Prompt Challenge - Tumblr Posts - Page 2

@febuwhump prompt: "You weren't meant to be there."

***

You weren’t meant to be there.

Words he did not dare to speak aloud could not be silenced in his mind. Jet was still unconscious on the hospital bed - the amount of painkillers in his system was no doubt off the chart considering the damage to his shoulder and the series of surgeries that had been required to keep him alive.

Fad, standing vigil in the recovery room now that Jet had been deemed safe enough to move to a quieter floor, glanced guiltily at his partner.

It was his fault Jet was lying there now. But on the other hand, it was only thanks to him that Jet wasn't being buried in a Ganymede cemetery. A necessary evil, like any number of things Fad had done or turned a blind eye to. Leading a double life was no picnic.

The tension in his throbbing skull and the acidic churning of his gut were commonplace ailments these days. If he didn't have an ulcer by now he would be amazed.

The pain was a sort of penance for his service to the Europa Syndicate. Voluntary service at that. Though he was far from the only cop on the take. In fact, it was easier to rattle off the names of the officers not on syndicate payroll.

One of them was lying here in front of Fad now.

The damn dedicated fool.

He had been close... so close to getting out of the precinct and on his way to meet Udai. It was supposed to be a simple meetup and delivery, just another day at the docks getting his palm greased while weapons and drugs arrived to flood the city streets. The usual.

Instead Jet had shown up right before Fad could peel out of the parking lot. The knock on the tinted window had nearly given him a heart attack and then when the full implication of Jet's presence truly registered... that was when his stomach had begun to tie itself in knots.

The Black Dog was not about to let go of this "lead" that Fad was about to investigate. How easy it would have been to report nothing amiss! But no, Jet was still struggling with the absence of Alisa from his life and couldn't face sitting alone at home for hours. Couldn't miss work. Justice was his mistress and he had to heed her even at the cost of his own relationship.

It had been Jet's commitment to the force that had driven a wedge between himself and Alisa. That was Fad's interpretation of the break up at least. He'd erred when he assumed that Jet would diligently take time off to get used to the emptiness of the apartment. Jet Black wasn't the type to take so much as a sick day.

He was gonna get himself killed by being so damn stubborn and so damn honorable. Udai would have shot him flat out if Fad hadn't scrambled to take control of the situation. Firing on another officer... hell, firing on Jet, the partner who had had his back for years, who had kept Far alive on more than one bloody occasion... it had broken something inside of him.

Previously he had always been able to explain away his reasoning for why he did what he did. There were ways to justify criminal behavior to yourself. This, however, had been an assault that no one was paying him for. This had crossed a line in his mind that Fad hadn't even realized he'd drawn.

He had nearly offed his own partner.

Perhaps it would have been better to let Udai handle everything. Move one of the virtuous pieces right off the game board entirely. No more worries about Jet cottoning on to what was happening right under his righteous nose. No more sweat-soaked nightmares of Jet discovering his duplicity and ruining the good thing he had going.

But he refused to let his partner get gunned down on a darkened dock in the wee hours of the morning. He couldn't let Jet die. He owed his partner too much to stand by and let someone else pull the trigger and take his life.

And Fad couldn't take a fatal shot. Wouldn't take a fatal shot.

So he did the next best (next worst) thing... he crippled his comrade.

It would take months if not years for Jet to recover. All the red tape of getting a prosthetic limb approved of and installed and then the physical therapy to learn how to operate such a thing...

He'd effectively ensured that Jet would stay out of trouble for a while at least.

Yeah, that was the answer. That was how he could turn this around to make it acceptable. He'd done the only thing he could do to not only save his partner's life today but to keep him safe for the foreseeable future as well.

The headache began to fade just a touch. There had been so much stress built up over this whole mess... but he could clear his conscience to a tolerable degree and he knew there would be no fallout from the incident from the ISSP or from Europa.

Fad was in the clear. Jet would be on the mend.

These were the things he clung to as he moved towards the window to open it enough to blow smoke outside and avoid the wrath of the nurses nearby.

@febuwhump prompt: presumed dead

***

He hadn't genuinely expected to wake up. But if he had bothered to consider such an outcome... waking up alone wouldn't have crossed his mind.

Countless times before he'd come to under Vicious's tired scrutiny, the other man's expression briefly conveying a sense of relief at Spike's survival in the aftermath of whatever deadly shenanigans they'd been assigned by the Van.

When Vicious was sent to Titan, Spike took his life even less seriously than before if such a thing was possible. Mao and Annie worried that he was trying to die.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, he woke up from the worst misadventure under Julia's watchful eye. The gentle cadence of her voice had filtered into his subconscious and coaxed him back to the world of the living and he had been a changed man from that point on.

When he fled the syndicate, he took out a lot of other lives but managed to emerge relatively unscathed himself. There had been no blackness overtaking his senses and therefore no return to recall.

Before Faye's vigils, there had been Jet sitting opposite the couch. There hadn't been too many instances where he'd gone from insensate to convalescing on the couch, at least not until Faye's abduction... and Tongpu's assault... and Vincent's wrath... but the fact remained that there had always been someone nearby. Jet, or Faye, or Ed, or even just Ein.

He had never been alone. Always, he had been guarded. Cared for.

It was something he had not truly realized until emerging from a coma into a stark hospital room with no one else around. Not even a doctor or nurse. No syndicate lackeys keeping an eye on the most dangerous man to brazenly waltz through the Red Dragon Tower doors. Not a soul at all.

No one to grin down at him and recount the hassle of hauling his ass to safety. No one to smile softly at him and tend to him gently. No one to gruffly remind him of how much trouble he was and how lucky he was that he was considered worth it. No one to tease him and taunt him as a form of hiding concern.

He was alive. Alive and alone and neither by conscious choice.

Eventually, a nurse happened along to check on the patient in room 348. He discovered that, according to his chart, he was just another random John Doe. One of the few bodies recovered from the destruction and one that could not be identified as a syndicate member. For all intents and purposes, he was just a man who had stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time.

Which meant a few things...

For Faye and Jet, who likely weren't even on Mars anymore... there was no doubt that he was presumed dead.

For the assorted suits who had witnessed his collapse and deemed him no longer a threat - he had obviously been considered no longer alive. If they'd thought for a moment that he might rise from the steps, his body would have been riddled by bullets to keep him down.

There was an uncomfortable freedom thrust upon him now. No one aware he existed any longer... no ties to honor or sever... he was just a nobody in an uncaring world with a staggering amount of medical debt adding up more and more as the days dragged on.

He felt more akin to Faye now than ever before. And that made him miss the loud-mouthed harpy. And Jet too, for that matter. Hell, he even missed the dog and the kid.

So he did what no one presumed dead would do in his place... healed up enough that he could steal away from the hospital and the money he owed... and began trying to track down the last known location of his former comrades.

For anyone else this would be an opportunity to start life afresh. To become someone new.

Spike knew better.

He didn't need to become someone new. He didn't need to start fresh. He just wanted to go home, free at last from the ghosts of his past, and begin to truly live with the folks he'd grown to care for so much.

@febuwhump prompt: "I'm doing this because I care about you."

***

"Your father thinks I've lost my mind. He thinks I'm out of line with what I'm doing here... With what I'm letting them try... He's argued himself hoarse about how this is disrespectful to your life, how we aren't being fair to your memory or to our own grief... How we need to just let you go... To bury you and move on... He's trapped in the idea that what happened means you're dead. I love him, but he's just... Wrong. He's so afraid to hope... So afraid to let science give you a chance to breathe again. He thinks it's cruel, what I've consigned you to. Am I mad? I don't feel like it. I don't feel... consumed... or, or, driven... or like I'm spitting in the face of some heartless god. What god would give us you only to rip you away in the dawn of your adult life? You are so young, my darling. You still have your entire life ahead of you, a future impossibly bright to greet with your inexhaustible optimism. You've always been tough and stubborn and brilliant, my child. You deserve to have a shot at making a beautiful life for yourself. I fear this may destroy us, what I am committing to today. But the accident already wrecked us, truthfully. At least this way... Maybe someday... They say you can't hear me, that you won't know I've been here this entire time, desperate to see your eyes open... I don't care how long it takes or how much it costs us. I'll gladly drain our savings. I just wanted you to know... I'm not doing this because I'm crazy. It's not because I have lost sight of reality or have abandoned myself to fantasy - it's not any of the nonsense your father has shouted at me in this very room. I'm doing this because I care about you. Beyond all rhyme or reason. Beyond anything I've ever felt for anyone. I knew when you were born that I'd move heaven and earth for you, my sweet child. So I am pouring everything possible into this desperate chance that you can be revived someday. I love you, Faye, so much. I swear you will get your chance to live."

@febuwhump alternate prompt: immortality

***

He, like the fabled phoenix, had risen from the ashes more times than memory could even recall.

Would such a creature be fated to be trapped under the scrutiny of callous souls and scientific study as he himself has been?

Immortality was his, not theirs, and it drove them mad with envy and anger and urgent speculation.

All their curiosity and all of their endless testing and all of their brutal investigation would not yield them any useful answers.

He, in a fit of rage, made sure the destruction of the complex was complete. All lives accounted for and extinguished. If any had been favored as he had been, well, they would have emerged into the eternal dust storm that plagued the surface of Titan.

No, he was alone. The only true immortal.

And what price had he paid? Bought in blood, his own and that of countless others, that was nothing new in terms of advancement. Secured at the cost of everything that had come before - that, well, that was a tragedy truly. What had he forgotten? Who had he been?

Surprisingly, his mind conjured a few quotes on the matter, perhaps to further rub salt in the wound that would never heal no matter his longevity.

"The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering." Fuck you for that adage, Bruce Lee.

"Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality." Fuck you as well, Emily Dickinson.

That was the pain that pulsed strongest in his heart and left the most bitter taste in his mouth.

Had he loved? Had he been loved? Had that been taken from him?

There was no way to find the answer. He was a shadow of a man, a specter of humanity. He would endure after all else had perished. It was, after all, his plan.

More must suffer for his own agonies. For the beauty of life denied him.

The answer was in the whisper of the butterfly's wings, kissing his cheeks. Each flap echoed in his tormented soul. Were they real? Was he real? Was anything real?

He was a man destined to outlast stars.

But first he must avenge himself and the others who had been experimented on and abandoned. First he must purge the red planet of the undeserving lives thriving there where no life ought to be.

In the end, it would be him and the butterflies.

@febuwhump prompt: "Help them!"

***

Blood splattered against Faye's bare thighs as the bounty, struggling to rise despite the piece of rebar protruding from their stomach, cried out to her desperately.

"Help... them..." The man spluttered, reaching into a pocket with an arm shaking so badly that Faye was frankly astonished he'd been able to access the contents at all.

The photograph he pressed, crumpled, into her hands as she crouched beside him was of a smiling child and a weary looking woman.

"Hey now, don't die on me yet!" Faye exclaimed. "Who are these people? What do they need help with? Hey! Hey mister!"

Shouting at the unfortunate fellow was no use of course. He had slumped back against the framework of the apartment wall that he had accidentally skewered himself on when he slipped during their fight several floors up. His eyes stared vacantly at the unforgiving slate gray sky above, a sky that threatened rain but refused to actually begin soaking the city below.

Faye closed her eyes and clenched her fists, inadvertently further crumpling the photograph before she remembered it with a swear. This was just the worst. Dead bounty, no payout. Some end-of-life plea that now she had to either figure out or forget. Forgetting would, of course, be impossible now that she had the image burned into her retinas of the people in the frame. She had no desire to be haunted by coulda woulda shoulda type regrets.

At least it might not be an impossible task to determine who these strangers were. They knew the identity of the now-dead man and what he was wanted for. They had a visual representation of folks from, likely, his immediate family or most recent decade or so of life at any rate. Ed had worked miracles with less information, frankly.

Pushing herself up, Faye sighed. She cast one last look down at the man and shook her head sadly. It was a shame how often a bounty hunt ended in tragedy. Not just because it meant she was shit outta luck for making a paycheck but... well, it was a loss that was likely avoidable. This poor schmuck could have lived for another couple of decades at least if he hadn't fouled up somewhere in life... and the truly frustrating part was how simple the mistakes could be. How easily a person could become just another bunch of dollar signs to the rest of the world.

It's not like bounties were specifically bad criminals. Well, they were typically bad at being criminals, hence the fact that they were wanted rather than escaping notoriety. But... it was just so irritating that she couldn't go bust down the doors of bribable politicians or skeevy doctors or what-have-you.

More and more lately Faye had begun to wonder if perhaps there was a career change in her future. Fuck the police, fuck the justice system, fuck the bounty system, fuck most of the systems really. Too many lives slipped through the cracks - or, more often, were forced through because the systems weren't designed to protect or assist them. It was all bullshit and Faye was goddamn tired of it.

Perhaps it was time for a clever vigilante to enter the playing field...