Only Consenting Adults

[Author's note: Madame Syn, stricken by the impending loss of the club and her life's work, has attempted to end it all. Fortunately, Cassie found her in time, rallying the troops to get her to hospital. Now it's time for Cassie to pick up the pieces.

Themes of self harm, reader discretion is advised.]

---

IF YOU DIE, WE ALL DO

Charlie was teasing Sam about his shoes. Cassie dumped the overnight bags on the kitchen counter and rounded on them.

"Stop. Right now, I'm not kidding."

"But, he said my laces are tied wrong," Sam protested.

"No, really. No more."

Cassie glowered at both her boys until they were quiet. Then, she yielded and knelt down in front of her son and retied his shoelaces for him. It was a simple act, the easiest part of her morning so far, and she gave him a little pat on his knee when she was done. Sam smiled at her. Sometimes all she needed was a smile.

There was a knock at the front door, and suddenly the boys were in motion.

"School bags," she called out after them.

Cassie heard the door open, the babble of young voices and then a deeper one responding in kind. The cacophony gave her a little warm feeling, the sound of her family together, but then she froze. A little splinter of ice stabbed her heart, and suddenly she was struggling, like she had been since she'd woken up. Cassie tried to put on a brave face, almost in time to greet Damian as he appeared in the kitchen doorway with his sons in tow. Almost.

"Boys," he rumbled, "Ship out, come on. School bags in the car. Sleepover bags in the car. You got your lunches?"

His tone was severe, but she could see the mirth in his eyes. She'd known him far too long to be fooled by his demeanour. At his words, the boys scrambled, collecting the bags from the counter, each of them coming to her for a perfunctory hug before scrambling out of the kitchen to the car.

"Just like magic," Cassie murmured.

Damian looked up at her, as if noticing her at last.

"Rough morning?" he enquired.

Cassie analysed his tone, the set of his jaw, trying to divine his meaning. She shrugged, taking his question at face value.

"The usual nightmare," she conceded.

"They doing okay? Anything I should be aware of?"

There it was again, the same level tone. Damian was doing the project handover meeting.

"No, it's all fine. Just, uh, boys."

Damian nodded, but he didn't make a move back towards the front door. Cassie waited, unwilling to break the silence.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah. Fine. Why?"

"Sam told me."

Cassie's eyes widened. "Told you what?"

"About your special friend, that she hurt herself."

"He... he told you that?" she stammered.

"Yes, he was concerned."

Cassie met her ex-husband's gaze, scanning his face. He was maddeningly unreadable.

"What else did he tell you?" she asked.

Damian shrugged at that, replying, "Nothing. Up to you if you want to elaborate."

He was studying her now, and she could feel that dark pit in her tummy.

"I'll take the boys for the weekend too," he continued, "I'll call and let Lily know."

Cassie's breath caught and she couldn't stop the words, telling him, "No, I've got them for the weekend. It's my turn."

Finally, Damian's visage cracked, showing the irritation bubbling underneath.

"For fuck's sake, Cassie. I'm trying to help here."

"How?"

"You've got a lot going on. If Cynthia's in the hospital, the last thing you need are the boys to manage as well. What did she do?"

"Nothing. It was an accident. She had an accident."

"Which is bullshit, but fair enough. You don't have to tell me anything. That's fine."

Damian raised his hands and then turned for the door. He stopped, looking back over his shoulder.

"So, do you want to swap weekends and I take them?" he asked, his voice back to the same level tone.

"Why are you helping?" Cassie found herself asking.

To her surprise, Damian turned back to her and let out a low chuckle.

"Oh, good question. You mean after everything?"

"Yeah."

"After you humiliated me in front of the guys? After you fucked my best friend right next to me? Why am I helping?"

He folded his arms, grinning coldly, then asked, "You wanna know?"

"Yes, I do."

"Okay then, here it is. As previously stated, you can go fuck yourself as far as I'm concerned, but what matters to me are my boys. I want them to be happy. Ironically, that means I need you to be happy. So, I'll take the boys if you have something you need to do, if you need to get your head straight. I'll take the boys if you want to have time out with your special friend. We can play happy families for the boys, can't we Cassie? We've had plenty of practice."

Damian didn't wait for a reply, turning to go.

"It was what you did, not me. You did all this," she called after him.

Damian ground to a halt again in the hallway. She watched him roll his shoulders. He didn't look at her.

"And that justifies it, does it? What you did to me? Whatever lets you sleep at night."

"That's not fair. You were...."

"No," Damian interjected, "It's not fair. But it is what it is, and we're gonna need to live with it. We both got what we wanted, in the end, right?"

He looked back at her.

"I guess two wrongs do make a right. I'll take the boy for the weekend, okay? Call me if your plans change."

Cassie watched, open-mouthed, as he headed to the front door. She held it together until the door closed. She achieved at least that modest level of control.

---

Cassie went directly to the hospital afterwards, carrying a little bag of things for Syn: a change of clothes, her headphones, an adult colouring book. The incongruity of the last item wasn't lost on her, the idea of the ferocious and formidable dominatrix spending time happily colouring in pictures of ferns or landscapes seemed bizarre, but Cassie had an intuition that Syn would enjoy it. There would be a pithy remark, of course, but that would be just for show. Syn would appreciate the simplicity of making something beautiful from her bed. She hadn't brought flowers, of course. Flowers would be met with a withering stare; Syn was not the sentimental type. In her jeans pocket, she'd brought a fourth item, something entirely more personal and private.

Cassie had made sure that Syn had a private room to herself, and made her way up to the third floor of the hospital. She found the nurse on duty, a slight man with wiry brown hair and an easy smile.

"Who're you here for?" he asked.

"Cynthia Lane. She came in last night."

"Yeah, okay. Not a problem."

"How is she?"

"She's awake, but we have her on pain medication due to the fractured ribs."

"Any visitors yet?"

"No. To be honest, we haven't raised any next of kin."

Cassie shook her head. "I'm pretty much the closest you're going to get."

"And what shall I put you down as?"

Cassie paused. It was such a simple question, but there were immensities behind the answer. Syn had no living relatives, she was a widow with few friends outside the circle of her club activities, a singular woman trapped in the bubble that she had constructed for herself. A brilliant understanding dawned from that insight. If that bubble was about to be burst by the new laws, then Syn's actions had been entirely rational: to her, the new laws would feel like the end of the world.

What should he put Cassie down as? She had known Syn for only a year, but she was the only person who fitted the description.

"I'm her partner."

The nurse nodded, jotting the details down in the visitor register, before leading Cassie down the corridor to Syn's room.

Her partner. Two years ago, Cassie had been a happily married wife to a husband she adored, raising her twins in a pleasant house in the suburbs. And yet, here she was now, through the looking glass into a new world: an accomplished dominant herself, who had managed somehow to tame the woman with the greatest reputation in the city and turn her into her personal slave, no, more than that, nowhere near adequate for how she felt. It was acknowledged in Cassie's statement to the nurse: her lover.

"Just here," the nurse said. "She's still pretty groggy, so maybe take it slow."

"Thanks," Cassie replied and opened the door.

The room was pleasant, with a picture window framing mid-morning sun, showing a view of the trees in the park opposite the hospital. The bed was to one side. Lost in the white sheets, a lean body nestled.

"Hi Cynthia, it's me."

Syn's face was pale and drawn, but at the sound of Cassie's voice, her eyes flickered open. There were tear tracks on her cheeks.

"How are you feeling, hon?"

"I was just in conversation," Syn replied.

"With?"

Syn grimaced. "Doesn't matter."

"It's okay, Syn. You can say."

"You'll think I've lost it. Even more than trying to kill myself."

"Try me."

Syn pursed her lips and looked down the bed to her feet. "Harvey," she said, "I was back in the finishing school in Zurich that he sent me to."

"You never told me about a finishing school."

"Didn't I? I would have, eventually. It was important."

"What were you there to learn?"

"Oh Cassie, he sent me there to be trained. I learned the proper way to serve."

"He sent you away? To Switzerland?"

"Of course. It was the finest finishing school in the world. It still is, but very difficult to be accepted into. Harvey managed it, or course."

"How long were you there for?"

"Six months. Harvey dropped me off in September, and I didn't see him again until he came to fetch me home in the Spring. We'd been together by then for two years, for nearly every hour of every day. That was the worst part of it, the agony of not having him near me, his hands on me. I was taught all about denial, and pain, and submission. I went in there a girl, and I came out a woman."

Syn smiled to herself.

"He collected me from the school, then that same day he took me up into the mountains, into a glorious, green Alpine meadow and then he went down on one knee and asked me to marry him."

Her eyes flicked to Cassie and the smile faded.

"You must think I've lost my marbles, talking to dead husbands. It's a sign of trauma, isn't it?"

"It depends. How was it, seeing him again?"

"Cassidy," Syn replied, her face suddenly radiant, "It was glorious."

"Then I'm glad he's there for you. Maybe he showed up for a reason."

Syn's lips curled into a little half-smile.

"Oh Cassidy, I had forgotten just how good you are."

"What?"

"Binding the associations like that, weaving a positive narrative. You're slick."

"I...."

"You could just come out and say it. We could rationalise together."

Cassie stumbled over her words. Syn had cut to the heart of it, even clouded on the pain drugs, even after deciding to end it all, just like that.

"I'm sorry," Syn said at last, "I hope the note showed that."

"What note?"

"I left a note on the laptop," Syn replied, eyebrows arching as if to suggest that she had expected Cassie to be a little more thorough.

It triggered something in Cassie, and all of her sudden, her emotions welled to the surface.

"I was too busy trying to get you to the hospital, Syn," Cassie replied, acidly, "Do you have any idea what it was like, finding you almost too far gone on that couch? If I hadn't turned up early to see you, it would have been too late."

Syn's expression changed, becoming sombre in the face of Cassie's sudden ire.

"You actually died on the floor, did you know? It was just blind luck that Tony found Adam downstairs drinking with Ashley, who's a paramedic. It's blind luck that I'd decided to drive that night, and I had the car parked outside the back door. Blind luck that Eve happens to have a cop badge and a qualification in vehicle pursuit driving and did the fifteen-minute trip to the hospital in five and a half. A lot of fucking things went right. Ashley had to break half your ribs starting compressions."

Cassie sucked in air, trying to calm down, trying to abate that hideous terror of almost losing someone she knew she had come to care deeply about.

"We really had no time for notes," Cassie hissed.

Syn stared at her, eyes wide. She seemed to be struggling to find words. Instead, eventually, she raised a shaking hand towards Cassie. Cassie stared at it, cheeks still burning with anger, and then she relented. Syn intertwined her fingers in Cassie's and sank back into her pillows, closing her eyes.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, "What a fool."

Cassie slid her hand into her pocket and pulled out the collar. The little silver hoop chinked and Syn's eyes opened. Cassie dangled the fine leather strip in front of her.

"We play games, Syn. You play with the collar. I know Harvey bought this collar, but it's mine now. You belong to me now. I say. I make the call. I decide."

Syn regarded the collar in silence and then shook her head.

"Only Harvey could do that. I understand what you're trying to do, but only he could bind me like that."

Cassie stared at her until Syn diverted her gaze. Cassie softened.

"Tell me something, Syn. Tell me why you did it."

Syn's face creased up and Cassie could see her trying to hold the emotions at bay.

"Remember talking about legends?" Syn rasped, "When I told you about why I run the club? It's his legend. It's the thing we built together, the seed around which everything else, all those lives, have coalesced. All those years and Staunton is going to snuff it out in an instant. He's going to erase Harvey's legacy like it's nothing."

Tears were running down her face now.

"I simply didn't care to be around to see that happen."

Cassie laid the collar in Syn's palm and folded her fingers around the soft leather.

"It's true, I can't command you now. But I want to. Do you understand? I nearly lost you. I don't ever want to be in that position again."

---

Adam paid a visit just before dinner time. Syn hadn't expected any other visitors, and had been very careful to specify to Cassie that she didn't want to have to deal with a stream of people. But, Adam obviously had other ideas. That was about right, Syn thought, Adam always had other ideas.

"How are you?" he asked as he entered.

"Breathing, which I understand is thanks to you."

"Well, I just gathered the volunteers. Ashley is the one really, and Eve. Though, the way Eve was driving, I expected we were all imminently about to join you in the great hereafter. But how are you?"

"Really? I'm angry. I made a fool of myself in front of everyone."

"That's not true. Everyone's asking how you are. People are coming out of the woodwork. You'd be surprised. Cassie's embargo on visitors is the only thing stopping an epic conga-line of deviants forming all the way from your door to the car park."

Syn managed a smile.

"Don't make me laugh," she begged, "It hurts like hell."

"Okay. But, less talk about being a fool when you're talking about suicide."

"Attempted," Syn said.

"What?"

"Attempted. They're calling it an attempted suicide. Like I wasn't detailed enough in my planning, like I was somehow inept."

"Oh wow. Even now, it's still all about the reputation," Adam chuckled.

Syn flashed him a wry smile. "Gallows humour."

"How was it?"

"How was what?"

"Did you see a bright light?"

Syn looked at the man in front of her for a moment, before deciding that this was what passed as humour for Adam, his attempt to lighten the conversation. How in the world did Eve cope?

She played along.

"No. My dead husband though, which was a nice surprise."

"Conjugal visits in the afterlife?"

"Oh, you have no idea," Syn laughed, wincing as the pain shot through her damaged ribs. They lapsed into silence.

"What's in the bag?" she asked.

"Oh, yes. I brought you something."

Adam fetched the bag from the end of the bed and extracted a plant.

"Ophrys apifera," he announced, "The Bee Orchid."

"It's very pretty," Syn commented, "What a lovely purple."

"Yes," Adam replied, "The labellum is shaped to mimic the body of a female bee of a particular species."

"I see."

Adam was regarding the plant now, turning the pot in his hands as he spoke, showing Syn the secrets of the flower.

"It's an example of co-adaptive evolution. The flower needs to attract that bee, so it mimics the female very closely. In return, the bee has adapted its mouthparts to extract the nectar from the orchid. They fit together perfectly, each fulfilling its role in the ecosystem. You see?"

Syn nodded.

Adam smiled, then continued, "By evolving together like this, they both receive adaptive benefits to their survival that they wouldn't be able to access on their own. Together, they are stronger."

"I see."

"But," Adam continued, his eyes on the beautiful flower, "It comes at a price. They need each other in order to survive. If the bee becomes extinct, then the orchid can no longer pollinate, and if the orchid becomes extinct, the bee will starve."

He set the orchid down gently on the bedside table, turning it so that the flower was shown to full advantage.

"They can't survive without the other. Their fates are all entwined, you see. If one dies, then they all do."

---

[Next chapter: The final night of the Lost and Found: the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. All are welcome; it's going to be a night to remember.

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