Kindnesses: (by timydamonkey)
Disclaimer: I shockingly still don't own Heavy Rain, and am still just a fan.
Author's Note: Since Heavy Rain is a surprise current poll winner (I never knew I had so many Heavy Rain readers who would read my profile, haha), here is another Shaun fic from my pile of Heavy Rain ideas. Reviews appreciated as always.
This one was written for two reasons: I wanted a Shaun POV on certain things from the Jayden only ending, and I wanted to explore writing Scott, though I'm not ready to try getting into his head and writing from there yet. So, Shaun gets to do the honours.
Oh dear. I think I've got Scott's accent all wrong. :/
My description of Jayden… he is a drug addict. The dialogue from that section between Jayden and Scott is lifted from one of the endings (and what he says to Shaun) although I've shortened it a bit, but the rest of the dialogue is original.
In hindsight, this could have been done with much fewer words. Part of the stuff I wanted to Shaun POV, though, was related to atmosphere building, so in that respect it was worth it. Does it work? I'm not much of a description writer, which is probably obvious – I like my interior monologue.
Shaun barely recognised the man peering at him through the grate in the warehouse floor.
He remembered, quite distinctly, his father leaving while he sat on the carousel. He remembered him walking away, despite Shaun calling after him in alarm, because his eyes had looked dead. He remembered losing sight of him and asking around in a panic, before meeting a large police officer with a smile and comforting demeanour.
This man wasn't smiling. He may have had the same facial features, but Shaun couldn't recognise him at all.
He didn't know how long he'd been there, waiting to drown. It felt like years. Centuries. His legs had hurt so much from treading water that it had felt like he was being tortured, but the pain was going away now. He just felt numb, his body and his mind.
This man came to visit sometimes, and Shaun bit his tongue to keep his mouth closed. He was scared that, if he opened it, the water would all pour in, weigh him down, and drown him from the inside out.
He hadn't eaten. He was dying of thirst while surrounded by water, he was sure, and the man just watched him expressionlessly.
"It shouldn't be long now." The man was crouched down to see him, and Shaun couldn't read how he felt: was he gleeful, or relieved, or desperately angry? His voice hadn't wavered. "If your father's worth his salt, anyway."
Shaun didn't know if that was supposed to mock him or not, but he thought of his dad, looking at him for that split second without recognition, and, unbelievably, it was that that made him cry. It wasn't sobbing, it wasn't much more than tears in his eyes burning tracks into his face amidst the chill of his body. But he hated this man for reminding him of his father, of a man who loved him and a man who didn't seem to know him anymore, and for standing and watching him drown.
He felt strangely light-headed. He wasn't sure what it was from, but he was so very tired from keeping himself propped up, tired of the pitter-patter of rain that were his only company beyond the few sporadic visits of that man.
The man sighed. "It's nothing personal, kid," he said. Shaun believed it, too: the man had no reason to dislike him, and he barely reacted to the predicament as if it wasn't anything new. That scared him more than anything.
He obviously didn't expect Shaun to say anything, as he didn't wait for much of a response: he just pulled himself to his feet, turned and left. Shaun felt blood blossom in his mouth as he bit his tongue sharper this time, because a part of him wanted to say, 'Wait! I don't want to be alone.' Even somebody so obviously unhinged was better company than the rain, even though it might get him killed. It was a horrible thought, but it was there. The water level was rising, and staring at that grate, he thought about his face being mashed into the grating as the water level rose. He couldn't help but open his mouth – idiot, idiot, it was only a thought – to gasp and inhaled some water, and then started to choke on his panic.
A man was leaning over his face. He didn't recognise this one. His face was less full; he looked unhealthy, pale and drawn, shadows under his quite sunken eyes.
His perspective seemed to have tilted. Gradually, slower than he would have liked, he realised he was on solid ground. His limbs felt as if they'd been replaced by lead weights, and he felt like he'd throw up any minute. As soon as he had the thought, he started coughing up water, like he had a river streaming from his mouth. His throat burned.
He became dimly aware that the man was trying to talk to him.
"…You're safe," the man was saying, but he really wasn't, as demonstrated when the man suddenly returned over his shoulder. Shaun tried to say something, but nothing came out of his mouth when he opened it, and then the strange man who'd visited him was back and had kicked him in the side.
He strained his thoughts, now that he could do so without forgetting that he was drowning, and thought he remembered a name on that police uniform, although the man certainly wasn't wearing those clothes now. Shelby.
Shaun tried to roll himself over to see what was going on, and Shelby started to rant. He couldn't separate the words from each other, as the sudden jerky attempt to move made the world white out for a moment as he gasped for breath. His only consolation was that at least the mad man seemed to be ignoring him. When he finally managed to focus back on the world around him, the angry tone have voice had disappeared and was replaced by a terrifyingly gentle one.
"You discovered my little secret… and it will die with you," Shelby promised. Shaun's heart beat quickly. And then – and then something happened, but Shaun couldn't see what. He heard running and thought for a horrifying moment he'd been left alone with that man and was going to be thrown back into that death trap, but the voice was different.
"Bastard, you're not gonna get away that easily." The other man was angry too, and when he got right up into Shaun's face again, he was terrified for a moment. He stared at this man, with a face translucent enough that some instinct in him was shouting at him to get away, to cross the street if he ever saw him, but he could barely twitch a limb. He could barely feel them.
Maybe it wasn't that bad, he comforted himself. The man had yet to do anything threatening, and the policeman had looked so friendly, and look where that had taken him. This man obviously wasn't with the crazy one with the way they'd been talking (and Shaun had a distinct impression that weapons had been involved – and, Shaun realised, he couldn't have moved enough to avoid them).
This man had protected him, one way or the other.
"Are you all right, Shaun?" the man asked over the buzzing in Shaun's head.
It took a while to get the words out of his mouth. It hurt, and he gasped right through it, but he felt that certain things needed to be said. "Yes… yes, I think so…" He was about to thank him, when a thought suddenly struck him. He hadn't thought of it before, and felt immensely guilty. "Where's Dad?"
The man, his unlikely saviour, tried to smile at him, but it was rather strained. He glanced upwards. "I'll call the police," he said. "They'll come and get you, okay?"
He'd totally avoided the question. That couldn't be good. He opened his mouth to demand an answer – he may have looked pitiful, but surely he could do something – but the man had turned around and ran. Shaun was left alone in an empty, rotting warehouse. He didn't know where Shelby was, but he hoped the man wasn't still there with him, hiding. The thought made him panic, which made it hard to breathe, so he just lay there, trying to take calm breaths and wondering when life had become so complicated.
He didn't want to lie there anymore, on that grimy floor, all alone and at the mercy of everything life could throw at him. He'd been learning, since Jason died, that life could throw an awfully disproportionate amount at people. He levered himself to his feet. It took several attempts, a coughing fit, and even as he managed to pull himself up, he couldn't stop his body shaking. He was weak-kneed, and just about managed to drag himself to a wall to hold onto until the world stopped spinning. He'd stumbled over his own feet, only having regained a small amount of feeling in them so far, feeling as if he was walking on something that wasn't there. It was very surreal.
He clutched the wall and breathed. He could hear clattering noises from somewhere around him, and he could probably track them, but he couldn't move from that wall. He didn't think he wanted to, either.
He hated that he was alone. After everything, he wondered if he ever wanted to be alone again. He wanted his dad.
It couldn't really get any worse. And then, the door burst open.
The first thing Shaun saw was the gun. The second thing he recognised was the police officer's uniform. However long ago, he'd have instantly relaxed, but he can't trust the police, now. He isn't sure he can trust anybody but his dad, all his strange behaviour aside.
The man said something Shaun couldn't hear, and then other police spilled into the room with their weapons. Shaun shrunk back against the wall and waited. It didn't take them long to find him.
"Shaun Mars?" The police officer asked him, but Shaun didn't open his mouth. He just stared. The police knew of him. They could be with the other man – or he could have been reported missing. Calm down, Shaun, he told himself, but it didn't do anything. At least being vigilant wouldn't get him hurt, said another part of him. The officer frowned. "Lieutenant!"
"Yeah?" A man strolled over, and it was the bearded man Shaun saw first peeking into the building. He looked genuinely surprised to see Shaun. "Good to see you alive and well, Shaun. I'm Lieutenant Carter Blake. Your mum's been worried about you."
This much, at least, he could bring himself to open his mouth for. "And my dad?" He wanted to sound calm, but it came out as some strange mix of hysterical and desperate.
The man pursed his lips and didn't say anything.
"Please," Shaun begged into the silence, and then he was crying again. His chest shook, and it was agony against his other injuries. He winced and had to focus on breathing again for a moment.
"Shit," said Blake. Shaun watched dispassionately, feeling oddly like he was having an out of body experience as the man swung around and yelled, "Where's the damn ambulance, for Christ's sake?"
"My dad's going to be worried." Shaun tried again. "He'd have got spooked."
Blake turned back to him. "About what, Shaun?"
There was no easy way to explain his father's odd turns, moments where he seemed nothing like himself and just seemed to wander. He knew how it sounded, and he couldn't tell on his father like that, so he said nothing.
Evidently seeing him he didn't plan to say anything, Blake said, "You don't have to worry about your father anymore. He's in safe hands."
That, at least, was reassuring. He had no reason to doubt Blake's words, had no idea what they meant beyond the relief it made him feel.
A wave of tiredness hit him with his relief, and he slumped down the wall. He'd have hit the floor if one of the police offers hadn't grabbed him, saying, "Woah, kiddo!"
Shaun was seriously considering just sleeping, when Blake coaxed, "Shaun, a colleague of mine called me telling me you were here. Have you seen him?" He said the word colleague strangely, and Shaun couldn't read the meanings behind it. Still… he thought back.
"You… you don't mean the policeman, do you?" Shaun asked. "He's the one who kept me here. And… and the other man helped me out. He looked ill."
"A policeman kept you here?" Blake queried, obviously disbelieving, but Shaun had had enough. He didn't know when he'd last slept, or eaten, or done a million things. It wasn't a choice he consciously made, but his body protesting this state of affairs that meant he toppled practically into the arms of a policeman and fell asleep.
A safe place, it turned out, meant prison.
Shaun was there when his father was released. He was there when he got his first look at the man in a while, pale faced and with a bandage wrapped around his hand (and oh god, there was no finger, what had his dad done, was it in one of his fits -).
His father reached him and hugged him. He could feel his mother's smile, despite everything.
Things weren't okay. But, Shaun felt, maybe they could be – one day.