MIRRORS OF THE SOUL

Chapter 2:  All I Have Left

Once in the hallway, he looked both ways, seeing no sign of the missing Cort.  He decided to check the lobby, so headed that direction.  Rounding a corner (very similar to the definitely squarish Circular Quay in semantics) he discovered a strange doorway he'd never noticed before.  "What the f___?" he said.  "Where did THIS come from?"
He reached the fingertips of his right hand out toward its smooth surface.
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"Perhaps," Steve ventured, "if Bunny were to join you for the next shot?"  

Sid glanced briefly up to the balcony where he'd been aware for some time that the General had come to stand.  "Just one more roll of my son and me," he remarked rather loudly.

Joimus had gotten Dess settled for his nap under Franki's watchful eye.  "Why do you torture yourself so?" she asked, returning to the W and coming quietly up beside Maximus, putting her hand atop his on the rail.

He sighed.  "Seeing Livi even this way is better than not seeing him at all."  He leaned forward, brushing her brow with his lips.  "I'm sorry to be like this," he murmured, shaking his head.  

"Sorry to be like...Maximus?" she smiled.  "Like Maximus, who loves his sons?"

"It's not fair to you," he continued.  "I know it is not and, yet, I cannot seem to help myself."  

He had turned fully toward her as he spoke and she slid her arms around his torso, leaning her cheek on his chest, listening to his heart.  "What did you say at the very end of our wedding ceremony?"

Without hesitation, he replied, "I said I was 'home'."

"Are you home still?"

He pressed her to him, his hands spread wide over her shoulder blades. "You are my home," he murmured, his voice muffled because his lips were buried in her hair. He leaned back, then, just enough to move his lips to hers.

Sid looked up again, witnessing the embrace.  "Damn!" he growled. "She always spoils my fun."

Bunny walked up, smiling.  "It's in the script."

"You know there is no script," Sid snapped, still peeved.

"So she says," Bunny mused, looking up at the balcony herself.  "But I've often suspected she may be the only one of us who...has...one."

Sid's eyes widened at the thought, sparking with anger at the dastardliness of such a concept.  Seconds later, the angry lines of his features morphed into...  admiration.  "Damn!" he said again.  "Good for her!"  Looking back at the balcony, he added, "Maybe there's more to the little Puritan than I've given her credit for."  

Hando reached the bottom of the spiral steps, pausing, trying to get his bearings in the darkness.  "Cort?" he called softly.  "You down here?"  

It was winter now in Sydney and as he'd been intending on walking down the Wharf to Otto's, he was wearing his long, black, form-fitting topcoat over his TWP's, his blood red shirt, and white suspenders.  A sudden, small noise came from behind him and, instantly, a switchblade appeared in his hand.  He tensed, lifting his chin, his nostrils flaring.  "No games, Mate," he called, making an effort to keep his voice
controlled.  

Blinding lights flashed on and he lifted his left hand, shading his eyes. When he became accustomed to the glare, he realized he was standing in front of a mirror. Why would there be a huge mirror down here?  He blew out a sudden sharp breath, leaning forward to peer at the glass. Davey was standing beside him! He turned, reaching out his hand where Davey should be, his lips parting in happy surprise.

He was alone.  Spinning in a quick circle, he called, "Davey!"  But there was only the lights, the mirrors, the silence.  He let his gaze go back to the mirror.  Davey was there, standing less than two feet to his left. Hando's jaw muscles worked and his eyes blinked back wetness at the sight.  "Mate," he said, shaking his head, "where've you been?"  

The last Hando had seen of his best mate was when Davey left the warehouse with Gabe.  Ando always found ways, unsubtle Welsh ways, to distract him after that scene and, for him, it had become as though that were the ending of his movie. She preferred it that way.  Gabe was gone. Davey was gone.  That left Hando whole, strong, and in need of...company.  The memory of anything else had long since faded just as surely as though the celluloid had been snipped at that spot with formerly Welsh scissors.

"Davey?" he said again, cocking his head slightly.  The sight of his friend left him feeling rather kicked in the emotional gut.  He remembered telling Gabe to leave and how Davey had gotten up to follow her.  When they'd left the room, it had hit him that Davey...his Davey...was going.  He'd said his name aloud.  Just that one word, just the saying of that name, said...everything, and he'd gotten to his own feet, going quickly to the door, standing just outside it, watching in silence during those minutes when his brain was trying to grasp that Davey was making a choice.  

"You came back," he said softly to the mirror.  "I knew you'd come back, Davey." He smiled slightly, hopefully.  "Best mates, they've got to stick together, you know, Davey.  Watch eachother's backs."  Davey was silent, a strange enigmatic look in his eyes.  "Right?" Hando urged. "Right, Davey?"  He began to breathe rapidly, shallowly.  "You and me, Davey.  You and me?"  Unwillingly, he'd made the last phrase into a question.  

Hando's reflection in the mirror was not replicating his movements. He stood there in his black coat, his brown boots planted upon a small heap of rusty chains and barbed wire.  Davey turned, looking at mirrored Hando.  Real Hando was confused. "What's going on, Davey?"  Mirrored Hando spoke, his voice deep and echoing. "I've got to preserve my white blood.  Someday it may be all I have left."  Davey
looked out of the mirror, finally speaking.  "Someday it may be all you have left." He walked around behind mirrored Hando, pulling out his Hitler Youth knife as he moved.  Hando remembered the knife well, had even pitched in some money so Davey could buy it off Magoo.  His eyes widened in shock and disbelief as he saw Davey raise the blade.  "DAVEY!" he cried, stepping up to the mirror, beating on it with his fists.  "What the f___ are you DOING???"  

The knife descended, sinking into a neck artery.  Blood spurted, coming right out of the mirror, splashing on real Hando's face.  He backed up, completely dumbfounded, wiping his palms across his eyes, his cheeks. Mouth hanging open slackly, he stared at his hands, coated thickly with red.  "Someday it may be all you have left," Davey intoned flatly.  He sank to his knees, just as mirrored Hando was doing.  "No," he mouthed silently, shaking his head from side to side in disbelief.

 

Reaching his bloody right hand out, he pressed it to the mirror, letting it slide slowly down, leaving a track of scarlet as it moved.  In the mirror, Hando fell over, lying on his back, his eyes wide, blank, staring sightlessly to the side.

Real Hando stared, unable to pull his gaze away from the scene.  Davey faded into nothingness as tears made little half-diluted pathways down Hando's smeared cheeks. All that was left now was his reflected self, lying dead atop the chains, his own "pure" blood pooled around his head and shoulders. Then came the sound of chattering in a foreign language.  Hundreds upon hundreds of Japanese tourists came up in the
mirror, forming a semi-circle around the body, pointing at it excitedly, taking...pictures.

 

He started gasping for air, barely able to breathe.  Closing his eyes, he leaned his forehead on the streaked mirror.  And, so it was, he did not see the robed and hooded figure coming up behind him, nor had he any awareness of the powder as it fell.  As the power of thought left his stiffening form, he felt only...relief.

After the figure had settled his new statue on its base a few feet away from Cort, he turned to look at Himself.  "Like little moths in my web," he cackled.  Noting that his captive had his head turned as far to the side as possible, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, he said, "You do not wish to look? Ah, what a waste! Such a fine new piece for my...collection, too."

Ando had started pacing.  "He's been gone too long, don't you think?" she remarked to Sue.

"I'm hoping he's found Cort by now," Sue replied.

Ando licked her lips thoughtfully.  "Do you think we should...worry? Do you think she would actually make someone other than Maximus... suffer?"

"Not usually," Sue said, "but, then, there was that incident with Bud, remember?"

Ando remembered it well.  It had disturbed her no end.   She hadn't felt really safe for some time now.  Always before she could count on being the comic relief and nothing more terrible would happen to Hando than pink lemonade or perhaps some Clorox. "She's never really made him... suffer...you know.  Not really.  Do you think she...would?"

Sue sighed heavily.  "I heard that she watched Romper Stomper three times in the last two days. It could have been...preparation."

"Preparation!" Ando gasped, the color draining from her face, making her elbows, therefore, twice as pink.  "She...wouldn't??"

"Who wouldn't what?" Terry asked, coming up beside the two Englishwomen, one of whom was actually NOT really English at all, if the truth were to be told, which, thank goodness, concerning the formerly Welsh it always was.

"Torture Hando," Sue supplied.

"Someone is torturing Hando?" Terry growled, his brow knitting in that way that never seemed to produce a scarf, much less a sweater.

"Possibly," Sue continued.  "Cort was missing and Hando went to look for him. Neither of them has returned."

"Hando AND Cort are missing?" Terry exclaimed, already disturbed by the anonymous note about Himself.  He turned to annsmac.  "You know kidnap is my specialty."

She would never actually SAY that she had, all along, thought his equipment was his specialty, so she diplomatically responded, "Yes."

He headed for the entrance, saying over his shoulder as he walked, "Fill the rest of them in when they get here."  

"Wait!" she called, running after him.  He paused, one hand on the knob.  She kissed him thoroughly.  Much more thoroughly than that simpering Alice had ever done.  Then she watched him walk down the hall, holding his arms in that way he had that so reminded her of a male silverback.  As she turned back to the room, she whispered under her breath, "Please don't...blunt."

He came to an intersection of hallways, taking the right-hand one.  Half way down it, he came upon a door that didn't match the rest of the doors.  He paused.  "Strange," he said softly, reaching out his hand to touch its smooth surface.