[meme] - AU drabble ficlet
It was over. Those the plague hadn't killed before he cured it were depowered. Depowered, disoriented, dispirited in some cases, but the majority smiled easier, walked freer, worried less, and after a brief period of adjustment, went back to their lives, perhaps changed by the experience, but grateful to have their lives.
Or perhaps they were like him. Giving upbeat soundbites to the press corps, appearing with the President to triumphant cheers and wearing carefully coached smiles that were neither too broad nor too slim under eyes that were neither too bright nor too dull, too grim. Perhaps they were like him - slipping smiles with suit and security, drowning success in glass after glass of fantastically expensive single malt.
Something beautiful, dared he think magical, had left the world with the Shanti plague. He had saved their lives, but killed their potential.
Oh, his conscience was clear, his actions unimpeachable by any standard of reckoning. Even the formerly evolved community hailed him a hero.
Yes, his conscience was clear. His actions unimpeachable. By any standard save his own.
His father would've found a cure that saved their powers. His father would've found a way to isolate the retrovirus from the gene sequences it attacked. His father would have saved Shanti. Finally.
On the third night or the thousand, he no longer kept track, the doorman of his Fifth Avenue penthouse announced Monet St. Croix, daughter of some ambassador or other -- one more in the bevy of beauties, male and female, who had sought to share the bed of "our best hope". He had met her...somewhere. It didn't matter. They would talk, exchange faux witty repartee that led to tipsy kisses and from there to mindless, sweat-streak passion amidst silk sheets.
He greeted her with a celebrity smile, which she returned -- with a ringing slap.
"I'm sorry," he said dutifully, proudly not cradling his aching cheek. Most likely he had seduced her fiance. It happened.
"Snap. Out of it, Doctor," she spat, each word a bullet ricocheting inside his skull until the thrum and rattle threatened to sober him - which would be a tragedy.
"Certainly," he answered smoothly, a hint of angry mockery in his tone, but only a hint. "If you will only consent to tell me what it is, I will gladly snap out of it."
"Faugh!" He though she might literally spit then, but instead, she paced, muttering in African accented French he didn't bother to listen to as he turned away to pour her a drink. She apparently needed one as much as he did.
When he held it wordlessly out to her, he sipped his own, more entranced by the spectacle than he was concerned. Monet was, after all, a very beautiful woman, and fury was a good look on her.
"I cannot believe you are our best hope."
He nodded sympathetic understanding. "I've often felt the same way." The media had dubbed him that in the darkest hours of the plague. He'd always hated it.
Monet shot him a mutinous glare - gorgeous, he thought - then grabbed the single malt out of his hand. He considered ducking the likely throw, but she took a sip, then another, and then another, until she finally calmed enough to say, "Fix it," dark, lovely eyes imploring him. "Please. Help us."
Their gazes slid into lock, and the struck chord vibrated -- he didn't think it was an exaggeration to say -- all the way down to his soul.
* * *
She spent the night, and the next, and the next. When she finally left, it was to arrange for the sale of her apartment and the transfer of her things.
It took him thirteen years to crack it -- to find the key to unlocking their powers again. It was gloriously, elegantly simple. It was unspeakably, uneffably complex.
And Monet, his muse, was with him every step of the way.