lirazel | fic: the heaviness of all things

Now that reveals have happened, I can put my Yuletide fic up over here. First non-kpop fic in a long time!

Title: the heaviness of all things
Fandom: Luther
Characters/Pairings: John Luther, Alice Morgan, shades of John/Alice
Rating: PG-13
Summary: John always knew there'd be a price if he ever broke free. It's just that this isn't the type of freedom he envisioned, and he always expected to be the one paying for it.

"The heaviness of life
is heavier than the heaviness of all things."

-Rainer Maria Rilke

They must niggle away at you, the ones who get away. The ones you just know are guilty, but you can’t prove it because you get tripped and tangled by all those tiresome little laws.

Why are we talking about this, Alice? You don’t care about my work beyond seeing it as some sort of game.

Do you dream about them? Or is it their victims’ faces you see? Ghosts only stick around if they have unfinished business keeping them from their eternal rest, you know.

You don’t believe in ghosts, Alice.

I do. I just think they live inside your head. Does it get crowded in there?

At least it’s never lonely.

Ah, yes. Because I’m all alone in my own mind. No empathy—narcissistic with psychopathic tendencies. But my mind is all swept clean, neatly organized. It’s much easier to live that way.

I don’t think you know the first thing about living, Alice.

Well, that makes two of us. Wouldn’t it be fun trying to figure it out together? The one puzzle our minds can’t solve?

You know I’m never going to say yes, Alice.

Never’s an awfully long time, John.

He doesn’t remember the conversation till later, much later. After all, it’s been almost a year since she left, and he’s only talked to her once or twice since then—a few exchanges of words over payphones (he wants to speed them along, she insists on drawing them out, and she’s always the one who leads this dance) about what to do if she hears he’s dead. Other than that, the only contact they’ve had is a few gaudy postcards with characteristically (infuriatingly) enigmatic messages scrawled on them. (He doesn’t keep them. It’s not his fault if his aim is bad and they never quite make the dustbin.) Almost a year without Alice Morgan.

He doesn’t miss her. Not the way he misses Zoe, a throbbing in his skull just below his occipital lobes, an ache behind his shoulder blades, an itching in the palms of his hands. He thinks about her sometimes, he can admit that, wonders what she’s doing—not how she’s doing, because she’s Alice—but that isn’t the same thing as missing at all. And he only wonders when he goes too long with too little to do, his mind carouseling back to her with inevitability when he’s left alone with his own thoughts for too long. But that doesn’t happen so very often anymore; he keeps busy because he wants to be and because London always has some new horror to reveal. Sometimes entire weeks go by when he doesn’t think of her once (and the fact that those are always the worst weeks, well, that’s just how things are).

He hasn’t thought of her in some time when he gets the call from Rose Teller. The last time they talked was months ago, but she isn’t calling to catch up.

“It’s Marvin Hoffman.”

John grunts, pulling his lunch out of its wrapper and juggling it into the microwave with one hand while he holds his mobile to his ear with the other. This break will be ten minutes, if that; there’s a suspect in the interview room waiting already. “What about him? He do in another little boy?” If he did, John’ll get the fucking bastard this time, no matter what it takes. John was the one to find Tommy Bracken’s body.

“He’s dead.”

John pauses for a moment before punching the final button on the timer. “Well, that’s one less monster walking the streets, anyway.”

“He was murdered.”

Again a pause, longer this time. “Huh.” The microwave dings and he grabs the pocket of cheese and meat in its limp paper sleeve, hissing as it burns his hand; it’s probably still cold on the inside; he’ll eat it anyway.

“Throat slit, genitalia mutilated. Not in that order.”

Well. It’s nothing John hasn’t fantasized about doing himself. He can’t muster any righteous indignation on this one’s behalf.

“They’re looking at the families of his victims?”

“Of course. But I doubt that road will lead anywhere.”

John thinks back to all five of the families, ones he got to know through tearful interviews and dozens of treks through paper files, the various assortments of parents with their helpless or raging grief. More than one was capable that kind of revenge, but none would have waited so long.: the last body was found seventeen years ago. Brother, perhaps? Finally all grown up and capable of vengeance? But no, Maxie’s brothers were all older—old enough to have done it then if they were going to do it—Nathaniel’s little brother was mentally disabled, Kamran was an only child, and the other two only had sisters. Always possible a woman could do it, but not likely, not with what John knows of Marvin Hoffman.

“Yeah, me neither. Thanks for letting me know.”

SCD 1 is in charge of the investigation and they come up completely empty, and that’s interesting enough to take note of, but he’s no stranger to cold cases, and it’s not his to worry about, and it’s not like he isn’t happy the piece of shit is dead, so he doesn’t think much on it.

(He definitely doesn’t think of Alice.)

The postcard is from Philadelphia this time, a kitschy thing featuring a garishly-colored collage of city landmarks.

I stopped here just for you. Liberty Bell, Independence Hall. Synonyms for freedom, John. Blood always has to be spilt. I’m going to Lexington and Concord tomorrow. I’ll think of you.

This one just misses the dustbin, too.

Three weeks later, and Justin and DS Gray are talking by the printer when he gets in. It’s a blustery morning, London November through and through, gray and dreary with that irritating rainfall that won’t build up to anything substantial but won’t quite die down, either. John never remembers an umbrella.

“…found her dead in her red E Type this morning. It was sitting in her garage, all the doors in the house locked, not a window broken. They’d say it’s suicide, ‘cept for the fact they pumped five liters of water out of her lungs,” Justin’s saying, and John knows.

(This is when he remembers.)

He knows, but he can’t get ahead of himself and—shit, Alice, what the fuck are you doing?

“I’d forgotten all about her,” Gray says, taking a sip of her tea. “Never quite sure if she did it or not.”

“Oh, she did it,” Justin says grimly in that absolutely-certain way of his.

Gray shrugs. “Always thought she was a cold one, though, taking that book deal so soon. Over a million pounds, and all for writing about her kids’ deaths.”

“Say, that was one of yours, wasn’t it, boss? Margie Dangerfield? The baby-killer?”

“Yeah,” John confirms. “She was one of mine.”

When the first child—Lulu, age 3—had drowned it had been a tragedy, and it sparked a nationwide movement, headed by Ms. Dangerfield herself, to get pool owners to make sure their pools weren’t accessible to children—fences, gates with child-proof locks, that sort of thing. But then it had been the other two (Marco and Marion, twins, 12 years old), in the bathtub, and Luther had been called in. She was slippery, Margie; he remembers sitting across from her in the interview room and watching her sob her eyes out, bereft—that was the word she used—bereft at the loss of her babies. She didn’t seem so bereft six months later when she got her book deal, got some ghost writer to repackage her story about how she was out visiting a sick friend the night the twins were murdered and it must have been some intruder or her ex-husband, promoted it to best-seller and bought herself a Jaguar with the royalties. John had known she’d done it from the moment Rose gave him the first sketchy details about the case, but there’d been a slip-up in evidence and Margie sailed out of the courtroom on a technicality. It had taken two years for the sergeant responsible for the blunder to work himself up to suicide.

He gets another call from Rose. “Everything all right, John?” is all she asks, and she doesn’t press him when he says it is, but the tone of her voice tells him everything he needs to know.

John finds a payphone by a kebab shop on the way home that night, dials the number (he doesn’t let himself think about the fact that he knows it by heart, though he’s only used it twice before), lets it ring three times and hangs up. He returns the next night, and at exactly midnight, it rings.

Are you planning on dying sometime soon, John? You only ever call me anymore when you’re planning on dying. It makes a girl feel like she’s only good for one thing.

What the hell do you think you’re doing, Alice?

You always get so grumpy, even when I’m doing you favors. Didn’t your mother teach you gratitude, John? Or do we not talk about your mother?

Favors? Favors? Alice, you’re killing the criminals I couldn’t put away.

I know! Isn’t it lovely of me? Taking care of all your problems the law can’t touch, and me one of them? It’s delicious, I think.

Alice, you have to stop this.

I really don’t have to do anything at all, John.

Someone’s going to notice, Alice. People already have noticed.

Don’t worry, John, I made sure you had an alibi each time.

Do you think that matters? You aren’t even on the continent and you’re doing it—what makes you think they won’t think I’m hiring someone? Are you trying to get me arrested? Is that what you’re trying to do? Punish me because I wouldn’t come away with you?

Of course not, John. I’m hurt you’d think that little of me—you know I loathe seeing anyone locked away. I’m trying to set you free.

He needs to know what she knows, how much she knows, so he goes to Benny. Benny pulls up the list of computers accessing Luther’s old case files in five minutes, and the only IP address that isn’t in London is in Charleston, South Carolina. There’s a postcard with a pineapple on it that’s been sitting by John’s dustbin for almost two months now. Damn it, Alice! He knows she’s good enough to have erased all evidence of her presence, so that means she didn’t mind getting caught. Or that she wanted to be.

“Files on here only go back to ’99. Before that, it’s all hard copies. The Service hasn’t had the resources to scan in everything prior to that,” Benny tells him.

Figures. A visit to Records reveals all his old files are missing. It’s no surprise, not at all, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t leave a dent in one of the filing cabinets.

He goes through them all in his head, all the ones he remembers (he remembers all of them), tries to determine where she’ll strike next.

Two points make a line, not a pattern, Rose used to say. You need three for that.

But John’s never been in the habit of listening to those sorts of adages. He narrows it down to a list of four he thinks her most likely to target next, and he makes a few calls. They probably won’t help anything—the kind of security he can provide would only make Alice laugh—but he has to do something (never mind the fact that when it’s come to Alice, he’s always been laughably out of his league).

The next postcard is from Liberia. There’s no note this time, just the impression of her lips, the lipstick blood red.

He knows the look on Schenk’s face, knows it well, so he’s expecting exactly what he hears when he closes the office door behind him.

“Peter Dillard was found dead in his auto shop this morning. Multiple gunshot wounds directly to the face. Time of death around 10 PM last night.”

Serial killer, targeted young women working late in convenience stores—didn’t even rape them, didn’t even need to: it was the violence the bastard got off on. He was one of the ones on John’s list. Wherever she is (John knows her well enough to know that just because she’s sending postcards from a place doesn’t mean she’s actually there), Alice is probably laughing.

There isn’t anything to say, so John doesn’t say anything, just sits back in his chair and waits. Schenk doesn’t make him wait long.

“This isn’t looking good for you, John. Three murders in the past month and a half, all of prime suspects in one of your former cases.”

“Yeah.”

Schenk looks older each time Luther sees him, like he’s aging a few years with every day that passes (John knows the feeling: he’s pretty sure he’s lived several centuries over by now). Right now he looks fragile in his weariness. “Now I know that you were working during the time of two of those three murders—one of them, I was actually with you. And I’m guessing you have an alibi for last night, too?”

John mops a hand over his face. “Mark North and I were at a pub.” It’s gotten to be a habitual thing, a pint with Mark once every couple of weeks. They don’t say much—this time Mark just asked about how Jenny’s settling in with her new place in Cardiff and John had answered as best he could—but they keep doing it for some reason. Of course Alice knows.

“And I expect all manner of patrons of this pub would be willing to testify to that.”

John shrugs, because they probably will. They’re the law-abiding sort in that pub—it was Mark’s choice.

“John, please tell me you know who’s doing this. And that you’re going to stop them.”

“I know who’s doing it,” John confirms because there’s no point in lying; Schenk knows the answer already or this meeting would be going very differently. “As for stopping them…I’m not sure that’s possible.”

“Well, make it possible,” Schenk commands crisply, the tone completely at odds with how delicate he looks right now. “Just because you clearly didn’t commit any of these murders yourself doesn’t mean they won’t assume you’re hiring someone to carry them out. Damn it, John, they’re your cases.”

“I know that. I know.”

He knows a lot of things, and knowing just makes it harder when there’s nothing he can do.

When you think about it, I’m doing society a favor, riding it of the evils it can’t. That’s what civilization is, isn’t it, John? Laws and propriety, and they forget those things will leave you with your hands tied. The irony of it is breathtaking: the very things that make you most civilized render you unable to deal with the monsters, because the monsters don’t care about your conventions.

I don’t care how much sense it does or doesn’t make, you have to stop this.

Being told I couldn’t do something always used to make me want to do it more. And being told I must do something, well, that was even worse. I was a terribly contrary child, John, you can’t even imagine.

I’m sure I can’t—fine, Alice, I’m begging you. Please stop.

This isn’t exactly how I imagined hearing you beg. Truth be told, you break so much more easily than I’d have thought. It’s almost disappointing.

Alice, listen to me. You’re ruining my career—my life. I don’t have anything left, there’s nothing else that I have. You’ve proved you can play me, you’ve proved how much influence you have over me. I’m in the palm of your hand. Now that you’ve proved it, please stop. Please.

I’m afraid my hands are empty, John. It’s all out of my hands.

There’s an inquiry. The DCI they send to interrogate him (they don’t use that word) is rough around the edges and graying, but he knows his stuff and his eyes are clear across the length of the table between them. John avoids lying as much as possible (though his questioner is good enough that that proves difficult) because he’s done nothing wrong (nothing but let Alice Morgan pry her way into his life, at least), but he can’t bring Alice into this (Alice is Pandora’s box taken on human form). From what John can tell, the DCI believes that John isn’t involved directly but suspects he’s holding something back. He’s good at his job.

Charges aren’t brought up—all the evidence is circumstantial, even if it’s damning in its own way—but Schenk thinks it best that John lay low for a while. It isn’t leave, exactly, but it’s more than probation: he’s basically acting as a consultant, telling Justin and Gray and the others what he would do in their shoes and sending them scurrying about to do it without ever issuing orders (Gray might trust him as much as she’d trust a snake, but she does acknowledge his experience, and Justin is Justin). It chafes.

He hears Justin and Gray arguing around the corner one morning, voices low but topic familiar. Gray thinks he’s behind it, of course, and Justin is adamant that he’s innocent. John will never know how he gained Justin’s unwavering loyalty; he could probably kill someone with his bare hands right in front of Justin’s eyes and Justin would still think there was some reasonable explanation for it. His faith is exhausting.

He tries to keep as much of it as he can from Jenny, and since nothing’s leaked to the media (so far), he manages to convince her that things have just been rougher than usual at work and steer her back to talking about herself. The move seems to suit her; she’s still Jenny, that bewildering mix of enthusiasm and cynicism, and she complains about her shop job through the whole of nearly every weekly call, but he thinks she might actually be building something of a life for herself, and it’s more than he’d thought he could ask for for her. Even if this is the end of him, she’ll be fine, and that’s what he needs to know.

He keeps finding himself staring sightlessly at the picture of David Bowie on the wall, and he wonders if he should be comforted that he has nothing left to lose. Nothing at all but his job.

The next postcard is from Normandy, lines of identical white crosses against green grass. Alice doesn’t sign her name, of course—there’s no need—but she’s written a single line John recognizes from Eisenhower’s letter to the Allied Forces: the eyes of the world are upon you.

This one, John rips to shreds.

He’s just stashed his coat in the locker and is about to leave the locker room when he hears two inspectors talking in the corridor beyond.

“…report just came in. Some house exploded in Southwark, blew the whole thing to bits.”

“Gas line problems?”

“Maybe. Or maybe someone did it on purpose. Won’t know for a while, anyway. They’re looking into it.”

There’s no way to know, of course, but John’s made a career of knowing without having any way of knowing, and so he knows that that was Bernard Addison’s house, Alice’s way of repaying him for the six synagogues and mosques he bombed a decade back. And John doesn’t have an alibi this time. He pauses just long enough to open his locker and grab his coat.

He flirts with the idea of going to Mark, but they’ll think to look there, and he doesn’t deserve to get caught up with this: this has nothing to do with him, and John’s had enough of dragging innocent people into his problems (even if, as he thinks that, he hears Alice’s voice in his head: you of all people should know, John, there’s no such thing as an innocent). He has a number of bolt-holes scattered around the city—dingy, run-down places like the place he’s been living—and he intends to head to one of them, but somehow it’s Alice’s flat he ends up at.

She’d kept the lease, just putting it under an alias name (choosing Lizzie Borden wasn’t John’s idea of a joke, but he knows Alice must have smirked as she wrote it on the dotted line), payments scheduled promptly, and she’d once teasingly told him he could always hide there ‘if the bluebottles come swarming for you.’ He curses himself even as he lets himself in (he’d sworn to himself he’d never use the key, but it’s still on his key-ring) and though he knows it’s impossible—she’s been gone far too long and she has a cleaning lady come in once a month—he could swear it still smells like her.

“All right, Alice. You win,” he says to the empty apartment, and he just wonders that it took so long.

There’s a note in the coffee can, paper folded neatly and the words precisely written: Never say never, John.

John didn’t really want any coffee anyway.

He spends the day watching the news, the details of the manhunt for suspected murderer DCI John Luther unfolding to the accompaniment of a crisp-voiced presenter. As usual, the media only has some of the least important information and half of it wrong, but John assembles a recognizable picture in his head: Alice laid out everything just perfect to lead right back to him, and there’ll be no getting away this time. If they find him, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

He thinks about Rose Teller, about Schenk, wonders whether they still think he’s innocent, but it doesn’t matter because both of them will do their jobs, no matter what they think privately. He already knows what Justin and Gray think. Sometimes it hurts, how predicable people are.

He jots a few vaguely reassuring lines on a couple of sheets of paper, finds a pair of envelopes and some stamps, addresses them to Mark and Jenny, sets them on the table to be dropped in the mail on his way out.

He doesn’t pull his gun out nearly as many times as he would have thought he would.

He can’t bring himself to sleep in the same bed Alice did, even if he knows the sheets have been changed since she was last here. He loses consciousness lying face-down and fully clothed on the guest room bed and when he wakes up who knows how long later, groggy and feeling like he’s been run over by a lorry, the light is gray and Alice is perched on top of the bedside table, watching him with the stillness of a cat.

“How does it feel, John? Being free?”

John runs a hand over his face, shifting his muscles to remind them that they aren’t made of stone. This is it, then.

“Where are we going, Alice?”

Her grin spreads like a blood stain till it’s sliced her face in half.

“Oh, John. Where won’t we go?”