2020-02-06 - Requiem for a Dream
Captain de la Vega is invited to a family dinner.
IC Date: 2020-02-06
OOC Date: 2019-09-29
Location: Dreamscape????
Related Scenes: 2019-11-10 - The Yellow Sign
Plot: None
Scene Number: 3843
The moment Javier de la Vega steps into his A-Frame cabin, he'd would know immediately that something is wrong, because the interior of his new acquisition has suddenly been converted into familiar surroundings.
Very familiar surroundings.
It's a humble living room, but his boxes are gone, replaced by more comfortable furnishings unmistakably chosen by a woman's touch. There are children's books on the low coffee table, but even for such things, they're almost too advanced for the eleven year old he knows lives here - including a collection of Pablo Neruda's poetry, bookmarked by a Ninja Turtles tassle. Even the scent is familiar - of something warm and cooking in the kitchen. It is, after all, dinner time and he is in the rare position of walking in just before his wife sets the table.
His wife.
He would spot her, Karin, lovely, graceful and blonde, and despite the perpetual exhaustion that rings her blue eyes, these days, they brighten when they fall upon him standing in the threshold, potholders in her hands and a fresh casserole still bubbling on the top of the ceramic receptacle. Their marriage was always fraught with difficulty, but despite all the struggling, there has never been any doubt that she loves him ardently, and deeply; he can feel it as he stands there by the door. "Javi!" His name is clearly savored, surprise and pleasure writ on her face. "I didn't think you would make it home on time for dinner, luckily the table's set. Emrys' already washed up. Why don't you do the same and you can hear about his day?"
She pivots, foot encased in comfortable slippers. "I wasn't sure, so...I hope you don't mind, but we have a guest for dinner tonight."
He stills in the entryway, stopped cold by what he sees. All of this domestic bliss; the stuff of the American Dream, what men like him kill and die for, and he feels sick to his stomach. A quick glance over his shoulder finds not his gravel drive, and the Charger cooling off there in the rain, but a sunny tree-lined street arranged with similar houses one next to the other. Some guy out mowing his lawn, a couple of girls taking their dog for a walk. He shuts the door, and happens to glance down at himself, and notices that he's in his fatigues. Home, likely, from a recent deployment.
"Karin," comes out a little brokenly as his gaze travels back to her. As he takes her in, this woman whose memory fades a little more by the day. He'd forgotten what her voice sounded like, he realises. Swallowing, he eases out of the doorway, touches the back of a chair, the edge of a lamp as he makes his way over to her. "The guest. Who is it?" His touch lands, last, on her cheek. A few stray strands of blonde hair tucked behind her ear, and a dutiful kiss that carries with it a pang of longing.
The sound of her name on his voice is hoarse and frayed, but hearing it gentles her expression visibly. "Love," she murmurs, and even know he feels it - the pain of every single deployment, and the sheer, unbridled and uncomplicated joy and relief that floods her veins and fills every part of her every time he comes home and alive. She turns her face into his cheek, lashes lowering at the brush of coarser skin against her softer own, and she kisses him back; she tastes like affection and melancholy.
Asked about the guest, there's a hint of hesitation, but her smile remains. "Emrys' new specialist," she tells him as she leads him to the dining room. "I...hope you don't mind, but considering his needs, I asked a friend who works as a teacher that works in a school for special children. She referred him, and...oh, Javi, he's brilliant. Emrys' grades are improving and he seems to genuinely care about him. He keeps saying he's unique." Her eyes gleam as she looks at Ruiz. "Just like you."
The three words linger, strangely, in his mind.
And when they step through the threshold of the door and Karin sets the casserole dish on the table, he'd find a familiar figure in a bowler hat and an impeccable pinstripe suit, seated not at the head of the table, but to the side of it, next to an eleven year old boy with Ruiz's dark hair, and his unique, striking eyes. How long has it been since he'd seen his face? Did he ever realize how much his son looks just like him?
Emrys looks up from the book he's reading in the table, his head bent and pointing out a passage to the man with a bowler, who laughs pleasantly at his comment. He then turns his head, his expression brightening. "Papa!" It's enthusiastic, and proud...but uncertain, and shy. A boy forever proud of having such a brave and capable man as his father, but is never sure that he will ever measure up to his firm and discerning standards. Not when he's so frail, not when he doesn't have the proper disposition to wield a gun, or take lives. No matter how brilliant, or how enamored of poetry...just like him.
Peregrine smiles, a gloved hand resting on Emrys' shoulder - it's a gentle touch, but a firm one, ultimately preventing the boy from going to his father. "Gunnery sergeant," he says with his polished, affable tones. "You have a lovely home." Dark lenses glint under the dining room's light. "And an absolutely special little boy."
His new specialist. Emrys's new specialist. Everything about this situation is wrong, and Javier's heartrate picks up, thudding against his chest in warning. Unique. He's unique. And then the Marine follows his wife into the dining room, and that man in the pinstripe suit and bowler hat is sitting there, next to his son whom he hasn't seen in fifteen years, and it's like all the air's gone out of the room.
Then Peregrine looks up at him, and Javier meets his eyes with a surge of heat, fire and brimstone in those darkling depths, and a sickness in his gut. Like he knows he's going to try to kill this man in front of his family. They're not his family. "Que quieres?" His voice is rough with emotion, and he prowls in closer. Slow. "Porque estas aqui?" The man doesn't let his son come to him, so he goes to them. Closer and closer, taking the long way around the table.
"Javi?" Karin looks between Javier and Peregrine, concern on her features. "Have the two of you met? Do the two of you know each other?"
Emrys seems oblivious to the rising tension between the two men in the room. He proceeds to work on a math problem with a pencil, and shows the work to the suited man next to him who peers at the paper. "You missed a step," he tells the young boy kindly, and patiently. "Can you see where it is?"
"I...I think so, doctor. Oh! I should add first, before subtracting?"
"Very good!" A gloved hand ruffles his dark hair. "You'll be a decathlon champion yet."
As the eleven year old works on his numbers, Peregrine flashes that easy smile towards Karin. "I can't say I know your husband well, Missus de la Vega, but I know him to be a courageous sort, and a ferocious hunter." His gloved fingers find the brim of his hat in a salute towards Ruiz. "As for what I'm doing here, your wife invited me, given your son's remarkable progress. We were about to talk about his care, and continued development. Why don't you join us? He is, after all, your son - and in his case, the apple does not fall far from the tree."
Dark lenses watch his prowling over the table, and he must sense that killing intent, because anticipation practically sings in the air, growing thick with it. "You ought to take the opportunity," he murmurs softly. "Second chances do not come very often."
Peregrine speaks, and all Ruiz hears is DANGER. All he knows is that he has to kill him. He has to end his life, and rip him to pieces with his bare hands, and spill his blood all over Karin's new rug, because he can't let him do this. He can't allow it.
His dark eyes try to seek the other man's as he stalks in closer. Fingertips to the hilt of a steak knife laid neatly atop the table, then it's collected into his palm. He isn't armed with a weapon, of course; his firearms are surrendered before leaving base. But he's more than good enough with his hands. "You need to get away from my son." Closer, and he ignores the inevitable panicking that's likely to ensue from Karin. From his child, happily doing his math homework over there. The long blade glints in the light, and his heart thunders in his chest as he realises what he's going to do. Does it distress him? Does it pain him? Or does the drumbeat of sickened exhilaration drown it all out?
He has the knife, he knows what he needs to do, but he hesitates. Two steps away from the man in the pinstripe suit, and he simply watches him with those dark, ferocious eyes and brittle tension and nothing.
You need to get away from my son.
Those words don't seem to register to the boy, and he chatters about happily about his math assignment, and how things are so much easier now, if he just followed the acronyms. If he just followed the words. The words that dance at the back of Ruiz's mind even as like eyes turn up from the other side of the table, smiling proudly and accomplished. And he would feel it, how much the eleven year old wants this - how much he yearns for his father's approval.
Karin is cognizant of the danger, however, because she has grown considerably pale. "Javi..." she whispers. "Javi, no..."
Peregrine continues stroking gloved fingers on the boy's hair as he finishes his homework at the table. "I've worked with plenty of children," the man replies to Javier, seemingly oblivious to the danger he presents. The dark lenses perched on that hawk's beak nose makes it impossible to determine whether he even sees the steak knife in his hand, and his smile doesn't waver. "But it's the bright ones that tend to attract my attention. I can give young Emrys plenty of guidance, if you would let me." He inclines his head, though not enough for the police captain to glimpse his perpetually shadowed features. "His potential is just as potent as yours. Could you only imagine, if we had met, when you were his age? I would have been availing you the help I'm presently availing your son."
Watching Ruiz, he continues, softly. "He won't have to suffer under its thrall, as you have."
It's the touch of those gloved fingers to his child's hair that does it. That intimate gesture, that monster touching his boy, and who the hell knows what he's already done to his wife. And the fact that they aren't real, none of this is real doesn't register to him in that moment. All that matters is he's touching his child, and he knows. He knows the boy shines, and god, if that hasn't kept Javier awake at night, sick with fear. The fear that whatever this is, whatever he's been given, he's passed it on to his son, as well.
There is little that can compare to the realisation that you've fucked up your child. He should be thanking Peregrine. He should be settling in to help serve him some roast beef and mashed potatoes, and asking whether he wants a second helping of the asparagus, because Karin does a really amazing grilled asparagus. He should be relieved that the man wants to help, wants to ease his burden, wants to give him the opportunity that Javier never had.
Instead, he ignores Karin's pleas, and takes that last step toward Peregrine, close enough to brush his knee. And with a quick, sure turn of his wrist, attempts to sink the knife into his heart while still trying to find his eyes behind those glasses. There's no more hesitation, no hitch of uncertainty at the last moment, as one might expect in a normal, well-adjusted person. They broke him down, piece by piece, and remade him into a machine capable of killing.
There's a flash of silver, and those dark tinted lenses lift up to meet Ruiz's face - like twin mirrors, they reflect the dual images of his face back at the police captain, and for a brief few seconds he would see it - how sick he looks, how fearful he is, and a father's rage at a monster entering his home, defiling what little happiness that remains. Of walking into his memories after making him relive them and remember the faces of those he loved before Time scrubbed their precious details from his mind altogether. After all, how long has it been? Twenty years? More than?
Blood sprays into the far wall, stains his wife's carpet and leaves lurid slashes over the table cloth. It flows red all over Karin's platter of grilled asparagus, so prettily presented, including the little lemon-lilies she used to make with her paring knife. She has always been so delightfully artistic, his Karin. His wife.
His wife, who is now screaming. And yet, the quiet, innocent, bloody gurgle somehow manages to cut through all of that.
Because as Javier looks down, that gloved hand is there - the one that was so gently stroking his boy's hair, it's resting sideways now, and the blade has sunk right into Emrys' chest, the eleven year old having scrambled from his seat, and throw himself in front of his doctor and teacher in an attempt to save him from his father. Eyes that look just like his stare up at him in wonder, and confusion, blood dribbling from the child's mouth as blood wells from the metal protruding from where his small, beating heart should be. Brilliant, but frail, and forever yearning to be just as strong as his father. Strong enough to fight for what he believes in. Strong enough to fight for his country, and everyone he loves.
And die protecting them, also.
Just like him.
The child doesn't speak. His small body slumps and crashes into the floor, blood seeping into the carpet. Karin keeps screaming as she rushes forward, and god only knows when Peregrine has moved, because he makes room for the hysterical woman who gathers her dying child in her arms.
"What have you done?!" she screams at him, love warring with betrayal and a mother's white-hot fury, twisting her beautiful face as her clothes grow slick with their child's blood. "I told you not to! Why do you never listen to me?! I beg, and plead, and you still-- you still-- !" Grief spills hot from those crystal-blue eyes. "You killed us! YOU KILLED US!"
The words fill the room, pressing savagely into Ruiz's skull. All he hears for several long, savage moments is the vehicle, burning tires squealing through the open road and the warning blares of a horn...
People who have seen combat, who are familiar with this, sometimes call it tunnel vision. This utter loss of situational awareness, until nothing else matters but the one task they've fixated on. The knife is turned sideways, and slid in between the floating ribs, where he knows the left ventricle's huddled. His hand reaches to knock the man's hat off, and fist in his hair- except it isn't Peregrine's hair. It's his child's. It's his child he's slivering through the heart with a steak knife, and he feels him convulse, confused, big eyes staring up at him. Eyes like his. His child. His child.
Dying, in front of his eyes. Slumping into the chair, then slumping to the floor, and the life slipping out of him. Somewhere, distantly, his mind screams that THIS IS NOT REAL. That they died two decades ago, and none of this. None of it is happening. But he's already started hurtling down this course, and it's too late to turn back. Too fucking late.
What has he done? The knife falls to the floor, and blood spatters from it as it thumps into the rug. Followed by the much heavier thump of his fatigues-clad frame following it, and the more solid sound of his head meeting the side of the table. He slams it back once, you killed us, then again, his potential is just as potent as yours, and again, like it might help smother the sound of tires shrieking against asphalt and the blare of a horn ricocheting through his head.
<FS3> Ruiz rolls Mental (8 7 6 6 6 4 3 3 3) vs Peregrin (a NPC)'s 10 (8 8 7 7 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 1)
<FS3> DRAW! (Rolled by: Portal)
<FS3> Ruiz rolls Mental (8 7 7 6 6 3 2 2 1) vs Peregrine (a NPC)'s 10 (8 6 6 5 5 4 4 4 3 2 1 1)
<FS3> Victory for Ruiz. (Rolled by: Portal)
It sounds more distant, now, this clamoring that this isn't real, fading under the dull roar of rushing water. Even the sea sounds furious over this innocent death.
But what is real? The mistake of most waking nightmares is that there are often elements in it that are so nonsensical that belief is suspended to the point of breaking, but what if they remained within the realms of the believable? To play with what's already there, to color between the lines and in the doing, slowly branch out and make those who are meant to feel it fill the missing pieces? As the tragedy unfolds before him, the images are reflected in Peregrine's dark tinted glasses as he simply watches Karin weep over the broken body of their son, her screams echoing louder, and louder, and louder in the room, as if suddenly built with the acoustics of some of the most famed opera houses in the world, rising in pitch and embarking in a furious crescendo, bleeding into the sounds of a devastating car accident that only Javier hears.
Karin screaming. Screaming as she holds their son. Screaming as she grips the wheel of her vehicle. Emrys, silent, because Javier's steak knife is protruding through his heart. Because he was sleeping in the car when they were hit. His sightless eyes stare upwards at his father as he attempts to crack his head open against the side of their dining table, still carrying the blood-spattered dregs of the meal Karin lovingly prepared for his homecoming. Over and over, again and again.
There's no amusement from their dinner guest. Impeccably-polished Oxfords, instead, cross the bloodstained carpet towards the man, a gloved hand gesturing towards Ruiz, in an attempt to actually soothe the man's hurts, to prevent him from hurting himself further. But the nightmare has gripped him tightly, and he can't risk further damage to that beautiful, tortured mind.
So the ground underneath him cracks. It breaks. Javier suddenly finds himself falling through the abyss, away from the table, falling, falling, falling...
....and the splash of the crystal blue waters of the Pacific. It tastes familiar. He knows these waters well, and they continue to pull him under.
A tapestry of horror, stitched together with the delicate, frangible, filament-fine memories of his family. His home. His wife and his child, whose faces he can't remember, can't quite remember. And struggles to burn into his retinas, even now as his son lies there dying and his wife screams and screams, warring with the sound of rubber shredded on asphalt and blaring horns, and the crash of his son's head against the table and-
Darkness. Darkness in all directions except above him, where a cloudless sky streaked with fingerfine cumulus waits, at the apex of summer's solstice. But beneath the water, it's dark and soundless. He can't breathe, but does he need to breathe, to die? Does he need to die, to breathe? Down and down he sinks, and the light starts to fade, like a window slowly being painted over. Arms and legs akimbo, body drifting, turning, like he's falling in the slowest motion. Is his son down here? Is his wife? Could he find them, if he dived deep enough?
Nothing stops Javier from sinking further and further into the trenches of the Pacific, to let the familiar chill of it whisper over his senses and bathe him with its uncomplicated nature. As the dark continues to pull him down further, he's almost able to see them; Karin's face and her eyes as blue as these waters, themselves, his boy, eleven and dark-haired, with eyes just like his.
When he sinks deep enough, their hands reach for him in the abyss and engulf him and within the depths of this deadly, beautiful reunion, he can feel their embrace and their voices rippling in soothing tandem through the bubbles, welcoming him home.....
"Papa," Emrys whispers as he holds onto him, as the three of them drift further to the uncharted depths. "I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you found us."
As the world grows black, his son's longing whisper lingers in his ears.
"You won't leave us anymore, would you?"
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