| I wished to live, but I saw clearly that I was not living, but rather wrestling with the shadow of death; there was no one to give me life, and I was not able to take it. — St Teresa of Avila |
Aurora came back from the blankness to a bitter cold wind blowing through broken glass, an empty doorframe that could keep nothing out, wind dozens of degrees below zero passing over the reflective melted-sugar shards of glass on the floor. The knife-bright light of the stars and the moon came through the door, but there was no other light, only that great paleness falling on faces that looked almost blue in it, perhaps frozen with the cold. Two were up and awake—Hudson, his skin pinched white and dark with the chill, his hands nervous; the other was Joel McCree in handcuffs. His face was at ease and he wasn't shaking, and she could see the rest of the lobby faintly past him. What the point of the handcuffs was she didn't know, and didn't care much: she had a headache.
A headache, and the others were still stirring in their sleep beside her. Hudson was listening to a message on his communicator from—she recognised the voice abruptly—the Prime Minister. This had gone far up the chain of command, past the Commissioner of the RCMP or the Premier of Quebec or...Aurora wasn't much for politics and didn't know exactly who would come after the Commissioner. The Justice Minister, maybe? Far up, anyhow. Far up.
“...he suggested the possibility that the patients might interfere with Dudley,” Hudson was saying. “Which is tantamount to a nuclear threat on the whole area at an absolute minimum.”
“Yes, Hudson, I understand that. I just want to hear that you are doing something about the situation. Not just licking your wounds there in Repentigny.”
“We got McCree.”
“For how long?”
“As long as you want me, sir,” said Joel, lifting his head up.
“Don't help me, McCree,” said Hudson irritably. “You gave us nothing before and you're still doing nothing. Raising nothing to an art form, you ask me.”
“If you can hold onto him, that's good for us,” said the Prime Minister's voice. “We're the ones sailing through the press shitstorm. Just don't let me hear that you've lost him. Having and losing is worse than never getting. You got me?”
“Yes sir,” said Hudson, with a touch of professionally applied false amusement. “We'll do our best. He's promising to be good.”
Aurora thought that it shouldn't take much to fake having an invisible prisoner, especially for a Conservative government. But probably Hudson was better than that. Jean-Paul was waking up, and as he sat up he reached for her hand, a sheen of luminescence running from their hands, white and cold as the light coming from outside. Her brother—it was strange still, because she'd always thought of herself as being alone in the world, and she'd never had to have sibling-feelings. Even Jeanne-Marie had only had a general sort of protective wing extending over the other students at the school, nothing particular, nothing over and above everyone else. She knew she was supposed to feel it for Jean-Paul and she almost did, but mostly she wanted to feel it and thought she might be hearing traces of it in herself where it wasn't. It wasn't natural, she didn't think. It was taught. Mostly he was a sort of mystery, someone who might teach her something about herself, if she only kept close by him to watch what he might unfold.
The others were waking up too, but Aurora stayed where she was, sitting on the thinly-carpeted lobby floor, holding Jean-Paul's hand and watching what went on between Hudson and the Prime Minister.
“...I'm hearing that the lights are out from where you are all the way down to here. I'm looking out from the Centre Block on the Hill and I can see everything all dark just across the river in Gatineau.”
This was apparently about as interesting to Hudson as information on the weather, but he said, “We're in the process of getting back on our feet and doing what we can, sir.”
“Right,” came the voice over the communicator, sounding exhausted and disgusted. “Right, I suppose that's all I'm getting out of you. You know what to do if you find something.”
“Yes, sir.” A click. Hudson snapped the communicator shut and the thin blue light from the screen disappeared.
Hudson rolled his head around on his neck, flexed his fists, like he was readying himself for a fistfight. Joel was being still, leaning with his back against the receptionist's desk, but Hudson caught a glimpse of him anyway and his face darkened.
“That fucking son of a bitch,” he muttered, apparently referring to the PM, although Joel, Prawn, the Commissioner, and the Premier were all potential targets. He got up, paced for a few moments, and then suddenly punched the wall, going straight through the drywall and, astonishingly, through the brick as well. “Shit,” he said, looking up at the wall, but it remained steady.
Then: “All right, that's a sign—we've hung around here long enough. We're going after them.”
“No, you're not,” said Joel, very quietly.
Hudson wheeled on him. “How long do you expect us to stay here, then? It must be thirty below—”
“Nothing's changed since we made the deal,” Joel said, louder now. “If we go after them somebody might flip out and then we're really in trouble. A blackout's no big thing. If that's all we got then we got lucky.”
“We sure did. Do you even know what an EM pulse is? Everyone in this town who needed a computer chip to make their cars go, they've got useless hunks of metal sitting in their driveway. All their electronics fried. Regular people trying to pay the bills, people who need to get to work to feed their families. Fucked over, thanks to you. What made you try a stunt like that, anyway?”
Joel shrugged, the noise of the cuffs audible; he was solid now. “Cars and electronics can be replaced. Those kids can't be. The boys in Four West can't be. And I didn't have any better ideas.”
“Just like you don't have any now. What bloody good are you? Here's my idea. We go after them, and you talk them out of going all Shiva the Destroyer on the province.”
“You overestimate me.”
“I don't think I do.”
“I don't just have to talk them out of wrecking shit. I have to talk them into submitting to arrest. And probably prison-time. If I could do that shit I'd run for office.”
Hudson was a little slow to respond, and then he finally said, “We could negotiate something.”
“What, Department H jobs?”
That had, apparently, been it. “It's a goddamned good deal, McCree. The kids can go back to their parents—most of them are too young. But for Dudley it might be the impetus he needs to get his life together. You ever think about that?”
“I think his life would have more dignity if he stays poor and doesn't kill anybody.”
“You summed a lot up in a nutshell there, boyo,” Hudson said in the silence that followed. “You might have just lost yourself some friends on the team here. You guys are the ones who felt the need to shoot the lights out. You lost control of Prawn, not us, despite that threat you keep waving in my face. By the time we got here the situation was out of control. If you think this is like the Canada Day shootout—”
“One day it will be,” Joel snapped. “What do you think you'd do, if someone looks out his back door and starts spraying bullets?”
“What would you do? Stretch out
your arms and say 'I love you this much'?”
“It is not my job to say what I'd do.” Joel was furious; Aurora was fascinated. She thought she'd never see him like this, their contact in the house having been so brief. “If you're torturing babies it is not my job to suggest you torture cats instead. I just have to tell you to stop.”
“Well, this is the real world,” said Hudson, unmoved. “Save your philosophy 101 examples for your professors. Say something useful or shut your mouth.”
Joel did him one better and faded out, although Aurora thought that he was still there; probably everyone in the room thought so too, including Hudson, who flipped off the empty spot.
“Are we going after them, then?” asked Walter.
Hudson thought about it for a long few moments, and then sighed, rubbing his forehead. “I don't see any safe way to do it, if the patients really are crazy enough to use Dudley. What I can do is send you and you—” he indicated Network and Arclight— “to Quebec City, see what you can do about the power grid. They may send you somewhere else, who knows.”
“If Dudley did an EMP—” Walter began.
“Right, right, I know. Repentigny is toast, but the rest of the province could be salvageable. Reports are that electronics in Gatineau work, so he didn't fry the whole of Quebec. See, I'm not Conan the Barbarian, even if I lose my cool sometimes.” Hudson ran a hand through his hair, scratching the back of his head and pressing on the muscles in his neck. “God. Okay. We need to extract Dudley from the party, get that weapon out of their hands. Can we convince them to let the telepaths go their way? We're not interested in them.”
“We'd have to get close,” said Corporal McKenzie doubtfully.
“We have a hostage for good behaviour, though. Remember how you told the Prime Minister 'Anything', McCree? Christ, I'm talking to walls now. But you know what I mean, we approach with sweet pure hearts and lots of non-scary thoughts—am I talking the right language now?”
“They don't have any reason to trust you,” Joel said, reappearing on the floor by the desk. “They can't read you, and for all they know you're just selling the team a load of bullshit while you secretly know how the plan's going to go down.”
“You're a paranoid man, you know.”
Joel shrugged. “I'm a mental patient.”
“Do tell. Would you come along for something like that? Just cutting the telepaths loose and taking Prawn?”
A long silence. “What about the everyone in the House?”
“If you were very very clever and didn't leave any physical evidence of what you were planning, they'll probably get off.”
“Prawn and I knew what we were doing. Half of the others didn't.”
“Joel, for the sweet Lord's fucking sake,” said Hudson, “you really are lawyering me to death here. This argument belongs in court. If your friends are innocent, they will be found innocent. Our job is to bring in everyone who smells. I know you understand that, because you're not stupid and you've got more than enough experience. So you must be trying to work on my feelings. I don't like it and I don't think it's going to result in justice. All right? You have thus far gotten a very patient response out of me. Now, for the last time, shut your mouth unless you want to offer useful suggestions or compliments on my cologne.”
“I'll tell you what he's doing,” said Walter. “He's stalling for time.”
It was amazing; as soon as Walter said that, Hudson was decided. Aurora watched as he herded everyone back to the van, warning them to watch for broken glass. Joel, according to his own code, allowed them to stuff him in there as well, between Langkowski and the front seat. Hudson would listen to no more arguments, and Joel made none. They drove.
Paul drank goat's milk to calm his churning stomach and watched the minute hand crawl around the kitchen clock, La Presse and two books in front of him sitting unread. The TV was on in the other room, but the others weren't watching it either. The kids who didn't know what was going on passed through the house cautiously, and there were few of them: most knew enough to scent trouble on the wind, and wouldn't stay in a place where it was likely to alight. Paul thought of peas or bullets rattling around in a can, all the lucky uninvolved bastards finding their way out of this house until the cops could just pop them open and arrest everyone who was left.
Someone turned off the TV, turned on the radio, and that was the moment when the lights went out. A groan went up from everyone in the kitchen—this was the sign and symbol of the affair going south down in Repentigny.
“Calisse de crisse de tabarnaq,” Paul said, pushing violently away from the table and nearly falling off his chair as a result. Pure deep blackness, nothing but the faint shifting light from his own skin illuminating the room, greenish-blue, not a happy turquoise but a sick brown green slipping past slate blue fear.
“Get us some lights,” said Sabine, resting her head in her hands. “Fuck Prawn.”
“I knew he'd fuck it up.”
“Get us some lights.”
They had emergency supplies in the kitchen drawer, flashlights and candles, and soon the kitchen was illuminated. Nobody left the room to go into the shadows, but Mary Jane and Edouard slipped down from upstairs to take candles. They were some of the desperate ones, the ones not willing to go out into the cold in search of something easier, something less risky. They couldn't defend themselves. They were physical mutants—Mary Jane had fur, sleek fur like a seal's, and Edouard thick grey skin, mottled and armoured—they weren't safe on the streets in any situation where John Q. Public had his back up.
How had this happened? Paul felt the question bubble up and then swell like a blister, at first meaning Prawn's blunder and the blackout and then growing to mean his whole stuck involvement here, unable to leave, unable to leave. And all these kids, suckered in with promises that they'd be safe and then they were just like him, unable to leave. And the situation in Quebec, it really had been better once, hadn't it? Before.
Paul found the weak link of the chain in the moment when he'd agreed to help Joel with the house. Joel wouldn't have done it alone, would he? And a stupid crush had overwhelmed Paul's smarter instincts. Not just a crush on him physically but a crush on his ideas, on everything he promised. Light in the window, food, warmth, we are always here, all that had purity once. Dorothy Day. Saint Dot. Our Lady of Guadalupe looked down at him with her swollen eye, just barely visible in the gentle light from the candles. Yes, Paul had had a crush on this room and that poster, the collision of vision and practice. He was just as guilty as Joel of wanting to be a saint. Or, to use a more popular word, a hero.
That, after all, was the reason he didn't leave.
But of course there was another simpler reason, the reason most of them had. To whom shall we go?
Paul ate up some time with these thoughts, self-pitying as they were, and he watched the candles burn down with the others. Now and again they disspiritedly called Prawn a wanker, although none of them said the same of Joel. Paul thought it. The candles—stiff beeswax tapers from Saint-Sulpice, honey-smelling and high-quality—had half burned down when they heard cars pull up outside. Too late to snuff the candles and put out the flashlights—Maison St-Jean-de-Dieu sat on high ground and its lights were visible from the end of the block at least.
Paul went to the door, clinging to the wall as he went even though he could see well enough, and waited. Slamming doors and the trundling shutting sound from vans' doors. That might be the crew coming home or it might be police. Paul waited.
Footsteps, a pause, and then a knock. Paul saw his skin flash yellow, a fearful colour. He would not answer until he heard the password. They had agreed.
“Paul Laliberté, this is Snowbird of Alpha Flight,” came a voice through the door. “I have twelve female patients from Neurocherche. Why don't we have ourselves a detente here and you let us in?”
“For what, a raid?”
“Just me. I want to talk, okay? We can work something out.”
Paul hesitated, then said, “Joel and Prawn aren't with them?” He could hear an edge in his voice that might have been the approach of panic. Even the colours of his own skin meant nothing to him anymore, for he felt that he was a long way off from himself, cut adrift.
“Your partner asked that we bring the girls here,” said Snowbird, and then: “He said to tell you Saint Dot sent us. It's cold out, Paul. Let them in.”
Saint Dot, that was the password. Paul slid back the bolt and undid the chain—they rarely locked the door in the house, since someone was almost always home, but tonight they were huddled and hiding, as if they could really keep back anyone intended on force.
The girls in their housecoats and nightgowns streamed in, with the lack of fear of those who have been outside too long. “They're barefoot!” Paul exclaimed. “You should have said!”
Snowbird, following after the last girl, gave him a crooked smile. “What would you have done, throw shoes out the window?”
“Why'd you even bring them here?” Paul asked, ignoring her. “Aren't we all under suspicion of being involved in a crime?”
“We're in a situation requiring a bit of casuistry,” said Snowbird. “Hudson would have been perfectly happy to drag you all away to lockup. But what's needed here is police work, not beating you on the head with clubs and hauling you back to the cave. Is there somewhere I can set up to talk to everyone in the house individually?”
Paul, for lack of any other inspiration from above, allowed her to spread out in the sitting room: laptop, paper notebook, audio recorder, gas lantern, and a cup of tea—the girls were thawing out in the kitchen and the bedrooms, and the other kids were milling around too, everything suddenly very loud and smelling of salty shock. Paul had to retreat to Joel's office to get any clear air.
He sat in there for a long time, watching the candle's light flicker, half-illuminating the gold colour of the St Clare icon. At last he rested his chin on his folded arms, exhausted, and got a bad turn when he heard a loud and insistent knocking on the door.
“They said you were in here,” said Snowbird, sticking her blonde head in. “Your turn with the Inquisition.”
Paul followed her through the hall, the walls no longer familiar in the darkness, the light of the candle passing by the pictures in their battered frames. In the sitting room he took a seat on one side of the fireplace, across from her makeshift desk on the coffee table. Snowbird's body armour was shucked off on one end of the sofa, like a lobster shell, and the upper buttons of her navy blue uniform were undone. She tapped at the keyboard of her laptop for a few minutes, while Paul waited, and then sat back with her notebook on her knee, tapping her pen thoughtfully on the paper.
“So. Paul Louis-Joseph Laliberté. No aliases. No criminal record, either. How long have you known Joel McCree?”
“Seven years, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I knew his name seven years ago, but we didn't start really hanging out until about five years ago.”
“You met at St Rita's Residence in Ottawa, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You were there for...bipolar disorder, that's right. Would you say you were friends before the Canada Day Shootout?”
“I guess. I mean, yeah. We got closer after that, though.”
“I gotcha. Makes sense.” She wrote something down. “What convinced you to go on this venture with him? I mean, I have friends—good friends—that I just wouldn't want to live with even on the most selfish terms. Wouldn't share an apartment, wouldn't want to work a job with them. That's all moot, of course, since I'm on the Alpha Flight team now, but you see what I mean. This guy you were sort of casually friends with, you two end up doing something like this. How's that happen?”
“This is all stuff you know.”
She raised her eyebrows. “What makes you say that?”
“We've been over this with cops before.”
“Metro and Sûreté du Québec have files on you and a few conversation transcripts, but those are closed to other investigative authorities. Procedure.” She shrugged. “Let's just talk, okay? What makes a guy decide that he's going to chuck it all and do this?”
“Chuck what? What do you think I had going for me? I was about to get blasted out into space from St Rita's, and the only other option was going home. I tried going to college the first year—the place is situated pretty well for that.”
“Right. But that was four years ago. You stayed.”
“I thought I was using my time pretty productively here.”
“You a political sort of guy, Paul?”
“A bit.”
“How so?”
“I watch the news, I vote. That kind of thing.”
“Other activism? Peace marches, mutant rights, that stuff?”
“I go if I feel like it. I'm not much for stuff that requires me leaving the house and being on display.”
“Hence the lack of a criminal record, sure. Okay.”
“Someone's got to stay clean.”
She smiled. “Joel's pretty clean. Enough to stand bail for detainees, anyhow. You did the same. That's quite an investment, even if the money wasn't coming out of your pocket. That, that shows principle, if you ask me. That tells me you believe in this.”
“Of course I do.”
“You know, I've spoken with other people in the house, and a number of them have been ambivalent about things that McCree's on record as saying he believes in. They're not pure pacifists, which I've got no objection to. They're pretty mainstream. A couple were upset about Dudley's payoff. What I'm saying, they stay here because they think this place does lots of good, but they're not totally on board with everything McCree says. Which is reasonable. But you, they say you're his right hand man and what the boss says you agree with.”
“He's not my boss.”
“Some of them said partner.”
“We never talked about it.”
“There was some speculation,” she said, “about the status of your relationship.”
Paul was silent for a long moment. “There isn't one.”
“You weren't in love with him?”
“We aren't a couple. It doesn't matter how I feel.” But of course his feelings were obvious. Humiliation, and the black of scabbed-over pain. “Look, he doesn't tell me what to think. Is that what you're getting at? You must know the whole setup here anyway, procedure or not. We know Department H was watching the house.”
Her eyes watched him, unmoving. “Do you?”
“Your man following Prawn and Jeanne-Marie on Christmas Eve was pretty obvious. And again at New Year's. Someone had their eye on the house and let you guys know.”
“Even under the Mutants and Public Order Act, surveillance of private premises without a warrant for periods greater than two hours per 24-hour period constitutes violation of privacy rights.” She looked back down at her notebook. “Wouldn't Prawn have been able to tell you if there were bugs? What are you accusing us of?”
“It was telepaths,” Paul said, convinced now.
“Evidence gained by psionic means isn't currently admissible in court.”
“Neither are polygraphs, right? But cops still use them. To intimidate.”
“On cop shows, maybe. You think we wanted to intimidate you? Why am I not whipping out all sorts of knowledge to impress you with? I just want to hear your side of things and write it down, and if you show no sign of being involved with this incident then there won't be a warrant or anything else. Dudley and McCree have confessed, but you don't have to go down if you're innocent.”
It struck him like a hard shove to the ground, a pain as sharp as a dentist's pick probing a cavity, and surely she saw it cross over his face, his hands. He'd known that things would be over for Prawn if he were caught, but that they'd confessed— “They confessed?”
“Dudley as good as left his signature—there's no one else in the country who could have done it. McCree's been martyred and antagonistic by turns, but he was right there on the scene, everyone on the team saw him, and he didn't fade on us.”
“God.”
“You're surprised?”
Paul thought that she wanted to let him get away; she'd poked in spots that she knew were tender but she hadn't really hammered him on evidence. “I didn't know that Prawn intended to do anything like this,” he said, which was partially true. He'd thought Prawn would have better sense or better control, at the very least. “I knew they were going to Neurocherche.”
“Neurocherche left too many paper records,” said Snowbird ominously. “And the girls have been talking. The boys in Four West are another thing. The B&E charges against McCree might be dropped depending on what we find out about Neurocherche. But I can't say the same for Dudley, and Joel's already agreed to be responsible for Dudley's behaviour as his S3 guarantor.”
I'm not stupid. Paul remembered his words, joking, at the time when they'd signed the papers. He was blood-purple with shame, an ugly raspberry. “I knew what they were planning,” he said, staring down at his feet. “I knew and saw the plans and the notes. I was there in the kitchen when they talked about it. I thought Prawn could handle it without hurting too much.”
Snowbird clicked the recorder off and lowered her voice. “Don't tell me this. Nobody wanted this to get messy, and we can keep the focus on Dudley—and that was an accident. The media are going to want a head to roll, and his'll be it, but...look, stuff will come out about Neurocherche. It will. And then things are going to look a lot different.”
“And that'll change the law? I'm, what, an accessory?” He used the English word.
“Nobody's howling for your blood, Paul. Nobody thinks you're a threat. You're not.” She snapped her laptop shut. “I have heard enough overblown rhetoric today. I think you and McCree are trying to embarrass us. Alpha Flight was planned to be a force with discretion, with very few restraints because our judgement was considered trustworthy. This is not the RCMP or the Sûreté du Québec. I'm glad of that; I had enough of working in that system. It's the beginning of a parallel structure for mutants—that's sensible. We don't want to be a secret police and we sure don't want to be painted as one when we're not.”
“You were watching us—”
“Department H made errors. Alpha Flight has a clean slate.” Her things put away in her bag, she hefted her body armour under one arm and stood up, ready to leave. “Don't leave town. But don't expect us to rush in and indulge your martyr fetishes either. You're a waste of some very expensive time.”
When she had left, Paul stood still for a moment behind the door, listening for the departure of the van before he went back to the kitchen. Sabine and four of the girls were still there; the others were long in bed. Sabine watched him with cautious eyes while Paul went through the address book, and finally said, “I'm sorry we talked to her, Paul. But it...I didn't know what else to say.”
“I don't care about that.”
“I was afraid she'd take you away too.”
“Well, I squeaked out.” He was angry, but he didn't know exactly why: everything felt confused, mislabelled, out of order. His mind was still trying to match up all the events of the evening with what he had suspected before, and he kept finding pieces missing, things left over. Alpha Flight didn't care about him, but Snowbird had spent the whole evening at the House. She didn't want to arrest him, but she'd asked all those questions to throw him off balance. It had worked. Maybe that was the whole intention of the visit. Sow confusion in the ranks. “I don't matter to them, apparently.”
“What are you doing?”
“Calling New York.” He found the number and dialled, sinking down on a kitchen chair while he waited for an answer. Machine. Of course. “This is Paul Laliberté at St John of God House in Montreal,” he said when the beep came, feeling as if from a long way off that his throat was sore, his voice hoarse. He was exhausted. “In the morning we're going to head for the border with twelve kids. They need help and we have no more room. That's all. Bonne nuit.”
When the dawn broke on the blackened city, the Prime Minister issued his statement to the press, close-fisted with the facts but assuring the people that most of the province would have light again by sunset. Repentigny was still blotted from the powergrid, and the situation there was a national emergency. The event would be considered an Act of God for insurance purposes; the Red Cross was accepting donations. Mutant involvement had been confirmed and the responsible parties were being held.
That was all.
The cell block had a television parked in the upper corner of the room, foggy behind some thick treated glass, blocked into squares by an adamantium cage. The walls between the cells were double and triple thick, no opportunity for prisoners to speak with one another except through that thickness. The bed was reinforced, and the toilet set into concrete. A brief pass through the other cells showed that not all were built this way; they had designs that varied for the purposes of holding different sorts of mutants.
The block was empty, apart from Prawn in a cell at the other end. Joel had given over his examination of the block and returned to physicality in his cell when he heard Prawn say, “Is anybody else in here?”
“I'm here, Prawn.”
“Are you staying?”
“As long as they make me.”
“You really are bats.” And then, more quietly: “Can you come in here, then?”
Joel thought about that for a minute or two and then decided to do it. Prawn, in his cell, had a red-and-white face from either crying or trying not to very hard. He had a shadow under one eye, a bruise without swelling. “Who hit you?”
“Somebody in intake. Not that rough, compared to some times. I reckon they behaved themselves with you.” He lay back on his bed. “You don't know what happened to the kids, then?”
“Hudson told Snowbird to take care of it.”
“I just don't want all this to be for nothing.”
“I know.”
“I slipped, Joel. That was all. I'd never done anything like it and—the power grid's got a really daft setup—I didn't want to waste our time there. I see the power's back on, though,” he added, glaring balefully up at the television.
“They might have a generator. Or—I don't know what time it is in here.” They were both speaking in hushed tones, as though it were very late at night, but the echoes of their voices on the cinderblock walls kept them from speaking louder.
“I don't know either.” Prawn rubbed his face, careful around his bruised eye. “D'you think they're listening to us?”
“Probably. As much as security ever listens to a conversation. As much as they ever really listen to us.”
Prawn turned over and pressed his face into the plastic-covered pillow, and stayed there for a long time. When Joel heard him draw breath, there was a shudder in it, and Prawn turned back at last looking pale. “This is worse than all the other times. I don't even know why. It just seemed easier back then to get out. And we weren't all alone. I can't just toss it off and—you know I could get out of here. Same way I broke the glass. Enough heat and that wall would crumble, the steel would melt. Even adamantium melts.”
“What's stopping you?”
“You are, you bloody wanker. You've fucking infected me or something. I'd feel—like I cheated or something. But I can't just chin up and imagine the harps and the clouds or whatever it is you do, either. I don't even understand what you're getting at, half the time, and I'm not thick even if I haven't finished school. They all knew it in the house, how fucking confusing it was to spend ten minutes listening to you. The Princess Pats are a moral emergency to you but if anyone offered you a seat up on the Hill we know you'd take it. I don't fancy being tied in knots all the time like you always are. You're a fanatic and you're not even enjoying yourself.”
And understanding came like water leaking slowly but inexorably through a wall. You can't live with fear like that, do you understand me? It will cripple you. Joel felt it now, that crippled hirpling gait he'd been walking with all this time. “So we're both stuck.”
“Yeah. Fucking brilliant.”
Notes: Back in action after almost a year! The title is from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov:
I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead of nearer to it- at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.
Thanks to all those who waited.