Fic: Perchance To Dream (1/1)
Title: Perchance To Dream
Rating: R
Character: Wikus Van De Merwe
Word Count: 1,049
Summary: Wikus is having trouble remembering. And forgetting. For the cliche_bingo Prompt - Hypothermia & Extreme Cold. Spoilers for District 9.
Prompt Table: Here
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Title belongs to the immortal William Shakespeare.
Author’s Notes: Just a little randomness that popped into my head after seeing the film.
Perchance To Dream
There are nights where he still remembers what it’s like to feel cold, and to pull an extra blanket onto the bed, to burrow further into the warmth of his wife’s slender frame, to bleed into her breaths with the ebb and flow of the night.
The night feels still now, stoic and dark where there used to be stars, and the rough cut of sheet metal against his naked frame is nothing like the slide of bare legs, or even the subtle rub of stubble on shins bearing the soft silk of a woman, but Wikus remembers, and he pretends.
He wakes one morning, before the sunrise, with something fleshy and lukewarm held against him, the long tendrils of his fingers tangled around it, and for a hazy moment Wikus wonders if it’s all a dream. He blinks, though, and recognizes the dead hog pressed along his side for what it is. Confused, he notices the small child, eyes wide and glinting in the early shafts of stray light, shifting between Wikus and the pig carcass expectantly, and Wikus cannot help the surge of something warm and tender seep through him, surging with the sun.
He tugs the dead animal a little closer. He doesn’t flinch when the youth hovers, settles close to him, as close as possible without touching. He doesn’t remember when he stopped fearing them, stopped being repulsed by their proximity. He doesn’t remember a turning point, but he knows that what he’s feeling is close enough to sympathy, to camaraderie, to affection, that it should cause him some concern.
It doesn’t.
_______________________
The first time it happens, Wikus doesn’t even remember how it comes to pass, only that it does. He remembers the glow, the sheen of ebony skin, the rhythm of frantic human gasps, and a warmth that feels outside of himself, really; separate and other and foreign, as if he’d not meant to know it, not allowed to touch.
She lauds him as the “prawn who can meet a woman’s needs,” who knows how to move and thrust and linger just in the right way, and when her fellow scarlets eye him with interest, he flees, vomiting into the nearest pile of trash with a vigor.
And it reeks of rancid cat food, the taste of it bitter and vile in his mouth, the bile so black that he can’t even see it against his arm as he tries to wipe it away.
_______________________
Wikus doesn’t see Tania, never watches her sleep, never hides in the shrubbery to see her leave for groceries; a year’s gone before he realizes he can’t even remember her eyes.
He fashions her a rose, or else, what passes for a rose, out of shards of glass and the soft frays of a burlap bag, and he wonders in a moment of strange and poignant clarity whether or not the dichotomy, the irony is more significant than it seems; the way sharp petals gleam translucent in the sunlight and innocuous thorns curl along the stem, fibrous and whimsical as they catch the breeze.
Leaving it on the porch in broad daylight isn’t one of his better ideas, but he’s finding it increasingly difficult to keep the more trivial of his thoughts straight these days, things apart from hunger, and pain, and need, and shelter, and anticipation as he watches the sky at night. It’s not one of his best ideas, but he does it anyway, doesn’t remember why he shouldn’t for the briefest instant in time; and when the he catches the soft creek of floorboards, the hint of motion within the house, he doesn’t care to remember all the shouldn’t’s anymore.
He peers through the window on a whim, and when he sees the gentle dip of his wife’s back, the curve of her thighs, and the tiny head resting on her shoulder as she sways back and forth through the parlor, he doesn’t know what to make of it at first. Not until the baby - with her tuft of blonde and her angel face and her pudgy cheeks and eyes like his own used to be - he’s sure of it; not until she raises her head and blinks, her mouth open with terror when she finally sees him, when those perfect eyes swallow her face in complete and heart-stopping dread, and she wails loud enough for him to hear it through the glass.
He runs, and he remembers what heartbreak feels like. But he still can’t remember Tania’s eyes.
He doesn’t leave District 10 again, after that.
_______________________
Wikus remembers what it felt like to hate them, to think them less than dirt.
They give him the name Alexander Davidson, and they speak to him as if he’s incompetent, and worse than that, he doesn’t even have the will anymore to fight them, to argue, to defend his intelligence and his capacity to understand. They stare at him, the sheer superiority stifling as it rolls off of each and every uniformed guard, every suited pencil-pusher in a vest that wouldn’t, couldn’t save him here. He sighs as they review protocol with him - he’s a curiosity, of course, because they haven’t picked up a prawn that’d surfaced back onto the radar for at least a few months - and his eyes flicker idly to a wet painting, primitive in chalk and pig’s blood, dripping and flaking against a piece of scrap metal some meters away.
Three people, one prawn.
And Wikus knows now that it isn’t a warning; it’s just an observation.
There are so many people. Three to one. Ten to one. Hundreds upon thousands, upon millions, to one.
All they want is to go home. They just want to go home.
He almost remembers when he started considering himself amongst the “they,’ but not quite. Not that it would matter.
_______________________
He doesn't remember the last time he dreams. He doesn’t remember when he starts to watch the sky with the thought that moons are missing. He doesn’t remember when the only name he associates with his sense of self becomes Alexander, and he doesn’t know how it all happened, only that it has.
He doesn’t remember, but the flowers stop.
Rating: R
Character: Wikus Van De Merwe
Word Count: 1,049
Summary: Wikus is having trouble remembering. And forgetting. For the cliche_bingo Prompt - Hypothermia & Extreme Cold. Spoilers for District 9.
Prompt Table: Here
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Title belongs to the immortal William Shakespeare.
Author’s Notes: Just a little randomness that popped into my head after seeing the film.
Perchance To Dream
There are nights where he still remembers what it’s like to feel cold, and to pull an extra blanket onto the bed, to burrow further into the warmth of his wife’s slender frame, to bleed into her breaths with the ebb and flow of the night.
The night feels still now, stoic and dark where there used to be stars, and the rough cut of sheet metal against his naked frame is nothing like the slide of bare legs, or even the subtle rub of stubble on shins bearing the soft silk of a woman, but Wikus remembers, and he pretends.
He wakes one morning, before the sunrise, with something fleshy and lukewarm held against him, the long tendrils of his fingers tangled around it, and for a hazy moment Wikus wonders if it’s all a dream. He blinks, though, and recognizes the dead hog pressed along his side for what it is. Confused, he notices the small child, eyes wide and glinting in the early shafts of stray light, shifting between Wikus and the pig carcass expectantly, and Wikus cannot help the surge of something warm and tender seep through him, surging with the sun.
He tugs the dead animal a little closer. He doesn’t flinch when the youth hovers, settles close to him, as close as possible without touching. He doesn’t remember when he stopped fearing them, stopped being repulsed by their proximity. He doesn’t remember a turning point, but he knows that what he’s feeling is close enough to sympathy, to camaraderie, to affection, that it should cause him some concern.
It doesn’t.
_______________________
The first time it happens, Wikus doesn’t even remember how it comes to pass, only that it does. He remembers the glow, the sheen of ebony skin, the rhythm of frantic human gasps, and a warmth that feels outside of himself, really; separate and other and foreign, as if he’d not meant to know it, not allowed to touch.
She lauds him as the “prawn who can meet a woman’s needs,” who knows how to move and thrust and linger just in the right way, and when her fellow scarlets eye him with interest, he flees, vomiting into the nearest pile of trash with a vigor.
And it reeks of rancid cat food, the taste of it bitter and vile in his mouth, the bile so black that he can’t even see it against his arm as he tries to wipe it away.
_______________________
Wikus doesn’t see Tania, never watches her sleep, never hides in the shrubbery to see her leave for groceries; a year’s gone before he realizes he can’t even remember her eyes.
He fashions her a rose, or else, what passes for a rose, out of shards of glass and the soft frays of a burlap bag, and he wonders in a moment of strange and poignant clarity whether or not the dichotomy, the irony is more significant than it seems; the way sharp petals gleam translucent in the sunlight and innocuous thorns curl along the stem, fibrous and whimsical as they catch the breeze.
Leaving it on the porch in broad daylight isn’t one of his better ideas, but he’s finding it increasingly difficult to keep the more trivial of his thoughts straight these days, things apart from hunger, and pain, and need, and shelter, and anticipation as he watches the sky at night. It’s not one of his best ideas, but he does it anyway, doesn’t remember why he shouldn’t for the briefest instant in time; and when the he catches the soft creek of floorboards, the hint of motion within the house, he doesn’t care to remember all the shouldn’t’s anymore.
He peers through the window on a whim, and when he sees the gentle dip of his wife’s back, the curve of her thighs, and the tiny head resting on her shoulder as she sways back and forth through the parlor, he doesn’t know what to make of it at first. Not until the baby - with her tuft of blonde and her angel face and her pudgy cheeks and eyes like his own used to be - he’s sure of it; not until she raises her head and blinks, her mouth open with terror when she finally sees him, when those perfect eyes swallow her face in complete and heart-stopping dread, and she wails loud enough for him to hear it through the glass.
He runs, and he remembers what heartbreak feels like. But he still can’t remember Tania’s eyes.
He doesn’t leave District 10 again, after that.
_______________________
Wikus remembers what it felt like to hate them, to think them less than dirt.
They give him the name Alexander Davidson, and they speak to him as if he’s incompetent, and worse than that, he doesn’t even have the will anymore to fight them, to argue, to defend his intelligence and his capacity to understand. They stare at him, the sheer superiority stifling as it rolls off of each and every uniformed guard, every suited pencil-pusher in a vest that wouldn’t, couldn’t save him here. He sighs as they review protocol with him - he’s a curiosity, of course, because they haven’t picked up a prawn that’d surfaced back onto the radar for at least a few months - and his eyes flicker idly to a wet painting, primitive in chalk and pig’s blood, dripping and flaking against a piece of scrap metal some meters away.
Three people, one prawn.
And Wikus knows now that it isn’t a warning; it’s just an observation.
There are so many people. Three to one. Ten to one. Hundreds upon thousands, upon millions, to one.
All they want is to go home. They just want to go home.
He almost remembers when he started considering himself amongst the “they,’ but not quite. Not that it would matter.
_______________________
He doesn't remember the last time he dreams. He doesn’t remember when he starts to watch the sky with the thought that moons are missing. He doesn’t remember when the only name he associates with his sense of self becomes Alexander, and he doesn’t know how it all happened, only that it has.
He doesn’t remember, but the flowers stop.