Ghost (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hacktivist) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
capeandcowllogs2012-09-05 12:45 am
hacktivist) wrote in capeandcowllogs2012-09-05 12:45 am
Entry tags:
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn what the swift mind beholds at every turn {CLOSED}
WHO: Ghost (solo)
WHERE: Max's burial spot
WHEN: Shortly after receiving the news of Max's death.
WARNINGS: Corpse. Grief. Death and dying.
SUMMARY: "Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night.
I miss you like hell."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
FORMAT: Prose
Ghost passed a hand into and through his nearest terminal; he sent out requests through hundreds of miles of circuits until he had what he needed.
He left soundlessly.
When he found the sad plot where she lay, he landed, knelt, pressed his gloved hands against the ground. The moon was not sufficient to light the silvery claws that furrowed the earth--the agony of a problem solver offset against the irremediable nature of death. His emotions splintered his barriers with the force of a hurricane, and inadvisably, he let them come.
"There is much I wanted to tell you."
Intangible, he drifted through the earth to meet her, coming up against the corpse without flinching, wrapping his arms around her in imitation of a hug.
"...so very much." He felt his way verbally, slowly, "And now you have gone to a place I cannot follow. I-..."
He imagined he could feel her presence like the touch of fingers to feverish skin. The spectre of regret swept up with renewed intent.
"Perhaps I should be direct. I - love you very much."
Feelings were lethal. They brought with them howling uncontrollable monsters; bottomless rage, sorrow right through every bone. Every memory of her laugh and her smile tore like knives and fled like thieves. He'd only become comfortable with himself around her, to explore the nature of her very being, only just confident he could say the right thing.
She was so young. She was so kind. She was so gentle.
The world had never been so barren.
It was wrong he couldn't say this to her. A fundamental flaw in reality. And his grief was at capacity.
"I will find the ones truly responsible and bring you vengeance. I will water this grave with their blood, I... I--I hope--I hope that-- ... I had much more for you, but now I can give you nothing else. Please come back... Max--..."
The robotic tuning wavered, and logic broke before the storm like glass when he said her name, the numbness he'd cloaked himself in fell to rags. Her name made it an impossibility.
His mind was racing, his heart was breaking all over, he could feel it. The smell of thermite and dead flowers were intermingled inseparably in his memories.
"I'm sorry. I am so sorry, please come back to me."
Ghost's fingers were moving, stroking at her hair despite the nature of noncorporeality, smoke through her form, skin and bones and organs, clinging desperation as his shoulders shook with muted sobs.
Listening delirious for benediction, incapable of hallucinating her voice - he knew it well, though. He used recordings of their conversations to lull him to sleep when the fear gripped him without cease. Recordings which could be all he had, if she did not return.
His crying was still quiet; it tasted like slow choking.
Part of him observed the facts; she had died violently but with considerable bravery, in a way she would perhaps have chosen - in service of the individual. The part that reached conclusions like these faced the fact that she might not return with immobile stoicism, and took stock of who should be sent after her to meet their makers.
The part that had objective awareness that he had loved a woman who had deserved every scrap of that love and more. The part that cautiously, optimistically, reasoned that she had known this.
"If you return," The breadth of his illogicality was such that he was making promises to her remains, "I will never hold back that truth again. I will tell you it at every opportunity that presents itself. I will--"
Those red lenses were questing for answers. Technology, magic, could he hack the Porter? Death may result, but the end goal was the same. Perhaps a sorcerer? Was there an afterlife where he could play the Orpheus to her Eurydice, and try to return her home? If anyone belonged in the underworld, if anyone could navigate it to find her, it was he.
"--I will wait for you."
He lost track of how long he stayed there, intangible, but when he rose from the grave it was coming on for morning, and he was tired in body and soul.
Ghost lay against the earth, rested his helmet in his arms, and let sleep take him for the first time in days.
WHERE: Max's burial spot
WHEN: Shortly after receiving the news of Max's death.
WARNINGS: Corpse. Grief. Death and dying.
SUMMARY: "Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night.
I miss you like hell."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
FORMAT: Prose
Ghost passed a hand into and through his nearest terminal; he sent out requests through hundreds of miles of circuits until he had what he needed.
He left soundlessly.
When he found the sad plot where she lay, he landed, knelt, pressed his gloved hands against the ground. The moon was not sufficient to light the silvery claws that furrowed the earth--the agony of a problem solver offset against the irremediable nature of death. His emotions splintered his barriers with the force of a hurricane, and inadvisably, he let them come.
"There is much I wanted to tell you."
Intangible, he drifted through the earth to meet her, coming up against the corpse without flinching, wrapping his arms around her in imitation of a hug.
"...so very much." He felt his way verbally, slowly, "And now you have gone to a place I cannot follow. I-..."
He imagined he could feel her presence like the touch of fingers to feverish skin. The spectre of regret swept up with renewed intent.
"Perhaps I should be direct. I - love you very much."
Feelings were lethal. They brought with them howling uncontrollable monsters; bottomless rage, sorrow right through every bone. Every memory of her laugh and her smile tore like knives and fled like thieves. He'd only become comfortable with himself around her, to explore the nature of her very being, only just confident he could say the right thing.
She was so young. She was so kind. She was so gentle.
The world had never been so barren.
It was wrong he couldn't say this to her. A fundamental flaw in reality. And his grief was at capacity.
"I will find the ones truly responsible and bring you vengeance. I will water this grave with their blood, I... I--I hope--I hope that-- ... I had much more for you, but now I can give you nothing else. Please come back... Max--..."
The robotic tuning wavered, and logic broke before the storm like glass when he said her name, the numbness he'd cloaked himself in fell to rags. Her name made it an impossibility.
His mind was racing, his heart was breaking all over, he could feel it. The smell of thermite and dead flowers were intermingled inseparably in his memories.
"I'm sorry. I am so sorry, please come back to me."
Ghost's fingers were moving, stroking at her hair despite the nature of noncorporeality, smoke through her form, skin and bones and organs, clinging desperation as his shoulders shook with muted sobs.
Listening delirious for benediction, incapable of hallucinating her voice - he knew it well, though. He used recordings of their conversations to lull him to sleep when the fear gripped him without cease. Recordings which could be all he had, if she did not return.
His crying was still quiet; it tasted like slow choking.
Part of him observed the facts; she had died violently but with considerable bravery, in a way she would perhaps have chosen - in service of the individual. The part that reached conclusions like these faced the fact that she might not return with immobile stoicism, and took stock of who should be sent after her to meet their makers.
The part that had objective awareness that he had loved a woman who had deserved every scrap of that love and more. The part that cautiously, optimistically, reasoned that she had known this.
"If you return," The breadth of his illogicality was such that he was making promises to her remains, "I will never hold back that truth again. I will tell you it at every opportunity that presents itself. I will--"
Those red lenses were questing for answers. Technology, magic, could he hack the Porter? Death may result, but the end goal was the same. Perhaps a sorcerer? Was there an afterlife where he could play the Orpheus to her Eurydice, and try to return her home? If anyone belonged in the underworld, if anyone could navigate it to find her, it was he.
"--I will wait for you."
He lost track of how long he stayed there, intangible, but when he rose from the grave it was coming on for morning, and he was tired in body and soul.
Ghost lay against the earth, rested his helmet in his arms, and let sleep take him for the first time in days.