Gone & Gone Away || (Scott & Loki)
The date was January 16th 1941, and Scott Fitzgerald was dead. Or so any American with a literary inclination might have said and they might have even done so with a tear in their eye — not for the man himself, understand, but for the creations that had sprung forth from his thoughts and from his pen. Scott Fitzgerald had gone to his grave, carried there on the fading, violent rhythms of his third and last heartattack, and he had gone much-criticzed and for the largest part alone.
And, trudging along the edge of a muddied backroad through the chilled rain, the man now called Scott Reinhardt mumbled — not for the first time but not quite the thousandth — a firm, pleasant good riddance.
He seemed normal enough, this man walking so doggedly through the rain, navigating the muddied byways between villages in the more rural protions of Southern France. He wore multiple layers of good, sturdy quality clothes and thick, well-made boots, but nothing embellished or too fine to have belonged to anyone better off than a wealthy farmer’s son, or a merchant’s get. He had the look of a man travelling too long, with grit pressed into his skin and tired eyes, but still he walked on, carrying on his back a large pack and strapped to that pack a satchel. He kept his eyes fixed ahead beneath his crooked leather cap and kept his mouth and nose tucked behind a tightly wrapped pair of scarves. On either side of him, the thin road of hard-packed earth was deteriorating in the downpour, the sound of the rains beating down around him like a thick, dull roaring, a constant noise in his ears that he learned to tune out with practice and patience. Above him the skies were gunmetal grey, clouds weighted and heavy where they smothered outh the heavens. The darkness of oncoming evening crept in on every side as somewhere beyond the haze of the rains the sun slowly slipped behind the horizon’s edge, leaving the weakened and weary people of this land to pass another sleepless quarter in an oppressive shadow that had naught to do with the night.
The world was at war and civilization tore itself apart at the seams as countries turned on one another and lines were drawn, and a few key men in the whole of world’s faceless populace made the decision to hurtle them all toward ruin.
The masses trembled, prayed; sometimes they railed, and fought, but more often they passed merciless hours worrying for loved ones and for themselves, for their homes and their lives and their futures. And some lost all of that, and more. Faith was comforting to these people until it suddenly wasn’t, and still, they had to keep on and carry forward.
And through it all — through the heartbreak, the hunger, the gunsmoke and the bodies and the cries and the screams and the bitterly cold rains — through all of the war’s mounting horrors and pains, Scott Reinhardt kept moving.
He had no choice.
Three miles, he reminded himself, three miles and then I can rest.
It never failed to amaze him, how long such a short distance could seem when one was bone-achingly tired, beaten down and weary. He had been walking for four days, between this town and the last, taking shelter in the forest and bedding down under a soggy cotton blanket and a water-resistant tarp, always waking to more rain.
It was beginning to feel like he had not seen the sun in ages. And maybe he hadn’t.
But the town — this town, the name of which he’d been told but already forgotten — promised to be a place where he might have real rest, furnished as it was with a pitiable but functional inn and rough but edible foodstuffs. There might even be cheap, thin whiskey, he’d been told — and that had been enough to make him laugh, albeit briefly, because what had the world come to at last?
But he kept walking, on and on— and at half-past seven, Scott stepped out of the country muck and into the rough-hewn square of a town he still couldn’t name but was so unabashedly happy to see.
It took the better part of a half-hour to convince the innkeeper to give him a room. The man suspected him of being American, no matter how well Scott plied his practiced Parisian accent. The whole while, his stomach growled and ached, the warmth of the fire in the commonroom temptingly close. And in the end, it was his mounting frustrations— and a string of aggravated French that might have made a sailor blush— that finally won him the accomodations. The room even had a bath, with hot water, and a dinner plate could be sent up, for a little extra.
Scott gladly paid the extra and climbed the stairs to his room.
It was not until an hour or two later, once he’d scrubbed every inch of grit and dirt from his skin and hair, brushed his teeth and redressed in the thin but dry robe he’d procured from the innkeeper (again, for extra) that Scott even began to feel marginally human again.
The dinner plate helped some, too, laden as it was with small potatoes and chewy meat in a watery gravy; still, the soup that came along with it was good and the bread was not molded, so that too was a blessing. And indeed, there was a cheap, undoubtedly homestilled whiskey to be had, which he consumed more out of the desire to be warmthan any real enjoyment, but it was better than he’d had in weeks and that was to be cherished too.
Scott Fitzgerald was dead and the world was at war again.
And caught between the devil and the sea, the man called Scott Reinhardt only hoped to survive it all long enough to see the sun again.
All in all, he consumed everything on his plate and drained half the small bottle of alcohol the innkeeper had delivered with it, and then collapsed onto his back in the bed, his head spinning and the room with it. His body was sore, his mind was tired, but mostly it was his soul that felt heaviest, battered as it was, bruised and aching.
His thoughts went for a moment, as they always did, to Loki — and the memory of the god was like sunlight for a moment, blindingly bright and warm, sinking beneath his skin, a comfort he knew was imagined but that he reached for anyway, because he could not help himself.
He breathed the god’s name, just once, tiredly before his body surrendered — finally, at last — to the desperate, velvet-edged pull of unconsciousness.