"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all." ― Oscar Wilde.
The Father
The explosion reverberated back to Stew and I, and we shared worried, fearful expressions.
"He's not going to leave her, not now." Stew said, referring to Jason as we made our way along the hallway towards the man sobbing and swearing, rocking Emily in his arms.
"Jason," I said, clearing my throat gently. "Jason, it's no use, we have to keep going."
"No!" He yelled. "I need to find that bastard. What's her name? Dylan? She did this, I need to find her."
"Jason, you're angry, you're upset, if you go after her now, she'll use that against you."
"I don't care!" He spat, looking up at me with tears smudging the bloodstains on his cheeks. His hands were red with Emily's blood, her body limp and lifeless against him.
I shuddered and looked away, feeling sick.
"She agreed to marry me," He choked, a sob raking his throat. "We were going to spend the rest of our lives together,"
I winced.
Why did people fall in love in the middle of war? Why promise themselves a life they could never hope to lead?
I guess that was the beauty of love... It made you feel powerful and alive. What better place for those emotions than in a war zone where death and weakness prevailed?
"There's no pointing in living a life without her. Dylan can kill me for all she wants. But if she tries, I'm taking her with me."
He sniffed and rubbed the back of his bloody hand over his snotty nose and cried as he laid Emily down on the floor.
"We'll come back for her, I promise." I told him as he moved onto his knees to kneel by her side.
Stew and I continued down to the end of the corridor to give Jason some privacy.
A few moments later, he joined us, cocking his gun.
"Let's go." He said, cracking his neck.
I sighed and followed him further along the corridor, which broke out into a landing that overlooked a small lobby beneath us.
There were no bannisters at the edgings of the landing, and the stairs were blown to pieces.
"What the hell happened here..." Stew mumbled as we walked to the edge of the landing and looked over, seeing nothing but the rubble of broken doors, marble, wood and glass.
"They must've bombed here." Jason shrugged absentmindedly, his eyes staring glassily down into the bomb site beneath us.
I realised then, as the dust and smoke were beginning to settle, that there was blood everywhere.
I could smell it, too. The coppery iron heat of blood was everywhere. Of course, we could smell smoke and fire and gunpowder, too. But mainly blood.
My heart squeezed and my stomach dropped.
"Melanie..." I mumbled, and the two men turned to me in confusion.
"Melanie!" I called out, realising that of course, she'd be down there.
I looked down frantically into the pit beneath us, desperate for a sign of life.
A hand protruded from the rubble and I gulped, trying to find it's owner. It took me a while before I realised that it had no owner...
Behind me, Stew wheezed as we began to see the torn limbs amongst the rubble of the building beneath us. Of course, it was hard to see, but once you found one lost hand, all you could see was the torn bodies beneath us.
"MELANIE!" I frantically screamed, running along the edge of the landing to try to get a better view.
"We need to get down there!" Jason demanded, and ran in the opposite direction.
"Melanie!" I cried, desperately trying to find a way down to the pit beneath me.
I turned to find that Stew and Jason were gone, and I wondered where the Hell they'd gone without me.
"Hello, Aaron." A familiar voice came from behind me and I whipped around, to the corridor we'd just come from, to see Kate Joyner standing in a black skirt-suit and red lip-stick, looking as alive and powerful as the day I'd met her.
"Kate," I said, cocking my gun and training it on her. "Aren't you supposed to be dead?"
She smiled and waved a hand as though she were gently swatting a fly.
"Details, details," She scoffed. "Aren't you supposed to be retired by now?" She smiled and I cocked an eyebrow.
"Details, details." I echoed and she smiled wickedly.
"It's no use, you know," She said sweetly as she took a careful step forward.
I looked away for a second to ensure I wouldn't step over the edge of the landing and then trained my eyes back on Kate before me.
"She'll never hear you from this high, the acoustics just won't allow it." She changed her expression, and for a moment, she looked sad.
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"Melanie," She said. "She won't hear you from this high."
"How can you say her name?" I frowned. "Our daughter, who you abandoned. How can you even think about her?"
"Oh Aaron, don't be dramatic."
"And how do you even know that she's down there?"
This time, when her expression changed, there wasn't a hint of sadness.
"Do you think I would've allowed that bomb to go off without her there?" She tsked, and smiled again. "Why Aaron, you don't know me at all."
The Protector
Distant shouting interrupted the ringing in my ears and I groaned, trying to open my eyes.
I coughed as I inhaled dust and dirt and moved my arms to clear the space in front of my face.
I couldn't tell which way was up or down, until I realised my left arm was trapped beneath a huge piece of marble.
I winced and rolled onto my left side, the wood and debris falling from my body as I did so. I used my right hand to drive a small wedge beneath my left arm and the marble, and dragged my left arm free.
I grazed and cut my fingers as I pulled my right hand free, and swallowed the tears as they stung at my eyes.
I rolled onto my stomach and forced myself into a stance; my bones crunching, my legs and arm aching, blood smudging and rolling down my face and arms.
I had an open wound on my leg, but nothing compared to the agony of searching that debris for a sign - any sign - of Melanie.
"MELANIE!" I yelled desperately. I'd been blown to the mouth of the hallway we'd just emerged from, and I had no idea where she'd gone.
I turned desperately to find Dylan mere feet from me, a knife in her hand as though she'd been creeping up on me to cut me.
Without even blinking, without hesitation, I reached forward and snatched her by her throat, Jason and Stew yelling to me from far away as I tripped over debris and broken furniture to throw Dylan against the nearest wall.
"You have some fucking nerve, coming at me with a knife." I said, pinning her against the wall.
My left arm was pretty much out of the game, so I hadn't thought beyond pinning her to the wall with my right hand against her throat.
"How come you never handled me like this when we were together?" She choked, dropping the knife to try to pry my hand from her throat.
In the darkness of the corridor, her eyes were sparkling as her face turned red.
"That was the biggest mistake of my life." I said through my teeth, tightening my grip on her throat.
"Aw c'mon Spencer, you don't mean that," She gasped. "We had some great times." She wheezed.
"Yeah, like the time I snuck behind your back repeatedly to see Melanie, and then when I eventually broke up with you to move back in with her. You were nothing but a skid mark on my life that I cannot wait to flush clean."
She stared me dead in the eye, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she stared me down, her hands falling limp as my words registered.
Then, as if in a flash, rage rolled across her face and she smacked down on my arm with just enough force to make me flinch.
I didn't lose my grip on her throat, but I wavered, and that was enough.
She pushed forward and pummelled a punch straight in my stomach and that was enough to make me lose my grip.
I doubled over, and whilst I was over, I snatched the gun from my sock and straightened.
Only, when I trained my gun straight for her forehead, she'd got a gun from somewhere too, and had it resting right on me.
The Father
"So you'd really do that?" I asked carefully, not so much as blinking.
"You'd really kill your own daughter?"
She shrugged as though I'd asked her something menial.
"I don't have a daughter," She said simply. "My life began when that bomb almost killed me."
"Us," I reiterated. "That bomb almost killed us. Our daughter was in the same city at the same time, you do know that don't you?"
"Of course I do. I've always known where Melanie is."
"And yet... She isn't your daughter?"
She pouted as though she was annoyed I'd corrected her.
"Enough of the small talk, Aaron. Are you going to get out of my way or are you going to become a problem?"
"Am I not a big enough problem to you as is?" I asked, feeling slightly wounded that my presence here wasn't a problem for her.
"Not nearly enough, Aaron." She smiled and waved her hand, and suddenly a man appeared from the hallway to my left. In an instant, I'd turned and shot him, and he fell in a heap on the floor.
"Now am I a problem?"
*
I marched Kate back down the hallway and into what appeared to be an admin office. There were desks and telephones and computers, and the majority of the room appeared to be untouched by the panic around us.
I marched her to a chair in the corner and we both sat down opposite one another after I'd barricaded the door closed.
"I'm surprised, for someone at the head of a terrorist cell, you're not very well protected."
"That's because you just took out my bodyguard." She huffed in an insulted tone, blowing hair out of her eyes.
"He was your bodyguard? That guy that didn't see me shooting him?" I scoffed, almost entertained.
"He was a marksman, he's the best we had."
"Well," I smiled. "I'm honoured to have dethroned him."
"Oh quit smiling, Aaron, it doesn't suit your face." She snapped and I was taken aback.
I hadn't been smiling. Maybe on the inside, but certainly not on the outside.
"How on Earth did you get into this, Kate? I know you were always aiming for the top, but a terrorist cell? Really?"
"We're not discussing this, Aaron. I'm not talking to you."
I rolled my eyes and sat back on my chair.
"So do you just plan on being silent until I kill you? You don't plan on talking your way out of this?"
She snapped her head around to face me.
"You couldn't kill me," She smiled. "You don't have it in you to take another person's life unwarranted."
"No," I said, shaking my head. "You're right, I don't," She smiled. "But you've killed plenty, I think your death is warranted."
Her smile fell and she looked almost scared for a moment.
"You won't kill me, Aaron. I'm the mother of your daughter."
"No," I told her. "You gave up that right when you joined that terrorist cell, better yet, when you gave our daughter to your parents to raise. You didn't tell me you were pregnant, Kate!"
"So is this why you're really going to kill me? Because I kept your daughter from you."
"There's nothing personal about this, there are just some things we have to iron out first."
"Like what?" She sighed in a bored tone. "Like the fact that I named her after your grandmother to force you into coming back to me? Like the fact that as soon as I returned and found out you were back with that whore of yours, I was so heartbroken that I couldn't ever look at Melanie again. Like the fact that every day of my life I've lived it, picturing how wonderful we could've been together, as a family, so happy and in love and devoted to each other."
I tried not to let her words affect me and carried on regardless.
"But instead, you're devoted to an organisation that wants to kill thousands and doom our country forever?"
"Oh don't be melodramatic, Knavs is going to be the best thing to ever happen to America."
"And what would you know, Kate, you're British!"
"And so is your daughter, and yet she's fighting for your president like he's her father!"
"Because that's what you do when you love something. You fight for it. You don't join a terrorist organisation in order to avenge your broken heart."
A heavy silence hung between us and I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere.
She'd been brainwashed. Taken and turned into something I barely recognised. She was programmed to believe that 'the cause' was the right thing to do, that we were the enemy and Knavs was the only one who could stop us.
Talking was pointless.
The Protector
"Well," Dylan breathed heavily. "Isn't this exciting?"
I didn't blink.
"Who'd have thought, all those years ago, sleeping together in the same bed, fucking, kissing, dating... That we'd be here, holding a gun to each other's heads..."
I didn't flinch.
"Is this what it's like with Melanie? All red-hot-blood, excitement and energy and passion? You were always so gentle with me, it was boring, but this..." She laughed excitedly. "This is more like it!"
I didn't reply.
"Oh c'mon Spencer, say something, you're making me think you're actually planning on pulling that trigger."
I took the safety off and cocked an eyebrow.
"And you're making me think that you still believe we have a chance together." I said calmly.
"Oh no, I'm way past that. I was engaged, happily, everything was going swimmingly until you and your gang of goons decided to play Mystery Inc."
"What's gotten into you, Dylan? You were never like this. A terrorist cell? What possessed you?"
"Oh Spencer, your naivety is flattering," She smiled. "I've always been like this. The first time we met, I was a part of the Cell. The fact you fell for all of my little lies proves how deep I'd gotten and how shallow you really are."
She removed the safety on her gun and I frowned.
"What do you mean you were a part of the Cell when we met? That was decades ago, Dylan."
"Exactly," She sighed sweetly. "Long before Melanie came along, that's for sure."
There was a thick silence that enveloped us.
"How long have you been manipulating this?" I whispered, almost terrified to know the answer.
"Oh Spencer," She sighed again. "Right from the very beginning."
She'd barely finished her sentence when I cracked my hand out, hitting her over the side of her face with my gun.
In the struggle, her finger twitched and she shot the gun, but it just grazed the air above my shoulder as she fell to the floor.
I grabbed her by the hair and began dragging her along the corridor, the pain in my body merely fuelling my rage.
"If this were in any other environment, I'd say this was sexy." She gushed, trying to claw at my hands.
I dragged her up a flight of stairs, making sure to throw her against the metal bannisters as I dragged her, 'accidentally' kicking her a few times to ease her way up the stairs.
It was strange, if this were any other woman, I'd never have been able to handle and treat her the way I was currently doing with Dylan.
At the end of the day, she was a woman, born into this world to reproduce and love.
All Dylan had reproduced was hatred, and all she had loved was war.
"Where are you taking me?" She said through her teeth, ripping the skin on my hands.
I threw her against a wall and grabbed my gun from my holster, reaching out and shooting her in the knee caps.
She screamed out in agony and I revelled in her pain before continuing to drag her along the corridor.
We were at the very top now, and I knew the blasts had shot through the ceilings and destroyed floors, creating a sort of pit where my wife lay somewhere, hopefully still alive.
I dragged Dylan as she sobbed and winced, my entire body red-hot with anger and agony.
We came out at the opening of the pit and I smiled, this is where Dylan would die.
"You know," She spat as we came to a stop and I leaned against a wall to catch my breath.
"I never laid a hand on your precious Melanie," She spat. "I'm not interested in her."
"Of course you are," I said breathlessly. "You couldn't stand the fact that whilst you were playing me, I was playing you. You couldn't stand that I'd never be on your team."
"Spencer," She smiled. "I don't even bat for your team, let alone want you on mine."
"What are you talking about, Dylan?" I snapped angrily.
"I'm a lesbian, Spencer," She smiled wickedly. "Emily killed my fiance, so I killed Emily."
I glared at her for a moment.
"I was using you to get closer to the Bureau, closer to the BAU, and subsequently closer to the Hotchner's. Heck, the plan was to make Melanie fall in love with me. But she'll never be on my team," She caught her breath, her face shining grey with sweat.
"I'm sorry that I used you, Spencer. You were just a pawn to get me to the Hotchner's. They're the ones who had the power, Spencer, not you."
I stared at her for a moment longer.
"I might've been powerless," I said as I pushed off the wall. "But I'm the one who has power now."
I gritted my teeth as I stepped towards her and snatched her by the arm.
"Spencer, no, Spencer, please, no, I'll take you with me, please, Spencer, don't, no!" She eerily screamed as I threw her into the pit and she fell, five floors, and landed with a sickening crunch, a stake of a table leg straight through her abdomen.
The Father
"I don't understand you, Aaron, I really don't. You march me along a corridor, sit me in a chair as if we're about to do storytime, and now you're marching me all the way back along the corridor to what? Push me over the edge? You do know I have fighters everywhere. They're not going to let you kill me."
"Is that so?" I said in a bored tone, the barrel of my gun pressed against the back of her head.
"And how do you know that you have any minions, sorry I mean, fighters, left?"
"Oh c'mon, your team isn't bright enough to have killed them all. There were quite a lot of us."
"And there were quite a lot of us."
"Yes, most of whom we've killed."
I didn't respond but kept pushing her back along the corridor towards the ledge.
I wasn't quite sure what my plan was.
Shoot her? Have her fall into the pit?
Push her? Risk her surviving?
This is a woman who had survived a bomb, I didn't want to take any chances.
"Who did you put in your grave?" I asked before I could stop myself.
"What?" She asked, taken aback by my question. "Oh that was easy," She said cockily, and if I hadn't have handcuffed her hands together, I knew she would've been waving in one of those Kate-signature gestures.
"We just did the exact same thing that you did with our daughter,"
She stopped and turned to face me, a cruel smile on her face.
"You don't need to have a body to have a funeral."
I clicked the safety off of my gun, the barrel pressed against her forehead now.
"Why did you do it?" I questioned. "Why did you torture our daughter?" My voice wavered ever-so-slightly, and I hoped she hadn't heard it.
Melanie and Jack. They'd always be my vulnerable points.
"There it is!" She cheered.
"The question I'd been waiting for! Why did I do it?" She cackled, throwing her head back carelessly as if there wasn't a gun pointed at her head.
"Because I could," She sang manically. "Because she had answers, and I had questions."
"She's your daughter," I hollered. "You gave birth to her!"
"And she betrayed me!" She yelled back, the smile and happiness gone from her face.
"She went crawling to you, she built a life with you!"
"And she wasn't supposed to do that?" I guessed. "She believed her mother was dead! She'd gone looking for you! You were gone!"
"And she just moved on to the next best thing," She huffed, as though we were talking about a man jumping from woman to woman.
"We're not discussing some whore, we're discussing our daughter. She believed her mother was dead and she sought out her father! She did not betray you."
"Oh yes she did," She scoffed. "Building a prestigious career in the FBI, working her way up to political esteem. How dare she."
I shook my head.
"I've worked with psychopaths, mad-men, truly insane individuals. But you, Kate, you're the worst one out of them all."
"Why thank you." She dipped her head and that crazy smile plastered over her face again.
"So because your daughter found her father and built a career for herself... You decided to abduct her, and torture her."
"Like I said, she had the answers to questions I had."
"And did you find your answers?"
Her silence certainly answered my question.
"Did it ever cross your mind that maybe she didn't have the answers you were looking for?"
"Oh she did," She sang. "She's my daughter. Of course, she'd have the answers."
"And what were these 'questions' that you had?"
She smiled and met my eyes calmly, coolly, the blue diamonds sparkling in the darkness.
"Did I do the right thing?"
The question seemed so random, that for a moment I thought she was asking it of me.
There was a long pause as I came to terms with the fact that no, she wasn't asking me the question, she had been seeking the answer out of our daughter.
"You abducted and tortured our daughter to discover if you'd done the right thing?" I asked, only to clarify what on earth she meant.
"I had to know that I'd done the right thing by giving her up. That I'd made her stronger. That she was where she was, because of me."
Another long pause.
"You crazy bitch."
No, I didn't contemplate saying that. No, I didn't regret it either.
"That's awfully out of character of you, Aaron." Kate sniffled, looking taken aback.
"You beat our daughter. You abducted her, you killed our friends, you robbed a child of its mother, you made your own granddaughter believe her mother was dead, you ripped our family apart, you beat your own daughter to within an inch of her life. The death and destruction you have caused..." I shook my head in disgust and tears shone in her eyes.
"And you say swearing is out of my character," I shook my head. "Your character is an abomination," I spat. "You... disgust me."
She opened her mouth to disagree, but stopped, unable to say anything.
"Aaron..." Is all she said instead, one final, pleading word.
"You almost killed my daughter," I said. "It's because of you that so many people have died," I squared my shoulders and pointed my gun at her. "Therefore, you deserve to die."
The Protector
I managed to get back downstairs and into the hell-pit where Darren and Danny had sacrificed their lives to save Mel and I.
Jason and Stew were riffling through the rubble, calling names desperately trying to find life.
"Have you found her? Where's Melanie?" I called, worried to hear their response.
"Spencer?" She called, and they moved out of the way to show Melanie hobbling over the rubble, a large cut across her cheek, running down her neck and into her shoulder. I wondered if it was an old scar reopened, or whether this was a new one.
It didn't matter, nothing did as I hurried over the rubble towards her.
"I thought you were trapped, I was so scared to come back down here." I cried into her shaved head which smelled of blood, sweat and smoke.
"I know, I didn't know where you'd gone until they told me you'd found Dylan..." Melanie choked as she craned her neck back to look up at me.
Looking at her from this angle, Dylan's body was just about visible over her shoulder.
"You killed her..." She said simply.
"She's over." I said, stroking her cheek, wincing at the sight of her nasty cut.
"Spence..." Mel whimpered, her hands pressed against my chest. "She killed Emily..." I nodded and my bottom lip quivered before I pulled her against my chest as she sobbed.
Suddenly gunfire cracked above us and Melanie jumped out of my arms, all four of us craning our necks to see, our guns aimed and ready.
At the edge of the opening on the third floor, Aaron and Kate were wrestling, and a gun was flying down towards the pit.
"DAD!" Melanie screamed and jolted for the nearby corridor.
"Melanie..." I warned, trying to jolt after her.
Suddenly pain shot through my leg and I winced, falling to the rubble, watching as Melanie ran off down the corridor for the stairs.
The Father
Out of nowhere, a man came hurtling towards me and threw me down on the floor at the same time as I shot the gun.
The bullet whizzed by Kate, and I hadn't even hit the ground but I had my knife from my belt and had it launched into the man's chest as he threw himself down on top of me.
I threw his body from mine, over the edge of the opening and lunged for Kate.
She cracked her head down and whacked me solidly, making me woozy and dizzy for a moment.
She kicked my side and I staggered towards the edge before throwing myself down on the floor where I'd been moments previous.
Her foot kicked out and I snatched it, but she pulled it away again too quickly and all I was left with, was a shoe.
I tossed it aside and she kicked off her other one as I scrambled to my feet, ready to lunge for her.
She still had her hands handcuffed, so I was at an advantage. Although, I was still dizzy and off-balance from where she'd head-butted me.
Hatred and rage shot through me, fuelling me to lunge for her. She moved out of the way at the last second and I fell to the floor, but as she'd jumped away from me, her tights had slid on the marble floor and she slipped, completely losing her balance.
She wobbled for a few moments and I took my opportunity, watching her wobbling there at the edge of the opening.
I snatched my gun from my sock and shot, catching her square in the chest.
In the split second, before she fell, she looked at me, with the most ghostly of blank expressions, as if the power had been drained from a robot; the phantom sucked from the human host.