Save Me
By Chya
Inspired by Evanescence's "Bring Me To Life"
"No volunteers to take you home tonight, Rhade?" Harper asked rhetorically. "Maybe your reputation precedes you; on sale, buy one ex-Admiral, get a drunk for free. There are only so many ladies willing to clear up the vomit you know; you'll have to start paying them soon. Oh wait, you already tried that." The engineer and barman didn't even pause to see if there was a reaction. As he switched the lights off, his last words to the man leaning heavily on the table were, "Try not drool when you pass out, it's hell to clean up." And then the door was shut.
The bar was in near darkness, the only light the red glow of the bedroom area through the curtain. For the longest time, there was only silence broken by the slight breath of the lonely figure at the table.
Eventually, a slight clink of glass meeting teeth echoed around the room as he took a long draft of the strong spirit he was using to dull… everything.
But it didn't work, and with no audience to prop up his mask of intoxicated indifference, the ghosts and feelings he tried so hard to not care about choked him as he swallowed. The liquor going down the wrong way brought forth wracking coughs that soon gave way to harsh breaths that couldn't possibly be tears. He tried to concentrate, control his lungs with the techniques he'd mastered as a warrior, but that training was beyond him these days and he only ended up coughing some more.
Bone blades extended and oddly white in the gloom, he cleared the table with a hoarse cry of bitter and angry frustration, sending glass and empty bottle crashing to the floor while the beer stained deck of cards continued to flutter to the floor for long seconds after the man's breathing had calmed.
Only one item remained on the table, a small gun conned from some out of towner in a game of chance that the mug could never have won. It was supposed to be fully charged, but by the worn and abused state of it, Rhade doubted that.
Worn and abused.
A machine used to maim and kill lying discarded and unwanted.
There was only so long a gun like that could hold a charge. Sooner rather than later it would run out and there wouldn't be enough energy in the universe to bring it back to life.
It would become an empty husk, junk to throw away.
One more piece of nothing.
He'd become nothing. If he hadn't lost it, he'd destroyed it and if he hadn't destroyed it, he'd had it taken away from him. No home, no wife, no progeny. No lover, or love. No honour left, or pride or even a Pride. Not even a belief system anymore. A genetically engineered loser, Dylan had said. Well, he'd actually said race of losers, but it amounted to the same thing.
Nothing left to live for other than the imperative to survive.
Idly, he picked up the gun and looked down the wrong end of the barrel. His finger tightened on the trigger and he was slightly surprised to feel nothing. His finger tightened further, and he decided, in a perfectly rational process of thought, to see if there was a charge. The gun buzzed and whirred, but no blinding flash of destruction came bursting forth.
He wiped the sudden sweat from under his nose with his empty hand. He was right. No charge. The gun was already dead. Which was fortunate, since he would otherwise now be headless as well as legless. A drunken giggle with no humour escaped his lips.
Suicide was the antithesis of his ingrained beliefs, but it wasn't suicide if he was too drunk to duck a passing bullet was it? And drunk was a good way to go, that and sex. Didn't have to think, and sedated the ghosts that tried to come out of the dark.
He was supposed to be strong, and he was. Except when no one was looking and he found himself alone in the dark with the ghosts let loose. Only then, only when there was no one to see or hear could he admit to himself that he needed someone to save from himself. Just one person to give him something to live for. Not just survive, but live.
Because just surviving would kill him sooner rather than later.
And he desperately wanted to be saved.
He had no energy, couldn't be bothered to climb to his feet and stagger through the curtain, so he let his forehead drop to the table next to the hand still clutching the gun. 'Hope I drool,' he thought as he drifted off to do battle with his ghosts, 'make Harper's morning.'
Fin.