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.
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.]
no subject
no subject
[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.
no subject
no subject
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.]
no subject
no subject
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.