244: Happy Endings? Bah.
Aug. 16th, 2008 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sylph_ficsSlade looked down at the paired slabs of dark, polished stone jutting up from the cold ground--even in late August, it was far from warm in this part of Siberia--and slowly dropped down to a knee between the two of them, un-gloved hand resting on the rough top of the cool granite as he read the simple epitaph on the larger stone.
Pantha
?-2007
Жена, Мать и Любовь
//'Wife, mother, and beloved.'//
The simple words, carved deep into the stone, tried to make his throat tighten, though nothing ached as much as that damned question mark did. After a few moments, he turned his head far enough to look at the stone on his right, and the cold of the tundra felt like it slid through his veins.
Ребенок
?-2007
сын и герой
//Son and hero...// Addie'd carved something very similar on her memorial for Joseph--a memorial that, thankfully, they'd been able to take down. That this was carved on Baby's... He shook his head once, hard, and turned back to Pantha's stone.
"I'm sorry, kitty-kat. I should've been paying more attention." He sighed, low in his throat, as other 'should-haves' rolled through his mind, //...kept a better eye on my daughter, known Wade was still alive, stayed more in contact with Logan, gone to help that day Stone's drone appeared, kept working...//
Useless thoughts, all of them, not what he'd come here for or intended. He took a breath to settle that, and left his hand laying on the stone. "You'd just hiss and snarl at me for the apology anyway, wouldn't you?
"Your life, your choice, your decision that day to go and fight--yeah. I can hear you snarling at me from up there, 'Shove it, One-Eye.' All right, kitty, I will. But that question's still staring at me. You never managed to find your answers, did you?"
Memories of Pantha's wild danger, of all those desperate weeks searching for the children only to find an ending that had killed his son and nearly killed him as well flared up in his mind, making him look again at the fact that the cat-woman he'd become fond of had only entered his life because of what had been done to his son. If Joe hadn't been driven by the Spirits to take the Wildebeeste leader's place, who knew if Pantha would ever have come into the Titans' sight? He didn't.
"Damn it, Pantha, you were the only one who would give me a good argument, or who got it!" For everything she hadn't known about herself, she'd known survival and protecting herself better than any of the rest of them. He'd always enjoyed the challenge of fighting and arguing with her, the danger in her and how hard she'd fought against letting the Wildebeeste child into her heart... and how deeply she'd come to love the little "demon-spawn" without ever really being willing to admit it.
That she was gone, snuffed out that fast, that stupidly, without ever having found her answers for herself, or for Baby... the wrongness of it burned in his veins, and he found himself speaking quietly.
"You didn't find those answers before you died, and I wasn't here. So I'll look. If who you really were is out there anywhere, between Addie and I we'll find it. Might take me a while, Pantha, but we'll find it." //Have to see to the living first, but we'll get there.// He ran his hand over the stone again, then stood up. "It won't be a happy ending, kitty, but at least it'll be something."
"Wilson," the voice from probably twenty feet above and the same back made him tense--Leonid had to have been flying damned slow and quiet to pull that off. Something to remember--and he looked back over his shoulder.
"Kovar. Want to talk?" He asked the question in Russian.
The tall blond barked a bitter laugh, shaking his head as he answered in the same. "It must be the real you. No-one else would be so... blasé, is the word, yes? Or care enough to be here."
"It's me. I'm sorry."
"No. It was not your doing, and you came."
"Too late."
Leonid shrugged a shoulder as he touched down. "It's more than some did."
Slade reached out, wrapping a hand hard around that broad shoulder. "She was a friend." //And I know what it's like to bury a wife, and my sons,// was left unsaid. There was absolutely no need to prod at the double-edged sword that the resurrections in their combined communities so often was. Not with this man who had lost so much. That he seemed to be slowly finding his own happiness again... the time for that conversation would only come much later, if ever.
"Yes. Come, Slade. I have vodka. If you are going to hunt for Pantha's answers, you need to know what we had found--and I need the vodka to tell you."
//...Red Star, drunk. Oh, this is going to be an interesting evening.// Leonid was dangerous enough sober. "All right, Leonid. Let's go."
Pantha
?-2007
Жена, Мать и Любовь
//'Wife, mother, and beloved.'//
The simple words, carved deep into the stone, tried to make his throat tighten, though nothing ached as much as that damned question mark did. After a few moments, he turned his head far enough to look at the stone on his right, and the cold of the tundra felt like it slid through his veins.
?-2007
сын и герой
//Son and hero...// Addie'd carved something very similar on her memorial for Joseph--a memorial that, thankfully, they'd been able to take down. That this was carved on Baby's... He shook his head once, hard, and turned back to Pantha's stone.
"I'm sorry, kitty-kat. I should've been paying more attention." He sighed, low in his throat, as other 'should-haves' rolled through his mind, //...kept a better eye on my daughter, known Wade was still alive, stayed more in contact with Logan, gone to help that day Stone's drone appeared, kept working...//
Useless thoughts, all of them, not what he'd come here for or intended. He took a breath to settle that, and left his hand laying on the stone. "You'd just hiss and snarl at me for the apology anyway, wouldn't you?
"Your life, your choice, your decision that day to go and fight--yeah. I can hear you snarling at me from up there, 'Shove it, One-Eye.' All right, kitty, I will. But that question's still staring at me. You never managed to find your answers, did you?"
Memories of Pantha's wild danger, of all those desperate weeks searching for the children only to find an ending that had killed his son and nearly killed him as well flared up in his mind, making him look again at the fact that the cat-woman he'd become fond of had only entered his life because of what had been done to his son. If Joe hadn't been driven by the Spirits to take the Wildebeeste leader's place, who knew if Pantha would ever have come into the Titans' sight? He didn't.
"Damn it, Pantha, you were the only one who would give me a good argument, or who got it!" For everything she hadn't known about herself, she'd known survival and protecting herself better than any of the rest of them. He'd always enjoyed the challenge of fighting and arguing with her, the danger in her and how hard she'd fought against letting the Wildebeeste child into her heart... and how deeply she'd come to love the little "demon-spawn" without ever really being willing to admit it.
That she was gone, snuffed out that fast, that stupidly, without ever having found her answers for herself, or for Baby... the wrongness of it burned in his veins, and he found himself speaking quietly.
"You didn't find those answers before you died, and I wasn't here. So I'll look. If who you really were is out there anywhere, between Addie and I we'll find it. Might take me a while, Pantha, but we'll find it." //Have to see to the living first, but we'll get there.// He ran his hand over the stone again, then stood up. "It won't be a happy ending, kitty, but at least it'll be something."
"Wilson," the voice from probably twenty feet above and the same back made him tense--Leonid had to have been flying damned slow and quiet to pull that off. Something to remember--and he looked back over his shoulder.
"Kovar. Want to talk?" He asked the question in Russian.
The tall blond barked a bitter laugh, shaking his head as he answered in the same. "It must be the real you. No-one else would be so... blasé, is the word, yes? Or care enough to be here."
"It's me. I'm sorry."
"No. It was not your doing, and you came."
"Too late."
Leonid shrugged a shoulder as he touched down. "It's more than some did."
Slade reached out, wrapping a hand hard around that broad shoulder. "She was a friend." //And I know what it's like to bury a wife, and my sons,// was left unsaid. There was absolutely no need to prod at the double-edged sword that the resurrections in their combined communities so often was. Not with this man who had lost so much. That he seemed to be slowly finding his own happiness again... the time for that conversation would only come much later, if ever.
"Yes. Come, Slade. I have vodka. If you are going to hunt for Pantha's answers, you need to know what we had found--and I need the vodka to tell you."
//...Red Star, drunk. Oh, this is going to be an interesting evening.// Leonid was dangerous enough sober. "All right, Leonid. Let's go."
