Behind Broken Glass
By: Dark Draconain
Rated: PG
Feedback: Would be lovely, cheers.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summery: (postDay3) At the end of the day, you have to be able to face your reflection in the mirror.
A/N: Written in June 2004. An exercise in "show, don't tell."
-
Behind Broken Glass
-
The reflection in the mirror was half covered in steam, blanketed by the heavy mist that lay in the warm air. The muted white of the ceiling light shone against straggling water droplets that hung suspended in the sealed room.
Jack picked up the handle of his disposable razor, the plastic hard against his calloused fingers. He began to drag the blades across his face, cold metal drawing ragged lines through the stubble on his jaw. It was a ritualistic action, practiced every morning for uncountable days. It wasn't necessary; there was no one to impress with a meticulously shaven face and clean, shampoo-scented hair.
Another motion in a pantomime of perfect banality. Every morning he got up and ran and showered and shaved and ate breakfast. Not because he had to: Because he had no reason not to. It was a choice between spending the rest of his life rotting in a bed, or rotting in the shell of a comatose specter that went through the motions of a normal life.
Jack paused, dropping the razor on the counter and listing to the clack bounce off the tiles: A hollow echo resounding through an empty room. He leaned in closer to the mirror, thrusting his palm through the wet cloud obscuring his view, looking for the eyelash he was sure had fallen into his eye. He found it—a near-transparent wisp floating in a blue-green iris—pulled it out and flicked it off the tip of his finger, watching it swirl downwards; a helicopter blade without a purpose to resist gravity.
He continued shaving, considering the virtues of opening a steam-covered window and letting breathable air into the bathroom. It would take away the vaporous clouds hanging overhead, but it would also take away the warmth. Ultimately he decided it wasn't worth the effort. But then, if opening a window wasn't worthwhile, what was?
Nothing.
A simple word. Seven letters and two syllables long. A word that wielded such meaning as to be useful even out of context. A word that referred to something that didn't exist; something without meaning. But it was an ironical paradox: Nothing could mean everything; anything.
Nothing was what Jack did all day. It was what Ryan Chappelle had died for. It was what Teri had died for.
After the hellish day with Saunder's, Jack finally decided to forfeit. It was too hard to keep pretending that everything he did was for the good of everyone else. Too hard to keep justifying all the pain and death he alone had caused. Too hard to bury the nightmares that woke him at obscure hours in the morning, leaving him in tangled sheets and a cold sweat, with vague remembrances of shadow faces and partial horrors.
Too hard to face his co-workers, knowing that they'd seen his weakness, his failure, and his pain. The heroine was over, had been for awhile, but it was never really gone. It would never be really gone.
In the end he had done the one thing he promised himself he would never do again; he had run away. Run away from his work, from his friends, from Kate. Everyone. Everyone but Kim. She hadn't let him abandon her the way he had after Teri died. She came to see him, brining him food and lecturing on the horrors of canned beans and potato chips: the last small glimmer of happiness in his petty world of darkness. And Jack clung to her, needing her to stay but not wanting her know.
He stopped shaving, running the razor under hot water that scorched his fingers, watching the little scraps of hair swirl down the drain, helping along the few that got stuck, and placed the razor on the counter. He looked at his reflection in the mirror, the same one he saw day after day, the same one he hated day after day. A reflection that held no meaning, save to remind people it was still there, heart beating in time.
He threw his fist into the glass, a motion smoothed and perfected by years of practice, lacking the staggered jarring that should have laced such an abrupt attack. The mirror shattered under the force of his punch, jagged shards raining down on the bathroom, scattering across tiles and ripping the skin from Jack's knuckles.
He stood there, staring at the cracks he'd created, the destruction he'd wrought. He ran unsteady fingers over the sharp edges, admiring the subtle chaos of the lines. And in the cracked pieces he saw his reflection again, a small sliver blood trickling down his cheek, like a small tear consumed by anger and drowned in regret.
fin