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rainbowfic2015-01-27 06:05 pm
starphotographs) wrote in rainbowfic2015-01-27 06:05 pm
White Opal
Name: starphotographs
Story: Universe B (this is a placeholder, subject to change, will need to be tagged though)
Characters: Milo, Kit is there as well.
Colors: White Opal
Supplies and Styles: Miniature Collection, Saturation.
Word Count: 1984
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: Milo keeps his mind on better things, banal problems, faded days.
Note: This is the debut of the other universe I primarily work with! It's mostly centered on Earth, even if you couldn't tell from this particular piece. If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Whatever you're wondering about, I've probably thought about it. :P (Or I didn't, and would like to start!)
Sleep Standing Up: Life on Mars
The last of my own energy, I've used. But I can't admit this, even to myself. I'm still needed. My brother needs me to be there. I need me to save us. And the instant I give in to that sucking exhaustion I've been lugging around with me everywhere, that'll be that. If I lie down, I know it'll be for good. So I run on momentum, pinballing from one task to another, home to work, work to home, from the bed to the bathroom where I can spit blood in private. Always wishing I could sleep standing up.
*****
When we had to leave the Darwintown Children's Home, they moved us north. A few months later, summer came, the Sun reaching out with just enough heat for us to go outside in t-shirts and jeans. The sky was huge in all directions, and most of us had never been anything but stir-crazy. We darted around madly at nothing in particular, kicking up so much dust we got covered in it, sixteen little rusted Golems. The had to hose us off before they let us back on the carpet. The dirty hose water was freezing cold, and my brother cried.
*****
Kit is trying to tell me about some dream he had last night. Actually, a movie that only existed in his dream. Some kind of Halloween special, a cat was involved, apparently it got so absurd that he woke up unable to stop laughing. I'd usually be more interested, but I'm busy slogging through breakfast. If my concentration breaks for a second, I won't be able to choke anything down. And listening is hard when my lungs are vibrating furiously and my chest feels like it's full of wet gravel and broken glass. I tell him I'm late for work.
*****
I've never seen rain. The sky doesn't have enough water for that, not enough water for much of anything. My hair squeaks when I rub it against itself, and my lips split open and bleed. Even ice here is dry. We don't even really have clouds. On Earth, apparently, there are so many clouds that people start mistaking them for other things, which I never really understood. I actually saw one yesterday. A pale, thready thing, drifting listlessly along the horizon. It didn't look like anything but a cloud.
*****
I was bored and wanted to go down to the Canali and fart around. Kit was trying to do "watercolors" with a piece of cardboard, dust, and sink water, so he wanted to stay home. I spent two aimless hours underground, alone. I didn't have money, so I couldn't go shopping. I didn't remember where I'd found that big grocery store that had samples, so I couldn't eat. I did remember which stores had forms you could sign, so I wandered around stealing free pens. Even though I've done this so many times that I have a drawerful at home.
*****
On the bus from work to the elevators, I usually stare out the window. Today, the entire hemisphere is having a big stupid dustup, so all I can see is rusty nothing and my own vacant face. I feel things tearing off and rattling around under my ribs, and look forward to coughing in the sink. Whatever comes out will be at least three colors.
I hope no one wants the other seat, because no, I can't make room. I've been standing with my knees locked for twelve hours. I'm stuck like this. It took long enough to sit down.
*****
Kit does something that used to scare me half to death. He'll stop dead still and stare for a little bit, and then for the next half hour, everything I say to him whistles right through his head. I'm used to it now. It doesn't look painful, and he always comes right again. One time, I asked him what happened, and he said he didn't know. Just that his mind and body seem different, that sometimes there's music, and he always sees beautiful things. It's part of him, and that's all. So I just wait to tell him anything important.
*****
When the sun starts sinking, the sirens start droning, droning every half hour until it's pitch dark, that last low note dying off slowly. They're basically air-raid sirens, but the danger is the air itself. Without the Sun's bright protection, you could freeze solid just because you were a little late getting home from work. Once, I did overtime at the plant, and right before I got in the elevator to the bullet train, the last siren blared in my ears. I couldn't go home. I slept on a row of chairs at the station, cold, aching, and completely alone.
*****
If I'm going to have a coughing fit every time I start to drift off, I might as well make myself useful. Maybe I can figure out what the hell is going on. I start reading. Metal fume fever. Occupational asthma. Pneumoconiosis. Pulmonary fibrosis. I push my hair out of my eyes, then pause to examine it more closely. After my last haircut, the blue cast goes all the way to the ends. Chronic exposure to cobalt by inhalation. Nothing exactly fits, but nothing exactly doesn't fit. I just know that it's from my job, and that I'm probably dying.
*****
When I was thirteen, the unthinkable finally happened: Kit and I were severed, flung to the far corners of this rusting globe. I had no point of reference for what would happen to him without me, so I did the only thing I could think of: I ran. I got on the dark train and sat on my freezing hands from Newton to Yellowknife, watching my white breath in the train-car and the moons outside the window, shining like dented cans. Two old cans on one tight string, me calling down the cable to my brother. I'm coming, I'm coming.
*****
Throughout my life, a lot of people have felt the need to comment on my dead-looking eyes. If they're especially polite, the word is "dull," and they’ll ask me if I'm okay. The answer used to be "yes," and "yes" it remains, but now I'm lying. Anyway, it's really the kind of thing where other people point it out, but you never quite see it in yourself. My eyes are just my eyes. Now, when people started commenting on my bad breath a few months ago, that I noticed. But I couldn't explain it. I still brush twice every day.
*****
Whenever Kit had a nightmare, he had to climb in bed with me. He did this until he was twelve. For most of our lives, we were in different rooms, down different halls, on different floors, even, but he remained undaunted. This made everything worse. Kit has no sense of direction to speak of, so by the time he found me, he was practically traumatized. And now, when I lie awake, sweating out a fever or struggling for air, I want to crawl in with him. I can't. He'd know I couldn't protect him anymore. But I'm so terribly scared.
*****
I only celebrated Ghoul's Day once, when we were living in Yellowknife. The idea is, there's some kind of monster between Earth and us that eats satellites or something. And every year, people from all over write messages to stuff in capsules and launch them into space so the Ghoul can read them. (If Ghouls can even read.) I wrote "who actually reads this stuff?" I don't know what Kit wrote, other than that it went on for half a page. I've always been good at asking questions. He's always been good at playing funny games. We need each other.
*****
Honestly, I've always wanted to leave. Go back ten years and ask me what I want to do, the answer would be "see it all." I wanted to get a craft and, essentially, shoot myself into space. The direction didn't matter, because I'd be exploring either way. Now, I'd just settle for getting to Earth in one piece. I'm cold and hungry and sick. In no shape for adventuring, too exhausted to even think about it. All I can think is that I hurt, and if making it stop means leaving this world, I'll do whatever it takes.
*****
I know how to survive anything: you check out. When you haven't eaten in three days and your head is spinning, you check out. When you're freezing in five layers of clothing, you check out. When you wake up drenched in your own sweat, drowning in your own blood, you check out. When your spine feels jammed together from hours standing on a concrete floor, you check out. You check out, you check out, you check out of your whole goddamn life. It's all I remember how to do. I only seem like an optimist because I've already given up.
*****
If you ask me, Kit and I were doing fine when it was just us in the same house we'd been living in since he was born. But apparently, someone didn't think so, and they called the police to tell them that the last adult was dead. We got sent across town to an orphanage full of other kids who were loud and stupid and mean to my brother. I kept a diary, and recorded every indignity I suffered there. "Jake ate my sandwich." "Phil stepped on my foot." "Kelly Proctor stole my binoculars. Kelly Proctor is a kleptomaniac."
*****
"Milo?"
"Hm?"
"What are we even going to do on Earth?"
"The question is, what won't we do on Earth? There are endless options over there! I'm going to learn to ride a bicycle."
"I mean like, seriously."
"Oh. Well. I could get a better job there. We could live in a nicer apartment. I'm going whale watching."
"...What kind of job?"
"Don't know! I do know that I'm going to lie out in the sun until it hurts. Apparently, that can happen."
"...Milo?"
"Yeah?"
"Will you see a doctor?"
"I'm quitting this job. I probably won't need to."
*****
The next time I escape by train, we're together. Barreling out of Iron Hills, the two of us in the big wide world, watching it blow past. A cable picks us up off the tracks and hurls us over the planet-splitting canyon. Marina Vista is gleaming in its bubble, having a beautiful night. The rest of the ride is flat, dark nothing. Juno in its cracked, dirty dome, pristine and dead as a pinned insect. And at last, Hyperborea, with its white forest of launchpads, gleaming in the midnight sun. One thing's for sure: we're a long way from Darwintown.
*****
I know how to fly this escape shuttle. I've been reading the manuals for months. I've been in the cockpit for twenty hours. And just ahead, the blue arc of the Earth, the burning Sun we've been following. My eyes unfocused, hands shaking on the controls. Before I can stop myself, I start coughing. I try to cover my mouth, but it's useless. What I'd been swallowing for months splatters everywhere. Brother, I'm not alright. I can't hide it. And finally, I don't need to. Kit knows how to fly this escape shuttle. He's been reading my manuals for months.
*****
I black out in the dark cockpit, wake up in a white bed. I'm in orbit, I'm nowhere. The gravity isn't even real. These few things I'm told: I'm not on Earth, but my brother is. I'll be on Earth soon, but I'm going there to die. I'm dying, but it isn't my job. I'm just sick. I have tuberculosis, of all fucking things. Nobody talks to me without long sleeves and a mask. Someone in plastic clothes and a respirator puts a tube in my arm, and then I'm alone. I stare at the ceiling. I sleep lying down.
starphotographsStory: Universe B (this is a placeholder, subject to change, will need to be tagged though)
Characters: Milo, Kit is there as well.
Colors: White Opal
Supplies and Styles: Miniature Collection, Saturation.
Word Count: 1984
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: Milo keeps his mind on better things, banal problems, faded days.
Note: This is the debut of the other universe I primarily work with! It's mostly centered on Earth, even if you couldn't tell from this particular piece. If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Whatever you're wondering about, I've probably thought about it. :P (Or I didn't, and would like to start!)
The last of my own energy, I've used. But I can't admit this, even to myself. I'm still needed. My brother needs me to be there. I need me to save us. And the instant I give in to that sucking exhaustion I've been lugging around with me everywhere, that'll be that. If I lie down, I know it'll be for good. So I run on momentum, pinballing from one task to another, home to work, work to home, from the bed to the bathroom where I can spit blood in private. Always wishing I could sleep standing up.
When we had to leave the Darwintown Children's Home, they moved us north. A few months later, summer came, the Sun reaching out with just enough heat for us to go outside in t-shirts and jeans. The sky was huge in all directions, and most of us had never been anything but stir-crazy. We darted around madly at nothing in particular, kicking up so much dust we got covered in it, sixteen little rusted Golems. The had to hose us off before they let us back on the carpet. The dirty hose water was freezing cold, and my brother cried.
Kit is trying to tell me about some dream he had last night. Actually, a movie that only existed in his dream. Some kind of Halloween special, a cat was involved, apparently it got so absurd that he woke up unable to stop laughing. I'd usually be more interested, but I'm busy slogging through breakfast. If my concentration breaks for a second, I won't be able to choke anything down. And listening is hard when my lungs are vibrating furiously and my chest feels like it's full of wet gravel and broken glass. I tell him I'm late for work.
I've never seen rain. The sky doesn't have enough water for that, not enough water for much of anything. My hair squeaks when I rub it against itself, and my lips split open and bleed. Even ice here is dry. We don't even really have clouds. On Earth, apparently, there are so many clouds that people start mistaking them for other things, which I never really understood. I actually saw one yesterday. A pale, thready thing, drifting listlessly along the horizon. It didn't look like anything but a cloud.
I was bored and wanted to go down to the Canali and fart around. Kit was trying to do "watercolors" with a piece of cardboard, dust, and sink water, so he wanted to stay home. I spent two aimless hours underground, alone. I didn't have money, so I couldn't go shopping. I didn't remember where I'd found that big grocery store that had samples, so I couldn't eat. I did remember which stores had forms you could sign, so I wandered around stealing free pens. Even though I've done this so many times that I have a drawerful at home.
On the bus from work to the elevators, I usually stare out the window. Today, the entire hemisphere is having a big stupid dustup, so all I can see is rusty nothing and my own vacant face. I feel things tearing off and rattling around under my ribs, and look forward to coughing in the sink. Whatever comes out will be at least three colors.
I hope no one wants the other seat, because no, I can't make room. I've been standing with my knees locked for twelve hours. I'm stuck like this. It took long enough to sit down.
Kit does something that used to scare me half to death. He'll stop dead still and stare for a little bit, and then for the next half hour, everything I say to him whistles right through his head. I'm used to it now. It doesn't look painful, and he always comes right again. One time, I asked him what happened, and he said he didn't know. Just that his mind and body seem different, that sometimes there's music, and he always sees beautiful things. It's part of him, and that's all. So I just wait to tell him anything important.
When the sun starts sinking, the sirens start droning, droning every half hour until it's pitch dark, that last low note dying off slowly. They're basically air-raid sirens, but the danger is the air itself. Without the Sun's bright protection, you could freeze solid just because you were a little late getting home from work. Once, I did overtime at the plant, and right before I got in the elevator to the bullet train, the last siren blared in my ears. I couldn't go home. I slept on a row of chairs at the station, cold, aching, and completely alone.
If I'm going to have a coughing fit every time I start to drift off, I might as well make myself useful. Maybe I can figure out what the hell is going on. I start reading. Metal fume fever. Occupational asthma. Pneumoconiosis. Pulmonary fibrosis. I push my hair out of my eyes, then pause to examine it more closely. After my last haircut, the blue cast goes all the way to the ends. Chronic exposure to cobalt by inhalation. Nothing exactly fits, but nothing exactly doesn't fit. I just know that it's from my job, and that I'm probably dying.
When I was thirteen, the unthinkable finally happened: Kit and I were severed, flung to the far corners of this rusting globe. I had no point of reference for what would happen to him without me, so I did the only thing I could think of: I ran. I got on the dark train and sat on my freezing hands from Newton to Yellowknife, watching my white breath in the train-car and the moons outside the window, shining like dented cans. Two old cans on one tight string, me calling down the cable to my brother. I'm coming, I'm coming.
Throughout my life, a lot of people have felt the need to comment on my dead-looking eyes. If they're especially polite, the word is "dull," and they’ll ask me if I'm okay. The answer used to be "yes," and "yes" it remains, but now I'm lying. Anyway, it's really the kind of thing where other people point it out, but you never quite see it in yourself. My eyes are just my eyes. Now, when people started commenting on my bad breath a few months ago, that I noticed. But I couldn't explain it. I still brush twice every day.
Whenever Kit had a nightmare, he had to climb in bed with me. He did this until he was twelve. For most of our lives, we were in different rooms, down different halls, on different floors, even, but he remained undaunted. This made everything worse. Kit has no sense of direction to speak of, so by the time he found me, he was practically traumatized. And now, when I lie awake, sweating out a fever or struggling for air, I want to crawl in with him. I can't. He'd know I couldn't protect him anymore. But I'm so terribly scared.
I only celebrated Ghoul's Day once, when we were living in Yellowknife. The idea is, there's some kind of monster between Earth and us that eats satellites or something. And every year, people from all over write messages to stuff in capsules and launch them into space so the Ghoul can read them. (If Ghouls can even read.) I wrote "who actually reads this stuff?" I don't know what Kit wrote, other than that it went on for half a page. I've always been good at asking questions. He's always been good at playing funny games. We need each other.
Honestly, I've always wanted to leave. Go back ten years and ask me what I want to do, the answer would be "see it all." I wanted to get a craft and, essentially, shoot myself into space. The direction didn't matter, because I'd be exploring either way. Now, I'd just settle for getting to Earth in one piece. I'm cold and hungry and sick. In no shape for adventuring, too exhausted to even think about it. All I can think is that I hurt, and if making it stop means leaving this world, I'll do whatever it takes.
I know how to survive anything: you check out. When you haven't eaten in three days and your head is spinning, you check out. When you're freezing in five layers of clothing, you check out. When you wake up drenched in your own sweat, drowning in your own blood, you check out. When your spine feels jammed together from hours standing on a concrete floor, you check out. You check out, you check out, you check out of your whole goddamn life. It's all I remember how to do. I only seem like an optimist because I've already given up.
If you ask me, Kit and I were doing fine when it was just us in the same house we'd been living in since he was born. But apparently, someone didn't think so, and they called the police to tell them that the last adult was dead. We got sent across town to an orphanage full of other kids who were loud and stupid and mean to my brother. I kept a diary, and recorded every indignity I suffered there. "Jake ate my sandwich." "Phil stepped on my foot." "Kelly Proctor stole my binoculars. Kelly Proctor is a kleptomaniac."
"Milo?"
"Hm?"
"What are we even going to do on Earth?"
"The question is, what won't we do on Earth? There are endless options over there! I'm going to learn to ride a bicycle."
"I mean like, seriously."
"Oh. Well. I could get a better job there. We could live in a nicer apartment. I'm going whale watching."
"...What kind of job?"
"Don't know! I do know that I'm going to lie out in the sun until it hurts. Apparently, that can happen."
"...Milo?"
"Yeah?"
"Will you see a doctor?"
"I'm quitting this job. I probably won't need to."
The next time I escape by train, we're together. Barreling out of Iron Hills, the two of us in the big wide world, watching it blow past. A cable picks us up off the tracks and hurls us over the planet-splitting canyon. Marina Vista is gleaming in its bubble, having a beautiful night. The rest of the ride is flat, dark nothing. Juno in its cracked, dirty dome, pristine and dead as a pinned insect. And at last, Hyperborea, with its white forest of launchpads, gleaming in the midnight sun. One thing's for sure: we're a long way from Darwintown.
I know how to fly this escape shuttle. I've been reading the manuals for months. I've been in the cockpit for twenty hours. And just ahead, the blue arc of the Earth, the burning Sun we've been following. My eyes unfocused, hands shaking on the controls. Before I can stop myself, I start coughing. I try to cover my mouth, but it's useless. What I'd been swallowing for months splatters everywhere. Brother, I'm not alright. I can't hide it. And finally, I don't need to. Kit knows how to fly this escape shuttle. He's been reading my manuals for months.
I black out in the dark cockpit, wake up in a white bed. I'm in orbit, I'm nowhere. The gravity isn't even real. These few things I'm told: I'm not on Earth, but my brother is. I'll be on Earth soon, but I'm going there to die. I'm dying, but it isn't my job. I'm just sick. I have tuberculosis, of all fucking things. Nobody talks to me without long sleeves and a mask. Someone in plastic clothes and a respirator puts a tube in my arm, and then I'm alone. I stare at the ceiling. I sleep lying down.
no subject
no subject
And since this is just a "highlight reel" for a more involved story that continues on for quite a while after this, in which I'll probably be jumping back and forth a lot when I post snippets of it on here, I suppose this doesn't exactly count as a spoiler: They do eventually reunite! And Milo is okay. Kind of. He's not like, okay-okay, but he's okay enough that a new okay can be reached, which is actually pretty damn okay, taking everything into account. It's kind of a "you're in pretty good shape, for the shape that you're in" situation. :P (Meaning, he gets out with moderate bronchiectasis in his 1.5 remaining lungs and short about a foot of colon, but generally lives a happy, active, and relatively normal life.)
no subject
I DO
IT JUST TAKES ME A REALLY LONG TIME
Now, I am also going to take a long time to cuddle and think about rust golems and three colors coughed up in sinks.
Thank you.
no subject
YOU ARE WELCOME. I THANK YOU BACK AS WELL! <3
no subject
*cough*
Anyway, I really like Milo. It's just so clear how much he loves his brother, how determined he is to stay with Kit and to get Kit somewhere safe, and that's really endearing in a character.
no subject
He does indeed get antibiotics! Even though he's kind of bait-and-switched at first. Meaning, the facility he's held in is basically a sanitarium for escapee Martians with infectious diseases that are rare (if not eliminated) on Earth, who are used as subjects for drug trials for a while, then treated with first-line, bare-minimum antibiotics for a while. Luckily for Milo, his brother breaks him out of one of those eventually, and he gets proper treatment from a nice back-alley doctor. (Though, it's not without complications. His iffy treatment caused his infection to become resistant and all.)
Yeah, I like Milo, too! I mean, he's my character, but he's one of my favorite people that I've made up. :) And I'm so glad that was clear for you, since it was what I was trying to convey, and this is obviously just kind of a highlight reel of their full arc! And yeah, he's really endearing. Even when he's on Survival Autopilot Mode. :D
Thanks a ton for reading/commenting!