FicWad

What we've Sown
Chapter 2
What a world what a world…

Her phone was ringing and she picked it up without a thought. No thought of disturbing patients, no thought of why that ringtone was so unfamiliar.

It was just instinct.

Less than five minutes later she was beyond thought. Lunch steamed merrily in it's carboard box, forgotten, one fork rising bravely out of the mashed potatoes like an albino Lochness from sea foam.

"When… wh-"

Coherence had left her some time ago.

"He left a note." Father was on the other line, hurried and harried. The omnipresent silence that served as background noise told her why. Silence meant "the office" which in turn meant work. She almost felt bad for the poor soul who'd had to make the call to him in the first place.

He was crosser than the proverbial badger when riled. Calling during work was cause for him to be riled, emergency or no. Tragedy or no.

Such was a childhood lessons, one of her first, learned so long ago the bitter taste it evoked had become familiar, almost welcome.

"What did the note say?"

She knew grandfather, and despite or maybe because of his… oddness… she'd loved him unconditionally. It was more than she could say about father. Work was his love, the office his altar, and he was a regular attendee in his worship of one. Dogged, fanatical even. The light of his laptop was divine, a Trojan the work of Lucifer.

Never mind all claims to the contrary.

"What did he say?"

"The note?" Father hedged, trying and failing to sound innocent.

"You read it, didn't you?"

His silence was damming. Of course he had. Never mind that there had been two notes, one for him, one for her. Despite his distance, the emotional divide (because physically it wasn’t that far, he lived uptown, she downtown, it wasn’t insurmountable) he still harbored that infuriating, absent minded fatherly side. Some half smothered instinct made dad go through the motions of "protecting his little girl" from time to time.
Never mind she dealt with the insane and unbalance every day.

Nevermind she'd be better equipped, better trained to deal with such a note. It was her calling. And those last gleaming from the one she loved, she could distance herself enough to see what went wrong. There was such a thing as professional distance.
Her first clenched in her lap. Knotted so hard, it hurt.

She hurt, because you couldn't love the dead because they didn't love you back. They were gone. Granddaddy and all his crazy, his piggy back rides, the s'mores over the fire…

She could still remember him holding them, though they smoldered and squished in his thick calloused hands.

He was fearless then. She'd been convinced of that a childhood ago. Fearless, and as an adult she knew he still was in an odd way. Were the world a thing of black and white, with great deeds needing to be done he would have thrived.

In this grey, this world of cause and clause, with politics warring with economics, to those more evasive dragons he faltered. Fell. Failed.

"I'll scan them, send them doc file via e-"

"No." There was no vehemence needed, the negative was more than enough to stop the lackluster efforts and steel his voice besides. "I… I want to pick them… mine… up."

"Stop by the office then. They're here with a few of his "things"."

Tone supplied all the adjectives needed. Disgusting, primitive, savage, unclothe, unclean…

What else could you expect from a man who lived in the middle of nowhere? Eking out a living in a log cabin, where the most "modern" thing he laid claim to was indoor plumbing?
And that radio. That scratched, clunky, but durable thing she'd snapped up on a yard sale while driving out to see him. She'd snuck it onto him two Christmas' back, not sure it would work but his face… When it had hummed out "Oh Silent night" the rapture… He'd love it, they'd sung along to static marred carols while the snow was flying and the fire dying.

Her hand swiped at her face, furiously scrubbing out tears she shoulder be sheading. Yes, it was sad, but logic… She rushed to the old route, and found it wanting.

Logic didn't really have a place here.

Despite her best the tears came and fell. Arm heavy, she made a squish of her mash via one uncaring elbow.

He heard something; surely he heard some of it. To those odd half formed sounds he called out. "Sweetheart, are you there?"

Dad hadn't caller her that since high school graduation. Granddad had never stopped.

"You alright?" He pressed, clearly disturbed by the continuing quiet.

No.

"Yeah, you?"

Because, this is your Dad, you know. Your Dad. Not mine. The guy whose arms you walked into, who picked out up when you fell, and held you close. The broad-shouldered (because all the men of Belmont were broad-shouldered since who knew when) lout who'd bend over double checking for ghoolies and ghasts that you insisted lurked under the bed each night for a year straight.

You know, dad, your dad. Who did all that for me, and twice as much for you?

Father coughed, wonder of wonders. The offices sacred silence was broken by a sound of human origin. Halelughla. Praise be. Papers rustled, not the paper of the note, but those of numbers and columns. She could tell, it had that stiffness a handwritten note never could hold.

Workaholic scripture held tight, surely father looked on.

"I've got a meeting."

And with that, she knew they were done. Till holidays at least. Unless something worse happened.

But considering it was just him and her now... she didn't expect the worst, not for a while anyway.

She sighed, the sound broken, not that he'd ever notice.

"Yeah, I'm gunna take the rest of the day off here." Did he gasp? Possibly. Surely he stiffened black eyes flashing their disapproval at her sin. "I'll nip by later, pick up-"

"That’s…" He brightened, she'd have cried if she weren't already. "Great, that's great…" Brightness faded, failed, turned flinty a mere three syllables in. "The box under the desk, take that too."

He never asked if she had the key, he'd given her one she held onto it. Belmont’s were like that, great keepers of the little things.

It was those big things that were lost along the way that were hardest to reclaim. She hung up, wondering and weeping. When had they lost that bit, that piece that bound them all together?

Where was her family?


XXX


A box, a bag a book, a hand revolver (it's ammo spent) a knife, a coiled bit of leather that was both long and torn.

She felt as if she was amongst the remains of some Dr. Seuss book gone wrong.

The length was ripped ragged, threefold split, and if it weren't for the savagery of its tearing she would have thought it symbolic.

She's spread about Granddad's worldly possessions, and the sterile office of executive Mr. Samuel Alex Belmont finally got a life.

It was a stark, primitive, savage sort of life, but beggars couldn't chose.
That'd irritate him, he deserved it anyway.

With that little spot of spite to warm her life she set granddad's relics in the center of her father’s life. Knife here, gun there. The contrast gave her a sort of courage to unfold the note. The pages (note indeed, it was a letter damn it!) were stapled by father's hand. He was never trusting of pressure, and lines, and hopeful intent.

She looked down, and never mind he was gone, Granddady's voice rose up, a final gift of lines and pen and fond remembrance giving him voice beyond the mortal realm.

He'd have liked that thought, she mused, loved it, it had something of faith, something he grieved that neither of his children held to.

"My dearest heart


I stand a weary man, old before infirmary snaps my final years. Between twin mountain I've lingered in the shadows, in their valley. To aspire to meet the peak of one I would have to quit the other. In knowing this, I decided long ago I shall not.

So, in this eternal twilight, amongst the debris of landslide, I sip on the leavings of the occasional squall, and feast leanly. I sit in this dark, and find riches turn by turn.

Do not grieve me my indecision, I don't, I shant.

Though heaven is surely bright, I would happily abide this simple shadow for eternity if only for the pleasure of waiting. Waiting for my loved ones to come home. To come back to me.

Hope and dreams do not fill the plate, but on this staple I survive. Love, richest bounty, has been gifted to me by you.

Your smile.

Your laughter.

I recall both and am full. Filled."


Many spaces scratched and scrawled out, words, ominous, darker than the above, stood out. Stark, screaming, all accidental he scared her.

"Forg- attack…" And an almost complete thought, terrifying for how it had been slashed out, not with ink, but force, leaving behind a true void that had no frayed edges to fill. "What I should have told you all those-"

Away from the rest one word, on the papers edge. "…bite…"

Alone, stark underlined, smeared perhaps with sweat (tears) surly.

"No Antidote"

A few more lines down, she scanned the cleanliness, the void unmarked, it was direct contradiction to the above. She looked for some sign, some connection between the ramblings above to the clearer (if shaky) text bellow. Nothing, finding nothing she looks down, no warning, nothing to guild her.

"God Forgive Me.

If this world were kinder, as merciful as those lands at odysseys' end… For what remains for us to find? In this world where we've mapped out every road, charted every unforgiving angle. What else remains for us? If the world were kinder, I could hold my peace.

The world is not kind.

From the edge I look inward and quake,

From the edge I look out and break.

The view is too much the same.

Forgive forgive forgive forgive forgiveforgive forgive forgive…

I've been through the logs. One hundred, two hundred times, no, more, surely more. Now, this final time, I seek and they fail me. There is no antidote, not for the lycanthrope's bite, nor anyway to still it's insidious, distortion it calls venom.

I will not turn

I shall not."

She looked up then with eyes wide like a child's. Her expression twisted with fear. True fear. Even as she looked about the memorabilia with a macabre kind of wonder. Was it bullet, or blade? Both were silver and she knows all the clichés. She wonders which he took. Which was his cure when those mysterious logs failed him, so spectacularly?

Looking at the relics of his insanity (no longer an oddity, for it hadn't been harmless, not at all) she grieves. The tears come down in a torrent.


XXX


"Morning sunshine."

He's back to his banter, but that awful hiss is always there now. He does nothing to obscure it, dipping in and out between deep and raw, raucous and silken. Through it all, that reptilian affection of his remains. He watches her every move, commenting on the stiff set of her shoulders, the fragility of her composure all with his gaze. And while others might have seen only leering cruelty in his bald comments there still remains… A glint of something about the blue of his eyes.

He'd reached out to comfort her after all.

Never mind the wall between them, he'd offered comfort, and condolences, in his crude sort of way.

"Been boning up on ol' Grand Daddy's booklet? Find it, enlightening?"

She takes her seat, he's being extra nice today, no comments about the redness of her eyes.

"Ya know… I knew a harpy with eyes that shade of red. She cried for joy though, no pain. Her kind, they couldn't feel pain, not 'till the very end."

Scratch that “nice” slant.

The newest facet to his insanity (which she's sure of now, very sure) was his need to tell stories about things that could never be. It was disturbingly similar to what he’s done to Samantha. On the other hand he’s not being overtly nasty about it, but there is a sense of mind games to the whole. For his witticisms always correlated with the page she'd been reading in Granddaddy’s book. Every single time.

"Must be nice…" She murmured distractedly, setting up paper, setting up pen. He watches each motion with unblinking eyes, baring his broken teeth wildly.

"Oh… another test!" He blinks then, startled out of his joy by something she's said. Clearly the train upstairs isn't quite as swift today. Must not have had his daily cup of Joe with Joe…

Joe who was getting transferred tomorrow for charges of "fraternizing with the patients”, the guard's lucky he wasn't getting fired. Economy being tough and all.

What a world.

"Hey now, wait just one moment here! You… What did you just say?"

"I was merely hypothesizing on how it would feel not to feel pain." The Doctor replied.

"Um hm, and while you're lying about that how about you tell me the truth about this: Any long and wistful thoughts 'bout jumping off of bridges too?"

"And when did you become the professional shrink?"

He smirks at hearing her use a word he's been trying to drill into her head since day one. But that small victory wasn't enough to pull him off the scent. He's a hunter, and she's just offered him some quarry.

"I didn't, but you let things drop so I’ll pick up the slack.” He wagged a finger at her. “But just this once mind…” Seeing her utter apathy he lost all forced jocular, throwing himself into his chair after turning it about wrong ways around. “You,” he scolded, “are letting Death get you down."

Her eyebrow raises, her lips thin into a line. While it's petty she snaps up the pages to the test he'd requested. Yes, sadly, he knows all the tests by name and asks for them when the boredom looms. Ink blot is one of his favorites and she might have humored him, would have tried to anyway, until then, until now that was.

Surely he sees her snap the pages up, stuff them away, and if he missed that well he certainly didn't miss her stand.

Turning her back on him also helped ram the message home, and if it didn't well she'd have to re-categorize his intelligence.

"Your Ganddad, he wasn't nuts, I swear it!" Incredible! Was he on the outside looking in?
No. He had no right to assess anyone's sanity. Perhaps he never had.

Her heels click as she stomped to the door.

"Before… before you go off to get transferred somewhere else, think about this. I wouldn't rag on you so's much if you were grieving. Really grieving. But you aren't, so you're fair game."

"When did you become God's jester then, so high and mighty that you can make the whole world and it's pains your carnival?" She spat, there's a buzz the door leading out will be open soon. A door, guards, and distance would separate them. She's looking forward to it this time around.

"You can't lock it up inside. You'll be joining me here if you do…"

"Answer my god-damned question!"

He blinks at her. He indulges in a slow motion blink that seems more reptilian than his affected hissing. And it's natural. Something tells her that this, where everything else wasn't, is natural. He rears back, not in fear or shock but amused surprised.

Then he smiles.

"Finally. We're getting somewhere now."

The bolt clicks, the door pulls open. It's Joe, and he's looking at her with concern so obvious she wants to cry. The burning she's been holding in since she read Grandad's letter is back to the fore. Is this what he wanted, the mad man beyond the glass? To see her cry, not merely see hinting's of the fits before?

"It's for him and you you're like that, you know." He's divined her thoughts, and the knowledge doesn't scare her like it should. "When you cry, really cry, it's gotta be for something beyond yourself. That's what I'm looking for."

A pause, Joe looks at her in askance. Behind her, beyond her, the man whose named himself after Deaths' right hand carries on.

"And to answer the God-Damned question –never thought I'd ever hear a Belmont do that by the way, what a world, what a world…- I'm not God's jester, and I don't do the same for old cloven foot downstairs either. Being friends with Death, being bound to Death... I learned something down the line, something I'll share. Time wears away all expression, even the dead's, and under that final façade called rigorous mortis... you might say we're all smiling inside."