MEME: Drabbles and Meta

[frozenfractals]

Today we've got a two-for-one meme!

Tag your characters into the meme, and leave each other either prompts or drabbles, as the mood moves you. Prompts can be anything from a situation to a relationship to a song lyric. Replies can be in the form of drabbles OR meta/rambling about the topic or something associated with it. We all love talking our faces off about these characters, so go ahead and indulge the urge to babble.

Of course, we all know sometimes the inspiration just isn't there, so try not to take it personally if someone just doesn't get to your prompt or if a reply is brief. The more prompts you give, the more likely you are to get!

Comments

[likeaplanet]

He told me, once, what would've been a guilty confession if he was capable of guilt the way most people are. He told me that there's a part of him that longs for the simplicity of this place. The base survival of it. The lack of surprise that I felt, in hearing a confession like that, should've been some kind of red fuckin' flag for me, but I'd laughed and rolled my eyes and chucked it into the big fuckin' pile of Jesus Christ, Mike Pinocchio's a Fuckin' Nutjob that I keep in a corner of my brain.

I wonder if he'd considered, when he said that, what this would be like with the girls clutching at our hands, cheeks stained with tears and ashes, clinging to our clothes. Finally, finally finding a limit to their otherwise unyielding ability to accept the awful shit thrown their way. I wonder if he'd considered that, and I'd like to think he did, but honestly...

Honestly, I can't always be sure.

It's infinitely harder, surviving when you're no longer just surviving for yourself. Infinitely harder to push through all the shit, when you have to carry the weight of someone else on your back. And when the darkness starts to tug at him, when his eyes stop looking like his, when he starts to smile just a little too much after a slaughter, I pull him back, every time. Drag him through, him and the four of us, touching his face, whispering words. Hey, Mike... Mike, come on. Stay with me.

But I start to notice, a grim, cold revelation, that he's only coming back in half measures. Each day, each fuckin' second in this place, it's like watching pieces of him chip off and fall away.

When it happens, that moment, I'm standing in the ruins of a crumbling building, the sirens screeching overhead, the girls standing at my side, no longer afraid but resigned. When it happens, when I know like a switch going off in my mind, I've got a loaded gun in my hand, and an escape plan. I know, without a doubt, that I'm gonna have to put a bullet in him, before this is over. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But if we don't get out of here, soon, there's no other outcome.

"Come on," I say to the twins, my hand curling briefly around the back of Flo's neck. "Remember what we talked about. Stick close to me."

"Not to Daddy," Mack says, and it's not a question. She says it with an understanding greater than her years. She knows it, too.

"No, not to Daddy," I nod, taking the safety off my gun.