Chapter Text
1934, Ullapool
The water will always be red in his nightmares. Red frothing when he tries to swim out, the smell of brimstone thick in his sinuses.
It wasn’t of course. The loch was still that day, and the only frothing was from a young boy, trying again and again to head out to where he’d last seen the rowboat disappear to, where he’d heard that great boom across the water. He’d swim, nearly drown himself, crawl to land until he could breathe, and then wade out again.
He did that until some passing elderly couple made him stop, held his tiny little wrist until he screamed, crying that he was sorry, that he had to go, he had to see if they were alright. Later, when there was a blanket over his shoulder and something warm in a mug nestled between his hands, the screaming would turn quiet, and there would just be the sobs.
But in his nightmares, the water would always be red.
1940, Paris
There was nothing to be worried about in that first week. More concerning were the boots overhead, the checks that failed to notice the door that led to their technically-not-legal apartment, the voices above speaking their native tongue to whoever opened the door. Ludwig’s attention was on the fact that food was now being rationed, and his best bet for supplying the two of them were the scant resistance fighters still in the city. Few and far between, extremely cautious, but between dabbling in reports on the occupation they would also occasionally smuggle supplies for those who needed it.
So he had plenty to occupy his mind in that first week. Besides, respiratory infections could last as long as a fortnight, so he’d trouble himself then.
After a month, Mother stopped breathing all together in that damp basement that might as well have been a tomb.
Not that that kept Ludwig from trying, of course. He did everything in his power, pouring over books, cutting and re-sewing, tearing his hair out and growling because one of these stupid academic tomes had to have something that would help, anything, please…
He wore himself to exhaustion, his mother’s body cold and uncaring on the operating table. He had failed her. He had studied, he’d studied for years in research books piled high, all that time as a resident and he was nothing when it came to something that matted. A common infection. And he’d let it take the last person he had left.
He hadn’t left the apartment in months. If he was being honest, he didn’t remember leaving it this time either, only that suddenly he was standing in a street he didn’t recognize with rain pattering on his shoulder. It dripped down the remains of his once-white shirt and pooled Mother’s blood at his feet. It was out here, yes, and dangerous, but no longer did he care, and he merely stared up at the pouring rain until his glasses were nothing but a spattering of droplets.
“<You there! It is curfew!>”
Ludwig didn’t turn around. There was simply nothing left that could be afraid. What more could he fail? What more could he lose?
“<I said it is curfew! Come here!>”
It seemed the lone soldier had confused him for a French citizen, no doubt would ask for his paperwork. Ludwig considered responding in German, just to hear him jump, but he couldn’t find it in him.
The footsteps splashed through puddles, storming to a lone man staring at the rain, a lone man lost. In the dark, the soldier couldn’t see how much blood covered his suspect. He couldn’t see the bonesaw clasped in the doctor’s right hand.
“<You there! I said->” The last words were a burble as Ludwig turned and slashed him across the throat.
He didn’t stop there. Even as the soldier gasped over the blood spilling out of his mouth, Ludwig jammed the bonesaw forward again into his stomach, over and over, until he was dead as a man could be. He didn’t know where the fury came from, the desire—no the need—to hurt, but he just kept hacking as the rain came down.
When it stopped, Ludwig blinked at the corpse of his countryman.
From this angle, it wasn’t really different from all the cadavers he’d practiced on in school. More gruesome, yes, but ultimately empty. The resemblances to humanity shaved away.
So useless. A waste.
He hauled the body back to the basement. In a single halfhearted endeavor, he attempted a lung transplant, but it was as successful as he thought it would be. Maybe if he hadn’t waited so long after Mother’s death, or if he hadn’t brutalized the other patient so…
Ah, but that was neither here nor there. Ludwig had discovered he much preferred working on the living than the dead; though maybe certain people should wind up dead when all was said and done. In the meantime, he shook himself from his grief. Mother had said he was a good son to her, but yet he had left her alone for a ridiculous amount of time, failing her once again as she was defenseless on that table. Careless. He went across to the apartment’s lone mirror and threw a blanket across it, cursing himself for his selfishness, for his wallowing. Mother would need to be washed and prepared—there were many things he couldn’t do by himself, but he would do his best. He owed Mother that. And if he could keep himself from being more of a waste, well, that could come later.
1941, Chapayevsk
There was an older woman who sometimes shared her meals with the girls—just the tinniest bit, a mouthful maybe, but Mikhail was grateful for it all the same. His sisters didn’t remember their grandmother, but she, her name was Biserka, was just like Nana with her kind face and kinder words when the day was long.
She was too old to be working. They made her work anyway. She died two months after their family arrived.
Mama cried often these days, but she cried much when Biserka died. The extra food had helped Bronislava stay strong, and now without it the littlest of them might shrivel away entirely, so small as she curled to Mama while the cold chewed away at them all. He watched them both fall asleep, exhaustion claiming each pair of eyes in their sleeping room.
It was his job to watch now. Papa had gone and gotten himself killed and it was Mikhail’s job to watch his family. He would not let them die. They had been sent here to do just that, but Mikhail would not let them.
Zhanna had too much spirit. She talked back and the guards beat her often, and it was just so much like Papa’s brand of stupid that Mikhail couldn’t sleep for how much his heart ached for her. He found her, once, after a particularly bad one. Zhanna was almost thirteen and never cried anymore, but here he found her, pressed against one of the walls as blood, tears, and snot leaked out of her in equal measures.
If she were a bit older, the guards would do much worse to her. He’d seen the way they looked at the other women in the labor camp, and he know there were evil things that went on here where these men controlled everything: their food, their blankets, their very lives. He wrapped his arms around his sister and let her cry. Mikhail was fifteen and never cried anymore either, but salt-wet spilled out of him onto the top of her head.
It was three months in when they tried to separate him from Mama and his sisters.
They shouldn’t have left their baton where it was so easy to grab. They shouldn’t have underestimated him—he was fifteen, but when he peeled back the slouch that had hung around his shoulders for the past three months, he felt a gleeful satisfaction at the terror on their faces when they realized he was taller than them. They should have sent more than two men to try and take him from his family. When the second of the guards shot at him, he shouldn’t have missed.
“<Go!>” he told Mama as a singular fist wrapped around the neck of the second guard. A whole fist around his tiny, baby neck. “<Let everyone know: we leave tonight!>”
He would kill every Party man in this building. He now had two guns, and he was free, and he had would kill every single one.
But first.
“<You,>” he said, squeezing slightly. “<You are the one who beat Zhanna.>”
If the man could piss himself a second time he would have. His eyes were already boggled, popping out of his head, yet somehow they managed to become more terrified.
“<Every man in Chapayevsk will spend his last moments in agony.>” Mikhail’s fist tightened around the baton, the first weapon he’d managed to grab. He pulled the sweaty face close to him, red from lack of oxygen, tongue lolling out of his mouth. “<And you. You get to be first.>”
1942, Hancock
“Ma says smoking is unladylike,” Jane said.
Like the lines in a script, Peggy looked sideways at him, fit every morsel of contempt a teenage girl could into a single sentence and said, “you gunna tell?”
Jane ignored her. “Ma says you must report for supper.”
That made Peggy move, though it was a pained, achy sort of move, the kind you did after you’ve been picking weeds out of the strawberry bushes all day. But at least she stopped leaning against the barn and smoking, so Jane had fulfilled his duty. He marched after her as she returned to the house.
“Jane,” Pa barked as soon as they entered. “Where the fuck have you been? Get me a goddamn beer.”
“Yes sir!” Jane saluted.
“And take that fucking bucket off your head, Jesus Christ.”
Jane wanted to correct him, to tell him it wasn’t a bucket but a helmet, but knew that wasn’t a good idea. It was never a good idea to tell Pa he was wrong about something. He went to the icebox to get the beer.
It was normal one second. One second for everything to change, to have his hand on Pa’s favorite brand and then to hear the yelling from the living room. Fist hitting skin. The sound of Ma screaming in pain. The sudden bellow of Pa screaming in pain too.
That last one was not normal.
When Jane came rushing in the scene made no sense because Ma was on the floor like she was sometimes when Pa hit her, but Pa wasn’t standing either. He was collapsed on the ground, Peggy over him with a chair clasped in both her hands. Her face was horrified. The wild spite and the terror chased around each other in her expression and she was still poised with the chair as though she might hit Pa again.
He stirred, and she did.
This time it cracked loud, one leg snapping off in her hand as the wood smashed on Pa’s back. He collapsed, the feeble inches he’d pushed up with his arms gone in an instant.
Peggy threw the broken chair away. “Ma!”
She ran at Ma. Elle was grabbing Ma and helping her to her feet, but Jane was still struck there, stupefied. He was staring at Pa. He couldn’t stop staring, couldn’t believe what he was looking at.
“Ma, Ma c’mon we’re going.” Peggy didn’t give her a chance to argue, not that it looked like she was going to anyway. She was just as entranced by Pa’s prone body as Jane was.
And then Peggy was going for the back door, the one made of chicken wire that you could watch the fireflies through in the summer, the one that led onto the porch and out into forever. She grabbed Elle around the wrist and for one fateful second she and Jane locked eyes.
Jane didn’t move.
She turned, and pulled the rest of the family out into the yard. Out into wherever ‘away’ was.
Pa stirred.
When Hancock’s only two officers, Sheriff Johnson and Deputy Miller—Miller who’d caught Jane once when he’d been stealing scrap metal from the junkyard and promised not to tell nobody if he never did it again—finally arrived on the scene, the Jane they found was more blood than person. Jane didn’t remember much, not of them coming, not of them taking Pa and making him lie down until someone could bring him to a hospital. What he remembered was Pa, Pa hurting him over and over until none of his limbs worked and his jaw was all wrong. He’d never earned a beating that bad before. All that was left was meat.
The hospital smelled awful.
It was in a different town because Hancock didn’t have a hospital in the first place, and it was understaffed because most of the doctors had been recruited as medics for the war. Jane was left in a bed with sheets that were always clean and some flowers by the nightstand that were always fresh. Sometimes a woman would come and visit him. She was a social worker, but he didn’t have answers for any of the questions she asked him.
“Where’s Pa?” he’d field her sometimes, a question of his own.
She’d try to answer him, but he knew it couldn’t be the truth.
Only when he was two weeks better, his limbs working and jaw set again but still not quite right, did he ask Peggy that same question. “Where’s Pa?”
She was smoking again. Elle was there this time though, and they were supposed to be picked up, supposed to go somewhere. Jane wasn’t going anywhere yet though, not without answers.
“Prison,” she puffed.
“You’re lying,” Jane countered.
“He nearly killed you. Everyone saw. It was enough this time, and he ain’t coming back out.”
“No,” Jane shook his head. “You! You killed him with the chair! I saw you, you goddamn backstabber.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. It didn’t work as well as it used to: he was taller than her now. She couldn’t look down anymore.
“Well then maybe I did,” she said quietly. “Maybe I did kill him. Finally worked up the nerve.”
“Traitor!” he pointed at her.
“She didn’t Jane,” Elle tried to say, but Jane wasn’t in the mood for listening.
“Murderer!” he yelled. There was no one around to hear. The car that was supposed to pick them up wasn’t here. It was just them. “Judas!”
She looked him dead in the eye. “One of us was going to have to do it, in the end. And it wasn’t gunna be you.”
This was no straw that broke the camel’s back. This was a sword through the single rope holding the pulley of bricks.
He flew at her, and they both landed against the sidewalk with a smash. The force knocked a surprised yelp out of her, but that hesitation got eaten up fast, and Peggy responded the only way she ever had. The only way the two of them had ever treated each other. He beat his fist against her, and her strike came right back, fist colliding with the side of his face. He didn’t care. He’d felt worse.
So, so much worse.
He picked her up and slammed her back on the concrete on the outside of the social services, hitting her again and again, ignoring every kick and punch and bite she threw his way like he was numb to it, like he was nothing but a killing machine. Pain was weakness. Weakness he no longer had. She killed Pa and he was going to kill her back.
It was a lot like that time she’d almost killed him, their squabble by the potato field where they’d been just as intent yet woefully toothless. But the difference between seventeen and nineteen is a lot smaller than eleven and thirteen, and this time Jane was the one with all the conviction. The righteous cause. The need to win.
“Stop! Stop you’re killing her!”
Elle tried to grab his arm. He threw her aside and she landed in the street, and after that he didn’t think about her anymore. He only cared about Peggy.
And when Peggy stopped moving, his knuckles had peeled back at the skin, and his front was covered in blood that wasn’t his. He didn’t listen to Elle’s whimpering. He turned in a direction, any direction, and ran.
1944, Viren
A man by the name of Vance walked up ruined streets, eyes cast where the bombs had done their dirty work and left very little for the casual observer to mull upon. His shoe idly kicked a piece of rubble—light and porous, knocking white dust onto the vamp—and it went skittering off into what once might have been the town square.
He had hoped to find something domestic among the rubble, but luck was not kind enough to allow that boon. She had other plans for him, plans that would surely take him to the doors of hell and back, but such was the path he had chosen. Already, as he had arrived at the rendezvous far earlier than he had planned, he’d taken the time to walk by what he guessed to be his old home. It was as unrecognizable as the rest of Viren, but based on where he calculated the town square and the river walk to be, it was near a thing as any, and he’d wanted to see if there was anything worth salvaging. There wasn’t of course. Nothing but dust, but old memories. His grandmother had had a clock, one with the softest tick tick tick you could ever want, and somewhere in the sharp recesses of stifled boyhood, he’d wanted to find that clock more than anything else.
There was nothing for him here. As he had suspected.
“<An odd place for a meeting.>”
Raul. For he was Raul once again, as Vance was Vance, though they’d played with many names in their long partnership. Vance did not look up. “<It is secluded.>”
“<So’s the bottom of a well.>” Raul took a few strides in the direction of the river, subtly trying to insert himself into Vance’s line of sight. “<I hope whatever you called me here for is important.>”
Ah Raul, always to business, except when it mattered. “<I used to live here, you know.>”
Raul had a cigarette in his mouth. By his raised eyebrows he didn’t know, or he did and simply didn’t see how it was relevant. “<Bit of a pit,>” was all he remarked.
Maybe he thought Vance was lying. One didn’t just drop that sensitive sort of knowledge after all, not without something of equal sensitivity from the other in return. Every kernel of truth was a weakness, after all. Such was the nature of their relationship.
“<I suppose so,>” Vance hummed. He picked up a scrap of broken wood. It was not the clock. He set it aside.
More rubble. The sounds of Vance dutifully sorting through it all as the minutes ticked by. Usually Raul adored these games of social leverage, but apparently playing with Vance was beneath him. “<Why am I here, boy?>”
“<Because I asked you, I presume.>” Wires, glass. An old lamp perhaps.
“<Are you truly so strapped for productive activities that you can do this all day?>” Raul asked. “<It used to be we kept ourselves busy. I still happen to have duties in->”
“<-In Luxembourg, yes I know.>”
The corner of his mentor’s eye twitched. “<…In Lyon, actually.>”
Vance turned, leaning against the vague remains of a doorframe. “<No Sir, your business partners are very much expecting you in Luxembourg tomorrow evening.>”
Raul had nothing for that.
“<How long have you been selling to the Germans, Raul?>” Vance pressed. “<A year? Two? Since before we even met? I suppose I was the dupe in the first place to believe a man when he says he’s abandoned his national pride.>”
“<Is that what you think this is? Patriotism?>” Raul chuckled. It had no humor within, only cold and calculation. “<I told you in your very first lesson boy: if you wish to live, you must have no loyalty. None but to yourself.>”
“<I suppose you did teach me that,>” Vance admitted. “<Maybe I should have taken it to heart.>”
He withdrew his pistol from his breast pocket. In an instant, Raul’s was out faster, pointed at Vance’s forehead with no slack in its trigger. Vance raised his eyes. Some part of him had hoped, the tiniest sliver, that there would be some hesitation in the man who had raised him. That maybe Raul would consider for just a moment.
But no. Like the clock, that was too long of a shot to ask for.
Vance cocked his head to the barrel aimed his way. He did not balk, merely continued his motion, flipping open his own chamber and checking that everything as it should be. He snapped it closed and didn’t raise it. “<You taught me many things,>” he said. “<Do not confuse allies for friends. Show weaknesses you do not have and hide the ones you do. People look to the left when they are lying and to the right when recalling a memory. Always check your sidearm before a fight.>”
The pair of eyes under their heavy brow narrowed. Raul squeezed the trigger. The resounding shot cracked the tranquil countryside as the blank was let loose.
Raul lowered his weapon, holding the grim smile of a man who can’t quite find the will to be disappointed. “<I should have known not to give away all my tricks. The mistake all teachers make. It is the role of the young to devour the old.>”
“<You did always say you would never have children,>” Vance recalled.
“<No one should. Children turn out far too much like their parents,>” Raul agreed.
“<Or too different.>”
Vance leveled his pistol and fired.
1953, Bee Cave
“Dammit, god damn it,” Dell hissed, his voice not sure if this was a curse or a plea.
The end of the gun was still smoking, and it must have had some mighty fine conduction because all the sudden Dell felt his own temper sparking up just as hot. The dead man on the floor had a big hole in his back, blood getting all over the rug, (Mom’s rug, her favorite, been here since even before Dell was born), and all ‘n all being a huge nuisance. It was one of them RED fellas, a Spy maybe, Dell couldn’t tell much by the remains of his uniform.
The Spy’s intended target was cowering in the corner, underneath one of Mom’s shelves. She had a penchant for collecting little ceramic angles, hundreds of ‘em, more cherubs than anything as they loitered about with little garden hoes or knitting needles. Dad hadn’t thrown them out when she died. He hadn’t changed a single fiber in that house.
“God dammit Dad,” Dell repeated. “Get up. Just…shit. Get your sorry ass up.”
Dad did, eyes wide as he stared saucers at the body. His goggles were around his neck. Had he even been in the workshop today? Every damn time Dell came over he was just standing out in the field, staring at nothing. Might as well have come to visit a scarecrow.
Except not this time. Dell’s gut twisted as he realized if he’d been a couple minutes slower, if he’d stopped at record place like he’d wanted to, he’d have arrived to a completely different body lying on the floor.
“What the hell are you doin’ down there?” he demanded of his father. “You were a goddamn mercenary for Christ’s sake—some snake busts into your home and you’re cowering on the floor like a rat? Why am I always doin’ this? Why do I gotta break my back to look after a grown ass man?”
“I…” Dad shook his head, but he managed to stop gawking at the body for just a second.
“I can’t-” Dell’s voice cracked. “I can’t keep doing this. You gotta snap out of it Dad, or you’re gunna be dead. Find something to work on or, hell, go back to BLU for all I care. Just do something because I am done with this.”
Dad was gunna say something. Dell knew it, tensed for it, and despite his harsh ultimatum what he wanted most in the world was his father back. The man who’d brought him up right, the one with drive.
But then Dad’s mouth fell closed. The moment passed. Dell cradled the remains of his crushed spirit, small and biting in his chest, and pointed his gun at the floor.
“Goodbye Dad,” he said, surprising even himself how flat his voice could go. He turned and left, engine on his pickup still hot. Dad might have opened his mouth again as he left, but if he did, he still couldn’t find the words to make Dell stay.
1955, Boston
“Why not?” she asked, trying to keep up with Lou’s long legs.
“‘Cause I said so, that’s why.”
She was better at keeping up, better every day. She bet that when her brothers were her age they weren’t nearly as fast her, and she could’ve run circles around them all on account’a how much she would run just to practice. Of course, no one would take her on that bet, because the point was that they all weren’t her age and if they wanted to go someplace without her they just would do it on their stupid long legs.
“Why’d you say so, though?”
“Because shut up, how’s that for an answer?” Lou snapped. “God, d’ya ever just stop talking?”
She pressed both hands to her face and made a farting noise.
Everything was so dark right now, which was probably the only reason he hadn’t ditched her already. Ma would kill him if he left her baby alone in the city at night.
(She stuck her tongue out at the thought.)
She wasn’t a baby. She could do anything her brothers could do and then some, but they were always up to something, or ditching her, and when they let her play ball with them it always out in left field. No one likes playing left field. That’s where you send the loser kids during gym, the ones who only want to eat grass and put their gloves on their hats.
But now she was out! With Lou! And it was exciting, she felt like the world was at her fingertips until a voice from the dark called, “‘sup Lou.”
It made her jump. It didn’t make Lou jump because he was in high school and no one made him scared anymore, but she still saw his face go taut in the streetlight. “Whaddya freakin’ want, Ricky?”
Ricky, no one she knew, all long and lanky and a lot older than Lou, crept out of one of the shadows. They were near the park on Norcoss and it was a big open space but suddenly she felt very cramped as he stalked closer to them both. And sure she saw her brothers talking to strangers all the time but…this guy put a bad feeling in her stomach.
“What do you think I fucking want?” The park was a little lower than the street and each of Ricky’s footsteps when smack on the concrete stairs. “Three. Fucking. Weeks. I gave you three weeks and you still don’t have my money.”
“You’ll get it.” Lou was looking tough. That was good. She felt better when her brothers were tough, except when they were using that tough to wail on her. But right now it was good to see, so good to see she pretended not to notice the way his eyes kept darting about for witnesses.
“Like hell I will Deramo.” Ricky spat. He pushed her aside when he got in Lou’s face, like she was nothing, random bunch of junk that just happened to be watching. “I’m starting to think you’re no good for it. That you’re a bad investment.”
She wasn’t used to thinking of Lou looking young, but next to Ricky he looked positively baby-faced. “Don’t start shit, Rick,” he told him.
“You don’t give orders round here.”
“Well I don’t take your orders neither.”
And then the knife came out.
She really wasn’t thinking straight when she saw that knife. The only thing she could think of was Lou who was screaming because in a split second the switchblade had gone in and out again, and all the sudden he air was filled with howling as the two scuffled at each other. Lou held Ricky back by his wrist and she just. Didn’t think. There was only the thumping of her heart and the blood in her ears as she ran forward and pushed.
Ricky lost his balance at the top of the park stairs. He went back, back, arms pinwheeling and it might have been funny except then he hit the first step with a lot louder crack than he had going up it. It went like that: crack all the way down, over and over again, limbs going all which way until he reached the fountain at the bottom of the steps with the loudest crack of all.
There was a big bloody print where his head had hit the fountain edge. She could see it from here, how red it was even in the dark. Ricky didn’t move no more.
She glanced at Lou. “He stabbed you,” she noted.
Lou stopped looking at Ricky for the barest of seconds to look down at the knife wound in his side. He put a palm over it, catching red shirt and bloody skin both. “It ain’t so bad.” He paused. “Think Ricky got it a lot worse.”
She looked down at Ricky. Ricky who was definitely a dead body now. “Yeah. Guess so.”
“Yeah,” Lou echoed. “Yo, help me out with this.”
She didn’t get what this was until Lou went down and started moving the body, dragging him by the legs and hauling him further into the park. “Where you taking him?”
“Harbor. Hurry up, grab his arms.”
She did. He was heavy, and the walk to the harbor was long, but Lou was bleeding heavy out his shirt so she decided she had no right to complain. (For now. She’d sure get in some good complaining later.) Instead she asked, “why the harbor?”
“It’s uh…shit it’s that habeas corpus thing. If they don’t have a body they can’t prove that he was murdered, so they can’t charge you with nothing. Plus, water washes all the fingerprints off and stuff, so they’re less likely to pin me with it.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You? I’m the one that got him.”
He looked at her, tough again. “If anyone asks, I’m the one who did it, got it?”
“What? No fair!” She’d saved his stupid life and he wasn’t even going to let her say she’d killed a guy?
“Yes fair,” Lou said. “You’re nine, I can’t let you- If they thought it was you then-” He took a deep breath. “You just gotta say it was me Jeremy. Please.”
She hated when her brothers used her name. It was fine being called kid, or Ma calling her baby, but being called by her first name was Serious.
But she couldn't get quite so worked up about it now; he was worried about her being in trouble. There was going to be real trouble and for the first time in her life someone was willing to take the heat for her. It still didn’t seem fair that her first kill wouldn’t count, but she sighed. “Fine. If anyone asks.”
“Which they won’t. Let’s get this chucklenut in there.”
With a great heave, the two of them managed to lug Ricky’s body over the railing and into the harbor below. She’d once heard that corpses float, but that must have been a load of bull because Ricky disappeared as soon as the ripples stopped forming. She looked at Lou.
“Time to get out of here,” he said, but then bit his lip. “Actually, we should try to wash the blood off the fountain first.”
“And deal with that.” She pointed as his shirt.
“…And that, yeah.”
The walk back to the park was eerily silent. She wanted to say something, but for the first time in her life she was at a loss for words. “Thanks Lou,” was all she could manage.
“Yeah, don’t mention it. Literally.”
“I mean. Thanks. For saying you’d do that for me.” She was quiet for a minute. “I know you guys don’t like hanging out with me. I know I ain’t really…”
She didn’t know what to say. She different than her brothers, but Lou was different too right? He let her hang around, and he just said he’d go to jail so she wouldn’t have to. Maybe that was it.
“…It’s alright kid,” he supplied. He put an arm around her shoulder, and she didn’t ask about it anymore.
1957, Chaparral
It shouldn’t have been that easy, he thought. Big bang boom, ‘nother wanker dead, and he was just some idiot sitting at the end of his scope.
They paid him in Australium. Thirty thousand dollars worth. He sat in his hotel room rubbing it between his fingers wondering if this time it would stick.
1963, Cloudcroft
After home was destroyed and they finally accepted they were never getting it back—even if they knew where it was on a map, even if they could name a singular nearby town, they still couldn’t have gone home without the children—they spent a lot of time wandering. Sometimes in the same direction, sometimes different, but it always forward. They could beg off strangers for a little while because they were young and had a face so ripped up by flames that mother-types would dab their why they looked at them, but eventually good will would always run out.
They weren’t sure when they found themself in America. One minute everyone was talking sense and the next they weren’t, and Martia had to adapt or stop getting their scraps. Eventually they knew enough English that when someone started shouting, “work! Work! Seventy cents per hour!” they were learned enough to be intrigued. It was a lot harder to get charity here, as some people were just as likely to yell at them as help, and a lot of the time that yelling was accompanied by insults thrown at their retreating form. They didn’t know exactly what the insults meant, just enough to gather that they were some very nasty names.
Simple, their family used to call them. But they could never quite get that smoke out of their lungs, so now they were sick to everyone who heard them cough. Diseased, people said, or ill but the knew that meant something different entirely.
So a job sounded real good. They’d never had a job before. They got herded into a training room with a lot of other people, watched a short video in English, and then were shuffled off to where there were uniforms.
The first time they slipped on the mask they nearly cried. Was this how people breathed all the time? No choking, no gasping, just the little respirators doing all the work as easy, clean air filled their lungs? It was amazing. A miracle. Martia snuck their suit out of the factory at the first opportunity.
Not only did it make breathing easier, but when they wore it, people weren’t so cruel to them either. They were still an oddity, and strangers didn’t know what to make of them at all, but things were much nicer after they started to wear the suit like a second skin. Everything from inside the suit had a nice color—soft, like rainbows. Sometimes they could have sworn it made the trees look like lollipops.
The license plate factory work wasn’t bad either. Martia was in charge of watching the blue fire beneath the molds, making sure it didn’t get too hot, that it didn’t overheat the metal or get too cool and let it harden. They monitored, and watched, and when they were sure everything was good they’d pull a lever and the batch would go on.
It was not very safe. The video inside the little TV said it was safe, but Martia knew it wasn’t, not by the way the fire jumped when there wasn’t enough kerosene in the tanks, not by the way the flames were exposed entirely during the few seconds between molds. It was only a matter of time before something bad happened, and when it did, it wasn’t Martia who paid.
The stranger should have been wearing a suit. The sign outside clearly said Required Beyond This Point, but either the man hadn’t seen or he hadn’t listened. Martia hadn’t even known what he was doing there, if he was a manager or lost or something else entirely, but they never found out.
He tripped. There was a long gap between molds. He caught fire instantly.
“AAAgggh!” he was screaming as they ran for the lever to keep the next mold from running him over. “Help- oh god aaaaaAAAAAA-”
Chofa had asked for help too. They’d left her before she’d started screaming like the man was doing right now, so she’d been a lot more articulate. This man was all vowels, not words or anything, just horrid, horrid noise.
And Martia just stood there.
The fire seemed hungry. Martia knew what hungry was like, and they felt bad for it, bad for the fire. That was silly right? But here they were, just standing here, watching a man lay on his back as he was fried by the fires beneath him. The extinguisher was right over there but…was it their imagination, or was he starting to sound…happy? The screams were almost giggles now, childish in glee, and the rainbows in their vision were much brighter when they looked at the fire. Maybe it wasn’t so bad? They reached out a hand next to the thrashing man, cupping their palm, watching the flames lick over it. Painless, but still hot. They wouldn’t try what he was doing.
He’d stopped twitching now. Just a black husk on the conveyer belt. They dragged him off by the ankle and sprayed him down with the fire extinguisher. Later they’d have to explain, and make sad, sympathetic noises as everyone stood over the body, but in reality they weren’t all too upset. They were pretty sure he’d had a pretty good time before the end.