But I'd follow you to the great unknown
Off to a world we call our own
Hand in my hand and we promised to never let go
We're walking the tightrope
High in the sky
We can see the whole world down below
We're walking the tightrope
Never sure, never know how far we could fall
But it's all an adventure
That comes with a breathtaking view
Walking the tightrope with you
No one can ever follow
No one can ever know
Wind up the spinning top and watch it go, watch it go
Never gonna be easy, was it?
You didn't think it'd be so much fun
Smile comes despite the danger get some get some
There's something happening here
There's something here that I just can't explain
I know I'm where I belong
Deep down inside I am no longer lost!
I won't let you go
This is what you really want
So don't let go of me
This is what you asked for
I wanted something more
This is what you really want
I wanted this right here
This is what you asked for
It's all gonna shift, it's out of our hands
Babe if you could know, you would hatch a plan
That's my, that's my man
If we're gonna die, bury us alive
If they're searching for us they'll find us side by side
That's my, that's my man
This world is gonna burn, burn burn burn
As long as we're going down...
Baby you should stick around
For the devil to dance again
And the room is too quiet
I was looking for the breath of a life
A little touch of a heavenly light
But all the choirs in my head sang, no
Drew and Ettore were racing through the starch white hospital hallways, stumbling over their own feet in their haste. Ett had taken the lead as he had also taken it upon himself to push people aside and call out that the two of them were coming through at breakneck speed. He shoved one of the nurses to the side. She swore at him and stumbled against the whitewashed wall as his metal arm collided with her chest. He winced, feeling a little guilt swell in his gut, but kept going as Drew showed absolutely no signs of stopping and depended on him to keep the paparazzi away and to clear the path.
“Shit, sorry!” was all he managed to get out toward the nurse as they rounded a corner and he flung open the door to the emergency staircase.
They took the stairs, not bothering with waiting for an elevator to chug along. Ett managed to take two at a time with his long strides. Drew fell somewhat behind, panting as he was out of shape compared to the younger man.
“Fucking hell,” Ett swore as they finally reached the door to their floor and he shoved it open hard, nearly knocking it into a doctor who stumbled back and stared in shock at them. Ett held the door for Drew and the older man hurried ahead with Ett on his heels now. The hospital was filled with the sounds of whirring machines, beeping things and squeaking sneakers… and Ett yelling at anybody who happened to move in front of them.
In general, Ettore had grown to hold a passionate dislike for hospitals. After spending so much time in the field, he had also spent his fair share of time in hospitals and, generally speaking, only bad things seemed to happen to him in these buildings that smelled distinctly of chemicals and death.
He pulled to a stop outside of birthing room and caught his breath quickly as he hesitated with his hand on the knob. Drew made no such hesitation and grabbed it from him, pushing open the door as Keera’s screams broke into the hallway and Ett stayed back, looking tense. The door shut in his face as Drew entered and rushed to his wife’s side.
His palm was suddenly damp from a cold sweat and he rubbed it against his dark wash jeans. He and Drew had flown straight here from Spain when they had receive the message that Keera had gone into labor. He had been serving as a bodyguard for Drew over there while the man was negotiating some type of business relations. Upon getting the call in the middle of the night, they had thrown on the street clothes nearest to them and taken off in Drew’s private jet without so much as a farewell or conclusions to Drew’s consultations.
The clothes he wore now had been lying in a neglected pile next to his bed. He was actually pretty sure the shirt was Drew’s by the way it fit although he had no idea how it would have ended up in his pile of shit. Ett wore a simple pair of dark wash, almost black jeans, a white button up that was half unbuttoned and a little big on his frame. On his feet were a pair of black Converse shoes. He typically wouldn’t wear something like that, but Gracie had bought them for him for Christmas so, for her, he wore them. Secretly, he was certain this was just her way of nerding him up. His hair had grown out a little longer than normal and hung around his face as there had been no time to do anything with it. There were dark rims around his eyes from lack of sleep. Not only had they traveled through the night with no sleep but, recently, he had been battling with a lot of unexplainable nightmares.
Ett’s head throbbed in sudden pain and he winced. He had grown almost used to it and, for the most part, he could manage these migraines now but this one was different. This one grew, throbbed, and almost sent him to his knees. He placed his cool metal hand against his forehead in an attempt to abate the cold sweat trickling down his brow.
He hesitated for a long minute outside of the door as the cries carried out into the hallway and several nurses passed by and gave him inquisitive looks before squeaking on their way. This wing of the hospital seemed suddenly, hauntingly quiet. It was as if everything and everyone had paused and held their breath as Keera cried out and groaned.
Finally, he pushed open the door and entered. The air pressure in the room seemed to change drastically from that in the hallway. It felt as if he had stepped into artic temperatures and then it burned the hell out of him as if he had died and gone straight into the inferno. His fingers dug around in his pockets til they grazed over the Rosary he always kept tucked away there. It burned to the touch and he instinctively jerked his hand back and picked his way through the room to where he saw Gracie sitting in the window seat and watching, waiting. She seemed on edge though not for the same reasons as he was.
Something was wrong. Something was wrong with him.
Through his delirium, he vaguely saw Drew standing beside Keera and holding onto her hand tightly and whispering something to her. There was a doctor and a nurse there too but he couldn’t make out any faces.
Ett sat down beside Gracie heavily and rested his cheek against her shoulder as was typical for him. This time, though, it wasn’t out of affection but because he was unable to keep his head up any longer. He felt as though he was suffocating and his breathing was labored as he fought against the crushing in his chest. The color had washed from his face and he looked practically spirit-like himself as the life felt as though it was draining from his entire person. His eyes closed slowly and he swallowed thickly. He was about to say something, certain that he had taken ill in some way.
When he looked up again, his eyes had gone from normal light blue, to an icy, transparent and liquid blue. He blinked and it was gone, but they settled on a figure that appeared crouched in one corner of the room and his head slowly rose from Gracie’s shoulder as he focused. The figure came in and out of focus for a second and then he realized it was staring right back at him and glaring right through to his soul. He felt drained and yet drawn to it. He shifted away from Gracie. It was pulling him in.
“Oh God…” he murmured under his breath. The thing was faceless and yet… he could make out features. Eyes that were a horrible icy color without pupils and definition but they were eyes, nevertheless. There weren’t any lids, or none he could see. It was a straight stare right at his soul. Its hair was stringy, moving without any airflow. It’s body was indescribably lanky and unhuman-like. It’s limbs were contorted and terrifying. His stomach did a flip as it almost looked like there was blood dripping down what could be called its legs and soaking into the floor, through the floor, dripping God only knew where. There was no mouth that he could see and yet he distinctly heard whispering coming from its corner. It was a never-ending string of hissing in his direction as it beckoned him closer.
Without thinking, he rose and moved from Gracie and wandered across to the corner. His limbs moved jerkily, under no control of his own. He could vaguely hear Gracie calling his name… or calling for an Ettore. Was that still his name? Ett felt hot, like he was burning from fever. He heard Keera’s screams as he reached out toward the figure.
Why was he doing this? Why? He didn’t want to touch it. He wanted to run. Why was it here and what was it?
His metal arm hung limply as the connection was made between his right, real hand and the creature. The creature remained stationary, its eyes bore into his and Ett’s eyes reflected its ice blue. They remained suspended in time for a moment like that. He could hear Gracie moving behind him and he heard doctors. More beeping equipment and squalls of what he assumed to be a baby. The creature’s eyes flicked pure black, blending with its body and Ett’s normal, bright eyes changed with it as he looked over his shoulder. Both his eyes turned black and demonic like as they settled first on Gracie and then on the baby the doctor held up to show Keera. His eyes closed again, shutting out their pitch blackness and he collapsed in the corner of the room. His heart slowed to a near stop, he was vaguely aware that he must be seizing again. He felt himself jerking painfully out of his body. There was a sharp cry. He had no clue if it came from himself, Keera or Gracie. The room turned into a blur and it spun painfully as he looked up. He didn’t see Gracie’s face nor even a stranger’s. He saw the thing staring blankly down at him and then jerking him upward and disappearing through him or into him. He wasn’t sure. His body felt disconnected and distant and that was when he realized it was.
Panic came over him as he realized he was no longer in the hospital room. He was lost in a dense forest of trees that were foreboding and bathed in a dim purpleish light. The sun was bright up above but all around him was freezing cold and dark as night. In front of him, there was a massive mansion that looked as though it had just been built the day before. Its windows were shuttered and the landscape around it was filled with contorted topiaries of various animals that he could not name. He moved toward it. His motions were slow at first and then he started running. The spirit was gone entirely and yet his head was still screaming in pain and he felt terrified without fully knowing why. He pushed into the house and looked around.
The walls and furniture were warped and the wind was whistling through it’s empty rooms. The curtains were pulled closed tightly and he heard a child laughing behind him but when he turned, there was nothing there.
“Where are you!?” he cried out, speaking a language he didn’t know yet somehow understood and could speak. He snapped his lips together tightly as the creature presented itself in front of him and his stomach did a flip-flop as it communicated without words. “I can see you!” he swallowed back his fear, backing toward the door and away from it as it came ever closer. “Why can I see you? What do you want?” it was whispering dark thoughts into his head, whispering his uselessness and whispering to him about the pills and the booze and whispering to him about Addington’s child. The child that needed to die.
Even in this dream state, Ett felt his blood pressure dropping and his eyes rolling into the back of his head as the creature reached out and he felt the burn of its touch across his skin. It left a visible mark as it traveled down his right arm and to his hand. Yet he didn’t have the energy nor the will power to resist it. It was inches from his ear now, much larger than it had been in the hospital room and pulling him into its force.
He realized within seconds that it was going to possess him, slowly. He had never had a spirit do this with him before, he had never dealt with anybody except people who simply wanted to be heard, seen and talked to.
“Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in praelio.” He stopped as he gasped for breath and his knees buckled under him. Somewhere in the house he heard laughter again. It was twisted, like a girl screaming and laughing at the same time. His blood ran cold, “Contra nequitiam snarls diaboli esto praesidium. Imperet illi Deus,” he felt a little stronger and looked up to see the being inches from him, their eyes were a mere hair’s length away and they locked, “supplices deprecamur: tuque, Princeps militiae coelestis, Dei virtute, in infernum detrude Satanam aliosque” his heart was racing faster than he knew it should. It was hammering like a drum against his chest and felt like it might burst. Sweat poured down him, “spiritus malignos, præbent mundo ad perditionem animarum pervagantur. Amen.” The creature momentarily jerked away from him. There was blood splattering the floor and he wondered if it was his own.
Ett rose from his knees and wobbled toward the door but was stopped. His legs refused to move and he was thrown back around. His back collided painfully with the wall. The being was right in front of him again, his back pressed against the wall as he stared down at it, trapped. “What do you want?!” As he repeated his words he again heard the same mantra repeated over and over. Kill the child. Kill it. Kill it. Kill it.
Ett cried out as it felt as though the words were being engraved into his skull. He felt blood trickling down his neck and he realized that there was red liquid dribbling from his ears and down to his shirt collar, staining the white permanently red. Tears were running down his cheeks in red – he realized that he was crying blood.
By that point, he was certain that he was going to die. He wasn’t going to see the normal world again…. He wasn’t going to see Gracie again. “Let me go!” he lashed out and the being vanished. Ett dashed to the door, light headed and blacking out as he flew through the forest and prayed that someone would revive him and help him escape this world. “Madre!” he cried out, it was the only person who came to mind who might be able to help him. “Appello!” he gasped out, leaning against a tree as he felt the weight and horror of it settle across his chest. He sniffed and realized that his nose was bleeding too. He rubbed the back of his hand against it and it came back smeared and dark red.
He fell to his knees. “Appello!” he reached for his Rosary but found that it had vanished. He searched both pockets desperately but it was not to be found. He looked up toward the dim sun as the mixed tears fell freely down his cheeks and dripped into his shirt.
He remembered no more after that.
He came to in a hospital room of his own, gasping as machines beeped to life around him. They rung, loud and annoying, in his sensitive ears. He looked around to see only Gracie there with a gray-haired doctor. Her cheeks were stained with tears and the doctor looked absolutely horrified as Ett blinked and stared around blankly, his eyes still a clear, ice blue for a second before adjusting to their normal color. He was pale as a sheet of paper and the usually subtle dark rims around his eyes were defined and as dark as if he had been wearing eyeliner.
“Nurse!” the doctor immediately called a nurse in there and rushed to the side of the bed to check his blood pressure and vitals.
“What happened…” Ett’s words came out in Italian as nothing else was coming to him besides the demon’s horrible language that he somehow understood.
“You died ten minutes ago,” the doctor murmured in shock himself as he gathered what Ettore was asking without needing to understand the language, “we tried to revive you but you were gone.”
Ett looked over to Gracie, his eyes wide and terrified, “But… Drew… Keera?” he frowned as he tried to piece everything together but memories were coming back spotty at best and for a second he couldn’t even recall his own name as the doctor asked him. In that moment’s hesitation, the man frowned and exchanged a look with the nurse. The only word that kept coming to his mind was omicida. He attempted to sit up and made a grab for Gracie’s arm with his left, metal hand but the his grip was weak at best. “Gracelyn?” for some reason he couldn’t contemplate what he called her besides that, maybe that was what he called her. He frowned and looked away before falling back and staring at the white tiled ceilings as the doctor and nurse attempted to escort Gracie out of the room.
Prompt: Watching.
Characters Used: Keera Docherty, Jake Howe, mentions of Drew Addington (Hales' Character)
Rating: PG
Warnings: Really bad writing?
Summary: Set a few months before Keera discovers Drew has a year left to live, the pair attend a charity function, Keera contemplates the present.
She was always watching, she had no other choice really. Being Isaac Addington's Personal Assistant meant continuously watching; watching his actions, watching to see if he was about to cause some sort of scandal or PR mess that as usual she would be left to clear up, watching to see if he needed prompting with someone's name or position. Watching to see if he was getting bored or antsy, in need of an escape or a drink. Being Drew Addington's wife meant watching in an entirely different way, however. She was watching and she was enduring; enduring the flocks of models and beautiful women who fawned over her husband, his smile at the attention he received while all she felt was jealousy and hurt, wondering where she had gone so wrong that she was no longer good enough. Of course no one knew they were married, that was their own secret to accompany the others, and so she had to keep still, keep quiet, despite how much she wanted to march across the ball room to where Drew was sat on the bar (never at it, on it), surrounded by his adoring fans, and rip him away from them in a pure display of animalistic possessiveness.
The one thing that stopped her, apart from the obvious publicity and scandal it would cause, was that she could never be sure if he was hers, not anymore. She swallowed hard, fingering the gold key necklace at her throat, a gift from him that she had no clue what to make of. Why did things have to be so complicated? She struggled to piece it all together, to read what had become of her, and them. He played to the crowds, she knew that much, but exactly how far he went for that fame she just wasn't sure. Was he faithful to her? There was a time long ago where he hadn't been, right after they were married and she knew that, she had expected that, but now? She looked down and adjusted her dress, a straight cut cream piece that was elegant yet still professional, finally moving away to the other end of the bar, needing something dry and alcoholic desperately.
Although those around her were enjoying the laid back style of the party, Keera was still working, PDA in hand as she answered emails and arranged their schedule for the next coming weeks, looking up only briefly to order herself a martini.
“It's on me.” Came a familiar voice from beside her and she glanced up, slightly relieved to see the smiling, although slightly concerned face of Jake Howe. Jake was an acquaintance of hers, a fellow Personal Assistant, working for AddInc's rival company, Parsons Industries, owned by Derek Parsons. Despite this rivalry, however, Keera and Jake often found themselves in each other’s company, mainly to escape the demands of their bosses, if only for five minutes. “You work far too hard.” He continued, nodding down to her hand held device and she smiled sadly.
“It needs to be done.” She answered simply, leaning forward to air kiss the space beside both of his cheeks sociably. In truth Keera often found it hard not to work. She thrived from being useful, from being needed and she knew without her the company would have probably fallen apart by now. She took these responsibilities seriously. Gently her friend took the device from her hand and slipped it into her purse for her.
“Drink.” He urged, passing her the glass and took one for himself, for which she smiled gratefully and nodded, glancing over her shoulder briefly to see what Drew was up to. He hadn't moved, still surrounded by his admirers and at this point he was making origami shapes out of the napkins. She felt another pang, thinking of how he always made those for her. “Hey, Keera...” Jake's voice brought her back around and he smiled with understanding. “Forget about him for the night, he can handle himself. I'd offer you a dance but I know you'd only turn me down... though if you wanted to get his attention...?” He waggled his brows a bit and Keera smiled at him once more, grateful for the distraction but still she shook her head.
“As much as I appreciate it, Jake, I should probably stay close...” She made as to come up with an excuse but she couldn't even find one, unable to explain it to herself, let alone her friend and he shrugged, nodding in understanding and squeezing her hand briefly before moving off once more with a sad smile.
Keera watched him go before turning once more to watch Drew, knowing it would most probably hurt her, but she supposed she was use to the pain, now. She wouldn't leave, not until he asked her to. She needed him, just as much as he needed her, she knew that much at least, and so she vowed to stay beside him, watching as he shone in his own spotlight from her sidelines, too weak to pull away or ask him what they were now, still clinging to the hope she found in the small gestures and smiles, the occasional moments that were theirs... after all, they had lasted this long, who could tell what the future held?
Cast in this unlikely role,
Ill-equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact
Living in the limelight
The universal dream
For those who wish to seem
Those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation
Get on with the fascination
The real relation
The underlying theme
Living in a fisheye lens
Caught in the camera eye
I have no heart to lie
I cant pretend a stranger
Is a long-awaited friend
