Title: Into the Shining Sun
Author: skybound2
Characters: The Illusive Man
Word Count: ~1200
Rating: K
Summary: Everyone has a beginning, even the Illusive Man.
Author's Note: Felt like exploring some background for good ol' TIM, since we know so little about him, and this was the result. I once thought it would be longer, but the muse had other ideas, so I'm posting it as is. Here's hoping it's not too awful. Title from the Pink Floyd song "Coming Back to Life."
Into the Shining Sun
Marmalade. His face and hands are covered with it. He sucks on stubby, thick fingers, laughing with unadulterated joy at the sweet taste of the sticky stuff. Trying to get every last drop that he can. He has it so rarely, and is always so sad when it is all gone, that he wants it to last and last.
He is three years old and perched on the wide shoulders of the most impressive man that he has ever known. His father has moved heaven and Earth to make it possible for their little family to be together planetside for this event. He has lived almost exclusively in space ports and on-board ships, and the feeling of the light breeze messing his hair is one he wants to cling to always.
Next to them stands the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. Smiling up at him, she shines, a burnished gold in the equatorial sun. She grabs at his hand, pulling it from his mouth, and kisses the tips of his fingers, before bopping him on the nose. He giggles and ducks his head from her, but secretly loves the attention.
In all his life, he has never known a more perfect moment.
The light around them begins to dim, the halo surrounding his mother not quite as bright as a moment before. Confused, he bends over his father's head, and is greeted with an upside-down smile. His father passes him a set of viewing goggles, patiently explaining why he needs to wear them, and the boy dutifully listens, without really understanding. He takes them all the same and slips them on – a size too big for his head – and turns towards where his father's hand is pointing, taking in the moon as it slides into place across the sun.
He is awe-struck. For so long, all he has seen has been metal bulkheads and twisted staircases, with the sun a distant dot in space, something only seen through tiny portholes. But he knows that it is larger than any planet in their system, and that the moon is tiny in comparison. It doesn't make sense to him that the moon could cover it so completely.
The crowd all around him is staring at the same sight, some with slack jaws, others with smiles beaming, but all seeming to feel like him. As he watches, several people pop their goggles off, and look back up, so he does the same.
It is brilliant, and dazzling, and so much more vibrant without the goggles to get in the way. The minutes tick on by, but he keeps his gaze locked on the sun. Wondering if the moon will stay there forever, or if it will be chased off again. Beneath him, he can hear his parents talking, but he is steady on his father's shoulders, so they don't notice that he has dropped the lenses to the ground.
Eventually, the moon begins to pull back, and the sliver of the sun that is revealed trumps everything else he has seen up to that point. The entire world is drowned out in white-white light, that bleeds into bursts of red and blue and orange. The colors dance and mingle together and he finds that he never wants to look away. He is still so young, and has no concept of time, every moment feels like an eternity, and every second is gone too quickly.
He hears a gasp from where his mother stands, but still he does not turn his head. He feels his body being pried from his father's shoulders, and warm hands grasping his cheeks and forcing him to turn and face their owner. There is a pang in his gut that is worse than when he realized there was no more marmalade, as he tries to focus on the face of his mother. He knows that it is her, because it is her voice coming from her mouth, but all he can see of her is a fuzzy image – like he is looking at her through the cotton of his t-shirt.
And all around him, the colors continue to dance.
~~~\/~~~
Echoes of pain, both current and past, blanket him. Reverberating on all sides, until he can feel it deep within his bones. An itch that is impossible to scratch.
He is seven years old, and he can't stop screaming.
After he had first sustained the damage to his eyes, his parents had taken him to every doctor, every specialist that they could, trying to fix what he had done. The first few attempts had accomplished nothing. His retinas were still burned, and the world was still a hazy shade of pale, but there was no pain then, and he wonders if that would have been preferable to this.
When the last normal course of treatment failed, his mother took him aside and asked him, in those soft dulcet tones, if he would like to try something more experimental. Something that might repair his eyes and allow him to see better than he ever has, or if enough was enough, and if he was done with being poked and prodded.
He felt no hesitation in answering, 'yes' - he was old enough after all to understand the value behind being strong and taking responsibility for your actions. His (relative) blindness was his own fault, and he would do anything if it meant he could see a real smile on his mother's face again. The foggy impression of her that he had seen the past four years, had always looked so sad.
But the experimental treatment was more rough around the edges than anyone had thought, and his body reacted in a most unexpected way.
The cancer spread through him like a flesh-eating virus. The uncontrollable cell-growth causing rivers of pain to wash through his body. Intense doses of old-fashioned radiation therapy and chemotherapy, layered on top of the more modern bio-injection and photonic therapy, managed to finally kill the cancer – at the expense of his eyes.
He finds it ironic that the excessive exposure to light proved to be his savior. Though it did absolutely nothing for the pain.
~~~\/~~~
There is a constant, dull throb at the front of his skull. A thump-thump-thump that is there, always. He sees better now than most humans, his most recent cybernetic implants make sure of that. But the ache, the muscle memory of pain is something that never goes away, never wilts.
He is twenty years old, and the colors that stream in through his phony eyes come in a kaleidoscope of shades. High definition blues, and deep, bottomless blacks. Orange and red as scintillating as the sun was, all those years ago. Bright, beautiful.
Blinding.
Every time he strikes a match; every time he places a cigarette to his lips, and inhales a shallow breath, watching the cherry red tip flair up; every time he snubs one out, scattering ash in varying shades of umber onto the ground; every time he turns and stares out the viewing window, into a churning mass of fusion and gas: he remembers the pain. Remembers his mother's smile.
Remembers the taste of marmalade, and one perfect day.
~End