Derailment

[forthedog]

He's not sure what wakes him. It could be any number of things. It could be the light on his face, the air moving over him, the shift of cloth against skin where before it had just been the cool of the sheets and the heat of two bodies. It could be the hard ground under his back, which would also explain the aches in him as consciousness drifts closer. He's gone soft, he thinks sometimes, fallen out of the habit of sleeping well on the ground, lost in the embrace of Tom's big bed. But he still roughs it sometimes, so at first the fact that he's clearly outside doesn't sound any alarms.

But it's the kind of outside. It's not the light but the quality of that light; not warm and glowing but thin, pale, anemic. When he opens his eyes it's not the trees swaying over him in the morning breeze but what they're like, them and the other plant life, still thickly growing and untamed but bad. Unhealthy. Sparse where it shouldn't be and dense where it shouldn't be. No birds, no fucking birds at all. The hints of a world knocked out of balance and gone horribly wrong.

There's a cold wet nose pressed against his cheek, and a weight pressing into his arm, numbing it. He rolls, pulls it away and sits up, shoving Neil harder than he meant to. Dexter steps back, whining softly, and Mike stares around and then down, absorbing it in quick shocked bursts. The car. The campfire, smoking ashes. Dexter. The two figures, curled together on the ground. Tom's old and ragged sweater. His own pants. Camo. Boots. The itchy feel of clothes that haven't been washed for a while.

His gun.

There's no mistaking what this is.

He doesn't want to wake them. As long as they're still sleeping, this is his nightmare and his alone. Maybe they never have to wake up. And yet he has no idea what's really worse: being back here or being back here on his own.

"No," he breathes, barely above a whisper. No louder, because he's honestly afraid that he might scream. "No. No. Fuck."

Comments

[little_moons]

I'm hard and fast asleep when there's a sudden sharp pain under my ribs, a swift rush of vertigo when the world snaps into focus and I'm bolting up before my eyes even open.

"Jesus Christ, man. What the fuck?" I mutter, rubbing a hand across crusty eyelids and wincing at the dead taste in my mouth.

It creeps in slowly, the little things that don't feel right. The breeze fluttering over my skin, and the roughness of my clothes. My eyes open, and for a moment, all I can do is stare, my hand reaching up to curl around Mike's arm before I even realize it.

At first, I think maybe the island's changed, but no... No, that's not it. It's not even close to bein' that simple.

[out-of-realm.livejournal.com]

He hadn't slept well - old nightmares, familiar themes. People dying, people just not being there anymore. He snapped awake the instant Mike jerked and cursed, and now he was staring, still lying down, at a tree that was dead and rotting where it stood. Everything was spoiled here, he thought. It was the smell. Faintly acidic, moldy - conjuring up sense memories of ruined woodlands that were rotting in their own soil. You found that everywhere, here.

Here. He already knew where he was.

"Neil," he said, almost in the same instant that he registered the continued presence of the other man beside him, "Oh, shit, thank god I -"

Too much. Too much. The girls, Peter, the Compound, the rest of the Island - where had everyone gone? With active effort, he stopped himself and swallowed, looking at Mike.

"Tell me what I'm thinking is wrong," he said quietly. No hope, really, but why bother? That had stopped existing here a long, long time ago.

[m-pinocchio.livejournal.com]

Mike just shakes his head. His throat is locking up. He used to dream about this, waking up sweating and trembling with Tom and Neil quiet next to him, and Eostre before them. He used to dream about this and he used to pray and pray to a God he doubted in just about every possible way that he would be spared it. That Tom would be spared it. That they could hang onto what they had.

And now Neil is here too. And his daughters...

"You're not wrong," he whispers finally. "Look the fuck around. You know you're not wrong." He gets shakily to his feet, staring at the world with his hands clenching uselessly at his sides, Dexter yipping and dancing around all of them. He doesn't have the attention to spare to tell the mutt to shut it.

He doesn't even know where they are. When they are. And for the moment, it doesn't seem like it matters.

[m-pinocchio.livejournal.com]

The end of the world. He'd thought about it some as a kid, when the spectre of nuclear war had still been lingering here and there, and he'd thought about it later, gone off to fight his own wars and lying in the darkness and thinking about how real death was. He'd thought about it, but he had never seen this in his mind. Because this is the thing: the world ends but the carcass remains, and in that respect it doesn't end at all.

The suburbs thicken, the trash and the filth piles up in the streets, and the ruined towers loom closer. They pass under the rusted, half collapsed hulk of the tracks of an elevated train. Here and there, fires burn in trash cans and lots and the remains of houses. Here and there, flat sullen eyes watch them. A dog, limping and emaciated and covered with sores, whining softly, and Dexter whines back and shivers. Shortly before the buildings begin to rise over them in earnest, they reach a checkpoint, barbed wire and debris and big, dirty men with guns. A few of them gather around the car and Mike doesn't even have to speak. He reaches into his pocket and produces the couple of rounds of ammo he knows he keeps in there for emergencies. One of the men takes them out of his palm and waves them through with a harsh grunt.

Past the checkpoint, it's more crowded, and many of the buildings seem to be at least partially occupied. Lots of stores, smashed-out windows and empty shelves. An entire family, a man and a woman and three skinny children dressed in rags with swollen bellies, huddled in the front window of what was once an upscale department store. More men with guns, prowling, eyes dark and dangerous. Just looking for an excuse to shoot. It's weirdly quiet, and Mike drives slow, trying to keep his eyes everywhere at once.

"Stay sharp," he mutters. "Both of you."

[little_moons]

At the checkpoint, I stay silent and slouched in my seat, mindful of the eyes that flicker over me. It's nothing new, but it's been a while since it's felt like this. Even aggression on the island tends to come off as teasing, and this is anything but.

There are hollow-eyed children hovering along the side of the road, lost even at their mother's side, and I'm suddenly, overwhelmingly relieved that the girls aren't here, no matter how much I wish we weren't all apart. I don't think I could see them in a place like this.

Just driving down the street's like going through a fuckin' gauntlet, silent as a goddamn funeral march.

[out-of-realm.livejournal.com]

"We're gonna have to go to ground," Tom murmured, looking through the destruction, still trying to orient himself. When they came to Chicago, they hadn't stayed long.

"And I want us to stay out of Grant Park, if we can," Tom murmured, cutting a look over at Mike. "Think Yang still has that Motel 6 operating out of the old El cars?"

[little_moons]

Stick close. Yeah, okay, easier said than done.

The place is fuckin' packed, or maybe it's just the fact that it's so much junk packed into such a limited space, but all the jumble and the noise puts me immediately on edge. I stick close to them, just like promised, even reaching out to hand onto a sleeve or whatever's handy when we have to move through a particularly congested section. It doesn't smell any better than the train cars, not really, even the parts that are open air feel close and stuffy. The air's oily and heavy here, sticking on my skin and the folds of my clothes. Inside my nose and in my hair.

But there's food and there's booze, so it's not a complete bust. I follow along, keeping my chin high and my eyes ahead, and try not to think about how strange it is to have people look at me the way they are. I'd gotten used to being... an upstanding member of fuckin' society. I got spoiled and stupid, and now, I find myself floundering, trying to figure out how to handle myself.

I can't help be really fuckin' grateful I'm not alone.

[out-of-realm.livejournal.com]

He hates this place. It's not a mob den, it's just generic people, regular citizens, and they're shopping for narcotics and slaves and food and a few hours with prostitutes. Some of them are young, some of them are in chains. Tom eased ahead of Mike and Neil in the crowd, eyes wiping around the room, trying futilely to see all the angels.

"Nothing with meat," he said firmly, passing a few greasy spoon stands without stopping. He kept his eyes down as they passed a sex booth, a naked woman prostrate on a counter, hands moving between her thighs. "Tell me if you see something."

[m-pinocchio.livejournal.com]

When Tom drops his eyes Mike looks, almost instinctive, and then looks away again. The woman is gaunt, haggard, dead-eyed. Once he would have felt a tug of purely animal desire under the disgust. Now there's just the disgust, and more pity than he's exactly comfortable with.

"Definitely nothing with meat," he says, smiling grimly. "'Round here, you can't even be sure it's not human. Worse things have happened.

As his eyes scan the place he spots a stall selling what looks like some kind of burrito and he touches both their arms, nodding. "Might be something over there." If it's just beans, that's something. There might even be some evil-tasting beer, which he isn't sure he would turn down.

[little_moons]

I wake up in the back of a van.

Sprawled across the bare metal flooring, bounced around violently as it clatters over broken pavement. I hurt... just about everywhere. I can't pinpoint just one place. My face? My throat? My stomach? My hands? It's all one big fucking blur. Groaning, my stomach lurches and for a moment, before I can lift my head and look around, it's all I can do not to fuckin' puke everywhere. I cough weakly, try and lift a hand to push the hair from my face, but they're bound. Bound tightly at my back and for the first time, I really, truly understand how fucked I am.

They're laughing. Big belly-rumbling guffaws from the front seat and I roll my eyes sharply and mutter, "Will you shut the fuck up?"

"Oh look, Sleeping Beauty's awake," one of them says and that sends them both off into even louder peals of gleeful laughter and I slump back into the floor, glaring at the back of their unfamiliar heads. I'd expected it to be those assholes from the train, but it's not. No less brainless and fucking disgusting, though. Lucky me.

Yeah, lucky me. Fucking helpless and all I can do is... pray that Mike and Tom are all right.

[m-pinocchio.livejournal.com]

They're almost back to the el cars, but it's been hours and it's full dark. The city isn't dark. It's lit with fires, some under control and some not, though it's almost incredible that there's anything left to burn. It's lit with flickering electric lights, where people are fortunate enough to have that fantastic level of luxury.

They're exhausted, almost holding each other up, though it's horror far more than weariness, and some vague and desperate hope that when they reach their car, Neil will be there waiting for them with that smirk on his face.

"Hey," says a rough voice out of the darkness, and Mike comes close to jumping, one hand instinctively going to his gun. A face emerges into the dim light, old and scarred and filthy. "You're the guys that were lookin' for that kid, right?"

[out-of-realm.livejournal.com]

It's fear that keeps him awake, and adreanalin that's keeping him alive. It had tapered since that afternoon, but his blood felt sharp and hard in his veins, and details stood out against the jaundiced night.

Tom stopped, on hand on his piece and looking at the man with blank, hard eyes.

"Maybe," he admitted, sharing a look with Mike. "Who's asking?"

[little_moons]

I wake up being dragged by the ankles. Yanked from the open doors of the van, thumping heavily on the bumper and then hard on my ass in the dirt, the air knocks of of my lungs with a sharp cry and I flail helplessly, landing on my face in the mud and yanking hard at my bound wrists. The gun at my hip's gone, been gone, and I realize with part horror and part amusement that it never even occurred to me to go for it out there by the gallows.

"On your feet, sweetheart," one of them laughs, yanking me up by the hair and shoving me toward a dark, faceless building in the woods. I woke up, which means I fell asleep. We drove for a long time. The sun looks like it's gonna come up soon.

"Fuck you," I mutter, stumbling on a rock, and I get a sharp knock to the back of the head, sparks flaring up behind my eyes and my teeth snapping closed on my tongue. I groan in pain, spitting blood in the dirt, and they lead me the rest of the way by the back of the neck.

There are others inside, people scurrying around in the shadows. Women, skinny looking boys no older than me with haunted eyes, and kids. Some of them are bound and some of them are wandering free, snapping to attention as soon as me and my two blockheaded guards come through the door.

A girl, no older than fourteen, so dirty I can't even tell the color of her hair, gets up out of a chair in the corner, walks silently to a door in the back of the room and opens it.

It's a cellar, a short flight of stairs leading down -- A flight of stairs that I'm shoved down, tumbling into the dark, the door slammed and bolted behind me.

[m-pinocchio.livejournal.com]

It's darker outside the city, and even after they build a fire to beat back the darkness, it still looms around them, black and oppressive. It's been years since he was in a place this dark. Even the depths of the jungle aren't like this. He crouches by the fire, hands outstretched, glancing up at Florence's calm face. They've told her what they can, which isn't much. Neil is a friend. A good friend. That's all. Not how they'd met him. Not anything else. No Island, no twins, no word or mention of the brief time she'd shared their lives there.

It's better if she doesn't know.

They need to sleep, him and Tom if not her, but he doesn't know if he can do that, no matter how exhausted he is, lying down next to Tom and not being able to touch him the way he wants to, lying down next to Tom with Neil not there, with Neil lost and taken and maybe hurt, and he refuses to imagine any worse than that.

"You should eat," he says, looking at Tom and nodding to the jerky sticking half out of his pack.

[out-of-realm.livejournal.com]

Tom jerked, looking up from the cooling embers of the fire, coming back to himself across canyons and years. Still in the Realm, still fucked, Neil gone, Florence.

He gave Mike something like a smile, but it fell short.

"Not hungry," he said. He rubbed his hand over his face, snorting out a laugh. "God, I always hated that stuff."

[little_moons]

I wake up with a start, eyes snapping open, and there's a boy hovering over me. He's cleaner than the others. No more than thirteen or fourteen with startlingly blue eyes, long, thin bones and pale skin. He's staring, a jar of cloudy water clasped in his hands. He blinks, realizing he's been caught, flushes and shoves the jar so forcefully at me the water sloshes over the sides and over his hands.

"You're supposed to drink this," he says and I push myself up weakly to sit, aching just about everywhere possible and realizing just how fucking thirsty I am. I take the jar warily, wondering for a moment if I should drink it... it could be drugged or hell, any number of things, but I can't stop myself. I down half of it without taking a breath, the boy watching me with wide, curious eyes.

"You gotta name?" I ask after a moment and obediently he says, "George."

Coughing out a startled laugh, I say, "I knew somebody named George, once." But he looks at my smile with total bewilderment, and before I can say another word, he's scurrying back up the stairs, the door slamming behind him with a bang.

Putting the jar aside, I cough into the back of my hand, wincing as I get to my feet and try to stretch the kink out of my spine, squinting out into the darkness of the fuckin' hole they've dropped me into.

I'm the only one down here, but I can tell that hasn't always been true. There are stains on the floor... blood and shit and piss and God knows what else. It reeks. Smells like fucking death, just like the rest of this goddamn hellhole of a world, and I realize... really realize that this might be the last place I ever see.

Coughing out a hollow laugh, I step back against the wall and slide to the floor, pushing a hand through my hair and drawing my knees up toward my chest. I wanna go home. I wanna go home to my fucking stupid, sickeningly perfect little life. The life that I made with the two of them. I don't even know what the fuck's going on out there anymore, I don't even know if they're alive, and that realization is enough to suck the breath right out of my lungs.

I wish... I wish so fucking hard that I could like... telepathically communicate with them. That I could think of something hard enough and they'd just know. God, I just hope you're okay. Where are you? I need you...

"Fuck," I mutter, thumping my head against the wall and kicking over the jar of water with my foot, feeling a kind of sick satisfaction as I watch the water spread out and sink into the dusty concrete floor.

[m-pinocchio.livejournal.com]

Morning comes too soon. He practically shoves himself off the cold ground, the inadequate padding of his bedroll. He's gone soft, he thinks, not for the first time. Gotten too used to comfortable beds and sleeping in safety. He shouldn't be this tired, this sore. But it had been a while before he had been able to sleep, despite his exhaustion.

He sits up with a soft groan and Florence is there, heating some canned beans over the fire, and she gives him a nod. There's a lot in that nod. She had looked up at him when they had reentered the camp the night before, and she had looked at him again as he lay down, and he had been sure: she knows. Maybe not everything, but she knows enough. The way he and Tom are with each other. The gentler side to the bickering. And more than that: they're both too tanned, too fit, too clearly well-fed. In spite of the shabbiness and the dirt on them, neither he nor Tom fits here anymore. Really, he's surprised it hasn't excited any comment before now.

So she knows. But she only nods, and he returns the nod, reaching for the canteen and swirling his mouth out before he splashes some on his face and hands. In lieu of coffee. Which is another thing he's gotten too used to.

Tom is sitting a little ways away, still on watch, and Mike gets to his feet, carrying the canteen over. "Hey," he says, dropping into a crouch. "Doing okay?"

[out-of-realm.livejournal.com]

He hadn't missed this, morning in the realm. It stripped away all the hope and beauty out of sunrise, and it just never quite looked right. Ones and zeros could only get so much right, and the gradient of dawn was always uneven, jerky.

He wondered if Eostre was still looking out for them somewhere, and if her touch could reach even here.

"Yeah," he said, glancing up at Mike tiredly. Sunday. Two nights. "Getting there. Sleep okay?"

[little_moons]

Something's happening, upstairs.

I spend some immeasurable amount of time dozing, listening to the sounds above me, the groaning of pipes and the low murmuring of voices. It seems relatively calm up there. Or it did. But now there are footsteps, lots of them, and raised voices outside the door. Standing warily, I make my way up the creaky stairs, press my ear to the heavy door to listen.

Over the den, I can't tell which voice belongs to what fucking ham-fisted moron out there, but they're talking about me, unless they've got some other hot piece of ass locked up down here. Rolling my eyes, I rest my head against the door, feeling weak and tired and just fucking... fed up, but when I hear Mike and Tom's names, I step back with a gasp, nearly tumbling down the fucking steps.

"Fuck," I hiss, hurrying back down the steps and taking my place back on the dusty floor right as the door swings open.

"You're a hell of a lot more valuable than we thought, kid. Consider yourself lucky," the guy standing in the doorway says, and even half-shadowed I know I've never seen him before. With a snort of laughter, he tosses a plate of food onto the floor. It splatters. Soupy, unidentified meat and a hunk of stale bread.

"Fuck you," I mutter, spitting in direction of the plate.

On his way out, the door slamming behind him, he can't stop fuckin' laughing. "Prick."

[m-pinocchio.livejournal.com]

Like everything else, the Paramount is a ruin, but it's an elegant ruin, and in its broken sign and half-demolished facade is the shadow of some former glamor. Half the word Paramount has fallen away and shattered in the street, leaving only Para, the thin, anemic sun glittering off its curves. It feels appropriate, though Mike couldn't ever explain why.

They're crouched in the shadow of a ruined building, across the street and halfway down, the car parked a safe distance away but not so far as to make a speedy getaway impossible. Dexter's locked in, upset and whining, and if they come back to dog piss on the seats, Mike thinks he might...

Well, he'll be happy to come back at all.

"I see one guy at the door," he whispers, handing the binoculars to Tom. "But there's probably at least four we don't see." The roof in particular might be a sniper's heaven.

[out-of-realm.livejournal.com]

"At least," Tom agreed dourly, taking the binoculars and giving the building a hard, calculating once over. Well fortified, crumbling, probably with back doors and secret entrances.

"God, I wish we knew more about this place," Tom said, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. "I hate going in blind. It's dangerous."

[m-pinocchio.livejournal.com]

There's something about the fire that's making Mike a little uneasy. He's sitting a ways away from it, back against a tree and his gun spread out in pieces in front of it. Cleaning it calms him, centers him. His hands are washed and the blood that's dried into the cracks of his nails is covered well enough by dirt and by the oil. He's half watching Tom and Neil by the fire, Neil lying back on one of the bedrolls at Tom's insistence, Tom dabbing carefully at Neil's cuts with a damp rag.

He should be over there. But he doesn't feel ready, yet. And he knows he doesn't have to worry about any of the physical injuries. None of them look too bad and Tom will take care of them.

But he can't look at them without feeling that awful dead rage rising up in him again. More than rage. Hunger.

He hears a crack off to the side in the trees and he rolls up to his knees, his hand going immediately for his knife, but when the light hits the figure's face he relaxes instantly.

A few minutes later he's kneeling by Tom, a hand on his shoulder. "Florence is back," he says, nodding up at her as she draws near the fire. "She got the youngest ones to a settlement a few miles from here. There's people there who can look after 'em. The others said they could take care of themselves so she let 'em go on their way."

He looks down at Neil, steeling himself and forcing a faint smile. "How you doin'?"

[out-of-realm.livejournal.com]

Tom nodded. Florence always found them. Florence always would.

Wringing a clean scrap of cloth in a bowl of clean water, he waved Neil over to him, gently dabbing at the cuts and his swollen eye, murmuring quietly as he did it. Dexter rested his head in Neil's lab, looking up at him soulfully.

Florence could do this better than him, she could make all the pain go away, but she'd had her hands full the past few hours and there was no telling how exhausted and her talents were by now.

"She always did have a way with kids." The girls had loved her instantly, but that was another place and time.

[m-pinocchio.livejournal.com]

He watches Tom go for a long moment, fingers still against Neil's cheek, touching like an anchor, the fire casting strange and dancing shadows over all their faces, making the trees waver like a dream. Dreams are things you can wake up from. It took him years to wake up from this.

He turns to Florence again, swallowing hard but calm. "So I guess you know we're not the people you remember." She's no fool, and also the kind to keep everything calm unless there's a reason to do otherwise. But the facts are the facts and they need to be faced now.

[doesnt-speak.livejournal.com]

Without looking over at Mike, Florence smiles, but it's twisted and hard, a pained acknowledgment that, whoever they are, however much they still might be Mike and Tom, they aren't the Mike and Tom who belong with her. They're still fighters, but there's a difference now. There's a place where they've changed.

She nods, then finally looks at him. There's no demand in her expression, but she does want to know whatever he's willing to tell her.