orderfromchaos | 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

I think that is fitting. If the sea is there we can wrap the poor devils in hammocks and sink them with stones, unless that is something their folk don't do.

[To Bush, that is nearly the only proper burial; but landsmen are buried on land, and if that's as they'd want it, he'd rather help.]

They were Jews. Most of them.

Their killers cremated them. Even though that's forbidden.

[It's almost comical, in the darkest possible way. It's not as though they'd cared.]

Open-casket is forbidden too. But that's because you aren't supposed to look at someone who can't look back.

[A twitch of his mouth, more hideous amusement. He picks up the lopsided eye gingerly, and it coheres, grows more spherical in his hand. He drops it gently in the bucket, wipes down the wall where he leaned against it, his body and his handprint marked in the viscous fluid, drying and flaking a little in the interim.]

Not keen on burial at sea, then. I have known enough Jewish sailors.

In the earth, then. Here, lad, in this bag; it is not dignified for the poor remains but it will serve. We will make them a better resting place once we're inside.

What happened, Dillon? Where have you been?

A grave. A mass grave, prepared for us, all the ashes mixed with water so the particles find each other again. There was so much death, we fell in and. We fell in.

[And the mud turned back into people, slowly. He grits his jaw against shuddering at the memories, does as Bush says, scrubs the hallway of puddles and his departing footprints.]

We should stop my room - the clothes I had on before, they're still caked with it.

Holy Peter

Good thought, lad; very sensible.

[A jerk of the head, a puffed out 'heh' of half-amused breath.]

No. It's Gabriel wakes the dead.

We got five thousand, today. A drop. More tomorrow, when - whenever I go back. Tessic means to take us all over Europe. His sister's grave last. He doesn't know I know that's his plan, but I saw it. He thinks it's why God made me like this, doing the things I do, and his calling to bring me to it. So I could reverse the worse crime ever committed.

[And Dillon just. Doesn't know.]

[There is an atrocity Bush has no experience of; it is the sort of thing only heard of during the Black Death, or biblical plagues.]

Take care, lad. Just keep a sound head on your shoulders and don't let yourself be pushed into anything you oughtn't.

[It sounds like it may be too late for that.]

A calling is all well and good but be slow and steady. There's not much was ever the worse for done with a little less haste and more care.

[He takes a deep breath. It feels like his first one since he saw the pit, saw the knot of old, terrible fate in it, tied himself to its unraveling. Breathes again. He does have time, here, to consider, if he isn't thrown back without his memories again. He can think and not panic. It's good to remember.]

Yeah. I guess you're right.

[Tired - still so tired - but warm.]

Thanks. For all of this.

Of course. [Bush would never think to call it paternal, the gruff and protective way he handles certain young people. Other people might, though, and they wouldn't be far off. He'd slop through tides of blood for his young midshipmen.]

It's a bit of work; good for us all, since we're kept so idle here.

[His old clothes are just inside the door, wrapped inside a dark towel. He adds them to the bag, and lets out a sigh, some small part of him soothed by gathering the last traces that haven't already gone down the drain.]

Yeah.

Lord. I haven't done a day of actual labor since - I don't know. Ranch camp, when I was thirteen? The infirmary doesn't count. It's sitting and waiting mostly.

[There was his year of penance, reconstructing shattered cities. But he's put it out of his mind, and he doesn't think of the oversight.]

Unnatural. The Dutchman isn't prey to the same dangers as sailing ships above water, but there's still work to do for every shift, holystoning the decks, keeping our course.

I'll be back to sleeping twelve hours a day here just for something to do if I can't keep myself active.

[He's deliberately being bluff and matter of fact, as they bring their grisly cargo towards the CES]

[Dillon sees. And he's grateful.]

Remind me to tell you about Hearst castle sometime, when we've got a less solemn occasion. You'll be properly appalled.

[He flicks his item at the door when they get there; the bright poker chip bounces perfectly back into his hand as it opens. Compared to morality, physics is easy.]

I will ask you about it-- hopefully not over dice, remind me I'm not to play with you.

...Damn, what are we going to use for a spade. I can lash something up, but I should have thought to visit the gardens.

[He shakes his head. If his abilities worked on the barge itself, he could probably step into the CES and someone would try to kill him one. Alas.]

I'll fetch a proper one, if you stand watch?

I will, and gather some stones for a cairn. [Keeping busy, that's the trick to it.]

Good. That's - yeah.

[And he's off. He only brings back one shovel, and a pine slat box that once carried seedlings of some sort - all collected, there isn't much volume to the remains, but coffins are supposed to be wood. It's a little better than just another hole. The CES is incongruously nice today, a meadow with wildflowers. He picks a spot on a hill and starts digging, and for all his self-deprecation about not working, he knows how to use a shovel. Soon, the grave is deep and neat, smells of fresh loam instead of ashes and rot.]

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

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