[story] no blinding light
author: mellish (scratchmist)
email: scratchmist [ at ] yahoo dot com
No Blinding Light
This is what they learned, when they were children and the walls of the place hadn't closed in on them yet, hadn't taught them how to grope for the nearest weapon or how to hang themselves in the dark; how to take food in smaller increments and how to slice the top of a terror's head open with their blades, instruments of death from years ago, because nobody uses robots these days, robots are huge and clunky and ineffective: it's better to be alone when things are painful.
Because that way, nobody else gets hurt.
That way, when the walls collide at last, no one will remember how your eyes betrayed how afraid you were to finally go.
They aren't orphans by coincidence. It's all part of the grand design. When the terrors began leaking into this section of the city in the latter half of the century, humanity didn't have a lot of mercy to spare. After the robots were destroyed, the government inevitably turned to the untapped potential of the human mind, to the possibility of behavioral conditioning. The children were gathered from the scraps of their burning homes, their eyes alight, mouths gaping as they asked why nobody else could be saved. Did anyone have an answer to that?
We save you, and everyone else gets saved. Shut up and follow me. Follow me, follow me. To the ends of the world, to all that burning. Moses was eight when they picked him from the smoking ruins of his home; nine when they were done with the trauma therapy and had taught his little body how to run, jump, breathe better. They made him memorize the best places to strike: in the head if they're flying, in the middle of their chest when they walk the earth. His hands shook when they first grasped a sword. He always knew this was why they had whipped his palms that evening, and he went to sleep with them pressed under his pillow, afraid the cuts would start bleeding again if he wasn't careful.
Arlene, who used to sleep in the bed across the floor, died in combat when he was ten. He hadn't been there with her - hadn't seen her foot snag over the wires in the old hospital, the terror moving forward to scoop her up into its fire-belching mouth.
The following week, Lucas moved in. He was eleven and had a scar across his jaw, and smiled a little too much when he came in, like the emptiness meant nothing to him. Moses learned afterwards that Lucas had somehow killed a terror on his own when it finally descended on his family - in the remote part of the city, where the smart citizens had gone when they still had some money. But money was only paper that burned, and that area had few survivors. Lucas had some of the best potential the center had ever seen.
There is something about proximity that makes even the most difficult people into allies. But Lucas wasn't trouble, no matter how gifted he was. Their first day together Lucas asked Moses if he knew how to sing, and when Moses looked at him askance and said "No," Lucas said, "I'm not surprised, I don't either."
Silence.
"But my father did," Lucas said, like this was better than nothing, and maybe it was.
Moses is fifteen and has been on field missions more times than he cares to admit, and at night he counts the scars lining his arms, almost lazily. This is what living here does to people. This is where the children the government protects go to learn how to stop having nightmares. (The solution: become a nightmare yourself.) These days he thinks there's something wrong with him, an unsettled feeling in his stomach that he can't quite place when Lucas laughs (more secretly now, he's learned his lesson) and grips his arm and tells him that's not really the right way to throw a knife. What would he know? They gave Lucas a gun.
A girl down the hallway - Kallie - pressed into Moses the other day, buried her face in his shoulder and wept. He put his arms around her, awkwardly, and didn't tell her to stop, even if he knew that when they were caught they'd probably both be beaten too sore to move. She kissed his cheek when she was finished - it was eight minutes, really, nothing too long - and she told him thank you, that that was all she really needed.
"Okay," he said, and he held her face for a moment, before the moment could pass. "You'll be fine."
These are some of the things he and Lucas talked about in all their years together: how to staunch the flow of blood to the stomach. Which kind of lunch pill tastes better. Why the smell of a bombed-out school building is worse than watching the sun sink in a blackened afternoon sky, too many terrors falling to their death above them. Why Moses's father, who had been one of the engineers on the robots, had been among the first to be targeted. (It wasn't his fault. It wasn't his money to waste. And the government had nothing to do with who the terrors picked or where they attacked first - right?) What a piano sounded like - this one Lucas had a really hard time explaining. He sat up in his bed and went "Ten-ten-tin-tin-tenenen," and that didn't really tell Moses anything. How weird it was the other day when they discovered Connor and Sandra making love, in the dressing room closest to Lucas's practice hall and farthest away from the main building. Their faces were smashed up together in the dark, and she made a strange, savage sound when they pulled apart to look at the intruders.
"Sandra is pretty," Moses says.
"Yeah, but Connor isn't." Lucas laughs. There's something weird about his laugh, the way his eyes shift so that they're no longer looking at each other. Moses thinks, Kallie is pretty too. And so is Lucas, but that isn't really right. So instead he says, "What about that new location tomorrow, huh," and everything is okay again.
When he was thirteen Lucas saved his life. They never talk about this. He remembers waking up to find his shoulder dislocated, his vision swathed in purple as he lifted one hand to inspect his fingers, which he was pretty sure had been blown off by that poorly timed bomb. Someone was yelling when he fell to his knees - the noise was incredible, like the world was groaning - and now it was too quiet. He shut his eyes again and thought about it, and remembered, hazily, Lucas looking down at him like he was the only thing that mattered.
He knew it was a problem, to be friends in this situation, but it wasn't like he could help it.
"You're back," Lucas said, six days later, after they'd released him from the medical center.
"Uh," Moses said. Lucas shook his head slightly, and that was the end of it.
When he was fifteen he returned the favor. This was around the time he got the feeling things were only going to go from bad to worse. He didn't think at all about it while Lucas was gone, and the bed across from him was empty. It was possible that Lucas hadn't survived, that the medical center had already turned him into compost. Moses found himself vomiting every evening, but there were too many children now for the government to monitor as closely as they had in years past. Nobody said anything.
When Kallie had folded herself in his arms he had leaned his chin against her head, thinking about how nice yet terrible it would be, if Lucas returned.
And he did, six days later. On the seventh day Moses found himself apologetically crossing the space between their beds to wrap his arms around Lucas and press his forehead against his best friend's back.
When Lucas turned around and kissed him wearily on the mouth, he didn't even try to act surprised.
"Well," he said, and it sounded like a question.
"Yeah, I know," Lucas said, and wiped his thumb beneath Moses's eyes, because he had started crying.
They didn't try to do anything about it. It was just like everything else that happened - what could they do? The center had long ago stopped trying to prevent it - maybe around the second batch of children, when Moses was too young to remember. It was inevitable, too many of them all together in one space, and life too scary beyond tomorrow. It was the least they could let the orphans do. Girls who got pregnant were a problem - that was what many of them were afraid of - and if they were caught, the penalties were corporal.
What kept things safe, always, was the knowledge of death - at least someone new, every day. If not, something was wrong. Fighting a losing war made everything shaky, hopeless. A stolen kiss, five minutes absorbing someone else's warmth, tasting someone else's sweat - that was one moment that didn't matter in the greater scheme of things.
"Do you want to know what my father used to tell my mother?"
"No, not really."
Those words would be from an archaic language, when people still had time to spare, when the walls they lived in weren't clinical, didn't echo with the sounds of war. Or at least, back then, the war was still too far away to be part of reality. Everything terrible was a figment of the imagination, and then the sky was raining fire.
"Okay, fine." Lucas says it like this answer really disappoints him, but then he kisses Moses on the forehead, making a point about being taller, and it doesn't matter. Moses grabs him and tips him down to kiss him back, like they're doing formal dancing again, that stupid class nobody ever liked, when they were in the lower grades. (Because they're children of the state, or so they've been told. They need to be well-bred. They need to know the proper dinner etiquette, the waltz, the nuances of Rachmaninoff.)
You don't need to tell me, Moses thinks, closing his eyes against the feel of Lucas still alive beside him. I already know.
Laughter is a dangerous sound. They both know this. They swallow the laughter that bubbles up when something funny happens, when something terrifying happens. Moses doesn't want to go on missions with Lucas anymore, because this could turn into a liability. (It already has, he realizes, then, No, no no.) That's okay. The close combat people don't usually go with artillery; they're far along enough to be specialized, to not have so many rotations. The day they make it through that village raid alive, they both laugh through the medical inspection. This is the only way they can keep from hysteria - but the laughter is silent, a shaking in the shoulders that might be mistaken for fear. Lunacy is the better-tasting pill.
There’s shrapnel in Lucas’s ribcage, which is nothing new. Moses finds he is missing two fingers - the ring finger and little finger on his left hand. He's startled by it, but in a way, it's comforting - like he's already given something up, in exchange for still being alive. He lifts his hand for Lucas to see, later that evening, smiling a crazy smile.
"We're not going to make it, I think," Moses says. It's the most depressing statement he's ever said aloud - the things he's thought, of course, are much worse. It's been ten years, now, since he first came here; eight since he met Lucas. That is already a miracle.
"Does it hurt?" Lucas asks. When he shakes his head no, Lucas tugs him forward into a hug, buries his face against Moses's shoulder, doesn't say anything for a couple of minutes. With a start, Moses remembers Kallie, who died a half-year earlier. Ryan might have been in love with her. He couldn't fight for weeks afterwards. The desperation sang through the walls. One loss in so many. One loss was everyone's, and that made it no one's. Moses jolts back to the present when Lucas presses a kiss against his neck, and his breath is suddenly tight against his throat, like this might be something different.
They fall backwards into Lucas's bed - still the same bed, from so many years ago, only the sheets ever changed to keep them sterilized - like they're trying to lose their breath entirely. He knows this sensation and yet doesn't know it; how many nights did he already spend under these blankets, why does nearly dying make it any different?
This world takes and it takes, Moses finds himself thinking, letting himself curl into Lucas. He feels small, and all he wants right now is warmth, and there's nowhere safer than here. This is all the world has ever given me, and this is all I can dare to want.
There’s a quiet fury that ripples beneath Lucas’s breath, in the way his hands clench. A violence that spills out only when they are fighting: something shared, the mania of apocalypse. Moses, who takes pleasure in slaying the terrors as much as the next person, accepts it. The world is dark and twisted, and they are living in it. They are battling it, but they can only keep so much from crawling beneath their skin. It isn't like they keep these things secret. Relief from today’s survival can just as easily turn to rage, to despair.
But there is always some outlet. Something that needs to be killed, and something that needs to be avenged. Something to protect, and they know that isn’t each other, and that’s as good as it will get.
The battle that blinds Lucas is the same one where Moses loses two more fingers, but that's not unexpected for someone who uses a blade; any more and he'll be completely useless in the field, and he'll either have to become an instructor or go kamikaze and get himself killed in a mission. Neither alternative is particularly appealing, but he isn't thinking about that. He’s thinking of Lucas.
The sickness of terror takes sight, first. There isn't much left to do after but to wait for the breathing to slow.
It's not a terrible way to go. It's not violent, at least. Moses remembers, hazily now, how important it was those first few years not to let anyone in. There is no space for two bodies amidst these closing walls. There is no reason to transfer the pain onto someone else. Everyone has their own scars, refracted a million times over in the darkening sky, the nightmares, the memories that hiss when they seem gone forever.
Lucas comes out of the medical center early, as expected. He didn't want bandages over his eyes. He turns his head to face Moses when Moses comes up to him, puts his hands over Lucas's ears and kisses him on each eyelid.
He used to think it was strange, how he still felt human, intact, despite everything. There really were things you could become numbed to after long enough. Moses never really expected to live past twenty; he still doesn't. Maybe this knowledge, that they wouldn't have to live through much more of this, was what turned so few of them to madness, to roughness. How they could be so civil, so kind to each other, when the uniforms were gone. How they were so young when they drank from death and never stopped. How the taste never got sweeter, but eventually became the only water they knew.
"What did you say then?" Lucas is never sloppy. This isn’t coincidence; it's good old grand design. "That we weren't going to make it?"
Moses nods. Remembers that Lucas can't see. Clears his throat. "Right on the first try."
Lucas leans his face into Moses's hands and exhales.
"You won't have to wait very long," Moses says. His mouth is dry. "Not for me. I promise." This is the truest fact he knows. Lucas nods, wraps his arms around Moses's hips. Sure, the motion seems to say. That works for me.
Moses runs his hands through his best friend's hair. Remembers not to cry. Any other way, this wouldn't have hurt. He wants to see Lucas when he leaves, the happiness in his unseeing eyes, because now there isn’t anything else to be afraid of. Lucas is the bravest person he knows.
This is the better lesson, no matter how much it hurts. This is the one he’ll cling to.
"Do you know how to sing?" Lucas asks.
"Yes," Moses answers. "You taught me how."
the end
email: scratchmist [ at ] yahoo dot com
No Blinding Light
This is what they learned, when they were children and the walls of the place hadn't closed in on them yet, hadn't taught them how to grope for the nearest weapon or how to hang themselves in the dark; how to take food in smaller increments and how to slice the top of a terror's head open with their blades, instruments of death from years ago, because nobody uses robots these days, robots are huge and clunky and ineffective: it's better to be alone when things are painful.
Because that way, nobody else gets hurt.
That way, when the walls collide at last, no one will remember how your eyes betrayed how afraid you were to finally go.
They aren't orphans by coincidence. It's all part of the grand design. When the terrors began leaking into this section of the city in the latter half of the century, humanity didn't have a lot of mercy to spare. After the robots were destroyed, the government inevitably turned to the untapped potential of the human mind, to the possibility of behavioral conditioning. The children were gathered from the scraps of their burning homes, their eyes alight, mouths gaping as they asked why nobody else could be saved. Did anyone have an answer to that?
We save you, and everyone else gets saved. Shut up and follow me. Follow me, follow me. To the ends of the world, to all that burning. Moses was eight when they picked him from the smoking ruins of his home; nine when they were done with the trauma therapy and had taught his little body how to run, jump, breathe better. They made him memorize the best places to strike: in the head if they're flying, in the middle of their chest when they walk the earth. His hands shook when they first grasped a sword. He always knew this was why they had whipped his palms that evening, and he went to sleep with them pressed under his pillow, afraid the cuts would start bleeding again if he wasn't careful.
Arlene, who used to sleep in the bed across the floor, died in combat when he was ten. He hadn't been there with her - hadn't seen her foot snag over the wires in the old hospital, the terror moving forward to scoop her up into its fire-belching mouth.
The following week, Lucas moved in. He was eleven and had a scar across his jaw, and smiled a little too much when he came in, like the emptiness meant nothing to him. Moses learned afterwards that Lucas had somehow killed a terror on his own when it finally descended on his family - in the remote part of the city, where the smart citizens had gone when they still had some money. But money was only paper that burned, and that area had few survivors. Lucas had some of the best potential the center had ever seen.
There is something about proximity that makes even the most difficult people into allies. But Lucas wasn't trouble, no matter how gifted he was. Their first day together Lucas asked Moses if he knew how to sing, and when Moses looked at him askance and said "No," Lucas said, "I'm not surprised, I don't either."
Silence.
"But my father did," Lucas said, like this was better than nothing, and maybe it was.
Moses is fifteen and has been on field missions more times than he cares to admit, and at night he counts the scars lining his arms, almost lazily. This is what living here does to people. This is where the children the government protects go to learn how to stop having nightmares. (The solution: become a nightmare yourself.) These days he thinks there's something wrong with him, an unsettled feeling in his stomach that he can't quite place when Lucas laughs (more secretly now, he's learned his lesson) and grips his arm and tells him that's not really the right way to throw a knife. What would he know? They gave Lucas a gun.
A girl down the hallway - Kallie - pressed into Moses the other day, buried her face in his shoulder and wept. He put his arms around her, awkwardly, and didn't tell her to stop, even if he knew that when they were caught they'd probably both be beaten too sore to move. She kissed his cheek when she was finished - it was eight minutes, really, nothing too long - and she told him thank you, that that was all she really needed.
"Okay," he said, and he held her face for a moment, before the moment could pass. "You'll be fine."
These are some of the things he and Lucas talked about in all their years together: how to staunch the flow of blood to the stomach. Which kind of lunch pill tastes better. Why the smell of a bombed-out school building is worse than watching the sun sink in a blackened afternoon sky, too many terrors falling to their death above them. Why Moses's father, who had been one of the engineers on the robots, had been among the first to be targeted. (It wasn't his fault. It wasn't his money to waste. And the government had nothing to do with who the terrors picked or where they attacked first - right?) What a piano sounded like - this one Lucas had a really hard time explaining. He sat up in his bed and went "Ten-ten-tin-tin-tenenen," and that didn't really tell Moses anything. How weird it was the other day when they discovered Connor and Sandra making love, in the dressing room closest to Lucas's practice hall and farthest away from the main building. Their faces were smashed up together in the dark, and she made a strange, savage sound when they pulled apart to look at the intruders.
"Sandra is pretty," Moses says.
"Yeah, but Connor isn't." Lucas laughs. There's something weird about his laugh, the way his eyes shift so that they're no longer looking at each other. Moses thinks, Kallie is pretty too. And so is Lucas, but that isn't really right. So instead he says, "What about that new location tomorrow, huh," and everything is okay again.
When he was thirteen Lucas saved his life. They never talk about this. He remembers waking up to find his shoulder dislocated, his vision swathed in purple as he lifted one hand to inspect his fingers, which he was pretty sure had been blown off by that poorly timed bomb. Someone was yelling when he fell to his knees - the noise was incredible, like the world was groaning - and now it was too quiet. He shut his eyes again and thought about it, and remembered, hazily, Lucas looking down at him like he was the only thing that mattered.
He knew it was a problem, to be friends in this situation, but it wasn't like he could help it.
"You're back," Lucas said, six days later, after they'd released him from the medical center.
"Uh," Moses said. Lucas shook his head slightly, and that was the end of it.
When he was fifteen he returned the favor. This was around the time he got the feeling things were only going to go from bad to worse. He didn't think at all about it while Lucas was gone, and the bed across from him was empty. It was possible that Lucas hadn't survived, that the medical center had already turned him into compost. Moses found himself vomiting every evening, but there were too many children now for the government to monitor as closely as they had in years past. Nobody said anything.
When Kallie had folded herself in his arms he had leaned his chin against her head, thinking about how nice yet terrible it would be, if Lucas returned.
And he did, six days later. On the seventh day Moses found himself apologetically crossing the space between their beds to wrap his arms around Lucas and press his forehead against his best friend's back.
When Lucas turned around and kissed him wearily on the mouth, he didn't even try to act surprised.
"Well," he said, and it sounded like a question.
"Yeah, I know," Lucas said, and wiped his thumb beneath Moses's eyes, because he had started crying.
They didn't try to do anything about it. It was just like everything else that happened - what could they do? The center had long ago stopped trying to prevent it - maybe around the second batch of children, when Moses was too young to remember. It was inevitable, too many of them all together in one space, and life too scary beyond tomorrow. It was the least they could let the orphans do. Girls who got pregnant were a problem - that was what many of them were afraid of - and if they were caught, the penalties were corporal.
What kept things safe, always, was the knowledge of death - at least someone new, every day. If not, something was wrong. Fighting a losing war made everything shaky, hopeless. A stolen kiss, five minutes absorbing someone else's warmth, tasting someone else's sweat - that was one moment that didn't matter in the greater scheme of things.
"Do you want to know what my father used to tell my mother?"
"No, not really."
Those words would be from an archaic language, when people still had time to spare, when the walls they lived in weren't clinical, didn't echo with the sounds of war. Or at least, back then, the war was still too far away to be part of reality. Everything terrible was a figment of the imagination, and then the sky was raining fire.
"Okay, fine." Lucas says it like this answer really disappoints him, but then he kisses Moses on the forehead, making a point about being taller, and it doesn't matter. Moses grabs him and tips him down to kiss him back, like they're doing formal dancing again, that stupid class nobody ever liked, when they were in the lower grades. (Because they're children of the state, or so they've been told. They need to be well-bred. They need to know the proper dinner etiquette, the waltz, the nuances of Rachmaninoff.)
You don't need to tell me, Moses thinks, closing his eyes against the feel of Lucas still alive beside him. I already know.
Laughter is a dangerous sound. They both know this. They swallow the laughter that bubbles up when something funny happens, when something terrifying happens. Moses doesn't want to go on missions with Lucas anymore, because this could turn into a liability. (It already has, he realizes, then, No, no no.) That's okay. The close combat people don't usually go with artillery; they're far along enough to be specialized, to not have so many rotations. The day they make it through that village raid alive, they both laugh through the medical inspection. This is the only way they can keep from hysteria - but the laughter is silent, a shaking in the shoulders that might be mistaken for fear. Lunacy is the better-tasting pill.
There’s shrapnel in Lucas’s ribcage, which is nothing new. Moses finds he is missing two fingers - the ring finger and little finger on his left hand. He's startled by it, but in a way, it's comforting - like he's already given something up, in exchange for still being alive. He lifts his hand for Lucas to see, later that evening, smiling a crazy smile.
"We're not going to make it, I think," Moses says. It's the most depressing statement he's ever said aloud - the things he's thought, of course, are much worse. It's been ten years, now, since he first came here; eight since he met Lucas. That is already a miracle.
"Does it hurt?" Lucas asks. When he shakes his head no, Lucas tugs him forward into a hug, buries his face against Moses's shoulder, doesn't say anything for a couple of minutes. With a start, Moses remembers Kallie, who died a half-year earlier. Ryan might have been in love with her. He couldn't fight for weeks afterwards. The desperation sang through the walls. One loss in so many. One loss was everyone's, and that made it no one's. Moses jolts back to the present when Lucas presses a kiss against his neck, and his breath is suddenly tight against his throat, like this might be something different.
They fall backwards into Lucas's bed - still the same bed, from so many years ago, only the sheets ever changed to keep them sterilized - like they're trying to lose their breath entirely. He knows this sensation and yet doesn't know it; how many nights did he already spend under these blankets, why does nearly dying make it any different?
This world takes and it takes, Moses finds himself thinking, letting himself curl into Lucas. He feels small, and all he wants right now is warmth, and there's nowhere safer than here. This is all the world has ever given me, and this is all I can dare to want.
There’s a quiet fury that ripples beneath Lucas’s breath, in the way his hands clench. A violence that spills out only when they are fighting: something shared, the mania of apocalypse. Moses, who takes pleasure in slaying the terrors as much as the next person, accepts it. The world is dark and twisted, and they are living in it. They are battling it, but they can only keep so much from crawling beneath their skin. It isn't like they keep these things secret. Relief from today’s survival can just as easily turn to rage, to despair.
But there is always some outlet. Something that needs to be killed, and something that needs to be avenged. Something to protect, and they know that isn’t each other, and that’s as good as it will get.
The battle that blinds Lucas is the same one where Moses loses two more fingers, but that's not unexpected for someone who uses a blade; any more and he'll be completely useless in the field, and he'll either have to become an instructor or go kamikaze and get himself killed in a mission. Neither alternative is particularly appealing, but he isn't thinking about that. He’s thinking of Lucas.
The sickness of terror takes sight, first. There isn't much left to do after but to wait for the breathing to slow.
It's not a terrible way to go. It's not violent, at least. Moses remembers, hazily now, how important it was those first few years not to let anyone in. There is no space for two bodies amidst these closing walls. There is no reason to transfer the pain onto someone else. Everyone has their own scars, refracted a million times over in the darkening sky, the nightmares, the memories that hiss when they seem gone forever.
Lucas comes out of the medical center early, as expected. He didn't want bandages over his eyes. He turns his head to face Moses when Moses comes up to him, puts his hands over Lucas's ears and kisses him on each eyelid.
He used to think it was strange, how he still felt human, intact, despite everything. There really were things you could become numbed to after long enough. Moses never really expected to live past twenty; he still doesn't. Maybe this knowledge, that they wouldn't have to live through much more of this, was what turned so few of them to madness, to roughness. How they could be so civil, so kind to each other, when the uniforms were gone. How they were so young when they drank from death and never stopped. How the taste never got sweeter, but eventually became the only water they knew.
"What did you say then?" Lucas is never sloppy. This isn’t coincidence; it's good old grand design. "That we weren't going to make it?"
Moses nods. Remembers that Lucas can't see. Clears his throat. "Right on the first try."
Lucas leans his face into Moses's hands and exhales.
"You won't have to wait very long," Moses says. His mouth is dry. "Not for me. I promise." This is the truest fact he knows. Lucas nods, wraps his arms around Moses's hips. Sure, the motion seems to say. That works for me.
Moses runs his hands through his best friend's hair. Remembers not to cry. Any other way, this wouldn't have hurt. He wants to see Lucas when he leaves, the happiness in his unseeing eyes, because now there isn’t anything else to be afraid of. Lucas is the bravest person he knows.
This is the better lesson, no matter how much it hurts. This is the one he’ll cling to.
"Do you know how to sing?" Lucas asks.
"Yes," Moses answers. "You taught me how."
the end