Title: Memorabilia
Pairing: Cutter/Borden, Angier/Borden (all implied)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Let us not remember.

A/N: All the cookies go to miss_gordon for beta services and wonderful advise.

<lj-cut>He has never been this cold, not even when he looked at the tanks with the 'prestige materials' inside and could almost feel the water licking his own skin and the ice gripping his heart.

The many prices Angier was willing to pay for his revenge, ending with that unspeakable horror.

With the little girl's hand on his own, he almost believes he is doing the right thing. The noise of the shot shouldn't surprise him, shouldn't make him jump and squeeze Jess' hand, but it does.

He mumbles an apology and moves her to the side of the door. He's sure she should not see her father's face when he walks out.

*

Borden's steps are unsteady when he comes out of Caldlow House, and his hands are trembling.

Cutter starts to tell him something, but what he can possibly say?

"You had no choice?" (we all did, a long time ago)

"He deserved it?" (god help us if we're going to have what we deserve)

So the words die in his mouth.

Borden holds his daughter, carefully keeping his head to the side so she won't see the tears.

Cutter just will pretend he didn't see. Perhaps it will not matter if he remembers anyway.

*

Cutter is busy working on a new magic box, so he doesn't recognize the handkerchief before Borden does.

They had been killing time at the side of the stage, during a rehearsal, at the beginning, before Julia and even before the rivalry. Borden was playing with a deck of cards, and Angier was vanishing a coin over and over again, moving a silken white handkerchief over his open palm with a graceful turn of his wrist.

"This was the first trick I ever learned", he confided, with a wistful smile. "A friend of mine taught me, back in America."

This held Borden's attention immediately. "Another apprentice, or a magician?"

Angier shock his head. "Neither. He saw it on stage once, and thought it over until he figured out how it was done. It took him quite a while, too." He looked away. "He wanted to be a magician, but he would've never had the courage to oppose to his family. He was from a noble family, my friend. So he willed his dream to me, and his handkerchief too."

He turned the garment back on his hand, pensive. Borden reached to take it and have a look on it, and he quicky pulled his arm back.

"Perhaps he finally did it." Borden said.

Angier smiled again, a tight, sad smile. "No, " he responded. "He died in America, and I came here and never knew anything more of his family."

"Where did you get that from?" Borden asks his daughter.

"Lord Caldlow gave it to me. He said I could be a magician too, because his wife was, and she had light hair like me. He taught me how to vanish a coin with this".

Borden takes the delicate piece on his own trembling hand. Now he can read the initials: R.C.

Cutter approaches him cautiously. "Borden. Come take a look at this."

Borden smiles a little at Jess and follows him, but the handkerchief doesn't abandon his hand for the rest of the day.

*

Cutter starts to refuse as soon as the last word of the request comes from Borden's mouth.

"This is absurd. And morbid. Surely any of us can come up with a better idea."

"If you have one this very second, I hear you. But we need the money, and the underwater escape act is . . ."

". . . 'A tired, second-hand trick?'"

Borden fixes him with a glare. "It brings people in. Besides, I can no longer make my trick, can I? I need to look out for Jess, and that's all."

Cutter can't argue with that, not without bringing subjects that are better left buried. Only that nothing has gone away, not really; and he knows the night of the first performance, when he sees the object Borden gives the volunteer to tie his hands with.

*

Borden insists in rehearsing with the Langford double, and he throws a defiant glare at Cutter every time he gets it undone.

Cutter is not sure if Borden realizes at those moments who is in front of him, and who isn't.

*

It takes exactly two months for Borden to break.

"You never speak of him," he says one afternoon, his voice hollow on Cutter's ears. He's wearing his stage suit, and he is dripping wet. He's been on the tank again, though they barely have to practice anymore. Cutter only hopes he didn't ask the little girl to tie his wrists.

"Talk of whom?" he asks, hoping against hope that Borden won't dare to speak his name.

"Angier," Borden says, and his face goes ashen, like that day on the stage so long ago, like that day on the street so little time ago.

He walks close to Cutter, and this close, he can feel him trembling from the cold and the weight of his ghosts. Borden presses his mouth against Cutter's, and the words burn his lips.

"I know you loved him." Also. "It is something learned, the ability to forget?"

Cutter stays very still, and closes his eyes, until he feels the warmth-cold of Borden's body pull away from him, and the hollow sound of the steps when he walks away. </lj-cut>

Tags: the prestige