ethan baltimore goes a lot of places (thoroughfare) wrote in superbabies, @ 2013-02-10 22:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | ethan baltimore |
narrative! Backdated to just at two weeks ago when Ethan took off on his own adventures to get away from the school. He wound up in the forest of Vietnam to camp and center himself but ultimately discovers that isn't so. Gateway makes a visit and Ethan goes for a ride.
Leaving the school behind, at least this time, was easier for Ethan than he had expected. With his surplus rucksack packed tight, the few instruments he would occasionally need strung off the sides and set off. This time of year made the southern hemisphere out of question, he didn’t want to deal with the heat or the fires or the bugs. Instead, he went to where his heart called: Vietnam.
Damn, how he loved that country this time of year. The tropical flowers, the overabundance of orchids and birds and just colors. It made Ethan’s heart swell with joy after leaving the village and setting out on foot into the jungle. Here he was at his most relaxed, back straight instead of bent and haggard, chin high and senses opened wide yet something nagged at the back of his head.
For weeks now Ethan hadn’t felt right. It started before the Friends of Humanity attacked the school, maybe even before Christmas. This pulling sensation that tugged at the fibers of his being, that existed on the edge of his conscious. It felt like time was fraying and, as a man so connected to traveling as it were, it bothered him greatly. Unnerved him, set him on edge. He hadn’t realized it until it felt too late and he had to run and find some relief.
The first three days were quiet, easy, fun. Ethan set up camp under a rock overhang near a river, fishing for his meals, cooking everything over a low campfire. He had a red sleeping bag designed for arduous climates and a tarp for covering; enough books for three weeks and absolutely no outside contact.
Life was simple, and yet, he still felt watched.
On the fifth day, Ethan moved camp closer to the river and closer to a village. He wasn’t ready to give up just yet, to turn in and go back to the school. To deal with the problems there, to turn back into the magical school bus that traveled students where they needed to be. Sometimes, when he thought about it, Ethan wished he wasn’t a mutant, that he lived a normal suburban lifestyle back in Sydney, visited his mother and step-dad every Sunday for dinner on a normal schedule and could actually drive a car---he couldn’t drive! He didn’t need to drive, he could go whereever he wanted, but the fact was he couldn’t drive---and have real, normal relationships where no one died or came back from outer space, where he didn’t have to worry about his students eating each other.
It was the little things he wanted to have. The little, perfectly normal, non-mutant things.
Perched on a rock by the river, Ethan tried to meditate, or something like it. He read once that it helped clear minds and besides, Gandhi did it. That seemed important. To gain clairty he must erase the noise or something; it helped that the local animals didn’t seem to arouse his telempathy and there was not a soul around.
Perched cautiously on the rock, legs folded pretzel style, Ethan zoned out of conscience being and into what he liked to refer to as his inner white zone. Really, it was limbo; he could pass there whenever he pleased, it operated as a space between here and there. In fact, when he made gateways, this was what they opened through but rarely did people see them. Rarely did they realize he could step in and see the world at his fingers, he could pinpoint people. He could find things and be places. He knew when he was alone and when he wasn’t. People appeared like colored images in his mind and he could communicate back in a way; unlike true telepaths or empaths, Ethan could only just talk. Read. Understand, to some extent, though he had never spent time focusing on it.
Which is why he was startled to nearly falling off the rock (and into the water) by a clearing throat. His eyes opened wide and his mind tried to pull something before he turned around. All it got was white. Blank.
Gateway was behind him.
Once, a few years back, Ethan had run into him (not that anyone exactly “runs into” Gateway, per se). The aboriginal man found you and either yanked you from existence to some other land or just watched, followed, amused by the mundane tasks of humanity no doubt. Ethan didn’t even know if he ate, much less other stuff, though he assumed he did. Gateway was human and as far as he knew, some generation-back of grandparent according to his father who had been subjected to Gateway. It was how Bishop ended up in this time stream, removed from the future.
Still, the loin-clothed wiseman unnerved Ethan. Scrambling to his feet, shoes sliping in the surface, he stood proper and straight in front of the man who, as usual, hovered in the air in pretzel pose, staring at him with a look Ethan couldn’t quite place.
Determination, maybe, but the hard age lines made reading his expression difficult and it wasn’t as if Ethan could pick anything up. Everything was blank. Serene, really. Time passed between them, the river continued to flow, a bird cried in the trees, until finally Gateway spoke.
It is your time. In his head, quietly and loudly all at once. Panicking, heart suddenly racing, Ethan thought the worst. Death, removal from the time stream, shot into space, but mostly, death. He was projecting loudly it seemed for Gateway cracked a smile.
Not death.
“Great, then. What? No, don’t---don’t touch me, what are you doing,” Ethan was backing up, away from his great-relative’s finger which touched him, right in the third eye.
His world went blank. Not white, not black or any color really. It just was. He wasn’t aware of having fallen back onto the rocks, green eyes open wide and looking up into the sky, nor any other sensation because he was gone.
Through his mind flowed history, every action, every reaction, every piece and trial and war. From his toes to the top of his head he hummed with action and things he couldn’t quite describe. Suddenly Ethan was history, the creation of man, the dawn of civilization. He was there when man began walking upright, the first tool usage and fire controlled to the beginning of religion, hunter gatherers. He saw all at once every war that had ever been, every fight between one man. It was like someone had turned his mind into a television and flipped through the channels, but he understood it all.
All of time was him and he was of time. Watched the sun rise over the African savannah with Masai, the end of World War II and the start of Woodstock; King Louis XIV’s death and Mongolian warriors sitting around a camp fire. He sat with the first people of Central America as they welcomed the Spanish and saw their death from disease soon after; bent his back under sticks for fires in the Pacific islands and watched every earthquake that shook Japan. It became personal after awhile: Ethan watched his friends grow up, saw what was happening at the school, what had happened and knew things, stuff, facts and problems.
It was so much and yet he knew it was nothing compared to some, and when he woke up---it could have been days, hours, he would never really know---he wasn’t in the jungle anymore.