|
Post by Hayley "Chez" Chezaneski on Sept 28, 2009 0:54:53 GMT -5
Hadn't she known it would all fall apart at some point? That because of her father, she'd never be able to live completly normally? She'd managed for some time, that was true - but she could see it crumble before her eyes, all because she'd tried to talk to a friend and find out what was wrong. She felt herself sinking deeper into the hole she'd created for herself, all the while realizing that the two of them were managing to play some twisted sort of twenty questions - because by now, Kate must have managed to realize something was off with her, as she'd done with her as well.
She tossed Kate's words back at her, because they were the truest that she could think of without telling the whole truth.
"Forced to." She answered, tossing a look to the girl sitting next to her. And it was probably the fullest truth she'd told in a long time. Like Kate had done with herself, Hayley pushed to focus away from herself again, only knowing it would come back sooner or later. The quicker they got to Manhatten, the better.
"What was your favorite part about the city?" It was a harmless question, she figured, and one that couldn't possibly be turned back on her.
|
|
|
Post by Kate Saunders on Sept 29, 2009 17:50:44 GMT -5
Kate herself felt like she was drowning. The waters where coming in at a fast rate. Taking her under. Not letting her go. She didn't know what to do. She couldn't find a way out. She was going to be lost. And she thought that was the best thing. Death was the only sanctuary she could think of. The day had come on harder than she had wanted. She couldn't find her way through her life any more, and knew it. Yet some how she was able to continue functioning. Maybe it was the little game the two of them where playing between each other that was helping. She didn't have to say another if she Chez didn't. She could not answer at all. Something seemed to be forcing her to answer, though, after so many years in silence.
With Hayley's answer Kate knew the game had gone to far, with both of them. Chez didn't want to talk about it, and neither did she. Out of the two of them the only one that would learn what had actually happened would most likely be Chez. After all that they had said in the last few minutes when she saw where they ended up she would understand, Kate knew that. But no matter what there was still to much that could explain what Chez had gone through for Kate to guess it, so unless she came out with it there was no way she was learning. Which made Kate mad. The least that could happen was she had leverage on Hayley unless she decided to tell Matt her dirty little secret. He was the last person she wanted to know, epically since he had worked on the case after it had happened.
When she was asked the next question she looked down. Her life after losing AnnaLyn, and Realin, and her parents was nothing. She hated every second of it, always was in pain. Cried herself to sleep. When she moved to California she was dead. It took her a long few moments for her to answer the question. She wanted to be truthful, not that she could have thought of something she liked anyway. Finally she came to the only answer that she could think of, "Nothing." And it was totally the Kate thing to say. yet it still revealed to much about herself then she would have liked. Deciding to continue paying the sick game she asked, "What did you like about Baltimore?" She knew Chez might very well answer like she had the last one with repeating Kate's answer, but there was nothing she could have done.
|
|
|
Post by Hayley "Chez" Chezaneski on Sept 29, 2009 22:07:59 GMT -5
"Nothing."
They were both in deep water, and they both knew it. They were playing a game - and they were both good at games. But was this a game that either of them could win? Hayley knew that she could keep asking questions - but she could keep answering them? No, not without telling something that she didn't want anyone to know. Something that she'd managed to keep away from all of them.
"What did you like about Baltimore?"
With a humorless thought, she considered answering 'the basement.' Because that was all she knew of Baltimore, the basement where not only her brother had died, but a small part of her had died as well. The hotel lobby - where her father and a federal agent had been shot and died? Where she'd killed her father to save herself and the life of someone who was already dead?
"I didn't see much of it." She answered, watching the road and taking another turn. They still had time to kill - and if it wasn't time they were killing, it was any chance Hayley had of keeping herself a secret.
She swallowed, and made the sudden decision to slow the car. "You're not really okay, are you?"
|
|
|
Post by Kate Saunders on Oct 2, 2009 17:52:07 GMT -5
Kate couldn't believe her misfortune. She had only be with the Ct team for a little under a year, and yet she couldn't even keep her secrets hidden for that long. Hayley, on the other hand, had been with the team a lot longer and still no one seemed to think anything was wrong. Kate would have never guessed that the even tempered girl was hiding something as big as it was turning out. Kate cursed herself for not being that good. She had been the best at hiding her emotions for all those years, in college and high school. Yet the one year she actually lives in New York she finds it hard to get past the day her family died. And she was having Chez drive her straight into the eye of the storm. What was she thinking? There was no way this was going to end well.
"I didn't see much of it." Now that was an odd answer. If you lived in a city for around four years then why wouldn't you have seen any of it? Had she been in the hospital all that time, Kate didn't think Maryland had many good hospitals. The only other thing she could think of was either she had forgotten all those years, like amnesia, or something, which didn't quite explain the other woman's attitude, or something else had happened. She had been forced to live there, she didn't see the city, and she didn't want to talk about it. It sounded kind of like she had been kidnapped... Kate couldn't believe that that was true. How could it be? Wouldn't Matt know, or at least Jack? And if so then Kate would have known it, she knew it. But it seemed to be the only thing that made sense. That or she was just being stubborn with Kate and making it seem like she had been through something to get Kate to open up about her own past, unlikely, yet possible.
"You're not really okay, are you?" Kate felt the tear start to sneak out of her eye. As fast as she could, hoping that Chez wouldn't see, she wiped it away and cursed herself for being weak again. Seeing no reason to try and hid it any more she said softly, "No..." She looked down, not wanting to look at Hayley, nit caring to play their little game any more. Not caring if she learned her whole life story. She was done fighting. She was ready to give in to the temptation that had been haunting her the past eight years.
|
|
|
Post by Chez on Oct 4, 2009 22:08:00 GMT -5
And in that moment, she knew that their games were up. She could see it in Kate's eyes and hear it in her voice. She knew what that look felt like, could remember it as clear as day, even if she'd hidden it beneath her and tried to never reach it. Could something just as horrid happened to Kate? Could she have lost someone, like she had? Lost everything that she'd had, like Hayley had?
The liaison slowed the car and paused it on the side of the road, ignoring the 'no standing' sign that was posted there. She'd deal with police involvement later if she had to - besides, she could always flash her badge.
She unbuckled her seat belt and turned to face Kate, drawing her legs up underneath her. "What's wrong, Kate?" The words were barely a whisper carried on a breath. "Tell me, please. I'll listen."[/size]
|
|
|
Post by Kate Saunders on Oct 5, 2009 17:56:41 GMT -5
'Have you ever felt like you were reliving a nightmare?" Kate asked a few moments after Hayley stopped the car. She had barely noticed that they had been driving down the road before. She looked up at the other agent and knew that she knew what she felt like, she had been through something just as bad as Kate had. If anyone knew it was her. Looking back at her lap, afraid to make eye contact to long. She didn't want Chez to see her cry, though she could already feel the tears coming. "Well that's what I've been living..." She said through the frog in her throat. "For eight years now I've been living a nightmare. Every night when I close my eyes... I don't remember the last happy dream I've had. It's always been the same one. Over and over again. Yet it isn't just a dream..."
She had to stop. She quickly whipped the tears that had escaped away with the sleeve of her shirt. Taking a few large breaths she then was able to continue with her story. "It's the worst in this day... the day that it all feel apart... I used to be happy..." She tried to laugh but failed. "I used to have a family..." It was the one thing she never talked about. She never mentioned her fallen family. To the world she had none, and never had. "I used to have a mom and a dad... and two sisters... twins... Annalyn and Realin... I used to be Kathlen..." She had to stop again. The memory of her sisters hurt even more when she said their names out loud. It hurt to hear her real name. She didn't know why she had said that. It was yet another thing that very few people knew about her. And yet she had told Chez even though it shared no purpose in the story.
"On this day eight years ago my family had taken a trip to New York... My dad had business to do... We had... we had gone to the world trade center.... just... just for fun.... how could I have known it was the last time I would see them?" Kate broken into full tears then. Knowing that even though she couldn't finish the story Chez would have put the pieces of the puzzle together by now.
|
|
|
Post by Hayley "Chez" Chezaneski on Oct 11, 2009 0:34:22 GMT -5
Yes, of course she knew what that was like. She relived one every time she saw a brother and a sister playing together, or every time that she heard of another parent abusing a child. She lived it every time that she closed her eyes and had ever since she'd been liberated from the situation at nearly thirteen years old.
But that didn't make it any easier to hear exactly what had happened to Kate.
Of course. Looking back on the past hour, of course Chez could see it all now - she could see exactly where they were going, too, and it was all so simple that she chided herself for not figuring it out and offering Kate some peace sooner.
She was crying now - full on crying, after she'd let her finish her story without interuption, and Hayley didn't realize that there were tears trekking down her own face as well. Their stories - their pasts, while so vastly different, were so similiar at the same time. They'd both lost their entire families - because while Hayley had her mother, of course, it wasn't the same. It could never be the same once she'd gone back. It was she who had changed, Hayley knew this, even if it was hard to accept.
Without thinking of any possible reaction that the woman across from her could have, she gathered the sobbing Kate into her arms, stroking her hair. "Shh, Kate. It's ..." No, it wasn't alright. It wasn't alright to have your entire family ripped away from you. "I'm so sorry, Kate." With Kate so close to her, she could feel the woman shaking - it had to be from more than the sobs, and Hayley wondered if the woman had eaten today at all. "It's not fair, it isn't. It's not right. Nobody ... nobody should lose family. Nobody."
It was how she was on Ryan's birthday - he'd died only eight or nine days before turning ten, and she still could barely face the day, more than fifteen years later.
"But you've got to know that they loved you. And that they knew that, don't you? You know that. You couldn't have known that it would be ... the way that it ended up." She was surprised at how composed her words were. "But love isn't something that goes unknown."
And then, she broke. Years later she still wouldn't know exactly what had made her do it, still couldn't pinpoint the element that made her tell. In truth, she didn't tell it all. In some ways, she never would be able to - there was just too much to tell. But it was the first words of them she'd ever uttered, and, at the very least, it was a start. She was tired, too. Maybe it had been her own words, reminding her that possibly her brother knew she loved him as well, and that's why he'd not allowed her to come near him the week he lay dying, saving her life but ending his. Maybe it was Kate's story. But whatever it was...
"I lost them too, Kate." She whispered it so silently that she was sure that the woman wouldn't hear her over her sobs, but she didn't care if she did or didn't. In some ways, the words were only meant for her, and Hayley wouldn't hold it against Kate if she didn't respond at all.
|
|
|
Post by Kate Saunders on Oct 16, 2009 9:54:01 GMT -5
Kate buried her head in her arms not wanting to let Chez see her like this. She hadn't cried in front of someone for eight years to the day. After she learned that she had made it out of the building safe, but some how her sister and parents and gotten caught up several floors above her, once she learned that she had abandoned them up there, she had broken into tears on the dust covered streets. And she didn't stop crying until days later after they had found the four bodies. By the time the funeral came around she had no more tears to shed. Then after she went to California to live with her father's brother who cared nothing for his now dead brother Kate had stopped crying in front of people. She cried every night to herself, a tradition that she still held true to to the day, but until that moment she had never lost it in front of another human being. Crying was a sign of weakness, one that Kate couldn't afford to show.
As Chez talked about how her family knew that she loved them Kate couldn't help but disagree. She had been thirteen years old, her sister had been fourteen. But when she heard the first plane hit the building a few floors over them the only thing Kate could do was run. She had a few injured for falling rubble. But even with what was later discovered as a broken ankle and arm she had made her way down uncountable flights of stairs, not even thinking to help her family, who even to this day she was sure one of them had been caught under something, and the rest had tried to save them and thus didn't make it out in time. Kate hadn't even stopped to help random people along the stair well that were to injured to make it down, not that the small wounded girl could have done much. How many people had died inside the building because she hadn't stopped to help them? This was nothing that she was going to tell anyone else, not even after telling the story. No one needed to know what kind of devil she was. Most people didn't like her now because she made herself out as a mean person, but if they knew what she had done no one would even want her to live. She could live with the life she had created for herself. But she wasn't ready to live the life that had been given to her.
"I lost them too, Kate." The words were almost to soft to hear. But when they were muttered it caused Kate's eyes to suddenly dry up with no more tears. Her breath still a little raspy she lifted her head and looked over at the older woman. So something had happened to her that was like what she had gone through. Some how she had lost her family also. The two very different people, one in front of the cameras, the other hidden behind them, were more alike than either of them could imagine. It didn't matter how Hayley lost her family, even if it was miles away from how Kate did they still both knew more than anyone else what the other one was going through. Kate wasn't sure what to say to the soft confession, whether she was supposed to have heard it or not. Anyone time Kate would have ignored it, afraid of what might come from it. But she had already shown all her cards, well most of them, so there wasn't much to loss. "Wh....what happened?" Kate asked afraid that she might be crossing a line, and actually cared.
|
|
|
Post by Hayley "Chez" Chezaneski on Oct 16, 2009 22:41:17 GMT -5
For the third or fourth time that day, she felt her heart nearly stop. She immediatly felt guilty for interupting Kate. The sentence she'd spoken had really been for herself, she told herself. It hadn't meant to be answered, right? Did she really want to say everything about herself - about what had happened to her when she was nine, ten, eleven, twelve?
But Kate had actually responded - she'd asked, and Hayley had never heard her sound so sincere. She always sounded so nonchalant, the patented 'Kate' attitude, but that wasn't present right now. She'd sounded honestly sincere and it threw Chez off her guard.
How long had they been so ignorant of this, of how alike they were? How could they not have noticed how much they had in common? Sure, they usually didn't speak to each other - they weren't usually in each other's company, one of them was in the media and one was undercover, and when they did come together they were usually pretending to be other people for the sake of the job - but the two agents were so different, how could they be so alike? How could they have let that go unoticed for all this time? When the one person who probably would have understood all along was sitting right in front of her?
But maybe that's not what she'd wanted, someone to understand - was it? She'd only wanted to continue as if it had never happened, but that was falling apart in front of her.
Was she really about to break that right now? She could feel it looming in front of her. Nobody knew - nobody since middle school. Sure, in high school, rumours had circulated and some truths had surfaced, but once she'd hit college she'd been able to be a completly different person. She'd struggled for so long to shed that scared little girl - was she about to welcome that part of herself back by telling Kate all about her - about her brother and her father and everything else that had plauged her?
She took a deep breath.
And spoke the truth, for the first time.
"I was nine." She spoke the words hestiantly and quietly, and realized that she'd left Kate waiting for a couple of moments before she'd spoken her first sentence. "And I was living in New York City with ..." She found that she couldn't speak, and she had to take several deep breaths before she continued. "with my twin brother. His name ... She swalowed. "was Ryan. Our parents had just gotten divorced ... he told us he was just taking us on vacation, how were we supposed to know?" Her voice cracked with that admission - she'd always blamed herself. Ryan hadn't wanted to get in the car with their father that day at the park, he said he wasn't supposed to be taking them, but she'd said that it was their father, what could the harm be?
"And he took us in the car and he drove for a long time. When we finally got out, we didn't even know where we were - and he threw us in an unused basement of a hotel." She was shaking, and she hated that. "He was selfish. He didn't want our mother to have us. And he kept us there in tha basement for two years before Ryan... before Ryan ... Ryan got the flu. And my "father" refused to take him to a hospital." And she was crying, silently, tears running down her face but she continued to talk because she had to, now that she'd started.
"He refused to let me near him, Ryan. He didn't want me to ... die too. He did. He died. He was only eleven, Kate. Eleven. And he died because of what my father did." Because I wasn't strong enough to save him. "My 'father' developed schizofrenia ... guess he always had it, huh?" Her laugh was sarcastic. "and he started to kill people that reminded him of my mother... long story short, the FBI got involved... long story longer, my father kidnapped one of the agents. His schizofrenic brain told him it was my brother.
That man, that agent, he helped me to escape. And my dad killed him. And I killed my dad." She could pretend that the story ended there, and she would, for now, because she couldnt' continue, not right now.
"Those agents that were on my Dad's case - they were the BAU. I dont' think they even had any idea that there were children involved in that case - just stopping a serial killer. Imagine their surprise finding me in that basement when their agent was kidnapped." She was laughing now because she found it to be better than crying. "You know, I think Agent Rossi recognized me - not as me, of course, but just recognized me as familiar? Of course, I had my father's name back then - he's the only one old enough to have worked that case, and he did work that case, I remember..." She realized suddenly that she was still talking - the one thing she was good at, talking, becase she'd found her voice after all those years in silence. Once you found your voice, it was more than hard to give it up.
|
|
|
Post by Kate Saunders on Oct 18, 2009 11:29:37 GMT -5
Kate could tell that Hayley wasn't to thrilled about sharing her own past. And for once the other woman felt bad about it. Why would she cause someone the same pain that she had just gone through? Did it really matter that much to know about Chez's own haunted past. Several time did Kate want to say, Never Mind. Or just tell her to drive. There was several minutes between when Kate asked about it when Chez actually started to talk. At one point Kate had decided that Hayley hadn't heard her at all, which was hopeful thinking. When Chez started to talk Kate knew that she had heard. And now was to late to stop her. An eye for an eye, right? Kate spills the beans, Chez has to give something else in return. It was the game they had been playing. Yet Kate still hated herself for it. She knew what it was like to without her past and never talk about it, never think about it. Chez had been hiding her true self a lot longer than Kate had, how much harder would it be for her?
Kate didn't stop her though. She wanted to know, no matter how much it hurt. She wanted to see what had happened to Chez to make her the way she was. She wanted to see how so like people could be so different. As Hayley went on to tell her horrific experience in the basement Kate thought it was odd, maybe even funny. Not what she had gone through, no that was terrible and in many ways worse than what Kate had. Kate had had one terribly bad day where everything just floated away from her. Chez had had four years of hell watching her brother fade into nothing until he was no longer there. Chez had been truly alone for all those years, Kate had forced herself to be alone.
What Kate thought was funny was the way that they had turned out. Kate had been the rich senators daughter. She had had everything she wanted. She was always in the lime light. At parties, in social gathering. But once she lost her family she became invisible, hidden in the shadows. Even more so when she went into undercover. She was a ghost, for ever haunted by the ghost of her past. Hayley on the other hand had spent years in a basement with out a say in anything. When she had gotten out she had soon found her voice, and now she stood in front of a camera, prod-casting herself to the world. Shouldn't it have turned out the other way? The social butterfly with piles of money turn into the believer, the speaker to the people warning them of the dangers that she had gone through. Trying to stop people from dieing like she was doing now but in the same lime light she grew up in?
Kate eyes, that had been fixed on her lap for the story finally moved up to look at Chez next to her. She had been shocked to hear that it had been the BAU that had saved her. That Rossi had been there and yet he didn't remember. How could that be? It hadn't been that long, shouldn't he remember? Maybe it was better for Hayley that he didn't, yet Kate couldn't help but wonder if it hurt her to know she wasn't memorable. Kate herself worked with a man that had worked the 9/11 case. Matthew Grimaldi had looked into it after the day, and yet he still had no idea that he was working with one of the survivors and Kate hoped that it would stay that way, she didn't want the man's pity. She didn't want anything to change. Taking a large breath she said, not knowing what else she could possible say, "I wont tell anyone if you wont?" Her words were a little cold, but her voice was still soft. Still caring. The opposite of who everyone knew Kate to be.
|
|
|
Post by Chez on Oct 28, 2009 21:21:38 GMT -5
"Of course," She said, tired, heavy eyes set on the road before her, the car parked on the side of it. "I was young then. I had a different name. And I barely saw him. The agent who died there ... it was different for them then. The BAU didn't work in teams." It wasn't as it was today - if it had been today, and a federal agent from the BAU had been kidnapped and died, Rossi surely would have remembered her, because he'd have worked closely with the man. Today they worked as a team, in former years they'd worked as singles. "I think he feels I'm a familiar face."
"I won't tell anyone if you won't."
"I won't." The words were out of her mouth quickly, and she spoke them assuredly. That secrecy, that assurance, was all she needed. She wondered if Kate hadn't told anyone for the same reasons that she had - she hadn't wanted the pity. She didn't want to be the little girl locked in the basement.
But she knew she was. She undoubtly was, and she'd worked so hard to lcok that part of her away. Perhps she hadn't suceeded as well as she thought she had.
|
|
|
Post by Kate Saunders on Oct 29, 2009 9:05:47 GMT -5
Kate wondered why Chez hadn't joined the BAU, and instead the CT team? Why hadn't she decided to go after men like her father, and stop people from getting harmed the same way she had. Maybe it was as simple as she didn't want people to know, and figured that somehow working with the team, even though it wasn't the same people as before, (though Rossi had just rejoined) would be to hard to keep her secret. But like she said she was under a different name, Rossi didn't even know now. Maybe she wasn't like Kate, who had joined Counter Terror for that very reason, even though she worked with Matt one of the agents on the 9/11 attacks and he still didn't know. It wasn't like he saw her face or anything, just her name. Or maybe rather the name of her dead family. She wasn't sure if he would have seen the survivors list.
When Hayley ensured Kate that they she wouldn't tell anyone she felt better. She didn't know what she would do if people found out. It was bad enough that one person on the team had to know her true colors. She wouldn't be able to take Matt looming over her, taking care of her because now she had a reason to be the way she was. She liked ticking people off for seemingly no reason (losing ones family wasn't a very good reason either). She liked not being able to connect with even her partner. She liked the life that she had now. No way she could hurt other people now, forget to save them from the falling building. She would always be there for people in the shadows, even if they didn't know it.
Kate's eyes slowly feel to the clock on the dash board. She knew that Chez needed a moment. But Kate's eyes had dried up and she didn't want to sit awkwardly on the side of the road any longer. She was also becoming ants about getting to the ground zero sites, and not missing to much of the tribute. No reason to not go now. Chez already knew, there was nothing stopping her this time. "Um..." She wasn't to sure what to say, so not like the woman. "Can we get going now?" She sounded like a scared child asking her mother something she knew would make her mad.
|
|