Work Text:
Geographically speaking, they're still in London.
Socially speaking, they're in another now. May it be a battlefield of shadows or a haven for those more dependant on adrenaline than on safety. There’s no tourist information available; it’s yours to make whatever you want of it.
(They will make it their own.)
*
London; Requirements on potential flatmates usually include solid income, ability to keep the common areas somewhat tidy and relatively few bad habits.
In another now; Being intrigued by your first conversation is a good start, but curing someone’s limp or killing a man with military precision on the first night of cohabitation are the kind of things that really closes the deal. And once your flatmate realised that you just killed a man the only important question for him is what you did with the gun (losing such a promising flatmate just because he’s careless with the evidence would be a shame).
Then there might be a moment when you look at each other - it’s all still so new - and find that neither of you can restrain the giggles that are threatening to emerge at the last place you ought to be amused (you can’t giggle, this is a crime scene.)
*
London; A well-developed system of justice ("well-developed" doesn't necessarily equal "fair" or "effective").
In another now; For most of the people you’ll encounter here there are no rules except for those you chose to live by in order to belong to a certain group. Those rules, though, are employed relentlessly. The price of breaking them is never noted in advance; consequences more dependant on someone's whim than on replicability. Terms like 'fair' are not applicable, while 'effective' is more than adequate to describe it.
And you might think that your life would end here, your nose filled with the smell of chlorine and your body heavy with explosives (and the look in your flatmate’s - no; friend’s - eyes is something you never thought you’d live to see; fear) but then there’s awful music that reminds you of school dances and never getting a chance to dance with the only girl you really wanted to be with, and the man with the gun is suddenly waving goodbye with a laugh that isn’t the least bit amusing. And your legs are suddenly weak and your friend’s hands are all over you as he simultaneously gets the explosives off and replaces the feeling of fear with a feeling of something else that also results in tachycardia.
*
London; The society will provide you with safety, structure and possibilities.
In another now; You might have believed in that kind of society when you went to war, because you weren’t afraid of dying for it. Unfortunately, it soon proved to be harder to live for it. And while you were away - fighting until you felt nothing but the metallic taste of blood and exhaustion in your mouth - the society was busy spending the money that would have made a better army pension and disassembled the rehabilitation program you might have needed after the war. Therefore you find it hard to value that society’s values over your own these days.
It doesn’t help that the man who’s currently crowding his tongue inside your mouth and gripping your wrist hard enough to bruise (hard enough to meet the intense pleasure of his body pressed up against yours in the empty corridor) doesn’t believe in any rules but his own and those he calls ‘the rules of logic’. And you might not agree to all that he calls logic, but you find it hard not to obey the rule of desperation that surges through your body as soon as he is in close range, so you might be just as illogical as he is.
(Rationalization; Society appreciates the results he gets, so if they don’t know about what methods led to said results then everybody wins anyway)
*
London; Justice is not something achieved by breaking the law in order to arrest someone else who did just the same thing.
In another now; In order to solve a crime you might have commit a few of yourself (or the nebulous man running just a few feet ahead of you in the abandoned building might). Those who committed the original crime are brought into justice while you walk away, smiling at the man who just lied, stole and hacked into a national database to insure that a blackmailer was exposed. Your friend - lover? - smiles back at you, knowing that you didn’t have to break the nose of the man threatening him, but that you gladly did so anyway.
And if breaking someone’s nose and looking the other way while that same brilliant man steals some government documents is the price you need to pay for having your veins filled with adrenaline and your body filled with… him, then it’s a price you won’t hesitate to pay.
(You’re beautiful like this, with someone else’s blood on your hands)
*
London; The dead stay dead.
In another now; You might be one of the few that are granted their wish for the return of a loved one (there’s no point in denying that anymore, that’s what he is was is) who died. The appropriate response to that is to knock your loved one to the floor and, later, leave him alone on the sidewalk with a bleeding nose as you emerge the whole thing in a cab with an intriguing woman by your side and something that feels a bit like chlorine in your blood.
And there’s no rules to this, something which becomes clear as he gets you to forgive him by letting you (once again) think that you’ll be blown to pieces in a matter of seconds. You do forgive him, and you might love him a bit still, but your own moral code won’t allow you to leave the woman you promised to marry. So there’s nothing more to it until you find your former lover in a drug den and the thought of him being that lonely and careless again won’t give you any peace.
(Not that you ever had peace; to you the mere concept seems like something out of a fairytale.)
*
London; There’s no justification for killing someone in cold blood.
In another now; Your wife is was is an assassin and attempted to kill the love of your life your best friend. And he wants you to forgive her, so you try to (if it means something to him - anything - there must be a reason to do so). And you both protect her from her past killings and you both cover up for the fact that she almost killed two men at in a highly secured office while you still thought of her as ‘something else’; something that was different from the anomie you had lived in with… him.
In the end; to uphold a promise means more than a letting another heart continue to beat (I vowed to keep you safe). And you see him take a life (his very first?) for the sake of your wife, whom you don’t even think you know anymore. (Did you ever let her get to know the real you? The one you are when you’re with...) And she stands beside you on the tarmac as you want to tell him things (impossible things, unforgivable things), so you end up not telling him anything at all, and he returns the favor. There’s a pause between breaths, but nothing more is said, and you watch the plane rise to the sky and taking everything you have with it, heading towards an end.
(It was never supposed to end, but you didn’t obey the rules of society, and perhaps that’s what's caught up on you now? At least that’s what you like to think, because then it would at least make some kind of sense or serve some kind of melodramatic higher purpose.)
(In life; It doesn’t.)