ZzzZzz Flop - Agatha & Lucas
Where : Some city in the sky / Agatha’ s mind When : Last night Who : @lucastheunlucky & yours truly @detective-keen
What: Agatha & Lucas share a few thoughts in Agatha’s mind.
Agatha sat on a bench, a book in her lap. She watched as a zeppelin passed, high above her, her hand toying with a pleat in her skirt. The hem grazed the paved floor, dancing above it as she stood up. A stray strand of her hair fell on her shoulder, and she placed it back in her Gibson updo, as she made her way toward the city hall. She was not sure why she was drawn toward it, but this was where her steps where taking her. She passed by a statue of a man with one arm, and if she could feel her guts twist as she turned her back on it, she assumed that this only meant one thing : she was hungry.
The woman stopped at the bakery to buy a raisin viennoiserie, but the feeling in her guts did not go. From the corner of her eye, she had caught it, once again, this shadow of a person. This was not the first time she saw it. She couldn’t place where she had seen it before, but she knew this was not the first time she was seeing it, and that was a fact. “You,” she exclaimed, ignoring bypassers turning to look at her, clearly disapproving. Unfortunately, the shadow was gone, once again. She searched around her, and found herself tumbling forward. When she stood up, the town in the sky had vanished, and she was getting into a car, with the man from the statue. The one armed man. This does not make anysense, she rubbed at her eyes and sighed with relief as she found herself, once again, in what she thought was her reality. A lively town in the sky, with zeppelins and joyful people passing by.
Lucas kept feeling like these passing people should have faces. They blurred in and out of focus, taking on people he saw once or twice when he had been in the precinct when he was arrested by Officer Roland. Everything in him wanted to push that memory from his mind in well practiced denial and survival. Someone snickered from his left shoulder and he looked over and two people dressed in pleated skirts with police badges hanging loosely on their neck. They were talking behind their covered mouths, eyes darting towards him briefly before they turned slightly to keep talking to themselves. He felt a hint of despair, knowing they were bad talking him, no, someone else. But that emotion burned away as did the environment when a statue in the distance rose up. His heart pounded, but someone on the streets handed him a cold drink and it was warm this high in the sky. He sipped it, noticing it was a milkshake that he hadn’t been able to enjoy with Nic before his attack. “Do you want one?” He asked the person next to him, now having two in his hands. “Drink it quick though. Something bad might happen.”
Drink it quick though. Something bad might happen. The voice sounded familiar, and Agatha immediately found herself tearing up. She had not heard this voice in years, and she thought that she had forgotten the sound it, but no, the moment she heard it, she knew who it belonged to, she knew she had to find him, and to find him, her mind told her that she had to run across these people. That someone in the crowd, somewhere, was her father. Perhaps she dreamt of him because for months, she had hoped that he had gone missing, disappeared, and that the few bits of him they found were proof that he managed to run away, but that Agatha grew out of that quick, coming to term with the terrible mistake he had done, the deaths he had caused. Still, she ran, bumping into people, hoping to catch the messy salt and pepper head of hair her father used to sport. Her chase came to an abrupt halt as she ran headfirst into a man, spilling milkshake on her formerly spotless, wrinkle free blouse, and gasped in horror. “Can’t you be more careful?!” The nerve. She knew damn well she was responsible, but she was pissed off. Not paying too much attention to poor Lucas, she looked around, searching again. Come on, where are you dad? Show yourself, please, she begged, her hand pinching at her nostrils as she felt tears running down her cheeks.
Lucas watched the milkshake explode in his hands, and he glanced almost eerily calm over as a crossbow bolt exploded the other one and sent it flying into the clouds. “Told you something bad would happen,” as the chill of the ice cream stung his hands, his eyes were a bright, molten ring of gold. Wolfish features gave his bone structure higher peaks, and sharper lines down his jaw. The scent of tears drew his gaze towards Nic who lost his milkshake. Would he cry over it? Luke felt sad about losing the milkshake again too, but it was strange seeing the man tear up. He looked towards the truck that pulled up, seeing men pile out of it, and glanced over to see a woman instead. “Hey, this place is dangerous, you better duck behind something,” Lucas warned, cracking his knuckles ready to fight, “I’m not letting these people get hurt.”
“What?” Agatha looked over her shoulder, looking both offended and disbelieving. “Bitch, I’m no damsel in distress.” The truck that had just arrived looked completely out of place, in the middle of all this late 19th century streets. Her hand instinctively went to her right side, where she usually had her gun holstered, but all she could feel under her finger was the wet fabric and her ribcage. “Shit.” Running out of the street into a home that wasn’t hers, she went straight to where her dream took her, and when she walked out back in the street, next to Mr. Saviour, it was with a loaded blunderbuss in her hands. “Who the fuck are these people,” she asked, taking cover behind a wall.
The city in the sky shuttered, the clouds disjointed into a starry sky then back again like a pixelated rendering. Lucas’ brow twitched, and he frowned as an overwhelming feeling surfaced that he did not want to go through this again. “No, wait-- this isn’t-- right,” he watched her come back with a weapon and with her motions a dense cloud blew in easily, shrouding the place for a second as the truck was suddenly dented and half destroyed when he looked at it. Lucas stood in the middle exposed when she asked. “Hired muscle,” he muttered, “fuck.” He subconsciously tried with all his might to change this, but he could only see a crowd of people happily milling about like there wasn’t any danger. No one else here was reacting to what they were seeing and it was disjointing. “I hate this--” A ring of darkness came out in the far distance and started moving and consuming the happily and peaceful place in a slow threatening crawl. His fists closed tightly. “I have to stop this, all of it. Where are we?”
“Well, no shit Sherlock,” Agatha spat, clearly unsatisfied with that answer. “Who the fuck hired these guys,” standing up, she aimed and shot one of said guys in the leg. It was hard to get information out of dead men after all. Squatting down, she loaded the blunderbuss again, a frown on her face as she watched people around them walk by as if everything was fine. What the fuck, she thought, standing up again to shoot another of these guys. That would be when she saw this dark, weirdly circular cloud coming their way. “Looks like we have a storm coming right our way,” a frown on her face, she took a step back, carefully. “And how exactly are you going to stop … this?” She motioned to what she referred to as clouds. “Where are we? Are you…” She stopped mid-sentence. Where were they? She had no idea. And yet, she knew this place. She felt as if she had spent hours in this city in the sky. “Fuck, I don’t know.”
“Ivor Gotch,” Lucas couldn’t stopped himself from finishing the answer, stress was making his hands shake and the beast was clawing under his skin, and he actually slapped his hand over his mouth as if that would have stopped it from being said. She had taken some good shots, but the firearm’s explosive sound made him sick, and he instinctively flinched. Lucas didn’t know either where they were, it didn’t feel like a place he’s ever been. Though it was beautiful, and it felt if he wanted too, he could make up his mind and go enjoy a nice lunch should he wish it. The looming statue in the background held the person he feared the most. “I don’t know how to stop it, I just know I have too before it’s too late.” He looked at her, the horrid wound on his arm from his wrist to his elbow open and bleeding, a line from a hole near the side of his temple drew a single trail over his eye and down his cheek. Two stains came under his shirt, bleeding through. Luke closed his eyes, always in his nightmares came such profound hopelessness. “Heh, it’s going to be too late. No one saved me the other times. What’s this one matter.”
“What?! That’s the guy from the hospital?!” Agatha remembered reading that name on the papers they had sent her back when Miles spoke to her at the station. What the fuck was going on. Why was she obsessed with this Gotch person ? And who was this guy ? She was pretty sure she did not recognize him but she felt like she had seen him before. “Well that’s great,” and things seemed to be getting greater. Her eyes widened at the sight of blood. “You are bleeding?!” Well no shit Agatha? “Why are you bleeding? When did they…” She was pretty sure that she did not see him getting shot. This did not make any sense. Any other time, she would have been starting to get a headache. “What do you mean? You need bandages, you need help,” she exclaimed. It was not in her habit to panic, but she had no idea where they would find a medic here. The streets were now eerily empty.
“Hey, it’s fine,” Lucas looked down at the wounds and felt nothing. “I don’t feel anything.” Numbness surfaced to these experiences, not ever wanting to relive them, his mind always pushing it away, making it seem less serious than it honestly was. Maybe it was a problem. He glanced at her, confused-- why in the world would this stranger help him? He wiped his cheek, smearing the dampness of red, disoriented from the this entire scene. “Why?” Lucas had said the same thing to Jared, to Winn, to Ariana. So many people that word was directed at, never understanding that he was worth saving. That he didn’t have to keep suffering. “If you help it's just going to end bad for me. How could you stop someone who already got away with so much?” A slightly broken huffed laugh. The statue in the distance rumbled, shifted like its face was turning towards them. Luke shook his head. “I promised to stop feeling like this and it always surfaces anyway.”
“How? Those look really bad,” maybe it was bullshit, maybe it wasn’t, but she was going to trust her guts here and call bull. Agatha, taking off her belt, did her best to stop the bleeding with a tourniquet, then getting a handkerchief from her breast pocket, placed it on the wound. “Put you hand on this.” That’s when she noticed the wounds on his chest and covered her face. “When did you… Why are you bleeding? When?” She did not understand. She was pretty sure that she did not see him get shot, which meant that…. Either he was lying, either she was dreaming.
A floating city in the sky, the fact that she wore a Gibson hairdo on a 1910’s outfit, the goddamn blunderbuss, hostile people showing up for no reasons, people acting weird? This was definitely a dream, and it was time for her to wake the fuck up.
The world around them was shuttering, like a ripple on the surface of taunt water. Lucas’ subconscious didn’t want to thinking about any of this, and in his bed, he was stirring in familiar ways, trying to wake up. The dark swirl in the distance came closer, an impossible black that seemed to be staring straight into the universe. He dabbed things with the handkerchief, but he knew it wouldn’t really matter. He quickly put his hand on her shoulder. “Hey, listen-- whoever you are, just thanks for sticking up for me there, shooting those guys,” Luke seemed conflicted. With that he left the world they had created, and Luke with a start sat straight up in bed. Breathing heavy, but his hand mocked holding something in his hand.
Lucas blinked a few times, and turned the light on. That face. It was clear in his mind, and something more clung to him. A feeling about his situation he toyed with but never had hope on.
