locke cole (lockecole) wrote in silverage, @ 2011-08-12 13:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | !narrative, locke cole |
find your way
Who: Locke Cole
When: Backdated to a weekday morning before the snow
Where: Around the city
What: Many things have happened in New York since his arrival and Locke wonders if it’s about time some significant changes ought to follow.
Rating/status: G/finished.
“Back from the dead?” he asked with a start.
“That’s what I’ve been hearing,” said the dark-skinned man with his back turned to his customer, tiny sounds of tinks and clinks decorating his clattered work counter where he was hunched over. “You got anyone you want to be seeing?”
“Uhh...not necessarily,” Locke said after a lack of thought as he moved his hands from his sides to the long table that parted him from his friend’s working space. At the silence that followed, he finally gave the question some pondering, and he decided that yes, there was no one dead he was aching to see alive at the moment. “You see these dead people?”
“You’d see them, too,” the bigger man said as he tossed his tools aside and sniffed as he turned slowly and waddled carefully closer to his friend. “I’m not talking about ghosts, I’m talking about real, physical people. Like they never died at all!”
“I guess that’s possible if they were uprooted before their time,” Locke concluded. “But damn, New York’s already getting tight as it is...”
“You tell me. I never realized until I got new neighbors. And that’s saying something!”
Locke wasn’t sure he followed his friend’s train of thought.
“Anyway,” his friend said as he opened the till and fished out a couple of notes he later handed to his customer. “Haven’t found me a treasure like last week, again, have you?”
“Hey, if you were walking on treasure, you’d be so rich, you wouldn’t have to work,” Locke snorted as he raised the money he’d received before he pocketed it. “Thanks, Pops. Breath for another week.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“That’s why I always give you jewelry, right?” Locke said to him with a chummy smirk as he straightened up and began to walk away. New York was a big place with a million of people, finding jewelry was like picking flowers. “I’ll find you something like that diamond necklace, don’t worry.”
“Hey, Locke,” his friend called to him as he reached the door, leaning over to the wooden counter where his till was placed, “my granddaughter’s dropping by next week. Come and tell her the story about Draco and Maria, won’t you? She’d love it.”
“Count on it,” Locke said with a little salute. “Until then, Pops.”
The bell rang as he pushed the door open and left the shop.
People were coming back from the dead. It was a most curious, most peculiar thing to happen...and most worrisome, too. Locke thought about it as he strolled Central Park, arms crossed over his chest, eyebrows arched, head dipped. If people came back from the dead, then that could mean that he could meet a couple of dead people from his past...and there was a lot to choose from and he wondered what would happen if he did meet them.
Was there a person dead he’d like to meet again? Locke didn’t even need a moment to think about it, he knew who it was -- his first love, Rachel. He wasn’t in any desperate need to see her, though. Before she’d completely gone away, they managed to talk for one last time and that had been enough to close his wounds for him. If he got to see her again, though, he wouldn’t be picky. He’d take her out on a date, make her see movies and all of New York and they’d have fun like they used to.
For the worse, though, who would he hate to see? His brows wrinkled and he frowned deeply. Only one name flashed in his mind and it brought chills down his spine: Kefka. If people came back, then there was no saying that that maniacal clown won’t be coming back. And if he did...
Locke shook his head. It was a great day out and there was no use thinking about these depressing thoughts. So what should he do, instead? Locke thought it was a silly question. If there was one thing he learned during his extended stay in New York, it was that there was a lot of things that he could do. So far, watching operas and musical performances was his favorite and there was the wonderful world of movies which only New York could have. Moving pictures, who would have ever thought that possible? He sure as hell didn't but now he was obsessed about them!
But there was nothing good to watch. So Locke thought to entertain himself by visiting museums and this place called "Tiffany and Co" which was a gift from above. Or, he figured he could always do that thing everyone called "job hunting". It seemed taxing and difficult, but he figured it could be fun, too. There would be no need to steal hotel keys or rid drunk men of their surplus money...it could be a nice change and it would give him a better grasp about life in New York.
Yeah, maybe he ought to try and look for work for once...
The idea hit him like a falling object from the skies. It collided with his head with a light crack but the impact went straight through his skull and he yelped as his hand flew to the top of his head where it felt like a dull pike had fallen right in the middle of it. Looking down to his feet, he found that there was a fallen sandal.
A sandal?
Locke gazed up to the overhanging branches of the tree he was under and found a skirt in the middle of the foliage. “What...the...?”
Down went the other slipper.
Oh geez... “Hey, Miss!” he called out to the white skirt and took two steps closer to the half-figure in the tree although he took care not to see anything beyond what he could see. “You need some help up there?”
“No thank you!” She sounded young when she cried that. “Just stay away from me if you don’t want me to drop on you!”
Locke’s brows wrinkled a little. That didn’t sound like the answer of someone who was fine...
“What are you looking for, anyway?” he asked just the same.
“Nothing I need your help with!” she persisted, “A, anyway, I’ve almost got it--” until her foot slipped from the branch it was on and she shrieked as she clung onto to the tree with her everything.
Locke might have cursed loudly as he shot forward and spread his arms out for her. He opened his mouth to ask her to climb down but she’d insisted stubbornly (and shrilly) that she was fine and managed to get her dangling feet back on a foothold. “You know,” he went on with his unwanted help as he stood at the balls of his feet, “just an advice coming from an expert tree climber,” or expert everything-climber, really, “but you should probably learn how to get down before you even try to get up! You know what I’m saying?”
“I do and I know how to get down-- whoah,” her foot lost hold, again.
Locke sighed before he muttered under his breath, “She’s not gonna make it.”
Her foot tried again to regain balance but lost it just as she found it.
“Yup. She’s not going to make it,” Locke concluded as the branches began shaking more wildly. He kept to his silence in spite of her uncomfortable situation but kept his form poised for movement. It didn’t even take her more than a minute to last in her precarious position when her last foot had completely lost its surface and she fell straight out of the nest of leaves, shrieking as she descended.
Locke hissed something sharply under his breath as he dashed towards the lady’s spot and stretched his arms out just in time to catch her squealing, a wide-brimmed, white hat in tow. She was dressed in her Sunday best, too, which was too bad as her lace-patterned white dress was now soiled. At least the single blue ribbon in the middle of her waist remained intact. He sighed as he looked at her. “You need to know how to properly fall off trees, Miss.”
And then he caught his breath. The woman he carried in his arms was young, big-eyed and fair with a touch of pinkness the way his old friend’s was until he started taking her out to his adventures. And then her hair, her long wavy, black hair, was scattered artfully across her shoulders the way he’d always remembered them to be. Locke couldn’t believe it. Could she--
“I don’t normally fall of trees, I promise,” she groaned as she brushed her hair back. “Now, can you put me down?”
“Geez, just trying to be a knight...” he said with an uncertain volume as he descended to his knee and let her down on the concrete. “Say, have we met before?” He couldn’t help it, he had to know as soon as he could!
“No?” the woman now looked at him suspiciously as she wriggled out of his arms, “What makes you say that? You’re not trying to pick me up, are you?”
“N, no, of course not!” Locke said with a start. “Although looking at the current state of your leg...” he looked at her right one where the lower limb was decorated by light grazes and the ankle was shaped to something like a vague bell... “I think I might end up having to do just that.”
“Just you try--”
“It’ll hurt, Ray-- I promise you.”
The brunette glared at him and Locke lifted his hands up.
“Just saying,” he continued before he placed his fists to his sides, “although, you gotta admit, it’s great I caught you. If you fell off that tree all on your own and you meet the ground feet first--”
“All right, thank you! Geez!” She snorted as she raked her messy hair off her tiny face, again. “What the world does for polite words these days...” She regarded him with an evil eye after... “...hey, you know what, you look...strange...”
“You have a world of words to say to me and you tell me the most obvious of them all.”
“I don’t meet a lot of strange people. You’re the first. What’s your name?”
“Locke Cole,” he answered simply, a little taken aback by the sudden change of her mood as he stroked his fringes a little. She at least prompted an opportunity for introductions!
“Oh, you’re French!”
What was a French?
Smiling to her savior, she said to him, “My name’s Claudia Winston.”
Oh, Claudia! She wasn’t Rachel...Locke didn’t realize how much he had been holding his breath until he let it out with a smile and a nod. “Nice to catch ya.”
Claudia snorted at him again and Locke laughed.
“Well, you can’t stay that way for longer,” he said as he began to undo the bulky knot of his makeshift sack in the middle of his chest, keeping on his knee. “Can you stand?” he asked. It was such a stupid question, but Locke inquired politely for a purpose, and he got the response he wanted. As he switched his weapons to his front and tied the ends of it behind him, he watched Claudia protrude her lips at him and turn to her swelling foot, the toes of it aching to move but unable to even twitch... “See? Didn’t I tell you?”
“This never happened before.”
“Don’t worry, Claudia.” Locke said with a wink. “This is just between the two of us.” She was young, perhaps about 8 to 10 years his junior, and she really was taking this harder than she’s supposed to. So when she smiled at him, he smiled back and wider. She really was just a kid.
Having successfully secured his weapons to himself so that the sword slashed from his right shoulder to his left side, he turned around and offered his back to the girl. “Hop on. We’ll get you to a healer.”
“A healer?” Claudia giggled while she collected her sandals. “You’re so old and Victorian, Monsieur Locke.”
Locke found himself pressing his lips tight when he realized his mistake. It was only when she was clambering to get on top of him that he remembered that there was a different word they used here for healers. He used to know what it was but now he’d forgotten all about it. Anyway, there was no sense thinking about it, anymore, not when Claudia was already on his back. He made sure to place his hand where her skirt covered her thighs and he grunted as he brought himself to his feet and began to walk away from the point of accident.
It didn’t take him half an hour to reach a clinic and in that span of time, he learned that Claudia was just 18, was an only daughter with two brothers, had many half-relations and loved climbing trees.
There was no line to hold them back in the clinic so the doctor saw them the moment they stepped in and gave Claudia her treatment. Locke stayed beside her during the entirety of it and when she was dressed and was phoning her house, he went and relieved himself in the men’s room.
She had paid for the doctor’s service by the time he’d gotten back and was seated on a comfy chair with her bulky ankle wrapped in a cast. “Feeling better?” he asked with a tight smile on his face, fists on his sides and his weapons back to his back. Claudia nodded to him, swinging her injured leg as Locke sat beside her. “Don’t do that, it actually puts strain on your injury even if you don’t feel it.”
Claudia stopped obediently. Looking up to him, she said, “You seem to know a lot about falling off trees, Locke. Did you do it often?”
“Three times a week. Used to be my hobby.”
Claudia giggled and Locke beamed at her. He liked making her feel better... “So you’re an alien,” she said suddenly.
“Excuse me?”
“An alien,” Claudia repeated simply.
“An alien,” he said, too, but it was crystal in Locke’s face how clearly he understood what the word meant. He stared blankly at Claudia, half a smile on his face, he didn’t even know what to do with it. Alien, what was an alien? He tried the word to see if it was familiar to him but nothing was really make sense for him. Alien... “Is that...an ailment...a man full of ailments?”
“Ailments? What?” Claudia laughed giddily. “Locke, what are you talking about? An alien! E.T., some creature from outer space!”
“Outer space...” This was just getting worse for him. Outer space was a term he’d been hearing for some time already, but all he knew about it was that it was way beyond the skies and practically unreachable without special suits and ships and stuff. Other than that...
Claudia was laughing harder by now. “You’re an alien and you don’t even know what outer space is? I can’t believe you!”
“Is that bad?” Locke was really starting to wonder now...
“It is if you want to feel like human.”
“Hey, I’m human!”
“I mean like us, geez,” Claudia chortled. “Us who have been here all our lives, not like you who just popped in from out of nowhere!”
Locke cocked a brow. “Well, excuse me for inadvertently losing my way...hey, how’d you know I don’t belong here?”
He looked genuinely baffled, and Claudia seemed to have taken some pride from the look on his face. “It’s simple. No one looks for a healer these days and did you know that when you were carrying me all the way here, we passed by three, empty cabs?”
“Really?” Locke said thoughtlessly as the image of the yellow cars appeared in his mind. The first time he saw one, he watched it swerve and crash straight into the wall and he vowed never to be in one ever. “That’s nice...”
“That’s all you’re gonna say?” Claudia giggled. “That’s nice? Locke, those cabs would have gotten us here much faster than your feet could. And you didn’t even think to hail one! Any American would have done that. But you, you just kept on walking as if you didn’t see them!”
“Yeah, well...” ...well nothing, really. Locke really couldn’t see the point of hailing cabs when he could get them from Point A to Point B no problem. His lips twitched a little as he thought of a response. “...well...cabs don’t exist where I come from.” That was a sad response. But there it was, anyway.
“So what does?”
“That’s like a cab?” Well, chocobos exist but. “Nothing. We’ve got trains and ships,” and airships and moving castles, “but nothing like these cabs.”
“Wow,” Claudia sighed as Locke tried a smile at her and she rested her chin on her palms, elbows on her leg.
“Don’t do that.”
“So you must come from a really old place,” she said as she straightened up. “Are there kings and queens?”
“One king, no queen.” Yet.
“And knights and all that!”
Locke laughed happily at the sight of Claudia’s sparkling eyes and blushing cheeks. She really was kind of cute, and she was making him miss his king friend and his castle and his friends and home, basically, and he wished he could go back soon...
But until then, he’d love to tell everyone about it if they wanted him to. “I guess you can say that,” he said, “I’d show you around but right now, I don’t know where to find it.”
“That’s what I’ve been hearing, all right,” she said with a nod. “None of you can find a way back home...I don’t understand how you can cope with it, it must be frustrating.”
“Yeah, it kind of is,” Locke said as he tugged his bandana off him and raked through his brown-ish locks before he placed his bandana back on. “I’ve been here for forever and I still haven’t found a way for me to go back.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Sure I do,” Locke answered simply with an honest nod. “You would if you ever get the chance to stand in my shoes.” And he grinned when she glared at him. “But I miss home. And I miss my friends...”
“And do you miss your girlfriend?”
Locke laughed heartily as he nodded, again. What a lady this was! “Yeah, I really do! I used to see her everyday but now, it’s so different. I don’t even know what she’s doing now, or how she looks now.” But enough about her, this talk was just making the ache sting worse. Gesturing to her, he asked, “How about you? Got someone special?”
“I used to,” Claudia confessed quietly as she looked down to her wide-brimmed hat and began smoothing its laces with her thumb. “But before I could see him, I’d have to go to a different world now.”
“So he’s like me!” Locke said with a look of shock and interested in his wide eyes. He hunched forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “He lives in a different realm than you do and he comes to visit, ‘sthat right?” Because it sure as hell makes sense to Locke, he’d heard it happen -- but she shook her head. It wasn’t like that, maybe he doesn’t hop realms just to visit Claudia. “So he--” and then it occurred to him: a different realm where people can’t visit, and the look of soft sadness on Claudia’s face. Her lover was...
“...oh,” said Locke biting his lips, “I’m sorry.”
Claudia simply shook her head. “He died in the war.”
Locke kept quiet, his face open and soft as he gazed at Claudia’s weak smile. Dying in the war was a terrible way to go, all those violence and bloodshed and all...
“And this hat...” she went on, lifting her white hat as she turned it in her hands, “was his last present for me. I, I was wearing it when the wind blew it to the tree...and I just had to get it down.”
“Because it’s the last memory you have of him,” Locke said quietly. “It’s your one source of strength.”
Claudia gasped through her nose and looked up to him with a surprised nod. “Yes! You--”
“Not me,” Locke said. “But...my girlfriend taught me how it felt like. To be in your sandals right now...”
Claudia snorted out a laughter at Locke’s indication of her shoes which fell during her adventure with the tree, and he smiled a little at her. She was easy to keep happy.
...but then she began to sniffle and hide her eyes, and he knew that this time, it was different. So inching closer, he placed an arm around her and drew her to his shoulder so she could rest her head on it as she sobbed. “Your boyfriend’s one sorry man for leaving you here...” he said -- and here, she laughed again. All in the way of Locke’s plan.
Not long after, Claudia’s chauffeur finally arrived and Locke helped her up from her seat, through the doors and into her car while her driver tried to steal her away from him.
As he stepped back to the curb, she watched the windows to her polished car roll down, and she brought her head out of the open frame to talk to him. “Hey Locke,” she said, the voice of a young, reckless female back in her words, “You think he’d come back? All these...past people popping out of nowhere and all?”
“D’you need to say goodbye to him?”
Claudia nodded.
Locke nodded back. “Then you’ll see him, again.” Every couple deserves a chance to say goodbye to each other before forever was sealed.
Claudia beamed at him. “I’m really happy to have met you, Locke. See, this is my last day in New York. Tomorrow, I’m moving to Seattle for good. Start a new life and all...”
“Does Seattle have more trees than New York?”
Claudia stuck her tongue out to him as he grinned. “Seattle is my ancestral home. So I’m going home.” She moved her head closer to him. “I hope you find your way home, Locke. I hope you get reunited with your girlfriend soon.”
“Thanks,” Locke nodded, “that hope will take me through another week of hell.”
“It’s not so bad, you’ll see,” Claudia said, smiling. “Until then...just try to hold on, okay? Don’t be an alien. Goodbye, Locke.”
“Farewell, Claudia.”
They waved to each other, and Locke stood by to watch her glimmering car disappear into the horizon. Alone then, he sighed and looked at his feet. Hang on, eh? Well, there wasn’t much left for him to do, anyway, other than to hang on. He could do that, he was good at hanging on.
As he looked to his left, there came a flash of yellow and as it drew closer, it took the form of a car with a single passenger behind the wheel.
Not so bad, eh...?
Taking courage and breath, Locke stepped forward and lifted his hand to the air the way he saw them do it in the movies.
“Taxi!”