Solace

"Good, that's the right answer." Karen said finally and she turned away and poured herself a cup of coffee before sitting down at the table. "Now, I can see the steaks you've got in the sink there, so chop-chop, a girl works up an appetite planning a murder that she isn't allowed to commit anymore." She said and the situation was defused as Dan and Bobbi looked at one another and visibly relaxed. Karen sipped at her coffee as she watched them and she knew that they would be spending the rest of their lives together. She hid a smile in her cup and was happy for them as she hadn't been for anyone else in a very long time.

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NOW

Karen stopped in the driveway behind his car and got out to walk up to the house with him. The grass was trimmed, but it looked absently done, more out of a sense of duty than any joy at the task. The windows were all closed and heavy drapes were hung all around the area she could see. It was a pleasant neighbourhood, little yards on either side separated by white fences or hedgerows. She saw flowers planted all up and down the street, a basketball hoop in the cul-de-sac at the end of the road and bicycles of varying sizes lay in many of the front yards. In an hour the streetlights would be on and there would be a scramble as everyone's children headed for home. Karen could clearly see a little pink bike with tassels on the handlebars pedalling furiously for home, the red pigtails of the girl in the seat flying in the wind as she squealed with laughter, her face and hands filthy, her knees dirty from chasing crickets and the image was so clear that it was painful. It faded as she tried to will it to reality and she felt such a stab of pain and loss that it threatened to break her heart all over again. She turned back to the house and saw Bobbi standing there, a baby on her hip and her hair back in a messy tail as she waited for her friend.

Karen stifled a sob as this vision abandoned her too and she knew that she couldn't return here again. Bobbi had never lived here but there were too many painful memories bound up in this place. Too many dreams and hopes and fears and desires. She sobbed and hugged herself as she forced herself up the front walk to where Dan was waiting at the door.

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TWO YEARS EARLIER

Karen stared at the little white stick for a long time, waiting for it to show and when it came up she glanced at Bobbi and the redhead looked right back at her with nervous eyes. She had gone through a case of these pregnancy tests in the last year and never with the results that she wanted. When Bobbi saw the look on Karen's face she sank down on the chez by the window and hugged a pillow, her face looking anguished.

"Well..." Karen said as she walked over with the test still in hand. "As far as peeing on a stick goes, you're a pro by now. And lord knows the two of you have had enough practice in the last few years to be good enough at stirring in the baby batter." She said and Bobbi blushed and looked angry at the same time, resulting in a melange that was just adorable. She didn't have the features for righteous anger.

"This isn't funny." Bobbi said finally, burying her face in the pillow so she sounded muffled and Karen sat down beside her with a sigh, patting her friend on the back with her free hand.

"But think about this from my point of view." She said and Bobbi mumbled something that was meant to sound profane into the pillow. "I'm the one who has to plan the baby shower." She said and it took Bobbi a slow three count to register what she had just heard. When she did she sat up abruptly and snatched the test from Karen to look the little blue '+' that was on the end of it. She smiled then scowled and hit her friend with the pillow she was holding.

"You're cruel." She said as she whacked Karen again and the other woman squealed with laughter and grabbed a pillow to return fire. As she was cocking her arm back Bobbi feigned fear. "You can't hit me, I'm pregnant." She said and Karen paused just long enough in doubt for Bobbi to get in three good solid hits and the two of them were laughing and swatting each other with pillows.

When Dan came into the room and set his briefcase down he quirked an eyebrow at the pair of them. They were clearly enjoying their fight and he just laughed a little.

"Let me get a beer and the video camera before you start tearing at each other's clothes." He said and both women paused as it sank in. Bobbi had never told him that Karen had once made a pass at her, but the memory was always there and it was clear that Karen remembered too. Then both women rounded on him and started assaulting him with pillows as he laughed and backed up to the wall.

"Sure, you laugh, I'm the one with stretch marks." Bobbi said as she flailed at him relentlessly. "And now, because of you I'll have stretch marks on top of my stretch marks."

It took Dan a bit to get it under the relentless barrage but when he did he grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her up and spun her around, laughing as she smiled and looked at him with such love and devotion that Karen felt suddenly very out of place. But then Dan set her down and Karen found herself drawn into a hug with the happy couple. They were still hugging and laughing and sobbing all at the same time when a tiny hand tugged on Karen's fingers. She glanced down at the cherubic little face and Aria looked so solemn and serious that Karen disengaged from the hug and knelt down.

"What is it honey?" She asked as Dan and Bobbi watched.

"Are mommy and daddy and aunt K mad at each other?" She asked so innocently that it ached the heart.

"No honey, we're really happy." She said to her god-daughter, the person in the world she loved the very most.

"Why?" Aria asked, her eyes huge and the blue so vivid that it seemed impossible.

"Because you get to be a big sister." Karen said and the smile that split her face was so big and so genuine that Karen fell in love with her all over again.

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Four months passed, months of tests and a gentle swelling of Bobbi's belly that never seemed to stop. Everyone was sure she was having a boy because of the size, but Bobbi had steadfastly refused to find out ahead of time. She wanted to be surprised. But her nausea was so strong that she went through three different prescriptions before she found one that let her function with something approaching normalcy. But today was a big day and Karen drove her out to meet with Dan to look at a house. They were practically in Simcoe by the time they reached their destination and found Dan waiting for them. Bobbi moved slowly and carefully as Karen got Aria out of the car seat and they walked up to meet him. As a group they went up to the house where the Realtor was waiting. He was a pleasant man with a warm smile and a casual friendliness that Karen found endearing.

He introduced himself to the two women as Darren Carter and he unlocked the house to let them inside. Karen walked with Aria while Dan and Bobbi followed Darren around and saw the house. It had a garage, four bedrooms, a living room, a huge kitchen and dining room, a small study at the back of the main floor and a fully converted basement. All of the appliances and utilities were new, as were the doors and windows and new insulation had just been blown in after the roof had been replaced. There was a home inspectors report and an album of pictures from the recent renovation and it was very clear to Karen that Bobbi was in love with the house. She could already see what bedroom would house which child, where Bobbi and Dan would make their own room and how much fun Aria and the new baby would have in the big back yard as they grew. It was a beautiful house and Karen was happy for her friend, even though Bobbi was moving farther away from where Karen lived.

They were still business partners, still had their office downtown and would see each other all the time. But the idea that the woman she had spent much of the last ten years as a constant companion to was moving farther away was acutely painful. She had always been a part of Karen's life since they day they had met and Karen realized that she still had feelings for Bobbi. She felt a stab of jealousy at Dan for a moment, but it was gone so quickly that she wasn't sure it had even been there. Dan made Bobbi happy, and together they had made Aria. So she accepted it and knew that in time she would hardly care. After all, they had years and years ahead of them. They were still young, not even thirty yet and their whole lives were stretched out ahead of them.

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NOW

Karen sobbed at that memory; at the naïve thought that they would live forever and never get hurt. Then to have Bobbi and Aria wrenched away so painfully and senselessly... She wiped her tears away with her sleeve and when Dan opened the door she followed him inside.

The house looked like he had just moved in recently, boxes stacked in the living room, a few opened and fewer still unpacked. She could see dust everywhere and in the far corner, half-hidden behind a wall of boxes was a mattress on the floor and some blankets. She glanced at the kitchen and saw a sink full of dishes and more boxes. There were take out containers and pizza boxes stacked on the counter and she felt a wave of nausea at the conditions. Dan had handled this worse than she had, and she had nearly broken under the grief. But she understood now that he hadn't ever sought help, hadn't ever gone looking for someone to talk to the way she had. He had isolated himself among the detritus of his old life, among the cast-off husk of his family and he had been alone with his memories for a year. Had he even left this house? There was a stack of mail on the floor inside the door and she could see that he had barely touched it. Bobbi had been rabid about bills, and she had set up a quick-pay for everything so she could worry less about it. But Dan didn't seem to care; he didn't even really shop for food.

They had both gotten a check from the insurance company when Bobby had died, enough to live on for a long time. But Dan hadn't done anything but lay in his depression and misery since the funeral. She felt fresh tears at that as he moved to some boxes and carried them closer to the door. She glanced at them and saw papers and books from the now failed business that she had worked with Bobbi, all mostly useless but filled with proprietary information that Karen would have to dispose of properly. He looked them over then snapped his fingers.

"There was another box, hold on and let me find it." He said and she nodded as she looked around the room again while he went and rifled through the piles of a life that was gone.

She wandered a bit and saw boxes marked with Aria's name, others marked 'Nursery' and still others with just a rough heart around the letter 'B'. They were all unopened. She touched a few fondly and when she felt the call of nature she glanced into the ground floor bathroom. It was barely clean enough to use so she wandered to the stairs and up, seeing the big ensuite bathroom that was on the second floor. She stepped in and froze when she saw what was laid out there neatly on the counter almost like an altar. She forgot all about her need to relieve herself and she snatched at the piece of paper and went thundering downstairs, feeling angrier than she had in a year.

She found him in the kitchen and when he saw her and what was in her hand, he paled. She closed with him and felt a moment of pity when she saw how defeated he looked, but then she threw the note in his face.

"What the fuck is this?" She asked and he laughed a little sheepishly.

Now she could see everything that she had missed before. Many of the boxes were freshly packed. There was a stack of cleaning supplies just inside the door that she had missed and the dishwasher had been run recently. He was cleaning up so no one else would have to. And his suicide note and the syringe next to it put everything together. He was getting ready to die, and this was a part of his saying goodbye, of his closing up loose ends.

"I... I..." He stammered as he picked up the note and she slapped it out of his hands again then grabbed the front of his shirt and pushed him back to the wall as her other hand grabbed a knife from the sink. He stared at it with wide eyes.

He had planned to kill himself, but now that he was confronted with a death that he couldn't control he was more afraid than he had been since... since that night. But she didn't use the knife on him, as she stared at him and he watched the knife, she dragged the edge across her inner arm. The cloth of her shirt parted then turned rapidly crimson as the cut bled and he gasped at the sight. He grabbed her hands and knocked the knife away, then turned to the sink and pulled her sleeve up as he turned on the water. But he froze when he saw her arm. There was a mass of scars all along her inner arm. He looked up at her face then back at her arm and the fresh cut among the mass of scars that hadn't been there a year ago. She pulled her arm free from his grasp and as he watched she pulled her shirt off over her head and tossed it idly aside. Both of her arms bore a mass of scars. From the shoulder down to her elbow and then her forearms on the inside and outside were lacings of scars. It was the work of years all crammed into a few months.

"Do you think you're the only one who misses them?" Karen asked as her blood dripped down onto the floor steadily. She was already feeling weak and dizzy, but she couldn't stop now, she was too angry. "Do you think you're the only one who lost someone they loved?" She asked and he just stared. "Do you really think that will let you see them again?" He looked so shocked by the words that her anger faltered, but she held onto it grimly, it was the only thing keeping her conscious at that moment and she needed it. She needed something to focus on, something to distract her from her relapse.

So she slapped him hard across the face, her hand leaving a bloody print on his cheek and he recoiled back, looking shocked at her action as she stepped up and hit him again and again and again. She was angry and she wasn't going to stop hitting him until the anger had passed, but he surged forward and caught her in his arms and held her as she screamed and fought. Then they were both weeping as they sank to the floor together. They were both crying and both sharing their mutual loss and grief. She felt him winding something around the cut on her arm and didn't even look at it, didn't even care. But when he looked up into her face again she acted without thinking and she kissed him hard, full on the mouth in a way that left no mistake as to her intentions. He paused in shock, but then he was kissing her back, his hands grasping her bare back and pulling her in closer to him, her breasts pressed hard to his chest as her hands tangled in his hair. They had a mutual need that nearly matched their mutual loss and neither of them was capable of fighting that loss.

For Dan, it was the fact that of everyone he knew, Karen was the only one who had lost as much as he had, the only one who understood his pain and grief. For Karen Dan was the last real link she had to two people she had loved more than she loved herself. Bobbi had been an anchor for her, the one thing that kept her centered in the world and focused on something other than her own problems. Bobbi had been her antidepressant and with Bobbi gone Karen had been free to indulge in her own self destruction. But now she had someone to shift her attention to again and as Dan pushed her back onto the floor she pulled at his clothes frantically. There was no room for anything but this now, and his shirt came off easily, then his hands were on her body and she gritted her teeth and sucked breath through them desperately. She had never needed anyone the way she needed him right now, and it was clear that he felt the exact same way.

She didn't fight as he pulled at the front of her pants and got them opened, pushed them down her legs and she kicked off her shoes and pants before she pushed at him, strong despite her weakness and when he was on his back she quickly divested him of his pants and saw the hard rod of his cock. As soon as she saw it the tingle in her core that she hadn't even been aware of turned into an inferno of need and want and she straddled his hips and with barely a thought she slipped over him and moaned as he filled her. It was wordless, instinctual, this need that drove them. They didn't make love, they didn't have sex... they fucked... they mated... they sought solace in each other, in the thing she had had too much of and he hadn't had any of in a year. She ground over him with an intensity that should have frightened him, but instead he responded with equal intensity, equal hunger and a frantic lust that bordered on insanity.

His hands gripped her hips hard enough to leave bruises as she moved over him, her hands on his chest for support and he slipped up her sides to her shoulders, around and under her arms to grasp her breasts and squeeze hard again. She moaned out, half sobbing at the feeling and went harder and faster, goaded by the pain and the need she felt from him. She rode him hard, slamming her hips down against him and feeling him punch at her cervix like a fist with every drop of her hips. When his hand slipped from her breast and up to her throat, circling her neck reflexively, she grasped his hand there, one of her hands keeping his fingers around her throat while the other hand gripped his wrist, her grip impossibly tight as she climaxed. She sobbed at the intensity of the pleasure, at the power of it all as it wracked her body more than anything she had done in a year. She didn't even have the wherewithal to realize that he was moving her until she felt the cold floor on her back and looked up to see him looking down at her. She swallowed heavily around the clench of their hands at her throat and stared at him as he reached back with his other arm and scooped up her left leg, drawing it up until it was on his shoulder, then he straddled her right leg and she was shocked at how deep she could suddenly feel him.

Her back was flat on the floor but her waist had turned, her hips twisted to the side and when he thrust into her he was practically brutal. She cried out, but her hands kept his hand at her throat. She needed to feel that, needed to feel him gripping her there and she came again on his fifth thrust, the dregs of her first orgasm still moving around in her core and she looked up at his face, saw how close he was to his own orgasm and she wanted to tell him to stop, to pull out but she had no voice, and a moment later as her pleasure rebounded into another orgasm under his brutal, pounding assault, she had no mind to remember why she wanted him to pull out and as she arched her back up, nearly tossing him off of her, she felt the wash of his seed in her core, felt his fluids mingling with hers and the warmth of him spreading through her body as he came hard. He grunted and pushed up into her so hard that she could almost feel him at the back of her throat. He fell still as what felt like a gallon of his seed pumped into her core and then he released her. She felt his hand slip away from her throat, her nerveless fingers unable to keep him there and his cock slipped from her overused sex, leaving her feeling cold and hollow and abandoned all over again.

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She lay there half on her back and half on her side as their fluids leaked from her core in a flood and she caught her breath, tried to grasp at sanity that always seemed to slip away, and slowly she came back to herself. As her head stopped spinning, as the room stopped dancing around, she felt the all-over tingle that usually came with a powerful orgasm, like her skin was far too sensitive and her nerves were sticking out all over like the whiskers on a cat. The lightest caress of the air was enough to send a shiver of delight through her and she smiled a bit. She had loved that and when she turned to look at Dan she froze. All of the warmth drained from her as she saw the blood all over his face and chest and neck and for a moment she thought he had taken the knife to his own throat. But then she remembered that she had hit him with her bloody hand, and that she had held onto him while she bled and that the blood was hers. She started to sit up and the sound came rushing back into the world so abruptly that she gasped. She heard something and she looked around deliriously until she realized that it was him.