Fracas sat in his corner of the roof, tucked in one of the gulleys formed by the sloping tiles. As he took a drag from his cigarette, an obnoxious, feminine voice rattled around in his memory.
"Those things will kill you, you know."
I don't want to die.
He opened his eyes and looked at his cigarette with a sort of detached shock. That wasn't how that conversation had gone. That wasn't even how the possibilities of that conversation had ever gone when her scolding came to mind. Dismissal, agreement, stony silence... Never that.
It made him pause and examine himself. He had known for a while that the cigarettes had been a sort of passive-aggressive way of dancing with death since the Crash, and he'd only gotten worse since the Fall. He felt the term was overused, but yes, he was probably suicidal. When pressed about it, he would dance around it, jokingly saying that he had a deathwish, just like every other shadowrunner out there. But today, for the first time in a long time, the idea of his death - glorious or not - actually caused a real twinge of fear. Not remorse for things left undone, not guilt for the promises unkept, but actual fear.
He stopped the automatic motion of bringing the cigarette to his lips, instead holding it out and watching the blue smoke rise into the sky, on its way to join the ubiquitous LA smog.
Shit, what else was going on in his head that he didn't even know about? So much of his time recently had been devoted to planning, learning, and building. Even when he was meditating, he was meditating on outside ways to increase his power, from spell formulas to power foci to that damnable dragon scale that -still- felt like it was burning a hole in his pocket.
He closed his eyes, looking inward. Acceptance. Peace. A sense of his place again, and the feeling that the ability to reach that place was just around the corner.
There was also a power he had not noticed before. It was familiar; he had known it and wielded it decades ago. But he believed it had left him, for one younger, stronger, more dedicated than he. Yet here it lay. He reached out to touch it, and it rippled and uncoiled, looking him over.
It bit him.
Cursing, Fracas flung his burned-down cigarette away from him, snuffing it with a stomp and scrunch of his sneakers as he sucked on and then healed his burnt fingers. After a few more moments of thought, he pulled his false-backed cigarette case from his pocket and plucked out his cigarettes. A quick count told him he could still get a few nuyen from selling them to gangers and bums. He should probably keep a few just for the sake of appearances. A cigarette case with no cigarettes would be a dead giveaway.
"Ugh, those things are disgusting."
"They are an acquired taste."
"If you're determined to put chems in your body, there are so many safer, cleaner ways of doing it."
"I have acquired the taste."
"Those things will kill you, you know."
"I fucking hope so."
"Oh, c'mon, my company's not that bad."
"At least your money is good."
"Christ, you're such a hoop."
"Been called worse by better people."