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Entry tags:
fic: Another Day Gone, Criminal Intent, AU,PG
Disclaimer: not mine
Fandoms: L&O: Criminal Intent, X-Men (vaguely)
Characters: Alex Eames, Megan Wheeler, Piotr Rasputin
Rating: PG, language, violence
Length: 1600
Genre: post-apocalyptic AU, angst, gen
Notes: I seriously DO NOT know where this came from. I can say that my only though about halfway through was "Well, no one will want to read it, but![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aj will possibly appreciate it." (I suppose I could have just emailed it to A.j., but I am feeling bored and I haven't spammed in a while)
Another Day Gone
by ALC Punk!
No one told Alex that when the world was ending her partner was going to be one of the first to die. She hadn't been prepared for that, but then, she hadn't been prepared for the bombs, or the devastation that followed, either. Picking her way through rubble, eking out a living from the basement of a building that had fallen into itself like a house of cards. Sharing floor space with people she couldn't label criminals and cops in an easy black and white fashion anymore.
Too many things were changed. Too many people gone.
Some days, she thought the hulking man who shadowed Wheeler was Bobby, and then she'd remember. The surprise on his face, the blood on her hands--
Wheeler liked to joke that Piotr Rasputin was just someone she'd met on the subway. Rasputin never joked back, but there was a lightness in his eyes when he watched Megan's back as they searched for food and supplies.
In the dark, when they only had each other for warmth, Alex told herself she could cry. She could mourn--fuck, she was a widow, she knew all about the cycle of grief. But this was different. This was the entire fucking world reduced to rubble with only a flighty junior detective and a man who never spoke to keep her company.
"You don't have to be strong for me," Megan said one morning as they washed their hands in the trickle of water that never quite stopped. Running water was a luxury, even if it caused a stripe of mildew and too-humid air that made it clammy on top of the cold.
Alex turned her head and raised her eyebrows, "You'd prefer me to fall apart and be useless?"
"No."
They didn't talk again until they were hauling scrap out of a shop window, and then it was simply common-places: the weather, worry over their food stores, the winter that was sure to kill more people. It was easy not to talk about feelings, about what had happened, about their dead captain and colleagues. Rasputin hadn't known them, and emotions might slow them down.
Wheeler had to shoot a man who wouldn't take no for an answer when she went for lunch.
There was blood on her hands and it was all Alex could do not to gag at the sight and smell. Wheeler cleaned her hands in the dirt and muttered about needing soap.
Alex hated how gritty she felt, how filthy everything was. Showering wasn't possible, though. Making do with standing water and soap was all they had. Sometimes, she let herself think about bubble baths and candles, hot towels and scalp massages.
-
In dreams, Alex did paperwork. She always hated paperwork, the piles and piles of ridiculous forms to be signed in triplicate that followed her around in day to day life. Every single thing she did on a case had to be noted. Did she where confiscated hooker wear? Was she sporting a bruise from a 'john' they'd booked? Vice had been like the ultimate "I can't believe I'm putting this on a report" game.
Homicide hadn't been quieter, but the routine had been different. She hadn't ever felt the urge to file a harassment notice against her fellow officers.
Sometimes, she'd wondered if it was the hulking menace of Robert Goren.
In the waking world, she had scrapes and dirt, month-old bread and the urge to find a stack of paper and start filling out forms again. She never confided that to Wheeler.
-
"I was visiting friends in Westchester." It wasn't the only time Rasputin had opened his mouth, but it was the first time he'd offered something personal.
Alex watched the way the fire hid his features, the light flickering too much to tell whether he was sad or happy. "Figured you weren't from around here."
"Do you think your family is still alive?"
It wasn't a kind question, and Alex saw the big man flinch before he shook his head. "No. The farm is--they would not have survived such destruction."
The fire crackled in silence until Wheeler shifted, her hand touching Rasputin's shoulder. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking." She slid closer, leaning into him, and Alex could see the gleam of tears on her cheeks.
Rasputin wasn't the only one who had lost people.
-
Alex had been jumpy for days, but couldn't put a finger on why. Not until they were relaxing at noon, taking a break and the gang jumped them. From the tattered suits and hanging skin, they must have been stock-brokers or bankers. It didn't matter, though, as untrained as they were, there were still too many of them. She saw Rasputin go down under five of them and punched at one, pulling her gun when she had the chance.
"Freeze!" she shouted, her voice ringing in a way that would have made her academy instructors proud.
They didn't, and Alex swung around at Wheeler's squeak, sighting down the end of her pistol.
"Drop it, or I kill her." The man was taller than Wheeler. He'd yanked her off-balance with an arm around her throat. She was struggling, clawing at him, but couldn't get the right leverage to dump him to the ground.
"Let her go."
He laughed, the sound ugly, "Not until I've had my turn."
So Alex shot him. The sound of the gun reverberated against the rubble, bouncing around until the others in the gang were backing away, uncertain, with their leader down.
"Let him up," Alex ordered.
Rasputin climbed free of his pile, bloodied, but on his feet.
"Good. Now get the fuck out of here, and don't think about coming back." It reminded Alex of standing in a room full of cops. You had to make yourself heard, grab the bull by the horns and ride it. You had to prove you were top dog.
She didn't relax until the sounds of them going had dwindled.
"We'll need to move," Wheeler murmured.
-
There aren't that many people left in Manhattan anymore. The gang of stock-brokers was a fluke, but it's not one they can afford to encounter again. Alex only has the rest of her clip left, unless they manage to scavenge more bullets. Wheeler has two clips. Firepower probably won't save them, in the long run.
Wheeler finds them a new space, it's less crowded, with better cracks in the pipe; stand close enough to the wall, and it's like a cold shower.
On the second night, rolled into her blanket, Wheeler asleep at her back, Alex jerks awake from a nightmare, Bobby's name on her lips.
There hadn't been a gunshot, or a warning. Just a knife and desperation, Bobby's hands digging into her arms as he folded. Alex was half his size, but she'd managed to get him under cover before trying to stop the bleeding.
He'd died under her hands, leaving her shivering over a corpse, wondering what the fuck to do.
Wheeler had found her after he'd gone as cold as the cement under her knees.
-
"I've heard there are places down south." Leave it to Wheeler to start a conversation after they've all been quiet for a day. The redhead tossed an uncertain look at Rasputin, then turned serious eyes on Alex. "It's going to freeze, soon. We can't stay here. Not if we don't want frostbite."
Alex knew that, fuck it. "I know. How do you suggest we get there, fly?"
The scorn in her voice made Wheeler straighten in surprise. "Eames. Alex. We can fucking walk. Or hot wire a car."
"You can drive through the river?"
"There are still foot bridges, yes?" Rasputin wasn't mediating, merely looking curious. "We have seen them during recces. A car will not fit."
Alex rubbed a hand over her face. "I don't think south is a good idea. Most survivors will be heading that way. They'll pick over the rubble before we get there. We need a place that's less obvious."
"Piotr. You said you were visiting friends in Westchester." Wheeler was being careful, or trying. Her hand touched the man's arm. "Would it be too hard to go there?"
The area had promise. Richer areas had better supplies and less people. The high-rises around Central Park had been squabbling landfills for weeks in the aftermath. They were picked clean, now. But Westchester was the wrong direction; out of the way.
"I suppose I will not know until we arrive," he said, then lapsed into silence as though the entire exercise had used up his words for the week.
-
Westchester was a goal. It was a way out of the stagnant quagmire of a dead city. Alex let Rasputin and Wheeler go first, shouldering her pack, her gun in her hand.
They'd stocked up on as much as they could, found a few gun shops to pick through. More ammunition, and a rifle that Rasputin now wore across his back. Enough bottles of water to see them to Canada, Wheeler had joked. Bland, tasteless food that would last forever.
Behind them were crumbling sky scrapers, places they'd once walked, dodging the teeming traffic of a New York City day (and sometimes, the night).
Alex was the last one to step onto the slim concrete spire that had managed to stay erect, leading off the island. She didn't look back, feeling a sense of hope fill her as she found firm footing on the bridge.
It didn't matter if there was no one alive in Westchester. The world had ended, and Alex wasn't sure they were really alive themselves. Perhaps they were simply ghosts, moving through a world burned to ash. But even so, there were still cinders under the gray, still life.
Alex refused to give in--Bobby would have chivvied her along, would have mocked and ranted and raved...
One day, there would be birds singing again.
Until then, she had to let the past go, leave it behind or let it rule her and drag them all down. Goodbye, Bobby.
A breeze whipped up, dragging at her hair, and then it was gone.
-f-
Fandoms: L&O: Criminal Intent, X-Men (vaguely)
Characters: Alex Eames, Megan Wheeler, Piotr Rasputin
Rating: PG, language, violence
Length: 1600
Genre: post-apocalyptic AU, angst, gen
Notes: I seriously DO NOT know where this came from. I can say that my only though about halfway through was "Well, no one will want to read it, but
aj will possibly appreciate it." (I suppose I could have just emailed it to A.j., but I am feeling bored and I haven't spammed in a while)Another Day Gone
by ALC Punk!
No one told Alex that when the world was ending her partner was going to be one of the first to die. She hadn't been prepared for that, but then, she hadn't been prepared for the bombs, or the devastation that followed, either. Picking her way through rubble, eking out a living from the basement of a building that had fallen into itself like a house of cards. Sharing floor space with people she couldn't label criminals and cops in an easy black and white fashion anymore.
Too many things were changed. Too many people gone.
Some days, she thought the hulking man who shadowed Wheeler was Bobby, and then she'd remember. The surprise on his face, the blood on her hands--
Wheeler liked to joke that Piotr Rasputin was just someone she'd met on the subway. Rasputin never joked back, but there was a lightness in his eyes when he watched Megan's back as they searched for food and supplies.
In the dark, when they only had each other for warmth, Alex told herself she could cry. She could mourn--fuck, she was a widow, she knew all about the cycle of grief. But this was different. This was the entire fucking world reduced to rubble with only a flighty junior detective and a man who never spoke to keep her company.
"You don't have to be strong for me," Megan said one morning as they washed their hands in the trickle of water that never quite stopped. Running water was a luxury, even if it caused a stripe of mildew and too-humid air that made it clammy on top of the cold.
Alex turned her head and raised her eyebrows, "You'd prefer me to fall apart and be useless?"
"No."
They didn't talk again until they were hauling scrap out of a shop window, and then it was simply common-places: the weather, worry over their food stores, the winter that was sure to kill more people. It was easy not to talk about feelings, about what had happened, about their dead captain and colleagues. Rasputin hadn't known them, and emotions might slow them down.
Wheeler had to shoot a man who wouldn't take no for an answer when she went for lunch.
There was blood on her hands and it was all Alex could do not to gag at the sight and smell. Wheeler cleaned her hands in the dirt and muttered about needing soap.
Alex hated how gritty she felt, how filthy everything was. Showering wasn't possible, though. Making do with standing water and soap was all they had. Sometimes, she let herself think about bubble baths and candles, hot towels and scalp massages.
-
In dreams, Alex did paperwork. She always hated paperwork, the piles and piles of ridiculous forms to be signed in triplicate that followed her around in day to day life. Every single thing she did on a case had to be noted. Did she where confiscated hooker wear? Was she sporting a bruise from a 'john' they'd booked? Vice had been like the ultimate "I can't believe I'm putting this on a report" game.
Homicide hadn't been quieter, but the routine had been different. She hadn't ever felt the urge to file a harassment notice against her fellow officers.
Sometimes, she'd wondered if it was the hulking menace of Robert Goren.
In the waking world, she had scrapes and dirt, month-old bread and the urge to find a stack of paper and start filling out forms again. She never confided that to Wheeler.
-
"I was visiting friends in Westchester." It wasn't the only time Rasputin had opened his mouth, but it was the first time he'd offered something personal.
Alex watched the way the fire hid his features, the light flickering too much to tell whether he was sad or happy. "Figured you weren't from around here."
"Do you think your family is still alive?"
It wasn't a kind question, and Alex saw the big man flinch before he shook his head. "No. The farm is--they would not have survived such destruction."
The fire crackled in silence until Wheeler shifted, her hand touching Rasputin's shoulder. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking." She slid closer, leaning into him, and Alex could see the gleam of tears on her cheeks.
Rasputin wasn't the only one who had lost people.
-
Alex had been jumpy for days, but couldn't put a finger on why. Not until they were relaxing at noon, taking a break and the gang jumped them. From the tattered suits and hanging skin, they must have been stock-brokers or bankers. It didn't matter, though, as untrained as they were, there were still too many of them. She saw Rasputin go down under five of them and punched at one, pulling her gun when she had the chance.
"Freeze!" she shouted, her voice ringing in a way that would have made her academy instructors proud.
They didn't, and Alex swung around at Wheeler's squeak, sighting down the end of her pistol.
"Drop it, or I kill her." The man was taller than Wheeler. He'd yanked her off-balance with an arm around her throat. She was struggling, clawing at him, but couldn't get the right leverage to dump him to the ground.
"Let her go."
He laughed, the sound ugly, "Not until I've had my turn."
So Alex shot him. The sound of the gun reverberated against the rubble, bouncing around until the others in the gang were backing away, uncertain, with their leader down.
"Let him up," Alex ordered.
Rasputin climbed free of his pile, bloodied, but on his feet.
"Good. Now get the fuck out of here, and don't think about coming back." It reminded Alex of standing in a room full of cops. You had to make yourself heard, grab the bull by the horns and ride it. You had to prove you were top dog.
She didn't relax until the sounds of them going had dwindled.
"We'll need to move," Wheeler murmured.
-
There aren't that many people left in Manhattan anymore. The gang of stock-brokers was a fluke, but it's not one they can afford to encounter again. Alex only has the rest of her clip left, unless they manage to scavenge more bullets. Wheeler has two clips. Firepower probably won't save them, in the long run.
Wheeler finds them a new space, it's less crowded, with better cracks in the pipe; stand close enough to the wall, and it's like a cold shower.
On the second night, rolled into her blanket, Wheeler asleep at her back, Alex jerks awake from a nightmare, Bobby's name on her lips.
There hadn't been a gunshot, or a warning. Just a knife and desperation, Bobby's hands digging into her arms as he folded. Alex was half his size, but she'd managed to get him under cover before trying to stop the bleeding.
He'd died under her hands, leaving her shivering over a corpse, wondering what the fuck to do.
Wheeler had found her after he'd gone as cold as the cement under her knees.
-
"I've heard there are places down south." Leave it to Wheeler to start a conversation after they've all been quiet for a day. The redhead tossed an uncertain look at Rasputin, then turned serious eyes on Alex. "It's going to freeze, soon. We can't stay here. Not if we don't want frostbite."
Alex knew that, fuck it. "I know. How do you suggest we get there, fly?"
The scorn in her voice made Wheeler straighten in surprise. "Eames. Alex. We can fucking walk. Or hot wire a car."
"You can drive through the river?"
"There are still foot bridges, yes?" Rasputin wasn't mediating, merely looking curious. "We have seen them during recces. A car will not fit."
Alex rubbed a hand over her face. "I don't think south is a good idea. Most survivors will be heading that way. They'll pick over the rubble before we get there. We need a place that's less obvious."
"Piotr. You said you were visiting friends in Westchester." Wheeler was being careful, or trying. Her hand touched the man's arm. "Would it be too hard to go there?"
The area had promise. Richer areas had better supplies and less people. The high-rises around Central Park had been squabbling landfills for weeks in the aftermath. They were picked clean, now. But Westchester was the wrong direction; out of the way.
"I suppose I will not know until we arrive," he said, then lapsed into silence as though the entire exercise had used up his words for the week.
-
Westchester was a goal. It was a way out of the stagnant quagmire of a dead city. Alex let Rasputin and Wheeler go first, shouldering her pack, her gun in her hand.
They'd stocked up on as much as they could, found a few gun shops to pick through. More ammunition, and a rifle that Rasputin now wore across his back. Enough bottles of water to see them to Canada, Wheeler had joked. Bland, tasteless food that would last forever.
Behind them were crumbling sky scrapers, places they'd once walked, dodging the teeming traffic of a New York City day (and sometimes, the night).
Alex was the last one to step onto the slim concrete spire that had managed to stay erect, leading off the island. She didn't look back, feeling a sense of hope fill her as she found firm footing on the bridge.
It didn't matter if there was no one alive in Westchester. The world had ended, and Alex wasn't sure they were really alive themselves. Perhaps they were simply ghosts, moving through a world burned to ash. But even so, there were still cinders under the gray, still life.
Alex refused to give in--Bobby would have chivvied her along, would have mocked and ranted and raved...
One day, there would be birds singing again.
Until then, she had to let the past go, leave it behind or let it rule her and drag them all down. Goodbye, Bobby.
A breeze whipped up, dragging at her hair, and then it was gone.
-f-
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More?
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(Ahahah, gang of stock-brokers!)
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Thank you.
I'm just, A.j., I don't even know where this came from, or where I'd go next. *hands*
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I read it twice. It's beautiful but very sad. It's like... Dostoevsky on acid.
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