Five minute drabble. It's fun. In a 'somebody's died' kinda way.
He stared at the cards, and they stared back, waiting for him to make his move.
It wasn't the mind numbing boredom that kept him playing. That helped, and thank God for it, but that's not what kept his eyes welded to the cards. He wasn't winning. He'd played four hands already, playing with the cards as deftly as he had once played with hearts, then sorting them out into their lines, each in its allotted place. And he wasn't winning. He'd never gotten very far in any hand, and that was remarkable in itself.
He saw his situation in the cards. He wasn't a mystic, like Mattie, and he didn't think cards could tell the future. But he knew than that they could tell the present. That they delighted in doing so, just to see him writhe.
He realized that his current game was going to get nowhere, and cursed. He shuffled the deck together, before looking at the clock. Time didn't really register, but it was a habit, and habits were good. Even if some people would have him break them. People who were the cause of the need for such habits, at most times.
He thought about going to the room and seeing if Ororo would still be awake enough to talk. He knew that if she wasn't, she'd be okay with being woken up, but he didn't want to keep her awake. No reason for both of them to suffer.
He wondered where she had gone, and why she wasn't back yet. They hadn't even fought this time. She had just been gone when he'd woken up one morning. Everyone was worried, to some extent, but he pretended not to be, at least around the others. They didn't need to see that. Not reason to show them his newest habit. one he'd picked up from the woman who was so dead set against so many of his other habits.
He sat back, throwing the deck of cards across his floor, the black and red cards reflecting in his similarly colored eyes, but not quite registering in the mind behind them. He wasn't seeing anything, lost in a private world of horrible thoughts and vicious what ifs.
He threw himself onto his feet, pacing wildly for a minute, before the pressure built up to be too much. He jerked the door open, stalking toward the exit of the institute.
Hank was heading toward Remy's room, his heart heavy, and his hands dragging a bit on the floor more than they were helping to support him. It was usually up to him to be the bearer of bad news, and heaven knew this was the sort of thing that happened regularly at the institute, but it never got easier.
Hank ran into the harried man, who was still making for the exit. As soon as he saw the look on Hank's face, he ran for the door, not listening to what Hank was trying to say with all his might.
Hank watched him retreat sadly. No, it never got any easier, even when you didn't have to say a word.
This was written in literally ten minutes. But it's still fun.
Reveiw!
Peace and Love,
Panther Nesmith