jeriendhal | Fic: Sea of Light

A Gargoyles/Dark City crossover that I wrote several years ago and just dredged up. Rating PG, no warnings.

When the dawn came, Terri blinked her eyes and turned away.

The shafts of light slipped between the city’s towering buildings, bathing the streets in a yellow-gold glow. Terri kept her head low, her eyes fixed firmly on the sidewalk. She had left her job at Harry’s All Nite Diner an hour ago, deciding to save the money she would have had to pay to use the cross-town bus by walking the two miles towards home. Every penny she saved was another penny towards Getting Out.

She was going to Get Out someday. She had sworn that, a long time ago.

An ambulance zoomed by, heading towards some commotion several blocks away, its siren wailing distress. Another followed soon on its heels, and then came a hook & ladder, and a pumper truck. When Terri reached the next intersection, she glanced towards Uptown. In a cloud of dust, the remains of several buildings lay centered around a gaping hole in the ground. A gaggle of police cars ringed the chaos, as the cops kept back a gathering crowd. She turned her face away, even as she felt a tug towards the disaster. The cops and firemen could handle it, they didn’t another bystander to worry about.

She'd gone just a block further, when the man stumbled in front of her. All she saw at first was hunched, lumbering shape brushing against as he fell out of the alleyway. Terri grabbed at the man’s lapels instinctively, swinging him around to slam up against the brick wall of the storefront. The man let out a startled gasp, then fell to his knees.

"Pardon me. I didn’t see... where I was going," the man gasped. As he looked up at her, Terri regretted her violent reaction. This man hardly looked like he was a threat. He was a skinny, sandy haired fellow, perhaps forty years old, dressed in a ripped and dusty tweed suit. Perched on his nose were a pair of gold wire framed glasses. One lens had been cracked by whatever accident left him in his current disheveled state.

"I’m sorry," she apologized, letting go of his tweed coat. "I shouldn’t have tossed you around like that. Were you in that accident back there?"

"Accident?" he asked, puzzled. Then he let out a short, startled laugh. "Accident... Yes... yes, I was. You could say... that I caused it... in fact." The man spoke as if he was perpetually short of breath, like someone who had ran too far, past the limits of endurance.

"You’re kidding," Terri said.

"No... I’m not. Couldn’t call it... an accident, really. Perhaps... a necessary balancing." He swayed where he stood, holding a handkerchief to a bleeding cut on his forehead. Terri figured he was about half a minute away from keeling over in shock.

"Come on. Let’s get you someplace where you can sit down," she said. Terri took hold of his arm, and led him inside a nearby automat, depositing him in one of the booths. Maybe the guy was nuts, or maybe he was just suffering from shock due to the accident. Some deep down instinct told her he wasn’t a threat, though. The man had the hunched over, beaten manner of a dog that had been kicked too many times.

She slipped some change into one of the wall slots, and retrieved a cup of black coffee which she pressed into his hand. That and a ham sandwich for herself ate the change she had saved by walking home.

"Thank you," the man said gratefully, holding the coffee with both hands to keep it from shaking. "I’m sorry... I haven’t... introduced myself. I’m Doctor Schreber. Doctor Daniel Poe... Schreber...

"I’m Terri," she said. "Terri Baltimore." She looked at him carefully. "You’re an MD?"

"No. A Doctor of... Psychiatry," Schreber said.

"A head shrinker?"

"A healer... of minds," he corrected. Something dark passed over his face, and he turned away from her gaze to look out the window. "At least... that’s what... I began... as. I’m something... different... now.

You’re a nutcase, Terri thought to herself. She felt chilly all of the sudden, despite the blinding morning light piercing the grimy plate glass, warming the brown cardigan she wore over her pink waitress dress.

"I called myself... an artist," he continued, off on some private train of thought. "But that was a... rationalization. I couldn’t face... what I was... truly doing. Too horrible." Schreber turned back to her abruptly. "Who are you?"

Terri pushed her back up against the seat opposite him, suddenly wishing there was more distance than just the small table between them. "I just told you..." she began.

"You gave me... your name," he said. "A name... is just a label... a tag. Who are you?"

"I’m just Terri," she said. "I’m a waitress."

"Not enough," he gasped. "Who are you? What makes you... what you are?"

She shrugged her shoulders, and forced herself to be calm. Maybe he was nuts, but she didn’t think he could physically threaten her. Better to just play along, and try to figure out what he had meant when he had been babbling about the accident. "I don’t know," Terri said.

"Everyone is... more than... just a name... and a position," Schreber went on. "What drives... you forward. Why do you... get out of... bed?"

"So I can get out of here," she replied automatically.

"Where... is here?"

"This place. This city," Terri said. She felt her face flush in anger. "I want out. I don’t fit in."

"Why not?" Schreber said, for a moment looking more sympathetic than crazy. "Someone who looks like you... People would try... to make... a place for you."

"Not likely," she replied, glancing at her own reflection in the window. A thin, coppery skinned face stared back at her. Her black hair was gathered up in a fraying bun, and her waitress’ dress hid a too skinny frame. There were bags under her eyes from the long night, and she angrily realized that this loony was keeping her away from her bed in the flophouse apartment she rented. "Look, I have to go," she told him.

"Stubbornness... A hard childhood... A father... who was never there. A mother too tired... to give love. An unsatisfying adulthood... And feelings... that there should be more," Schreber muttered softly.

"Huh?" Terri was halfway out of her seat when he spoke. She sat down again, hard.

"Merely... a formula," he said. He smiled sadly. "Just one more... question, and I’ll leave you... alone."

"What?"

"Before... this morning. When was... the last time... you saw the sun?"

"What kind of question is that?" she shot back. "I’ve seen it lots of times."

"When?" Schreber prodded. "A week? A month? A year?"

"I work nights," Terri said stubbornly. "I get up, go to work, go home, and sleep."

"You were... walking home... in the daylight," Schreber pointed out. "When did that... ever happen before?"

"Not since..." Terri paused, then frowned. She had last seen the sun... when? It had been a long time ago. Not since...

Her eyes grew wide, and she felt her heart begin to beat faster in her breast. She couldn’t remember.

The diner was filling up, growing noisy and warm as the morning crowd came through. Terri shivered once, convulsively. A cold, cold knot was forming at the bottom of her stomach, as she searched her memories, and came up empty.

"Who are you?" she demanded. She gripped the edge of the table to keep her hands from shaking. "What are you?"

"A man," Schreber said. Terri had lean over the counter, his next words were spoken so softly. "A man who... to preserve... what little he had left... chose to do... what his masters... demanded of him. To take... and reshape... the clay he was given. Into lies."

"Why can’t I remember?" she asked. Begged. Keep it together, she demanded of herself. Keep him talking. It was important to keep people talking. She had learned that a long time ago.

When?

"How do you feel?"

"Alone," she replied. She was in a now crowded automat, sitting across from a remarkably attentive man, and she felt alone.

She’d always felt alone.

"Why?"

"I don’t know," Terri said. "All I know is that I don’t belong here. This city, it isn’t where I should be. There’s nothing here. There’s no one here. Not for me, anyway."

"But where... would you go?"

"Away. Out. Maybe I’d go to..." She stopped again in mid-thought. Getting out of the city had been her goal since...

She couldn’t remember when.

She couldn’t remember where she wanted to go, either. Or where she was.

"What’s the name of the city?" she asked Schreber. The automat was growing colder.

"It doesn’t... have one," he told her. "An odd... oversight. They named... a place that was never... really there. But they didn’t... name what little... was real."

"Who?" she demanded. "Who built this city? When did they build it? Why?"

Schreber shook his head. "It doesn’t matter... who made... this place. They’re gone. Annihilated by... their own... curiosity. Their own desperation... to quantify... what can’t be quantified. The Clock... is destroyed. Their mechanisms are... controlled by another. One who wishes... to live... in the light. Do you want... to know... who you are?"

When had Schreber stopped being crazy, and become the only voice of reason she could hear? The man spoke truth, she could feel that somewhere in her bones. Instinct, older than humanity’s conscious thought, told her to trust him. "Yes," Terri said to him. "How am I supposed to know?"

"Live your life... and discover... for yourself," he advised. "But allow no one... to tell you... that we are only... the sum... of our memories."

"But," Terri tugged at her bun in agitation, dislodging her hair and making it spill across her back, below her shoulders. "Where do I start?"

"Try Shell Beach," he advised.

She left him there, sitting in the booth at the automat, sipping a cold cup of coffee. An odd looking man, with an odd way of speaking, who had broken free of something she couldn’t understand.

* * *

Terri finished the walk home slowly, looking at the city, really looking, for maybe the first time in her life. Brick storefronts held five-and-dimes, pharmacies, bookstores, run by people whose hours all said, "Open all night." The sidewalks and roads were full of citizens who walked slowly, blinking against the light. Sometimes they looked up at the sun with wonder, as if seeing it for the first time in their lives. Perhaps they were.

She walked up to her flophouse apartment and changed quickly out of her pink waitress uniform. She put on a long brown skirt, a white blouse, and sensible walking shoes. From under her mattress she retrieved the wad of bills she had been saving. It was far thicker than she thought it should be. More than enough for a bus ticket to Shell Beach. Enough for a bus ticket anywhere. If she knew where she wanted to go.

She left her hair down, and it feel into slightly curled waves. It looked better that way. Indefinably right.

The bus line managed to take her to the edge of town, where the buildings began to crowd together so tightly that you couldn’t really find where it ended and the outside world began. If there was an outside world.

"How do I get to Shell Beach?" she asked the driver, when bus had stopped."

"I'm not sure," he had said. "Just keep walking, I guess." He had scratched his head then, as if he knew there should have been a better answer.

"Thanks," Terri had said, and stepped off the bus. The tenements and shops in this part of town were mostly abandoned. Even the bums stayed away, with no passersby to beg change from. She started walking between the buildings, following no particular path, just keeping to a direction that seemed to be away from the city’s center.

When she found the door, it turned out to be blue, with a brass knob, and an almost comical sign that simply said, "Shell Beach." As if the whole seaside town would be just on the other side.

It was.

Terri turned the door, pushing it open, and was blinded by the light pouring from the sea. The sun’s rays hit the blue water and reflected back, producing a bright silver sheen.

She blinked her eyes rapidly, bringing them back into focus. She was standing on a boardwalk, leading across the beach to the sea. Behind her, a wall of immense height rose up, forming a barrier between the beach and the city. In the distance, almost disappearing behind the wall’s curve, she could see some buildings, and what looked like and amusement park.

At the end of the boardwalk, a man and woman sat on a bench. The said nothing, not seeing her. They seemed content to hold hands and stare at each other, communicating with silence, the way lovers always have. Terri left them alone. They wouldn’t have the answers she was looking for, and it would have felt sacrilegious to break the intensity of their emotion.

She kicked off her shoes and set off along the beach, heading towards the amusement park. The sand was warm, but not so much as to burn the soles of her feet. There was a breeze coming off the sea, but not so cool as to chill her. It was perfect. A paradise, in exact opposition to the grimy hell of the city she had just left.

Someone made this.

The ones who had made the city? No. Maybe the one who had freed Doctor Schreber from whoever had controlled him. Maybe the one who had brought the dawn. She didn’t know. Maybe she never would. It wasn’t the question she wanted answered.

She kept walking. It was close to mid-afternoon before she reached the outskirts of town. The town was as empty as the beach, with airy clapboard houses painted in gay pastels. In the amusement park, carnival booths sat empty, the Ferris wheel was frozen, and not a soul could be found. It was as if someone had decided to create the perfect beach side town, but had forgotten to tell anyone about it. So it sat abandoned, a little slice of heaven that someone had forgotten.

The breakfast she had eaten with Schreber had long gone, leaving her stomach grumbling. She stopped by an abandoned hot dog stand and fixed herself a Zen, leaving a dollar underneath the ketchup bottle for the owner to find. It tasted wonderful, somehow being better than the dogs she had bought in the city, usually while she was on the run to work.

She began to walk the length of the boardwalk, intending to start a systematic search of the town. Schreber had said she’d find answers here. Terri frowned to herself. No, he’d said Shell Beach was a place to start. The answers were somewhere else.

"So where do I go from here?" she said aloud. The only reply she received was the whistling of the wind along the sand. So she started walking again.

Terri had almost reached the boardwalk’s end, when she saw a dark shape rising from the beach ahead of her. It was vaguely man shaped and standing perfectly still. She vaulted over the wooden railing, onto the sand and began jogging towards the mysterious figure.

When reached it, she found a larger than life statue waiting for her, carved out of what looked like granite. It was of a humanoid creature standing over seven feet tall, clad only in a stone loincloth, with bat-like wings outstretched, looking like nothing so much as a demon from a biblical story.

No, she thought to herself, not a demon. Despite its inhuman features, there was something noble in its carved face. A quiet dignity that hinted at enormous strength. And there was something else there as well. It was staring directly at the walls of the city, one clawed hand outstretched, with a look of infinite longing on its face, as if it wanted to search within for something. Something it had lost.

"Hell of a place to leave a lawn sculpture," Terri said to no one in particular. She stepped around the statue, raising her eyes against the sun, which was starting to drop down towards the bright sea. Behind it, she found a rowboat built in fantastic style, with painted gunwales and a high carved prow, looking for all the world like a prop from a Viking epic.

Someone had dragged the boat from the water, up the beach. There were digigrade footprints leading from the water’s edge, going all the way up to the statue itself.

Statues don’t walk, she thought to herself. But cities weren’t supposed to live in darkness, either. And people weren’t supposed to go though night after night, with no clue as to who they really were.

"Who are you, Big Guy?" Terri asked, walking around to face the statue again. "Who are you looking for?" He didn’t answer, though at this point she wouldn’t have surprised if he had.

The sun was still coming down, and the night was going to be cold when the breeze picked up off the sea. But she was tired, and wondering. So Terri sat down in the shade of the statue’s wings, and waited for the night to come.

The End