Work Text:
Sam Fisher stood on his balcony, looking down. Cracks in the pavement lay out before him, little fissures only a few millimeters deep but which felt to him endlessly dark and mysterious. He took a drag from his cigarette, and thought. It was only forty feet. Maybe if he twisted to land on his head, the fall would put him out. People have died from shorter drops. Then again, people have survived longer. He snuffed the cigarette, and went back in.
The morning came without sleep, and was met with requisite enthusiasm. He brushed his teeth, swirled his mouth with water, and covered his face with foam. The beard disappeared, but left a shadow that refused to go. Coffee and a cigarette was all he cared to take before shoving himself out the door, and slogging off to work.
The Boss said nothing about the man’s rotting visage, as if he could not see Fisher’s decaying face. Coworkers laughed and talked in the cubicles beside, as if they didn’t realize Fisher couldn’t hear. The talkers surrounded his desk, speaking to him, of him, with him. As the speaking died, Fisher wondered how he was so alone.
The end of the day brought an opportunity to relax, to see more life, so Fisher went to the park and watched the ducks. It was a pastime for him, a helpful hobby. He smoked a cigarette as he saw them go, soaring from the water into the sky. Sam liked the ducks. He wished he knew how to fly.
Stepping up the stairs, he walked again to the balcony. Looking down at the pavement, he wondered again about the cracks, and where they went. The pavement looked inviting. Perhaps it was worth a try.
It was on that very same day that Sam Fisher died.
It was not a long fall. But for him, it was long enough.
It was not a very bad life. But for him, it was bad enough.
He met the cracked concrete with his body, and in doing so cracked something else.
He was not the one that made the gap.
But he was the one that widened it.
The crack began with a woman, who was just a passerby. It ran through her life, an instant changed into forever. She had lived a sheltered life, none too strange but none too ordinary, and was out walking when he fell. He did not die instantly. This only widened the gap.
The scene was soon surrounded by the paramedics that picked him up from the concrete, the ones who checked his pulse and who calmed the passerby. There were three of them, working as a team. Mary Jones, Marshal Wallace, John Dean. Dean was a student working their way through medical school. This was their first suicide. This was their first exposure to the gap.
Everyone that saw the body felt the cracks. Everybody that saw him lie there felt his pulse stop, his life drain, his blood run cold. The body was sent through a hospital, where it was taken to a morgue. The blood was drained, his skin carved and sutured like an animal to be preserved. The body was given again to a funeral home, from whence it was interred. The funeral was attended by his coworkers, by his family. They didn’t know what had happened. They had never known what would have transpired. Sam thought that they didn’t understand the real him, and perhaps they were right. Even in death, they still could not know him. They only knew that he wasn’t there, and that it hurt.
Sam was missing from his apartment balcony. He was missing from the shop where he bought his smokes. From the park bench he watched the ducks. Sam was missing from the lives of the people that knew him, from the spaces he inhabited, from the time he was supposed to live in. Sam Fisher was a man once, a person that lived. But now, he was only a space between people. A death. A gap. And it was a gap that could not be bridged.
Not with love.
Not with money.
Nor religion.
Nor power.
The Gap could not be defeated, nor delayed, nor controlled.
It could not be restrained to those who cared.
It came for them all.
It consumed and consumed, and broke the hearts of men into pieces. It came for all that saw him. All that knew him.
Sam Fisher may have been divided from his fellows, but he was the one that split them off. Fisher was the one that split the crack.
The divide waits for all. Separation should come eventually, whether to the poor or the rich. While one still lives, they may still fight the divide. While you still live, you may still claw yourself out of hell. Humanity’s a tapestry, and every death tears a crack. Don’t break the fabric. Do not increase the gap.