they will forever be my post-traumatic stress wonder duo otp
And another Boardwalk Empire piece. I have literally written more fic in the past week than I have in the past decade. WTF.
Daedalus. Richard, Jimmy, Gillian. Angsty like whoa. Shameless appropriation of T.S. Eliot. Spoilers for 2.11, 2.12, and WWI.
Eventually, frustrated and impatient, she sends Richard to Princeton. Jimmy is unconscious on the floor, surrounded by bottles. He could be an angel or a sleeping child, if not for the fine white powder dusting his face--fucking New York, Richard thinks, because he thinks of the scowling Italian one and the little Jewish one as a sort of unit and he doesn't bother to remember their individual names. He half-leads, half-carries him from the room; Jimmy keeps muttering something about trains. He vomits next to the car, looks up at Richard, and says lucidly, "I lost a brother on the Lusitania." Then he passes out again.
Halfway down the road back to Atlantic City, the breeze from the open window ruffles the hair plastered to his forehead and Jimmy stirs. His eyes are glassy, half-lidded, full of strange truths. Richard silently wills him back to sleep, but Jimmy speaks.
"Did I dream it, Rich?"
"No," he answers, and they don't speak again the rest of the way home.
The thought of leaving Jimmy alone at that mansion full of dead animals turns his stomach. But it's what Gillian wants, and without orders from Jimmy, Richard is at loose ends. He returns to the house in case Horvitz comes back. He sits on Jimmy and Angela's bed, ears trained for sounds outside, eyes on the bloodstain, gun at the ready, and he does not move for the better part of four hours.
Somehow he anticipates the ringing of the telephone before he hears it, so accustomed has he become to the waxing and waning of Jimmy's madness, the strange tides that draw him to the edge and back again. After all, it's been almost twelve hours since he last dealt with bloodstains; it must be time for the next crisis.
Her voice is like his own, halting and hoarse. She sounds so rattled that Richard forgets his own distaste for both telephone conversations and Gillian conversations and asks: "Is Jimmy safe?"
"He's alive," she says curtly, and hangs up.
She is nowhere to be found when he arrives; he follows the scent of blood and the sound of shallow breathing into the parlor. He tends Jimmy's wounds without looking at them, but meets his gaze when the blue eyes begin to flutter. They are hollowed-out, empty, and Richard feels the same queasiness that he does when he glimpses his own gaping socket in a mirror.
"Jimmy," he asks, and his hand smudges a bloody thumbprint onto his cheek. "When does this stop?"
That little half-smile he has grown to hold so dear. "It doesn't. I thought you knew that."
---
The truth comes to him slowly, and for that he is grateful, sometimes. Other times he wishes he hadn't seen it coming: the shock of having Jimmy ripped out of the world would have been enough to put a pistol between his teeth and blow away what's left of his head and then, at least, it would be over. Instead he spends that last week watching the fuse burning down, never knowing when it's going to go off.
"He's never going to forgive you," he says, and Jimmy smiles and asks for a steak. As they're sitting over a dinner that Richard doesn't touch, he looks across the table and thinks please, please let's stop this, while we still can.
But he knows it's already too late. Jimmy just grins, orders another round. Reaches across the table and plucks Richard's straw from his empty glass and moves it to the full one.
---
He doesn't want to stay in the Commodore's house after Jimmy leaves. But it's dark and pouring rain, and he's been drinking, and he only has one goddamn eye after all. He finds a couch by the window and sits up all night with his back to it. He doesn't peer through the downpour for a glimpse of Jimmy's car. He has learned not to want things, or to expect them.
Confirmation comes at ten the next morning, when the phone rings again for Richard. "I shouldn't be calling you." He recognizes the accent immediately, although he still doesn't know the Irishman's name. "But I didn't think it fair, to leave you wondering." A pause almost long enough to give hope, and then: "He died fearless." Richard hangs up the receiver without a word.
He stands in the foyer a moment, unsteady on his feet. He feels he should sit down but isn't sure where to go. Back to the couch where he spent the longest night of his life? Back to that desolate place by the sea? His rooming house, packed with guns and cut-apart magazines? Get on a train to Chicago, to Wisconsin? Go back to France, walk until his feet bleed? Time to come home, Richard, but: I don't know where that is, he thinks as the first sob rises in his throat. I don't know where that is.
It's an ugly, choking, wounded sound that echoes in the empty room. He clenches his teeth to silence it and his shattered jaw shrieks in pain. He has never felt so freakish, so incomplete. And he hates Jimmy, suddenly and horribly: hates his stupid plans, his desire to crush the world under his boot, his weakness in the face of others, his bull-headedness. Hates him for the decisions and indecisions that brought him to this end, but hates him more for what kept Richard at his side: his compassion, his goodness. The way he looked at Richard in the Army hospital, looked at him in a way that no one had since he returned. And no one ever will, ever again.
He rips off his mask, throws it to the ground, hard. It bounces carelessly off the carpet, its expression blank and inscrutable as always.
He senses the movement rather than seeing it; Gillian is on the stairs. She looks him directly in the face and if her gaze lacks her son's affection, at least it is the same hard, pitiless stare she gives everyone.
"My son was not always smart," she says icily, "but he was very, very brave. And for you to crumple up now would be shameful. Do you hear me?"
Hers is a general's voice and in spite of himself, he nods. She stops on the last step and grips the bannister like a pistol.
"What's important now is that I secure what should have been my son's legacy and make Thompson pay for what he's done. Tommy is going to have a lot of enemies when he grows up, and he's going to need protection. The next few weeks are going to be difficult on all of us. But don't you dare lay down and die on me now, Richard. You're needed."
He realizes then that they are more alike than he thought; they've both seen the worst that mankind has to offer, in their respective ways. Every act she performs is a gun aimed at someone's head, and all he is anymore is a bullet.
And this couldn't have ended any other way.
Daedalus. Richard, Jimmy, Gillian. Angsty like whoa. Shameless appropriation of T.S. Eliot. Spoilers for 2.11, 2.12, and WWI.
Eventually, frustrated and impatient, she sends Richard to Princeton. Jimmy is unconscious on the floor, surrounded by bottles. He could be an angel or a sleeping child, if not for the fine white powder dusting his face--fucking New York, Richard thinks, because he thinks of the scowling Italian one and the little Jewish one as a sort of unit and he doesn't bother to remember their individual names. He half-leads, half-carries him from the room; Jimmy keeps muttering something about trains. He vomits next to the car, looks up at Richard, and says lucidly, "I lost a brother on the Lusitania." Then he passes out again.
Halfway down the road back to Atlantic City, the breeze from the open window ruffles the hair plastered to his forehead and Jimmy stirs. His eyes are glassy, half-lidded, full of strange truths. Richard silently wills him back to sleep, but Jimmy speaks.
"Did I dream it, Rich?"
"No," he answers, and they don't speak again the rest of the way home.
The thought of leaving Jimmy alone at that mansion full of dead animals turns his stomach. But it's what Gillian wants, and without orders from Jimmy, Richard is at loose ends. He returns to the house in case Horvitz comes back. He sits on Jimmy and Angela's bed, ears trained for sounds outside, eyes on the bloodstain, gun at the ready, and he does not move for the better part of four hours.
Somehow he anticipates the ringing of the telephone before he hears it, so accustomed has he become to the waxing and waning of Jimmy's madness, the strange tides that draw him to the edge and back again. After all, it's been almost twelve hours since he last dealt with bloodstains; it must be time for the next crisis.
Her voice is like his own, halting and hoarse. She sounds so rattled that Richard forgets his own distaste for both telephone conversations and Gillian conversations and asks: "Is Jimmy safe?"
"He's alive," she says curtly, and hangs up.
She is nowhere to be found when he arrives; he follows the scent of blood and the sound of shallow breathing into the parlor. He tends Jimmy's wounds without looking at them, but meets his gaze when the blue eyes begin to flutter. They are hollowed-out, empty, and Richard feels the same queasiness that he does when he glimpses his own gaping socket in a mirror.
"Jimmy," he asks, and his hand smudges a bloody thumbprint onto his cheek. "When does this stop?"
That little half-smile he has grown to hold so dear. "It doesn't. I thought you knew that."
---
The truth comes to him slowly, and for that he is grateful, sometimes. Other times he wishes he hadn't seen it coming: the shock of having Jimmy ripped out of the world would have been enough to put a pistol between his teeth and blow away what's left of his head and then, at least, it would be over. Instead he spends that last week watching the fuse burning down, never knowing when it's going to go off.
"He's never going to forgive you," he says, and Jimmy smiles and asks for a steak. As they're sitting over a dinner that Richard doesn't touch, he looks across the table and thinks please, please let's stop this, while we still can.
But he knows it's already too late. Jimmy just grins, orders another round. Reaches across the table and plucks Richard's straw from his empty glass and moves it to the full one.
---
He doesn't want to stay in the Commodore's house after Jimmy leaves. But it's dark and pouring rain, and he's been drinking, and he only has one goddamn eye after all. He finds a couch by the window and sits up all night with his back to it. He doesn't peer through the downpour for a glimpse of Jimmy's car. He has learned not to want things, or to expect them.
Confirmation comes at ten the next morning, when the phone rings again for Richard. "I shouldn't be calling you." He recognizes the accent immediately, although he still doesn't know the Irishman's name. "But I didn't think it fair, to leave you wondering." A pause almost long enough to give hope, and then: "He died fearless." Richard hangs up the receiver without a word.
He stands in the foyer a moment, unsteady on his feet. He feels he should sit down but isn't sure where to go. Back to the couch where he spent the longest night of his life? Back to that desolate place by the sea? His rooming house, packed with guns and cut-apart magazines? Get on a train to Chicago, to Wisconsin? Go back to France, walk until his feet bleed? Time to come home, Richard, but: I don't know where that is, he thinks as the first sob rises in his throat. I don't know where that is.
It's an ugly, choking, wounded sound that echoes in the empty room. He clenches his teeth to silence it and his shattered jaw shrieks in pain. He has never felt so freakish, so incomplete. And he hates Jimmy, suddenly and horribly: hates his stupid plans, his desire to crush the world under his boot, his weakness in the face of others, his bull-headedness. Hates him for the decisions and indecisions that brought him to this end, but hates him more for what kept Richard at his side: his compassion, his goodness. The way he looked at Richard in the Army hospital, looked at him in a way that no one had since he returned. And no one ever will, ever again.
He rips off his mask, throws it to the ground, hard. It bounces carelessly off the carpet, its expression blank and inscrutable as always.
He senses the movement rather than seeing it; Gillian is on the stairs. She looks him directly in the face and if her gaze lacks her son's affection, at least it is the same hard, pitiless stare she gives everyone.
"My son was not always smart," she says icily, "but he was very, very brave. And for you to crumple up now would be shameful. Do you hear me?"
Hers is a general's voice and in spite of himself, he nods. She stops on the last step and grips the bannister like a pistol.
"What's important now is that I secure what should have been my son's legacy and make Thompson pay for what he's done. Tommy is going to have a lot of enemies when he grows up, and he's going to need protection. The next few weeks are going to be difficult on all of us. But don't you dare lay down and die on me now, Richard. You're needed."
He realizes then that they are more alike than he thought; they've both seen the worst that mankind has to offer, in their respective ways. Every act she performs is a gun aimed at someone's head, and all he is anymore is a bullet.
And this couldn't have ended any other way.