AUTHOR'S NOTES: Lots of Les Misérables references ahead. The title is even a Les Mis reference. The whole quote is, "To die for lack of love is horrible. The asphyxia of the soul." Things written in (italics within parenthesis, like this) are thoughts from the POV character. The dividing lines are all simply Caesar ciphers. This fic is also on AO3, but with more formatting.
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Darkness. It's all you can see through the tiny holes in the loose burlap sack you're trapped within. Muffled thuds and metallic rattling. It's all you can hear above the loud clanging. You press against the rough fabric, gasping for air as whatever shitty vehicle you're travelling in lurches to a sudden halt. You can feel your own heartbeat. Ba-boom. Ba-boom. It pounds at your chest like an angry animal trying to escape from a cage.
Gathering your wits about you, you do your best to take stock of the situation. You can't feel any injuries. No bruises. No cuts. No broken bones. And you're not drugged; no, you're perfectly aware of everything.
No.
Put that aside for now.
Go over the basics.
... Your name is David Lesgle Strider...
"Fucking idiots! This is how you kill a man, not capture him. Someone get this clueless fuck out of this goddamned potato sack. NOW! Goddammit. Hey. Hey, bud? Blond Playboy bastard?" An oddly familiar voice breaks through your thoughts. It settles in just long enough to conjure up an image of a grey-faced creature with tiny, nubby orange horns. Wild golden eyes, the irises rimmed with red. Pointed teeth set in a mouth whose lips are stretched into a comforting smile.
... No. Focus!
You're beloved radio personality DJ Strider, and you're a filmmaker. You might be young, but you'll take down any two-bit bastard who claims you can't hold your own against the seasoned professionals.
"Hey. Come on, you lump of shit. I didn't risk some of my best agents for you to sleep like a goddamned toddler after a full day at the free-for-all playhouse." The burlap is lifted and you can see light. All you can see is light. It's as much a relief as it is an annoyance, and it takes a few minutes for your eyes to adjust. As this happens, you're helped to your feet and led to a rather cosy office chair. It's one of those faux leather ones, the sort you see in old movies. Some sticky patches hint at quick repairs, but it's still something far above the standard of living you're used to.
(Shit, if they're going to abduct you, these fuckers are going to do it in style.)
As this thought fades from your mind, your eyes finally begin to focus on your surroundings.
You're underground. You know that much. There are no windows, and the long escalators leading above-ground have been shut down. Metal plates cover the points at which they'd let people out to the ruined city above. The lacunar ceiling panels remain as they once were, but their opulence has faded. Next to a flickering, multicolored arch embellishment-on one of the few flat surfaces in sight-someone has spray-painted a seemingly nonsensical alphanumeric string. "ECRUT-1." This flat wall serves as the back of the space you're in. The rest is demarcated with propped-up sheets of corrugated steel.
There's a rusty desk.
And, most importantly (probably), there are two people.
One is quite tall and feminine. Her hair is thick, yet short, and the tight curls have been maintained so that two soft peaks stick upwards on the left and right sides of her head. This frames her dark brown face nicely. When she speaks, she has the cool, collected voice you'd expect from someone of her appearance. "So this is the fabled Dave Strider?" she says (asks?), studying you with a pointed intensity.
The other is distinctly masculine, though many features are androgynous. "Don't get him riled up now, Kandice." Their voice is perfectly mid-pitched, refusing to lean in the direction of definitively male or indisputably female. Their face, with its smooth brown skin, is devoid of makeup, though, and there's a clearly maintained beard of light stubble on their chin. (You can't help but compare this to yourself, with your too-pale white skin and a face that wouldn't grow any hair on it if you slathered it with fertilizer.) Then again, this all pales in comparison to the faded grey wheelchair. (This is a politically incorrect thought for you to have, and you're well aware of it. Then again, you'd always thought the type of guy to hire people to forcibly abduct a beloved radio personality would be a bit more intimidating. That said, this bastard seems to have enough upper body bulk to strangle a fucking bear.)
For a brief moment, your gaze meets theirs. And there's something in those silvery-grey eyes that makes you see the eyes from before. Vivid, honey yellow with a thin rim of red around a catlike pupil. It's not as if you have much time to ponder the vision, because the conversation steamrolls onwards.
"I'm going to be perfectly fucking honest with you, Strider, I don't want to do this right now. I've got one hell of a headache and trying to reason with some oblivious blunderfuck is not high on my list of priorities. It's probably somewhere between 'drop dead' and 'eat my own shit,' just to give you a general idea." Here, they pause. They back away from you and park behind the desk. With all the delicacy of a baby shoving some random item into its gaping, toothless maw, they flip through the contents of one of the drawers. After a few seconds, a file with your name on the front is dropped onto the faded metal surface between you and... "Who the fuck are you, anyhow?"
"I didn't introduce myself?" There's a moment of silence, and you can see a vague hint of a fifty-fifty mix of surprise and embarassment. However, this fades quickly. In its stead is a look of disinterested anger, complete with dramatically furrowed brows. "My name's Karuna Vajpai. I'm the leader of the East Coast Condesce Resistance Movement and, most importantly, your one-way ticket out of an early grave."
You nod. (What the hell else are you supposed to do? Dance a fucking jig on the table, shit on it, and then bleat like a goddamned goat?) "That sure is a lot coming from someone I just met," you mutter, unsure of where you stand with this Karuna character.
"It is," they agree, and an oddly confident smile spreads across their face. You're tempted to call it a smirk. "So, let's just get down to the fucking wire. Either you agree to help broadcast messages on behalf of the ECCRM, or I'll have a bullet in your fucking skull by noon. How does that sound?"
"You're just going to let him do this!?" you plead, turning your attentions to the only other person in the faux room. (You might exist in a world that will ultimately collapse into a deadly hellhole, but you're not quite ready to die yet. At the very least, you'd like to finish the script for your next film.)
Kandice, however, disregards your commentary. She applies a layer of jade green lipstick to her full lips, studies the resultant shape on the tube, and shrugs. Then, without another word, she exits.
"Look, I think you're an absolute asshole. You're brash and annoying and every time I hear your voice on the radio, I want nothing more than to put a gun to my head and pull the fucking trigger. But you've got a following, and you've got an inconceivable amount of social power. We kind of need that." Karuna concludes this with a long sigh. Pushing off of the edge of the desk, they reorient themselves so that their weight rests on the backrest of the wheelchair rather than on the desk. "I don't really want to kill you, Strider. That'll be messy as hell and it'll be awful PR for us. All I'm looking to do is to stop a bunch of fucking shit-brained bastards from destroying the planet any more than they already have. If you join, which-as far as I'm fucking concerned-is your only real option, it's a win-win situation. Either we win, and the Condesce bastards fuck off to whatever hell they clawed their way out of; or, we lose and everyone fucking dies."
"You just spout pure rainbows and positivity, don't you?" you counter.
(Up until now, you've tried your best to avoid politics. It never bothered you on a personal level, so you deemed it an ignorable thing. Then again, as time passed, shit started hitting the fan. The population is rapidly decreasing, legislation is verging on outright murder these days, and things have gone to absolute shit. Forget hell in a handbasket. This is a nuclear apocalypse in a wet diaper.)
"I'm just saying what needs to be said," shrugs your impassive opponent. "If it helps any, I've pulled some strings and gotten some people you might know down here. I've been told you're friends with John Egbert, the resident goddamned whoopie cushion and chef. And you're Rose's sister, so there's that." Another shrug. Karuna grabs a coffee mug from the desk (you'd assumed it to be empty, but this is obviously wrong) and downs a massive gulp before continuing, "You'll be allowed to bring all your undoubtedly ugly shit down here and we'll provide you with food and shelter."
As you had before, you simply nod. While your life above-ground isn't exactly easy, it's what you're used to. You're not the type of guy to let other people dictate your life, and you don't plan on bowing to any sort of pressures they'd put on you here. Then again, you're running out of water that isn't irradiated, and there's only two more tins of sealed meatloaf at your shanty-turned-miniature-mansion. So, you agree. "Sure," you say, doing your best to sound as disinterested as possible, "Whatever. I'll do it."
"Fucking fantastic!" Karuna responds, wheeling towards a shelf of assorted and seemingly unorganized papers, "Now, get the fuck out of my office!"
Again, you nod. You're not going to protest this order. This guy's an absolute piece of shit (from what you can tell), and you're happy to get as far away from him as possible.
For now, you figure you might as well investigate. You don't doubt Karuna's claims that John and Rose are here, but you'll have to see it before you'll believe it. (Not that it matters. You're a fish that's already bitten the hook. You're just being reeled in.)
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It doesn't take long to find John. The slightly tanned skin, the wild black hair, and those dorky oblong glasses. He's someone you just can't miss in a crowd, and that's major boon for you. After what you just went through, you're not exactly up for a wild goose hunt.
"I'm guessing it went well with Grand Knight Vajpai," is his greeting to you, and you wouldn't expect anything else. It's all the vaguely tactless charm you've come to expect from John. "You're not dead is what I'm trying to say."
"I figured," you mutter, burying your hands in your pockets. You can only assume that this is where John's been for the past five years. (He disappeared from your life around the time the Condesce finally managed to replace all of America's government officials with their own agents. He'd said he was joining the cause, and you'd encouraged him. That's not to say you weren't disappointed. And you considered following him, but you ultimately decided against it. Perhaps, if you had, you wouldn't be in this situation.) "Vajpai's a real jackass. Just so we're on the same page."
"He's just in a bad mood today," John shrugs, offering you one of his trademark smiles-wide, toothy, and goofy as hell. (He's always been the type to "see the best in people." Goddamned good guy.) "Anyways, you probably met Rose's girlfriend, too. Kandice?"
"Pain in my ass," you counter.
"Nah, she was just playing along with Karuna. They're both really nice people." John does his best to reassure you of the moral character of your new superiors, and this has an odd dual-effect. On one hand, it's nice to have that familiar friendly guidance. On the other hand, no one should need this much talking up to sound like they're not a complete asshole. "You'll have to meet Therese, too, but we'll get to her later." (That's definitely NOT comforting. At all.)
"So, what about Rose? Is she still churning out that homoerotic wizard drama?" you inquire, ribbing your childhood friend in the side.
He responds with a literal snort of laughter. "What else would she be writing? I mean, besides our monthly ECCRM pamphlets." When he rolls his eyes, you can't help but recognize how clear and blue they are. (They're like the fucking sky. They're just that goddamned clichéd, and you can't help it. They're fucking gorgeous, and your goat is frequently gotten by the fact that he is just not interested in you. Sure, you're fine with seeing your best bro happy with anyone, but that's not to say you're without disappointment whenever you know those stupidly blue eyes won't ever look at you the way you've often looked at him.) "By the way, I saved you a bunk that's right below mine. It'll be like our sleepovers in high school."
"I'm guessing that includes the part where you can't hold your liquor worth shit?" you reply glibly.
"I'll be sure to puke on you, just for the nostalgia." John flashes you another of his grins.
And, now, the two of you round a corner in the sea of plain concrete and flickering flourescent lighting.
Now, you find yourself face-to-face with someone who looks remarkably like you-the same pale skin, blonde hair, and freckles spattered over the bridge of her nose. Her arms are folded across her chest, and she looks about as happy to see you as you'd expect. "Nice to see that you're still alive, brother."
"Nice to reunite like some sort trite cartoon siblings, sis," you rebut.
She rolls her eyes, though you catch the vague hint of a smile playing at the edges of her lips. Like you, she'd drop dead before she let you know her real motives. Rose is an enigma, and you strive to match her mystery with your own aloof aura.
(In line with that, you'd never admit that you're glad to see your sister, but you are. You're damned glad to see your sister, and you'd honestly thought she was dead for a while. The last you'd heard, she was servig with the California-er, rather, the West Coast-division of the resistance when their base was bombed to smithereens. Seeing her alive and well here is a huge fucking relief, because you'd never live it down with your conscience if something actually ended up happening to Rose.)