Fighting Oblivion
By Angelfirenze
Disclaimer: Not mine. Never were or will be.
Summary: A collection of Bobby drabbles featuring Thursday lyrics; this is the fifth installment, continuing when he is forty years old. It's now 2001, and all Hell has broken loose. I'm sure all of you, just like me, remember where you were...
Archive: Amorous Intent, of course. Anywhere else, please ask.
Rating: R just for caution...
Perspective
…Falling apart…Like the ashes of American flags…
He walks steadily through the chaotic street, dust and rubble swirling around him like a sandstorm in a desert. This is a desert...of shock and terror and rage and hate...and he's drowning so fast he doesn't think he'll ever be able to pull himself out again. Beside him, faintly, he feels Alex's hand in his numb, dead fingers. They're cold, like his are, but he can tell they're shaking. They've both been dying today...inside...
We used to be very tall buildings…and we're falling…for so long…
They look up, he and Alex—not Eames...not today—and she turns and buries her face in his shoulder, sobbing silently. They're jumping now, those people in that building...trying to escape the flames. He dies again, for them. He wishes he could make it better...but he can't.
In the shadow of the New York skyline…we grew up too fast…
Alex is wrapped in his arms, crying at the hurt and the death and they can barely move past the despair. The feelings and the pain he sees in Alex's face (one he knows mirrors his own) threatens to overwhelm him. He fears it might. Perhaps it's for the best, really, that he is unable to move. He would surely succumb to the hate and anger that, even now through the haze of grief, boils in his blood at those who would purposefully target civilians.
I would make a much more sufficient target, he thinks angrily, thinking of his tenure in the armed forces.
He can't help but identify with the children whose mothers and fathers have been ripped away.
Husbands...wives...brothers...sisters...sons...daughters...gone.
Like this is war.
War…all of the time…
They're running now…being pushed, really...the towers are coming down...people dying...so many...he doesn't realize it until they pass the hospital with its makeshift gurneys made of desk chairs with sheets wrapped around them. He's crying, too. His eyes sting and burn but he doesn't stop...
But he's crying and he can't stop.
They offer a welcome...when you are leaving...