Only The Good Die Young

[Wayland]

It was cold at the Home.

Even by British standards, it felt too cold for a day in July. The sky didn't lack for sun; but the veritable forest of trees that guarded the perimeter of the grounds didn't lack for shadow, either. Dappled shade was apparently all the rage as far as the groundskeepers were concerned: perhaps the government had issued one of it's ridiculous health warnings; perhaps now the elderly were to be kept out of direct sunlight, and out of reach of children.

From his bench, Wayland watched as one of his less mobile co-residents was wheeled along the path that meandered through the too large and too generic lawn. It had been landscaped, he believed the term was; someone had decided that millennia of geology and erosion had not made the terrain seem natural-looking enough, and so extra topography had been artificially added. It likely cost a fortune, too: a few thousand pounds for some ridiculously ill-mannered and ill-educated man with a wheelbarrow and no shirt to wander around adding lumps and bumps, only to cover them with endless strips of rolled-up lawn that had been carved from somewhere far more suitable.

Wayland couldn't see the point, frankly. The only people who were ever permitted to walk on the grass were the gardeners employed to cut it with one of those infernal tractor mower machines. If it was not supposed to be walked on, they should have just left it as a disinteresting patch of mud, so that no one had the inclination to set foot on it.

Withered, shaking fingers unfastened the leather bound organiser that rested in his lap, fumbling through the pages until it reached the calendar. A battered but still very much functional silver pen was withdrawn from an inner pocket of his tweed jacket; a cross of black ballpoint was carved through today's date.

Another day down, he mused, his eyes returning to their disinterested scrutiny of the world outside the Home's drab and magnolia-painted walls.

His old eyes, wreathed by tired and deep-set wrinkles, closed and opened in a slow blink.

Life goes on.

[Chartis]

Trying to describe to someone how different the air was here as compared to, say, Slavasshøgda, was an exercise in futility. Clarity had tried once or twice, and sometimes till got the occasional urge to try capture the sensation and pin it down in words, but in almost always ended in a total lack of understanding. There were the obvious, concrete differences: elevation, landscape, climate, season. All of these dictated tiny fluctuations in the atmosphere and all of these had absolutely nothing to do with the way the air felt when she opened her eyes in a new city, a new country, a new continent. Like fingerprints, each stretch of foreign land had it’s own particular sensation, wholly unique, totally irreplicable.

The scientific answer had something to do with the minute variations in the earth’s geomagnetic field, the source from which Clarity intuitively divined coordinates from. She valued the insight, but she wasn’t particularly fond of stripping away the romanticism of teleportation, stripping it to the bare bones of logic. One could dismantle the specifics of her mutation and lay them out atom by atom, mote by mote, and still there would be no way of fully grasping what it felt like to take a breath in Marrakech and feel the colour of burnt sand twining it’s way about her legs in reedy, coiling hisps, while the slippery taste of mint tea swelled beneath her tongue and the clatter of cymbals ached in her chest; it could not contain the calm, grey-heavened thoughtfulness that lay gently across her shoulders in Vancouver, the prickling rain kissing along her scalp like a whisper, even when it was sunny; science knew nothing of the overwhelming hum that clung to everything in Bombay, nor the startling silence that lived on the plains outside of Ulaan Baatar.

Today it felt like hands. Chilled hands, pressing just so against the vulnerable skin at the nape of her neck and trailing across her collarbone. Clarity felt the sharp edge in the air as she breathed in, the grating against her lungs like a blade upon a whetstone. The woman pulled her jacket all the tighter around her small, delicate frame and lifted her eyes to trail their blue, blue gaze across bronzed letters: High Trees Care Home. It sounded peaceful. She imagined that was the point; if you were going to convince people to move into the citizen’s equivalent of a prison, it at least had to maintain a veneer of appeal.

Clamping down on the unease that had been churning in her belly all week - long before she had even made the instantaneous trip between Westchester and London - Clarity started up the front steps. Her boots clacked on the stone. She wondered if they were appropriate, or if the chestnut suede was overkill for the occasion. How was one meant to dress when about to meet their biological father whose existence had been a secret for thirty-two years? This was the sort of thing that fashion magazines never covered.

The lobby inside was understated, painted in warm neutrals and decorated with framed floral watercolours. There were curtains in the window, a quaint touch. Clarity always forgot how cozy curtains could make a place seem, until she was reminded of precisely that by someone defying the vertical blinds craze. Maybe she ought to get some for her living space at the Institute. In fact, maybe she could leave right now and catch a taxi to -

No. No. There was a reason she was here. An important reason.

Clarity took a few more steps inside, firmly placing herself within the building. There was no one tucked behind the small reception desk. She leaned over, glanced down past brochures inviting potential residents to ‘come home to High Trees’, and then looked farther still down the passageway. There was an impossibly tiny, curly-haired woman with too much rouge on her cheeks, shuffling back into her room, but beyond that, there was only a distended quiet, occasionally pierced by the muffled sound of television programs winding on. A round of applause caught Clarity’s attention and she followed it, rounding the corner to find herself in a little sitting room. It, too, was nearly empty, save for a man in a tweed jacket sat upon the pink chevron-patterned sofa watching a game show of some sort, and a lonely ficus moping in the corner.

“Excuse me,” Clarity smiled, eyes doing an uncertain circuit between the television screen and it’s viewer, “I hate to interrupt, but I don’t suppose you know where I might find Wayland Godfrey?”

[Sam Enoch]

Sam peeled his eyes away from the screen, and looked at the new arrival with the kind of gratitude and admiration that made it seem like she'd risked life and limb to drag him back from the jaws of death with her bare hands. In a way she had: for the last twenty minutes, Sam had been forced to endure a fate worse than death, trapped in the lobby of an old people's home in front of a television with no remote control showing nothing but endless episodes of Deal or No Deal interrupted only by the frequent tedium of ad breaks.

His face changed slowly, unfurling from a coma mask of boredom into a blossoming smile, as warm and open as such an expression could possibly be. Deep brown eyes stared out from deep-set sockets, drinking in every detail as they flittered across her face.

"I have absolutely no idea whatsoever," he replied cheerfully; his voice tumbled out with an unmistakably English accent, offering a gentle reminder just in case anyone within earshot had forgotten which country they were currently in.

His features adjusted almost imperceptably into a smiling frown: an expression that seemed conceptionally odd, and yet one that his face seemed to have been perfectly crafted to sport. His head cocked ever so slightly to one side. "Could I possibly interest you in a Jammie Dodger?"

[Chartis]

"... I'm sorry, a what?"

Clarity shook her head, clearing away the fascinated trance that had wrapped up her attention and tucked it away. She had been on the receiving end of many looks in her life but never one from such a vaguely odd character, and never one that hemorrhaged quite as much adoration as his did. He was regarding her with an uncomfortably devoted expression, as if she were some kind of hero. What a strange, strange creature.

He helpfully held up a biscuit when confronted by her confusion. Ah, yes, she could see that he had a packet of them now, held safely in one hand. Clarity declined with a polite smile and a small shake of her head, her loose hair swishing over the collar of her coat.

"No, thank-you. That's very kind, but I really must find my... " she trailed off, stuck trying to unearth the right word to use. This scenario had never factored into her mind when she'd rehearsed how things might go.

Finally, Clarity merely offered another smile. "You're very kind, I'm so sorry for interrupting. Enjoy your program."

Back at the reception desk there was still only an empty chair. Clarity sighed. What was she supposed to do now? She couldn't very well go knocking door-to-door through the wards like some kind of inclusive solicitor. Though it didn't align with what she considered to be a place of refuge and comfort, the care facility was still home for most of these people. They deserved all the rights of privacy afforded to the rest of the world.

A walk wouldn't violate anyone, however. She could get a feel for the place, have some time to let her thoughts calm, and who knew? Maybe she would even discover some good fortune lurking in one of the corners and meet someone who knew where she might find the face that she was looking for.

[Sam Enoch]

Sam watched as his sanity lifeline disappeared. He was feeling decidedly dejected, or deflated, or some other word that began with 'de' and ended with 'ed'. He was fairly sure that the majority of words of that ilk would fit. His de'ed feelings were further amplified by her rejection of his biscuit profferance. The young woman had sounded decidedly European, and he supposed that explained her total lack of appreciation for the offer of a good biscuit; but there was more to it than that, he was sure. There was something about the way she had looked, the way she had acted; something that made it seem more like now simply wasn't the time for biscuits.

He let out a faint snort of derision as she disappeared through the doorway that led to the gardens, vanishing entirely from view.

"It's always the time for biscuits," he muttered disapprovingly to himself, twisting the Dodger's two biscuit sections apart to gain access to the alleged jam in the centre. Sam wasn't entirely convinced that it was what it claimed to be; but then Americans referred to Jam as Jelly, and Jelly as something else entirely, so he supposed that Jam was perhaps more of a relative, spiritual concept, and could be whatever you needed it to be.

Right now, Sam needed Jam to be in his stomach, and made short work of bringing that circumstance to pass.

[Chartis]

For some reason, Clarity felt compelled to walk very slowly as she traveled the passages of the care home. They were all the same, dressed in pale cream walls and glossy tile floors, giving way to rooms at either side and occasionally breaking up the monotony with a windowed alcove that housed a chair or two for resting, and yet her attention didn't waver. This was the place where a part of her lived. He had walked these same halls for years, now. They were just empty, insignificant passageways to Clarity; to him, they housed memories.

Perhaps even this very spot was important. One hand pressed gently to her mouth, Clarity turned a slow circle in the middle of an intersection of corridors. A soldier of daylight had managed to sneak across the front line, it`s gentle warmth lying in square defiance of the overhead fluorescent bulbs. She felt it dance across her high cheekbones, a companionable press, and when Clarity stopped her gradual spin, she found herself facing a glass door that opened to a garden.

Eager for a change, she stepped through and into the grasp of the outside world. Clarity took a deep breath. There was a tightness in her breast, a band of tension that she hadn`t realized was growing ever more restrictive until it began to loosen in the space of the garden. It was a pretty, winding affair with beds of crocuses and neatly trimmed hedges that gathered closely against the building and surrendered to broader, heartier trees the farther out the path stretched.

Papa would have hated this, Clarity thought to herself as she walked, gravel crunching underfoot. The idea of being stored away in a cunning little reproduction of the countryside would have only made Aldo`s anxious last days all the harder on his frail body; for this peaceful, manufactured bubble did nothing but emphasize the fact that this was not the world at large. He would have felt so useless, so cast aside. So forgotten.

Almost immediately, Clarity`s relief was replaced by a guilt for a man she did not know. Surely, he must have had a family of his own, a real family. Had they all given him away? Left him here, with the trees and his thoughts, to grapple alone with the fact that he had become outdated?

Or maybe she was uncharitable. Perhaps Wayland Godfrey received many visitors. Perhaps he was loved, as her own father had been.

"Enough," Clarity rebuked herself quietly. She stuffed her hands into her trouser pockets and sighed, shuffling forward. There was a bench ahead, sparsely occupied, and it would do some good to take a moment to collect herself before deciding on her next move.

[Wayland]

Someone new was in his garden.

Not only was she a new arrival for the day: she was new to this place; not a visitor he had ever seen before, and not one who seemed familiar with where the paths and corridors might lead. That much was obvious: no visitor ever set foot in the gardens without some elderly relative in tow. The young felt obligated to provide the elderly with the fresh air that they foolishly believed would somehow cure their ills; the elderly felt forced to comply, clinging on to those precious moments with relatives who cared enough to visit when it was convenient, but clearly not enough to let them be a permanent part of their lives. Only people like Wayland - the old and alone - ever ventured out here of their own volition; and even then, it was only to escape from the never-ending presence of the old and dying.

No: the woman was most certainly new. His senses and perception might have been dulled by age, but they had not turned completely blunt. And yet, something about her seemed strangely familiar. Perhaps that would be something to contemplate the next time he lapsed into deep thought.

Now was not the time, however. Now was the time for involuntary contact with humanity; the time for forced civilities, and needlessly trivial conversation. No doubt she would want to discuss the weather. No doubt she would want to tell him how lovely the garden was. No doubt she would feel like she was performing a much needed service: bringing a little joy and company into the life of a withered old man.

Why couldn't the world just leave him to die in peace?

He didn't move; part through choice, part through the partial seizure of his limbs that plagued him every time he sat. The merest inclination of his head was the only indication that his words were meant for her at all.

"You seem lost, child."

[Chartis]

A hesitant smile tugged at Clarity's lips. Child. That wasn't a term she was used to hearing applied to her. She supposed it was all relative, of course, but trying to embrace the concept in a way that wasn't shaped like her son was almost impossible.

"I am, a bit," Clarity confessed with a soft, hopeless laugh as she eased onto the opposite side of the bench. She tilted her face up for a moment to let the patterned sleeves of shade play across her features. The wind brushing through the leaves above made them rustle so that they sounded for a moment like whispering voices or gracious applause.

When a few moments of silence had settled around them, given them a bit of steeping time, she turned to face the elderly gentleman.

"This is my first time here, and I'm not entirely sure it's where I'd like to be," Clarity explained, tucking an arching curl of snowy hair behind her ear. She crossed her ankles neatly one over the other and leaned back, hands gathered in her lap.

"My name is Clarity - which is ironic, given the circumstances. May I ask your name?"

[Wayland]

It was with a sense of reluctance that Wayland considered answering. He had made this mistake before: those who seemed like innocent and friendly young people turned out to be vicious, greedy harpies intent on using guilt and anguish as weapons to strip away the last of his wealth, all in the name of saving orphans or refugees or baby Tasmanian snow leopards or some such nonsense in countries that hadn't even existed when Wayland had been their age. One slip of the tongue, one mention of a name, one foolish moment of weakness during which you mistakenly thought you were about to be asked for directions, and you suddenly became their prey.

No one had ever resorted to such tactics by coming to the Home itself before; but if that was her purpose in being here, he had to commend her for her bold and cunning strategy. It wouldn't work on him, of course; but then, the majority of her potential targets could not boast quite as much tactical experience in invading these kind of insidious quests for information as he had gained over his decades in service.

His head dipped slightly, aiming his gaze into a sidelong glance in her direction. "Perhaps," he pointed out, in a calm but gravelled voice, "It might be more helpful if you told me the name of who you are looking for."

He tried to muster a smile, but his withered features refused to let it manifest. "I am far too old to help a lost soul, but I'm sure I can manage to help a lost girl find your way."

[Chartis]

There was something about the old man that inspired in Clarity a desire to fetch him a tin mug (for such a chap seemed designed for sturdy practicality) of well-deserved tea. He possessed a bold weariness, stretching thinly over a harder tack, like a sentry wall that had stood fast for generations and was finally beginning to buckle beneath the eroding force of time.

"You know, I once played chess with a blind man in Morocco, much older than you. It was a fine lesson in not discrediting someone because of age," Clarity said. She leaned in a little, easily tossing aside the mild suspicious that he was sidelining her with. "Not only did he win, he also stole my pocketbook."

Much more than that, he'd captured her interest and become a friend. Silas of Tanger-Tetouan, who had defied utterly the grunge movement that had swept up her peer group during the early Nineties.

And now this stranger, who seemed just as equally displaced in his surroundings, a herald from another era. What stories did he have?

The trees overhead gave another timorous rattle, punctuating the stillness. Clarity crossed one knee over the other, her coat falling open at the bottom to reveal a sliver of blue linen.

"You don't seem the sort to do that," she smiled, eyes alighting on his cap for a moment before returning to capture his gaze. "And I've not brought my wallet, either. If you could point me in the direction of a Wayland Godfrey, though, I'd just about forgive you for not being a charming criminal."

[Wayland]

That almost conclusively confirmed his suspicions. If she had said anything else, he would probably have given her the benefit of the doubt; but claiming to be there to visit Wayland Godfrey - to visit him - was just preposterous.

She didn't have the personality or the bearing to have been from the military, nor the uniform: every time anyone from the Army or Air Force came to visit, they insisted on doing it in No. 1 dress. Allegedly it was a sign of respect - dress up smartly before visiting the tired old Brigadier who didn't have the decency to just die and save the military the expense of paying his pension - but frankly, Wayland always felt like the only one they were trying to make feel important was themselves.

No: this Clarity was clearly not a soldier. And somehow, he didn't buy her as anything else legitimate either; not one of those pretty young things with their trouser suits that the Security Service had employed lately; not one of those weedy little woman Police Constables who looked like little girls playing dress-up whenever they went to work. Whatever business Clarity had with Wayland Godfrey, it most definitely was not official state business.

More than likely a journalist, he decided, a little bitterly. Despite his efforts to avoid it, and despite the layers of red tape and secrecy that shrouded his service record, every now and again someone came poking around, trying to root up evidence on whatever crackpot conspiracy they thought he had been involved in. He supposed it was ironic: he actually had been part of a good many secret actions and government cover-ups; but the girl was a fool if she thought she could charm the details out of him. That path led to folly.

Wayland huffed out a laugh.

"Why on earth would you want to speak to that old fool?" Another expression - a frown this time - completely failed to manifest on his withered features. "Nothing he has to say that is worth listening to, I can assure you. I'm sure there are far more productive ways a young lady such as yourself could spend her day."

[Chartis]

"Oh, I'm sure there are," Clarity agreed warmly. Her polite smile didn't waver as she shrugged. "All the same."

Was it a requirement of old age, she wondered, to regard the world through a veil of skeptical cynicism? Perhaps it was merely the lingering optimist within her, a cunning survivor of her sterile European childhood that was bolstered by her own exuberant offspring, that gave Clarity a notion that it was possible for one to traverse their allotted time to a late point and manage to remain unmarred by poor experience, free from resentment at large.

She was going to be a delightful old lady. There would be a lot of absent doddering about the globe and taking advantage of the freedom to say exactly what she was thinking without fear of being politically correct and the drinking of spiked tea, just for the sake of shocking her grandchildren. Clarity wholly planned on embracing it with abandon.

In the meantime, however, she skirted it with the sort of gentle respect that one was meant to afford those of a certain age.

"He once knew someone important to me," Clarity offered by way of explanation. "I'd very much like to talk about it - though from the sounds of it, you don't have a standing date on the courts with him."

[Wayland]

"Wayland Godfrey was a great man, once."

The words tumbled from his lips with a mix of bitterness and disappointment. He had been proud of the man he was, once: proud to be that man. He'd done great things: saved lives; saved countries, even. He had done so much good, and he did not regret a single moment of it. But those days were gone, and what was left now? Where was the legacy that Wayland Godfrey would leave behind? When most of your life had been shrouded in secrecy, who was left to remember you when you were gone.

He looked at his unwanted visitor again, more closely this time. Someone important to me. The sense of vague familiarity he'd felt earlier suddenly seemed to take on new meaning. A relative, perhaps? It was a strange tactic for a journalist: trying to bluff their way in with such a story. Those things were easily uncovered, if you were shrewd enough and smart enough to trip up the lies.

There didn't seem to be any deception in her eyes, though: so who, then? The child of one of his old comrades? Walter Harriman had a daughter, he knew that much; but her name was Katrina, not Clarity and, though it would be rude to say it aloud, Clarity looked like she had a decade or so that Katrina Harriman was too young to posess. Annabelle Lester, perhaps? But no; she was too pretty to have come from Eric Lester's loins.

He frowned, finding himself defeated. The frustration that filled him with was overwhelming: old and addled his mind might be, but his memory was still mostly intact. He'd kept tabs on those he'd worked with - covertly, of course - and yet, the woman in front of him was a total mystery. Was she simply so good at lying that his dulled senses couldn't tell the difference, or was his memory finally starting to wither away?

"Who?" he asked, a note of angry insistance in your words. "Who did I -"

He stopped; he wished he hadn't. Forcing the blundered question through his lips might have been enough to make it pass unnoticed, but his involuntary hesitation had drawn too much attention to it. He sighed, his shoulders slumping.

"Who did I know?"