Impressions
By Fewthistle

Author's Note: Written for Challenge Nine, Prompt Three at the Livejournal Community even_angels_. First and last lines written by flying_peanuts. Temperance specific. No real pairing

She paid for each candid caress. Paid in brittle nights, the hollow longing as present as the paint chipping along the chair-rail. Temperance wondered, lying on her back, a thin white tee-shirt her only cover against the night air, the sheets rumpled and damp and now empty beside her, why it was always like this; meaningless, mindless, perversely void of even the most basic of emotion.

Just hands on skin, mouths pressing hungrily, fingers seeking, plumbing depths; coming as close to touching her soul as a boat skimming the surface of the ocean to the black nothingness of the Marianas Straits. Surely there was more. She vaguely remembered feelings of passion, of joy, of love, but they were as buried in layers of guilt and recriminations and unfulfilled expectations as strata around ancient remains.

Pushing up from the bed, she braved the unkind light of morning, pulling back the curtains of her bedroom, not to brilliant light, but the overcast gloom of rain darkened sky. With a slight twist of her mouth meant to resemble a resigned smile, she turned and padded softly to the bathroom, her practiced motions setting the shower running as she pulled the tee shirt over her head.

Breakfast first. Then. Well, then she could try to figure out what then was going to be. She hated weekends. That's why nine times out of ten she ended up back at work, bones spread out before her on the solid steel of the examination table. The dead didn't demand emotion from her that she wasn't capable of giving.

Parched white bone didn't want her to make time to spend together, didn't pout when she was unwilling to become something that she would never be. The dead only demanded answers from her, demanded that she use her brains and talents and education to somehow find them justice. That was the one thing she felt comfortable supplying. Everything else left her resentful and ultimately, alone.

She sat at a table in the front of the café, wedged up against the plate glass window. One leg of the chair she occupied was shorter than the others, so that she had the sensation of the earth shifting ever so slightly beneath her as she reached for the small, stained metal creamer. She tipped the creamer over her fourth cup of coffee, watching as the white swirl of liquid sank into espresso before rising again, its breath expelled in a cloud of murky brown, coloring the surface.

Outside the rain had begun to fall in earnest, running in sheets of moisture down the pane beside her. Glancing out through the smudged, foggy glass, the street was a blurred scene from Childe Hassam that she has seen in a museum, the colors muted; gray and brown and more gray, street and building and sky merging.

“You need anything else?” The distinctly uninterested voice of her waitress drew her stare away from the waterlogged street. “Raining like hell, ain't it?”

“No, I'm fine,” she murmured back, not raising her eyes, her gaze caught by the incongruity of brown polyester pants and scuffed red tennis shoes, as the woman stood beside the table. “And yes, it is pouring.”

“Want the check?”

“Whenever you get a chance. There's no rush,” she answered slowly, the truth of the words sinking into her with the same swirling motion as the cream into her coffee, rising to the surface of her thoughts to make them cloudy and indistinct.

There was no rush. No rush for anything. She had no where to be. There was no one waiting at home for her. The day stretched out before her, long and gray and purposeless. Except for work. Work gave her life meaning. But still, there was no rush. The dead didn't go anywhere.

A movement outside the window caught her eye and she turned her head to watch as two figures paused a few feet to the right. An older man and a younger one, neither dressed against the elements. The older man looked around forty or so, hair neatly cut, just beginning to gray at the temples.

He wore a suit, blue or black, she couldn't tell, the material wet and dragging down. The pale pink shirt was soaked through and she could see the outline of an undershirt, and the faint suggestion of a necklace of some sort. He was talking animatedly, his face seeming to shift with the steady river of rain that cascaded over his features, like waves moving sand.

The younger man appeared to be barely registering the words that swam at him through the downpour, his head incongruously tilted up as the sky dumped bucket after bucket down. His eyes were shut and the water slipped over his face, a waterfall over immobile rock. His sweatshirt and jeans looked so heavy that the bunched hem of them rested on the pavement, an anchor that held him to the world.

Finally, the older man stopped speaking, his eyes blinking rapidly, eyelashes playing ineffectual windshield wipers. He seemed to realize that the younger man was not listening and he reached an impatient hand out, flesh coming up to grasp at sodden fabric as he clutched the sleeve of the sweatshirt.

With a graceful arc of arm and shoulder, the younger man brushed the hand off, turning without a word to disappear into the gray ether of the rain. For a moment, the older man stood there, hair plastered to his head, gazing after the retreating figure, his hand still outstretched. It was like looking at a dvd in still frames as his hand slowly dropped. As it fell, the rain washed away all traces of feeling, of life from his face.

He turned in the opposite direction, and as he did, his eyes met hers. Even through the distorted imprecision of the glass, she could see in his face the words she had just spoken. No rush. He had no where to be. No one waiting at home. And then he blinked and in a few steps disappeared from her view.

Temperance took a last few sips from her coffee and pushed back her chair, the uneven leg tilting back and hitting the hard vinyl surface of the floor with a clunking sound. Gathering her anorak, she walked toward the cash register, the slight tackiness of the linoleum catching at the soles of her shoes.

Maybe she could call Angela. Do a little shopping. God knows, Angela never turned down shopping. Or better yet, they could take in a movie. The thought of sitting close in a darkened theater, a huge tub of popcorn between them, arms pressed tightly against each other on the armrest suddenly seemed the best idea she had had in a long time.

Standing under the minimal shelter of the restaurant awning, Temperance pulled out her phone, her thumb hitting the speed dial of Angela's number. Only then did she remember that Angela wasn't home. She and boyfriend du jour had headed out for the Maryland shore late yesterday. Temperance idly wondered whether it was raining there as well, and if it was, if Angela had even noticed.

The rain had died down, reduced to an erratic play of drops against cement as she began the walk to her car. The bright yellow of her pullover stood out sharply against the still gloom of the gray, rain-slick sidewalk and street; an odd, disconcerting beacon of sun. But only on the outside.

Fallen and abandoned, she was an anonymous shift of light.