Participants:
| Scene Title | Après Moi |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Write violently of February. |
| Date | April 2021 |
Après moi le déluge
The room smells of death and sick. Rue’s lost count of how many times she’s emptied her guts out onto the floor and the front of her shirt, but she’s long since purged herself of everything in her. Now she gags only on air. Maybe she’ll die of dehydration. That’s probably a miserable way to go, but it has to beat whatever is in store for her.
She’s been on her knees on the hard floor for some days, her arms stretched above her head, straining the muscles in her shoulders and their joints. The crying has been kept to the absolute barest of minimums. It’s all she’ll allow. The only sign of it being the occasional shuddering breath when her eyes stray toward the decaying corpse of her partner and friend. He was meant to get away. He was meant to get away, because she warned him. Because she gave herself up. He was supposed to be on a plane home by now, having reported her lost. He was supposed to be telling the CIA — that fucking Marcus Raith — what happened.
Nick Ruskin should have been telling Richard Ray. There should be an attempt at rescue any day now. Elliot Hitchens should know that his girlfriend could still live, perhaps, if they acted swift enough. Everyone involved should know that she’d hold out. That she would not break.
The door opens and Rue Lancaster’s bloodshot blue eyes follow the shaft of light up until she sees a man. He’s no more than an indistinct shadow at first, but he soon comes into better focus as he stalks into the room. His face is covered by a scarf, and probably something else to keep the stench of decomposition and vomit at bay. There are three more men. Two remove the remains of Nick Ruskin.
The third points a gun at her while the other sets a bag down behind her. She can’t see what’s inside and knows that’s by design, but can’t keep her mind from racing anyway. One of the thoughts it races to is how much damage she could do with that gun. The first man starts circling back around to her, something in his hand, obscured by the drape of his sleeve.
So she fights.
Thrashing out with her chained arms, she tries to connect a fist to the approaching man’s head, scrabbling to her feet as fast as her exhausted body will allow for. The award for this act of defiance is a blossoming pain in her jaw as it’s smashed with the buttstock of the gun. She groans, and her breath comes in panting gasps, but she does not cry out and she does not beg.
The first man grabs her roughly by the chin. Already the dig of his fingers against her face brings the ache into sharper relief. “Drink,” he tells her, and Rue shuts her mouth tight, eyes burning with her anger. “It is water.” The mouth of a canteen is brought to her lips, the first dribbles of moisture landing there, and still she does not open up.
Those fingers dig in harder, forcing her mouth open. The water is cool and refreshing and she spits it into the first man’s face. The second rewards her again with another hit that causes her to lose her breath when it strikes in the same place. This time, they grab her hair to force her head back and pour the water down her throat. Choking on it at first, she eventually has to give in and swallow it down.
No dying of thirst for her. They still need her.
“I’m not telling any of you shit,” the prisoner growls.
Even though she can’t see most of the man’s face, she can see in his eyes and his brow the way his mouth must be curving into a grin. The way those dark eyes narrow gives him away. “We have no questions for you at this time.”
Her eyes dance between both of his while she waits for the other shoe to drop. “Cool. Then I have one for you.” She grins, wolfish and full of herself. “Can I meet your dad?” She waits until the confusion settles in. “That way I can fuck him, and give him a kid he actually wants.”
I—
Her jaw is released and the next hit comes, but only as a backhanded slap. It’s enough to make her grunt as that same spot is targeted again. Her eyes flit now to the mirrors, wondering if she’ll see the bruise beginning to bloom on the left side of her face already.
— must go on standing
You can’t break that which isn’t yours
I—
Again, that hand strikes her face. Another grunt accompanies the pain that breaks off her staring match with her reflection
and shifts it to the door that opens to the bedroom of the old farmhouse. She’s sitting with her legs folded together at one side, her arms bound behind her back. The man has curly greying blond hair, cropped short, but unruly. Cruel, pale eyes seem to gleam like the water that formed tapering crystals of ice and hung from the gutters of her parents’ roof back in Illinois, glinting in the sunlight bleeding through the window, and just as cold.
Struggling, she pushes to her feet. Whatever comes next, she doesn’t want to be cowering on the floor from it.
— must go on standing
I’m not my own
It’s not my choice
With the back of his hand, he strikes her across the left side of her face and she goes staggering. “Did I tell you to get up?” His voice is thick with an accent she can’t place geographically. Maybe he fled from the gulf? She thinks she heard somebody call him Geno or Woody. Maybe Buddy? It ultimately doesn’t matter.
In answer to his question, she whimpers and shakes her head quickly in small motions. “No.” Her voice is a soft whisper, her eyes stay on his face. She’s seen worse than him. Been in worse situations. He doesn’t even know what she has, but keeping it from him will be the key to her survival.
He grabs her by the chin and her blue eyes squeeze close, a small mewling sound escaping from the back of her throat. “Please…”
Turning her roughly with that commanding hand, he examines her face where the slap landed. “That shouldn’t bruise up too badly,” he decides, while she stews in fear of what that means. “Someone’ll take you.” He slants a grin that would be charming if not for the ugly circumstance. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
Rue Lancaster tastes bile in the back of her throat. She opens her eyes, not bothering to hide her apprehensiveness. “Adrianne.” It’s the first name that comes to mind. If she gets out of this, she never wants him to know who to ask about, who to track down.
“Well that’s real pretty, isn’t it? Suits ya.” He lets go of her chin and pats her on her still stinging cheek. “Now stand still and let me get a look at ya.” Casually, he starts to circle around his captive, giving appraising looks. “You’re a little scrawny, but you’ve still got plenty of spirit.”
Her mind races, taking her to all the places south that this situation leads. “You said you would take me to Dephi.” Like reminding him will somehow make this whole thing into a misunderstanding that they can just clear up and move on from.
Be afraid of the lame, they’ll inherit your legs
Be afraid of the old, they’ll inherit your soul
Be afraid of the cold, they’ll inherit your blood
“And I’m going to.” He stops himself, corrects. “Well, I’m going to take you to some associates of mine that work that area. What happens to you after I hand you off is someone else’s problem.” He pauses, shrugging his shoulders. “And yours, I suppose. You didn’t ask for a royal escort, darlin’, just to get you there.” Spreading his hands out in front of him, he lets that grin grow again. “But…”
After a moment to let that hang, he let his hands drop to his sides again. “We have a week before we need to start headin’ that direction. In the meantime, you’re going to earn your keep around here until we’re ready to travel. You be good, you’ll be taken care of. Fed an’ all that. Won’t have to worry about bruising that pretty face of yours.”
Blue eyes cast to the floor, her fingers curling into fists behind her back. Her blood feels cold under her skin. Slowly, she draws in a deep breath. “What do you expect me to do?”
“Ohh,” he drawls out slowly, as if needing time to consider the notion. “Typical woman stuff — not that you can’t do plenty else. Cleaning, cooking…” There’s a cock to his head, implying something she’s too afraid to speak into existence with speculation. “Various other duties as assigned, typical job listing bullshit.” The umbrella there is frighteningly large.
Après moi, le déluge
After me comes the flood
“Don’t fret, sweetheart.” That train left the station hours ago. “We’ll get along just fine.”
It’s been… Two weeks? It’s impossible to keep time in this place, so she measures it in force-fed meals and the fifteen minute allowance for the bathroom. “If I die of a UTI,” Rue mutters to herself, “I’ll never live it down.” There’s no one around to appreciate how funny she is, and that’s just been upsetting.
Metal creaks and clinks as she winds it around her hands and her forearms, creating enough stability and removing enough slack to allow her to hold herself up and rock to and fro. Stepping back as far as she can go, then rushing forward. Swinging. Her legs pump. Forward. Back. Forward. Back.
Good. Just a bit more.
It’s been days of relentless questions. Day after day after day of nothing but questions that have nothing to do with anything. She isn’t sure what that means. Are they checking to see how compliant she’ll be? If she’ll tell them the innocuous little shit like what her favorite color is? Or favorite song?
And if she starts there, do they expect the rest to cascade?
The cascade is in the form of shattering glass as she finally gets enough momentum to carry herself forward and smash her heel into one of the mirrors. Her feet drag on the ground, bringing her to a skidding stop. Chains rattle as she returns the give to her tether. It’s too far for her to reach with her hands, but she can stretch out her leg and pull a shard toward her that way. Not one too large, or it won’t disappear against the fold of her sleeve.
She’s breathless, a grin of elation across her face for this victory she’s achieved. But when she bends forward to pick up the reflective splinter, she can’t quite reach. Letting one arm raise while the other lowers, she tries again with the length distributed differently.
When it’s still not enough, she balances on one foot, lifting the other in the air as she leans like one of her ballet stretches. Still, she cannot reach her prize.
With a heavy exhale, she brings herself back to center, shoulders sagging. “Fuck.” Warily, she watches the door. She hasn’t heard boots in the hall yet, so her actions here have yet gone unnoticed. She’s breathing hard from the exertion of her stunt and the nerves, but she forces it to something deep and even, calming herself. In and out. She folds one hand over the other, feeling her pulse beneath the skin briefly. In and out. The hands switch places, other over the one.
One more big breath. In…
Eyes close.
Out.
I—
Rue immediately breathes in again, choking on a scream as her eyes fly open again and the world has gone white with the blinding pain in her wrist that came with the hard pull and the sharp pop! as it dislocates, letting her slip her hand from the cuff.
More breath is sucked in, deep and ragged even with the exhale, tears running down her face. Something between a moan and a wheeze slips past gritted teeth.
— must go on standing
You can’t break that which isn’t, isn’t yours, yours
I—
The luxury of time required to indulge in this pain and work through it does not exist. Cradling her wounded wrist against her chest, she bends down, now without the other arm keeping those scales from tipping too far. She snatches up the mirror shard in her good hand and straightens up.
The blonde gasps as she stumbles a step, having to bring her foot down to catch herself before she falls. The redhead laughs along with her and reaches out to offer a steadying arm. “I’ve got you. That was good, though. I’ll have you turning fouettés in no time.”
“You make it look so easy.” The shorter woman plants both feet flat on the ground now, holding on to her girlfriend’s arm.
—must go on standing
I’m not my own
It’s not my choice
“Ah,” Rue dismisses with a wave of her hand after Liza’s caught her balance again. “All the hardest dance moves look that way, because if they showed the amount of difficulty they take to pull off, they wouldn’t look impressive,” she admits. “We’ll start with your pirouettes and work our way there.”
Liza hums thoughtfully. “I suppose that makes sense.” She reaches out to lay a hand on Rue’s shoulder as she comes up on the toes of her borrowed shoes. They’ve shoved some cloth in there, since Rue’s feet are larger, but not by much. With that little bit of extra height, she leans in and bestows a peck to the other woman’s lips.
Be afraid of the lame, they’ll inherit your legs
Be afraid of the old, they’ll inherit your soul
Be afraid of the cold, they’ll inherit your blood
There’s a brief moment of surprise that sees blue eyes widen. Then their lips meet again, smiling all the way through.
Après moi le déluge
After me comes the flood
Her wrist still throbs from when they re-set it. The strain from the cuffs only makes it worse. She’s spent more time on her feet to try to find relief. Everything hurts, honestly, but that’s not just the worst of it. She’s getting weaker. She’s tried to stretch her muscles, tried to keep herself sharp.
But it isn’t sustainable. There’s only so much nutrition. So much water. If this keeps up, and she’s sure it will, there won’t be much left of her. And as determined as she is not to give in, they’re going to give her every reason to want to. Refusing to eat in hopes of speeding along the inevitable has been countered. It may only be just, but she’s being kept alive and just strong enough that any information she reveals is more likely to be true than the nonsense of someone delirious with hunger.
Be afraid of the lame, they’ll inherit your legs
Be afraid of the old, they’ll inherit your soul
Be afraid of the cold, they’ll inherit your blood
She’s tried taunts, hoping to piss someone off enough to snap and just kill her and be done with it. But Ra’id Abdul-Jalil Sabbagh has made it clear what her only means of escape is, and the stupid thing is that she’s certain there’s nothing she knows that would be of any benefit to them. They have to already know she was sent by the CIA. There were no operatives to meet. Everything was so compartmentalized…
Après moi le déluge
After me comes the flood
But maybe as long as they think she has something they want, they’ll keep flying blind elsewhere, too focused on what she might be able to provide. So, hearing footsteps in the hall, she mentally marks another day of survival out of spite.
The farmhouse is a blaze at her back. It had been a gamble, given that she has no resources and is fleeing on foot, but it can’t be worse than staying there another day and waiting for the inevitable. All it had taken was palming a second match when she lit the cook fire, finding the space and opportunity to set something to smoldering, then waiting elsewhere in the house for the fire to begin.
A year earlier, she wouldn’t have thought she’d ever have it in her. Time and circumstance change people. But it isn’t just the roar of the fire, but one of anger that punctuates the night. Either the house is a lost cause or she’s worth more to him than the shelter, but she can hear him giving chase. The instinct to look back and see just how close behind he is has to be shoved down in favor of keeping as much distance as there already is between them, hoping she can only make that distance grow if she can just pour on more speed.
Февраль. Достать чернил и плакать!
Писать о феврале навзрыд
Пока грохочущая слякоть
Весною чёрною горит1
Slush makes her slower in the grass, makes her footing less sure when she reaches the road. It only brings her to spur herself faster while her mind is screaming questions. Where is she going to go?! The closest answer she can find to that is away. The timing of her egress was such that she’d have enough light to find her way into the town, and then the darkness to swallow up her trail and allow her to hide.
Getting followed was a possibility, but one she thought would be slimmer than her apparent reality. Out here, everywhere is the middle of nowhere. No amount of crying out for help will find her any.
Февраль. Достать чернил и плакать!
Писать о феврале навзрыд
Пока грохочущая слякоть
Весною чёрною горит
When she thinks she can’t hear him anymore, she finally looks behind her for the signs that he’d given up pursuit. It means she doesn’t see the divot in the surface of the rain-snow mixture. The pothole causes her to step down further than expected, throwing off her momentum and sending her sprawling to the ground.
“Oh no. No, no, no, no.” Bootsteps on the asphalt. They slow even as she starts to scramble, her left wrist screaming in protest from catching her fall gives out from the shock of it and she has to try again, this time ready for that sharp agony. He’s confident he’ll catch her, and she’s terrifyingly sure that confidence is earned even as she finds her feet again and resumes running. Burning lungs and strained muscles beg her to slow, but fear and determination keeps her moving, but that distance is closing.
The pain in her back only registers after she’s already hit the ground again, the breath knocked out of her. His large hand grabs her by the shoulder and rolls her roughly onto her back so she can see him standing over here. “I told you what would happen if you tried to run.” He winds up with the wooden bat he’d already struck her in the ribs with. Rue brings her arms up to protect her head, all of it happening too fast to do more than gasp.
The bat connects with her leg instead.
Be afraid of the lame, they’ll inherit your legs
Be afraid of the old, they’ll inherit your soul
Be afraid of the cold, they’ll inherit your blood
Rue’s scream shatters the night just as the bat does her right tibia. It drowns out the crack of the gunshot that sends the man crumpling to the ground, blood blossoming across his shirt and jacket from the wound in his chest. He’s dead before her cries stop echoing from the vacant buildings.
She lays on the ground sobbing, curling in toward herself instinctively. She’s never felt a pain like this in her life, and she knows that it means death for her. She can’t hear the sound of footsteps approaching, but distantly hears voices like they’re coming to her from the end of a tunnel.
“Trafficking piece of trash. Make sure there’s no one else.” Someone kneels beside her and rests a hand on her shoulder, causing her to cry out again in fear, and once more for the pain that comes when she tries to jerk herself away.
“Calm down, calm down,” the voice urges. A woman’s, brusque but without bite to it. The sensation in Rue’s leg changes, not less painful but differently so. Until it becomes only an ache.
Rue sucks in deep, ragged breaths, eyes wide and staring up unseeing at first as the hand moves from her shoulder and brushes away the red curls from her face. The woman’s hair is shorter, blonde, with smears of black streaked over her cheekbones. “Liza?” she rasps in a quiet voice. The light starts to fade, and Rue can’t help herself from wondering if this was an angel, easing her pain. Being the last thing she sees.
Après moi le déluge
After me comes the flood
“I thought it would be different,” Liza admits, curled up on a blanket next to Rue in the remains of an old gazebo in what used to be someone’s backyard. The roof of it is mostly intact, but there are slivers of starlight above, which the redhead is staring up at while she pets her hair. “I thought we’d get out here and find just… fields of green grass and wildflowers and the landscape looking like it should if so many people hadn’t come along to ruin it.”
Rue is silent for a long moment before. “Yeah… Me too.” She sighs, her hand stilling where it lays cradling Liza to her chest. Last night was so hot they couldn’t be near one another. Tonight, they huddle for warmth. The new world is a testament to the way people have ruined it. “Guess that’ll take another hundred or so years. It’s been a long time since I’ve played Fallout.”
Liza’s endeared by the comment. “Nerd,” she teases as she gently pokes her lover’s shoulder.
“Hard to be one these days. Not much tech left to nerd out about. Haven’t found a comic book…” Rue swallows hard, glaring accusingly up at the stars, as though they were to blame for their situation, rather than being perfectly indifferent to it. “I guess I have my iPod.” The chuckle doesn’t do enough to break up the discontent brewing inside her, but it’s something. “But it’s dead as a doornail until we find another generator.”
The nod of the blonde’s head is more felt against her chest than anything. “Rue, I…” Liza pulls in a deep breath. “I want to go back.” She holds it in her chest, feeling the way that Rue, too, has stopped breathing for that moment.
“Li…”
I —
The air is exhaled in a sound of frustration, maybe tinged with disgust as well. “You are so stubborn. You’re not going to get the high score on the Oregon Trail, Rhubarb!” Liza pushes up to sit, the blanket coming with her and pooling around her waist. “We are gonna die out here.”
“We aren’t!” Rue breaks off her staring match with the sky to look at her partner with wide eyes, surprised and stunned to hear her be so assertive suddenly. “We’re almost to—”
“To where, Rue? Do you even know? Or are we just chasing some… windmills?”
— must go on standing
You can’t break that which isn’t yours
I—
Rue starts to sit up herself. It feels hard to breathe suddenly. “You don’t chase windmills, you tilt at them.” It’s the stupidest thing to come out of her mouth, but she’s just otherwise struck dumb, nothing worth saying came to mind.
“Oh, good,” Liza snaps. “You finally read one book in the Ark. What, was it illustrated?” The words are regretted the instant they spill from her mouth and inflict pain on their target. She drags the taller woman in for a fierce hug. “I’m sorry,” she whispers into those bushy ginger curls. “I’m sorry, I’m just scared and tired, and…”
And Rue already knows all these things. “We just… If we just go a little further, I think we’ll find them. As long as we travel smart, we can.”
A branch snaps nearby and both women jerk their heads in that direction, wide eyes, holding their breath again and listening. The blonde reaches under the pack at her side and retrieves a pistol, flipping off the safety with her thumb. “Stay here,” she murmurs. “I’ll go take a look.”
Rue finally exhales, a single desperate breath that begs for caution as Liza eases to her feet and steps silently into shadows.
—must go on standing
I’m not my own
It’s not my choice
Startled awake from a nightmare, Rue blinks in the dark. The ache in her shoulders is the first thing to come into relief. She lets out a shuddering breath as she rolls them to try and loosen the angry muscles. The whimper is momentary, but enough to be infuriating. Her resistance is waning. In the dark hours between endless questions, the fires of her defiance die down to embers.
Still, it’s enough to continue to persist. Every time she hears footsteps in the hallways, whether they eventually lead to the opening of the door to her cell or not, it’s like poking that dying fire and breathing it back to life. She holds on to that knowledge, that each time it counts, she can rile herself up like a nest of hornets that dares to be kicked.
Dissociation keeps her from seeing her reflection most of the time, a stubbornness not to stay present in the moment when it will only later dull her. Now, she studies herself, really looks. Her right hand comes up to press into her cheek, like she can feel how much fullness it’s lost in the time she’s been captive here. A breath of laughter comes unbidden as a thought flits through her mind about how she resembles her modeling days, when her diet was salads, green smoothies, and the occasional designer drugs. If she’d known where she would be now…
“New York really changes people, huh?” she asks of her reflection.
A pale hand rests on her shoulder in the mirror, but she doesn’t feel it. Blue eyes grow wide as she tries to discern the shape of the ghost. Rather than dread, Rue dares to feel hope. Her head snaps to the side, twisting to look for the person there.
But there’s no one. Only her own reflection stares back at her in the mirror again.
I — oh! — must go on (go on) stan— (stand) —ding tall
You can’t (can’t) break that (that) which isn’t (isn’t) yours (yours)
Reminded again that she’s alone, she doesn’t let her bring her to despair. Instead, she takes a gratefulness from it. Chains rattle as Rue climbs to her feet again, easing one ache in favor of rousing different ones. She draws on an anger for her predicament.
There’s the footsteps. Rue jogs in place, pissed about the way her knees throb from too much time spent on the ungiving stone. “Fuck these guys. Fuck these guys. Fuck these guys,” she hisses under her breath, slowing to a stop as she hears the bolt on the door unlatch.
Now comes the first question of the day. “Good morning, Miss Lancaster,” the thickly accented voice asks with no sincerity. “How are you feeling today?”
I — oh! — must go on (go on) stan— (stand) —ding tall
I’m not (not) my own (own) it’s not (not) my choice
Rue grins wide, her answer prepared as it always is.
“Fuck. You.”