late summer ficathon
For delgaserasca 's summer ficathon. Prompt, title, and epigraphs from poetry by Paul Guest.
TITLE: Remember How Sad That Was When
CHARACTERS: Harry, Ruth, Malcolm, Ros, Lucas
SPOILERS: Series 8
SUMMARY: "He'd had a plan. A simple and effective game."
I love to tell others, but I'm unsure why.
__
one
you taught me to love, rationed.
+
Cyprus. Cypriote. George and Nico and markets, and men in black cars. She is forced to remind herself, return; come and gone and come again, in three year gaps, like some compulsory anniversary.
There is heat and tropical winds, blown north from the equator; balances of sea air and sun against her face. There is a pleasingly languid quality to it, one which went unseen, at first when she was too preoccupied with exile.
She found a rhythm, eventually, beaten by the tides.
And then a form of rebirth, quick and dying back slowly. She's able to choose, this. Now there are no deadlines, no clock ticking against her actions; mental nor physically strapped to a bomb in bright technicolour, seconds moving down.
Simplicity and elegance return, in some fraction.
She goes to the house, out of curiousity and a sense of obligation, nostalgia; the tiny and ancient Micra carves its way up the hills, kicking dust from its tires, and as the roof begins to show itself between the trees and against the sea, she feels a punch in her gut. It is empty; seclusion was once desired, but now it proves lonely and overgrown, the garden gone to seed and the pool covered in a fine layer of pollen and dirt.
She's surprised, when there is mail; doesn't wonder at the logistics because she already knows how. Wonders at the why, the familiar dread in her slight shake of hand - the postcard is dated two weeks ago; a photograph of Paris, the girders of the Eiffel Tower crossing to the sky in 1940's sepia.
(The Grand Tour ends here - City of Light; city of love.)
One line. Not Harry's writing. Ros'.
She puts it down carefully, corner by corner on the side, parallel edges. There are the bones of a fish beside it, yellowed by sun; head and tail fanned delicately on the cutting board, paper thin.
She cries; and then she sobs. And then she screams.
__
two
how emotionally counterintuitive it was
+
London is consumed by the world's attention, its ancient want of competition on tracks and stadiums; because of this, Malcolm has studiously averted turning on the radio. It makes him glad that there is no television - to see the city again will seem an indulgence, and his enthusiasm for such things is lacking.
But today, mid July, when the campers come and the sea remembers reflection of the sun, he toggles the switch as he waits for the kettle to boil, and welcomes a new voice into his silent days.
There is the unbidden jingle of the news, achingly familiar; a plummy accent telling of disaster and strife in uncompromising sentences. He thinks of Harry.
It seems a comfort, for some moments, until there is a pause and then Malcolm hears the words 'targeted shooting' and 'Hampstead', and a sort of hollow dread fills his chest. The voice moves on to gold medals.
He ignores the high-pitched whistle of the kettle as it steams, instead going to the front door in quick strides, nearly stepping on the post as he stoops to grab it. He feels the cool, thick paper, glossy beneath the assorted bills; it is written in Ros' hand, clean and crisp as the woman herself, scrawling closed code.
There is pause. Poetry.
(“Did you choose a poem for my funeral? I bet you did.”)
There is pause, voices of the radio muffled in the other room, and then he is sliding down the wall, post a forgotten fan beside him.
For a moment he sees flags and flowers and sodden earth; knighthoods and red walls and prison doors with cyrillic, and then he looks to where the Cornish coast laps the hungry sea, sun shining defiantly through cloud. Trying, still.
(“So smile, Malcolm.”)
__
three
But there were limits and lengths and limits again.
+
He seems incapable of feeling any sort of nostalgia for lakes and fells and the quaintness of tiny villages; the sun rises on blue skies, lifts the mist, and Lucas turns his back.
He'd had a system. One he didn't distrust. One that was laid out in near obsessive neatness, perfectly pitched and executed; dates and times mentally categorised but never written, and no blood on his hands.
Three years. Nearly half an incarceration and thousands of days, all mounting up to one shot. The exact weight of the gun in his hand, the exact pressure on the trigger.
Fear in another man's eyes and half-uttered words; blood on rusted-red brick mixing salty with the smell of stagnant water below the aqueduct. It smelled like the Thames. It smelled like the Lakes.
Lucas doesn't know the feeling of being on the run, but he does know the fear that it comes with; what's truly foreign is traitor, because loyalty is ingrained, deep, deep, impenetrable.
He doesn't know Tom had done the same - followed a pattern, a train track that ended in derailment. A heavier shotgun in his hands.
A ferry carries him over the North Sea, as cloud begins to cover the swathes of blue in dark bruises. Later dusk comes, and he pulls the postcard from his pocket, carried for two days; found at his flat hours after he'd left the body and ditched the gun.
Moscow, gold-lighted, onion-domed, snowing. Quintessential. He flips in over in his hands.
The message is clear. No secret safe, and colleagues haven't been 'okay' for a long while.
Ros is going to come after him, he's always known this. Harry was too close for it not to be a personal chase, fuelled by revenge; but personal runs deep for him too - all anger, mistrust, careful despair, paired down and funnelled into a plan: packed into gunpowder, a shell, housing.
Effective, but never, never simple.
He sees another shore coming in and out of focus through the mist, flat and uniform; continental Europe upwind. He looks to the postcard, to the coast; rips the paper into pieces in his palm and throws it to the sea.
The sun shows itself weakly, and he wonders how long it will be before they come for him. Ros, he thinks, won't wait.
He imagines backing down. He imagines continuing running. He imagines Ros showing up on his doorstep, wherever it is, with a gun levelled at his head - because she won't give him the luxury of another cell. Instead.
Payback in a bullet; and that single, devastating tear.
I woke some other
place with lakes and blue skies and rush hours
and strangers I worried about. But no you.
No ages of you. No your name three times
when I walked somewhere or lay down at night
to bargain with sleep. No you
falling from my mouth everywhere I went.
No you anywhere to be seen.
Paul Guest; Remember How Sad That Was When
TITLE: Remember How Sad That Was When
CHARACTERS: Harry, Ruth, Malcolm, Ros, Lucas
SPOILERS: Series 8
SUMMARY: "He'd had a plan. A simple and effective game."
I love to tell others, but I'm unsure why.
__
one
you taught me to love, rationed.
+
Cyprus. Cypriote. George and Nico and markets, and men in black cars. She is forced to remind herself, return; come and gone and come again, in three year gaps, like some compulsory anniversary.
There is heat and tropical winds, blown north from the equator; balances of sea air and sun against her face. There is a pleasingly languid quality to it, one which went unseen, at first when she was too preoccupied with exile.
She found a rhythm, eventually, beaten by the tides.
And then a form of rebirth, quick and dying back slowly. She's able to choose, this. Now there are no deadlines, no clock ticking against her actions; mental nor physically strapped to a bomb in bright technicolour, seconds moving down.
Simplicity and elegance return, in some fraction.
She goes to the house, out of curiousity and a sense of obligation, nostalgia; the tiny and ancient Micra carves its way up the hills, kicking dust from its tires, and as the roof begins to show itself between the trees and against the sea, she feels a punch in her gut. It is empty; seclusion was once desired, but now it proves lonely and overgrown, the garden gone to seed and the pool covered in a fine layer of pollen and dirt.
She's surprised, when there is mail; doesn't wonder at the logistics because she already knows how. Wonders at the why, the familiar dread in her slight shake of hand - the postcard is dated two weeks ago; a photograph of Paris, the girders of the Eiffel Tower crossing to the sky in 1940's sepia.
(The Grand Tour ends here - City of Light; city of love.)
One line. Not Harry's writing. Ros'.
She puts it down carefully, corner by corner on the side, parallel edges. There are the bones of a fish beside it, yellowed by sun; head and tail fanned delicately on the cutting board, paper thin.
She cries; and then she sobs. And then she screams.
__
two
how emotionally counterintuitive it was
+
London is consumed by the world's attention, its ancient want of competition on tracks and stadiums; because of this, Malcolm has studiously averted turning on the radio. It makes him glad that there is no television - to see the city again will seem an indulgence, and his enthusiasm for such things is lacking.
But today, mid July, when the campers come and the sea remembers reflection of the sun, he toggles the switch as he waits for the kettle to boil, and welcomes a new voice into his silent days.
There is the unbidden jingle of the news, achingly familiar; a plummy accent telling of disaster and strife in uncompromising sentences. He thinks of Harry.
It seems a comfort, for some moments, until there is a pause and then Malcolm hears the words 'targeted shooting' and 'Hampstead', and a sort of hollow dread fills his chest. The voice moves on to gold medals.
He ignores the high-pitched whistle of the kettle as it steams, instead going to the front door in quick strides, nearly stepping on the post as he stoops to grab it. He feels the cool, thick paper, glossy beneath the assorted bills; it is written in Ros' hand, clean and crisp as the woman herself, scrawling closed code.
There is pause. Poetry.
(“Did you choose a poem for my funeral? I bet you did.”)
There is pause, voices of the radio muffled in the other room, and then he is sliding down the wall, post a forgotten fan beside him.
For a moment he sees flags and flowers and sodden earth; knighthoods and red walls and prison doors with cyrillic, and then he looks to where the Cornish coast laps the hungry sea, sun shining defiantly through cloud. Trying, still.
(“So smile, Malcolm.”)
__
three
But there were limits and lengths and limits again.
+
He seems incapable of feeling any sort of nostalgia for lakes and fells and the quaintness of tiny villages; the sun rises on blue skies, lifts the mist, and Lucas turns his back.
He'd had a system. One he didn't distrust. One that was laid out in near obsessive neatness, perfectly pitched and executed; dates and times mentally categorised but never written, and no blood on his hands.
Three years. Nearly half an incarceration and thousands of days, all mounting up to one shot. The exact weight of the gun in his hand, the exact pressure on the trigger.
Fear in another man's eyes and half-uttered words; blood on rusted-red brick mixing salty with the smell of stagnant water below the aqueduct. It smelled like the Thames. It smelled like the Lakes.
Lucas doesn't know the feeling of being on the run, but he does know the fear that it comes with; what's truly foreign is traitor, because loyalty is ingrained, deep, deep, impenetrable.
He doesn't know Tom had done the same - followed a pattern, a train track that ended in derailment. A heavier shotgun in his hands.
A ferry carries him over the North Sea, as cloud begins to cover the swathes of blue in dark bruises. Later dusk comes, and he pulls the postcard from his pocket, carried for two days; found at his flat hours after he'd left the body and ditched the gun.
Moscow, gold-lighted, onion-domed, snowing. Quintessential. He flips in over in his hands.
The message is clear. No secret safe, and colleagues haven't been 'okay' for a long while.
Ros is going to come after him, he's always known this. Harry was too close for it not to be a personal chase, fuelled by revenge; but personal runs deep for him too - all anger, mistrust, careful despair, paired down and funnelled into a plan: packed into gunpowder, a shell, housing.
Effective, but never, never simple.
He sees another shore coming in and out of focus through the mist, flat and uniform; continental Europe upwind. He looks to the postcard, to the coast; rips the paper into pieces in his palm and throws it to the sea.
The sun shows itself weakly, and he wonders how long it will be before they come for him. Ros, he thinks, won't wait.
He imagines backing down. He imagines continuing running. He imagines Ros showing up on his doorstep, wherever it is, with a gun levelled at his head - because she won't give him the luxury of another cell. Instead.
Payback in a bullet; and that single, devastating tear.
I woke some other
place with lakes and blue skies and rush hours
and strangers I worried about. But no you.
No ages of you. No your name three times
when I walked somewhere or lay down at night
to bargain with sleep. No you
falling from my mouth everywhere I went.
No you anywhere to be seen.
Paul Guest; Remember How Sad That Was When