10. Noises
Him. The girl.
The gasp, the ground.
His chalk-dusted hands flattening against it. The sting of concrete and ice on his flesh.
The sounds.
Everything had become so loud in just a few seconds. His ears rang, his mouth opened. An intense dizziness possessed him.
The air seemed thicker. The light warmer. The smells sharper.
And the sounds were overwhelming. Too many of them.
The first he fully registered was a strange wailing. Like a banshee, somewhere far away.
A distant blaring, followed by another, then another.
Another wail. Slow and high-pitched, moving, from far away to closer, then far again.
Ringing. Here, there. The tapping of buttons.
Chatters. Hellos, goodbyes. Laughter. Coughs. Breaths.
Crunches. Scrapping.
Feet. Shoes.
Falling, here, there, everywhere…
The world had come alive.
Cecil-Cecil-Cecil-
Peter Lake lifted his head. It took his tearful eyes, so accustomed to the fog, a long and spacious minute to fully adjust to the colors before him.
Blue, yellow, orange, a bit of green, a pool of darkness, the fading daylight clashing with a series of lampposts, too vibrant to be real, too round, too clean… Oh god…
"Ce- Cec- Ah-"
He coughed, violently and suddenly. And he squinted, hissing, touching his face. He felt the dry, tangled beard, the wet skin on his cheeks. And for the first time, he randomly felt self-conscious of the haphazard appearance he certainly had. Because now he wasn't alone in a dead and endless void. He was real…
You're here… You're…
"Cecil!" he cried.
Cecil wasn't here.
No…
No…
"Cecil!"
"Where does it hurt, honey? It's okay, it's- Hey!"
A woman.
O Come, O Come-
"No… No, no, no…"
"Hey! I'm talking to you!"
It wasn't her.
O…
Peter Lake turned, his fingers trembling, his knees burning. He felt the heat rising to his face, the frustration and terror contorting his features.
There were two people behind him now. The girl he'd run into was now cradled in the coated arms of a dark-haired woman. Her ice-blue eyes pierced through him.
"You just ran into my kid, you lunatic!"
He'd forgotten the feeling of being perceived so openly. So closely. It only made everything else feel a hundred times worse.
So Peter Lake openly stared back, frowning. The woman clenched her jaw.
"What? What the hell is wrong with you?"
And he decided, right then and there, that he hated them. Because they weren't her, and they weren't Cecil, either. And he longed for the fog for the first time, and that sickened him.
And they looked so wrong, in every way. Their outfits made no sense. Not the fabric, not the cuts of their clothes, not the shadows on the woman's eyes or the red of her daughter's coat. And there was too much noise, and too much light… And everything was too much…
The woman sneered, dragging the little girl to her feet and towering over Peter. The child opened her eyes, wheezing, and looked at him.
"Let's go, baby."
She tugged at the girl's hand. The child had turned her attention directly to him, replacing her mother's stare for her own. Her eyes were black. They stood out like buttons against a colorless, freckled face.
She whispered, to him, to the woman, to everyone. "I smashed into you…"
And Peter Lake hated them.
"He ran into you, I saw it," her mother was muttering.
"Why is he so angry?"
"Because some people just can't live with themselves."
The farther they went, the softer their voices, the louder the rest…
"Why?"
"Because they hate themselves. And therefore, they hate everyone else."
Peter Lake hated them.
Author's Note: To anyone who is here today, thank you for reading.
Here they are, Virginia and Abby! Though you technically don't know that yet :3 Oh well. But yeah, it's them.
I know that Peter's way of meeting these two is way sweeter in the movie - Peter and Abby smash into each other and he immediately helps her back to her feet and they share a quirky little chat, where she reminds him of little Willa and Beverly's stars. And then Virginia takes her daughter away cause she was too far away to help her get back up immediately. And I definitely plan to have these interactions, in some way, too, if I'm able, but for their first time meeting, as you can see, I decided to change it.
Because 1) as you've already seen, I want to explore Peter's desperation during his oblivion, and how his unconscious grief for Beverly, his experience in the fog, and his guilt over the few memories he's managed to recuperate reveal him as the flawed individual he still is, to make room for the humanity that "Winter's Tale" is directly centered on - Peter's humanity is the true miracle of the film, I've always said, and I want to further emphasize that by addressing the darkness he could have displayed in Pearly's gang and how he can still most certainly return to that darkness if he so chooses (this is something the movie doesn't address but something I most definitely interpret from it: Peter chooses to do better, but he could just as easily choose to be so much worse, especially after Beverly's death), and 2) I find Virginia's entire reaction to Abby's first meeting with Peter in the movie to be kind of underwhelming, since, y'know, if MY terminally-ill daughter just fell to the ground after smashing into a weird homeless guy, my maternal instincts would have been on fire in that instance XD I wouldn't take three business days to reach her.
So yeah. I've been busy lately but as always, I'll keep you posted as often as I'm able cause I love coming back here. Here's your hug, see you next time! *hug*
