(PARODY AMONG US): 7.13 The Snapping Beneath The Floorboards
Torchwood Parody Among Us
7.13 The Snapping Beneath The Floorboards
Starring Natalia Cordova Buckley, Scarlett Johansson, Ben Mendelsohn and Ian Alexander
Warning: Shit is heavy
The Hub
Cherry came to, and The Light was blinding. Her view fuzzed in and out of focus as she came to. Her head ringing from the strike. She had...She had been shot. Holy shit. She had been shot. Her mind was frantic, but her body was drowsy, her eyes barely fluttering open. And what was that light?
It all began to fade in as Richardson shone the light into her eyes.
She was tied to a chair.
Richardson.
She shouldn't have...it was him?
Richardson?
"Don't bother trying to get up, you're only alive because I wanted you to be," Richardson said in his melodic rumble of a confusing voice. "It takes a great degree of talent to shoot someone in the stomach without puncturing anything superbly important."
She was in the original torchwood hub's rubble. Not the hub they worked in now. She was in the infirmary...Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no
Richardson snapped a plastic medical glove onto his fingers, chuckling quietly. "You know, I thought it would have took longer. Turns out all you need to do to kill Torchwood is keep the city nice and quiet."
"You're...." Cherry groaned...
"No, no, seriously. Stop. You're going to need to save your strength." Richardson said. "Okay, so, yes. I am Anarchy, the leader of the Anarchists, the leader of the Committee, and all of that stuff. Deep Cover is really difficult to maintain, you know. You have to act superbly stupid at times. But all of that is over now. Hold still."
Richardson reached for a scalpel off of the table.
"This is probably gonna hurt."
Nightmares. She brushed off the frightening visions. Simply nightmares. That was all they were. False visions that were not the truth. Nightmares. Anastasia couldn't sleep a lot of the time, and as a result, she was becoming more nocturnal. She brushed off her hair, and twisted it into it's usual bun. She had no clue what time it was, but it was superbly dark.
Anastasia sighed, pulling herself off of the ground... Nightmares. Simply repeating the word as if that would lessen the impact of seeing his face each night. Her uncle.
Bloodied, and broken.
She rumpled through her pockets of her dark trenchcoat, one of the last remainders of her old life. Twenty Three Pounds. All she had.
She was hungry. And thirsty. Bag of crisps - water - That was probably eight pounds at the least.
She didn't really want a drink of water though.
* * *
Anastasia slumped down the street. Her gut was aching, and it was either the alcohol or her self-loathing. She wasn't quite sure which. It began to rain- as it did in Cardiff. Across the street, she saw shelter. A tea shop. She haphazardly moved her way over to it.
Opened the door.
Walked in.
"Anastasia?" Ash asked, dumbfounded, serving at the counter.
"Ash?" Anastasia said groggily.
"Oh, golly, you look absolutely wasted," Ash worried, walking over. "What happened?"
"What do you think, Ash?" Anastasia groaned. "I got fired from the only thing keeping me going."
"Well, you didn't strictly get fired. The place closed down...okay, perhaps not the point I should be making - you should have come and talked to me. We're friends."
"We were workers. And besides. I can't talk to you about..." Anastasia muttered.
"What?" Ash asked.
Anastasia slouched. "Nothing." She growled, angrily.
"I'd get you some coffee or tea, but contrary to popular belief, caffeine does not decrease level of intoxication." Ash chirped. "Do you want a blanket?"
"What is this place, some kind of-"
"Tea shop." Ash stated. "You go in it to buy Tea, usually."
"I'm not that drunk." Anastasia grumbled. "I meant what you're doing here?"
"I'm moving on with my life. Although I must say, somehow being a barista is just as stressful as hunting aliens." Ash muttered. "Not like there are any aliens anymore."
"I know, that's why I'm in here," Anastasia hissed. "Stop treating me like a baby."
"Well, the rain sure is coming down. I'll get you a blanket."
"I'm fine," Anastasia spat. "I've been sleeping on far worse than this, I can be comfortable in your fancy tea shop."
"What?" They asked.
"My apartment went boom a month and a half ago. I was sleeping in the Hub until I got fired." Anastasia growled. "Nobody asked me about any of this. Now...Now I'm alone."
"Okay, I'm definitely getting you a blanket."
* * *
Ash walked back over to Anastasia with a blanket. He handed it over, and she begrudgingly accepted. "Alright, you're going to tell me everything."
Anastasia placed her head on the table. "No." She whispered. She was nearly completely sober now, but her head was ringing like hell.
"I don't want to be annoying, Anastasia, but you need help. I can tell."
"What?"
"You look like bloody Owen Harper." Ash said. "Now come on. Tell me. I'm here for you-"
"No."
"I'm sorry?"
"You don't get to throw that I'm here for you shit at me, Ash. You weren't there, no one was there, you aren't gonna understand. No one's gonna. No one else just fucking kills their uncle!" Anastasia blurted.
Ash stood there in silence.
"Tell me everything." They said quietly.
Anastasia rushed out onto the street.
* * *
Well, Anastasia. You've done it now.
You ruined everything, Anastasia, you ruined everything and he's dead and he's not coming back and now Ash knows, now he fucking knows thanks to your stupid big mouth
Run
Run Anastasia Run
Run far away from here so none of them will ever know
Escape
Escape them
They're only here to hurt you
* * *
Abandoned building. Good. Anastasia stepped inside, her dark trenchcoat drenched by the rain. She pushed inside, into the dark, where she could be alone.
Rats scurried through the dark.
She watched one of them scurry into a hole in the wall. A point of black darker than the rest of the darkness.
She wished she could have a place like that.
"Anastasia," A whisper came from beneath the floorboards of the building. The broken floorboards, some split in two, littered with gravel, seemed to move slightly - a microinch of a microinch as it spoke.
Shit.
"What? Who's there?" Anastasia snarled.
Something slid something across the floor to her. She picked it up, off of the floor. A Gun.
"You have two options. You can kill them. Stop the others from knowing... - or you can kill yourself."
"Who's there?" Anastasia shook. "Who's there?!!" She yelled.
"Two options," The voice of her uncle whispered. "You have two options."
* * *
The rain continued to fall, but luckily, Ash had an Umbrella. It was small, and it was printed with rubber ducks on it - they had gotten it at a young age, but it was an Umbrella.
"Anastasia!" Ash yelled. "Anastasia!"
Oh, damn it. Where was she?
"Anastasia!!"
Nothing.
Their umbrella was useless now at it's function, the rain blowing and fluttering into Ash's eyes. Their makeup streaked.
Ash bent down to observe a halfwashed away footprint in a mud-sand-gravel puddle.
Anastasia. Or anyone else that wore that particular brand of boots...but fairly distinctive.
Ash turned left, following the scant trail of washed away footprints.
* * *
Anastasia turned the gun over in her hand.
Her rational thoughts fought her irrational as she did so.
"Two choices," Her uncle's voice chided, a scraping noise echoing from underneath the building.
Anastasia bit her lip. "What are you," She growled angrily.
Nothing in response, which didn't help her nerves, which were growing.
She had dreamed about escape for the last few nights...but she didn't want death to be her way out of her problems. At least, that's what her conscious told her.
The subconcious mind whispered taunting, vicious memories.
Growing up with her Papas in a desolate town in Mexico - learning what hatred and bigotry meant from a very young age. Her family was hated, and just by being adopted into it, she had been thrown into that hatred. But she loved them, she loved that memory, and when she thought of her uncle, she didn't think of a snarling faced Weevil, she thought of her happy smiling uncle who taught her how to color with some nice crayons that he made from the leftover wax he had from his work. At night she didn't have nightmares about Weevils...she only saw his head bleeding onto the pavement. That was the fear. That was what she had done.
"Anastasia," Ash said, walking in. "Put the Gun Down."
Anastasia turned, shaking. "I killed him," She cried quietly. "Ash, I really killed him, and it wasn't him, but it really really was, and I-"
The voice from below them snarled, the deep anger rising. "You have two options. You can kill him or be free, or you can die before they get to you. You've seen the prisons here...the hell on earth they are...do you really want to go to one?"
"Stop talking to me!" She yelled. "Stop it, Uncle, stop it!"
"Anastasia, there's no one there." Ash said quietly. "I'm not going to hurt you, I'm not going to let anyone hurt you, just put the gun down."
"How many have died because of me?!" Anastasia cried. "How many people did I fail to save - if it wasn't for me, Mrs. Thenardier's house wouldn't have been fucking bombed- I wouldn't see her face every night too-"
"Anastasia," Ash began-
"Shoot him," Yvonne Hartman's voice snarled from beneath the floorboards. "He's so sanctimonious. Won't shut up for one second, thinks he's the smartest fellow in the room. Show him who's boss."
Anastasia's hand shook. "Ash, stay away." She insisted. "It wants to hurt you. It wants to hurt us."
Ash reached out his hand. "It's alright." Ash said, continually calm. "I-"
"It's not fucking alright." Anastasia snapped. "Stop telling me to calm down. I don't want to calm down."
"Kill him," The growling and scraping from beneath them grew closer.
"Get away!" Anastasia repeated. "Get Out, Ash."
"If you don't want to calm down, then that's fine. But I'm not leaving you here." Ash said.
"You're never going to understand."
"Not exactly..." Ash said, emotional, "But I definitely understand what it's like to feel like the world is going to swallow you up. Like there's no way out. And I nearly made this mistake myself, so please." Ash begged. "Put the gun down."
The Voices Screamed In Revolt, a cacophony of menace, a swirling of terror-
Anastasia dropped the gun to the floor.
It all stopped.
She collapsed, crying.
Ash walked over. "I'm going to hug you, is that okay?" They asked.
It was.
"I'll explain everything." She said.
* * *
Anastasia stepped out of the hut onto the street, a slow peach red light filtering over the horizon as the sun rose.
"It's....it's beautiful." Anastasia whispered quietly. Still a bit broken up.
"Anastasia, I know you've been through a lot, but...I do think ...with your uncle...you made the hard call, and the fact that it hurts..." Ash began... "Well, I don't want to say that it's good, but it's better that it does than it doesn't."
"You're right. I...Torchwood is going to be hard to move on from, but, yeah...that's right." Anastasia said quietly.
"If you're still homeless, Brayden and I have a sizable apartment." Ash remarked.
"Hunter?" Anastasia's mouth dropped. "I'm sorry, Hunter?"
"Yes," Ash said.
"Well. Color me surprised." Anastasia sighed. "He's probably an awful roommate."
"The worst. He hogs the bed."
For the first time in a while, Anastasia laughed.
Then she realized what this meant. "...Wait, are you being serious?"
* * *
Anastasia and Ash left, and they left relieved. Whether Torchwood had a future or not, they had remained friends.
The past was perhaps less scary.
The future was open.
And deep down below the floorboards of the rusted old shack, deep and behind rusted girders and rubble, wood and chain, there lay a skull. Reaching out from beneath the dirt. Waiting.
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