characters: Lucky Genevra & Seven.
rating: PG-13 - vague violence.
genre: eidetic angst.
words: 946.
author's note: Lucky belongs to![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
kaitlinbell. x-posted to paper_inc
---
Paralysis is what's got him.
Lucky is only distantly aware of the arm clamped around his chest, pressed tightly against his sternum. The nails digging into his shoulder, chipped red and shaking, aren't what acts as the vice -- the restraints.
It's the fear. The cold, quiet, primal terror that seizes his gut with frosty fingers. That's what keeps him still.
He can hear Seven breathing behind him, with her arm around his shoulders and her lips beside his ear. He can see the gun clutched in her hand, skin white as a dove, and he can feel the feral fury in her pulse. He feels the quick, tight beating of her heart crushed against his back, and Lucky wonders if she is more afraid than he is.
He can see the other gun as well, reflecting dully in the moonlight, and it matches Seven's with the notable exception that it's pointing at Lucky's face.
It isn't the gun. Either one of them, really, that gets him.
It isn't the stranger standing in front of him or Seven behind him or the blood dripping from her temple to her chin that frightens him.
Knowledge is what's got him. The paralysis of fear.
He is going to die.
Lucky wants to laugh, in a distinctly strangled way. It's funny, in a sick sort of fashion, the situation at hand. It's funny that instead of being confined to a hospital room or an empty apartment to die alone of lung cancer like he thought he would be, he is going to be shot to death by a stranger with a gun the same color as Seven's hair.
The teenage boy glamor of the death appeals to the writer within, and Lucky can't help but be grimly amused. He wonders if Seven has thought of that, and he thinks she hasn't.
Her finger tightens on the trigger. So does the stranger's.
It's stupid, so very stupid of Lucky, that beyond the veil of fear, he thinks the stranger is a rather appealing one to look at. His lips are full and parted slightly, the lower one only fractionally larger than the top. His nose is straight and proud, and above it, Lucky thinks his eyes are a pretty blue. The boy's hair is dark and mussed and his eyebrows are drawn together in anxiety. But, even so, Lucky can appreciate a handsome murderer. At least he would be treated to that before his brains are smattered on the wall behind him.
The boy is looking at him. And Lucky looks back, for he cannot will himself to move. Not even his eyes; impossibly wide, impossibly green, and impossibly still. He is shackled firmly into place.
Paralysis is what's got him. The paralysis of fear.
What happens next, though, comes as a slow surprise. Time comes to a grotesque stop, the noises around him melting to run together as though someone had put a tape recorder in reverse. Like crayons in an oven, he can't tell one from the other. The sound is obscene.
He can barely discern as Seven moves, her chest pressing tighter to his back, no less sluggish and languid than if she had been moving through water. He does not see her pull the trigger, just hears it -- the sudden cacophony of gun metal as the lever pushes the hammer backwards, compressing the spring inside the handle, all while the pawl attached to the trigger pushes the ratchet, and the cylinder rotates in a smooth circle.
The breech chamber is positioned in front of the gun barrel in a single, fluid transition. Seven pulls the trigger all the way back, and the hammer is released.
The compressed spring drives the hammer forward; the firing pin on the hammer extends, striking the bullet's primer with a single note of finality. It explodes, and the propellant is ignited.
Another explosion, and the bullet tears forward so fast that time is ripped back into place in its wake, surging Lucky forward until nausea grips at his stomach and leaves him in a dizzy heap on the floor with Seven sprawled on top of him.
He struggles to raise himself, looks up with wild eyes and is stunned to see that the only trace that the bullet had ever been there is the ribbon of blood suspended in the air in a lazy spiral.
The bullet buries itself in the wall, and the stranger's legs buckle. Three bodies collapse to the floor. Two guns clatter across the ground. One of the bodies is dead.
Silence is sudden and overwhelming until Lucky drags himself to sit in a daze, and Seven slides to the floor behind him. He twists around, groping blindly for her, and when his hands find her shoulders, she is jerked forward. The woman's body comes pliantly, and Lucky's arms encase her.
They sit that way for an hour, Seven on his lap with his arms across her back, and they wait in silence for the police to arrive and take her away. She is resigned to this. She accepts that her fate had always been one behind silver metal bars. But the police don't come, and it's another quiet hour before Lucky manages to stand.
The body is still stretched out on the floor when Lucky quietly leads Seven back to his bedroom, a hand on her elbow and an unsteady gait. The boy lies alone in the dark kitchen with a hole between his eyes, dark head haloed by a darker circle that stains the kitchen floor, spreading over the tiles like a cancer.
rating: PG-13 - vague violence.
genre: eidetic angst.
words: 946.
author's note: Lucky belongs to
kaitlinbell. x-posted to paper_incParalysis is what's got him.
Lucky is only distantly aware of the arm clamped around his chest, pressed tightly against his sternum. The nails digging into his shoulder, chipped red and shaking, aren't what acts as the vice -- the restraints.
It's the fear. The cold, quiet, primal terror that seizes his gut with frosty fingers. That's what keeps him still.
He can hear Seven breathing behind him, with her arm around his shoulders and her lips beside his ear. He can see the gun clutched in her hand, skin white as a dove, and he can feel the feral fury in her pulse. He feels the quick, tight beating of her heart crushed against his back, and Lucky wonders if she is more afraid than he is.
He can see the other gun as well, reflecting dully in the moonlight, and it matches Seven's with the notable exception that it's pointing at Lucky's face.
It isn't the gun. Either one of them, really, that gets him.
It isn't the stranger standing in front of him or Seven behind him or the blood dripping from her temple to her chin that frightens him.
Knowledge is what's got him. The paralysis of fear.
He is going to die.
Lucky wants to laugh, in a distinctly strangled way. It's funny, in a sick sort of fashion, the situation at hand. It's funny that instead of being confined to a hospital room or an empty apartment to die alone of lung cancer like he thought he would be, he is going to be shot to death by a stranger with a gun the same color as Seven's hair.
The teenage boy glamor of the death appeals to the writer within, and Lucky can't help but be grimly amused. He wonders if Seven has thought of that, and he thinks she hasn't.
Her finger tightens on the trigger. So does the stranger's.
It's stupid, so very stupid of Lucky, that beyond the veil of fear, he thinks the stranger is a rather appealing one to look at. His lips are full and parted slightly, the lower one only fractionally larger than the top. His nose is straight and proud, and above it, Lucky thinks his eyes are a pretty blue. The boy's hair is dark and mussed and his eyebrows are drawn together in anxiety. But, even so, Lucky can appreciate a handsome murderer. At least he would be treated to that before his brains are smattered on the wall behind him.
The boy is looking at him. And Lucky looks back, for he cannot will himself to move. Not even his eyes; impossibly wide, impossibly green, and impossibly still. He is shackled firmly into place.
Paralysis is what's got him. The paralysis of fear.
What happens next, though, comes as a slow surprise. Time comes to a grotesque stop, the noises around him melting to run together as though someone had put a tape recorder in reverse. Like crayons in an oven, he can't tell one from the other. The sound is obscene.
He can barely discern as Seven moves, her chest pressing tighter to his back, no less sluggish and languid than if she had been moving through water. He does not see her pull the trigger, just hears it -- the sudden cacophony of gun metal as the lever pushes the hammer backwards, compressing the spring inside the handle, all while the pawl attached to the trigger pushes the ratchet, and the cylinder rotates in a smooth circle.
The breech chamber is positioned in front of the gun barrel in a single, fluid transition. Seven pulls the trigger all the way back, and the hammer is released.
The compressed spring drives the hammer forward; the firing pin on the hammer extends, striking the bullet's primer with a single note of finality. It explodes, and the propellant is ignited.
Another explosion, and the bullet tears forward so fast that time is ripped back into place in its wake, surging Lucky forward until nausea grips at his stomach and leaves him in a dizzy heap on the floor with Seven sprawled on top of him.
He struggles to raise himself, looks up with wild eyes and is stunned to see that the only trace that the bullet had ever been there is the ribbon of blood suspended in the air in a lazy spiral.
The bullet buries itself in the wall, and the stranger's legs buckle. Three bodies collapse to the floor. Two guns clatter across the ground. One of the bodies is dead.
Silence is sudden and overwhelming until Lucky drags himself to sit in a daze, and Seven slides to the floor behind him. He twists around, groping blindly for her, and when his hands find her shoulders, she is jerked forward. The woman's body comes pliantly, and Lucky's arms encase her.
They sit that way for an hour, Seven on his lap with his arms across her back, and they wait in silence for the police to arrive and take her away. She is resigned to this. She accepts that her fate had always been one behind silver metal bars. But the police don't come, and it's another quiet hour before Lucky manages to stand.
The body is still stretched out on the floor when Lucky quietly leads Seven back to his bedroom, a hand on her elbow and an unsteady gait. The boy lies alone in the dark kitchen with a hole between his eyes, dark head haloed by a darker circle that stains the kitchen floor, spreading over the tiles like a cancer.
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