, yelling to the police or the paramedics or the tabloid newspapers. She remembered whipping her head up at that, and whatever she said or did, it made that man go pale and edge away.
She didn't follow him. It didn't matter- the press would get hold of it soon enough and fuck it, fuck them all anyway, she was kneeling in her daughter's blood. She was kneeling in her daughter's blood, helping someone she didn't even know put pressure on the wounds-- wounds, more than one, he'd stabbed her more than once, over and over into her stomach-- and watching Miranda's terrified eyes, watching her gasp and struggle to breathe, watching blood trickle from the corner of her mouth. Her daughter. Her daughter, her little girl. God, oh, God, no.
She said something. Lots of things, in Spanish, she thought, because when she spoke to her children in Spanish she spoke from love, as their mother. Reassurances, she thought-- everything's going to be all right, I love you, I'm here, don't worry, you're going to be fine. Things she said when Jack was five and broke his arm, when Charlotte was sixteen and broke her heart. It's all she could do, hold on to Miranda with her voice and her hands, keep her from slipping away.
The next thing she remembered was the paramedics shoving her out of the way. She got to her feet and demanded to go with them-- this is my daughter, I am her mother, you will not keep me out of the ambulance-- and one of them shaking his head, saying there was no room. She caught a taxi instead and ordered it to follow, not caring what the driver thought of the blood on her hands and the knees of her grey suit. She didn't remember what she paid him, didn't care, she just shoved money at him and bolted into the emergency room, only to be told that Miranda was in surgery and she'd have to sit and wait.
It was there, gasping, tears smearing wet over her face, that she remembered her family, her husband and children, all of them blissfully unaware of Miranda falling, of her blood all over the concrete. She almost wanted to leave them that way, but they had to know and better she told them. She fumbled out her phone for the first time, left bloody fingerprints on the keypad as she dialed.
She had to fight to speak in English when Christopher answered, because he wouldn't understand her if she spoke Spanish, he didn't know any of the words. She said his name and gasped in air, suddenly sobbing too hard to speak.
"Isobel, Isobel--" He said her name over and over, his voice a thin layer of calm over sheer panic. "Isobel, listen to me, I need you to breathe. Can you breathe, love? Breathe for me--"
She fought in a breath, fought herself to clarity at least. "It's Miranda," she said, and her voice caught on her daughter's name. "God, Christopher, someone stabbed her, someone..."
"I'm coming," he said, immediately, and God but she loved him, that certainty he could project even when he was falling apart. "Where are you?"
She gave the name of the hospital and stayed on the phone while he said soothing, comforting things, because she couldn't stop crying and she needed his voice now, needed that strength, even if she said nothing back to him.
God, her daughter, her daughter...
christopher
It had been a fairly successful day, all told. He'd met with the writers for the next film he was producing and had a look at the script, which had improved immeasurably from the last draft. He'd had lunch with the director of his current film, and gone out to the set in the afternoon, hung around with a couple of the actors, and made tentative plans to go out for drinks, pending Isobel's veto. Not that she exercised that particular right capriciously, only when they had something to do he'd forgotten about, but that was often enough that he made a point of asking.
In fact, when she called, he'd thought it was a sign. He excused himself from his current conversation with a laughing 'be right back, gotta take this.' Maybe they did have a party tonight, or maybe she just wanted him home that night, which meant something very different now that their children had all grown up and moved out. A pleasant thought, for a pleasant day-- he smiled, and answered the phone.
And felt the smile drop off his face when she got out nothing more than his name. And then...
He told the director he was going, and didn't explain why. Not that he needed to-- he was sure it would be all over the news soon enough, and he needed to know before the story broke, if she was alive, if she...
He wouldn't think that. Not now. Of course she was alive. Miranda was strong and tough and brave; he'd get to the hospital and she'd be out of surgery and she would be fine, laughing a little weakly, teasing everyone for being so worried. She'd have that little quirk of her mouth she got when she was trying to be amused, to make everyone stop being anxious around her. And he'd ruffle her hair and tell her not to be so silly, of course we were worried, you got stabbed, Miranda, that tends to make your family worry.
The police would catch the man who did it, and they'd find out why. It would be a story, for the future. Something Miranda could tell while rolling her eyes, something the rest of them would tell with a shiver at how close they'd come to her really being in danger.
Maybe she hadn't really been hurt. Isobel was hysterical, breathing harshly in his ear as the driver got him to the hospital, but she'd just seen someone attack their oldest daughter. Maybe Miranda was fine, only scratched up a little. She'd be annoyed that he'd left work for her. She was always so hardworking, trying so hard to impress her parents, to make them proud of her. Christopher told her he was proud of her as often as he could, as often as he remembered-- he vowed silently that he'd be more insistent about it now. He'd say it now until she believed it.
Yes. She was fine. She was only in surgery because... because she'd bled a lot, maybe had a few deep cuts. They were stitching her up now and she'd be sitting up in bed when he got there, annoyed and exhausted. Maybe they'd even let them take her home, put her to bed in her old room and pamper her until the slashes healed without even the trace of a scar. She'd hate it, but she'd let them do it, because she knew they loved her.
She was fine, she was fine, she was fine. He repeated it to himself like a mantra, wanting it to be true, needing it to be true, and still he couldn't quite... Isobel sounded so frantic, choking on air. Even now, now that he'd talked her down a little, calmed her a little, there was still the harsh edge of tears to her breathing. If Miranda was fine, then why was she crying like that?
Miranda was fine, he told himself. He told himself that until he got to the hospital and Isobel came to meet him, crying silent, shuddering tears, with blood all over her hands and knees, and even then he tried to believe it, held his wife close and tried to believe that Miranda was all right, until a green-scrubbed surgeon with a mask pulled down around his neck came to speak to them, face solemn.
He held Isobel tighter. She wasn't fine. He'd known that, but it still felt... oh, God. She wasn't fine.
jackson
Jack remembered later with perfect clarity everything that happened that day. Everything.
He'd been sitting on a bar stool, watching Felix flirt quite effectively with a handsome bald man over by the pool table and feeling only a little bit jealous. After all, it wasn't any of his business what Felix did with guys, bald or not, except insofar as Felix might feel like giving him details afterwards. Not that he ever actually did, probably fortunately. Jack wasn't one hundred percent sure he could survive the mental images details would produce.
Whatever, it wasn't relevant. He'd been watching Felix and smiling a little sadly and being happy and a little depressed at the same time. He'd been drinking Guinness, more because he felt like he should have what he'd ordered than because he had any real taste for it, the bite of the dark ale tingling his tongue. He'd smelled the sticky scent of alcohol, felt the cherry wood bar hard beneath his elbow and the glass cool in his hand, seen the TV flickering in the corner of his eye, sound on mute in deference to the jukebox but subtitles on. He'd been wondering if Felix would go home with the bald guy, and if he did, what Jack would do for the rest of the night. Call Miranda, he'd been thinking, go out with her somewhere and try to take her mind off whatever it was she'd done to break her own heart.
Then the TV in the corner flipped over from baseball to some blonde talking head, looking very seriously into the camera, gripping her microphone so tight her knuckles were distinctly pale. Jack, attention attracted by the change of light and the scrolling "BREAKING NEWS" banner across the bottom of the screen, put his Guinness down and squinted up at the TV. She stood in front of a building-- hey, that was their building, Hennessy and Family occupied the fifteenth floor, and Jack began to get a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Then they showed a picture of Miranda, chin lifted and eyes haughty, just as his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he knew.
Felix looked up about then, at the TV and then fast to Jack, and whatever he saw in Jack's face made him abandon the hot guy without a backwards glance. "Where?" he asked, before Jack even said anything. "Tell me where, I'll drive you. You look like you're going to faint."
Fainting was not really on the agenda, although it was kind of hard to breathe suddenly. It was just... Miranda. Okay, sure, maybe he would have gotten himself stabbed at some point, in a bar fight or because he hit on the wrong person. Maybe Charlotte, though it killed him to think that; she was just so very obviously not white, and so very obviously vulnerable. But Miranda?
Miranda was his strength. She'd always been his strength. When he couldn't get out of bed, she'd come and sit with him, tease him and make awful puns just to get him to smile again. When someone hurt him or Charlotte, she would exact a horrible revenge, then come home and just hold them like nothing had ever happened. She had a bad tendency to break her own heart but even then she'd been strong, stiff upper lip, acting like nothing affected her. He admired her for that, for her cool armor even when he thought it was a really bad idea.
How could she be hurt? How could someone possibly have hurt Miranda?
But Felix's face had settled into stiff lines while he stared at the TV. His father's voice had sounded almost empty. He could hear his mother crying in the background.
His chest was too tight, his throat closing over, his eyes blurring. Miranda. Oh, God, Miranda.
He remembered nothing of the drive to the hospital but crying, curled over silent in the passenger's seat, taking shuddery gasping breaths when he could.
Felix stayed with him, even rubbed his back when he could spare a hand.
Jack had no idea what he'd done to deserve Felix.
charlotte
Mondays had become laundry days, for no real reason that Charlotte could see. Part of it was probably Daniel's preference for getting things he disliked done all at once. She rather liked doing laundry herself, enjoyed the feel of freshly clean clothes still warm from the dryer. She held one up against her face now, a softly-knit sweater Miranda had given her for her last birthday, and raised her eyebrows when Daniel laughed softly. "What?"
"You," he said, and folded the last of his clothes into his basket. "Your face. You look so happy."
"Simple pleasures," she said, smiling. "It smells nice. When I was little I remember just curling up in my laundry basket to smell the clean clothes."
"You're so weird," he said, affectionately, and leaned over, cupped the back of her neck and kissed her.
She closed her eyes, concentrated on the feel of his mouth, the slight pressure and warmth on her neck, for the few seconds he kissed her, then opened her eyes and smiled at him. "I know, but you love it."
"That I do." He kissed her again, quick and soft, then picked up his basket. "You all set?"
"Yeah," she said, and blinked, surprised, when her phone buzzed in her pocket. "Hold on, phone call."
Or text message, as it turned out. Charlotte frowned at her father's message-- We're coming to get you, nothing more, as if she was supposed to know what that meant.
Daniel touched the small of her back. "Is something wrong?"
"No, just..." She shook her head, showed him her phone. "My father. He's not usually so terse."
"Did something happen?"
She shrugged, and picked up her laundry basket. "I suppose I'll find out when he gets here." Which... she'd have to be sure Daniel wasn't around for that, because Christopher Hennessy was starkly recognizable, even if his daughter wasn't, and Daniel still knew her as Charlotte Rueda.
She would have to tell Daniel the truth someday. But she'd rather have a plan, have the words mapped out in her head before she explained that she'd been-- not lying, not exactly, in Mexico she would be Charlotte Hennessy Rueda, but definitely not telling him the whole truth.
Well, it could wait. She tossed her hair over her shoulder, unlocked her apartment door, and walked in, Daniel close behind her. She'd left the radio on, and now it was blaring some sort of news alert. She listened with half an ear, moving towards the kitchen. "Daniel, do you want..."
Then she really heard it.
"...earlier this evening, lawyer and press darling Miranda Hennessy was stabbed outside her Los Angeles office by an unknown assailant. She was rushed to the hospital and is currently in surgery. We'll make further details known as they become available to us."
Charlotte dropped the laundry basket and stood swaying. Miranda?
"Charlotte?" Daniel rushed to her, caught her elbow, helped her to a seat. "Charlotte, look at me, look at me. Are you all right?"
She was shaking, she realized numbly. "I... I..."
He touched her chin, lifted her face until she was looking him in the eyes, concern all over his face. "Charlotte. Talk to me. What happened?"
"My sister," she said, and it rushed over her all at once-- Miranda, stabbed, hospital, surgery. "My sister. They just said on the radio, my sister was stabbed, oh God!"
"Your sister?" He let go of her chin and straightened up. Charlotte hid her face in her hands, so she wouldn't have to look at him.
Her father would be here soon. Her father would bring her to her sister. And then... maybe then... she could think about this.
But not yet.
peter
It was really inexcusable how long it took Peter to figure out that Miranda had lied to him.
She was a lawyer, for God's sake, sister and daughter to actors, and a public figure all her life; she'd learned from her earliest infancy to lie with a smile on her face and a bright, brittle laugh. He could tell, when he was paying attention, when she lied like that, smooth and easy, and now that the hurt had receded just a little, he knew she'd lied.
He had no idea why she'd lied to him, but he knew that she had.
It made his heart jump to think it. Why the hell had she done that to him? She'd looked him right in the eye and laughed, that careless easy laugh she got sometimes when someone was being stupid. Love? she'd said. Oh, you poor silly man, what did you think this was?
Evidently exactly what she'd thought it was. He remembered it now, remembered the brittleness of her laughter and the dead unhappy look in her eyes-- oh, yes, she'd lied. But it made no goddamn sense.
Not that it mattered.
Peter got up, shut off his computer, and headed for the door. He wasn't supposed to be here anyway-- he'd been working late, trying to drown the hurt in the endless tasks his position generated. Miranda should be out of work now, if she wasn't also working late. Which... was very likely. He'd start with her office, just walk right past Julian like he still belonged there. If she wasn't there he'd wait until Tuesday; he wanted to go to her apartment and confront her there, but the last thing he wanted was to make her feel unsafe. He needed...
He needed to see her. He needed to find out why she'd lied, why she'd told him she didn't love him. He didn't need to have her back-- though he wanted her back, he wouldn't deny it-- he just needed to know why.
He grabbed his jacket off the coat rack, pulled it around his shoulders, and barged out into the cubicle farm, where... huh, that was weird, almost all of his staffers were still in, volunteers too, and clustered around the television at the end of the room. Peter smiled at the sight, a little sadly-- Miranda had always mocked it, with its black and white screen and terrible reception. She'd offered to buy them a new one, a good one, and he'd just shaken his head, protested that he liked the poor little thing. It was only doing its best.
Still, if all his staffers were gathered around it, that probably meant something was going down. He hesitated, torn between Miranda and his company, then cursed internally and headed over to the little knot of people. "What's happening?"
All of them snapped to face him, disconcertingly in unison, and... okay, that was not good. Every single one of them was looking at him like his dog had just died.
Peter stared back, uneasily. "What? What is it?"
"Peter..." one of them faltered, and that was definitely not good. They called him Boss or Bossman, Mr. Edleson if he was in trouble, never just Peter, never...
"Someone had better tell me," he began, and then he really looked at the television, at Miranda's sharp and clever face, eyebrows arched, and the banner scrolling across under it; he really listened to the low hum of the announcer's voice, and felt as if someone had stabbed him.
"Oh, God," he whispered, and sat down on somebody's desk. He didn't know whose and didn't really care at this point.
Diane, his VP of operations, came up and touched his elbow, uncertainly. "Peter," she said. "I'm so sorry. Shouldn't you go..."
"She dumped me two days ago," he said, feeling dazed. "She... I was just going to go see her, find out... I told her I... I was so angry with her."
Miranda smiled out from the television, insouciant and haughty, that look that always made him want to kiss the arrogance from her lips. Somewhere in the city she lay in an operating room, bleeding, and the last thing he'd said to her was that he was angry.
"I'm so sorry," Diane said again. He could only shake his head.
Title: Blur
Story: Shine Like It Does
Colors: Faded blue 27 (Only yesterday, when the world was young), liver 17 (stomach), zing 9 (if I throw a stick, will you leave?) with shadowsong's paint by numbers (It's the end of a long day, and Miranda just can't handle any more interruptions).
Supplies and Materials: Portrait, stained glass, reimaging (of a number of things, and Jossing a couple of other things), stain (“There’s one thing worse than having a family. Not having one.” - Hanne Holm), yarn (a falling star), glitter (You come face-to-face with your worst enemy. What happens?), glue (Unresolved feelings may add to your general uneasiness today because getting clarity about your current circumstances is tricky business.), chalk (bombing victims TRIGGER ALERT), novelty beads (A character is afraid).
Word Count: 5000
Rating: R.
Summary: Miranda gets stabbed.
Warnings: Violence.
Notes: THIS STORY GODDAMNIT. Dear characters: when the only one cooperating is the one who gets stabbed, we need to rethink our relationship.
miranda
Miranda was having the most wretched fucking day of her life, and the worst part was that she couldn't even show it.
She knew how the press was. One hair out of place, one trip to the office less than perfectly dressed, made up, and coiffed, and suddenly everyone was talking about your inevitable descent into alcoholism and rehab. Lord knew she'd seen it happen to Jack enough times, and she just could not deal with that now, with the rumors and the faux concern and people looking at her...
Worst of all, it might get back to Peter and then this entire exercise would have been for nothing.
So when she woke up with a hangover from the cheap wine-- Miranda did not waste good alcohol when she was just drinking to get drunk-- and a complete lack of desire to move from her comfortable, safe covers, she gritted her teeth and swung her legs out of bed anyway, wincing when her bare feet touched the cold floor.
It turned out to be the best part of her day.
"This was supposed to be finished two weeks ago," she said, in her best icy tones, staring at the shrinking novice attorney like a snake at something small and fluffy. She was quite proud of that glare, actually-- she'd worked hard to perfect it. "I was assured, two weeks ago, that it was finished. Help me to understand why you're coming to me now and saying that it isn't."
"Er." The hapless attorney shifted his stance and refused to meet her eyes. "Er. I thought it was done. I was assured..." He stopped immediately, but Miranda had already picked up the important word.
"Assured?" She lifted both her perfectly-arched eyebrows at him in a calculated move. "Do you mean to tell me that you did not write the contract I assigned you to write?"
He cringed, shifted again. "No, ma'am."
She sighed, shuffled the papers on her desk together into a neat pile. "Who did? Your paralegal? Well, it hardly matters, I'll find out on my own. Clear out your desk. Security will come in half an hour to escort you from the building."
He jerked, shock wiping out every other expression. Just like Peter looked when she told him-- Miranda shied away from that thought and composed her face. "Is something wrong?"
"You can't just fire me!" he said-- squeaked, rather. "You... all I did was..."
"Was attempt to claim credit for someone else's work," Miranda replied, briskly. "I don't really know what they did at the other law firms on your resume, but we do not encourage plagiarism." She tilted her head, slightly amused by his spluttering. Would he go to bluster or begging next? "Or did you forge that too?"
She'd have bet bluster, but he composed himself reasonably well and gave her a fairly good imitation of a contrite expression. Miranda might have been impressed if she hadn't been a much better actress herself.
"Please," he said. "Please, give me a second chance. I'll... you'll see, I'll really impress you."
She considered it for a bare moment, just long enough for the hope in his eyes to send her stomach sinking then shook her head. "No," she said, decisively. "There are no second chances here. Goodbye."
He at least had the dignity to leave, then, and didn't make her call for security.
Miranda sighed, and let herself go just enough to press her fingers together at the bridge of her nose. She really didn't enjoy firing people-- most of the time, anyway; firing the man who'd sexually harassed half the executive assistants had been a genuine pleasure. This attorney had at least accepted his fate with relative grace, but it was just the perfect capper.
Her hangover had faded around noon, but it had left a bitch of a headache behind, one that still throbbed behind her temples. She'd had to sit through a three-hour meeting with her least favorite clients, and missed lunch because one of them had buttonholed her afterwards to (clumsily and unsuccessfully) hit on her. That also told her that her breakup with Peter had become public, the one small mercy in the day-- she had enough warning to dodge her family's phone calls, because the very last thing she needed was misplaced sympathy.
She'd done this to herself, after all.
The snatched ham sandwich at her desk around three had not been a decent substitute for lunch. Nor had the constant stream of bad news-- this client dropping them, that one wondering where their contracts were. And now she'd had to fire someone, maybe two people, depending on who had really written the contract.
Finding that out could wait until tomorrow, though. It was still twenty minutes to five, but she had had so much more than enough of this day. She logged out of her computer, shut the whole thing down, and snatched her keys, looking forward to peace and quiet and please, God, a little time alone with no one bothering her. Miranda closed her eyes briefly, inhaled-- she could almost feel the relaxation sinking into her bones. Home was so close.
So of course her mother was waiting at her assistant's desk, toe tapping.
"Mrs. Hennessy," Julian said unnecessarily, and made good his escape. Lucky bastard.
Miranda gave her mother a rather milder version of her usual basilisk glare and said, "Yes?"
"You haven't been answering your phone," Isobel Hennessy replied-- in Spanish, lovely, which made this was a personal conversation, the very last thing she wanted right now. "Your brother says he can't reach you either. What is going on, Miranda?"
"Nothing." She walked past her mother, and out of her office suite, the click-click of her heels on the marble floors echoing in the hallway. "Nothing is wrong, Mama, it's just been a terrible day. I'm going home."
"Miranda," her mother said, and the clicks of her heels echoed down behind Miranda's, in slight counterpoint. "Miranda, do not walk away from me!"
"It's nothing, Mama!" she called over her shoulder, and sped up. "I just really want to go home."
"Miranda..." Her mother paused, frustration clear on her features, then followed her into the elevator, let the doors slide shut before she continued. "Miracita. You haven't been yourself these last few days."
Using her childhood nickname against her was blatantly unfair. Miranda barely kept herself from rolling her eyes, and replied, "I'm just tired. You know how business has been lately."
Her mother's eyes narrowed. "No more busy than usual." She paused a moment, then added almost casually, "Jack says you've left that nice young man you've been dating. Peter, was it?"
Damn Jack. Miranda was going to do something really terrible to him. "We weren't going anywhere. It didn't seem reasonable to continue dating." Which happened to be the honest truth, if not quite all of the truth.
"Reasonable?" Her mother sighed, as the elevator dinged and opened its doors on the lobby. "Love isn't about reasonable."
"All right then," she snapped, clicking out of the elevator, "then we weren't in love. It doesn't matter, Mama, it's over. Leave it."
"No." Her mother caught up to her, laid a hand on her elbow. "We're worried about you. I'm worried about you. I will not leave it."
"Mama..." She'd known that wouldn't work; her mother never gave up on anything in her life. Miranda checked for observers, found only a bored security guard, and let her shoulders slump, suddenly. "Mama, I just... I'm tired, please. We can talk about this later, I promise, but just not now."
Her mother eyed her for a moment, then gave in all at once, a sudden melting in her posture that Miranda well remembered from childhood scoldings. "All right, Miracita. But we will talk about this later."
Not if she had anything to say about it. "Of course, Mama."
She turned her cheek up for her mother's kiss, gave one back, then walked out the double glass doors into the smoggy heat of twilight. The sun was down but only just, and the concrete still baking when she stepped down onto the sidewalk. Two blocks to the garage she parked her car. Forty five minutes from getting her car to pulling into her apartment complex-- half an hour if she was lucky. Fifteen minutes from there to a cool bath, some ice cream, and maybe a glass of good wine, and then she could go to bed and have a good cry and forget that this day ever happened.
She barely felt the knife going in.
isobel
Isobel saw her daughter fall.
It was so quick she hardly realized what had happened at first. There was just Miranda, walking down the street with her head down and her shoulders tense-- and God but she was worried about her daughter as she walked away, so unhappy and trying so hard not to show it-- and then there was Miranda falling and a man falling on top of her, something flashing silver-bright in the sun, and blood spilling across the concrete.
She thought, later, that she screamed something at the receptionist about police and ambulances, but she didn't remember anything very well. It was all a blur of images and impressions and sheer horror skating between flashes of clear images, and the only thing she could see clearly was Miranda falling, endlessly, her black hair loose against the sky like ink, and her blood everywhere.
The next thing she remembered with any clarity was kneeling beside her daughter, God, her daughter, sprawled on the pavement. She didn't know what had happened to the man with the knife, and didn't especially care just so long as he didn't get away with this. People were crowding around, most of them on cell phones, yelling to the police or the paramedics or the tabloid newspapers. She remembered whipping her head up at that, and whatever she said or did, it made that man go pale and edge away.
She didn't follow him. It didn't matter- the press would get hold of it soon enough and fuck it, fuck them all anyway, she was kneeling in her daughter's blood. She was kneeling in her daughter's blood, helping someone she didn't even know put pressure on the wounds-- wounds, more than one, he'd stabbed her more than once, over and over into her stomach-- and watching Miranda's terrified eyes, watching her gasp and struggle to breathe, watching blood trickle from the corner of her mouth. Her daughter. Her daughter, her little girl. God, oh, God, no.
She said something. Lots of things, in Spanish, she thought, because when she spoke to her children in Spanish she spoke from love, as their mother. Reassurances, she thought-- everything's going to be all right, I love you, I'm here, don't worry, you're going to be fine. Things she said when Jack was five and broke his arm, when Charlotte was sixteen and broke her heart. It's all she could do, hold on to Miranda with her voice and her hands, keep her from slipping away.
The next thing she remembered was the paramedics shoving her out of the way. She got to her feet and demanded to go with them-- this is my daughter, I am her mother, you will not keep me out of the ambulance-- and one of them shaking his head, saying there was no room. She caught a taxi instead and ordered it to follow, not caring what the driver thought of the blood on her hands and the knees of her grey suit. She didn't remember what she paid him, didn't care, she just shoved money at him and bolted into the emergency room, only to be told that Miranda was in surgery and she'd have to sit and wait.
It was there, gasping, tears smearing wet over her face, that she remembered her family, her husband and children, all of them blissfully unaware of Miranda falling, of her blood all over the concrete. She almost wanted to leave them that way, but they had to know and better she told them. She fumbled out her phone for the first time, left bloody fingerprints on the keypad as she dialed.
She had to fight to speak in English when Christopher answered, because he wouldn't understand her if she spoke Spanish, he didn't know any of the words. She said his name and gasped in air, suddenly sobbing too hard to speak.
"Isobel, Isobel--" He said her name over and over, his voice a thin layer of calm over sheer panic. "Isobel, listen to me, I need you to breathe. Can you breathe, love? Breathe for me--"
She fought in a breath, fought herself to clarity at least. "It's Miranda," she said, and her voice caught on her daughter's name. "God, Christopher, someone stabbed her, someone..."
"I'm coming," he said, immediately, and God but she loved him, that certainty he could project even when he was falling apart. "Where are you?"
She gave the name of the hospital and stayed on the phone while he said soothing, comforting things, because she couldn't stop crying and she needed his voice now, needed that strength, even if she said nothing back to him.
God, her daughter, her daughter...
christopher
It had been a fairly successful day, all told. He'd met with the writers for the next film he was producing and had a look at the script, which had improved immeasurably from the last draft. He'd had lunch with the director of his current film, and gone out to the set in the afternoon, hung around with a couple of the actors, and made tentative plans to go out for drinks, pending Isobel's veto. Not that she exercised that particular right capriciously, only when they had something to do he'd forgotten about, but that was often enough that he made a point of asking.
In fact, when she called, he'd thought it was a sign. He excused himself from his current conversation with a laughing 'be right back, gotta take this.' Maybe they did have a party tonight, or maybe she just wanted him home that night, which meant something very different now that their children had all grown up and moved out. A pleasant thought, for a pleasant day-- he smiled, and answered the phone.
And felt the smile drop off his face when she got out nothing more than his name. And then...
He told the director he was going, and didn't explain why. Not that he needed to-- he was sure it would be all over the news soon enough, and he needed to know before the story broke, if she was alive, if she...
He wouldn't think that. Not now. Of course she was alive. Miranda was strong and tough and brave; he'd get to the hospital and she'd be out of surgery and she would be fine, laughing a little weakly, teasing everyone for being so worried. She'd have that little quirk of her mouth she got when she was trying to be amused, to make everyone stop being anxious around her. And he'd ruffle her hair and tell her not to be so silly, of course we were worried, you got stabbed, Miranda, that tends to make your family worry.
The police would catch the man who did it, and they'd find out why. It would be a story, for the future. Something Miranda could tell while rolling her eyes, something the rest of them would tell with a shiver at how close they'd come to her really being in danger.
Maybe she hadn't really been hurt. Isobel was hysterical, breathing harshly in his ear as the driver got him to the hospital, but she'd just seen someone attack their oldest daughter. Maybe Miranda was fine, only scratched up a little. She'd be annoyed that he'd left work for her. She was always so hardworking, trying so hard to impress her parents, to make them proud of her. Christopher told her he was proud of her as often as he could, as often as he remembered-- he vowed silently that he'd be more insistent about it now. He'd say it now until she believed it.
Yes. She was fine. She was only in surgery because... because she'd bled a lot, maybe had a few deep cuts. They were stitching her up now and she'd be sitting up in bed when he got there, annoyed and exhausted. Maybe they'd even let them take her home, put her to bed in her old room and pamper her until the slashes healed without even the trace of a scar. She'd hate it, but she'd let them do it, because she knew they loved her.
She was fine, she was fine, she was fine. He repeated it to himself like a mantra, wanting it to be true, needing it to be true, and still he couldn't quite... Isobel sounded so frantic, choking on air. Even now, now that he'd talked her down a little, calmed her a little, there was still the harsh edge of tears to her breathing. If Miranda was fine, then why was she crying like that?
Miranda was fine, he told himself. He told himself that until he got to the hospital and Isobel came to meet him, crying silent, shuddering tears, with blood all over her hands and knees, and even then he tried to believe it, held his wife close and tried to believe that Miranda was all right, until a green-scrubbed surgeon with a mask pulled down around his neck came to speak to them, face solemn.
He held Isobel tighter. She wasn't fine. He'd known that, but it still felt... oh, God. She wasn't fine.
jackson
Jack remembered later with perfect clarity everything that happened that day. Everything.
He'd been sitting on a bar stool, watching Felix flirt quite effectively with a handsome bald man over by the pool table and feeling only a little bit jealous. After all, it wasn't any of his business what Felix did with guys, bald or not, except insofar as Felix might feel like giving him details afterwards. Not that he ever actually did, probably fortunately. Jack wasn't one hundred percent sure he could survive the mental images details would produce.
Whatever, it wasn't relevant. He'd been watching Felix and smiling a little sadly and being happy and a little depressed at the same time. He'd been drinking Guinness, more because he felt like he should have what he'd ordered than because he had any real taste for it, the bite of the dark ale tingling his tongue. He'd smelled the sticky scent of alcohol, felt the cherry wood bar hard beneath his elbow and the glass cool in his hand, seen the TV flickering in the corner of his eye, sound on mute in deference to the jukebox but subtitles on. He'd been wondering if Felix would go home with the bald guy, and if he did, what Jack would do for the rest of the night. Call Miranda, he'd been thinking, go out with her somewhere and try to take her mind off whatever it was she'd done to break her own heart.
Then the TV in the corner flipped over from baseball to some blonde talking head, looking very seriously into the camera, gripping her microphone so tight her knuckles were distinctly pale. Jack, attention attracted by the change of light and the scrolling "BREAKING NEWS" banner across the bottom of the screen, put his Guinness down and squinted up at the TV. She stood in front of a building-- hey, that was their building, Hennessy and Family occupied the fifteenth floor, and Jack began to get a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Then they showed a picture of Miranda, chin lifted and eyes haughty, just as his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he knew.
Felix looked up about then, at the TV and then fast to Jack, and whatever he saw in Jack's face made him abandon the hot guy without a backwards glance. "Where?" he asked, before Jack even said anything. "Tell me where, I'll drive you. You look like you're going to faint."
Fainting was not really on the agenda, although it was kind of hard to breathe suddenly. It was just... Miranda. Okay, sure, maybe he would have gotten himself stabbed at some point, in a bar fight or because he hit on the wrong person. Maybe Charlotte, though it killed him to think that; she was just so very obviously not white, and so very obviously vulnerable. But Miranda?
Miranda was his strength. She'd always been his strength. When he couldn't get out of bed, she'd come and sit with him, tease him and make awful puns just to get him to smile again. When someone hurt him or Charlotte, she would exact a horrible revenge, then come home and just hold them like nothing had ever happened. She had a bad tendency to break her own heart but even then she'd been strong, stiff upper lip, acting like nothing affected her. He admired her for that, for her cool armor even when he thought it was a really bad idea.
How could she be hurt? How could someone possibly have hurt Miranda?
But Felix's face had settled into stiff lines while he stared at the TV. His father's voice had sounded almost empty. He could hear his mother crying in the background.
His chest was too tight, his throat closing over, his eyes blurring. Miranda. Oh, God, Miranda.
He remembered nothing of the drive to the hospital but crying, curled over silent in the passenger's seat, taking shuddery gasping breaths when he could.
Felix stayed with him, even rubbed his back when he could spare a hand.
Jack had no idea what he'd done to deserve Felix.
charlotte
Mondays had become laundry days, for no real reason that Charlotte could see. Part of it was probably Daniel's preference for getting things he disliked done all at once. She rather liked doing laundry herself, enjoyed the feel of freshly clean clothes still warm from the dryer. She held one up against her face now, a softly-knit sweater Miranda had given her for her last birthday, and raised her eyebrows when Daniel laughed softly. "What?"
"You," he said, and folded the last of his clothes into his basket. "Your face. You look so happy."
"Simple pleasures," she said, smiling. "It smells nice. When I was little I remember just curling up in my laundry basket to smell the clean clothes."
"You're so weird," he said, affectionately, and leaned over, cupped the back of her neck and kissed her.
She closed her eyes, concentrated on the feel of his mouth, the slight pressure and warmth on her neck, for the few seconds he kissed her, then opened her eyes and smiled at him. "I know, but you love it."
"That I do." He kissed her again, quick and soft, then picked up his basket. "You all set?"
"Yeah," she said, and blinked, surprised, when her phone buzzed in her pocket. "Hold on, phone call."
Or text message, as it turned out. Charlotte frowned at her father's message-- We're coming to get you, nothing more, as if she was supposed to know what that meant.
Daniel touched the small of her back. "Is something wrong?"
"No, just..." She shook her head, showed him her phone. "My father. He's not usually so terse."
"Did something happen?"
She shrugged, and picked up her laundry basket. "I suppose I'll find out when he gets here." Which... she'd have to be sure Daniel wasn't around for that, because Christopher Hennessy was starkly recognizable, even if his daughter wasn't, and Daniel still knew her as Charlotte Rueda.
She would have to tell Daniel the truth someday. But she'd rather have a plan, have the words mapped out in her head before she explained that she'd been-- not lying, not exactly, in Mexico she would be Charlotte Hennessy Rueda, but definitely not telling him the whole truth.
Well, it could wait. She tossed her hair over her shoulder, unlocked her apartment door, and walked in, Daniel close behind her. She'd left the radio on, and now it was blaring some sort of news alert. She listened with half an ear, moving towards the kitchen. "Daniel, do you want..."
Then she really heard it.
"...earlier this evening, lawyer and press darling Miranda Hennessy was stabbed outside her Los Angeles office by an unknown assailant. She was rushed to the hospital and is currently in surgery. We'll make further details known as they become available to us."
Charlotte dropped the laundry basket and stood swaying. Miranda?
"Charlotte?" Daniel rushed to her, caught her elbow, helped her to a seat. "Charlotte, look at me, look at me. Are you all right?"
She was shaking, she realized numbly. "I... I..."
He touched her chin, lifted her face until she was looking him in the eyes, concern all over his face. "Charlotte. Talk to me. What happened?"
"My sister," she said, and it rushed over her all at once-- Miranda, stabbed, hospital, surgery. "My sister. They just said on the radio, my sister was stabbed, oh God!"
"Your sister?" He let go of her chin and straightened up. Charlotte hid her face in her hands, so she wouldn't have to look at him.
Her father would be here soon. Her father would bring her to her sister. And then... maybe then... she could think about this.
But not yet.
peter
It was really inexcusable how long it took Peter to figure out that Miranda had lied to him.
She was a lawyer, for God's sake, sister and daughter to actors, and a public figure all her life; she'd learned from her earliest infancy to lie with a smile on her face and a bright, brittle laugh. He could tell, when he was paying attention, when she lied like that, smooth and easy, and now that the hurt had receded just a little, he knew she'd lied.
He had no idea why she'd lied to him, but he knew that she had.
It made his heart jump to think it. Why the hell had she done that to him? She'd looked him right in the eye and laughed, that careless easy laugh she got sometimes when someone was being stupid. Love? she'd said. Oh, you poor silly man, what did you think this was?
Evidently exactly what she'd thought it was. He remembered it now, remembered the brittleness of her laughter and the dead unhappy look in her eyes-- oh, yes, she'd lied. But it made no goddamn sense.
Not that it mattered.
Peter got up, shut off his computer, and headed for the door. He wasn't supposed to be here anyway-- he'd been working late, trying to drown the hurt in the endless tasks his position generated. Miranda should be out of work now, if she wasn't also working late. Which... was very likely. He'd start with her office, just walk right past Julian like he still belonged there. If she wasn't there he'd wait until Tuesday; he wanted to go to her apartment and confront her there, but the last thing he wanted was to make her feel unsafe. He needed...
He needed to see her. He needed to find out why she'd lied, why she'd told him she didn't love him. He didn't need to have her back-- though he wanted her back, he wouldn't deny it-- he just needed to know why.
He grabbed his jacket off the coat rack, pulled it around his shoulders, and barged out into the cubicle farm, where... huh, that was weird, almost all of his staffers were still in, volunteers too, and clustered around the television at the end of the room. Peter smiled at the sight, a little sadly-- Miranda had always mocked it, with its black and white screen and terrible reception. She'd offered to buy them a new one, a good one, and he'd just shaken his head, protested that he liked the poor little thing. It was only doing its best.
Still, if all his staffers were gathered around it, that probably meant something was going down. He hesitated, torn between Miranda and his company, then cursed internally and headed over to the little knot of people. "What's happening?"
All of them snapped to face him, disconcertingly in unison, and... okay, that was not good. Every single one of them was looking at him like his dog had just died.
Peter stared back, uneasily. "What? What is it?"
"Peter..." one of them faltered, and that was definitely not good. They called him Boss or Bossman, Mr. Edleson if he was in trouble, never just Peter, never...
"Someone had better tell me," he began, and then he really looked at the television, at Miranda's sharp and clever face, eyebrows arched, and the banner scrolling across under it; he really listened to the low hum of the announcer's voice, and felt as if someone had stabbed him.
"Oh, God," he whispered, and sat down on somebody's desk. He didn't know whose and didn't really care at this point.
Diane, his VP of operations, came up and touched his elbow, uncertainly. "Peter," she said. "I'm so sorry. Shouldn't you go..."
"She dumped me two days ago," he said, feeling dazed. "She... I was just going to go see her, find out... I told her I... I was so angry with her."
Miranda smiled out from the television, insouciant and haughty, that look that always made him want to kiss the arrogance from her lips. Somewhere in the city she lay in an operating room, bleeding, and the last thing he'd said to her was that he was angry.
"I'm so sorry," Diane said again. He could only shake his head.