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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Now alright?

Fine.

[He's waiting at the door.]

[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?

[OOC: hypertextual aside: when they arrived at the door, there was a kiss. Darn mistletoe.]

...alright with it.

[He does hug his own elbows, though, because he feels the cold, and it always takes him a little while to counter it. There's a little ripple when he steps over the threshhold, a blaze of power diffused only by how widely it's cast, because his power is unbounded here, so he could practice with Jean and Elsa. Without the admiral's dam, he can feel repetitions in the snowflakes, a thousand tiny patterns beginning to come under his sway. He concentrates on directing the overflow as much as he can into a small pocket of heat around himself. Heat is only chaos on the molecular level; it comes easily but not naturally, not automatically, and the fineness of scale, the staggering number of operations to be sifted through and simultaneously brute-forced at volume. For a little while, Arthas is free to play, while Dillon struggles and concentrates, eyes nearly glazed, until his breath stops steaming and little puddles spread around his sneakers.]

[Many cultures say that, rather than in constant flames, hell is freezing cold.

Icecrown is the surface of an ancient glacier covered in threadbare snow. The sky is seamed with stormclouds, halfway into a month-long night that falls on the winter solstice. Black mountains rise in the distance, and the wind makes the snow into shrapnel. The living would have trouble surviving here, which is partially the point.

Arthas is staring at Dillon.]

Don't pass out.

[It's the wind that really fucks with him, whisking away his studiously heated bubble faster than he can harass the universe into making it. And even though there's always some overlap at the edges, weather belongs to Michael; it's a hard system for Dillon to get traction on. He shivers, breathing steaming, splits his attention and continues to keep himself warm, makes up for the finickiness of it and his inability to consciously process millions of molecules with more raw power. Once he starts letting loose, it always comes easier.]

What would you do if I did?

Drag you to the infirmary.

[He says it as if it was obvious, as though he hadn't made every possible signal to indicate otherwise, and deliberately so.]

[If he is surprised, he doesn't show it, just sticks his hands in his pockets.]

Why?

[Curious, not disbelieving. There are a lot of possible answers.]

Because.

[Arthas frowns. He's not used to examining his own logic.]

It would indicate damage worse than being stabbed.

Which matters because - that's what you've done? That's what I allowed already? That's a warrior's sort of death?

I'm not a warrior, particularly.

It matters because you'd be dead. Injured. Whatever.

[He's making this too complicated, and it's frustrating.]

Why's it unacceptable to you that I be dead, or injured, or whatever? Today.

You didn't agree to it, today.

[He starts stomping across the ice, deep cleats that play hell on the decks of the Barge giving him easy traction here.]

[Dillon kind of - scoots. His sneakers slide on the ice, slick with a very thin later of water where he's trying to keep himself heated. If he were anyone else, he'd have fallen on his ass several times. But friction and wind resistance and weight balance are all simple physical symptoms, and pretty soon he settles into a skating sort of motion and catches up.]

What would it take for you to hurt someone who didn't agree to it? Starvation, being attacked...?

[Other...things?]

I don't starve. Attacking someone is an implicit agreement to be attacked in return, that's how war works.

[And what the hell are you doing, Dillon, this is not an ice rink.]

It does buildings now, I've heard.

You want to be back inside already?

And yeah, that's fair. Anything else, these days?

I want to be anywhere that doesn't look like this damn ship.

[He keeps walking in the same direction, though.]

I'll kill someone when I need to send a message. When someone asks me to. Or when they just deserve it.

If who asked? Who deserves it?

[Hey, dang, look at that. Glitzy Vegas neon spires twinkling their bright lights through the snow, flanking them as though the path Arthas has chosen were the main strip.]

Hannibal, I'm sure you'll agree, deserved it.

[Arthas stops dead (ha ha) and squints at these bright things.]

These aren't supposed to be here.

[A little darkly; a scoured sort of honestly.]

I don't think I can be a reasonable judge of what he deserved.

The lights are from me.

This is a real place.

[Arthas grumbles, but plods forward.]

I lived here.

They're from the first city I went to after I decided to take over the world.

[It's a complicated memory, one he's mostly at peace with. He flicks one of the towering spindly monuments as they pass, a brisk rap, resonances and windchill working on the brittleness of the steel, and after a few seconds, the whole thing shrieks mournfully, shudders and crumbles into metal dust and broken glass, in a sad scatter that just manages to miss them completely. Dillon scoots on before he can rebuild it in spite of himself.]

You don't think Hannibal deserved what I did do to him, though.

[Arthas stops again, to watch the tower crumble. Yes, the kid is showing off. But at the same time, it pays to know what he's capable of.]

I don't think anyone deserves that. Did you succeed?

[He does like showing off; but Arthas is one of a few people he wouldn't really expect to impress. It's also just nice, cutting loose a little, venting some of the endless energy inside him, unraveling the simple patterns of something less fraught than fate.]

You're probably right. I did get him to stop eating me, which was all I really wanted at the time.

[No, Dillon, be honest.]

Or. Okay. I wanted. I wanted him to suffer. Not. Mostly not for its own sake, not in the. Pain way. But he didn't care about dying. And I wanted him to know he wasn't untouchable, wasn't - above it all. I wanted rip that smug certainty away. And I certainly did that.

[Caustic, by the end, bitterly amused. Hannibal got his revenge. Dillon isn't untouchable either.]

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