PWD #06: Going Down To Die
Going Down To Die
Summary: Dream Sequence: Sera and Simon walk down a dusty highway…
Date: 30/12/2012 (OOC Date)
Related Logs: None
Noble Sera 
Dreamscape
A long, empty stretch of highway. A generous description for the road, considering the way that it was cracked and pitted, the black asphalt turned a dull brown from who knows how many years of dusty settling over it, ground in by tires whose black rubber fared no better in the face of ubiquitous grime and grit…
Dec 30, 2004


A long, empty stretch of highway. A generous description for the road, considering the way that it was cracked and pitted, the black asphalt turned a dull brown from who knows how many years of dusty settling over it, ground in by tires whose black rubber fared no better in the face of ubiquitous grime and grit. The only sign of life along the road: a single, gnarled tree, its trunk bent like the back of an old, haggard woman, its bark as cracked and wrinkled as her ancient face. The leaves tried to cling to it. It was useless. Only a few managed to hold on, flapping in the face of a dry, angry wind trying to snatch them from the arms of their grandmother. Underneath it? A lone figure, curled in on herself, head bowed and buried in her knees. A figure there so long, the dust was beginning to settle in a fine layer over her, too.

Over the sound of the whispering wind and sighed dust comes a new sound, that of a dark shadow in the distance rising over the horizon. Far down the road, like a pinprick of black dabbed onto an old, dusty painting, the old, black muscle car gasps the last of its fuel. Like everything on the highway, the car is cracked and dusty, always within a hair's breadth of succumbing to a death beneath the sweltering heat.

Entire minutes pass until the vehicle's tires wheeze their last death rattle and the endless, horizontal plane no longer allows the weight of the vehicle to roll it forward. With a soft, puff of dust, the door opens and groans against the rust in its joints. Black boots beneath ravaged blue-jeans step out to reveal the tall, red-headed form of Simon Noble wearing a simple, black tee shirt over his torso and a dark pair of sunglasses. Tattoos already starting to bake beneath the burning sky, he starts his first few steps down the highway.

"Sera." He says to her, eyes turning towards the tree. He extends a hand. "Not like this. Not yet. Not here."

Folded arms part, falling limply to her sides. Sera's head peels off of her knees, squinting up underneath the harsh glare of a boiling red sun. Her tears have long since dried on her cheeks, leaving pale trails of clean skin underneath a splotches of brown that have settled into the pores of her skin the way its settled into the pits of the road. Dry, cracked lips part, but no sound comes out — only a rattling. She's cried her eyes red and bloodshot; she's sobbed her voice away. There's a swallow, but still nothing.

Recognition doesn't dawn in her eyes. Not right away. It's too long, before her brows settles and relief touches her face.

One hand, which had dropped so listlessly at her side, reaches up. The skin scratches like sandpaper, whipped rough and raw by the wind. Fingers curl and she begins to pull herself up slowly, with a heavy, groaning weight that threatens to pull him down instead, before she finally makes it up to her feet. She totters there, like one of the leaves blowing in the wind.

He looks back towards the V-44 Auruoch, eyes scanning over it as if inspecting the most recent lamb fallen behind for the wolves to feast upon. With its door left open and waves of heat roiling off of its hood, he lets out a quiet sigh and turns his gaze back to her. The sand left behind from her hand brushes against his palm, which he turns skyward. A whisp of overheated air rolls the last bit of grit away, sending it towards the unknown.

His head tilts, eyes tracing the stains from her tears on her face and the pale cracks where her lips have split and gone dry. He reaches out to her, his moist, feverish fingers wrapping around her wrist. Without so much as a question, he tugs her to follow along beside him.

"We've gotta keep going." He says, though the tone of his voice is devoid of any hope. His actions are automatic. They're dying and he knows it, yet unlike his beloved car he refuses to give in yet. "Just…don't stop."

Sera shields her eyes from the sun with one raised hand, brought to rest on her brow. It's a pause, a halt — a moment of sweet relief in that tiny patch of shade. It's a moment that doesn't last. There's nothing for her gaze to settle on as she stares ahead until the end of the highway becomes a pinpoint on the horizon. No rocks. No people. No trees. Nowhere to stop or to rest. No hope.

"I know," she whispers horsely, finally managing to wring those two lonely syllables out of her throat. They can't go back. There's no other choice but to keep going, to forge ahead on foot.

The first step is the hardest, one accompanied by a wince of pain. With feet already blistered, her steps are a slow, arching shuffle. She doesn't wait for him to catch up. She doesn't need to. Her fingers dig in, dragging him forward with her. Aeons would pass faster.

Her fingers press into his tendons, forcing a sigh from his lips at her sudden, purposeful strength. His arm tugs hard in its socket, and he's forced to be dragged along for the first step by the shorter woman. For those first steps, all that can be heard is the sound of asphalt scraping beneath his boots and the brush of rock and sand beneath Sera's bleeding heels as each step distubs the ground beneath.

No clouds. No birds. No water. The sky itself becomes their captor, and the only obvious path is the one that lies behead. The sun, at its peak, doesn't move from its position as the minutes, or possibly hours, pass. Sweat beads down the back of Simon's neck, and his eyes narrow tightly to keep out the intense, bright light out of them. But something starts to form on the horizon ahead of them. Through the watery fog of the mirage, he makes out the outline of a figure.

"Sera…" He whispers, his voice growing hoarse. His fingers dig into her wrist to get her attention.

There's a smile that slowly comes to her parched lips; they crack as it spreads, red lines appearing against the flaking white skin. It's the smile of of someone with death hovering above them, who has accepted their fate, embraced it with arms wide-open. Or that of a madwoman, all traces of reality seared out of her mind.

"Simon." There's a heartbeat, or maybe an hour. "Simon." And another. "It's alright." Her reassurance - it's said with a cat-eyed blink, spoken like a desperate prayer. No. She isn't frightened anymore.

Shaken free from his stare, the figure in the mirage leaves his gaze as he flinches and looks down to Sera. A bead of sweat rolls down from the center of his forehead until it falls off of his eyelash. He looks down to her pale lips and shakes his head, denying that this will be their fate. You're going to become like her, Simon. Dry. "No." He shakes his head, defiantly lowering his brows to her. "Just…another hill." What hills, Simon? There are no hills. There is nothing…

Brushing the tattooed back of his left hand over his forehead, he tugs Sera's arm forward, daring to risk a little more to their pace. "Someone's up there. They can help."

"It's alright." No. Not a prayer — a mantra. Whispered to the gods enough times, it may be true. But there are no gods here. Only the road. And them. And the figure in the distance. "It's alright, Simon." Untrue. Untrue, untrue, untrue. It's as though the words echo up from the earth itself, every time Sera's feet slap against the asphalt burning beneath them. Waves of heat rise up off it, shimmering. Sizzling.

Her feet carry them forward, though they are raw and bleeding. Sera's white shirt clings to her, damp in patches, glued to her skin. She doesn't stop. He said don't stop.

But they're not alone. Not anymore. A woman dressed in grey, first a spot in the distance, grows. Looms, somehow, though she's so very small. The loose fabric of her gown whips in the wind, long sheets of it slipping across the empty sky like stormclouds running forward. A hollow smile stetches across her face as the two travelers approach. A red-headed man. And her granddaughter. "It's alright," she echoes back to them. Her voice is a whisper. It rolls like thunder. "The river drowns all thirst."

"River. There's a river up ahead." He says, still hydrated enough to be able to spare the words. They sound like saltwater poured over sandpaper as they roll off of the tongue. "She knows the way. Just don't sto—"

Simon's words catch in his throat as the woman in gray up ahead moves just enough to reveal another figure behind her. Salt and pepper hair brushes with the wind over a face that was once young and handsome but has since been worn with time with worry lines and blotched skin. His black, button-up shirt is torn in places, and when the wind whips, the back of the shirt billows like a parachute. "Dad?"

"Yes. Dead," comes the elderly woman's reply. Did she mishear him? No. No. She couldn't have. The sound carries here — echoes, though there are no walls for it to rebound from.

Peace. There is peace slowly smoothing Sera's glistening face. It's drained of color. It's gone white, underneath the grime and the dirty. It should be red under the hatred of the sun. There is no shade. There's no relief. But yet it's there in the crinkling of her eyes, in the upturned corners of her mouth. "It's alright. They'll show us the way. We'll walk together." Of course they know they way. Of course they do. There's only one path.

It stretches out ahead of them, lined with pinpoints of black and grey that stand out as sharp as broken glass on the barren road. Pinpoints. People. Waiting, one by one, to be picked up along the highway.

The sheer number of people that are falling into line behind them are overwhelming. Some of the faces Simon knows, others he doesn't, but as the numbers delve from the tens to the dozens, he cannot help but to crane his head dreamily to take in their faces. "That's my mother. My father. My uncle, I haven't seen him since before I graduated." Simon's words come out flatly as the mass of people continue down the road. Their footfalls form a muted wall of sound around them, and the whispers of their voices lull into a din.

Weakening, the sweat from Simon's pores now turns into white stains that streak down his neck and his cheeks. His back heaves, taking in long, slow breathes as he suffers alongside her. He turns his head and his lips crack. A small well of blood rolls down his chin. "I know these people."

"I know them, too." Sera's voice is an even monotone. Emotionless. Devoid of life, like whatever hell this must be.

They are all going down to die. The words aren't spoken. They fall from no one's lips. Yet the thought echoes. It drowns the mind. "It's alright. We'll show them the way." The words come from Sera, not from the grey-haired, grey-robed woman walking along at her side. Her grandmother is not leading them anymore. She is not a a guide. She is a companion. Keeping an even pace, standing with them, shoulder to shoulder. Like his father is, walking along at his side. The two soldiers and their two companions — they are shepherding the others, now. They are walking ahead of them all.

The sound reaches them. The sight never does. Water — rushing over rocks, rolling along the riverbanks, splashing over its sides. It calls in the distance, low and quiet. Muffled, as though behind a wall. Unseen, though there's no veil.

Water. Simon, you can save them. You can save her. All they need is water. Simon thinks to himself, and suddenly the world doesn't seem so small. The landscape is changing. Something is progressing for the two of them and their companions. Once again, Simon squeezes Sera's hand and urges them forward, and the weakness in his knees nearly sends him stumbling. The two of them shuffle along, nearly dead in a sea of gray-glad bodies. They are the parade of the dead and dying.

"Show them the way to the water." Simon asks, lifting his eyes from the pavement to the way ahead. His father, to his side, so much more pale and gaunt than he once remembered, stares forward with his rapidly drying, dessicated eyes. Simon begins to feel fear once more.

"Sera? Sera, we should turn around. Something's wrong…"

She stops. She does not look back. There is nothing behind them but a legion. There's nothing to go back to but fire and a red sky.

The burning heat was fading. Slipping away. It was grey. Everything was grey. Is grey. The sky. The stones. The color of the dust staining their skin and clothes — it too has been leeched away. It is grey. The cliff rising on the horizon. It too is grey, a mass of grey stone, a monolith. A tower, standing alone.

"I can carry you." No, she couldn't. She could barely move when he found her, could hardly support her own weight on the already bloodied soles of her feet. Her hand slides from his, slips away. It's a hollow eternity before it's pressed against his back, before she leans into him as though they were both intoxicated. "It's alright. I can carry you the rest of the way." No, she can't. But the river. She can hear it.

"No, something's wrong…" He repeats, urged forward by the hand on his back. He lifts his arm and wraps it around Sera's shoulders, tugging her in close against him to support her weight. She's far weaker than he is, at least he seems to think so. "…they're all goona die, Sera. We're gonna die. I'm not ready yet."

Drawn forward by the sound of the rushing water, the flood of bodies behind them no longer needs to be directed. They're all moving towards the cliff before them. Though he tries to stop, Simon is bumped forward by a red-headed female behind him. Simon turns to look over his shoulder to see the dried eyes of his mother, and his feeling of dread deepens. His back is bumped once again, and he starts forward once more.

"They're all already dead." She says this with alarming calm. And it's true. They are. Her grandmother. Her father. Her brother. Old Mike, who died down in the mines with them. Angie, from that accident in high school. She knows their faces. She knows them well. It's almost a comfort, to see them again.

Her grandmother's hand liftsto rest on her cheek, the old woman's body shielding them, at least in part, from the rush of the crowd all moving as one towards the black hole in the rockface — towards the sweet sound of water. The fingers were weathered. Wrinkled. Bony. Cold. "Sera," she says softly. But it wasn't her voice. It was Martus's voice. Her son's voice. Sera's father's voice. It was her lips moving. The words were not her own. Coming, forced, out of a foreign body. Disjointed. Mismatched. "Sera. Sera, you need to remember."

She was not paying attention. For the first time, she looked back. Her eyes were not on the people slipping past them, moving forward. They were on the ones coming up behind. Familiar faces, but something was wrong. Something she couldn't quite recognize, but it burrowed down into her brain like a drill, placing an echo of Simon's fear way, way down deep in the pit of her thoughts….

"Simon. Simon!" Panic. "Some of them are stil alive."

The panic in Sera's voice gives wings to Simon's own fears, and he starts to thrash out against the wave of bodies pressing against them. He ignores the whisperings of her grandmother, unable to understand what she's saying, in favor of trying to get control of the situation. She's right. They're alive. They're all going to die He thinks, and in response he immediately turns to press his shoulder into his father's cold COLD? chest. His feet dig into the gravel as the weight of the crowd skids him backwards as he tries to bar his mother and father from stepping forward.

"Sera! FRAK! Sera don't—" He growls and reaches out, grabbing her wrist as hard as he can. "PUSH!"

She was speaking. The old woman was still speaking, in the gruff voice of a hard-laboring man. The words were lost. Drowned out. The message, whatever it was, was missed, washed away by absolute terror. It tasted like bile, sick and bitter, rising up in the back of the throat. Still alive. Some of them were still alive.

Stop. Stop. Stop, stop, stop. STOP.

The flourescent overhead light standard to all military bunks. It wasn't red, like that hateful sun. It was white. White and cold. Stinging the eyes as they opened. There was no river. No desert. No dust. Just a tangle of sheets wrapped in knots, locked aroun legs and ankles like shackles — totally soaked through with sweat.

"…Frak….," a single word falling, an exhaled whisper of relief.

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