FIC: Crystalline (Fatigue)
Title: Crystalline
Author: ShadowSpirit
Email: HPFerret@aol.com
Feedback: Pretty, pretty please?
Rating: PG
Chapter: Fatigue
Summary: The Memoria is what keeps them there. They're drunken on the city's energy; it's a drug that is forced upon them all. Angela and Rollin--they just want to leave. But the Memoria isn't going to just let them walk away.
WIP: Complete
Word Count: 2376
Disclaimer: Mine~~~
Uh. I'll edit later. I just want to get it posted. *cough* I think I've edited the first half before...
┘┌Fatigue┐└
Shadowed apartment buildings loomed over them; faces in windows ducking out of sight. They didn’t even try to look -- or at least Angela Rimes kept her gaze dead set on the darkness ahead of them. She dragged along slowly, forcing her legs to lug along: one, step, two, step, three, pause -- breathe. Her eyes stared blankly to the sky, and then all at once she slouched over and began to cough violently.
“Angela? Angela!” Turning to her quickly, Rollin set his hands onto her shoulders, moving one down to rub at her back and try to ease her from the coughing, but she didn’t stop.
White shadows waltzed around them. Everywhere. It was like disco lights, but in one color and mocking them. Angela’s feet tangled together and she started to slip to the ground. The coughing continued even as Rollin guided her downwards. “Angela, what’s wrong?”
She tried to wave a hand like it was nothing…
But then she passed out half way through.
She would always giggle and hide in clothing racks of stores, calling out Pick me, pick me! to unsuspecting customers. She didn’t remember why she did it -- out of fun, perhaps. But why she was hiding, she never understood. It could’ve been from a parent. Or maybe it was because she simply could.
One time she ran into a boy -- or… the boy ran into her. He had dove in through a rack of sweatpants, breathing heavily, and then looking with a shocked expression into her own. She started to ask who he was and he shushed her quickly, explaining quietly that he was escaping his mother. She had nodded and kept quiet, and when he seemed to become certain that his mother had passed, he made his wait out.
Curiosity and interest led her to follow him, and instead of going their separate, peaceful ways, they ran off to terrorize other people trying to do their shopping.
And then he was gone.
And then she never remembered being in a store like that.
She wasn’t sure they existed anymore.
Maybe the stores… that boy… were all just some… silly little dream.
“She will be ok,” Angela heard someone whisper in a hushed tone. Was the air speaking to her? She opened her eyes slowly and looked up. Rollin let out a relieved breath and she turned her gaze to a young girl in a dress. The girl offered a small smile and Angela groaned, forcing herself to sit up. “I told you she would be.”
“Thank you… I think.”
“What happened?” Angela stared at Rollin for her answer.
“You just started coughing, and then you passed out. Are you ok?”
“I think so… I had a funny dream though,” her smile was lopsided. She looked distant for a moment and Rollin had to wave a hand in front of her face to return her to normal. “Who are you?” Angela looked at the girl.
The child straightened, arms pulled behind her back and she shrugged. Angela blinked at her. “You don’t… know?”
“I know.”
“So…?”
“So what if I know?” she hummed.
“I’d like to know your name, that’s why.”
“Oh. Well. I’m just another Somebody.”
“Uh huh… ok…”
“I don’t think she’s with the unit,” Rollin commented.
“That’s kind of obvious,” Angela said as she stood up.
The girl tilted her head to the side and watched Angela intently. “But we’re all connected to the Memoria. How can you not be? It’s not possible.”
“Oh, it is.”
She frowned, suddenly looking a mix of being upset and confused. She turned away and started to skip down the dark road. Rollin and Angela made to follow her and were blinded by what they thought were the headlights of a car. They moved out of the way to avoid being hit, but when the light faded they were only left with the same old road and buildings. “Where’d she go?” Angela looked to Rollin.
He shrugged, bemused. “Maybe… she just wasn’t there at all… I could’ve been losing it.”
“But I saw her too.”
“You could be losing it too, then.”
The city lights blended together higher in the sky. Among the darkness they seemed more free, waving and twisting their light against the backdrop like an aurora, but from far down on the ground -- the roads, and especially in the pits of the city -- no one could ever see the sort of aurora. All they saw was the black that kept them in; kept them like captives, even if they were never aware of it.
Angela and Rollin trekked along through shadows. They were tired and worn out as an aftereffect, Rollin decided, from being separated from the rest of the unit. Angela sunk to the dirt ground and leaned back against a rusting pole with a sigh. “We’ll keep walking and walking,” she said, “but we’re never going to find a way out. They’re not going to let us.” She started to laugh for a moment before stifling herself, “Like they’d ever let someone just walk out of their city!”
“But I don’t see how they could stop us from finding at least the edge…”
“Well, neither do I, but they’re doing it.”
“I hate them.”
He sat down besides her and nodded. “Yeah. So do I.”
It was radiant. He remembered when he was just a boy, he’d be pushed back into the safety of his home by his older brother when the storms struck. Yet almost always, he would run to a window and brush aside a cloth curtain -- hand woven -- and watch as white-pink flashed across the sky, rippling through like the waves of water that surrounded them. “I just wanna see!” he’d cry out when his brother pulled him away; every time.
“It’s dangerous! Mom’d have my head if she came back and found out the storm killed you.”
“You’re just a chicken!”
The sound of wind would thrash wildly against the window then, and he would cry out in shock and press himself back against a wall far back from it. Sometimes, on the days with smaller storms, his brother would chuckle. Other times, the storms were so bad that even his brother backed away alongside him.
“Why are they angry with us?”
They grew more and more angry as the days had gone on. They had decided to take his father, too.
“The Endless will never believe we have a right to be in this world; be apart of their land. Just don’t go doing anything to upset them… and maybe the storms will then stop…”
But he had realized that trying to not disturb the Endless only seemed to make things worse.
“You can escape from here.”
“Hey, wake up, I want to keep moving. Jeez… Rollin… Rise and shine!” Angela kicked at the sleeping body in the dirt. She nudged her foot up and under his arm, then kneeled down and grabbed for both of his cheeks, stretching them into an odd face. “Wake up, moron, come on! I don’t want to stay here all day. Or night…” she glanced up at the sky with confusion, though she saw more of the underside of highways than the actual sky. “Or whatever time it even is.”
“Stop it,” he groaned, batting her hands away from his face. It was the extent of his moving.
“Don’t make my have to drag you up.”
“I’m tired. Just let me sleep a bit longer.”
“No! No more sleep!” she snapped. Angela reached out and yanked at his arm, heaving him to his feet. “You can be so incredibly lazy. Let’s make a deal, you can be lazy all you want after you get us out of the city.” She crossed her arms with almost a smug expression crossing her face.
“Me?” he whispered back groggily. Words wove through his mind in a chain: You can escape from here. “Angela, that doesn’t seem much of a fair deal.”
“Oh, of course it is. You’re just not seeing the whole picture. Don’t you --” she stopped short. Rollin stared at her in confusion. Angela’s eyes were focused away from him. She looked more confused than him, but then she suddenly bolted and went running down the road.
“Angela!”
She made no move to answer him or even signal what was going on. “Angela! Wait up! What is it?”
“I have to know!” she yelled back to him as she cut a corner and started down a new path. “I have to know if she was real, or just in our imaginations!”
“Who?” he tried to keep up with her as best he could.
“That girl!”
“Angela, I don’t think --”
“I saw her!” she stopped and looked at him. He nearly crashed right into her. “I saw her. Just now. She looked shocked and then took off.”
“Angela, the city --”
“Don’t tell me the city is messing with us! I’ve been messed up enough by this damned city, but now I’m free from its controls and its not holding onto me anymore. I saw her! She can’t be just some figment of my imagination!”
“Angela --”
“ROLLIN!” she growled back angrily.
“Angela, turn around!”
She did.
The girl was standing right there, looking at them with a peculiar expression on her face. She tilted her head to the side and blinked, but didn’t smile. She seemed oddly upset.
“You…” Angela whispered, slowly calming herself back down.
“Me,” the girl answered in a mirroring voice. “Somebody.”
“Are you…” she tried to find a way to phrase it…
“Do you really exist? Or are you just in our minds?” Rollin asked.
“I exist,” the girl said, “I’m not… in your minds, as you put it…” She shifted her feet uneasily.
“Then why don’t you tell us your name?”
She watched him, silent for some time. They thought she was going to disappear again and maybe it would all mess with their minds again, only to tire themselves out all over. But the girl finally nodded and her arms resigned from behind her back and moved to rest by her sides.
“Selina.”
“See?” Rollin smiled. “Was that so hard?”
Selina turned her gaze onto Rollin and took a step forward. She seemed to be paying attention to everything around her, even Angela. Her voice was kept barely above a whisper as she spoke. “You two are separate from the Memoria. It’s… disconcerting… but… intriguing…”
“But you’re disconnected too, aren’t you?” Angela asked.
“I was demoted.”
“…What?”
Selina sighed and turned a bit away. She folded her arms over her torso and stared off in the direction that the Memoria was in. She started to try and explain. “I was an Overseer. I helped to maintain and keep a balanced control level in the city. But… I started to get too involved. I wanted to know about the people. I was too curious, so they demoted me. Now I still go into the city when I know that the others won’t notice my presence has shifted.”
“Y-You…” Angela took an uneven step away. “You work for the Memoria…?”
“…Yes.”
“Rollin, let’s get out of here. Now. She’s going to force us back with the unit!” she turned her attention madly towards Selina. “I’m not going back! Never again!” She grabbed Rollin’s arm and started to drag him away from the girl she could now give a label THE WITCH.
Selina called desperately to Rollin, “You can escape from here!”
Rollin stopped and Angela stared at him. He gazed over at Selina, who continued to speak out loudly. “You have your memories in a whole! They can’t keep you held here. The Overseers can’t regain control of you. You remember your true home, your family, friends, everything! And you can use those memories to escape! But only you can!”
“Angela?” he whispered to her. She seemed lost. Stunned. “Angela, do you remember anything? Your life before this city?”
“No. Nothing.”
Five white shadows fell away from Selina’s body like petals. Her eyes went wide in panic. She hurriedly began to stumble over her words just to get them all across. “The Memoria has held onto you for too long. You won’t know anything outside this city anymore, and with yourself severed from the unit, you hardly know anyone else. Without your memories, you’ll never be able to find and exit, and if Rollin stays with you then he’ll never escape either!”
“I’m not leaving her!” Rollin called back.
“Then you accept your fate to be doomed to wander this city, lifeless until an Overseer finally catches you, and returns your mind back to the unit, and the Memoria.”
“I’ll find a way to get us both out of here.”
Angela stared at the ground. She was feeling sick to her stomach. “I remember…” her voice died down. She wasn’t sure if she was certain herself. Did she really? Or was something playing a trick on her? “A store. And a boy. I hid in the middle of these racks of clothes and called out to people. And then this boy that I ran into and I sort of teamed up and we ran through the store together, harassing customers.
“I don’t know if it really happened. But it’s all I can remember. I know that it didn’t happen here; there are no shops like that around. So, it’s something, right? I can’t be completely lost to the will of the Memoria if I still remember even one thing from my life before… But then… is there any way… to get the rest of my memories back?”
Selina’s body began to fade. “The Memoria.”
“What about it?”
“I have to go! They’re going to catch me!”
The shadows broke away and wisped into the air like ghosts. They expanded and the white radiated into the darkness, flooding the entire alleyway until it burst -- like shattering -- and Selina was nowhere in sight.
“But what about the Memoria?” Angela cried, begging the dark shadows for an answer. Any answer. “How is that supposed to help me?!”
“We’ll find the way, Angela. I promise you. I’m not leaving you behind.”
“Thank you, Rollin.”