Falling Through the Cracks
by Aimme,
with touches by My Note Book
Summary: His mask was flawless. His walls were perfectly structured. Protection and cautionary containment at its finest. Even a perfect pretend held fractures, though, and no matter how strong his glue, under the right circumstances, glue cracked and had to be gutted and filled in again.
Author's Note: I must beg indulgence for this chapter. It is very aptly named, given the chapters we have been seeing recently and how this one seems to be of a different cut—of such a dissimilarity of the likes which we have not seen since chapter 2, though it is also considerably different from that chapter, of course. Confused, yet? We are having what the chapter-title says: an interlude of peace! Well, kind of...
Besides, I am not clear on what is going on with the twins as yet. And with the way this week has gone for me, it was a good thing I was not trying to write something for one of them, as that would have been from scratch—whereas, this has been sitting in rough draft form for many weeks, just like the previous chapter.
BlackKeys96, thank you! I am glad that you liked the new light for London. There are episodes and certain scenes that make me believe she is not as much of an airhead as she makes herself out to be and as everyone believes her to be. Granted, we all have our airhead moments, but they are just that: moments. Her thoughts and feelings were meant to be sad, so I am glad you picked up on that. As for the parts about hiding behind a mask and the one about family, I am glad you felt something for her there! I hope you enjoy any more aspects of London we might see in my writing!
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Chapter Sixteen - Interlude of Peace
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"Don't ever stay alone
Because if you're alone,
You think.
If you think,
You remember.
If you remember,
You cry.
And if you cry..."
-unknown
Walking slowly now, as the emotions hit her, she tries to make sense of all the rushing in her head. Verily, she dreads arriving at the infirmary, as if everything will solidify then and there will be no escaping the gruesome reality that threatens to darken an already dark world.
No one is around, which is a relief, and she lets herself sink down onto a stuffed seat in the deserted hall. The faux leather creaks, but she pays it no mind. There is a louder creaking, cracking, bursting sound inside, and she is once more grateful that no one is around—who needs to see her cry? She normally finds a closet, but she feels too overborne to consider searching for such a luxury.
Trickling slow, a few here, a few there, she does not sob as normal. She quietly laments, weeping in a much more solemn manner than usual. "No, no, no, no…" she whispers to herself, as if the mantra could counteract the cold, hard truth. Her shoulders convulse on the word she dreads and hates with a passion: "Dying." This is all too much, and she does not know what to do as Woody's words echo in her head, over and over and over.
"This can't be happening…" she finally states, swiping at the newest tears dampening her cheeks and smearing mascara beneath her eyes. "It's not fair."
She lifts her gaze to the ceiling, in effect directing her words heavenward. "God, please, no. Don't let this be happening, not to Zack, not to me, not now, not ever," she pleads in the silent hall, with one more jerking sob which catches on the last word. "He could never deserve this."
Sure, Zack is not perfect. Is anyone? Yet how could anyone, sans a murderer or other lowlife scum or dictators or tyrants, deserve death? Is it truly fair?
Something tickling at her memory reminds her about a long-ago admonishment, an adage one of her babysitters had spoken of, that death is the only just ransom for the dues of sinners, but surely she is not remiss in her memory of something about justice tempered by grace and mercy? And there is something there about death, about that due, but she cannot remember those carefree, simplistic days and she scarce recalls the stories Hedia used to tell (or so she tells herself).
Oh, where are her stubborn memories when she needs them?
Suddenly, one rises from the back of her mind, taking her by surprise, as it is nowhere close to any of the ones she has been turning over in her thoughts.
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*Flashback*
He stares, as if unaware of the torrent and her downpour, the lightning and his display and thunder and his racket as they compete for their presence in the black sky.
I cross to the rail, staring down onto the sky deck, brows drawn as I stare at him, trying to understand. I grip the handle in my hands tightly, the wind giving a churlish yank at what the British would call my brolly.
"Zack! Is everything alright?" I can barely hear my voice over the rain, and I note that even my intrusion does little more than startle him from his thoughts for but a brief moment.
"Huh?" his head snaps up, gaze flies up to me. Face streaked with water, the drops pouring down his drenched form "Oh yeah!" he answers, convincing and with a smile he has forced across his previous frown. "I was just closing up!" his smile flashes a little bigger as he jumps up from where he has been sitting on a bar-stool at the Easy Squeezy, doing nothing rather than something.
I nod, anyway. I am not fully convinced, but what business have I here? Do I really have cause to doubt his words? If he wants to get drenched and sit like a mindless idiot while doing so, that is his problem, not mine.
Besides, I have places to go, people to see. Passing insults to drop, greetings to pass on. Smiles to smile. I have to go. "Alright. See you later, juice monkey," I holler as I turn away, leaving him behind to his questionable behaviour and his odd mannerism.
*End Flashback*
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Why had he been behaving so strangely? Who sat in the rain and stared blankly out into it as if they didn't notice, with that rather questionably detached, pallid despondency tingeing their face? Rain hides many things. Rain masks perfectly what can escape one's mask.
Does she have a chance to eventually find out from him what that had been out? She suspects at the behaviour she had seen, but what was behind it? If he dies now, she could not eventually find out, and that memory would go on bothering her in her uncertainty of what it held.
Oh Wilson's government money! if he dies now…
She falls back against the bench with a sigh, suddenly trembling. "Don't take him away from us. We all need him," she doesn't care she is speaking aloud to herself, she doesn't care that there is no one around to hear her, no perceivable way anyone could hear her. She doesn't care, though; the words are burning her heart, searing in her mouth. She needs to give them an airing out.
A burning sob convulses her shoulders, but she stops there and will not let any more pass. She cannot. Her eyes burn, but she swallows back the tears, refusing the weeping which wants to sweep over her.
She runs her hands over her face, suddenly feeling depleted and wasted. There is nothing to it, she supposes, than to accept reality, suck it up and learn to buck up and walk on. It was the practice of her life, so what was another round?
To her surprise, a door across from her and just to her right, by about two feet, opens as she releases a sigh. She absently notes the number on the door is 3 · 1 2 7 as her brain compensates for her shock by noting abstract, random information.
An old lady, with brightly deep eyes, pure white hair plaited down her back with errant wisps haloing her head, and a face wrinkled as though from her long years of life, steps out of the room with the smallest of smiles to herself as she shuts the door. That smile, however slight, London notices, falls completely and her face softens when she turns and her gaze zeroes in on the small Tipton heiress, and rather than going about her business, she approaches.
London stares at her, intrigued as she is by this woman's presence and the "something" about her eyes that the younger woman cannot understand. Why are they so deep and remind her of the far reaches of space, reaches which she considers when she lays out beneath the Milky Way and wishes she could catch a falling star?
"Dear, are you unwell?" she inquires, effectively jerking the other from her thoughts and her staring with a single question.
With a startle, she hastily shakes her head and sits up straight. "No, no. I am fine. Uh. I'm sorry, miss."
The lady tilts her head, sharp eyes piercing through London. "Truly?" she questions. "London Tipton does not usually conduct herself in this manner in open sight."
Her heart rate explodes at those words, disconcerted surprise racing through her. There is something about those words which unsettles her, despite their innocuous surface appearance.
"Now, see, I presumed I heard someone in distress out here. I can see it now, all over your face, dear," the stranger slowly makes her way over to the heiress as she speaks, "So do not be sorry, and do not be timorous or bashful. What is wrong, sweetie?"
London is taken aback by this question, for most older passengers tell her -and her friends- to go away and leave them alone. They don't want to be annoyed with and by children.
Except Zack. They all loved Zack.
She has noticed this yet has never said anything. Several examples could come to mind, but she is focused on the older woman beside her, confused by the question, the intrusion, the sudden company.
And yet it all serves to bring one thing to the focused, sharp forefront of her mind.
Zack.
It is as if a dam is broken by the presence sinking into the seat beside her, the kindness and open invitation to share and her surprising lack of feeling as if she has to hide or as if she cannot open up and share. And she does not understand this feeling, this sort of relaxed unreservedness, a freedom to simply be and not hold back.
She cannot for the life of her control the wave of emotion which crashes over her and she does not feel any need to stop the bore which swells through her and channels through her eyes. Her hands fly to her face, half embarrassed at the tears while another part of her guard feels lax and unopposed to crying.
She feels the stranger wrap caring arms around her woebegone frame and she slips right into them, feeling immensely comforted in the wake of her sorrow. If this was anyone else, London's required response would have been to flip, but something feels right, her walls and veneer and guard either null and void or lax and unperturbed. As the woman leans a white-haloed head against her own, she is at peace with it.
Maybe it feels as though this woman, whoever she is, had come to London's rescue. Maybe, it is almost as if this is an answer to a prayer. Whatever it is, a wave of calmness sweeps over the distressed heiress and she quiets, breathing in the interlude of peace which is suddenly there.
"Come now, tell me everything," the elder's voice is soft and understanding.
London pulls back and looks up, seeing wrinkles which unexpectedly strike her as being the byproduct and beautiful reward of years of kindness, benevolence, and charity—by the efforts of a heart beating for others. Rather than ugly and repulsive, she suddenly sees them as the proof of a lifetime and each line, she can see, is incredibly full of a compassion which has its own respective story.
Oh, now where is her head running off to? Silly musings and fanciful pictures—she shuts off her imagination, but she cannot quite immerse herself in realistic, strictly as-is mentality.
"Well…one of my friends…he is, well…in really bad trouble," she answers the question posed to her.
"What kind of trouble, sweetheart?" the older woman asks as she reaches beneath the bench to grab a convenient box of tissues underneath.
"Well…" she tries, again, but she hates the words and doesn't want to say them. "Well, he's…he's…going to die."
"Oh, honey," is the sympathetic whisper as arms encircle her again and draw her near, and she lets herself be pulled into the hug. A few tears leak down her face, but she does not sob, as she is held tight. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah. I just can't understand why he just wouldn't tell us," London says as she pulls away from the woman and takes a tissue from the box.
"You do not have this information from him yourself?"
"No. A…a mutual…friend told me." Why the questioning? This is something awful, heartbreaking! Why are words being spared to it?
She feels a gentle hand stroke her hair, but she does not protest as she normally would.
"Maybe your friend is wrong," the old woman begins, haltingly, then stops. Instead, she continues with, "Dear, perhaps it is not as ruining as the kind of death you fear—dying takes many forms. And there is always more than we see, beyond what we see. Rarely anything that seems to be certain is set in stone; one aspect of the nature of the world is change, and the future is rarely as set as it seems. You never know what is coming."
A comforting -yet, somehow, wry- smile turns the elder's mouth into a soft, altogether bemusing expression. Why is her look wry?
Yet London feels she has no time to puzzle the riddles presented to her, for she feels the inexplicable need to move on to the infirmary again. Thus, she stands, almost without considering everything, and finds herself determined to see Zack alive and well. And then she will shake him a few times and demand to know why he would be so stupid as to do this to her.
She swipes a hand across her face, takes a deep cleansing breath, and steels her shoulders and herself, before she walks off to the infirmary without looking back. There is an urgency sinking into her bones, increasing and solidifying.
She speeds up.
"It's better to cry than to be angry. Anger hurts others, while tears flow silently through the soul and cleanse the heart." -anonymous
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Author's Note: Uh...thoughts? I do not think I can think of any questions to pepper at your brains. A side note for me to make would be that I may one day write a one-shot based on London's flashback, but not told from her perspective. I know some details and such, which I could write a story from, so if you ever see a one-shot about it in the future, you will get to say you heard it here first! Kind of...
More importantly, I am interested in hearing what the readers would like to see next. Zack? Cody? Bailey? Woody? Carey? I am starting this next week of writing without any, even vague, idea of what I will write. So you could very well influence the next step of the story if you don't mind casting an idea, thought, or vote on something! Give it a shot! It's not hard. There's this review button and you can share whatever you are thinking...nifty, aye?
Vocabulary:
churlish - (1) crass: characteristic of somebody with bad manners; (2) unkind and grumpy: surly, sullen, or miserly
brolly - U.K. Same as umbrella
pallid - (1) pale: having an unhealthily pale complexion; (2) lackluster: lacking color, spirit, or intensity
timorous - timid: showing fear or hesitancy
bore - (3) tidal wave in river: a large powerful wave that the tide causes to move up a river or narrow estuary
woebegone - sorrowful: feeling or looking distressed or sorrowful
veneer - (4) deceptive appearance: a superficial appearance or show put on to please or impress others