Seconds Ticking Away [Original, 1/1]
Title: Seconds Ticking Away
Fandom: Original
Characters: Ash, Ren, some miscellaneous park people
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Nothing really. Some action (as in bad guys)! Dirty language.
Summary: The world won't end today, but that doesn't mean that life isn't hard.
Comments: This is actually an old fic that I doubt anyone here has read, haha. It was written for a Gaia contest (which I won, thanks very much *coughs*) and is actually written in first person POV. Premise was... that we had to include some lines from a song (which I chose Linkin Park). It was really quick, written in the span of one night (which was like the day before contest closes, but hell, that's just me being stupid), and the plot is wonky. S'all right though. XD Could be worse. Oh! And I shamelessly stole the last line from Robert Frost's Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening. 2567 words.
It's not like what they say.
Death's just death, ya know? One day you're here and the next day you're not. You learn after the years pass by (so many goddamn years) that life is nothing more than just a prelude to death and you (humans, I'm telling you) are just this tiny speck in the wind. Hey, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. There are a lot of worse things than just being a blip on the radar, a momentary supernova. You can do what I've been doing for years. You can have a destiny that's so fecking heavy that it's surprising that I manage to stay upright by the end of the day.
(Most of the time, at least).
Seriously. I'll give you my (worthlessly) long life and a pack of cigs to tide you over. Don't smoke? You're going to start. It's not like it's going to hurt you any.
~~~~~~~~~~
People don't believe me when I tell them that there's something nasty coming by. Ren does, but then again, he's been with me long enough that the only reason why he's still alive is because he listens to me. That's why I'm not surprised when some bottle blond blinks vacuously at me and tilts her head instead of hitting the ground and running like I told her to.
"What?" is her stunning reply to my rather terse, 'run and keep running out of here if you value your life'.
I would have commented on her inability to follow simple instructions, but Ren grabs me by my coat's sleeve and pulls me away.
"Not the time, Ash," he says and is pulling things out of those big pockets of his that may or may not help (probably not), but were better than nothing. There are wards and charms and spells attached to string and what looks like a toy frog, but I really didn't need to know.
"Clock's ticking," I remind him, "Time is a valuable thing." I can feel time, literally, slip away, one small grain at a time. My life revolves around my internal clock--which would have maybe made a funny joke if only things aren’t so damned serious.
I'm not a seer. Not a prophet. I can't do much of anything useful with my 'gift' (or curse or maybe even a freak accident). I certainly can't get rich quick off of it; I can't see lotto tickets or know what number the roulette ball lands on. It's just a giant counter to all the bad shit that could happen on earth. It's just this weird foreteller of doom that I got stuck with.
One would hope that all it does is count down to little things like tripping over my shoes and landing on my face or maybe even getting hit by a car.
Of course not. Things would be way too easy then. No, my counter only dings at the really bad stuff. Like, earth shattering, holy-crap-hang-onto-your-pants kinds of things. Like right now? Right now the earth is shaking--and someone is screaming earthquake, but it isn't, and it's not only my gut feeling that tells me this--and I'm staring up at the sky and towards a rift between time and space that very few people can see and even less can handle.
Like that hole in the sky and what looked like smoke, heavy and black, seeping through.
"Ash," Ren says quietly, and I jerk my attention away from the smoking hole to see him palming three wards layered with runes and magic. He snaps out a few quick words and throws them towards the hole. The smoke slows, the hole doesn't get any larger, but it doesn't actually stop. This is where I come in.
I'm a Balancer. I make things right again, or I try to, because otherwise things get hairy and people die.
I became a Balancer because I have this internal hourglass, not the other way around. The damn thing drags me into the weirdest situations and I’m not allowed to run away.
Really, I’ve been told that.
Still, I do my job and I do it well.
I don’t really think about slicing a finger open anymore. Bottle-blond lady is looking at me like I’m insane and hurries away, heels clacking on the concrete, but I ignore her in favor of letting my blood drip down to the ground. Like I said. I have no magic of my own, but apparently (or so they told me, and evidence has pointed out that they might be right) my blood holds properties in it that can heal rifts like these (some may argue that’s magic, but I’ve been told multiple times that it isn’t. I don’t get it, but I don’t bother trying to argue with the old farts that rule my life).
Blood on the ground. Blood in the sky. I swipe my bleeding thumb over one of the paper wards that Ren wordlessly hands me and give it back to him. That’s why he’s been assigned to me, because otherwise I’d never be able to do anything on my own.
As it is, I’m pretty much just a walking blood bank.
He takes it and that paper shifts and shrinks and becomes a red streaked dove in his hands. It’s beautiful in a way, and it lifts from Ren’s hand with a few strong wing beats before streaking off towards the rift. It hurls itself through and light flares from the bloody ground by my feet and by the rift. My blood is the connection it takes for the earth to form a link between the rift and itself so that it can close the rift.
It does. Slowly, and more of that black smoke comes out, but it closes. Problem is that closing the rift is one thing and getting rid of what the rift has spewed out is another.
Luckily it’s just smoke this time.
Or not so luckily, because the smoke-which didn’t disperse as smoke does, and should have been a huge honking clue right there-touches a tree. The tree withers, leaves turning brown and branches curling in of itself, and dies.
Most of the people in the area had already cleared out, but there were still some stragglers gaping at the suddenly dead tree and the smoke that suddenly seems to grow bigger.
Oh for…
“Run you morons!” I snap at the frozen people. Some blink idiotically at me, while others seem to take my advice and take off, faces pale and disbelieving. It’s mean of me, but I can’t care about the stupid ones because that smoke seems to be drifting in my direction and the last thing I want is to die like that tree.
My thumb hurts, but it’s an ache that I’m used to, and I pay it no mind as I dig in my pockets and back away, the smoke coming towards me like a bloodhound on a trail. That ever sense of doom ticks on and I should have known that just closing the rift wouldn’t end things.
Ren’s suddenly in front of me, one hand shoving me back while the other stretches out in front of him and towards the smoke that’s acting a little too sentient for my comfort.
I land on my butt and scowl, but he only has eyes for the smoke. Light flares in his hand and spreads outwards in a net and he casts it with a flick of his fingers. Thing is, the smoke disperses through the net like nothing is there and wow; now we’re kind of in trouble.
Where the hell is… I suddenly grin, large and vicious as my fingers close on something small and round in my pocket and I get up and jostle Ren aside even though he’s trying to keep me back. It is his job to keep me safe and all, and usually I appreciate it, but sometimes he takes things a step too far.
“Stop it, Ash!”
I stomp on his foot-poor guy-and dart around him while he’s cringing before flinging the small agate I have in my hands right at the smoke.
I don’t have any magic. Trust me; I’ve been tested a million times. But what I do have are allies who will do anything to see me not die, and they have magic to spare. Literally, in this case, as the agate glows when I shout out the words that Chesa gave me, right when it reaches the smoke.
It explodes in teeth shaking light and pressure. I turn my head away and close my eyes because it’ll blind me if I stare too long. As it is, I already have heavy oddly colored blobs underneath my eye lids and I can hear Ren swearing up a storm a few feet away.
The light slowly fades and I crack open a lid, squinting through blurry eyes towards Ren and the smoke. “Hey, Re-oh crap.” It’s a lot smaller than it was before, but the smoke is definitely still there, and like an idiot, I stand there watching as it regroups and starts to draw closer.
Ren’s hand clamps down on my wrist and he’s tugging me away, half dragging me through the park.
I dig in my heels and try to yank out my hand. “What are you doing? It’s still there!” My voice is a bit shrill, but hey, I have a reason for it. Ren’s not listening to me though, his grip just gets tighter and his stride gets longer.
“Ren, you fecking moron!” I snap, and he just shakes his head.
“I need to get you somewhere safe.” He’s not even looking at me. “Then you can call for backup while I’m getting rid of-”
“People are going to die.” I twist my hand and jerk out of his hold in a smooth move taught to me after many hours on a gym mat. Ren jerks around but I’m already heading back towards the smoke and the screams of people it gets close to.
I’m no hero. I don’t even like most people. If I thought that I couldn’t do anything, then I’d be following Ren’s plan exactly. But I’m a Balancer. I see things through. Beyond that? I’ve been lent many kicking items that may help turn the tide against this smoke thing. I’m not helpless, and even though my power is borrowed, it’s still there.
I press a fist against my chest as the clock ticks life away. I can feel my own hurried heartbeat.
“People always die, Ash,” Ren growls out, and I know he’s stressed because Ren’s usually a bleeding heart. All about saving the puppies from the rain and that sort of crap. “But-”
“But in the end, it doesn’t even matter?” I interrupt and ran a little faster. Ren’s at my heels and I can see the smoke drifting through trees and bushes and oh, damn, poor squirrel. My hands fumble for my pockets and I can feel the outline of a some gum (ordinary), my keys (ordinary), a coin (if held, can translate anything), and a pen (ordinary, except for the fact it can write underwater and that’s pretty cool).
Then I find what I’m looking for and pull it out. ‘It’ being a small metal cube about the size of a marble.
“If you can get that smoke thing over to me, all of it, I can trap it in here.” I tap the sides with a fingernail and frown when Ren shakes his head.
“Just give it to me.” He’s doing that thing where he goes quiet and unhappy, and it makes you feel like crap. Still.
I shake my head. “Can’t,” I say, “Love to, but can’t. Carson’s keyed the thing to me and it won’t work unless I’m making it work. And you know that I can’t just transfer the key over to you, the entire not having magic thing.” I smile, and it’s a little bleak, but I should be forgiven.
In any event, I’m not dying here. I have too many things to do and my time hasn’t run out yet. That big day, the one my time piece is really ticking down for, not just these mini events, isn’t here yet. Won’t be for some time, so I think I’ll get through things fine. Sometimes things work out for me.
Ren has this screwed up look on his face of pure frustration, but he knows that I’m right. While I usually gloat when I’m right (because it happens less often that I’d like), I decide to let the moment pass. Not the time and not the place. Even I know that.
He stalks off towards the smoke thing without another word and I try to remember the phrase to work the box.
It’s that easy.
It helps that smoke-thing still wants to vaporize me and comes at me like an overeager puppy. It helps even more that Ren’s a Class A mage who casts a spell or two that makes the smoke bunch up so that none of it escapes when I shout out a phrase I don’t understand (it’s in Grrpbt, dwarf language, and I can barely speak English let alone a language that has almost no vowels). The tiny cube pulses with light. One side slides open and a vacuum forms, so strong it’s hard to breath.
A few seconds-five tops-and it’s over and I feel like I’m going to fall down right there. My legs are like jello (damn Ren for dragging me around) and my finger shake from the residual magic.
But it’s over.
At least this battle is.
~~~~~~~~~~
Clean up is the crappiest job in the world. I don’t envy the people who have to pick up after me, but I’m definitely not helping out either. Not that Ren or any of the others will let me, the way I’m being fussed over like a baby.
I lower my head, sitting in the back of a van with my feet dangling off the sides as I’m getting checked over by a medic. My mouth twists and I see Ren flinch out of the corner of my eyes.
Three people dead. One was younger than I am, probably a lively girl of eleven, and the other two a devoted couple.
I’m making crap up, but my mind always turns to scenes that give me the most grief. Ren says it’s just my guilt complex rearing its head, but I can just imagine the victims, clear as day, and I ache for them. Not because they died, but because they’re more names on a list longer than I care to know, who had hopes and dreams and aspirations and I bet the little girl probably wanted to be president or something.
I don’t feel bad for them. I’ve already justified their deaths. That’s what is making me feel terrible, and I won’t, can’t, tell a soul about it. Like I say, death’s just death, but sometimes…
Sometimes I wish that it didn’t happen so often around me.
I press a hand against my chest, can feel the slow beats of my heart pulse against my hand, and close my eyes.
“But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
Fandom: Original
Characters: Ash, Ren, some miscellaneous park people
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Nothing really. Some action (as in bad guys)! Dirty language.
Summary: The world won't end today, but that doesn't mean that life isn't hard.
Comments: This is actually an old fic that I doubt anyone here has read, haha. It was written for a Gaia contest (which I won, thanks very much *coughs*) and is actually written in first person POV. Premise was... that we had to include some lines from a song (which I chose Linkin Park). It was really quick, written in the span of one night (which was like the day before contest closes, but hell, that's just me being stupid), and the plot is wonky. S'all right though. XD Could be worse. Oh! And I shamelessly stole the last line from Robert Frost's Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening. 2567 words.
It's not like what they say.
Death's just death, ya know? One day you're here and the next day you're not. You learn after the years pass by (so many goddamn years) that life is nothing more than just a prelude to death and you (humans, I'm telling you) are just this tiny speck in the wind. Hey, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. There are a lot of worse things than just being a blip on the radar, a momentary supernova. You can do what I've been doing for years. You can have a destiny that's so fecking heavy that it's surprising that I manage to stay upright by the end of the day.
(Most of the time, at least).
Seriously. I'll give you my (worthlessly) long life and a pack of cigs to tide you over. Don't smoke? You're going to start. It's not like it's going to hurt you any.
~~~~~~~~~~
People don't believe me when I tell them that there's something nasty coming by. Ren does, but then again, he's been with me long enough that the only reason why he's still alive is because he listens to me. That's why I'm not surprised when some bottle blond blinks vacuously at me and tilts her head instead of hitting the ground and running like I told her to.
"What?" is her stunning reply to my rather terse, 'run and keep running out of here if you value your life'.
I would have commented on her inability to follow simple instructions, but Ren grabs me by my coat's sleeve and pulls me away.
"Not the time, Ash," he says and is pulling things out of those big pockets of his that may or may not help (probably not), but were better than nothing. There are wards and charms and spells attached to string and what looks like a toy frog, but I really didn't need to know.
"Clock's ticking," I remind him, "Time is a valuable thing." I can feel time, literally, slip away, one small grain at a time. My life revolves around my internal clock--which would have maybe made a funny joke if only things aren’t so damned serious.
I'm not a seer. Not a prophet. I can't do much of anything useful with my 'gift' (or curse or maybe even a freak accident). I certainly can't get rich quick off of it; I can't see lotto tickets or know what number the roulette ball lands on. It's just a giant counter to all the bad shit that could happen on earth. It's just this weird foreteller of doom that I got stuck with.
One would hope that all it does is count down to little things like tripping over my shoes and landing on my face or maybe even getting hit by a car.
Of course not. Things would be way too easy then. No, my counter only dings at the really bad stuff. Like, earth shattering, holy-crap-hang-onto-your-pants kinds of things. Like right now? Right now the earth is shaking--and someone is screaming earthquake, but it isn't, and it's not only my gut feeling that tells me this--and I'm staring up at the sky and towards a rift between time and space that very few people can see and even less can handle.
Like that hole in the sky and what looked like smoke, heavy and black, seeping through.
"Ash," Ren says quietly, and I jerk my attention away from the smoking hole to see him palming three wards layered with runes and magic. He snaps out a few quick words and throws them towards the hole. The smoke slows, the hole doesn't get any larger, but it doesn't actually stop. This is where I come in.
I'm a Balancer. I make things right again, or I try to, because otherwise things get hairy and people die.
I became a Balancer because I have this internal hourglass, not the other way around. The damn thing drags me into the weirdest situations and I’m not allowed to run away.
Really, I’ve been told that.
Still, I do my job and I do it well.
I don’t really think about slicing a finger open anymore. Bottle-blond lady is looking at me like I’m insane and hurries away, heels clacking on the concrete, but I ignore her in favor of letting my blood drip down to the ground. Like I said. I have no magic of my own, but apparently (or so they told me, and evidence has pointed out that they might be right) my blood holds properties in it that can heal rifts like these (some may argue that’s magic, but I’ve been told multiple times that it isn’t. I don’t get it, but I don’t bother trying to argue with the old farts that rule my life).
Blood on the ground. Blood in the sky. I swipe my bleeding thumb over one of the paper wards that Ren wordlessly hands me and give it back to him. That’s why he’s been assigned to me, because otherwise I’d never be able to do anything on my own.
As it is, I’m pretty much just a walking blood bank.
He takes it and that paper shifts and shrinks and becomes a red streaked dove in his hands. It’s beautiful in a way, and it lifts from Ren’s hand with a few strong wing beats before streaking off towards the rift. It hurls itself through and light flares from the bloody ground by my feet and by the rift. My blood is the connection it takes for the earth to form a link between the rift and itself so that it can close the rift.
It does. Slowly, and more of that black smoke comes out, but it closes. Problem is that closing the rift is one thing and getting rid of what the rift has spewed out is another.
Luckily it’s just smoke this time.
Or not so luckily, because the smoke-which didn’t disperse as smoke does, and should have been a huge honking clue right there-touches a tree. The tree withers, leaves turning brown and branches curling in of itself, and dies.
Most of the people in the area had already cleared out, but there were still some stragglers gaping at the suddenly dead tree and the smoke that suddenly seems to grow bigger.
Oh for…
“Run you morons!” I snap at the frozen people. Some blink idiotically at me, while others seem to take my advice and take off, faces pale and disbelieving. It’s mean of me, but I can’t care about the stupid ones because that smoke seems to be drifting in my direction and the last thing I want is to die like that tree.
My thumb hurts, but it’s an ache that I’m used to, and I pay it no mind as I dig in my pockets and back away, the smoke coming towards me like a bloodhound on a trail. That ever sense of doom ticks on and I should have known that just closing the rift wouldn’t end things.
Ren’s suddenly in front of me, one hand shoving me back while the other stretches out in front of him and towards the smoke that’s acting a little too sentient for my comfort.
I land on my butt and scowl, but he only has eyes for the smoke. Light flares in his hand and spreads outwards in a net and he casts it with a flick of his fingers. Thing is, the smoke disperses through the net like nothing is there and wow; now we’re kind of in trouble.
Where the hell is… I suddenly grin, large and vicious as my fingers close on something small and round in my pocket and I get up and jostle Ren aside even though he’s trying to keep me back. It is his job to keep me safe and all, and usually I appreciate it, but sometimes he takes things a step too far.
“Stop it, Ash!”
I stomp on his foot-poor guy-and dart around him while he’s cringing before flinging the small agate I have in my hands right at the smoke.
I don’t have any magic. Trust me; I’ve been tested a million times. But what I do have are allies who will do anything to see me not die, and they have magic to spare. Literally, in this case, as the agate glows when I shout out the words that Chesa gave me, right when it reaches the smoke.
It explodes in teeth shaking light and pressure. I turn my head away and close my eyes because it’ll blind me if I stare too long. As it is, I already have heavy oddly colored blobs underneath my eye lids and I can hear Ren swearing up a storm a few feet away.
The light slowly fades and I crack open a lid, squinting through blurry eyes towards Ren and the smoke. “Hey, Re-oh crap.” It’s a lot smaller than it was before, but the smoke is definitely still there, and like an idiot, I stand there watching as it regroups and starts to draw closer.
Ren’s hand clamps down on my wrist and he’s tugging me away, half dragging me through the park.
I dig in my heels and try to yank out my hand. “What are you doing? It’s still there!” My voice is a bit shrill, but hey, I have a reason for it. Ren’s not listening to me though, his grip just gets tighter and his stride gets longer.
“Ren, you fecking moron!” I snap, and he just shakes his head.
“I need to get you somewhere safe.” He’s not even looking at me. “Then you can call for backup while I’m getting rid of-”
“People are going to die.” I twist my hand and jerk out of his hold in a smooth move taught to me after many hours on a gym mat. Ren jerks around but I’m already heading back towards the smoke and the screams of people it gets close to.
I’m no hero. I don’t even like most people. If I thought that I couldn’t do anything, then I’d be following Ren’s plan exactly. But I’m a Balancer. I see things through. Beyond that? I’ve been lent many kicking items that may help turn the tide against this smoke thing. I’m not helpless, and even though my power is borrowed, it’s still there.
I press a fist against my chest as the clock ticks life away. I can feel my own hurried heartbeat.
“People always die, Ash,” Ren growls out, and I know he’s stressed because Ren’s usually a bleeding heart. All about saving the puppies from the rain and that sort of crap. “But-”
“But in the end, it doesn’t even matter?” I interrupt and ran a little faster. Ren’s at my heels and I can see the smoke drifting through trees and bushes and oh, damn, poor squirrel. My hands fumble for my pockets and I can feel the outline of a some gum (ordinary), my keys (ordinary), a coin (if held, can translate anything), and a pen (ordinary, except for the fact it can write underwater and that’s pretty cool).
Then I find what I’m looking for and pull it out. ‘It’ being a small metal cube about the size of a marble.
“If you can get that smoke thing over to me, all of it, I can trap it in here.” I tap the sides with a fingernail and frown when Ren shakes his head.
“Just give it to me.” He’s doing that thing where he goes quiet and unhappy, and it makes you feel like crap. Still.
I shake my head. “Can’t,” I say, “Love to, but can’t. Carson’s keyed the thing to me and it won’t work unless I’m making it work. And you know that I can’t just transfer the key over to you, the entire not having magic thing.” I smile, and it’s a little bleak, but I should be forgiven.
In any event, I’m not dying here. I have too many things to do and my time hasn’t run out yet. That big day, the one my time piece is really ticking down for, not just these mini events, isn’t here yet. Won’t be for some time, so I think I’ll get through things fine. Sometimes things work out for me.
Ren has this screwed up look on his face of pure frustration, but he knows that I’m right. While I usually gloat when I’m right (because it happens less often that I’d like), I decide to let the moment pass. Not the time and not the place. Even I know that.
He stalks off towards the smoke thing without another word and I try to remember the phrase to work the box.
It’s that easy.
It helps that smoke-thing still wants to vaporize me and comes at me like an overeager puppy. It helps even more that Ren’s a Class A mage who casts a spell or two that makes the smoke bunch up so that none of it escapes when I shout out a phrase I don’t understand (it’s in Grrpbt, dwarf language, and I can barely speak English let alone a language that has almost no vowels). The tiny cube pulses with light. One side slides open and a vacuum forms, so strong it’s hard to breath.
A few seconds-five tops-and it’s over and I feel like I’m going to fall down right there. My legs are like jello (damn Ren for dragging me around) and my finger shake from the residual magic.
But it’s over.
At least this battle is.
~~~~~~~~~~
Clean up is the crappiest job in the world. I don’t envy the people who have to pick up after me, but I’m definitely not helping out either. Not that Ren or any of the others will let me, the way I’m being fussed over like a baby.
I lower my head, sitting in the back of a van with my feet dangling off the sides as I’m getting checked over by a medic. My mouth twists and I see Ren flinch out of the corner of my eyes.
Three people dead. One was younger than I am, probably a lively girl of eleven, and the other two a devoted couple.
I’m making crap up, but my mind always turns to scenes that give me the most grief. Ren says it’s just my guilt complex rearing its head, but I can just imagine the victims, clear as day, and I ache for them. Not because they died, but because they’re more names on a list longer than I care to know, who had hopes and dreams and aspirations and I bet the little girl probably wanted to be president or something.
I don’t feel bad for them. I’ve already justified their deaths. That’s what is making me feel terrible, and I won’t, can’t, tell a soul about it. Like I say, death’s just death, but sometimes…
Sometimes I wish that it didn’t happen so often around me.
I press a hand against my chest, can feel the slow beats of my heart pulse against my hand, and close my eyes.
“But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”