[oc] Under a blackened sky
On August 15th, 2007, an earthquake shook Ica, Pisco and Chincha. It was horribly felt here in Lima. There were two waves. The first scaring the shit out of everyone (it wouldn't end, like most earthquakes here do, it just kept on going) and the second kind of caught me back at the computer. I made a post about half an hour after, titled earthquakeeeee. For me, it was really funny. Now reading those posts, I remember the aftershocks, and how one night there were five of them and I couldn't sleep, thinking one of them would just keep going, like the very first.
There were too many dead and even more hurt. Thousands lost their homes, what little they had. We are not a powerful country. It's been a year and people are still trying to rebuild, to have a room when they used to have a house.
I'm trying to help out, as little as I can. My trip to Chincha is part of "College students helping to rebuild" or something like that. We're doing our best.
In light of that, and of a video I was given the link of not a couple of weeks ago, I wrote this. It was started so very long ago, but only found its ending now.
Title: Under a blackened sky
Author: M. F. Luder
Pairing: Ryan/Seth
Rating: PG-13
Category: Gen. It'd be slash if you squint. Angst, because this is me still being me.
Challenge: For fanfic100 and 35. six sense. The rest of the stories can be found at Big Damn Table.
Author's note: Thanks to mylogiceatsyou for doing the beta work, yet again.
Under a blackened sky
August 15th, 2010.
Seth rolls over in bed, covering his eyes with one hand, trying his best to keep the sunlight away from his face. He sighs, and pulls the covers over the top of his head, hiding from the whole world for just a second.
He can feel his mouth, thick and dry, something tasting greasy and wrong on his tongue. He blinks, rubbing his eyes with his fists, turning around to face the window. He pauses for a second, a thought forming and then dissolving into thin air, as the sparkles of the sun shine and dance before him. He blinks again, and sitting up, checks the clock.
A little after seven. He runs one hand through his hair, the feeling that he's forgetting something between his eyes. It's Wednesday, and he has an 8.30am. If he takes a quick shower and then has a bagel on the way to class, he's certain he can meet up with Jen before class and get her notes from yesterday which both he and Lara decided to blow.
In the shower, he goes over everything he has to take to class, over the photocopies he'll need for his afternoon Color class and how he promised Emily that he'll partner with her at Design for Publishing. He goes through everything twice and still can't find what he thinks he's missing.
Seth tries his best to pay attention to Exhibit Design but Lara is as bored as he is and she ends up telling him the very long story of how she met Luigi and how they fell in love, which is a nice story. For a second he thinks about the mermaid poem and he opens his mouth to tell her that, but then the teacher calls attention to one of the students in the second row, who, apparently, was falling asleep in his seat. So they both turn around and try their best to pay attention, or at least not fall comatose.
By the time they leave class and meet Emily and Luigi -- who starts bitching about geologic stuff that neither Lara nor the other two understand -- Seth has long forgotten what he wanted to tell Lara.
They have Words and Things -- a stupider name Seth has never heard before -- and Digital Portfolio after lunch, and afterwards they sit in the small café, and Seth can't help but look around him and see these three girls he has become fast friends with, and then Dean joins them from having found a quiet place from where to call his girlfriend from. Seth frowns, taking out his cell phone for a second, thinking about calling summer. Summer, who's spent the last three years being one with nature and sticking it to the man and God knows what else. Summer, who he's learned to miss and not miss at the same time, who he should be missing, and yet isn't. Not really.
He swallows, and reaches for his Mocha Latte, letting himself not think about anything for a second. He closes his eyes for a second, takes in a deep breath. A cell phone rings in the background, and he's thinking about the book he has to read for intro, when someone screams behind him.
He opens his eyes, frowns, and looks over his shoulder. A guy at the bar of the small café is talking to the bartender. He can't hear the words, only the voice, the urgency in the tone.
"What's going on?" Lara asks again, and Seth glances over his shoulder to see her turning around in her seat on the arm of the chair Luigi is sitting on. Emily stands up from her seat, her eyes wide.
Seth blinks, turning around in his seat. His eyes see the TV over the counter. He blinks and he reads the words and he can't breathe, because this isn't happening, because they are wrong, because those words are wrong.
The bartender raises the volume of the TV, the whole café suddenly attentive.
"-- repeat, there has been an earthquake on the west coast. We repeat, there has been an earthquake on the west coast. So far we know very little. Unofficial reports state that it reached 8.0 on the Ritcher sca--"
Seth shakes his head, takes a step forward and stumbles. His right hand reaches to hold himself on the column before taking another step forward, and another. His breathing and his pulse roars in his ears and for a second he can't hear anything, and everything around him is nothing but a blur, it's colors and shapes and and and and--
"Seth?"
It's the people pushing against him that stop him in his tracks. Everyone is coming and going in SFO. It's like the whole city is on high alert. Which it is. The earthquake hit not fifteen hours ago.
Someone pushes at his shoulder and he just moves with them, hand tight around the one bag he put together before driving to the airport, cell phone in hand, not caring how much it would cost him to get here, to Berkeley, home.
He takes his cell phone out of his pocket, flips it open and wants to try to call again. He thinks his hand shakes, but takes no notice. He managed to get through to his parents right before the flight. They'd been caught at the mall, and said Sophie was fine, had stopped crying once the movement stopped. Seth'd told them to tell her that she was a strong girl. It was only right then that he realized he knew very little about his sister.
He dials, again, for what feels like the tenth time, because he can't stop himself. Signal busy, it says. Like hell. Seth curses under his breath and flips the phone shut.
It's not anger he's feeling, he tells himself. It's not anger at all.
Someone hits his shoulder once again, his side, and then he spins around for a minute, so many people are pushing past him and he should be moving only he's not.
And he's standing before the TVs in the waiting area and there's the news on and he can hear... God, he can hear...
"-- amateur video taken during the tragic earthquake that shook Berkeley to its very core, last night at 6.43pm."
It's nothing but black and the camera shaking for a minute, two, and then he realizes that it's not that it's black, the lights are all out. And the camera is not shaking, the person with it was running toward something, out of something. Somewhere.
His blood runs cold, his chest grows cold. Everything around him is cold.
His right hand tightens around his phone, tight, tighter, and he keeps watching because he can't stop himself. He doesn't understand what's going on, there's gray all around the scene. It's grey and black and then there's light (from the camera? yeah, from the camera) and there must be voices talking, he thinks he hears someone curse, and someone crying, but it's too low for him to understand.
He waits. And watches. And thinks he's dying inside but can't be sure.
And then he gets it. The light is coming from the camera, and the guy is using it to light what's going on around him, and then there's dirt, and it is dirt, and it's because he's trying to dig someone out of the debris.
There are more hands and feet, and debris, everything in the scene is debris. Someone asks if there's a power line close, and someone else tells the first guy to go fuck himself, to keep on digging. And then there's the shadow of a white face. It's like a horror movie, only worse, because this happened. This happened fifteen hours ago and it's still happening and the shadow of a white face is a guy buried under concrete and mortar and they keep on moving things, rocks, pieces of concrete and iron.
Someone's crying and then there's that face again, that face, white except for the hair and the lips, and Seth thinks that dark stuff on his forehead might be blood.
"Just hang on," the guy with the camera says. "Just hang on. Hang on. I'm right here."
There's a woman walking, and the guy with the camera tells her to be careful, there's a guy under all this crap. And then someone comes by to help and they end up placing a block of concrete almost on top of the man's face. And Seth thinks he would laugh if it weren't so painful.
Someone's crying and the guy is picking up papers and putting them inside his journal and the white face is there. The guy is there, buried chin deep in nothing but debris.
"It's okay, you're breathing. It's okay. We've got you. You're breathing, you're breathing. Just calm down. Calm down. You're breathing, there's someone else right there that isn't. You're breathing, and he's dead."
Seth's just standing there, watching, hearing the man tell the guy that he's breathing, that he's okay, and he's not the only one watching. People all around him are watching and crying.
He flips his cell phone open once again, hits #3 in his speed dial and it says again, Signal Busy, and he curses under his breath because the signal isn't busy, it's dead. It's dead because the phone is under five tons of debris and Ryan is with it and he could be dying, face white from dirt and concrete, blood in his forehead and no one to dig him out, to tell him that he's okay, that they've found him, that he's breathing.
He dials the same number, over and over again, until he thinks he'll burst into tears if he hears the stupid ding dang ding of the busy signal and when he hears it again, understanding crashes in all at once.
Ryan's could very well be dead, and Seth will never see him.
They used to... they used to share a house, a room sometimes. They used to share a life. They used to be so close, they were together every waking hour, so close he could almost feel Ryan's breath.
He grimaces, thinks something hurts inside but he can't find it. It tastes greasy and wrong on his tongue, and then he remembers that taste. Yesterday morning. It tasted wrong on his mouth.
I should have called him. I should have--
Seth spent the summer with Summer, following her for a whole month in her quests, and doing nothing more than staying in the hotel of the city with Pancakes. Ryan spent the summer taking classes, to catch up, to advance. They never got together. Ryan called him twice. Seth called him once. They barely talked fifteen minutes all together.
They--
We used to share a life, he thinks, and something inside him cracks and he can't help but lean forward, breath thick in his throat. We used to share a life, he thinks, and how soon have I forgotten it. The thought tastes bitter and greasy and wrong and like remorse. Someone hits his shoulder, and he blinks, looking around, wipes his face with the back of his hands.
It's minutes and almost a millennia before he forces himself to take a step forward, and another, and move until he's actually moving and tell himself that he'll find him. He'll find Ryan and get that life back, the one he forgot about. He'll find Ryan, if it's the last thing he does. Seth'll find him. He has to.
It was short and quick, but I felt like I needed to write it. And here it is. *sighs* The video someone linked me it's this one. Not recommended for the weak of heart. I mean, it's strong, and a few people I've recced it haven't liked it, have felt it was too much. *shrugs* Just in case you wanna watch it.
I'm off now. To bed. Take care.
There were too many dead and even more hurt. Thousands lost their homes, what little they had. We are not a powerful country. It's been a year and people are still trying to rebuild, to have a room when they used to have a house.
I'm trying to help out, as little as I can. My trip to Chincha is part of "College students helping to rebuild" or something like that. We're doing our best.
In light of that, and of a video I was given the link of not a couple of weeks ago, I wrote this. It was started so very long ago, but only found its ending now.
Title: Under a blackened sky
Author: M. F. Luder
Pairing: Ryan/Seth
Rating: PG-13
Category: Gen. It'd be slash if you squint. Angst, because this is me still being me.
Challenge: For fanfic100 and 35. six sense. The rest of the stories can be found at Big Damn Table.
Author's note: Thanks to mylogiceatsyou for doing the beta work, yet again.
Under a blackened sky
August 15th, 2010.
Seth rolls over in bed, covering his eyes with one hand, trying his best to keep the sunlight away from his face. He sighs, and pulls the covers over the top of his head, hiding from the whole world for just a second.
He can feel his mouth, thick and dry, something tasting greasy and wrong on his tongue. He blinks, rubbing his eyes with his fists, turning around to face the window. He pauses for a second, a thought forming and then dissolving into thin air, as the sparkles of the sun shine and dance before him. He blinks again, and sitting up, checks the clock.
A little after seven. He runs one hand through his hair, the feeling that he's forgetting something between his eyes. It's Wednesday, and he has an 8.30am. If he takes a quick shower and then has a bagel on the way to class, he's certain he can meet up with Jen before class and get her notes from yesterday which both he and Lara decided to blow.
In the shower, he goes over everything he has to take to class, over the photocopies he'll need for his afternoon Color class and how he promised Emily that he'll partner with her at Design for Publishing. He goes through everything twice and still can't find what he thinks he's missing.
Seth tries his best to pay attention to Exhibit Design but Lara is as bored as he is and she ends up telling him the very long story of how she met Luigi and how they fell in love, which is a nice story. For a second he thinks about the mermaid poem and he opens his mouth to tell her that, but then the teacher calls attention to one of the students in the second row, who, apparently, was falling asleep in his seat. So they both turn around and try their best to pay attention, or at least not fall comatose.
By the time they leave class and meet Emily and Luigi -- who starts bitching about geologic stuff that neither Lara nor the other two understand -- Seth has long forgotten what he wanted to tell Lara.
They have Words and Things -- a stupider name Seth has never heard before -- and Digital Portfolio after lunch, and afterwards they sit in the small café, and Seth can't help but look around him and see these three girls he has become fast friends with, and then Dean joins them from having found a quiet place from where to call his girlfriend from. Seth frowns, taking out his cell phone for a second, thinking about calling summer. Summer, who's spent the last three years being one with nature and sticking it to the man and God knows what else. Summer, who he's learned to miss and not miss at the same time, who he should be missing, and yet isn't. Not really.
He swallows, and reaches for his Mocha Latte, letting himself not think about anything for a second. He closes his eyes for a second, takes in a deep breath. A cell phone rings in the background, and he's thinking about the book he has to read for intro, when someone screams behind him.
He opens his eyes, frowns, and looks over his shoulder. A guy at the bar of the small café is talking to the bartender. He can't hear the words, only the voice, the urgency in the tone.
"What's going on?" Lara asks again, and Seth glances over his shoulder to see her turning around in her seat on the arm of the chair Luigi is sitting on. Emily stands up from her seat, her eyes wide.
Seth blinks, turning around in his seat. His eyes see the TV over the counter. He blinks and he reads the words and he can't breathe, because this isn't happening, because they are wrong, because those words are wrong.
The bartender raises the volume of the TV, the whole café suddenly attentive.
"-- repeat, there has been an earthquake on the west coast. We repeat, there has been an earthquake on the west coast. So far we know very little. Unofficial reports state that it reached 8.0 on the Ritcher sca--"
Seth shakes his head, takes a step forward and stumbles. His right hand reaches to hold himself on the column before taking another step forward, and another. His breathing and his pulse roars in his ears and for a second he can't hear anything, and everything around him is nothing but a blur, it's colors and shapes and and and and--
"Seth?"
It's the people pushing against him that stop him in his tracks. Everyone is coming and going in SFO. It's like the whole city is on high alert. Which it is. The earthquake hit not fifteen hours ago.
Someone pushes at his shoulder and he just moves with them, hand tight around the one bag he put together before driving to the airport, cell phone in hand, not caring how much it would cost him to get here, to Berkeley, home.
He takes his cell phone out of his pocket, flips it open and wants to try to call again. He thinks his hand shakes, but takes no notice. He managed to get through to his parents right before the flight. They'd been caught at the mall, and said Sophie was fine, had stopped crying once the movement stopped. Seth'd told them to tell her that she was a strong girl. It was only right then that he realized he knew very little about his sister.
He dials, again, for what feels like the tenth time, because he can't stop himself. Signal busy, it says. Like hell. Seth curses under his breath and flips the phone shut.
It's not anger he's feeling, he tells himself. It's not anger at all.
Someone hits his shoulder once again, his side, and then he spins around for a minute, so many people are pushing past him and he should be moving only he's not.
And he's standing before the TVs in the waiting area and there's the news on and he can hear... God, he can hear...
"-- amateur video taken during the tragic earthquake that shook Berkeley to its very core, last night at 6.43pm."
It's nothing but black and the camera shaking for a minute, two, and then he realizes that it's not that it's black, the lights are all out. And the camera is not shaking, the person with it was running toward something, out of something. Somewhere.
His blood runs cold, his chest grows cold. Everything around him is cold.
His right hand tightens around his phone, tight, tighter, and he keeps watching because he can't stop himself. He doesn't understand what's going on, there's gray all around the scene. It's grey and black and then there's light (from the camera? yeah, from the camera) and there must be voices talking, he thinks he hears someone curse, and someone crying, but it's too low for him to understand.
He waits. And watches. And thinks he's dying inside but can't be sure.
And then he gets it. The light is coming from the camera, and the guy is using it to light what's going on around him, and then there's dirt, and it is dirt, and it's because he's trying to dig someone out of the debris.
There are more hands and feet, and debris, everything in the scene is debris. Someone asks if there's a power line close, and someone else tells the first guy to go fuck himself, to keep on digging. And then there's the shadow of a white face. It's like a horror movie, only worse, because this happened. This happened fifteen hours ago and it's still happening and the shadow of a white face is a guy buried under concrete and mortar and they keep on moving things, rocks, pieces of concrete and iron.
Someone's crying and then there's that face again, that face, white except for the hair and the lips, and Seth thinks that dark stuff on his forehead might be blood.
"Just hang on," the guy with the camera says. "Just hang on. Hang on. I'm right here."
There's a woman walking, and the guy with the camera tells her to be careful, there's a guy under all this crap. And then someone comes by to help and they end up placing a block of concrete almost on top of the man's face. And Seth thinks he would laugh if it weren't so painful.
Someone's crying and the guy is picking up papers and putting them inside his journal and the white face is there. The guy is there, buried chin deep in nothing but debris.
"It's okay, you're breathing. It's okay. We've got you. You're breathing, you're breathing. Just calm down. Calm down. You're breathing, there's someone else right there that isn't. You're breathing, and he's dead."
Seth's just standing there, watching, hearing the man tell the guy that he's breathing, that he's okay, and he's not the only one watching. People all around him are watching and crying.
He flips his cell phone open once again, hits #3 in his speed dial and it says again, Signal Busy, and he curses under his breath because the signal isn't busy, it's dead. It's dead because the phone is under five tons of debris and Ryan is with it and he could be dying, face white from dirt and concrete, blood in his forehead and no one to dig him out, to tell him that he's okay, that they've found him, that he's breathing.
He dials the same number, over and over again, until he thinks he'll burst into tears if he hears the stupid ding dang ding of the busy signal and when he hears it again, understanding crashes in all at once.
Ryan's could very well be dead, and Seth will never see him.
They used to... they used to share a house, a room sometimes. They used to share a life. They used to be so close, they were together every waking hour, so close he could almost feel Ryan's breath.
He grimaces, thinks something hurts inside but he can't find it. It tastes greasy and wrong on his tongue, and then he remembers that taste. Yesterday morning. It tasted wrong on his mouth.
I should have called him. I should have--
Seth spent the summer with Summer, following her for a whole month in her quests, and doing nothing more than staying in the hotel of the city with Pancakes. Ryan spent the summer taking classes, to catch up, to advance. They never got together. Ryan called him twice. Seth called him once. They barely talked fifteen minutes all together.
They--
We used to share a life, he thinks, and something inside him cracks and he can't help but lean forward, breath thick in his throat. We used to share a life, he thinks, and how soon have I forgotten it. The thought tastes bitter and greasy and wrong and like remorse. Someone hits his shoulder, and he blinks, looking around, wipes his face with the back of his hands.
It's minutes and almost a millennia before he forces himself to take a step forward, and another, and move until he's actually moving and tell himself that he'll find him. He'll find Ryan and get that life back, the one he forgot about. He'll find Ryan, if it's the last thing he does. Seth'll find him. He has to.
It was short and quick, but I felt like I needed to write it. And here it is. *sighs* The video someone linked me it's this one. Not recommended for the weak of heart. I mean, it's strong, and a few people I've recced it haven't liked it, have felt it was too much. *shrugs* Just in case you wanna watch it.
I'm off now. To bed. Take care.