Things Best Left Alone Part 2 [FPF]

I snapped back to the present, the far flung battlefield, the bloody snow, quickly replaced with the confines of my small room. I picked up the arm and slotted it into the socket. There was a slight sting as an electric shock shot through the nerve endings but aside from that it seemed perfect. I flexed my new hand a little, the rods and springs working away silently from under the sleek silver casing the housed the workings.
I turned my intention back to the contents of the drawer. There were some clothes folded neatly in a small pile. I reached in and pulled them out. As they cascaded in front of me, they did not seem to be the clothes that a man would wear, or at least wear during working hours. Although… No, these were not my clothes but they had been. It was a tight, or tight compared to my frame, jumpsuit in a deep red colour. It reminded me of a long time ago…

“So you’re actually going to marry her, then?” asked my friend.
I turned and smiled at him – he looked very smart in his suit and his white hair held back in tight cornrows. “You should have your hair like that all the time,” I said, avoiding the question. My marriage to Garnet was not… accepted by much of the nearby community. While the galaxy in general had total and complete acceptance for marriage in its many forms – straight, gay, mechanical, imaginary – they were more than slightly sceptical about holographic. I loved her, there was no denying that. It was just that perhaps saw it as rather strange.
But before I could think on it any further, the wedding march struck up. I turned and saw my bride. She looked beautiful in her white dress, her short black hair tied into a neat bun of some kind – my lack of hair styling knowledge letting me down – and she carried a small collection of flowers, which I have a sneaking suspicion were highly poisonous, in her hands. Her bright eyes darted to meet my own and we locked stares, only having eyes for each other.
As walked up the aisle, I began to think back to all my other marriages, perhaps not the best thing to do but it happed anyway. They had all failed, primarily because I’d either outlived my spouse, which was unfortunately common for me, or they had died in one of the many wars in which I found my self to be increasingly bound to. But with this, with her, I could be with forever.
Garnet. The Grand ARtificial NETwork. She was the AI program that had been ‘built’ for my ship, the HMS Ark Royal, and we had been though more than a little in the wars. She was smart, funny, understood me and all that other crap that people try to use in an attempt to define love. I didn’t try. I knew what love was and it couldn’t, and shouldn’t, be put into words. I loved her and that was enough for me.
The minister’s words all blurred and mixed together as I stood enraptured by Garnet’s beauty. Only when I heard the appropriate gaps in his words that I knew I was too speak. When the words ‘you may now kiss the bride’ punched through my love drugged brain that I snapped back to attention. Although not quick enough as Garnet reached to me and gave me a kiss. This was the best day of my life.
The rest of night flashed by in a series of speeches, drink (none of which I had in respect to me new wife’s lack of ability to consume alcohol) and dancing. I sat in the large hall, the spherical glass roof gazing out at Earth drifting lazily in space, admiring the golden band that was wrapped around my ring finger.
“You must be getting quite a collection of them now,” smiled Garnet from my shoulder. She didn’t move her head but kept staring at the Earth, her head resting on my shoulder.
“What a thing to say,” I laughed softly, but it was true. Rings of all kinds were kept safe in a drawer deep within my private collection of stuff. But not this time. This marriage would work out and we would be together forever…

I stood in front of the mirror, dressed and cleaned. There had been clothes more fitting for me in a lower drawer: a blue/grey greatcoat and a waistcoat with black trousers and riding boots. A silver watch with chain had a date and ‘Never Forget’ scratched into it. I brown hat with a tall crown sat upon my head. But I still didn’t know who I was. I knew I was a soldier and that I had married so many times it was heartbreaking. Garnet, Kate, Zofia, Rienette, Jack, Jamie, and so many more. I felt that I lived for so very long.
But there was something missing. I went back over to the drawers again. I pulled open the bottom drawer to reveal a single object. It was a box. A fine black box with brass hinges, the dim light gleaming on the wooden surface. The box was devoid of markings, purposeful or accidental, except for the number 64 printed in golden characters on the lid of the box - the same echo of the past but now a thousand times stronger. The lid was held shut by a simple brass hook lock, easily opened by the sliding of a finger. But as I pushed the hook up it felt as if the hook carried the weight of a thousand pasts. But I didn’t know why.
The heavy wooden lid was gently lowered to the desktop as I stared at the object held within. I felt like I’d always known what would be inside since the moment I saw it. But then, I didn’t know.
Resting within a soft mould of itself, a worn LeMat Revolver rested within. The smooth gun metal glinted in the light; the nine barrel pistol was a star in the black of the box. As my fingers gripped around the cold wooden handle, flashbacks of a suppressed past sprang from their prison and danced in front of my eyes.
Screams. Gun fire. Explosions. Death and destruction. I had no choice. No, there is ALWAYS A CHOICE! No, no choice – had to be done. Had to stop it. It could not, would not, should not go on. It was horrible, terrifying. It was me. But it was others. I – I – I… It was the end. No more. The end to Bad Wolf and the Greatcoat. I had to end the lighter of fires, the flames that had forged great men. I will never forget. They will never forget. They will never forget. Alone and afraid. Angry and passionate. Confilct ruled my life but no more.
A red button.
Then silence.
I only need one image to know who I was, who I was destined to become and who I had been since the dawn of time. I am Thomas Plisken.

As I thought these words, something that can only be explained as strange began to happen. What seemed to be a tear in the fabric of reality, or what I assumed to be such, ripped open and a gust or wind pulled me inside. I emerged, rather inexplicably, in the middle of some form of desert and at the feet of an old friend.

"Plisken?" asked Jay in surprise as I picked my self up from the dusty ground.

"Quite so, son," I said, giving him a smile.

"You've changed. Again."

"Yes," I laughed, "And I doubt it'll be for the last time. Now, what has brought us here?"