(no subject)
Mar. 4th, 2009 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vervaceousTitle: Vector
Fandom: Harsh Realm
Rating: NC-17 for language, violence, and explicit adult situations
Wordcount: 60,155
Summary: Three years after his entry into the Realm, Tom Hobbes finds his stagnant day-to-day existence disrupted by the worst threat he's ever faced--and the entire Realm faces it as well.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
-20-
Later, he's wrapped in a blanket in a plush chair up in the lobby, shivering with shock and the feeling of everything being turned inside out, at the center of it all a furious desire to see that light again. The doors are wide open, letting in a cold draft, and Guardsmen wander in and out with dazed expressions on their faces. None of them appear to be armed.
Florence sits close beside him, her hands closed around his. He hasn't told her much. He's not sure what he's told her. There was a light.
Mike is dead.
She hadn't seemed surprised. She'd folded him into her arms and held him, and he'd cried against her neck until others had come, frantic, questioning, and he doesn't remember very much after that.
“They all thought I was special,” he says softly, staring down at his hands in hers. He laughs shortly. “So much for that. I didn't save anything.”
Florence cocks her head, looks strangely thoughtful. She gives his hands a squeeze, reaches up with one of hers and touches his chest over his heart. It's a gesture she's made before, and he's known what it meant before, but now he's not sure.
“I'm not special,” he says again, staring at her. “I'm not.”
She shakes her head, somewhere between amused and sad, and takes his hands again. She looks up and Tom turns his head, following her gaze. Hitchins is coming towards them, looking bewildered.
“Everyone checks out,” he says. “No sign of the virus anywhere. And I mean... anywhere.” He reaches up, takes off his beret and rakes a hand through his hair. “And people out fighting at the fence... they say their weapons just vanished. The sick people got well in seconds. None of it makes any sense.”
“Did they see a light?” Tom asks quietly, looking up at him. Hitchins gives him a quizzical look and shakes his head.
“No one said anything about any light.”
“Okay.” Tom drops his head into his hands. “I need to go back to my room. Please.”
* * *
It happens that he opens his eyes to find himself standing on a wide strand of shoreline, a beach that stretches off in either direction for as far as he can see. Beyond the line of sand is a thick jungle, the kind he'd expect to find on a tropical island, and it occurs to him that that's exactly where he might be. It should be surprising; he'd closed his exhausted eyes in his bed in his room, Dexter curled up next to him, cold nose against his hand. But here he is, and it's not surprising.
He walks down the beach a little ways, and though the sun is high it's not yet late enough to be hot, and the breeze off the water is refreshing. At a certain point he reaches a promontory of rocks and begins to climb, and when he looks up again there's a man sitting on the flat of one of the highest stones. As he gets closer he raises a hand in greeting, and after a second or two the figure turns, raises a hand in kind. A few moments more and they're close enough to speak to each other, and for Tom to see who it is.
“Hey,” says Mike, and that's not altogether surprising, either. He nods to the space on the rock beside him. “Have a seat.”
Tom does, looks around, and from here he can see much further down the beach and further still inland. He thinks he might see people a great way off, and what looks like a path cutting through the trees.
“What is this place?”
Mike smiles, and there's something purposefully mysterious in it. “That's kinda hard to explain.”
“You're dead.” Once he looks back at Mike it's a little hard to stop. He looks nothing like he had when Tom had last seen him. He's strong, tanned, and there's a peace about him that would be disarming if it didn't seem to make a kind of sense all its own.
Mike laughs. “In a way, I guess. I guess that's right.” He spreads his arms, gesturing to all around them. “This place... it's a kind of crossroads. A lot of different paths converge here.” He shakes his head slightly, and for a second regret flashes across his face. “But not yours. And not the Mike Pinocchio you knew.”
“So why am I here?”
Mike shrugs. “Who knows? Enjoy it. Go swimming or something.”
“I'm dreaming,” Tom says, and part of him is just realizing it and part of him has known all along.
Again that smile, something like mischief dancing behind it. “Aren't we all?” Mike draws his knees up to his chest and rocks backwards a little. “I had a dream where I was with someone, and I didn't know them but I did. You ever have a dream like that?”
“All the time,” Tom whispers.
“Okay, then.” Mike reaches out and gently cups his cheek, his hand broad and rough and warm, and Tom's eyes slip closed, prickling at the corners.
“Time to wake up.”
* * *
“It's the damndest thing,” Hitchins says. “We still can't find any of 'em.”
They're sitting out on the steps in front of the building, looking out at the city—the new city, where no one is exactly afraid, but everyone is deeply confused. No one seems sure of anything. No one seems to understand what's happened. But there's no violence, no chaos. No uprising. It's eerie.
“And you're sure they didn't leave?” Tom pulls his arm back and tosses the tennis ball. It bounces away over the terrace and Dexter chases it, yipping happily. Hitchins shakes his head.
“No one saw 'em go, anyway. And the portal up at the top floor logs every use. Unless they covered their tracks, no one went in or out that way.”
“Portal?” Tom looks up sharply. Beside him, he feels Florence's touch on his arm.
“Yeah.” Hitchins nods. “Just the one. It's locked up pretty tight. Or it was. But we had a technician look at it. No one's used it in days, not Santiago, not any of his top men. So unless he has something else hidden somewhere...”
“Right,” Tom says, but he sounds absent and he feels it. A portal. Home. He closes his eyes and sees blue eyes looking back at him, so he opens them again.
“So they all just vanished.” He looks over at Hitchins again, meditative. “So who's in charge?”
Hitchins laughs faintly. “Right now... hell, man, no one knows. And I don't think I hate the feeling.”
* * *
It doesn't stay that way for long. Days pass, a week, and Tom can feel them gravitating towards him, all of them, more and more of them consulting him more and more of the time. His advice about legal disputes. About city management. About how to deal with the large number of soldiers who now find themselves without weapons. About how to accommodate a growing flood of refugees venturing past the place where the fence had been, first a trickle and then more and soon threatening to become a flood.
But it's curiosity, it seems, more than desperation. Men return from the wastes and report that they're wastes no longer. Dead trees bearing fruit, the little green sprouts of vegetable crops and grain poking up through the soil of long-abandoned fields and gardens. The streams and rivers running wild with fish. Deer, healthy and plump, roaming through the woods.
It seems, more and more, that there is a great deal less to fight over.
It's around that time that the exodus begins. Like the refugees, it starts small: one man coming up to Tom and saying that he'd heard of a portal back home, he had a wife, children, all he wants is to get back to them, please. Then two more, then five, and finally he shakes his head, steps aside. The portal isn't his to control. They never had to ask him in the first place. If they want to return home to the Real World there's nothing stopping them.
So they go.
The first night of the exodus, he dreams of Sophie, and he can no longer remember her face, the way it looked, the feel of it under his hands. He opens his eyes and lies in the dark, the sheets tangled around him, the bed he'd shared with Mike for one night. He thinks about a thousand minds, a thousand computers that make the Realm real. Or that used to.
You are all free. The Realm will subsist.
Had it really been enough? Those few seconds? But Mike's gone.
Mike's gone.
Unless it's time to rethink what “gone” really means.
* * *
More and more of them, leaving, and there's not a new glitch or anything else unusual to be seen. He's not sure how it's possible. Maybe he'll never entirely know, what happened in those few seconds when Mike was swallowed by the light. He tries to get back down to OSCAR, and the room is unlocked, but the keyboard is unresponsive, the screen dead and dark, the white sphere silent and lifeless. He pokes at it for a while, then sinks down into the seat in front of the console and stares at the table. The gun is still there, on the desk next to the keyboard. He picks it up, looks at it for a few seconds, puts it down again. Absently, he reaches down and rubs at a spot on his thigh that's paining him.
Wherever Mike is, he isn't here anymore.
* * *
When he finally goes he's among the last, headed up to the top floor with Florence and Hitchins in tow. It's hard to say what makes the decision for him. Statelessness. Weariness. The way, when he closes his eyes, there's another set of eyes looking back at him reproachfully.
“You can't go,” Hitchins mutters once they step out into the featureless hallway. “You can't. You've been so...” He reaches out and takes Tom's arm, turning him, face beseeching. “Who's going to be in charge now?”
Tom leaves aside the obvious protest of the idea that he was ever in charge to begin with and regards Hitchins thoughtfully. “How about you?”
“Me?” Hitchins almost squeaks the word. “I can't... I wouldn't... I don't want to be in charge.”
“In my experience, the people who don't want the job are the ones most suited to do it,” Tom says placidly, scooping Dexter up into his arms. He nods at Florence, smiling faintly. “She'll help you.”
“I--” Hitchins stammers, and falls silent again. Tom turns to Florence, pauses, petting Dexter's head. Another second or two and he reluctantly sets Dexter down by Florence's feet.
“Stay.” He looks back up at her. “You'll take care of him?”
She nods, and there are tears standing out in her eyes as she takes a step towards him, puts her arms around him, and for a moment or two he lets himself lean against her, feeling her strength flowing into him.
“I'll miss you,” he whispers. “I'll miss you so much.”
She nods against his shoulder, pulls back just a little, leans in and presses a kiss to his cheek. I'll miss you, too.
He swallows hard when he finally pulls away, trying to blink the blurring out of his eyes. This isn't death, not really, but it's goodbye, and probably goodbye forever. The world he's going to might not feel exactly like home anymore, but this is not his home either, and he's been told. Asked. The last thing he'd been asked.
As he turns and the door hisses open in front of him, revealing the gleaming room and the soft reclined chair, a line comes to him, from a movie or a poem or a book he might have once read.
You cannot always be torn in two. You will have to be one and whole for many years. You have so much to enjoy, and to be, and to do.
He settles down on the chair, and Hitchins fits the headphones over his ears. Florence touches his shoulder, and then withdraws her hand. Tom looks up, into the light, and when it blinds him he closes his eyes, and meets the eyes behind his own.
Time to wake up.
-end-
Fandom: Harsh Realm
Rating: NC-17 for language, violence, and explicit adult situations
Wordcount: 60,155
Summary: Three years after his entry into the Realm, Tom Hobbes finds his stagnant day-to-day existence disrupted by the worst threat he's ever faced--and the entire Realm faces it as well.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
-20-
Later, he's wrapped in a blanket in a plush chair up in the lobby, shivering with shock and the feeling of everything being turned inside out, at the center of it all a furious desire to see that light again. The doors are wide open, letting in a cold draft, and Guardsmen wander in and out with dazed expressions on their faces. None of them appear to be armed.
Florence sits close beside him, her hands closed around his. He hasn't told her much. He's not sure what he's told her. There was a light.
Mike is dead.
She hadn't seemed surprised. She'd folded him into her arms and held him, and he'd cried against her neck until others had come, frantic, questioning, and he doesn't remember very much after that.
“They all thought I was special,” he says softly, staring down at his hands in hers. He laughs shortly. “So much for that. I didn't save anything.”
Florence cocks her head, looks strangely thoughtful. She gives his hands a squeeze, reaches up with one of hers and touches his chest over his heart. It's a gesture she's made before, and he's known what it meant before, but now he's not sure.
“I'm not special,” he says again, staring at her. “I'm not.”
She shakes her head, somewhere between amused and sad, and takes his hands again. She looks up and Tom turns his head, following her gaze. Hitchins is coming towards them, looking bewildered.
“Everyone checks out,” he says. “No sign of the virus anywhere. And I mean... anywhere.” He reaches up, takes off his beret and rakes a hand through his hair. “And people out fighting at the fence... they say their weapons just vanished. The sick people got well in seconds. None of it makes any sense.”
“Did they see a light?” Tom asks quietly, looking up at him. Hitchins gives him a quizzical look and shakes his head.
“No one said anything about any light.”
“Okay.” Tom drops his head into his hands. “I need to go back to my room. Please.”
* * *
It happens that he opens his eyes to find himself standing on a wide strand of shoreline, a beach that stretches off in either direction for as far as he can see. Beyond the line of sand is a thick jungle, the kind he'd expect to find on a tropical island, and it occurs to him that that's exactly where he might be. It should be surprising; he'd closed his exhausted eyes in his bed in his room, Dexter curled up next to him, cold nose against his hand. But here he is, and it's not surprising.
He walks down the beach a little ways, and though the sun is high it's not yet late enough to be hot, and the breeze off the water is refreshing. At a certain point he reaches a promontory of rocks and begins to climb, and when he looks up again there's a man sitting on the flat of one of the highest stones. As he gets closer he raises a hand in greeting, and after a second or two the figure turns, raises a hand in kind. A few moments more and they're close enough to speak to each other, and for Tom to see who it is.
“Hey,” says Mike, and that's not altogether surprising, either. He nods to the space on the rock beside him. “Have a seat.”
Tom does, looks around, and from here he can see much further down the beach and further still inland. He thinks he might see people a great way off, and what looks like a path cutting through the trees.
“What is this place?”
Mike smiles, and there's something purposefully mysterious in it. “That's kinda hard to explain.”
“You're dead.” Once he looks back at Mike it's a little hard to stop. He looks nothing like he had when Tom had last seen him. He's strong, tanned, and there's a peace about him that would be disarming if it didn't seem to make a kind of sense all its own.
Mike laughs. “In a way, I guess. I guess that's right.” He spreads his arms, gesturing to all around them. “This place... it's a kind of crossroads. A lot of different paths converge here.” He shakes his head slightly, and for a second regret flashes across his face. “But not yours. And not the Mike Pinocchio you knew.”
“So why am I here?”
Mike shrugs. “Who knows? Enjoy it. Go swimming or something.”
“I'm dreaming,” Tom says, and part of him is just realizing it and part of him has known all along.
Again that smile, something like mischief dancing behind it. “Aren't we all?” Mike draws his knees up to his chest and rocks backwards a little. “I had a dream where I was with someone, and I didn't know them but I did. You ever have a dream like that?”
“All the time,” Tom whispers.
“Okay, then.” Mike reaches out and gently cups his cheek, his hand broad and rough and warm, and Tom's eyes slip closed, prickling at the corners.
“Time to wake up.”
* * *
“It's the damndest thing,” Hitchins says. “We still can't find any of 'em.”
They're sitting out on the steps in front of the building, looking out at the city—the new city, where no one is exactly afraid, but everyone is deeply confused. No one seems sure of anything. No one seems to understand what's happened. But there's no violence, no chaos. No uprising. It's eerie.
“And you're sure they didn't leave?” Tom pulls his arm back and tosses the tennis ball. It bounces away over the terrace and Dexter chases it, yipping happily. Hitchins shakes his head.
“No one saw 'em go, anyway. And the portal up at the top floor logs every use. Unless they covered their tracks, no one went in or out that way.”
“Portal?” Tom looks up sharply. Beside him, he feels Florence's touch on his arm.
“Yeah.” Hitchins nods. “Just the one. It's locked up pretty tight. Or it was. But we had a technician look at it. No one's used it in days, not Santiago, not any of his top men. So unless he has something else hidden somewhere...”
“Right,” Tom says, but he sounds absent and he feels it. A portal. Home. He closes his eyes and sees blue eyes looking back at him, so he opens them again.
“So they all just vanished.” He looks over at Hitchins again, meditative. “So who's in charge?”
Hitchins laughs faintly. “Right now... hell, man, no one knows. And I don't think I hate the feeling.”
* * *
It doesn't stay that way for long. Days pass, a week, and Tom can feel them gravitating towards him, all of them, more and more of them consulting him more and more of the time. His advice about legal disputes. About city management. About how to deal with the large number of soldiers who now find themselves without weapons. About how to accommodate a growing flood of refugees venturing past the place where the fence had been, first a trickle and then more and soon threatening to become a flood.
But it's curiosity, it seems, more than desperation. Men return from the wastes and report that they're wastes no longer. Dead trees bearing fruit, the little green sprouts of vegetable crops and grain poking up through the soil of long-abandoned fields and gardens. The streams and rivers running wild with fish. Deer, healthy and plump, roaming through the woods.
It seems, more and more, that there is a great deal less to fight over.
It's around that time that the exodus begins. Like the refugees, it starts small: one man coming up to Tom and saying that he'd heard of a portal back home, he had a wife, children, all he wants is to get back to them, please. Then two more, then five, and finally he shakes his head, steps aside. The portal isn't his to control. They never had to ask him in the first place. If they want to return home to the Real World there's nothing stopping them.
So they go.
The first night of the exodus, he dreams of Sophie, and he can no longer remember her face, the way it looked, the feel of it under his hands. He opens his eyes and lies in the dark, the sheets tangled around him, the bed he'd shared with Mike for one night. He thinks about a thousand minds, a thousand computers that make the Realm real. Or that used to.
You are all free. The Realm will subsist.
Had it really been enough? Those few seconds? But Mike's gone.
Mike's gone.
Unless it's time to rethink what “gone” really means.
* * *
More and more of them, leaving, and there's not a new glitch or anything else unusual to be seen. He's not sure how it's possible. Maybe he'll never entirely know, what happened in those few seconds when Mike was swallowed by the light. He tries to get back down to OSCAR, and the room is unlocked, but the keyboard is unresponsive, the screen dead and dark, the white sphere silent and lifeless. He pokes at it for a while, then sinks down into the seat in front of the console and stares at the table. The gun is still there, on the desk next to the keyboard. He picks it up, looks at it for a few seconds, puts it down again. Absently, he reaches down and rubs at a spot on his thigh that's paining him.
Wherever Mike is, he isn't here anymore.
* * *
When he finally goes he's among the last, headed up to the top floor with Florence and Hitchins in tow. It's hard to say what makes the decision for him. Statelessness. Weariness. The way, when he closes his eyes, there's another set of eyes looking back at him reproachfully.
“You can't go,” Hitchins mutters once they step out into the featureless hallway. “You can't. You've been so...” He reaches out and takes Tom's arm, turning him, face beseeching. “Who's going to be in charge now?”
Tom leaves aside the obvious protest of the idea that he was ever in charge to begin with and regards Hitchins thoughtfully. “How about you?”
“Me?” Hitchins almost squeaks the word. “I can't... I wouldn't... I don't want to be in charge.”
“In my experience, the people who don't want the job are the ones most suited to do it,” Tom says placidly, scooping Dexter up into his arms. He nods at Florence, smiling faintly. “She'll help you.”
“I--” Hitchins stammers, and falls silent again. Tom turns to Florence, pauses, petting Dexter's head. Another second or two and he reluctantly sets Dexter down by Florence's feet.
“Stay.” He looks back up at her. “You'll take care of him?”
She nods, and there are tears standing out in her eyes as she takes a step towards him, puts her arms around him, and for a moment or two he lets himself lean against her, feeling her strength flowing into him.
“I'll miss you,” he whispers. “I'll miss you so much.”
She nods against his shoulder, pulls back just a little, leans in and presses a kiss to his cheek. I'll miss you, too.
He swallows hard when he finally pulls away, trying to blink the blurring out of his eyes. This isn't death, not really, but it's goodbye, and probably goodbye forever. The world he's going to might not feel exactly like home anymore, but this is not his home either, and he's been told. Asked. The last thing he'd been asked.
As he turns and the door hisses open in front of him, revealing the gleaming room and the soft reclined chair, a line comes to him, from a movie or a poem or a book he might have once read.
You cannot always be torn in two. You will have to be one and whole for many years. You have so much to enjoy, and to be, and to do.
He settles down on the chair, and Hitchins fits the headphones over his ears. Florence touches his shoulder, and then withdraws her hand. Tom looks up, into the light, and when it blinds him he closes his eyes, and meets the eyes behind his own.
Time to wake up.
-end-
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-03-04 05:14 am (UTC)I LOVE the island. I love the gentle dwindling of things. I love Florence and Hitchins and the dog. I love the feeling of carrying on. I love this entire story to pieces. It's...really impressive wordsmithing from top to bottom and back again.
I really can't get over this. It's an amazing, enthralling piece <3
no subject
Date: 2009-03-04 04:33 pm (UTC)That was amazing.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 12:42 am (UTC)I love the Pale Horse name/symbology, and to remember the advice given to Samwise at the end, beautiful and soothing and bittersweet, and the island, that's the RP you play in, right? :)
Not sure I can forgive you for putting me through Mike dying, but it was for a good cause, so I will get over it eventually *g* after all, if he's been digitalised into the Realm...who says he can't re-digitalise himself back? (well, you the author can, but denial is very strong in me, and much practiced :D
Thank you for writing this and sharing it with us, it's such a strong piece. Thank you :D
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 01:31 am (UTC)In my head, actually, he became a kind of godlike AI. But I never did anything with it in the story. Still, it gave me comfort. :D
Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 12:18 pm (UTC)Which is also why I can think in my head that hey, since he's the One Supremo now, he can certainly digitalize a version on himself to enjoy a juice steak now and then *g*
:D
no subject
Date: 2009-04-27 01:02 am (UTC)And the whole story? Holy shit, man. Everything that came together, the way it panned out, it just... I'm in awe. It was amazing. So good. The voices and the plot and the visuals. It was brutal and incredible and painful in all the best ways. I love it.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-27 05:55 am (UTC)<33