orderfromchaos | 23. the creatures in tide pools

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23. the creatures in tide pools

[Open spam in the chapel, since the kid flood, whenever.]

[When he isn't on shift at the infirmary, or trailing after Abigail like a concerned ginger puppy, Dillon is spending a lot of time in the chapel. Just - sitting, in the very front pew or the very back, wishing for saints and stained glass and stone, for something gaudy and familiar, the smell of sand and wood polish. But the chapel resists his homesickness, neat white plaster, well kept, effusively inoffensive. He tries kneeling, a couple times. But it doesn't feel right, and neither does prayer. So he sits, quiet, eyes forward on the Unitarian nondenominational emptiness, for an hour or two, watches the shadows from the little candles, tries to think about his mistakes, about his options, about nothing at all.]

[Private to Arthas]

I want to see you. Anywhere you'd rather meet?

[Spam for Jerry, backdated to after Allison's post, early the next morning on the tenth.]

[He's just sitting in the hallway, across from Jerry's door. He's not impatient. He's not even angry, really, just calm and steady. He was sloppy, he was absorbed with his own messes. But he made a promise. Allison's rambling plea for understanding as revenge didn't change that. Jerry made his choice, and now he has to face the consequences.]

[Private to Arkin, backdated to after the above]

I've turned Jerry human. I promised him he would, if he hurt anyone else outside self-defense, before you were assigned to him.

[Filtered to Abigail, Scott, Chris, Bucky, Gene, Helena, and Iris, backdated to after the above]

I turned Jerry human, and now he's threatening to leave my friends' corpses at my door like the worst cat in the world.

[He doesn't sound scared. He doesn't even sound mad. He is irritated, and a little disgusted. It was one thing with Okoya and Carter - there were actual stakes there. This is just Jerry being petulant.]

All of you could probably take him in a fair fight, but he's sneaky and mean, so keep an eye out, and kick him in the balls for me if he tries anything.

[Gift List]

Abigail - a print of Starry Night. Some clever board games - like, the kind that are actually interesting and thoughtful? Wise and Otherwise, Ticket to Ride, things like that. I don't think she got to play much as a kid. And some kind of meditative geometry game she could use for like - calm without emptiness, when she needs that. And some pretty dresses.

Bucky - a pineapple upside-down cake, and like, kevlar insert panels that work with the jacket he already has.

Bush - another pineapple upside-down cake, and good boots. Better boots? Like, comfy and insulating, modern REI science stuff, but looking period on the outside. And with the one weighted to make balancing on the fake leg easier.

Cambridge - the collected poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Chris - ridiculous Motherfucker merch. Like, a bobblehead. And T-shirts with golden-age style onomatopoeia impact balloons. A pez dispenser!

Gene - a St. George Medallion. Silver, and a strong chain.

Helena - one of those little personal fold-out cabinet altars, with an old style painting of a bible story she always liked in the panels.

Iris - a tinsel crown, the Al Green christmas album, and tickets to all past and future black-and-white Harry Hunsacker plays.

Scott - The True Story of the Three Little Pigs

Simon - myrrh incense

Snafu - altoids, warm socks with good wicking layers or whatever, and a couple collections of Far Side comics.

Steve - some really good lamps? With flexible necks so he can position lighting how he wants for drawing. Bright and not too harsh, full sun spectrum.

And give all the forties guys a bunch of girl scout cookies.

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[That makes him think of poor Amy, dead and undead and then somehow alive, all only to be dead again.

Or of himself, the far more typical case: the most alive now that he's ever truly felt, but undead to the rest of the world, and dead forever to his father.]

Changed is only the same as gone to those who fear change in the first place. That's a symptom more common to the living than to the Partially Deceased.

[A raw sort of laugh, one harsh involuntary bark, amusement and pain fused together at the ways they don't understand each other.]

Not like you. Like -

Okay. You ever see anybody with late stage Alzheimer's?

I guess so.

It seems like a good enough place to feel lost in.

[He narrows his eyes, listening, but wary.]

Not personally, but I'm familiar with the concept.

[He draws in a breath through his nose, like that burst of emotion was too much, like has to coil himself in again. And he does.]

My parents were a lot like that. Vegetables, at the very end, but before then - lost, and gibbering, they didn't know me or their own names, couldn't remember where they were from one second to the next. Totally shattered.

And I've met people who didn't seem like that at all. Who walked around and talked and seemed - fine, just like you or me. But there wasn't anything inside at all, not even a scared lost spark with no memory. Like a wind-up toy going around gossiping and making pie.

Your soul's still ticking along even if your heart's not, I can see it. But there are things that can rip it away without touching the body at all. That's the worst kind of gone.

[He's waiting at the door.]

You're not from my world, I take it. Not familiar with the war.

[Because he's still taking Dillon at face value: just a boy, a living boy. Maybe a particularly smart one. But if he really was all that smart and he'd been around for the first Rising, if he'd been around to see the difference between an untreated Redeemed and one like Simon, he wouldn't be saying this now.

On the other hand, Simon doesn't really feel the need to fill Dillon in on his own personal history of mindless killing.]

If you get another chance, maybe you should try asking your parents next time.

[He edges out of the pew, hands going back into his pockets, casual and cool.]

[Roderick isn't fool enough to think he could sneak up on Dillon. Not Dillon. Not after everything that's gone down; he knows better.]

[But he doesn't have to announce himself, either. Just intrudes on his solitude, with God or without God, sits in the second pew from the front, at an angle so that Dillon can see him in his periphery. It feels a little sacrilegious to the part of him that still believes in a Christian god, but he does his best to ignore that part.]

[This is about remembering injuries. Making sure they're remembered by the one who caused them. Nobody's slate is wiped clean here - not his, not some god's in the body of a boy.]

[He is afraid. But only a little that he'll admit to himself.]

[He watches the way Roderick sits, the way he holds his shoulders. Deliberate, nervous, waiting. Dillon takes a little while to try and get straight what he wants to say, but there's never a right enough thing to say for things like this; in the end Dillon gives it up, because it seems worse to keep him waiting long.]

I'm sorry.

[A little raspy, but clear, not half-swallowed.]

It wasn't me, but. It could have been, and I'm the one who's here, and you were still hurt. So.

For whatever it's worth to you, I'm sorry.

Not your war, no.

[He's getting bits and pieces of it, but it's like trying to understand someone talking underwater, or reading Beowolf in Old English. Simon doesn't breathe with the patterns of the living, which is a large chunk of Simon's cues that are - present, and he'll learn them, but not arranged in a way he recognizes yet. But he can get the gist of context, here and there.

All of his own killing has been mindful, Dillon thinks. Judge not.]

You can be mad and still have your soul. It's not the same thing.

I'll go, if you'd rather. I probably spend too much time here anyway.

[Arthas has put on his most imposing armor (not that any of it is unimposing particularly) and breezes straight to the entrance as if Dillon is invisible.]

How are you with the cold?

[That's a good way of putting it, both literally and figuratively: Simon does breathe, but not to keep his dead heart beating, and when he's not using his lungs to speak they tend to be unconsciously, unnervingly inanimate.

Similarly, there are ways he's just like anyone else and ways he absolutely isn't. Like his body, his expression tends to be unnaturally still. The further he gets into this discussion, the more signs he shows -- tiny ones, a twitching of the mouth here or a squint there -- but he knows he's difficult to read when he wants to be. It's a talent he's cultivated. Right now, he could be almost talking to a wall, except for the very fine edge of irritation in his voice.]

Well, that's up to you. As for me, I think the setup in my cabin will be suiting my purposes just fine from here on out.

[ Jerry had been waiting for this. Things had been a little TOO quiet ever since he'd turned Allison. Granted, he'd been keeping his head down since then, waiting for Dillon to appear. That had been part of the reason for his actions, after all. To test the kid. He'd started to grow a bit too comfortable when there was no back lash. He should have had at least Allison's friends breathing down his neck. He'd seen the announcement, her grand tale of his actions, while he was out of his room. So he was on his guard again, and he wasn't exactly surprised to see Dillon waiting for him. Jerry stepped out of the stairwell, but didn't go any further. He just stood there, arms at his sides, watching Dillon. Waiting. ]

[He sits up a little straighter. Wasn't expecting that, not right away. It's strange; in his head he thinks of death as everything and nothing, but he still isn't sure how to categorize what's happened to him at Dillon's hands. It's odd, the way he just takes responsibility.]

It's worth something.

[He doesn't need to say out loud that he doesn't know what. That's probably understood.]

You ever done it before?

No. I didn't even know I could until I got back and saw what happened.

He had, though. A couple of times.

Sorry about the delay.

[He doesn't stand up. Doesn't try to close the distance. He's almost always been touching people when he effects them on the barge, but that's not a requirement. It helps him focus, and it's an excuse to touch, to be temporarily connected. But it's unnecessary theater. He just stares at Jerry, and takes the endless bright well inside him, and pours impossibility into the sliver of the world where Jerry stands, turns back all the little tics and transformations. In some ways, it's the easiest resurrection he's ever done, all the pieces already in working order, and in some ways it's the hardest, because the unlife of vampirism isn't a magic he's ever tangled with before. But death is death, in the end, and where he goes, death has no dominion.]

I wasn't--

[ He'd expected touch to be necessary. Or to at least see some sort of shift in the guy. But there wasn't anything as far as he could see. Before it had been a sneaking emotion that crept in under everything else, tied directly to what Dillon had been doing at the time. But this was different. And it felt wrong.

Jerry was never one for retreat. But thanks to Mason, he knew what his human soul was like. Mangled, desperate, weak. He'd worked too hard to be forced back to that. So as he started to feel Dillon's magic, his body starting to revert in ways he'd never thought possible, the vampire did the one thing he thought he'd never do. He ran. Not a sprint, but the sudden unnatural motion of a vampire. But the short burst lasted only long enough to get him up the first flight stairs before it failed him. But that didn't mean he stopped. ]

[He almost laughs. He only doesn't because part of him is quite sure that if he starts, it will be very, very hard to stop. His range - his real range, the distance at which he can feel autumn leaves alighting back to their branches and strangers' crooked teeth grinding straight without his even wishing it, is hundreds of miles. The admiral stops him spilling over unconsciously more than a few feet, but there's no limits when he's trying. He couldn't pick out a body at that distance to revive, or at least he doesn't think so, but the full length of the barge is a very small fishbowl compared to a star.

He closes his eyes and feels Jerry's thrashing, desperate flight in his mind. And he keeps pushing, ignites respiration in Jerry's cells, begging for oxygen, sets his heart thumping to deliver it, in time - for now - with Dillon's own. He doesn't mess with Jerry's mind, beyond peeling back the cold insulation undeath afforded him. He's not transformed somehow into anyone else, not even another him; he loses no memories of himself or his choices. He is himself, but simply, utterly human. Hungry, most likely, because Dillon can't create blood sugar or sustenance that isn't there, but not tired.

He stands when it's done, follows Jerry up the stairs. He won't pursue hard; he doesn't have much to say. But it seems like Jerry should have the opportunity, if he wants to. And besides, his room is that direction.]

[ He tries to stop it, tries to will his body back to the way it should be. But his flight slowed on the stairs as his muscles were robbed of the supernatural force which drove them. They started aching from effort, demanding fuel his body lacked still. And when his lungs inflated involuntarily, he let out a wheezing sound as he dropped to his knees. It was one thing to breathe for the purposes of speech. It was entirely another to require the process.

He tried to get to his feet, to push on. As if he could some how escape the effects of Dillon's influence. But he was driven back down by a sudden lurch in his chest. His heart had worked before, in a way. But like breathing, it was an entirely different process. He felt it spread, an unfamiliar thrumming spreading through his entire body, flooding his ears with the sound of thunder.

The fruit that was so much a part of his diet was enough to keep the initial kick of hunger from overwhelming him. Not that he didn't already have enough to deal with. His senses were dulled. Vision, hearing, even touch seemed dull and lacking. All of it drowned out by the sense of what was happening inside him. Centuries without breathing, without a proper pulse. It was all he could feel, all he could hear.

He managed to push up to his feet, leaning hard on the wall. He felt heavy. Unfamiliar. He saw Dillon there. Even with the insulation removed, it was going to take time for those emotions to return and mingle with his own, just as it took time for the undead side to force out those emotions. So he managed the smallest, confident smile. Even if he sounded breathless when he spoke. ]

It won't last, you know.

[He shrugs.]

Nothing lasts forever.

[Except him, maybe, but he hopes not.]

The present still matters. And it's not difficult, if I have to do it again.

[He doesn't even sound vindictive. He's not gloating, he's just being clear. Jerry thought he was bluffing, but he wasn't. He almost never is. It might be a little less painful for everyone, if Jerry learns that.]

Humans are pretty good at fending off guilt, sometimes. He's not the guy he was when he died. He's the same asshole he was yesterday, just a little less pointy.

I mean, good, it's what you're there for, whatever. But it's kind of a lead-a-horse-to-water thing, right now. Just because he can feel things again doesn't mean he will yet.

[ The wall seemed to be the only thing supporting him, as his body seemed to be slowly settling into this "life" thing. His breathing was staggered, the old process and the new process fighting each other. But even so weakened and fighting his own body, he still maintained the same attitude as before. That sense of looking down on Dillon. A predator looking upon something that was less than prey. An insect. Something that didn't matter and he couldn't use. ]

You don't really think this will stop me, do you, Dillon?

[A breath out, fast and light and curling into a wistful smile at the edges. He misses Lourdes, for all that she was miserable and selfish and cruel. He can't help but miss her.]

Control is not my domain. Nor my desire. I told you there would be consequences, and so there are.

Do you really still think I'm prey?

[Yes; yes, of course he does, right down in his freshly warm marrow, because the habits of centuries die hard. He has to bite his lip, because he is not laughing, he is still not laughing. Even if it's the funniest thing in a long time.]

[ But Jerry did laugh. It was a short, derisive burst, barely more than a snort. But it was still a laugh. ]

You? You're...useless.

[ Dillon had never been prey. He'd been something to avoid. ]

I am to you.

[A little hard-worn contentment; he's been used more than he cares for already.]

You'll want to eat soon. Start with crackers and apples, that shouldn't upset your stomach too badly. And don't forget to drink enough water.

[Jerry probably won't listen. But that will be his problem. Dillon sticks his hands in his pockets and continues past Jerry on the stairs.]

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23. the creatures in tide pools

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