orderfromchaos | 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

You know why other people would. You've heard it all, probably.

There's no in-between where I come from. But everybody has parents, kids, friends, historical heroes. Lists and lists. It's nice, you not being interested.

[Parents; the part of Simon's constantly medicated mind that can process emotions again gives a sharp throb of pain that he manages to ignore. He tries not to think about what he can't remember: the fact that his mother's death almost certainly rests on him.

He shakes it off, thinks instead of Kieren's family sitting down to Sunday lunch together whether or not their son can eat it. He stands.]

We have friends and families, same as you.

[He looks down at his hand. Not like me, he thinks, except that grief is one of the least exceptional things about him. That's nice, too, a kinship, even if Simon doesn't see it that way.]

I didn't bring my own parents back, actually. It seemed selfish.

Edited 2014-12-14 05:45 (UTC)

[More selfish not to, he thinks, if he really could have: how does he know they wouldn't want to be living a second life? But then, he's realizing belatedly that Dillon doesn't mean it the way he does.]

There's back and there's back.

[And being dead, undead, and alive again are all very different things.]

And gone and gone.

[He scrubs a hand through his hair.]

Sorry. I'm - maudlin, lately.

[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?

[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.

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.]

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.

[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.

Peace be with you, then.

[It's not right, all of its proper place with no mass to give it a place. Dillon doesn't offer his hand, and Simon probably wouldn't take it if it did, and it's probably for the best they don't touch anyway.But it's what Dillon wants to say,the communal catholic ritual of it and the sincere goodwill, even if Simon isn't strictly Catholic and doesn't consider them community at all. It doesn't matter to him.]

[Simon was raised strictly Catholic, and even if he's diverted from it very slightly -- still very slightly, the ULA branching off at an angle so acute as to still be nearly invisible -- the rituals remain the same for him. He knows what it means for Dillon to say that, and what it means for him not to reply.

And so he doesn't. He glances Dillon over once, and then he walks away, his hands still resolutely in his pockets.]

23. the creatures in tide pools

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[spam] if simon tweeted this would be #sorrynotsorry