sunday_reveries It may be when we no longer know...
Title: The Real Journey
Characters: Lucky Spencer with Lena and Sonny and the Crowbar crew vaguely mentioned.
Note: Written for a prompt at sunday_reveries, the best prompt comm evar. The quote that's listed first is the amazing, amazing prompt that inspired this happier piece. :)
It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey.
--Wendell Berry
It takes a change in universe to create a real change.
Lucky Spencer had lost everything like countless wanderers that came before him when he landed in Chicago against any choice of his own. Months before he had fallen through the Rift, he had lost so much, and what fell through the Rift was not Lucky Spencer at his best. It was the scraped out remains of various pieces that were held together by some need to survive and not an intensity and enjoyment of life.
The family that he started to build had crumbled in front of him in the face of an affair that he walked in on, that had been going on for months.
He fell into a drunken stupor. All the hatred, bitterness, and anger within him that could be twisted into something terrifying had been twisted into something terrifying inside of him by his pain, by alcohol which had its own dark, tight hold over his heart.
You don't do this to someone you love.
When your fiancée is nailing your brother that goes way, way past wrong.
It was created too by his love which died so quickly, died like it had been strangled slowly, died in the most painful way that love has ever died for Lucky. He looked at the woman that he had planned to marry, that held his heart in her hands and felt sick, felt like he was being stabbed.
I loved her. I mean, I would just look at her and know that she was mine. My heart would just ache...it was a good ache. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff, looking at the ocean. Frighteningly beautiful. Now all the good is gone and all that's left is just the ache.
The alcohol drove him to frightening places. It unleashed something within him that he hadn't realized was always there. It's a darkness, a monster that began to eat away at anything inside of him that had been good. He held a man against the counter with a gun against his head for no reason, for no good reason.
At that time, it was the alcohol that was all that made the pain bearable. It had a hold on him, and it always will. There will never be a time when a part of him does not want to down a shot or pop a pill. It's the life of an addict, and every time it will be a fight for him to deny the urge.
Nothing could be farther from his mind at the present moment. Lena walks beside him on the sidewalk of Chicago in her combat boots and she sends him a smile that lights up her face. The smile that he returns to her comes easily, and he tells her that she did a nice job back there, and she says, You didn't do such a bad job yourself, Officer Spencer.
He has in his pocket a USB drive with information on it that will save some lives. They had to steal. They had to break into private property and pretend to be someone that they weren't.
Before he fell through the Rift, he was a police officer in a town that was run by the mob. He had tried at that time in a vain attempt to become nothing like his father who was the ultimate conman to play it all straight by the book.
It would drive him crazy to think that there would come a time where he would break so many laws and feel good about it.. Nothing has ever felt more right, more like he was actually helping people than working for Sonny, working beside Lena.
They make it to the Crowbar, and they are congratulated by their family. It is nothing like the family that he had tried to build for himself, that he had thought that he needed. It wasn't until that had all been stripped away from him that he discovered a family that's filled with misfits and demons and angels and conmen and criminals, that he discovered a family that finally feels real to him.
Sonny stands on the other side of the bar, handing out drinks to everyone as they cheer together.
He turns to Lucky then who has been quiet against the bar this whole time, observing like a temporary outsider that's a part of the group. "Hey, Spencer, you want a drink?"
Lucky looks away from the group to Sonny, and he almost smiles as if it's as easy as that. "No thanks. I'm good."
And he turns his attention back to what's become his family, to his life which finally feels like living again. He rests the USB drive on the bar in front of Sonny who takes it and clasps his shoulder, and Lucky catches Lena's gaze who is across the room with Zoe. He catches her gaze, and he smiles.
His chest aches but it's in that good way, the good way that he thought had been killed by the monster.
His heart aches with it, and it's good.
Characters: Lucky Spencer with Lena and Sonny and the Crowbar crew vaguely mentioned.
Note: Written for a prompt at sunday_reveries, the best prompt comm evar. The quote that's listed first is the amazing, amazing prompt that inspired this happier piece. :)
It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey.
--Wendell Berry
It takes a change in universe to create a real change.
Lucky Spencer had lost everything like countless wanderers that came before him when he landed in Chicago against any choice of his own. Months before he had fallen through the Rift, he had lost so much, and what fell through the Rift was not Lucky Spencer at his best. It was the scraped out remains of various pieces that were held together by some need to survive and not an intensity and enjoyment of life.
The family that he started to build had crumbled in front of him in the face of an affair that he walked in on, that had been going on for months.
He fell into a drunken stupor. All the hatred, bitterness, and anger within him that could be twisted into something terrifying had been twisted into something terrifying inside of him by his pain, by alcohol which had its own dark, tight hold over his heart.
You don't do this to someone you love.
When your fiancée is nailing your brother that goes way, way past wrong.
It was created too by his love which died so quickly, died like it had been strangled slowly, died in the most painful way that love has ever died for Lucky. He looked at the woman that he had planned to marry, that held his heart in her hands and felt sick, felt like he was being stabbed.
I loved her. I mean, I would just look at her and know that she was mine. My heart would just ache...it was a good ache. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff, looking at the ocean. Frighteningly beautiful. Now all the good is gone and all that's left is just the ache.
The alcohol drove him to frightening places. It unleashed something within him that he hadn't realized was always there. It's a darkness, a monster that began to eat away at anything inside of him that had been good. He held a man against the counter with a gun against his head for no reason, for no good reason.
At that time, it was the alcohol that was all that made the pain bearable. It had a hold on him, and it always will. There will never be a time when a part of him does not want to down a shot or pop a pill. It's the life of an addict, and every time it will be a fight for him to deny the urge.
Nothing could be farther from his mind at the present moment. Lena walks beside him on the sidewalk of Chicago in her combat boots and she sends him a smile that lights up her face. The smile that he returns to her comes easily, and he tells her that she did a nice job back there, and she says, You didn't do such a bad job yourself, Officer Spencer.
He has in his pocket a USB drive with information on it that will save some lives. They had to steal. They had to break into private property and pretend to be someone that they weren't.
Before he fell through the Rift, he was a police officer in a town that was run by the mob. He had tried at that time in a vain attempt to become nothing like his father who was the ultimate conman to play it all straight by the book.
It would drive him crazy to think that there would come a time where he would break so many laws and feel good about it.. Nothing has ever felt more right, more like he was actually helping people than working for Sonny, working beside Lena.
They make it to the Crowbar, and they are congratulated by their family. It is nothing like the family that he had tried to build for himself, that he had thought that he needed. It wasn't until that had all been stripped away from him that he discovered a family that's filled with misfits and demons and angels and conmen and criminals, that he discovered a family that finally feels real to him.
Sonny stands on the other side of the bar, handing out drinks to everyone as they cheer together.
He turns to Lucky then who has been quiet against the bar this whole time, observing like a temporary outsider that's a part of the group. "Hey, Spencer, you want a drink?"
Lucky looks away from the group to Sonny, and he almost smiles as if it's as easy as that. "No thanks. I'm good."
And he turns his attention back to what's become his family, to his life which finally feels like living again. He rests the USB drive on the bar in front of Sonny who takes it and clasps his shoulder, and Lucky catches Lena's gaze who is across the room with Zoe. He catches her gaze, and he smiles.
His chest aches but it's in that good way, the good way that he thought had been killed by the monster.
His heart aches with it, and it's good.