Guy Burgess (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thatmadbastard) wrote2012-04-15 09:30 pm
thatmadbastard) wrote2012-04-15 09:30 pm
Entry tags:
4th broadcast - action/written - backdated
[On an ordinary evening, Guy fell to bed with his life as blessedly in order as it could be, relegated here. Luceti, in seven months, had shown its colours, both frightening and generous. The last, drawn breaths before sleep claimed him had been against the neck of his Julian Bell, clothes discarded for--finally--a chance to do more than declare his love for the poet with pretty words, but to make it. Everything was changed when he woke.
There's a feeling that accompanies loss, one that is rooted deep in paranoid intuition, the very feeling that, in knowing something is terribly wrong, the mind refuses it. Guy shoved it away, hoping to hell it was all in his head. Yet there was wrenching feeling in his gut, bequeathed by that unease in the atmosphere and the little details one wouldn't notice otherwise being so very strikingly off. Something inside him had begun to sink and break.
Guy was grappling with a feeling all humans in a state of loss know. It is a moment when the heart catches hysteria and shifts between settling in the acid churning in one's stomach and hopping up to block the throat to make breathing and speaking laborious. In a way, Guy had grown accustomed to fried nerves, a heart that often beat rapidly with worry, the weight of stress that bent his back and the painful--yet righteous--pressure on his mind. Loss was something he seldom knew, but paranoia is and always had been a bosom friend of his.
The moment he woke without Julian's beautiful body in his arms, warm and bare, he knew.
Guy had spent his life collecting things and giving them away, seldom losing anything. Now, he walked a barren household and collected what remained. Two stories of near complete emptiness, and a gaping sense of loss, flapping about in his hung open jaw.
All three of them, in a night, gone.
There was a cup, in the bathroom, and Guy could smell the scotch in it from the hall. Like a tombstone, solemn on the ceramic sink, it stood, Kim's toothbrush inside. The philanderer's double, a scent of a memory in the wake of Kim Philby's vanishing act. Scotch and toothpaste. Guy walked away.
In the kitchen, once cluttered, there was an overwhelming sense of vacancy. Two books rested on the still-greasy floor where the table had once been. Anthony had picked it out. Now, there were just the leather bound memorials to his and Julian's name. Two volumes of flattery. A sketchbook filled with Guy's face as his dear Anthony saw it, and the last resounding words--meant for him alone--that a dead poet could bestow the world.
If asked, Guy would never be able to reason his numb search around a clearly empty house, but his soul was aching and groping for remnants of those he had always loved most. He went to the closet last, and after room after room of spacious nothing, he looked upon the only pieces left.
Anthony's coat. Kim's favoured tie.
With the volumes clutched in hands, Guy left. Anthony's coat weighed over his shoulders, rounded them with grief, and Kim's tie coiled around his neck, like a scarf, unknotted but wholly successful in covering the knot in Guy's throat.
Julian Bell's flame had gone out again. Anthony and Kim were back where they belonged, fighting fascism. Only Guy remained, his former happiness extinguished.
Anguish was strange to him in that it stole none of his understanding away. He knew them to be all right, relatively speaking. Yet it was also potent enough that there existed no amount of relief to be had in knowing them to be ripped away from him and that he was alone in Luceti. Time waited for all of them while in this place, and time would wait for him, too.
Ah, but Julian... in the arms of the angels again.
Guy holds his anguish as he holds his gin: bitterly, easily, and half-dazed. He walked the ways of Luceti, wings twitching, but low on his back. Anthony had never made such alterations to his clothing, and Guy was strangely comforted by the weight of the cloth enveloping even the feathery, gangly and useless things on his back. If he couldn't have Anthony's embrace, or Kim's eyes, or Julian's mouth...
Guy, unabashedly, is drunk for weeks, and will never set foot in House 32 again. On April 9th, when he can’t bear to speak them but can, just barely, write their names, he pens:]
It is with great regret that I inform the citizens of Luceti that three men have left us.
Anthony Blunt and Kim Philby returned to England; Julian Bell rests with God.
There's a feeling that accompanies loss, one that is rooted deep in paranoid intuition, the very feeling that, in knowing something is terribly wrong, the mind refuses it. Guy shoved it away, hoping to hell it was all in his head. Yet there was wrenching feeling in his gut, bequeathed by that unease in the atmosphere and the little details one wouldn't notice otherwise being so very strikingly off. Something inside him had begun to sink and break.
Guy was grappling with a feeling all humans in a state of loss know. It is a moment when the heart catches hysteria and shifts between settling in the acid churning in one's stomach and hopping up to block the throat to make breathing and speaking laborious. In a way, Guy had grown accustomed to fried nerves, a heart that often beat rapidly with worry, the weight of stress that bent his back and the painful--yet righteous--pressure on his mind. Loss was something he seldom knew, but paranoia is and always had been a bosom friend of his.
The moment he woke without Julian's beautiful body in his arms, warm and bare, he knew.
Guy had spent his life collecting things and giving them away, seldom losing anything. Now, he walked a barren household and collected what remained. Two stories of near complete emptiness, and a gaping sense of loss, flapping about in his hung open jaw.
All three of them, in a night, gone.
There was a cup, in the bathroom, and Guy could smell the scotch in it from the hall. Like a tombstone, solemn on the ceramic sink, it stood, Kim's toothbrush inside. The philanderer's double, a scent of a memory in the wake of Kim Philby's vanishing act. Scotch and toothpaste. Guy walked away.
In the kitchen, once cluttered, there was an overwhelming sense of vacancy. Two books rested on the still-greasy floor where the table had once been. Anthony had picked it out. Now, there were just the leather bound memorials to his and Julian's name. Two volumes of flattery. A sketchbook filled with Guy's face as his dear Anthony saw it, and the last resounding words--meant for him alone--that a dead poet could bestow the world.
If asked, Guy would never be able to reason his numb search around a clearly empty house, but his soul was aching and groping for remnants of those he had always loved most. He went to the closet last, and after room after room of spacious nothing, he looked upon the only pieces left.
Anthony's coat. Kim's favoured tie.
With the volumes clutched in hands, Guy left. Anthony's coat weighed over his shoulders, rounded them with grief, and Kim's tie coiled around his neck, like a scarf, unknotted but wholly successful in covering the knot in Guy's throat.
Julian Bell's flame had gone out again. Anthony and Kim were back where they belonged, fighting fascism. Only Guy remained, his former happiness extinguished.
Anguish was strange to him in that it stole none of his understanding away. He knew them to be all right, relatively speaking. Yet it was also potent enough that there existed no amount of relief to be had in knowing them to be ripped away from him and that he was alone in Luceti. Time waited for all of them while in this place, and time would wait for him, too.
Ah, but Julian... in the arms of the angels again.
Guy holds his anguish as he holds his gin: bitterly, easily, and half-dazed. He walked the ways of Luceti, wings twitching, but low on his back. Anthony had never made such alterations to his clothing, and Guy was strangely comforted by the weight of the cloth enveloping even the feathery, gangly and useless things on his back. If he couldn't have Anthony's embrace, or Kim's eyes, or Julian's mouth...
Guy, unabashedly, is drunk for weeks, and will never set foot in House 32 again. On April 9th, when he can’t bear to speak them but can, just barely, write their names, he pens:]
It is with great regret that I inform the citizens of Luceti that three men have left us.
Anthony Blunt and Kim Philby returned to England; Julian Bell rests with God.
[written]
[written-->action]
[He writes that much, but even the letters are jagged, unusual. He staggers as heavily into Cloud Nine as his penmanship had been on the page, eyes bloodshot, more gaunt that usual, a hollow.]
no subject
Sit.
[Written]
[Written]
I don't know whether or not to say thank you. Though I suppose this means I have.
Only one of them has died.
[His own brashness hurts, however. Talking about Julian's death, once again, is painful and raw.]
[Written]
[Especially since it is who she remembers it to be.
...that a poet named Julian Bell should have the heart to love me equally.
There is little she can offer, she does not know this man well. Not at all.]
Would you care for company?
[Written]
It just so happens I'm at the local and would rather not be alone. Do you like to drink?
[So strange... to look for company. He'd not once been without it before.]
[Written/Action]
[It doesn't take long for Adele to flip her journal closed and make her way to good spirits, pausing at the door to look for the grieving Englishman.]
[Action]
He calls to her without looking over.]
Miss Leblanc. [A deep gulp from the glass.]
[Action]
[Action]
[Action]
[Action]
[Action]
[Action]
[Action]
Backdated to March 31 - Action
Walking down alongside the river, she'd stopped to scoop up a small, smooth stone she'd seen in the shallows when Guy's shuffling form caught her eye.
She paused, half bent, to watch the way his steps moved...forward, forward, back. A pause. Forward again. Aimless and slow.
She'd seen him drunk, before, half naked in the bristling cold fountain. She'd seen him in a panick, tossing book after book into the open fire.
She'd never seen him like this.
Fingers dripping, stone forgotten, she turned away from the river to face the spy]
Guy?
[action]
Aptly named.
[Even his own humour is hollow, meaningless.]
[action]
broken.]
Guy...what's happened? What's wrong?
[action]
[action]
Who, Guy?
[it's soft, and purposeful. Looking for clarity. Reinforcing his name. She's there. She knows who he is.] Who's gone?
[action]
[action]
[action]
[action]
[action]
[action]
[action]
/tentative voice
He feels a dull clenching in the pit of his stomach, the journal growing heavy in his hands.
And Kim. Kim had been one of the people whom had supported him when the both of them had found themselves drafted and thrust in that subterranean war zone, doing their best to survive the Third Party assault.
Oh.
The Bronxite just stares at the words scrawled on the page and that's all he can think to say, even though no one's there to hear it. And then he thinks about Mr. Guy - someone who had always spoken so fondly of them, whom valued companionship - and he suddenly feels a little aching knot harden in his throat. He doesn't know if it's for himself or for Guy or both. It doesn't really matter, in the end.
Mac may not have seen them for some time, but it did not mean he hadn't thought of them - and now, more than ever, he was kicking himself for having gotten distracted by other people and other things and not having kept more in contact. He had just gotten used to the idea that they would be there when he had cracked open his journal open day after day and viewed the contact list. But if there's one thing that Luceti teaches, it's that the only thing that one can expect is unpredictability.
He calls up Guy, swallowing. Maybe he'll want to talk, maybe he won't - but it's the very least he can do.]
Hey...
[voice]
Dear Mac.
[It is going to take a bit of coaxing to get Guy talking. An eerie challenge.]
[voice]
Listen...
[He sucks in his lower lip, anxiously considering how to proceed.]
Can I - - [A pause to swallow.] D'ya want me... t'come over?
[voice]
[He couldn't have named the number of days it has been since he left that house. He hasn't gone back. He can't. Not even for his beloved records.]
I'm not terribly difficult to find. Just... the most unsightly Englishman.
[Panic makes a man cryptic, and Guy defaults on using undertones to say he'd like the company. He's spent so many days alone.]
[voice]
... Where y'stayin' now? [If he doesn't live in the house anymore, that is.]
[voice]
[voice]
[voice]
[voice--- > action, if it's cool with you]
[ voice ]
her throat closes up but she speaks anyway. writing takes so damn long...and she doesn't even know where a pen is. ]
R-rests with God? [ she never knew. had never known that he...oh, god. ] Guy?
[ voice ]
Julian Bell died eight years ago, in a fire. [It hurts to say that name. It hurts, as newly wounding as the first day he'd heard the news nearly a decade before.] Back in the arms of the angels. More suitable wings.
[It might have been a lighthearted remark, once. When he could still hold the poet in his arms.]
[ voice ]
[ she takes the time to try and control her voice. careful. measured. leaderly. ] I'm so sorry, Guy.
[ voice ]
[They both fought the same things, just in different ways. Julian was a braver soul than Guy could be.]
Don't be. They'll be all right. All three, right where they belong.
[ voice ]
[ voice ]
[ voice ]
[ voice -> action ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
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(no subject)