A/R REMIX: "I Do Not Sleep"
Hey folks! We have a few more stories left - sorry about missing yesterday. The posting schedule for the remaining stories might be a little more spread out as we coordinate some details.
Title: I Do Not Sleep
Rating: T
Remix of: The Last Walk, by sira01
It wasn't as cold as she'd expected. In fact, it was almost balmy. There was a light breeze blowing across the hilltop, and she could see it moving the long grass on the plains below. It was peaceful.
Apart from the crack and crunch of a shovel in dry ground.
Laura looked over at the source of the noise, and felt her throat tighten at the sight. She watched him dig, torn between knowing it was necessary, for both of them, and not wanting him to put his back out. Again.
She sighed. Death wasn’t as final as she’d expected, either. Over the last few years, she’d done more wondering about the great unknown than she’d ever have thought. She’d had her share of close encounters with it, too. There had been a part of her that had just assumed that eventually, you crossed to the other shore and then... eternity. Probably with your loved ones, and maybe even some people you'd rather not have met again, like at some endless cosmic family barbecue.
Laura shook her head. Here she was, dead, on a hillside, watching Bill dig her grave. This had definitely not figured in the aforementioned scenarios.
He paused for breath, leaning on the shovel, and wiped his forearm along his hairline. Laura smiled, affection flooding her, but it faded quickly. She’d left him, alone, as they’d both known she would, and she could see it in his face; in his eyes; in the sag of his shoulders as he looked toward the Raptor and then out over the plains. She should not feel so calm. So serene, while he felt the pain that she had caused.
And yet, she hadn’t left him. She was here, sitting on a rock, with him, watching him, not moving on. Where was her ferry ticket? Her cosmic barbecue? Her mother and father, her sisters and friends and uncles and aunts? Perhaps it was only a myth. A dream.
Or perhaps something was holding her back.
===
When the light in the day had gone, and Bill had disappeared for a time, Laura took a deep breath. She let her head fall back and looked up at the stars, watching the huge, pale moon hang in the sky. It was a beautiful place. Of stars, she had seen millions, and once or twice a week had thought that she could happily never see another. But right then, she could only think how it would have been to share this view with Bill, just once.
He returned nearly an hour later with a jacketful of stones, and began to lay them carefully across the surface of the grave. Between the low moonlight, his meticulousness, and his fatigue, it took him hours. Laura found she did not tire, in whatever state she now existed, but she could see him failing. Sleep, Bill, she whispered, but he didn't stop. Not until the last stone was in place. Stretching his fingers, he fell onto his back, gazing up at the sky. It was beginning to lighten, with tinges of red appearing in the distance.
Laura went to sit next to him; her ghostly fingers skimming the hair at his temple; the hand that lay over his heart.
“Miss you,” he whispered into the cool morning air.
“Me too,” Laura whispered back, but from the look in his eyes as they closed, she knew he had not heard her.
===============
Bill awoke to a warm, red glow, and for a moment, all he could think of was Laura. Her hair; her smile; that scent she wore.
He opened his eyes to a pile of stones and the vivid sunrise coming over the mountains, and suddenly, there was the grief, hitting him in the chest like a punch he didn’t see coming. “Oh, Laura...”
“I know,” came the absent reply from next to him.
Bill turned over so fast his vision blurred, only to be restored by the sight of a shocked-looking Laura sitting by his shoulder. Laura, wearing a beautiful deep blue shirt he had never seen before, with her auburn curls falling over her shoulders. Laura. Alive. Words failed him. This must be a dream. But then she spoke.
“Oh, really, Bill. You promised.”
“I... What?” He pushed himself up to face her. Nothing cracked, and it didn’t hurt. That should have been his first clue.
“You promised me you’d carry on.” She paused. “Though... I’m pretty happy to see you. I mean, that you can see me. I mean... oh, hell.”
Daylight dawned. Literally and figuratively. “I died?”
She nodded.
Bill took this in. It wasn’t as... cold as he’d expected. Almost... balmy. And there was Laura. He stared at her until she blushed. “So what you’re saying is, you’re glad I’m dead?”
Laura gave a cough that turned into a snicker. “Yes, Bill. I’m glad you’re dead.”
On the whole, Bill was pretty glad he was dead, too, given the welcoming committee, but this still didn’t feel real. “So, uh, what do we...?” Were there protocols of some sort for this situation?
“Well,” Laura replied, “you could kiss me.”
Yes, he could. Bill gave a half grin and reached for her to pull her back down with him, but his hand went right through her arm. He tried again. No luck. There was a leaden pause. “You’re joking.”
“Oh, no...” whispered Laura, as the ramifications hit her, too. She looked as disappointed as he felt.
Bill looked up at the sky. “What good’s an eternity together if I can’t even touch you? I had... plans.”
“I...” She stopped, frowning. “What do you mean, ‘plans’? Bill, you’ve been here all of two minutes.”
“Pilot, remember? They teach us to think fast.”
It made her smile, and Bill thought at least there was that. He could go a long way on her smile, whether he was dead or alive. But there had to be something they could do about this. For both of their sanity.
Laura had been thinking, too, but more productively, it seemed. “Perhaps this isn’t eternity,” she said.
“What?”
“Elosha mentioned something once. A kind of limbo, for the lost souls. The ones with unfinished business.”
“Huh.” Bill considered this. “Do we have unfinished business? Only thing I can think of is, I never got to kiss my wife.” He nodded at the ring on her finger.
Laura’s face lit up in a smile. “No, you didn’t. And my husband put this on the wrong hand.”
He grinned. The desperate grief he’d felt as he’d given it to her was now a distant memory, replaced by delight at her acceptance. “I couldn’t reach the other one. Can you switch it?”
She moved it experimentally. “Yes. But... I don’t want to.” Her fingers curled to keep the too-large band in place. “Call me sentimental.”
He wanted to pull her closer and kiss her more than ever, right then. “We’ve gotta do something about this limbo thing,” he said, in a low voice. “I miss you.”
She leaned towards him. “I miss you, too... Yesterday, I thought I would watch you forever but never speak to you or touch you again...” She trailed off, shaking her head.
Bill didn’t like to see that look coming over her face, especially since the point was moot. “No wonder you’re glad I’m dead.”
She giggled and tried to swat him on the shoulder, but swiped straight through. “Damn.”
“Heh. Have you noticed that nothing aches anymore?”
“Pretty good, huh? We, uh, don’t seem to need sleep, either.”
“No kidding.” Bill raised an eyebrow, possibilities popping up in his mind like mushrooms. “Do you think...?”
Laura’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, Gods, yes. But first...”
“Yeah. The unfinished business.”
They were both silent for a moment as they thought about this. “Lee?” Laura ventured.
Bill shook his head. His son would be fine. He had a purpose; a plan.
“Saul?”
“Nah. He has his favorite distraction back.”
Laura laughed. “True.” More silence. “Shall we walk on it?” She nodded out towards the plains.
“Might help.”
Laura rose, with the lightness of youth, or death, or whatever it was. She stretched, straightened her shirt, and looked down at him. “I’d offer you a hand up, but...”
Bill snorted and pulled himself easily to his feet, jumping on the spot. It felt like he’d lost about forty years and twenty pounds. “Frak me,” he said.
“That is the final objective,” Laura quipped over her shoulder, moving lightly away over the hillside. “Coming?”
As enchanting a prospect as she presented, and as much as he wanted to follow her, when it came to it, Bill found himself reluctant to leave the gravesite. Somehow, it seemed wrong. Laura came back to stand with him. They contemplated the pile of stones and Bill’s lifeless form.
“Feels odd, doesn’t it? Just leaving them there?”
Laura, who, he supposed, had already had a day to ponder this out-of-body perspective, was much less bothered. “Bill,” she said gently, “I’m not there. Neither are you. That body; that grave... they’re not your future. Not mine. It sounds silly, but we’re free, now.”
“Free,” he repeated. He hadn’t thought of it that way. He wasn’t a man given to contemplation of the afterlife. When you saw death in a military context, you couldn’t spend hours wondering what happened afterwards. Some did, he knew, but it brought everything too close for his taste. And for the people he loved... as a child, he’d never liked to imagine the dead moving on without him; laughing and happy while he still missed them. Free.
Laura nodded firmly. “Come on. Our future’s out there. Can’t you feel it? That... pull?”
Now that she mentioned it, he could. An unwavering sense of the need to go... that way. He was sure it hadn’t been there all along, but... Shaking his head, he took one last look at the graves. “We’re not there,” he said quietly, and followed Laura down the hill.
They walked for most of the day, their progress across endless fields of long grass guided only by the strange sense of direction that grew stronger as they talked.
Eventually, Bill had to ask. “Were you trapped, Laura?”
“What?”
“You said, ‘we’re free’. What did you mean?”
Laura sighed. “Just that, I guess.” She turned to look at him. “I did feel trapped, sometimes. Well. A lot of the time. I was in a body that was failing me; in charge of a fleet with yo-yo morale and failing hardware; on a search for a planet that might not exist; on the run from an unpredictable enemy... and wondering all along if those responsibilities and limitations would let me have what I wanted, just once. If my life could get out of its own road long enough for things to go right; for me to be in control...”
Bill made a noise of agreement. “When you put it that way...” She was thinking of everything, but as he glanced at Laura’s profile, seeing her skin bright and healthy in the sun, he found his perspective narrowed. They’d been tied down for so long, trying to be the model leadership team. He’d let - they’d both let - their responsibilities and obligations keep them from time together until he’d thought, at the end, that he could never forgive himself. He’d even watched Laura fight it, especially in those last weeks, and only now did he see why she was right. They said hindsight was 20/20, but when you were looking from the afterlife, it was practically bionic. “I...”
“I know. It was like that for me, too. But it’s all gone, now. We can do what we want.” She smiled at him, a lightness in her eyes he had not seen more than a few times in as long as he’d known her. It made him think of something. No. Several somethings.
“Well,” he said, “we will when we’ve fixed this.” He waved a hand through hers and moved an eyebrow suggestively.
Her smile became a giggle. “Is that all you think about?”
“Since I died and woke up and saw you in that shirt? Yeah.”
Laura rolled her eyes. “I won’t say it hasn’t crossed my mind at all. Since you woke up and stared at my... shirt... until I thought it would unravel. I’ll assume you were admiring the color.”
“I’m not that much of a gentleman.”
“I know.”
Not long after that, they came to a river. It was a vast, calm expanse that reflected the few clouds visible in the sky. The shore was made of smooth, flat stones, and they picked their way carefully to the waterline.
“It’s beautiful,” breathed Laura. “And look over there - more of those pink birds. I loved those.”
Bill had had a vastly different opinion of them, up until this morning, but he’d found that his opinion on a lot of things had altered upon dying. Mostly, for the better. “They are kinda nice,” he allowed. “Better in bulk... Huh. What’s that behind them? Looks like a boat.”
Laura shaded her eyes. “I think you’re right.”
There was something in her tone, and Bill turned to her. “But the people on this planet couldn’t...”
“No.” She was silent, and then added, “It’s for us.”
“We’ve gotta cross?” But it was a rhetorical question. He was sure she felt the pull as strongly as he did. They walked along the shore until they came close to the small craft.
“Gonna be a tight fit,” Bill remarked, eyeing it.
“Good thing you’ve lost a little weight, then, isn’t it?”
“Funny. You just hope there’s no current out there.”
Laura chuckled. “Get in the boat, Bill.”
“There are no oars.”
“No... Trust me on this one. It’s...” She looked awkward. “It’s not my first time out of the marina, all right?”
Bill turned to her, surprised. “What? How can you--?”
“Bill, how many times did I almost die, before? Let’s say... the setting is always different, but the story is the same.” She smiled. “This is where we make the choice. Are you ready?”
He looked back at the way they had come; at the faint outline of higher ground in the distance. He looked out over the water, but the other shore was too far away to be visible. Past and future, he thought. We’re not there. He looked at Laura. His future. The time to make change for others was over; now, it was for them to make change for themselves. The sense of finality was overwhelming, but almost as soon as it hit him, it passed. Laura was watching him. She was ready, he could tell. And with another look at her shirt, so was Bill.
He stepped carefully into the boat, and then turned back, raising a hand to help Laura in after him. She accepted without thinking. Her smile as their fingers touched was brighter than the sun on the water.
Title: I Do Not Sleep
Rating: T
Remix of: The Last Walk, by sira01
It wasn't as cold as she'd expected. In fact, it was almost balmy. There was a light breeze blowing across the hilltop, and she could see it moving the long grass on the plains below. It was peaceful.
Apart from the crack and crunch of a shovel in dry ground.
Laura looked over at the source of the noise, and felt her throat tighten at the sight. She watched him dig, torn between knowing it was necessary, for both of them, and not wanting him to put his back out. Again.
She sighed. Death wasn’t as final as she’d expected, either. Over the last few years, she’d done more wondering about the great unknown than she’d ever have thought. She’d had her share of close encounters with it, too. There had been a part of her that had just assumed that eventually, you crossed to the other shore and then... eternity. Probably with your loved ones, and maybe even some people you'd rather not have met again, like at some endless cosmic family barbecue.
Laura shook her head. Here she was, dead, on a hillside, watching Bill dig her grave. This had definitely not figured in the aforementioned scenarios.
He paused for breath, leaning on the shovel, and wiped his forearm along his hairline. Laura smiled, affection flooding her, but it faded quickly. She’d left him, alone, as they’d both known she would, and she could see it in his face; in his eyes; in the sag of his shoulders as he looked toward the Raptor and then out over the plains. She should not feel so calm. So serene, while he felt the pain that she had caused.
And yet, she hadn’t left him. She was here, sitting on a rock, with him, watching him, not moving on. Where was her ferry ticket? Her cosmic barbecue? Her mother and father, her sisters and friends and uncles and aunts? Perhaps it was only a myth. A dream.
Or perhaps something was holding her back.
===
When the light in the day had gone, and Bill had disappeared for a time, Laura took a deep breath. She let her head fall back and looked up at the stars, watching the huge, pale moon hang in the sky. It was a beautiful place. Of stars, she had seen millions, and once or twice a week had thought that she could happily never see another. But right then, she could only think how it would have been to share this view with Bill, just once.
He returned nearly an hour later with a jacketful of stones, and began to lay them carefully across the surface of the grave. Between the low moonlight, his meticulousness, and his fatigue, it took him hours. Laura found she did not tire, in whatever state she now existed, but she could see him failing. Sleep, Bill, she whispered, but he didn't stop. Not until the last stone was in place. Stretching his fingers, he fell onto his back, gazing up at the sky. It was beginning to lighten, with tinges of red appearing in the distance.
Laura went to sit next to him; her ghostly fingers skimming the hair at his temple; the hand that lay over his heart.
“Miss you,” he whispered into the cool morning air.
“Me too,” Laura whispered back, but from the look in his eyes as they closed, she knew he had not heard her.
===============
Bill awoke to a warm, red glow, and for a moment, all he could think of was Laura. Her hair; her smile; that scent she wore.
He opened his eyes to a pile of stones and the vivid sunrise coming over the mountains, and suddenly, there was the grief, hitting him in the chest like a punch he didn’t see coming. “Oh, Laura...”
“I know,” came the absent reply from next to him.
Bill turned over so fast his vision blurred, only to be restored by the sight of a shocked-looking Laura sitting by his shoulder. Laura, wearing a beautiful deep blue shirt he had never seen before, with her auburn curls falling over her shoulders. Laura. Alive. Words failed him. This must be a dream. But then she spoke.
“Oh, really, Bill. You promised.”
“I... What?” He pushed himself up to face her. Nothing cracked, and it didn’t hurt. That should have been his first clue.
“You promised me you’d carry on.” She paused. “Though... I’m pretty happy to see you. I mean, that you can see me. I mean... oh, hell.”
Daylight dawned. Literally and figuratively. “I died?”
She nodded.
Bill took this in. It wasn’t as... cold as he’d expected. Almost... balmy. And there was Laura. He stared at her until she blushed. “So what you’re saying is, you’re glad I’m dead?”
Laura gave a cough that turned into a snicker. “Yes, Bill. I’m glad you’re dead.”
On the whole, Bill was pretty glad he was dead, too, given the welcoming committee, but this still didn’t feel real. “So, uh, what do we...?” Were there protocols of some sort for this situation?
“Well,” Laura replied, “you could kiss me.”
Yes, he could. Bill gave a half grin and reached for her to pull her back down with him, but his hand went right through her arm. He tried again. No luck. There was a leaden pause. “You’re joking.”
“Oh, no...” whispered Laura, as the ramifications hit her, too. She looked as disappointed as he felt.
Bill looked up at the sky. “What good’s an eternity together if I can’t even touch you? I had... plans.”
“I...” She stopped, frowning. “What do you mean, ‘plans’? Bill, you’ve been here all of two minutes.”
“Pilot, remember? They teach us to think fast.”
It made her smile, and Bill thought at least there was that. He could go a long way on her smile, whether he was dead or alive. But there had to be something they could do about this. For both of their sanity.
Laura had been thinking, too, but more productively, it seemed. “Perhaps this isn’t eternity,” she said.
“What?”
“Elosha mentioned something once. A kind of limbo, for the lost souls. The ones with unfinished business.”
“Huh.” Bill considered this. “Do we have unfinished business? Only thing I can think of is, I never got to kiss my wife.” He nodded at the ring on her finger.
Laura’s face lit up in a smile. “No, you didn’t. And my husband put this on the wrong hand.”
He grinned. The desperate grief he’d felt as he’d given it to her was now a distant memory, replaced by delight at her acceptance. “I couldn’t reach the other one. Can you switch it?”
She moved it experimentally. “Yes. But... I don’t want to.” Her fingers curled to keep the too-large band in place. “Call me sentimental.”
He wanted to pull her closer and kiss her more than ever, right then. “We’ve gotta do something about this limbo thing,” he said, in a low voice. “I miss you.”
She leaned towards him. “I miss you, too... Yesterday, I thought I would watch you forever but never speak to you or touch you again...” She trailed off, shaking her head.
Bill didn’t like to see that look coming over her face, especially since the point was moot. “No wonder you’re glad I’m dead.”
She giggled and tried to swat him on the shoulder, but swiped straight through. “Damn.”
“Heh. Have you noticed that nothing aches anymore?”
“Pretty good, huh? We, uh, don’t seem to need sleep, either.”
“No kidding.” Bill raised an eyebrow, possibilities popping up in his mind like mushrooms. “Do you think...?”
Laura’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, Gods, yes. But first...”
“Yeah. The unfinished business.”
They were both silent for a moment as they thought about this. “Lee?” Laura ventured.
Bill shook his head. His son would be fine. He had a purpose; a plan.
“Saul?”
“Nah. He has his favorite distraction back.”
Laura laughed. “True.” More silence. “Shall we walk on it?” She nodded out towards the plains.
“Might help.”
Laura rose, with the lightness of youth, or death, or whatever it was. She stretched, straightened her shirt, and looked down at him. “I’d offer you a hand up, but...”
Bill snorted and pulled himself easily to his feet, jumping on the spot. It felt like he’d lost about forty years and twenty pounds. “Frak me,” he said.
“That is the final objective,” Laura quipped over her shoulder, moving lightly away over the hillside. “Coming?”
As enchanting a prospect as she presented, and as much as he wanted to follow her, when it came to it, Bill found himself reluctant to leave the gravesite. Somehow, it seemed wrong. Laura came back to stand with him. They contemplated the pile of stones and Bill’s lifeless form.
“Feels odd, doesn’t it? Just leaving them there?”
Laura, who, he supposed, had already had a day to ponder this out-of-body perspective, was much less bothered. “Bill,” she said gently, “I’m not there. Neither are you. That body; that grave... they’re not your future. Not mine. It sounds silly, but we’re free, now.”
“Free,” he repeated. He hadn’t thought of it that way. He wasn’t a man given to contemplation of the afterlife. When you saw death in a military context, you couldn’t spend hours wondering what happened afterwards. Some did, he knew, but it brought everything too close for his taste. And for the people he loved... as a child, he’d never liked to imagine the dead moving on without him; laughing and happy while he still missed them. Free.
Laura nodded firmly. “Come on. Our future’s out there. Can’t you feel it? That... pull?”
Now that she mentioned it, he could. An unwavering sense of the need to go... that way. He was sure it hadn’t been there all along, but... Shaking his head, he took one last look at the graves. “We’re not there,” he said quietly, and followed Laura down the hill.
They walked for most of the day, their progress across endless fields of long grass guided only by the strange sense of direction that grew stronger as they talked.
Eventually, Bill had to ask. “Were you trapped, Laura?”
“What?”
“You said, ‘we’re free’. What did you mean?”
Laura sighed. “Just that, I guess.” She turned to look at him. “I did feel trapped, sometimes. Well. A lot of the time. I was in a body that was failing me; in charge of a fleet with yo-yo morale and failing hardware; on a search for a planet that might not exist; on the run from an unpredictable enemy... and wondering all along if those responsibilities and limitations would let me have what I wanted, just once. If my life could get out of its own road long enough for things to go right; for me to be in control...”
Bill made a noise of agreement. “When you put it that way...” She was thinking of everything, but as he glanced at Laura’s profile, seeing her skin bright and healthy in the sun, he found his perspective narrowed. They’d been tied down for so long, trying to be the model leadership team. He’d let - they’d both let - their responsibilities and obligations keep them from time together until he’d thought, at the end, that he could never forgive himself. He’d even watched Laura fight it, especially in those last weeks, and only now did he see why she was right. They said hindsight was 20/20, but when you were looking from the afterlife, it was practically bionic. “I...”
“I know. It was like that for me, too. But it’s all gone, now. We can do what we want.” She smiled at him, a lightness in her eyes he had not seen more than a few times in as long as he’d known her. It made him think of something. No. Several somethings.
“Well,” he said, “we will when we’ve fixed this.” He waved a hand through hers and moved an eyebrow suggestively.
Her smile became a giggle. “Is that all you think about?”
“Since I died and woke up and saw you in that shirt? Yeah.”
Laura rolled her eyes. “I won’t say it hasn’t crossed my mind at all. Since you woke up and stared at my... shirt... until I thought it would unravel. I’ll assume you were admiring the color.”
“I’m not that much of a gentleman.”
“I know.”
Not long after that, they came to a river. It was a vast, calm expanse that reflected the few clouds visible in the sky. The shore was made of smooth, flat stones, and they picked their way carefully to the waterline.
“It’s beautiful,” breathed Laura. “And look over there - more of those pink birds. I loved those.”
Bill had had a vastly different opinion of them, up until this morning, but he’d found that his opinion on a lot of things had altered upon dying. Mostly, for the better. “They are kinda nice,” he allowed. “Better in bulk... Huh. What’s that behind them? Looks like a boat.”
Laura shaded her eyes. “I think you’re right.”
There was something in her tone, and Bill turned to her. “But the people on this planet couldn’t...”
“No.” She was silent, and then added, “It’s for us.”
“We’ve gotta cross?” But it was a rhetorical question. He was sure she felt the pull as strongly as he did. They walked along the shore until they came close to the small craft.
“Gonna be a tight fit,” Bill remarked, eyeing it.
“Good thing you’ve lost a little weight, then, isn’t it?”
“Funny. You just hope there’s no current out there.”
Laura chuckled. “Get in the boat, Bill.”
“There are no oars.”
“No... Trust me on this one. It’s...” She looked awkward. “It’s not my first time out of the marina, all right?”
Bill turned to her, surprised. “What? How can you--?”
“Bill, how many times did I almost die, before? Let’s say... the setting is always different, but the story is the same.” She smiled. “This is where we make the choice. Are you ready?”
He looked back at the way they had come; at the faint outline of higher ground in the distance. He looked out over the water, but the other shore was too far away to be visible. Past and future, he thought. We’re not there. He looked at Laura. His future. The time to make change for others was over; now, it was for them to make change for themselves. The sense of finality was overwhelming, but almost as soon as it hit him, it passed. Laura was watching him. She was ready, he could tell. And with another look at her shirt, so was Bill.
He stepped carefully into the boat, and then turned back, raising a hand to help Laura in after him. She accepted without thinking. Her smile as their fingers touched was brighter than the sun on the water.