Voting Part 3- Final Challenge
Sorry for the delay.
Voting is DIFFERENT for the final Challenge. Please read the rules carefully.
dallin_dae, fool_of_ships, and brighteyed_jill do not need to vote. You can still leave feedback if you wish:) Please remember the deadlines for your next parts:)
1. ANYONE CAN VOTE. You don't have to be a member or a participant to vote.
2. Please COMMENT and vote for THE BEST FIC Comments are screened
3. The challenge rules can be found here, Does the fic follow the rules of the challenge? This should be a factor in your voting.
4. You may leave feedback on any or all fics if you wish. Writers enjoy feedback. If you loved a fic, tell the author:)
5. Don't vote for your own entry.
6. Don't tell people to vote for you. Keep your fic anonymous until the results are posted.
7. Voting is screened, no one will know who you voted for.
8. You are not to vote for a particular style you don't like or something like that, but on the quality of the fics.
9. Remember. You are only voting for ONE fic of BEST quality.
Voting will be open until 10pm EST December 22nd, when the winner will be announced! :)
FIC #1
Focus Character:: Robert Bishop
Title: Philosopher's Stone
Spoilers: Through 2x11, “Powerless”
Bob was an unremarkable man.
He never had the handsome, military-office efficacy of Arthur Petrelli, the cold imperiousness of Kaito Nakamura, or the easy magnetism of Adam Monroe. To describe Bob, people used words like “unassuming,” “undistinguished,” and “bland.” He was the type of man who invited being thrown up against walls, even by laughingstock geneticists.
In his work with the Company, Bob's mundanity worked to his advantage. Certain positions, like Regional Sales Manager at Primatech Paper, required Bob's particular ability to make no impression whatsoever. Coworkers and acquaintances took to calling him “good old Bob” because, of course, the phrase meant nothing at all, and there was no more precise expression to describe Bob's utter lack of distinction.
That was the trouble with alchemy, Bob knew. He could change the world around him, transforming elements to his will, but he could never change himself. He could never make himself remarkable. He could never transcend the crushing weight of his mediocrity. Until Elle.
********
Bob wasn't able to hold Elle until she was three days old. The doctors said she had an erratic heartbeat: something to do with the heart's electrical signals. They ran some tests and kept her under observation, but they never found a cause. Years later Bob would look back on those days, thinking that even then there were signs that his little girl was special, was ready to push herself for the sake of her abilities.
When they put her in Bob's arms for the first time, she cried and cried, waving her tiny arms around. This little creature would not be ordinary. Bob realized that right away. People would notice her, would respect her. Maybe even fear her. He would make Elle the best. Neither the Petrelli brats nor little Hiro showed any glimmer of greatness in childhood, but his daughter would be the exception.
Victoria Pratt warned him that two parents with the genetic marker for abilities would not necessarily pass on the traits to their offspring. He ignored her. Such platitudes were all well and good for the Petrellis, whose precious little Nathan never so much as hovered during his childhood, but his daughter was capable of more. He'd make sure of it.
********
When Elle was in first grade, Bob got a call from the principal telling him that something was wrong with his daughter. During recess she had been left in charge of the class pet, a Dutch rabbit named Bandit. At the end of recess, Bandit was dead: singed and reeking in his cage.
Elle was sitting outside the principal's office, sniffling pathetically when Bob arrived. “I didn't do anything,” she wailed. “I just brushed him.”
“Tough little girls don't cry,” Bob told her. She flinched at the familiar admonition, and scrubbed her tears away. “That's better.”
Instead of talking to the principal, he took Elle to look at the rabbit. Its fur was charred in places, and the whole classroom smelled of cooked meat. Bob looked thoughtfully from the dead pet to his daughter, and thought about the fire at Elle's grandmother's house last year. Bob started to feel the beginnings of pride.
********
The next morning, instead of taking Elle to wait for the bus, Bob drove her to Hartsdale.
When they walked into the facility together, Thompson raised an eyebrow. “Is it take your daughter to work day?” he asked.
“She's manifesting abilities.” Bob passed her little hand into Thompson's. “Take her down to the lab and get started.”
“Daddy.” Elle turned her wide blue eyes up to Bob. “Where are you going?”
“I have work to do. It's time for you to be a big girl.” He smiled, chest swelling with pride when Elle straightened up to her full height and put on a serious expression, ready to be brave. “Good girl,” he told her. To Thompson, he said, “She's all yours.”
********
When Elle was twelve, she told Bob she hated him. “I wish you were dead,” she screamed at him from behind the glass. “All of you, and your stupid shrinks! I hate you!”
Bob walked away, fuming. He had invested a great deal of energy in making Elle into a useful tool for the Company. Despite all his efforts, she continued to disappoint. It took time, he knew, to transmute an element. The process was supposed to take centuries, but someone with his talent should be able to speed up the process, to purify and strengthen whatever he touched. Elle was not the best material to work with, but his reputation depended on making her into something worthwhile. He would not allow her to fail. He would find another way to refine her.
“Wait! Wait wait wait!” she shouted after him. “Don't leave me here!”
Bob stepped back up to the observation window and regarded his daughter coolly. “You know what happens when you lose control of your powers. You've lived here for four years; you should understand the rules.”
“I didn't mean to,” she said softly.
“Then you need to be strong enough to control yourself. What did I tell you about losing?”
“I'm sorry Daddy.” She hung her head.
“The work I do is very important,” Bob said. “I only have time for winners.”
“I know Daddy. I said I was sorry!”
Bob shook his head wearily. Sometime Elle was so weak that he despaired of her ever living up to her potential. “I'll be back in a few days. If you're ready to be tough by then, I'll give you another chance.”
“I'll be ready,” she said. Bob gave a satisfied nod at the spark in her eyes. His little girl was finally starting to temper.
********
When Elle was twenty-two, she told Bob no for the first time.
“I can't,” she said.
Bob looked up from his desk. He couldn't have heard correctly. “What?”
“I can't do it.” She immediately ducked her head, ready for a rebuke. At least she knew her behavior was weak.
“Elle, it's your job. I thought you were tougher than this.”
“I'm not. I try to be tough, but…” She scrunched up her face in frustration. A normal girl would have cried, and Bob silently congratulated himself that Elle was better than that. “I just want to do something else for a change.”
“Go to your room,” Bob said.
“I'm not twelve any more!”
“Do you want me to call the guards?”
Elle glared at him. “No, Daddy.” She went.
Bob picked up the phone and dialed out. “Noah. How's Claire? Uh huh. I need the Haitian in Hartsdale. Put him on the next flight.”
********
Bob sat beside the Haitian at Elle's bedside, and together they sorted through his daughter's memories like a deck of cards, discarding the ones that she didn't need, the ones that might make her weak.
Take the memory of bringing her here for testing when she was seven.
Leave the memory of breaking her leg by falling off her bike.
Take the memory of riding ponies at her fifth birthday party.
Leave the memory of her grandmother's burnt corpse laying the wreckage of her house.
Take the memory of screaming hate at her father.
Leave the memory of electrocuting her psychiatrist.
Take the memory of her mother singing her to sleep as a child.
Leave the memory of pinning Adam Monroe to his bed, grinding her body into his.
And so on.
When she woke up, she would still be his daughter. She'd still be reckless, sadistic, and imperfect. But she would be stronger. She'd be better. She'd be closer to what Bob hoped for her all along.
If Bob could transmute iron into steel and lead into gold, then he could transform Elle. He just had to keep trying.
FIC #2
Focus Character::The Haitian
Title: Je m'appelle
Names have power.
It's not something he believes with the certainty of faith, but rather something he has learned to be true. He has seen spies unmasked and dying men revived at the sound of their names. He knows when a child begins to respond to its name, and that its parents will often have spoken it even before birth. And he knows that it was not what Thompson expected, years ago, to have introduced himself by name and received nothing in return.
It was shock that had stolen his voice at that first meeting, and distrust that had kept it away for weeks afterward. He could hear the rest of the people at the Company talking, over his head and in painfully fast English, always hard and businesslike except when they wanted something. Then it was slow and smiling, innocence that smelled of poison. He would have had nothing to say even if he could have spoken.
He heard Thompson on the telephone one day, pleading for help from the person on the other end; and the next morning he was shown to an office he'd never seen, with a similarly unfamiliar woman looking through papers inside. She wouldn't look at him until Thompson had left, and then her face was elegantly unreadable. He says you won't speak, she said, in unexpected French, and instantly she was better than a stranger. That's fine, but if that's what you want then you'd better know how to read. While he was still staring, she added, I'm Angela. Do you have a name?
He only nodded. Just like my boys, said Angela, with a long-suffering smile. Let's hope you do as well at your studies.
He had never expected his studies to include experiments, or learning the difference between a hasty eradication of a lifetime of memory and a precise removal of only a few details. She had explained to him the purpose of it all, how he would be able to help the Company do things they could only dream of before his arrival. The world would never accept us, she had said, one day in the office that had become their classroom. They would kill us all if they knew.
I know, maman, he had answered, his voice foreign from disuse; and she had stared. Don't tell them, please, he added when he realized what he had done.
They will never know, she said, and her eyes said she spoke truth. And he had taken the pencil from where it lay on the desk between them and painstakingly printed another truth, block letters that no power could extract from his mind to jot into his file. Angela had watched him, committing the moment to memory; and then she had taken a lighter from her handbag and held the page between them while it burned.
He remembers the ashes as he climbs the stairs at Bennet's house. It's what will happen to them all without secrecy, without the help he's been practicing for years to provide. Bennet's wife asks who he is, only once, and is silent. He doesn't tell her, even though he knows she'll never remember.
He hears Thompson and Bennet the next day, marveling at him, and realizes that they don't need his name. He's unique in this place, identifiable on sight and easily referenced. The Haitian, they say, as if he were a nation of one. It never brings his head around, never shocks him into obedience or freezes him in the path of a bullet. He doesn't want to be that vulnerable, and he knows he is perhaps the only person who can be certain that he never will.
The staff know him and his habit of slipping through darkness to meet with his maman . Tonight, he finds her asleep, alone, and he thanks all the loa he knows. He will never be sure whether she knew that he would do this, if she had ever anticipated feeling his fingertips on her own forehead, searching for every instance of revelation and carefully smoothing over the memory. I'm sorry, he says, though he knows she will have no memory of the pain he regrets having to cause her.
Names have power, and he has both. He doesn't plan to give up either one any time soon.
FIC #3
Focus Character:: West Rosen
Title:The Dangerous Art of Flying
After that first, desperate, exhilarating escape, West had sat up all night on his bed in the dark, hands shaking. The memory of the flight was all a blur, he knew he’d done it, vaguely recalled the rush of wind in his ears, and the indescribable, dizzying sensation of not just weightlessness, but power pushing him onward. But the details weren’t there, just adrenaline and dizziness, like a dream fading with time.
He’d flown. People didn’t do that, it was impossible. West had always been one of those kids with an overactive imagination, the sort that gives you a wonderful, rich young childhood, but right around the age of ten starts to mark you out as a weirdo to other kids. He’d dreamt of this sort of thing, wanted desperately to be special somehow, but he wasn’t delusional, wasn’t actually mental like the other kids thought he was. He knew people couldn’t fly.
Except he had.
Eventually he fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion sometime around 5am. He dreamt of a monster in horn-rimmed glasses.
West didn’t go to school the next day. His mother didn’t make him go, barely glanced at him when he wandered into the kitchen to get something to eat. He wanted to snap at her, ask her if she’d noticed he’d been gone, show her the mark on his neck, but he didn’t. He knew from experience her attention was best left anywhere other than him.
He’d stayed up the next night as well, sat in the dark looking out the window. The night sky was cloudless, crisp and covered in stars. It was calling to him, inviting him to soar up into it, immerse himself and look down on the world below.
Instead he curled up under the blanket and cried.
When he did go to school the next morning he kept away from the other kids. In all fairness, he always kept away from the other kids, but not through choice. This time however he sat quietly in one corner of the lunchroom, eating the sandwiches he’d made himself that morning whilst staring at mostly nothing, aware but not caring that he was cementing his position as a social outcast.
His history teacher had horn-rimmed glasses. West spent that lesson eyes fixed resolutely out the classroom window, at the wide-open blue skies.
3am that night he climbed out his bedroom window and up the tree in the backyard, then onto the roof. The night was cloudy and humid, no stars hung in the sky and the same sense of unlimited, boundless freedom being just a hair’s breadth away wasn’t there anymore. He stood on the edge of the roof, trying to look up at the sky but instead finding his gaze repeatedly drawn to the very solid looking paving slabs below.
“Come on. You’ve done this before,” he hissed at himself under his breath, willing himself to beat the panicking rapid beat of his heart and the lump in his throat, to step over the edge and fly.
But the ground looked so solid, the sky so bland, and he felt the push of gravity pinning him to the roof like he’d never thought to feel it before. He climbed down, back through the window and into bed, where he cried himself to sleep with hot angry tears.
That night Horn-Rimmed Glasses stuck a needle into his neck over and over, until it bled everywhere. When he woke up, West was half surprised that his pillow wasn’t soaked through with his own blood.
Finally, after a week, the humidity went away, and there was a beautiful clear sky. West’s mom had gone out, on a date with some guy, or to find a guy in a bar, or something like that, she hadn’t really said. He climbed out onto the roof again.
Looking straight up so nothing but the sky filled his vision West felt himself suddenly dizzy, like the world had dropped away. The sky was huge, so much bigger and immense than the ground, making West feel tiny below the spread of the universe, and filled with a sudden impulsive desire to be part of it.
When he finally tore his gaze away he was a good sixty feet above his house.
The sudden shock made him drop like a stone, the ground hurtling back in an instant, with just enough time for him to look back up at the star spattered blackness and feel himself come to a halt, just hanging there.
The ground, gravity, was irrelevant he realised. The rules don’t apply to you; don’t give them a second thought.
The realisation should have been liberating, it was liberating, but total freedom is a scary prospect. The open sky no longer looked boundless and inviting, it looked like a dark landscape that could swallow West up and never let him out. He’d dropped the last couple of feet to the roof, stumbled and nearly fallen off the edge, then hurried to the grounded safety of his bed. That night he dreamt of nothing but flying in a black expanse, unable to find the way out.
His mom was back the next day, Saturday, looking the worse for wear but, miraculously, with some fresh groceries in a bag. Wordlessly West packed the food away and make her a sandwich, which she took with a wan smile and a mumbled, “good boy, you’re such a good boy,” and then failed utterly to eat.
He left her to sleep whatever it was off and took his bike down to the beach. One end was packed with sunbathers, but further along where the golden sand turned into rocky pebbles there was more or less nobody. West sat there awhile, watching the sea and the horizon. A long while as it turned out, since before he knew it the sun was sitting low on the horizon, and dusk was setting in, the sky turning a collection of colours, gold to pink to blue again.
When he took off it was easy, like taking a step forward, just something natural. The ground dwindled away beneath him, as he climbed higher and higher, faster and faster.
It was… amazing didn’t even begin to cover it, but was all West’s mind could come up with. He didn’t know it was possible to be speechless in your head, but he was. He felt powerful, free, he felt special.
All the details on the ground beneath him looked tiny, all the roads, the houses, the beach, small and unimportant every one. He actually felt sorry for all those idiots at school who flicked spitballs at him, who shoved him into the lockers and shunned him at lunch, because they could never see all this. Never see how ridiculously small the stupid little town was, how much more was right out there over the horizon, and who could never, ever be able to go there as easily as West could. He’d heard once a quote from someone who’d been in space, or maybe it was someone speculating or philosophising or whatever, anyway, it had gone something like ‘when you look down on the Earth, you can’t see any borders or nations’, something like that. West knew exactly what that meant now. Those invisible lines, like our town and the next, good side of town, rough side of town, or hell, even the giant stupid invisible line that was California, they all meant nothing.
Because he was free, invisible crap like family, popularity, borders and all that meant nothing. One day, whenever he felt like it, he could just fly away.
Fly away from all the monsters with horn-rimmed glasses and sharp needles.
Voting is DIFFERENT for the final Challenge. Please read the rules carefully.
dallin_dae, fool_of_ships, and brighteyed_jill do not need to vote. You can still leave feedback if you wish:) Please remember the deadlines for your next parts:)
1. ANYONE CAN VOTE. You don't have to be a member or a participant to vote.
2. Please COMMENT and vote for THE BEST FIC Comments are screened
3. The challenge rules can be found here, Does the fic follow the rules of the challenge? This should be a factor in your voting.
4. You may leave feedback on any or all fics if you wish. Writers enjoy feedback. If you loved a fic, tell the author:)
5. Don't vote for your own entry.
6. Don't tell people to vote for you. Keep your fic anonymous until the results are posted.
7. Voting is screened, no one will know who you voted for.
8. You are not to vote for a particular style you don't like or something like that, but on the quality of the fics.
9. Remember. You are only voting for ONE fic of BEST quality.
Voting will be open until 10pm EST December 22nd, when the winner will be announced! :)
FIC #1
Focus Character:: Robert Bishop
Title: Philosopher's Stone
Spoilers: Through 2x11, “Powerless”
Bob was an unremarkable man.
He never had the handsome, military-office efficacy of Arthur Petrelli, the cold imperiousness of Kaito Nakamura, or the easy magnetism of Adam Monroe. To describe Bob, people used words like “unassuming,” “undistinguished,” and “bland.” He was the type of man who invited being thrown up against walls, even by laughingstock geneticists.
In his work with the Company, Bob's mundanity worked to his advantage. Certain positions, like Regional Sales Manager at Primatech Paper, required Bob's particular ability to make no impression whatsoever. Coworkers and acquaintances took to calling him “good old Bob” because, of course, the phrase meant nothing at all, and there was no more precise expression to describe Bob's utter lack of distinction.
That was the trouble with alchemy, Bob knew. He could change the world around him, transforming elements to his will, but he could never change himself. He could never make himself remarkable. He could never transcend the crushing weight of his mediocrity. Until Elle.
********
Bob wasn't able to hold Elle until she was three days old. The doctors said she had an erratic heartbeat: something to do with the heart's electrical signals. They ran some tests and kept her under observation, but they never found a cause. Years later Bob would look back on those days, thinking that even then there were signs that his little girl was special, was ready to push herself for the sake of her abilities.
When they put her in Bob's arms for the first time, she cried and cried, waving her tiny arms around. This little creature would not be ordinary. Bob realized that right away. People would notice her, would respect her. Maybe even fear her. He would make Elle the best. Neither the Petrelli brats nor little Hiro showed any glimmer of greatness in childhood, but his daughter would be the exception.
Victoria Pratt warned him that two parents with the genetic marker for abilities would not necessarily pass on the traits to their offspring. He ignored her. Such platitudes were all well and good for the Petrellis, whose precious little Nathan never so much as hovered during his childhood, but his daughter was capable of more. He'd make sure of it.
********
When Elle was in first grade, Bob got a call from the principal telling him that something was wrong with his daughter. During recess she had been left in charge of the class pet, a Dutch rabbit named Bandit. At the end of recess, Bandit was dead: singed and reeking in his cage.
Elle was sitting outside the principal's office, sniffling pathetically when Bob arrived. “I didn't do anything,” she wailed. “I just brushed him.”
“Tough little girls don't cry,” Bob told her. She flinched at the familiar admonition, and scrubbed her tears away. “That's better.”
Instead of talking to the principal, he took Elle to look at the rabbit. Its fur was charred in places, and the whole classroom smelled of cooked meat. Bob looked thoughtfully from the dead pet to his daughter, and thought about the fire at Elle's grandmother's house last year. Bob started to feel the beginnings of pride.
********
The next morning, instead of taking Elle to wait for the bus, Bob drove her to Hartsdale.
When they walked into the facility together, Thompson raised an eyebrow. “Is it take your daughter to work day?” he asked.
“She's manifesting abilities.” Bob passed her little hand into Thompson's. “Take her down to the lab and get started.”
“Daddy.” Elle turned her wide blue eyes up to Bob. “Where are you going?”
“I have work to do. It's time for you to be a big girl.” He smiled, chest swelling with pride when Elle straightened up to her full height and put on a serious expression, ready to be brave. “Good girl,” he told her. To Thompson, he said, “She's all yours.”
********
When Elle was twelve, she told Bob she hated him. “I wish you were dead,” she screamed at him from behind the glass. “All of you, and your stupid shrinks! I hate you!”
Bob walked away, fuming. He had invested a great deal of energy in making Elle into a useful tool for the Company. Despite all his efforts, she continued to disappoint. It took time, he knew, to transmute an element. The process was supposed to take centuries, but someone with his talent should be able to speed up the process, to purify and strengthen whatever he touched. Elle was not the best material to work with, but his reputation depended on making her into something worthwhile. He would not allow her to fail. He would find another way to refine her.
“Wait! Wait wait wait!” she shouted after him. “Don't leave me here!”
Bob stepped back up to the observation window and regarded his daughter coolly. “You know what happens when you lose control of your powers. You've lived here for four years; you should understand the rules.”
“I didn't mean to,” she said softly.
“Then you need to be strong enough to control yourself. What did I tell you about losing?”
“I'm sorry Daddy.” She hung her head.
“The work I do is very important,” Bob said. “I only have time for winners.”
“I know Daddy. I said I was sorry!”
Bob shook his head wearily. Sometime Elle was so weak that he despaired of her ever living up to her potential. “I'll be back in a few days. If you're ready to be tough by then, I'll give you another chance.”
“I'll be ready,” she said. Bob gave a satisfied nod at the spark in her eyes. His little girl was finally starting to temper.
********
When Elle was twenty-two, she told Bob no for the first time.
“I can't,” she said.
Bob looked up from his desk. He couldn't have heard correctly. “What?”
“I can't do it.” She immediately ducked her head, ready for a rebuke. At least she knew her behavior was weak.
“Elle, it's your job. I thought you were tougher than this.”
“I'm not. I try to be tough, but…” She scrunched up her face in frustration. A normal girl would have cried, and Bob silently congratulated himself that Elle was better than that. “I just want to do something else for a change.”
“Go to your room,” Bob said.
“I'm not twelve any more!”
“Do you want me to call the guards?”
Elle glared at him. “No, Daddy.” She went.
Bob picked up the phone and dialed out. “Noah. How's Claire? Uh huh. I need the Haitian in Hartsdale. Put him on the next flight.”
********
Bob sat beside the Haitian at Elle's bedside, and together they sorted through his daughter's memories like a deck of cards, discarding the ones that she didn't need, the ones that might make her weak.
Take the memory of bringing her here for testing when she was seven.
Leave the memory of breaking her leg by falling off her bike.
Take the memory of riding ponies at her fifth birthday party.
Leave the memory of her grandmother's burnt corpse laying the wreckage of her house.
Take the memory of screaming hate at her father.
Leave the memory of electrocuting her psychiatrist.
Take the memory of her mother singing her to sleep as a child.
Leave the memory of pinning Adam Monroe to his bed, grinding her body into his.
And so on.
When she woke up, she would still be his daughter. She'd still be reckless, sadistic, and imperfect. But she would be stronger. She'd be better. She'd be closer to what Bob hoped for her all along.
If Bob could transmute iron into steel and lead into gold, then he could transform Elle. He just had to keep trying.
FIC #2
Focus Character::The Haitian
Title: Je m'appelle
Names have power.
It's not something he believes with the certainty of faith, but rather something he has learned to be true. He has seen spies unmasked and dying men revived at the sound of their names. He knows when a child begins to respond to its name, and that its parents will often have spoken it even before birth. And he knows that it was not what Thompson expected, years ago, to have introduced himself by name and received nothing in return.
It was shock that had stolen his voice at that first meeting, and distrust that had kept it away for weeks afterward. He could hear the rest of the people at the Company talking, over his head and in painfully fast English, always hard and businesslike except when they wanted something. Then it was slow and smiling, innocence that smelled of poison. He would have had nothing to say even if he could have spoken.
He heard Thompson on the telephone one day, pleading for help from the person on the other end; and the next morning he was shown to an office he'd never seen, with a similarly unfamiliar woman looking through papers inside. She wouldn't look at him until Thompson had left, and then her face was elegantly unreadable. He says you won't speak, she said, in unexpected French, and instantly she was better than a stranger. That's fine, but if that's what you want then you'd better know how to read. While he was still staring, she added, I'm Angela. Do you have a name?
He only nodded. Just like my boys, said Angela, with a long-suffering smile. Let's hope you do as well at your studies.
He had never expected his studies to include experiments, or learning the difference between a hasty eradication of a lifetime of memory and a precise removal of only a few details. She had explained to him the purpose of it all, how he would be able to help the Company do things they could only dream of before his arrival. The world would never accept us, she had said, one day in the office that had become their classroom. They would kill us all if they knew.
I know, maman, he had answered, his voice foreign from disuse; and she had stared. Don't tell them, please, he added when he realized what he had done.
They will never know, she said, and her eyes said she spoke truth. And he had taken the pencil from where it lay on the desk between them and painstakingly printed another truth, block letters that no power could extract from his mind to jot into his file. Angela had watched him, committing the moment to memory; and then she had taken a lighter from her handbag and held the page between them while it burned.
He remembers the ashes as he climbs the stairs at Bennet's house. It's what will happen to them all without secrecy, without the help he's been practicing for years to provide. Bennet's wife asks who he is, only once, and is silent. He doesn't tell her, even though he knows she'll never remember.
He hears Thompson and Bennet the next day, marveling at him, and realizes that they don't need his name. He's unique in this place, identifiable on sight and easily referenced. The Haitian, they say, as if he were a nation of one. It never brings his head around, never shocks him into obedience or freezes him in the path of a bullet. He doesn't want to be that vulnerable, and he knows he is perhaps the only person who can be certain that he never will.
The staff know him and his habit of slipping through darkness to meet with his maman . Tonight, he finds her asleep, alone, and he thanks all the loa he knows. He will never be sure whether she knew that he would do this, if she had ever anticipated feeling his fingertips on her own forehead, searching for every instance of revelation and carefully smoothing over the memory. I'm sorry, he says, though he knows she will have no memory of the pain he regrets having to cause her.
Names have power, and he has both. He doesn't plan to give up either one any time soon.
FIC #3
Focus Character:: West Rosen
Title:The Dangerous Art of Flying
After that first, desperate, exhilarating escape, West had sat up all night on his bed in the dark, hands shaking. The memory of the flight was all a blur, he knew he’d done it, vaguely recalled the rush of wind in his ears, and the indescribable, dizzying sensation of not just weightlessness, but power pushing him onward. But the details weren’t there, just adrenaline and dizziness, like a dream fading with time.
He’d flown. People didn’t do that, it was impossible. West had always been one of those kids with an overactive imagination, the sort that gives you a wonderful, rich young childhood, but right around the age of ten starts to mark you out as a weirdo to other kids. He’d dreamt of this sort of thing, wanted desperately to be special somehow, but he wasn’t delusional, wasn’t actually mental like the other kids thought he was. He knew people couldn’t fly.
Except he had.
Eventually he fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion sometime around 5am. He dreamt of a monster in horn-rimmed glasses.
West didn’t go to school the next day. His mother didn’t make him go, barely glanced at him when he wandered into the kitchen to get something to eat. He wanted to snap at her, ask her if she’d noticed he’d been gone, show her the mark on his neck, but he didn’t. He knew from experience her attention was best left anywhere other than him.
He’d stayed up the next night as well, sat in the dark looking out the window. The night sky was cloudless, crisp and covered in stars. It was calling to him, inviting him to soar up into it, immerse himself and look down on the world below.
Instead he curled up under the blanket and cried.
When he did go to school the next morning he kept away from the other kids. In all fairness, he always kept away from the other kids, but not through choice. This time however he sat quietly in one corner of the lunchroom, eating the sandwiches he’d made himself that morning whilst staring at mostly nothing, aware but not caring that he was cementing his position as a social outcast.
His history teacher had horn-rimmed glasses. West spent that lesson eyes fixed resolutely out the classroom window, at the wide-open blue skies.
3am that night he climbed out his bedroom window and up the tree in the backyard, then onto the roof. The night was cloudy and humid, no stars hung in the sky and the same sense of unlimited, boundless freedom being just a hair’s breadth away wasn’t there anymore. He stood on the edge of the roof, trying to look up at the sky but instead finding his gaze repeatedly drawn to the very solid looking paving slabs below.
“Come on. You’ve done this before,” he hissed at himself under his breath, willing himself to beat the panicking rapid beat of his heart and the lump in his throat, to step over the edge and fly.
But the ground looked so solid, the sky so bland, and he felt the push of gravity pinning him to the roof like he’d never thought to feel it before. He climbed down, back through the window and into bed, where he cried himself to sleep with hot angry tears.
That night Horn-Rimmed Glasses stuck a needle into his neck over and over, until it bled everywhere. When he woke up, West was half surprised that his pillow wasn’t soaked through with his own blood.
Finally, after a week, the humidity went away, and there was a beautiful clear sky. West’s mom had gone out, on a date with some guy, or to find a guy in a bar, or something like that, she hadn’t really said. He climbed out onto the roof again.
Looking straight up so nothing but the sky filled his vision West felt himself suddenly dizzy, like the world had dropped away. The sky was huge, so much bigger and immense than the ground, making West feel tiny below the spread of the universe, and filled with a sudden impulsive desire to be part of it.
When he finally tore his gaze away he was a good sixty feet above his house.
The sudden shock made him drop like a stone, the ground hurtling back in an instant, with just enough time for him to look back up at the star spattered blackness and feel himself come to a halt, just hanging there.
The ground, gravity, was irrelevant he realised. The rules don’t apply to you; don’t give them a second thought.
The realisation should have been liberating, it was liberating, but total freedom is a scary prospect. The open sky no longer looked boundless and inviting, it looked like a dark landscape that could swallow West up and never let him out. He’d dropped the last couple of feet to the roof, stumbled and nearly fallen off the edge, then hurried to the grounded safety of his bed. That night he dreamt of nothing but flying in a black expanse, unable to find the way out.
His mom was back the next day, Saturday, looking the worse for wear but, miraculously, with some fresh groceries in a bag. Wordlessly West packed the food away and make her a sandwich, which she took with a wan smile and a mumbled, “good boy, you’re such a good boy,” and then failed utterly to eat.
He left her to sleep whatever it was off and took his bike down to the beach. One end was packed with sunbathers, but further along where the golden sand turned into rocky pebbles there was more or less nobody. West sat there awhile, watching the sea and the horizon. A long while as it turned out, since before he knew it the sun was sitting low on the horizon, and dusk was setting in, the sky turning a collection of colours, gold to pink to blue again.
When he took off it was easy, like taking a step forward, just something natural. The ground dwindled away beneath him, as he climbed higher and higher, faster and faster.
It was… amazing didn’t even begin to cover it, but was all West’s mind could come up with. He didn’t know it was possible to be speechless in your head, but he was. He felt powerful, free, he felt special.
All the details on the ground beneath him looked tiny, all the roads, the houses, the beach, small and unimportant every one. He actually felt sorry for all those idiots at school who flicked spitballs at him, who shoved him into the lockers and shunned him at lunch, because they could never see all this. Never see how ridiculously small the stupid little town was, how much more was right out there over the horizon, and who could never, ever be able to go there as easily as West could. He’d heard once a quote from someone who’d been in space, or maybe it was someone speculating or philosophising or whatever, anyway, it had gone something like ‘when you look down on the Earth, you can’t see any borders or nations’, something like that. West knew exactly what that meant now. Those invisible lines, like our town and the next, good side of town, rough side of town, or hell, even the giant stupid invisible line that was California, they all meant nothing.
Because he was free, invisible crap like family, popularity, borders and all that meant nothing. One day, whenever he felt like it, he could just fly away.
Fly away from all the monsters with horn-rimmed glasses and sharp needles.