Fic: Lazarus. (Post-Waters of Mars, PG for themes, SPOILERS.)
Monday, November 16th, 2009 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
orange_crushedLazarus. This is a very short post-Waters of Mars look at Ten. PG for themes. Also, this is for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
intrikate88, font of good ideas. MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT.
"And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions."
-T.S. Eliot
"There is only one lord of time," he says. "And that is me."
The dreams don't stop.
"Do or don't do," says Adelaide. "Make and unmake. Your choice." Her eyes are white. "Where is the line ?"
"I don't know." He really doesn't. In the dreams his feet keep disappearing, his ankles and his knees; he is eaten alive by something, by the dark. He feels warm and cold. He feels nothing, and that's the worst of all. "I can't tell anymore." The skull inside Adelaide smiles, and Adelaide does too. Her lips pull back.
"Then you'll fall," she says, and he does. He lets go. He falls in the orange suit: falls to the beast, who was just a shell in the end. He remembers the breath inside his helmet, the sweat and resignation. She knows. She knew. He was always going to fall. He falls forever. He wakes up on the grates, pressing waffles into his face and bunching his suit up into his armpits.
"Breakfast on Calathustra!" he calls out, to nobody, and dances around the console to Holiday in Cambodia and tells knock-knock jokes to the locals when he gets there. He smiles and jokes and falls head-over-heels for the librarian and forgets her by noon. It's noon somewhere. There's a disaster, a flood, on Argus Five. He stops it. They give him a key to the colony. It shines like gold. And nobody there will invent a better dam and they'll discover the underground city fifteen years too late and someday they'll never send their engineers to the citadel on Sectus and there won't be peace. There will be peace with somebody else, probably.
His breakfast is delicious. He has seconds of everything, and then goes back and has it again, sitting across the cafe from himself in a fake mustache and a bowler hat. "Who's that handsome fellow in the corner ?" he asks out loud to all the waitresses, and gulps his juice.
"Your lines are all over the place," Adelaide tells him, that night. He's trying hard not to look at the missing part of her face. "How will you know which ones not to cross ?"
"I just will," he says.
intrikate88, font of good ideas. MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT. "And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions."
-T.S. Eliot
"There is only one lord of time," he says. "And that is me."
The dreams don't stop.
"Do or don't do," says Adelaide. "Make and unmake. Your choice." Her eyes are white. "Where is the line ?"
"I don't know." He really doesn't. In the dreams his feet keep disappearing, his ankles and his knees; he is eaten alive by something, by the dark. He feels warm and cold. He feels nothing, and that's the worst of all. "I can't tell anymore." The skull inside Adelaide smiles, and Adelaide does too. Her lips pull back.
"Then you'll fall," she says, and he does. He lets go. He falls in the orange suit: falls to the beast, who was just a shell in the end. He remembers the breath inside his helmet, the sweat and resignation. She knows. She knew. He was always going to fall. He falls forever. He wakes up on the grates, pressing waffles into his face and bunching his suit up into his armpits.
"Breakfast on Calathustra!" he calls out, to nobody, and dances around the console to Holiday in Cambodia and tells knock-knock jokes to the locals when he gets there. He smiles and jokes and falls head-over-heels for the librarian and forgets her by noon. It's noon somewhere. There's a disaster, a flood, on Argus Five. He stops it. They give him a key to the colony. It shines like gold. And nobody there will invent a better dam and they'll discover the underground city fifteen years too late and someday they'll never send their engineers to the citadel on Sectus and there won't be peace. There will be peace with somebody else, probably.
His breakfast is delicious. He has seconds of everything, and then goes back and has it again, sitting across the cafe from himself in a fake mustache and a bowler hat. "Who's that handsome fellow in the corner ?" he asks out loud to all the waitresses, and gulps his juice.
"Your lines are all over the place," Adelaide tells him, that night. He's trying hard not to look at the missing part of her face. "How will you know which ones not to cross ?"
"I just will," he says.
