orderfromchaos | 3 - open spam + public + maintenance filter + private to Elsa

Entry tags:

3 - open spam + public + maintenance filter + private to Elsa

[Open spam]

[Dillon looks like he just crawled out of a vat of blood, ash, and partially coagulated human organs - because, as it happens, he did. There are strange patterns in the carnage, pathways where muscle fibers wriggled across his cheek to clump together or shards of bone forged thin wedge paths across his drenched clothes to rejoin a scrap of synovial cartilage, concentric webs of extraneous blood vessels plastered over his pants in bizarre, gridlike patches. His eyes are raw, and his cheeks are streaked, almost clean from sobbing. He's slumped against the wall, dripping dark ruddy muck, gulping down air, starting and staring furtively around, one hand braced against the wall, the other reaching out to no one, taut, shaking.]

- Winston!

[Another gulp, involuntary, unsteady. He pulls his hand back, almost covers his eyes, remembers it's filthy just in time. His eyes flutter closed, and he groans, then tries to stumble to his feet, but he feels nearly catatonic, cored out by the horror he's observed - absorbed - and bereft without the others. He's on the barge. He's - some species of safe, here. No one stays dead long enough to drag him into it. He laughs, quiet, brokenly, with the space of one breath.]

[Public, later]

[His hair is still damp, and his skin looks pink, a little raw. He's been scrubbing and scrubbing. His eyes are deeply, terribly sad, but he can't quite look straight at the screen.]

I'm sorry for the - mess. If you saw it. It's not. Anyone on the barge. I'll clean it up now.

[Private to the maintenance crew and possible future maintenance crew]

That shouldn't - it's not in you guys' job description. But if I could borrow some supplies. That'd be good.

[Private to Elsa, also later]

Please tell me you're okay.

[OOC: multiple respondents to his arrival totally okay; if any flood is good for wibbly time, it's this one.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There were these - people. Like, a whole nation, only they didn't have a home, for a really long time. And some other people hated them, because they were different, and tried to wipe them out. They - it was really, really awful. They were rounded up, and worked to death, or poisoned, and the bodies were burned because there wasn't space to bury them all. Millions of them. It was the cruelest thing - people mostly agree. The worst thing anyone's ever done, in all of history.

[He doesn't recite it mechanically - as far from it as possible. His words lurch and ache, because it would have been hard to explain the holocaust to someone who'd never heard of it under normal circumstances, but today he has seen it, in the way he sees, all the threads of cause and consequence, has leeched the old suffering from the earth only by taking it into himself, by understanding and bearing witness. He's crying again, silently, tears slipping down his cheeks and soaking the knees of his jeans.]

So. So today someone took me and my friends down to one of the old mass graves. And we climbed in. And they climbed out.

[It is difficult to imagine. For all the bad things in her life, Elsa knows she's lived a very sheltered one. Obviously. But she'd never needed to see suffering like that, even if she's read about wars and cruelties and injustices, and tried to learn how to prevent them from happening under her watch.

She can't imagine it. Doesn't want to.

And there's a part of her that wants to find someone else who can help him, because she has no idea how. No one's prepared her to deal with something like this, and the temperature of the air around them drops with her uncertainty.]

Why did they make you do that?

Nobody made me.

If you see someone get killed and you could stop it and you don't, it's your fault, isn't it, at least little. And if there's injustice and you could fix it and you don't, isn't that the same thing? What's the difference? It feels like there should be one but is there really? I can save them, it doesn't matter how long it's been, not if Winston and Michael are there to help fill in the gaps. And we did. We did, we stole - we saved thousands of people.

I made the call, I told them to get in there with me. I think it was the right thing but Tessic wants us to do it again tomorrow, and I'm so damn glad I don't have to go back yet.

[He turns his head for the first time, searches for her eyes.]

Does that make me a coward?

No.

[But she's probably the wrong person to ask about cowardice, and that's the thought that makes it difficult for her to look at him.

It had been so much easier to run away and not look back, and she still hates that this place makes it nearly impossible to do the same thing. She doesn't want to think about what she's done, or whether it was right or wrong or if she's actually a monster.

She also has no idea what the Tessic is, and she wonders if he thinks she does.]

Shouldn't you be happy? That you saved them?

I should. I guess. Maybe I will be. It was just so awful in the middle of it.

[He sniffs, and wipes his face with the end of his sleeve, gulping down a breath, bracing himself again. Stiff upper lip or something.]

I'll be okay. It was just. Hard.

[She knows all about that, too. Can almost imagine him repeating her mantra to himself, and part of her wishes he wouldn't do that. It had never helped her even if she still clings to it sometimes, why would it help him now?]

... Is there anything I can do?

Edited 2014-02-23 07:03 (UTC)

Can you tell me what you were reading about?

[Something else to think about. To bring his focus to this place, and this time.]

[It surprises her, and it probably shouldn't be a difficult request to follow through on, but she's still thinking about everything that's happened. It's distracting, to say the least.]

Just some fables. [Nothing particularly exciting or intellectually stimulating, but.]

I've reread the books in my room already.

That's fine. That's sounds - nice. So tell me a story.

[As happens so often with Dillon, it's awkward, but sincere.]

[She hesitates, not sure of what to tell or how to really do this. It's another life skill she hasn't had to use in years, and sometimes it's hard, to think of how much better things had been before she'd almost killed her sister.

Dillon looks a little like Anna, superficially. They're around the same age, too.

So finally, she sits down next to him, arranges her skirts carefully and tries to focus on the story, not on what Dillon had told her or how uncomfortable she feels. He'd helped her, when she'd been miserable, even though she'd been uncomfortable.]

One day, a fox was boasting to a cat of its clever devices for escaping its enemies. "I have a whole bag of tricks," he said, "which contains a hundred ways of escaping my enemies."

"I have only one," said the cat; "but I can usually manage with just that."

A moment later, they heard a howling pack of dogs coming towards them, and the cat immediately climbed up a tree and hid herself in the branches.

"This is my plan," said the cat. "What are you going to do?"

The fox thought first of one way, then of another, and while he was debating the hounds came nearer and nearer, and at last the fox in his confusion was caught up by the dogs and soon killed by the huntsmen. The cat, who had been looking on, said: better one safe way than a hundred on which you cannot decide.

[He hasn't heard it before. It's a little on the knows, with how he doesn't know which way to go, nowadays. Pick something: do it well. Maybe if he commits to this, hard as it is, knowing the worth of it, maybe that can be enough.]

Clever cat.

[The thinnest possible smile, but he manages one.]

Yes. [Although she identifies with the story for a completely different reason: she thinks of herself as the cat, because running away and hiding has always seemed like the best, safest solution.

She hesitates for a second before asking a question she's been sitting on since he got back.]

Why did you want to see me?

Just. Checking in, once I remembered what I was doing here.

[There's a lot of stuff he doesn't know how to deal with at home, but at least he can make sure she's okay.]

[She still doesn't necessarily understand the importance of seeing her specifically, especially when he was really upset, but. It's not the worst thing, probably.]

Well, thank you. You've been very kind to me.

Guess I'm doing something right, at least.

[It makes him smile, very small. He doesn't know how much good he's actually done, but - it's something. He closes his eyes, lets go of his knees enough to lean back against the couch. He's so tired. Bone-deep, deeper, soul-deep. He didn't know it was possible to be this tired. And he worries, with a shiver, that the moment he drops to sleep he'll be back in that pit.]

I still don't understand why you think you haven't.

[He's made mistakes, he hasn't had control, he's been manipulated... but she's never seen him do any of that here. In comparison, it seems like he's been doing pretty well for himself.]

[He sighs, scrubs a hand over his face.]

I just - at home, it feels like the more I try to fix things, the worse it turns out. And I killed so many people. And I'm trying to make up for it, but it's like I'm in a hole and all I have is a shovel, and...

It's easier, here. Everything is already so crazy, I don't. Destabilize it.

[She nods, but doesn't really know what else she can say. She still thinks being able to undo some of the damage must be better than not being able to do anything, but then again, she hasn't had to live with what he's done.

And knowing her, she'd probably be taking it a lot worse.]

[He reaches over, squeezes her gloved hand, lets go again. Small touches, getting her used to more little cracks in her isolation without the world falling apart. And it's a comfort for him, too.]

You're a better friend than you think, you know that?

[Touch might be something she can get used to - it's not as though she doesn't miss it - but it's still early days, and even though she knows she won't hurt Dillon even if she wanted to, her first instinct is still to jerk her hand way. It's not quite fast enough to avoid the gesture entirely, but it's still a thing that happens, and it takes her a moment to get anywhere close to relax again.

She does manage some self deprecating humor, though.]

I don't. [Otherwise she'd think she was a better friend.]

[He snorts softly, weary but amused by it anyway.]

Yeah, alright. I'll just have to keep saying so, I guess.

[And again, it kind of makes her think of Anna, and how she'd done everything she could to keep her sister away from her to keep her safe, but Anna had just kept coming back for more until she finally didn't anymore. And even after the knocks on the door had stopped being a morning routine, she'd still tried.

At least she can't hurt Dillon the way she'd hurt Anna.

She tries to smile a little, mostly for his benefit. She wants to say something else, like she's glad he's not hurt, but she doesn't actually really know how to say it. She still feels rusty at all of this, and like maybe she doesn't want to get unrusty.]

[He gets some of it from her smile, the well-meaning uncertainty, and that feels warm, feels like enough. He settles back into the couch, lets coiled in on himself.]

Would you read to me a little? I'll probably be asleep in a minute.

[Well, that's definitely not helping the previously small similarities between you and a different redhead - not that Anna had necessarily been awesome at sitting still enough to finish an entire story when she was younger, but - and as complicated as that might be, she feels like she can do this.

So she nods, and looks over to the stack of books she's assembled. It's a weird collection.]

Do you have any requests?

Whatever I interrupted is fine.

[Her voice is nice, is all, is a pull against all the things waiting for him in his nightmares. He didn't get the Vector dreams when he was on the barge before, but this isn't something the world is trying to tell him, it's just - what he's lived. He's so tired, though. Maybe he doesn't have to dream at all.]