Labyrinth of Emotions – 02.28 ~*~ Finale Pt 1

            Thank you to everyone who came along for the ride on this one. It’s not every day that you get to play out something like this, and even when you knew someone was going to die, you tagged along, hoping against hope. I’m sorry, but hope dies here today, in a blaze of glory. Along with 2 or more characters in this story.

            I know there are some lose ends, but I’ll tie them up in a few weeks, with an epilogue to the story I’m sure.

            Please leave feedback, even if you HATE it, I want to hear it, leave a fake name. I don’t care, but please leave a little something, in honor of the dead and the fallen.

*****

            Rosita was breathless with laughter, she just couldn’t breath any more, and her father’s face was beet red and Alex was sitting with a serious look on her face. She had her hands cupping her chin, blinking and holding in the evident chuckle that was bidding to escape.

            “You didn’t?” Bette asked in a shrill voice, and Alex nodded, a shrug and then a soft grin.

            “I did. It was her own fault, she asked for it.” Alex was saying with a half smile on her face, and Tina was finally able to talk. Alex having been telling tales of her life taking care of her sister when they’d been younger, and some of the silly things that killers and perps sometimes did, and got caught doing.

            “Oh I can see her face! Nessa must have wanted to throttle you!” Tina said, and she held onto her stomach, Alex nodded, and then looked at the time, and took in a long breath. She didn’t want the laughs to stop, she wanted them to go on until the dawn broke, but she knew that the night was young, and she should be getting back to work.

            “I gotta jet guys, I’m still on the clock. I was looking for someone when you steered me in here.” She said to Bette and Tina got up too, Bette following suit. She smiled at Rosita, who was looking much better than when they’d first seen her, medicine was a great medicine.

            “We should go too, way passed visiting hours.” Bette said and Ro nodded, tossing the covers aside and her father gave her a look, as if asking where she was off too.

            “Ready Papi?” She said with a joking grin and he pointed back to the bed and Ro winked, taking the IV pole and walking to the bathroom, grabbing the back of the johny with one hand, coving her shapely ass.

            “I’m going to the bathroom, and this thing doesn’t cover my ass, so off with you before you get a look at what I’m not selling.” She said with a laugh and they all left the room, Rosita waving goodbye.

            They walked out into the hallway, and Alex felt her pager vibrating, she looked down, seeing Jo Wheaton‘s number, the one from Twilight she scoffed and Bette grabbed the pager from her. She held out of reach from the detective and tossed it to Tina, who caught it deftly with her left hand.

            “You need to learn to take a minute for yourself Alex, all work and no play makes the detective boring, and I know first hand that you are anything but boring.” Bette said and Tina looked at the pager, seeing her own work number. She then shot Bette a look about her boring comment and Bette paled, then a hot blush rose to her cheeks.

            “Hey, why not go for a drink? Come on Alex, you can see Jo, and we can dance?” Tina offered and Bette looked at her over the top of Alex‘s head and Alex shrugged.

            “What the hell, I’ll meet you there.” Alex said and they left the hospital, Alex‘s mind a jumble of thoughts as she watched Bette getting into the car with Tina, leaning over and kissing her softly and Alex had to smile. At least one thing in the world was right.

******

            Lara sat at the bar, and Alice sat down next to her. They looked at each other, nodding a hello and then nothing was said. Alice was in the dumps again, yet another murder tonight, and she and Jo had finally come to the conclusion that Sam was the killer. Her DNA had been found at two of the four crime scenes. This time, Sam‘s wedding ring to C.J. had been found clutched in the hand of the dead woman. She’d gotten the call from Jo just minutes ago, and she was meeting her here, and Dana hadn’t a clue what had been going on.

            She hadn’t had the courage to tell her that Sam was caught up in some sadistic re-enactment of Crystal‘s killing spree. Alice looked down at the drink, and Lara didn’t move, as if deep in some thoughtful world of her own.

            “Alice?” Jo said, and Lara turned too, Jo‘s eyes were feral as she touched Alice‘s shoulder and Alice cringed, the woman’s hands were like ice. Jo withdrew her hand quickly, and she had a look that almost scared Alice.

            “Jo…” Alice said and Jo waved to the bartender and ordered a soda, Katey handed the drink to Jo, and she nodded and Jo forced a smile. She sat down next to Alice and looked over at the clueless chef. Dana came over, dragging Bette and Tina with her, Tina waving to Blu for a drink, and Bette kissed her cheek lovingly as she did.

            “Look who I found outside? The gang is all here, where is Sam?” Dana asked and Alex appeared out of no where, meeting Jo‘s eyes from across the room and she knew, there’d been another one. Fuck, she’d been to late, again, she’d been to late to save another one.

            “I think we need to talk.” Jo said to Lara, and Lara gave Jo a confused look, and Jo bit down, making her jaw pop out and Alice put a hand on Jo‘s forearm. For some reason, Alice felt like this was her responsibility, and not Jo‘s.

            “I’ll tell her.” Alice said in a stiff voice, just as Jayden came up behind Alice, pinching her cheek quickly and Lara got up off the stool, not wanting anything else to do with Jayden Masters. She looked at the woman with venom in her blue eyes and was about to punch her, when she thought better of making a scene.

            “Tell who what? Hey guys, who’s up for some pool?” Jayden asked casually and Lara grunted, wanting to haul back and punch the doctor, again fighting down the hate in her belly, and Alice touched her gently. She shot a look at Jayden, and Bette moved towards them, ready to break up a fight.

            “You have some fucking balls, coming here, anywhere near me.” Lara sneered and the confused look on Jayden’s face wasn’t what she was expecting. Jo stood up, and motioned to Lara, as if she knew that Lara was angry. Her fingers touched the base of Lara‘s neck and Lara relaxed immediately.

            “What did she do?” Jo asked, and she gave Alice a look, and Alice pulled her cell phone from her hip and dialed Sam‘s house. Something was wrong, and Tina looked over at Bette and Dana put an arm around Alice‘s waist, as she blocked her ear and listened. Marina sashayed over and pulling a drunk Jenny along for the walk. They were both giddy, and then Marina saw the serious look on everyone’s face, and her mood changed.

            “She was at the house, with Sam tonight, she said that Sam hasn’t been as faithful as I thought she’d been.” Lara stated, and Jayden took two steps back as if she’d been slapped. She turned to Alice and Alice saw that there was something that Jayden wasn’t aware of.

            “Um.. Lara I’ve been working for the last 12 hours, I wasn’t at Sam‘s tonight, or any other night in the last two weeks. I just left work, I’m still in my scrubs…” Jayden said and Lara slammed her hand on the bar, and Alice jumped. She met Dana‘s confused look and kissed her, Bette cocking an eyebrow at the intimate gesture.

            “She’s telling the truth…” Jo said, her face a mask of confusion as she rubbed her chin, she began to walk around the small area of the bar and she turned to Jayden, pointing a finger at her, but Alex spoke instead.

            “The nurse said you logged out hours ago.” Alex said, and she turned, pulling her cell phone out and dialing the hospital, asking for the nurse she’d spoken with before. She spoke to her quickly and then Jo said in a stunned voice.

            “You have a twin….” Jo stated, tussling her hair and grabbing the back of her neck and pointing to Lara. “You saw the twin, the twin… She’s… Alice, could we have gotten it all wrong?” Jo asked, and Dana gave Alice a look that asked 1000 questions, Jo dug her keys from her pocket and walking to the door of her club.

            “What the fuck is going on?” Bette asked and Marina tried to pick up the conversation, Jenny was ordering another drink from Blu, but Marina waved it off.

            Lara, Jayden and Alice followed Jo, Alex fell into step behind them, everyone else behind Alex, a convoy of sexy lesbian women walked through Twilight .

            “Nurse said she saw Jayden AFTER she’d been logged off duty, and CJ Master’s works there too. Jo, Sam‘s house?” Alex asked and the FBI Agent simply nodded, grabbing her black jacket from the guard at the door, stepping into it and Alice thought she looked like an action movie star, whipping the coat onto her body and Alex looking as mean as she did, leather jacket gleaming in the moonlight and Alice thought they looked like hero’s in some movie going off to save the world.

            “We were looking for clue to why Sam was killing, but it wasn’t Sam, it was someone setting Sam up. What better way to resurrect the killer, but making it look like the person who’d gotten the killers heart to be doing the killing? Its to Stephen King not to be right, it has to be that. Sam isn’t the killer.” Jo said, getting into her car, Lara getting into the car too, and Jayden jumped into the back seat. Alex slid in to the front seat, and took her gun out, checking it and putting one in the chamber.

            “If you think you are going alone, you’ve got another fucking thing coming.” Jayden said and Alice launched herself into the back seat.

            “I’m with them.” Alice said, Dana clambering over the back of the car and got in the back seat, and Jo shoved the car into reverse and back out of the slot and shot forwards and into the night, hoping to be in time again.

            “Ok, that’s it, we are going to follow you, we’ll catch up.” Bette said and Tina nodded, Marina nodding too, and Jenny was checking out a sexy vamp that had just walked by.

            “What is going on?” Jenny asked and Marina said in a soft serious voice.

            “Looks like death.” Marina stated ominously in her thick accent, making Bette and Tina turn and stare at her as they quickly moved to Bette‘s car.

*****

            Sam woke up, groggy and in pain, every inch of her body ached, hurt and she rubbed her head. She felt it, the small gash that Jayden had given her. The hard cross across her eyebrow, fuck it hurt. Sam touched the blood, it was thin, to thin. What was going on with her? She stumbled up to her feet, then fell over, the room not only spinning from right to left, but was tossing her upside down as well.

            “Jay…” Sam muttered, realizing she was in her own house, in her own clothes and no longer in the Johnny of the hospital where she’d begged Jayden to cut out her killer heart. She’d been at Twilight , more forgotten time. Snippets of things that she’d done, who’d she been looking for earlier? Lara.

            She put her hands flat on the hard wood floor of her living room and pushed herself up to her knees. She saw the puddle of vomit to her left, and she moaned softly. She was sick, in the head and her body as well.

            “Jay…” She muttered, coughing and seeing blood spraying out, she groaned, internal bleeding, that was just what the doctor hadn’t ordered.

            “Sam you’re awake…” Jayden said, helping her to the couch and Sam tried to talk, but her mind wasn’t responding to what she was telling it to do. She closed her eyes, coughing as she tried to speak again. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, seeing her watch was gone for some reason, and she grabbed at her ribs.

            “Why here, where…” Sam stammered, trying to get up again, something was wrong, very wrong with everything that was going on. She got to her feet, her bare feet she saw. She was wearing an old pair of jeans and she looked down to see she was wearing a black wife beater, she never wore this stuff anymore. There was glass on the floor, but her feet didn’t hurt, did they? Why was she wearing these clothes? Not since…

            “C.J.” Sam said, looking up into the eyes of her ex girlfriend, wife, her soul mate to find the cold eyes of someone she had never met before. C.J. had been doing this to her, somehow she’d managed to do something to induce the black outs and everything else that had happened to her over the last month.

            “So you finally figured it out, took you long enough. I’ve been playing the ‘make Sam crazy game’ for weeks now. Planting evidence, your friends the FBI and the young detective, they aren’t very astute, or they just didn’t want you to be a killer. Even Alice didn’t believe, but they will after tonight.” She confessed and Sam let out a barking laugh, well this was good, at least she wasn’t actually insane. She just had an insane ex lover.

            “You, you did all of this, the scratches, the phone calls, the lost hours…. How did you….”

            “Oh that was easy. Its CRT, a wonderful drug I’ve been concocting over the last months, and just enough of it, I can control you rather well… How you are thinking, your pills Sam, one single drop on each little pill and it was enough to send you into a very malleable stupor. You said and did anything I wanted you to do, except sign your name on the documents I needed, and even then it would have been obvious. Those sexy steady hands of your shook when you were drugged, and the papers would have been called into question. I couldn’t have that, now could I?” C.J. stated, walking around the room and Sam wished she didn’t, because it was making her want to vomit again.

            “Documents…” Sam asked, moving to the stairs on her hands and knees, she didn’t know where she was going, she just needed to go. Away from this insane woman that she’d once called lover.

            Sam put one foot on the stairs, and almost fell over, grabbing at the railing with grit teeth. C.J. was behind her, laughing ever so softly. Sam blinked her eyes, and they just didn’t want to come into focus. She landed hard on her left knee, she felt the pain, ok that was good. A soft cackle from behind Sam, and she moved up the stairs.

            Oh god, Lara! Was she here? Had C.J. done something to her too? Please, please let the red head be ok, please let me look into those blue honest eyes one more time before this is all over, to make sure you are safe.

            “Lara!” Sam yelled, hoping against hope that she wasn’t there, and that she had somehow been miraculously detained at work, and that Shane was with her, that anyone was with her. Please, by the grace of the lesbian gods, please let them not be in this house. Shane, who’d taken up the habit of crashing there on the weekends while Jenny was locked up in her room, writing.

            “Oh the poor red headed babe isn’t here.” C.J. said, and Sam was on the landing, struggling to get her feet under her. Lara was safe, how was she going to keep her that way? If she tackled her, threw them off the landing, crash to the floor, would that be enough to kill C.J.? Sam didn’t know, and she most certainly didn’t want to die trying. She couldn’t fight with her, she was in no shape to do that.

            “I wanted you to give me your estate, but then I remembered, I’m your heir to the fortune your mother left you, all those untapped millions…. So if you die…” C.J. was saying and Sam focused on what she was saying, this was about money? Of all the things on this earth, it was about money.

            “You are so full of shit C.J. You aren’t my heir!” Sam spat, falling again, her mind refusing to wrap around the fact that the women she loved and cherished has been gas lighting her for weeks. There had to be some sort of explanation other than the fact that she wanted money.

            “My father kicked me out Sam, because he knew I was still in fucking love with you! You get that, he threw me out, he has Lee! He has my baby, because I’m a single lesbian mother with no future, so I needed your money, the money you refused me… Then I found out about the heart, and that you were going to live! Fuck you for living Sam! Then it came together, slowly at first but then I met a marvelous woman named Brandy from New York. A friend of the original Whip Me Beat Me killer, and she told me some wonderful tid bits that would implicate someone who knew Alex in the murders. Those murders that I was going to commit, set you up, frame you, and then you’d commit suicide. You are so naive sometimes Samantha, I’d be rich, and my father would have to give me Lee back.” C.J. stated and Sam laughed ruefully and got to her feet, seeing a single drop of blood from the cut on her eyebrow.

            “You could have done it… Different…” Sam muttered, and she saw her fingers on her left hand, there were 12 of them, and she groaned, whatever she’d given her was warping her mind. Beam me up Scottie, Sam thought in her head as she righted herself, blinking and finally the floor stopped being a vivid mirage of shapes and colors. Focus, sheer will power was propelling her now, nothing more than that, and the will to live.

            “The red head and the androgynous chick, all at once, really good for a heart transplant patient Sam, to bad she was in the way…” C.J. said, and Sam put her head on the cool wood floor as she went crashing to it again, the cold helping to clear her head for just one instant. Then she understood what she was talking about.

            Shane. No, no, not Shane! Sam begged, pleaded to her lesbian gods that if she had to die tonight, let it be alone, please let Shane live? This wasn’t her battle, her fight, or her place to die here, tonight at the hands of a crazed woman.

            “What did you do?” Sam yelled, drawing on her strength to stand, and C.J. got in her face, and Sam wanted so badly to punch the hell out of her. Instead she listened, her hot temper gone, replaced with the calm she’d had before, she was going to die. That was ok with her, but she was going to make sure that no one else died with her. The shimmering purple haze enveloped her as she found that place inside of her that was serine and filled with soft music that lulled you to sleep at might into restful dreams.

            “Did you see the scars Sam? She’s a cutter, and that’s just what she was doing when I found her on the street tonight, so I thought it would be appropriate that she was the last victim of the new Whip Me Beat Me killer, someone you know, the shame, the pain over took you and you finally decided to take your own life.” Sam saw Shane‘s feet on her bed, and she stumbled to the room, finding a prone Shane on the bed, blood all over the sheets and the floor. The doctor in Sam emerged and she forgot about all her own pain, all about C.J. for a moment and she went to work.

            “Oh god, Shane. Shane talk to me girl. Don’t think about it, don’t think about how sweet the pain is Shane….” Sam found the pulse, weak and barely there and she pressed her forehead to Shane‘s. She kissed her nose, and she saw that C.J. had cut her leg, but not very well, she’d put up a fight, good for you Shane. She could smell the electricity in the room, C.J. had more than likely used a stun gun. Fuck you C.J.

            “Stay with me girl, stay the fuck with me. Get away from that light Shane, come back to me, come on you can do it. There isn’t anything there but more silence, come back to the noise.” Sam muttered, reaching for the belt that was around Shane‘s waist, stripping it and wrapping it around her thigh. She pulled it tight, the blood slowing and Sam was grateful for that small grace.

            “She wasn’t cutting anymore, she promised… She did, I know she would have.. There never is enough time is there…. Now this, Jesus Shane.” Sam said, moaning softly as her vision faded, and she went crashing to her knees. She looked like she was praying at the alter of Shane, instead of losing consciousness.

            “9.. 1…” Sam began, but then remembered who the hell she was talking too, it wasn’t old faithful Jayden, it was her cold blooded murdering sister. Her lover, poor Lee, to have a mother who’d turn to murder, how twisted had C.J. become?

            “Come on Sam, let me get this over with, the drugs should be kicking into high gear right about now…” C.J. stated, patiently waiting for her death, as if it were nothing new.

            “Fuck you!” Sam said, wanting to launch at C.J. but she had to take care of Shane, she had to save her, had to. She had way to much to live for, what had C.J. said to Lara? What? Pretending to be Jayden, she was sure of it. Where was Jay? Was she ok too? Sam‘s mind blazed with questions, with no answers in sight.

            “You are ever the hero.” C.J. stated as Sam tightened the belt again and the world began to fade, slowly as she collapsed in the pool of Shane‘s blood, fading into the light she’d told Shane to stay away from.