Warning: obliquely implied character death
Scene: The setting sun fading pink through hazy air lightening with the fluttering start of the night breezes, washing the pale stone and stucco in shades of rose and lilac. On the loggia, rugs and cushions are scattered about - no better place to catch the gentle touches of the wind. A thin, gauzy curtain dancing slowly in the arched opening, escaped from its restraint. On the tile floor, a pallet, no more than a mattress, swathed in soft linen sheets. On the pallet, a man. Pale skin shocking against dark hair, and a loose white shirt that barely stirs with each shallow breath.
Scene: A study in pastels - the watercolors of early dusk paint the air, mirrored in the folds of fabric, the fragile shadows cradling fading eyes. The sounds of the city rising like fragrant smoke.
Hidden under another soft linen sheet and layers of thick cotton bandages is a bullet hole with no bullet in it. The metal is gone, but its poison has already soured the blood that flowed around it.
He is safer here than he was there, and that is a very dangerous thing. Spirited away to this place to bide his time, but this is no hospital and his rescuers are no doctors, and there are no words for the slow lapping of realization against the fast-eroding edges of his mind.
Too soon, he thinks. Too swift a change, from dark to light, from numbness to pain and back again to the incomparable weightiness of being. It's getting to be too heavy for his lungs.
Gaby did not nurse him like Illya did, lifting his head to drink when he didn't care to lift it himself and sitting with him as he stared blankly out at nothing, but it was her idea to bring him out onto the loggia. Her idea to let the cool air soothe him and the changing colors of the sky remind him of his freedom.
He is grateful to her for it, though he shouldn't be, for all the wrong reasons.
Surely she intended a different sort of freedom.
Scene: The soft brightening of the evening, a breath of warmth tracing the edges of the breeze. A growing light behind closed eyelids. A growing sense of disconnect; the sharp lines of what is and what is not blurring and canting and falling away.
He should be fighting. Resisting. But oh, God, he's tired.
Footsteps sound on the tile behind him. He should care. He should open his eyes, at least, and pretend.
Too much.
A hand on his shoulder. A palm pressed to his forehead, fingers laid against the side of his throat.
He should . . .
"Cowboy?"
He's so
"Napoleon—"
he
scene:
A/N: this is sort of a test-drive for this piece, since I don't usually write in this style, but I thought I'd give it a shot. As always, I'd love to hear what you think! (But let the record reflect that ff's posting platform should allow a little more creativity in spacing.)