Requiem
Setting: Three years after PD Season 2. A few years back in the 'corrected' post-DOFP universe.
Summary: Ned discovered his mutation when he was nine. He was lucky enough to find a partner that thought his power was a gift, not an abomination - even more so when his powers brought back his childhood sweetheart. But nothing lasts forever. There's nothing left for him in Papen County. This is the end. Or is it?
Warnings: Angst like whoa. Character death. Suicide and overall dark themes at the beginning.
dolente
sorrowfully, as if the player were mourning
It smelled like a library should smell. The air was musty with the scent of old paper. Dust swirled lazily in the beams which passed through distant skylights. The shelves were dark wood, the walls coated with dark red paint. This was a place to reflect, to meditate-
A burst of laughter and frantic shushing from a group of teens gathered around a table in the corner.
-a place to sit and do homework, apparently.
Ned took a long breath and released it, making his way through the stacks. He hadn't a clue what he was looking for. Escape? Comfort? Something to remind him that he was still on planet Earth?
He wandered through biographies, stared vacantly at philosophy, rifled through literature. There wasn't a strong fiction section. Beyond the classics, there were just a few battered copies of modern favourites. It looked as though someone had brought them from home.
He almost smiled at a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, handled so many times that its spine had been wrapped in clear packing tape.
Aimless footsteps led him to the psychology section, several rows away from the chatty teens. Their voices drifted to him through a shelf on cognitive behavioural therapy.
A boy's voice. "Okay, hear me out: Queen Victoria was a mutant."
A tongue clucked. "What?"
"Come on, Bobby." A girl's voice, thick with a southern twang.
Scanning the shelves, Ned picked up a small hardcover book. The spine read, 'A Grief Observed.' He flipped to the first page.
"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing."
He shuddered and looked around. Alone in his row, he felt exposed as a long-dead author put words to sensations he couldn't explain.
"Seriously! You know the rumors about 'the family sickness,' Carpathian werewolves, eating flesh - what if she was a mutant who shifted into wolf form? And she passed her mutation down the Royal bloodline?" A wooden chair creaked. The boy sounded smug. "You gotta admit, it makes sense."
The sound of paper crumpling met his ears. "I think your brain needs to thaw out." Another girl remarked.
A ball of notebook paper bounced past Ned's aisle. "Well, I don't hear you contributing this project. Are those your Comp Sci notes?"
"I thought I'd get some real work done," came the sassy retort.
He read on.
"At other times it feels like being mildly concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me."
"Guys, what about this? King Zog of Albania. Guy survived fifty-five assassination attempts." The southern girl spoke up. The sound of a book colliding with the table and pages turning. "Somebody shot him three times in the back of the head and he lived. Wait, that was his bodyguard. Yeah, that guy died."
Ned flipped to a different section of the book, his heartbeat quickening. Maybe another chapter would be less- evocative.
"For in grief nothing 'stays put.' One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?"
"What do you think, healing factor? Maybe a teek?"
"Who knows? We could probably build a case for it." The southern girl replied.
"Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. How often - will it be for always? - how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, 'I never realized my loss till this moment'?"
"This is brilliant. I'd kiss you if it wouldn't kill me."
The book slipped from Ned's fingers.
It fell to the ground with a dull 'thud' and flapped open to the title page. He reminded himself to breathe.
It wasn't an auditory hallucination. That wasn't Chuck's voice. That was the boy.
Heart pounding in his ears, he snatched the book of the ground and slid it back on the shelf. Perhaps he could come back to it later. But certainly not now.
Ned stuffed his good hand in his pocket, trying to act nonchalant as he edged closer to the study area.
He kept his eyes on the titles passing before him.
'Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.' 'Listening to Prozac.' 'The Noonday Demon.' 'The Black Veil.'
Well, wasn't that a cheery lot.
He turned a corner and the study group came into sight. Bobby had a particularly doe-eyed expression as he leaned toward a girl with white stripes in her auburn hair. Her countenance was both long-suffering and longing as she slouched back into her chair. The other girl, whose hair was pulled back in a ponytail, seemed amused by her partners.
Stealth. Stealth, Ned. He was here looking for a book, right?
Ned's shoulders slumped and he forced his attention back to the shelves. He grabbed a book at random, immersing himself in soothing prose that encouraged him to leap from his confines, befriend his grief and trust the wisdom of darkness.
His stomach sank as he turned a page. If grief was that easy to overcome, what was he doing wrong? He stuffed the book back in place vindictively and took up another, cracking its dusty gray cover open to the middle.
"Bobby, cut it out. You know it's not safe to touch me." said the girl with the Southern accent.
"I'm not afraid."
"I am. I don't want to hurt you."
Ned's fingers tightened around the book. He remembered rough hands holding him in place, the bite of the knife and the rush of the chill night air. But even the blade hadn't been half as painful as the soft palm forced against his chest, the spark of electricity..
"You're right. I'm sorry." Bobby relented a few minutes later, sighing. He folded his arms on the table and rested his chin on his hands.
Rogue tucked a white lock behind her ear. "It's not like I want to push you away."
"I know. It's not your fault. I just want to show you how I feel about you." Bobby said, glancing over at his girlfriend.
"You guys are idiots." Kitty said, sitting back down with a crumpled piece of paper in her hands.
Frowning, Bobby raised his head. "Hey, I know there's more ways to show that than physically. All I'm saying is-"
She tossed the wad at his face again, speaking in a lower tone. "No, I mean you two are idiots. How's your spatial awareness coming?"
Slowly Bobby moved to an upright position.
Rogue sat up straighter, her gaze flitting to the corners of eyes. "What do you mean by that?"
"You dorks haven't noticed the weird guy at the end of the row? He hasn't turned a page in like five minutes." Kitty said softly, opening her notebook and scribbling across the page.
The sandy-haired boy raised his head. He caught a brief glimpse of a shady figure in a beige button-down and was rewarded with a boot to the shin for his trouble.
"Don't look!" Rogue hissed.
"I wouldn't worry about it. I think he's working so hard on eavesdropping that he forgot to pay attention to his surroundings. I walked past him three times and he didn't look up once." Kitty whispered, hiding a smile.
Bobby shifted in his chair. "That's kind of freaky. You seen him around before?"
Both girls shook their heads.
"D'you think we should tell somebody?" Rogue said, looking around. Suspicious figures in the mansion usually weren't a good sign for a school full of mutants, many of them vulnerable runaways
Grabbing their thick history text, Bobby smirked. "Nah. I got a better idea." He nudged a chair out of the way with his foot and shoved the book forcefully across the table. It flew through the air and landed with a hearty booming sound.
The man flinched, his head jerking up.
Kitty stifled a giggle.
He looked towards them, curly hair hanging in his pale face. For such a tall guy, he had a way of making himself appear small. Now that he no longer stood in profile, they could see the fabric splint binding one arm and the bandages peeking out from under the sleeve of the other. He took a step backward, flustered. He haphazardly shoved the volume he'd been not-reading into a shelf and strode out of sight.
"Way to go, Bobby." Crisis averted, Rogue patted his shoulder with a gloved hand.
Something didn't sit right with Bobby. The man didn't seem like a threat; he was just a little- off. Bobby scooted his chair back and moved to shelf where the man had abandoned his book. He found it jammed between two texts on the history of podiatry.
'A Grief Like No Other: Surviving the Violent Death of Someone You Love.'
His stomach sank.
notes.
I think it's interesting that this all started based off a tumblr picset I made and turned into more than seven thousand words, most of which I wrote in the middle of exams. I'm gonna go ahead and say that this is evidence of an ability to be phenomenally creative under pressure. Creativity is not equal to productivity, though...
The text quoted comes from C.S. Lewis' 'A Grief Observed.' Fantastically poignant book. I highly recommend it - but it is a real heart-breaker if you happen to be right in the middle of a traumatic situation.
Don't write the story. Live the story.