Dr. Rufus Sixsmith (rufus_sixsmith) wrote in spinningcompass, @ 2013-01-01 17:03:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !closed |
Who: Rufus Sixsmith and Kaya (then, additionally, Robert Frobisher & Sherlock Holmes)
Where: The Churchyard
What: Sixsmith arrives. In the same place as Robert but 24 hours too late. Because I'm a hideous person. (and then they're reunited beautifully and i might have cried a little bit but it was very late)
When: New Years Day
Warnings/Rating: Low?
Status Ongoing
Sixsmith heaves. His legs give way beneath him and he sinks forward into the snow. He gasps, swallowing down great gulps of freezing air and willing himself to vomit because his mouth tastes of blood and dust and metal. But he can't. Only brings up bile that he spits into the slush before him.
The next sound he hears is a sob. His own sob as he lifts a hand to run through the hair on the back of his head, looking for an exit wound that doesn't exist. His hair- it's thick, full. His gaze falls down to the hand that remains in the snow, staring in wonder at the smooth skin of youth that has replaced the mottled, purple colour of his old age. His fingers are long and strong, not gnarled by the arthritis that had been setting in-
His clothes are not the clothes he wore in the hotel room. His body is no longer full of the aches that had been a marker for his time in life, aside from the cold that is seeping through to his knees from the snow in which he still kneels. His body is now that of the man he once was, the strong, quiet youth whose life was marked by his love of a wayward young man. His body is the one that Robert had loved.
The wonder at this sudden change is short lived because then he is searching through the snow for the letters. The letters he carried with him his whole life, the letters that been around him in the last moments of his life before the barrel of the gun had been pressed into his mouth. They're not here. Clawing through the snow and hard dirt with his now raw hands, the letters are not here. The only thing he had left, his most precious possessions, all he had of Robert-
Sixsmith punches the ground with the vigor that accompanies the lose muscles of youth and then he cries, the sound like that of an animal, trapped and terrified. He doesn't know where he is. He would have thought Heaven but ney, he never deserved that, did he? Probably not. If this were heaven he would be surrounded as he was before, with the carefully preserved though well loved sheaths of paper. No, this is not heaven.
His despair weighs him down until he lays upon the hard, cold ground, curled into a foetal position and wondering if it is possible to just disappear. Or freeze. Or die again. Anything to numb him to this fear of misplacement and the bitter, bitter sadness of losing him all over again.