(LFN/The Stand) At the End of All Things
Title: At the End of All Things
Fandom: La Femme Nikita/The Stand crossover
Author: jackiejlh
Rating: PG-13
Character(s): Madeline, Randall Flagg
Warning(s): implied canon character deaths
Author's Note: WTF brain? I don’t even know. Obscure fandom crossover is obscure. This is what happens when you read The Stand on your breaks at work while trying to work on LFN/FF crossover, I think. Also, my brain has developed an unhealthy obsession with dropping Madeline into other canons and seeing what she does. Lol.
Summary: She’s been having dreams about a man who she doesn’t know and yet who seems oddly familiar, calling her to the west.
At the End of All Things
The smell is awful, if she thinks about it too much. Truth be told, she doesn't often think about it. It's easier to ignore it, to let her eyes slide past the bodies of people she didn't really know and doesn't care to remember as she drifts through Section Six like a ghost.
No, Madeline insists, not a ghost.
Not yet.
Soon though, she thinks. She's always prided herself on being a survivor, but just now she's not sure her resiliency is something to be celebrated. It feels like she’s been alone for such a long time....
"Come home," Paul had said just ten days ago, when the first inklings of the super-flu started circulating in the US government rumor mills. "I don't want you half a world away right now. If you catch it-"
"I probably already have," she'd interrupted, and he'd stopped short, his eyes wide on the monitor. "Two of the operatives I was working with last evening are already ill. I'm not coming back to One just to spread it further." Her voice hadn't wavered or changed at all with the words; she hadn't been afraid to die.
He'd looked as though she'd slapped him, and all of the color had drained out of his face. "Madeline..." he'd started, his voice tight with pain and fear of losing her, and she'd only offered him a soft smile before saying, "I have work to do," and signing off.
After that, they'd only spoken once. Paul's face had been drawn and tired-looking as he'd recounted the damage, the causalities already suffered and those expected to occur within the coming days. She hadn't been sick after all, but he had, and she'd known, in a way, that she'd never see him again.
She hasn't heard from One in days. She hasn't heard from anyone. The American prairie stretches around Section Six like a desert, uninviting and lonely, and the only other survivor of the flu in Six shot himself five days ago. He wasn’t the only one to choose that route, but he was the only healthy person to do so, and she hates him a little for it. Madeline’s never particularly craved the company of other people, but the unending silence and the pleading, agony-lined faces of the dead are beginning to weigh on her. If she is to survive this, she thinks, she’ll need to leave soon. She’ll go insane here, she worries.
Perhaps she already has.
She’s been having dreams. Dream after dream after dream, every night, every time she closes her eyes, always the same thing and yet different. A man who she doesn’t know and yet who seems oddly familiar, calling her to the west. The same hillside, the same too-strong wind and bright stars, but the conversation changes.
“I could use your help,” he says sometimes. “Things aren’t coming together as quickly as I’d like. You can help with that. You’re amazingly capable, Madeline. One of my best, if not the very best. You’d be an asset here. You’re wasting your time, lurking around that abandoned building like a wraith.”
Sometimes she argues with him. “It’s not abandoned if I haven’t left yet,” she told him once, just to be contrary. She misses having people to prove wrong, in a way.
He’d gotten angry, of course. He almost always walks away angry.
“I don’t take orders well, I suppose,” she’s told him more than once, and he never hesitates to call her on that lie. The truth is, Madeline has never really minded following orders-provided they were orders worth following-and she’s always been more comfortable having someone to support and push toward success than with being in charge herself. It’s just that she’s incredibly particular about just who she’ll follow loyally and unconditionally; so far, the list has stopped at one, and she doesn’t see any reason to add to it. Unconditional loyalty is something she thinks-no, she knows-she’ll do better without. She really shouldn’t have allowed it the first time around, but circumstances had been… different then.
Or maybe it’s just that she’d been different then.
Everything is different now. Everything. She’s stranded thousands of miles from home, and One really isn’t a home anymore, but simply a cold, lonely, abandoned shell. Truly abandoned, for no one is left there. No one that she knows of, anyway. She can’t decide whether or not it’s a good thing that she wasn’t there to see her work, her life, her sanctuary of sorts, fall into ruins in the space of ten days.
“I’m growing tired of this game, Madeline,” the man in her dreams tells her often. “Come to me, where you belong. Your place is with us now.”
“I’ll decide where my place should be,” she replies, as always.
“We’re waiting for you in Las Vegas. I’m waiting for you,” he presses, and she laughs.
“The roads are blocked. Unless you’re planning to send a helicopter, I think you may have to make do without me.”
And as usual, he glares at her. “Walk. Ride a bike. Crawl, if you must. I don’t care how you get here, just do it. Everyone else is. You’ll meet them along the way, if you hurry.” And he sidles up behind her, his fingers ghosting along her shoulders and down her arms. His touch is like ice, and it turns her stomach and sends an involuntary shiver down her spine. “You wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.”
“You’re not real,” she answers simply, shrugging away from his hands. “I’m not obeying orders given in a dream. If you want me there so badly, come here and tell me yourself.”
He never comes, of course. And why would he, when he’s not a real man? He doesn’t have a name, she’s not even entirely sure he has eyes-that sounds insane, she knows, but then, maybe it is. Maybe she is. She only knows that despite having this dream nightly, she can never remember his face later, and people in dreams don’t necessarily need to have eyes, she concedes, so maybe it’s simply that he doesn’t.
But dream or not, real or not, eyes or not, he has a point. If her mind is creating imaginary companions to keep her from completely losing herself in her horrific surroundings, then perhaps leaving would not be amiss. She can outfit herself with clothes from Six’s mission Closet, arm herself and pack supplies, and then just go… somewhere. Anywhere.
West wouldn’t be a bad choice, she admits. East is pointless because it’d be too much like going back, and if life has taught her nothing else, it has proven time and again that one can never go back. South would be too hot for comfort without modern conveniences, and north would take her toward places she’s spent her entire adult life avoiding. If even her subconscious is urging her west… well, it’s a place to start, anyway.
Settling into bed, she decides for certain, Yes, I’ll go west. And why not? She has to go somewhere.
“Hurry,” the man tells her the minute her eyes are closed. “Rest now, and in the morning, you must hurry. There is much work to be done, and it falls to you to make sure it is done correctly and efficiently.”
“I didn’t say I was coming to you,” she points out, and he gives her a knowing smile that seems to chill her blood even as it offends her.
“You will. This is where you belong.”
She rolls her eyes and walks away into the dark countryside of her dream, but as she turns her back on him, she knows that in the end, she’ll find her way to Las Vegas. To him, if he's real and actually there waiting for her. What else can she possibly do? Section life may have suited Madeline perfectly, but it has left her ill-equipped to be part of the ignorant, uninformed masses. Somehow she knows that the very parts of her that the world abhors, the parts of her that Section allowed her to use freely because it suited their purposes, are also the parts of her that this man treasures most. The parts he not only needs, but wants.
She needs a purpose, a reason to keep surviving, and he will give her one, if he's really there. Perhaps it will even be one worthy of her attention. Worthy of her loyalty.
Madeline wakes up long before dawn, and with a sudden certainty, she climbs out of bed and heads straight for the Closet, grabbing suitable clothes by the handful before heading toward the kitchens. She doesn't pause to let herself consider that she's planning to travel across the country on foot based on the demands of an imaginary man. She can't, for if she does, then what does she have left?
Hurry, his words echo in her mind. Hurry. You must hurry.
And so she does.
Fandom: La Femme Nikita/The Stand crossover
Author: jackiejlh
Rating: PG-13
Character(s): Madeline, Randall Flagg
Warning(s): implied canon character deaths
Author's Note: WTF brain? I don’t even know. Obscure fandom crossover is obscure. This is what happens when you read The Stand on your breaks at work while trying to work on LFN/FF crossover, I think. Also, my brain has developed an unhealthy obsession with dropping Madeline into other canons and seeing what she does. Lol.
Summary: She’s been having dreams about a man who she doesn’t know and yet who seems oddly familiar, calling her to the west.
At the End of All Things
The smell is awful, if she thinks about it too much. Truth be told, she doesn't often think about it. It's easier to ignore it, to let her eyes slide past the bodies of people she didn't really know and doesn't care to remember as she drifts through Section Six like a ghost.
No, Madeline insists, not a ghost.
Not yet.
Soon though, she thinks. She's always prided herself on being a survivor, but just now she's not sure her resiliency is something to be celebrated. It feels like she’s been alone for such a long time....
"Come home," Paul had said just ten days ago, when the first inklings of the super-flu started circulating in the US government rumor mills. "I don't want you half a world away right now. If you catch it-"
"I probably already have," she'd interrupted, and he'd stopped short, his eyes wide on the monitor. "Two of the operatives I was working with last evening are already ill. I'm not coming back to One just to spread it further." Her voice hadn't wavered or changed at all with the words; she hadn't been afraid to die.
He'd looked as though she'd slapped him, and all of the color had drained out of his face. "Madeline..." he'd started, his voice tight with pain and fear of losing her, and she'd only offered him a soft smile before saying, "I have work to do," and signing off.
After that, they'd only spoken once. Paul's face had been drawn and tired-looking as he'd recounted the damage, the causalities already suffered and those expected to occur within the coming days. She hadn't been sick after all, but he had, and she'd known, in a way, that she'd never see him again.
She hasn't heard from One in days. She hasn't heard from anyone. The American prairie stretches around Section Six like a desert, uninviting and lonely, and the only other survivor of the flu in Six shot himself five days ago. He wasn’t the only one to choose that route, but he was the only healthy person to do so, and she hates him a little for it. Madeline’s never particularly craved the company of other people, but the unending silence and the pleading, agony-lined faces of the dead are beginning to weigh on her. If she is to survive this, she thinks, she’ll need to leave soon. She’ll go insane here, she worries.
Perhaps she already has.
She’s been having dreams. Dream after dream after dream, every night, every time she closes her eyes, always the same thing and yet different. A man who she doesn’t know and yet who seems oddly familiar, calling her to the west. The same hillside, the same too-strong wind and bright stars, but the conversation changes.
“I could use your help,” he says sometimes. “Things aren’t coming together as quickly as I’d like. You can help with that. You’re amazingly capable, Madeline. One of my best, if not the very best. You’d be an asset here. You’re wasting your time, lurking around that abandoned building like a wraith.”
Sometimes she argues with him. “It’s not abandoned if I haven’t left yet,” she told him once, just to be contrary. She misses having people to prove wrong, in a way.
He’d gotten angry, of course. He almost always walks away angry.
“I don’t take orders well, I suppose,” she’s told him more than once, and he never hesitates to call her on that lie. The truth is, Madeline has never really minded following orders-provided they were orders worth following-and she’s always been more comfortable having someone to support and push toward success than with being in charge herself. It’s just that she’s incredibly particular about just who she’ll follow loyally and unconditionally; so far, the list has stopped at one, and she doesn’t see any reason to add to it. Unconditional loyalty is something she thinks-no, she knows-she’ll do better without. She really shouldn’t have allowed it the first time around, but circumstances had been… different then.
Or maybe it’s just that she’d been different then.
Everything is different now. Everything. She’s stranded thousands of miles from home, and One really isn’t a home anymore, but simply a cold, lonely, abandoned shell. Truly abandoned, for no one is left there. No one that she knows of, anyway. She can’t decide whether or not it’s a good thing that she wasn’t there to see her work, her life, her sanctuary of sorts, fall into ruins in the space of ten days.
“I’m growing tired of this game, Madeline,” the man in her dreams tells her often. “Come to me, where you belong. Your place is with us now.”
“I’ll decide where my place should be,” she replies, as always.
“We’re waiting for you in Las Vegas. I’m waiting for you,” he presses, and she laughs.
“The roads are blocked. Unless you’re planning to send a helicopter, I think you may have to make do without me.”
And as usual, he glares at her. “Walk. Ride a bike. Crawl, if you must. I don’t care how you get here, just do it. Everyone else is. You’ll meet them along the way, if you hurry.” And he sidles up behind her, his fingers ghosting along her shoulders and down her arms. His touch is like ice, and it turns her stomach and sends an involuntary shiver down her spine. “You wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.”
“You’re not real,” she answers simply, shrugging away from his hands. “I’m not obeying orders given in a dream. If you want me there so badly, come here and tell me yourself.”
He never comes, of course. And why would he, when he’s not a real man? He doesn’t have a name, she’s not even entirely sure he has eyes-that sounds insane, she knows, but then, maybe it is. Maybe she is. She only knows that despite having this dream nightly, she can never remember his face later, and people in dreams don’t necessarily need to have eyes, she concedes, so maybe it’s simply that he doesn’t.
But dream or not, real or not, eyes or not, he has a point. If her mind is creating imaginary companions to keep her from completely losing herself in her horrific surroundings, then perhaps leaving would not be amiss. She can outfit herself with clothes from Six’s mission Closet, arm herself and pack supplies, and then just go… somewhere. Anywhere.
West wouldn’t be a bad choice, she admits. East is pointless because it’d be too much like going back, and if life has taught her nothing else, it has proven time and again that one can never go back. South would be too hot for comfort without modern conveniences, and north would take her toward places she’s spent her entire adult life avoiding. If even her subconscious is urging her west… well, it’s a place to start, anyway.
Settling into bed, she decides for certain, Yes, I’ll go west. And why not? She has to go somewhere.
“Hurry,” the man tells her the minute her eyes are closed. “Rest now, and in the morning, you must hurry. There is much work to be done, and it falls to you to make sure it is done correctly and efficiently.”
“I didn’t say I was coming to you,” she points out, and he gives her a knowing smile that seems to chill her blood even as it offends her.
“You will. This is where you belong.”
She rolls her eyes and walks away into the dark countryside of her dream, but as she turns her back on him, she knows that in the end, she’ll find her way to Las Vegas. To him, if he's real and actually there waiting for her. What else can she possibly do? Section life may have suited Madeline perfectly, but it has left her ill-equipped to be part of the ignorant, uninformed masses. Somehow she knows that the very parts of her that the world abhors, the parts of her that Section allowed her to use freely because it suited their purposes, are also the parts of her that this man treasures most. The parts he not only needs, but wants.
She needs a purpose, a reason to keep surviving, and he will give her one, if he's really there. Perhaps it will even be one worthy of her attention. Worthy of her loyalty.
Madeline wakes up long before dawn, and with a sudden certainty, she climbs out of bed and heads straight for the Closet, grabbing suitable clothes by the handful before heading toward the kitchens. She doesn't pause to let herself consider that she's planning to travel across the country on foot based on the demands of an imaginary man. She can't, for if she does, then what does she have left?
Hurry, his words echo in her mind. Hurry. You must hurry.
And so she does.