11-Mar-2004
Radio Vignette #1
Author: CleverYoungThief
Rating: R
Warnings: Gore, religious imagery, language
Archive: GWA
Genre: Supernatural
Timeline: Pre-series (Maxwell Church Massacre)
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Don't sue. College kids are like L2 kids; we got nothin'.
Feedback: Please?
Notes: Well, I was listening to a song on internet radio, and this ficlet just kind of came out. I labeled it as a #1, because it may become an arc. Some days, I have a hard time trying to get my head going to write. And I've figured out that these little radio vignettes are relatively easy to dish out, and they get my brain juices working. This one was inspired by the song Dead Can Dance, by Rakim.
This could also work for the gw500 "Whisper" Challenge, if it wasn't about three hundred words overly long. *laughs*
Somewhere, someone is playing a radio.
But it doesn't matter to us, not in a smoky night when all that we love has been taken from us, stolen away into the darkness like a bogeyman from a child's story. I can smell them burning the plague victims over on 6th Street. After awhile, the smell doesn't leave you. Duo says now it makes us all smell like death, that that's why people are afraid to get near us, that's why we're pariahs, but I'm not sure I trust him.
He's always been a little crazy.
He wanted my jacket once, more than anything. But they had to burn it like everything else. Shit, I would have given it to him. Would have given it to him in a heartbeat. Poor kid... and fuck the guys who say different.
Yeah, maybe he's a little crazy.
Like now. There are puddles of blood sinking into the cement of the cracked and destroyed sidewalk. The bodies of the fallen are still lying in the church, and a few crumpled dollars from the shattered alms bowl are blowing down the street, moved by the passage of a car. Coins shine in the gutter like the eyes of wild animals, but I'm afraid to take them. It seems like a sin. A book lies in the street, too burned and torn to be recognizable, but somehow I know it's a bible. The gold edging on the pages is what tells.
Duo is one fucked up little kid. And that's coming from a kid who is pretty fucked up himself. Been wandering, now. Wandering, but I couldn't tell you how long. It could be days, or hours, or eons, or just a year or so. I can't tell the time anymore.
All the clergy are dead, the ones that watched over him and all the rest, the sirens are on their way, the Alliance soldiers are gone- thank Christ for small favors, eh?-and that brat is standing in the middle of a broken street, arms outstretched with his palms to the sky, spinning like a dervish in slow motion. His eyes are closed, and that braid whirls behind him.
Dancing for the dead. Or maybe he died too, and maybe I died, and we're all just ghosts waiting out here in the rain, waiting for them to pull us, torn and broken, from the cathedral; I can't even feel the rain against my skin, I'm so numb from the blasts and tiny bits of stained glass shrapnel that have buried themselves in my skin, too soon to sting. I can feel the glass as if I'd been there myself, but it doesn't hurt.
I can't feel anything. And where the fuck is my shadow?
It all just blends together now, like dark alleys and cellars and switchblades and pistols, crack and broken elevators and subways and rats, like the way day flows into night here, the way the neon burns always; in other places, they have to turn it off.
But not here.
Maybe the dead can dance, too.
It's starting to rain a little, and that dilutes the blood on the asphalt like oil in water, spreading it across the surface, turning it pink. I raise my eyes to the sky... or whatever the hell passes for a sky here. It's dark. The sirens are getting closer. I can hear the ambulances, but I don't see them. There's a bright light everywhere.
"Duo," I say, rising from where I sit on the curb. I walk closer to him, but he can't see me. Not where he is.
I know he hears my voice.
He's still spinning (Christ kid, aren't you dizzy yet?) turning in those slow revolutions, covered in ash from the fires and blood and thicker, more visceral things. He's saying my name in a whisper, over and over again.
"Solo... Solo... Solo... "
A cross is hanging from his neck, but not a pretty one, not in gold or silver, like those hypocritical upper class fucks wear when they're feeling particularly guilty. No, his is made of wood; two sticks, crossed and bound together in the center by tattered strips of shipping tape.
"Duo."
I reach out to touch him...
But his arm passes through me, and I can feel his steady heartbeat like a prayer. I close my eyes as he touches me, is me, and for a second, we're the same, two sticks of the same cross. And I realize what I am. What he is.
He stops spinning, and opens his eyes. It's raining harder now, but I can tell he's crying. What'd I tell you about crying, kid?
"Solo?"
I pull back, heading back into that place between shadows. Kid... oh, Kid...
I outstretch my arms, palms to the storm-ridden sky, and I raise my face to it. I can still feel the light at my back, warm and cold all at once, too bright to look at, and too bright to look away. But I don't want to go. I don't want to leave him. Any of it.
Not yet.
I dance in the rain next to him. I ignore the sounds of the screams, and the sirens, and the smell of the burnings on 6th Street.
Because the dead can dance, too.
owari
(:./cyt/radio1)
