Viggo's Break - Chapter 8.1 - Comparing mouths and playing dolls

Viggo and Nyssa are on the run. To know more, read Chapter 7.2.

They had been driving for a little under two hours when they heard the news. Nyssa was dozing and Viggo had turned on the radio. A name caught her attention. She raised the volume.

“…apprehended in Richmond. Axel Bernard had escaped from Saint-Paul penitentiary yesterday afternoon. It now appears that he was wounded in yesterday's earthquake. He's been transported to a local hospital, but his life isn’t in danger. He was apprehended in Richmond during the commission of a bank robbery. Police officials stress that there were no civilian casualties. A spokesman for the sheriff office admitted that a deputy had been lightly injured by flying glass from a broken window.”

Nyssa turned the volume down again. Not a word was uttered for the longest time. She was waiting for Viggo to acknowledge the worsening of their situation. He didn't. So, she did, “They caught Bernard.”

“Good.”

“Good?” she repeated, feeling that there was nothing good about it.

“That man – out there – he was a menace.”

“They're going to come after us with everything they've got!”

“Let them,” he ground out.

She laughed. She couldn't help it. He was a policeman, through and through. Not an escapee. Not a criminal. Certainly not a killer.

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and smiled ruefully. Busted.

“So…” He cleared his throat. “Are we done with the questions?”

“It was your turn.”

“Did you…Forget it.”

His neck was red, which piqued her interest. She pressed him, “What is it? Tell me.”

He shook his head. She waited him out, fully expecting that he would eventually cave in. He didn't. He finally opened his mouth with a sigh, but she knew – she just knew, somehow – that he wasn't going to ask the question he had been about to. “Did you think about me often after I was arrested?”

She took a deep breath. Talk about a sucker punch.

“All the time. I missed you. Even when I still believed you were guilty, I missed you. I couldn't even drive down your street. I tried going back to that bar we used to have breakfast in – I couldn’t. It was…” She forced the words out, “It was killing me. I was drowning.”

“Didn't anyone help you?”

She chuckled – but it was bitter. “Oh, sure. Russ did. And his way worked, I guess. Alcohol did somewhat numb the wound. Trouble was, I felt worse afterward.”

“And you let him bang you.” His crude language and accusatory tone shocked her. So did the flash of temper. “I told you he wasn't for you. I warned you. How many times did I warn you?!”

He was right. She had been forewarned. She hadn't listened. She should have listened. She would have spared herself lots of heartache if she had.

But Viggo’s reaction was out of proportion. He slammed on the breaks, sputtering incoherent cuss-words. Panting, face red and sweaty, he jumped out of the car. He started pacing.

Nyssa decided he wasn’t going anywhere and slid in the driver’s seat to park the car properly on the side of the road. Then, she rested her chin on the wheel and watched him warily as he paced, and paced, and paced. He was like a lion finally let out of his cage. All lethal intent and nervous energy. And more guilt than anger, though he would never admit to that. He came to an abrupt stop, sat down in the grass, eyes lost in the ocean, shoulders hunched.

Nyssa kept checking the time. They needed to get going.

When Viggo walked back to the car, he was very much the Iceberg again. He sat down stiffly in the passenger’s seat, never looking at her. “I was out of line, sorry.”

“Yes, you were” He drew back. He hadn't been expecting that. Well, she wasn't through. She had done her own bit of introspection. “And you're right, you warned me. But you warned only me. What about Crystal Sarasian? What about the other women he badgered, abused and maybe even killed? Did you care about them?! No. A man who cared would have called IAD on Russ's ass! You never did. The boys in blue held rank. You placed your loyalty to your partner ahead of your duty to serve and protect everyone else.”

“Don't you think I know that?!”

“Do you? Yes, I let Russ screw me – I even enjoyed it in the beginning! Is that what you want to hear? I had the hots for him…”

He slapped a hand over her mouth, shutting her up mid-rant. “I don't want to hear that,” he informed her. “I really don't.”

“Well, don't talk down to me like I'm a tramp and I won't tell you things you don't want to hear.”

She started the car and it seemed that the argument was over, much to the dissatisfaction of every party. And then, quietly, he told her, “You aren't a tramp and I won't be a hypocrite.” Quieter even, he added, “It was your turn.”

“Did you think about me?”

“I tried not to.” His tone betrayed pain before it evened out again. “Angela, Russ and the others…It hurt. But that you could believe those things about me, it made me wonder if I had gone mad. If even you, could…”

Hesitantly, she reminded him, “I was only…”

But he cut in, “'Only'? You were only what? I trusted you, you knew me. Out of all the people in my life, you were the one who really got me!”

Yes, she had been that, hadn't she? The old Nyssa had been amused by his Iceberg reputation, amused that everyone thought him so cool and composed. He had been different with her, he had shared desserts and told her hilarious jokes in that deadpan tone of voice. She had enjoyed that about him – his sense of humor, his sweet tooth. More than that, he had been so steadily good: a good man, a good friend, a good cop.

She should have known better, she shouldn’t have believed the worst of him. Meeting his eyes squarely, she said, “I'm sorry.”

For a moment, it looked like he was going to say something, that he would let go of the terrible anger he wore wrapped around himself. But then, he shook himself – all of him, like a wet dog. “Forget it. My turn.”

She sighed, disappointed and oddly relieved. “Ask away.”

“Don't you fear me at all?”

It should have sounded odd and almost threatening, coming from the human Iceberg on her passenger’s seat. It wasn't.

“No,” she replied unequivocally. “We're on the same side. I'm only afraid for you. I'm afraid we'll fail.”

“Not that. I spent eight years in jail. Aren't you afraid of all the ways it could have changed me?”

“Like?”

“I don't know. What kind of things did you imagine?”

She balked at the bold invitation to pry, looked away. “They say there are drugs, rapes, gangs there.”

“Of course. All three of those.”

“Did you…?”

“I didn't do drugs and I wouldn't have joined a gang.” She opened her mouth, but she couldn't get the first word out. Viggo must have sensed it because he started laughing. It wasn't a pleasant laugh, just a little bit mean and just a little bit caustic. “I got propositioned a lot.”

“By gangs?”

He let out that same laugh again. “I accepted once.”

“Viggo, for Heaven's s…”

He covered her voice with his, “A mouth is a mouth, Malik, and a blow-job is a blow-job.” She closed her mouth when he frowned down at her. “I needed to blow off some steam. I didn't dare close my eyes, but I imagined he was Miss America and I enjoyed. I'll be damned if I'll apologize for it.”

Why had he told her, then? She hadn't been asking, she…He had insulted her. He was showing her his throat, repaying her shame with his. She touched his cheek and the five o'clock shadow there. “Why only once? If it felt so great, why didn't you make it a regular thing?”

He smiled. She felt the happy lines against the tip of her fingers, and it warmed her.

“Because it didn't feel great. It felt wretched. Empty. He was all bones. He smelled of washing powder and sweat. I wanted a woman. I wanted a soft body under me. I wanted this scent, hot and musky. Wet pussy. I wanted…Shit.” He tugged at the fabric covering his crotch, making room in his trousers. “I'm getting hard. I shouldn't talk like that right now.”

She started feeling the first stirrings of fear. Those were words Viggo had never used with her, subjects they had never approached. He was an altogether different animal – cruder.

“Did you love him?” he asked suddenly, harshly.

She jerked forward. Another blow she hadn't expected. “No,” she replied without thinking, using the hindsight she had gained over time. “I was infatuated with the man I thought he was. I know who he is now and that’s over.”

“Would you…Would you have gone back to him if I hadn't told you to, that day, when you visited me?”

“No.” He blanched. “He would have dragged me back. Wouldn’t have been the first time. He always finds me.”

“Found,” Viggo said, like it was an oath. “Won’t happen ever again.”

It shored up her optimism a little. She took the next left, turning into what was barely more than a dirt-road. “We're almost there,” she told him. “Let’s stop eviscerating each other from here on. Or the next couple of weeks are going to be hell.”

“Not yet.” Her heart thudded against her ribcage. She couldn't imagine how this could get worse, but he had a knack for surprising her. “I owe you one last question.”

She couldn't resist that temptation, “When I came to see you, with my half-cocked hypothesis about Russ and my tales of evil and conspiracies, why…why did you believe me? Was it just despair?”

His eyes studied her face with the intensity of an MRI machine, then, solemnly, he answered, “It was despair – and the Virgile Mercantile shoot-out.”

To understand better how Viggo ended up in jail, read Chapter 8.2.