[Lark] Rage Against the Dying of the Light

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Recommended Music: The Horror and the Wild, Nights Like These

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“It’s not fair!”

“I know it isn’t! You think I don’t know that?”

“Then why don’t you do something about it?!”

“I can’t. You know we can’t.”

“Why?”

That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? Lark - sixteen and too wise for their youthful appearance, too tired for their bright eyes, roped into all of this by inevitability and responsibility - drags their hands down their face, exhausted and annoyed. “We just can’t. There are rules. There are limits.”

It’s an argument that’s been tread too many times, and the twelve-year-old Lark standing before them is already puffing up like an angry little bird, their hands balled into fists and arms tight against their sides. “And who makes the rules?”

“I… I don’t know.” The older Lark admits, looking away for a moment, shuffling their feet, scratching at their wrist. It isn’t the answer they’d like to give, but it’s all they have. “They’re just there.”

“Well, then. I’m going to break them.” With a stomp of their foot, the younger Lark disappears, venturing into the future. If going to the past doesn’t change anything, surely visiting the future must be the way to go.

There’s a reason going into the future is dangerous. It’s a game of chance. They don’t know where they’ll end up, and there are so many paths they travel down, so many places they’ll eventually be. It’s overwhelming, all-encompassing, like grasping at a thousand dangling strings and trying to find the right one to pull on. They’re pulled every which way, but the current Lark of any time always serves as the strongest anchor. They reach for it, finding purchase in the timeline.

“Get down!” They appear in the middle of a fight, and a seventeen-year-old Lark shoves them aside before they can get stabbed in the face. It earns the older teen a nasty cut to the arm, and it’s second nature to reach for their sense of time once more, although it’s clumsy when they wrench it forward rather than back.

Time resists being changed. It tries to restore the natural order of things, to send them back to where they’re supposed to be. They refuse, tugging and twisting and swimming against the current. It would be so easy to give up, to give in, to fall victim to the acceptance that has corrupted their older selves.

But they refuse. They have to try again, so they venture farther forward. They appear in a messy apartment, the roar of a passing train rattling in their bones. They trip on a discarded sweater and a pale arm catches them, sets them back upright again. “Shh.”

“What are you-” They begin, but are cut off by a hand over their mouth. Childishly, impulsively, they stick their tongue out, and the older Lark pulls their hand away again, wiping it on their jeans.

The shifting lights outside pause, and there’s a moment of absolute stillness.

“What does it look like, little me?” The elder Lark asks in the absolute silence of stopped time, raising an eyebrow as they continue to carefully rifle through a stack of papers.

“I dunno, that’s why I asked,” the smaller Lark replies, rolling their eyes.

“Don’t worry about it,” they answer, “You’ll find out in time.”

Before they can protest further, time resumes, and another flash of light heralds the arrival of sixteen-year-old Lark, who grabs the twelve-year-old’s arm and drags them back to their own time.

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“This isn’t helping. You and I both know that. Just give up,” the wiser Lark advises, releasing them once they’re both back in the same apartment they started in.

“Did you?” The younger Lark asks, leveling a vicious glare their way. They’re gratified to see their older self look away, a frown twisting their lips down. “Then neither can I.”

And so it continues. They root through the timeline for significant moments, and at every turn they find their older self putting everything back together, stopping them from trying to burn everything to the ground, dragging them back to their own time again and again and again. Stopping them, holding them back, always one step ahead.

It’s a rigged game. Lark knows they aren’t going to win, but they can’t give up. Giving up means moving on, means letting everything happen just because ‘that’s the way it has to be,’ means accepting that they’re on a shorter timeline than they could ever have anticipated.

Maybe they can change things in the past. Maybe their future self is a coward and a liar, and they’re hiding the truth from them. And so they travel back, find a nine-year old Lark, try to tell them the truth before they can uncover it on their own.

Their past self is excited to see them. Usually it’s the older Larks that go back to visit. They remember being so happy at the rare visit from an intermediary Lark. If they can just-

But the younger Lark is chattering so brightly, tugging at their hands, eyes sparkling. Before they can get a word out edgewise, they’re pulled back, more roughly than they’ve ever been treated before.

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They tumble to the ground, momentum carrying with them even as they’re transported to another time. They skid on the damp grass of a moonlit clearing in the woods, teeth already bared as they get to their feet, but their future self is already speaking before they get a chance.

“The fuck do you think you’re doing?!” The sixteen-year-old asks. They’re taller, stronger, faster, and so much angrier than Lark thought they had the capacity for. Finally, their patience is at an end. Good, because that means both of them are equally miserable. “Quit being stupid! You are making everything so much harder.”

“You aren’t making it any better, yourself! Why don’t you just stop trying to stop me? That’d make it easier, wouldn’t it?” The twelve-year-old bites back.

“Oh, I can’t wait until you have to be in my shoes.” The older Lark stalks forward, voice rising with their temper. “And then you can see what a brat you’re being right now.”

“You think you know so much more-”

“Because I do! That’s literally how this works!”

“Yeah, well, predict this,” the younger Lark snaps, throwing an inexperienced punch. Quite predictably, the older Lark catches their wrist, tightly enough that they can’t even pull their hand back. They struggle in the hold, but their future self will always be stronger, wiser, more prepared.

“We both know this is going nowhere. Give up.” The older teenager is dispassionate, unmoved even as they try to yank at their arm with their opposite hand, even as they lean back far enough that they’d fall if it weren’t for the hand on their wrist, even as they twist their hand around every which way.

“No! You can’t make me. I’ll never be like you.” They snarl, frustrated tears building in their eyes.

“You will. You don’t have a choice. None of us have a choice.” Lark is so tired, and their voice holds too much solemnity for someone of their physical age. “You’ll learn. I did.”

They let go suddenly, and Lark falls back into the soft grass. They yell wordlessly, face crumpling. Frustrated, angry, grieving. Tears blur their vision, and they wipe at their face in a futile effort to bring everything back into focus. It’s pointless, all pointless. They’re just one person. Just a kid, really. What do they know about anything?

Green flashes in their vision, and they’re alone. They curl their legs close to their chest and rest their forehead against the tops of their knees, closing their eyes. There’s nothing to look at, anyways.

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Somewhere, a wind chime rings.

Soft footsteps, and someone takes a seat beside them. They see green and silver and blue in their peripheral vision, and they hadn’t realized they were shivering until there’s a blanket laid gently across their shoulders.

Lark shrugs off the offered comfort, ready to snap at their sixteen-year-old self, but when they look up they’re greeted by a different, but no less familiar, face. The eldest Lark. Even they can’t stay mad at the face they saw, lifeless and still, so far into the future and yet not far enough. Never far enough.

“I know,” the elder Lark says, endlessly simple. Sympathy softens their eyes, turns all their sharp edges somehow more forgiving.

“How can you-” the younger Lark chokes on their words, voice strangled when they finally find the will to continue. “How are you just… okay with all this?”

The clearing is quiet for a minute, the older Lark tipping their head back to look at the stars. Their words emerge as a fine mist in the chilly air when they finally break the silence. “Because you aren’t.”

This Lark is so close to the end of the line that they already look like they remember them looking, hair cascading down their back and scars wrapping around their hands and the weight of the world on their shoulders. And yet. When they look back at their younger self, something in their gaze is sharp, burning, thorned, just like the briar digging into their heart. And Lark realizes, finally, despairingly, that they were being stupid. So, so stupid.

They never gave up, not really. The anger is still there. The despair is still there. They just learned to live with it.

Really, what else could they have done? They were given the choice between fighting a losing battle with every breath, or making the most of what time they still had. They let themself try, once, and then they moved on. Of course they did. They had to, or it would’ve consumed them.

The younger Lark sits with this realization for a long moment. Their future self pulls the blanket back up around them, pulling them into their side with an arm around their shoulders. “I know.”

It’s a quiet night, and there’s time enough for them to try again later. Maybe this time it’ll be different. Maybe this time it won’t. They can’t give up yet, not before they know they’ve tried everything. But maybe they can rest, just for a moment.