[EM] December Prompt #1 -- What now?
Dec. 6th, 2007 02:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
changehistoryFrom Alice in Wonderland:
Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
His throat had healed from the screams that ripped it raw, making him taste blood, as soon as he stopped screaming. Even so, he imagined he could still feel the tightness there, threatening to boil over and rip through him and start him screaming again. Except, of course, that there was nothing to scream about anymore, was there? He stood at the window of a perfectly decent flat in Cardiff, looking down on a city lit up with Christmas lights shining in the dark. Despite the time of the year and the temperature, the window stood open, fresh air blowing in cold over the bare skin of his chest, still red from the scalding heat of the shower.
Every light in the flat was on, pushing the darkness back until even the corners were flooded and bare, with no shadows for anything to lurk inside of waiting to leap from nightmare into life. They were still there in his head, though, all those thoughts that came when the darkness was absolute and closing in around you with a smothering weight of dirt and silence broken only by ragged, terrified breaths.
He’d broken. He knew that. In 400 years, he hadn’t let himself do that, and his own screams still echoed in his head followed by flashes of shame. The wood of the casement was smooth under his palms, but he curled his hands tight over it anyway, feeling the phantom splinters of the shattered casket digging in, though his body had pushed them back out hours before.
He was free. He was safe. It was a litany, soft and sure that he kept up in his head. Not in the cell. Not in the coffin. Not in the States. Not in Japan. Hiro could find him here. He knew that, but the kanji burned across his brain and when all trust and all faith were gone, he found he could still cling to a sliver of hope. Only now, only here, in the silence that fell at the center of a busy city when the noises from the street were nothing so much as white, could he fully run his mind back over it, pushing through the horror and the betrayal to the one kernel of fact that stood stark and bright against the night.
He had failed.
It was a thought as empty as the grave, sliding through him and slipping into the cavernous, dark places in his soul. Everything he had plotted for was dust, like so many ashes in his mouth or the dirt that pressed and smothered him so recently. He had his vengeance, empty as it was. Kaito lay buried next to that empty casket, rotting to worms for the sins of his family. Victoria, too, wasn’t coming back any time soon. A cloud of suspicion would hang over Angela, always, and she had lost her power to manipulate her beautiful boys.
His thoughts brushed over Peter with a sharp point of pain, of loss, of something there he couldn’t look too closely at that whispered about loneliness and the long road and the slow path. And Nathan…she had never answered him, when he’d asked her the question years ago before everything went to hell, his eyes resting on the dark haired toddler Arthur had brought in with him that day. Claire seemed an answer that Angela wouldn’t give, perhaps, or maybe he just wanted her to be one, because she, too, had a flush of forever around her and there was a fierceness somewhere inside him that wanted her to be his. Not just like him, but blood of his blood, finally, after all these centuries, his gift reborn in someone else.
Empty, though, reckless thought and hopeless meandering. Angela would never tell him plain, and he would never know, and Nathan lay close to death, and he couldn’t get to him to heal him even without the promises he’d made Jack to stay. To walk in to that room would be capture, would be the hell of being buried again in a cell if not a grave, if Peter would even let him near, with what he had to know now. He could spin it, in another day, another week, twist it back on itself and call Bob and everything else into question, but not today. Not in this hour, when exhaustion clung to him like a specter of the remembrance of death, however brief.
A sound, a door opening, the smell of takeout, sharp and unrelenting and delicious and sickening all at once. The past, the plotting, the present, the despair, the future, the hope all mingled and merged and scored claw marks across his brain, raking deep and drawing bloody thoughts that scabbed and healed and smoothed and left an empty pit in the hollow of his stomach and the atriums of his heart. It hurt to feel so lost, a physical pain almost, as he forced himself to close Jack’s window and step forward.
He wouldn’t be a coward. He wouldn’t break again, no matter how terrifying the whisper he hadn’t heard in 400 years, clamoring for an answer when he had none to give. He let it surface for a moment, turned it over, then stuffed it back into the recesses of himself to ponder when the feel of decay didn’t still cling to him, when he could breathe without tasting dirt and feel himself alive again.
Then, maybe, he’d find an answer to shut up the whisper that clawed itself through each of his cells, asking, What now?
Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
His throat had healed from the screams that ripped it raw, making him taste blood, as soon as he stopped screaming. Even so, he imagined he could still feel the tightness there, threatening to boil over and rip through him and start him screaming again. Except, of course, that there was nothing to scream about anymore, was there? He stood at the window of a perfectly decent flat in Cardiff, looking down on a city lit up with Christmas lights shining in the dark. Despite the time of the year and the temperature, the window stood open, fresh air blowing in cold over the bare skin of his chest, still red from the scalding heat of the shower.
Every light in the flat was on, pushing the darkness back until even the corners were flooded and bare, with no shadows for anything to lurk inside of waiting to leap from nightmare into life. They were still there in his head, though, all those thoughts that came when the darkness was absolute and closing in around you with a smothering weight of dirt and silence broken only by ragged, terrified breaths.
He’d broken. He knew that. In 400 years, he hadn’t let himself do that, and his own screams still echoed in his head followed by flashes of shame. The wood of the casement was smooth under his palms, but he curled his hands tight over it anyway, feeling the phantom splinters of the shattered casket digging in, though his body had pushed them back out hours before.
He was free. He was safe. It was a litany, soft and sure that he kept up in his head. Not in the cell. Not in the coffin. Not in the States. Not in Japan. Hiro could find him here. He knew that, but the kanji burned across his brain and when all trust and all faith were gone, he found he could still cling to a sliver of hope. Only now, only here, in the silence that fell at the center of a busy city when the noises from the street were nothing so much as white, could he fully run his mind back over it, pushing through the horror and the betrayal to the one kernel of fact that stood stark and bright against the night.
He had failed.
It was a thought as empty as the grave, sliding through him and slipping into the cavernous, dark places in his soul. Everything he had plotted for was dust, like so many ashes in his mouth or the dirt that pressed and smothered him so recently. He had his vengeance, empty as it was. Kaito lay buried next to that empty casket, rotting to worms for the sins of his family. Victoria, too, wasn’t coming back any time soon. A cloud of suspicion would hang over Angela, always, and she had lost her power to manipulate her beautiful boys.
His thoughts brushed over Peter with a sharp point of pain, of loss, of something there he couldn’t look too closely at that whispered about loneliness and the long road and the slow path. And Nathan…she had never answered him, when he’d asked her the question years ago before everything went to hell, his eyes resting on the dark haired toddler Arthur had brought in with him that day. Claire seemed an answer that Angela wouldn’t give, perhaps, or maybe he just wanted her to be one, because she, too, had a flush of forever around her and there was a fierceness somewhere inside him that wanted her to be his. Not just like him, but blood of his blood, finally, after all these centuries, his gift reborn in someone else.
Empty, though, reckless thought and hopeless meandering. Angela would never tell him plain, and he would never know, and Nathan lay close to death, and he couldn’t get to him to heal him even without the promises he’d made Jack to stay. To walk in to that room would be capture, would be the hell of being buried again in a cell if not a grave, if Peter would even let him near, with what he had to know now. He could spin it, in another day, another week, twist it back on itself and call Bob and everything else into question, but not today. Not in this hour, when exhaustion clung to him like a specter of the remembrance of death, however brief.
A sound, a door opening, the smell of takeout, sharp and unrelenting and delicious and sickening all at once. The past, the plotting, the present, the despair, the future, the hope all mingled and merged and scored claw marks across his brain, raking deep and drawing bloody thoughts that scabbed and healed and smoothed and left an empty pit in the hollow of his stomach and the atriums of his heart. It hurt to feel so lost, a physical pain almost, as he forced himself to close Jack’s window and step forward.
He wouldn’t be a coward. He wouldn’t break again, no matter how terrifying the whisper he hadn’t heard in 400 years, clamoring for an answer when he had none to give. He let it surface for a moment, turned it over, then stuffed it back into the recesses of himself to ponder when the feel of decay didn’t still cling to him, when he could breathe without tasting dirt and feel himself alive again.
Then, maybe, he’d find an answer to shut up the whisper that clawed itself through each of his cells, asking, What now?
