All Kinds of Weather
Title: All Kinds of Weather
Date posted: 11-28-07
Fandom: Alias
Disclaimer: Yeah, I guess it kind goes with "what if Jack and Nadia got ressurected but that means they live forever" little universe thing I created. Mmhmm.
Spoilers: Niente.
Notes: alias500 said "doomsday" and I said "sweet!" And, also, the glory that is Janis Joplin
They had decided not to evacuate. There were other courses of action people were taking: heading up to the mountains, going down to the coast, migrating inland, choosing deserts or jungles, forests or hills; they decided to stay in their apartment. It was no more dangerous than the other places people were fleeing to (the coasts were the exception, Jack actually got angry when he thought about the fools attempting that escape.) They would stay with their belongings, with the others too poor or too frightened to leave, the deserted streets and the eerie silence.
The temperature was just rising to levels of discomfort, and the lack electricity prompted Nadia to wear a white sundress with an embroidered bodice. There had been clouds on the horizon when she'd gone to the cemetery that morning. She visits far more often than he does, and she brings flowers and sits to talk to the headstones, the grass dry and yellowing beneath summer sandals. Melancholy after her visit, Nadia lays on the bed with her music player, no bigger than a quarter had been, which was powerful enough to fill the room with Janis Joplin singing "Me and Bobby McGee."
The song reminds Jack of the death of his daughter, but Nadia, with her eclectic taste in music, had been introduced to the song by her sister eighty-seven years ago and had never forgotten it, transferring the file from one format to another to keep with the times. She wasn't in the room when Isabelle had explained the accident, her mother's voice high and only slightly off-tune before impact. Nadia listens to it because it moves her in a way that many things can't. Jack works at getting information on the weather from his contacts, many of which have become frightened enough to hide, but he takes comfort in his endeavors, as if working alone could help.
"I cleaned them," she says from the doorway, visible in the darkness due to her dress, "the headstones. They were so dusty. The winds and the ash-" She shrugs. "It seemed important. To have them clean. I put tulips by Sydney. I didn't know what flowers... if Vaughn liked flowers, but Sydney-" She's worried, absurdly, because immortality can't shake fear. They had both decided to stay, long before the evacuations had been recommended, flames and smoke rising into the night sky as they watched from the roof. They cannot burn.
"I'm sure it was fine," and he means to comfort her, but she keeps going: "Sydney loved tulips best. She should have something nice. I visited Isabelle too, but I can never find Little Jack." Little Jack had happily been called that from ages one through nine, when he said he didn't like the idea of being called 'little' anything. In death, his aunt had revived his pet name, and instead of flowers, she put small stones on his side of the grave, careful not to disturb the flowers left for his wife, when she could find it.
He hasn't the heart to tell her the way the winds are blowing it won't matter whose graves she put flowers on, for if the wind doesn't take it, the fires will. She sinks languidly into a chair, skirt fluttering limply. She pulls her hair forward and exhales. "We should've left. The fires only make things hotter."
"Freeze in the mountains, parch in the desert," he replies, looking at the maps that flicker on his screen.
"Drown on coasts, starve in the hills," she replies, and she studies her hand, her default position for when she considers their lot. "Do you think things will really end this time?"
"We've been through worse," he says, more harshly then he intends, but Nadia isn't bothered.
"In one place, maybe. But not all over the world. And the weather is just-" It's brewing, they know, and they wait for it. She clears her throat. "What do think will happen to us?"
He pictures them roaming ruins, surrounded by death. "It'll end."
Date posted: 11-28-07
Fandom: Alias
Disclaimer: Yeah, I guess it kind goes with "what if Jack and Nadia got ressurected but that means they live forever" little universe thing I created. Mmhmm.
Spoilers: Niente.
Notes: alias500 said "doomsday" and I said "sweet!" And, also, the glory that is Janis Joplin
They had decided not to evacuate. There were other courses of action people were taking: heading up to the mountains, going down to the coast, migrating inland, choosing deserts or jungles, forests or hills; they decided to stay in their apartment. It was no more dangerous than the other places people were fleeing to (the coasts were the exception, Jack actually got angry when he thought about the fools attempting that escape.) They would stay with their belongings, with the others too poor or too frightened to leave, the deserted streets and the eerie silence.
The temperature was just rising to levels of discomfort, and the lack electricity prompted Nadia to wear a white sundress with an embroidered bodice. There had been clouds on the horizon when she'd gone to the cemetery that morning. She visits far more often than he does, and she brings flowers and sits to talk to the headstones, the grass dry and yellowing beneath summer sandals. Melancholy after her visit, Nadia lays on the bed with her music player, no bigger than a quarter had been, which was powerful enough to fill the room with Janis Joplin singing "Me and Bobby McGee."
The song reminds Jack of the death of his daughter, but Nadia, with her eclectic taste in music, had been introduced to the song by her sister eighty-seven years ago and had never forgotten it, transferring the file from one format to another to keep with the times. She wasn't in the room when Isabelle had explained the accident, her mother's voice high and only slightly off-tune before impact. Nadia listens to it because it moves her in a way that many things can't. Jack works at getting information on the weather from his contacts, many of which have become frightened enough to hide, but he takes comfort in his endeavors, as if working alone could help.
"I cleaned them," she says from the doorway, visible in the darkness due to her dress, "the headstones. They were so dusty. The winds and the ash-" She shrugs. "It seemed important. To have them clean. I put tulips by Sydney. I didn't know what flowers... if Vaughn liked flowers, but Sydney-" She's worried, absurdly, because immortality can't shake fear. They had both decided to stay, long before the evacuations had been recommended, flames and smoke rising into the night sky as they watched from the roof. They cannot burn.
"I'm sure it was fine," and he means to comfort her, but she keeps going: "Sydney loved tulips best. She should have something nice. I visited Isabelle too, but I can never find Little Jack." Little Jack had happily been called that from ages one through nine, when he said he didn't like the idea of being called 'little' anything. In death, his aunt had revived his pet name, and instead of flowers, she put small stones on his side of the grave, careful not to disturb the flowers left for his wife, when she could find it.
He hasn't the heart to tell her the way the winds are blowing it won't matter whose graves she put flowers on, for if the wind doesn't take it, the fires will. She sinks languidly into a chair, skirt fluttering limply. She pulls her hair forward and exhales. "We should've left. The fires only make things hotter."
"Freeze in the mountains, parch in the desert," he replies, looking at the maps that flicker on his screen.
"Drown on coasts, starve in the hills," she replies, and she studies her hand, her default position for when she considers their lot. "Do you think things will really end this time?"
"We've been through worse," he says, more harshly then he intends, but Nadia isn't bothered.
"In one place, maybe. But not all over the world. And the weather is just-" It's brewing, they know, and they wait for it. She clears her throat. "What do think will happen to us?"
He pictures them roaming ruins, surrounded by death. "It'll end."