View Full Version : Caught In The Crossfire (Solo)
Caught In The Crossfire (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AhU12zC8fc)
1974
There’s a still in the street outside your window
You’re keepin’ secrets on your pillow
Let me inside, no cause for alarm
I promise tonight not to do no harm
I promise you baby,I won't be no harm
And we're caught up in the crossfire
A heaven and hell
And were searching for shelter
Lay your body down...
There were no two ways about it, Duffy Bracken was lost. Try as he might there was a fire in his heart enclosed in ice, and an icy determination in his mind itching to burn with a passion he found difficult to display. War had taken it's toll on many men greater than the lanky thief, and many more wars would continue to inflict casualties on the populous. On the other hand, if he did not stand up to his responsibilities in the here and now, to stave away the decadence of tomorrow, there would be war eternal waged in the destitution of his failure.
Lucian had made his first move; his declaration, his opening gambit in the outright waging of conflict. The troupe had expected it for many months, and pulled their resources together to try and prepare themselves as best they might against it. It did not make it's arrival an easy truth to jostle, nor its resolution any easier to deal with.
Tears had been shed, flames extinguished and emotions cooled in short order. The tendons of Duffy Bracken's reflexes had been tested, his blades unsheathed and his allies called upon. Nobody in Scara Brae that owed the troupe their allegiance, friendship or gold could escape the great and triumphant rally, a horn pealing through the darkness of All Soul's Night. Oh so many nights spent wasted, Duffy had said in his speech to the rabble, oh so many souls slain in the quest for salvation.
He watched the corpse for three nights, by candlelight, halcyon wave and midsummer gust, until at last the under taker came to spur it away to the Mausoleum Grande and the obscurity of a pauper's grave. The last tear dropped onto her coffin, a lavish oaken engraved monolith of power that had drained their coffers. Duffy Bracken, Tantalum, Avatar of the Thayne Tantalus and Big Brother to the snotty nosed brats of Scara Brae's slums vowed to never cry and never rest, until Lillith Kazumi was avenged.
Until Lucian Lahore was dead, buried and forgotten.
Of course, Lillith wasn't dead. Not in any strict permanent sense of the word. They couldn't know that, the others, not yet, not now, not here. There was too much at stake for the truth to be unveiled at the convex curve in the troupe's historical progression. It was a weapon, unexpectedly thrown at Duffy's feet, and he had no other choice but to bear arms in war.
No sooner than the final nail had been hammered into the coffin and the door to her tomb sealed, Lillith's body vanished in a glittering swirl of blue sparks and tendrils of ghostly, icy flame. Through the ether she fell, a spiritless soul without direction, crossing briefly the realms of the Void, The Aria, Purgatory and finally, back into Althanas, but far from the maddening crowd of Scara Brae.
Into the womb of a woman she dove, and history re-wrote itself about her progeny with ease. She was reborn a girl of youthful vigour and hasted growth, in the wastes of Salvar where the sun burns and the ice freezes the heart. Duffy closed his eyes briefly, thinking of all the places in Althanas where she could end up, then sternly pushed it to the back of his mind as he made his way through the city streets back towards the Prima Vista.
There was much to be done, and he hated being caught in the crossfire between indecision and inaction.
"Duffy, is that you?" Ruby's voice drifted down through the cold innards of the Tantalum's base of operations as he entered, pushed the door to and half turned to leave again. He had hoped everyone would be watching the performance of La Senza by the rival Callan troupe from Salvar, performing in Scara Brae for a one night 'extravaganza.'
"Yes, it's me, where are you?" He knew exactly where she was, she, like he, took to loniliness like a duck to water.
Footsteps strolled over the floorboards overhead and Ruby's heels appeared at the top of the steps. She was, according to form, dressed to the nines and nowhere to go. She smiled as she appeared, a glass of wine in one hand and a book of lines in the other. She hadn't performed in so long Duffy was half surprised to see her rehearsing.
"Good read?" He prooded a finger to the pages as he took of his scarf and dropped his overcoat over the back of the grubby sofa that filled most of the centre of the room. He was too tired to notice the dry tears in the corner of her eyes, too unaware and selfish to realise she was more hurt about Lillith's demise than he had dreamt.
"Lucian's Call, it's that time of year again."
"Ruby." He stopped himself, adjusting his intended sentence to be more 'subtle.' "I thought we both agreed two years ago now we weren't going to celebrate his life anymore?"
"Oh, we're not, I'm just maudlin' for memories."
"Do you want to run through something a little more cheery with me upstairs in a moment? I just need to get something to eat and gather my things and...?"
Ruby smiled but smiled on the inside, and she turned to walk back up the stairs with an accepting nod. As she dissapeared, the guilt weighed down even heavier on the thief's shoulders, and he strolled into the kitchen to slap together a ham sandwhich, with mushy peas of course.
The plate seemed more an empty modest offering to peace than sustenance as Duffy strolled into the stage room a few minutes later. He had been conservative with the cutting of the lofk and the application of the ham, true, but he didn't have the heart to be seen to be enjoying himself so slovenly. He cocked a glance at Ruby, who was sat on the edge of the stage platform with her heels dangling back and forth in a gentle rhythmic pattern.
"So, good lady, what do you fancy?" His question was stifled by muted gobbles of food. He had learnt many things in his short life, but manners were not one of them.
"The bookcases look so alien to me after so long, I can't easily remember what it is we've come to love - comedy, farse, drama, relationships, wars, loves, all of them are distant lines on hidden books."
"It's been a while, sure, but we've 'ad more...pressing matters to attend to. We will rekindle our passion one day, but for now, we must keep it in our hearts, keep it close."
He set the plate down beside her as he went about his oratory speech and moved off to the side partition into the seperate bookcased area beyond a tatty red curtain. He threw his voice so that Ruby could still hear him without having to crane her neck or give it much thought.
"But rekindle it we shall, right here, right now!" There was a loud bang and a torrent of smaller bangs, something that resembled a stack of books falling, and then a stream of curses.
"Are you okay?" Ruby rolled her eyes and set her sights back onto the book in her hand. She read on silently as she waited, the last dregs of the evening sun streaming down through the stained glass dome cast in yellows and oranges in the shape of a sun that rested overhead.
"Oh I'm fine," Duffy said sternly, tumbling through the curtain as if he'd been chased by a bull. He had two books in his hand, small leather tomes written and re-written as time had gone by. Without looking, Ruby knew exactly what they were.
"Let me take a wild, if not educated guess," she held Lucian's Call up to her face like a fan and tried not to seem interested. Her voice flat-lined into a dull monotone, as raspy and devoid of life as the far flung and abandoned corners of the room. "Lysander's Flock, and the arbitrary 'cheering up a woman' scene from Your Tits Are Splendid, because ornithology puns make me moist according to Lil...my family."
Duffy stopped halfway across the room and looked at one book then the other, shrugged, and came to sit by her side. "There's no need to spoil my fun, pick one?" He held them both out earnestly.
Ruby jabbed Your Tits Are Splendid with a delicate fingers and set her page keeper into her own play before setting it to one side.
"I warn you, Duffy, I am on form if not lost in the meaning," she pushed herself upright and dusted down her buttocks from the dusty borderline. She walked into the centre of the platform, where the carpet was still a red shade you could recognise and stood defiant to the world.
"Act One, Scene Three, you are to play Leopold and I Isould, begin!" She clapped, and suddenly, a little life returned to the Prima Vista.
"I do admit, Leopold, I have some consternations about our proposed gathering of wits," Ruby made to fan herself as if she were brandishing a prop. The sudden transformation was innocuous, so much so Duffy paused to find his words as he came to grips with the blonde hair and blue eyes, which had moments ago been auburn and hotter than the sun itself.
"How can I ease thee into acceptance, how can I prove to thee my love?"
"Let us see," she began circling Duffy, and he stepped forwards to give her the full scope of motion about the stage. They were naturally at home in this environment, and in their imagination, the dusty cavern of the Prima Vista's stage room became a glamorous ball room ante chamber, the heart of a distant nobility only Ruby had come close to understanding.
"You can bequeath to me your honour."
Leopold knelt, and bequeathed his honour, his perfect slacks dusted and greyed as they contacted the floor with two little thuds. He bowed, like a knight without a knighting.
"You can gift me all your gold, your wordily wealth!" She smiled, stopping to his left and turning on a swift heel to circle in the opposite direction.
Leopold dropped his purse from his belt and emptied the pockets of his suit. A watch that shone with passion, a pile of gold larger than a poor man's world and a silver chain, which was once Visla Eraclaire's, a fitting prop.
"You can sell your words to my dominion, defend me in all aspects of life."
"And so it shall be, my love!" Duffy looked up as the stage description demanded, and caught Ruby's breasts from the vantage point of an innocent.
"And stop looking at my lovely tits!" Ruby replied half amused, half shocked, and gesturing to what would be a painted back drop of a garden over a balcony and two fluttering birds made of wood and string and childish endeavour.
The crowd would roar with laughter, Duffy would rise with a blushing hue, and the world would learn to love the Tantalum again.
"Even with all that, do you still wish to marry me?" They had paused to allow the customary crowd reprieve, and continued with stoic determination plastered on their faces. Duffy was used to the 'taking', the moment in an actor's role when he lost his own identity to the one written in ink and sweat; they both felt themselves dragged into The Aria as their counterparts appeared in their hearts.
"I wish nothing more, even if I were a man with nothing on his back and no mind to heart the beauty before me, I would want nothing else!" He crossed his hands as if begging.
"Then get back on those knees and propose to me without the overbearing presence of that mother of yours, or the stern glare and faint odour of peas of your father."
Ruby smiled and leant forwards on her heels, as if expecting to pluck a diamond from thin air and eager hands. Leopold produced a small black box with trembling fingers, a trinket hastily plucked from the troupe's many countless crates or cheap ornamentation and stage perfumes and offered it up to his love from a single knee.
"My lady Isould, to you I gift the loop of my world, the binding circlet of my affection. To you I offer my heart, if only you would reprieve my grovelling with the acceptance of my offer to marry."
Isould was not one for stuffy romanticism, she was as hot headed and loathsome of clichéd derivative chatter as much as Ruby was, so she relished lifting her heel onto Leopold's shoulder and gently nudging him. He rolled back in a flurry, giving the impression that he had been kicked hard and down back into the gutter where the audience wanted his soppy puppy dog persona to be.
"Then say it like you mean it! Say it like you have nothing left to say, say it as if the sun were shining on your last moment, the wind sweeping away your last breath."
A flicker of fire grew overhead, as Ruby can-tripped the stage's machination to fulfil her question and cast a beam of light onto Leopold.
"I offer you no other alternative, no other hope, no other glimmer of opportunity Sir. I have been scorned for my shrewdish behaviour since I was but a girl, but I am not one to kindly give the reason to another to ask the question you ask. I am also," she snarled, with fiery demagogue, "not one to say yes like a feeble matriarch of a dying family. Money is my father's wish, but love and reprieve from the drudgery of this soulless, tit filled world is mine - so ask again!"
The silence that filled the stage was as real as the day such a question was asked, by a young Princess Isould centuries ago, and it echoed through every incantation of history by playwrights and actors ever since.
"Do you think," Duffy broke the illusion and pushed himself upright, "that someone will ever say yes to either one of us and the gods allow us to go through with it?" The question visibly stung Ruby, but Duffy could not think of a more appropriate moment to deal with the events of the previous weeks.
"I-" she sighed, and dropped the book with an ominous thud, "I hope so. Speaking as one who was married, and wishes to revive that marriage when this dredging war is done...I hope so. Why, do you wish to ask me, or do I get the wrong impression from you?" She cocked an eye with Sardony and rested her hands on her hips in her usual tempting fashion.
Duffy chuckled, "No, do not worry - despite our previous encounters, there will be no endeavour on my part to secrete love about your person."
"Good. Good," she said cursively, as if dissapointed. For a brief moment, the ambassadorial nature of the troupe returned to the links that it's members shared. A glimmer of lightning binding brother and sister and mother and daughter, something snapped and snared into nothingness by Lucian's cold corruption.
"Thank you, Duffy. Even though you're comic demeanour dimmers the radiant nature of Leopold's innocence, love struck persona, it's these little moments of performance amidst all the dreary conflict that keeps me alive."
"You're welcome," Duffy smiled warmly and then turned, with a leap, he dropped off the stage and made his way to the right front quarter of the stage room. Behind a red curtain cutting off a section of the room, he started to rummage in a series of crates filled with cocktail dresses and elegant 'lucratively acquired' dresses of fine silk and cotton lace.
"What on...earth are you doing?" Ruby tailed him, scooping up the copy of Lucian's Call with a stoop to conquer. "A costume change is a little-" Duffy turned and produced a striking dress Ruby gasped at before she could finish her protestation. "That's, gorgeous!"
"Good, now get it on, I'm going downstairs to find my coat and tails, you and I are going to the opera to forget all this shadowy glumness - we've a long road ahead Miss Ruby La Roux and we certainly deserve one last night on the town before we go North to the Castle and call on our allies."
She didn't protest, in fact, she removed the items of clothing from his hands so quick he felt the rush of wind in her absence as she streamed with heavy clip clops over the floorboards behind the distant changing curtain, giggling all the while.
Duffy gave the curtain a longing look, hung his head, then stepped onto the top stair to descend back into the stuffy undercarriage of the Prima Vista, and the pea scented ante-chamber to the world of mystery beyond.
It was a funny state of being, guilt. Duffy waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom before making his way over the cluttered floor towards a tall oaken wardrobe propped up next to the door that lead to the true exit of their hideaway. Long ago, they had boarded off small sections of the front windows and filled them with homely scenes to give the illusion that the ancient building was in fact a summer house, long abandoned except for two weekends a year when the troupe had Lisa & Minella live in the compartments for a few days to pull off their façade in style.
Inside, he found his smartest clothing and dropped his trousers there and then. He changed with gusto and the swagger of a man soon to be married as soon as the church bells chimed. Irony would have it, that the clothes both halves of the Tantalum donned were the very same items of clothing that their preprocessors wore when they had confronted Lucian, and when their ancestors and their ancestors had done the same...
Duffy recited the names slowly.
Lysander...the hero.
Defoe...the first disciple, Lucian's favoured under study.
Brandybuck, the plucky bard who incited rebellion.
Duffy Bracken...the lost child, the acrobat, the monkey-man...
Somewhere along the long line of illusory people, he guessed fate would break the cycle of life and rebirth, and give Lucian's children the chance to break free of their father's reign before being dragged back into amnesiac bliss. This was their moment, their chance to shatter his tyranny and give life to the Thayne Tantalus, bound as he was in the Theatre in the Sky.
Duffy folded his tie over and tucked it in and pulled it down, and with a grimace, he adjusted it to that it sat perfect over his neckline and made to button up his waistcoat. He smiled at his boyish innocence in the warped and cracked mirror, and pulled on his coat.
Ruby would hurt him, with pointed shoe and a backhander worthy of the gods, but the plan he unravelled to make her prove her worth to him, and to the Thayne, was all he had left to ensure their freedom.
He turned and strolled over to the bottom of the stairs to await the debaucher of a newer, more cheerful Ruby, and crossed his hands solemnly over his front like a funeral director's solemn acceptance of things to come.
When Ruby appeared at the top of the stairs, Duffy felt a wave of deep satisfaction that caressed his sensibilities and eased the sense of guilt that had been troubling him for so long. Somehow, knowing that he could still make her happy despite all that he had done to hammer her loyalty pleased him no end.
"I see you went with, oddly enough, red for this evening?"
Ruby rolled her eyes and clip clopped down the wooden descent to Duffy's side. Together, they came across as a sort of semi-sophisticated young couple about town. They appeared neither exuberantly rich nor excessively poor, and held about their person contentment like a winter veil.
"Thank you, Duffy."
He paused for a moment, and considered the best way of going about a response.
"It has been my pleasure," he cocked his arm to take her into his confidence, and she reciprocated with a polite bow. "Shall we?"
She nodded, and they waggled their pert backsides back to the side entrance and bowed out into the cold evening air to take part in the very thing they shrived to protect - life, caught in the crossfire as they were between ignorance and bliss, love and hate, loyalty and betrayal.
Time had a funny way of washing you downstream free of troubles, and let you drift in temporary distractions to ease the pain.
It would not be long, and Duffy knew all too well, before he, and many others, would have to die.
MetalDrago
12-22-10, 04:14 AM
STORY ~
Continuity (5/10) ~
Setting (5/10) ~
Pacing (7/10) ~
CHARACTER ~
Dialogue (7/10) ~
Action (6/10) ~
Persona (7/10) ~
WRITING STYLE ~
Mechanics (5/10) ~
Technique (6/10) ~
Clarity (6/10) ~
Wild Card (6/10) ~
Overall Score - 60/100
Duffy Bracken Receives 2500 EXP and 135 GP
Silence Sei
12-30-10, 06:11 PM
EXP-GP added.
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