[Closed] The shadows bring the starlight
Characters: Stoneface/Sam Vimes, Blood/Yachiru & Ghost/Jack Landors
Date/Time: April 10th, Blood's bed time
Location: Stoneyface's house, Section 3
Rating: PG-13, strong language eventually. Bawls will be had.
Summary: The twins have suffered enough losses and now need Stoney to support them. A tough decision must be made--who will now care for ( Read more... )
Date/Time: April 10th, Blood's bed time
Location: Stoneyface's house, Section 3
Rating: PG-13, strong language eventually. Bawls will be had.
Summary: The twins have suffered enough losses and now need Stoney to support them. A tough decision must be made--who will now care for ( Read more... )
"Maybe it's still in his house? I don't have anything left anyways so it would be easy enough." Not that he had a lot of things the first time around but thanks to the fire he had nothing of personal value left.
Ghost didn't make eye contact as he talked--instead he looked into his empty mug as he spoke. "I'm asking you," he said simply. Maybe it seemed out of the blue? Didn't seem that way to Ghost. He shrugged. "Blood likes you and you like her. You know more than I do about kids and--if I disappear there's a damn good chance that Sky and Bridge will too. They're the only ones left I trust and--well. They're my age and seem to know less than I do about this stuff. I'd still prefer it if Justice and--Truth if he ever came back--would care for her because they're not a part of this whole Watch business but...I don't know anymore. I--"
He broke off and sighed. "What do you think?" It was a sign of how much Ghost had come to respect Stoneface that he simply came out and asked for his opinion.
For his help.
Reply
He paused again. "But when it comes down to it, nobody else is safe either. Certainly nobody she knows. She's friends with loads of guards and watchmen, and none of us are safe. Feew of us are, besides the scummy ones on the sidelines, and we don't exactly want Samehada looking after her, do we?"
He leaned forward. "I think I'd do the best job out of everybody that's left. But you need to know that I'm in danger of dying too. And if I die, and you die, we need a back-up plan. What she needs is a stable home, and I'll do my damndest to give it to her. If you think I'm the best choice, then I'll take it."
"But if I'm not the best choice, or if I'm not here, who else is there? Sky's a good lad, but he isn't ready to take on a child."
And neither are you, Ghost, and that's a fact, he thought, but that wasn't something he'd address right now.
"I say we figure out who she goes to in case you die. And in case I die too, we'll talk to her and figure out who she likes, and who seems responsible. She's got to know more people than big men with big swords."
Reply
Couldn't be Sky, he was a Guard and Watch, double trouble right there. Bridge was the head of the Scavengers and while that wasn't at all a lofty position, it was still a figurehead of sorts. Bastet was of course in charge of the guard. Who was left?
"She does like Samehada but I don't know him well enough." It must have been the late hour and fatigue that made Ghost actually that that suggestion seriously.
If Stoneface were to ever say that to him he would actually agree. But he still wouldn't give his sister up for nothing.
The last suggestion made Ghost sit up straight. "Yeah?" He asked with a bit more energy. "Ya mean talk serious to her? Do you think she'd be ok with that? I mean I think we should--I should--but I know with kids you're not supposed to--Oh I don't know."
He frowned at at the poor chipped cup. "If I were her, I'd want to be talked to as an adult. After all this time and doing an adult job? She ain't a kid in that sense. I'd rather be honest now than disappear and have a lot of things never said."
Reply
He hadn't even considered not talking it through with Blood. "She understands the situation well enough to be afraid that when she wakes up in the morning, we'll be gone," he pointed out. "She needs to know."
That wasn't a conversation that he was looking forward to.
He hesitated. There were people after him, but he didn't want anybody else to take care of Blood when push came to shove, and he was just cocky enough to think that he'd do a better job than most others would. "I don't think she's old enough to choose who she wants to stay with herself, but she's old enough to put her two cents in and tell the adults before they make the proper decision." He rapped his hands on the table. "Before you make the proper decision."
This wasn't the conversation he wanted to have, but the one he needed to have, and Gods, wouldn't the world look clearer through the bottom of a bottle? The thought grew more and more appealing every day--not that it was unappealing to begin with. He patted his pockets for a smoke, then paused.
Don't smoke in the baby's room. You can't smoke in the baby's room.
The rule came to him in a flash. Blood wasn't a baby, but smoke wasn't good for anybody. He sighed. "D'you smoke, Ghost?"
Reply
This wasn't a conversation Ghost never wanted to have and in that thought he was unintentionally echoing the older man in front of him.
Perhaps they had more in common than they would ever realize.
Ghost blinked at the knock to the table and then nodded at Stoney's words. His decision. Ha. It was his by the grace of having been in the cocoon right next to Bloods on one fateful day in October. Chance. Or fate. Who knew really.
He was still pondering that when Stoneface asked him about smoking. He blinked in confusion. "Sometimes yeah."
There was a faint ...sensation, a faded memory of a time when he'd pulled a cigarette from the laughing mouth of a handsome redhead. A drag on the cigarette followed by an unexpected kiss from a man he couldn't remember anymore. A man who was missing now. The memory ping was gone before he could really chase it down and make it clearer.
Another tragedy given to him by the sphere.
Reply
He walked out of the kitchen, crept past Blood's sleeping figure and out into the fresh air. It hit him like cold water to the face, and he shuddered awake, properly awake, and felt himself come alive again. It was temporary wakefulness like a strong cup of coffee after a sleepless night, but even something temporary was precious. He liked the night. He thought best with pavement under his feet, cold air in his lungs and nothing but muddy darkness greeting his eyes. He leaned against the wall, and extracted a roll-up from his pocket, curling his hand around the match as he lit it. He offered one to Ghost.
"Normally I smoke cigars," he said, conversationally. "Can't beat a good cigar. But there's something to be said for a nice roll-up out of the wind."
He stared into the shadows, collecting his thoughts.
"Listen to me, Ghost. Earlier, inside, you told Blood that you wouldn't take on anymore dangerous missions. Were you telling the truth?"
He took a drag, and smoke hung in the air like a mist before drifting away in a gust of wind.
"You asked to hear what I thought. See, lad, everything around Blood changes every day. The Wilderness changes, people come and go, and even the entire bloody tree went upside down. If we talk to her about a will, that's more change, more change than she can handle. You know how hard it is for her to admit she's scared? Of course you know. You live with her."
"And that means it's gotten bad. I mean, you're hardly out of childhood yourself - and don't scowl at me, Ghost, I'm old enough to be allowed to say it - but there's got to be stability for as long as you can manage. This is no place for a kid, and no place for a kid whose guardian goes around doing Gods know what. If you're serious about this whole will thing, about taking good care of her, you're going to have to change things up. If you die, it's not your neck on the line. It's her's. She's hurting, and she knows you're hurtin', and that just about everybody around her is scared shitless, and that ain't a way to go about things."
"I don't know what you go about in your spare time, and whether you've stopped or not, but if it's still going on? It has to stop. Here and now. 'Cos right now, Ghost, now things are a bit bendy, but we can bend back. Sooner or later, it'll break. You're making a will now. That's good. But more things have to change."
He paused, realizing how long he'd spoken for. He wasn't used to speaking at length when he wasn't yelling, and he certainly wasn't yelling now--he kept his voice quiet, confidential, his tone gentle. He hadn't gotten enough sleep, he thought. He talked too much when he was tired.
Or maybe there were just too many things that had gone unsaid for too long.
"D'you hear me?"
Reply
It meant that when Ghost took a cig from Stoneface he was able to light up with ease but not with a sense of satisfaction that his companion had. It was just something to keep his mouth and fingers busy.
Particularly since he was about to get lectured. He didn't look at Stoneface right away--instead he took a drag and let the smoke seep out, like his secrets.
"I haven't done the things that almost got me killed since it happened. If that's what you mean. The agreement I have with Spade is still dangerous--but I'm honor bound to it. But other than that I haven't been back to my contacts for months."
It was partially Blood, partially fear and mostly just grief that kept him inactive these days. He had pushed himself deeper into the black market to find answers to Clé's murder. When that never revealed itself, he stayed because he thought maybe it would help him protect Blood. When it failed to do that and ended him with him being shanked, he was done.
Stoneface's words were harsh and at one or two times they made Ghost flinch, but they weren't anything he wasn't already realizing. But yes he did scowl at the comment about being young because he sure as hell didn't feel like it. Maybe he was young but there was nothing innocent about him anymore and that was really his definition of kid. Innocence, maybe the kind that Bridge had at the beginning before this place tore him down too.
Ghost took another drag on his cigarette.
"I hear you."
The smoke went up into the night air.
"I just don't know if its really that easy. These things, these jobs...they just...find you one day. They ask if you wouldn't mind doing a job for them, something easy and they don't tell you right away how its connected. A delivery--could be flowers, could be a teddy bear or a box--ya think it's a gift. So you drop it off and you don't think twice about it....
Then you find out later on the journal or through the grapevine that house you left it in, that person got a memory back. Or something they recognize from their past or a mysterious note in rainbow ink. You hear these things and suddenly you realize what's you're in the middle of."
Ghost sighed and looked at Stoneface. "And then it's too late."
Reply
He soaked up what Ghost told him quietly, his policeman brain sorting past the pauses and the uncertainty to the core of what was important. Somebody distributed the crystals. He knew that. He'd done a deal with a man on the street that one time, one he didn't fancy repeating. He cleared his mind, let the thoughts settle in, seep into him until he was sure he'd gotten them memorized.
"Once you're in, they've got you, and it's a devil to get out. Men get tangled in business too big for 'em, and they think it's for their own good, or the good of their family, and next thing you know, you're picking arms from out of the river and hoping to Gods that the head's not in their house." He looked sideways at Ghost, and shrugged. "Not here, not yet. But that sort of stuff happens. I know it does. No easy way to do it, and no risk-free way of doing it, but you can try. Can't ease out of it, but you can't rip it off nice and quick like one of those adhesive bandages."
He took another drag, and stood almost eerily still against the wall, out of habit alone. Stay still enough, silent enough, and you could fade, become another shadow in the night, just a part of the scenery.
"You can't just deliver things and not think about it. You've got to, sooner or later, because everything catches up with you in the end. I can't tell you how to get out, but you've got to. It's all gotten... bigger than you, Ghost. You spent a good month underneath the surface. It's time to come back."
Reply
The hand holding the cigarette shook for a second before Ghost was able to calm himself. "I wouldn't be so sure," he mumbled.
He flicked a bit of ash onto the floor and sighed. More pent up frustration. His feet itched to move because that's what he did when he was stressed and panicked. He wandered and moved outside of himself, sometimes even running and leaping off islands because he could and because it made him feel something other than the fear curling up in his mind. It took a lot of willpower to stand still.
Instead he gave Stoneface another glance. "You know about that then. The waves and those who float and those that drown."
Cryptic shit. He always hated the code Spade and the CPA tended to talk in. It made a man's head ache.
Reply
He shrugged. "I don't like codes. I can just about understand O.O.O., but beyond that, I like regular words just fine."
There were problems with codes. One, they made everybody nervous, and two, if there weren't conspiracies to begin with, once people saw the codes, they began making their own. Then everybody got suspicious and nobody trusted one another. Which was all very well if you were a copper, but if you were just a normal citizen, everything got a bit... mucky.
No, he'd stay well away from codes.
"Wouldn't be so sure of what?" He asked. "That it'd be best to get out, or that you will? 'Cos if you don't... no, if you don't, I'd still take care of Blood, no matter what you did. But I wouldn't want to explain what might happen to you."
Reply
Well Ghost knew why. Because Spade was batshit crazy. You try staying sane after decades trapped here, never aging, watching everyone else disappear and reappear like some macabre game.
"Hmmm...the colors all mean something," he said casually. "Every faction has their own thing. Dunno them all, dun have to really. They're all crazy."
He had to backtrack and reprocess what Stoneface was asking him before he could answer. "No I mean, don't be so sure that they won't resort to violence. If you leave--but don't. Don't explain that part. Kid doesn't need to know, she'd just get mad and then if I ever came back she'd beat me up and the new me would have no clue why."
Ok it was a bad joke but hey he was trying.
Reply
Stoneface snorted. It was half-hearted, but the lad was attempting to rile some spirit back into himself, and that was something to be encouraged. All that shuffling about made him uneasy. "No, I mean that I'd have a devil of a time thinking up a really big whopper to tell her. Besides, she'd give your shins a good kicking whether you remembered or not, I'm sure of it."
He took one last drag on his cigarette, then dropped it and stubbed it out on the ground. "Yeah, there'll be danger either which way. If you die, may as well do it doing the decent thing."
It's what he told himself, anyway.
Reply
There was a slight wince from Ghost as he remembered the MULTIPLE beating he's gotten over the two times he'd gone missing. From Blood and Lucy and hey Sky had looked like he wanted to deck him but thank goodness he'd refrained. "Yeah yeah I get it. No death for me."
Besides the cocoon goo tended to stay in his hair for MONTHS.
"I'm out of the delivery business for sure. I told Spade I wasn't gonna to anything more than deliver messages for him and I think that's safe enough. I'm not even sure that last message he sent was all that helpful."
He stomped out his own cigarette with a bit of a flourish. "Although I'm not sure I get what the decent thing is these days. Standing around and doing nothing seems as damning as tilting at windmills."
In other words he was a kid without a purpose, beyond staying alive.
Reply
Stoneface took a deep breath of the clean air, and stared peacefully out into the darkness of windows around them. There was a lot of big things, and a lot of big crimes, but a lot of little crimes too, which he found reassuring. Kind people desperately sorting things out amongst themselves, making ends meet, stealing here and there along the way, evil people committing desperate crimes behind shaded windows in filthy alleyways... it was all part of the big picture. That was what Edensphere was, he thought, not the blasted people who sprouted wings and claws and ate humans, or the near-saints that went around giving their hearts out. Just normal people. Stoneface didn't like normal people, which was okay since he didn't like anybody, but he certainly tolerated them. He felt most at home tucked away, watching a crowd willing to argue that the sky was a fetching shade of black if they thought it'd get them somewhere.
Those were the people he made laws for.
"Let's go inside. I'll write up the beginning of the will, all right? So long as we're clear about what's going to happen in the future."
Reply
"Plenty of--actually it's weird. I kinda think we don't have any real heroes. Just normal people. Good people but they're just guys like us. Dash once mentioned wanting to--actually never mind. That's his secret to tell."
Heroes were teams of people that swooped in to save the day at the last minute. Nobody died on a hero's watch. They could overpower and outgun anything in their path. That was Ghost's definition of a hero so no there were no heroes in Edensphere. Dash and Cross once mentioned that they wanted to start a superhero team, months ago. But Ghost knew it wasn't going anywhere because to be a superhero you had to believe in rules and you had to fight villains who were constricted by those rules. Here there were no villains here to fight. The rules and conduct changed everyday. People disappeared and reappeared for no reason. How could you be a superhero living like this?
You couldn't. At least Ghost couldn't.
"Yeah ok."
Reply
They sat at the small kitchen table, and Stoneface picked up one of those lengthy law books you could kill somebody with, and looked up how to do a will. He lit a candle, and as neatly as he could, he filled a page with his spidery writing, full of the right words. Not as good as what Justice could do - nobody was quite like Justice with words - but it would have to do. Occasionally, he gestured towards Ghost to sign bits.
And then it was as good as it ever would get. He tapped Ghost on the shoulder, lightly, pushing him out of his chair. "Time for bed. There's blankets and pillows on the couch for you, which I trust you'll be sleeping on, 'cos Blood will just about pitch a fit if you're not there when she wakes up. Go on. I'm just going to stay up a little longer."
His head was too full of different worries and questions for sleep. He'd stay up and go through some papers - damned papers! - which was a surefire nightcap if he ever knew one, and he'd end up in his bed soon enough, which he was more or less used to. What Ghost and Blood needed, however, was a good night's sleep. It wouldn't solve everything, but it'd solve enough.
Reply
Leave a comment