A Life Half Lived

[Dusty Lens]

He felt sick with fear, his stomach crawled with it, his lungs burned with it. It was all he could do to not simply collapse with his head between his legs, trying to hold back the urge to vomit. He had no idea where to go now. Would they even take him now that Allan was dead? Were any of -them- even left after that raid? How was he going to explain his absence? Could he even go home? Ever? What was home now?

It was well and truly night now. The streets were blacked out in the wake of the protest and the stars hidden beneath a thick wall of smoke. He wasnt completely sure where he was, or whos turf he was in. His mad journey through the aqueduct had taken him through a number of switches as he fled in panic ahead of imaginary pursuit. The only frame of reference he could grasp was a dim snatch of illumination cast by a half dozen slow moving patrol-craft in the smokey distance. But even that might be a phantom of his imagination, for it too swiftly vanished.

David realized he had stopped moving when the shivering began. He remained immersed in the sludge of the aqueduct, now barely capping his knees, but he was soaked through and the blackened night offered little warmth. Without the fuel of panic he felt suddenly drained, stiffening muscles offering up little beyond a stumble towards the sharp incline of the reservoirs walls. In this new moment he wanted nothing more than to escape the numbing cold of the water which had taken him untold miles. He blindly raked his fingers against concrete until they found something which he could grasp, a vine, which supported his weight well enough to carry him to something resembling a ledge.

There he collapsed on his back, staring upwards into the pitch. For a moment there was a shrill fear that he might be blind. Some passing shrapnel had torn a nerve which he had not felt through the panic, some watching god had struck him sightless for his betrayal. David waved a hand in front of his face and saw nothing. Black against black.

The hand collapsed to the weight of fatigue; landing atop the bulk of the sodden package in his jacket pocket. Instinct roused him long enough to sift through the foil, miraculously drawing a smoke which had escaped immersion unscathed. He drew it to his lips, tapped the foil twice and waited.

A moment later the familiar flare blossomed to life, bringing a promise of light and a gift of heat as the smoke rush to his lungs. Relief and thanks flooded through him with the warmth of the smoke, the crackle of the drawn paper. A noise which echoed hollowly in his mind like the belch of the repeater.

That was all it took.

Fear and guilt surged through his stomach and he was suddenly sick. A hasty roll nearly took him down the embankment, body feebly striving to hold itself in place against the incline while he retched, his body offering nothing beyond a burning yellow film. When his shudders calmed his body collapsed onto the embankment and resumed its violent shuddering. The cold, panic and fear coaxing him to dance in his ill earned shelter.

David rocked himself to sleep. Moaning feverish apologies to an unseen Allan, the father he never knew, a life he never knew, the people in the streets, the officers in the building, anything to take him back from the things he had done that day and the fear of what was yet to come. Anything to save him and make it go away.

It was just too much.