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Autobiography	By : tartausucre Category: 1 through F > Firewall Views: 1918 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Firewall is the property of Warner Bros. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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“This is actually good,” Bill said through a mouthful. Margaux forced a smile.
“Thank you for the vote of confidence.”
He had come back shortly after his abrupt departure, blessedly knifeless, and — another blessing — he had merely sat down at the table and watched her cook.
Margaux mixed her curry into her rice and took a forkful, blowing on it before she ate. The garlic powder wasn’t so bad, she supposed.
Bill seemed to be in a slightly better mood. She didn’t know what satisfaction he could possibly derive from taking a lock of her hair — some symbolic act of violence, she supposed — but if it improved his behaviour then he was welcome to it. It was more than a little abnormal, but really — what about their situation wasn’t? Her concept of normality was by necessity being readjusted every day. It was the only way she’d stay sane.
From somewhere in the back of her mind came a warning, a reminder that his moods could not be predicted or depended upon; especially, it seemed, today. Soon the satisfaction of taking that small sacrifice from her would fade. He would need to be kept sweet.
“If…”
He looked up from his plate. She registered a look of mild annoyance beneath his deliberately blank expression. She swallowed her mouthful.
“If I was making it again, how would you want it?”
“Planning on doing a lot of cooking, are you?” he asked through another mouthful, with what seemed like forced disinterest. Almost as if he was still just angry enough that he felt he had to make a point.
“I’d like to be useful,” she said quietly. In her mind she was visualising approaching an ill-tempered dog.
Bill nodded, chewing thoughtfully.
“It could be hotter,” he said at last.
“Boiling hot or vindaloo hot?”
“Let’s not go full vindaloo, darling. I’m not mental.”
On that one we’ll have to agree to disagree. “Okay.”
“And some meat wouldn’t go amiss.”
“If you buy it, I’ll cook it.”
He pointed his fork at her. “Deal.” Bill grinned lopsidedly at her, baring his teeth as he chewed. It made him look like a younger man. “This wouldn’t be the beginnings of a plan to poison me?”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t do that. Robert would have my head.”
“I admire your honesty, Margaux.”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t say you wouldn’t like to.”
*
Time was not behaving as it should have.
Margaux had stared at the clock on the kitchen wall, waiting for the second hand to move, until her exasperation drove her gaze up to the cracks in the low ceiling. The next time she glanced at it she had somehow lost half an hour.
She had to escape it, to get out from under that indifferent, portentous face. Margaux got up and headed out into the hallway.
Going into the sitting room would take her back into Bill’s presence. She’d been relieved when he had finished his food and left. Was that really what she wanted?
She considered going to her room — no, not her room, just the room she slept in — but she didn’t want to be alone. Not now. Not even if the alternative was him. Had the options been solitude or Robert, she was less sure of which she would have chosen; she could admit that, much as part of her cringed to think of the implications.
Margaux hesitated in the sitting room doorway, watching Bill stare down at the laptop screen. The pale blue of his irises, eerily illuminated by the backlit screen, made the movement of his pupils easy to track, and she watched them flit left and right as he read.
Bill didn’t react as she walked in, didn’t look up, but the stiff set of his shoulders said that he was aware of her.
“Do you mind if I sit?”
He pointed, without looking at her, at the floor beside his foot. The meaning was clear enough.
She frowned.
Still better than sitting alone. This is the wrong time to be proud, you silly bitch.
Margaux moved to the spot, between the sofa and the coffee table, and sat down on the thin, age-stained carpet. He tapped a magazine against her shoulder and she took it. It was the one he’d been reading yesterday — the cultural supplement to a paper. National, not local. She wondered absently where the actual newspaper was. Whether there was something in it she wasn’t allowed to see.
The laptop’s mouse clicked in the silence. Margaux stared at the cover of the magazine without taking in a word of the titles splashed across it, too fixated on the relentless trickling away of the seconds to think clearly. It was building in her chest, in the hollow of her throat, this feeling of panic and hopelessness, like water rushing into an oubliette. She could fight and tread water all she liked, but soon enough it would reach the top, and she would drown. She wasn’t sure she could keep her resolution to stay calm.
Minutes passed.
Margaux whimpered softly and laid her temple against Bill’s knee.
How she hated him.
She hated Bill; she hated Robert; she hated David and, yes, even Joe, because damn it, David must have told him. Mustn’t he? And yet here she was. Still. Finally, she hated herself, and that was a hatred that made the others look like petty discontent. For going home alone that night instead of going to the party with Joe and Lila; for not having a better escape plan; for not running faster; for not fighting harder; but most of all, for being powerless, and for not knowing how to make it stop.
Oblivious to her thought process, Bill smiled to himself and stroked the back of her head. Like a dog. Margaux felt a surge of rage, like magnesium catching and flaring white-hot, but like burning magnesium it was over as quickly as it began. She hadn’t the energy to be afraid and indignant at the same time.
Margaux flipped open the magazine and stared at the blocks of text, willing them to make sense.
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Autobiography