Deathfic Challenge - 9/35 - #28 Beauty - "Riptide"
Title - Riptide
Author - Sealgirl in
seal_girl
Fandom - Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon
Characters - Eric the Cavalier
Prompt - #28 Beauty
Word Count - 1005
Rating - G
Warning - Implied Character Death!!
Summary - Eric looks back at his final moments in the Realm.
A/N - Set as an Alt Ending for “Eye of the Beholder”.
Continuity - 9/35
Table - is Here!
Riptide
‘Excuse me?’
The voice was light and relaxed, but nothing special. There was no reason for him to react to it, no real reason at all. Except that he did.
His breath caught, and for a moment Eric couldn’t move.
It was difficult to pinpoint exactly what it was that triggered the feeling. Not the accent; it wasn’t that the tone was similar, or the voice. There was something beyond superficial recognition that resonated within him. She had a lovely voice, a beautiful voice; so different, but so similar.
‘Mr Montgomery?’
That’s who he was now. No one knew him by any other name.
None of his friends had ever called him that; his friends had called him Eric. He wasn’t even sure how long it had been since he was Eric to anyone. Certainly years; decades maybe? How long had it been since he’d come back home?
‘Mr Montgomery, your Father is waiting.’
He didn’t speak, just nodded in reply, willing the woman to leave. The sooner she was gone, the better. The feeling and the memories were too painful, too acute, too overpowering.
He had tried not to dwell on it, burying himself in work. His physiatrist had said he was in denial, and that it wasn’t his fault, and that he just felt guilty because he had come home and they had not. But even his father had noticed the change in his son, though he might deny that anything was actually wrong.
Still, there was nothing he could have done; that was true enough. But knowing that made it worse.
He had been too far away to be of any real use.
Eric closed his eyes. The memories were still there, simmering just below the surface, just waiting for a chance to catch him unprepared. He was usually ready for it, he understood how it worked. But every so often it would catch him completely unaware, even many years after the event. And those times were the worse. He couldn’t shield himself from their power.
He could remember exactly what had happened that day. The day he came home.
It was so simple, and so stupid.
The others had run back immediately to help the Knight; they’d all reacted to the sound of battle except him. He had stopped to look through the portal, to savour the sight of the Amusement Park, see the wheel and the people. He could even smell the hotdogs and hamburgers from the stand. It all seemed so real, and so close, and so tempting.
While the others ran back, he’d hesitated. It was that simple. He had wanted home so much that in the end he couldn’t force himself to turn away. He’d stayed there, looking with a sickening yearning filling his heart. He was aware of the shouts from the others, and knew that Venger was close by. He had known he was needed, but still, he had dared to linger.
Then, after a sweet moment of indecision, the choice had been made for him. Not that the others would have believed him if he’d ever had the chance to explain. The portal was closing, there was little room to move and he… he hadn’t really meant to step forward. Of course, he wanted to (who would in his position!) but he hadn’t really meant it. No, he had meant to turn round, and jump down after them. He had meant to come after them and help them. He had. He knew he had.
But in reality he hadn’t.
He had often wondered what it would have looked like to the others; how they must have felt in the few moments they had left, seeing him vanish back to Earth just as the portal shrunk away to nothing. Did the betrayal hurt, or had they expected it of him?
But he would never know. He would never have the chance to ask.
His eyes flicked open at the sound of distant laughter. He was here, he was home. Somewhere down the hall of the office her could still hear her voice, higher and clearer than anyone else’s.
At the sound, he flinched.
After he came home, everything was different and the new patterns in his life became fixed. All he did was work. He finished school as inconspicuously as possible, then he took his place in the company.
But that didn’t help. He didn’t socialise, he avoided parties and weddings and funerals. He never went to galleries with his mother. He never went to the opera, or the museum, or the theatre. He never looked at “art”. He couldn’t.
He never went near the soaring skyscrapers that crowned the city skyline. He never looked out over the bay at the setting sun. He never looked up to the stars. No, especially not that; he never looked up to the stars to see the whole of the Universe displayed in grandeur for him.
There were no pictures in his room, and as little colour as he could arrange. There was no art or fine food or wine; there were no flowers. Especially that, he couldn’t bear to look at flowers at all.
He surrounded himself with bland or boring people. He spent his life in the impersonal, stylised boardrooms of his Father’s company. He rarely went home; but that was no better, he rarely spent time in the plush house of his family and spent most nights crashed on the scruffy, leather sofa in his office, with all beauty excised from his life as neatly as he could manage.
But it still lurked in the recesses of his life, no matter how hard he tried to remove it, hiding in the curve of a tree, the lilt of a voice, the smile of a child; such beauty as he could never face was waiting.
It was there to remind him, and every single day he tried to forget.
He got home, and the portal shut behind him.
But not before he heard their screams.
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