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Nick stared sullenly into the dark, murky waters of the bay.
A sharp wind rustled his hair and jacket, and he hugged his knees tighter,
folding into himself as much as possible. The wind was a welcomed friend.
It seem to bless his dark mood with it's cold caress.
Everything was so wrong. Everything and everyone was wanting
something from him and it wasn't his research. All he ever wanted was to
do research. Study, learn, expand mans knowledge of the earth. Oh, they
hide it well. Were discreet, but he knew, he knew they watched him with
curious eyes. His friends, his associates, and lord knew who in Monique’s
government. Nick had no delusions about how much of their attention he
now had. Suspected his own government was catching on as well. No longer
curious about his research, but curious about him. His perceived power.
His control.
He laughed out loud. Control? Yea, right. Control was the last
thing he had right now. Out of control was more like it. Spiraling down
a corridor of confusion that seem to grow more everyday he tried to cope.
Nick dropped his head onto his knees with a groan. Dear god, he'd wished
he'd never come to New York. Somedays, in the dark recesses of his mind,
he sometimes even wished he hadn't been born.
Nick looked back up. His choices were few. Learn to live with
those who now knew his secret, -his friends he could handle, it was the
other eyes he feared, the governments, the terrorists that had done this
to him- or try to hide from those same said people on a planet surrounded
by satellite surveillance systems.
Or...
He looked at the black water, not really shocked. Suicidal tendencies
had been cropping up more and more. Not obvious, no. No, their form was
far more subtle. More reckless risk taking. Dangerous attempts in
the field. Daring perilous situations, pushing the boundaries of common
sense. Others called it foolhardy and headstrong, he called it what it
was.
A death wish.
His head hit his knees again. Even that was no solution. It
would only leave Godzilla unguided and vulnerable. A thought that twisted
at Nick’s gut. How many would be hurt by the great monster before the inevitable
death that would follow his own?
Nick felt a pressure in the back of his skull. A throbbing sensation
that was neither pain, nor thought, simply existence. An inquiry. He was
surprised and blinked, jerking back as if burned. Usually Godzilla’s presence
in the back of his mind was merely that, a presence, but now there was
more almost an intelligence. A growing clarity between them.
"No!" Nick screamed, hurling himself to his feet. Not closer
damn it! He couldn’t handle this right now. He didn't want to be closer
to the monster’s mind. To understand what should always remain a mystery.
He didn't want to be a freak of nature like the creature that had attached
itself to him!
Nick turned and ran blindly down the dark wharf, dodging the
crates and barrels stacked liberally along the shoreside. As if distance
was the key to saving his sanity. He clambered fences and rolled over boxes
in a mad dash, chest heaving as sobbing breath tore from his throat. He
wasn't a freak! He wouldn’t be some one else’s damn research project!
The inquiry was now worry and he rebelled against it, throwing
his darkest thoughts at the intruder in his brain.
‘Go away!’ he screamed silently. ‘Go away and leave me alone!’
Alone. It was something he would never be able to take for granted
again. His way was blocked suddenly by a mammoth stack of steel shipping
crates that towered like an impenetrable wall. Nick hurled himself at it
all the same, body slamming against the uncaring barrier with a resounding
thud. He never bothered to try and go around, only through. Nick hurled
himself again and again, screaming to the heavens in rage against what
fate had been wrought against him. It all ended as his legs gave and Nick
collapsed in a sobbing pile, burying his face in his arms.
"Go away," he whispered to the shadow in his mind.
His own raspy breathing blocked out the sound of the water lifting
and breaking as a sleek reptilian head broke water, an exhale scattering
drops of water across the bay.
Godzilla scanned the area in confusion, trying to find whatever
threatened his parent. So much about his parent confused him. There were
no constants with his parent. Always changing, always different was the
perception Godzilla had, but, confusing as it was, he could not ignore
the most basic instinct ingrained in him from birth.
-Follow the parent, learn, protect.- His parent would lead him, teach
him, but his parent also
did so many other strange things. Allowed others in his territory,
helped the ones that hurt him. Try and stop him from protecting his own
territory.
Godzilla shook his head, as much as to shed the last remnants
of water as the odd thoughts in his mind. This was his parent, and he would
follow, and learn, and protect.
Nick looked up the same time Godzilla leaned over the wharf,
clawed fore feet gouging across the weathered wood as he leaned down, sniffing
curiously at him. He felt the pounding confusion in the back of his mind,
coupled with territorially instincts. The two were colliding in a jumble
with his own thoughts of despair and depression till they were whirling
together, one indistinguishable from the other.
The great orange eye blinked lazily, locked onto him, iris dilating
in the dark night. Nick stared back into the eye that was as wide as he
was high and stood unsteadily. Godzilla let out an inquiring rumble, drawing
back, one fore claw going back into the water and taking a rotted chunk
of the dock with it.
"Does it confuse you as much as me?" he asked aloud to the great
lizard.
Godzilla cocked his head, a slight gesture indicating his lack
of understanding. His grasp of the human language was limited to a small
pile of words.
Nick smiled slightly at the familiar gesture. And envied his
giant charge. Godzilla didn't know the feeling of being different. He was
unique and thusly could be compared to nothing else. He would never know
the feelings of isolation caused by nonconformity.
Never.
Alone. Last of his kind. Alone.
Nick felt an indescribable pity and guilt at those thoughts.
He was both savior and destroyer of Godzilla’s kind. Was this his punishment
for the genocide he had helped perpetuate? To be charged with the care
and well being of the last of the noble monsters. To share a part of himself
in payment for the flesh he had destroyed.
"Seems fitting in a way," he said softly, holding his hand out.
Godzilla wuffeled at the strange gesture and looked at him. Nick tried
to construct a feeling of warmth. Of the pride he felt when Godzilla did
the right thing at the right moment which was the lizards greatest skill.
He sent that feeling of warmth to the pinpoint in his mind that had become
Godzilla’s place within him. Tried... tried to let the lizard know he cared.
Despite everything, the pain, the depression, the fleeting bouts with his
sanity, he cared. Would the lizard understand? Was the feeling two way?
Godzilla wuffeled again, blinked and dropped his head, chin
scraping across the wharf till it was a handsbreath away. Nick leaned forward,
scrubbing at the heavy scales on Godzilla’s lower jaw with both hands;
putting all his strength into his long scratches under the lip, allowing
himself to feel the child like joy of merely touching this mountain of
intelligent muscle.
Moments like this cut through the murkiness of the real world.
They were the bright beacons that kept him afloat in the tumult of private
agendas and personal vendettas.
Godzilla rumbled and Nick looked up just in time to see a large wet
tongue snake out and wrap around him, drenching him head to toe in lizard
spit before Godzilla freed him and slipped back into the water, certain
that all was well again.
Nick could only laugh despite the putrid spit he was covered
in. His curse, his blessing. One and the same and part of him.
"You sure know how to ruin a good sulk!" he shouted at the turbulent
waters, not the least bit angry.