![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Having left Nelson after helping him clean up the mess that was his display, I have no reason to stay behind. The meeting... what a disaster. I have to admire Nelly for his idea... But with certain individuals involved, it was bound to fail.
And I'm already beginning to see what I must do.
I shut the door behind me quietly, already having noticed the distraught gathering at the end of the walkway. Blake looks almost dumbstruck as Laurie's mother gestures violently, shouting at him while clutching her daughter by the arm. I pity Laurie - her mother is a powerful woman, but so controlling - yet my attention is focused on Blake.
The car pulls away, and Blake stands at the edge of the street, staring after it. Coming closer, I see the look on his face - how thoroughly surprising.
He looks almost... sad.
I feel no pity. I feel almost nothing at all. I could walk away, now - his pain means nothing to me.
But I move closer instead, and lean against the gate.
"Eddie."
He looks up, as if dazed, and I smile.
"Lady trouble?"
- Mood:
thoughtful
It's a thick sensation first, like to drowning, with trial and error discovering limbs like bags of lead, still as marble. The world around as black as pitch.
And I realize I'm in water. Treading, every fiber thrumming with exhaustion, unable to stop, yet unable to move. Before me is a distant ship, mighty and made of shadow, and with each battering wave I'm brought closer to it. Instead of relief, I feel only fear, because with every breath I recognize the stink of rot and fermentation.
Then I see it.
A titanic face, or a blackness which remains faceless, albeit for a gaping maw dribbling out scraps of entrails, venomous blood. Its teeth are not teeth, its eyes not eyes - it is made up of needles and mirrors, full of water and spite. I know this even before I see it, as if it were predestined, fated to be so.
And I'm caught in its ethereal, slurping drag, the inward gravitational pull of its endless croaking lips, and I realize that it isn't made up of darkness, of nothing at all.
They're faces.
Thousands, screaming and crying, bleeding from their eyes or mouths or the smashed remains of their skulls and ribcages, torn asunder. They're reaching out to me, floating in space, scrambling out of a mess of their own fluids and oozing pus to call to me. I hear through all their moaning, the sobbing shattering screams that they're saying my name, my name which is not my name, for my name is Ozymandias, king of kings, look on my works--
Look on this massacre--
I'm drowning, the salt around me not water but blood and hysteric tears, and all I can see is the collapse of buildings and flickering blue light—
“No….!!!”
I wake up soaked in sweat and trembling, as I have not done since the night after my mother’s burial, or perhaps since sleeping on the street for a third night in a row, seventeen years old, after death and before renewal.
My bedroom in my New York estate is nothing compared to my chambers in Karnak, but it remains spacious and well decorated. Bubastis rumbles drowsily on her pillows at the foot of the bed, undisturbed by my waking.
Somewhere behind the heavy curtains, the world is asleep, broken facets slowly mending.
I will remain awake, tonight.
- Location:New York, NY
- Mood:
shaken
The streets are damp, the air humid, and my armor feels heavy as I move up the fire escape. It's been a long time in searching, but I know he should be here. Hours of investigation proved fruitful - Hooded Justice's disappearance, and the operative sent to try and fail to find him.
Edward Blake.
I reach the roof, ignoring the complaining ache in my arms, and survey the city below me. It's nearly three in the morning - another hour and my watch would do little more than act as empty survey for a sleeping city.
He is here, though, and I'm not tired, though the night is warm, the air thick with the smell of oncoming rain and heavy tobacco smoke--
I recognize the stink of a cigar through the humidity even as I turn around, defensive, and I find myself staring down the barrel of a .45.
He's tall, and built like a prize fighter. Eyes glowing in the dark against the lit cigar sitting jauntily on his lip.
Patriotic colors, grinning like a fool, he smells like leather and sweat. He's one of us, and yet his gun hovers steady, inches from my nose.
I dislike him immediately, as I thought I would, but stand straight.
"Good evening."
- Location:Dockland
- Mood:
irritated
"Adrian."
The sudden shine of blue shocks me from my meditation, and my head throbs.
Jon looks at me blankly - or perhaps, apologetically - and I know he's here to ask about my return to New York.
Or rather, to be told what he already knows.
Between us, the planets whirl and shimmer in their glass casing, oblivious to the truly perilous axis their real faces spin on.
I step down from the dais, and wait.
- Mood:
calm
Rorschach left puddles of rainwater and mud on the floor, trailing from the window to where I stand now, and back again. The plastic figures scattered across my desk lay twisted and huddled over newspapers; they're merely bent and golden facsimiles of myself - faces from my past I no longer find familiar.
Prostitute, he'd said, and I'm still surprised I managed not to laugh.
I've long since closed the window, but behind me the room still feels damp and cold.
A comedian has died, he said, and with raindrops and the outdoors dragged in from the outside, he floods the my office with the smell of wet leaves and cheap, overused cologne. Edward Blake has died in New York.
I know what I must do.
- Mood:
determined - Music:U2 - Stranger in a Strange Land
I'm afraid that I can't quite grasp the direction my mind is going in, at the moment. I feel horribly bitter, as much as it pains me to say. Yet somehow I can't truly hate the buffoon. He's a good fighter, he's proven that more than once... and if not necessarily a good man, well, perhaps he's at least ahead of the curve.
I nearly hate myself for thinking it, but - what if he's right?
What if we're just picking at the edges of the world's heavy rot? Is what we're doing truly so useless? So... mundane?
It can't be true.
We have our morals, our strengths... Can these truly not be enough?
I've always tried to be steadfast in my path, no matter what it may be. Yet I'm questioning, now. Everything.
I have money enough to buy a thousand maps. Enough, maybe, to pinpoint all the degradation and crime the world over.
I wonder how many would burn as easily as that one.
- Mood: cold
Though history does have a manner of repeating itself...
Not that I'm entirely unprepared.
- Mood: contemplative
- Music:David Bowie - The Width of a Circle
Perhaps it was only the cold, but those halls felt quite bitter.
For now, I've purchased a rather small estate just outside of New York City. It's rather quaint, but could do with some redecorating... And I think, perhaps, it's a bit too quiet. No matter, I know I ought to be here, as close as I can to the reconstruction of the world.
I think it will serve as a fine reminder.
-V.
- Mood: calm
And to keep tabs on some... old friends.
Now, just a small matter of finding them...
- Mood:
accomplished - Music:Antonio Vivaldi - "Spring" Allegro
