The Center (Houdini and Nurse_K)

She stared at him the entire time he spoke. What her stare said she wasn't sure. She didn't really know why he was there to see her, other than to try to get her to talk to him. Well, if he wanted the truth she would give it to him. Did he still love her? She didn't really know, and couldn't really know unless he proved it to her. She wasn't going to ask him to do that now though. If he wanted to prove it to her, he could do that on his own time. Not while she was at work. But there was something she needed to tell him if this was going to be the last time they would ever see each other. Something she couldn't say when she walked out.

"I never stopped loving you," she said, matter of factly, with only a hint of sadness in her voice, "Not even for a second. It's still going strong. Despite everything," she cleared her throat and began to fiddle with some papers on her desk. That was all she had to say. Anything else would be jumbled and incoherent as she was quickly losing her control. "Hope...hope your life is a good one," she said shakily.
 
A tear came to Brendan's eye when she told him what was on her mind. "You're a strong woman, Elsa," he told her, just a slight quiver in his voice. "That's one of the many things I love about you. I...I just never intended... never intended for you to have to use that quality to get through something I put you through. He turned and walked away a single step, before turning back around. "All I ever wanted was for you to be happy. More than anything else in the world, I hope you find that in life. But it'll take a better man than me to give that to you," he finally said, loud enough for a few of the closest people to hear, but he didn't care. He turned and walked back out, shaken by the encounter he'd just had with her.

As he walked home, his mind repeated every word of their conversation over and over again. He analyzed each syllable, wondering what he should read into what she'd said. Was there some chance she'd take him back? He'd give anything to have her in his arms again, yet he truly believed she deserved better than him. Would the more noble thing be to stay away, to give her up for her greater good?
 
She already knew that there was no one else for her. If she wasn't with Brendan, she wasn't going to be with anyone. Well...not willingly anyway. She had enough sense to know that once Carlos got out of prison he was going to hunt her down. Especially if she ended up...she didn't even want to think about that right now. This had turned out not to be a very good day for her. Being confronted by Carlos' goonies AND Brendan in the space of one afternoon was more than she could handle.

When the clock finally hit 5pm she gathered her things and shut down her computer. Many of the offices stayed open passed five, but main reception always closed then. She went out the front door and turned right, never seeing the two Latino men still there. She went to a coffee shop and got herself a large coffee and then walked the rest of the way home. She had a tiny, tiny apartment four blocks from her work. It had a bedroom, a bathroom, and a living room/kitchen. It was as much as she could afford.
 
The boys perked up from where they'd been hiding behind a fountain when Elsa came out, following her to the coffee store, and then home. Luis was evidently the scribe in the pair, and made a note of her address and apartment number. They also did some snooping, and found her phone number in the directory. The next day, Alex received his weekly call from Carlos. "Yeah, we found her," he answered. "Nope, I couldn't tell," he answered to the question of whether anything interesting was observed on Elsa. "Nah, she just seemed scared to hear we were with you." Carlos, back at the Center, furrowed his brow in thought. "Wait another week, until I get another phone call. I want you to follow her to her apartment next Friday, and I'll call there at six o'clock. Make sure she'll talk to me," he said with a laugh. "She'll know by then."
 
The rest of the week was crap for Elsa. Her days were boring, her nights were boring. Her weekend was boring. Everything was boring. She didn't see Brendan again, though every day she secretly hoped that he was going to come into the building again. Finally on Sunday she decided she would break down and take the pregnancy test. She bought several at the drug store, aware that sometimes they were inconclusive. She went to the bathroom and peed on the stupid thing, anxiously pacing back and forth as she waited for it to tell her. Inconclusive. She got angry and threw it away.

The next day she woke up feeling horrible. She ran to the bathroom and was sick all morning. She called out from work and laid around her tiny apartment all day. On Wednesday she took another test. Her heart was pounding wildly as she waited. And then there it was. A little +. + means pregnant. She...was pregnant. With Carlos' baby. What was she going to do? He knew, he obviously knew. That was why he sent his goons after her. She could lie and kill it. But somehow she felt that he would know she was lying.
 
When the day came around, Alex and Luis stationed themselves inside Elsa's apartment building about ten minutes before they thought she'd be back, stowing themselves away in the laundry room, out of sight from the main hallway. Of course, if Elsa went to do something else after work, the plan would be ruined, and Carlos would have to wait another week before he got another phone call. But they had to take the chance sometime. Alex peeked around the corner when he heard footsteps, and saw that their trip hadn't been in vain. They crouched at the door, waiting for Elsa to unlock her door. Once they heard the key turn, they both darted out and sprinted the twenty-five feet to her door. Luis got there first, and caught the door just as she was closing it, pushing it back open and letting his partner in before slamming it behind him.

He lunged at Elsa, wrapping her up in his arms before she could escape or grab a phone. "Relax, sugar, we ain't gonna hurt you," he said soothingly, smiling at his partner. "Our... colleague," he began, snickering at his use of a big word. "He wants to jus' talk with you."
 
Elsa'd had a hard day. She was trying to cope with the fact that she was pregnant. If she had been pregnant with Brendan's baby she would've felt differently. What she would have felt she wasn't exactly sure, but differently definitely. She held horrible carrying Carlos' child. She didn't want this baby. She didn't want to carry it, birth it, and then raise it as she knew she was going to have to do. Carlos had said so many times that he would kill her and everyone she loved if she wouldn't care for his child. She never thought she would actually have to live that.

Elsa screamed when she heard the door get kicked open and saw the two men from the week before standing there. She kicked and fought when the one wrapped his arms around her to restrain her. She thought they were going to rape her too. But then they revealed that Carlos wanted to talk to her. Her face drained of color again and she went limp, dreading that.
 
The one who'd been holding her slowly released her. "I told you we not gonna hurt you. Now if you wanna make a fuss and all, we can change our minds," he said. "But really, we don't wanna hurt you, girly. You carrying some precious cargo, ain't you?" He'd said this just to test the waters really, but the look in her eyes told him that it was likely she knew something she wasn't letting on. A minute later the phone rang. "Yo boss," Alex said, picking up Elsa's phone. "Yeah, we got a strong suspicion 'bout that." He turned to Elsa, and held out the phone. "It's for you," he said with a big smile. "You need to get on there and talk," he instructed.

The voice on the other end was a familiar one. "Mamita," he began. "How you and my little one doing?" he asked cheerily, starting with the assumption she was pregnant and leaving it to her to deny if she chose to.
 
Her face flushed deeply when the man made the reference about precious cargo. She didn't think what she was carrying was very precious, at least not yet. A lot of women became attached to their babies throughout the pregnancy, but Elsa wasn't sure that was going to happen with her. She did, after all, legitimately hate it's father. She was alarmed when the phone that rang was her own. They'd gotten her phone number too? That meant Carlos could call her without his goons being there. Ugh.

She took the phone and sat down on the couch warily. She held it up to her ear and buried her face in her free hand. She swallowed uneasily at the mention of his little one, and decided not to address it. "I was fine until your lackeys nearly busted my door." she said evasively.
 
"Come on baby, why you gotta hate?" he began. "I forgave you for that last thing you said to me, sugar. You know... they let visitors in now. Why don't you come see me?"
 
"I don't ever want to set foot into that place again," she said, the fear obvious in her voice. "Why are you doing this to me, Carlos? Why can't you just leave me alone?"
 
"Come on," he pleaded. "I feel you though. I wouldn't come back here neither once I get out. You know, my lawyer be working on an appeal of that case to get me outta here.... So, you got any news you need to tell me, sugar?"
 
She glanced up at the two men still standing in her living room smirking at her. She hated them instantly. "Umm..." she started, fidgeting a little bit, her free hand naturally drifting to her still flat stomach. "No...I don't think so," she lied.
 
Carlos had been trying to play it nice, but he was going to have to exert his figurative muscle now. It was possible, of course that she wasn't pregnant, but he had to be sure. "You know, baby," he began, a little sneer now evident in his voice. "You seen that I got strong feelers, even from the inside. If you lie to me, you gonna find out how strong they really are. So think hard, you sure you ain't got nothing important to say? Nothing I'd want to know about?"
 
She could hear and feel the change in his voice, and like he'd done at the Center, he exerted that strange control over her. Her blood ran cold at his threats and she fidgeted again, knowing that she wasn't going to be able to lie to him. She didn't know how he managed to do it, but he had a way about him that rendered her absolutely defenseless against him. "I..." she began, but then stopped. She didn't know how to say this to him. What he wanted to badly and what she didn't want to give him, "I...um...I think there might be something you might want to know about."
 
Carlos pumped his fist quietly at the phone booth in the Center. She didn't have to tell him what the news was, but he was going to make her nonetheless. "I told you my boys can swim," he said calmly, not conveying the emotion over the phone that he was showing in person. "It's true, ain't it?"
 
She felt like she was going to burst into tears. "Y-yes," she stammered, having an incredibly difficult time holding herself together. "It's true," she wondered what he would do now. Hang up now that he had the info he wanted? Force her into small talk? Make horrid plans that she wasn't going to want to keep?
 
"Here's how this is gonna work," he said softly and confidently. "I'm gonna call you every other week at this time to check up on my two babies. We don't need my crew there with you, unless you start avoiding my calls." He cleared his throat, and paused a moment. "Then, when you have the baby, if I ain't out yet, you gonna bring him to see me. Or her. Whichever one." With that, he hung up the phone, not affording her a chance to protest or try to negotiate
 
She was twelve weeks pregnant. A call every other week for the duration meant twelve more calls from him. She opened her mouth to say something to him, but he'd already hung up. That was that. She wasn't going to be able to negotiate. She wasn't going to be able to bargain. It was how it was, she had no choice. He wanted her to bring the baby after she had it. Hopefully that meant she was going to escape having to go see him while she was pregnant.
 
Carlos’ two lackeys saw the disturbed look in Elsa’s eyes and knew that their work was complete. Their job was to keep an eye on Elsa and make sure she kept the baby and didn’t try to run off anywhere. “Nice seein’ you again,” Alex said with a smile and a nod of the head, and with that, the two thugs walked out the door and disappeared.

Brendan did a lot of serious thinking over the weekend. It had been torture to stay away from Elsa for over a week. He knew that he loved her more now than when she left him. Her absence only made him appreciate her more. He’d convinced himself that if she gave him another chance, he would never again do the terrible kind of thing he’d done. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he was more sure of it than he’d ever been about something. He wouldn’t drink if he had to, although he’d never had a problem in that regard before. So he felt he had to see her again. After all, she hadn’t had to tell him she still loved him the last time. Even if it had a tone of finality to it, she left the door a tiny bit open for him.

On Monday afternoon, he left work at four o’clock and walked to the train station. On the way, he went inside a building and came out with a small envelope, sliding it into his pants pocket. He got off the train and walked to her building, arriving at the fountain outside at a quarter to five. He sat down by the front door, waiting for her to come out. Hopefully, he’d guessed right and she finished at five, anyway. He wasn’t going to be sad and pathetic, even though that’s how he felt. He was going to be the Brendan that she came to love in the first place. He’d be respectful of her, but he’d be the confident, sometimes cocky guy who took charge, but had her best interests at heart. If it worked, he was sure they'd both end up a thousand times happier than they were now. If it went up in flames, at least he'd have tried.
 
She slowly brought the phone away from her ear and clicked the hang up button. She stared at it for a couple seconds and then jumped when she heard a voice. It was one of the lackeys. She just watched them as they left her apartment, not saying a word and barely breathing. She swallowed nervously and then set the phone down. She felt like her life was over.

The weekend was dull for her mostly because she wouldn't go out anywhere. A couple of girls from work called her and asked her to go out for drinks, but she couldn't drink now. Drinking was bad for the baby, but she didn't tell the girls that. She just said she felt ill. Which was the truth. She moped around for those two days until Sunday night when she realized that she shouldn't let this ruin her life. She shouldn't let this kill her soul. Maybe she would love the baby. It was half of her, after all.

Work on Monday was actually pretty good. It passed by fairly quickly. She walked out the door and turned to the left and stopped short, seeing Brendan sitting there. She stared at him for a moment, her heart beating wildly. "H-hi.."
 
Brendan had gone off into a daze while he was waiting, going through what he might say. It was good that Elsa had seen him and not ignored him, or else he might have missed his chance completely. When he heard the first intonation of her voice, he recognized it immediately, and started, jumping up from the edge of the fountain. He went up to Elsa, and his body twitched as he fought the impulse to embrace her, or take her hand. The synapses in his muscles were telling him to, but he fought it off, knowing she was no longer his to take.

"Hey Elsa," he said, running his hand through his hair, a calm rushing over him now. He stared down and toed at the cement for a second before looking back up into her eyes. "This is the only place I know where to find you. So I've decided something," he informed her with a smile. "I'm going to walk you home, or to your train, or wherever you're going. If you want me to leave off when you get close to home, so I won't know where you live, I will. If you don't want to talk to me, I'll just talk to you. Or we'll walk in silence."

He took a couple steps in the direction she'd originally been heading, hoping she'd come along. "You said you still loved me, and that's why I couldn't stay away. You shouldn't love me after what I did. So, I'm going to keep coming back here, tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, until I know if what you said was true. Because, dammit, I love you more now than I ever have." His mind drifted back to their walks through the halls in the Center. So much of their relationship had been defined and developed by those walks that were more than simply a means of transport. He only hoped that walking together again, he could get to know Elsa anew, and show her who he really was.
 
She wasn't sure what to say. He wanted to walk her home? That was incredibly sweet, and at the same time, strange. Why would he want to do that? Then she remembered. That was how they'd gotten to know each other at the Center. They'd walked everywhere together, in every kind of condition, under every kind of emotion and feeling. Walking was vital to their relationship and once they'd left the Center they'd basically stopped doing it together. Maybe that was why they'd had problems.

She gripped her purse tightly and stared down at the cement for a moment after he'd said that he loved her more now than he ever had. A smile was forcing its way to her lips, whether she wanted it there or not. She swallowed hard and then looked up at him again with a little nod. "Okay. I live four blocks away." and then she began to walk in her original direction. She wondered if she should tell him what had happened. She figured yes, since he was trying to rebuild their relationship, and she couldn't hide this from him if they were going to do that.

"Brendan," she began, "I..." her breath caught in her throat but she forced herself to go through with it, "I'm pregnant. By...by Carlos."
 
Elsa's little smile hadn't escaped Brendan's notice, and he parted his own lips in a half-grin once he saw it. He began walking side by side with Elsa, keeping a respectable distance of a couple of feet between them. He had been ready to bore Elsa with some of the particulars of his day to day life since they'd split, but that fled his mind as what she told him hit him like a sack of bricks.

"Wha.... But...That fucking animal!" he finally exclaimed in indignation. He stopped walking and looked over at Elsa, his mouth gaping wide open. His first thought was to come up with any rationale that what she'd said might not be true. "Are you sure it's his? We had sex at the Center. It's not like we used the reccomended kind of birth contr..." His voice trailed off as he realized that he'd just called Carlos an animal. What did that make him? "I...I don't know what do say," he finally offered, shaken by the way he'd condemned himself through his own line of reasoning. "Will you be okay?"
 
She shook her head, "I know it's his. The time line...it has to be his. And he knows. He...he had his people come find me. He's keeping tabs on me to make sure that I don't try to run or get rid of it," she clenched her teeth and sighed. "I don't know if you're going to want me back, anymore, Brendan. I'm a burden now. It's not just me anymore. It's me...and a baby." it hurt her to say those things, but she knew they were true. And she knew that if she was going to be with Brendan again, which she wanted more than anything, that he was going to have to accept that. And she didn't know if he would.

It was a hard thing to accept for anyone, let alone the man she loved helping her care for her rapist's child. And the fact that she was going to have to go see Carlos, he wasn't going to let her stay away from him. He had succeeded in making himself a staple in her life, whether she wanted that or not. She began walking again, a little more dejectedly, expecting Brendan to move away from her now and not want to be with her.
 
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