forthedog | Derailment

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."

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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?"

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?"

"No," he says simply, handing over the canteen. He looks up at the grimy sky, and his mouth twists sharply and he looks away again.

"Doesn't matter. We gotta go today." He rakes a hand through hair in sore need of a wash. Used to be like this all the time. "They'll be moving him. If they haven't already." If the theater is a central location, it'll also be a distribution point for the entire operation. Shipments heading out for smaller skin markets, not just in Chicago but maybe anywhere in what used to be Illinois.

"And that's if they don't realize what they have."

"Right," Tom said, rolling to his feet and pretending like that hadn't even crossed his mind. They were still revolutionaries, Tom was still a figure head for a fucked war, and every person they cared about was a target. Everyone they cared about was as good as dead.

"I don't think they'll send him out too far," he muttered. His mouth twisted in an ugly line and he moved to the fire, crouching down to bury the ashes. "I don't think they're going to try and hawk him to a farmer for field work."

Not with a face and a body and an attitude like Neil's.

"They're not gonna get a chance to hawk him to anyone," he says, bending to gather up the bedroll, giving Florence another nod as she glances at Tom and begins to clear away the rest of the camp. Mike pauses, bedroll in his hands, and meets Tom's gaze.

"This place," he says slowly, "there's not just gonna be Neil. There's probably gonna be a lot of other people there. We'll do what we can for them, but Neil's gotta be the only priority. We get in, we get him, we get out. Anything else is a bonus."

His mouth tightens and he looks away, hating the words, hating that he's saying them.

"I just need us to be on the same page."

After a long moment, familiar pain and aches claiming his rib cage - these are you people, you can save them, you can end this - he nodded. Dirty face. Ten year old girls in tatters, sold off as toys and bed warmers. This is what happens when you ruin the world. Anything that had been sick and twisted gets let out because there's no point in hiding it or controlling it anymore.

"We're on the same page," Tom said thickly, looking washed out, tired. He met Florence's eyes and gave her a guilty look, clearing his throat as he stood.

"Promise."

"Okay," he says, swallowing hard, his face fixed with the apology he can't put into words. I'm so sorry. It should be better than this. And he knows that Florence is watching the two of them, that she can see them, but there's no point in lying to her, in pretending that something isn't true when she's known it from his side almost since the beginning. So he reaches out and slides his hand against the side of Tom's neck, thumb smudging his jawline. Affection and an attempt to steady. We can do this. Together.

And he bends and slings the bedrolls up onto his shoulder, and heads for the car, not looking back at either of them.

Edited 2009-08-13 01:05 (UTC)

The simple touch made his color rise in his cheeks and in his ears. He made eye contact with Florence, finding her face unreadable but not unfriendly. Maybe she saw it coming but that didn't mean that the sudden change made sense.

"I...um..." he stuttered, rubbing the back of his neck as Mike made himself scare. "It's hard to explain."

Florence smiles faintly, gives half a shrug. It usually is. And from the car, Mike watches them and feels another hard twinge of guilt. Just because he's not trying to hide everything from her doesn't mean that she's gotten an explanation, and that's what she deserves. Even if they never see her again in another day, it's still what he owes her, when he's never in his life kept anything from her.

So maybe they'll have time.

"C'mon," he calls, waving an arm out the door. "Cover those ashes and let's get moving. We're burning daylight here."

"Coming," Tom said, just loud enough to be heard. He looked over his shoulder, giving Florence a helpless, lost smile.

"I. We'll try to explain. Later." He swallowed, chewing his bottom lip. "We have to find Neil first."

Which was as much as he could say and keep the guilt and the worry at bay. He drew a deep breath and turned on his heel, jogging up the hill to Mike.

He doesn't hear what's said, but he sees the look on Tom's face, and then Florence, as she kicks dirt over the coals and turns to follow, her pack slung over one shoulder and her rifle at her side. He's used to them as a unit, cohesive, and while that still feels true, it feels less true than it did. Hard to explain. But they're all out of sync, and there's nothing to be done about it now.

He shoves the passenger's side door open and nods up at Tom, slipping the keys into the ignition and listening to the familiar, comfortable roar of the engine. The car looks like a piece of shit, but the engine is good, always has been good, and it runs, and that's what counts.

So it can take them to Neil.

"Everybody ready?" He turns his attention to the road, a gap through the trees, and the ugly gray sky. "Here we go."

Derailment

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