ELYSIAN FIELDS

A/N: Hey guys. I know this chapter and the last were a little lighter. Please be aware the lightness ends at the end of this chapter. Next update things will never be the same again. That is all you get.
Also chapter titles come from T.S. Eliot's amazing quintessential modernist poem, The Waste Land. Stop reading this and go read that. Then come back if you want.

Elysian Fields

Chapter 2

Breeding Lilacs Out Of the Dead Land

10:15am (?)

"Did you see that?"

"No."

"That?"

"No."

"That?"

"No.

"That?"

"I'm blind. Blind. I can't see shit."

"Sam, give me that flashlight."

"What?"

"Pass me your flashlight."

"Three flashlights aren't going to change anything, Spike. We need to—"

"Don't say that. Don't say things like that. We just need a little hope and—"

"I'm blind. I have the worst headache. And my legs don't work."

"Yeah, well you're not dead."

"You're not helping him by sticking flashlights in his eyes."

"Oh yeah? And what's your suggestion Dr. Braddock?"

"Have you even tried contacting Sarge yet?"

"Raf's comm. link is down."

"So is mine. Have you tried yours?"

"No. It's—It's kinda stuc—there we go. It's dead air. The base is loose, but I might—"

"Jules?"

"She awake? Sam? She awake?"

"Was I—"

"She's awake. Let's get out of here. This little wire needs to—"

"Was I unconscious?"

"And if I smash really hard on this part, then it should—"

"Yeah Sweetheart, yeah you were."

"A ha. Sarge? Ed? Do you guys copy? Yeah it's Spike. We're all conscious. Raf's in pretty rough condition though. He's got no leg movement. He can't see either."

"Just tell them I'm blind. And you forgot the headache."

"You're not blind. Not until a doctor tells you you are."

"Won't be able to pedal."

"Sam and Jules have head wounds. She just regained consciousness. I broke my wrist."

"No, no, no, no."

"Yeah. Copy that."

"Jules, you can't—"

"Can't, well I guess I could feel out the black and white but what's the use?"

"I'm not sleeping. My eyes are—"

"The stairs look completely blocked, but there might be a way to tunnel down. I would start at the second floor if it's stable."

"Thank you."

"The short and the long of it, but there's no change."

"Okay keep me updated. Sarge is sending Ed and another team to the second floor to see if they can do an extraction."

"Let me take a look."

"Raf, you okay?"

"Yeah, just—Yeah. You think there's any chance they can get us out?"

"There's four points of entry. Double doors rubbled shut. Stairs avalanched closed."

"Sam, it's fine."

"Windows probably broken and boarded with stones, and then just backhoeing a wall. Can you see this?"

"What do you think? Tell them what's going on with Sarge and Ed. Give me the flashlight. I'll stick it in my eye."

"You know there's no way I'm letting you move without me—"

"Guys, Ed and the other team are going to the second floor to find a way to get us out."


10:20am(?)

Perches at her feet. Just like on the couch at home. When she's really tired she'll put her feet in his lap. Fall asleep with her face tucked into the crook of her arm while he plays melodies on her toes. Paints her legs different colors with different degrees of pressure. Muscles hard as diamonds. Diamonds. A lot of diamonds lately. Diamonds in her ears. Diamonds speckled in her hair. Diamonds set behind her eyes.

The abyss, the rest of the stairwell, darkness swallowing darkness in selfish gulps, sucks him in. Somewhere else. Heel of a familiar foot in his lap and five toes braided with his fingers. Her voice tickling his ear in warm rasps. Late nights and early mornings spun tightly in a spool with her and a bed sheet. Kisses her because everyone knows. Public embraces. They go out for dinner hand-in-hand and he ends up shoveling food into his mouth because her foot rides high on his leg underneath the table. Ballets over ankle, shin, knees and thigh. Stockinged toes pluck at the disappearing wrinkles in his pants at high thigh and he yells for the cheque.

The tread of an SRU work shoe digs into the thick of his thigh and his brain shuts the fuck up. The depression of her sole remains on his skin. Shrines her in light, her right hand skims the rivulets between the brown bricks. Nails filing down against the jagged bumps in the stone. A moan escapes her. Weary, hazy, confused and hurt.

"Jules?" Ignores his own soaring head resting somewhere in a pit of clouds. Shoves off the slab and kneels before her contorting face. Eyes swirling into knots, plugged by clogging lashes and a layer of dust.

Positions the flashlight on the floor. Still illuminates the area, but won't flare in her abused eyes. She commences pushing herself up, arms swaying like cherry blossoms in a breeze. Legs curling to the side. Eyes barely open like she just awoke from a Sunday afternoon nap. Bangs pasting to her forehead, more security detail for her eyes. One hand scouts the back of her head while the other acts as a stabilizer. "Was I—" coughs once and groans from the pain. Still sways all diamonds and blossoms. "Was I unconscious?"

"Yeah Sweetheart. Yeah you were." Sputters it out. She's talking. She's fine with dayspring eyes and a careening body.

Knees shuffles closer. Pebbles seed. Will grow to full boulders on his knees and he doesn't care. Embraces her because he can. Let's her forehead fall to his chin. Plants kisses with the diamonds and ash woven in her hair. Let's his hand support her strained neck.

At first her fingers lick at the back of his head. Just shy of contacting his own wound. But then grow languid. Flop from his hairline, tickle his neck and hook into his coat collar before diving completely off his back. Head becomes heavy on his shoulder. Chin a pressure point as the side of her face masks against his neck.

"No, no, no, no." Yanks her back. Her eyes droop like petals on a withering flower. "Jules, you can't go to sleep. Not right now."

"I'm not sleeping." Immediately she argues, but at half capacity. "My eyes are—" flinches at rash radiance from Spike. Back to coercing blind pupils with multiple flashlights. Her eyes dance within the sockets from over stimulus. She ducks her head away, then bows in another direction. Teeth impaling her lip enforcing failure.

He cups a hand around the side of her face, slumbers in the dry bed from her ear. Fingers broad enough to shield her from the brightness. In the corner beams mingle. They're spun together in a centrifuge. Fireflies caught in a jar and jostled like a salt shaker. Toppling from an airplane in the nighttime sky towards the ground lit up by a thousand Christmas lights. A string of stars tied upon a lasso. Reflect off the specks of diamonds, ashes, and kisses in her hair.

"Thank you." She grins at him. Authentic. Tickles blooming eyes. Full lips crack, dust spurts out.

Words are pure relief. Cold in hot. Hot in cold. A gulp of unadulterated oxygen. The purest of pure. Requited love in every syllable. It's the basis for his calmness. Any part of her from a shed eyelash to an exhaled breath.

Rubs his spare thumb over her soft cheek where one of the darker dirt smudges smugly sits. Probably shaded by their contact. Brushes the side of her head with a finger. "Let me take a look."

Manages to roll her eyes through barely open slits. "Sam, it's fine."

"You know there's no way I'm letting you move without me—"

"Guys," Spike flashes directly at them. To avoid the ocular assault, Jules wobbles towards the wall. Hand deflates through two layers of coat to her vest as he helps her turn. The coat cackles and spare rocks from the wall clatter. "Ed and another team are going to the second floor to find a way to get us out."

"Okay Spike." Salvages the flashlight from the ground. Obstructs the light from the side of her face with his right hand. Her fingers circling around his palm and pressing his cool hand to her hot temple. Spare hand traces the light over her wound, starts just behind her left ear and runs to the back of her skull. "We'll be right over. I just want to make sure she doesn't have a concussion."

Slap reverberates through the stairwell. Tastes the rejection over the soot. The back of his hand singes. "I don't have a concussion."

"I just want to check." Replaces his hand, but she knocks it from her face like a mosquito. A buzzing, blathering, parasitic insect intent on annoying. Out for her blood. "Jules."

"You don't have to treat me like—"

Drops the flashlight. Light wavers and balances on invisible scales. Slides forward so his chest grazes the slope of her shoulder. "Do you have any idea how fucking scared I was?" Neck twists to meet him. Impedes her movement. Forces her head straight. Fingers march on the border of her wound in the low light. It's not bleeding anymore. It doesn't need stitches. Just a superficial laceration.

Thumb wipes through the blood, sticky molasses on her neck. Lets his fingers drop and find her pulse. The common functionality of a heartbeat. One he could tap Morse code to. "You weren't waking up. We're stuck in here and you're lying there unconscious—"

"Hey." Revolves against his hand. Planets realigning. Shifting to each other's orbits. Spike's lights running track on the walls and fractured roof like lasers at a planetarium. A star show. Her face powdered in soot. Eyes responsive, but covert. Fatigue resting in the dust laden lines. The pressure within the well making her a diamond in a galaxy. "I'm okay, Sam."

No answer. Carries the light to her face. It drips between his fingers like rainwater. Like sand granules in a desert. Flinches at an invisible sound, at the punch of pain behind dark brown irises. The same pain they both share. Fist twists into the sleeve of his coat, five petal blossoms on a stone. Waggles the light before her eyes. White valleys crawling with red worms. Dots erupt and digest. Dark brown illuminates to light brown. Gradation from center out. Flecks of feathers within. In the very back, diamonds shimmer.

Lessens the light against the slab. Flicks a tear away with his thumb. Arid, painful. "You don't have a concussion."

Doesn't gloat. Doesn't tell him what a colossal waste of time this was. Face still cupped. Still protected. With light flushing up, projecting on both of them, she kisses him. Softly. Dryly. Perfectly. Just like every other one of her kisses. Maybe better.

Stands and his knees groan and shudder like metal walls in a windstorm. Spots of blood pucker at the mouth of his skin. Offers her his clean hand. Lets his head bob on his shoulders for a few minutes, like a perpetual motion bird. Constantly sipping. Diving.

"You know what's weird?" Floats up, barely enough of her to keep her on the ground.

Arm wraps around her waist to keep her earthbound. Came from the earth. Within the earth. Natural. Arm slung to hip. Just walking to the store. Just from the store to the car. Just into the restaurant. They're anywhere but here. Natural. The changing of seasons. The changing of positions. The shedding of petals. The shedding of clothing. The opening of flowers. The opening of mouths. The creation of diamonds. The creation of life. "What?"

"I think I dreamed about you using my blender."


10:47am

"Julianna Callaghan, it's good to hear your voice." Greg's relief melts over the mechanics of the comm. link. Seeps through garbled speakers and sparks the microphones to soothe twisted cords.

"It's good to be heard." Barely audible. Barely present. A filtered, flickering buzz of flitting wings at a hive. Static spuming honey. Viscous golden liquid jamming their communications. Instead bottle and label the voices for later.

Soupy ambiance. Whips of smoke curl by his face. Stretch out and arch against his skin like a purring cat with feathers sticking out of its mouth. No sound. Sound clips of a conversation in his ear. Three people. Two people. One person peer pressuring the others to join.

Foot falls scabrous. Gravel amounting to mountains under his foot. The carver of mountains. The climber of mountains. A modern day Sisyphus. The specks of gravel, of stone, of concrete, of intentional hurt on the linoleum floor weed thicker. Clutch together in scattered bundles. Grow abundant. Grow in legions.

"I'm approaching the second storey stairwell. I need the statuses of everyone below." Footsteps again. Mountains trundle from his heel. Waddle overweight trying to keep up.

"I'm sitting with Raf. We're against the walls near the doors."

"Sam and I are by the stairs. We're looking for any breaks in the rubble."

Boxed corner. Right angle. Wrong outcome. Recalibrate path to slip through the crevice in the walls. Mountains crunch beneath him. Flatten, return ocean bound. Atlantis for millennia. "Okay, stick close to the walls. I don't know how stable this floor is."

What if—What if he walks through and falls down. Then five trapped. But then a descent. A decent hole and search and rescue. Worth the risk. Job about risk. Job about chest shoving a boulder as big as a shopping cart up a straight incline, only to have it roll back down. Job is about crushing mountains and having them erupt to Pompeii thousands. Job about a maniac blowing up a high school and trapping his team.

Walk through. Crushes mountains. But not the one that counts. Dominates the room. The corridor. The windows. A plague of rubble spewed. Fractions of light sieve through the cracks like dying breaths. A quick breath because they might be flashlight beams from below. But belong to the overcast daylight through broken bay windows. Debris a constant exclamation point.

Collected up like a Mayan temple. Stairs over stairs. Rocks over rocks. Mountains under mountains. No way of getting down. Can't dig because rocks pile like prizes in a gumball machine. If he removed one, more would topple down. Can't tell them. Has to tell them. Can't tell them.

A bleached noise. Not from honeydew in the communications. Not from sentiments stinging the headsets. It's in the stairwell. The half well with him. A bland noise. Not unlike the malicious intent of bees' wings. But nostalgically electronic. Like the chime of a cell phone or a beep of a wristwatch.

A scarlet blaze emits from the temple. Showers the surrounding rocks of the effigy in an ethereal glow. A dab of blood on an obsidian mountain. The showings of lava within a volcano. All eerily familiar for a unique experiencing. Agitates his interest, so he crushes with caution until he looms over the radiating rock.

The red transforms. Concentrates until it forms numbers. Moving numbers. Numbers in rows, in constant motion. Four columns, the last of which can't stay stable. Constantly jumping. Descends to the point of stealing the third. Then the third releases a scream concentrated in a beep.

Stares at the moon. Recognized the glow from a clock face. A clock radio white and round like a low hanging moon. Stuck to some wires, stuck to some charges, stuck in the mountain. Hand ghosts up his body until it taps at the beings contained in his eardrum.

"Guys, there's another bomb."


A/N#2: The first section was from Raf's POV. Hence the no descriptions (I realize he still has three and a half out of five senses (half of touch) but everyone has those senses too. Plus I figured the dramatic dialogue would be confusing like the state he's in. It was also the only time I'd ever get to do it.

Back                         Home                              Flashpoint Main Page                              Next

Your Name or Alias:      Your E-mail (optional):

Please type your review below. Only positive reviews and constructive criticism will be posted!