secret_history | sorceror's drabble request

sorceror is evil and asked me for an Incarnate drabble featuring little one-armed Shannons. I've done my best to accommodate him, but I realised that, as a player, I don't really "get" Alvin Standard. So I had to improvise a bit on his character. I hope I've done him justice.

"Mama… will you tell me a story about the past, please? I want to hear about New England again."

Shannon managed to avoid snapping at her youngest daughter, although it felt as though someone was industriously drilling a hole into the side of her skull, and she was thoroughly convinced it wouldn't take much for her to lose what little breakfast she'd managed to choke down so far.

"Sinead, go ask your father for a story. I can't right now."

Sinead scowled. "Daddy doesn't tell good stories. Tell me a story, Mama, pleeeease?" she let a whine creep into her voice which felt like a white-hot needle piercing Shannon's eardrums.

"You know," Voltaire opined from somewhere at the back of her mind, "I have never understood why that child talks so much. You and your husband don't talk nearly that much. Perhaps she talks to fill in the silences, eh?"

"No, that's your job," she answered silently. She knew Voltaire could hear her. "And please, for the love of all that's good and holy, be quiet."

"It's hardly my fault that you had too much to drink last night. If you ask me, this Richard is getting in the way of my work. You should get rid of him."

"I'm not getting rid of Richard," she snapped. "He's as much a part of me as you are, and he's not nearly as annoying. At least he's quiet most of the time!"

Voltaire lapsed into a sulky silence while Sinead continued to plead for a story.

She appealed to her husband, who had just appeared in the doorway to the bedroom. "Alvin, for God's sake…"

Alvin scooped Sinead up and propped her against his hip. "Come on, little girl. Your Mama's got a headache. She had a bad night, so we're going to let her sleep in. We can make waffles."

Shannon smiled gratefully at him, and pulled the covers over her head.

"Mama makes better waffles."

"Yes, well, that's because Mama has two arms. Besides, she never puts whipped cream on them, now does she?"

Sinead shrieked with delight and clapped her hands, and Shannon whimpered. "Alvin!"

"Shush, Sinead. We'll go make noise elsewhere while your Mama gets over her hang- umm, headache."

"Did Richard come back and make her drink again?" his daughter asked brightly as he carried her toward the kitchen, and Alvin nearly choked.

"Where did you hear that?" he demanded, sitting her down on one of the wooden chairs at the table.

Sinead kicked her heels unconcernedly at the bars of the chair. "I heard you and Mama talking, only it wasn't Mama, it was Richard. He used very bad words," she said, reaching for a glass on the table which Alvin promptly confiscated before she broke it.

Alvin stared at his daughter, wondering where the hell she had gotten this habit of sneaking around. Certainly it wasn't from him or his wife. Maybe the television. He'd have to watch out for that.

"Why does Richard do that?" Sinead asked, her little legs still swinging.

Alvin pulled out the makings of waffles as he pondered how to answer the question he and Shannon and countless other Incarnates had never been quite able to figure out. Why did some past lives have the ability to control the body of their latest incarnation, and why did they feel the need to do so?

"I'm not sure," he said finally. "I think maybe Richard thinks he needs to come back and finish something, maybe. He died very suddenly, you know, and so maybe he left something undone."

"Can't we figure out what it is?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I don't know how we'd do that."

Sinead appeared unconcerned, and changed tacks with the alarming rapidity of all five-year-olds. "You knew Richard once, didn't you Daddy?"

The fingers in Alvin's missing hand began to itch, as they hadn't done in years. He rubbed his shoulder instinctively with his remaining hand, hearing the 'click' of the land mine as loudly as if he'd just stepped on it, and the roar of the detonation as his world erupted into a nightmare of flames and smoke and shrapnel and searing pain.

"Yes, Sinead. I knew him once."

sorceror's drabble request

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