Title: The Thunder of Things.
Author: Rodlox.
Pairing: Diana/Marco (my Maia muse grabbed the keyboard!)
Summary: Diana mulls over about the rays of sunshine and the dark clouds that are appearantly needed to make a good future.
POV: Diana's.
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters. Really. You think I'd be on this side of the Pond if I was rich enough to own the characters? Bah, I'd be in some nice house out on the Marches.
Maia's coloring in a sketchbook April got her. At least my sister can do a few things right, even if the rest of the time is a completely different matter.
Dry thunder outside draws my attention to what's outside the window of my apartment. The sky's overcast, blanketted by herringscale clouds, brief rays of sunlight poking through the cracks as the blanket is dragged across the heavens by winds that move them without breaking the pattern of the shape. Bits of light, the good shining through, niceties being observed even during the most glum of settings. Life isn't always a yin-yang, and that's a fact I've known almost all my life, known that events more often are more of one than the other. There might be equilibrium settling in at a later time, but next to never does it happen at the time we'd like.
The thunder sounds like rockets to my ears. Maybe just to my ears, and April's if she were still here, but she's not, and that's that. Rocket thunder. To Maia, thunder is thunder and is confused with nothing else. I don't have that luxury. Werner von Braun brought with him all his knowledge when they paperclipped him over to postwar America. And it was on the shoulders of his V-2 rockets that we set foot on the Moon.
But that doesn't wash his hands clean of what he'd done, the things he'd been complicit in. It never should, and we shouldn't pretend there wasn't a price to pay for what he knew. We didn't have to pay it, so most of us just celebrated what he made possible, never asking at what cost the knowledge had come.
I can't help but wonder how the future will look on us, on how we're treating the people that they sent back to prevent the Catastrophe. Will they curse our bloodsoaked hands, insisting that we could have done things with less death? Or will they smile fondly on the photos of us on their dressers, saying prayers for our souls in Heaven, only grateful that we did our part in improving our future. Or will wars be fought over what we'd done, the things we've committed, the people we've involved ourselves with? Will they consider us saints or demons, or simply cast us to purgatory. I ask myself these things, and I wonder if the future could calculate every possible outcome, or if they gave the 4400 the powers they did and simply hoped for the best. As much as I'd like to think that we won't outgrow the capacity for hope, I shudder to think that all of this was done with no more precaution than some fingers crossed.
There's a knock on my apartment door. Maia jumps up and runs to the door. "Marco's here!" she shouts.
"Maia?" I ask, turning to look at her. I've never really confronted her about her journal, about her visions, and have no idea if she knows I know, or if she knows I suspect, or even if her journal was just a joke on her part. As April could attest, one of father's favorite sayings was 'make enough predictions, some are bound to come true.' How far did her vision reach? Could Maia see the people that sent her back to this year, even once glimpse their faces? Being human, they must have faces, right?
Maia stops where she is, looking back at me sheepishly. "He called earlier, while you were in the shower. He said he's bringing pizza," with that little grin of hers. The imp. I have a hunch that she asked Marco to bring a pizza, cold or not.
I stand up, reasoning that I have to greet him properly as he steps through the door.
the end.