revivalproject | The Lonely

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The Lonely

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Somewhere in the back of his mind, behind the cogs jamming with fevered panic and hidden within the terror scrambled maintenance and safety protocols that normally kept his heart and lungs and adrenal glands within normal parameters, Drake couldn't help but liken himself to a goldfish in a bowl: tiny and helpless, on display, nothing secret, nothing private, at the whim of an entity far more powerful than any he'd ever come across, and yet the tiniest bit...fascinated. The sudden BANG caused him to flinch and stumble backwards with his arms raised (To what? Protect himself? That's a good one.) and when he looked up again, everything was as it had been a moment ago.

But it also wasn't.

If he'd known right away exactly what happened, he'd have liked to have said that he felt very strange, but he didn't. What he felt was dreadfully familiar. It was something that, until recently, he felt all the time, waking and sleeping, accompanying him to work, meeting him for lunch, coming home and sitting at the dinner table, getting bigger and bigger until he couldn't breathe. He had learned how to live with this quiet terror and was still relearning how to live without it.

What was different was the...hunger? Desire? Biological urge? ...to feel others feeling it. That part was so new and so subtle that he didn't notice it at first. After all, Drake had often, perhaps selfishly, wished that his loved ones might have an inkling of the danger he put himself in every day, of how he felt, of how hard he tried. And sometimes...he wanted to get back at them. He never did, he never would, but the hurt and angry little thought sometimes niggled its way to the surface all the same.

And now it was there full time. It howled in his ears and it filled his lungs and it spoke through his lips:

"I will make you feel alone."

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The rise of that impending Something that could famously be classified as a Disturbance had so abruptly flattened out into nothing that Cal almost collapsed, himself. His connection to the Force was gone again, but something else had replaced it, and he wasn't sure what. He felt a panic welling within his chest, something he only barely managed to bring to heel as he was drawn to that sense that was significantly Other. At the back of his mind he wanted nothing more than to recoil from it, but that thought was quickly being pushed further and further away.

Instead he was driven by a different need. His eyes stared out across a landscape both unfamiliar but understood.

The shift was jarring. Echo knew he was surrounded on all sides, dodging blaster bolts and bodies both organic and mechanical. Yet within the war-worn cacophony, a cold silence stirred, eerily out of place as it soon engulfed the landscape.

Separated.

Set apart.

Empty.

Isolated.

Reminders that formed like a blade thrust deeply into his chest. The pang sharpened, direct, unyielding, unapologetic.

It only stoked his frustration. Any grief he was harboring began to burn away at the edges as he pushed onward, dead set on trying to find out where this was coming from.

Things were just as Drake had convinced himself he preferred them. It was quiet. He was alone. All that was missing was his work work work, and he needed his work work work to keep himself convinced that things were just as he preferred them. Without it, he wandered, aimless and purposeless, looking for someone else, anyone else, but not for company.

It was more to pour out some of that aimlessness and purposelessness, to put it on someone else for a change. That was why, when he spotted Cal

-a friend, someone familiar-

the low hanging mist that seemed to follow at his strangely silent heels

-don't, he's a friend, he helped you-

began to curl and creep towards Cal as if of its own volition, thickening until Drake was nothing but a faint, shapeless ghost within it.

"Hello."

He wasn't even convinced that Cal would be able to hear him. But if he did, well...all the worse for them both.

Ahh, another friend. The fog that liked to follow him like a pet curled and lifted and hid him from sight. Whatever this place was, it cushioned his steps and made them silent. It made everything silent. It was comfortable.

You pulled away from me and that's when I needed you.

That was, perheps, a little less comfortable. Drake frowned inside his cloud and rubbed the back of his neck.

You acted like I was some - some stranger that you didn't know, and every day you knew me less and less.

Enough. It was someone else's turn to be on the other side of this. His turn to be cold and dispassionate. His turn to manipulate and gaslight and use his genius to make startlingly accurate guesses based on context.

Carrying with him a sense of heaviness and dread, he hissed softly behind the soldier.

"Echo."

If the soldier turned, no one would be there, but just out of sight, the voice would come again, "What a funny name. Where does it come from?"

The landscape twisted and stretched around and beyond them. The floor was made up of massive tiles and immense shelves packed with boxes and packages of goods towered over them like strangely composed buildings. But this was no city. They were indoors, the light above forming parallel lines of brilliance that went as far as the eye could see and further, just as the rows and rows around them.

Despite the shift, Cal didn't bat an eye. He didn't blink even as he looked stolidly in the direction that Drake was, even if the man himself was unclear. And yet Drake would feel that even in this personal fog, he could still be Seen. There was a pale hint of an unnatural glow to the padawan's eyes as he looked on.

"Drake Riley..." he said. He knew what prompted Drake forth. He knew it couldn't be helped, watching the mist out of his peripheral as it snaked along, as though fighting for its own space amidst the strangeness of their surroundings.

It was like a vacuum. Any sound left seeped into nothing, smothering some of the burning coals with little effort. Echo blinked behind the faceless visor of his helmet, mind clearing for a brief second, shoulders still tensed as he tried to reorient his sense of direction.

He then heard his name.

The ARC Trooper shifted, aiming his blaster toward the ground as he jerked his head to look behind. He saw nothing. He saw no one.

"Who...?" It was the first real word he had spoken since, hoarse and unnatural to his own ears.

Well that was different. Drake hugged himself inside his little cloud, both appreciating and recoiling from the acknowledgement and the strange feeling of being recognized in a way he wasn't used to. As if Cal had grown up with him and knew his habits, his tastes, his fears and ambitions. He wasn't sure how he felt about that.

"What is this place?" He asked, attempting to move toward a wall for safety, but finding it as static on the landscape as distant mountains. "Seems a bit big."

Cal himself remained stationary, as though unbothered by the wide area that expanded beyond them or simply figuring it was pointless to try and narrow it down to something more conceivable. He let his perhaps unnerving gaze shift away from Drake for a moment.

"An impossibly huge super market," he replied. "We won't find an end to it, nor an exit." His eyes swung back towards the man, or rather the blurred nimbus of where he was, but then the mask of fog wasn't enough to hide him from Cal's Sight. "One can be Lonely even here."

"Oh no one," the voice murmured. "That's who I am, no one. That's who you are, too, isn't it? One in a million, but not in a good way."

No matter where the trooper turned, he wouldn't see anyone. Just a pale mist that seemed to press further in on him, oppressive and suffocating. And that voice, however familiar it might have been, seemed to waft along with it, breezing behind him, floating at his shoulder, curling around his heart.

"Are you a fake? A copy? An imposter?"

A fake.

Echo's blood, once boiling, suddenly ran cold.

His breath hitched deep within his throat, constricted, an invisible weight crushing past the layers of his battle-worn armor, deep into his chest.

A copy.

He was a clone. One of many. No one important.

No -- he was important. He had a purpose.

An imposter.

"I'm not-- " He choked out the words, drawing in a sharp, ragged breaths. "I'm...me. Like you're you." He felt lightheaded, briefly returning to his senses, hardly feeling like he was making any real sense.

--Snap out of it, soldier. Focus.

Concern parted from quiet desperation as he tried -- again, in vain -- to look for the voice. Remembering whose voice it was. "...You're Drake Riley."

"Oh is it?" His voice was momentarily incredulous and he looked around, feigning as if seeing his surroundings for the first time. "Well how about that. So it is."

"One can be Lonely even here."

"Oh, especially here."

He wasn't sure how, but Drake was aware that his hiding space, his safe space, his private little prison, wasn't keeping him quite as concealed as he'd hoped. (It was possibly the way Cal was looking directly at him, straight in the eyes.) He stepped away from the mist, though it still draped itelf over his shoulders and crawled over his shoes.

"No one knows us. No one sees us. Here we are, two souls unnoticed by the world around them. May as well be lost in the emptiness between galaxies, eh?"

A shopper so tall that her face disappeared in the distance walked by, her heels cracking like cannonfire as she paused, picked up a bottle of green liquid that Drake strongly suspected of being some spinach drink or possibly kombucha with added spirulina, and moved on.

"Everyone's preoccupied with buying banana flour and kale salad and trying to fit in with their day drinking yoga friends. Here's a secret: they never will. T's funny, really. They don't even realize that they're just as lost and alone."

He hadn't blinked once. He wasn't allowed to miss a single second of anything that happened around him. It was wearying, especially in such a busy place, knowing that if he pushed himself he could Know even beyond what seemed to be there, physically.

Drake slipped away from his useless cover and Cal stared at him quietly as the man made his observations, as he in turn made his own. He didn't want to. But they were there, the man like an open book.

"Except for you it wasn't grocery shopping and yoga," he said softly.

Drake could tell immediately that he'd hit the nail on the head when his senses filled with a sweet fragrance that somehow satisfied all hunger and longing.

God, that was good. He breathed it in like a heady perfume, like the steam off a roasting pig spiced with juniper and cardamom.

Then he heard his name and he opened his eyes, that succulent whiff beginning to dissipate.

"I'm no one." He repeated a little forcefully. "And you...are nothing but an echo. A shadow on the wall that thinks it's real."

Drake watched the giant shopper as she moved away, cranking through the impossible calculations it would take for an infinite supermarket to have finite shoppers moving at a finite speed in a finite space within it. What was 'away' in a place like this? What was speed, and by extension, time?

Then Cal struck him with such sharp tipped perception that it made him look over sharply. If Drake didn't know better, he'd wonder if Cal could see straight through the brave face he kept securely fastened on.

"I didn't know we were talking about me," he said stiffly, having decided then and there that he didn't care for the way he was being Looked at. Singled out. Pried into.

Deflection. That's the ticket.

"How about you, then? Your little robot friend, is that all there is?"

"For a while, it was. And before that, not even BeeDee-One. I lost someone I was close to, and my entire Order was either killed or scattered to whatever parts of the galaxy they could escape to, hiding from an Empire that wants us all dead."

It was mere fact he was speaking, and for as calmly as he related it, Cal seemed like he wasn't even speaking about himself.

"It's difficult to trust people, isn't it? Once you've been betrayed, once you've lost so much, and lost yourself..."

This wasn't working. Drake could feel it wasn't working, he was getting nothing off of Cal, not the faintest whiff of discomfort or sadness or longing. Cal was talking about his loneliness openly and dispassionately, like he was mocking any attempt made to get a reaction or stoke an emotion.

But there was nothing.

Except...

The sudden familiar worry that he'd come home and find a note on the 'fridge and a package of hot dogs thawing in the sink.
The confused shame at Andrea's palpable annoyance at him for being able to sing the kids to sleep with his guitar after her multiple failed attempts.
The heavy resignation of having resolved to sleep as far from her as possible lest he touch her face and cause her to turn away.
The panic rising in his throat as his best friend quickly fabricated an excuse to leave after he opened up and asked for help.
The weary desperation of years spent changing one thing after another about himself in the misplaced hope that something would one day please her.
The edge that he could feel himself getting closer and closer to, that he was hanging onto by his fingertips, that he was slipping off of. A bottle of sleeping pills turning in his hands. A sudden urge to give away his position or run too slow or sabotage a mission so that everyone had time to run but him.

"Stop it."

He was fine. He was fine.

"...I'm sorry."

He knew what Drake meant to do, and he knew it couldn't be helped. Just as it was with him.

"I can't help what's happened to me, any more than you can with yourself. I can't not Know. And the fact that it's something you keep hidden, that you don't want to think about...only begs for it to be brought to light."

When Drake would look, he'd find Cal a little closer, those eyes still unblinking, an eerie glowing cast to that gaze that seemed to bore right into him.

For a moment, a rush of thoughts flooded Drake's consciousness. Ordinary thoughts. Classified thoughts. Private thoughts. And then nothing, although it still felt as though Cal could see every moment, every mistake, every fear and regret as though he had stood beside him his whole life, just watching. Indifferent.

It was that indifference that got to him. He craved being seen, but not like this, not all the damaged bits between the cracks in his smile, not against his will, and certainly not with as much empathy as a prepared slide of Clostridium perfringes beneath a microscope. It was that indifference, not just to his brokenness, but to what should be Cal's own - How dare he be okay? How dare he advertise the marked difference between how each of them had coped with loneliness in their lives? - that deadened his eyes. That clenched his hand with a sound like cracking ice. That made him breathe heavy plumes of cold, drenching mist.

When Cal was close enough, Drake jutted out a hand to grab his arm, and his grip was stronger than expected, thin fingers sucking all the warmth away. His edges seemed to blur and his voice seemed far away.

"You want in? Fine, mate. Be my guest."

A chill that settled behind the ribs blew through them and gathered the fog around, a hiss like wind sweeping over the tundra, whipping up the snow, spraying sea water into the frozen air, a deep, hollow howling. And then it fell silent, so profoundly silent that there was nothing to distract from the empty desolate feeling of the place they now found themselves in. It was a feeling that seeped into the bones. It was the feeling of telling a joke that no one laughs at. Of being the only one not invited. Of having what should be a good time if only there were someone to share it with. Of being forgettable. Inconsequential. Walled off and uncared about. Drake himself seemed to embody this feeling, this barren Arctic solitude, exposed to the elements and devoid of life or warmth. And he seemed comfortable with it.

He didn't move a muscle. He'd probably anticipated it. Perhaps part of him welcomed it. After all, if Cal was here, it meant that he couldn't be anywhere else, couldn't submit any others to the things they didn't want to be Known. It was just unfortunate that it was not without cost.

It was cold, like the frigid air of the frozen planet of Ilum. He knew this feeling, the numbness, the silent and yet somehow tense sensation. The world going by around you while you felt like a rock sitting in the middle of a rushing stream. Cal loathed the feeling, the solitude that still persisted even amongst the company of others, the invisible barriers that were set up by no one but yourself because at the heart of everything, trust had been shattered and the only one you had to rely on was yourself, and there wasn't any confidence in that decision, just necessity.

Just as this could be. Perhaps they could feed off each other in this twisted cycle until this nightmare broke.

"Wait-- "

The hard edge of the tone made the clone flinch, forcing him back into a vague space he had no control over. Reminding him of what he was.

Nothing but an echo

A sharp intake of breath ran through his helmet's vocabulator, teeth clenching as the words reverberated in his head.

A shadow on the wall

Too easily that spark of rage reignited. Blaster shots rang out in succession, firing at nothing. There was no visible target to focus on, but there had to be someone out there.

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The Lonely

Eye see you

Rough Cut

I can't decide on a hellscape! Mb Vast? I feel they both could work with that.

Re: Rough Cut

lol roll a dice? I can work with Vast XD

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Re: lol roll a dice? I can work with Vast XD

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CW: reference to suicidal ideation

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