Do I Twist, Do I Fold? ('Skies' entry)
Oct. 26th, 2019 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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who_contestTitle: Do I Twist, Do I Fold?
Word Count: 1066
Rating: PG-13 for (non-explicit) references to violence/abuse and fleeting reference to self-harm.
Genre: Character Study/Angst
Characters: Lucy Saxon
Summary: Harold Saxon is dead, but faith in him is not. Lucy prepares for one last meeting. Spoilers for The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords, leading into The End of Time.
The second prison they send her to, once the trial is over, is different from the first. It is older, for one thing, the walls not concrete but solid brick, the bed a wrought-iron frame welded into place. That first night, and on every night thereafter, Lucy sits with her back against the brickwork and lets her mind conjure fleeting, inhuman shapes out of the darkness, until sleep rises up and pulls her under.
Harry never liked how much she slept. He would shake her awake, perhaps two or three times in one night, just in order to show her something: a favourite dressing gown, or an enormous bank of clouds, or the glow of a city burning, very small and very far below. His face uncanny in the bedside light, childish grin splitting it open: Come and see. She always followed him, of course. The exhaustion became permanent, like another skin pulled much too tight around her head.
In the new prison the interruptions are rarer, and she never hears a sound from the other cells. It occurs to her, more than once, that she might actually be alone. It would be just like them, to clear a whole building out especially for her: ruthless, if a touch overdramatic. She is hardly a risk to others - nor, for that matter, a potential escapee. Harry (he was Harold Saxon during the trial, but he will remain Harry to her, for as long as she draws breath) is dead. And if he is not - that if digs into her late at night, each jab bringing a fresh surge of terror - then she is best kept where she is. Her enemies will see to it that their paths cross eventually. The vital thing is to be ready when (if, if, if) they come.
The morning after she is transferred, somebody arrives to assess her. No uniform, just a security pass on a lanyard around his neck. Clipboard loaded with forms, sleeves folded back at the cuffs - a doctor. She is getting good at identifying them by now. This one is shaven-headed, with a Dublin accent softened almost to nothing. Regular medication, he wants to know. Drug use. Any history of self-harm. If she doesn't have the answer immediately to hand he repeats the question, the exact same intonation, like a doll having its string pulled.
Harry would have had fun with him, she thinks, and covers her mouth with both hands, because no-one should see her smile.
The new doctor turns a page, hovers over it a moment.
Any possibility you might be pregnant.
Lucy wants to claw at his eyes. But her fingernails have been cut short, they thought of that, and they barely make an impression when she digs them into her own palms.
Brave face, her father would say. Patting her hand as he lay dying, the smell of urine and disinfectant. Brave face, my dear. Don't let the bastards grind you down. In the memory it is just the two of them in the hospital room, though by that time Harry would have been there too, fetching cup after cup of bad coffee and looking grave. Waiting.
Lucy was never particularly bright, but she listened. People would confide in her, not expecting much, and be taken by surprise when she could quote their words back to them later. All this meant that after her father's burial, when Harry changed and everything they had talked about began to take shape, none of it had shocked her. She had known, from the start, how far they could go together: right to the furthest edges of reality and higher than anyone had ever soared before. The final stage of human evolution. The emptied skies at the end of the Universe. Rejoining the Earth afterwards, she had found the look of everything transformed. Other people seemed waxy, their smiles false and much too broad. They died easily: they were barely alive to start with.
And still, even then, she had not been afraid. She is afraid now.
The doctor has not stopped watching her. Any possibility you might be pregnant, he says again, and Lucy thinks (imagines, maybe) his eyes flicker with disappointment when she shakes her head.
Nearly three months elapse before the first postcard. Her mother has written to her in between times; Lucy gets the envelopes delivered to her cell already opened, the pages combed through for hidden meaning. She has yet to reply. The two of them seldom had anything to say to each other, even before all this. And what can she say now, to someone she might never see again? No - best to save her words for when she needs them. One of the things Harry taught her, with his blaring music and constant drumbeat, was that silence can be valuable. It can be the last thing that protects you, when all other hope is gone.
The picture on the card is of a hillside in winter, dotted with sheep given a second, ethereally white coat of snow. And, at the foot of the slope, the holiday cottage where she and Harry spent their first night as newlyweds. It had belonged to an old friend of her father's, Albert or Alfred or similar, who had played a role - Lucy's heart starts to beat loud in her ears - in setting up the Ministry of Justice.
The message is not in her mother's hand. We are thinking of you, it says. Lucy sits down hard on the bed - the impact jolts her spine - and tries to gather herself. Part of her hadn't wanted to believe in the networks of people still out there: Harry's followers and her own, tiny band, each side preparing to make its first move. Now that things are finally in train, the walls feel altogether less solid. Anyone might reach in and snatch her away.
Outside, the guard who brought in the postcard is whistling. When the vision panel slides back all Lucy can see is a mouth - unsmiling, no lipstick - and the beginning of a chin. Got everything, Saxon? It asks.
With an effort, Lucy pushes herself off the bed. The weeks of shuttered light and pallid food have faded her, naked feet the colour of ivory. Bones and sinew scarcely held together, she half-expects to rattle as she goes.
"Not quite," she says.
And begins to talk.
The second prison they send her to, once the trial is over, is different from the first. It is older, for one thing, the walls not concrete but solid brick, the bed a wrought-iron frame welded into place. That first night, and on every night thereafter, Lucy sits with her back against the brickwork and lets her mind conjure fleeting, inhuman shapes out of the darkness, until sleep rises up and pulls her under.
Harry never liked how much she slept. He would shake her awake, perhaps two or three times in one night, just in order to show her something: a favourite dressing gown, or an enormous bank of clouds, or the glow of a city burning, very small and very far below. His face uncanny in the bedside light, childish grin splitting it open: Come and see. She always followed him, of course. The exhaustion became permanent, like another skin pulled much too tight around her head.
In the new prison the interruptions are rarer, and she never hears a sound from the other cells. It occurs to her, more than once, that she might actually be alone. It would be just like them, to clear a whole building out especially for her: ruthless, if a touch overdramatic. She is hardly a risk to others - nor, for that matter, a potential escapee. Harry (he was Harold Saxon during the trial, but he will remain Harry to her, for as long as she draws breath) is dead. And if he is not - that if digs into her late at night, each jab bringing a fresh surge of terror - then she is best kept where she is. Her enemies will see to it that their paths cross eventually. The vital thing is to be ready when (if, if, if) they come.
The morning after she is transferred, somebody arrives to assess her. No uniform, just a security pass on a lanyard around his neck. Clipboard loaded with forms, sleeves folded back at the cuffs - a doctor. She is getting good at identifying them by now. This one is shaven-headed, with a Dublin accent softened almost to nothing. Regular medication, he wants to know. Drug use. Any history of self-harm. If she doesn't have the answer immediately to hand he repeats the question, the exact same intonation, like a doll having its string pulled.
Harry would have had fun with him, she thinks, and covers her mouth with both hands, because no-one should see her smile.
The new doctor turns a page, hovers over it a moment.
Any possibility you might be pregnant.
Lucy wants to claw at his eyes. But her fingernails have been cut short, they thought of that, and they barely make an impression when she digs them into her own palms.
Brave face, her father would say. Patting her hand as he lay dying, the smell of urine and disinfectant. Brave face, my dear. Don't let the bastards grind you down. In the memory it is just the two of them in the hospital room, though by that time Harry would have been there too, fetching cup after cup of bad coffee and looking grave. Waiting.
Lucy was never particularly bright, but she listened. People would confide in her, not expecting much, and be taken by surprise when she could quote their words back to them later. All this meant that after her father's burial, when Harry changed and everything they had talked about began to take shape, none of it had shocked her. She had known, from the start, how far they could go together: right to the furthest edges of reality and higher than anyone had ever soared before. The final stage of human evolution. The emptied skies at the end of the Universe. Rejoining the Earth afterwards, she had found the look of everything transformed. Other people seemed waxy, their smiles false and much too broad. They died easily: they were barely alive to start with.
And still, even then, she had not been afraid. She is afraid now.
The doctor has not stopped watching her. Any possibility you might be pregnant, he says again, and Lucy thinks (imagines, maybe) his eyes flicker with disappointment when she shakes her head.
Nearly three months elapse before the first postcard. Her mother has written to her in between times; Lucy gets the envelopes delivered to her cell already opened, the pages combed through for hidden meaning. She has yet to reply. The two of them seldom had anything to say to each other, even before all this. And what can she say now, to someone she might never see again? No - best to save her words for when she needs them. One of the things Harry taught her, with his blaring music and constant drumbeat, was that silence can be valuable. It can be the last thing that protects you, when all other hope is gone.
The picture on the card is of a hillside in winter, dotted with sheep given a second, ethereally white coat of snow. And, at the foot of the slope, the holiday cottage where she and Harry spent their first night as newlyweds. It had belonged to an old friend of her father's, Albert or Alfred or similar, who had played a role - Lucy's heart starts to beat loud in her ears - in setting up the Ministry of Justice.
The message is not in her mother's hand. We are thinking of you, it says. Lucy sits down hard on the bed - the impact jolts her spine - and tries to gather herself. Part of her hadn't wanted to believe in the networks of people still out there: Harry's followers and her own, tiny band, each side preparing to make its first move. Now that things are finally in train, the walls feel altogether less solid. Anyone might reach in and snatch her away.
Outside, the guard who brought in the postcard is whistling. When the vision panel slides back all Lucy can see is a mouth - unsmiling, no lipstick - and the beginning of a chin. Got everything, Saxon? It asks.
With an effort, Lucy pushes herself off the bed. The weeks of shuttered light and pallid food have faded her, naked feet the colour of ivory. Bones and sinew scarcely held together, she half-expects to rattle as she goes.
"Not quite," she says.
And begins to talk.
