After the Fall

[lb_lee]

After the Fall

Prompt: ‘Fall’

Summary: When M.D. hits the wall, she hits hard.

Word Count: 1002

Notes: Guess which cliché I’m a huge detractor of?  Takes place after the events in ‘Break It Up And Let It Go’ have become habit.

M.D. wakes up.

She’s lying on her back, legs bent partly under her, and there’s warm concrete under her.  Above her is a clear, peaceful blue sky, framed by tall buildings, and her mind is blissfully empty.  Sure, her head throbs and her mouth tastes coppery, but that seems inconsequential.  What matters is that it’s a beautiful blue sky above her, and the sun is warm and bright, and—

And someone’s crying.  Is it her?  It’s not her.

A shadow looms over her, blocking her view of the sky.  It takes a second before her higher brain functions kick in, but then she recognizes him.

“Hi, Biff,” she says.

He doesn’t grunt at her.  The crying isn’t coming from him either.  M.D. senses that this is important, but she isn’t quite certain why.  She considers sitting up, but trying might hurt (more), and now that she thinks of it, the concrete isn’t so bad to lie on, so she stays where she is, letting her mind reboot.  She’s not worried; eventually it’ll put itself back together and inform her what happened and how she should feel about it.

“My head hurts,” she informs Biff, since it’s the one thing she’s sure of.

He makes an impatient noise.  He’s blocking the light, so she can’t see his face, but his hands are lit enough for her to see that they’re wrapped.

Her mind makes a connection. “You hit me, didn’t you?”

“Uh huh.”

“Did you knock me out?”

“Uh huh.”

“Oh.” She tries to figure out why this is important.  She can’t. “Okay.”

He looks at her for a long moment, like he’s waiting for something.  She hopes he’ll tell her, but he doesn’t, just starts unwrapping his hands, and she watches the familiar movements of his wrists and forearms and lets her memory stitch itself back together.

Going somewhere.  She was going somewhere because she had to do something.  Something important.  What was it?  Any minute now, she’ll have it…

While she’s pondering the matter over, Biff finishes.  Now that her eyes have adjusted to the shadow, she can see his hands, battered and bloodied.  His forearms aren’t much better.

Ah.  That’s it.  She smiles.

“Oh, good,” she says.

He raises his head.  She still can’t make out his face with the sun behind him, but that’s okay.  Everything’s okay now that she knows what happened.

“I made it.  I was worried I wouldn’t,” she explains.

He just looks at her.

At first she doesn’t understand.  Then everything knits together and starts coming into focus.  She’s not in his apartment; she’s on the street.  He’s not making the usual grouchy retorts.  And there’s still that crying, which isn’t her or him—

“Oh no,” she says.

He says nothing.

“What did I do?” She asks.

Biff ignores her, just barks over his shoulder, “Go home.”

The crying continues unabated.

She starts struggling to get her feet under her. “What did I do?”

Standing up turns out to be easier said than done, because now she has enough cognizance to realize she hurts everywhere.  She must have given Biff a good run for his money before he put her down.  Anyway, he plants a foot on her chest to keep her from going anywhere.

“Go the fuck home,” he bellows over his shoulder, but whoever it is obviously won’t or can’t obey, and then he turns to her and tells her to stay down.  And something is horribly wrong, because she’s realized where the sound is coming from, and she knows Biff isn’t trying to keep her down for her health; he’s trying to block her sight of whoever’s crying.  Which means it’s someone important, and the only person she knows in the entire city of Vaygo besides him is—

She blasts him with electricity to get him off her, and when he goes down, she manages to lurch to her feet.

Raige is curled up against the wall.  It doesn’t matter the details of the condition he’s in, only that it’s not much better than Biff’s, and he jerks away from her when he sees her.

There is nothing she can say, nothing she can do.  She can’t even offer medical care, because it’s obvious he’s scared to death of her.  Of course he is.  The only thing she can do is get out of his sight.

She doesn’t remember taking the jaunt port, or arriving back at the Jaunter’s League.  Just suddenly she is in her room, and she locks the door, walks to the corner, and she’s okay, she’s handling this like a lucid, rational human being, that’s good, because that means she can fix this, she can make this better, she can make this work, and—and—

She hits the floor on her knees so hard they bruise.

Because Raige can run a four-minute mile, run like the wind and the water, leave her eating dust, and he didn’t run.  Because Raige is her best friend, and he is a pacifist, and he’s the hopeless, dreamy, stupid idealist who thinks he can talk someone down from  violent psychosis.  Like if he loves someone hard enough, that’ll be enough to cure anything.

Like she could understand him.  Like she could recognize him.

There is something horribly wrong with her.  She’s known this for a while, but this is the first time she’s known.

In a minute, she’ll pick up the phone.  She’ll call Bobby, and she’ll tell him what happened, and she’ll say that maybe it would be better that she get taken out of the general public for a while, and she’ll be calm and pragmatic about it, no crying or wailing or self-pitying.  In a minute, she’ll do the ethical thing so even if she turns out to be unfixable, at least she won’t be able to hurt anyone else.  In a minute, she’ll do all that.

But right now, there is something horribly wrong with her, and all she can do is cry.

 

Comments

[aubergine-pilot.livejournal.com]

I know what cliche.

And ow, and oh god, and just I AM NO LONGER CAPABLE OF "CAN", I CAN'T, I JUST - AAAAAH. Talking directly to folks who write stuff like this makes me nervous.

[lb-lee.livejournal.com]

"After the Fall" was tricky. I'm still not entirely satisfied with it.

Oh, and since you seem to be enjoying the IS stuff; I worked up an actual timeline and crap so you can actually know what order everything goes in, instead of living in Story Confetti. Would that be useful/interesting to you?

--Rogan

[aubergine-pilot.livejournal.com]

Satisfied or no, it's damned good as it stands. You're really good at last lines that stab the reader right in the heart, you know that? (Also, stream-of-consciousness style narration.)

We already discussed my intense hunger for a timeline, but just to make certain of it - YES. YES IT WOULD BE.

[lb-lee.livejournal.com]

Okay, I can slap that up for you, and I'm sure you already know about the 101 post.

Since I'll be able to later tonight, is there any other IS crap you want? Original draft, questions answered, "who the hell is X and what species are they anyway?" that kinda stuff?