Precious Illusions
part 6
"Your palms aren't all gross and sweaty, are they?"
Cole Turner raised an eyebrow, abruptly halting in step upon the stairwell, as he slowly and deliberately turned around to face his sister-in-law with amusement shrouded deeply in his blues. "Unlike certain people who will remain nameless, I didn't run through the manor completely naked when an earthquake was about to hit. So trust me, Paige, I'll be fine."
"For your information, that was Phoebe, and she was wearing slippers. Prue told me all about it."
"Really?" he questioned, a small smile faintly touching his gorgeous profile rather teasingly. "In that case, maybe I should remind her about that someday. It might actually prove to be mildly entertaining."
"Oh, yuck. Okay, I did not want to know that."
"I was only joking," he objected innocently.
"No, see, that kind of joking is how another little Cole Junior will come into the picture, and far be it for me to say this place gets smaller and smaller every time you guys have another kid. I mean, I always thought it was going to be Piper who'd be popping them all out."
"Is it the name Cole that bothers you, or the fact that we might just have enough of them to finally kick you out?"
"Probably a little bit of both," she acknowledged. "But hey, who am I to complain about it, right?" She immediately thought better of the way she'd chosen to handle her answer, backtracking as her expression brightened. "While we're on the subject, complaining is just plain wrong, and people who...are entirely grateful shouldn't even be doing it. Besides, it's not as if you'd actually go through with it, anyway. I've been here for quite awhile now, and I've pulled my weight. You can't deny that now, can you?"
"I think you'd be surprised."
"But I'm a great babysitter," she protested.
"I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I don't think making out with Merrick in front of my daughter on the living room couch is setting a good example. It could have gone and scarred her for life. You know, come to think of it, it could have probably just plain scared the daylights out of her, too. I'm still deciding yet."
"Yeah, and Nick said he was sorry about that."
"Nick? I would think it takes two people to initiate something like that," he commented, shrugging. "At least it always has where Phoebe and I are concerned. Either way, Nick lives to cause trouble, and since you see absolutely nothing wrong with that, you're only contributing to it."
"You know that's not true."
"Paige, just do me a favor and shut up."
"Sure, fine, easy for you to say," she grumbled. "Then again, I also wasn't a crazy person back in the day. I may have been an evil enchantress, but I obviously never got my kicks reporting to some big, bad evil."
"Don't come near me," a shaky voice uttered, cutting forcefully through the conversation, as the frail figure sitting in the armchair suddenly threw her arms protectively around her body. She began to shrink deeper into as much comfort as the piece of furniture would allow her, quickly pulling up her feet, her long blonde hair shielding most of her face. Her blue eyes delicately peeked out from beneath it, noticeably clothed in traces of anger and apprehension, her line of vision trailing Cole's every move.
He carefully held out a hand to her, as if to indicate he meant to exhibit no possible sign of malice, gently urging her to stay where she was. "Hey, look, I'm not the bad guy here, okay? I'm just going to try and have a reasonably civilized-"
"You're a murderer," she whispered, reiterating her previous claim, as her fingernails dug painfully into the skin on her back, her legs gliding up to fully meet her chest.
"I'm a lot of things," he told her, his tone becoming somewhat hoarse, "but I'm not a murderer. I haven't been one for some time."
"Don't take another step," she warned.
"See, what'd I tell you? Callous and unresponsive," Paige drawled, immediately shaking her head. "Maybe she actually wants us to hurt her. I should go see if I can find some weapons."
"You're harboring a killer," Laurel snapped, finally sparing a glance at her, "and that makes you just as much of a monster as he is."
"Am I a monster too?" Alexandra Turner inquired, as she bravely entered the room, a small glass of juice enclosed in one tiny hand.
"Do you want to leave?" Cole offered, calmly shrugging his shoulders. "Do you really want to get up and get out of here? Fine, go ahead, see if I care. You see if I give a damn about it, because with all due respect, no one's exactly holding you against your will right now. They've pretty much given up on you altogether, and you still refuse to say anything that might actually prove to be of some help to us. But while you stay there and remain completely indifferent to your fate, you’re also still a liability."
"Why the hell would I want to help you?" Laurel snapped back.
"See, this is a good start. We're getting somewhere, aren't we?"
"You're not the slightest bit curious as to how you ended up in the twenty-first century? Not even a little bit?" Paige volunteered.
"Whether you like it or not, I'm the only chance you've got," Cole continued, ignoring Paige completely, as he proceeded to study his former acquaintance with interest. "Despite what you've already seen, Miss Egan, good sometimes wins over evil. It's rare, but not entirely impossible."
"The only chance I have?" she repeated. "You're clearly out of your mind. Then again, you always were, weren't you? You didn't even have to try."
"I'm serious."
"You took my life, you son of a bitch, and now you're suddenly demanding repentance for your crimes?"
"It's not like that. I don't go and demand it, it more or less demands itself."
"Oh really? Is that how it works?"
"Laurel."
"Don't say my name," she hissed. Her eyes struggled to project the confusion clouding them, even as her expression grew softer, very nearly on the verge of faltering. "After what you did to me, you don't deserve the luxury."
"Look, I'm not out to-"
"You've brainwashed them. You've done something to them so they can't see you for who you really are. You're hurting them like you hurt me."
"The man you knew no longer exists. He doesn't hurt people anymore, and he's already suffered a great deal for what he did in his past."
"You're lying."
"Okay," he conceded, as he slowly let out a deep breath, having wrestled with himself far more than he'd intended to in the time they'd been allotted. He was very nearly ready to break, and couldn't stand the thought of her watching him crumble under the scrutiny. "Now that you're finally coherent, maybe it's time I show you something then. Maybe it's time you understand what you've gotten yourself into by finding me again." He sighed, almost admitting the defeat right then and there. "I can't give you whatever it is you're looking for, because I don't have it in me. I don't have a bone in my body that says I want to subject you to any harm. None whatsoever. I can't do anything to you, because I don't want to. You're just a memory. A memory I never wanted to- a memory I tried so hard to repress, because of what was involved."
"I didn't come back for you!" she roughly accused, her tone cutting through his gentleness like ice.
"So why did you? If it wasn't to cause me all of this heartache, and have me rethink the way my entire life has gone up until this point, then what for?"
"I don't know," she said quietly. Her disposition was a bit more refined, and she finally chose to relax the grip she had on herself, her body settling itself in a forward position as she placed her feet upon the floor. She nervously grasped a strand of blonde hair, carefully winding it around her index finger. "I don't know."
"You were buried," he told her. "I know, because I saw it with my own eyes. They took your broken body, and they put it in a fresh grave, and I watched them cover it with dirt. I stood there and I watched, Laurel, and you never even tried to move." His stole a glance at her, and there was a more pronounced sadness etched across his face. "Of course, I knew perfectly well what I did, and I already knew you wouldn't."
"Yeah, and yet here she is, in all her cranky, pissed off glory."
"Paige."
"What?" the witch hastily objected. "She's been nothing but psycho since she got here. I get that she's got issues, but don't you think this is pushing it a little? I mean most of us just throw and break things to relieve the tension."
"She's upset."
"Clearly," she added, rolling her eyes.
"Yes, and when someone is upset, they act out on those feelings in different ways. Given what she's been through, I'd say she'll well within the legal limit."
"Hey, fine, whatever, Dr. Cole. Either way, I've just about had enough of this. I'll see you bright and early in the morning." She turned on her heel, and began to climb the stairwell once again, discernibly having second thoughts as she abruptly paused after the first couple of steps. She rested her arms upon the railing for a moment, studying him with vague interest, her lips somewhat pursed. "Well, unless she decides to grab a sharp, pointy object and run around the house trying to kill us all."
"Your sarcasm is a blessing in disguise."
She only scoffed at the thought, as she continued on up, her slippers slowly sinking deep into the plush carpeting.
"So you enjoyed the sight of my dead body," Laurel carefully considered, silently nodding to herself. "I mean, I guess it doesn't surprise me knowing you'd actually take pleasure in the fact that you saw them put me in the ground."
"It's not like-"
"You had every right to rejoice," she confirmed, shrugging, entirely apathetic. "You figured you probably took me out of my misery, right? Only, I...I guess you didn't plan on it happening to me all over again so soon, because once obviously wasn't enough. I clearly wasn't experiencing my fair share of torment in the hell I'd begun living." She met his eyes dead on, corning them dangerously with her blue ones. "I wasn't, was I?"
"I don't understand," he admitted.
"But I fail to see how you can still be alive, how you can still be here, just waiting to do your worst all over again. You're the one man I wish I'd never met."
"No, I think that title belongs to your father."
"My father?"
"I know what it's like to lose family."
"You've mastered this," she said softly, laughing. "All these years, and you're a real pro, Belthazor. Congratulations, well done. Remind me to get down on my hands and knees and thank you."
"For what?"
"You really know how to show a girl a good time- even if your idea of a good time doesn't necessarily fit the standard definition of it. You're still right there, just waiting to rip some poor woman's heart out, while you let her bleed to death, in the most literal sense of the word."
"You think this isn't hard for me?"
"You think you're a better man than my father?" she challenged. "You're obviously out of your league."
"Your father wasn't who you thought he was."
"Well, he sure as hell wasn't a demon like you, was he? That much I know."
"Oh, you'd like to believe that," he told her, his voice precariously low, "but the truth is, you don't have to be a demon in the flesh to be considered one. An ordinary man who deals with darkness behind his daughter's back, is just as much to blame for her hardships as someone whose face isn't his own. Evil doesn't seek you out unless you let it."
"You let it."
"So did he, and I'm sure he's already been judged for that."
"You didn't know a damn thing about him or me," she roughly accused. "You're only pretending you did, just like y-"
"That's where you're mistaken, I'm afraid. Your father was into things you couldn't even begin to comprehend. He was into things that weren't exactly fit for his own daughter to lay eyes on." He tossed her a painful smile. "You might be convinced I'm a monster for the half breed I was, and for everything I did to you...but he was entirely human."
"You are a monster."
He shook his head. "Belthazor was vanquished a long time ago. I'm just Cole now. I have a wife, I have three children, and before he was gone completely, I'd already learned to repress that side of myself for the woman I loved- the woman I still love...very much."
"It doesn't make it okay."
"Laurel."
"It doesn't," she repeated more sternly. "I just don't understand how she can touch you, how...how she can stand to be in the same room as you, and actually feel something for you in return. It doesn't make sense, it's wrong, and it shouldn't have been your fate, because you don't deserve it. You never felt anything for the victims and what you took from them, yet you've managed to live high and mighty as a result of those sins, while others had to perish from your cruelty."
"I realize there's little to nothing that will condone what I did, but the fact of the matter is-"
"There are no facts, there's only death."
"I'm sorry, but I honestly don't buy that."
"You don't have to, because if I ever find out you were the reason behind why I'm here right now, I won't sit around and wait for you and your demon half to come get me this time. I'll find you and kill you, you son of a bitch, and I'll be done with it. If it's anything you owe me, maybe it's your life."
"Is that really what you want?"
"More than anything," she said softly, as she slowly picked herself up, carefully rising from the chair, her bare feet taking a few trembling steps toward him, her hands clenched wildly at her sides.
"Then I'm not going to stop you."
"Daddy?" Alex's voice drifted worriedly through the deafening pang of silence, the small child's empty glass restlessly shifting in her loose grasp and shattering loudly to the floor. "Daddy, what's going on?"
He didn't seem to register his daughter's mishap at all, instead choosing to keep his full concentration on Laurel, who had planted herself directly in his line of vision, her expression thoroughly unreadable. "But before you go and make that decision, you should know that it won't-"
"Bring me back," she told him, shrugging. "Yes, I know. It...well, it wouldn't make me a good person, would it? None of it. As much as I want you to take responsibility for what you did, this isn't the way to go about it."
"No," he affirmed.
"But if all else fails, what choice do I have? I can't go back, and I can't go forward. I don't have the answers, Belthazor. So maybe there's only death, and maybe it's the one thing I can take comfort in now."
"Cole. It's just Cole."
"I guess I don't have the answers for that, either."
"We can reform ourselves," he initiated, his tone becoming slightly remorseful, as his blue eyes slowly winced. "But it doesn't happen overnight or when we want it to, and it certainly doesn't happen when we still want, or...desire horrible things, wishing them on someone else. The truth of it is there's still so much more we have to learn." He calmly nodded, more to himself than to her. "You have to know that I was given an order to execute, and it was at your father's expense. I never would have had contact with you if the Source hadn't come to me. I would have never tried to get your attention so desperately if he hadn't requested it. Your father was under obligation to sacrifice you if he was unable to comply with the terms of his debt."
"You just keep telling me one lie after another."
"No. I'll swear with everything I have that it's the absolute-"
"You could have betrayed your cause, made a change for the better- even gone on the run. People do it all the time."
He shook his head. "They were all I had, and they made me who I was. I was forced to play by their rules, especially if those rules involved taking an innocent and destroying them until there wasn't anything left to destroy. I wasn't as smart back then, and I never could've dodged the bounty hunters. They would have taken my life for my treason."
"You didn't want to try."
"I thought about it once or twice," he confessed, a strange kind of amusement incorporating itself in his inflection. "Unfortunately, the odds were never in my favor."
"But killing me was much more appealing," she reasoned. "Your freedom for what they asked of you, right?"
"Give me your hand."
"Why?"
"Give me your hand," he repeated, while he casually held out one of his own, patiently beckoning to her. His attractive profile refused to reveal much of anything, as was his habit, and he lightly cleared his throat. "Sweetheart, could you please go on up to bed?"
"Daddy?"
"I promise I'll be by to tuck you in as soon as I get back."
"Where are you going?"
"There's something she needs to see," he informed her, professing a single nod Laurel's way. "It won't take long."
"But it's dark there now," the little girl suddenly added in a rather subdued tone.
"It may be dark, but it's still going to be deserted."
"It's because they always sleep all the time," she murmured.
"That's right."
"Do you think we can save her?"
"It's not so much saving as it is knowing," he assured her, winking.
"So it isn't a person then, is it? It's what you think inside your heart."
"Alex..."
"But sometimes that's okay, because what saves some people is how they believe. You already see that, Daddy, and you really want to make it all better like it was before. Maybe your magic could help her," she prompted.
"I don't think so, honey."
"Where are you taking me?" Laurel spoke up, turning to look at both of them, her slender frame growing somewhat tense, her fingers absentmindedly weaving their way across her clothing, a few strands of blonde hair falling in front of her face.
"From what I'm starting to gather," Cole continued, "the place where it ended, and probably the place where it all began."
"You're going to put me in the ground again?" her voice nearly broke, its emphasis so timid that he nearly felt close to crumbling himself. "You're going to put me down there again, and just keep hoping that I go away?"
"You want answers, don't you? You were obviously disoriented when you got here, and it would be in your-"
"I sure as hell don't need to be buried alive to get them," she viciously snapped at him.
"It's not exactly on my list of things to do, but if you're that set on trying it, maybe we could arrange something."
"Then what are you going to do?"
"Well, for starters, you might want to grab a shovel...just in case."
She looked rather askance. "What for?"
"We're going graverobbing."