orderfromchaos | 21. loose ends

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21. loose ends

[Spam for anyone who would visit Abigail or Derek's rooms]

[He spends most of his time, outside infirmary shifts, shuttling back and forth between the two, with his comm and a few snacks and a big sketchbook. He sits at their respective besides for a few hours each, filling pages and pages, sometimes with surreal, twisted dreamscapes, sometimes with sketches from memory.]

[Private to Scott]

I think it's time I learned about Playstation.

[Spam for Bucky]

[He's doing fine. He's - really, he is. He's been through worse than Hannibal, it was only a week, it was only pain. But he sees Bucky come out of the mess hall and there's - it's the shape of his indrawn breath, the bracing in it, an echo of the moment before the scalpel and his shoulders flat as they were on the slab just for a moment, and Bucky himself probably isn't even remembering it except that the experience has writ itself on him again and left a hundred little fingerprints, and suddenly Dillon can taste fried medallions slivered off his own heart, savory and fresh while his chest ached sharply, and he staggers, has to lean against the wall and swallow convulsively against nausea.]

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[Scott is kind of exhausted after the full moon; he was actually dozing when Dillon's message comes through, and for a second he stares blearily at his device before it sinks in and he blinks the sleep away.]

Oh - oh, yeah, dude, come over. I'm right down the hall, number five. You're gonna love it.

[He laughs.]

I'll bring snacks. And coffee.

Oh God, yes please. I'll get it all set up. I hope you like racing games cause....I don't have a whole lot of variety.

[He's too tired for puzzle games - and he's not sure his powers would unravel them in weird ways now anyway - and not really interested in fighting games, like, ever again.]

That sounds perfect. Be over in ten minutes.

[Which is enough time to get coffee, weird Dutch candies, and a stupid amount of popcorn, and then knock on Scott's door by kicking it. Not in the place that would shatter the whole thing.]

[Scott definitely appreciates his door not being shattered. He's there a second after Dillon kicks, pulling open the door with a tired but solid smile. He reaches out to help lighten the load, possibly stuffing a handful of popcorn in his mouth as he takes it off Dillon's hands.]

You seriously know how to stock up.

Yeah, well -

[Weird, weird. Scott has the smile of someone who has been through some shit. Well, that's not weird, they all have. He has the smile of someone who has been hiding some of his shit, which is not cool, and not totally like Scott - not totally unlike him, but, still - and Dillon can't pick up what it was, which means a weird barge thing, a weird unpleasant dangerous barge thing that he is hiding so as not to freak people out.

It is at this point in his slightly off-kilter staring that he notices the bandage on Scott's neck and connects it to the rest of what he's picking up, and not, say, a humorous accident involving a canal and a lamppost. Because he is an observant, if circuitous, person.]

Dude. What happened to you?

[He tries to gesture at the bandage, which causes some of the coffee to slop out of the cups, and then, in utter defiance of gravity, slop back in.]

Edited 2014-11-16 18:01 (UTC)

[Scott's hand lifts automatically at the nod, but it freezes halfway to his neck before dropping again.]

Um.

[He hesitates, hesitates, then rakes a hand through his hair and turns to drop everything only mostly carefully on the bed. He almost misses the miracle coffee - almost - and the distraction has him staring as the words inch out of him.]

It was just--

[Bullshit it was an accident. Scott lets out a long breath.] Jerry bit me.

[Words he never thought he'd have to say about another person again.]

Edited 2014-11-19 01:11 (UTC)

[His eyes narrow, and there's a low shiver of energy for a moment, like the air before a thunderstorm, then Dillon controls himself as well as he can, follows, asks flatly,]

Why?

[He feels - something? He's not sure what, but he thinks he should be sniffing the air for lightning. But that's ridiculous.]

I don't know - to be an asshole?

[It's not that far fetched, but. Scott scratches around the bandage.]

I think he wanted to see if he could turn me.]

This can't go on.

[Half to himself, as much as anything.]

I know.

[He pauses, shakes his head and sits on the edge of his bed, pressing his hands tight together between his knees. But the stillness only lasts a moment before he gets up, heading through the open door at the far side of his room to stop in front of the bathroom mirror. He peels the bandage down a little, checking to see if the black....ooze is still seeping. It's slowed enough that he can't tell.]

He's gone after too many people. [Too many people Scott cares for.] And he's still high on being powerful, and I don't know how to make him understand anything. It's not - he's not like the people we dealt with back home.

I've known a few.

[Strangely, it's not Okoya he thinks of - Jerry imagines himself the master hunter, but he's not that smooth, not that skilled at manipulation. He relies on supernatural strength and taunts. It's General Bussard Dillon remembers, the sadistic military prick. The blunt simplicity of him. He respected nothing unless it had the power to force him, and then only grudgingly.]

He won't stop until there are consequences severe enough to make him actually regret.

[Conviction, and intention, at once.]

Is he loose?

[Because Dillon is already half turned toward the door.]

Edited 2014-11-20 07:34 (UTC)

Sorry.

[He means it, too. He's known his share of crazies, but they weren't in situations like this, eternally trapped. They could be stopped. Defeated. Even the Nogitsune they were able to trap, and he literally lived for chaos and suffering. But Jerry - Scott can't (won't) kill him, and they can't lock him away forever.

He's here to be better, and Scott's never really had to do that, not to this extent.]

No, he's not. I put him back in Zero before I went out to the city. That's like two weeks in a row. We can't just keep him down there.

No.

[It's a little less urgent, then. He slumps onto the couch instead of storming off.]

I'll do something.

[He's glad there's no storming, at least.]

You don't have to do anything.

[He thinks Dillon means for him, or because of him. It's hard, sometimes, to remember just how....much Dillon is.]

I do.

I'm sick and tired of - smarmy predators who think it's their right to hurt anyone they like.

I might not be able to stop him but I can make him regret it.

Killing him won't do anything.

[It's not wary or desperate. He's not really worried about Dillon doing something drastic, though maybe he should be.]

Don't get me wrong, I want to beat the crap out of him every time I see him. But he'd just laugh it off.

I know.

[Dillon said something he'd regret, and he meant it; neither injury nor death qualifies. But it's a problem for another time. He has a hurt friend in front of him. He sighs, forces himself to let go of the anger that wants to boil up and burst inside him, careless and scalding. He can't be that.

He reaches out, fingertips to Scott's wrist, because he is a goddamn healer now, but it's contamination, and the kind of purification Scott needs belongs to Tory, not to him. He can ease a little of the damage, the itch and the ache, but only the symptoms, not the cause.]

Sorry. Looks like magic blood poisoning is out of my wheelhouse.

[Scott glances up at the touch, but he doesn't pull away. Some of that burn fades, though, and he smiles when he realizes it.]

That's okay. I'm pretty sure my wheelhouse is smaller.

[He reaches out, clasping Dillon's arm briefly.]

Thanks, man.

Whatever.

[He doesn't pull away or anything, though.]

So - are we gonna play?

[Bucky's not thinking about it, not really. He's had plenty of time to get good at compartmentalizing things like this, so he goes about his day distracting himself with other things. Downtime means time to think, and he's not looking for that right now. Maybe not ever, if he had a choice, but he doesn't, so he'll just make do with what he has.

(It has absolutely left fingerprints. Gouges, more accurately, probably.)

So he has no idea what might have caused this reaction - isn't even thinking about it, or anything close - but he does hurry over when he sees Dillon stumble and prop himself up against the wall. Bucky reaches out without thinking to put a steadying hand on Dillon's shoulder, openly concerned.]

You okay?

[He tenses, a tiny bit, because he's gotten a lot better about touch but Bucky is - not a parent, not even a parent figure really, but definitely a grown up in the way he and Scott and Elsa and Abigail are not, and it makes some part of him remember his parents, and the terrible unwitting damage his touch did to them. But it's a tell easily lost in his general shakiness.]

Sorry. Sorry. I just.

[What does he even say. He blows out a breath, tries to set his shoulders.]

Rough month is all.

Tell me about it. [And while part of that does sound bitter, it's fleeting compared to the sort of resigned humor in his voice.

He doesn't move his hand from Dillon's shoulder, trying to keep him steady.]

You gonna be sick? [Which is being asked totally non-judgmentally, somehow. Maybe even a little jokingly as he continues.] Steve threw up on me all the time when he was a kid, so if you're gonna puke, might as well just get it over with.

Nuh-uh. I got a strong stomach.

[One side of his mouth curls at that, and it's not resigned in the same way at all, not the coping kind of black humor, it's the tab on a zipper that could spill out cackling hysteria if someone tugged it hard enough, because he kept his food down all week, and that's funny, that's so damn funny. He leans into Bucky's hand, though, the steady warmth of it a bulwark against the memories, the smell.]

[It's a look he's seen plenty of times before on the faces of guys who weren't that much older than Dillon, and others who were his age or younger, so Bucky knows they're kind of hovering on the brink of something bad. He should probably try to get him to talk, but he knows sometimes talking doesn't help, so he tries to nudge him along to stable ground with something else instead.]

You need anything? [Somewhere to sit, water, to talk, whatever. Bucky's thumb gently strokes across Dillon's shoulder, going for comfort and trying to keep him steady.]

[Fresh air, maybe, he thinks. But the CES is gone, and he just - he just needs to get a gulp of air down, swallow the crazy with it. He didn't crack when Hannibal had him, murmuring think on your sins, Cole, on your pride while he popped morsels into Dillon's mouth. On the fourth day he was hungry enough to be grateful, but he just swallowed, got through it, didn't lose his shit.

This seems terrible important to express, suddenly, except Dillon can't explain it without talking about torture, and he can't talk about what happened to him without bringing it up for Bucky, who fits so well into the mantle he's taken up, who knows who he is taking care of someone.]

I told my shrink he was dying once. I mean he knew already, bad leukemia, third round of chemo. I just tossed it in his face because I didn't like his condescending attitude.

You plan to die with dignity. Told him that like it was a parlor trick. Ha ha, who's the profiler now.

[He was an asshole a year ago. Christ. But confession is good for the soul, or Bucky's hand on his shoulder is, or something. His breath comes slower, and he's steadier.]

[Well, at least he's calming down, even if Bucky's not entirely sure what to do with that information at first. It's a shitty thing to say to someone, but Bucky's said shitty things to people and they've said shitty things to him back. People fuck it, that's just how things are.]

Kids do dumb shit. [And Dillon is still a kid, even if in some ways, he's not.] And you've had a lot more put on you than most people your age do, so-

[He ventures a small, slightly wry smile.]

I'll try not to hold it against you.

[Or, you know, he won't at all.]

[He doesn't feel like a kid. Hates being called one, normally, except Bucky doesn't mean it like he doesn't know what he's talking about. Just that maybe he shouldn't have been stuck on his own. It's - warming, disarming, good. He hunches, sniffs, smiles on one side.]

...I did cure his cancer. I hope that counts for something.

They can't all be spectacular ironic backfires.

[All miracles, he means; all attempts at dragging the world to something better.]

He probably figures it does. I do.

[For better or worse, Dillon decided maybe that was better than dying a slow, horrible death. It's kind of scary to think about having that power, and the million different ways it can go wrong, but... yeah. It's good to know sometimes it works.

Bucky squeezes his shoulder again.]

You're a good guy, Dillon. If you wanna talk about whatever happened, I had a pretty rough month, too.

[Meaning, he gets it and won't get all judgmental or shitty about whatever it was.]

I know.

[Quiet, looking at the ground, not sure himself if he's tensing or relaxing under the touch. It feels like both in his chest, see-saw, a knot pulled free but the strings drawn taut.]

Hannibal had me.

[Mumbled.]

[The shift in Bucky's expression is immediate, but subtle. His brow furrows, and there's a protective flash in his eyes that's completely useless, because it's not like there's anything he can do about it, now, but.

Doesn't stop it from happening.]

When did he get you?

Most of the last week.

[He swallows, sets his shoulders, glances up.]

It's okay. It just - hurt. They're gone now.

[It didn't just hurt. It was degrading and twisted and awful, tapped into old terrors and new bitterness. Which is perhaps why he slips, says they instead of he.]

[Unfortunately, Bucky latches onto it immediately, and doesn't let it go.]

They? [He keeps his hand on Dillon's shoulder, and the grip's still reassuring, not too tight or too pushy, even if he's getting more emotional.]

[oops]

...your rough month.

[The most oblique way he can think of saying I know you were tortured too.]

[There's a flash of surprise, and then Bucky just lets out an almost dismissive snort, looking away for a moment.]

It's fine. [It's not the first time, goes unsaid, especially since it probably wouldn't exactly be reassuring, even though Bucky thinks it actually maybe should be. At least this time, he'd known what to expect. That had made it easier, knowing he'd already been through worse.

And he doesn't know Dillon's full story, and he knows he probably doesn't want to get treated like a kid, but-]

C'mere. [He slides his arm around Dillon's shoulders and pulls him into a gentle, but firm hug.] You're okay.

[He's been helpless and alone before; he's been electrocuted more than he really cares to think about. But never vivisected; never the subject of such intense and incisive malice.

And he hasn't really had anyone treat him like a kid since his parents started losing their minds when he was thirteen. He shudders, for a moment, then mashes his face into Bucky's shoulder, hugs him back tight. Because he needs it, and because helps center Bucky back to himself, being the strength someone else needs.]

You too.

[Choked, a little, but his voice doesn't crack.]

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21. loose ends

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