Liberty or Possessions Chapter 16 Zero-Sum
Liberty or Possessions Chapter 16
Zero-Sum
Warnings: Character Deaths
The glow from the sun had disappeared some hours ago. There seemed to have been several extra hours of light that Mikkel could not prove existed, ones that dragged on and on, allowing them to maneuver about the city without fear for the perceived deadline of night. According to his watch, however, the sun had set at approximately the proper time and had not given them any extra hours before their inevitable deaths. Still facts did not cause Mikkel to believe that it had not tried to. He thought and believed many things as he and Oliver sat in the black of night, waiting. Below them, in lower buildings, there were lights on. There were not many, but some from whatever survivors managed to dodge death the day previous, escorted back to their houses by what remained of the police and soldiers. There should have been no reason to know what Mikkel did, the Presence never having told him, but he was certain no amount of cement or earth between those people and the sky would keep them safe from the final purge of humanity that night. At least, Mikkel reasoned, he had a prime seat for his own death.
The rooftop gave them a vantage of a section of the city that was excellent, and, despite a few blind spots from taller much more locked down buildings, he would not miss a thing. He would see how their personal stories were to end with minimal interference. Oliver had refused repeatedly and animatedly to go anywhere without Mikkel, especially to safety. Oliver wanted to die with the rest of humanity, and Mikkel knew that that was not the Presence’s decision. That was one choice that the translucent gods, or whatever they were, had not made for Oliver. That was one that stemmed entirely from Oliver’s personality and way of coping. He did not think he was above the rest of humanity as Sinclair had, did not think he was lower than humanity as Mikkel did. Instead Oliver just considered himself one of them, one directly in the middle of the flock. Mikkel wondered absently if that had been one of the criteria that the Presence looked for when choosing their prophets or saviors, or whatever it was that Oliver was to them. There was no way to know without the Presence telling him directly, but it seemed as if they were officially gone. There was no strange tingle at the edges of Mikkel’s consciousness that told him otherwise. They wanted Mikkel to take Oliver somewhere high, somewhere where they rose above everyone else, and Oliver wanted that too. Oliver wanted to watch the end just as Mikkel did and, for the first time in a long time, Mikkel had the desire to not be alone.
It was not very late into the night when the end began. It started with swirls in the clouds, barely noticeable since there was very little light pollution that night, but they were there nonetheless. They looked like the start of tornados; twelve of them that Mikkel could count from sight. They had not gone unnoticed by Oliver either, and it reminded the younger man strangely of the Wizard of OZ. He let himself fantasize, for just a fraction of a second, that they could maybe take him home. He could possibly get sucked up in them like Dorthy, twist in the air as they pulled him along and eventually to his home again. Logic overruled wishful thinking, however, and he knew that they were far more likely to bring his death as it seemed was promised. He still never fully got on board with the idea that he would be spared; regardless of if Mikkel thought he was the only innocent person in the world. There seemed to be no discrimination to how the Presence worked, and that gave Oliver little peace.
Neither man spoke as the clouds pulled open, tore away from each other to make gaping holes where the Presence reached down. They glowed otherworldly, a beautiful and terrifying blue. No, not blue, but aqua that seemed to shimmer in its translucence. The first time both men had seen them it had been with terror, an agony for Mikkel that reached into the depths of his soul and seemed to mangle it worse than any corporal torture could, than even the Berserker rage had. To Oliver it had been the fear of those around them that turned the awesome sight sour and evil. He had not understood before, but right then, sitting on the roof of a slightly structurally compromised apartment building, they both saw beauty.
"Are those stars?" Mikkel asked, voice barely above a whisper in the silence of the night as he stood. Oliver chanced a glance over at the familiar face of his foreign companion as he too got to his feet. He held tones of Oliver's Mikkel in the quaking awe of his voice, looked slightly like him with the wide-eyed and stunned stare he deployed. He had never once considered that the older man would never have seen the night sky through the smog of the dying world. He never imagined anyone would not know what stars looked like. Oliver took a step closer, bumping their shoulders together as he pointed toward the stars that hung glittering through the aqua haze of the Presence.
"Those, right there, the ones that make a box and then the two off it? That's Ursa Major. Supposed to be a bear, but looks more like a spoon. We call it the Big Dipper. Cool, right?" Neither of them had to speak loud as Oliver named off the very few constellations they could see, and the ones he knew which were rudimentary at best. Mikkel watched with rapt fascination, like a child discovering some magic that nature held. It was all accentuated by Oliver's helping hand and seemingly otherworldly knowledge of it. Mikkel knew many things, things about guns, tactics, and drugs. He knew how to hide in plain sight, knew how to run long distances without fatigue. He did not, however, know about the simple and yet stunning beauty nature held that Oliver seemed to know about. He was going to die soon, Mikkel knew. They would both die soon, and for once he had something to live for that was not just revenge. He wanted to know about the beauty that Oliver knew. He wanted to feel friendship, companionship, even love again. He did not want to die when there was so much Oliver could still teach him, and he wished that he had let the boy do so when they still had time.
It seemed like hours that the hands slowly descended toward the Earth, but the stars did not move-- explored ones did not shift from view nor new ones shift to take their place. A glance at Mikkel's watch showed that they had only been seeing the glimmering specks for thirty seconds, but he knew Oliver had been telling him about the night sky for much longer than that. Time, it seemed, was finally on his side. Time finally agreed that Mikkel had not done everything he needed to, and was trying to give him a chance to remedy that.
"Did you ever look at the stars with the other version of me?" Mikkel asked in a hushed tone when they had lulled into a strangely comfortable silence. Their time was running out, they would be dead at any moment, but there was a peace in it that Mikkel had never known nor thought existed. The Presence had promised him that, and though Mikkel wanted to shout up at them, shout to the translucent forms reaching down that he did not deserve a calm soul, he could not work up the anger. He could not be mad, and it was a freeing feeling. Oliver's gaze slowly shifted to him from where he watched the stars, and though Mikkel refused to look away from the sight of the stars, he knew the exact look the younger man had on his features. It was serene and yet confused, brows creased slightly.
"No… That's not really…" Oliver would have said that it was not exactly a normal thing for friends to do. He would have said that even where he was from, where the stars were not something constantly hidden from them, there was still a sense of romance about them. He did not have to explain, however, because Mikkel took over the conversation again. It was not a forceful redaction as Oliver had come to expect, but a slow and easy response, as if Oliver had not needed to explain what he meant.
"You should. I don't want there to ever be a reality where I don't get to see them. I'd like that if you could do that for me." He trailed off for a second before he continued slightly quieter. "For us, really." Oliver did not need to ask who the 'us' was in reference to, because he knew Mikkel meant every instance in which he existed. Oliver chewed thoughtfully on his lip for several seconds, or what felt like seconds but was probably milliseconds by the slow lengthening of time, before he spoke.
"You know what we have done, though?" He asked, a light chuckle in his voice as he slid his hands into his pockets, shifting from the heels to the balls of his feet and back, rocking slightly. "We played some pranks. Boeds kinda gave me shit for it, teased me, but our teammates deserved it. Put some Icy-Hot in Biz's jock once. Not a lot, but just enough that for practice he wasn't very happy." Mikkel laughed before Oliver even had a chance to explain to him what Icy-Hot was, but for some reason that did not surprise him.
"I remember we put hot sauce in someone's ketchup," Mikkel said with a grin on his face, making Oliver laugh louder, the sound echoing across the city.
"Yeah, with Summers! Snuck it in Z's food and we put so much in! Don't know how he never smelled it but he ran for a glass of milk!" They both laughed that time, wide grins of youthful delight over pranks well played and those that had been done back at them. However, his joy over the memories slowly faded into confusion for Oliver. They were his memories. They were his and his Mikkel’s memories, not this Mikkel’s. There should have been no way that he knew about them, or even understood them, and yet he did. It should have been odd, how Mikkel knew, how he sensed things that only Oliver should have had recollection of, but Oliver began to feel it too. There were nagging memories that should not have been his, and yet began to surface in his mind nonetheless.
"Do you know what ever happened to Sidney?" Oliver asked, after Mikkel had lulled back into silence, eyes still on the glittering stars. The Presence had reached the Earth, hundreds of them that started in the sky and ended on the ground that was well past their line of sight. They were all around them, long aqua arms that promised death, but no sense of dread seeped into either man. Only a sense of completion filled them. Mikkel never did answer, and Oliver did not push. The question had not been meant as rhetorical, but it might as well have been. Mikkel did not know what had happened to his fiancé, and despite some reunion in death, he probably never would. Oliver could feel, however, the pain that came with that question. He could feel Mikkel’s hesitation and slow spiral into the memories that he had tried to bury for so long. He did not know what had happened to the love of his life, but he blamed himself for her probable death all the same.
"I wonder, sometimes, what I would have done five years ago if I knew what I know now." Mikkel's words came after another hefty silence. Almost as if it were a great feat, Oliver pulled his eyes from the sky to regard the older man. Mikkel did not smile any more, but he did not look distressed either. He simply looked contemplative. "I wonder if I would have met you and we would have been friends. I mean, not this you, but the other you; the you that I very well may have killed. The other you that is dead regardless, and probably never got to see the stars." Oliver frowned also, more of a habitual reaction than any portrayal of emotion. Mikkel had also known that Molious had killed him, had hidden it, but that did not make Oliver dislike the older man. It, instead, made him feel closer to him. Mikkel regretted it, regretted the killings. He finally realized that not all the deaths he had orchestrated were for the greater good, and Oliver was glad for that.
"But you didn't know," Oliver whispered and Mikkel smiled then, just slightly. He could feel Oliver's reassurance, and that brought about thoughts of Maria. She had considered much on the subject of Oliver, it had seemed. She had written much about him since he had entered their lives, and though that had only been a few days, she had also seemed to know about him beforehand. Maybe, like her, he had not been put there to do anything but what he had done. Maybe he had been the good soldier just for this Oliver, the one that stood with him when they were sure to die and told him about the stars. The Presence had made him feel completely culpable, but maybe he had also been part of the answer. Maybe he was not supposed to save his world, but Oliver's. They had alluded to that, had told him that he was the other half of Oliver, but Mikkel still doubted that. At best, he reasoned, he was just a reminder to Oliver of what he already had. The shared memories, the momentary bond they held while staring death down, was not for them, but for Oliver and the other Mikkel, and Mikkel knew that all at once.
"I know now, though, and so do you." Mikkel responded with a sight quiver in his tone. It was not what he wanted to say, not at all what he thought that Oliver needed to know, deserved to know, but it was all that came out. There would be no crying confession, no begging for Oliver not to forget him, to not let Mikkel die in this damned world because that was not right. Mikkel knew he deserved to die, that Oliver deserved to live, and that he had no right to put any more on the younger man. Oliver had not been clear on what Mikkel’s response meant, but he hummed in thought regardless, no longer interested at all in the stars and the arms. Shifting again, Oliver reached out to take Mikkel's hand. Neither of them shook with any fear, no anxiety over their imminent deaths, and both of their pulses beat slow and steady against the other's palm.
There had been no way to save this world Mikkel finally let himself realize. It had been far too gone before they had received the first warning. Oliver's appearance had been the beginning of the end for it, and Mikkel had been too slow to see any of it coming. He had been far too caught up in his own tragedies, his own betrayals, to see how lost everything else had become. Maria had told him all about it, about this grand divine plan that she had sensed, and he had ignored her. That seemed to be the only possibility right then, drawing his last moments out to an eternity that stretched and warped in every way except the ones he could see in the three limited dimensions he had always lived in. Something out there, something that at one point or another had probably been ascribed a capital G in front of its name, had given them those last eternal moments to piece it together and solve the puzzle-- the whole image of what was to happen. Mikkel wanted to tell Oliver everything, wanted to make sure he understood what it meant. He wanted Oliver to keep fighting, to save whatever world he went to next because then Mikkel could save it too. He could not speak on the subject, however, unsure if the Presence silenced him, or if his own mind told him that informing Oliver of his fate would have been more detrimental than helpful.
Mikkel wondered just when it had been placed in him, all of the pieces to the puzzle that he had been trying to solve all along. He was unsure which things that he had endured were necessary and which had been superfluous. At which point had pure survival changed into divine-seeking? Had he gotten the pieces when he was himself, or the Berseker, or even when he had been controlled by the Presence? Though the questions piled in his mind, though he wondered and fretted, it never became more than just an intellectual exercise. It never broke through the odd calm and the easy rhythm of Oliver's pulse against his palm. They would meet their end soon. They would see the finale that came after the twilight, and he would have earned whatever was to come.
"Oliver," Mikkel spoke in the hushed whisper they had shared for the eternal minutes. Oliver’s voice came again in a monotone hum that resembled entirely what Mikkel felt above the thoughts. "Tell me about your world." Oliver cleared his throat, as if he had not spoken in some time. It had been possible, of course, what with how time seemed warped.
"Well, we have stars," Oliver began thoughtfully. "And trees, and flowers. I dunno, what do you want to know?" Mikkel told him that there was nothing specific that he wanted to know, that he just wanted to hear about it. He wanted to hear about the place that had the things that he had not seen or experienced in quite some time, if ever. He just wanted to know what there was in the strange world that let Oliver still be innocent.
"People are nice there," Oliver whispered, a light smile on his lips as he thought about the world with his friends, his teammates, his family. "We go out in the summer, and there's the sun out, and we can go swimming in the lakes. And there's snow in the winter. It's really white and there are mountains of it where we clear parking lots and stuff. People play hockey on ponds." Oliver broke off for a moment, a light laugh burbling to his lips as he closed his eyes and imagined his world; very different from the one he was in at that moment. It had been explained to him, in part, of the climate change. About how everywhere was hot and barren, that the rain was toxic and the plants were dead. He wondered if this Mikkel ever saw snow, and something told him that he had not. He tried to picture it as he spoke.
"Every year, when we travel, I find one city where it snows, and I always manage to hit Boeds with one snow ball. I get a bunch thrown back at me for it, but I always get him once a year. It's sort of like tradition." He reveled in the memory for several minutes, not sure if Mikkel could feel them in the sort of sixth sense way Oliver had been able to know about Sidney. He wanted to be back there, with Mikkel, with all his friends. He wanted to be on the ice, or lounging around in the sun. He really wanted, though, to not stare death in the face, and to never have had a gun held to his head.
"Tell me more about the people, Oliver." Oliver thought about it. He wondered how to sum up the whole of humanity. This Mikkel, the one that stood there waiting for death, seemed to be able to compile everyone into a simple distinction of killers and the dead, but Oliver's world was much less black and white. Oliver's world had trends and anomalies, but so did every person. He first thought to world news, about how people were portrayed as groups, but then he thought about the people he knew and met. He thought about the people he knew most of all: his family, warm and loving, and his friends.
"Most of them are nice, Mikkel. Some are bad, they kill people or hurt people, but most of them aren't like that." Oliver tried to think it through, but even those thoughts seemed to be becoming more and more buried under all the stuff going on in his head. There was an inability to focus on one thought, something that shifted and altered his thoughts. It was almost like white noise, the veil over his conscious efforts, but without any actual sound. He wondered if that was what death was, but it did not worry him as much as intrigued him. "Countries hate each other, and people hate each other, but for the most part we're all trying our best. Normal people just try to get along, to live and not bother anyone too much. Some people don't care if they bother people, and others try really hard to bother people, but most people just try to get where they're going and do what they have to do."
"Seems nice," Mikkel whispered. Oliver shrugged a little and squeezed Mikkel's hand, trying to figure out exactly what he wanted to say.
"Most people just… just go through life, I guess. Blindly. Not trying to do bad or good. It's better than this but it's still…" He had no word for what it was. It was not bad, but more disappointing, almost suboptimal. It seemed more like something was just strangely absent from most of humanity. He had not actually noticed it in his own world, but when faced with the people that existed with this Mikkel, he had begun to piece a little bit of it together. Something important seemed to be missing from everyone, like the idea of doing good for goodness sake was an alien concept. Everyone seemed to be living for his or her own particular moment, not for the moments that would follow.
"You think we're bad people," Mikkel said easily, and Oliver shrugged again. He did not think them so much bad as broken. They were beat down and scared. "You think I'm a bad person."
"I think you made bad choices, but you didn't know. Maybe you thought they were good choices, maybe you thought they were the only choices. I don't think you ever intentionally made the bad choices." Mikkel squeezed Oliver's hand back, thinking about those words and what they meant. At the time he had thought that joining the American forces had been the right choice. He thought agreeing to the experiments would allow him to protect his loved ones, even the civilians, but it had turned out to be the wrong choice. He went AWOL, tried to go off of the drugs, tried to bring good from the bad by joining Molious and exacting his revenge systematically. In hindsight, though, Mikkel knew he was only punishing himself under the guise of making amends.
"I am a bad person, Oliver." He was not too sure why he said it, but Mikkel muttered it without any hesitation. Deep down that was how he saw himself: The Big Bad Wolf going after, not the innocent girl, but the other monsters in the forest. Oliver would not tell him that it was true since he was too kind, but Mikkel knew that that was exactly the case. He had destroyed just as many sheep as he had other wolves, and it was about time he got what he was due. He would get the death that should have been on him hundreds of times over -- put down like an animal.
Both men dropped the conversation for another length of time, and Mikkel had just begun to wonder if their deaths would ever come when he began to feel his mouth grow parched. He had not noticed before, but all over he felt the awkward stretching of skin, the scrape of his eyelids over his suddenly dry eyes. The dead had shown him that that had been the first stage, their water escaping back into the world-- their skin turning leathery, their eyes deflating, and their blood thickening. Soon they would hollow out, slowly be unable to draw breath. Their muscles would contract, and they would fall, and they would die. Mikkel tried to swallow, but no spit clung to his mouth or eased the dryness in his throat. However, he still drew breath.
“I know you never loved yourself, Mikkel. Not for a long time. I understand, I do. I don’t get it, but I understand. But, Mikkel, I want you to know I love you.” Oliver had chosen the platonic version of love, the love spoken to friends, to family. Oliver confused him with the other Mikkel, but he could not feel uneasy about it because Oliver loved him despite his faults, despite the harsh treatment and rough words. Oliver was stronger than him, capable of so much more than he was, and it was a comforting thought. “I know they told you things, told you things about me, but they don’t really know everything. They don’t know I’m stubborn and can be really selfish when I want to be, and I’m going to save you, even though they want me to let you go.” Oliver had turned to look at Mikkel, really look at him hard and direct. The Presence had apparently opened up to him about their fate, had maybe even told him about what his role would be. Oliver, in those infinite seconds, had told them to go to hell. He was not a puppet, but a strong-willed man, and he would do everything in his power to do what he wanted to do, which was keep Mikkel with him. He did not care that this Mikkel was not his own. He wanted him nonetheless to survive their last moments. Oliver had tried to barter, to offer his own life in exchange, but it had fallen on deaf ears. There was no way around it, it seemed. They would both die to further whatever it was that the Presence wanted of them.
"Oliver, was there ever a time, a place, where you felt peace?" Mikkel asked slowly. He had ignored Oliver’s words, his self-assigned desire to save Mikkel. Mikkel did not need to be saved, did not even want to be saved, truth be told. He wanted to see the end of all of his own suffering and misery. He wanted the pain to finally be over for him. It was selfish, but it was the way things would be so long as Oliver did not try to intervene. He would need to talk him down.
"Yeah," The younger man whispered back, finally sounding as labored with death as Mikkel had. Clearing his throat, hoping that there was enough time to force out a few more words, Mikkel spoke again. It was strained and hoarse, but he had a few more things to say to Oliver, a few desperate words to try to ease that one moment. He had seconds to do one good deed, something not for him, but for the boy that clung to his hand with the first traces of fear he had shown that night. Mikkel’s thumb slowly traced Oliver’s knuckles in an attempt to soothe him.
"I want you to think about it, Oliver. I want you to never let go of it. Remember, that regardless of what happens after this, we'll be together. Even if it's not me, even if it's the other me, we will be together soon, and that is the reason that I'm not afraid of dying. You are the reason I'm not afraid." Blackness had come to Mikkel's vision. It did not hurt, did not alarm him, because even though he was sure his nerves had failed, that he had probably fallen face down on the roof because his equilibrium had finally been destroyed, he could still feel Oliver's pulse against his hand. He never knew if Oliver had said anything back to him because his hearing went, and slowly his brain began to as well. Slowly the blackness from his senses crawled over his consciousness, and Mikkel's final thought was of Oliver and his heartbeat that never wavered. It did not slow as Mikkel's did, and that gave him hope that he was right. As long as Oliver lived, Mikkel thought in the last second of his life, then it had all been worth it.
Master Post: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/16531.html
Chapter 17 Epilogue: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/20971.html
Zero-Sum
Chapter 16 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwYkRDuNCVk
Warnings: Character Deaths
The glow from the sun had disappeared some hours ago. There seemed to have been several extra hours of light that Mikkel could not prove existed, ones that dragged on and on, allowing them to maneuver about the city without fear for the perceived deadline of night. According to his watch, however, the sun had set at approximately the proper time and had not given them any extra hours before their inevitable deaths. Still facts did not cause Mikkel to believe that it had not tried to. He thought and believed many things as he and Oliver sat in the black of night, waiting. Below them, in lower buildings, there were lights on. There were not many, but some from whatever survivors managed to dodge death the day previous, escorted back to their houses by what remained of the police and soldiers. There should have been no reason to know what Mikkel did, the Presence never having told him, but he was certain no amount of cement or earth between those people and the sky would keep them safe from the final purge of humanity that night. At least, Mikkel reasoned, he had a prime seat for his own death.
The rooftop gave them a vantage of a section of the city that was excellent, and, despite a few blind spots from taller much more locked down buildings, he would not miss a thing. He would see how their personal stories were to end with minimal interference. Oliver had refused repeatedly and animatedly to go anywhere without Mikkel, especially to safety. Oliver wanted to die with the rest of humanity, and Mikkel knew that that was not the Presence’s decision. That was one choice that the translucent gods, or whatever they were, had not made for Oliver. That was one that stemmed entirely from Oliver’s personality and way of coping. He did not think he was above the rest of humanity as Sinclair had, did not think he was lower than humanity as Mikkel did. Instead Oliver just considered himself one of them, one directly in the middle of the flock. Mikkel wondered absently if that had been one of the criteria that the Presence looked for when choosing their prophets or saviors, or whatever it was that Oliver was to them. There was no way to know without the Presence telling him directly, but it seemed as if they were officially gone. There was no strange tingle at the edges of Mikkel’s consciousness that told him otherwise. They wanted Mikkel to take Oliver somewhere high, somewhere where they rose above everyone else, and Oliver wanted that too. Oliver wanted to watch the end just as Mikkel did and, for the first time in a long time, Mikkel had the desire to not be alone.
It was not very late into the night when the end began. It started with swirls in the clouds, barely noticeable since there was very little light pollution that night, but they were there nonetheless. They looked like the start of tornados; twelve of them that Mikkel could count from sight. They had not gone unnoticed by Oliver either, and it reminded the younger man strangely of the Wizard of OZ. He let himself fantasize, for just a fraction of a second, that they could maybe take him home. He could possibly get sucked up in them like Dorthy, twist in the air as they pulled him along and eventually to his home again. Logic overruled wishful thinking, however, and he knew that they were far more likely to bring his death as it seemed was promised. He still never fully got on board with the idea that he would be spared; regardless of if Mikkel thought he was the only innocent person in the world. There seemed to be no discrimination to how the Presence worked, and that gave Oliver little peace.
Neither man spoke as the clouds pulled open, tore away from each other to make gaping holes where the Presence reached down. They glowed otherworldly, a beautiful and terrifying blue. No, not blue, but aqua that seemed to shimmer in its translucence. The first time both men had seen them it had been with terror, an agony for Mikkel that reached into the depths of his soul and seemed to mangle it worse than any corporal torture could, than even the Berserker rage had. To Oliver it had been the fear of those around them that turned the awesome sight sour and evil. He had not understood before, but right then, sitting on the roof of a slightly structurally compromised apartment building, they both saw beauty.
"Are those stars?" Mikkel asked, voice barely above a whisper in the silence of the night as he stood. Oliver chanced a glance over at the familiar face of his foreign companion as he too got to his feet. He held tones of Oliver's Mikkel in the quaking awe of his voice, looked slightly like him with the wide-eyed and stunned stare he deployed. He had never once considered that the older man would never have seen the night sky through the smog of the dying world. He never imagined anyone would not know what stars looked like. Oliver took a step closer, bumping their shoulders together as he pointed toward the stars that hung glittering through the aqua haze of the Presence.
"Those, right there, the ones that make a box and then the two off it? That's Ursa Major. Supposed to be a bear, but looks more like a spoon. We call it the Big Dipper. Cool, right?" Neither of them had to speak loud as Oliver named off the very few constellations they could see, and the ones he knew which were rudimentary at best. Mikkel watched with rapt fascination, like a child discovering some magic that nature held. It was all accentuated by Oliver's helping hand and seemingly otherworldly knowledge of it. Mikkel knew many things, things about guns, tactics, and drugs. He knew how to hide in plain sight, knew how to run long distances without fatigue. He did not, however, know about the simple and yet stunning beauty nature held that Oliver seemed to know about. He was going to die soon, Mikkel knew. They would both die soon, and for once he had something to live for that was not just revenge. He wanted to know about the beauty that Oliver knew. He wanted to feel friendship, companionship, even love again. He did not want to die when there was so much Oliver could still teach him, and he wished that he had let the boy do so when they still had time.
It seemed like hours that the hands slowly descended toward the Earth, but the stars did not move-- explored ones did not shift from view nor new ones shift to take their place. A glance at Mikkel's watch showed that they had only been seeing the glimmering specks for thirty seconds, but he knew Oliver had been telling him about the night sky for much longer than that. Time, it seemed, was finally on his side. Time finally agreed that Mikkel had not done everything he needed to, and was trying to give him a chance to remedy that.
"Did you ever look at the stars with the other version of me?" Mikkel asked in a hushed tone when they had lulled into a strangely comfortable silence. Their time was running out, they would be dead at any moment, but there was a peace in it that Mikkel had never known nor thought existed. The Presence had promised him that, and though Mikkel wanted to shout up at them, shout to the translucent forms reaching down that he did not deserve a calm soul, he could not work up the anger. He could not be mad, and it was a freeing feeling. Oliver's gaze slowly shifted to him from where he watched the stars, and though Mikkel refused to look away from the sight of the stars, he knew the exact look the younger man had on his features. It was serene and yet confused, brows creased slightly.
"No… That's not really…" Oliver would have said that it was not exactly a normal thing for friends to do. He would have said that even where he was from, where the stars were not something constantly hidden from them, there was still a sense of romance about them. He did not have to explain, however, because Mikkel took over the conversation again. It was not a forceful redaction as Oliver had come to expect, but a slow and easy response, as if Oliver had not needed to explain what he meant.
"You should. I don't want there to ever be a reality where I don't get to see them. I'd like that if you could do that for me." He trailed off for a second before he continued slightly quieter. "For us, really." Oliver did not need to ask who the 'us' was in reference to, because he knew Mikkel meant every instance in which he existed. Oliver chewed thoughtfully on his lip for several seconds, or what felt like seconds but was probably milliseconds by the slow lengthening of time, before he spoke.
"You know what we have done, though?" He asked, a light chuckle in his voice as he slid his hands into his pockets, shifting from the heels to the balls of his feet and back, rocking slightly. "We played some pranks. Boeds kinda gave me shit for it, teased me, but our teammates deserved it. Put some Icy-Hot in Biz's jock once. Not a lot, but just enough that for practice he wasn't very happy." Mikkel laughed before Oliver even had a chance to explain to him what Icy-Hot was, but for some reason that did not surprise him.
"I remember we put hot sauce in someone's ketchup," Mikkel said with a grin on his face, making Oliver laugh louder, the sound echoing across the city.
"Yeah, with Summers! Snuck it in Z's food and we put so much in! Don't know how he never smelled it but he ran for a glass of milk!" They both laughed that time, wide grins of youthful delight over pranks well played and those that had been done back at them. However, his joy over the memories slowly faded into confusion for Oliver. They were his memories. They were his and his Mikkel’s memories, not this Mikkel’s. There should have been no way that he knew about them, or even understood them, and yet he did. It should have been odd, how Mikkel knew, how he sensed things that only Oliver should have had recollection of, but Oliver began to feel it too. There were nagging memories that should not have been his, and yet began to surface in his mind nonetheless.
"Do you know what ever happened to Sidney?" Oliver asked, after Mikkel had lulled back into silence, eyes still on the glittering stars. The Presence had reached the Earth, hundreds of them that started in the sky and ended on the ground that was well past their line of sight. They were all around them, long aqua arms that promised death, but no sense of dread seeped into either man. Only a sense of completion filled them. Mikkel never did answer, and Oliver did not push. The question had not been meant as rhetorical, but it might as well have been. Mikkel did not know what had happened to his fiancé, and despite some reunion in death, he probably never would. Oliver could feel, however, the pain that came with that question. He could feel Mikkel’s hesitation and slow spiral into the memories that he had tried to bury for so long. He did not know what had happened to the love of his life, but he blamed himself for her probable death all the same.
"I wonder, sometimes, what I would have done five years ago if I knew what I know now." Mikkel's words came after another hefty silence. Almost as if it were a great feat, Oliver pulled his eyes from the sky to regard the older man. Mikkel did not smile any more, but he did not look distressed either. He simply looked contemplative. "I wonder if I would have met you and we would have been friends. I mean, not this you, but the other you; the you that I very well may have killed. The other you that is dead regardless, and probably never got to see the stars." Oliver frowned also, more of a habitual reaction than any portrayal of emotion. Mikkel had also known that Molious had killed him, had hidden it, but that did not make Oliver dislike the older man. It, instead, made him feel closer to him. Mikkel regretted it, regretted the killings. He finally realized that not all the deaths he had orchestrated were for the greater good, and Oliver was glad for that.
"But you didn't know," Oliver whispered and Mikkel smiled then, just slightly. He could feel Oliver's reassurance, and that brought about thoughts of Maria. She had considered much on the subject of Oliver, it had seemed. She had written much about him since he had entered their lives, and though that had only been a few days, she had also seemed to know about him beforehand. Maybe, like her, he had not been put there to do anything but what he had done. Maybe he had been the good soldier just for this Oliver, the one that stood with him when they were sure to die and told him about the stars. The Presence had made him feel completely culpable, but maybe he had also been part of the answer. Maybe he was not supposed to save his world, but Oliver's. They had alluded to that, had told him that he was the other half of Oliver, but Mikkel still doubted that. At best, he reasoned, he was just a reminder to Oliver of what he already had. The shared memories, the momentary bond they held while staring death down, was not for them, but for Oliver and the other Mikkel, and Mikkel knew that all at once.
"I know now, though, and so do you." Mikkel responded with a sight quiver in his tone. It was not what he wanted to say, not at all what he thought that Oliver needed to know, deserved to know, but it was all that came out. There would be no crying confession, no begging for Oliver not to forget him, to not let Mikkel die in this damned world because that was not right. Mikkel knew he deserved to die, that Oliver deserved to live, and that he had no right to put any more on the younger man. Oliver had not been clear on what Mikkel’s response meant, but he hummed in thought regardless, no longer interested at all in the stars and the arms. Shifting again, Oliver reached out to take Mikkel's hand. Neither of them shook with any fear, no anxiety over their imminent deaths, and both of their pulses beat slow and steady against the other's palm.
There had been no way to save this world Mikkel finally let himself realize. It had been far too gone before they had received the first warning. Oliver's appearance had been the beginning of the end for it, and Mikkel had been too slow to see any of it coming. He had been far too caught up in his own tragedies, his own betrayals, to see how lost everything else had become. Maria had told him all about it, about this grand divine plan that she had sensed, and he had ignored her. That seemed to be the only possibility right then, drawing his last moments out to an eternity that stretched and warped in every way except the ones he could see in the three limited dimensions he had always lived in. Something out there, something that at one point or another had probably been ascribed a capital G in front of its name, had given them those last eternal moments to piece it together and solve the puzzle-- the whole image of what was to happen. Mikkel wanted to tell Oliver everything, wanted to make sure he understood what it meant. He wanted Oliver to keep fighting, to save whatever world he went to next because then Mikkel could save it too. He could not speak on the subject, however, unsure if the Presence silenced him, or if his own mind told him that informing Oliver of his fate would have been more detrimental than helpful.
Mikkel wondered just when it had been placed in him, all of the pieces to the puzzle that he had been trying to solve all along. He was unsure which things that he had endured were necessary and which had been superfluous. At which point had pure survival changed into divine-seeking? Had he gotten the pieces when he was himself, or the Berseker, or even when he had been controlled by the Presence? Though the questions piled in his mind, though he wondered and fretted, it never became more than just an intellectual exercise. It never broke through the odd calm and the easy rhythm of Oliver's pulse against his palm. They would meet their end soon. They would see the finale that came after the twilight, and he would have earned whatever was to come.
"Oliver," Mikkel spoke in the hushed whisper they had shared for the eternal minutes. Oliver’s voice came again in a monotone hum that resembled entirely what Mikkel felt above the thoughts. "Tell me about your world." Oliver cleared his throat, as if he had not spoken in some time. It had been possible, of course, what with how time seemed warped.
"Well, we have stars," Oliver began thoughtfully. "And trees, and flowers. I dunno, what do you want to know?" Mikkel told him that there was nothing specific that he wanted to know, that he just wanted to hear about it. He wanted to hear about the place that had the things that he had not seen or experienced in quite some time, if ever. He just wanted to know what there was in the strange world that let Oliver still be innocent.
"People are nice there," Oliver whispered, a light smile on his lips as he thought about the world with his friends, his teammates, his family. "We go out in the summer, and there's the sun out, and we can go swimming in the lakes. And there's snow in the winter. It's really white and there are mountains of it where we clear parking lots and stuff. People play hockey on ponds." Oliver broke off for a moment, a light laugh burbling to his lips as he closed his eyes and imagined his world; very different from the one he was in at that moment. It had been explained to him, in part, of the climate change. About how everywhere was hot and barren, that the rain was toxic and the plants were dead. He wondered if this Mikkel ever saw snow, and something told him that he had not. He tried to picture it as he spoke.
"Every year, when we travel, I find one city where it snows, and I always manage to hit Boeds with one snow ball. I get a bunch thrown back at me for it, but I always get him once a year. It's sort of like tradition." He reveled in the memory for several minutes, not sure if Mikkel could feel them in the sort of sixth sense way Oliver had been able to know about Sidney. He wanted to be back there, with Mikkel, with all his friends. He wanted to be on the ice, or lounging around in the sun. He really wanted, though, to not stare death in the face, and to never have had a gun held to his head.
"Tell me more about the people, Oliver." Oliver thought about it. He wondered how to sum up the whole of humanity. This Mikkel, the one that stood there waiting for death, seemed to be able to compile everyone into a simple distinction of killers and the dead, but Oliver's world was much less black and white. Oliver's world had trends and anomalies, but so did every person. He first thought to world news, about how people were portrayed as groups, but then he thought about the people he knew and met. He thought about the people he knew most of all: his family, warm and loving, and his friends.
"Most of them are nice, Mikkel. Some are bad, they kill people or hurt people, but most of them aren't like that." Oliver tried to think it through, but even those thoughts seemed to be becoming more and more buried under all the stuff going on in his head. There was an inability to focus on one thought, something that shifted and altered his thoughts. It was almost like white noise, the veil over his conscious efforts, but without any actual sound. He wondered if that was what death was, but it did not worry him as much as intrigued him. "Countries hate each other, and people hate each other, but for the most part we're all trying our best. Normal people just try to get along, to live and not bother anyone too much. Some people don't care if they bother people, and others try really hard to bother people, but most people just try to get where they're going and do what they have to do."
"Seems nice," Mikkel whispered. Oliver shrugged a little and squeezed Mikkel's hand, trying to figure out exactly what he wanted to say.
"Most people just… just go through life, I guess. Blindly. Not trying to do bad or good. It's better than this but it's still…" He had no word for what it was. It was not bad, but more disappointing, almost suboptimal. It seemed more like something was just strangely absent from most of humanity. He had not actually noticed it in his own world, but when faced with the people that existed with this Mikkel, he had begun to piece a little bit of it together. Something important seemed to be missing from everyone, like the idea of doing good for goodness sake was an alien concept. Everyone seemed to be living for his or her own particular moment, not for the moments that would follow.
"You think we're bad people," Mikkel said easily, and Oliver shrugged again. He did not think them so much bad as broken. They were beat down and scared. "You think I'm a bad person."
"I think you made bad choices, but you didn't know. Maybe you thought they were good choices, maybe you thought they were the only choices. I don't think you ever intentionally made the bad choices." Mikkel squeezed Oliver's hand back, thinking about those words and what they meant. At the time he had thought that joining the American forces had been the right choice. He thought agreeing to the experiments would allow him to protect his loved ones, even the civilians, but it had turned out to be the wrong choice. He went AWOL, tried to go off of the drugs, tried to bring good from the bad by joining Molious and exacting his revenge systematically. In hindsight, though, Mikkel knew he was only punishing himself under the guise of making amends.
"I am a bad person, Oliver." He was not too sure why he said it, but Mikkel muttered it without any hesitation. Deep down that was how he saw himself: The Big Bad Wolf going after, not the innocent girl, but the other monsters in the forest. Oliver would not tell him that it was true since he was too kind, but Mikkel knew that that was exactly the case. He had destroyed just as many sheep as he had other wolves, and it was about time he got what he was due. He would get the death that should have been on him hundreds of times over -- put down like an animal.
Both men dropped the conversation for another length of time, and Mikkel had just begun to wonder if their deaths would ever come when he began to feel his mouth grow parched. He had not noticed before, but all over he felt the awkward stretching of skin, the scrape of his eyelids over his suddenly dry eyes. The dead had shown him that that had been the first stage, their water escaping back into the world-- their skin turning leathery, their eyes deflating, and their blood thickening. Soon they would hollow out, slowly be unable to draw breath. Their muscles would contract, and they would fall, and they would die. Mikkel tried to swallow, but no spit clung to his mouth or eased the dryness in his throat. However, he still drew breath.
“I know you never loved yourself, Mikkel. Not for a long time. I understand, I do. I don’t get it, but I understand. But, Mikkel, I want you to know I love you.” Oliver had chosen the platonic version of love, the love spoken to friends, to family. Oliver confused him with the other Mikkel, but he could not feel uneasy about it because Oliver loved him despite his faults, despite the harsh treatment and rough words. Oliver was stronger than him, capable of so much more than he was, and it was a comforting thought. “I know they told you things, told you things about me, but they don’t really know everything. They don’t know I’m stubborn and can be really selfish when I want to be, and I’m going to save you, even though they want me to let you go.” Oliver had turned to look at Mikkel, really look at him hard and direct. The Presence had apparently opened up to him about their fate, had maybe even told him about what his role would be. Oliver, in those infinite seconds, had told them to go to hell. He was not a puppet, but a strong-willed man, and he would do everything in his power to do what he wanted to do, which was keep Mikkel with him. He did not care that this Mikkel was not his own. He wanted him nonetheless to survive their last moments. Oliver had tried to barter, to offer his own life in exchange, but it had fallen on deaf ears. There was no way around it, it seemed. They would both die to further whatever it was that the Presence wanted of them.
"Oliver, was there ever a time, a place, where you felt peace?" Mikkel asked slowly. He had ignored Oliver’s words, his self-assigned desire to save Mikkel. Mikkel did not need to be saved, did not even want to be saved, truth be told. He wanted to see the end of all of his own suffering and misery. He wanted the pain to finally be over for him. It was selfish, but it was the way things would be so long as Oliver did not try to intervene. He would need to talk him down.
"Yeah," The younger man whispered back, finally sounding as labored with death as Mikkel had. Clearing his throat, hoping that there was enough time to force out a few more words, Mikkel spoke again. It was strained and hoarse, but he had a few more things to say to Oliver, a few desperate words to try to ease that one moment. He had seconds to do one good deed, something not for him, but for the boy that clung to his hand with the first traces of fear he had shown that night. Mikkel’s thumb slowly traced Oliver’s knuckles in an attempt to soothe him.
"I want you to think about it, Oliver. I want you to never let go of it. Remember, that regardless of what happens after this, we'll be together. Even if it's not me, even if it's the other me, we will be together soon, and that is the reason that I'm not afraid of dying. You are the reason I'm not afraid." Blackness had come to Mikkel's vision. It did not hurt, did not alarm him, because even though he was sure his nerves had failed, that he had probably fallen face down on the roof because his equilibrium had finally been destroyed, he could still feel Oliver's pulse against his hand. He never knew if Oliver had said anything back to him because his hearing went, and slowly his brain began to as well. Slowly the blackness from his senses crawled over his consciousness, and Mikkel's final thought was of Oliver and his heartbeat that never wavered. It did not slow as Mikkel's did, and that gave him hope that he was right. As long as Oliver lived, Mikkel thought in the last second of his life, then it had all been worth it.
Playlist by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://8tracks.com/masterpenguin/liberty-of-possession
Chapter 16 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwYkRDuNCVk
Master Post: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/16531.html
Chapter 17 Epilogue: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/20971.html