"You got five minutes."
Funnily, five minutes will never be enough for them to catch up on what could have been.
Abby doesn't want to believe how fast the tide has turned. The moment she last saw him – the gap between now and then seems to have stretched the days into ages – Marcus was still a free man. A rebel, but without handcuffs. The ideal sound of those words hardly match up with the severity of the situation – with Pike in control, everything they have built, everything they have abandoned sleep for... It's all crumbling, with an earthquake awaiting on the clouded horizon.
It's all crumbling, and Abby's heart continues to be hit by the dusty rubble.
The biggest rock to smash her chest is, at last, standing a few metres away from her. His hands are restrained and his hair, including his beard, looks rough, a testament to how long he has sat in prison. She refuses to believe he's going to end up like Jake, with his soul dancing in heaven, free of physical ties... Abby would rather have an imprisoned, but living Marcus on Earth than a free, dead version. Him staying alive would be more than enough. It's selfish, perhaps, to want to be in control of his current state... Yet, it's obvious he cannot do anything against his awaiting kiss with death, so she will take matters into her own hands.
He has saved her life on so many more levels than one, and even if he hadn't, she would spend her last breath still trying to save him because she loves him.
She cannot, cannot, afford to be shattered a second time by the loss of love; she will shatter if nobody's left to stitch the tatters of her heart together (somehow, she has lost Clarke along the way). She may be a doctor, but he is her saviour, in some romantic perspective, and Abby could barely find strength in her tired soul anymore if it weren't for him... It's dangerous, love, because it makes you dependent, and she has been a blissful fool to walk into that trap; nevertheless, she minds being trapped far less when it's being trapped with Marcus.
Marcus isn't Jake. He won't die, like Jake. Not if she can help it.
Their brown eyes meet. In this very moment, some goddamn key appears in Abby's mind and locks the door which would enable her to look away. She's almost hypnotized by staring a possibly-soon-dead man in his possibly-soon-empty eyes – eyes which, at the moment, pass mountains of unspoken words and apologies over to her, gently pushing that misty information into her brain although they are still standing too far apart to touch.
Abby takes two rushed, yet hesitant steps forward, lost on what to do. What does he expect her to do? Run over to him, hug his malnourished body and press him to her to create a unit in wishful thinking Pike won't be able to separate them? In fact, she wants to do nothing but bind him to her somehow, but she knows it isn't possible and his execution will stand no matter how crushing and desperate her hug is. There are also the hidden cameras to think about.
They continue to stand apart from each other for a few seconds, shifting from leg to leg, plagued by the weight of what is to come. They both have waited for this, yet when they are positioned face to face, heart to heart, none of them wants reality to be true.
Abby is still speechless, at a loss of how to act, what to say, because this man, Marcus Kane, is the embodiment of her hope, even in his rough and leashed state; he is the quell of water he has allowed her exhausted lungs to drink from, unintentionally drowning her to be her anchor; he is the sun continually bestowing the crown of her spirit with light, brightening her path so she doesn't trip, simultaneously growing branches to make her trip only to catch her from falling; he has, somehow, become her everything since they have fallen from the sky – and he is going to die.
Over her dead body, perhaps.
She is relieved when he literally makes the first step, forever holding her intense gaze, but her heart still manages to jump into her throat and nest itself in it.
"Are you alright?" Added to Marcus's verbal worry, there are lines on his face which undeniably come from frowning. Where Abby is concerned, a death sentence deserves more than a frown– Hell, it deserves more than asking a friend, a good friend, someone he cares about how she's keeping up. You stupid, stupid man... she can't help but think, since he obviously wants to make this conversation about her, as is his wont, instead of the other way round, the way she has imagined this to go down.
Who is she fooling?
She hasn't really had the time nor energy to properly think about fickle details of their too short talk in this grey, dim room. It's so grey, Abby begins to think the walls want to imitate her mood, and she tries. She tries to keep her iron walls up, yet she knows she's failing as her vision begins to water and blur. There is a red hurricane going on in her mind. Stupid man, her thoughts repeat, and she nods almost imperceptibly, attempts to smile for exactly that stupid man, because he doesn't deserve to see her sorrow when he is the one with the prospect of not being able to watch the sun rise another time tomorrow.
This is the first time in those whimsical five minutes she averts her eyes. She is trying to smile on the outside, but inside she is breaking. Funny how calm she must look, too, if not a bit rained on by a cloud of sorrow.
It takes Abby a short moment to recollect herself, and she lets her gaze rise to meet his another time. His eyes are still the same shade of brown. Jake's eyes were grey before Thelonious floated him. Marcus is not Jake.
Marcus Kane won't die on her watch.
"I won't let this happen to you." Her voice is almost quiet enough to count as a whisper as she steps up to him, though the volume doesn't match up at all with the severe implications of her words. Abby is aware she has ignored his question, but this isn't about her – she doesn't allow him to make this about her. Marcus, blessed and doomed like he is, seems to understand. He draws in a silent, but heavy breath like he always does when he's about to protest, but she dares him with her bold, stubborn eyes to overlook the fine line his life is dancing on, and he seems to understand that, too, since his breath remains a breath, long and drawn-out as if his lungs are reeling from the arduous work his mind has put them under. There was a once a time when Marcus Kane abhorred her perseverance, but surely he must have realized by now Abby Griffin has forged the steel of her will to be cutting and sharp so she can save him?
Please let me save you.
He tramples down her high hopes with his following words.
"Abby, listen..." Her body remains stiff and rigid from denial with the introduction of the speech that is no doubt to come. He can't expect her to listen to his personal devaluation of his own life, yet her ears remain open, desperate to catch one flicker of hope still burning in him.
"Anyone caught helping us..." The deep rumble of his voice diminishes with the flow of his words, and maybe he starts whispering the next because he doesn't want their reality to echo through the room, in fear they will worsen the brutality of truth. The Kane of old would have spoken about the facts in a monotone behaviour, stoically acknowledging the unalterability of the present for what it is. But this Marcus... His voice is betraying the storm of his emotions, and Abby is glad for it, despite the murky hour, since that means he's willing to let her in and, if she hasn't read the signs with pink glasses obscuring her view, truly cares about her. "...will be condemned to death, too."
If she hasn't read the signs wrong, he doesn't want her to die. Stupid man, Abby muses yet again, the sound of something bittersweet ringing in her ears, of course I would give my life to save yours. They are inevitably caught in a vicious cycle of love and the tragedy that comes with it.
"Then I won't get caught," Abby retorts, not harshly, realizing the need to appease him so he will listen. He, in turn, will need to realize the amount of her worry for him equals his for her, and she won't give in because it's traditional for a woman to do so or because he wants her to. He needs to realize she wants him to live, needs him to breathe at all, because he is her oxygen supply and, without him, her flame will go out.
He needs to realize their love is meant to last.
Marcus merely reacts by pushing out a short, breathy laugh out of his throat and lower his eyes, just like she did a few moments before. Does he think her proposal really so amusing? Does he think her words are somehow funny because the plan behind them is unfeasible? Does he think her unable to save him? Abby, with a bitter taste on her tongue, remembers how she once – a few precious seconds ago – thought the time to involuntarily have to prove herself in front of him is over.
Is his belief not strong enough? His trust? His love?
"But I'm begging you," Marcus whispers into the silence. Does she need to get down on her knees and clasp and cramp her hands as if praying for him to realize she is begging him, too, in her own way? Abby temporarily regains eye contact, and in those brown orbs she can recognize how concentrated and still desperate he is. It's unbelievable how much his silent despair equals the thing she has categorized as Mount Weather despair, the pain she then dully caught in his voice as her very own tongues of fire licked their way into her leg. Now, his death sentence is her personal drill, and if she doesn't do something (which she will, no matter Marcus's disregard for his own life), his corpse will be like her lack of bone marrow – only ten times worse.
"I'm begging you, just– Don't– Don't–" Their eye contact crumbles along with his voice, and Abby's heart aches for him, stronger than it ever has since attaining knowledge of the upcoming execution. "Don't, no–"
His almost imperceptible words echo her fragile thoughts. I'm begging you to stay alive. Don't die. Don't die. Her active mentality is steadily eating her up from the inside with a vicious cruelty as she continues to listen to his pleas. She doesn't know how to articulate her thought process right now anyway – her mind is screaming.
"The people need someone here to show them the way out of the dark." The epilogue of his speech is spoken with surprising steadiness. Marcus searches her eyes like he wants to gauge if she has taken in and processed his words, perhaps even agrees with him. (He wants her to realize she is the only tangible beacon of hope around, perhaps filling him with light more than anybody else.)
It's amazing that her heart makes no noise when it cracks.
How could she possibly light the path for others when she is in the process of losing her torch? Abby can't do this without him. Why doesn't he realize? He needs to realize, but he always refuses, and it makes her heart howl with pain. He won't give in to her pleas just as she won't give in to his, and they remain stuck in their vicious cycle and- She doesn't know how to get them both out alive and it destroys her. The red hurricane of sorrow and grief and a fickle flicker of hope breaks out of her body, and she desperately tries to fight the marching tears back with all her might. It's ironic, only, how that might and strength has diminished with his incarceration. The sword of her mind is blunt. This one onslaught she is bound to lose. So she tries to speak instead of letting the tears fall loose and, for the moment, it seems to work.
"I can't do this again." But, she has lost another fight – her voice is drunk, her lips quivering with dark memories, memories of Jake and the loss of his heart warmly pounding next to hers in bed. Also, Abby has just, not so unwittingly, compared Marcus with her dead husband, putting them on the same level in regards to love and its tragedy. It felt like saying "I love you."
She meant "I love you."
Disbelief is blooming in Marcus's eyes, a brown flower without thorns, completely unprotected against the winds of emotion blowing in the atmosphere. Stupid, stupid man... It's true, Abby is good at hiding her emotions, but the signs she has given him in response to the little, but indeed devastatingly significant touches and smiles he has given her surely must have told him he has a place in her heart? Now, he must, he has to, realize this place is as large and warm as she built it to be for Jake? Now, that her tongue has spilled nothing but truth, that Abby has practically lain out her heart in front of him like an unmade bed (messy, but comfortable and forever lasting), now... Now he must see that she will go down with him if he chooses to forsake his life like this. His corpse will have her life on its conscience.
She is trying to save them both. No half-measures where the love between them is concerned.
As a last resort, she brings her shaking – when did they start shaking? – hands up to his face, his rough, handsome beard, but Abby doesn't fully dare to touch him again, letting her hands feed on air. She hasn't been able to touch him for so many days... She's afraid his skin won't be as soft, that his hair won't feel like home when nestling her fingers inside it– That everything will have changed during his period of incarceration. It has, too, she knows, but she also knows the Marcus standing in front of her, and she knows she loves him, through hell and back.
Her world, though nothing has trickled over her eyelids yet, has become more blurry, making it a tad difficult to navigate her hands to where she wants them to be. The tips of her fingers lightly brush his beard, over and over, and it's him, it's Marcus, not some cruel trick of her mind, not the image of Jake usually haunting her dreams, so her hands soon come to settle around Marcus's mouth, welcoming the feeling of his facial hair on the choppiness of her skin. It feels like a ceremony for someone coming home. He is, in a way. As long as she holds him, so physically aware of his beautiful presence, he won't die. He wouldn't dare to die in her arms.
Abby ignores the prospect of him having lost hope. At the same time, she tries to be his hope, although her castle walls have long since turned into glass. (Abby doesn't ignore the fact a bullet in Marcus's head would be the hammer to her walls.)
She tries to be strong for him, so he may grasp the courage to stay alive and do the same for her.
Her statement, filled with a singular lifetime of truths and hopes, remains without an answer, forced to hang in the tense air surrounding them. I can't do this again is the sun crawling out behind clouds; I can't do this again is the rainbow trapped between grey rain and bright light; I can't do this again is the forewarning hide-and-seek of the sky before a storm; I can't do this again is the thunder kissing lightning. Those five words are special in every way, hold so many meanings and manage to unite them into one: I can't do this without you. To emphasize her point, Abby, even in her blindness, softly caresses his face, careful not to break his skin so Marcus doesn't have to endure the pain she feels with her heart breaking.
He shows no sign of acknowledging whether he fully understands her emotions and desires, and it makes Abby's face contort along with the oncoming flood of tears. She, weakly and without remarkable vigor, tries to fight them yet again, but even without attempting to speak once more she knows the strength of her voice is failing her. This time, it's the strength of her heart which has won the upper hand – she closes her eyes as lone, wet diamonds escape her eyelashes, and the visage of sadness and grief is complete, weeping for the dark blank of their future.
She presses her eyes together particularly hard as she moves Marcus's head closer to hers, which is making its way to his as if falling horizontally, making their foreheads meet in the middle. Abby is only able to relax her grimacing face when she connects to him, skin to skin, but she doesn't stop silently crying, holding the vain hope close to her heart he isn't able to feel the proof of her mourning. It would be a stain, a further stain on him issued by someone else, a stain she doesn't want him to bear. She needs to grieve alone, and yet, during their intense touching – the feeling of his black, unwashed, but glorious hair between her fingers, the way his forehead rubs so smoothly across hers – her breathing in the intoxicating, exhilarating smell of him, and eventually letting out the involuntary sniff that always seems to accompany her tears, she shares her sorrow with her love in a way she hasn't imagined is possible. It would probably feel good, too, if that invisible bullet waiting to enter Marcus's brain weren't there.
Her hands slyly, yet with the purest of intentions, travel from his hair down to his shoulders, pulling Marcus and the drug of his mere warmth to her, making their noses touch. After the perceived ages of being apart, Abby needs to feel him and have him with her properly now to ban the possibility of him being ripped from her arms before she knows it. She indignantly hopes her embrace is to him as much of a safe haven as his very existence is to her. She hopes he knows their love is meant to last.
She hopes he loves her too much to go away.
Abby senses the sweat on the back of his neck with her palms as she guides her face to hers once more, desperate and hopeful to feel him on her lips and in her very soul before they have to go their separate ways again. She doesn't do things by half-measures, certainly not in regards to what is between them, hence, although she has a rescue plan in mind and will go through with it, she puts more trust into the pool of the present rather than in the differently-shaded skies of the future. Too many possibilities, one chance for a kiss.
She has long since decided to go for the latter.
As she already feels Marcus's breath on the soft flesh around her mouth, sending shivers down her trembling soul, she simultaneously perceives his hands coming to lie on her arms, haltingly pulling them from his heavy shoulders. He is beginning to reconstruct the shield the Marcus Kane of old wore as part of his mental armour everyday, and she is all but ready for it. No... no, please just let me... Let me in, be with you, right now, just a little... Her thoughts make her wear the invisible title of a hypocrite – Abby Griffin doesn't do half-measures. The man opposite– standing right in front of her, still forming a unit with her for all the skin kissing each other through the material of their ragged clothing, seems to have realized that, too.
It would be a goodbye kiss. They deserve better.
"Please..." Inwardly, she blesses and dooms Marcus all over again, but Abby isn't ready to admit in any way she was in the wrong. Instead, she robs her forehead of his warmth and looks into his eyes again, her face tear-stricken and brown orbs pleading with a lost hope. He won't change his mind, yet she still laments his decision. It isn't only him deciding to steal the empty kiss from her reservoir of wishes – he also has stolen what he believes to be the only chance for his life. True, their first kiss isn't meant to be one of despair and goodbye, but he uses the truth to cover up his true intentions – he doesn't want her to kiss him and save him.
It's out of your hands, Abby wants to tell him (and the irony of it hits her with feeling the chain of his handcuffs slide against the cloth covering her arms), but she is too tired. So tired... The battle in this very room has sucked something out of her heart she can only fill with the hope and implementation of setting Marcus free.
"Don't make this any harder than it already is." Blessed and doomed. He is thinking of them both right now, though Abby wishes he would do that on a larger scale, including not only emotions but actual living and breathing. Their eyes are locked again – one of them has thrown the key away. Earthquakes, mountains, hurricanes and finally an ocean, so calm on the surface but full of underwater volcanoes, pass between them. It's clear Marcus won't give in, although his eyes, filled with sad light while looking at her through his eyelashes, make her want to believe another story. Two tough anchors have pulled the corners of her mouth down to what feels like several inches southwards.
Self-sacrificing moron. The only image of him, not wanting to take the one hope she has offered him with open hands full of shuddering veins, terrified to the core, makes her heart cry out for more tears.
I will save you. She spends no words. She refuses to listen to the sound of him protesting, throwing his life away.
Marcus takes two agonizingly slow steps back while holding eye contact. Although Abby continues receiving his stare boring into the brown pits of her soul, the drill having opened her chest at the beginning of those five minutes that have encompassed everything pulls her heart out, letting it stick to its metal tip, as the physical distance between them grows.
I can't do this again.
I can't do this without you.
I love you.
Her heart makes no sound when it thumps onto the ground and starts to create a dark red pool around it.
Marcus has the dignity to not look into her eyes when he breaks their shared stupor by calling for the guards. She dully catches the opening sound of a door outside the universe they have created for themselves here – a universe Marcus just broke the walls of. The calmness of his voice begins to disgust Abby, him ending her visit before the time is up even more so, but then he looks into her eyes again. She looks back, scrutinizing his whole beautiful face, trying to beat it into her mind so she may not forget the glint of his near-obsidian holes or the unique grey-black of his beard, telling the story of their fall to Earth up until their cagey reunion in this room... It will take a few hours before she may see him again.
She will see him again in freedom.
The possibility of the freedom of death is worth her tears.
Abby nearly doesn't catch the minimal quivering of his lips, mostly because it catches her off guard since Marcus is usually in control of himself, but also because his beard sometimes makes some things difficult to see. She thinks he might start to cry, too, and, out of the blurry corner of her vision, she sees her heart lying on the floor making a weak attempt at trying to crawl over to him for comfort. Yet, Marcus regains his semblance of control as fast as he lost it and nods to her.
His eyes are a hurricane, too, although a relatively dry one as opposed to hers.
And he nods.
You are strong. You'll be alright.
As the guards escort Marcus out and Abby stands alone in the grey, dim room once more, she still is in a dark place with both soul and body, but she also feels strangely... reassured.
Hope is everything.