Worth 50,000: Day Five - Bride of All Unquiet Things
I watch a lot of tv for someone who doesn't have basic cable. Even during these first days of Nano I've stayed pretty caught up on things while still hitting my word counts. Mostly. One of my favorite shows on television right now is Boardwalk Empire. It's not flawless, but it's gorgeous and dramatic, and it's really good at getting at the
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"I don't like this," Moira says. It's probably the third time she's said it, and Charles very much wants her to stop. The more edgy Moira gets, the more edgy Charles gets, because Moira is not easily rattled.
"I know," Charles says. His flashlight beam wobbles in the half light as he lengthens his stride to keep up with Moira. He really should be conserving the battery--he knows there are probably rooms and tunnels further down with no light to speak of. Still, the hallways and alcoves they've stumbled upon so far are unsettling enough--he doesn't want to add to it by removing even a fraction of the light. "I appreciate that you're doing it anyway."
The catacomb--dark concrete, scratched and burned, stained and splattered--stretches far out in front of them. There are metal doors on rusted hinges hanging half open. Most of them are burned and ransacked, the product of the explosion that killed Charles' stepfather. Others are oddly pristine, covered by a thick layer of fine dust. Charles tries not to think about what went on in these rooms, what sort of experiments were happening on his own property, on his fathers property, right under his feet.
"Yeah right, like I'd let you wander through Kurt's laboratories on your own," she says. The hand not wrapped around her flashlight is resting on her gun--Charles assumes it's second nature after being in the FBI for so long. He's rather glad for it, at any rate. If her hand had been free, he would have felt compelled to cling to it for dear life, and he'd like to maintain the illusion that he's at least partially composed.
He doesn't know why he's insisting on doing this. Or, rather, he knows on the surface, but he's not sure he wants to dig deeper into his own motivations.
It's a little crazy, a little desperate--normally when a stranger breaks into your house and threatens you demanding to see your late stepfather, Charles imagines one should call the police. But he hesitated--there was something in that man's eyes he recognized, something he saw in the mirror when his thoughts drifted, uncomfortably, to growing up in the house under Kurt's rule.
"And he just disappeared?" Moira asks, as if reading his mind.
"Well, not in a puff of smoke," Charles says. "He left the house. I was a bit too stunned to do anything more than call you."
"Charles, when we get out of this we're going to talk about how when a madman breaks into your house asking leading questions about your stepfather and his business partner, your first impulse should not be to call a friend who's an hour away," she mutters.
"I...didn't want to involve the police," Charles says, haltingly. "I--there are things that--my stepfather was not a nice man."
"I know," Moira says. "Generally, nice men don't smack their stepsons around."
"Yes, well," Charles says. He quickens his pace again until he's walking side-by-side with Moira, their arms brushing occasionally as they walk. "Then you'll understand what I mean when I say Sebastian Shaw was worse than my stepfather." He shivers. He'd only met Shaw a handful of times, tense family dinners that ended with Shaw and Kurt going out to the laboratories out back, the catacombs of rooms they're currently walking through, and not coming out again for days.
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"You haven't told me a single thing that's reassured me that this is a good idea," Moira says. "Why the hell would you want to help someone looking for that creep?"
"Because--" Because there was something starkly beautiful about him, even in his rage. Because he could have hurt Charles, but he seemed to recognize the same hopelessness that Charles recognized. Because the hatred with which he spat out Shaw's name, Kurt's name, was sharp enough to cut glass. Because in the long moments they stared at each other before he ran, Charles felt something calling out to him, pulling him closer. "Because he was scared. He was angry, but he was as scared as I was. And if Shaw--if Shaw is still alive, I'm afraid of what will happen if they find each other."
The hall is lit by a string of bulbs hanging so low they nearly brush Charles' head, despite his short stature. They've been walking steadily towards what is clearly the last bulb, swinging incongruously in the still, thick air in front of another metal door that reaches from floor to ceiling.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Moira asks as they approach it, twenty feet away, fifteen, ten.
"Yes," Charles says, though his throat is dry and he can feel his inner demons tugging at the edge of his consciousness, reminding him of the only other time he's been down here, the time he'd like to forget entirely.
Moira unholsters her gun and nods towards the door. Charles grips the handle and swallows back the bile creeping up his throat.
"On three," she says. "One. Two. Three."
Charles closes his eyes and pulls open the door.
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