Dandelion (Reprise)
May 26, 2021 19:04:21 GMT -5
James Nightingale, Max f'n Daemon, and 3 more like this
Post by Downfall on May 26, 2021 19:04:21 GMT -5
Serenity had sat, with her knees together, on a little dune of sand and grass overlooking the slate-gray waves, and contemplating as he came down the wooden step. And for a long time, the two of them just watched the surf rolling in on Long Point Key.
He started to say something, but then thought better of it. It was awkward between them, still... in their first week, they'd had to establish some firm boundaries. The less said about her confused reaction of trying to revert to her submissive captive aspects, the better. The almost-kiss...
Since then, they'd stayed on opposite sides of the beach house. He had gone out every night, driving over the bridge back to the mainland, wanting to spend the least amount of time there as possible.
Serenity had plucked a strand of long, fiber-optic tough grass from the dune, and twirled it in her hand as she felt his boots in the sand behind her. Finally, she spoke first, "Danny... why did you want me to stay here?"
He didn't even consider it for a moment, his tone not unkind, perhaps a little understated. "You had nowhere else to go, kid... you were pulled into a van up north and your closest family's a sick old woman in hospice out'n Long Island New York... And you don't have - anybody? No brothers? No Dutch uncle, nothin'?" Serenity shakes her head.
"I'm a foster kid, been shipped from house to house all my life... never knew my mama," she said, her accent with inflections of Boston but every once in a while slipping in some down-home bayou patois, "My daddy well, he was always a drunk, didn't wanna kid like me..." She threw the blade of grass away, "Sorry, you probably can't relate."
He stood, aloof and stony, where a warmer individual would have moved to comfort the lonely refugee, but he said, "I can, actually."
"But why did you want me to stay here?" Serenity says, face turned to him but her eyes shifting away, touching her hair nervously. She was still waiting for a monster to peek out from behind a mask, for a nightmare lecher to snake it's tongue and caress her cheek with it as he pawed her clothes. But Danny just stood there, unmoving. She couldn't have known he'd never given any girl except one a second thought in his life. "If it's not... the one thing... then why did you even... come to my rescue... why did you put me up here."
He wants to answer, but after opening his mouth, he just throws open his palms and shrugs.
"I do have to tell you, kid. I'm considered an asshole in the circles I travel. I've bounced from place to place for a long time, been blackballed from others 'cause of my temper... and I've had to become really good at starting everything over from ground zero." He turns to the waves, his brow suddenly furrowed. "But I was given this opportunity to wrestle for a new company, they call it Action Wrestling if ya can believe that braggadocious shit... and the pay is more than I've made in a long time. They want me to come in and gave me a choice of facing some idiots named Chad Ford or Dionysus... hrn." The sudden tangent is more than Serenity's heard him speak in days. She sits forward, intrigued. And there's a little note of an old, firmly held belief in his voice, that he's better than this.
"So, you're starting over here, then, too." Serenity says, thinking that's good, it's something they had in common.
"Yeah, but... don't get it twisted, girl, I'm Daniel fucking Fehl, I'm the king of anarchy... give me three weeks and I'll have a stable of simps together and we'll be running the place." He jabs a thumb to his chest. Serenity regards him not half-amused. He's gone from being honest and vulnerable to his macho mindset playing on an idea of who he used to be.
"I think you're more than that, Danny... you may have this idea of yourself in your head as this asshole bad boy... but there's more to you than that."
She reaches down, to the patch of grass, and she pulls a stem. The plant is a closed, green shell folded around a yellow inside. A dandelion.
"You're just like this flower, tbh."
He cocks an eyebrow at her, taking the flower in his palm.
"See, dandelions get a bad rap, but they've evolved all this time to tough it out even in the most unlikely conditions. When they're protecting themselves from the elements or under cover of night, the outer membrane closes around it's leaves, protecting it's stamen... but when the sun shines on it the flower opens."
Danny looks from her to the closed bud in his hand, then tosses it into the ocean. And yet, Serenity's earnest attempt to connect has touched a part of him that recalls back to a day sitting in Jackson Park with someone special long ago... she'd read off facts about flowers that she thought were so punk... they'd kissed and lay next to each other, listening each to one earphone of a Walkman as it had played her mixtape, and they'd watched the clouds pass by over them as they lay on the knoll among a blooming field of dandelions. Memory synapses firing off like firecrackers, he breathed in.
"Yeah, yeah, don't get cute about it."
"I think it'd be good for me to stay here," Serenity says, "I think it'll be good for us to embrace some new beginnings and allow ourselves to open up here. Be who we really could be."
He fixes her with a sour look, non-plussed with the idea. She cracks a smile, though, and it's infectious.
"Just don't give me any more metaphors about flowers, kid. Come on, let's go inside, this godforsaken island can get hit by some fucked storms..."
She claps her hands together merrily, "I'll show you how to read my tarot cards and tell you your future next...!" as she bounds up the wooden step in front of him.
The pounding of the surf is a roar in his ears as he steps onto the beach.
"JASON!!!" he roars, louder.
"Right... here." comes the response, scarily calm.
He stands, stripped to the waist, in the surf, down the stretch of beach on which he'd, months ago, chased Serenity. Long Point Key is shaking with tide, and angry blued stormclouds give the air a frenetic energy. Wind whips their hair around them, buffeting them.
Jason is standing in the surf, holding a machete in one hand and a crowbar in the other, arms splayed out in mock-martyr pose. Scabbed-over wounds mark his body in disturbing layers, he's cut runes into his own chest like macabre tattoos. His eyes ringed with madness.
Daniel stands on the other side from him, in a patch of grass, stepping on clusters of wild dandelions.
"For half a second, I thought you'd gone yellow, Fehl... that, or you'd gone smart."
"I have a receipt for you, fuckstick, straight from the dying words of a sick old man."
"HA. Oh, Daniel... I thought you'd be getting ready for Havoc this week, though... all of your peers, they're all getting cozy with loved ones, doing interviews, normal wrestling life... but you... you're out there terrorizing gangs and scaring thugs into giving up the location of one trafficked girl."
Jason's sick amusement plays across his face; the multiple choice-question of what he knows, as ever, as he speaks in almost-riddles and taunts.
"I'll deal with AW stuff on my time. First I have to beat the shit out of a demented sociopath until he tells me where someone I care about is."
Almost casually, Jason flings the crowbar across the beach, to spray sand up at Danny's feet.
"You really have changed since I've started watching, Daniel... and, oh, yes, I've been watching, through the eyes of Mabon." Jason levels the machete at him with two hands, grinning wickedly. "Through dark magic. Through powers not to be spoken of."
"I don't give a fuck. You were the one who took her."
They circle each other as the winds spill sand between them, and the storm rolls in across the water. Jason laughs.
"You're really serious... it isn't just Serenity that's got you acting this noble. You're white knighting just like Dionysus."
"Shut up."
"Oh, look at you, mister righteous! Coming to strike me down and save the maiden, oh!"
Jason's grin turns wicked. Behind him, from the stormfront on the waves, lightning splits the horizon. "Maybe I should tell you how Donald choked when I gave him a cannister of carbon monoxide instead'a oxygen... how he clawed for breath, tugging at my pants leg... or how Serenity... mmm, sweet Serenity..."
"I'LL KILL YOU!!" Lightning flashed.
Jason grinned. "I want you to try."
Their implements clanged together like swords as the ran began to pelt the beach in earnest. He drew back with all of his might and brought it down towards Jason's taunting face. Jason blocked, swiped at him with the machete side-slash. It was sharp enough to draw through the fabric of his vest, drawing blood. Jason slashed again, and Danny blocked with the crowbar.
"Don't - recognize the crowbar - do ya, Danny..." Jason beamed, "That's - the one you disciplined Sicko with - in the Inner Circle days," he punctuated every break with an aggressive slash or chop with the machete.
"How you used to be a martinet - that tried to keep the soldiers in line - through the threat of force."
"How when Sicko - failed the team - by losing the Tag belts for us, you beat him in the shower until he lay in the fetal position."
"ENOUGH!" he roared, hitting the machete hard enough for the metal to sing. "That was a lifetime ago, Jason, and both you and I have had our separate peace with Sicko after that. That can't be why you're messing with me... Joining MS-13... kidnapping Serenity... killing my father."
Lightning flashed, and the thunder rumbled so loudly that it sounded like stentorian godly words.
"No, Danny... what you need to realize is that - All of that," their weapons clash, "Was because -" their weapons clash again, "-Your decisions - " Their weapons clash harder still "- Make victims of everyone who comes in contact with you."
Their faces are so close between their weapons that they're nearly touching. Jason snarls at him. "You're the one who killed Donald... because the cancer eating him was the rot that comes from being in close proximity to someone as black and soulless as you are."
"No!" Danny snarls back, drawing the crowbar and batting Jason's machete away. "It was you!!" The machete flings and flips end-over-end through the air, landing in the dirt behind him.
Danny raises the crowbar to beat Jason over the head with. "See... this is exactly what I meant... welcome back, my prince..."
"...to the other side of the line." He holds his arms out, welcoming it. "Embrace the darkness. Beat me just the way you did Ephraim. Do it. I want you to do it."
There's a long, tense second with his hands gripping the solid metal bar like a cudgel that it trembles mightily. The rain and the wind pelt them both, and thunder crackles.
Danny throws the crowbar aside.
"No."
Jason's lips peel back.
"You've pushed me as hard as you can, but you set all of this confrontation up this way just so you can prove your demented point to me, and I am tired of your riddles and games, you fucking sick creep. I won't let you prove your point in your mind..." and he thinks of Donald's voicemail, telling him you can beat the devil... but not at his own game... "I won't let you win."
Jason tilts his head, smiling, absurdly touched. "Oh, Daniel... you've changed so much. The old you would be filled with arrogant wrath... perhaps I have misjudged you."
He lifts a pointer finger, dramatically pontificating. "Or."
His grin splits wickedly, he looks over Daniel's shoulder, "Maybe you haven't been pushed hard enough into the darkness... maybe you haven't been given enough evidence that your aura and proximity befouls everything you touch. Mmmm, I don't know... what do you think - "
"--Serenity?"
Danny's jaw drops, shocked by the name, as the young woman comes from behind him. Her eyes are bleeding, and she has scabbed sigils carved into the exposed flesh on her arms, but her mouth twists in fury as she's picked up the machete and sinks the point of it in between his shoulder blades.
He yells in mingled pain and fury and hurt as the blade sticks in, and, incredibly, his first thought, beyond the recognition of being stabbed, and that Serenity did it, was that she wasn't in her right mind.
He fell onto the sands, and coughed and sputtered. Serenity stood over him, the machete dripping blood. Danny looked up at her.
"Ren... don't..."
She raised the machete again, a guillotine's blade ready to fall and hack part of him off. He gritted his teeth, grimacing and knowing that wherever the sharp blade landed might be a part he lost... some dim, faraway portion of his brain spoke up, thinking oh shit, I have to prepare for Havoc still...
But then Jason's hand came to catch Serenity's wrist with a smack. Kindly, he shepherded her, taking the machete-wielding arm down. "Now-now, my dear..."
Serenity's voice is empty, lifeless. "Yes, Jason."
Blood running down his back, barely able to feel the icy-fire area of the wound, he struggles to push himself up to look at her. "Ren... I... I looked for you... all this time..."
"I think this is a good stopping point for now, my dear," Jason says. He reaches down to Danny's body... and with savage strength, tears the DIY vest from his torso. He holds it up, like a hunter posing with a prized safari trophy. Danny lays there, on his back, sand mingling with the wound and grimacing in pain.
"I'll be back soon to teach you more lessons about your own nature, Danny... but for now... I hope you enjoy yourself, oh, Mister Nightingale is going to want to talk to you about what you said to Adrian... Well, good luck at Havoc, champ."
Jason and Serenity walk up the sand dunehill back to the main road.
And Danny lays there, 50 yards down the beach from his house, breathing heavily and trying to regain his strength. At length, the storm is starting to abate.
But the tide washes over him.
He tumbles under the water, turning himself over and sputtering, it getting into his mouth. The wave recedes, and he coughs out seawater, choking. The salt water stings his bleeding machete wound all over again.
The surf rolls in again, pounding him down.
At length, he is finally able to crawl out of reach of the tide, weakly. The wound between his shoulder blades is making his shoulders and arms feel leaden, numb. He'll have to have that looked at.
But he's shook, shocked, at a loss of what to do. Questioning himself.
Fuck. Serenity...
And yet, he feels heartsick, and the blood running down his chest as he drags himself towards the beachhouse drops on the yellow flowers at the base of the wooden step.
He thinks about standing here his first week, looking out into the waves and talking with Serenity. How easy it had all seemed then. How complicated it was now.
He looked down between his foot, and saw the grass patch at the foot of the steps, and the yellow flowers sticking between his feet. Wonderingly, he had picked one up.
As the sun had begun coming out onto the beach, the little flower's green membrane had begun to open, revealing the yellow petals on the inside.
He sits, thinking on a plethora of memory and twirling the little dandelion between his fingers like a parasol for a while.
"Hello?" a voice calls to him, lilting from down the beach. He doesn't answer it, looking at the flowers, some of which had drops of blood on them. But when he does look, he sees a strange woman walking down the beach towards him. She smiles, kindly.
"Daniel? Hello? Hi... my name is Elli. Elli Artemis. I've been looking for you."
He started to say something, but then thought better of it. It was awkward between them, still... in their first week, they'd had to establish some firm boundaries. The less said about her confused reaction of trying to revert to her submissive captive aspects, the better. The almost-kiss...
Since then, they'd stayed on opposite sides of the beach house. He had gone out every night, driving over the bridge back to the mainland, wanting to spend the least amount of time there as possible.
Serenity had plucked a strand of long, fiber-optic tough grass from the dune, and twirled it in her hand as she felt his boots in the sand behind her. Finally, she spoke first, "Danny... why did you want me to stay here?"
He didn't even consider it for a moment, his tone not unkind, perhaps a little understated. "You had nowhere else to go, kid... you were pulled into a van up north and your closest family's a sick old woman in hospice out'n Long Island New York... And you don't have - anybody? No brothers? No Dutch uncle, nothin'?" Serenity shakes her head.
"I'm a foster kid, been shipped from house to house all my life... never knew my mama," she said, her accent with inflections of Boston but every once in a while slipping in some down-home bayou patois, "My daddy well, he was always a drunk, didn't wanna kid like me..." She threw the blade of grass away, "Sorry, you probably can't relate."
He stood, aloof and stony, where a warmer individual would have moved to comfort the lonely refugee, but he said, "I can, actually."
"But why did you want me to stay here?" Serenity says, face turned to him but her eyes shifting away, touching her hair nervously. She was still waiting for a monster to peek out from behind a mask, for a nightmare lecher to snake it's tongue and caress her cheek with it as he pawed her clothes. But Danny just stood there, unmoving. She couldn't have known he'd never given any girl except one a second thought in his life. "If it's not... the one thing... then why did you even... come to my rescue... why did you put me up here."
He wants to answer, but after opening his mouth, he just throws open his palms and shrugs.
"I do have to tell you, kid. I'm considered an asshole in the circles I travel. I've bounced from place to place for a long time, been blackballed from others 'cause of my temper... and I've had to become really good at starting everything over from ground zero." He turns to the waves, his brow suddenly furrowed. "But I was given this opportunity to wrestle for a new company, they call it Action Wrestling if ya can believe that braggadocious shit... and the pay is more than I've made in a long time. They want me to come in and gave me a choice of facing some idiots named Chad Ford or Dionysus... hrn." The sudden tangent is more than Serenity's heard him speak in days. She sits forward, intrigued. And there's a little note of an old, firmly held belief in his voice, that he's better than this.
"So, you're starting over here, then, too." Serenity says, thinking that's good, it's something they had in common.
"Yeah, but... don't get it twisted, girl, I'm Daniel fucking Fehl, I'm the king of anarchy... give me three weeks and I'll have a stable of simps together and we'll be running the place." He jabs a thumb to his chest. Serenity regards him not half-amused. He's gone from being honest and vulnerable to his macho mindset playing on an idea of who he used to be.
"I think you're more than that, Danny... you may have this idea of yourself in your head as this asshole bad boy... but there's more to you than that."
She reaches down, to the patch of grass, and she pulls a stem. The plant is a closed, green shell folded around a yellow inside. A dandelion.
"You're just like this flower, tbh."
He cocks an eyebrow at her, taking the flower in his palm.
"See, dandelions get a bad rap, but they've evolved all this time to tough it out even in the most unlikely conditions. When they're protecting themselves from the elements or under cover of night, the outer membrane closes around it's leaves, protecting it's stamen... but when the sun shines on it the flower opens."
Danny looks from her to the closed bud in his hand, then tosses it into the ocean. And yet, Serenity's earnest attempt to connect has touched a part of him that recalls back to a day sitting in Jackson Park with someone special long ago... she'd read off facts about flowers that she thought were so punk... they'd kissed and lay next to each other, listening each to one earphone of a Walkman as it had played her mixtape, and they'd watched the clouds pass by over them as they lay on the knoll among a blooming field of dandelions. Memory synapses firing off like firecrackers, he breathed in.
"Yeah, yeah, don't get cute about it."
"I think it'd be good for me to stay here," Serenity says, "I think it'll be good for us to embrace some new beginnings and allow ourselves to open up here. Be who we really could be."
He fixes her with a sour look, non-plussed with the idea. She cracks a smile, though, and it's infectious.
"Just don't give me any more metaphors about flowers, kid. Come on, let's go inside, this godforsaken island can get hit by some fucked storms..."
She claps her hands together merrily, "I'll show you how to read my tarot cards and tell you your future next...!" as she bounds up the wooden step in front of him.
The pounding of the surf is a roar in his ears as he steps onto the beach.
"JASON!!!" he roars, louder.
"Right... here." comes the response, scarily calm.
He stands, stripped to the waist, in the surf, down the stretch of beach on which he'd, months ago, chased Serenity. Long Point Key is shaking with tide, and angry blued stormclouds give the air a frenetic energy. Wind whips their hair around them, buffeting them.
Jason is standing in the surf, holding a machete in one hand and a crowbar in the other, arms splayed out in mock-martyr pose. Scabbed-over wounds mark his body in disturbing layers, he's cut runes into his own chest like macabre tattoos. His eyes ringed with madness.
Daniel stands on the other side from him, in a patch of grass, stepping on clusters of wild dandelions.
"For half a second, I thought you'd gone yellow, Fehl... that, or you'd gone smart."
"I have a receipt for you, fuckstick, straight from the dying words of a sick old man."
"HA. Oh, Daniel... I thought you'd be getting ready for Havoc this week, though... all of your peers, they're all getting cozy with loved ones, doing interviews, normal wrestling life... but you... you're out there terrorizing gangs and scaring thugs into giving up the location of one trafficked girl."
Jason's sick amusement plays across his face; the multiple choice-question of what he knows, as ever, as he speaks in almost-riddles and taunts.
"I'll deal with AW stuff on my time. First I have to beat the shit out of a demented sociopath until he tells me where someone I care about is."
Almost casually, Jason flings the crowbar across the beach, to spray sand up at Danny's feet.
"You really have changed since I've started watching, Daniel... and, oh, yes, I've been watching, through the eyes of Mabon." Jason levels the machete at him with two hands, grinning wickedly. "Through dark magic. Through powers not to be spoken of."
"I don't give a fuck. You were the one who took her."
They circle each other as the winds spill sand between them, and the storm rolls in across the water. Jason laughs.
"You're really serious... it isn't just Serenity that's got you acting this noble. You're white knighting just like Dionysus."
"Shut up."
"Oh, look at you, mister righteous! Coming to strike me down and save the maiden, oh!"
Jason's grin turns wicked. Behind him, from the stormfront on the waves, lightning splits the horizon. "Maybe I should tell you how Donald choked when I gave him a cannister of carbon monoxide instead'a oxygen... how he clawed for breath, tugging at my pants leg... or how Serenity... mmm, sweet Serenity..."
"I'LL KILL YOU!!" Lightning flashed.
Jason grinned. "I want you to try."
Their implements clanged together like swords as the ran began to pelt the beach in earnest. He drew back with all of his might and brought it down towards Jason's taunting face. Jason blocked, swiped at him with the machete side-slash. It was sharp enough to draw through the fabric of his vest, drawing blood. Jason slashed again, and Danny blocked with the crowbar.
"Don't - recognize the crowbar - do ya, Danny..." Jason beamed, "That's - the one you disciplined Sicko with - in the Inner Circle days," he punctuated every break with an aggressive slash or chop with the machete.
"How you used to be a martinet - that tried to keep the soldiers in line - through the threat of force."
"How when Sicko - failed the team - by losing the Tag belts for us, you beat him in the shower until he lay in the fetal position."
"ENOUGH!" he roared, hitting the machete hard enough for the metal to sing. "That was a lifetime ago, Jason, and both you and I have had our separate peace with Sicko after that. That can't be why you're messing with me... Joining MS-13... kidnapping Serenity... killing my father."
Lightning flashed, and the thunder rumbled so loudly that it sounded like stentorian godly words.
"No, Danny... what you need to realize is that - All of that," their weapons clash, "Was because -" their weapons clash again, "-Your decisions - " Their weapons clash harder still "- Make victims of everyone who comes in contact with you."
Their faces are so close between their weapons that they're nearly touching. Jason snarls at him. "You're the one who killed Donald... because the cancer eating him was the rot that comes from being in close proximity to someone as black and soulless as you are."
"No!" Danny snarls back, drawing the crowbar and batting Jason's machete away. "It was you!!" The machete flings and flips end-over-end through the air, landing in the dirt behind him.
Danny raises the crowbar to beat Jason over the head with. "See... this is exactly what I meant... welcome back, my prince..."
"...to the other side of the line." He holds his arms out, welcoming it. "Embrace the darkness. Beat me just the way you did Ephraim. Do it. I want you to do it."
There's a long, tense second with his hands gripping the solid metal bar like a cudgel that it trembles mightily. The rain and the wind pelt them both, and thunder crackles.
Danny throws the crowbar aside.
"No."
Jason's lips peel back.
"You've pushed me as hard as you can, but you set all of this confrontation up this way just so you can prove your demented point to me, and I am tired of your riddles and games, you fucking sick creep. I won't let you prove your point in your mind..." and he thinks of Donald's voicemail, telling him you can beat the devil... but not at his own game... "I won't let you win."
Jason tilts his head, smiling, absurdly touched. "Oh, Daniel... you've changed so much. The old you would be filled with arrogant wrath... perhaps I have misjudged you."
He lifts a pointer finger, dramatically pontificating. "Or."
His grin splits wickedly, he looks over Daniel's shoulder, "Maybe you haven't been pushed hard enough into the darkness... maybe you haven't been given enough evidence that your aura and proximity befouls everything you touch. Mmmm, I don't know... what do you think - "
"--Serenity?"
Danny's jaw drops, shocked by the name, as the young woman comes from behind him. Her eyes are bleeding, and she has scabbed sigils carved into the exposed flesh on her arms, but her mouth twists in fury as she's picked up the machete and sinks the point of it in between his shoulder blades.
He yells in mingled pain and fury and hurt as the blade sticks in, and, incredibly, his first thought, beyond the recognition of being stabbed, and that Serenity did it, was that she wasn't in her right mind.
He fell onto the sands, and coughed and sputtered. Serenity stood over him, the machete dripping blood. Danny looked up at her.
"Ren... don't..."
She raised the machete again, a guillotine's blade ready to fall and hack part of him off. He gritted his teeth, grimacing and knowing that wherever the sharp blade landed might be a part he lost... some dim, faraway portion of his brain spoke up, thinking oh shit, I have to prepare for Havoc still...
But then Jason's hand came to catch Serenity's wrist with a smack. Kindly, he shepherded her, taking the machete-wielding arm down. "Now-now, my dear..."
Serenity's voice is empty, lifeless. "Yes, Jason."
Blood running down his back, barely able to feel the icy-fire area of the wound, he struggles to push himself up to look at her. "Ren... I... I looked for you... all this time..."
"I think this is a good stopping point for now, my dear," Jason says. He reaches down to Danny's body... and with savage strength, tears the DIY vest from his torso. He holds it up, like a hunter posing with a prized safari trophy. Danny lays there, on his back, sand mingling with the wound and grimacing in pain.
"I'll be back soon to teach you more lessons about your own nature, Danny... but for now... I hope you enjoy yourself, oh, Mister Nightingale is going to want to talk to you about what you said to Adrian... Well, good luck at Havoc, champ."
Jason and Serenity walk up the sand dunehill back to the main road.
And Danny lays there, 50 yards down the beach from his house, breathing heavily and trying to regain his strength. At length, the storm is starting to abate.
But the tide washes over him.
He tumbles under the water, turning himself over and sputtering, it getting into his mouth. The wave recedes, and he coughs out seawater, choking. The salt water stings his bleeding machete wound all over again.
The surf rolls in again, pounding him down.
At length, he is finally able to crawl out of reach of the tide, weakly. The wound between his shoulder blades is making his shoulders and arms feel leaden, numb. He'll have to have that looked at.
But he's shook, shocked, at a loss of what to do. Questioning himself.
Fuck. Serenity...
And yet, he feels heartsick, and the blood running down his chest as he drags himself towards the beachhouse drops on the yellow flowers at the base of the wooden step.
He thinks about standing here his first week, looking out into the waves and talking with Serenity. How easy it had all seemed then. How complicated it was now.
He looked down between his foot, and saw the grass patch at the foot of the steps, and the yellow flowers sticking between his feet. Wonderingly, he had picked one up.
As the sun had begun coming out onto the beach, the little flower's green membrane had begun to open, revealing the yellow petals on the inside.
He sits, thinking on a plethora of memory and twirling the little dandelion between his fingers like a parasol for a while.
"Hello?" a voice calls to him, lilting from down the beach. He doesn't answer it, looking at the flowers, some of which had drops of blood on them. But when he does look, he sees a strange woman walking down the beach towards him. She smiles, kindly.
"Daniel? Hello? Hi... my name is Elli. Elli Artemis. I've been looking for you."