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maidenxfmight · 4 years

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freefall

Tagging: @luthorforgood & Supergirl When: August 1st, 4:30 am Where: L-Corp What: Kara pays Lena a visit in the aftermath of Magneto’s attack. Lena can’t stop thinking about seventy stories, and that one second. Warnings: Injury Word Count: Not atrocious, 2,481

LENA: The clock on her tablet read 4:43am. Lena stood alone at the top of the staircase, observing the silent wasteland of the upper floors of L-Corp. Her tablet chirped. Digital scan complete, an automated voice spoke and then the floor plunged back into silence.

Her mind screamed. The gravitational constant: 9.81 meters per second squared. Free fall time: 7 seconds. In free fall without air resistance, h = .05(g)(t)^2. Calculated, h = 240.263 meters. 1 meter = 3.281 feet. 240.263 meters = 788.264 feet. L-Corp stood at 848 feet. The 29th tallest building in New York City. Two feet shy of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. 70 stories tall.

Supergirl reached Lena on the 38th floor at the 5th second.

402 feet of freefall in 5 seconds. 2 seconds to go from 109 miles per hour to zero with 446 feet of space and 500 feet required... her foundation had hairline fractures and her body ached from the pressure. After 6 seconds of freefall... 1000 feet required to stop from a speed of 150 miles per hour that her body would have then reached. The difference of a second.

There’s this world on my shoulders, and if anything happens, if that’s ever too much, if I’m ever too weak to hold it…I can’t bear to think about what might happen. One second later. Lena could only think of what might have happened.

A breeze brushed against shattered glass and a siren wailed in the distance. Ribs ached and joints protested the slightest movement. A flash of red. Lena's jaw clenched impossibly tighter, eyes shifting. "Supergirl?" A rasp in the air, hating herself for the grating sound of its uncertainty. Lena straightened her back and cleared her throat, but she couldn't hide the red haunting the corners of her eyes. "What can I do for you?"

KARA: Her apartment felt tight. It had been a while since she'd felt so restless in the space of her bedroom. Soft moonlight played across her comforter, outlining Lar's profile on the pale blue pillows. The steady in and out of Donna's breathing could be heard across the apartment, and it was supposed to be comfortable.

But something itched just beneath her skin. Her thoughts bounced from one to the next wildly and she couldn't bring herself to lie still. It's not like she actually needed sleep. Not since landing on Earth. No, that was another thing she'd lost with her home–

Rao, what was wrong with her? Her hands curled into fists and she suppressed a frustrated groan. The last thing she needed was to wake up her roommates and endure the third degree. Quietly, she lifted her window and floated out into the night sky. She hadn't felt quite right since the attack at L-Corp. Since she'd landed with a thud with Lena Luthor at the bottom of her elevator shaft, and the twist of metal around her had burned her palms.

Her gaze turned to L-Corp tower, where she could make out the skeletal outline of Lena moving shakily around her office. 4:43 am and of course she was awake. Doing what? Playing with more kryptonite? Kara thought of what could have happened.

It wasn't hard to imagine. She could imagine the dry scratch at the back of her throat, the way her own blood seemed to scrape through her veins, how her skin burned. She could imagine hovering over the elevator shaft and Erik finally revealing his cards, green and glowing as they both plummeted eight-hundred-forty-eight feet.

She could feel Lena's fingertips slipping through her own. All those worlds on her shoulders and Lena consistently decided to gamble with them.

She found herself drifting through Lena's office window, feet skating across the remnants of broken glass. It was still a battleground. She twitched, fingers flexing, breath catching. Something burned but she brushed it off. Lena moved tenderly, her voice not much more than a scratch.

Just seconds. Just one.

She thought are you okay, but found herself asking "Do you get it, yet?"

LENA: Two steps forward and one step back. The difference between five seconds and six. She should have expected Supergirl's words, the clip of something just beyond frustration in her voice. How many times had they been here before? How many times would Supergirl have to swoop in and save her life before Supergirl finally decided that a Luthor's life was no longer worth saving? Lena shouldn't have hoped for understanding.

"I warned you," Lena said, hand itching to run through her hair and tuck it behind her ears but body too stiff to think about uncrossing her arms and indulging in the anxious habit. She closed her eyes and a grimace turned into a frown as she turned to face the Super, eyes and jaw clenched shut for a second before both opened again. "You still came anyways." And maybe that hurt substantially more than if the Kryptonian had stayed away in some inexplicable way, because Supergirl hurtled through an elevator shaft without knowing if she would still be invincible when she hit the bottom. "You shouldn't have come." Come now? Come then? Ever?

KARA: Something was slipping, but Kara only just managed to catch herself.

I promised you always.

And she kept her promises. It hadn't mattered what would happen to her, if Erik had used the kryptonite. It hadn't mattered what Lena had said or done, how many times she could shove the device into her articles. It hadn't mattered, because Kara loved Lena, and she had promised her always.

But telling her as much would show her hand, and even feeling as though she was standing on a precipice in Lena's doorway, Kara couldn't quite bring herself to tell her the truth.

Maybe, maybe she doesn't deserve it.

Kara's mouth opened and closed again, her hands twitching at her side. Her toes were hanging off the edge, ready to plunge her into something, but she couldn't quite tell what. "Of course I came. I'm always going to–" She paused on a breath, raking a hand through her hair. "Don't, don't do that self-sacrificing song and dance. A lot of people worked really hard to keep you alive today, don't pretend like that means nothing."

LENA: Something in Supergirl's demeanor made Lena take a second look at the Kryptonian, really trying to look past the steely gaze and strong exterior.

Supergirl was tired.

"I didn't ask them to," Lena answered, her tone just a bit too sharp. 'I didn't ask you to' was implied, but Supergirl kept showing up time and time again. Lena had done nothing to earn that kind of loyalty, especially not with the past the two shared, but it was still freely given. "I dug this grave for myself. No one else should have to lie in it." The words were softer now, approaching vulnerable, and she had to look away. Glass littered the floor and severed cables still sparked at random in the gaping shaft of the elevator, wind twisting through the gaps and whistling as it passed through. Lena should have died, but she hadn't.

She turned back to Supergirl. I do care. "It means something."

KARA: She had, she had dug her own grave.

The thought burst its way forward before Kara could temper it, before she could remember Lena had started at the bottom of a grave. Her family had been digging it well before she'd been given a shovel. That maybe she'd be throwing up pebbles of her own in bits and pieces hardly meant she was entirely responsible.

But then there was kryptonite, and alien detection devices, and how sometimes Lena stepped right into her family's footsteps, even if she didn't seem to fully realize it.

Or maybe she did. The tired, small tug to her voice was telling. Kara took a moment to fully take Lena in, the way she guarded against too many injuries, the way the breeze from the ravaged elevator shaft played at the ends of her hair. How she seemed to war between resignation at the bottom of her grave and embracing the strength to crawl her way back out of it.

"Okay." Kara's voice was soft in turn, giving a small nod before she looked away. Too many words danced on the end of her tongue. Confessions, anger, concern, love. She had to clench her fists against the onslaught. "Good, okay."

She looked up, taking great effort to force herself to relax. Something wasn't right. "You have to believe you're good, Ms. Luthor. The rest of the world, they won't believe anything until you start believing it, too."

LENA: Kara Danvers believes in you. Lena remembered hearing those words when the rest of the world was shouting the fall of the last Luthor. She'd been so tired then, and the fight had just begun for clearing the Luthor name. Then, she hadn't known how many times one person should have to fall from grace and redeem a name over and over again. Metallo. Cadmus. It had only been the beginning, but it could have been the end. She'd been set to die in her brother's vault then, but Supergirl had saved her then too. But that's when Kara Danvers had become her hero, inspiring her to keep fighting for what was good.

She'd never considered that she had to believe first.

Lena offered a stilted smile in return, brow still furrowed and a hand rubbing the back of her neck. "The last time Magneto paid L-Corp a visit, I had to make a phone call to tell a woman that her husband wouldn't be coming home again... that Anthony's baby girls were fatherless." She stared hard into Supergirl's eyes -- green meeting blue. "I don't want to make a similar call for you." Lena didn't think she could look Kon-el in the eyes again if it came to that.

KARA: "Haven't you heard? I'm the Girl of Steel. I don't bend, I don't break." The words fell out before she could stop them, an echo from a simpler time. She could bend. She could break. It wasn't invulnerability that kept Kara alive. It was a mixture of luck and determination.

And they weren't the right words, not in that moment. When Lena was meeting her eyes with a resigned determination, on the tail of a confession that hurt. She knew what it felt like, to make that call. To know that, despite all best efforts, not everyone could be saved. It wasn't even Lena's fault.

The thought caught, whispers of kryptonite and detection devices and 'he's coming after you over your inventions, Lena' bubbling in the back of her mind. Her fingers curled and for a moment she was shocked they were loud enough for her to even consider. She shoved them down, shifting on her feet. Stop, breathe, restart.

"What I mean is I understand the risks I take." I wasn't sent here to fall in love with a human... "So do the people who love me." There was Fort Rozz, Reign... "I do what I do because I love this planet, the– the people. It gives me a purpose here, after– after Krypton. If you ever have to make that call, Lena, know that it's because I was doing something I truly believed in, and I'm at peace."

She paused, more than she meant to say having already spilled out into the air between them. "That woman, she probably believed in you."

LENA: Her lips pursed for a moment, ready to argue with Supergirl. Lena knew that there was one thing that could make the Kryptonian break, and it was the very thing Magneto had stolen from Lena. The very thing Lena has created — against Supergirl’s warnings. But Lena was so tired, joints aching and a migraine threatening to form and arguments dying on her lips just as they were thought. Words would get them nowhere tonight. “You might be at peace, but the rest of the world would not,” she admitted in no more than a whisper. “Maybe it’s selfish, but I care Supergirl.” I do care. The same words spoken weeks ago when she’d tried to warn the woman about Magneto’s potential threat. So much had changed, but that fact had not. It would be easier if she didn’t care, but she did and it seemed after all their differences, the same was true in reverse.

“You have a family here Supergirl. A good one that still sits around a table and eats pasta together.” She paused, unable to remember a single Luthor dinner that resembled the one Kon-El had invited her too. “I would like you to continue to go home to that.”

KARA: Someone had once told her she looked beautiful, with the weight of so many worlds on her shoulders. Kara didn't need any more weight, but in that moment, she felt it settle heavy against her back.

'The rest of the world would not' fell into the air between them and she caught on it, let it tumble around in her mind for a moment while Lena continued. Like there was no falling gently into Rao's light with the rest of her family, there was no peace, there was an Earth and a family who cared too much to let her go. There was a Luthor who thought about that, who pointed it out.

Kara wondered if it was just the guilt. She almost spoke it allowed, but she already knew the answer. It was written clearly across Lena's face, in the tired slump of her shoulders, in the stories she told. It was Lena's kryptonite. It was the mark on her back that got her security detail killed. It was–

Not Lena's fault. The actions of evil people were not Lena's fault. For some reason, Kara had to repeat it to herself once, twice, again for it to fully stick. It still felt slippery, unsure, and suddenly Kara felt markedly uncomfortable. There was an itch beneath her skin, something only a few rotations around the Earth might fix, and she needed out.

She didn't need Lena's concern, certainly not in regards to problems she'd created herself. She didn't need to be reminded of all the worlds on her shoulders. She was plenty aware of them without the help. Words like 'worry about yourself,' and 'you're playing with the same family now' danced on the tip of her tongue. But instead she said "I need to leave."

Her head tilted, like maybe she was listening to something, but all she heard was her own heart picking up pace and the way Lena's creaked against themselves when she breathed. Her feet lifted from the floor and she was half a moment away from blasting through Lena's windows when she paused. "They're your family dinners now, too, Lena. Best you come home to them."

#ff: luthorforgood #ff: freefall

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birdiethebibliophile · 6 years

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{fic} This Is My Kingdom Come

Fandom: The Adventure Zone: Commitment Rating: M Warnings: Descriptions of past psychological trauma and dissociative-like state, implied suicidal ideation (more to do with outside perception) Word Count: 1,897

Here on AO3.

Tagging @someone-called-f1nch, @voidfishkid, @mellowstarscape, and @jumpboy-rembrandt, and thanks to @aubreylikesgirls for yelling at me about the end of TOSF yesterday and inspiring this!

The first of my promised post-TOSF one-shots. Sorry for starting with such a heavy one. If you haven’t read it, go read That Old Sweet Feeling before this - it won’t make much sense otherwise!

Title from Demons by Imagine Dragons, the last song on my TOSF playlist.

Summary: A week after she comes home from the hospital, Nadiya finds Remy doing a little too much thinking.

__________________

“Hey… Remy. What’re you doing up here?”

Remy tossed a pebble off the roof towards the silent street below, swinging his legs against the side of the building. “Thinking.”

“Not your usual pastime.”

Nadiya had been out of the hospital for about a week. Between her mom flying in for a few days and Mary Sage’s constant meetings with her lawyer and Grace and Jonesy shepherding different ex-members of the Fellowship in and out of the place like it had a revolving door, it had all felt like a bundle of chaos, one of the results being that Nadiya hadn’t had an actual conversation with Remy since the night he’d almost killed her.

“Yeah. Well.” Remy shrugged, chucking another bit of gravel off the roof. “Got a lot to think about, I guess.”

“We could… talk about it? If you wanted,” Nadiya said, pulling her sweater closer around her and crossing her arms over her chest. San Francisco was foggy and chill at night, and she didn’t like it. Mary had visited a thrift store the day before and brought her back three cardigans, promptly stealing back two of them. Nadiya had been wearing the third ever since. “You could get off the edge of the roof. I could make coffee.”

“I’m okay, Nad,” Remy said. “For real. I don’t take fall damage. ‘M like Spider-Man.”

“Not really what I meant,” Nadiya said.

Remy’s head dipped, and even in the darkness, Nadiya could see his hands clench on the edge of the roof. “I – I dunno.”

“C’mon,” Nadiya said. “This is the first day the doc said I could have caffeine again.”

Remy gave a long, quiet sigh. “Okay,” he said, and swung his legs back onto the roof, hopping down from the ledge. “It won’t keep you up?”

“It won’t keep you up?” Nadiya countered.

“Nah,” Remy said. “Sometimes helps, actually.”

“Well, I’ve been sleeping a ton lately, and a cup of coffee only lasts about an hour for me, so I’m good,” Nadiya said.

A ghost of a smile flickered across Remy’s face. “How much coffee did you have when you were in grad school? Per day, rough estimate.”

“Five cups? It was pretty shitty stuff, though. Low caffeine. Sometimes instant.”

Remy followed Nadiya back into the building and down the stairs to the penthouse. Grace had flown to Las Vegas earlier that day to deal with the whole almost-an-entire-building-being-destroyed issue on Nadiya’s old campus. Jonesy had gone to bed around eleven, lab goggles still on her head. Mary Sage had curled up an hour earlier, and Irene had been asleep at nine-thirty, for some godforsaken reason (“a steady sleep schedule is important for mental and physical health, Nadiya,” she’d reprimanded when Nadiya scoffed). The apartment was quiet as Nadiya padded across the kitchen to the coffeemaker, measured out the grounds into a filter, filled the water tank. The soft sputtering of the machine started to fill the space, along with the familiar, comforting smell of freshly-brewed coffee.

“So,” Nadiya said, pulling up one of the mismatched chairs to the table. Remy forewent the chair entirely and sat on the table itself. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

Remy jolted, looking up at her from under the hood of his sweatshirt. “No, I haven’t!”

“Liar,” Nadiya said, but not unpleasantly. “I got back from the hospital a week ago and you haven’t said a word to me.”

He blanched as much as his complexion allowed him to – for Remy, this mostly meant his eyes widened so Nadiya could see the white all the way around the dark brown iris. “Oh, God, Nad, I’m so sorry, I should’ve asked how you were doing, I –”

“No, idiot, that’s not what I meant,” Nadiya said, exasperated. “I’m fine. I’m good. But it doesn’t seem like you are.”

“How are you good? I almost killed you!” Remy said, his voice growing higher even as it stayed quiet so as not to wake anyone else. “I – I fucking impaled you on your own arm, your heart stopped beating, you were d-dead –”

Nadiya realized quite suddenly that Remy was crying. It was like her brain had rewritten every moment around when he’d started, because she wasn’t sure when he’d gone from not crying to crying, but he certainly was now, one hoodie sleeve pressed to his face, tears flowing thick and fast down his cheeks, shoulders shaking. “You were d-dead,” he repeats, “and I killed you, and I fucking kill everything I touch.”

“What? No, you don’t,” Nadiya said. She gave up on the chair and climbed up onto the table with him. “Remy. Remy! Hey, I’m here, I’m alive, I’m okay. We’re all okay.”

“Not my parents,” Remy whispered, and his breathing sounded painful, sobs wrenched from his throat between words. “They’re dead, a-and my brother’s gym is never going to make any money, and Xander would be better off without me in his life, and –”

Nadiya steeled herself, then wrapped her arms around Remy’s shoulders in the tightest hug she could manage.

Immediately, Remy’s arms went around her chest and clutched the back of her sweater like a lifeline. His head dropped onto her shoulder. She could barely hear the muffled words: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Nadiya held him there, side by side, wrapped around each other, for longer than she could remember holding anyone, including Mary Sage. She felt the shoulder of her sweater growing progressively damper. She found she didn’t care.

Eventually, the coffeemaker stopped its soft sputtering, and the helpless shaking of Remy’s shoulders died down to a tremble, his arms dropping from around her. Nadiya hopped down from the table and filled two mugs, putting sugar in hers and pressing the other into Remy’s hands. He wrapped his fingers around it and took a sip, letting out a shaky sigh. “Sorry,” he said again. His voice was still raspy with tears.

“It’s okay,” Nadiya said, getting back onto the table with her own mug. “Um. I want to say something real, for like a second, but you have to pay close attention because I’m not saying it again, okay?” She stared down into her coffee. “You’re… you’re not just a good guy, Remy. You’re a good friend, and you can relate to other people better than any of us except for maybe Irene. You’re wicked smart, and brave as hell, even if that sometimes verges into some pretty dumbass shit. We –” She stopped and corrected herself. “I couldn’t have gotten through all this without you. I don’t blame you for anything that happened. It was all Martine. And as for the whole anyone would be better off without you part…”

She looked up, and it was so easy to meet Remy’s eyes. It was always easy with him in a way that wasn’t easy with most people. “It fucking sucked, thinking you were dead,” she said quietly. “And that’s not me trying to blame you for getting caught. Again, that’s on Martine, and she’s going to rot in prison, good riddance. But it was like a piece of us was missing. And I can’t imagine that’s not the way your brother and his kid feel. Okay? There’s no way they’re better off without you than with you.”

“But I lost American Ninja Warrior,” Remy said, and then abruptly laughed shakily, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “I guess when I say it like that and we just stopped somebody from taking over the world it’s not as big of a deal.”

“Who cares if you messed up on TV one time?” Nadiya said. “You saved the world on TV last week. You saved my life, too. By the way. I don’t… I’m still not sure what happened with that.” Nadiya shifted, and to cover her discomfort, took a sip of her coffee. Those moments were still jumbled in her head, a chaos of pain and a floating, disconnected sensation in a sea of white and a tugging in her chest. “I don’t think that would’ve happened without you. Fuck, without you, I feel like Mary Sage wouldn’t have stuck around past around day one, so I gotta thank you for that. Thanks to you I have a girlfriend, I guess.” She nudged him with her elbow.

“Can’t believe I missed that, by the way,” Remy said. “She, uh… she told me she liked you way back when we were kidnapped in Nevada.”

“Took me a little longer to figure it out,” Nadiya admitted. “Not much longer, but a bit. I’m still waiting on the teasing.”

Remy gave another watery laugh and lifted his mug to his lips with shaky hands. “I’ll work on it.”

“Anyway. I just… I might have almost died, but you got fucking brainwashed or whatever.”

“It wasn’t a big –”

“Hey.” Nadiya cut him off. “You weren’t there. Well, you know, kind of. You didn’t see yourself. It was like you were dead. Like… there was nothing behind your eyes. It was scary as fuck to see, so I don’t know how it must’ve felt. And you haven’t said a word about it.”

“It felt like… nothing,” he said after a long moment. “I can remember it. Which I dunno whether that’s better or worse. But it was like I didn’t have a body? Or maybe I didn’t have a mind. Like I was just a little to the left of everything, so I couldn’t use my brain to think and I couldn’t control what I was doing, and I couldn’t feel anything… and then when you – when you got hurt and fell and – it felt like something wrapped around me and yanked me back into my body. And then it all sort of hit at once, all the memories of –” He shivered. “I don’t remember what they did to me. Just Sylvane knocking me out, and then being brought to the gala and all the shit that went down there, and staying with Martine, and doing whatever she said. Her voice felt like – like a leash? It was just dragging me wherever she wanted me to go, whatever she wanted me to do, and I couldn’t help it. I could see myself hurting you, and I couldn’t stop. And then it just all hit me at once, and I was back and I thought you were dead, and – God.” He ran his hand over his face, then through his hair, knocking his hood back. “It was fucked up, Nad, I think it was pretty fucked up.”

“It sounds fucked up,” Nadiya agreed. “Drink your coffee.”

Remy drank his coffee. “It just didn’t feel okay to say anything about it when you had a literal hole in your chest.”

“Well, it’s closing up now.” Nadiya tapped lightly at the bandages on her midsection. “All good here. So it’s okay now. Yeah?”

Remy let out a long sigh that started out shaky and got deep until it sounded like it was drawing every bit of air from his chest so he could replace it all. “Yeah. Thanks, Nad.” He tipped his mug up and drained the last of his coffee. “I think I should probably get some sleep. You should, too. You’re still healing.”

“We both are,” Nadiya said as Remy climbed off the table. “Night, Remy.”

He smiled, and it almost looked like him. “Night, Nadiya.”

#taz #taz commitment #taz fanfiction #nadiya jones #christopher rembrandt #remy #angst #the adventure zone #the adventure zone commitment #taz: c #that old sweet feeling #tosf #part of series:#we will go dancing #mine

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toadrakua · 7 years

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Lost Causes: Draft

This was the story I submitted to Written In Light, a Fanzine based around the game “Destiny.” After having slacked off for most of the time allotted, I only just managed to “complete” it after asking for an extension on the deadline. However, this proved to not be enough, and it was rejected due to not quite fitting in with the theme of the Fanzine. So instead I have decided to post it here, all fourteen-hundred and ninety-five words of it, so that I may share anyway, even if it did not manage to completely tell the story I wished it to tell in the 1500 word limit I was given. I hope all enjoy it, and remember:

Eyes up Guardian.

“Guardian, I’ve located the distress beacon,” The ghost said as it fizzled into existence in Draco-66’s face. “But are you sure we should be boarding a Fallen Ketch? Alone?”

Shoving the baseball-sized AI away with a well-armored hand, the Exo Titan returned to the controls of his jumpship. With swift metal figures dancing across the console, he input the command codes necessary to initiate interplanetary travel.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine, Norm. There’s no need for us to bother another Fireteam with what’ll likely amount to tagging salvage,” Draco replied to his long-time companion, just before hitting the launch key. After a moment of pregnant silence, the Fangs of Nyx’s jump drive whirred to life, sputtering and groaning as it hesitantly obeyed its pilot. As the Titan stared out at the stars through the cockpit glass, the vessel leapt forward, rendering that very image a blur as time and space were ripped asunder in its wake.

A half hour later, and the jumpship lurched back into real-space, the Guardian and his Ghost found themselves staring down the bow of one of the largest ships still operating in the solar system: a derelict Fallen Ketch. As he brought the ship about to face the alien vessel, Draco couldn’t help but marvel at the shear size of the warship before him. Even halfway obscured by the darkness of space, the rotting hulk made his favored jumpship seem like a meager pebble lying against a boulder in a large, empty abyss. It was said by the Warlocks back home that these behemoths having been transporting the four-armed Eliksni—known to most as “The Fallen”—about the universe since the fall of their empire hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. Not that they had thought he’d been listening. In their eyes, a Titan like him should have no interest in these things. That couldn’t have been farther from the truth. The Fallen had always intrigued him. To him, at least, these interstellar nomads had never come to humanity’s shores with the intention to rule, like some, nor were they here to destroy it all, like others. From what he’d read from Cryptarchy’s archives and the Warlocks’ tomes, they may have just been fleeing the same darkness that had also nearly consumed humanity. Were either species not so stubborn and territorial, maybe there could have been peace?

Either way, here was one of their ships to explore, and this guardian was not about to pass up the chance. As Fangs of Nyx approached the lurking vessel, Norm set to work breaking in. Patching in through the jumpship’s communications array, the crafty little cuboid weaved its essence deep into the tangled, fractured corridors of the Ketch’s subsystems, sniffing out any form of working code it could find. It’ll take ages for me just to cobble together a program to open a simple door, let alone reactivate an airlock, Norm mused. Heh, ages for me. Somehow I don’t think it’ll be more than a few nanoseconds for my guardian. The Ghost noted the irony of that statement just as it finished compiling the data. Not even a second after it had started, it chirped a word of accomplishment to its peer, and relinquished control of the ship to Draco for final approach on the hangar.

Steering the craft towards the shuttered orifice, the Titan nodded to his long-time companion to pop the hatch, and so it was. WHOOSH! Immediately, debris came pouring out from the opening into open space—and slamming into the view-screen was the distinctive many-limbed silhouette of a Fallen Vandal; the bloated corpse of one, at the very least. It only stuck around for little bit, leaving behind a trail sticky bodily fluid against the portion of hull it had impacted. As his ghost replicated the sound of gagging behind him, Draco brought their ship in for landing, and disembarked. As soon as the magnetic soles of his boots hit the steel flooring, the Guardian was guns up, the barrel pointing at whatever dark corners an Eliksni could have been hiding in.

“Looks like no-one’s home,” he told nobody in particular. His ghost scoffed in response.

“What was your first clue? The lights being off, the corpses littering the floor? Or was it the lack of a welcoming party that tipped you off?”

If Norm’s Guardian was glaring, he couldn’t tell through the helmet. Never-the-less, the duo set off down the winding corridors of the defunct warship, Norm lighting the way, and Draco scanning every approaching fork in the road for a possible ambush. Each hallway they passed through opened up to another, each littered from floor to ceiling with grime and scraps of emptied ether sups, scraped dry of the nourishing substance the Fallen used to survive. Every so often they’d come another body; emaciated skeletons of what was once a proud Fallen warrior, their bellies bloated from rot, the life drained from now soulless eye sockets. For what seemed like the millionth time their career together, both Guardian and ghost were glad they couldn’t smell the no-doubt toxic fumes that meandered about these halls. After about an hour or so of walking, the two found themselves in a larger, more well lit space. He’d seen this type of set-up before back on Venus; a large, tiered open plan lined wall-to-wall with glowing displays and headed by an enormous throne at its back wall. Normally, the cathedral-esque command deck was just one of many areas on the ship that could be used to pilot the mammoth vessel, yet Draco and Norm had just hit the jackpot by coming across it first. Norm spared no time getting to work sifting through data logs as its guardian began scanning for any signs of movement.

His head on a swivel, Draco found himself following the trails of sticky liquids and wasted sup caps back to their deceased origin. Just like every room before it, this one was littered with the bodies starving Fallen who had become far too weak to carry on. There was a difference, however, between these Fallen and the ones who’d come before. From the looks of it, most of those who died here did not do so of their own accord. A surprising number bore wounds from shock weapons found not too far from other Eliksni across the floor. Some, it would appear, died from self afflicted injury, their own pistols still grasped in their claws. Of all the death that permeated from within this room, none were as pitiful as what sat displayed upon the once proud throne. Slouched over the empty vial of ether still clutched in it claws was but a lowly Dreg, poised as though praying to some deity that would never come.

Muttering a curse under his breath, Draco found himself caught off guard by the loud crash on metal coming from beyond the only other open passageway. After repeating himself, he called for his ghost to follow as he rushed in, gun at the ready and gearing for a fight. When he was certain the perpetrator behind the noise has stopped running, he slowed his paced to near a crawl and began his search. Tip-toeing past bits and pieces of shattered Servitors, the Titan took aim at every nook and cranny that looked large enough to hide a Dreg. As he turned the corner, an erratically blinking light caught his eye. There, at the end of the corridor, sat a malfunctioning Servitor, raw ether still dripping from its mismatched carapace. Behind it, he could just make out a series of four tiny eyes, staring, unblinking, back at him. Lowering his weapon, his ghost reemerged behind him, its metaphorical jaw hitting the floor.

“Is that an… Infant?” For once, Norm didn’t have anything snarky to say, and just floated there as its Guardian proceeded to approach the juvenile Eliksni, silently setting aside his firearm and gently cooing. Chittering with fear, the child seemed unable to decide whether to run and hide, or try and fight a battle it could not win. Realizing that himself, Draco brought his eyes from the malnourished youth, and down to the still dripping ether from its broken protector.

“Ghost… Norm. You think you can fix this Servitor’s ether processors? Maybe boost the signal of the distress beacon?” He asked the floundering AI still questioning the existence of the creature before it.

“What—I— yes, I... probably can,” Norm managed to sputter. “But the question is, why do you want to me to help feed a future killer of Guardians?”

“Because we can’t take it with us to the tower, and I can’t simple drop it off at the nearest Fallen orphanage, now can I?” Draco replied as he got to feet, being careful to quickly stow his weapon before the child saw him holding it. “Besides, isn’t that what being a Guardian is all about?”

Norm sighed. “Well, I guess I can’t argue with that logic.”

#Destiny #destiny game #destiny 2 #fallen #exo #titan #guardian #fanfic #fanfiction #Draco-66 #ghost #Norm

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joshuarossiter-blog · 6 years

Text

A Day In A Trice (short story)

It would not be too unreasonable to assume that Cloyne is the name of some debilitating illness rather than that of a coastal village. ‘Cloyne’s disease’, ‘an outbreak of cloynes’, or ‘You’re on the waiting list, but Cloyne’s patients are rather overlooked, unfortunately’ all seem to be more believable phrases than ‘Gee, I can’t wait to visit Cloyne in the summer’.

Even if someone were talking about their upcoming trip to the village, you would probably hear them say something more like ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go down to Cloyne at the weekend, my grandma Rosie isn’t doing too well. Yeah, I might come back Sunday morning, earliest. I do feel bad for her, though. Ugh, I’ll ask if she’ll come up our way instead; it'd do her some good to get away for a bit.’ But God forbid anyone bring the place up in conversation in the first place. They’d either have to be a fool, or be able to make their point so concise that no one would have a chance to cut them off and talk about someplace else. ‘Oh, Cloyne? I think we passed through on the way to, uh, where was it we went yesterday, Greg?’ Cloyne was a melting pot of well-meaning misdemeanours; good intentions causing reprehension; a clear contrast between the obliviously elderly, aimlessly middle-aged, and a gauche amalgam of youth. They lived as separately as possible, of course, but this did not mean they would go without silently denouncing each other day in and day out. Grannies would throw glares from between the garish curtains of front windows, so the students, slouched against streetlights, would slink across their front lawns to impart pungent puffs of smoke. Whether their way of life desired cheap decor or a measly gram of marijuana, at the end of it, they were both carelessly spending the same £10, over and over, no matter how they looked at it. Perhaps the only place where the people of Cloyne might have eased once upon a time was Mangum’s Diner on the seafront. There, they practiced more composed behaviour that for once produced a neutral state of affairs. One might want to call this a societal haven, but a more appropriate wording would be something along the lines of ‘public no-man’s-land’. The building itself was once a bungalow of the same calibre as the vast line of other beach shacks, until one day a plucky pair of lovers began dedicating the last three decades of their lives, financial investment, and forced smiles to renovating it until it was scarcely presentable and hygienic enough to tender food and drink from. They did so in defiance of the call of retirement and in a bid of vain self-preservation above all the other individuals whose lives passed before they could turn and see what was happening. Any person who ever observed this progression and felt pity for the couple’s fickle life decisions would soon grow to become as much of a reiteration of the Mangums than those who thought nothing of it. Again, at the end of it, they were destined to a scrabbling in the pebbles for relevance - trudging through the car park to the entrance of Mangum’s, and barging between profusely perspiring faces that were either far too familiar or frightfully foreign. Until one day they weren’t. Perhaps a more curious conundrum than why Mangum’s burned down one night was why the population dropped by half during the following week. There was no fervent expulsion, nor was there some established exodus. One by one, sometimes in twos, often in families (but rarely as nuclear units), people decided that perhaps there might be something more to be had. Or was it less than that? Perhaps they’d never reached further than the bottle on the yellow-brown coffee table because, well, their feet were on the table too, and they literally could not reach any further without getting up off the stained and singed sofa? And what is getting up anyway? A one-two, snap-click of knees and ankles, teetering forward toward the kitchen door and sinking back down into the dark ass-print depression of years gone by. Like that’s worth the effort. - - - Even during its final day, Mangum’s Diner was no more and no less than what the locals knew it as and had come to use it for since it opened. Down in the waters which it faced, the tides awoke and began to come inland for the morning. Seaweed waited to hitch a ride back into the ocean from its nine-to-five job of reflecting the light of the moon through the night while being harassed by curious dogs, crabs that had lost their way and the shoes of bored teenagers. 1. The crest of dawn illuminated the tracks left in the sand by a group of youngsters. Each trail, though directed toward the same campfire, met the sun with a different shimmer. One was made of smaller, shallower footprints, adjacent to a narrow, unbroken outline where the illustrator had drawn her skateboard through the sludge. Another was wider, deeper, and contained footprints that rotated every few steps. These footprints told of a person who had been spinning in circles all the way to the water, his face melted and his brain fried, attempting a sort of dance he was sure was the most perfect combination of movements and utilisation of space the universe and all its grace had ever seen. The third set of footprints kept close to the second, and then gave way a little once all the aforementioned spiralling started. It then made a wide, horseshoe diversion around a puddle of vomit. “Jesus, the sun’s up and I can still smell it” said the girl at the end of the first trail, pulling her dip-dyed hair to her nose. It was the same green-yellow as the fluorescent safety vest her father had bought her ‘to go with your new skating board’; the vest that was found smouldering in the back garden the following morning. He had wanted to be angry at her, but opted for avoiding confrontation after convincing himself her new hair choice would keep her visible enough on the road after dark, and for this reason it might have been a mature decision after all.

“It’s just kind of floating above every other smell, you know? How does that even happen?” “If you’d let me go to bed like I wanted to, we wouldn’t still be here, and we’d all be surrounded by the wonderful stink of our own bedrooms instead,” said the ash-faced, grey-eyed, steadily-drooling boy stood next to her, who was kicking sand onto the campfire. An empty bag of crisps tipped towards the embers a touch more and quickly retreated into itself, blackened and crumpled. “And about an hour from now, you’d wake up in a cold sweat, hang out of your bed until the head-rush hits you and then fall face-first onto the floor,” the other girl put forward. She put a gentle hand up to the boy’s ribs and stared at him with the sorry eyes of someone who had just shut their cat’s tail in a door. “Also, I might remind you that right now, staying with us means you’re only about…” She glanced over her shoulder at Mangum’s in the near distance. “About three minutes from work? You’ll be ‘right.” Water emerged from the under the layer of sand the boy was scuffing with his shoe. He noticed how the damp surface of the sand was ever so slightly flowing, only just. It washed his attention to the sea; his gormless gape swinging a dribble of saliva that swayed in the wind. The girls looked at him, wondering why he seemed to be watching the ocean so longingly. “Can we just- Let’s- Yeah, we’re all going to hold hands,” he started, “And then we’ll see how far we get.” “Right,” the girls responded together. “Because I don’t think we’d get as far as the sea. We’d probably sink in the mud. But we’ll hold hands and give it a go, and just leave all our phones on your skateboard so no one can call for help and we wouldn’t have to get up for anything ever again. It’d be so much easier.” “He’s got a point,” the first girl said, catching on like a bluebottle to a plate of leftovers. “Never get stood up again.” “Never wait for a bus again,” the other girl agreed. “Never have to assemble a sandwich again,” “Or even bother to eat at all,” “Never use PowerPoint again,” “Never have nightmares about pharaohs,” The boy shot out of his trance and fired his attention to the girls again - he looked ever so hurt.

“Don’t fucking bring up my nightmares about the pharaohs, OK? We spoke about this already. And that’s the last thing I want on my mind when I’m trying to die.” “Right, yeah. You’re such a moron, you know that?” “Fine, I’ll go myself, right now, is that what you’re telling me to do?” he blubbed, crying now. Of course, his friend was not trying to tell him anything. However, she was still very adamant that he was a moron. This much was true. Before her at that point in time was a manchild who was capable of doing nothing more than sucking a spliff through the tears gathering in the corner of his lips. His feet had entrenched themselves in the sand at this point, and he couldn’t bring himself to move them. Similarly, his emotions had also sunk a great deal. Both were freed only when the second girl offered a helping hand in the form of a slap to his gurning face. With his feet still physically rooted to the spot, he pivoted sideways and the rest of his awkwardly gargantuan body became stamped into the beige mire, like a grotesquely psychedelic version of Gulliver’s Travels. There, the addled adolescent remained for the next minute or so, blinking sediment from his eyes. He watched as a beached row-boat doubled and floated and waved into the air several times. Then his eyes fell onto a shooting star as his head lolled to the side. Spitting his tongue out in a cyclic succession of giggling and gasping, he watched the light cascade again and again. The others also turned their heads, but instead saw the light trundling across the horizon, not falling towards it. They frowned at the incapacitated idiot lying in the damp, making sand angels as he reached for the sodden joint which rested just above his head. “Well there you go; you slap Charlie hard enough and he starts laughing at trains.” 2. The train was due to arrive in Cloyne in about two minutes, not enough time read a double page spread of a biology text book but just enough time to roll a cigarette. Jay sighed at the pitiful image of Nicky frantically cobbling together a smoke on the fold out table, constrained by the strict schedule of the rail service and the insufficient legroom. He looked for something more hopeful to watch. A girl sat ahead of them pulled an almost colourful fabric from her fried-egg-shaped tote bag. He couldn’t tell what it was, only that it had ears and whiskers. Some tawdry, novelty purse? Feline-themed slippers? No. To his surprise, she draped the scarf around her neck, the head of the two-dimensional cat hanging beside her chest. Its rainbow patterning had greyed over time, and it looked a little sad, almost like it was a partisan of this girl’s scrawny neck. He imagined her constantly preventing it from slipping off as she craned further toward some YA fiction novel, maybe a MacBook keyboard, or perhaps the cleavage of her friend that she gets uncertain thoughts about every other evening. He stopped himself there. The girl flipped a bright, tea-stained magazine under her arm and scurried past the two boys. Jay caught a glimpse of a twenty-something-year-old androgynous person, kneeling with a dummy in his/her mouth. Still looking, Jay chuckled, then Nicky noticed too, offering an accompanying scoff. “Twats like that are so embarrassing,” Nicky uttered under his breath. “Well, come on, who does she think she is?” Jay turned, winced, and turned back. “I’d say she knows pretty well who she is. Seriously, look. Looks like she’s worn that scarf every day since she got it.” “I dunno... Just pisses me off that everyone has to try so hard to be so different, innit?” “I mean, if they know what they’re into, they probably don’t have to try hard at all.” “Oh, fuck off.” “No, no, I do see your point though. It’s like a constant battle between who can look the most iconic; the most free-spirited and individual, yet they're the people who try constantly to preach that we're all really just the same on the inside.” Jay pulled up his pastel pink socks and turned up another several folds on his trousers until they were swinging halfway up his shins. “Oi, let’s all just dress like clowns instead, I don’t know. If we’re going to keep progressing to looking more wacky and trying to make a bigger statement, why not skip the progression entirely and just literally channel the aesthetic of a clown?” He trailed off into tangents of different circumstances he might get himself into in full clown attire. Every scenario began with him striding through town in a frilly, multicoloured mash of fabric layers and assorted buttons, completely in denial of his paranoia that absorbed every up-and-down glance, every confused face through every white van window, and every double take over every navy-suited shoulder. He wasn’t too sure about it, actually, but it would be something. He rolled his trousers down again, for now. Nicky wasn’t even sure if he could remember what a clown entirely looked like – he had neglected to think about them since the days of flipping through cardboard picture books or being too naive to realise whenever those mildly exciting circus posters that slowly peel off of lampposts over the course of a year are actually advertising an event that occurred months ago. He looked at his grey t-shirt, its only focal point being the unused pocket on the left chest. Turning red, he looked across at Jay and his paisley shirt tucked into straight-legged trousers, and broke into a sweat trying to justify why he now felt so uncomfortable in the seat of his cargo shorts. “You hipsters are all the same,” he scoffed, tucking his cigarette beside his crew cut and behind his ear, securing that brilliantly tailored opinion. “Right.” “You are. You know it.” “Do I? Or, do we? I don’t know how you expect me to respond to that, to be honest. Just take a deep breath or something, man, don’t hurt yourself.” 3. As she walked past, Nicky’s heavy breathing was all that the girl with the cat scarf acknowledged of the boys’ exchange of various hormonal sounds before she decided to tune them out. It was far from difficult for her. If she decides something is going to make her uncomfortable or cause her harm, out it goes; out through the window, or under the carpet, or into the back of the cupboard with every out-of-touch birthday and Christmas present she had received from her parents over the last few years, but didn’t have the heart to dispose of. Leaving a situation was less like flicking a light switch; it was more like a dimmer that she could dial back as she gently shuts her eyes and emits a jettison of cold air past her septum piercing. She had reached a point long ago where she could anticipate the last notch of the dial, and depending on the situation, she might gently push the threshold for a moment until – CLICK – away she would drop. This was not one such occasion. She felt that getting used to a normal light switch would have been nice for once. Reach around the doorway at the back of her head and slap her hand straight onto the plastic panel; or if she had the courage, reach around the seat behind her and slap the brainless expression straight off that boy’s frustratingly shaped head. Why was the width of his jowls twice that of his forehead? Why did he feel the need to stick what little hair he had into such a pointless little peak? It made no sense. She tried not to care. The doors opened, and the satisfaction of that final click came as she dropped the platforms of her shoes onto the platform of Cloyne train station, and into the arms of her mother. “Hello, Olivia, that’s nice, thank you!” the sinewy lady stammered. Swatting her daughters scarf from her face with every difficult greeting, “OK, hiya, yep, alright now,” the wind would bring it back, waving in front of her every time, like a dog who never knows when the game of fetch is over. Where some would find benign enthusiasm, others see relentless irritation. Olivia’s mother whisked her away into the morning sun along the coast of the village. “Your grandfather will be happy to see you!” she lied. Olivia sat in the back seat, chewing on her seatbelt. She stared not through the window, but at it. She was watching the reflection of her mother as her mother watched the reflection of her via the rear view mirror. “Should be nice,” Olivia wavered, like the flag wafting in the distance. It indicated low tide. Should be nice, she thought. Means she shouldn’t have to go swimming. The car jolted downhill for a moment, into the dip in the junction. All the school kids hoped this area would flood every morning - that way, the school gets completely cut off by road, and the walking route from there is a safety hazard in heavy rain. The kids would gleefully agree with the health and safety laws, and then proudly parade their day off by playing in a construction site or derelict boat shed somewhere. Farther down the road, the car rumbled across the wooden bridge that a few of the same school kids hoped would collapse whenever the junction failed to flood. Were she a few years younger, Olivia would have been one of them. She dropped a penny out the window. Who knows, maybe it would break something.

4. “¡Guau! Mat-i-yew, come to grandpa, see this, yes? You got to come over, but be very gentle when you walk, please, Mat-i-yew.” The penny had landed upright, and remained there all morning. Unlike Olivia, little Matthew’s grandfather was pleased to see him, but only marginally more so. They had been walking all morning toward the diner, and now it came into view just as the sun hit directly overhead. “Granddad Red Car, you’re walking too fast,” came Matthew’s little voice from behind. It is difficult for a six-year-old to remember the surname Izquierdo, and it is difficult for a disciplinary, sixty-two-year-old, enormous, moustachioed Spaniard of upper class descent to hear a child use an elder’s first name. So, the distinguishing feature of Granddad Izquierdo’s red car as opposed to Granddad Beauchamp’s green car made communicating easier for Matthew. “My legs hurt and your watch has beeped three times after we sat down the last time and that means it’s been a really long time and I want a wee.” Granddad looked over his shoulder and sighed. He turned his face to the sun, closed his eyes and presented himself with an imaginary list: - Keep Matthew active – in progress. - Talk to Matthew – sí. - Feed Matthew – shared a sandwich in the car, will eat again at the diner. - Educate Matthew – trying to, Dios mío. Matthew came windmilling toward the bridge as quickly as he could. Granddad furrowed his brow, so the boy did too. His cheeks huffed and puffed, his face reddened as Granddad beckoned, until this little balloon of a face, inflated with the optimistic gusto found only within a child’s head, fell flat on the woodwork. A head in which why was, in that moment, long lost to a confusion of who, what, where, when, and above all, how. It burst and exploded into a cacophonous cry for help. Once the toddler crashed to the ground, the penny jumped onto its side, and Granddad Red Car sighed once more. Bleeding little more than a torrent of tears, Matthew’s pleading and pining projected all the way to the promenade. 5. “And you said it would be quieter down here.” “Well it’s quieter than Mangum’s. Just sit down.” Tentatively avoiding the afternoon crowds, two twins took a seat on the steps below the outreaches of the walkway, overlooking the tide as it reluctantly began to slip onto the pebbles, higher and higher. “You know, sometimes I’m almost glad I’m infertile. No idea how you manage.” They both turned to the direction of the distant din. “Eh, you just get used to it. Kids are bound to make a fuss when there’s barely a fuss to be made, then we grow up and we hit an age where it’s all ‘c’est la vie’ because we know no one’s going to listen.” “Why are human children the loudest, though? You ever see a video of any other baby animals crying? They don’t make half as much noise. Even chimpanzees, and they’re basically the same thing as us.” “Fine, you’re right, I know. Humans are awful in all forms.” “And how come we’re the species that's allowed to run the world? All we did was get clever enough to build things, but then our brains also invented crippling anxiety. Was it worth the effort?” “Yeah, I am still with you on this. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a bipolar dolphin.” “Who’d be a more capable dominant species, d’you think?” “You know, I’ve always wanted to see an intelligent, talking giraffe.” “How come?” “I know they’re not as dexterous as us and so probably not as capable in a sense, but look at them. It’s marvellous how they just stand and observe from way up there. They’re the perfect embodiment of a God; they’re pretty much living in the clouds, too. Wouldn’t mind a final judgement from a giraffe.” “Fair.” “You?” “Parrots.” “Parrots?” “Yeah, parrots. Imagine like, a six foot tall bird. It’d be mad. And they don’t even have to try to look presentable. They’d never have a bad day.” “But how would they run the world any better?” “Uh... There’d be a lot of talking, so it probably wouldn’t be much different. I wonder, though...” From where they sat, their heads ran parallel to the pavement. They both scrutinised the ants ruling the cracks in the concrete. The first twin looked a couple of degrees higher. “I wonder... What about that rabbit over there? Could he make a good prime minister?” “Not a chance. Far too many kids.” 6. The rabbit almost looked offended. It turned its head a few times. It didn’t look like there was about to be a dramatic reshuffling of the food chain or the history of evolution anytime soon. Not to worry, then. It dived headfirst into the ditch and scarpered the rest of the way towards Mangum’s Diner. Humans can’t take shortcuts through brambles, heh heh. As it came out into the side alley, it stopped short at the reverberation of idle feet swinging against empty dumpsters. Humans can turn boredom into intense levels of violent force, however. Everything has to be about them. Even rabbits are sick of teenagers. Back into the brambles it went. “I swear these rabbits won’t leave us alone, dude.” “They are leaving us alone, idiot, that’s why they keep running away.” A family walked through the alley from the car park, faces to the floor. The two boys sat atop the dumpster also faced the floor, but only until the family had passed. Then it was all eyes on. The first boy leaned toward the other. “Daddy,” he said in a slower but higher voice, “Why do those boys smell funny?” The second boy responded in a lower tone, “‘Oh it was probably just the bins’”, then belted out a guttural guffaw, rasping and rolling his eyes back. “Nah, the dad totally knows. ‘You’ll find out when you’re older, sweetie.’” “As if he’s going to let her. He’s in the last generation to think drugs are bad, he’s not going quietly.” “About the only thing he has a voice for now. How many words do you reckon he says to his wife a day?” “I bet some days he gets away with none.” The first boy turned to the brambles yet again. “It reminds me of, like, that David Lynch thing, with the rabbits.” “You and your rabbits.” “Shut up. It's really funny, saw it on Facebook, there’s one rabbit in a dress doing the ironing with the sofa beside her, right, and you watch nothing but that for a solid two minutes. Then another rabbit comes in wearing his little suit and goes to sit on the sofa, and you’re forced to watch that for another however many minutes, expecting something to happen, only it never really does, and this laugh track keeps reacting to all the nonsense they’re talking about. Can’t remember what else happens but, yeah. Says a lot that you know nothing is gonna happen, or at least that it doesn’t faze you. It’s such a recognisable husband-wife sort of thing, the only difference being that they’re rabbits, which is hilarious.” “Why’s that hilarious?” “Well, what do rabbits do more than anything?” “Fuck?” “Yeah! So it’s like, implying that all they have left is bland, wordless sex, and that’s what probably happens once the film’s over and the characters go to bed.” “That’s not funny. Makes sense but, Christ.” 7. Inside, the family had managed to acquire the last free booth. Mangum’s was always uncomfortably packed if it was uncomfortably hot outside. No one left because once they claim their spot, it is theirs - such is the way of the British psyche. On top of that, Cloyne’s inhabitants were either too pompous to hold themselves any lower, or too slovenly to think any further ahead. This family were clearly not locals, however. There was something about the way the parents offered their seats to anyone else first; the way the children stared at everyone in the room. It confused people. The way in which the waitress practically pushed them into the last free booth, and the way the man who spilled over the edges of his bar stool stared at no one in the room but the children was much more customary. Maybe it was the heat, maybe a weekend was just too long to be visiting Cloyne, but after fifteen minutes of miscommunication, the father started to grow “really rather cross with everyone. There, I’ve said it.”. The waitress waited. The father cursed at his family for not opening their mouths, not making up their minds, not hurrying up themselves and not being patient enough for him. The waitress waited. The son looked out of the window, the daughter sobbed, the mother apologised. The waitress waited. 8.

“And that’s why I don’t bloody come here no more. Always some family pratting about, I tell ya.” The man spilling over his seat was sat with his boy, a wiry lad of fifteen years. “I’n’t no reason it should be four quid a pint, I’ll teach ya that. Especially not if you’re not drinking yours anyway, Jack.” He grabbed the other glass from in front of his son. Jack watched his father down his beer. No, Jack watched his dad down his beer. The distinction between father and dad should be made clear, as father connotes that the word could also be used as a verb, and so in the case of Jack and the man beside him, using the word father would simply be incorrect. Jack watched the man slouched over the bar drink the beer that was bought for him, pouring about one-eighth of its contents down his shirt. Jack began counting the legs of all the stools along the bar. Once the man tucking away his gut began ushering him out, Jack instead counted the stools themselves. He would multiply the total by four in the car when he inevitably needed to. As they hurried through the car park, he wondered if one day he might have the time or need to count all the gravel behind Mangum’s. For now, he thought of onomatopoeia for the sound gravel makes as the man fumbling in his pockets continued swearing at his own ineptitude. Critch. Scritch. Scrutch. Khahrch! Two pop-pshh-slosh-slams later, at eight-twelve, Jack watched the projections on the table made from the kitchen light flowing through two beer glasses. He yawned. Blah blah, being a man, learning, alright? Here’s some home truths, tell you what, are you— “—even listening to me?”

Jack looked up.

“Right, go on, piss off up to your room then, I only fucking ever try with you.” Try what? Teaching me about life? No. Try to project yourself onto me. Try to voice yourself to someone you mistakenly think is impartial without actually attempting to sort yourself out. Try to make everything around us more and more miserable. God, now I’m doing it, the whole ‘woe is me, woe is me, woe is - Jack dropped into bed in his loft room. - me’. Inhale. Exhale. He looked up, trying to focus. The slant window always gave him a perfect view of the gradient of colours in the sky. Typically, one third gold, one tulip, one periwinkle. Then, later, one cantaloupe, one orchid, one azure. Then a less defined transition from a deep black to the dark half of blue. He checked his watch. Nine-fourteen. Curious; tonight, the sky glowed a sweet, candy red. Alluring as it was, this was very curious indeed. Worrying. Multiply the bar stools. He couldn’t remember how many there were. The fire in the sky declared itself. - - - Jack stood atop his bed, but found no words or sequences in the radiance; a radiance that felt as if it were bestowed upon him. Down the hall, the man with his door bolted shut drew the curtains without even looking outside. The family, packing away a board game within their chalet, felt the warmth before they saw anything. Then the outline of their double glazing glowed. They looked to one another in silence, puzzled. Best head off to bed. The dumpster in the alley warped and its plastic lid dripped into the hull amongst a whirl of ash and shadow. Meanwhile, the two boys, in some living room, melted into a sofa within their own haze of grey, contented in the contortion of their brains. “Dude, when do rabbits go to sleep?” “Hardly ever, probably. Must get scary out there.” The rabbit stained the wooden bridge a rich crimson. It had been painted with a single wide stroke across the slats, with its collapsed carcass gathered in a heap once the bridge met the tarmac in the most saturated point of the macabre illustration. A colony of ants were well into their work of conquering the mutilated mountain. At home in the centre of town, the twins swaddled a baby each. Simultaneously, their phones chimed. The babies wailed, and the father took them both while his sister swiped her phone. Then, after taking a moment to fathom what was on the screen, she turned it to her brother. “Oh...” “... C’est la vie?” Upon a hill, Matthew watched the flames from behind a screen door. They were clutching at the clouds, over and over. Wriggling a pillow under himself, he tried to understand. His family, in the kitchen, gravitated around glasses of spirits and Granddad Izquierdo, laughing obliviously. “And when the torero pierced the bull the last time, my amigo did not cheer with the crowd, but said ‘Really, Mr. Izquierdo, why do we do it?’ I say to him, ‘Why do we ask so many questions, eh? Come; drink.” Olivia was already lost in the red. Nothing but red. She grabbed a paper and pen, dimmed the lights to the last notch, and sat on her windowsill. Jay did much the same. Nicky likely did not. And on the beach, the three tracks had long been washed away, their artists sound asleep already. Now the tide, in their place, extinguished every ember and returned each iota to the inlet. Nonetheless, it would not come to flush away the flames. The way the scarlet struck the water in an ever-blooming blush - it caused the waves to crash continuously with contrite culpability.

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