orderfromchaos | 29. juxtaposition

[Video]

[Grumpy Dillon is grumpy. His clothes from over a month ago are unwrinkled, and he has no bedhead, but he manages to look groggy anyway.]

So, while I was unconscious for a month, Hangover ate all my socks. Or sucked the reality out of them, or whatever he does.

[The camera swings around to see a bobbing lavender jellyfish like creature, wriggling self-consciously on a few sad strands of translucent yarn. Squiddle shaming!

Back to Dillon.]

So can I borrow some, maybe?

[Filtered to Tucky, Dillon, Bucky, Jean, Iris, Abigail, Horatio, Chris, Helena, Gene, Snafu, and Scott]

What's up with you guys? Are you okay? I feel more out of touch than I did breaking out of prison.

[Spam for Merlin]

[Once he's checked in with people, he goes searching for Merlin, ends up discovering him in the infirmary which is, frankly, perfect, since he's stuck on shift. Dillon grabs a wheelie chair and scoots next to him, forcing himself to tamp down his anger. Just from the set of his shoulders, it's clear the guy is kind of messed up.]

Hey. Can I talk to you for a minute?

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You can have some of my socks. He can eat the bows off of them.

[Does she really have socks with bows on them? Who can say.]

I'm okay. Died a little.

Goddamnit.

[Wow Dillon, a whole blasphemy.]

Should I come over?

Um. Yeah. If you don't mind.

I'm still in the infirmary.

Be there in two shakes.

[And he is, sliding into a seat next to her, bristling a little but shoving it under concern. Beckett is floating nervously behind his shoulder.]

Hey.

[She glances up at him from her seat in the infirmary bed, propped up on a bunch of pillows, her eyes wide and her bones aching. She smiles a watery smile at him and scoots over a little to leave him space to sit.]

Hey.

[He puts his hand on the edge of the bed, where she can take it or not.]

You don't have to tell me about anything.

[He'll work out as much as he has to. But she can, is the thing. Without any pressure to say it right, or completely.]

[She takes his hand without hesitation, squeezing it tightly as if it's the last lifeline in the universe.]

I missed you so much. Don't fall asleep again. It's too awful.

I don't remember much. I just - remember I was going crazy. I'm still going crazy.

[He looks at their hands, to avoid her face. He doesn't want to see - he doesn't want to be tempted, as he is already tempted, to make it easier for her, until it is no longer her at all.]

Yeah. You'll get through it.

[He says instead, and in his voice alone it is not platitude but simple fact, because she will, because she has the tools and the friends, because she is mad, has been recently, an acute flare he does not scour her for the roots of, but in all the branching paths of her he has seen - an unstable swirl of them, with all the dice throws the barge inserts into his calculations - nowhere is it written that she must always be crazy. He never sees just one fate: she is not destined to be well. But she is not doomed, and he knows she will succeed, given that much of a chance.]

Edited 2015-03-27 20:14 (UTC)

[She leans against him, relishing his body heat and the soapy clean-boy smell of him. Her voice seems to have gone away for the moment, or else she just has nothing left to say that he hasn't already said, his faith in her past and future making her feel shockingly relaxed, even in the face of the man in the corner.]

[See?]

[She sees.]

[He holds her hand while Anya speaks, hoarse and acrid, a tight anchor, a steady beacon. He doesn't know what she is seeing, what her visions are doing as the thing inside her thrashes like an animal in a trap, but he is with her too, he is real, and Ben is real and ready at her other side, and she is not alone.]

[Without his presence she doesn't think it would have worked. That is, she knows it would have, but she feels like it wouldn't have, that it would've slid off her like water off a duck and she would have died as the thing's death throes rolled all over her.]

[She doesn't die, though. She survives, because Dillon is here, bending reality around himself and making the impossible possible. Her friend.]

[She swoons a little when it's done, only opening her eyes after molasses-slow moments have passed, smiling woozily at the three of them collected there.]

Did it?

29. juxtaposition

private, forward dated by like 12 hours

private, forward dated by like 12 hours

private

private => spam

spam

spam

spam

spam

spam; do we still want to timeskip and stuff

yeah let's go for it //timeskip//

timeskippety