Tom was in a dark place, but that may be due to the lack of light, it might have had a lot to do with the fact that his optimism had vacated the area. He was still smiling a dumb smile, though, and as he was looking for his escape, he noticed that his companion Charles had noticed his smiling as well, and Tom could sense Charles' decline in persistance to help the neurotic Major.
Despite the darkness, there was still a sense of impending day settling among the two men. Tom's smile, although making an uneasy tension, was confident, and when Charles asked what was so delightful, Tom replied "I've only got one tooth left." This, being unbelieveably untrue as Charles stared at the faint yellow teeth living in Tom's mouth, the laughter that erupted from behind them creaked, and Charles did not dare to ask what he meant. He assumed it would be some term from the seven that would really not make any sense than to the fighters.
Charles was a success. Charles had decided to travel for the rest of his life after become a success, and so he ended up somewhere hot and desert-like, and that was where he had been stranded, lost, and compelled to travel onward on foot, when he had run into the Major and had lost his battle with staying on his life course immediately. Tom had changed him. Charles was one of those "buy the crowd a few rounds" sort of guy, someone who would pick up the cheque without being asked, hold open the door, and this was why --he figured-- that Tom stuck with him. He was suave, he had women, he was a success.
Despite him being a success, Tom had rescued him one day while he was sitting beside some cactus feeling peckish, poking the spokes and when Tom, who was so together and polish-esque took him in he realised just how far gone his successful life had taken him. The Major had flipped his world until Charles knew that not only was his life a failure, but he would only redeem himself while helping this deranged nobody.
But Charles was never a confident man. This was clear in the shadow of the Major. His lines, his walking strides, his straight back were all skewed within Tom's perameters. Tom took hold of Charles' soul and recognised him as his helper, not as an individual. He was an object within Tom's world, and within Tom's reach you shuddered at the sound of speech.
And you fleed from laughter.
And so the second Charles heard the laughter, the insane laughter, he knew that it was no time to bring up questions or why they were standing in the middle of an irrelevant darkness. Charles knew that regardless of his past life, his last life, Tom would not take gratification, or ever forgive his helper of the fact that he was a survivalist success, that although Tom had survived the seven hours in the mountains, Charles had survived thirty years of continuous, perpetual society. Society trumps mountains, but soldier trumped mundane.
Charles was mundane. He had no substance to his name, no grit under his nails. Tom was definitely dirty, and by civilization's sense you stood away from the unhygenic. Charles had been afraid of Tom once, and although the fear lingered like a bad taste it did not tempt him to escape. Charles would be safe as long as the Major continued to play his own game upon him, to manipulate the surroundings in which they stood in now.
They were in the blackness, and their breathing was prominent within the heat and the rain, the silence. There was darkness, but their faces were visible. It was unheard of to Charles, the awareness of the other's face in darkness, but there it was, plain as day, the yellow the smile the stench, the dirt, the unhealthy, the eyes. The Major's eyes were looking straight above Charles' head, and he could do nothing but purse his lips and hope to the almighty mountain that Tom stayed calm, stayed in his boundaries, stayed "optimistic" for the time being.
And then it hit.
It wasn't really a surpirse, either, since Charles knew that at one point Tom would send him hurtling off of the mountain. But in his last few seconds of alive consciousness, Charles thought of his desk at home, with his silver ink pen with no cap sitting to the right.
The Major's laugh hung in the air, it was heavy, a sinking laugh that crawled under the rocks and stung the ground. It waited, it waited for another sound, but there was none. Tom turned away from the edge of the cliff, and cracked his neck. This was something that happened far too often to be healthy, but when the only thing keeping you healthy was that one mandatory glass of water a day...
Tom had needed the Word. The Word had been picking at a cactus when he had found him in the dry place, some distance from the mountains, and the Word had told him things about the success that only the success would know, and Tom had deduced enough from the Word to know that although he was a git, he knew what he was talking about, and he would have to be brought along.
Tom was on a journey. He was looking for the great mountains, the stone mountains that took years to appreciate after the modelling of them took only some months. People lived and worked and strived in these mountains, and the great one was large and had glass and was surrounded by inferior mountains. The magical mountain would redeem Tom of his journey. Tom would be satisfied at this mountain, because the seven had taken seven hours to pick-ax their way through resources, through bark and dirt and water, through air and purity, and the men who had lost due to their laziness would swirl in hell for Tom's sin of living had prevailed, and revealed itself to be resounding in the heavens of the mountains.
Tom would find the mountain that the Word spoke of so clearly, and he would take from it what was his, what would should have been his from the beginning. Not some lazy job, not some Major title, not a title at all, but a silver ink pen. The pens were for the success, but Tom wanted one to burn. By burning the silver ink pen, he would die a happy, satisfied, zero.
In the darkness Tom thought of his smile again, how he would continue it until he had forgotten the Word, and until he could see his own hands again. The funny thing about the darkness was that you could see faces, but not anything else. It was an infinite unlight of mystery except when it came to identity, unless you were alone. Tom, who was staring at his hands, or where they would be in the light, and figuring that if the Word was gone, he needed another.
His work would not finish until all of the mountains fell.
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