𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲 ▸ 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴

𝘀𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻. the start of the last week

~𝗼𝗵, 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘁𝘁𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀, 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗺𝗮𝗺𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗮𝗽𝗮𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗮𝗻𝗲?~

The groups' decision following the appalling demise of dear, wee Dawn, was to carry on and utterly fuck everything. Back to the bad old days once more, friends. In such times, Lana would remember a poem that her and Olivia would regurgitate at each other in events of immense stress. One particular morning would return to her each time she heard the words; early morning, sitting in the window of their bedroom, preparing to escape the hellish antics of Mary, Queen of Scots. Lana expressed her reluctance of the drop to the ground below and, with all her chest, Olivia replied, "Brave, Lana. Rage against the dying of the light. Do not go gentle into that good night." In no way were their quotes accurate or appropriately placed, but when she heard those words, she never ceased to give in. A "choose life" of sorts – the only difference being the rage that flickered in her chest when the latter was spoken to her, the condescension of it all, the ignorant overuse of it to encourage bad drugs and worse behaviour. Regardless, she repeated it in her head as she sprinted alongside Spud and Renton around the streets of Edinburgh, stolen goods tumbling from their pockets. There was no soft approach to the collective dive into depravity, no easy left turn in case things went bad – bad, worse – and consequently, she could not go gentle into that good night.

And so she didn't. She laid back on the carpet of the rat-infested squat, surrounded by needles and filthy gear, humming to herself to block out the persistent moaning and banging coming from the next room over. Her arms thrusted at the ceiling so she could admire her hands. The blanket rested over her weighed heavy and comfortingly.

'Do we still have that CD player, Rents?'

'Sick Boy sold it last month,' he replied drearily from across the room, slumped in the singular remaining chair to avoid the draft on the floor. He wished he'd been as high as Lana so that he, too, could lay there with her in comfortable clothes – because there truly was no blanket over her. Skag was the true comfort. 'The fuck do you want a CD player for?' He looked up.

Lana craned her neck backwards to meet his gaze. 'Need more to drown that shite out.' Her upside-down image of him scoffed and she went back to humming, though that hum gradually grew into a murmur and further into a more confident rendition of the Janis Joplin cover of "Piece of my Heart".

Between verses, Mark interjected, 'You cannae just listen to that shite all the time.'

'Who says it's shite?'

'Me, just now. You're a decade away from my auld girl's taste, you know.'

'You're just as bad yourself -' Lana furrowed her eyebrows at the ceiling -'Yours and Tommy's Ziggy Pop obsession and all that rubbish. I mean, the bloke's dead.'

'Iggy Pop. And he is not,' Renton argued, 'Tommy went to see him.'

'What, personally?'

'No, not fuckin personally, at a gig.'

She forced herself upright to look at him properly. 'You've got no rights callin my taste old, boy. Or have you forgotten my premium Top of the Pops knowledge?'

'How could I?' the statement might have been teasing if not for Mark's dreadful eyebags and seemingly eternally exhausted expression.

'What can I say? I gave a memorable performance,' she said as she crawled along the carpet towards him, ending up with her arms propped across his knees.

'More memorable than the fuckin bands on there – they don't even play live.'

'They do so!'

'Lana, Suede played on there the end of July, remember? It sounded exactly like the studio version,'