Your Love Will Kill Me

[coffeebuddha]

Your Love Will Kill Me

Rated: PG-13

You brought the springtime to fill, my heart in it's winter chill.
I lost my strength and my will, and now my tears start to spill.
I never knew such desire, just looking into your eyes.
And now the soul in me cries, and now the night is on fire.

Your love will kill me; your love will kill me.
And you will bear my curse as long as my life will be.

-"Your Love Will Kill Me" from Notre Dame de Paris

***

Christophe knew he loved her the first time she punched him. She had a gorgeous right hook. Her form was pure poetry, her aim was immaculate, her full weight was behind it. It broke his nose. He fell. The poor bastard never had a chance.

***

He'd shown up on her doorstep covered in blood. Most women would have screamed or called the cops or both, but she'd just opened the door for him and motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen. He peeled off his shirt while she pulled a first aid kit out from under the sink, and if the bruises and cuts that marred his wiry torso and arms shocked her, she didn't show it.

He realized she was shaking when she took his hand in hers and carefully wiped at his skinned knuckles with a damp towel. He realized that she had tears in her eyes when he cupped her face and one slid warm and wet against the pad of his thumb. And when he kissed her that first time, with his hard, calloused hands gentle on her cheeks and his mouth tasting of ash and dirt and copper, but so tender and loving that she wondered if he thought she might break, she realized she'd never had a chance either.

***

Her mother was Spanish and her father was Italian. Catholicism was as much a part of her as her green eyes and dark hair. She could deliver entire Latin masses in her sleep. No, really. She'd woken him up on more than one occasion by doing just that.

She'd always wanted a big wedding in the Church surround by her family and friends. He could never marry her. He was a mercenary, always on the run, living outside the law. Plus, he wasn't Catholic. She'd rolled her eyes and told him to stop talking like a bad cliché.

She left town with him that afternoon, leaving almost everything but a few changes of clothes and her family Bible behind. Near midnight she forced him to pull off the road into an open field. Under a sliver of moon and a million stars, she recited vows to him and God. She wrote his name next to hers in her Bible under her parents' and grand parents' names and told him exactly what the government could do with its marriage licenses and where her priest, who'd met Christophe once and started telling her to stay away from 'that heathen devil boy', could go. He loved her, she loved him, and they'd pledged that love to God. Or, at the very least, she had and he hadn't contradicted her. So far as she was concerned, they were set. He'd never loved her more.

***

At first she made comments about him having a split personality as a joke. It was never brought up around anyone else, but sometimes when they were alone, she'd just look into the middle distance and talk like she was thinking aloud. He'd growl, she'd laugh, they'd kiss, and all would be right in their private world.

***

Gregory found them.

He was surprised, then skeptical, then delighted. He thought she was charming. A real lady. She thought he was a bit of a pompous ass, but in the best possible way. They shared a common interest in music, literature, and pointedly loud comments about all of Christophe's worst habits.

He would show up out of the blue every few weeks.

She used to joke that he must have put a tracking device on Christophe when they were kids with the way he always seemed to know where they were.

Actually, Gregory and Christophe had disguised it as one of the prayer beads on the rosary Christophe had given her for her birthday. Just in case.

***

She hated the way he talked about God. Whenever he started in on one of his rants about God, she'd go quiet. She never said anything, but he knew she hated it.

He hated God.

He loved her more.

So he stopped, determined to keep his opinions to himself. After a couple of weeks, she backed him into a corner and yelled that she'd rather have him cursing God than refusing to acknowledge He existed.

She was contradictory and exasperating and he just couldn't figure her out. But the next time he called God a bitch, she laughed and tugged him down on top of her on their cheap motel room bed and showed him heaven. Afterwards, while they smoked his cigarette-because she didn't smoke, it was bad for you, but could she take a drag from his please?-he told her that she and God were both bitches, but that he could live with it.

***

One night, just as she was getting out of the shower, he burst into their room after having been gone for nearly three days. A gash just behind his hairline had covered his face with blood, his clothes were so torn it was a miracle they hadn't simply fallen off, and his eyes were cold and almost wild. He grabbed both her wrists in one hand, yanked her roughly against him, and took her hard against the bedroom wall. She cried out in pain and pleasure, her hands restrained but her legs locked tightly around him.

The next morning, her arms and hips were covered in bruises and Christophe and his things were gone. She took another shower, had breakfast, and called Gregory. It took them the better part of a month to find him.

It was the second time she punched him. It was the second time she broke his nose. It was the only time he ever tried to leave her.

***

She had nightmares because of his work. They both knew that he knew, but neither brought it up.

He was becoming more volatile, more unpredictable. All too frequently now they'd be driving down the highway or eating at a diner or lazing about in a motel room and she'd feel something shift. She'd look up and instead of her husband, she'd be riding/eating/lazing next to the Mole. She didn't complain, but she'd stopped making jokes.

***

He asked her once why she was with him. Why, no matter how bad things got-and they had gotten pretty damn bad often enough-she didn't leave.

She passed him his section of the newspaper and told him to stop asking stupid questions. He growled, she laughed, they kissed, and for the next few hours their world was perfect.

***

Christophe didn't know how long he'd been sitting in that small, dank room tied to a chair. If he'd ever had an internal clock, the irregular hours he'd been keeping for almost his entire life had smashed it to pieces. He'd lost count of how many times they tortured him, of how many there were doing the torturing.

He was tired.

He was hungry.

He was hurting.

But he was unwavering and unafraid right up to the point when they brought her in. Her clothes, thrift store jeans and one of his old t-shirts, were caked with dirt and blood. There was a long cut down the side of her face and the bastard, the fucking bastard, who had shoved her in front of him into the room was holding a knife against her throat.

She felt the shift when he stopped being the Mole and started being Christophe.

Demands were made. Threats were made. Promises were made. He had something that they wanted-information-and they had something that he wanted-her.

But he knew these men. Christophe knew them. The Mole knew them. He knew the promises they made and exactly how much those promises meant. She could see the indecision in his eyes. She could sense his flickering between Christophe and the Mole. She could feel the prick of the knife, dully echoed by the prick of tears behind her eyes.

Even if he didn't know yet himself, she knew that there was never a question of what the outcome would be.

***

Gregory found them.

Or, rather, Gregory found the Mole.