eswareinmal | This house is full of stories we both told

Giles doesn't notice anything wrong, at first, besides the faint smile on Ginia's face as she takes in the book and opens it. By the time the look of horror appears, he's looked away to browse the shelves she'd just been browsing. He doesn't recognize the book as anything but what it is. His own arrival here as a ghost had been hazy enough, and as for his return...

...he still couldn't remember. And he was trying not to dwell too much on that.

And so, Giles didn't realize that anything at all was wrong until the light appeared, bright and blinding and searing even to him. he whriled about, a cry of alarm sticking in his throat as Ginia was engulfed. He reached for her, feeling as though he were moving through a fog, far too slowly to be of any help, to save her...

...but then the light fades, and Ginia is still there, and that's lal that matters for a few seconds. Giles reaches out, wraps his arms tightly around her and sinks to his knees with her, his heart pounding in his ears so loudly that the world is blotted out.

"Ginia, gods, w-what was that?"

Ginia is conflicted when he embraces her. In the seconds it took her to read the few pages of the book and be surrounded by light, and five years passed. Five long years of hiding and caution and never letting people get close because that was a risk she could not take. Five years without friends and love, at least not until the last few months of her life. Then she gave it all without a second thought.

But the love and care Giles shows her feels foreign even as her current memories say it's natural and good. Wheat she feels for him hasn't changed, yet it comes in conflict with what she knows. Ginia pulls away from him, shaking slightly as she tries to process everything.

It's been five years. Five long years.

And now she's dead. Her hand touches against her chest. If she removed her clothes, would there be bullet wounds on her skin? Her hand moves to her face, gloved hands on the thin mask. She hesitates, but afraid to show Giles, but she must.

She tugs the mask down and pulls her cowl back. In those few seconds, Ginia aged five years and it shows. The new lines on her face, the forming wrinkles, the tired expression of a woman who wanted peace and never found it, she's aged.

For a few seconds, Ginia stares at him, processing everything. Her pride fails and her face crumbles, tears streaming down her cheeks before she covers it in shame. This is it. This is the end.

She died. She's dead.

Edited 2012-07-23 18:59 (UTC)

Giles withdraws sharply the second he feels Ginia pulling away. The inclination towards physical affection...well, it's one a lot of people had trained him into, Ginia being one of them. And so it is still a powerful impulse, to withdraw at even the faintest sign that it's unwelcome or strange.

But he stays close - he can't do anything else, after something like this, after the fear that he might have lost her is still tight and suffocating in his chest. The fact that she's still here only does a bit to relieve that pain, because even before she pulls the hood away and shows her face again, Giles knows that something has changed.

There's a second of nothingness, of breathless, dizzying strangeness as he looks into Ginia's face for the first time in five years. And then his mind fires back into life, and he sees. More than most, Giles knows what just a few years can do to age a person. But he could swallow all of those little changes, if not for the look in her eyes.

His hand, still covered by a glove, finds hers' and squeezes tight. It's not a conscious gesture, he's not even aware that he's done so until she starts to cry. Because then Giles moves in to embrace her and then...stops himself, holds himself back, not sure what to do and wishing that he was.

"Ginia...?"

Ginia continues to cry, and even inch of grief, pain, and loss pouring out. She's dead, there's nowhere to return to, she'll never see Jack or Natalie again, never see her brother or Evan again, and never know if their mission was a success. She's dead and her body was probably thrown into an unmarked grave because there are no courtesies offered an enemy of the country. There is nothing left for her in her world. Here is all she has left, unless the forces that be see fit to send her to another world.

Thoughts of Tara, their beautiful unborn child cross her mind. Will they ever meet her? Reach a place where they can raise a family? It seems so hopeles and ludracris now. Who ever heard of two dead people bringing life into the world? It only makes her despair and hurt more.

She remembers Giles too, kneeling here so lost and confused. Ginia throws her arms around him and holds him tight, grasping onto her love and affection for him as if it would slip away like so many other things. Even some of her memories of him felt faint or muddled. Her face buries into his neck and shoulder, trying to control her crying.

Giles gives a soft gasp as Ginia suddenly embraces him, falling from a crouch and into a sitting position with the sudden addition of her weight. But then he recovers his balance, wraps his arms tightly around her and clings for all he has.

Giles is piercingly, achingly aware that he'd just lost Ginia...just for a few seconds, from his perspective, but she'd been taken away all the same. It was a pain he'd never had to experience, not in this specific fashion - he'd been taken from her, yes, twice before this, but the same had never happened to her. And now that she's back, all he can think about is that it might happen again.

"I'm here..." His voice is trembling with a mixed up knot of emotions, and he knows he should say more, offer more in the way of comfort. But, somehow, that seems like the most important thing. "Ginia, I'm here..."

He is here. He is here and that's all that matters right now. Even if he hadn't been there for all these years - no fault of his own, there was no helping the fact they came from different worlds - he was here now. Ginia wonders if things might have been different if they had somehow been in the same world together. Maybe she wouldn't have gone off on a attack she knew she wouldn't come back from. Maybe they would have settled somewhere quiet together and never run into Natalie or Jack. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Her strong burst of emotion subsides slightly, a shudder running through her as she breathes in. Giles is here and they are together and he loves her and she's alive here. She's alive, breathing, existing, living. It's an idea she has to cling onto just as she clings onto Giles because it's all she has now.

Ginia has to tell him. She considers not telling him, finding some other excuse for her sudden sadness and grief. She vaguely remembers a letter where he told he he regretted telling her because she had to suffer with the knowledge he was gone. Wouldn't it be the same here? The burden of her death would be his as well? But there are things to tell him.

She starts with the easiest one. Her hands unwind from his back to his chest, resting lightly before she draws back and looks at him. Ginia does her best to memorize how he looks, committing every detail of him to memory again because she finds herself needing to remember. Five years is a long time, more so with a fractured memory.

/She's gone. Alice./

He's not entirely aware of how much time has passed before Ginia pulls away. Really, Giles isn't aware of much at all, except having her here and close and here, of running his hand through her hair and reassuring her that he's really here, that they're really together after...god, after however long it's been.

Giles lets her pull away when she finally shows that she wants to, and sits back to look at her as she looks at him. His gaze takes in all the little details, all the changes, all the ways she's older now than she was then. She's still beautiful, she's still Ginia, but...years can change a person, and he'd be lying if he said he wasn't scared.

So her first words surprise him, and it shows, knocking Giles out of his fear and trepidation into an expression of genuine surprise. "...Alice? W-What do you mean?"

/She's gone,/ Ginia signs again, suddenly aware Giles is the third person she's ever told this too and she falters slightly as she tries to find the words to explain everything. /All the conditioning, the training, all the things that made her, they fell apart years ago. Three, four years ago. She's gone. Or maybe not gone, I remember some of the things she does./

Her head drops, suddenly afraid to look at him and see his reaction. She knows Alice and him were never close, really only cautious and begrudging allies at best, but however he might react to the news, it scares her. However, she also knows there's a lot she could tell to scare him.

/...It's been five years, Giles. I'm 37./ On the bright side, it does close the age gap somewhat.

He lets out his breath, all in a rush, sagging slightly against her. Five years. Yes. That...that looked about right. Just from looking at her...that looked about right.

That sinks in before he can truly process the realities of Alice being 'gone'. Alice is just something he'd come to accept about Ginia, a difficulty and a quirk that were part and parcel of loving her. Give time, though...he'll be happy.

"...you've aged well."

It's a lie, she looks five years older than that just from stress. But it's a lie looks like it might help, if only a bit.

"...I missed you. And, and...I'm glad you're back."

That, of course, was the utter truth.

It's a lie and she knows it. It's only been five years but it might as well have been ten. There's peace in living out a quiet life as a waitress in Santa Fe, but there's also the stress of maintaining a secret identity and being on the run from your government. Death also has a way of adding on a few years.

Still, she smiles a little because the thought helps.

/...I missed you too. And I'm glad to be here./ Because the unknown after death scares her. Is there an afterlife? Heaven or Hell or some peaceful resting place? Or is it only nothingness to follow? Or is death simply another world and another chance at living?

/Do you still love me?/ It's only been minutes for him, but five years for her and she needs that reassurance and extra bit of stability.

Even in a world where it's a known, confirmed fact that there is an afterlife, a myriad of different heavens and hells...well, death is still the ultimate uncertainty, and that uncertainty had nearly driven Giles mad at one point. It had also driven him to make a deal with a death goddess. Nearly dying all over again in exchange for knowing...he still thought he'd come out ahead, in that particular arrangement.

One day, he'd know for certain. Until then? He could only hope that he'd done enough to redeem himself and escape a hell dimension for all eternity.

Ginia's answer, therefore, is a hug so tight that it's as though Giles is trying to keep her with him by sheer force of will. Really, on a certain level, he is.

"More than ever."

Truer words he has never spoken.

His hug is almost enough to squeeze all the air out of her. He's a strong man too and it almost hurts a little, but it keeps her grounded. Ginia wraps her arms around him and holds him tight, face resting against his shoulder. It's a cruel question to ask before certain statements, but even if he leaves after, at least she still had that last moment of love. A silly, selfish thought, but one needs to be a little selfish in order to survive.

But maybe if he did leave, it would be better for him.

She kisses him. A light kiss from someone who has forgotten how to be tender and loving and is doing her best to ease back into that role. Her hands cup his face and she rests her forehead against his.

She has to tell him. He has to know. It would be leading him on otherwise.

Ginia pulls back and looks at him, taking a deep breath before signing two words that change everything.

/I died./

Giles knows how to read sign language. He learned it thanks to the Council. And why not? It was a useful skill to have, a good, solid method of communication if a situation arose where speaking aloud might put them all in danger.

Giles knows how to read sign language.

But when he sees those two words, he wonders if he's forgotten. Because what he's reading them to mean...it isn't right. It can't be right. He must be seeing wrong, understanding wrong...it can't really be...

Giles lets out his breath in what sounds like a sob. He hates himself for showing even that little of how those two words rip his heart to pieces, but there's only so much he can keep back in the face of that. The urge to turn away just so she doesn't see his face is overpowering...but, instead, he just hugs her again, gently and tenderly this time, as though she'll break to pieces if he's not careful.

He doesn't say anything, but that's because he's trying not to cry. But he'll pull away after a few seconds, so she can say something if she wants. At suck close proximity, he doesn't think he'll miss anything even if he takes his glasses off to clean the dust of the store away.

Ginia knows she can't leave it at that, even if the truth is too much to bear. But she owes him the truth and she owes sparing him nights of endless wondering how she might have died or what happened because she knows what those nights are like.

Her expression hardens as she pulls herself together to share her story, the signs spilling from her fingers before now there's nowhere else to go. Keeping them in will only kill her more and right now she needs someone to help carry her burden for her.

/Project Whitecap, they were the group that... experimented on me while I was in the hospital. They made Alice, tested all sorts of things on us. Someone tried to speak out against them, went to the media, told everyone that would listen. He disappeared and the government covered everything up, then came after anyone who was in the project.

They tried to kill me, but I escaped. Faked my death and spent a few years laying low in Santa Fe. No one knew who I was, no one had to know. But an old friend... he ran into me. He was hiding from Whitecap, him and a sixteen-year-old./

She grit her teeth in anger. After so many months of running, it felt so good being able to spill everything out to someone else. Jack knew all her anger and agreed, but it felt good being able to purge out all her frustration and hatred toward those who ran her country. /They were experimenting on children. Teenagers, children, turning them into soldiers, into assassins. They were always children picked up off the streets or from the hospital, people no one would ever miss. Natalie was only sixteen and already as good a shot as I was. Natalie wasn't even her real name, it was the background they imprinted on her.

/I helped them escape. I had to. We spent months avoiding them, never staying in one place for long, but we could only keep it up for so long. Between Natalie and me, they would never stop coming after us. So I sent them off to Taiwan where some old contacts could hide them and I brought them time in the airport./

Her hands clenched into fists and her head dropped down. She could see it clearly, the agents coming after them, her and her stash of weapons alone. A final desperate fight on the tarmac. Giving into her deathseeker ways? Perhaps.

/I don't remember how many I took down. But the plane got away. I did all I could for them. I don't regret that./

This house is full of stories we both told

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