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31_days2012-06-26 02:44 pm
insaneladybug.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2012-06-26 02:44 pm
[June 26th] [Perry Mason] Lux Aeterna, 26
Title: Lux Aeterna, scene 26
Day/Theme: June 26th - In the silent forest
Series: Perry Mason
Character/Pairing: Lieutenant Tragg, Lieutenant Anderson, Maggie (OC), with a cameo by Otto Norden
Rating: T/PG-13
Takes place both before Tragg comes back and at the climax. This is pretty much blatant and shameless surrogate family hurt/comfort, angst, and squee. I'm slightly uncomfortable and unsure of what to make of the finished product; it's been so long since I've engaged in such shameless hurt/comfort. I don't think Andy ever died, though; it likely just seemed so because of the last lingering torment of the spell that affected everyone to some degree, according to theme #20.
By Lucky_Ladybug
Edith Fallon was not the only one having frightening visions. Lieutenant Tragg was wandering idly through the woods near the teens’ cabin, a random tree branch as his walking stick. He still bore a slight limp from the jump out of Florence’s tower into the water.
He had not gone far when the sight of something ahead made the color drain from his face. It looked like a body—an all-too-familiar body. He broke into as fast a run as he could muster. “Andy?!” he cried, his voice echoing through the pines. It was not possible; Andy could not be here.
But it was Andy’s body lying on the ground in front of him when he stumbled to a horrified halt. For a moment he looked up at Tragg, his eyes glassy as the life faded out of them. “I . . . I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” he whispered, barely able to speak. “I . . .” Then he was gone, in every way possible. Moments after he died, his body vanished from the grass, not leaving so much as an indentation to announce that someone had been there.
Tragg stood staring, shaking, gripping the stick as though it was his last line to sense. He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he did not hear Maggie approach until she was right behind him.
“Lieutenant?!”
He started and whirled. The young woman regarded him in immediate concern. “Oh no,” she said. “You saw something here, didn’t you?”
Tragg looked back. There was still nothing. “What makes you say that?” he demanded.
“We’ve all seen things in this part of the forest,” she told him. “I’m sorry; I didn’t think you’d go this far or I would have warned you.” She took his arm. “Come on, let’s go back.”
Tragg allowed her to steer him away, almost mechanical in his actions. “What kinds of things have you and the others seen?” he asked, still gruff, still shaken.
Maggie shook her head. “The past, sometimes. Things that haven’t happened, sometimes.” She frowned. “We don’t know why it happens, but it’s usually bad. And judging from how you’re still shaking, Lieutenant, you saw something very bad.”
Tragg passed a hand over his eyes. “I saw someone very important to me, lying in the grass dying.” With Maggie he somehow felt comfortable enough to say it. He was not sure he would have opened up that much to any of the others.
“That’s horrible,” Maggie said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
“It . . . could have been the past,” Tragg went on, hardly hearing her. He was mostly talking aloud now, voicing his tortured and bewildered thoughts. “Something like that happened once.” But then he shook his head, desperately wanting to push all of the nonsense away. “Bah! It must’ve just been a hallucination.”
“That’s what we all wanted to think, at first.” Maggie led him to several large boulders in sight of the cabin. After easing him onto one, she claimed another.
He looked to her, still clearly shaken. “But it’s real?” His voice was hushed and haunted, filled with horrified disbelief. “You honestly see those things?”
“We honestly do. There’s something wrong with that part of the forest.” Maggie frowned. “Maybe what it does is to take our worst fears and bring them out for us to see.”
Tragg gave a helpless shrug. “What’s wrong with the world?!” he cried. “It couldn’t have been like this before Florence took over.”
“It probably wasn’t,” Maggie agreed. “But then again, maybe these things were here, just not so prominent as they ended up under Florence’s rule. Maybe Florence’s black magic drew them out from where they were hiding.”
“Then they should go back again,” Tragg growled. “They have no business showing up here.”
Maggie leaned forward, clasping her hands. “Do you want to talk about it, Lieutenant?”
He looked away. “Not really,” he said. “But . . . it makes me wonder about him. If he’s alright, if he’s keeping out of trouble. . . . If he’ll live through all of this.”
“Your son?”
“Not biologically. He’s a young police lieutenant I looked out for and trained when he first came aboard. But yeah, he might as well be my son.” Tragg gazed down at his hands, still clutching the branch.
“He’s probably fine,” Maggie tried to reassure him.
“Probably,” Tragg grunted. “He’s probably worrying about me. For all he knows, I’m dead.” He sat up straight, the restlessness plain in his eyes. He wanted to leave, to hasten back to the city and let Andy and everyone else know he was alright.
Maggie laid her hand on his. “You’ll be well soon, Lieutenant,” she said. “Then you can go back.”
For a moment Tragg was silent. Then, finally rousing himself, he looked to Maggie again. “And I’ll just have to hope everyone will be there when I do.”
****
And everyone was. There were some grave injuries, such as Sergeant Brice’s, but he was expected to pull through. And Andy was fine, just as Maggie had surmised. Worried, but fine. And overjoyed that Tragg was safe. Tragg, of course, felt likewise about him.
It was not until the final battle against Florence that Tragg’s vision came back to strike him full-force. When everything began happening at once, and the floor began to give way under their feet, Tragg was thrown back near the window. He flailed, frantically reaching for something, anything, to grab onto. Not that it really mattered; they were all going down with the tower.
But then Andy was there, tackling him away from the window. They fell back near the dark green curtain, which Andy latched on to while still gripping at Tragg. Stunned, Tragg clutched at both him and the drapery.
“We’re going down no matter what we do now,” he growled. The panicked screams all around them were echoing in his ears, chilling his blood.
“That doesn’t mean we’re not going down fighting,” Andy returned. “Isn’t that what you taught me?”
The curtain began to pull away as the top of the tower and its upper walls began to cave in. Tragg looked up at his surrogate son and his last, brave smile. “. . . Yeah,” he said. “Of course it is.”
Then the cloth was ripped away and they were plunging into the debris, down, down. . . .
This was surely death, Tragg thought as he sank into the darkness. This was the price they had to pay to save their world from Florence’s madness.
But at least they were going together.
****
He was tangled up in something when consciousness and pain shot into him with a cruel fury. He gasped. The fire was coming from his right arm. And it felt like liquid was trailing down it in every direction.
Weakly he forced his eyes open. He was . . . alive? Somehow he had survived the collapse?
He must have; death was not supposed to hurt this much.
He reached up, his fingers brushing against the thick cloth wrapped around his body. It was the green drape, he soon realized, badly torn and battered but still intact. Clenching his teeth, he sat up, pulling it down from his shoulders. Considering the state it was in, he supposed he had to be grateful that the worst he had to deal with were his wounded arm and his pounding head.
What about the others, though? Surely if he had made it out alive, at least some of them would have. . . .
That was when he caught sight of the lifeless body sprawled next to him. A cold chill went up his spine. “Andy,” he choked out. “Andy, no. Wake up!” He grabbed Andy’s right shoulder, giving it a violent shake. “Wake up, blast it!”
But Andy laid still, his hair falling over his right eye.
He would never allow that if he could help it. He always kept his hair neatly combed.
He was unconscious, just unconscious as Tragg had been. His fingers shaking, Tragg tried to search for a pulse. The veins were motionless under his frantic probing.
Horror stabbed into Tragg’s heart. Ignoring his arm he reached down, pulling the younger man’s body into his embrace. “Oh Andy. . . .” Tragg clutched at him, numb at the feeling of the limp form. “I shouldn’t outlive you! For Heaven’s sake, do you have any idea how long I’ve been around? You’re so much younger than me. You had so much of your life ahead of you. And now . . . now it’s all gone because of this stand, this battle against evil.”
It was one thing to say that sacrifice was necessary. It was quite another to be left behind in the face of death, to realize that the person he loved most had paid the price and been called on ahead.
Should they have let Florence continue her reign?
No. No, they never could have done that. None of them ever would have allowed it. Certainly not Andy. And not Tragg, either.
“If it had to be either of us, it should have been me,” Tragg berated. He gripped the body closer, his heart increasing in speed. Was there any chance, any chance at all?
“Don’t take him,” he pleaded of the Divine. “Leave him here and take me instead. I’ll pay the price, if one of us has to. I’ll pay it!”
A gentle breeze wafted past him. “Hey,” came an empathetic, familiar voice. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. Neither of you has to pay it. Not today.”
Tragg looked up with a start. “Officer Norden?!”
Andy gasped, stirring in his arms. Tragg’s attention was immediately diverted from thoughts of Andy’s departed friend. Was this real? Or was it as much of a hallucination as the sight of Andy lying in the forest? Was he imagining things up in his mind because of his grief?
“. . . Lieutenant?”
Tragg was still staring down at Andy, his mind suddenly blank. Andy was speaking to him, looking at him, puzzled and in pain.
“Andy!” he cried at last. “You . . . you’re alive. Aren’t you? This isn’t a fantasy?!”
Andy blinked, trying to focus. “I’m alive, Lieutenant,” he rasped. “And . . . you are too?” He struggled to sit up. “I thought we’d both had it.”
Tragg assisted him, his hands shaking again. “I did too,” he said. “But then it seemed like it was just you who’d had it. That was far worse. Oh Andy. . . . Thank God. Thank God.” He rested his hands on Andy’s shoulders. “You’re really alive.”
Andy, still somewhat dazed and baffled from the fall, looked around at the devastation on all sides. There were many wounded. Others were dead. But gradually their friends limped and stumbled into view, all hurt but alive.
Andy slumped back. “Thank God indeed,” he whispered.
Day/Theme: June 26th - In the silent forest
Series: Perry Mason
Character/Pairing: Lieutenant Tragg, Lieutenant Anderson, Maggie (OC), with a cameo by Otto Norden
Rating: T/PG-13
Takes place both before Tragg comes back and at the climax. This is pretty much blatant and shameless surrogate family hurt/comfort, angst, and squee. I'm slightly uncomfortable and unsure of what to make of the finished product; it's been so long since I've engaged in such shameless hurt/comfort. I don't think Andy ever died, though; it likely just seemed so because of the last lingering torment of the spell that affected everyone to some degree, according to theme #20.
Edith Fallon was not the only one having frightening visions. Lieutenant Tragg was wandering idly through the woods near the teens’ cabin, a random tree branch as his walking stick. He still bore a slight limp from the jump out of Florence’s tower into the water.
He had not gone far when the sight of something ahead made the color drain from his face. It looked like a body—an all-too-familiar body. He broke into as fast a run as he could muster. “Andy?!” he cried, his voice echoing through the pines. It was not possible; Andy could not be here.
But it was Andy’s body lying on the ground in front of him when he stumbled to a horrified halt. For a moment he looked up at Tragg, his eyes glassy as the life faded out of them. “I . . . I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” he whispered, barely able to speak. “I . . .” Then he was gone, in every way possible. Moments after he died, his body vanished from the grass, not leaving so much as an indentation to announce that someone had been there.
Tragg stood staring, shaking, gripping the stick as though it was his last line to sense. He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he did not hear Maggie approach until she was right behind him.
“Lieutenant?!”
He started and whirled. The young woman regarded him in immediate concern. “Oh no,” she said. “You saw something here, didn’t you?”
Tragg looked back. There was still nothing. “What makes you say that?” he demanded.
“We’ve all seen things in this part of the forest,” she told him. “I’m sorry; I didn’t think you’d go this far or I would have warned you.” She took his arm. “Come on, let’s go back.”
Tragg allowed her to steer him away, almost mechanical in his actions. “What kinds of things have you and the others seen?” he asked, still gruff, still shaken.
Maggie shook her head. “The past, sometimes. Things that haven’t happened, sometimes.” She frowned. “We don’t know why it happens, but it’s usually bad. And judging from how you’re still shaking, Lieutenant, you saw something very bad.”
Tragg passed a hand over his eyes. “I saw someone very important to me, lying in the grass dying.” With Maggie he somehow felt comfortable enough to say it. He was not sure he would have opened up that much to any of the others.
“That’s horrible,” Maggie said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
“It . . . could have been the past,” Tragg went on, hardly hearing her. He was mostly talking aloud now, voicing his tortured and bewildered thoughts. “Something like that happened once.” But then he shook his head, desperately wanting to push all of the nonsense away. “Bah! It must’ve just been a hallucination.”
“That’s what we all wanted to think, at first.” Maggie led him to several large boulders in sight of the cabin. After easing him onto one, she claimed another.
He looked to her, still clearly shaken. “But it’s real?” His voice was hushed and haunted, filled with horrified disbelief. “You honestly see those things?”
“We honestly do. There’s something wrong with that part of the forest.” Maggie frowned. “Maybe what it does is to take our worst fears and bring them out for us to see.”
Tragg gave a helpless shrug. “What’s wrong with the world?!” he cried. “It couldn’t have been like this before Florence took over.”
“It probably wasn’t,” Maggie agreed. “But then again, maybe these things were here, just not so prominent as they ended up under Florence’s rule. Maybe Florence’s black magic drew them out from where they were hiding.”
“Then they should go back again,” Tragg growled. “They have no business showing up here.”
Maggie leaned forward, clasping her hands. “Do you want to talk about it, Lieutenant?”
He looked away. “Not really,” he said. “But . . . it makes me wonder about him. If he’s alright, if he’s keeping out of trouble. . . . If he’ll live through all of this.”
“Your son?”
“Not biologically. He’s a young police lieutenant I looked out for and trained when he first came aboard. But yeah, he might as well be my son.” Tragg gazed down at his hands, still clutching the branch.
“He’s probably fine,” Maggie tried to reassure him.
“Probably,” Tragg grunted. “He’s probably worrying about me. For all he knows, I’m dead.” He sat up straight, the restlessness plain in his eyes. He wanted to leave, to hasten back to the city and let Andy and everyone else know he was alright.
Maggie laid her hand on his. “You’ll be well soon, Lieutenant,” she said. “Then you can go back.”
For a moment Tragg was silent. Then, finally rousing himself, he looked to Maggie again. “And I’ll just have to hope everyone will be there when I do.”
And everyone was. There were some grave injuries, such as Sergeant Brice’s, but he was expected to pull through. And Andy was fine, just as Maggie had surmised. Worried, but fine. And overjoyed that Tragg was safe. Tragg, of course, felt likewise about him.
It was not until the final battle against Florence that Tragg’s vision came back to strike him full-force. When everything began happening at once, and the floor began to give way under their feet, Tragg was thrown back near the window. He flailed, frantically reaching for something, anything, to grab onto. Not that it really mattered; they were all going down with the tower.
But then Andy was there, tackling him away from the window. They fell back near the dark green curtain, which Andy latched on to while still gripping at Tragg. Stunned, Tragg clutched at both him and the drapery.
“We’re going down no matter what we do now,” he growled. The panicked screams all around them were echoing in his ears, chilling his blood.
“That doesn’t mean we’re not going down fighting,” Andy returned. “Isn’t that what you taught me?”
The curtain began to pull away as the top of the tower and its upper walls began to cave in. Tragg looked up at his surrogate son and his last, brave smile. “. . . Yeah,” he said. “Of course it is.”
Then the cloth was ripped away and they were plunging into the debris, down, down. . . .
This was surely death, Tragg thought as he sank into the darkness. This was the price they had to pay to save their world from Florence’s madness.
But at least they were going together.
He was tangled up in something when consciousness and pain shot into him with a cruel fury. He gasped. The fire was coming from his right arm. And it felt like liquid was trailing down it in every direction.
Weakly he forced his eyes open. He was . . . alive? Somehow he had survived the collapse?
He must have; death was not supposed to hurt this much.
He reached up, his fingers brushing against the thick cloth wrapped around his body. It was the green drape, he soon realized, badly torn and battered but still intact. Clenching his teeth, he sat up, pulling it down from his shoulders. Considering the state it was in, he supposed he had to be grateful that the worst he had to deal with were his wounded arm and his pounding head.
What about the others, though? Surely if he had made it out alive, at least some of them would have. . . .
That was when he caught sight of the lifeless body sprawled next to him. A cold chill went up his spine. “Andy,” he choked out. “Andy, no. Wake up!” He grabbed Andy’s right shoulder, giving it a violent shake. “Wake up, blast it!”
But Andy laid still, his hair falling over his right eye.
He would never allow that if he could help it. He always kept his hair neatly combed.
He was unconscious, just unconscious as Tragg had been. His fingers shaking, Tragg tried to search for a pulse. The veins were motionless under his frantic probing.
Horror stabbed into Tragg’s heart. Ignoring his arm he reached down, pulling the younger man’s body into his embrace. “Oh Andy. . . .” Tragg clutched at him, numb at the feeling of the limp form. “I shouldn’t outlive you! For Heaven’s sake, do you have any idea how long I’ve been around? You’re so much younger than me. You had so much of your life ahead of you. And now . . . now it’s all gone because of this stand, this battle against evil.”
It was one thing to say that sacrifice was necessary. It was quite another to be left behind in the face of death, to realize that the person he loved most had paid the price and been called on ahead.
Should they have let Florence continue her reign?
No. No, they never could have done that. None of them ever would have allowed it. Certainly not Andy. And not Tragg, either.
“If it had to be either of us, it should have been me,” Tragg berated. He gripped the body closer, his heart increasing in speed. Was there any chance, any chance at all?
“Don’t take him,” he pleaded of the Divine. “Leave him here and take me instead. I’ll pay the price, if one of us has to. I’ll pay it!”
A gentle breeze wafted past him. “Hey,” came an empathetic, familiar voice. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. Neither of you has to pay it. Not today.”
Tragg looked up with a start. “Officer Norden?!”
Andy gasped, stirring in his arms. Tragg’s attention was immediately diverted from thoughts of Andy’s departed friend. Was this real? Or was it as much of a hallucination as the sight of Andy lying in the forest? Was he imagining things up in his mind because of his grief?
“. . . Lieutenant?”
Tragg was still staring down at Andy, his mind suddenly blank. Andy was speaking to him, looking at him, puzzled and in pain.
“Andy!” he cried at last. “You . . . you’re alive. Aren’t you? This isn’t a fantasy?!”
Andy blinked, trying to focus. “I’m alive, Lieutenant,” he rasped. “And . . . you are too?” He struggled to sit up. “I thought we’d both had it.”
Tragg assisted him, his hands shaking again. “I did too,” he said. “But then it seemed like it was just you who’d had it. That was far worse. Oh Andy. . . . Thank God. Thank God.” He rested his hands on Andy’s shoulders. “You’re really alive.”
Andy, still somewhat dazed and baffled from the fall, looked around at the devastation on all sides. There were many wounded. Others were dead. But gradually their friends limped and stumbled into view, all hurt but alive.
Andy slumped back. “Thank God indeed,” he whispered.