But Now I See It Clear, Life Ain't Always Fair, Oh, What Can You Do, When You Don't Want To Hurt Him, Cause You Don't Deserve Him
--"Coming For You", Jojo
speaking of compulsions...
Heather headed home on the freeway afraid of what she would find when she got there. On one hand, it'd be nice to hear from Ryan that he was okay. It had been agony the last seven days with him being so handicapped and her the direct cause of it. It was part of the reason he had agreed to take care of him. On the other hand, there was a certain dread to his return to perfect working order. Heather had taken care of his needs from the time she arrived back at his place after work till when she left again in the morning. He had depended on her. He had needed her. She didn't know what to expect when he possibly might not need her so much any more.
She wanted to be practical about the whole matter, but the only practical thought in her head was the thought that everything was going change once Ryan could see again.
When you look through your eyes, Heather had always thought, you tend to believe you have some semblance of control over your life. You feel empowered and emboldened. Take that away, she knew, and people start acting differently. They become more deferential. They become more co-operative and open to consideration. This was her job. She offered people a look at what they were really like behind the bravado and cockiness. She offered people a chance to peer inside the person they were inside. Well, maybe offered was too strong of a word. She took. She took the luxury of vision away from people on behalf of courts when it was deemed necessary that an individual be reprimanded for the crime of short-sightedness, of being so wrapped up in their own pursuits they neglected everyone else's rights to the same pursuit. She'd worked with drunk drivers, abusive personalities, criminals of all sorts--wherever the victim or the victim's family wanted an extra measure of introspection from the guilty party. She would go in, take their sight, and let them know when they could expect it back. Sometimes it would be for only a day, sometimes a week, sometimes a year, and, on rare occasions, even longer. She would snap her fingers and that would be it.
They would be blind.
When Ryan rear-ended her Jeep, her intention hadn't been to misuse her ability. On the contrary, if the damage hadn't been too severe she was willing to even joke about it with him. But as he stepped out of his car, waving his hands in the air, her skepticism reared its ugly head. Not only did he have the audacity to blame the whole accident on her, but he had been very in-your-face throughout the whole discussion. She couldn't even count the number of times he pointed to his Audi and then wagged his finger in her face. Through all that she remained patient. Even when the cops arrived to take down the traffic report and he let loose with the allegation that she may have knocked back a few at lunch, she didn't say word one. It wasn't until he picked up her driver's license after she had given it to him and announced, "Now I know where to find you, bitch," that she decided he would be losing more than an hour or two out of his day.
She waited till that evening to revoke his status among the sighted. She wanted to make sure he wouldn't be on the road. She wanted to insure it looked completely like a freak medical occurrence. Sure, it was an abuse of her power, but in her mind she was entitled. She gave him one week. She thought that would be sufficient time to knock him down a peg.
When the phone rang the next morning the last voice she expected to hear was his.
"Good, I wanted to catch you before you went to work. I just called to say that I was out-of-line yesterday and that's not normally me."
At first, she thought it was remorse. She could imagine him laying in bed, helpless, and trying to atone for his actions in the vain hope that whatever god he prayed to would restore him back to how he used to be. She had seen it often enough, sitting in those courtrooms, as the man or woman would be sentenced. She would see them break down into tears as the realization of how much they had forfeited dawned of them. They would plead with her, beg her to undo what she had done. She'd feel sorry for them for awhile, but she could always rationalize it away with the thought that she was getting paid to a job. It wasn't personal, it was her profession.
Yet, as he refused to hang up the phone that morning, she never heard him once mention about how freaked out he was. In fact, it wasn't until the conversation had begun to draw to an end that he made mention of his condition.
"Well, I'm going to have to let you go, Heather. My friend Rob's here."
"Big plans?"
"I've just got an appointment with the eye doctor today. No biggie. But, hey, we should definitely grab that lunch you talked about."
She had no clue why she talked to him as long as she had. The more she considered it, the more she thought it was probably due to nothing more than curiousity. She had never to do any follow-up once it had been done. Their sight always returned right on schedule. She thought of herself as akin to a watchmaker, who builds the device, sets it into motion, and then doesn't waste time worrying about the fate of his creations. She was pragmatic that way. Though, if she really considered it, her powers were more devestating in nature. She tore people down in order that they could rebuild themselves again. That was her job. It was the people's job to do the actual rebuilding.
After they had the first lunch, she was surprised at well he was taking it all. His doctor had been at a loss to explain it away. Hysterical blindness was his best guess. His doctor had been sure it had something to do with the accident but could not explain the particulars to Ryan.
"But aren't you scared?" she asked him as he was paying the check.
"Petrified," his words said, but somehow she knew he wasn't as petrified as much as he was supposed to be.
When she dropped him off at his place, he invited her inside. She declined, giving some excuse about already having a previous engagement, but he would not be denied. They sat talking for about two hours. After those two hours it became obvious to Heather that she had made a mistake. She didn't know if he had just been having a bad day or that he had a momentary lapse in restraint, but she found him pleasant to talk to and be around. He was not at all someone who deserved his fate, temporary as it may have been.
Maybe that's why she showed up the next day at his place. He had mentioned to her that he had taken the month off from his job in an effort to gather some answers. She thought it might be nice to drop by to look in on him. The truth, however, was that she couldn't quite get him out of her mind. She felt she had wronged him and she was too ashamed to admit she had made a mistake. Not to mention, there were serious legal consequences if he ever discovered what she had done. Honestly, everything that had come out of his mouth during those two hours had only served to ratchet up the nagging guilt she already felt. She wanted to make up for it somehow and the only way she could think of was to assist him in all the small ways he would be unable to assist himself during the following week.
The day after that she took off an hour early from her appointments. She wasn't due in court and her boss owed her for assigning her overtime the month before. She brought him to a fancy place for a dinner and they ended up talking there well after closing.
The next day she spent over at his place, still unable to ease her conscience. Yet she knew there was another reason. She was definitely beginning to fall for the guy. He wasn't everything that she had been looking for, but he was enough for her. She already knew she liked being around him. Combine that with the fact she was so damn humble and courageous around a situation that she knew would completely unhinge the average individual, and she knew she had found something special. She also knew there were rules against this type of fraternizing. In court she wasn't even allowed to give out her name for fear of someone wanting to pay her back for doing her job. Spending the night at somebody she had blinded the week before was not only a no-no, it was against every rule in the code of conduct.
She couldn't stay away, though. She thought of him like the wounded sparrow she had hit with her car. She couldn't turn her back until she knew he would be fine again. Until that time she made it a priority to entertain him.
A week came and went without so much as a by-your-leave, and now she was driving once more to his place. Except this time, if she stayed, she knew he would be regaining his sight at precisely seven days to the minute she had taken it away from him. The nagging doubt that the person she had spent the last couple of days with would disappear began to take hold of her mind. The theory behind her job came bubbling back to the surface. People act differently when they don't have the luxury of being able to see. Would he be so vastly different with his sight as to be unrecognizable? That thought scared her more than the thought of him finding out what she had done. She wasn't a bad person. She had morals. At the time she had stolen his vision away from him, she thought she had been doing it for the right reasons. She thought he would come out a better person for the experience. When she had realized he was already a decent fellow, she worried that she had made the worst error in judgment she had ever made.
Then it began to crystallize that it wasn't he would come out better for the experience. Maybe it was her. Maybe he was her test on what kind of person she was. She began to consider that for a long time, for most of her professional career, she had taken a blind eye, no pun intended, to those she had caused to suffer. Yes, she knew the majority of them had done something so vastly unspeakable to deserve their punishment. A few of them, however, she may have believed hadn't done anything so heinous to go to such extremes as calling upon her ability. Truth be told, she couldn't see the corrolary between someone burglarizing a house for a watch they had given to an ex-girlfriend as a gift and now wanted back, and having to go blind for six months. She couldn't see the justice. Yet she had always abided by what she had been told. She was a blunt instrument in the hands of people she thought were wiser than her. Now she began to give real creedance that had set aside her own idea of fairness and developed an apathetic perspective about the way she conducted herself at work. These were human beings and maybe she couldn't exactly quit her job, but she thought she could have taken the time to really examine the cruelty of her position.
This experience with Ryan showed her she was capable of feeling something more for someone else. She'd always thought she was helping, but this was the first time she truly felt what it was like to actually help someone she had affected directly.
All this, all that she learned was being threatened to being taken from her. She didn't want to see that happen. She began to really consider telling him the truth, tell him what she had done. Perhaps, if he was the guy she really thought he was, he'd understand and the two of them could continue their relationship free of her lies. She thought how much she would like that, to build that kind of life with him. If there was to be any real future she knew that this was the only option.
Or was it?
As she pulled into his driveway, she thought of one more alternative, a way to hold onto what she had began to build. She stepped out her car, afraid to contemplate what she was actually contemplating. It would solve all her problems. It would insure that the two of them could have a real chance of staying together. It would definitely show what kind of person he was and what kind of couple they were going to be. More to the point, it would show what kind of person she truly was.
She didn't deserve him. She knew that. But she couldn't let go of him. Not now, not ever.
Before she stepped inside the front doorway she made sure that the two of them would be together forever, even if meant he could never see her again nor how far she was willing to go to keep him happy.
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
speaking of compulsions...Heather headed home on the freeway afraid of what she would find when she got there. On one hand, it'd be nice to hear from Ryan that he was okay. It had been agony the last seven days with him being so handicapped and her the direct cause of it. It was part of the reason he had agreed to take care of him. On the other hand, there was a certain dread to his return to perfect working order. Heather had taken care of his needs from the time she arrived back at his place after work till when she left again in the morning. He had depended on her. He had needed her. She didn't know what to expect when he possibly might not need her so much any more.
She wanted to be practical about the whole matter, but the only practical thought in her head was the thought that everything was going change once Ryan could see again.
When you look through your eyes, Heather had always thought, you tend to believe you have some semblance of control over your life. You feel empowered and emboldened. Take that away, she knew, and people start acting differently. They become more deferential. They become more co-operative and open to consideration. This was her job. She offered people a look at what they were really like behind the bravado and cockiness. She offered people a chance to peer inside the person they were inside. Well, maybe offered was too strong of a word. She took. She took the luxury of vision away from people on behalf of courts when it was deemed necessary that an individual be reprimanded for the crime of short-sightedness, of being so wrapped up in their own pursuits they neglected everyone else's rights to the same pursuit. She'd worked with drunk drivers, abusive personalities, criminals of all sorts--wherever the victim or the victim's family wanted an extra measure of introspection from the guilty party. She would go in, take their sight, and let them know when they could expect it back. Sometimes it would be for only a day, sometimes a week, sometimes a year, and, on rare occasions, even longer. She would snap her fingers and that would be it.
They would be blind.
When Ryan rear-ended her Jeep, her intention hadn't been to misuse her ability. On the contrary, if the damage hadn't been too severe she was willing to even joke about it with him. But as he stepped out of his car, waving his hands in the air, her skepticism reared its ugly head. Not only did he have the audacity to blame the whole accident on her, but he had been very in-your-face throughout the whole discussion. She couldn't even count the number of times he pointed to his Audi and then wagged his finger in her face. Through all that she remained patient. Even when the cops arrived to take down the traffic report and he let loose with the allegation that she may have knocked back a few at lunch, she didn't say word one. It wasn't until he picked up her driver's license after she had given it to him and announced, "Now I know where to find you, bitch," that she decided he would be losing more than an hour or two out of his day.
She waited till that evening to revoke his status among the sighted. She wanted to make sure he wouldn't be on the road. She wanted to insure it looked completely like a freak medical occurrence. Sure, it was an abuse of her power, but in her mind she was entitled. She gave him one week. She thought that would be sufficient time to knock him down a peg.
When the phone rang the next morning the last voice she expected to hear was his.
"Good, I wanted to catch you before you went to work. I just called to say that I was out-of-line yesterday and that's not normally me."
At first, she thought it was remorse. She could imagine him laying in bed, helpless, and trying to atone for his actions in the vain hope that whatever god he prayed to would restore him back to how he used to be. She had seen it often enough, sitting in those courtrooms, as the man or woman would be sentenced. She would see them break down into tears as the realization of how much they had forfeited dawned of them. They would plead with her, beg her to undo what she had done. She'd feel sorry for them for awhile, but she could always rationalize it away with the thought that she was getting paid to a job. It wasn't personal, it was her profession.
Yet, as he refused to hang up the phone that morning, she never heard him once mention about how freaked out he was. In fact, it wasn't until the conversation had begun to draw to an end that he made mention of his condition.
"Well, I'm going to have to let you go, Heather. My friend Rob's here."
"Big plans?"
"I've just got an appointment with the eye doctor today. No biggie. But, hey, we should definitely grab that lunch you talked about."
She had no clue why she talked to him as long as she had. The more she considered it, the more she thought it was probably due to nothing more than curiousity. She had never to do any follow-up once it had been done. Their sight always returned right on schedule. She thought of herself as akin to a watchmaker, who builds the device, sets it into motion, and then doesn't waste time worrying about the fate of his creations. She was pragmatic that way. Though, if she really considered it, her powers were more devestating in nature. She tore people down in order that they could rebuild themselves again. That was her job. It was the people's job to do the actual rebuilding.
After they had the first lunch, she was surprised at well he was taking it all. His doctor had been at a loss to explain it away. Hysterical blindness was his best guess. His doctor had been sure it had something to do with the accident but could not explain the particulars to Ryan.
"But aren't you scared?" she asked him as he was paying the check.
"Petrified," his words said, but somehow she knew he wasn't as petrified as much as he was supposed to be.
When she dropped him off at his place, he invited her inside. She declined, giving some excuse about already having a previous engagement, but he would not be denied. They sat talking for about two hours. After those two hours it became obvious to Heather that she had made a mistake. She didn't know if he had just been having a bad day or that he had a momentary lapse in restraint, but she found him pleasant to talk to and be around. He was not at all someone who deserved his fate, temporary as it may have been.
Maybe that's why she showed up the next day at his place. He had mentioned to her that he had taken the month off from his job in an effort to gather some answers. She thought it might be nice to drop by to look in on him. The truth, however, was that she couldn't quite get him out of her mind. She felt she had wronged him and she was too ashamed to admit she had made a mistake. Not to mention, there were serious legal consequences if he ever discovered what she had done. Honestly, everything that had come out of his mouth during those two hours had only served to ratchet up the nagging guilt she already felt. She wanted to make up for it somehow and the only way she could think of was to assist him in all the small ways he would be unable to assist himself during the following week.
The day after that she took off an hour early from her appointments. She wasn't due in court and her boss owed her for assigning her overtime the month before. She brought him to a fancy place for a dinner and they ended up talking there well after closing.
The next day she spent over at his place, still unable to ease her conscience. Yet she knew there was another reason. She was definitely beginning to fall for the guy. He wasn't everything that she had been looking for, but he was enough for her. She already knew she liked being around him. Combine that with the fact she was so damn humble and courageous around a situation that she knew would completely unhinge the average individual, and she knew she had found something special. She also knew there were rules against this type of fraternizing. In court she wasn't even allowed to give out her name for fear of someone wanting to pay her back for doing her job. Spending the night at somebody she had blinded the week before was not only a no-no, it was against every rule in the code of conduct.
She couldn't stay away, though. She thought of him like the wounded sparrow she had hit with her car. She couldn't turn her back until she knew he would be fine again. Until that time she made it a priority to entertain him.
A week came and went without so much as a by-your-leave, and now she was driving once more to his place. Except this time, if she stayed, she knew he would be regaining his sight at precisely seven days to the minute she had taken it away from him. The nagging doubt that the person she had spent the last couple of days with would disappear began to take hold of her mind. The theory behind her job came bubbling back to the surface. People act differently when they don't have the luxury of being able to see. Would he be so vastly different with his sight as to be unrecognizable? That thought scared her more than the thought of him finding out what she had done. She wasn't a bad person. She had morals. At the time she had stolen his vision away from him, she thought she had been doing it for the right reasons. She thought he would come out a better person for the experience. When she had realized he was already a decent fellow, she worried that she had made the worst error in judgment she had ever made.
Then it began to crystallize that it wasn't he would come out better for the experience. Maybe it was her. Maybe he was her test on what kind of person she was. She began to consider that for a long time, for most of her professional career, she had taken a blind eye, no pun intended, to those she had caused to suffer. Yes, she knew the majority of them had done something so vastly unspeakable to deserve their punishment. A few of them, however, she may have believed hadn't done anything so heinous to go to such extremes as calling upon her ability. Truth be told, she couldn't see the corrolary between someone burglarizing a house for a watch they had given to an ex-girlfriend as a gift and now wanted back, and having to go blind for six months. She couldn't see the justice. Yet she had always abided by what she had been told. She was a blunt instrument in the hands of people she thought were wiser than her. Now she began to give real creedance that had set aside her own idea of fairness and developed an apathetic perspective about the way she conducted herself at work. These were human beings and maybe she couldn't exactly quit her job, but she thought she could have taken the time to really examine the cruelty of her position.
This experience with Ryan showed her she was capable of feeling something more for someone else. She'd always thought she was helping, but this was the first time she truly felt what it was like to actually help someone she had affected directly.
All this, all that she learned was being threatened to being taken from her. She didn't want to see that happen. She began to really consider telling him the truth, tell him what she had done. Perhaps, if he was the guy she really thought he was, he'd understand and the two of them could continue their relationship free of her lies. She thought how much she would like that, to build that kind of life with him. If there was to be any real future she knew that this was the only option.
Or was it?
As she pulled into his driveway, she thought of one more alternative, a way to hold onto what she had began to build. She stepped out her car, afraid to contemplate what she was actually contemplating. It would solve all her problems. It would insure that the two of them could have a real chance of staying together. It would definitely show what kind of person he was and what kind of couple they were going to be. More to the point, it would show what kind of person she truly was.
She didn't deserve him. She knew that. But she couldn't let go of him. Not now, not ever.
Before she stepped inside the front doorway she made sure that the two of them would be together forever, even if meant he could never see her again nor how far she was willing to go to keep him happy.
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
posted by mojo shivers @ 1:31 AM
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