Fictember Day 4: Mental Alchemy
Prompt: Serendipity Characters: Michael Sava, Lance Marsh, Catalyna Hall @zoetic-tome, Daniel Samuelu @apassingshadowSetting: TSW Tabletop game/Cascade City Warnings: Contains non-detailed mentions of past physical violence, and also mentions of the aftermath of a fire.
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Lance Marsh always loved to talk about serendipity after a disastrous occasion. He liked to believe that, as if in some act of alchemy, one could and should take the bad from a situation and turn it into a sign of better things to come. He'd drilled that belief into Michael's head from the moment he'd been dropped off at his house at the age of twelve, only for the car's driver to never return for him.
"Kid, I know I'm funny looking and all, and you just wanna go home, but I promise you I'm going to make this into something good for you."
And he did. It was hard at times, and Michael remembered eating a lot of struggle meals as he grew into a young teen, but Lance was true to his word. By the time Michael was sixteen, he'd all but forgotten that his home had been anywhere but there. It helped that Lance was so amenable to facilitating visits with the kid's grandmother as often as possible and, barring that, paying for long-distance phone calls and allowing the occasional trip overseas to see her at home. The pain of abandonment grew into the warmth of home.
Lance was right about serendipity much later in Michael's life too.
He couldn't remember much about the incident. Only that his stupid coworker Tim had opened his stupid fucking mouth at the wrong fucking time and tugged at the edges of a wound still raw and bleeding. Michael saw red, fists flew, and next thing he knew he was sitting with an ice pack pressed to split knuckles while Lance made a phone call to keep him away from an assault charge. He couldn't keep him from losing his job at the repair shop (a matter of liability), but he'd made yet another sacrifice for his sake.
It didn't feel like there was any good to come after that. To his own eyes, Michael had lost everything; his fiancé, his job, and his sense of pride. Shame came to mingle with the loss, and he believed he'd truly hit rock bottom.
But Lance was right again.
It took time. It took hard work. It took moving out on his own. But gradually, as always, time worked its magic to heal things, and pride slowly replaced that shame as he found himself a new job and independence in Cascade. Much to his annoyance, he found himself believing in Lance's alchemy of serendipity.
Even when his roommate's foolishness and an otherworldly asshole's petty revenge cost him the symbol of his hard-earned independence and pride, Lance's smug 'I told you so' smile lived freely in his head.
Maybe he saw himself in Daniel. Maybe he understood the raw edges of his particular kind of wound all too well, and knew exactly the kind of pain it took to do such foolish things. He'd had someone kick him while he was down. He wasn't about to do the same to Daniel. Sure, they traded a few heated words; a huge chunk of what Michael had worked for was gone, and it was only a miracle that no one had been home and a neighbor had noticed the smoke in time to save everyone from a greater disaster. But like hell was he going to rip at someone else's fresh hurt.
And unlike Tim's dumb move, Daniel's foolishness hadn't been intentional. There were greater forces at play.
Maybe Lance was onto something with his belief. Maybe some good would come of this as well. Cat had invited them to stay with her until a new place was found, and her home was far nicer and more welcoming than his had ever been, despite its strange emptiness.
And maybe, just maybe, Michael was a better man than he thought himself to be.