AU: Le Fantôme du Burlesque, Part I

[nepheliad.livejournal.com]

Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,971
Pairing: Cary/Iz
Summary: Cary's dead. Isabella isn't. Neither can quite move on, in very different ways.
Notes: This is not actually a Phantom of the Opera AU. But it is sort of close. I also really need a Cary/Iz icon.

le fantôme du burlesque, part i

Dying of old age would never suit him.

Both Cary Vaughn-Blair and his longtime lover, Isabella Fitzwilliam, could have agreed on that one. Going out slowly and in pain wouldn't have suited either one of them. Isabella had already gone through it, and Cary would never let her do it again. He couldn't let her suffer like that – he'd heard about it, how she suffered with her first love. Her Randolf, her Andy, who he could never replace but who he strived to be just as good as. He'd always tried.

He kept trying, too, right until his death.

He wouldn't die in a way where she had to sit and watch him suffer. Not die in a way where she would waste away afraid. And maybe, maybe she never loved him quite how she loved Andy, but their love was still something that mattered. It mattered enough that another lingering death might break her, even decades after the fact. Even after she'd had decades to learn that he wasn't Andy and decide that she love him anyway.

They weren't all that similar in many other ways.

They were similar in most of the ways that counted: being sexually compatible and taller and suited in very different styles to being the man with Isabella on his arm in general. They were also different enough she wasn't ever running the risk of thinking she was only with Cary because he reminded her of Andy.

She loved him.

She didn't love him the same, because you can't love any two people the same, but over time, she loved him as much.

The problem was, as much didn't mean more.

So when he was on his deathbed after all, Isabella couldn't do for Cary what she didn't do for Andy. She couldn't make him immortal, couldn't bring him back, couldn't make him stay. They didn't even have children, something she and Andy had had, another reason on top of hundreds of thousands of others that she should've said hang it to her mother's rules and ways and made him immortal after all. It was a mistake to have ever listened to her – what did she know of love, anyway?

Not enough, Isabella thought, to know the pain of losing someone. Even if maybe Cecily had known the pain of losing her daughter, her Isibél, she didn't really know the pain of losing someone.

But she hadn't done it for Andy.

So she couldn't do it for Cary.

Not, of course, that Cary would die. She couldn't let herself think about it. Things had settled and gotten better and they had something approaching a family and he couldn't die! He wasn't going anywhere she didn't go, except maybe to work. They'd get through everything together. He was another rock in her life, another stable force she needed as a natural wanderer. They'd get through everything together. She didn't need to think about the possibility.

And they did go through everything together, from the minutiae of her club to the boring post-takedown paperwork of his cases.

Until one day, Cary didn't come back from a takedown.

***
Nicole didn't make much of a fuss, back then, about anything. She'd just walked in to Isabella's office – a real office, as opposed to one of the Burlesk House's upstairs "offices" – and said, quite matter-of-factly, he's dead.

What?

He's dead. My uncle.

What?

Of course, Isabella didn't ever say the second 'what?,' because she'd heard the girl (young woman, who was still a girl in her head the same way Cary was still right there next to her holding her hand kissing her neck running his hands down her thigh right there, not dead because he'd never leave her) the first time, and managed to hear her the second time, too.

She didn't want to hear it.

He was killed in an altercation with a perp, Nicole told her evenly. Nicole didn't seem phased. Nicole had been prepared for it; Nicole would be okay.

(Or so Nicole told herself.)

Isabella couldn't hear it.

It wasn't true.

He wasn't dead. He would be right back soon and he would be right there with her!

(She didn't know how right she was.)

***
What Isabella didn't know, what Cary Vaughn-Blair hadn't told her, what he'd made Nicole promise not to tell her was that there was something else to his death.

He'd planned it.

Or, rather, he hadn't resisted it, and had intended to let death come when death faced him. Suicide by occupation. He captured the unsub and the fucker killed him and they got to add another charge to the laundry list already on the perp's head. Someone had to go after him. Someone had to capture and corner him on a suicide mission of a grab and this was the only way. It was the only way for two things to happen: for the unsub to be captured (the unsub who wasn't much of one, anymore, anyway; he was identified the second Vaughn called for backup) and for Vaughn to die in a way that wasn't slow and painful.

He'd found out he had cancer, a few months previously.

It was a send from a fictional god he was happy to thank anyway that Isabella wasn't Robert, that she wasn't quite able to tune to him the way Robert did with Alice, that she wouldn't be able to tell. He couldn't tell her. He had to die some other way before she knew – he had to, he'd known it as he still knew it now that it was over, now that he was – must've been – dead.

He couldn't tell her and so he'd set that plan up, instead.

Nicole knew. Ryan knew. Neither were ever to tell her, and neither ever would. He trusted them. He trusted them and he knew he had to go, had to leave, and suddenly he found that he wasn't. Couldn't. There was no afterlife ahead of him. He wasn't going anywhere. He wasn't going anywhere! He had to stay with her! Death wasn't going to stop him from staying with her. All this death had stopped him from doing was dying another way, a way that would hurt her more. This was fast and brutal.

And he couldn't leave.

Andy had left her, after all.

He couldn't let it happen again.

***
This wasn't the way it was supposed to go, the ghost of Cary Vaughn-Blair thought when he found his way back to his Isabella, curled up in bed, staring out into space, trying not to think about anything at all.

This wasn't the way it was supposed to go at all. She was supposed to mourn him the way she mourned Andy, to grow cold and despairing, and he was supposed to be able to climb onto the bed and hold her in his arms and tell her it was okay, that he was still there, that he'd never leave her. That he'd done this for her. That he had control. That it was okay.

She was different, though.

And he couldn't hold her.

And he didn't have control.

And she didn't need him.

She had other people to hold her. Her family was there. Children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and his family, too; they all mourned together, but he was blind to them. Suddenly no one else mattered. He didn't need to watch Nicole, to watch Ryan, to watch Bianca or Ezra or the twins or Gwen or anyone. Everything was Isabella, his beautiful Iz who wasn't reacting the way he'd –

Not hoped.

He could never hope she'd hurt, but ... but it stung. It stung still that she had broken with Andy and not with him. That she was stable without him. Had death before just desensitized her? Or did she really just not love him as much? Had she not ever loved him as much? Was he kidding himself?

She didn't even see him, didn't hear him, didn't notice him, and she was magic just like he was by then; shouldn't she have, when they were alone? Maybe that was the problem. She was never alone. Everything passed in a haze for him and he didn't know what was going on and there were scads of people everywhere, around her, always –

He'd even had a funeral at one point.

He didn't notice.

Finally, finally, and maybe it was days later, she was alone, he got her alone, he spoke to her. Caught her arm and spoke to her. He could touch her after all! Touch her and she spun around and stared at him, and he spoke.

Quietly, softly, "Isabella."

She shrieked, "Go away!" and pulled away from him, throwing herself onto the bed, crying and yelling go away go away go away, leave me alone. Suddenly, he was paralyzed by more than his own death. He had no direction at all. He didn't know what to do.

She didn't want him.

He vanished.

Isabella screamed.
***
It was hard not to scream, hard not to yell for it to go away. It was hard to deal with it simply because it existed. It hadn't happened with Andy, maybe because there hadn't been a chance, but it hadn't happened before and Isabella hadn't been ready for it.

She wasn't prepared to hallucinate.

She saw him everywhere.

How was she supposed to mourn when he was everywhere? And then suddenly he could touch her, and she could almost pretend he was real – almost. Almost, but he wasn't. He had died.

She had let him die.

Just like she'd let Andy die she'd let Cary die and she had to keep seeing him everywhere. What was this, some kind of punishment? Why was the image of him haunting her? Why did she see him at every corner? She had to stay strong and stay, this time, for her family – she had come back to them and couldn't just leave them again. She couldn't. And this was making her want to more than anything else.

She couldn't keep seeing him. He had to go away from her mind and not come back again. She had to push him away – she hadn't expected pushing him away to be so simple, though, and the look on his face when she shrieked at him –

The look on a hallucination's face broke her heart.

She had to be going mad.
***
For weeks, Cary tried it.

He tried to go away and leave her alone. He tried and he couldn't, quite – he couldn't quite leave, couldn't, what was it she had called it? Cross over. He couldn't do that. Not without her, not at all, not even saying goodbye woul ever be enough. He couldn't do anything without her. They were in everything together. Together together together but they weren't together, echoed in his head, over and over, she doesn't want you anymore. She loved Andy more than you. She doesn't need you.

Move on.

Move on.

I can't.

Cary wouldn't move on, wouldn't think about moving on, maybe he was doomed to walk the earth forever like in some bad horror flick without her by her side but he'd rather do that than be away from her entirely. Sure, maybe from the afterlife he could watch her. And he'd considered it – simply trying to find that very clichéd light they talked about in the movies, in TV shows, anywhere.

Can you see the light? the exorcist or ghost whisperer or psychic or whomever would say.

No, Cary finished the mental teleplay inside his theoretical head. I can't. There's no light.

There was only a light when he thought of Isabella. Light of his life. Always.

He couldn't keep being away from her, even if she'd told him to go away – she'd told him to go away, and it hurt even if he couldn't really feel pain, maybe, it hurt and he hated it and hated being away from her. She didn't want him near her. He'd honor her wishes by going where she couldn't see him.

There were plenty of places she couldn't see him where he could still be near her.

Plenty.

One was the easiest to find.