"I hold my breath as I wish for death, oh please God, wake me..."

-- Metallica, 'One'

        It was the kind of day that only exists in stories; the sun was high in the winter sky, which was then a deep shade of blue unlike the previous days', deepening a shade towards an opalescent lapis with each passing second, minute, and hour that was tracked with the sun's burning march across it. It was hard to believe that a sun so bright and contrasting would not be blazing a great tear into the veil of blue cast across the planet's view of space, though it was not, instead the galactic powers of the great celestial body were simply warming the snow on the ground, warming each individual snowflake until it melted away into water, cascading down and speeding the process in which all those beneath it could be melted, until the clouds tracked their way across the sky and let loose their fluffy white payloads to blanket the city afresh. It was bright, sunlight glancing off white snow and transparent glass, though the arcing rays of yellow over store windows made them look more like halogen lamps than portals in the ugly grey buildings which marred the white winterscape, making it difficult to see what sale a store may be running, what unnecessary goods they might be peddling that day. It was the kind of day that only exists in stories, yes, and it was also the kind of day that a man likes to walk in, weary black combat boots trudging through the snow, faded green eyes turned to the displays and wondering why it was companies supposed he might like a 'Whatsamajigger Two', or a spanking new 'Turbo Thingumy'. He didn't want any of these things, no matter how new or improved they could get, because the more new and improved they were made, the less he understood them. He pulled a battered leather pilot's jacket tighter about his shoulders, lifting back the sleeve so he could read the time on the watch that had always been plain and simple, never new or .improved. He liked his watch. Silver, unassuming, and with hands instead of those infernal blinking numbers; it said it was lunchtime. Looking up at the sun, he silently disagreed with his watch as was the tradition, batting a flake of snow from the epaulet on his jacket which just refused to melt so that the name of the ship he had once been assigned to was as plain as the sun again: Eldridge.

        Jade eyes that had seen such better days lifted from the silver timepiece, to see if there was a store which presented where he would be able to get a bagel and a coffee for lunch, because presently, a gnarling sensation in the pit of his stomach was informing him that he needed something to eat, and desperately so, because a stomach is not the kind of thing you should deny lunch (he didn't mind denying the rest of his body, because he had no idea what that did, and it seemed to work just fine without his guidance). Breakfast, either, which he had gone without for as many days as he could remember waking up in the house he owned but which had never truly been his, and his stomach liked him less for that than it did for feeding him those repulsive Naval issue rations during what little of the Forties he had been around for, until the Navy that fed him beef which had never been involved with a cow had pronounced him a dead man, and over fifty years later, he was back again. Back, and hungry. Checking the contents of his billfold, his mood was suddenly not quite as dismal as it had been earlier -- he would be able to afford as many bagels as he wanted to eat; he could afford bagels for ten men, actually, for as worn as his clothing was, he was still a considerably wealthy man. Somewhere along the course that history had chosen to take while he was on a temporal holiday, a clever relative of his had invested in some newfangled 'Microsoft' business. He could never figure out why it was that money continued to appear in his account for this, because according to every record in the stringent world of banking, he was quite utterly and totally dead.

        If he had known that the money came from the very same man responsible for him being fifty-six years down the tracks of time, he probably would not spend it with the same carefree attitude that he did when it came to bagels and copies of Mad Magazine, but as he was not aware, he spent it all the same, and that was just what he was doing as the sun actually took the Twelve O'Clock position, and his watch said three past. Starbucks always had the kind of coffee he liked, partially because it was the coffee everybody liked, and partially because he was not the fussy sort who would kick up a stink about coffee. Most times he never finished the cup, the most important thing was that he could smell it, though he usually forgot to finish it after biting into a fresh bagel and forgetting almost everything aside from the fresh bread, just-cut tomatoes, lettuce... Needless to say, there was a lot he found very enjoyable about bagels, and when he had one, he was not his usual lucid self. As he walked into the store and stood in front of the polished wood counter, he made his order, and took a look at the machine that let people pay with credit cards. If he had told his friends that in fifty years the world would be running on plastic, they would have all laughed at him and told him he were crazy, though he wondered sometimes if he wasn't. "That'll be $7.50, thanks," the girl behind the counter told him quickly. Her face was already drawn, having had to deal with the bothersome type of customers who didn't smile at her as the man ordering the bagel was then, bright white teeth shining jovially out from his mouth.

        "Thankyou," he said, placing a $10 bill onto the counter. "Oh, and can I still get my military discount?" He took out a crumpled identification card with his name on it, faded and dog-eared, but still perfectly valid to him.

        The woman's face hung between extremely incensed, and quite amused, finally finding articulation in a thinly drawn smile as she passed his card back to him. "This expired in 1957, Mr Engstrom, is it?" She poked the card at the name sewn into his jacket before he took it from her hand, still smiling. "Nice outfit, too."

        Despite the apparent inability to get a discount from her smile, Sub-Lieutenant Lukas Engstrom (Retired, of course) was still in high spirits, judging by the way he simply smiled back at her, tucking his bagel into some deep pocket of his jacket and taking the coffee carefully between his fingers in the marvellous kind of polystyrene cup that had been invented to keep his drink hot no matter how forgetful about it he might be. "Sorry to bother you with that," he said, and quickly left Starbucks before anybody thought to ask him questions, departing into the cold and snow again.

        He hailed a cab once he got outside, which was a remarkably simple thing to do no matter when you were, and asked that the driver take him to the pier. The trip took longer than it might have on a day when the streets weren't covered with snow, forcing the driver to be even more careful than the average Washington DC cab driver was comfortable with being, so after a crawling ride to the pier, Lukas got out once paying the fare demanded of him, and waved the cab goodbye as it took off down the street again, turning the first corner it came to so it could escape the unusually cheerful man who bothered to wave to public transportation. Quietly finishing the bagel -- he had, true to form, forgotten his coffee, and it was presently on a trip to the Capitol -- he dusted his hands off on his denim trousers, moving casually down the pier as the light reflected from snow, and then sparkled into his eyes from the infinite and shifting ripples in the sea that he had come to pay his regards to.

        Lukas had missed a lot in his life. He had missed the birth of his younger brother, the end of the Second World War, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War... Investigating history through a second-hand account in some watered down version of events written for an encyclopedia that would only lie forgotten on some dusty shelf, he realised with growing discomforture that America had spent the better part of an entire century fighting something. The Nips, the Krauts, the Commies, Charlie, Ragheads -- it didn't seem to matter where he looked through the world, everybody had been on the receiving end of some fairly idle, and then, not so idle exchanges of insults between nations. It was, to him, ridiculous, and while other, more intelligent men may have come with another special word for the condition that would earn them all an awful lot of money and earn them places in some other dusty volume, he simply thought it disappointing. Another breath in of the sharp, salty sea air stung his nostrils, and he breathed deep of it to clear his head. He had missed all the other events and things those times had to offer, though. The ends of those wars, the Moon Landing, Kennedy's assassination, Elvis, the woman's liberal movement, Martin Luther King's effects on the world, John Lennon, Star Wars, the invention of the computer... There were so many things that were common knowledge to school children that were still so exciting and new, so diverse and interesting, things that the world he had come to know simply pushed into the past and moved away from in the name of progress that made him wonder how anybody got anything done at all without constantly repeating the same mistakes. Laying his hands across the mildew-infested handrail that seperated him from the sea which swirled and roared against the lattice of beaten supports beneath him, he wondered who it was who might miss him if he were simply to cast himself into it and die like he should have with his friends, as the mighty Eldridge sailed the seas of time... And reality.

        So now you remember, complained a voice in the back of his head, and suddenly his eyes felt very hot, as though his brain had begun to boil and had spilled out his sockets. I thought you'd forgotten all about me and Lucifer, buddy! Remember the fun times we used to have?

        "Go away," Lukas told the voice in his head, both beating against his ears and feeling as if it were pounding from the inside. "I don't have to listen to you, I left you behind in that place."

        The voice sounded again, and fresh tears of pain streaked down his cheeks as the flames leapt against his eyes. Deep and dark, the voice insistently pressed itself into his conciousness. C'mon, you don't think you could get rid of me that easily, did you? Now let's go have some fun and raze a village or two.

        Fire throbbed against the inside of his head, driving Lukas to his knees as the bagel dropped to the pier and bounced once, smartly, dropping into the rushing sea below. "No, please," he cried, throwing his hands to his ears in a piteous effort to silence the voice. "I don't want to, I don't want to do that again. I'm better, now, I'm not like you any more!"

        BAaaArrRRrrrP! The voice made an obnoxious buzzer noise, seemingly enjoying the torment it could cause simply by making it's presence known. Wrong again, bucko! You are as much a part of me as I am of you. You'n me are like pancakes and syrup, or sommat. You know I'm no good with expressions like that, but you know how good it feels to blow stuff up, don'tcha? Remember that time in Helsreach when you cornered that old guy, an' said that line. You know which one I mean, oooh! If I still had a spine, it'd be tingling to hear you say that again! Come on, let's do that again. I'll be that whiney old git. 'Ooooh, oooh! Don't kill me, please! I'll do whatever you want, whatever at all!' And then you said...

        "That'll be a neat trick when you're dead," sobbed Lukas, desperately trying to keep the voice happy, and quiet. The water hurled itself at the pier again with a resounding crash.

        That's the one, boyo! And I thought you had forgotten... The tone quickly changed, the playfulness and mocking notes all dropped in favour of something lower, a loose approximation of forcefulness creeping in. Little brother's here, you know?

        Lukas was beyond caring. He fell to the pier, curling his knees up to his chest and focusing for all he was worth on the surging of the sea below, the sea he had lived on, fought on, and should have died on, the sea that had no memory of what he had done, of what he might do, and cared nothing for how often he visited. The sea that had no opinion of him, no worries for him, and nothing but nothing to give but the tang of salted air and a lurch beneath the feet.

        Get up, ya pussy. You and me, we're going to have the best times again, you wait and see, and you're going to start by giving me a guided tour of your house. Better not be any floral crap on the walls, or I am so going to fry your cerebellum, kiddo. Then we're going to raid somewhere and find out all we can about the only white Triad leader I can think of, and we're going to pay him a little visit so you and me can pay him back for all the trouble he's caused us. Just think, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for that little prick, and I could be somewhere ruling all creation, and you'd be, well, your boring self without me. So whaddya say that we just forget about all that crap that we did back then, and we'll go slay a Dragon. Oh, yeah, hurry up and haul ass somewhere that I can catch a bite to eat. I'm starved, man, I could murder a curry.