starless night. [bowie/oz]

oz

We gotta get away and disappear
We're running out of time
The sun is low we'll go and break away
Fade into the light.

The giant's form rose across the black glass, paler than moonlight, all the colors muted. In his reverie, Oz hadn't heard the giant approach.  His breath caught in his threat, his body contracting against the sill to make him smaller, harder to hit. He twisted around sharply. Saw a body carved from the jagged shadows with slashing patterns of neon light that ebbed in and out of being. Realized, vaguely, that a human being stood before him, not some vengeful specter. One of Ten's tributes. Reeked. The smell reminded Oz of Snuff's mom -- that time he came over to their house unannounced and found her in the den, unaware of him, unaware of herself. 

"U-um...," was his only response, at first. He was just glad that the boy wasn't going to grab him and catapult him through the window. He could, with his size. If he wanted to. The odds were definitely in his favor.

The boy slumped into the chair. Listlessly. As though defeated. Even the way Bowie grunted his own name seemed dull, lifeless. For the first time, Oz noticed the crescent of light slanting across the glass in Bowie's hand.

Bowie bore himself like the men and women that worked at the factories. Oz used to watch them shuffle to work through the window as he got ready for school. Shoulders curled, overalls stained and creased, sometimes burned with acid or lacking a limb, draped in loose sallow skin and never talking to one another. Shuffling onward like ghosts as the factories' yellow breath clouded over all their heads. And Oz would watch them, and know that that was his future.

"I'm one of the people you'll have to kill to get home."

A shock went through Oz, and he forgot everything. Nine, the city beyond the glass, the darkness, the light. All he knew was the giant sitting close to him.

At first, he laughed in a short, wheezing burst. "What the hell, man," he jeered, as though it were a joke. And then it settled that it wasn't a joke. Bowie was being honest. An icy fist gripped Oz's heart -- and then planted a seed called Respect. Oz had never met an honest person before. Everyone, at least in District Nine, spoke like a liar. Mrs. Priscilla, with her usually crap about how he could have a bright life ahead of him if he just studied, raised his grades. Mom, with her crap about Dad coming back. Even Nowles, with her narcissism, was lying to herself, though Oz doubted she even noticed. Mya and Snuff, telling him that life matters. Maybe it generally does, maybe it generally doesn't, but not the life any one in Nine was going to lead. He tried to tell them, the night before the reaping. When they made their volun-tell pact. And they called him a bad person. A bad friend. For being honest. Then they forced him into promising to sacrifice one of them if he was reaped. To prove he was a good friend.

All those people back home lived in lies. Oz did too, off and on, though he didn't want to. But not Bowie. Maybe Ten was just a really different place. More "real."

"I'm Oz," he murmured, a drop in his voice, like reverence. He never heard himself speak that way before, ever. Maybe the closest was when he accepted his tribute status. "I..." He felt as though he were obligated to offer something up to Bowie, now. Some truth of his own. "I don't...I really hope I don't have to...?" Oz wrapped his arms around his chest as he peered into Bowie's face. "I don't want to be here."