WKAP fic: you said you'd help me disappear

[bliumchik]

Title: you said you'd help me disappear
Fandom: Who Killed Amanda Palmer (album)
Written For: yuletide 
Wordcount: 1200
Summary: She feels like something’s building to a point. An escape trajectory, or a countdown. It bothers her that she can’t figure out which it is.

“Listen, you’re not gonna get caught with these,” says the girl. Her voice is muffled through the bandanna that covers her nose and mouth. Behind her the alchemist stirs something awful-smelling and mumbles in an archaic tongue. His deep, regular voice suddenly reminds Amanda of a bass, and her fingers twitch for a piano again. She misses Brian like a phantom limb. 

“I’m not gonna get caught with these,” she tells the girl.

 

tick tick tick tick tick

 

(She draws the arrow carefully, concentrating. The little curlicues are important, although she could never quite understand the magic behind it. She tapes up the sign in the corridor and watches as it flickers out of visibility – the marker he gave her is running out of ink. She’ll have to ask him for another.)

 

tick tick tick tick tick

 

Dusk sweeps into the city like treacle, and Amanda rides the wake – dead air to magic, lowest visibility: her favourite time of day. Laying the charges is simple, making them invisible less so. The chemicals are volatile, the timing needs to be perfect.

 She’s had a lot of time to practice.

 

tick tick tick tick tick

 

REBEL LEADER STILL AT LARGE: PRESIDENT DOUBLES REWARD.

 

tick tick tick tick tick

 

Home tonight is an abandoned hotel. It used to be pretty swanky, by the looks of it, but nobody who can afford hotels like that lives in this city anymore. It’s been made an example of, ground zero for the curse. Amanda rips the curtains off the window for blankets – she doesn’t need curtains. She’ll be up before dawn in any case. She remembers the days when she only ever saw dawn from the other side, late nights cigarette-stained stumbling home from the club after another explosive performance. That’s abandoned, too – she spent a night there once. A patrol came through in the early morning, a cursory sweep for the propagandists’ sake – she’s never gone back. It takes a lot of effort, these days, not to feel that way about the whole damn planet. She feels like something’s building to a point. An escape trajectory, or a countdown. It bothers her that she can’t figure out which it is.

 

tick tick tick tick tick

 

(She tapes the final sign and goes lightly down the stairs. This building was raided last week, so it’s safe for now. It used to be a theatre, but it’s hard to tell how long ago – the windows are all shattered, exposing the trashed innards to the elements. She’s already forgetting what the city looked like, before.)

 

tick tick tick tick tick

 

When she wakes up there is a tiny plastic soldier on the windowsill. She taps it, thoughtful, then takes a line of sight along the tiny rifle. Opera house roof. Typical. She sees a movement, gives a small salute and slips the soldier into her pocket. Ten minutes later she is picking her way through the debris towards the lone figure perched on the far edge of the rooftop, sillhoetted by the rising sun – dishevelled wings obscuring all but the familiar spiky blond hair. 

“Hello, Blake,” she says. He throws her his wild grin, and a sandwich. She tosses it back, he looks almost skeletal this week. “How’s Alaska?” 

“Cold,” he answers, smiling ruefully. “Could you at least toast it for me?” 

Amanda rolls her eyes, but takes the sandwich back and rubs her fingers together under it. She has enough control now that she won’t even singe the bread. She remembers being twenty and burning her sheets up every other week, sixteen and terrified, head full of the gene scan and fingers tingling, twenty five and gleefully setting fire to campaign posters, curfew signs. These days she mostly burns junk, to replace flickering heat systems. 

She hands him back the sandwich and he devours it fast enough to confirm her surmise. They exchange plans, a little gossip, then just sit there watching daylight seep colour into the landscape for a while. Eventually Blake gets up, smiles ruefully, stretches his wings. 

“Say hi to, you know.” 

“Yeah.” 

“And, Amanda – good luck.”

He leaps into the air.

 

tick tick tick tick tick

 (I don’t like the look of the thing their pet shamans are building. Find Alan, if you can – he can help you. Bring him some pot and don’t ask about the triffids. 

Enclosed are those chocolates you like, and some mittens that Maddy knitted for you.

Stay safe. I love you.)

 

tick tick tick tick tick

 

“How is he?”

June pauses, a jagged piece of plastic suspended between her bleach-stained thumb and index finger. A drop of glue is gathering on the downward-pointing spike, poised to fall but foiled by surface tension. One large brown eye peers out at Amanda through the space between plastic and skin.

“The same.”

Amanda nods, nods too many times for anything like convincing. June’s creations stare at her from all the shelves, as though to say you can’t fool us, you can’t fool anybody in this house. She’ll look for herself anyway. Brian’s sunken eyes and twitching fingers have become some kind of twisted ritual to her visits here. She kneels in front of him and listens to the stream of useless future words pouring from his mouth, like maybe this time it’ll make sense. She listens for a long time, until she can almost feel a pattern in the whispering, but it doesn’t resolve into anything more than a sense of déjà vu. It never does.

She hands June the toy soldier on her way out.

 

tick tick tick tick tick

 

(The basement is full of mislaid props and scenery. She lays out the sheet music in an intricate pattern on the floor – then, on a whim, she picks up some interesting debris and arranges it in a tableau around the spot where she will sit and wait. She takes off her coat.)

 

tick tick tick tick tick

 

It’s time. She flexes her fingers and feels fire crackling through her knuckles. There isn’t going to be a second chance on this – the President and his fascist cronies, coming to her city? Almost too good to be true. They are taunting her. After all they have done, they are taunting her.

 

tick tick tick tick tick

 

(The room buzzes and goes out of focus for a moment, and then he is standing in front of her, black droplets trickling down from him and disappearing before they hit the ground. She buries her face in his big black coat that smells faintly of cats, her joints untensing for the first time in what feels like months.

 He says, “Come home with me. It isn’t safe.”

She smiles and tugs on his hair. “They’re still searching your house every month,” she murmurs, although she knows that’s not the home he’s talking about. Some days she can’t touch ink because it feels too much like a poorly-latched door, ready to spring open at a touch.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says. 

She holds him a little tighter.)

 

tick tick tick tick tick

 

“There’s no such thing as accidents,” says Brian.

 

tick tick tick tick tick

 

boom