(no subject)

[inwhiteleather.livejournal.com]

Date: 8 August 1999
Status: Private - Pollution and Famine
Setting: Somewhere between London and Tadfield
Summary: Pollution's on the road in search of something to do.

After a few days, Pollution figured it was time to get back on the move. He could do that, of course - travel whenever he liked. When you live in alleyways and the back rooms of bars, only noticed when you want to be, you can pretty much move on at your own leisure. The thing was, he loved London. It was a wonderful city. Unfortunately, it was just too much like living at work and what he needed was a break.

So, there he was, just outside of a town he couldn't remember the name of, watching the cars go by and contemplating whether he wanted to continue hitching or walk back into town and spring for a new (well...used...generally very used) motorcycle. He could easily afford it. He'd hitched his way around America and made a pretty cheap job of travelling India and China before that, so the money he'd collected off of the odd night of bartending (when he wanted a legitimate claim to his cot in those back rooms) and the occassional kind stranger (it's amazing to find people who really do still feel sorry for the "homeless") had never really been spent on anything else.

Leaning back against a tree, he continued his internal debate during a lull in passing traffic.

Comments

[afimne.livejournal.com]

Famine chuckled quietly. "Agreed," he murmured, watching the road without seeing it. He rarely had a chance to talk to Pollution, partially due to the latter's reclusiveness and his own reserved nature and partially due to the infrequent crossing of their paths. But he could always trust Pollution never to speak rashly, to make the sort of comment that seemed simple, but always summed up a point perfectly. Pollution spoke rarely, but Famine could always trust that when he did, it would be something worth hearing.

He frowned faintly at what Pollution said next, though. It had been a strange transition - more than sixty years ago, now - when Pestilence had retired. It was a first in their history; DEATH had watched impassively, War had regarded it with disdainful amusion, and Famine himself had regarded it as a step forward - a modernization, something that had to be done for them to keep their hold on the world. He supposed he would miss Pestilence - a few milennia of working with someone tended to make their absence rather noticeable - but it wasn't as if the retired Horseman wasn't keeping himself busy. In addition, the presence of Pollution was...well, a welcome one. It had taken some time to get used to, but Famine was somewhat surprised to note that now, he couldn't imagine reverting to the original four.

"He didn't," he finally replied, simply. "He chose to. He felt it was his time." Famine paused, then added, "Do you regret replacing him?"

[inwhiteleather.livejournal.com]

Pollution laughed slightly at the question but he didn't turn his eyes back from the blur of passing scenery. "It isn't in my nature to regret."

And it wasn't. Regret wasn't a natural emotion for any of them. Whether or not to regret something was an ethical question. One thing about your entire existence being focused on the destruction of mankind - their concepts of ethics and morality were something necessarily kept beyond the scope of your reality.

After a pause, he shrugged. "I don't regret but I wonder sometimes why I exist at all. At the base of it, I'm no more than Pestilence on a material level rather than a physiological one. He destroys from the inside out and I do the same from the outside in. I'm about as original as a reflection." He furrowed his brow thoughtfully. "I wouldn't have said that so many years ago - I wouldn't even have thought it, really - but the last thing I really and truly had any hand in was nuclear weaponry and War rather plucked that industry right out of my hands. Now I'm just back to London fog and holy rivers until the next bloody Hiroshima."