And the power of the people shall come to believe they do rule

[mickey-cops.livejournal.com]

((Continuing from this post.))

In the passageways beneath the park, where a group had gathered to break down a long-closed door, a laser beam was widening, and a broad circle began to blacken the surface of the wood, the locks melting and streaming down in shining rivulets, to puddle at the doorstep. The room was getting hot, now.

Outside, all at once, the rides all stopped. Animatronic figures jolted still; boats bumped each other confusedly; rollercoasters fell to the bottom of their tracks and did not continue up. The lights inside the buildings flickered off; the perpetual background noise of music and soundeffects went silent.

Below, the hole in the door began to crackle and spark around the edges, and for just a moment all the eyes trained on the door could see through it a fathomless darkness. An odd, organic silence filled the air; everyone's breathing and small movements were audible, but so too was a new absence of sound, as though the walls were all holding their breath.

And then the air around the door began to shimmer.

Comments

[caycep]

That did it.

She could keep a brave face on for Kira and Setsuna, but John's words pretty much wrecked Cayce; it didn't matter how many times they'd talked it out before. "What you said," she managed with a faint, quavery smile, and then she started weeping in earnest when he hugged her.

She clung a bit herself, it was true, and when she finally felt she could manage it, she let go. Through her tears, she said to Aeryn, "You keep this big lug in line now, okay?"

[ruined-mylife.livejournal.com]

Aeryn tilted her chin up slightly in a certain understated gesture of understanding and camaraderie. John... had this effect on pretty much everyone. And somehow he'd made her love him for it.

"Oh, I will. And thank you. You know, for keeping him in line all this time." Her tone and the accompanying smile indicated clearly the unspoken it takes so much added on the end of that.

She transferred her pulse pistol to her opposite hand in order to reach up and place it against John's back. A man like him didn't deserve so many goodbyes.

[caycep]

"I was glad to do it," Cayce grinned. She dragged her sleeve across her face and, after a moment's hesitation, hugged Aeryn as well. They hadn't gotten to know each other as well as Cayce would have liked, perhaps, but Cayce realized that she loved her all the same, because she loved John.

"You guys be happy now, okay?"

[ruined-mylife.livejournal.com]

Not so long ago, Aeryn probably wouldn't have allowed the hug. But now she simply wrapped an arm around the other woman and squeezed-back. Hugs. Another John-induced trait.

"It's a promise," she said fiercely.

[always-confuzed.livejournal.com]

"That goes just as much for you," John told Cayce. He was thinking similarly to Cayce; it was too bad she and Aeryn hadn't gotten the chance to know each other better. Aeryn had lost just as many as he had, more really when he remembered to allow for all that time spent on Talyn with another him and her mother chasing her. She deserved those friendships she could find so much more than he did.

All the same, there was a wonderous kind of unspoken affection there, and John yet again found himself thinking that it was only ever about people, no matter how vast and spectacular the Universe was. Any of them were.

So maybe, despite all the heartache, he was the luckiest man he knew.