"Try to touch the past. Try to deal with the past. It's not real. It's just a dream."
― Ted Bundy
AWARENESS
"I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT." Frank mused, pacing back and forth the sparsely-furnished office. He had always wondered why she had an office that barely had any personality but he never asked. After all, she herself lacked personality. "One second, she's seeking me for advice and the next, she's looking at me like I'm one of the damned."
Mirabel leaned against her chair, toying her silver pen between her fingertips. She wanted to indulge, to smile, to ask, to know, but she held her lips together in a grim line. "And why are you reporting this to me?" She rose a brow. "Are you telling me you can't do your job?"
Frank frowned. "No." He couldn't see how his boss hadn't noticed the way in which Aria had changed. She had lost weight, she sagged as though she carried everyone's problems on her slender shoulders, she had half moons for eyes and her lips rarely tilted up. "Rita, listen, I think we need to...end this. Aria isn't doing well. Can't we send her home?"
"Send her home?"
"I mean, fire her."
Mirabel pursed her lips. She heaved a dramatic sigh and pulled her glasses from her lean face. She had known this day would come. "We can't do that and you know that. She has the power to leave whenever she wants to—"
Frank gritted his teeth. "Well, I think she's forgotten that."
"Or maybe she wants to know why." Mirabel said, exceptionally harsh and to the point. She was disappointed in Frank. She had known that he would be naive, but she hadn't expected him to care about Aria so quickly. She uncrossed her legs and put on a straight face. She wasn't going to let him ruin this for her, no one could. "Don't you think that maybe Aria Black is just as curious as we all wish her to be?"
"Not that curious."
Mirabel stood, sauntering over to a sofa at the corner of her room as she spoke. "Why don't you sit down, Frank."
Frank wrapped his arms tighter around himself. He shook his head. "I'm good—"
"It wasn't an offer." Mirabel countered, pointing to the other sofa that sat before her. The coffee table was the only thing separating the two.
Frank took a second and then flopped into the chair hesitantly. "I really haven't got the time to talk. I just wanted to give you a suggestion. Aria's still in the interview room and I need to be there in case things go wrong."
"Give me a break, Trellis. When have things ever gone wrong?"
He threw his hands up in exasperation. "I don't know. Things could be going wrong right now."
Mirabel's lips pulled into a unknowingly curious smile. "Oh, I don't doubt."
Eyes narrowed into slits. "What does that mean?"
She waved his stare away with a slender, well manicured hand. "Nothing in particular."
Frank began to make a mental note of everything Mirabel said.
"Rita, I don't understand it myself but I feel like there's something terribly wrong with her." Frank leaned against the leather sofa and heaved a sigh. "She keeps talking about letters, and incrimination, and she always looks so scared."
Mirabel looked frustrated. "Well, maybe Aria just has a lot of secrets."
"Perhaps Prisoner 143 has manipulated her?"
"Possibly. But you seem to forget that it's your job to keep her levelled, Frank. So I don't understand why you've come here to complain to me."
Frank felt his brows crease. "I know...but she just doesn't trust me."
"Because you're not letting her."
As she let her words sink into the folds of his brain, Mirabel watched Frank's eyes flash momentarily. He opened his mouth to retort but she cut him off with the expert tongue of a liar. "And you're not letting her because a deeper part of you wants her to finish this project. Like all of us, Frank, you too want to know why Banshee did it."
Frank took in a deep breath.
She pointed out. "And I can't blame you because your reason is a justifiable one."
Frank looked away. He knew he was carrying a lot of repressed emotions inside of him but the carnal part of him believed her to be right. He did want Aria to finish the project for his own personal reasons. Yet, there was something about Aria that resembled a bird. Fragile, small, and terrified.
And so, as he sat in the office, he felt torn apart by the forces within him.
He trusted Aria. He pitied Aria. He liked Aria.
Frank closed his eyes to think clearly but a river of emotions had blinded him. Behind his green eyes, he saw the familiar visions that haunted his nightmares and completely broke his heart.
His wife kissing him goodbye. His children wrapped up in a hug. His brothers familial smile. The car driving away. His sigh of contentment. His fingers wrapped around a drawing his daughter made him. His elation of finally being home alone. His disbelief when he heard the phone call at 4am. His confusion. His pain. His anger. His sorrow. His absolute and sheer grief at realising he was home alone, because this time, he really was, truly, alone.
He could have been there. He should have been there. But he wasn't because he had wanted to stay home. He had promised his kids to take them on their first trip. They were going to go to Nirvana. It was said to be happiest place on Earth. But work had called, and he had asked his brother to take his place instead. He had been working on a case in the comfort of his home, whilst his family was being brutally murdered just a few miles from him. And what hurt the most was that they never got to their destination. They never did.
When he had heard the news, Frank felt like he had died with them.
He hadn't wanted to see their bodies for fear of losing his mind. The descriptions of their deaths carried all the grief that he could handle. He had left the following month, leaving the house in the exact way it was the night his family had said goodbye to him. All he had held onto was the drawing that his daughter had made for him the moment before they entered the car. It was all he had left.
His fingers involuntarily ghosted against the tattoo on his bicep.
"Frank," Mirabel spoke, and her voice carried a softness he wasn't used to. "Don't forget what brought you to this job. It's important for you to carry the same passion you had within you when we first met."
Meeting Mirabel seemed like fate at the time. She just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He had just begun to heal when she offered him the job. Frank did want to heal. Yet, he wanted to know.
Now, he began to question whether fate had played a part at all.
He shook his head vehemently. "I'm...I'm trying..."
"Do you no longer crave closure?" Mirabel whispered, leaning closer to the most vulnerable parts of the man before her. She knew just what to say to get him to react as she willed him to. She knew how to manipulate sadness.
She noticed Frank had his eyes screwed shut in pain. His face was contorted and his hands pressed against his temples. She suppressed her triumph. Frank carried his pain like a signpost, and that was his weakness. "The man who took away their lives sits in that room everyday and you watch him, and you tolerate him for a reason."
Frank tried and failed to hold back his groan. His head spun with so much hurt, pain and despair. He had been fuelled by rage and desperation when he applied for this position. Everything within him yearned to know what the fuck went on in Banshees head as he murdered his love and life.
Frank gritted his teeth as he suppressed tears. "Fuck."
"Focus on the pain. Work from it. Don't forget and move on." Mirabel egged. "Your loved ones didn't die for you to reduce them to faded echoes."
Her words caused Frank to feel sudden rage. He snapped his head up, eyes welling with unshed tears. "You can't say that to me. You don't know what it feels like to hold onto the pain. You can never underst-"
Mirabel stood. "Don't finish that sentence, Trellis."
Frank looked up because of the vehemence in her voice.
"Don't you dare. You don't know what the hell you're saying."
Frank blinked a few times.
She didn't want Frank to see her falter but she couldn't help herself when her demeanor slipped. "My son." Mirabel looked away from his ardent eyes. "He got taken away from me." Mirabel tried to suppress her overwhelming emotions. "He was taken from me before I could tell him that I loved him even if no one else did."
She looked back at him with reddened eyes. "Much like you, everyone I loved died in a single moment."
Frank froze.
"And much like you, the murderer still lives."
There was a pregnant silence that encompassed the both of them. It was a moment of truth for Frank, and it was a moment of weakness for Mirabel. They both stared at each other as though they were victims of the same consequence.
Then Mirabel blinked and before Frank could react, she had closed off on all vulnerability.
"Go back to the interview, Frank."
Frank opened his mouth and closed it.
Then he looked down and suddenly, he was at a loss for words.
His thoughts were akin to scrambled signals.
"Just keep doing your job." She sat still. "No questions asked."
Not-so-fun fact about Ted Bundy: Ted Bundy believed the motive behind most of his killings was due to an intense fascination with pornography. He claims that he may never have committed the horrific crimes if it wasn't for his absorption in pornography. He sometimes revisited his secondary crime scenes for hours at a time, grooming and performing sexual acts with the decomposing corpses until putrefaction and destruction by wild animals made further interaction impossible.
an: Mid-week update?! Who even am I?! You're welcome. Don't forget to vote, comment, and tell me your theories!