Perspective
Creeno
Bunch of one shots on individual Across the Universe characters. ;D Enjoy.
Notes for Max: So far, he's been the easiest. I am so not joking; Jude can be an utter bitch when he wants to. Castrophany, the word I used for two, actually isn't a word. It's from Fire Coming from a Monkey's Head by Gorillaz, a combination of catastrophe and cacophony. Use it enough, get it in the dictionary.
1. lost worth
"Ten more, Carrigan," grunts Lt. Munch and Max, for the umpteenth time, wishes he could just bludgeon the fucker's head in.
"Yessir," he hisses instead, and drops to all fours to do another round of pushups. The career military's are easy to pick out: gnarled faces, grim manners, a near frightening loyalty to this fucking war, and a near tangible hate for the draftees.
Max pushes, though. It's exactly like Princeton: pushing to beat the snobby bastards who you couldn't care less about in the street, grinning and moving on even when they're hurling shit at you.
(smiling suppresses the gag reflex)
The biggest difference, though, is that he can't just find a Brit that smokes like a chimney late at night and a car that isn't decked in camouflage and reeks of dried blood and jungle, and drive out of there any moment.
2. castrophany
It's a bigger bang than what he expects.
Aim, fire! — not quite bang.
It's a near goddamn roar to Max, the sound the metalandbullet make before another bullet with Uncle Sam's kiss on it kills another Charlie.
He still hears it in his dreams, this near unrecognizable sound.
He hates the fact that he was the one who made it.
3. taste
He pulls Jude's hand to his mouth and laps up the red juices. The Brit makes a startled, confused noise as Max licks at his fingers again. Marijuana gave him hella the case of munchies, but the damn box of Cap'n Crunch was in the kitchen, too far away.
"Uh, mate?"
"Nnnnyeah?" Max moves onto Jude's pinky and ring fingers, as Jude face starts to grow red to match the puddle of red juice and squashed fruit he's lying in. He'll probably regret it, but for now he's so baked he didn't even know how to tell his hand to move away from Max.
"Mind telling me about this sudden act of cannibalism?"
Max laughs around Jude's fingers; guy couldn't move but he could still pull out the big words. "Strawberries, man," he watches Jude blink and can see the gears starting to whirr a little bit in the Liverpudlian's head. "Juice is all over you."
It clicks in Jude starts to pull his hand away, but Max utilizes some of the reflexes the Army's giving him to jerk it back. "Y'couldn' get a bloody towel?"
"You're here, Judith," Max grins and pulls Jude closer, who's given up the fight. "Now, shut up like a good human sacrifice, huh?"
4. shrapnel
One moment, Max is firing futilely into the dense jungle he's still unable to navigate on this godforsaken patch of earth and the next, the world tumbles and spins, his head aches and then there's a Charlie right before him. He's got a dead soldier's gun in his hands, aimed straight at Max, and he can feel his heart stutter as he realizes that his own gun is cast aside.
(what will you do?)
Charlie's sweating as bad as him, hands shaking with the gun in his hands, and all Max can do is stare, unable to move.
(it's…it's not what you do, it's 'ow you do it)
And, mercifully, Charlie doesn't shoot.
Instead, a plane hits the earth not even a kilometer away from them, and pieces of it sail through the air to pierce Max's right side, out of the frying pan, into the fire.
5. richest king
He loves the Blue, every moment of detached bliss it gives him.
He doesn't have to feel the pieces of the dam plane trying to work themselves into his skin, leaving mottled scars of exploded stars on his skin. Doesn't have to feel himself break everytime he looks up at Lucy's crying, sad face and think I'll die just like Daniel, leave her all alone. Can ignore the empty feeling he has, knowing that Jude is gone.
"Hold still," purrs the beautiful nurse, Blue just beyond his reach.
He is Ozymandias, King of kings, when he and the Blue come together.
6. father
"Get out," Max glares at him. How dare he?
"I came to see you," Mr. Carrigan with his sweater and glasses and money and ambition says and it seeps into Max skin like jungledark and want of New York cold. "Lucy said—"
"I said get out," Max rises out of the Blue, blazing and bright and angry. "I don't want to hear your bullshit, see you throw around your money, old man. You and I know you guilted Lucy into this. All you had to say was Daniel, didn't you?" He feels as if he should be holding a gun, scrambling away, but he keeps himself focused. "Why don't you go ahead and leave quietly before I make a fuss and I get to see your ass dragged out?"
Max never sees him again.
7. prudence
"What'd you tell her?" Max shouts over the din of the crowd as Lucy goes off with Jude. She looked a little subdued after talking to Prudence.
"That I'd slept with you and Jude!" She screams back, face flushed in happiness as Sadie continues. Max laughs uproariously, getting a look from the girl of the night.
He certainly wasn't going to clean that one up.
8. lucy
They don't talk, directly, about Daniel.
She just leans on his shoulder and his hand goes around her and they mourn together in their own sort of way.
And it's even worse when she has to hand him a letter, a letter that could sentence him to the same fate.
9. jude
The letters are the only things that come out dry and nearly untouched. Max only has three, but every single one means so much to him, even if puling them out reminds him of jungledark and twisted bodies.
And he'd return the favor now.
Hey, Jude…
Done! :D See that pretty periwinkle/blue button? Click it and tell me what you think. It's a damn good motivator, yeah?