They had been getting longer. "Absences," the doctor called them. But Sebastian refused to call them that. An absence sounded like something long, a continuous lack, a permanent not being there. He was very much there. Just sometimes not in his own body.
They weren't new. He had always had them. Even as a child he would suddenly find himself observing a scene as from up high or far away. As if, for a tiny moment, he could see himself standing there, listening to the annoying aunts coo over him, enduring the claps on the shoulder from stuck up uncles.
At school they were a welcome distraction whenever he found himself in a situation where friends were lacking. The odd one out, he would look on the scene as an outsider while bullies tried to bait him into stepping a toe out of line. Until suddenly he'd be back in his body, throwing a punch, or shrugging and walking away. Whichever would annoy the other the most.
In the army there has been less of them. Hard to not be in your body when so many things were happening all at once. Hard to not be in your body when the situation was life or death.
And then there were those moments when it was just him, the rifle, and the target. When everything became crystal clear. When time contracted into a singular, long stretched now. He was never watching from far away as he waited for the shot. Brain blissfully quiet and focused he would bide his time. There was no world beyond the scope. Just the little circle and cross.
After the army. Well, he hadn't had need to observe from afar. Everything was immediate, and now, and in the moment. What had been alone had become we. What had been mine became ours. He wanted to live each moment, know it intimately, and see it from up close. There had been no absence, only presence.
Until that day. The day when he had searched and searched. Screamed until his throat was raw. That day he had seen himself from far away again. A lonely figure, wandering about, looking for a tether point, pleading for an answer that did not come. That day it had taken long before he was found himself back in cold limbs, damp, chilled flesh, ice cold bones.
Since that day they had become longer. First he would have missed a single sentence as he stared down on the heads of himself and his conversation partner. But a sentence became two, became three, became entire conversations. Conversations he could not recall, even when the person he was speaking with noticed nothing, as his body continued its functions of listening and replying. It didn't matter. People were boring.
It didn't matter. The world had lost its meaning. London had lost its shine. He didn't have to see each moment up close anymore. Not since that day when no answer came to his pleas and he had tracked home, cold and alone. When presence had become absence.
But on thing had remained in focus. Him, the rifle and the target. He still had those moments when the world fell away and everything made sense. When he was inside his body, patiently waiting with a finger on the trigger. Perfectly focused, relaxed but alert with just the right amount of tension.
Until now. When he was staring down on himself lying in wait.
It didn't make sense. This was the one. The single most important shot he would ever take. He tried to find a way back. Clawed at air. Desperate to get back to the body that was waiting, calmly, until the target would show himself. But he would miss it, stuck as he was, up in the air. He had to find a way back. This was important. Holmes had to pay!
The shot rang out. And still he was floating, as the bullet left the barrel, as the glass across the street shattered and the projectile hit its goal. He drifted over, accepting that he would be pulled back when the time came, and not before. He saw the decoy. Knew he had failed.
And was slammed back in his body as hands grabbed him and a voice loudly proclaimed something about arrest.
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