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(Originally posted at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
stayintheroom.)
The main character in this has actually been present in the XAOSverse since its inception. I just haven't really given him the time of day and have sort of regulated him to the status of "plot device".
I am a horrible person.
This is the first attempt at fixing this. Also, I now hate pronouns. And present tense.
Title: Somewhere a Clock is Ticking
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ultranos
Rating: PG
Notes: Title from Snow Patrol.
Summary: I've got this feeling that there's something that I missed
He wakes up screaming.
He has the memory of smoke in his nose and mouth, choking him, and of heat on his skin. All around him are flames and he's screaming, his throat raw from use and hot ash.
Where are they? It wasn't just him, there were others, and he's screaming for them and for him and where are they?
A face he doesn't recognize forces itself into his field of vision. The face is speaking to him, and those might be hands gripping the sides of his face, but he can't hear the words. He thrashes to free himself, find where they are, and get out of this place because all he can smell is smoke and all he can feel is fire.
His vision swims as darkness creeps along the edges until it swallows him whole and he knows no more.
He sees them, just outside of his reach. They are saying something, but he can't hear the words. Yelling, screaming, pleading, but there is no sound. He opens his mouth to speak, and finds he can't. His voice is silenced.
Suddenly, he is falling backwards. Flames leap to surround him. He's falling slowly, and he can see them trying to reach him. He reaches out his hand to grip the other's, but his hand passes right though. He sees the other screaming through the wreath of flames, and all he can make out is the word 'Why?'
When he wakes again, the smell of smoke is gone, replaced by the harsh aseptic smell that's unmistakably a hospital. He is lying on a bed, so his first sight is of a white ceiling. His mouth feels like a desert, and he can't speak around his tongue.
He feels someone holding his hand, caressing it between long fingers. When he turns his head, he sees his mother sitting by the bed, head bowed and her fingers entwined with his. She doesn't know he's awake yet. A tiny mewling comes from his throat, the only sound he can make, but it's enough to capture her attention. Her head jerks, and she quickly turns to look at his face. He tries for a weak smile, and doesn't know if he succeeds because even smiling hurts, but it's enough to bring grateful tears to her eyes.
He manages a croak, and his mother is there, offering a cup of water, encouraging him to drink slowly through the straw.
She lets go of his hand to run her fingers through his hair, just like she did when he was a little boy and sick in his bed, and he can't help but feel like everything is going to be all right. But that's not right, because he knows, he just knows that something is horribly, fundamentally wrong.
"Mom?" It's a harsh whisper, because he doesn't think his throat could manage much more, but it works.
"I'm here. I'm here," she whispers to him, almost as if she's afraid this is just a dream and he's still unconscious or worse. He can't tell. She's crying openly now, and the set of her jaw and the lines on her face tell of knowledge that does nothing to put to rest that nagging sense of wrongness in the back of his mind.
"What...?" The rest is lost in a cough, prompting more water to be offered. He'll stick to the monosyllabic words and hope they're enough.
His mother keeps running her fingers through his hair. "You were walking home, after school." Her voice is low, mechanical, as if she is trying to distance herself from the events she's describing. It sounds almost military in its distance, which does nothing to ease that teasing worry because his mother was never military. "There was a chemical truck. The driver lost control, and it crashed into a building. The spill caught fire..."
He is vaguely aware now that his arms are wrapped in bandages, that his chest and legs are as well. That's not important right now. He remembers the stark horror on the faces of the people he was walking with as they saw a truck slam into brick not twenty feet in front of them. He remembers being knocked to the ground as the engine block of the smashed truck sends sparks into the leaking fluid that catches fire. The smoke choking his lungs...
Then, blessed coolness. He is floating in the dark. Strange shapes and figures flash in his vision. He hears muffled voices, one that sounds vaguely like his own, but he is not the one speaking. The words have a strange echoing quality to them, resonating in this place outside of space and time.
There is a steady image, floating at the edge of his vision. He concentrates on that, and it comes into focus, like a blurry image on a camera before the aperture corrects. And then he sees them. Sees him, the other, screaming, scrambling over broken stone to reach him. The three are following, behind the first, but just as desperate.
He feels the fire again, looks down and sees flames springing into being around him, although he is surrounded by stone. The black-haired girl has reached the other and is holding him back from throwing himself into the flames. The other struggles against her, hand outstretched. The last thing he sees before he falls into the flames are the same eyes he sees in the mirror, desperate and beseeching, and he hears a voice that he knows as well as his own screaming his name before he starts screaming too.
"The others," he rasps, not caring about his throat because he has to know. "What happened to the others?"
His mother's face breaks at the question, and she buries her face into his shoulder, heedless of the bandages and sobs. And he knows. The nagging itch in the back of his mind has reared to the forefront of his brain and he can no longer ignore it nor explain it away. He knows the why of the profound sense of wrongness he feels since he woke up.
The others did not make it. He is the only one in the hospital.
He will never see his own eyes staring back at him in a face that so similar and yet so different from his own. Never see the matching grin break out on his mirror image. Never hear laughter from the three other people who had walked into his life and become his world, nor from the one who had been there since the beginning.
His brother is dead.
And nothing will ever be the same again.
stayintheroom.)The main character in this has actually been present in the XAOSverse since its inception. I just haven't really given him the time of day and have sort of regulated him to the status of "plot device".
I am a horrible person.
This is the first attempt at fixing this. Also, I now hate pronouns. And present tense.
Title: Somewhere a Clock is Ticking
Author:
ultranosRating: PG
Notes: Title from Snow Patrol.
Summary: I've got this feeling that there's something that I missed
He wakes up screaming.
He has the memory of smoke in his nose and mouth, choking him, and of heat on his skin. All around him are flames and he's screaming, his throat raw from use and hot ash.
Where are they? It wasn't just him, there were others, and he's screaming for them and for him and where are they?
A face he doesn't recognize forces itself into his field of vision. The face is speaking to him, and those might be hands gripping the sides of his face, but he can't hear the words. He thrashes to free himself, find where they are, and get out of this place because all he can smell is smoke and all he can feel is fire.
His vision swims as darkness creeps along the edges until it swallows him whole and he knows no more.
He sees them, just outside of his reach. They are saying something, but he can't hear the words. Yelling, screaming, pleading, but there is no sound. He opens his mouth to speak, and finds he can't. His voice is silenced.
Suddenly, he is falling backwards. Flames leap to surround him. He's falling slowly, and he can see them trying to reach him. He reaches out his hand to grip the other's, but his hand passes right though. He sees the other screaming through the wreath of flames, and all he can make out is the word 'Why?'
When he wakes again, the smell of smoke is gone, replaced by the harsh aseptic smell that's unmistakably a hospital. He is lying on a bed, so his first sight is of a white ceiling. His mouth feels like a desert, and he can't speak around his tongue.
He feels someone holding his hand, caressing it between long fingers. When he turns his head, he sees his mother sitting by the bed, head bowed and her fingers entwined with his. She doesn't know he's awake yet. A tiny mewling comes from his throat, the only sound he can make, but it's enough to capture her attention. Her head jerks, and she quickly turns to look at his face. He tries for a weak smile, and doesn't know if he succeeds because even smiling hurts, but it's enough to bring grateful tears to her eyes.
He manages a croak, and his mother is there, offering a cup of water, encouraging him to drink slowly through the straw.
She lets go of his hand to run her fingers through his hair, just like she did when he was a little boy and sick in his bed, and he can't help but feel like everything is going to be all right. But that's not right, because he knows, he just knows that something is horribly, fundamentally wrong.
"Mom?" It's a harsh whisper, because he doesn't think his throat could manage much more, but it works.
"I'm here. I'm here," she whispers to him, almost as if she's afraid this is just a dream and he's still unconscious or worse. He can't tell. She's crying openly now, and the set of her jaw and the lines on her face tell of knowledge that does nothing to put to rest that nagging sense of wrongness in the back of his mind.
"What...?" The rest is lost in a cough, prompting more water to be offered. He'll stick to the monosyllabic words and hope they're enough.
His mother keeps running her fingers through his hair. "You were walking home, after school." Her voice is low, mechanical, as if she is trying to distance herself from the events she's describing. It sounds almost military in its distance, which does nothing to ease that teasing worry because his mother was never military. "There was a chemical truck. The driver lost control, and it crashed into a building. The spill caught fire..."
He is vaguely aware now that his arms are wrapped in bandages, that his chest and legs are as well. That's not important right now. He remembers the stark horror on the faces of the people he was walking with as they saw a truck slam into brick not twenty feet in front of them. He remembers being knocked to the ground as the engine block of the smashed truck sends sparks into the leaking fluid that catches fire. The smoke choking his lungs...
Then, blessed coolness. He is floating in the dark. Strange shapes and figures flash in his vision. He hears muffled voices, one that sounds vaguely like his own, but he is not the one speaking. The words have a strange echoing quality to them, resonating in this place outside of space and time.
There is a steady image, floating at the edge of his vision. He concentrates on that, and it comes into focus, like a blurry image on a camera before the aperture corrects. And then he sees them. Sees him, the other, screaming, scrambling over broken stone to reach him. The three are following, behind the first, but just as desperate.
He feels the fire again, looks down and sees flames springing into being around him, although he is surrounded by stone. The black-haired girl has reached the other and is holding him back from throwing himself into the flames. The other struggles against her, hand outstretched. The last thing he sees before he falls into the flames are the same eyes he sees in the mirror, desperate and beseeching, and he hears a voice that he knows as well as his own screaming his name before he starts screaming too.
"The others," he rasps, not caring about his throat because he has to know. "What happened to the others?"
His mother's face breaks at the question, and she buries her face into his shoulder, heedless of the bandages and sobs. And he knows. The nagging itch in the back of his mind has reared to the forefront of his brain and he can no longer ignore it nor explain it away. He knows the why of the profound sense of wrongness he feels since he woke up.
The others did not make it. He is the only one in the hospital.
He will never see his own eyes staring back at him in a face that so similar and yet so different from his own. Never see the matching grin break out on his mirror image. Never hear laughter from the three other people who had walked into his life and become his world, nor from the one who had been there since the beginning.
His brother is dead.
And nothing will ever be the same again.
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