Despite Everything -- General

[A Moment In Subtext]

Andromeda
Despite Everything
By. A Moment In Subtext

The huge sun sat resolutely over Boston, as if determined to burn the city into a pile of ashes. So far, it was succeeding in at least making life miserable for the human residents of the city. The large piles of garbage that lay intermittantly on the streets had begun to rot, filling the city with a dirty, nausea-inducing scent for thsoe who breathed too deeply. The sun cast few shadows, except for directly beside the buildings, and as the bricks were baking the shad did little good for those withsing to escape the heat of the day.
Neitzcheans walked the streets among the humans, mostly shoving them out of the way and spitting on them. Many of them had their eyes out for people like young Seamus Harper, small and vulnerable. And worthless, his mind added of its own accord. It wasn't that people had told him that, because they hadn't. It wasn't even that he believed it, because he sure as hell didn't. It was because he understood what the Ubers thought of him, of his species.
He also knew that teh Neitzcheans cared more about their personal comfort than about finding Kludges like him. Which meant that if he stayed on the side of the building that the shadow was cast, near enough to feel the sweltering heat given off by the baking bricks, they most likely wouldn't find him.
Clutching the stack of comic books to his chest and praying to any deity that might be listening that the ink wouldn't melt off the pages, he ran in the shdows. Once or twice he grazed his arm on the burning bricks, scratching his arm up, but he knew the cuts weren't deep enough to scar, so he ignored them. As he gained speed the air he ran through began to seem less like dead air and more like a faint breeze, but it only lasted until he slowed down.
Panting slightly, he brough his speed up until he couldn't go any faster, and lit across the open space between the street and his home. No one paid him much notice, and if it weren't safer that way he might have been upset about it. As it was, on Earth, the less people noticed you the better. To be noticed was to have a huge freaking target painted on your back.
He had slowed down by the time he actually managed to get to his hom, and his breathing, while ragged like always, was steadier than it had been. He clunch tighter to the comic books as he went inside and closed the outside out as carefully as possible.
His mother looked at him for a moment and then crossed the room quickly. She knelt in front of him and pulled him into a hug, and he let her, despite the heat, because the warmth it gave him was different.
"Oh, Seamus." She whispered in his ear, and he knew he didn't have to respond.
After a moment she pulled away and regarded him at arms length.
"Oh, Seamus." She said again. "Why are you sad?"
Knowing it was a serious question, he stopped to think about it. He had his parents, and his cousins. He was well fed, he was as healthy as he could be. He wasn't abused. He wasn't dead. What was there to be sad about?, He thought sensibly.
"I'm not." He said with the absolute conviction that came with being a child.
"Well, well, that's good to hear." His mother said, and even though he could tell she didn't believe him he didn't say so. She smoothed his wild blond hair with one hand before standing up again. "Well, run along then. Go find your cousins."
He nodded and started to leave the room. He paused in the doorway and turned around. "Mama?"
She turned to face him.
"I love yo."
"I know." She said.
And he was happy.