[modern au - fic: Scribbles]

[population_ctrl]

Title:: Scribbles. Characters/Pairing: Jean Louis, with a guest appearance of Marcel and obligatory Mireille!musings. Summary: Things are changing for the better, changing all the time, with every second that passes. He simply can’t regret being that person, the one who sets it off and keeps it running. From the prompt: Several people can die in a word (Anise Koltz). Scribbles. Jean Louis orders his first murder when he’s twenty. Marcel is twenty-one and predictably gory about the entire thing – the dying journalist, hung from a nearby tree with his throat slit in three different places bleeding out into the dark reflexes of the Alzette. The park is still cooling from winter’s passage and they blend in with the shadows, the two of them and the gang of men hanging out in the background, ready to act if told. When told. He’s never seen anyone die before. And while it keeps Marcel somewhat entertained, he’s bored. Finished with it. The man gurgles his final breaths, dry heaving for lack of air and circulation. Nearly turned them over to the police five days prior, evidence in hand and the nervous gaze of a traitor, hopping from street corner to back alley, attempting to see everything and evade the consequences. Well. They caught him fair and square before he’d even crossed the street from his parents’ middle-class city house. Jean Louis has long since decided that any rat trying to crawl its way through his organisation will be left blind to all escape routes per definition; that’s how it has to be. No compromises. Blind by definition and in this man’s case, literally as well. He’s setting an example, isn’t he? And they’re all watching, paying attention. The children of the streets may not be the brightest in terms of analysis and reflection, but the underlying message in this particular little art piece won’t be missed by any of them. It’s drawn in a style that they all recognise, after all. Blood and dirt and secrecy and the smell of cigarette smoke, leaving spirals in the air. As they leave the corpse behind in the woods, Jean Louis has already forgotten his name. * Thirty African women, they say. And their children, God only knows how many. All dead, murdered and forgotten by the West as quickly as any other minor killing spree in a third world country. It makes a few headlines, certainly, but the oil prices are skyrocketing and the Saudi-Arabian deserts draw the eyes of the stockbrokers infinitely faster than the dusty soil of the Nigerian savannah. Once again, the message reaches all the right people; the ones who don’t give a damn and the ones who have to. Some Italian mob boss congratulates Jean Louis on pressuring the ‘safari animals’ into begging for trade - any trade, any guns, at any price. And a young, African rebel leader holds his peace and keeps his finger off the trigger as they shake hands on a deal that will manifest Jean Louis’ monopoly on illegal weapon’s trade in the region. Back in Luxembourg, in his apartment, he tries to reflect upon the deaths. The murders. It’s damaged, this thing he’s authorized. Unforgivable and impossible to put right. He should regret it, he thinks, but his apartment is high-class luxury, his contact list has grown exponentially within the past twenty-four hours and the world is getting smaller, lines drawn and tied to his demands. And that’s why he can’t. There’s a shade of something, a tinge perhaps, because he’s not so far removed from generalised cultural ethics that he can’t tell apart the objective right and wrong. But it’s working. Things are changing for the better, changing all the time, with every second that passes. He simply can’t regret being that person, the one who sets it off and keeps it running. It’s too important. And perhaps, Africa is simply sufficiently far away from the LEDs of his bedroom ceiling, the skyline of Luxembourg City and the buzzing of Parliament and the Court of Justice. Politics, with a Western beat. Nothing else matters. And that’s how he pushes the pieces on the sidelines out of mind and out of sight. * Barrault’s death manifests itself through hundreds of newspaper headlines. Different languages, different letters and descriptions, but always the same, unmistakable essence: change, this time brutal, visible and ironically unreadable. He chuckles as he puts the newspaper away, sipping his morning coffee and leaning back in his leather couch. They’ll cry and they’ll bemoan the loss of their leader figure. The nation, small as it is, quivering with grief for all of two or three weeks, at most. He knows what people are like. The old man was a symbol and symbols aren’t missed. Cherished, perhaps, in differing ways but seeing as he’ll never quite die in the eyes of the public, Barrault’s death will never actually, truly be mourned. That is, by anyone but his closest relatives. As always, there’s a message to everything Jean Louis does. A point and a purpose. This time, it’s a piece of art meant only for himself. Selfish indulgence. After the funeral, he refrains from approaching Mireille, completely aware that he’s left the door open to her and that she’ll accept his offer by her own accord. He wants to see it happen, wants to watch Phillipe’s treasured daughter step through the hole he’s left in the old man’s papermoon barricades. As opposed to a half-dead traitor or a foreign tribe of faceless numerals, Mireille’s little destruction belongs in his private exhibition. Other people collect artefacts, rarities and metaphorical gold. But Jean Louis intends to keep his master piece locked away, hidden and continuously re-drawn in lines of silver ink. Progression. Always. It makes everything else fade into the background, doesn’t it? Hindsight is twenty-twenty but only if you choose to turn around. Meanwhile, he’s found the path that leads up and beyond the dirt that it’s build upon and he’ll walk it, oh yes. He’ll walk it and create it and the world will be brighter for it. The losses, transparent. ~