For joy that dies, for love that dies (Vanessa)
She had never given much thought to marriage. She was a career woman through and through, she didn’t have time for fairy tales, and cereal box families. Not that she avoided romance, she had her share of lovers, casual and not. It was just that building a full Sedoretu, evening and morning, husbands and wife, seemed like such a daunting enterprise. She had her share of lovers, women and men of the evening, charming, and beautiful, and deceitful. It was funny, that blind lawyer who’d shown up at her gallery would have been just her type, but now all she could feel was mild annoyance at him wasting her time. Something changed when she met Fisk... no, Wilson. Awkward, sweet, and painfully honest, he was everything she’d never known she wanted. She’d actually been hurt when she realized he’d been lying to her, before she would have just laughed it off as part of the games people played with each other. Wilson was different, real in a way that none of her other lovers had been, twisted fairground mirror reflections of herself that they were. Fisk was nothing like her, and yet in some ways he was just like her. Strong, determined, a man with vision. She wanted him, she could feel the ways they complemented each other, strengthened each other, she thought that maybe this was how it felt to form that perfect square.
She’d been angry when she first realised he’d lied to her, and what he was lying about, but after she’d calmed down, considered the situation, she was shocked by how little she cared. Her boyfriend was a criminal, a gangster, most likely a murderer, but she was going to go back to him anyway, because she didn’t really care. She had never been a criminal, neither had most of her clients, (although there were some she knew better than to ask questions of), they hadn’t been criminals, but they had been rich, very rich. You didn’t get that kind of money without bloodying your hands a little, one way or another. She’d learned not to pass judgement. She liked Fisk, more than anyone else she’d ever met, and honestly the only difference between him and most of the other people she’d slept with over the years was that he was honest about what he was. About the fact that he profited from human misery, and bribed politicians, and silenced those who threatened him, the rest of them lied, and deflected, and buried it all in legal jargon, but fundamentally they were no different.
Vanessa had decided, somewhere in the dead hours of the morning, that if Fisk came clean with her, if he maintained the honesty that had first drawn him to her then she would stand with him, come hell or high water. So she had agreed to another date, she had taken her gun, and she’d confronted him. She hadn’t realized how much she wanted his honesty until he gave it to her, a promise, a vow, and she said nothing out loud but in her heart she knew. She wanted to marry him, even if it was only half a marriage.
Of course it wasn’t nearly that simple. Honestly she should have realized. Wilson had been dropping hints left right and centre about how amazing his friend Wesley was, how they should meet, they had so much in common. It was only after Wilson finally introduced them that the penny dropped. Wilson didn’t want half a marriage he wanted a Sedoretu. She wondered if she should have been irritated, she’d always thought a Sedoretu would be too much of a commitment, but when it came down to it she couldn’t find it in herself to be annoyed. Wilson clearly wanted this very much, and Wesley was an absolute darling. She’d never really understood why people felt so attached to their moiety sibs, but now she knew. It was just so relaxing, there was no pressure, no demands, they could just curl up on the sofa together for hours, talking about everything and nothing, sipping fine wine, and planning surprises for their future husband. After the wine had been flowing for a while they would talk about women, about what they wanted in their evening wife, and after they’d switched to spirits they’d discuss past affairs in lurid detail. It wasn’t long before she was as attached to her moiety brother James as she was to Wilson.
She was still unclear on just where everything went wrong. Wilson was as honest as he’d promised with her, but he hadn’t told her all the details of his operations, and in any case those couple of days were all a bit of a blur. All she knew for sure was that she’d been poisoned at the party, that she’d woken up in hospital, and that James was dead, murdered. She’d never been so angry, someone had taken him from her, from Wilson, had broken their Sedoretu before it was even completed. All she could see was red and her breath tasted like iron. She could see Wilson’s grief, and she wished she could grieve with him, but rage had stolen her tears, God she couldn’t even mourn him.
Wilson had tried to leave her after all that, afraid she would share Wesley’s fate, afraid the next time her poisoners would succeed, but she wouldn’t let him. She’d lost her morning husband, she wasn’t going to lose the evening too. She was so, so angry, and the rage only grew as her lover, her husband’s world fell apart around him and there was nothing she could do to help. James could have helped, would have helped, he was always so good at smoothing things over, at fixing problems. But James was cold in the ground, and all she could do for Wilson was stand by him, wait for him, until he wouldn’t let her wait anymore.
Wilson was arrested, he tried to escape, to flee the country with her. She waited for him, she waited until the deadline had passed, and then she left. She left her heart behind in Hell’s Kitchen, but she was too angry to cry, so instead she sat in the helicopter, across from Wilson’s mother, who she had just met for the first time, and she thought of vengeance. Vengeance for Wilson, his vision, his life’s work in ruins, vengeance for James dead in the ground. This city had stolen her marriage, she was going to get what she could of it back, an then she was going to make Hell’s Kitchen bleed.