For the first time in all his years, Gale awoke with unlimited energy. He threw himself off his bed, even changing the clothes he'd worn for many days now, even between the most recent trip. He found himself in his bathroom, his mirror long cracked from a powerful impact. Gently he rested his fist against the cracks epicentre. His reflection stared back at him, his tired grey eyes filled with the final flares of a dying fire, framed in a withered face covered in a shabby scraggly beard.

"Who have you become?" He asked. For the first long while Gale actually took a look at himself. He could remember the man he once was, the man who he still tried to be in the City.

It was so hard now not to see the world in bitterness it was beyond second nature. To see something but actually appreciate it had become a struggle, one that he had never noticed was happening. The man he had become he would never have seen long ago. He was not the man he aspired to be.

...and he'd been comfortable with it.

He still was, but some things needed to change.

This was one of them.

But that was a thought that would torment him for however long he had left.

"No bloody razer." He grunted, taking a moment before he searched the few storage spaces. Fruitless, he found himself in his bedroom. He opened the top drawer of his bedside, reaching in to pull out the closest thing to the item he searched for.

Gale walked up to the cracked mirror, twirling an old, yet still sharp bayonet. Its black blade was scuffed and tired, its days of glory as long ago as his own. He rested it down in the sink, wetting the blade before drawing through his facial hair.

For the next while, Gale carved away the beard that had taken over his face. His hands were shaky and awkward, not used to this precision anymore. The grey hairs fell into the sink a clump at a time as the rudimentary razer cut through them bit by bit.

He next properly looked his forgotten face over when he was done, he had no idea where the want to at least seam presentable came from. He had it at a familiar length again, the length it was the last time he had properly given himself the once over. He ran his hands through his hair, the long greasy grey locks curled around his fingers.

"Unacceptable now, Gale." He muttered, taking a fistful of his hair in a tight grip. His other brought the blade shakily up, sawing through it with vicious determination. A pounding on his door broke the silence, signalling the arrival of another person to bother him and interrupt his best laid plans.

Not that he cared, for once his hair was the priority, for the moment at least. It didn't take long for the long mane to be cut back to the length he had long ago, the length he has in his City… That was the real reason behind this sudden bout of masculine grooming.

Gale's eyes then drifted to his shower, covered in grime. Years of pooled water sat still and green. Another thing in disrepair.

He ignored the pounding on the door. He ignored the moans of his body, and the state of the water as he reached into it. Years of crusted stillness shifted on ripples, and from its depths he pulled out something he hadn't seen in years.

The memory of the night he'd discarded them had come back to him in a short burst, but it didn't change the shock of emotion upon laying eyes on the metal band once again. He wiped the chain down with a small towel, letting it slightly regain a long lost luster. The gold band was basic, yet it remained still pure after all this time. It had defied the dirt and grime, waiting for its time, a time that will never come again.

He slipped the chain around his neck and in a moment he felt he was back.

With his work done Gale made his way to the front door, casting it open immediately to the sight of his son. What a surprise.

"Hello, Da- What on earth has happened to you?" Alban practically did a double take at the sight of his father. He scanned him up and down, the man looked like he had cleaned himself, bar taking a shower. He locked onto the knife in his Dad's killer grip, still wet from shaving. He pointed at it, slightly concerned. "Err… Dad? Knife."

"What?" Gale said, confused, taken aback almost. He glanced down to his hand. "Ah right."

Gale's arm whipped out fast and almost lazily, throwing the bayonet with trained ease. The blade sailed through the air, landing with an audible thud as it impaled itself in a door frame. Gale turned back to his son, he still seemed to only be seeing the change. Gale wanted his boy to see him. He pleaded for it. But he felt that bitterness again, and quickly it took over.

"Happy now?" He grunted to him, the younger man only nodded causing his father to scoff. "Bullshit. You never are."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Alban growled back as his father walked away from him. The man didn't stop walking even when he pulled the knife from the frame. there was a loud clatter as he discarded it. Alban trailed his father into the living room, he stood at the door frame with his arms crossed. "What about the other day huh? I was happy until you decided to become suicidal."

"Well?" He asked pointedly. His father glanced up at him from the chair he now sat on, His expression loaded with barely contained venom. Yet it wasn't aimed at his son anymore.

"Well what?" Gale asked, his son's aggressive tone matched to his own.

"I come to visit you and you immediately insult me. What is that about?" He snapped at him.

"Sorry." He whispered. Alban scoffed.

" Sorry? Don't say something if you don't mean it." He sneered. Gale stood up, slightly stunned.

"What makes you think I don't mean it? Why do you think that?"

"Because you bloody actions you stupid old man!" Alban's voice rose. "Ever since Mum left, damn it the reason she probably did! You're a fruitloop in absolute obsession with your bloody City! It may be something fantastic, but you don't bloody give a shit about those that actually do love you!"

Gale frowned, he pointed with his lit smoke.

"Your fault." He growled. He gestured at his sun from head to toe.

"Yeah what the hell did I do you didn't?"

"You bloody ran!" Gale barked. "You ran and you buried your head in your work! I might've driven us down this path, but you sure as shit put us on it in the first place!"

" I put us down in the first place? You were the ass who drove Mum away! Why else would she have got in that car!" Alban's breath was heavy. He stuttered, then took a deep breath to quell the rage that threatened to explode again. He was definitely his father's son. "Do you think I want us to be like this?"

" Please!"

"It's what seems to have happened ain't it? Nothing but bad blood and glares sprinkled all over what remained of 'us'!" Gale threw his last words with the rhythm of a well trained vocal dualist. He let his frustrations of this out without volume, it wasn't needed. "What was I supposed to do? Where else was I supposed to go when I found out that my son became a belligerent angry man just like myself?"

"You love that place more than you love me!" Alban practically screamed, saliva spat from his mouth, tears began to break at long last. "Don't you see why I'm so fed up with this bullshit!"

"No." Gale's voice was low, his eyes were piercing with anger… "Never."

"Well you're a blind drunk then! Rather fit-"

"No." His father cut him off. Alban's rage might've doubled at that remark, but it also stalled slightly. "I never did."

"You never what?"

"I never loved it more than you." he still glared, that if anything made it harder. The anger wasn't at his son. "I lost my angel, then I lost my son. It's equally my own doing. This…" he gestured between them. "Bullshit, the hardest part of it was only seeing you when my time had begun to run out."

"Don't be melodramatic Dad, this isn't the time for that!"

"I know why you have been coming here more and more. Why in five years did I never see you once! And then, suddenly in three weeks I've seen you nearly every day." He tapped his chest. "Running out of time isn't it?"

Alban couldn't tell him if he was right or wrong. He honestly didn't know which was which anymore. The lines had blurred so much. All that mattered in that moment was that when the tears began to flow even more.

"Mum would laugh if she saw us." Alban chuckled, laughing slightly himself. Gale glanced at the photo.

" Tala for god's sake! Wake up!"

"Yeah she would… She'd beat our heads together." Gale smiled, that glance lingered on. "I have something I need to do, Alban. Before this is over." He explained clearly. His son looked up with his eyebrows furrowed. "If this is it, whether it is or not, then please let me do this before they take it all away from me."

"Surely it'd be better to stay here?" Alban pleaded. He became frustrated when his Father shook his head. "What? After all that you still need to go focus your last days on that… That place!"

"I have to do this, Alban. It's not for me it's for everyone. Including your mother." Gale begged, "She was there… I was there when it happened."

"Don't you dare go there, Dad." Alban warned, pointing at the man who drew on his rage in kind. "Mum had a car accident over eighty miles from here!"

"Exactly!" Gale shouted so hard he wheezed. The pain and anger that struck his face made it all the easier to see. "She fell asleep! What do you think that means!"

He begged for the day the memory would fade. It plagued every moment, it made the charm of who he was fade into the man he'd become. The world had been tinted, what else could matter? Not after so much already.

"You are delusional dad! We are in the middle of something here!" Alban snapped after a moment, Gale looked towards the door in disbelief, his heart on a plate and his son wouldn't notice. "That City isn't what's important, it's a dream! If you go on about it now, especially after all I said I will leave now and never come back. I'm tired of it, Dad. I'm tired of the bullshit." Alban snapped. His words caused Gale to look at him straight away.

"It wouldn't matter if you walked out that door anyway. You won't see me after today." Gale responded firmly, pointing down the hallway. While his son had given him an empty threat, Alban could tell this one was very real. "I've got something I need to do, doesn't matter what gets in my way. This is for your mother, this is for everyone."

Alban recoiled slightly, stepping back with the weight of it all. He rubbed his head. Resignation slipped into his head. The mad fool couldn't change.

"Yourself more like." Alban sighed, sounding disappointed. He reached into his pocket. "Have you drunk today?"

"Not yet no." Gale replied.

"Amazing that." Alban tossed his father something, Gale didn't catch a proper glimpse until he had them. He opened his hand to stare at the car keys.

"Can't stop you anyway can I?" He whispered, not making eye contact. Alban took a deep breath. "You got paper?"

Gale only pointed to the shelf behind his son. The bitter man cursed him, cursed them both. The silence was deafening as he waited.

Alban put away his pen and handed the scrap of writing alongside several fistfuls of cash, once again, without eye contact.

"If you're going, you might as well tell her what you're doing." He explained just as he finished.

He held his hand up as Gale went to thank him. "Just go Gale."

His father pocketed the cash without hesitation, yet his heart grew heavy as he held the torn off scrap in his hands. He caught what seemed to be a look now of shame from his son.

How he'd grown…

Gale scooped up his jacket from the armchair, checking its pockets quickly for all his effects, scooping up a faded passport as well and his cigarettes for the next few days. He avoided the sight of his son just as he had himself.

A look of equal shame on his face as he entered the hallway. He didn't glance back, not once. Hearing the sounds of Alban taking up his father's armchair as the door shut between them.

How they'd both grown...