TPTB-CH.16 Revelations Marcus/River
Title: Revelations (16/?)
Series: The Powers That Be
Author: Romanceguru
Disclaimer: Joss is the boss of me.
Rating: R for heaps of immorality
Fandom: Firefly/Angel crossover
Characters/Pairing: Marcus Hamilton/River Tam
Warning: Possibly very dark and disturbing
Timeline: Set a day or so after “ Triggered.”
Summary: Hate consumes her. Truth and revelation prevail.
A/N: I lost this chapter when my computer crashed, so I had to start anew. Hopefully it was for the best… Only a few more chapters left people! Please let me know if the plot is too muddled. I’m trying to connect the dots without spelling everything out too transparently. *I backtracked to the last chapter and smoothed over the Marcus bits to make his POV more mysterious and also to make the chapters flow better. Mainly in the beginning.
Betaed by the dark and mysterious elsibet34 .
Catch up here.
River faded from one darkness to the next, her eyes vaguely making out forms and shapes cast blurry by a light flickering somewhere beyond. Shadows danced as if a dream along the jagged walls and she watched them vacantly, unmoving. Her face lay against her bound wrists, body curled to the wet ground. She couldn’t feel a single thing.
It was in this numb state, bound and captive once more, that she found her clarity. Her mission. The locks binding her wrists felt simple, breakable, but she remained in them out of contempt. Lying there, ice cold water dripping from cavern crevices onto her cheek, her neck, and slipping into her already wet clothing, it looked like defeat. It wasn’t. She wanted to suffer, feel the biting cold, the deep burning sensation as the dampness pooled in her wounds. But more than anything, it was him she wanted to suffer, to feel every tragic inch of hurt he had caused by taking Simon from her.
In the shadows she could sense him lurk, his cutting blue eyes evaluating her from just beyond the light. It was a game of waiting. He would lose. His curiosity itched at her skin.
Fantasies of death, the way they taught her to do it, carried her through the hours. She had killed so many. Unlocked like a key and it was all brought back. She would have come to resent her if she hadn’t been needed for him.
Finally, Marcus stepped forward out of concealment, the sound of his heels sharp and precise. She resented the sound. Towering above her, he stood for a moment and then kneeled. His knees didn’t crackle or pop like a human’s would. Rather, he moved in one fluid motion.
Something touched her head and she flinched, moving for the first time and backing as far into the wall as she could, avoiding the hand holding the cloth. She would not let him touch her. Not this time.
“Very well.” Marcus consented, settling back on his heels to get a better look. She looked more feral than she had when he had first taken her in. Ok, more like adopted her against her will, but there was something else. He could smell the danger on her. Practically taste it. It wasn’t surprising.
Marcus continued on, speaking to River as if nothing had happened. As if nothing had changed. As if they had been placed right back at the beginning of it all.
“I know the conditions are dire.” Marcus sympathized, breaking the silence. He looked up and around, surveying the vast chambers of the dead hell mouth before returning his attention to the cuffs on River. She practically grimaced as he slid his large hand around her dainty wrists, warm for someone so cold. Clicking the restraints tighter, he explained himself uncomplicatedly, “Just a precaution.”
But his hands lingered on her skin, eyes searching the length of her arm for a moment before letting go and returning to business. “We can’t have you hurting yourself.” He argued briskly.
River laughed darkly at that, but did not meet his eyes. Her giggle bounced eerily off the walls and receded deep within the cavern.
Drawing back, Marcus stood, leaving his clothing off kilter as he stared down at River, wanting to say more than he had allowed himself thus far. Instead, he explained further, “We’ll move when the time is right. It’s best they don’t know where we are.”
River twisted her head up, her lips finding words. “I’m here.” She promised softly, her voice leaded with menace. “Caged with the beast.” She observed, tracing her fingers along the slimy rock. She practically hummed. “Tick tock.”
Marcus smiled slowly as he backed away, leaving the girl alone with her promises.
----
Marcus lay on a bed in a makeshift chamber, an old room covered in a century’s worth of dust. He seemed to hardly take note of his surroundings; the fire sparked and crackled for its own amusement. Hand over hand, his normally uncomplicated mind was restless as he stared off into nothing.
She, River, was exactly how he wanted her. Hate and rage blinding her of everything that had come before. It had been so simple, and now that it was over, the silence pressed in. Millenniums taunted him with the nothing he possessed.
He remembered her skin, cold and damp under his grip. He had done that to her, transformed what was beneath. There was now an irreversible hunger crawling through her veins, virgin and untamed and wanting to be unleashed upon the universe. She needed his guidance, but there was no time. No matter how intuitive, there were some things she would never know.
Feeling the faintest shift, a scrape, a movement, Marcus came out of his revere and smiled. “It’s about time.” He announced.
River emerged from the chamber’s opening, vengeance gleaming wet in her eyes. Massive heaps of sodden hair concealed her face. Her pale lips pressed into something that resembled a smile.
“You’ll be warmer by the fire,” Marcus instructed, unconcerned and laying just as still as before.
She did not move.
Marcus watched her watching him, observing the split second that she scanned the room, waiting the seconds it took for her to reach him with the poker from next to the fire. It was impressive. Weighted down by nothing, she straddled him, pressing the dull and rusted tip hard to his throat.
Tilting back, Marcus offered the expanse of his neck to her, as she had done once before. “The hasty don’t hesitate,” He berated and the grabbed the rod at her hands, guiding it deeper. “But you’ll have to push all the way through this time.”
River cocked her head, meeting his eyes with equal defiance. Every inch of her wanted this, for it to be over. But in looking into his eyes, the skin beneath her weapon seemed suddenly vulnerable, resistant to her push. There was no veil of gray in them, no unforgiving in the blue. They were just eyes and she recognized their capacity. There was a time when she had lived there.
The weapon fell, and any sound thereafter was unheard as River began to tremble. Her body shook uncontrollably with realization. Marcus sat up immediately, folding the girl in his arms, but she refused, beating her fists wildly against his chest. He let her. There was no humility in the moment, only understanding.
There was a choked sob, tears familiar as they bled into his shirt and met skin. “Why? Why, why, why? She chanted, the manic girl returning. Looking up, River’s dark eyes found their amber as they pleaded with his. “I could have forgiven you if you had been him.” She whispered.
He kissed her then. He hadn’t planned to, but the willpower he had so mastered up until that very moment crumbled. He needed to feel his mouth on hers, taste her breath as she struggled for release, confused and then defeated as she answered back with subsided rage.
Pushing up against Marcus, River wrapped her arms around his neck as he drew her slight frame firmly to his. The kisses were smothering, propelled by fervor and begging for air. There was the fear that if they stopped, they’d never start again.
Hands fumbled like first time lovers’ to undo clothing both tattered and clean. River moved her hair to one side as Marcus slid his hands along her back, searching for the tiny zipper embedded in her dress. Kissing her lips, her chin, her neck, the metal sang open, and he kissed her lower still, welcoming her contented hum.
River dug her hands into Marcus’ hair as clothing fell, as skin met skin and they connected fully and deeply. They danced like this, in sync and forgetting why it shouldn’t be. Placing his large hand along the side of her face, Marcus watched the pain fade away from River’s expression, her eyes closed and skin flushed. She never looked so beautiful.
His thumb moved along her jaw, looking, admiring, as his other hand moved up along the line of her throat. She consumed him, burning like a fever. “This is what they wanted,” he managed to confess and she opened her eyes.
“I can’t love you.” She answered knowingly, tears bleeding over at the full meaning. Marcus kissed them as they fell. “It’s how they win.” She whispered against his face. Already she could feel the shift, the natural balance of good and evil turned awry.
Marcus nodded, wrapping his hand around hers, and bringing them close. “I didn’t understand it then, that it had nothing to do with your abilities, what they made you. It was always something more basic.”
River tried to smile under the weight of it all. “You tried to undo what I did.” Everything made sense now, and that scared her more than her alternate reality. “It almost worked.” She professed. They had stilled but everything still moved.
“It wouldn‘t be the first time I failed.” Marcus confessed, half glad of it. It had been harder that he’d thought to fool her, to step into his old role and watch her suffer. “You’ll have to leave soon.” He prompted, signaling the urgency of the situation.
It was River’s turn nod. “The storm‘s getting worse.” She answered with the same sweet perceptiveness he used to find utterly annoying. Back before he knew he’d defy prophecy for her.
Pushing back, Marcus settled flat as River followed, entangling herself in the moment and forgetting everything before and after. She wanted to feel his body heavy upon hers, trapping her willingly. The feeling came in waves, burning hot and bright, and then when it was all over, despair.
Turning away, River fought the familiar ache. It beat like dread low in her abdomen. Marcus circled his arm around her waist, pressing his hand flat against the hurt, as if he knew it was there. Kissing her shoulder, he spied her profile, and wondered if she could ever be anything but sad when she was with him.
“It would have been easier the other way.” He rebuked softly, knowing full well it was too late to go back. But then again, it had been too late for a very long time.
River answered as if it had been a lifetime ago. “Simon?” She hoped.
Marcus stilled, frozen by her question, and then relented. “Alive. I made you see what I wanted you to see. What I needed you too.”
Wrinkling her face in remembrance, harsh and unforgettable, River struggled to understand. “How? There was so much blood. Tried to make it stay but I couldn’t. I…”
“Shhh.” Marcus whispered, soothing her from the panic she could never escape. From the memory of pain that she felt more intensely than any other. “It was all real. He was there and then not, but his death was a mirage.”
River‘s body relaxed for the first time as she began to understand. She had seen things that defied logic, and yet they were. As she settled against Marcus, it wasn’t long before another worry crawled its way inside. Putting her hand over his, she faced him, her eyes wide with concern. “They’re going to kill you for this. You‘re going to die and be replaced.”
Marcus smiled, amused. “You were going to kill me not too long ago.”
“I wasn’t.” River refuted honestly, searching his face. “But you knew that.”
“Mostly.” Marcus returned, a trace of his old arrogance shining through. Covering them with the ratty old blanket, he nestled River close and the fire eventually dimmed, the crackling growing more faint as sleep touched her face. He stayed awake, watching her sleep. He wanted to take in the last hours they would ever have together. Soon she would go back to her brother and fight to reverse the damage done, and he would help.
Far above the cavern, the ‘verse grew dark, upset by the imbalance her love had caused. Apocalypse and chaos, his lifeblood once raging, now stilled. He no longer wanted this fate if it meant she was going to die in its crux. Marcus had known River Tam for a mere blink in eternity, and loved her as well as some like him could for even less.
---
TBC
Series: The Powers That Be
Author: Romanceguru
Disclaimer: Joss is the boss of me.
Rating: R for heaps of immorality
Fandom: Firefly/Angel crossover
Characters/Pairing: Marcus Hamilton/River Tam
Warning: Possibly very dark and disturbing
Timeline: Set a day or so after “ Triggered.”
Summary: Hate consumes her. Truth and revelation prevail.
A/N: I lost this chapter when my computer crashed, so I had to start anew. Hopefully it was for the best… Only a few more chapters left people! Please let me know if the plot is too muddled. I’m trying to connect the dots without spelling everything out too transparently. *I backtracked to the last chapter and smoothed over the Marcus bits to make his POV more mysterious and also to make the chapters flow better. Mainly in the beginning.
Betaed by the dark and mysterious elsibet34 .
Catch up here.
River faded from one darkness to the next, her eyes vaguely making out forms and shapes cast blurry by a light flickering somewhere beyond. Shadows danced as if a dream along the jagged walls and she watched them vacantly, unmoving. Her face lay against her bound wrists, body curled to the wet ground. She couldn’t feel a single thing.
It was in this numb state, bound and captive once more, that she found her clarity. Her mission. The locks binding her wrists felt simple, breakable, but she remained in them out of contempt. Lying there, ice cold water dripping from cavern crevices onto her cheek, her neck, and slipping into her already wet clothing, it looked like defeat. It wasn’t. She wanted to suffer, feel the biting cold, the deep burning sensation as the dampness pooled in her wounds. But more than anything, it was him she wanted to suffer, to feel every tragic inch of hurt he had caused by taking Simon from her.
In the shadows she could sense him lurk, his cutting blue eyes evaluating her from just beyond the light. It was a game of waiting. He would lose. His curiosity itched at her skin.
Fantasies of death, the way they taught her to do it, carried her through the hours. She had killed so many. Unlocked like a key and it was all brought back. She would have come to resent her if she hadn’t been needed for him.
Finally, Marcus stepped forward out of concealment, the sound of his heels sharp and precise. She resented the sound. Towering above her, he stood for a moment and then kneeled. His knees didn’t crackle or pop like a human’s would. Rather, he moved in one fluid motion.
Something touched her head and she flinched, moving for the first time and backing as far into the wall as she could, avoiding the hand holding the cloth. She would not let him touch her. Not this time.
“Very well.” Marcus consented, settling back on his heels to get a better look. She looked more feral than she had when he had first taken her in. Ok, more like adopted her against her will, but there was something else. He could smell the danger on her. Practically taste it. It wasn’t surprising.
Marcus continued on, speaking to River as if nothing had happened. As if nothing had changed. As if they had been placed right back at the beginning of it all.
“I know the conditions are dire.” Marcus sympathized, breaking the silence. He looked up and around, surveying the vast chambers of the dead hell mouth before returning his attention to the cuffs on River. She practically grimaced as he slid his large hand around her dainty wrists, warm for someone so cold. Clicking the restraints tighter, he explained himself uncomplicatedly, “Just a precaution.”
But his hands lingered on her skin, eyes searching the length of her arm for a moment before letting go and returning to business. “We can’t have you hurting yourself.” He argued briskly.
River laughed darkly at that, but did not meet his eyes. Her giggle bounced eerily off the walls and receded deep within the cavern.
Drawing back, Marcus stood, leaving his clothing off kilter as he stared down at River, wanting to say more than he had allowed himself thus far. Instead, he explained further, “We’ll move when the time is right. It’s best they don’t know where we are.”
River twisted her head up, her lips finding words. “I’m here.” She promised softly, her voice leaded with menace. “Caged with the beast.” She observed, tracing her fingers along the slimy rock. She practically hummed. “Tick tock.”
Marcus smiled slowly as he backed away, leaving the girl alone with her promises.
----
Marcus lay on a bed in a makeshift chamber, an old room covered in a century’s worth of dust. He seemed to hardly take note of his surroundings; the fire sparked and crackled for its own amusement. Hand over hand, his normally uncomplicated mind was restless as he stared off into nothing.
She, River, was exactly how he wanted her. Hate and rage blinding her of everything that had come before. It had been so simple, and now that it was over, the silence pressed in. Millenniums taunted him with the nothing he possessed.
He remembered her skin, cold and damp under his grip. He had done that to her, transformed what was beneath. There was now an irreversible hunger crawling through her veins, virgin and untamed and wanting to be unleashed upon the universe. She needed his guidance, but there was no time. No matter how intuitive, there were some things she would never know.
Feeling the faintest shift, a scrape, a movement, Marcus came out of his revere and smiled. “It’s about time.” He announced.
River emerged from the chamber’s opening, vengeance gleaming wet in her eyes. Massive heaps of sodden hair concealed her face. Her pale lips pressed into something that resembled a smile.
“You’ll be warmer by the fire,” Marcus instructed, unconcerned and laying just as still as before.
She did not move.
Marcus watched her watching him, observing the split second that she scanned the room, waiting the seconds it took for her to reach him with the poker from next to the fire. It was impressive. Weighted down by nothing, she straddled him, pressing the dull and rusted tip hard to his throat.
Tilting back, Marcus offered the expanse of his neck to her, as she had done once before. “The hasty don’t hesitate,” He berated and the grabbed the rod at her hands, guiding it deeper. “But you’ll have to push all the way through this time.”
River cocked her head, meeting his eyes with equal defiance. Every inch of her wanted this, for it to be over. But in looking into his eyes, the skin beneath her weapon seemed suddenly vulnerable, resistant to her push. There was no veil of gray in them, no unforgiving in the blue. They were just eyes and she recognized their capacity. There was a time when she had lived there.
The weapon fell, and any sound thereafter was unheard as River began to tremble. Her body shook uncontrollably with realization. Marcus sat up immediately, folding the girl in his arms, but she refused, beating her fists wildly against his chest. He let her. There was no humility in the moment, only understanding.
There was a choked sob, tears familiar as they bled into his shirt and met skin. “Why? Why, why, why? She chanted, the manic girl returning. Looking up, River’s dark eyes found their amber as they pleaded with his. “I could have forgiven you if you had been him.” She whispered.
He kissed her then. He hadn’t planned to, but the willpower he had so mastered up until that very moment crumbled. He needed to feel his mouth on hers, taste her breath as she struggled for release, confused and then defeated as she answered back with subsided rage.
Pushing up against Marcus, River wrapped her arms around his neck as he drew her slight frame firmly to his. The kisses were smothering, propelled by fervor and begging for air. There was the fear that if they stopped, they’d never start again.
Hands fumbled like first time lovers’ to undo clothing both tattered and clean. River moved her hair to one side as Marcus slid his hands along her back, searching for the tiny zipper embedded in her dress. Kissing her lips, her chin, her neck, the metal sang open, and he kissed her lower still, welcoming her contented hum.
River dug her hands into Marcus’ hair as clothing fell, as skin met skin and they connected fully and deeply. They danced like this, in sync and forgetting why it shouldn’t be. Placing his large hand along the side of her face, Marcus watched the pain fade away from River’s expression, her eyes closed and skin flushed. She never looked so beautiful.
His thumb moved along her jaw, looking, admiring, as his other hand moved up along the line of her throat. She consumed him, burning like a fever. “This is what they wanted,” he managed to confess and she opened her eyes.
“I can’t love you.” She answered knowingly, tears bleeding over at the full meaning. Marcus kissed them as they fell. “It’s how they win.” She whispered against his face. Already she could feel the shift, the natural balance of good and evil turned awry.
Marcus nodded, wrapping his hand around hers, and bringing them close. “I didn’t understand it then, that it had nothing to do with your abilities, what they made you. It was always something more basic.”
River tried to smile under the weight of it all. “You tried to undo what I did.” Everything made sense now, and that scared her more than her alternate reality. “It almost worked.” She professed. They had stilled but everything still moved.
“It wouldn‘t be the first time I failed.” Marcus confessed, half glad of it. It had been harder that he’d thought to fool her, to step into his old role and watch her suffer. “You’ll have to leave soon.” He prompted, signaling the urgency of the situation.
It was River’s turn nod. “The storm‘s getting worse.” She answered with the same sweet perceptiveness he used to find utterly annoying. Back before he knew he’d defy prophecy for her.
Pushing back, Marcus settled flat as River followed, entangling herself in the moment and forgetting everything before and after. She wanted to feel his body heavy upon hers, trapping her willingly. The feeling came in waves, burning hot and bright, and then when it was all over, despair.
Turning away, River fought the familiar ache. It beat like dread low in her abdomen. Marcus circled his arm around her waist, pressing his hand flat against the hurt, as if he knew it was there. Kissing her shoulder, he spied her profile, and wondered if she could ever be anything but sad when she was with him.
“It would have been easier the other way.” He rebuked softly, knowing full well it was too late to go back. But then again, it had been too late for a very long time.
River answered as if it had been a lifetime ago. “Simon?” She hoped.
Marcus stilled, frozen by her question, and then relented. “Alive. I made you see what I wanted you to see. What I needed you too.”
Wrinkling her face in remembrance, harsh and unforgettable, River struggled to understand. “How? There was so much blood. Tried to make it stay but I couldn’t. I…”
“Shhh.” Marcus whispered, soothing her from the panic she could never escape. From the memory of pain that she felt more intensely than any other. “It was all real. He was there and then not, but his death was a mirage.”
River‘s body relaxed for the first time as she began to understand. She had seen things that defied logic, and yet they were. As she settled against Marcus, it wasn’t long before another worry crawled its way inside. Putting her hand over his, she faced him, her eyes wide with concern. “They’re going to kill you for this. You‘re going to die and be replaced.”
Marcus smiled, amused. “You were going to kill me not too long ago.”
“I wasn’t.” River refuted honestly, searching his face. “But you knew that.”
“Mostly.” Marcus returned, a trace of his old arrogance shining through. Covering them with the ratty old blanket, he nestled River close and the fire eventually dimmed, the crackling growing more faint as sleep touched her face. He stayed awake, watching her sleep. He wanted to take in the last hours they would ever have together. Soon she would go back to her brother and fight to reverse the damage done, and he would help.
Far above the cavern, the ‘verse grew dark, upset by the imbalance her love had caused. Apocalypse and chaos, his lifeblood once raging, now stilled. He no longer wanted this fate if it meant she was going to die in its crux. Marcus had known River Tam for a mere blink in eternity, and loved her as well as some like him could for even less.
---
TBC