Repudiation of Perdition (Harry Potter / AU / OC-SI)
Chapter 00: Finis
—
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
(Do not go gentle into that good night,
Dylan Thomas)
—
The body of the Shah buckled and fell to the floor like so much dead meat, what remained of the zealotous lunatic hitting with a nauseatingly wet sucking noise I just barely made out over the ringing in my ears.
'So much for negotiations.'
"Well… shoot."
Ashti raising her handgun again made me wave her down before she ruined what little of our hearing remained.
'Not that it would matter,' I thought bitterly.
My attention was drawn to the far side of the operations center at the top of the tower by a chiming alarm. Where only an hour before there would have been one of several radar operators reading off an identification match and raising the alarm, there was now just a screen and an empty seat and desk among dozens of others.
"And there it is."
"What about the express elevator to the sublevels? We can recall a tram."
"It wouldn't matter."
And saying that, the alarm turned to a steady droning as the automated elements of the island's coordinated anti-air system tried, and failed, to launch countermeasures from systems that had been long depleted, or, in the case of the fortified batteries at the eastern and western ends of the island, utterly annihilated by the Chinese Q-ships missile spamming them on their way to the Black Sea the month prior.
"Sir?"
A large screen woke up across the command center displaying a top down map of Crete and the surrounding sea for fifty kilometers, a line leading straight from the Shah's fleet.
Turning, I regarded the Kurdish woman for a moment with a bitter smile.
"This place was built to survive earthquakes and hurricanes — and I don't think there's much ambiguity in what the Fire of Allah might be. I'm afraid the pressure wave will collapse the sublevels just as well as the rest of the building."
And considering that, I hobbled around workstations to mute the alarm before getting to work to seal Crete's connection to the undersea tramways connecting the Agean. I stopped before I could execute the command and looked back to the woman that had been at my side through the anarchy of the past two decades, ever present in the simple black and white suit she had adopted as a uniform.
"Do you want to try anyway," I asked.
"Will you make it?"
Any other time I might have said I'd at least try, now… Gritting my teeth I stared at the inbound missile, and shook my head. You can fight the worst of human nature, you can fight nature — you can't fight the atom.
Any other scenario I might have tried, but… There was something anachronistically liberating in all options being torn away; no clever trick, no backup plan, no contingency. Not at this stage.
And at this point… I was so very tired of fighting.
I also prayed to every god that might exist that that bastard suffered for giving the order for ending things here.
Spiteful bastard probably actually thought he'd be reborn.
Even so, even knowing the odds… I shifted my weight off my left leg and gripped the console to hold against the throbbing spasm that shot through my shot-up leg.
"Ah." I laughed to keep the pain down. "No, I'm quite sure that running is beyond me right now."
She nodded in acknowledgement and I looked out the windows to the darkened island stretching out below, glittering prisms now dark save for by firelight and the stars catching my eye.
"Then I think I'll stay."
Looking back I saw her holster the handgun and unclip her tie.
"I'm sorry."
She snorted, and looking up, the crows feet around her blue eyes crinkled in amusement as she dropped her tie and the mask of professionalism fell away.
"I chose to stand before death with no expectations of the future. All that came afterward was extra."
The turn of phrase made me smile, remembering a far younger woman in tattered civilian clothes weighed down by a combat harness that had traded her service in exchange for support for her people… For all the good it had done in the end.
Where had the time gone? I knew, but… it was so quick, and now…
It had been a nice day, opening the tram to passengers. The ocean had been nothing but chop, but… that had been the point.
"Alright." Double checking that everyone had reached the terminal, I tapped out a command and, deep beneath the tower and tens of kilometers away, several sets of heavy water tight doors slid shut at the connection points of the subsurface tunnels leading to and from the island, followed moments later by explosive charges severing the passages and sending them to the ocean floor. Cutting off a limb to save the body.
Another set of commands put my affairs in order.
"...Done."
As soon as I said so Ashti hooked an olive skinned arm in mine.
"Sneaky sneaky," I murmured teasingly.
She just smiled.
"Sit for a minute?"
Glancing at the radar tracker — we had just about that.
"That'd be nice."
She hooked my arm in hers to help me along and left the command center, doors automatically parting to let us out onto the garden roof. A bit less managed than it would have been, the grass a little dead, the shrubbery a little overgrown — ah, but that was just me being pedantic.
She helped to ease me down onto a bench beneath an olive tree and we looked out over the island
She cocked her head and looked over the island and I stared with her, looking out over the protective domes of glass sheltering long since evacuated towns spread out over the arid mediterranean island, geometric pieces of glass glittering like stars.
Sure footing on unstable ground while everything else was going to hell in a handbasket. All it had taken was a ludicrous amount of money, a cynical outlook for the future prospects of a civil society, and breaking every moral qualm I had to get here.
But the people who had come under my umbrella here and scattered throughout the Agean had been safe because of it.
I tried not to think the worst of what might happen after this. It didn't work of course, and seconds ticked past as if they were minutes. The only consolation I had was that the others were capable enough and, with the ease of the easily distracted, what I'd built only held my attention for so long before I turned back toward the streak of light in the sky.
"You really don't regret it?
"No," Ashti said.
Turning from the missile I met her placid stare and raised a brow.
"Really." Coming from someone who followed with 'I can't complain' with all the things that had gone wrong as of late, I was skeptical.
"Nothing beyond the norm," she amended under my stare. "Look at it," she waved a hand out to the domes and the protected hamlets and towns. "You had a goal, it was a good one. I was happy to be part of it."
"But for just a little more time…"
"You'd sell the world for a song," she finished wistfully before placing a quick kiss to my cheek that made me turn back to find her smiling softly. "No, I don't regret it," she reiterated, her smile pulling at the crows feet at the corners of the vivid blue eyes staring back.
"...Ah." The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as I saw something that could have been — and would never be now. "I'm an idiot."
She smiled knowingly and leaned into my side. "A bit. You've always been preoccupied looking ahead to focus on the present." She to the sky. "I suppose I do regret not saying anything."
"Next time, I'll make time."
"Oh? Is that a promise?"
"It's a promise."
"Promises," she mused, and looked out over the island at what we had built one last time.
Moments later, we stared together into the heart of a star.
(※)
Time; You can make the best of it or the worst of it. Yet no matter what, at the end of things, there's never enough.
Growing up, you can spend ages watching the clock only for barely any time to pass at all, wishing all the while that it would go faster. It's only when you reach the age to realize how precious those minutes are, the hands are flying by faster and faster, too fast to slow them down. And then it's too late and there is nothing that can be done about it but make the best of the time remaining. The prospect of having a second chance, to make up for wasted time? It was the thing of dreams. Or, in my case, nightmares, when it came at the cost of all you had built and cared for burning away in nuclear fire.
Now, having been making the most of every minute I had after wasting so many for so long, it was rather confusing why I was stuck on my back, craning my neck to stare through a set of bars at an absolutely ancient grandfather clock, too many of its golden hands moving far too slowly.
That only held my attention so long before my eyes rose to the tawny owl perched atop it, head buried in a floating bowl.
"Guh?"
It rose to stare down at me and clicked its beak.
I wriggled in place and kicked, fat little legs treading air.
"Aih."
The words slipping in didn't make sense, none of this made sense, I didn't know, where was Ashti, why was I …
"Ah-h."
I could feel the kiss on my cheek burning and… and for the first time in so long, I was alone.
"Ah-ahhhhh!"
There was no well reinforced emotional numbness to hold it back, and with it came everything else in a flood; everything that had been built, fought for, killed for, all that I had pulled onto the shores of my little slice of stability, the work of a lifetime, gone.
I think that that being the last coherent thought I had for a long while was the only thing that kept me sane.
—
A/N: So… I'll say right out the gate that this is something of an ugly abomination that has sprung from the ether.
The premise is an obscenely complicated thing that IMO would probably be better used in some existential science fiction piece, the MC's background/future is better suited for a Battlefield 2042 campaign combined with some anxiety about the future, the AU/Original elements largely things that started as a stream of consciousness extrapolation, and, if I wanted to take it seriously, I wouldn't be using it in a Harry Potter fanfic or have the main character be a completely cynical bastard of an Si… well, I wouldn't necessarily call them an SI, it's just… the perspective of an extremely cynical, extremely jaded, functionally depressed person — whose perspective happens to be fairly close to my own and so it it easy to write off the cuff, if exaggerated… make of that what you will. (Let's be honest, most fanfic OC's are self inserts to one degree or another)
That being said, it is, so far, easy to write, somewhat enjoyable, and I need to shake off the cobwebs. So let's see where it goes.