By Sunrazor
Classification: Drama, angst, some action and possible slash.
Rating: R for now. Language and violence.
Spoilers: The whole series is fair game, but especially Inga Fossa.
Archiving: Anywhere as long as you ask me first.
Email: sunnyds at gmail dot com.
Feedback: No feedback makes the baby Jesus spit up all over.
Disclaimer: Harsh Realm and all characters and situations belong
to Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen Productions, and the rat bastards at 20th
Century Fox. No infringement intended.
Notes: This is my first attempt at writing within this
fandom. I have only the vaguest idea of what this thing is,
exactly, and I'm really not sure where it's going to go. But it
might be fun to find out, yeah?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here, back, down a long and straight trackI have chose the long road -
That leads me to god knows
So I can't stop right now
Even the good stars can fall from grace and falter
Lose their faith and slide
But I can't get an ocean that's deep enough for my day
It's the first of the ascension
It's a sad way we've flown before the storm
-The Frames, Fitzcarraldo
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-1-
Much of the time, there was darkness.
Here and there were patches of light, dim and cold, faint reminders of a time when there had been something other. There was also hunger, all-consuming and permanent. He could not remember a time when he had not been hungry.
Besides the darkness and the hunger, there was pain. The pain was caused by the hunger, of course, but also by fists and sharp rocks, creatures moving in the gloom who hurt when they had to, and many simply when they wanted to. At first he had tried to fight, to defend himself, but that had been so long ago, and the hunger made it difficult. Increasingly he found the best thing to do was to curl himself up and become as small as possible, to not react, to not even scream or moan. Eventually, if he was lucky, they would grow bored and move away.
Sometimes new things came. They were stronger and more frightened, and they were also louder. They made sounds with their mouths, strange clickings and smooth, flowing rushes of air. Some of the sounds he recognized, but not many. He thought that perhaps he had once been able to make sense of all of them, but those days were gone, if they had ever existed at all. What had been didn't matter. Food mattered. Survival mattered.
He crawled through the dark, trying to keep himself low and unnoticeable. He hadn't eaten in two sleeps, and he was starting to weaken. Once, before the last time he'd slept, he'd managed to get a place at the spring that jetted out of the wall, murky and foul-tasting. He had gulped the water down greedily, so much that he had been sick after. No matter. When you found something here, you took as much as you possibly could. Nothing was certain.
There was a faint skittering sound up ahead. He stopped, raising his head, his nostrils flaring.
Again.
He moved forward slowly, the pads of his front and back feet lifting and falling, lifting and falling. Careful. Easy. Silent. Whatever was up ahead, it didn't sound like the things that hurt him.
He went a foot or so more, and stopped again, listening. After a few seconds it came again; it was right in front of him. Almost right by his forepaws.
Wait. Patient.
Soft fur brushed against him and he moved, faster than he would have believed he could. The thing was in his grasp, wriggling, squeaking. Little needle teeth sank into his left forepaw and he yelped but held on, trying to get a better grip on the thing, trying to twist its back in just the right way…
Something big and hard crashed into the side of his head and he reeled back, dazed, the lights flashing before his eyes the brightest he'd seen in forever. The furry thing was snatched out of his paws and he was cuffed again, rolling over backwards, bringing his front legs up in an attempt to defend his head against the next blows. But no blows came. Movement in the dark, going away from him. Flesh ripping. The loud, satisfied crunching of bones.
He curled against the wall of the tunnel, shivering. Warm blood trickled down into his eyes. The hunger gnawed at his belly; it felt like a yawning cave in the middle of him, growing more and more and exacerbated by how close he had come to making it just a bit smaller.
Although he had no concept of what a day was, he would have agreed with the idea that some days were better than others. Sometimes the bad days came in strings. He was in the middle of a long string of bad days, maybe the longest yet. Back in the beginning he might have been strong enough to outlast the bad days, but not now. Now they were closing in around him, like scavengers waiting for something to die. Waiting for him to die.
It loomed increasingly large in what remained of his mind that that was probably what was going to happen.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He limped toward the sound of water, feeling his throat rasp and crackle. Five sleeps. It had been five sleeps since food and two since water. He was almost done, he knew it, but damned if he wasn't still going to try.
Ahead, mixing with the sound of water, was the sound of many creatures, snarling and hissing at each other as they fought for a place at the pool. The pool was small, so small, and there were so many thirsty. Many would not find a place at all. The weakest ones would creep away and die, or have their throats torn out by the stronger for presuming to challenge them. He knew that he was risking death by attempting to drink, but staying away meant death for sure. To realize that he felt that way, that he still wanted to live, despite everything, lifted his spirits and he moved faster. If he had to die at the teeth of one of his companions, well, that would be better than death huddled in a corner of one of the caverns, sick and weak and useless. He did not know why this was so, but he knew it all the same.
The sound of falling water was very loud now. He walked forward eagerly, squinting to see in the dim light. The dark tunnel he was moving through opened suddenly into a brighter cavern, a high gallery with a small pool of brown water along one side. Water fell into it from something round, protruding from the rock wall many feet above. Around it were crouched many things, filthy and pale and impossibly thin, most clothed in rags, some only in their own matted hair. Their appearance was not disturbing or strange to him. It mirrored his own.
He found a spot where the crowd was a tiny bit thinner, inching forward and trying to slide his body in between two of them. If he could just—
The larger of the two turned on him, growling, teeth bared. He dropped his head, making no eye contact, trying to appear as non-threatening as possible. Please, please, see how small I am? See how weak? It's not worth the effort of killing me. The big one's lips curled back further, but it seemed satisfied. It turned back to the pushing, heaving throng around the pool.
He stayed where he was for a moment, eyeing the gaps, the way the bodies shifted. Then he pushed forward again, cautiously. One paw, then another, closer, closer. Not too hard, gradual enough, and he just might do it. Water glistened dizzily in his vision. It was so close. He could smell it, and it was intoxicating.
The big one turned again, snarling and rearing up, and this time he knew there was no placating it. It towered over him, its lips pulled into a fierce grin over yellow teeth. Fear intensified his vision, and he could see small white bugs crawling in the mane of its hair. He scrambled away, looking around for a direction to run in, but the thing was on him, knocking him back, its ragged claws tearing at his neck. The stink of it hung around him like a cloud. He put up a foreleg, whether to protect his head or to fight back he didn't know, and its jaws clamped down on it. He threw back his head and yelled, and its teeth were at his throat, its breath hot and foul. He opened his eyes. Something in the rock of the cavern ceiling sparkled, and a memory came floating to him, of looking up somewhere long ago and far away, and all above him black and glittering, and it was descending. It was so hard to breathe.
Then there was all heat and light and sound, and a whump of air that threw them both back, tumbling over each other, everything momentarily forgotten. The others in the cavern were screaming and running for the tunnels, clawing and trampling each other. His attacker pulled itself to its feet and looked down at him, seemingly weighing its immediate safety over its pride. Then it turned and ran. Groaning, he raised his head and looked toward the pool.
The pool was gone. In its place was a pile of rubble from which clouds of dust billowed, making him cough. The cavern wall was split down the middle. Light streamed in, harsh and blinding and he winced, raising a paw to his eyes and cringing back.
Shapes were coming out of the light and the dust. Tall, strong-looking things. Nothing like the hunched and filthy figures he was used to seeing, when he saw at all. These stood fully upright, and moved with grace and speed. In their hands they carried some kind of sticks, and they pointed these at the few cowering things that remained, making more of those incomprehensible sounds.
One came toward him, and he briefly considered making a run for one of the tunnels. But he was injured, exhausted, and surrounded to boot. He lay back, swallowing his fear, simply waiting for whatever came next.
He was not expecting what came next.
The figure knelt beside him, lifting his head, pushing aside his tangled hair and peering into his face.
"Hobbes? Hobbes, is it you?"
The sounds were familiar. The face was, as well; the scar on the chin, the hard blue eyes… he shook his head, trying to clear it. Trick, it was a trick. He had to get away, back to the tunnels, back to the dark. He scooted backwards on his ass, trying to pull himself to his feet and run.
Strong hands seized his forelegs, pulling him up, doing the work for him. "Come on, Hobbes, we have to get out of here." One of his forelegs (arms? were they called arms?) was slung over the other's shoulders, supporting him. "Any minute now the reinforcements'll get here, they'll block off the exits, and we'll all be nice and fucked." He called over his shoulder to one of the others. "Get as many of the rest rounded up and out as you can. But don't screw around; they catch any of us in here, you know what they'll do."
He half-stumbled, was half-carried to the gaping hole in the wall, and through it, and up a steep slope. The light intensified and he whimpered, trying to pull away, but an arm curled around his ribs, holding him to his course. He squinted. Green. Moving green. And further up, was that blue—
He was stopped, pressed back against the wall. "Wait." A sharp snick sound. "Hold still. This is gonna hurt. "
He was about to turn his head away from the hypnotically moving green to see what was happening when white pain stabbed into his chest. It shivered and warbled down his spine and through his arms, and he screamed, and a hand was clamped over his mouth.
"Quiet! You wanna get us killed? Let me get this finished so we can get outta here." A horrible slicing sensation, one more sharp stab, and then something bloody and gleaming was being waved in his face. "This… no more of this shit." It was snatched away, and he saw it arcing back down the tunnel they'd come up through, glittering, sending a small shower of blood droplets spinning through the air.
He was being tugged forward again, out into air so crisp and fresh it almost stung his lungs, but all he could see was the waving green over his head, and above it, the blue. It all spun sickeningly together, and then whirled up into blackness which swallowed him whole.