He doesn't know where he is when the car finally runs out of gas. He's not sure he can garner the energy to care, either. So he sits, hunched over the steering wheel in the cramped innards of the rental car, resting his forehead against cold glass and listening to the wind rage about him. Like his life, he thinks. It swirls about him, drags through the hair and clothes and fur of every living thing on the planet--bar him. Him, it will not touch. He's left removed, isolated: shut in a car of his own making, out of gas and too tired to open the doors.

He realises, with a jolt in a part of his self where he'd thought his soul might be, back when he'd still believed he might have a soul--he realises, suddenly and completely, how much he truly wants to feel that wind. He wants... but he doesn't know what he wants. He doesn't have a name for the longing that assails him, he's suppressed all such longings for so long now he's no idea any more how to deal with their power. Except to open the door, and climb out into the physical wind ravishing the night air, and hope the unbearable ache of this wanting will be washed away in the breath of the storm.

He casts one last glance at the car, stranded in the narrow lane, driver's door still open, battered pathetically by the elements he's leaning so desperately into. Mud gives way beneath his feet as he staggers down the lane, face turned to the water falling like a benediction from above. It washes over his face, dribbling down his neck, and he closes his eyes, for one mindless second enjoying the cool flow of the torrent on his overheated skin. He's lost his direction; isn't sure anymore where he left the car, let alone where it is he lost his life, or what roads might be left for him to follow. It strikes him as somehow bitterly appropriate that his physical condition now reflects his inner confusion: walking down a mystery lane in the dark, wind and rain battering his body, not knowing where he's going or how he's gotten there; not even knowing what there is left he can do.

To hell with this road thing, he thinks, in a tone that might be savage if only he could find the energy. Wading through the mud to the stone fence, he clambers up it. It occurs to him belatedly, as he balances precariously on the top, that he has no idea what might be waiting in the dark, in this field. There could be anything, from the stereotypical enraged bull to a flock of sheep to a pack of gypsies. There could be a farmer with a gun, or nothing at all; and he finds, shockingly, that the possible danger no longer holds any concern at all for him. Disregarding danger is something he's well used to, but this casual dismissal of its importance altogether... for too many years, he's been weighing the possibility of disabling injury against the information or ally to be gained, the costs of death against the need to fight--for himself, for the world, for the people he'd believed in, once. The sudden vanishment of it from consideration altogether leaves him reeling and disorientated, and clinging to the uneven stone in consternation.

It's fatigue, more than anything, that gets him moving again: the wall doesn't make for an easy perch. He slides softly down into the field, stumbling a little on landing, his usual grace gone who-knows-where. He catches himself on the wall, feels the slick chill of the stone beneath his fingers. Lifts his hand to his face, his lips: tastes the must-and-earth odour of the moss streaking his skin. This, he reminds himself. The earth, and all in it--this is why. Why he struggled, sacrificed, fought. Bribed and battled and murdered; blackmailed, coerced, killed; blackened heart and mind and soul beyond recall. He wipes his fingers over his face, transferring broken trails of brown-and-green from wall to hand to cheek, and tells himself it is enough.

It's over. He's rather glad the stars are hidden behind the rain, tonight: he doesn't want to think about what they hide; doesn't want to think about how, despite it all, he still finds them beautiful. How they still have the power to draw him, to fields such as this, and nights spent lying under their splendour. He doesn't want to think about any of it. It's over, and all he wants to do is forget.

He pushes off from the wall, strikes out into the darkness beyond. The wind swirls around behind him and helps him on his way. The movement of something large up ahead briefly rouses his interest: he's rather hoping for the enraged bull. But it's merely another tree, stirring massive and eerie in the strengthening wind. Pausing beneath its branches he stares up into its canopy, wondering idly what the dawn might be like, watched from a comfortable perch above; but too tired to really contemplate finding out. Instead he places his hand palm first on the trunk in wordless acknowledgement, greeting and conversation in one soft movement, before he moves back into the full force of the elements beyond.

He's probably half way across the field when he loses his footing completely. In the darkness there is no way to tell for sure, of course; but he's far enough in that nothing built by mortal man is visible through the night and the storm, and that's more than enough for him. He doesn't want to think of who and what he's fought so long to save, anymore than he wants to think of what he's saved it from. Given the choice, he'd rather not think at all, tonight.

He can feel the earth moving beneath his back. There's a quiet pleasure in its motion, a pleasure he'd almost forgotten could exist, in the rush and terror of the past decade. He's not sure why he's here, what it is about this lonely field that drew him here to mourn, now that the world is well and truly safe, with no place left for him at all. He's not sure he cares, particularly. He's not even sure that what he's doing is truly mourning. The one thing he knows is that it's not the celebration he'd so long planned. That there will never be a celebration. Not for him. Not when there's nothing he can find worth celebrating.

Rain slides over his face, drips into clothes already soaked past saturation point. Their weight holds him to the earth; without it he fears he may float up, over the trees, over the hills, above the rain--past the aliens in their fleeing ships, beyond even the beautiful stars with their threat for the moment contained. Without the bounds of his self-set mission pushing in on him, he can find nothing inside himself for gravity to lay hold of. Naught to call his own and bind him to this earth, all he might once have been long ago sacrificed to fuel a fire meant to save the world, even as it destroyed his place in it.

There's something familiar about this field. It needs a headstone, he thinks, and cannot recall why. A marker of some kind, grief carved in stone for all the world to see. A loss so private and intense should be recognised, even if he cannot let himself recall what it is he's lost. Who--

Memories drown him, tumbling head-over-heels before his mind's eye as though the rain pouring down upon his flesh has at the last melted the wall that had contained them, and now they're flash-flooding unstoppable through the gullies of his denial. He gasps, once, a sound so lost and alone and ultimately truehe refuses to believe it comes from him. And then the riptide pulls him far beneath the surface, and he is drowning in scenes and feelings and needs he still cannot bear to acknowledge, let alone remember. But he has no choice, now, and images kaleidoscope before him until---

---sun glitters off laughing brown eyes, the warmth of an arm laid casually over his shoulder and savoured weighty in the still depths of his soul---

---the face beloved, lined familiar and cherished and currently contorted into a grimace of ecstasy as Walter plummets from the heights of release, back to him---

---a figure slices through water, decisively cutting the waves, and grinning he drapes a towel in the sun ready for when his lover tires of playing in the surf like someone a quarter his age, and returns laughing and happy to his side---

---the cool feel of whiskey in the glass, contrasting so strongly with the trail burning its comforting way down his throat and the mingled taste of Walter so strong in his mouth---

---heart fractures beneath the drive of a fist, harsher than necessary to drown out the urge to kiss, instead, to suck the breath from his very body and gift him his own---

---salt-sweet tears dripping onto bronzed skin, muscled and trembling-taut as both dive deep, caught in the throes of a love either has yet to acknowledge---

---terror, unwelcome and unacknowledged, nevertheless blares forth from eyes set deep in a blue-veined face, echoing equally as unacknowledged in the shadowy fist trembling over a keypad---

---love-welcome-disbelief-disgust, a progression reflected in brown eyes, repeated again and again in dreams which only vanish on waking---

---honeywarm and soft, the voice buzzes through the edges of consciousness, soothes him out of a nightmare and into dream, held safe by his lover's arms and body and voice, weighting him solid and loved in a sweet embrace---

---to wake, cold and alone, grasping at images half-glimpsed and warmer than anything he can bear to remember, awake---

---and fire reflects from glasses hiding warm eyes behind, memory supplying the certainty of belonging in these arms that hold him near---

---and coalesces, at the last, into a ghostly shimmering form he does not want to recognise as himself and yet cannot manage to ignore....

At least, he thinks, turning his face again to the rain, away from this ghostly vision he does not care to see; at least he has left it 'til the aliens are fled and the dregs cleared away to let his sanity go the way of everything else of value he's ever held.

"You're dead," he says at last, when it becomes apparent that the figure is not going to vanish into a raindrop, nor yet make the first move. What did it matter, anyway? "I killed you."

Laughing eyes pierce him, and he knows this phantasm is false. He'd never looked like that, he's sure. He'd never been that young, that hopeful, that happy. He couldn't have been, not and given it up. Not even to save Walter, not even for the world.

The laughter spills from green eyes, echoing oddly in the night air. "Don't be too sure of that," and the voice is his, too; his as it had been before horror and grief and terror changed him utterly. Of course, he remembers, he'd not just been happy: he'd also been naive and idealistic and just plain young--perhaps he could have been this laughing apparition after all. Perhaps he really was losing the last dregs of his sanity.

"It's not too late, you know," his younger self announces, before twirling away through the rain in a move he knows he never would have performed. A sly glance from the phantasm confirms it for the baiting it is; he lowers his head to the earth and stares up into the rain once more. Real, not real--what difference does it make? He's still alone in a field with nowhere left to go. Maybe, he thinks, he'll never rise from here. It's as good a place as any to spend what's left of his life, and there's nothing pressing he has to do.

Amused laughter intrudes on his melodramatics, and he reflects how annoying he must have been, marvels that Walter had ever put up with him long enough to love him in the first place. "Fuck off, kid," he says, attempting to sound menacing and failing utterly. "I killed you once: I can do it again." More laughter is the only reply he gets. He contemplates a glare to back up the threat, but it all seems rather pointless. Once, he'd commanded the respect of an entire network of shadowy Conspirators. Now, it seems he can't even get himself to pay attention anymore.

"Did you come just to laugh at me, or do you actually have something you wanted to do?" he asks irritably when the laughter shows no sign of abating. If he'd known how annoying losing that last shred of sanity would be, he muses idly, he might just've held onto it tighter. He has enough shit to deal with without conjuring up visions of himself to serve up more. Although at least the--apparition, ghost, vision, whatever you call it--at least it gives him something to dwell on other than the newly resurrected memories of a love thrown away. Not for nothing-- never for nothing--but discarded nonetheless. Thrown from a clifftop, to lie smashed and broken beneath a wild sea, never to be seen again--or that was the plan, at least. Now the tide has receded, and each glimpse of the corpse cuts deeper into the heart he could have sworn he no longer possessed....

When he breaks off his musings and opens his eyes, it's to find his younger self kneeling beside him, hand outstretched and hovering above his shoulder, unreadable expression on his face.

"It doesn't have to be like this," one of him whispers, and he's not in the least sure which. He half wishes for a bottle of whiskey; but the days when he could drown his sorrows in drink and not have them come back to bite him in the arse whilst he lay in stupour are barely even a memory, now. His ghostly other self, perhaps, he might be able to do it--

"Sleep now," the phantom tells him, smoothing water off his forehead, and his eyes close obediently, 'though he doesn't feel the least bit sleepy. Tired, yes, but not sleepy. "Sleep, and in the morning you will see."

"See what?" he wants to ask, but even as his lips open to protest, he slips away into darkness.

With the dawn, he wakes. Grey light filters through rain that hasn't let up in the least, drips down his collar as though to sidestep the cloth barrier it has long since breached. A quick glance around the field ascertains that his presence is the only living one, although the uncertain outline of his younger self sits wordless and watching from a perch high in the branches of the nearby oak. A flash of--something unnameable--sparks through him as he takes in the sight of this ghostly vision perched happy and whistling in a tree. The boy's waiting, he realises, and he doesn't think he wants to be here when whatever it is the phantom awaits decides to show up: very likely it will be something he wants even less to see. And so he rises, stiff from a night spent on cold ground, and he turns his face to the sky, and the water falling softly from above.

Raindrops taste like tears without the pain, he thinks. Casting one last glance over the empty field, he turns his back upon his ghost and walks away. It's a long way to town, wherever that should be, and he's not even really sure which way he should walk to find it. It doesn't matter: for the first time in years, time has no weight. It won't make a difference when he gets to a town, to a bank, to a plane, home to America. Just that, eventually, he does.

Perhaps not all is lost, after all. If he doesn't look, he'll never know.

A telegram, he thinks. It's been years since he's seen a telegram; the thought of beginning his new life with such a relic of the past amuses him.

Last word today, coming home to stay.

Oh no! It's spawned!

Onward to O When May it Suffice?.

Back to A Terrible Beauty is Born.

Should tarsh ever enter another Lyric Wheel again? Or are they a bad influence on her muses? Let her know what you thought of this scene at tarshaan@moonlit-eyrie .com

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