Nexus 100 Choices
Jul. 9th, 2009 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evillurksI keep trying to work on the longer fan fiction, and instead all these random bits of writing come along and beat up my brain. It's a bit like being mugged, and I feel bruised and slightly bewildered after the rush of words have poured out. This is so long it might as well be considered a proper short story. Four pages in Word. It would have taken place somewhere are the late Sixties or Early Seventies, for anyone who cares.
Title: Crossroads
Fandom: The Shadow
Characters: The Shadow, Lamont Cranston, Margo Lane (all older)
Prompt: 086 Choices
Word Count: 2,164
Rating: PG
Summary: Cranston and Margo retire.
Author's Notes: I don’t know what happened. The idea just steamrolled. This would be a flashback for the older Shadow I play, but it should be able to stand alone, too.
The past week had been busy, but the end was at last in sight. Margo moved through the downstairs rooms of the mansion, surveying elegant furniture lost beneath dust-cloths. Upstairs her suitcase was packed, and boxes and crates had been going out for almost a month ahead of them. A car would be waiting, when they landed in the Caribbean, and they would be whisked off to a new home not unlike this one, a number of their belongings already in place. It was a happy ending, she supposed. It left her feeling dissatisfied in a way she couldn’t put her finger on. She tried to attribute it to the emptiness of the house, as even the servants were quietly out of sight. Cranston himself had gone out early in the morning, to take care of last minute errands in Manhattan.
She paused in the entrance hall, and spied his keys lying forgotten on the table there. He might not miss them since the driver had a spare set, but it made her shake her head in mild despair all the same. Margo loved Lamont Cranston, just as much as she had when he’d been younger and trimmer and less personable. Back when she’d been utterly certain he was spending every night dressed in black, scouring the city of criminal elements. As time went on and he grew older, and The Shadow’s exploits no less fantastic, doubt had at last crept in. He was an agent, as she was, but she could be sure of nothing more. They were both called on very little, now. When she glanced in the mirror to tuck back a grey lock of hair, she did not wonder why. She doubted her husband capable of the feats she glimpsed between the lines in the paper these days. He remained an excellent marksman, and very keen for puzzles, but the signs of age were clear. This was far from the first time he’d left the house without his keys or some other item essential to whatever he’d gone out to do. She was resigned to reminding him of the daily details and picking up the pieces when she, too, forgot.
Sighing and beginning to wallow in loneliness, she picked up Cranston’s keys. One tumbled loose, unattached. There was a scrap of paper beneath, with a Manhattan address. There was no name, but her heart beat faster as these clues began to trigger the inklings of intuition. Tomorrow, they left for a golden retirement, but today there were old friends to say goodbye to.
Ten minutes later, Margo was tucking her hair under a hat and stepping into a cab, destined for the city across the Hudson.
At the door he rifled his pockets a last time, without much hope. He was forced to knock, embarrassed, and even more so when he saw the man who answered it had a dishtowel over one shoulder. Blue eyes sharper than his own narrowed, but Cranston was admitted without a word. “I’ll have to mail the key, I promise to remember.” Out of habit he gave a small smile, a mild expression that carried genuine apology nonetheless.
“You’re late. I thought you weren’t coming.” The tall form locked the door and moved back to the kitchen. The teapot was in the sink, and Cranston had clearly interrupted a washing-up.
He followed through the apartment to the kitchen. “Sorry, I got caught up.” He stifled a sense of mild irritation, and settled himself in a chair at the empty table, uninvited. The Shadow’s back was to him, and it struck him as strange to see him at so plebian a task as doing the dishes. “I’d offer to help, but I’m not sure I’ve ever washed dishes…” Only when the words were out of his mouth did it strike him as snobbish.
Shirt sleeves rolled up and water trickling down one elbow, The Shadow turned to regard him with one eyebrow arched expressively. The contrast between them had increased over time, making disguise a more complicated operation. Cranston had put on a little weight, while The Shadow had remained lean, perhaps even more gaunt than in the full health of his prime. Both men had gone grey, but Cranston’s face had softened with the changes in his life. The Shadow’s looked harder than ever, angular and almost bitter in its mask-like impassivity.
Cranston felt he was being very subtly mocked, and managed to meet the sharp gaze with a frown. “What?”
“I’m wary of a man who wears his helplessness like a badge.” The teapot, dried, was set gently on the countertop. With the jibe his expression had mellowed slightly. “Cooking for one doesn’t dirty much.” He shrugged, and put the cups away.
Not for the first time, Cranston was uncomfortably aware that whoever the man before him was, he had not come from the same privileged background he’d enjoyed. “You don’t have to live like this. You’ve got at least as much money as I have, by now.”
“Oh yes. Buy a house. Settle down.” The tone was clearly mocking now.
Only because the back was turned again did Cranston find the courage to voice his thoughts. “It can’t go on forever. You’ll have to retire someday.”
“No.” After the briefest of pauses, The Shadow sighed and elaborated for Cranston’s benefit. “No, I won’t retire, and no, it can’t go on forever. Someday the job will kill me. It’s a wonder it hasn’t by now.” He was still nursing a spot where a bullet had grazed him a week before, but the bandage was unlikely to show.
It was the resignation in his voice that allowed Cranston to continue. He watched The Shadow with thinly veiled concern, privately distressed by his tone. “Don’t talk like that. It makes you sound suicidal. But- things have changed. The world has changed. Leave it to the younger men. I’m not suggesting you try the domestic life, you could travel, but the problems the world has now, you can’t fight those.” He found himself pleading. As hard as it was to imagine The Shadow in retirement, the thought of him dead was all the more terrifying. He knew the slowing of reflexes with age, having felt it acutely in himself, and he was not so foolish as to think the man before him was immune.
As this monologue began The Shadow’s face gave a slight twitch, as if startled by some sudden sound. His jaw clenched in annoyance throughout Cranston’s words. “Travel. Where would I go?” The Shadow would be The Shadow wherever he went in the world, and find injustices there to correct.
“There’s… always the Orient…” Cranston hazarded, his earlier courage evaporating in the face of a quiet rage he could feel in the grizzled fighter at the counter.
“It’s changed. The Chinese government is becoming a juggernaut. I should’ve seen that coming, but it’s too late to put a block under the wheels now…” The Shadow’s sigh was an expression of his effort to keep his temper in check. His expression eased. “The problems the world has now are precisely why I intend to keep fighting.” As he spoke, he hung up the dishtowel and moved past Cranston towards the kitchen doorway. “At least you won’t have to mail me the key.”
It was terribly wrong of her, she knew, but Margo hadn’t worked as an agent for The Shadow so many years without picking up some instincts necessary for the job. She listened at the door before putting the key in the lock, and opened it with enough care to prevent any but the faintest of sounds. The apartment she slipped into was nondescript, giving no hints to the sort of person who might inhabit it. There was no decoration to speak of, and the furniture was plain and little used. The voice that reached her from the kitchen, deeper in, was Cranston’s. She crept closer, feeling the thrill she missed from younger days when she’d been given missions with a hint of danger. The words she made out intrigued her, and the returning tone was all too familiar. Many times had she heard that voice, soft and harsh at the same time. Long had she suspected Cranston’s connection to The Shadow was less casual than most, but she had never quite thought of him paying a social call to say goodbye. The argument itself furrowed her brow, as she felt herself drawn in by the words in the next room.
She was so absorbed that when a long hand from the doorway clamped around her wrist, she gave out a soft cry. The grip was like iron, and the key dropped from nerveless fingers into the second hand that waited for it below. Only then did she look up, and uttered a second gasp as she looked into the angular features of Kent Allard.
Cranston’s face appeared around the corner behind him, and his expression of clear surprise showed that he had not detected her arrival.
Seconds after the key dropped, her wrist was gently released. Allard slipped both hands into his pockets and leaned in the doorway, but his expression was grim. Two pairs of blue eyes were fixed on her, and it was with an effort she regained her composure. She was too mature in years to stand gaping like a fool, and she managed a polite frown as she rubbed her wrist. “You left your keys, dear.” Her tone dripped sweetness as she addressed her husband first.
Cranston moved to her side, recovering from his bewilderment swiftly, but it was to Allard he looked apologetic. “Things have just been so frantic… and I’m not as young as I used to be.” With a sigh he looked beseechingly into the hard features of the other man.
Margo found herself craning her neck to look between them.
The keen gaze took in Margo’s effrontery, and the way Cranston stood beside her, subtly protective. Allard’s visage turned mild, and he shook his head. “Consider it a last adventure.” He sighed, very quietly, and straightened from the doorframe. His head nearly brushed the lintel.
With that quiet sound, Margo was abruptly aware of a yawning chasm between them. She felt almost dowdy, close beside a husband who was showing his years in more ways than one. They were about to leave for a quiet, luxurious life, giving in to the leisure their years had earned them. They were leaving behind a lean, hardened man who lived alone in a succession of spartan apartments, and spent his nights battling the dark underworld with every last ounce of strength he had.
He lived in a world they had already left behind, and there was nothing they could give him but a goodbye.
“I’m sorry.” She dropped her wrist, and felt herself begin, very faintly, to blush. She realized dimly that it had never actually hurt, just numbed her hand for a matter of moments. It burned in her to ask if he was really Kent Allard, but already she suspected the answer. Whatever face he wore, he was only The Shadow. Anything else was just another alias. “If there’s ever… if you need us again…”
He smiled then, an expression that showed more in the lines multiplying around his eyes than anywhere else in that calm face. “Go. I wish you both the best.” With unusual chivalry he took her hand and bent briefly over it, than put his right out for Cranston.
“You know, I almost believed that.” Cranston smirked slightly, but his own eyes searched the inscrutable face. There was little he could hope to read there, his own gaze incapable of penetrating to the man beneath.
“Enjoy yourself old boy, and send me a postcard.” For a moment it seemed there were two Cranstons in the room.
Margo found herself smiling as she watched The Shadow confronting her husband with his own voice. This brief conversation was giving her a lot to think about on the plane trip to their new home.
The illusion fell away when The Shadow put his left hand over their still-clasped handshake. The girasol ring winked softly in the afternoon light. His expression had sobered, and there was no mirth left in his eyes. “Be happy. Go.” He slipped gently out of Cranston’s grasp and took half a step back to the doorway.
His tone melted their amusement. Cranston put an arm around Margo’s shoulders, and said nothing as he led her away. She managed a glance under his arm as he was closing the door, but The Shadow had turned away.
Margo settled close against him in the car as it whisked them away to the last night in their New Jersey home. She felt the motion as Cranston reached a hand to rub at his eyes, and to preserve his dignity she resisted the urge to look up at him. There was nothing left to say.
Title: Crossroads
Fandom: The Shadow
Characters: The Shadow, Lamont Cranston, Margo Lane (all older)
Prompt: 086 Choices
Word Count: 2,164
Rating: PG
Summary: Cranston and Margo retire.
Author's Notes: I don’t know what happened. The idea just steamrolled. This would be a flashback for the older Shadow I play, but it should be able to stand alone, too.
The past week had been busy, but the end was at last in sight. Margo moved through the downstairs rooms of the mansion, surveying elegant furniture lost beneath dust-cloths. Upstairs her suitcase was packed, and boxes and crates had been going out for almost a month ahead of them. A car would be waiting, when they landed in the Caribbean, and they would be whisked off to a new home not unlike this one, a number of their belongings already in place. It was a happy ending, she supposed. It left her feeling dissatisfied in a way she couldn’t put her finger on. She tried to attribute it to the emptiness of the house, as even the servants were quietly out of sight. Cranston himself had gone out early in the morning, to take care of last minute errands in Manhattan.
She paused in the entrance hall, and spied his keys lying forgotten on the table there. He might not miss them since the driver had a spare set, but it made her shake her head in mild despair all the same. Margo loved Lamont Cranston, just as much as she had when he’d been younger and trimmer and less personable. Back when she’d been utterly certain he was spending every night dressed in black, scouring the city of criminal elements. As time went on and he grew older, and The Shadow’s exploits no less fantastic, doubt had at last crept in. He was an agent, as she was, but she could be sure of nothing more. They were both called on very little, now. When she glanced in the mirror to tuck back a grey lock of hair, she did not wonder why. She doubted her husband capable of the feats she glimpsed between the lines in the paper these days. He remained an excellent marksman, and very keen for puzzles, but the signs of age were clear. This was far from the first time he’d left the house without his keys or some other item essential to whatever he’d gone out to do. She was resigned to reminding him of the daily details and picking up the pieces when she, too, forgot.
Sighing and beginning to wallow in loneliness, she picked up Cranston’s keys. One tumbled loose, unattached. There was a scrap of paper beneath, with a Manhattan address. There was no name, but her heart beat faster as these clues began to trigger the inklings of intuition. Tomorrow, they left for a golden retirement, but today there were old friends to say goodbye to.
Ten minutes later, Margo was tucking her hair under a hat and stepping into a cab, destined for the city across the Hudson.
At the door he rifled his pockets a last time, without much hope. He was forced to knock, embarrassed, and even more so when he saw the man who answered it had a dishtowel over one shoulder. Blue eyes sharper than his own narrowed, but Cranston was admitted without a word. “I’ll have to mail the key, I promise to remember.” Out of habit he gave a small smile, a mild expression that carried genuine apology nonetheless.
“You’re late. I thought you weren’t coming.” The tall form locked the door and moved back to the kitchen. The teapot was in the sink, and Cranston had clearly interrupted a washing-up.
He followed through the apartment to the kitchen. “Sorry, I got caught up.” He stifled a sense of mild irritation, and settled himself in a chair at the empty table, uninvited. The Shadow’s back was to him, and it struck him as strange to see him at so plebian a task as doing the dishes. “I’d offer to help, but I’m not sure I’ve ever washed dishes…” Only when the words were out of his mouth did it strike him as snobbish.
Shirt sleeves rolled up and water trickling down one elbow, The Shadow turned to regard him with one eyebrow arched expressively. The contrast between them had increased over time, making disguise a more complicated operation. Cranston had put on a little weight, while The Shadow had remained lean, perhaps even more gaunt than in the full health of his prime. Both men had gone grey, but Cranston’s face had softened with the changes in his life. The Shadow’s looked harder than ever, angular and almost bitter in its mask-like impassivity.
Cranston felt he was being very subtly mocked, and managed to meet the sharp gaze with a frown. “What?”
“I’m wary of a man who wears his helplessness like a badge.” The teapot, dried, was set gently on the countertop. With the jibe his expression had mellowed slightly. “Cooking for one doesn’t dirty much.” He shrugged, and put the cups away.
Not for the first time, Cranston was uncomfortably aware that whoever the man before him was, he had not come from the same privileged background he’d enjoyed. “You don’t have to live like this. You’ve got at least as much money as I have, by now.”
“Oh yes. Buy a house. Settle down.” The tone was clearly mocking now.
Only because the back was turned again did Cranston find the courage to voice his thoughts. “It can’t go on forever. You’ll have to retire someday.”
“No.” After the briefest of pauses, The Shadow sighed and elaborated for Cranston’s benefit. “No, I won’t retire, and no, it can’t go on forever. Someday the job will kill me. It’s a wonder it hasn’t by now.” He was still nursing a spot where a bullet had grazed him a week before, but the bandage was unlikely to show.
It was the resignation in his voice that allowed Cranston to continue. He watched The Shadow with thinly veiled concern, privately distressed by his tone. “Don’t talk like that. It makes you sound suicidal. But- things have changed. The world has changed. Leave it to the younger men. I’m not suggesting you try the domestic life, you could travel, but the problems the world has now, you can’t fight those.” He found himself pleading. As hard as it was to imagine The Shadow in retirement, the thought of him dead was all the more terrifying. He knew the slowing of reflexes with age, having felt it acutely in himself, and he was not so foolish as to think the man before him was immune.
As this monologue began The Shadow’s face gave a slight twitch, as if startled by some sudden sound. His jaw clenched in annoyance throughout Cranston’s words. “Travel. Where would I go?” The Shadow would be The Shadow wherever he went in the world, and find injustices there to correct.
“There’s… always the Orient…” Cranston hazarded, his earlier courage evaporating in the face of a quiet rage he could feel in the grizzled fighter at the counter.
“It’s changed. The Chinese government is becoming a juggernaut. I should’ve seen that coming, but it’s too late to put a block under the wheels now…” The Shadow’s sigh was an expression of his effort to keep his temper in check. His expression eased. “The problems the world has now are precisely why I intend to keep fighting.” As he spoke, he hung up the dishtowel and moved past Cranston towards the kitchen doorway. “At least you won’t have to mail me the key.”
It was terribly wrong of her, she knew, but Margo hadn’t worked as an agent for The Shadow so many years without picking up some instincts necessary for the job. She listened at the door before putting the key in the lock, and opened it with enough care to prevent any but the faintest of sounds. The apartment she slipped into was nondescript, giving no hints to the sort of person who might inhabit it. There was no decoration to speak of, and the furniture was plain and little used. The voice that reached her from the kitchen, deeper in, was Cranston’s. She crept closer, feeling the thrill she missed from younger days when she’d been given missions with a hint of danger. The words she made out intrigued her, and the returning tone was all too familiar. Many times had she heard that voice, soft and harsh at the same time. Long had she suspected Cranston’s connection to The Shadow was less casual than most, but she had never quite thought of him paying a social call to say goodbye. The argument itself furrowed her brow, as she felt herself drawn in by the words in the next room.
She was so absorbed that when a long hand from the doorway clamped around her wrist, she gave out a soft cry. The grip was like iron, and the key dropped from nerveless fingers into the second hand that waited for it below. Only then did she look up, and uttered a second gasp as she looked into the angular features of Kent Allard.
Cranston’s face appeared around the corner behind him, and his expression of clear surprise showed that he had not detected her arrival.
Seconds after the key dropped, her wrist was gently released. Allard slipped both hands into his pockets and leaned in the doorway, but his expression was grim. Two pairs of blue eyes were fixed on her, and it was with an effort she regained her composure. She was too mature in years to stand gaping like a fool, and she managed a polite frown as she rubbed her wrist. “You left your keys, dear.” Her tone dripped sweetness as she addressed her husband first.
Cranston moved to her side, recovering from his bewilderment swiftly, but it was to Allard he looked apologetic. “Things have just been so frantic… and I’m not as young as I used to be.” With a sigh he looked beseechingly into the hard features of the other man.
Margo found herself craning her neck to look between them.
The keen gaze took in Margo’s effrontery, and the way Cranston stood beside her, subtly protective. Allard’s visage turned mild, and he shook his head. “Consider it a last adventure.” He sighed, very quietly, and straightened from the doorframe. His head nearly brushed the lintel.
With that quiet sound, Margo was abruptly aware of a yawning chasm between them. She felt almost dowdy, close beside a husband who was showing his years in more ways than one. They were about to leave for a quiet, luxurious life, giving in to the leisure their years had earned them. They were leaving behind a lean, hardened man who lived alone in a succession of spartan apartments, and spent his nights battling the dark underworld with every last ounce of strength he had.
He lived in a world they had already left behind, and there was nothing they could give him but a goodbye.
“I’m sorry.” She dropped her wrist, and felt herself begin, very faintly, to blush. She realized dimly that it had never actually hurt, just numbed her hand for a matter of moments. It burned in her to ask if he was really Kent Allard, but already she suspected the answer. Whatever face he wore, he was only The Shadow. Anything else was just another alias. “If there’s ever… if you need us again…”
He smiled then, an expression that showed more in the lines multiplying around his eyes than anywhere else in that calm face. “Go. I wish you both the best.” With unusual chivalry he took her hand and bent briefly over it, than put his right out for Cranston.
“You know, I almost believed that.” Cranston smirked slightly, but his own eyes searched the inscrutable face. There was little he could hope to read there, his own gaze incapable of penetrating to the man beneath.
“Enjoy yourself old boy, and send me a postcard.” For a moment it seemed there were two Cranstons in the room.
Margo found herself smiling as she watched The Shadow confronting her husband with his own voice. This brief conversation was giving her a lot to think about on the plane trip to their new home.
The illusion fell away when The Shadow put his left hand over their still-clasped handshake. The girasol ring winked softly in the afternoon light. His expression had sobered, and there was no mirth left in his eyes. “Be happy. Go.” He slipped gently out of Cranston’s grasp and took half a step back to the doorway.
His tone melted their amusement. Cranston put an arm around Margo’s shoulders, and said nothing as he led her away. She managed a glance under his arm as he was closing the door, but The Shadow had turned away.
Margo settled close against him in the car as it whisked them away to the last night in their New Jersey home. She felt the motion as Cranston reached a hand to rub at his eyes, and to preserve his dignity she resisted the urge to look up at him. There was nothing left to say.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-07-10 03:09 am (UTC)This is another one of those beautifully powerful pieces, and I'm glad you ran with it when it decided to take you for this ride.
I admit, I got sniffly at the end. It's not a bitter goodbye, but it's not a pleasant one either.
I repeat, beautiful.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-10 03:18 am (UTC)Sniffly! Really? You don't even like Margo. I'm so proud. *laughs*
Thank you, very much. I think I'm beginning to get a handle on the awkward almost-friendship Cranston and The Shadow had. You can't impersonate someone for so many years without learning to respect their opinions, even if you don't agree with them, which is why The Shadow is slightly conflicted in that discussion.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-10 03:43 am (UTC)Heh, I'm not much of the 'sentimental' type either, but yeah, sniffy. About Margo, Cranston, and The Shadow.
I think you did wonderfully finding a meeting place that really gives such a curious insight into the relationship at this point in their years working together. The Shadow has made more friends than I think he realizes, sometimes.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-10 03:55 am (UTC)And neither of us likes Margo, and I still think Cranston is a bit of a prat. But they worked for him such a long time, and so closely. Even if it was rather ratty of Margo to break in like that... I'm really not sure why it took her perspective at beginning and end. That's just how it needed to be written.
It's because he has no idea how to be a friend back, I suppose. He sees this wall of intellect and physical distance between himself and everyone else, partly because of his antisocial tendencies, partly because of the facial disfigurement and divorce from identity. Even when he likes someone, as he does Myra and Metody, he's just incapable of working out how to bridge that gap and be friendly. He can pretend to be friendly, but that's not the same and he knows it. They get flashes of genuine friendliness from him, but he's just as likely to snap and scowl and hold himself aloof.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-12 04:35 pm (UTC)Also Margo deserves a lot worse for basically breaking into his home...
no subject
Date: 2009-07-12 08:57 pm (UTC)It was a ratty thing to do. Just because I wrote much of it from her perspective doesn't mean I was trying to make her likeable.