Feb 23, 2012 19:57
T H I N G S F A L L A P A R T
T H E C E N T R E C A N N O T H O L D
amascut,
rory williams,
applegate,
rue (hunger games),
hellboy,
annabeth chase,
ann darrow,
logan,
buffy summers,
waco kid,
teja,
veronica mars,
sallie reynolds,
katniss everdeen,
olivia dunham,
doc scurlock,
aziraphael,
mary anne bell,
coyote,
burton guster,
artemis,
yrael,
sameth,
will scarlett,
crowley,
skellig,
mal reynolds,
nick sayre,
felix of vale,
val von doom,
river tam,
anthy himemiya,
liz sherman,
annabelle newfield,
atton rand,
leonard 'bones' mccoy,
puss in boots,
illyria,
enzo matrix,
ava wilson,
thalia grace,
raylan givens,
raven,
tyler marlocke,
destruction,
hermione granger,
jack bauer,
the doctor,
splinter,
sariel rager,
michaelangelo,
kate barlow,
dixie cousins,
ben wade,
claudia donovan,
galadan,
john mccabe,
cal chandler,
moiraine,
michael the archangel
You've done well. You all have; so very well. Thank you. But it's too late. The shields are disintegrating. Galactus and Unicron have battered at them too long and too hard; the looping death of the TARDIS has taken it's toll, and that toll is too high. The centre cannot hold.
They spin slowly into the black hole, one after another, silent in the empty void of space. The TARDIS flickers and blooms one last time, and then winks out, like a candle being snuffed. The two destroyers s t r e t c h away, long and terrible, and then they, too, stutter and are gone ( ... )
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Fuck that.
Cal owes Milliways his life, as literal as it gets. He owes Milliways everything. He's not leaving it. This is the least he can do.
If Milliways needs his life, Milliways can have it.
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(and remember, I will always, always--)
At least Joshua got to tell her he loved her before he got et by an interdimensional space. No one's going to know what the hell happened to her.
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But . . . but they're not winning, and those things are gonna spot the triage space sooner or later, and when they do, the people here who can't defend themselves are going to need fighters who can.
(He has, if not gotten over the shock of being one of those fighters, at least put it firmly aside. He is one of them. Does it even matter why?)
That and it seems cruel to leave Claudia alone right now.
"I heard they were evacuating people into the Lost and Found," he says. "It's probably quieter in there." She doesn't strike him as the type to go for it, but just in case she didn't know - well, now she does.
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"Besides, if I'm going down with this ship, I'm going down with this ship, not in a Lost and Found box."
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But he doesn't disapprove, and besides, Claudia can make her own choices. As he recalls, this is one she's more equipped to make than a lot of people her age; the Warehouse doesn't exactly sound like a safe zone. She's probably had to deal with the fact of her own mortality before.
So he just smiles a little and says,
"Yeah, that's what I thought. It's probably boring in there, anyway. Personally, I'd rather get it over with out here."
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(drink a bit of wine, we both might go tomorrow)
"Anyway, what if someone needs another wormhole or something? I just fixed this thing and I barely know how it works, I dunno if someone else could figure it out."
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Science and technology: not Cal's strong suit. And he's not ashamed to admit it.
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This isn't the same as any price being worth it if it brought Joshua home, even when Claudia knew that price might be her life. This is - there's no goddamn good reason for it, and it sucks, and she can't think of anything else she can do.
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When she puts it that way, it sends a claustrophobic little shiver down his spine. If he'd needed another reason not to head into Lost and Found himself, that would have been the perfect one.
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His powers have been unreliable for hours. He's used up his last potion, and he's still bleeding (though not badly). And to top it off, his sword, the Sol Blade, that he's relied on for years, just broke.
He's known for some time that everything that begins must end. It doesn't make this easy to accept, but he can try. Still, there's no need to hurry his own end, so he makes his way toward an area that looks defended.
(Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wonders what his friends on Weyard will think of his disappearance.)
Eventually he ends up near this same tree, saying nothing, just clutching the pieces of his sword and staring toward the monsters.
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(Still, this is better than hiding in a limbo space, no matter how good he company in the Lost and Found might be. She... she couldn't do that. Nope. Not after what happened to Joshua.)
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"Hi," he says to the sword's owner, summoning up a slight smile. "Pull up a patch of grass."
(The part of him that will always be a politician has shrunk considerably in the last few months, but it won't ever disappear entirely. At least, not until he does.)
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Once he's down, he manages a "Hello."
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His voice is very dry.
The apocalypse is old news by now.
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