November Writing Challenge: Gratitude

[Sean *]

It's writing challenge time! To enter, just post a ficlet (300-4000 words suggested) in this thread. When the voting for this month's OTM winners comes around, a voting poll will go up for this as well.

The Challenge: Write a story that involves the theme of gratitude in some way, either explicitly or implied.

The rules:

• Characters must be in Hammel canon, but the ficlets are not site canon unless expressly stated, and anything setting-breaking will not be site canon regardless.
  
• Entries must be more than 300 words.
  
• You can enter no more than three ficlets. Any ficlets posted after the original 3 will not be considered for voting. If you want to post more, however, have fun.
  
• Ficlets must be titled.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Dear Diary

Josh pushed his pillows higher up against the headboard before scrambling onto the bed, notebook tucked under one arm. He pulled the covers up to his chest, reveling in the warmth of his bed. Outside orange and gold leaves plastered the drive, and tree branches leaned heavily over the yard. The sky was a grayish-white, dim and chill.

A perfect day for staying indoors.

More perfect, because Sean had given him a gift.

Josh hadn't expected a gift. Certainly the other young man owed him nothing, not when he'd already given him everything. If Sean hadn't won him, then who knew where he'd be? Oh, the telepath had already given him some hint of what might have happened, of what the other bidders would have been like. And he was aware, to some extent, of what life was like for other baseline humans.

Treated no better than pets, if that well.

No, he needed nothing from Sean when his life was already so much better than what it could be.

And yet, the telepath had felt generous, perhaps hearing his possession's wishes for precisely the gift he had chosen:

A diary.

Josh had never been one for a diary before the War, too busy living his life to record it. But in his present circumstances he had felt keenly that he would like one. He had a new need to record his thoughts and his secrets and his desires, not because he wanted one day to look back upon them, but because his life had changed so drastically that he now felt a lack he'd never felt before.

He had no friends. No confidants. Nobody to discuss his fears and his desires with. Nobody to discuss family with, because Sean didn't like that topic. Nor did the other man wish to talk about art, or about music. Sometimes they did have conversations, of course. And he knew that Sean knew his thoughts and fears and wishes. But that wasn't the same as talking about them, and confiding in your owner wasn't exactly the same as confiding in a friend. And besides, Sean could be a bit touchy.

But he had known, and he'd brought the diary unasked.

Josh hadn't been so excited since before the War began as he was as he opened the notebook, smoothing out one clear crisp page, whispering happily to himself, "Dear Diary..."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Love and Hard Times

In clicks and clacks,
Uneasy heartbeat, can’t relax.
But then your hand takes mine.
Thank God, I found you in time.

The tiny boat drifted across Long Island Sound, across idyllic waters. Other boats floated by, wind filled their sails to push them forward, sailing in lazy circles around the estuary. A lone lighthouse stood atop a small island, tall and proud against the blue sky and puffy, white clouds, providing a picturesque scene of small town New England and small town Long Island life.

Beautiful. Calm. Peaceful.

Although the sky remained as blue as ever, interspersed with familiar white clouds, on such a sunny day, the lighthouse suddenly came to life. The light snapped on, furiously flashing across the water. The surrounding boats took their cue, turning suddenly from their paths. They formed a ring, encircling the tiny boat and preventing it from continuing its path, preventing it from moving at all. The water beneath them turned choppy, and the sky above darkened, as the clouds turned angry and the sun disappeared.

Faster. Faster. Faster. Faster.

The boats moved so quickly that the colors blended to the naked eye. Wind whipped through their sails, howling around them. Whispers on the wind. Whispers of fears, whispers of confusion, whispers of pain, whispers of need, whispers of death. Whispers of hope drowned out amidst the cacophony.

Faster. Louder. Faster. Louder.

The water thrashed higher, threatening to overtake the tiny boat. Waves of water battered the desk, drenching the occupants.

Too high, too fast.

A vortex opened beneath the tiny boat, the result of the boasts swirling around it. Charybdis itself opened his frightening mouth, sucking the tiny boat down with the water flooding it.

The tiny boat flipped over, and the occupants fell into the water.

Drowning.

He called for help, but the whispers swallowed all sounds. Water filled his lungs.

Drowning.

He thrashed ineffectively, impotently struggling against the vortex, trying to find some perch, but there was nothing. The tiny boat had already disappeared into the waters, utterly shattered.

Drowning.

He sank.

Drowning.

Drowning.

Drowning.

****************************

He woke gasping for air. He had become tangled in his covers, which awkwardly entangled his arms and torso. In his sleep, he had pulled free at least one of his sheets, which had wrapped around one leg. Despite the chill in the air and the snow on the ground outside, he was drenched in sweat, which soaked through his pajamas.

He threw his head back, banging it on the bare mattress because his pillow had disappeared. He must have kicked it to the floor in the midst of his thrashing.

He didn’t have the energy to reach over the edge of the bed to pick it up. He barely had the energy to move.

He shouldn’t be alive. He had drowned.

Awake now, the whispers started again. He could barely hear himself think, they were so loud. Whispers shouldn’t be this loud.

He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe.

He was drowning.

Drowning.

He did not fall back asleep.

***********************************

He ate alone.

He sat at a small table at the back of the cafeteria, in the corner, as far from other groups as possible. Nobody spoke to him. Nobody joined him. Nobody even asked to join him. Nobody looked him in the eye, and so he kept his head down. Occasionally, people looked over before giggling to their group of friends, but nobody looked at him, as though he was the same as they were. During the nice weather, sometimes he ate outside in the courtyard, seated by the fountain or beneath a tree so that real distance and a building wall separated them. The snow made that impossible, even if he owned a winter coat; the staff didn’t let them eat outside in the bad weather. That confined him to his isolated table in the cafeteria.

In one sense, he didn’t mind. He had long since forgotten how to interact with his peers. He barely considered them his peers, because so much separated them in terms of thoughts and feelings and experiences. He knew that they didn’t consider him to be among them, because he was different.

In another sense, he had to make room for all of them in his mind during all waking hours. The least they could do was make room at one of their tables for him. Or to extend an invitation.

Mostly, he spent his time alone, seated at his isolated table knowing that he was never alone. That he could never be alone again.

I think I failed that math test.

A zit. Oh God, a zit! Like I needed this...

I wonder if Mitchel is a good kisser; he looks like he would be but I don’t know...

This food is terrible.

I hope that we can sneak out to the movie tonight. I just have to teleport out...

I’m never going to graduate.

He empathized with that last thought. He knew, in his heart of hearts, that he would never graduate either. He would never gain enough control for the school to let him leave, and so he would spend the rest of his life isolated from everyone else. Isolated, pitied, feared, treated with suspicion when not outright ignored.

Nobody outside of Hammel understood, not even his parents. He knew that they still loved him, and that they worried about him, but they treated him differently now. They tried to hide it, but they treated him with kid gloves, hands-off and fearful that he might never live a normal life. That he would never leave Hammel; that he might go crazy from the powers or the pressure or the isolation anyway, even if the voices were real rather than mental illness. That he would never find happiness or fulfillment.

They never said this to him, but the cause of their concern ensured that he knew regardless. He remembered vividly the three-hour long conversation with the recruiter in the living room. How Kathleen had been sent outside to play so that they could shield her from the situation. How the recruiter and his parents behaved as though he wasn’t there for the conversation. How it wouldn’t have mattered if they had sent him upstairs to bed, because he would have heard anyway. Every visit home (on those rare occasions that he was allowed to go home) and every visit his family took to Hammel only reinforced that knowledge.

Aside from his parents and his sister, he had nobody else outside of Hammel. All of his friends from school, from church, from the Boy Scouts, from the neighborhood, had long since abandoned him. Nobody wanted to be around the freak.

That proved true for life at Hammel as well. Nobody wanted to be around someone who could melt their brains.

Some deepest part of him thought that was an exaggeration. Surely, nobody could actually do that, but even the faculty discussed his powers in hushed whispers. Afraid, concerned, suspicious. It seemed that nobody trusted telepaths.

The cafeteria began to fill in, and someone at another table whispered about him.

That was enough for this morning.

Mechanically, he shoveled oatmeal into his mouth. He had no appetite, but if he didn’t eat enough or take in enough glucose, then the migraines and fatigue worsened. Considering that he hurt nearly all of the time, the prospect of worse frightened him to his very core. He couldn’t fathom worse, but he knew that it existed.

What could be worse than drowning?

*****************************

There had been a pop quiz in geography. So he spent the first half of the class period in the tiny, windowless “alternative” room. The one where he took tests alone, because his teachers worried about cheating.

The rest of the day had gone about as poorly.

By the time he reached his trainer’s office for his daily training session, he had a jackhammer in his head. He ached so much he thought his head might explode. And people worried that he might hurt someone else? (Truthfully, he worried about that too, when he could find the energy and presence of mind to worry.)

Politeness made him knock on his trainer’s door, despite the fact that it was wide open, and he knew that his trainer was alone inside.

Please, come in.

The thought popped into his mind, unbidden, just like every thought he ever heard. Unlike the rest, this had been deliberate.

Stepping inside, he barely managed to set down his bag down.

“You had a bad day.”

That was not a question.

He looked up at the elder telepath but said nothing.

He did not have to. Without preamble, the whispers faded away, until he heard nothing but the sound of his own breathing and that of his trainer’s.

Silence. Blessed silence.

He could breathe.

Robert Hopkins crossed the room and placed one large hand on his shoulder. “You should sit down and rest, Sean. I will get you some aspirin, and we can train later.”

He found himself gently guided to a chair and then seated with a pillow to prop him up. A moment later, a glass of water and two small pills were pressed into his hands. Sean swallowed without objection.

He closed his eyes, waiting for the acute pain to fade into a duller ache, just as the voices had disappeared. When the pain felt manageable, he opened his eyes and looked up at his trainer. Voice hushed, he asked, “What would I do without you?”

Robert squeezed his shoulder gently. “You needn’t worry about that, because I am here and going nowhere.”

I will always be here.

Sean clung to that thought like a life preserver.

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

Five, Four, Three, Two...
Site Canon: December, 2013

Lucy Serrano sat at the edge of her bed, hands pressed together in front of her as she stared down at them. The bounce in her leg was involuntary, if not therapeutic to the rattled senses. Slowly, she ran her hands together, fingers interlocking and squeezing tightly before she let go again.

The same hands that, only moments prior, curled themselves into the fabric of a dress. Gripping tightly for a second before her own mentality reasoned that she didn't need to be so... Aggressive? Demanding? Eager?

Desperate.

With lowered eyebrows, she ran her tongue through the break in her mouth, crossing her lips as if it somehow made the search for clarity easier. As if it could will understanding to flow. But all a movement did was recall the newfound sensation that still managed to linger against her mouth. Unfamiliar lips applying their own pressure. She was trying. She was giving, too.

A spotless room save for the single idle stain of dirt on the bedspread from when she'd kicked off her shoes in a defining huff.

A tentative reminder that she'd requested words of hatred to offer up light to a muddled situation. This was a girl she hated. Penelope Blaise was someone she hated. And she'd admit to it so many times, but not then, and not now.

Releasing her hands, the ink manipulator ran her fingertips over the Siberian tiger on her arm, and it moved as if to follow the track of her hand with its spine. Any method to calm its residual anger was a good method. It closed its eyes, blue fur motioning with the supposed connection. Though made of ink, the inhabitants of her skin still very much felt real.

And they moved. Rare in their actions, completely. Because were it not for Lucy's request, they never had. And she never asked.

A searing red mark against her cheek. She pressed her palm against it, feeling the heat still resonate in her skin. It made the Siberian tiger angry; it made herself angry, first. But she was sure it had moved to flash teeth and offer a completely muted growl.

Reeling both hands back, she pushed herself off the bed, swallowing hard to try and ignore the nerves and the aggression that threatened to overcome her. The tiger was angry; it burned her skin with the desire to leap away and follow after such prey.

"Shit." The singular word passed her lips on a heated breath, and her hands filtered to run the length of her face. But not for the tiger on the verge of impossible destruction.

For the first time since their imprinting four years ago - the first time since the ink manipulator became an ink manipulator - the sparrows at her hips outstretched their wings.

And they hadn't stop beating since.

The corner of her mouth twitched in an equally involuntary way until a smile broke through on a heavy exhale. Prior to her company, the only tattoo that ever moved on its own accord was the lion. Anger brought breath to the tiger, but something else set the sparrow's souls alight. And to carry such life was the most enthralling experience she'd ever had since she'd wandered into the role of a meta-human.