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[Video, public]

The next time someone dies, please tell me. I can bring them back with less strain on the barge and the people channeling it.

[Private to Ceres]

Hey, um. A little while back, Iris asked if I could maybe talk to you about powers. I'm sorry I've been hiding, lately.

If it's cool, let me know when it's a good time for you?

[General open spam]

[Dillon is mostly holing up in the infirmary, especially with Morgana gone, but he can occasionally be found grabbing a quite bite to eat or watching the stars from the deck. At one point, he finds his way down to the geometree and nibbles a hostess cake in between half-heartedly humming the 'happy birthday' song.]

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I know, [Gene says, sobering fairly noticeably, popping another M&M in his mouth and cracking it open between his teeth before answering. When he does, he sounds pretty distant.]

I'm not sure how I can go back without him.

[You'd be surprised what you can leave behind, Dillon thinks, half swallows his tongue on the bitterness of it. He has walked away from the other fragments of his soul more often than a person should really be capable of.

He won't make promises.]

I want to make sure you don't have to. He's -

[And it stymies him, a little. For all their different circumstances, Snafu reminds him of himself, at fourteen, at fifteen, running damned, convinced nothing mattered except maybe one person holding worth onto, holding too tight and ruining it all. Snaf hasn't gotten there yet; Dillon prays he won't.]

He deserves a future.

[Even though he doesn't believe in one.]

[Gene nods, because of course he does, he's never questioned that. Never questioned it about any of his marine buddies, but something about the idea of losing Snaf makes his blood run cold in a way he's not sure if would if it was Burgie or Jay who got it next. He'd be devastated, but he'd still have Snaf, who looks out for him and trusts him and knows how to survive when shit gets rough.

He swallows a little thickly, looking around the infirmary almost like he's distracted, or suddenly interested in the cabinets and equipment even though his gaze is unfocused and he's really not sure why he's about to say what he's about to say.]

I dream about it a lot. [It's easier just to call them dreams exclusively, because he only has nightmares now and this makes it sound less insane and upsetting. Less like there's something really wrong with him.] I felt it happen durin' that flood, where we were all dreamin' about people's memories, and it's never really gone away.

[Not like the other things he'd dreamed about, and now he sees it happening like he's going to - from a few feet away, covered in sweat and blood and grime, grabbing his carbine like a protective totem that might get him through this somehow, watching as his friend's head snaps back and then forwards as his body slumps to the ground, against the coral hills - and he can't watch it happen for real.

Gene looks back at Dillon, still looking older and distant, vulnerable in some way even though he doesn't quite look hurt, or sad. Just kind of tired and empty.]

You know we just lost the Skipper?

I knew you'd lost somebody. Close, I mean.

[Someone Gene had relied on. It's there in the weight of his eyelashes, the rhythm of his throat gulping down, the shadows in his cheeks. But he didn't know the details, not ranks or nicknames or duties, the flavor of a world he's only glimpsed through the two of them.]

[Maybe he should explain, but Gene's kind of uncertain he has the vocabulary or ability to talk about it right now. He feels vaguely annoyed with himself for coming in here and suddenly getting weird, like he should be better than this or with it by now.]

Snaf said it happened to him right after. Maybe a couple hours. [Gene both does and doesn't want more detail, and he's hoping just saying that somehow communicates how fucked up he'll be to have it happen one after the other like that. Bad enough that Hillbilly was gone just a couple days before.

He doesn't think he'll be able to come back from that.

He lets out a short huff of a breath, trying to pull it all back.]

I'm not gonna tell you what to do, and I don't think you'll screw him up worse. But I'm glad you're takin' it seriously.

Edited 2015-06-06 01:45 (UTC)

He doesn't look doomed to me. Neither of you do.

[This is solemn, quiet. A little bit uncertain, maybe, of trying to share this, when no one else has any way to see what he sees.]

I don't know how that works with getting shot, but.

[It's what he has to offer, something strange and slippery but more solid than an empty promise.]

[Dillon gets a puzzled look from Gene, genuinely puzzled, because that wasn't at all what he was expecting Dillon to say. To be honest, he's still not sure he wants to know how things are going to end for him, but at the same time, if it's gonna be something good-]

You think we're gonna make it?

[He raises one shoulder higher than the other, a skewed uncertain tension, like his body trying to curve into a question mark.]

I don't know. I don't...the barge means a hell of a lot of blank variables.

[He is making neither promise nor prophecy.]

But just on, like, instinct. I do, yeah.

[In some ways - in a lot of ways - that's more than enough for Gene. The foolish thought that he was invincible, that death would happen but not to him had worn off the second he'd had the guy fall on him when they were trying to get off the amtrac and onto the beach, and just having some confirmation or hope that maybe he would actually get out is kind of buoying.

Of course, Dillon's right. Anything could happen. Maybe his sense of these sorts of things isn't entirely accurate all the time.

Either way, he lets out a slow breath that sounds fractionally calmer and less miserable than he was before.]

Sorry. I didn't mean to come in here and get all depressing. [There's something like a pale, rueful smile there.]

But thanks.

It's cool. We can be, like, the gloomy redheads club.

[Gene doesn't have to keep up a front for him, is what he means, even though the playfulness of the phrasing is a front itself.]

Never really thought that'd be a club I'd be a member of.

[But he's accepting it with good humor now, so that's good.]

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