Tenebrae
He walks the streets a lot these days, alone, in search of something; he doesn't know what. Salvation, maybe, although he'd sneer at the term. Aimless motion, adrift in familiar context skewed strange. The buildings loom as high as ever but they lean now, crowding toward him in the cold gray light as if any minute they'll fall and squash him dead, like the thousands on the corner of Vesey and Church.
He's not entirely sure he would care.
He walks, but today he has a purpose, a destination. The January wind bites him with an icy kiss when he turns the corner; he winces and flips his collar up. It's bitter, and he's going to meet the partner he lost, and it's all just too fucking clichéd for words.
Salvation wears a badge and a crooked smile, and used to pace him along the streets he once called his own. But he threw that away, too stupid to know what he was losing until it was too late.
The diner door opens with a bitchy squeak, and he steps into warmth that smells like old grease and sweet danish. In a dingy red vinyl booth halfway down the aisle, his former partner looks up from a folded newspaper and smiles. He smiles back in answer, although it feels weird on his face--half-forgotten motion, like trying a sport he hadn't played in years. He slips out of his coat, slides onto the worn, comfortable seat.
They drink hot joe; they eat. They talk about everything and about nothing that really matters; and he forgets, just for a few moments, that the world has changed.
But the rude reminder arrives too soon in the form of the good-looking black man who stops next to their booth, polite but implacable--time to go. The man he's been eating with makes a snarky remark about duty calling, and pulls out money to leave on the table. He pushes it away--he will pay for breakfast.
His tablemate grins. "'Bout time, too, after all the bagels you mooched back in the day."
That cuts, but he manages another smile.
The diner door complains again. Chill silence flows from the now empty space across from him. He shivers, and closes his eyes. Some days the thought of eating his gun instead of breakfast actually has appeal, but with his luck, it'd be his former partner who'd get the call. And the friggin' paperwork alone would take a month, at least. As well as exposing things to the brutal light of day that would best be left to kinder darkness and twisted sheets.
He puts his own coat back on and pays the bill. The door protests a third time, closing the circle as he steps back out into the cold. He turns south, heading down past the pit where the thousands died, down to where the New York City edition of Charon approaches to ferry him across the water to Hell.
The wind bites harder, and grit from the looming buildings stings his eyes.
finis