(Dive)
I'm not afraid of the dark. I'm not. Not like I have a nightlight at home or anything. I'm immature, yeah, but not that bad. Besides, it's not the darkness that's the problem.
I have. a minor tunnel thing. Or, more broadly, an enclosed space thing. If you consider shaking and hyperventilating to be a minor thing. It's been at least twenty minutes since I got in a full breath. I feel like I tried to play for the Stanley Cup against a team of sumo wrestlers, who keep checking me into the boards. It sucks, to put it mildly. I hurt, and I'm tired, and I can't even bitch about it to keep myself entertained. Too bad. At this point a good stretch of whining would be kind of soothing. Might even kick-start Duke's memory. 'Oh, right, you're the obnoxious little brother. I remember now. Let's go home and get a shower and spend a lot of time in a nice, clean, dry open area. With light. And space. And did I mention clean?'
Stars. Even joking doesn't help. No matter how many jokes I make or how many times I remind myself that the footsteps behind me are Duke's, that the heavy breathing and the crackle of the force whips and the screaming are all in my head, that this will end and I can go home, my mind won't stop racing.
And I thought I had it bad two years ago, before all this started. I'd like to go home and kick fifteen year old me. To scream that even if my parents were dead, even if Wing and I had to fight off the social workers every time I sneezed, even if Canard was a pain and homework was mindbendingly dull, it looks like a paradise next to the year after. When everything came crashing in on me like a bad sci-fi movie, and I couldn't find my way out again.
It's not the dark. It's the memory of choking on dust, of falling, of screaming and their thick low laughter rolling over me-
"Aw, fuck."
I don't think I've ever been quite so glad to hear Duke's voice, even cursing. It's odd to hear him say it. Even with his history, Duke was always somehow cultured. Distant. With us, but not exactly one of us, and by his choice. Too classy to say things that would get me smacked in the back of the head by whichever teammate happened to be closest. I latch on to the jarring word and drag myself back to now, away from then.
Duke's different, somehow. Strange. Rougher. Is this what he would have been like if he grew up away from Puckworld, away from freedom-fighting? Maybe it was the Saurian invasion that turned him away from stealing and towards. well, chivalry, sort of. An alternate universe Duke, who apparently has no problem shoving strangers off the roof only to walk them through the dark a moment later. Weird. But then, he's always been weird.
I can't exactly turn around and ask what he's cursing about, so I just pause before it really occurs me that it might not be the best idea to stop. Thankfully, he doesn't bowl me over, just stops short. At least that much hasn't changed; Duke's got the senses of a cat.
Suppose I should be glad of that. I have no real urge to go swimming in the river of really bad things. Considering the whacked out super villains we've fought over the last year or so, I'm not beyond believing that alligators live in the sewers no matter how many times Tanya tries to tell me that it's just an urban legend. Before a year ago these people thought that aliens were urban legends, or little green men prone towards probing things better left alone, thank you. I don't exactly trust their standards.
Wow. And hello, grasping at random distraction straws.
Behind me, Duke sighs hard enough to ruffle my hair. Considering that it's plastered to my head with sludge, that's pretty impressive. "You could've told me that you were claustrophobic."
Heh. Nice to know that I don't have the corner on stupid statements. I reach out and poke him in the chest.
"Oh, right." At least he has the decency to sound slightly sheepish. "Hasn't anybody taught you sign language?"
Well, I watched this one special on the Discovery Channel, but all I remembered was the sign for red. It didn't teach me the really interesting words, anyway. Then again, maybe having a vocabulary of one word puts me right on par with Duke, who keeps asking a mute guy questions in the dark. What am I supposed to do, nod?
"Right. I'm, ah, just gonna take that as a 'no'. Look, stop for a minute. You keep hyperventilating like that and you're gonna pass out on your face."
I'm not hyperventilating. I'm breathing. Quickly. But I stop anyway, and lean against the wall. Feeling a little dizzy, here. I feel along the wall, looking for something to hang on to, and my fingers slip into a notch in the wall. Huh. Funny. Feels almost like a shape or something.
Duke's still talking, and I have to concentrate to really be able to hear him. He's talking like he's afraid there might be someone down here, listening. Which is a nice creepy idea I really do not need at the moment, thank you. "Would light help?" His fingers slide down my arm, clasp over my hand, and it takes a lot not to jerk my arm away. I'm all about the manly touchy-feely emotional stuff, but not in the dark and not in a tunnel. Bad memories. "If yeah, just close your fist and kinda nod it, up and down. If no, same thing with two fingers. Kind of like doing shadow puppets."
Shadow puppets. Gee, careful there, Duke. The passing toddlers might not understand you, could you be a little more patronizing? Jerk. I guess shadow puppets were all they had to entertain themselves before TV and video games. Y'know, in the Stone Age.
I make the shadow puppet gesture at him, more to get his hand off mine than because I'm really sure that a little light won't help. What's that human phrase? 'Cutting off your nose to spite your face'?
It can't be that much longer of a walk, anyway. My luck can't suck that bad. I hope. Oh, please, oh, please.
His hand slides away. Human skin is odd, more sensitive, and my knuckles tingle until I rub them against my side to get the feeling to go away.
"Okay." Duke sounds utterly and obnoxiously calm. Maybe I ought to reconsider that shove him into the sewer idea. "Well, I need to stop for a minute, figure out where we are."
Oh. Oh, no. We can't be lost. Not down here.
Somehow my hand ends up latched onto Duke's arm, tight enough to hurt. Maybe it's a good thing I can't talk, because at this moment I'd be screaming loud enough to bring the ceiling down. Somebody help me, I'm stuck with the Directionless Wonder. Why did I let him drag me down here? Couldn't he have traded in his sense of morbid humor for a sense of direction?
"Hey, hey, easy." Duke pries my fingers loose. "Ow. Relax. I know where we're going."
Oh, yeah, that sounds familiar. Couldn't have somebody wiped my memory, too, so I won't be stuck remembering that every single time we let Duke drive we ended up in the wrong state? I don't want to walk to Nevada.
A light blares to life out of nowhere, blinding me for a moment. When I manage to blink the pain away, I get to see Duke looking at me like I'm the headcase here. The flashlight in his hand is more like a penlight, battered and weak and tiny, but it seems like a sun down here. I'm torn between being relieved and annoyed that a little light makes the choking pressure in my throat ease up and let me breathe.
"Relax," Duke says again, because it worked so well the first time, then jerks his head up. "Listen."
And since I can't exactly sing showtunes to pass the time, I listen. And very, very faintly I can hear voices from aboveground. At least somebody's having a normal day.
A faint grin brushes over Duke's face. Another thing; he doesn't smile much, or make awful jokes. The closest thing I've seen is that weird crazed grin. This is the first smile, small and crooked and rusty. He doesn't smile much. I want the old Duke back. "Newspaper guy. Comes to work every morning, sets up his stand on this street like clockwork. We're almost there."
Almost where? Teach me the sign for that one, Yoda.
Before I can try to play charades again, the light blinks off. "Sorry," Duke says wryly into the dark, "can't have you getting too oriented. You're not even supposed to be down here."
Down here. He says it like it's familiar. Sure, man, remember the sewers but forget your teammate. I see how this goes.
Maybe it wasn't a spell to just turn us human and wipe Duke's memory. Maybe this is, like, Bizarro World. One of those alternate universe storylines like the ones that the X-Men are always getting themselves dropped into. Except Wolvie probably doesn't hyperventilate in sewers, no matter what universe you're dealing with.
Okay. So. Duke is Alterna-human-Duke, and I'm alterna-human-mute-Dive. Great. Fine. Let's just hope that the laws of physics hold true (law number 316: wherever Dive is, there Wing shall be) and I can drag him and myself to Wing so he can fix it. I mean, he has to know me. No matter what we're dealing with, Wing is the constant. Even in the mines, Wing was out there, and he found me, and we went home together in the end. He's my big brother. They do these things. Come rain or sleet or alternate universes or huge electronic demons or.. yeah. All that.
Something nudges me from behind, and I start walking with a new sort of energy. I might not have any clue what the heck is going on, but it'll be fixed soon. All I have to do is get to Wing. Until then, I just have to say frosty. Easy enough.
"You're exactly right. He's not supposed to be down here."
Easy. Yeah. Until a voice that most definitely isn't Duke pipes up from out of nowhere a second before the whole tunnel explodes into light. Duke's hands latch on in a death grip as I stumble back, almost slipping. Only his grip and my shirt keeps me from going sideways. Thank you, Alterna-Duke.
I can almost make out a shape, standing on what looks like the river. Everything else is just painful white light.
"Turn the lantern off," Duke says, sounding almost bored. "I already can't see out of one, do you have to take both eyes out or what?"
"You're supposed to have him blind-folded."
"Yeah, well, kinda hard to find the blindfold when you're being chased by the police. Ease off it, huh? Since when have you been such a stickler for the rules?"
Great. I'm in the middle of an old married couple.
The second voice sighs, and after a second the light switches from blinding to muted. I blink a couple times and can finally make out the man standing on a bridge that runs over the two platforms. It's the same color as the water, easy to miss if somebody's not standing on it. The guy himself is average; average height, average weight, mouse-brown hair and bottle-rim glasses on his nose. The only thing that really grabs attention is his labcoat, a dingy gray, and the stethoscope dangling from his neck. He looks like an intern escaped from the ER, if the ER was located in the sewer.
Scratching the back of his neck, the average guy sighs. "What do you need this time?"
That time Duke grins, really grins. "Ah, you know. The usual. Stubbed my toe, jumped off a building."
Another sigh. "Good Lord. Again?"
Setting me back on my feet, Duke asks, "Can you work me in?"
"Yeah, like I'm doing anything." Nodding at me with a not entirely friendly look in his eyes, he asks, "What about your guest?"
"Eh. Might as well look him over before I send him home."
Oh, please. Feel free to talk about me like I'm not here.
Average guy arches one eyebrow like he thinks he's Spock. "You think that's really wise?"
"He's mute. He doesn't know sign language. And even if he decides to write it down, he's already run from the cops, been shoved off a building and dragged through the sewers by an urban legend. Who's gonna believe this on top of an already absurd story? He's just a kid."
Just a kid. Well, it's nice to know that some things don't change through the dimensions, anyway. Looks like I get to fight for even his grudging respect all over again, if I even had it in the first place.
Just a kid. Tell it to the Saurians, man. Maybe I can get a note from my mommy. 'Please excuse Nosedive from intergalactic war today, he'd kind of like to be a normal teenager for a whole three seconds.'
"Too many risks," average guy mutters, but jerks his head at me. "C'mon, then. Into the rabbit hole."
And with that nice and cryptic cheery note, Igor turns and ducks through a narrow hole on the other side of the river. Great. It's a theme park for claustrophobics.
Duke pats me on the shoulder and pushes me forward, towards the bridge.
Okay. Stay cool, Flashblade. Keep up the running commentary. Just sit through this, and at some point you've got to get a chance to drag him out of here and to the stadium, and you'll be home in time to watch Bernie the Bear with Grin.
Right. Naturally. Just ignore the sinking feeling in my gut.
I'm not afraid of the dark. I'm not. Not like I have a nightlight at home or anything. I'm immature, yeah, but not that bad. Besides, it's not the darkness that's the problem.
I have. a minor tunnel thing. Or, more broadly, an enclosed space thing. If you consider shaking and hyperventilating to be a minor thing. It's been at least twenty minutes since I got in a full breath. I feel like I tried to play for the Stanley Cup against a team of sumo wrestlers, who keep checking me into the boards. It sucks, to put it mildly. I hurt, and I'm tired, and I can't even bitch about it to keep myself entertained. Too bad. At this point a good stretch of whining would be kind of soothing. Might even kick-start Duke's memory. 'Oh, right, you're the obnoxious little brother. I remember now. Let's go home and get a shower and spend a lot of time in a nice, clean, dry open area. With light. And space. And did I mention clean?'
Stars. Even joking doesn't help. No matter how many jokes I make or how many times I remind myself that the footsteps behind me are Duke's, that the heavy breathing and the crackle of the force whips and the screaming are all in my head, that this will end and I can go home, my mind won't stop racing.
And I thought I had it bad two years ago, before all this started. I'd like to go home and kick fifteen year old me. To scream that even if my parents were dead, even if Wing and I had to fight off the social workers every time I sneezed, even if Canard was a pain and homework was mindbendingly dull, it looks like a paradise next to the year after. When everything came crashing in on me like a bad sci-fi movie, and I couldn't find my way out again.
It's not the dark. It's the memory of choking on dust, of falling, of screaming and their thick low laughter rolling over me-
"Aw, fuck."
I don't think I've ever been quite so glad to hear Duke's voice, even cursing. It's odd to hear him say it. Even with his history, Duke was always somehow cultured. Distant. With us, but not exactly one of us, and by his choice. Too classy to say things that would get me smacked in the back of the head by whichever teammate happened to be closest. I latch on to the jarring word and drag myself back to now, away from then.
Duke's different, somehow. Strange. Rougher. Is this what he would have been like if he grew up away from Puckworld, away from freedom-fighting? Maybe it was the Saurian invasion that turned him away from stealing and towards. well, chivalry, sort of. An alternate universe Duke, who apparently has no problem shoving strangers off the roof only to walk them through the dark a moment later. Weird. But then, he's always been weird.
I can't exactly turn around and ask what he's cursing about, so I just pause before it really occurs me that it might not be the best idea to stop. Thankfully, he doesn't bowl me over, just stops short. At least that much hasn't changed; Duke's got the senses of a cat.
Suppose I should be glad of that. I have no real urge to go swimming in the river of really bad things. Considering the whacked out super villains we've fought over the last year or so, I'm not beyond believing that alligators live in the sewers no matter how many times Tanya tries to tell me that it's just an urban legend. Before a year ago these people thought that aliens were urban legends, or little green men prone towards probing things better left alone, thank you. I don't exactly trust their standards.
Wow. And hello, grasping at random distraction straws.
Behind me, Duke sighs hard enough to ruffle my hair. Considering that it's plastered to my head with sludge, that's pretty impressive. "You could've told me that you were claustrophobic."
Heh. Nice to know that I don't have the corner on stupid statements. I reach out and poke him in the chest.
"Oh, right." At least he has the decency to sound slightly sheepish. "Hasn't anybody taught you sign language?"
Well, I watched this one special on the Discovery Channel, but all I remembered was the sign for red. It didn't teach me the really interesting words, anyway. Then again, maybe having a vocabulary of one word puts me right on par with Duke, who keeps asking a mute guy questions in the dark. What am I supposed to do, nod?
"Right. I'm, ah, just gonna take that as a 'no'. Look, stop for a minute. You keep hyperventilating like that and you're gonna pass out on your face."
I'm not hyperventilating. I'm breathing. Quickly. But I stop anyway, and lean against the wall. Feeling a little dizzy, here. I feel along the wall, looking for something to hang on to, and my fingers slip into a notch in the wall. Huh. Funny. Feels almost like a shape or something.
Duke's still talking, and I have to concentrate to really be able to hear him. He's talking like he's afraid there might be someone down here, listening. Which is a nice creepy idea I really do not need at the moment, thank you. "Would light help?" His fingers slide down my arm, clasp over my hand, and it takes a lot not to jerk my arm away. I'm all about the manly touchy-feely emotional stuff, but not in the dark and not in a tunnel. Bad memories. "If yeah, just close your fist and kinda nod it, up and down. If no, same thing with two fingers. Kind of like doing shadow puppets."
Shadow puppets. Gee, careful there, Duke. The passing toddlers might not understand you, could you be a little more patronizing? Jerk. I guess shadow puppets were all they had to entertain themselves before TV and video games. Y'know, in the Stone Age.
I make the shadow puppet gesture at him, more to get his hand off mine than because I'm really sure that a little light won't help. What's that human phrase? 'Cutting off your nose to spite your face'?
It can't be that much longer of a walk, anyway. My luck can't suck that bad. I hope. Oh, please, oh, please.
His hand slides away. Human skin is odd, more sensitive, and my knuckles tingle until I rub them against my side to get the feeling to go away.
"Okay." Duke sounds utterly and obnoxiously calm. Maybe I ought to reconsider that shove him into the sewer idea. "Well, I need to stop for a minute, figure out where we are."
Oh. Oh, no. We can't be lost. Not down here.
Somehow my hand ends up latched onto Duke's arm, tight enough to hurt. Maybe it's a good thing I can't talk, because at this moment I'd be screaming loud enough to bring the ceiling down. Somebody help me, I'm stuck with the Directionless Wonder. Why did I let him drag me down here? Couldn't he have traded in his sense of morbid humor for a sense of direction?
"Hey, hey, easy." Duke pries my fingers loose. "Ow. Relax. I know where we're going."
Oh, yeah, that sounds familiar. Couldn't have somebody wiped my memory, too, so I won't be stuck remembering that every single time we let Duke drive we ended up in the wrong state? I don't want to walk to Nevada.
A light blares to life out of nowhere, blinding me for a moment. When I manage to blink the pain away, I get to see Duke looking at me like I'm the headcase here. The flashlight in his hand is more like a penlight, battered and weak and tiny, but it seems like a sun down here. I'm torn between being relieved and annoyed that a little light makes the choking pressure in my throat ease up and let me breathe.
"Relax," Duke says again, because it worked so well the first time, then jerks his head up. "Listen."
And since I can't exactly sing showtunes to pass the time, I listen. And very, very faintly I can hear voices from aboveground. At least somebody's having a normal day.
A faint grin brushes over Duke's face. Another thing; he doesn't smile much, or make awful jokes. The closest thing I've seen is that weird crazed grin. This is the first smile, small and crooked and rusty. He doesn't smile much. I want the old Duke back. "Newspaper guy. Comes to work every morning, sets up his stand on this street like clockwork. We're almost there."
Almost where? Teach me the sign for that one, Yoda.
Before I can try to play charades again, the light blinks off. "Sorry," Duke says wryly into the dark, "can't have you getting too oriented. You're not even supposed to be down here."
Down here. He says it like it's familiar. Sure, man, remember the sewers but forget your teammate. I see how this goes.
Maybe it wasn't a spell to just turn us human and wipe Duke's memory. Maybe this is, like, Bizarro World. One of those alternate universe storylines like the ones that the X-Men are always getting themselves dropped into. Except Wolvie probably doesn't hyperventilate in sewers, no matter what universe you're dealing with.
Okay. So. Duke is Alterna-human-Duke, and I'm alterna-human-mute-Dive. Great. Fine. Let's just hope that the laws of physics hold true (law number 316: wherever Dive is, there Wing shall be) and I can drag him and myself to Wing so he can fix it. I mean, he has to know me. No matter what we're dealing with, Wing is the constant. Even in the mines, Wing was out there, and he found me, and we went home together in the end. He's my big brother. They do these things. Come rain or sleet or alternate universes or huge electronic demons or.. yeah. All that.
Something nudges me from behind, and I start walking with a new sort of energy. I might not have any clue what the heck is going on, but it'll be fixed soon. All I have to do is get to Wing. Until then, I just have to say frosty. Easy enough.
"You're exactly right. He's not supposed to be down here."
Easy. Yeah. Until a voice that most definitely isn't Duke pipes up from out of nowhere a second before the whole tunnel explodes into light. Duke's hands latch on in a death grip as I stumble back, almost slipping. Only his grip and my shirt keeps me from going sideways. Thank you, Alterna-Duke.
I can almost make out a shape, standing on what looks like the river. Everything else is just painful white light.
"Turn the lantern off," Duke says, sounding almost bored. "I already can't see out of one, do you have to take both eyes out or what?"
"You're supposed to have him blind-folded."
"Yeah, well, kinda hard to find the blindfold when you're being chased by the police. Ease off it, huh? Since when have you been such a stickler for the rules?"
Great. I'm in the middle of an old married couple.
The second voice sighs, and after a second the light switches from blinding to muted. I blink a couple times and can finally make out the man standing on a bridge that runs over the two platforms. It's the same color as the water, easy to miss if somebody's not standing on it. The guy himself is average; average height, average weight, mouse-brown hair and bottle-rim glasses on his nose. The only thing that really grabs attention is his labcoat, a dingy gray, and the stethoscope dangling from his neck. He looks like an intern escaped from the ER, if the ER was located in the sewer.
Scratching the back of his neck, the average guy sighs. "What do you need this time?"
That time Duke grins, really grins. "Ah, you know. The usual. Stubbed my toe, jumped off a building."
Another sigh. "Good Lord. Again?"
Setting me back on my feet, Duke asks, "Can you work me in?"
"Yeah, like I'm doing anything." Nodding at me with a not entirely friendly look in his eyes, he asks, "What about your guest?"
"Eh. Might as well look him over before I send him home."
Oh, please. Feel free to talk about me like I'm not here.
Average guy arches one eyebrow like he thinks he's Spock. "You think that's really wise?"
"He's mute. He doesn't know sign language. And even if he decides to write it down, he's already run from the cops, been shoved off a building and dragged through the sewers by an urban legend. Who's gonna believe this on top of an already absurd story? He's just a kid."
Just a kid. Well, it's nice to know that some things don't change through the dimensions, anyway. Looks like I get to fight for even his grudging respect all over again, if I even had it in the first place.
Just a kid. Tell it to the Saurians, man. Maybe I can get a note from my mommy. 'Please excuse Nosedive from intergalactic war today, he'd kind of like to be a normal teenager for a whole three seconds.'
"Too many risks," average guy mutters, but jerks his head at me. "C'mon, then. Into the rabbit hole."
And with that nice and cryptic cheery note, Igor turns and ducks through a narrow hole on the other side of the river. Great. It's a theme park for claustrophobics.
Duke pats me on the shoulder and pushes me forward, towards the bridge.
Okay. Stay cool, Flashblade. Keep up the running commentary. Just sit through this, and at some point you've got to get a chance to drag him out of here and to the stadium, and you'll be home in time to watch Bernie the Bear with Grin.
Right. Naturally. Just ignore the sinking feeling in my gut.