Out Of Control 36

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

AnCatKatie

Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
Joined
Nov 27, 2010
Messages
6,813
Location
pearl jammin'
It's been so effing long since I wrote a chapter of this...good lord.

And yes, I'll leave you guys off there.

Not too many chapters left...

***

"Sometimes...
even right is wrong
"

—Codlplay, Lovers In Japan​

1986​

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit,” Eve muttered to herself, rubbing her fists over her eyes. The sparks she saw when she did that were not at all comforting.

She’d gone back to the entrance of the hospital like Phoenix said. And waited there for a couple hours, waiting for Phoenix to come back. At first she thought Phoenix might be playing a trick on her, when the sun began to sink behind the cars in the hospital parking lot and Eve’s legs ached from standing for so long. Then hope flared and she wondered if Phoenix had extricated Ciarán from wherever he was and that was why she was taking so wrong. Or maybe she had found Bono and they’d abandoned all claims of not seeing each other and were…well…anyways. By the time night fell and the chill began to set in, the palm trees outside mocking Eve’s assumption that Santa Barbara would be warm, Eve’s heart had begun to sink.

Obviously Phoenix had gotten herself into some deep trouble. Because she wasn’t back. It was nearing the middle of nighttime, long past when they agreed this would be over with. On top of it all, Eve had no pressure, no lightening in her mind indicating what Phoenix might be going through—as she’d told her cousin, there was nothing but her own thoughts.

“And that’s a bloody problem now, isn’t it!” she said out loud. Okay, stop talking to yourself Eve. Her heart beat hummingbird-fast though as she went through the various grim possibilities of what had happened to her cousin. The prospect of Phoenix having an affair with Bono suddenly seemed a lot more pleasant than whatever was probably happening to her.

She pressed her hands over her eyes again, trying not to see the images in her head. They left. She stilled and calmed a little.

Well, this meant they were probably right. Probably.

Eve sighed, and turned the way she did not think she would have to go: back into the hospital to break a man’s heart. Dammit, Phoenix…you didn’t even tell him you were released from the hospital, did you?

Mark was one big long healing burn mark. The skin peeking from beneath his bandaged arm was a less distressingly shiny pink than before. He leaned back like more of a stick figure of a man than he was against the hospital bed, his dulled spark eyes following Eve and blinking. She could actually recognize the shape of his face now; he had shaved, a little cut on his chin. She tried not to look at the tight raw skin of his hand where it showed balloon surface thin. There used to be guitar calluses there, she knew. He could do little now.

“Mark?” Eve asked. He focused on her calmly. He had suffered little but the burns—up till now. Her stomach wrestled uncomfortably with everything she knew and did not want to have to tell him.

“Do I know you?” he asked, squinting puffy eyes.

“I’m Ruth’s sister,” she said, sighing inwardly. “Eve.” There was a bit of a silence; Mark raised his eyebrows.

“Phoenix,” she blurted out of the blue; Phoenix was on her mind.

He leaned forward despite himself, eyes bright and attached to some recent memory of the concept of Phoenix. Eve swallowed, accidentally looking down at his hand. She didn’t do well looking at wounds…she remembered Ruth had pointed out calm as day someone who had nearly died from that bomb she’d run from—that Eve had known nothing about…it was hard to look away fast enough. See past the tree-skeleton bones and the unbidden mental image of what the body should look like.

She talked fast, wanting to get this over with. “Did Phoenix ever mention anything unusual to you?”

“That’s an awfully broad category,” Mark laughed, his expression still painfully open.

His confusion registered to Eve, who asked, “Have you felt unusually close to her? It’s a normal thing between people. But to the point where you felt like you knew what she was thinking. And it didn’t seem strange in any way…because mostly it isn’t…”

He nodded slowly.

“Shite,” Eve muttered, thinking It does rub off on people…her head buzzed. What if the disconnection was a sort of protection method…something instinctual…maybe it could be overcome? she mentally shook her head, focusing.

She explained as much as she could. Mark didn’t seem very surprised.

“Why are you telling me?” he asked, though, rubbing his finger over his thumb absently. “She could have told me if she wanted to. It doesn’t matter. She’s the same to me.”

“I was trying to find someone…somewhere…with her…with that. We were going to meet back in front of the hospital, and a couple hours passed…and I have no idea where she is.”

He looked confused again, and the other expression cut at Eve, the worry…the hurt behind it…

“We think the fire wasn’t an accident. And I think I know who started it, though not why. We were trying to find him. It was Phoenix’s idea…oh god, I’m sorry.”

She sat at the edge of the hospital bed, carefully away from him. She didn’t want to brush against the bandaged skin and accidentally hurt him…

“Ow,” Ruth winced when Eve jumped up to wrap her arms around her suddenly. Ruth had returned from Belfast just then. Eve didn’t know why she’d been so afraid for Ruth…

“What?”

Ruth looked down, hiding her eyes beneath her hair. Redgreenredgreen.

“Don’t try to kill me when you do that,” she said a moment later after a noticeable pause.

Well, Eve would be able to figure out what she needed to eventually…she wasn’t worried about Ruth not saying anything. Except the sudden sharp emptiness where the sort of staticky reception of Ruth’s mind was. Gone. Hidden?


Mark looked up at her suddenly. “Don’t,” he said.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t look like that. It’s not your fault.”

Yes it is…I knew something since Ruth started seeing Isaac…

“How is it not—“ He cut her off, shaking his head and grabbing her arm with his good hand. She stared at it in sudden fascination to avoid looking at his face.

“I know Phoenix,” he explained. “She does this. Something was bound to happen sometime or another.” She caught a look back at him, and he was staring out the window with a wistful expression. His grip loosened. She wiggled her hand away.

“I asked her to stay with me, on the day of the fire, and at least acknowledge that we love or hate each other. Makes sense that she’d up and run away.”

“You know her better than that. She wouldn’t stay gone.”

“No…but she’s been acting strangely lately.” His eyes clouded. “Almost as if she was afraid of something. She hid it, of course. It got so bad it was screwing with her guitar playing, and I asked what was going on…she wasn’t sure. Might it’ve been what you said?”

“It’s unlikely,” she told him seriously. “She must have known about…”

“Reading minds?”

“…earlier. It doesn’t tend to catch you unawares.” She tilted her head. “Acting strangely?”

He shook his head, looking past her. Mark had the images gripping behind his eyes, tightly fisted in his memory because he couldn’t forget them.

The night of the fire, looking for Phoenix to confirm that it was just maybe some food burning in a nearby restaurant…he’d seen a man outside, almost older than he and Phoenix combined, with a scar running from his ear to his chin…when he’d looked back he hadn’t seen that, but Phoenix swimming naked in the pool outside, talking to another man like she knew him. Loved him maybe.

Phoenix didn’t tend to act strangely…

Eve took one look at his face and said abruptly, “I’m going back.”

“What—!”

“You were talking just now about a strange man who had been outside…” Who wasn’t Isaac. This made things more confusing. Had Phoenix been wrong and gotten herself into a bigger mess than either of them had expected?

“Mark. Don’t worry about her,” she continued. “I have a feeling this is more complicated than I thought…”

She didn’t know head nor tail about what was going on anymore. Everything Eve knew had leapt and grown out of proportion to any possible facts.

*

Ruth unwillingly cracked her eyes open. The bluish early sunlight was almost headache-inducing. There was a warm little hollow of space between she and Oisín and the rumpled sheets, a warm reddish glow of the sun hitting his face and the shadows letting him sleep. Somehow, he had settled things last night. Something about the fact that they would always wake up next to each other for most of their lives reassured her. She looked at him for a moment, before the restless urge to wake pulled her out of bed and on her feet. Ruth shivered. She had the strangest sense descending on her. Something tugging at her to leave the house.

She frowned and pressed her head against the cold windowpane to clear that feeling away. Nothing happened; her forehead just felt colder. She closed her eyes, thinking, then settling on a realization. Her heart squeezed. This did feel familiar, didn’t it. But she usually wasn’t the recipient.

Oisín barely stirred, yawning when she pressed her lips to his forehead and whispered, “I’m going to go out for a bit.” She left him where he was. A similar strange sense of happening prickled at his skin, though it didn’t wake him yet. He wondered, in sleep, where Ruth was going…

Though curious as to why she could sense Eve again, Ruth fought it, wincing at the cold outside. She didn’t really want to be awake. She felt bad about leaving Oisín behind, but she knew something was bound to happen, and she didn’t want anything to happen to him. It didn’t matter if she got hurt, because…

Ruth frowned. Something about Eve’s thoughts was very familiar. She stopped walking down the street and sat down on a cold bench, pressing her hands against her forehead like somehow that would help her think.

It had been eight years ago. Eve hadn’t quite believed that Ruth was “fine” and leaving just because she wanted to go to America. Now, what about that time was familiar?

The slow-spreading feeling of Eve suspecting something she already knew…a little too late…

Ruth still wasn’t sure what that meant.

She found she was heading towards the ocean, and went to the edge of the pier, sitting down on the little observational deck at the end and looking at the huddled waves. Something was sparking her memory. She didn’t know what yet…she felt the faint glimmer of the beginning of a thought, still not yet understood.

Might it have been easier if Oisín hadn’t proposed to her? If she’d still been in that emotional turmoil from the afternoon before? She felt a general fuzziness around her memories from eight years ago. She was almost too happy to remember. Which was a problem, ugh.

Or maybe it was because Eve was only beginning to suspect something, again. Neither of them knew enough yet, what was true and what wasn’t. Ruth probably knew more.

‘Sheen had said it was probably Isaac who had started the fire, maybe even kidnapped Ciarán. But why…how did this connect to her?

She walked back home, too confused to think, and slipped in beside Oisín again, trying to get back to sleep. Maybe it would all make sense later. Right now she couldn’t think straight.

“’Sheen,” Ruth whispered before sleep dragged her back to think. “None of it makes sense.”

She was calmer after the sun drifted in and lit them both from the inside and she woke without the smell of ash around that had been prevalent in the air for the past weeks. She had a feeling of drifting sunken into her bones before something from her thoughts began to sink in. She was showering, Oisín still asleep, when she suddenly stilled, the water hissing around her, her thoughts clicking.

Why would Isaac start a fire…

Why would he have had that bomb…

How did both times connect to me…


Not that. But the heavy look in his eyes that said that he’d been lying. Stranger still, the guilt. He’d been so guilty he was drawn to her, a trap in himself.

And why would he kidnap Ciarán?

What purpose would that have accomplished...

She turned off the water with fumbling fingers and dressed hurriedly, leaving long trails of wetness where her hair didn’t quite dry, and practically ran out the door, stuffing her feet into her shoes on the pavement. She had a slightly better idea of where he might be, now. Even worse was the cold bead of understanding unshaking in the pit of her stomach.

She strung together what she would have told Bono and Ali and Oisín, some of which they had already heard. Some useful, some not. The facts floated by in sickening chunks of sunlight, distracting.

Eight years ago a man named Isaac walks onto a bus. Under his arm there’s a bag he throws away. He must have put the bomb somewhere more hidden, in the freezing morning in Belfast. He’s not stupid. He leans his head back against the seat at the front of the bus, the cold reminding him—he should stay unattached. To everyone. He can’t look the people who board the bus in the eye; he doesn’t want to see their faces.

He stands up, grabbing the door handle, and prepares to leave the bus. He takes a step out and just before the driver shouts a complaint that the bus is leaving, he is stepping off and I am stepping on. His eyes widen and he gives a little nudge forwards and the door shuts and I stumble off the step and the bus starts to leave.

Fastforward, in the hospital. "What’s the one thing you want most, Ruth?" he asks. I can’t answer. When I finally say something, he looks guilty.

Stupid eejit me. Should have said nothing.

"Why aren’t your parents here?" I ask him. "Or some other relative", I finish. "You must have someone".

"Why aren’t yours?" he glares. "Me da doesn’t care where I am."

He explains.

"Do you think", he asks, "do you think I’d make the same mistakes as him…"

"No. What do you mean? You mean, he’s a terrible father?"

"He’s not. As far as I care, he’s not anything related to me", he says before the subject closes off. Ruth eight years ago is confused.

"Do you think…do you think…"

Other things he'd asked, later, with short bloodstained breath.

"Why are you leaving, Ruth?"

"Why can’t you stay?"

"Why did you do that to me?"

What did he know before I left.


She knew now, but she kept as much of that knowing locked away inside of her as she could, in some jagged warm place she couldn’t let out. She needed to have a clear head to try not to believe whatever he said. The last time, she thought it hadn’t been him. It was around the time of the gunshot when she realized this man was a liar.

And that when he kept his word, he was deadly serious about it.

Ruth knew Santa Barbara. She had been here for a while. Her progress was mazelike in her preoccupation. She was in the middle of some unknown sidewalk when she quite literally ran into someone, and froze. Automatically she balled her fists and shoved whoever it was hard, hooking her other fist and slamming it into the man’s eye.

“Jaysus,” she heard, when she stepped back and met with wide eyes a surprised blue stare.

That voice calmed her down, though the hands gripping her arms to stop her hitting him sent an aftershock of her original fear coursing through her spine. Ruth slowly unfroze herself, wincing at Larry’s painfully squinted, puffy eye. She wanted to apologize, but just kept staring, her heart running ahead of her, bruising itself on the pavement.

“What the hell, Ruth?” Larry asked, when he’d stopped cursing at the punch that had come out of nowhere.

“I don’t think you want to know who I thought you were,” Ruth said slowly, still processing.

“Who—Nah, I probably deserved it,” he said unhappily, biting back a laugh. He expected some affirmative retort, but saw Ruth still looked stricken. She slipped downward and out of his grip, and made as if to walk away.

“Ruth! What—where in bloody feck are you going? Are you trying to get lost?”

“I live here,” she said irritatibly, “how can I get lost?” But she stopped, when he started walking towards her again. Irrationally she hoped.

“By not looking up at the buildings, for one,” he said reasonably. She started. She had been looking down at the sidewalk for the past block or so, thinking more about what Isaac had meant than where she was heading…

She needed her head to stop spinning with the spinning world.

“What’s going on, Ruth?”

She fixed him with that frantic stare again, which slipped into something a little calmer when he caught her hand, not dropping it the next moment like she thought he might. It didn’t mean anything. Really. But it steadied the convoluted axis for a second.

“Isaac. Started the fire,” she said in short gulps of air that got smoother and easier to move through her lungs. “He’s got Ciarán. He must.” Still, something didn’t quite add up.

She leaned against Larry briefly, the world steadying. Steadying. Trying not to notice the give in his skin when her face pressed against it, closed eyelids, the natural way he moved his head out of the way so her head fit on his shoulder. She thought suddenly of Oisín.

Distracting. She didn’t pull herself away, however. She just felt the earth rooted firmly in space for a moment, herself a little speck rooted to the earth. That was enough. Ruth relaxed.

“Why would those be related events?” Larry asked confusedly, gently extricating her head from his shoulder. She felt suddenly reluctant to speak further, knowing he might think the same thing. He was fine not knowing. Hopefully she was wrong, though the hairs rising on her arms said no she wasn’t and it was somehow somehow her fault…

She just gave him that look again, and said steadily, “I may not be able to come back.”

Larry looked at her in dismay, but she was already running back the way she’d come. His presence was fading already like the sun, like two hands meshed together, the fingers slipping into little synapses of space and then nothing together at all.

That moment had been strange. Like he’d known.

Ruth walked opposite the way Eve had went; she knew because she could feel in the unplanned scattered lightness of the way she’d came that Eve was here…is Eve searching for something? She had that strange separated-for-so-long feeling of Eve’s mind, again. The feeling of searching. She didn’t dwell on it because that, too, was distracting and she had the strangest feeling at the pit of her stomach that she was going the right way. Her hands started to clam up and her arms tensed and the sidwalk cracks got wider, little charcoal-drawn gulfs of cracked street underneath. A red tile skittered from a flat roof to fall with a flat wide sound onto the pavement. The windows stared from her peripheral vision. She felt like something was crawling through her body, something utterly reprehensible. The cold gunmetal feeling of Isaac’s life.

It was when she stopped at a streetcorner, in a sudden moment of doubt. A fork in the road, both ends of the street equally abandoned, no clues. Smack in the middle was some high lonely building, white-walled and crumbling, the wind rushing over the tall flat roof. The odd shape suddenly seemed familiar; she narrowed her eyes and came closer. It was an abandoned church, most likely. Probably the last place possible. Ruth lingered a moment though, setting her hand against the cool wall to the side and wondering suddenly, If Isaac wasn’t the one who started the fire…

It hadn’t seemed like the bomb had been entirely his choice, eight years ago, something she had tried to grapple with understanding for those years and failed.

…there must be someone else…her mind went through names. Who did Isaac know? Who was opposite to him?

D’you think, Ruth, that we become like our parents…

Her thoughts were cut off by a strange upheaval of the wall. Ruth frowned and moved away from it, then realized she had been standing in front of the door. How strange, she’d thought no-one was here. There was a shudder and a definite movement again, and the door cracked open, a man stepping out with the worst look she could imagine on his face. He stared at her utterly horrified, his wide dark-freckled face registering with a click in her mind just as he whispered, “Feck.”

It threw her entirely offguard.

Seamus? Seamus Fairleigh?” Ruth asked in wondering disgust. It was a little too late to notice that that stomach-clenched anxiety had left her in a strange emptiness. She moved forward, quite ready to punch Seamus—she’d heard from Oisín what Cath had had to deal with—

The man caught her wrist midswing hard, but not before she clapped a hand over his mouth. A mistake. She only realized that he’d frozen still when she felt a hand on her shoulderblade. What? Grasping there as if it was connected to someone who couldn’t see her, and pulling her back.

“You eejit!” Seamus spat at Ruth, glaring. “I was telling you to run, for Christ’s sake!”

Run? From what? There was someone else behind her; that had definitely not been Seamus pulling her away. Her body turned chill, prickling with warning that spread from her head down her spine.

She could have run. But she turned, trying to understand just what it was Seamus was referencing. Too late.

She saw too-unblinking blue clouded before her in a wide stare. All-too-familiar features, and the face…wrong…someone had marred Isaac’s face so that he looked almost another man. No, it was the way those eyes blinked slowly, heavy mothwings. His eyes weren’t clear anymore. He fumbled for sight, his hand flitting across her face briefly, heavily. Her stomach twisted sickeningly. Oisín had probably very nearly succeeded in killing him. He wasn’t all there.

What was coherent in his stare seemed lost. And somewhat dangerous.

“Ruth,” Isaac said. He’d backed her head against the wall with iron hands on either side; the shadowy other shapes in the room were only in her peripheral vision. The world turned nauseatingly at the utter silence after he spoke. And she could feel there were others here staring intently, and Seamus muttering curses under his breath.

She didn’t say anything, biding her time. She ran through her head a hopeful list of things in her pockets. None of them were anything close to a weapon.

But she’d seen his unintentional stumble in his footsteps, not to mention his eyes. Something was off. In a moment, she could take advantage of that to break free.

He squinted at her again, as if confirming his suspicions. She felt like retching, again.

Lightning fast, her arms were pinned behind her back with one heavy hands, and all plans died right there. Ruth calculated furiously. Maybe Seamus…

“Well, this should be interesting,” Isaac said, the image of who he saw and everything he knew about her finally connecting. A corner of his mouth twitched up in thought.
 
Lady, you best not wait as long for the next chapter as now it's getting intense.

Things are weaving together which is nice.
 
Heh, well I had 1. a college visit (which was good; it ended up being where I decided to go :)) 2. a bunch of homework to make up 3. too much to read 4. no inspiration...It's usually impossible for me to go so long without writing! I was inspired by reading a book with really good imagery, though. That's always fun.

It's good to begin to tie up the loose ends...the problem with that, though, is that now Isaac freaks the shit out of me. Ghh.
 
Nothing much to say, I guess... (just the same as all the rest?)
Really, no feedback for this, nothing, nothing is coming to mind.
It'd just be scary if all three of the women were captured. GAH. How have those men stayed concealed for so long?
 
How have those men stayed concealed for so long?

Utter evil skill. I don't know. Probably because there's been a fire to distract everyone.

Don't worry, Eve's going to pick up on the fact that something's wrong...hopefully in a timely fashion. I don't think Isaac's intentions are all that good.
 
I was thinking, it's all up to Eve now... she's the only one who really knows what was going on. Well, Ruth knows even more, but she's gone! C'mon. Somebody get her out soon.
 
Wow, the men are pretty useless here aren't they? Bono is too busy being tragic to be of any help to anyone. The rest of the band is...??
 
:lol: A good way to put it. Well, Edge is off in recording land, Larry's done being distracting though he'll be more helpful later, and Adam is just there to confuse Ali. Oisín is busy freaking out with Larry, who notified him Ruth was heading to wherever Isaac was...
 
Back
Top Bottom