Dillon Cole || Scorpion Shard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
orderfromchaos) wrote2014-10-03 03:50 am
orderfromchaos) wrote2014-10-03 03:50 am
16. i can feel this body dying all around me
[Spam for Bush, backdated slightly]
[He doesn't really move for the first three days. He feels blind, dead, wooden, crushed impossibly thin, like a person rendered in two dimensions instead of three. The whole word is empty, arbitrary, veiled. He doesn't want to deal with it. He is above dealing with it. It will end. These things do, veterans have told him. A few days, five at most.
But he still has a human body, one he is being forced to inhabit more strictly than he has in two years. And eventually, as he acclimates, hunger wins out over horror and rage and pride. He stumbles out into the hallway, staggers along, dizzy and weak.]
[Public video]
[It's mirror Dillon. It's unmistakable; he's a little younger, unscarred, his hair messy in a way that's literally impossible when his powers are working. He's curled up in the shadow of a perfectly geometrically symmetrical, fractal tree growing out of the remains of an oak coffee table in the eighth floor common room, back against it's perfectly cylindrical trunk, ridges in the bark as even as links of chain mail. It feels familiar, real. A lost piece of himself, alive. He looks down for a moment, frowning, then stares back up, defiant, trouble.]
I've done some really messed-up things. But so has he. I'm pretty sure we both got trapped into some awful situations.
If any of you talked to that other Dillon - I think. Things went wrong for us in a lot of the same ways. But some different ones too. I want to talk to you about it, if you'll let me. The more I know what's possible, the better odds I have of fixing things when I get back to my world.
[He doesn't really move for the first three days. He feels blind, dead, wooden, crushed impossibly thin, like a person rendered in two dimensions instead of three. The whole word is empty, arbitrary, veiled. He doesn't want to deal with it. He is above dealing with it. It will end. These things do, veterans have told him. A few days, five at most.
But he still has a human body, one he is being forced to inhabit more strictly than he has in two years. And eventually, as he acclimates, hunger wins out over horror and rage and pride. He stumbles out into the hallway, staggers along, dizzy and weak.]
[Public video]
[It's mirror Dillon. It's unmistakable; he's a little younger, unscarred, his hair messy in a way that's literally impossible when his powers are working. He's curled up in the shadow of a perfectly geometrically symmetrical, fractal tree growing out of the remains of an oak coffee table in the eighth floor common room, back against it's perfectly cylindrical trunk, ridges in the bark as even as links of chain mail. It feels familiar, real. A lost piece of himself, alive. He looks down for a moment, frowning, then stares back up, defiant, trouble.]
I've done some really messed-up things. But so has he. I'm pretty sure we both got trapped into some awful situations.
If any of you talked to that other Dillon - I think. Things went wrong for us in a lot of the same ways. But some different ones too. I want to talk to you about it, if you'll let me. The more I know what's possible, the better odds I have of fixing things when I get back to my world.
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[ Troubled kid, though. ]
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[Kind of reserved, in the teenage-boy-afraid-to-care way, wanting to.]
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[This isn't a truism; he sees it in people. He knows. There's empathy there, or something like it.]
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[ Jack sees it, too. Just not in the same way. ]
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[A scowl, frustration, restraint.]
He's one of the good guys, apparently, and after everything I tried to do, I'm - not.
[It's genuinely galling.]
And I'd kind of like to know where it is I supposedly went wrong.
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[ He considers, though-- how to let him know, how to help him. He owes Dillon, one way or another, doesn't he? ]
He helped me -- mended me, stabilized me. He meant well -- in everything he did. But I don't know a lot about who he was before the barge. Some people don't want to talk about who they were and... he's got that right, to keep it private.
I know he went through some terrible times. Cults, things like that. But beyond that-- he's not really quick to share.
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[This is quiet, almost said just to himself. He wonders how badly the other Okoya burned the other him; there must have been one. He is fate and the places fate breaks, he is sure; there must have been another Okoya.]
Do you know anyone he did talk to? More?
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Spam
By Jove! You look half dead.
Spam
[Roughly muttered. He puts a hand on the wall to steady himself, feels the rot, feels it - feels it not mend, the sick sticky decay of it, the whole world and even this piece of impossible untethered dreamland build to die, built flawed from the very beginning. Something spasms across his face, dull horror, and he jerks his hand back, almost overbalancing from the motion of it.]
Spam
Are you under the 'toll?
Spam
Nnn. No, just. Power's gone. Like the whole world's dried leaves.
An' hungry.
Re: Spam
[Bush focuses on the practical. The thing that something can be done about. There's no cure for dead leaves and black spirits except for a good meal and rest, and after that some hard work. That is his view.]
Some water in you, too, and orange juice.
Spam
[He hates to be controlled but he would like to be handled, a little, sometimes. He'll be hissy about the presumption of it later, but he realizes suddenly how thirsty he is, is woozy and docile for the moment.]
Re: Spam
Spam
[Muttered, a little nonsensical, as though the idiot who hasn't eaten in three days was like, totally some other dude making poor decisions whom Dillon is free to condescend to.]
Re: Spam
[But inexorably, he's steering the boy towards food.]
Spam
[Venomless and blushing, the awkward whine of teenage concession.]
Re: Spam
Manners, lad.
Now, here is the mess, and let's see if we can't make a civilized man of you yet. I find a hot meal is a help there.
Spam
You hit me!
Spam
Spam
[Coherent argument will have to wait until after he's eaten. He seems more surprised than anything else.]
Spam
Spam
[Because it will, and food, and somewhere under two years of creeping poisonous power, his mother raised him polite. There's - toast. Something bread-like. Toast is good. He has a lot of memories of toast, from the days when he spent hours curled around old mouldering bodies, learning to stitch them painstakingly back together, and plain toast was all he could hold down. Too much too fast will come up just as easily now, he is distantly aware, so he nibbles doggedly, and sips juice when it's put before him, which seems like a bit more that's right with the world.]
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[Which, now that the physical hungers are starting to recede, makes him think of the drugs he has surfeited on - the crackling fission of destruction, and then the luminous pink viscosity of soulstuff, singscreaming and splendid. He can't, of course. He can't even catch cast-off glimpses of them anymore, let alone consume one. But he wants with sudden vastness, bone-deep, cavernously hungry.
Protein won't help. But it won't hurt.]
Yes, alright.
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The juice is fine. Good. Yes.
[He was a Dr. Pepper kid, back when he did things like rollerblade and drink soda. It feels like remembering someone else's life, like a strange watercolor dream.]
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It is preferable to actually being controlled. He drops his gaze back to the breakfast plate like he's embarrassed about his bitterness, as though he's suddenly remembering Bush's assistance so far, as though it weren't his due.]
Fine, I guess. If you wanna.
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[Which he is too, of course. When he deigns to be.]
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What about you, anything interesting yet?
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She seems boring.
private voice;
private voice;
[Solemn, acknowledgment. It's good that she's still near him, bad that she's going to see him so reduced. He's furious, but it's not the time to unleash his temper. Not yet.]
This place is a trial, full of lies.
[Trust only me.]
private voice;
[But she does, maybe, and that makes it worse. She doesn't know what to feel. Every thought seems like betrayal, from a hundred different directions.]
private voice;
If that were completely true, you wouldn't be.
[Not vicious, but just a little cold, a little sharp. It's punishment, it's temptation, it's her own sin wound around her, given life.]
But it's alight. I'm still here.
[Keep your faith, I have not abandoned you.]
private voice;
I'm glad you're with me. [A little desperate, a little pleading.]
private voice;
[As though he is withholding, as though this is part of her punishment, not anything he is compelled to abide by. The purest definition of Hell is separation from God. This is not Hell. But it is - by this logic, inevitably - closer. She has strayed, so now she is farther from his influence and effects. But not lost. A smile, benevolent and contained, gentle for him.]
I'm glad too.
You can come through this, Helena. I'll still be here to guide you.