lucetilogs | (no subject)

Who:

nobodyspoke
What: Three paranoid spies wake up in Luceti, unaware of the change to their location.
When: September 13th, day
Where: Battle Dome
Summary:
Rating: Preemptively R for adult themes and language... mostly language

"You bloody fool."

They hadn't parted on the best of terms last night, he and Kim. Guy and Donald had been pleased, but Kim... That look, that tone. He didn't want to think about it today, didn't want to talk about it. Which, well, Anthony Blunt rarely "talked about" anything.

But something was wrong. As the haze of last night's drinking wore off (for he had drank a lot, though not in celebration), he was aware of cold metal under his arm and side. He noticed an ache in his back. His head, he might have understood, but... He knew he'd fallen asleep in his bed last night.

When his eyes opened to a dim metal room, his blood froze in his veins. Only half aware of the sleeping man beside him, he reached out, securing a firm hand over the shoulder and shaking.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A small smile from Kim. Oh his dear friends, what would he do without them? He took the aid without complaint though he would have insisted he were fine normally. It was a comfort to be had, for now.

"Come on then."

Around and around they went, till they came to an extension to the hallway leading to a single set of large doors.

"...Suppose that's our way out?"

It was wholly suspicious.

"Or into more trouble."

But it was a chance that had to be taken. What other choice did they have? He released Kim's arm, which he had kept a hand on, to stride forward, once more in the lead.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Nothing else to be done. He put a hand on the door to the left, turned the handle, and pushed. It opened without complaint, and he closed his eyes, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Nothing happened. Nothing at all.

Guy looked between his two friends, taking up Kim's arm in lieu of Anthony's being gone. He hadn't let go of Kim's hand yet, nor would he. A moment of pause and he could hardly stand it. Standing, waiting, expecting the worst was tearing at his nerves as much as the whole bloody situation.

"Is this... freedom?"

He would walk out the door regardless of whether it was or not, but he needed to know that they would follow.

A deep breath. He wouldn't shake, he would not. Not while Guy was half-holding him up. "Only one way to find out."

Again Kim moved - heedless of the thought that perhaps Guy would not want to move forward. But some delightfully abstract part of him reasoned that Guy had never stopped moving forward his entire life. Why stop for doors, now?

His hand is heavy on Anthony's shoulder, but not dependent. Even in the absolute terror of these moments, Kim still remembers what Tony had done yesterday. What he, himself, had done.

Reconciliation wouldn't be for some time, not until they sat down and talked about it. But now, that could all be put aside until they were back in England - which this was so clearly not.

"Together?"

Anthony looked back at Kim and gave a single nod. He understood all too well. His hand raised, settled on Kim's, and squeezed. It was not an apology, not an explanation, nor an offer for one. It was a simple acknowledgement-- Everything else can wait.

"Only way to do it," he agreed, his voice nearly lost on the way out.

He took a deep breath and moved for the doors, keeping close to his friend. Freedom or a fate worse than they had already suffered... they'd face it together.

Stand or fall.

It wasn't very often that Guy needed something at all to propel him forward, but the combination of Kim's arm in his grasp and his step forward shook Guy enough to remind him of that momentum. It was so very easy to stand and be taken by the cold reality of what could happen. He absorbed everything in the chill, like a sponge, imaginined the possibilities, the travesties, but could not let himself stay that way. He answered the tug and walked forward.

When staunch sunlight beat down on his face, when the hard steps outside the door were warmer than the metal inside had ever been, Guy squinted and near winced.

Where were the bloody black boots? The leather belts? The semi-automatic rifles and barbed wire fences? That bloody, bloody, bright sun was garish and heated, staring down at them and lighting up a freedom that should not have been there.

But it was.

Guy's hand let go of Kim's, slid out without him realizing it as he walked down the stairs, sheilding his eyes. They were in the midst of a town. He spun on his heels, nearly throwing himself off balance with the flare of his painful wings, and stared at the building behind them. A massive dome? Every door had been empty, theirs had been unlocked. What was this? A holding for something else?

Was this Bergon-Belsen, the holding place for thousands of Russian POW's, Dutch Jews... and now spies? Was this where people were made to work until they died?

... or was this Sobibor, a place where nothing awaited but death, where the forest lined road was horrifyingly named 'the road to heaven'? So many Soviet soldiers had gone there, transported there to die.

No. No it could not be Sobibor. Sobibor had been covered up two years ago in a hasty sweep by Nazi forces to bury everything that had happened after an uprising they never saw coming.

There was only Bergen-Belsen. They were there.

Not there...here. Yet... Guy knew they would not work. They were spies. They would not work.

They would die.

"Christ..."

It was the wrong slogan for the wrong camp but he knew that if they walked through that town and saw what he believed they would, it would be muttered on the decaying lips of the inmates, a false promise in an unforgiving hell.

"Arbeit macht frei."

Work will set you free.

He would have flinched at the German if he weren't so utterly horrified with what he saw.

And relieved. All he expected: black soot skies, gray dirt... gray people in gray clothes with one smear of colour on them to identify their crime for living with no hope for anything except possibly the relief of death. Everything he had horribly concocted was destroyed the instant the sun beat down on them and there were no cries in other languages, no barked orders, no alarms.

Just sunlight and the hum of a town living and breathing.

The club sighs....

three men's lives are changed forever.

The ... normalcy of the entire place catches him off guard and for a moment he's certain he's dreaming and he can laugh and breath now.

Except he still feels those wings, can still feel the heat on his neck and the sun is too realistically blinding to be a creation of his own mind.

So it's all real. It seemed too docile though, and Kim felt exposed with no shadows to hide in or walls to duck behind.

His wings shuddered.