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02 ☢ hits you so much harder than you thought
spam } snafu
[He doesn't know whether to be grateful or worried that he got paired up so quickly. It's something to distract him from Simon, at least - Simon being here and being Simon all over everyone. It isn't that he's not happy to see him, it's just that - well. Politics make things complicated, and Simon wears politics like one of his bulky sweaters.]
[Snafu, he thinks, is not much for politics. Snafu, he thinks, is very simple while being very complicated all at one time. Snafu is going to be trouble.]
[This was something he knew already, but reading the file makes it certain. Never mind the fact that on reading it he feels a little dirty, as if he's become privy to someone's worst, darkest secrets. Which is more or less the case. Made worse by the fact that he doesn't think Snafu will care that he knows.]
[In the end, after a few hours of lying in bed thinking about too many things all at once, he decides to just get it over with. Sits in the mirror and carefully removes the mousse, because there's nothing worse than being caught in an in-between state. His anxiety is at an all-time high, his heart would be palpitating if it could, and now he's walking to Snafu's door. He can feel how pale he is, see the white of his eyes as other people can see them. But he doesn't stop until he's knocking.]
voice } gene
Hiya. I have to ask you something.
[It's not a nice something, exactly, but it's. He just has to ask it, all right.]
spam } enclosure
[After meeting with Snaf - a mixed bag, as he expects these meetings might be for a while - he wants to walk. To be alone, or as alone as he can be in a place like this, but to be outside, too - as outside as you can be indoors. The obvious solution to this is programming a wide, empty field with sparse treeline in the distance into the Enclosure and go for a long walk.]
[His gait is still not quite steady, his skin deathly pale, eyes dead white. But he's smiling in the face of the wind, even if this place isn't natural and he knows it.]
text } admiral
[He doesn't know whether to be grateful or worried that he got paired up so quickly. It's something to distract him from Simon, at least - Simon being here and being Simon all over everyone. It isn't that he's not happy to see him, it's just that - well. Politics make things complicated, and Simon wears politics like one of his bulky sweaters.]
[Snafu, he thinks, is not much for politics. Snafu, he thinks, is very simple while being very complicated all at one time. Snafu is going to be trouble.]
[This was something he knew already, but reading the file makes it certain. Never mind the fact that on reading it he feels a little dirty, as if he's become privy to someone's worst, darkest secrets. Which is more or less the case. Made worse by the fact that he doesn't think Snafu will care that he knows.]
[In the end, after a few hours of lying in bed thinking about too many things all at once, he decides to just get it over with. Sits in the mirror and carefully removes the mousse, because there's nothing worse than being caught in an in-between state. His anxiety is at an all-time high, his heart would be palpitating if it could, and now he's walking to Snafu's door. He can feel how pale he is, see the white of his eyes as other people can see them. But he doesn't stop until he's knocking.]
voice } gene
Hiya. I have to ask you something.
[It's not a nice something, exactly, but it's. He just has to ask it, all right.]
spam } enclosure
[After meeting with Snaf - a mixed bag, as he expects these meetings might be for a while - he wants to walk. To be alone, or as alone as he can be in a place like this, but to be outside, too - as outside as you can be indoors. The obvious solution to this is programming a wide, empty field with sparse treeline in the distance into the Enclosure and go for a long walk.]
[His gait is still not quite steady, his skin deathly pale, eyes dead white. But he's smiling in the face of the wind, even if this place isn't natural and he knows it.]
text } admiral
Dear Admiral,
You could've just asked.
For Steve, charcoal pencils of different softness. Pastels, in case he likes them.
For Eugene, foods he's used to. Some little figurine landmarks of Mobile, Alabama. A picture of what it looks like now.
For Snafu, his favorite cigarettes. Foods he's used to. Hand sanitizer.
For T'Pol, something to do with her hands. A stress ball? Sweaters.
For Philip, that board game we made.
For Chromie, book repair equipment. A nice sweater that fits well, plain with bulky knit. Forest green.
For Simon, two Bibles, one antique one, a nice one, gilt and all, one to mark up. I'll make the other part of his gift myself.
private
[It's absolutely not hostile, or even especially wary, but there's something like anticipation in his voice. Probably not dread, because he liked Kieren when they'd talked, but it's strange to know someone else probably knows far more about Snaf than he does, strange to know he's someone else's responsibility and that someone isn't Burgie or Bill or Jay, and strange that he's here at all.
So maybe there is some wariness.]
private
Why him?
private
[Gene isn't sure he knows how to explain it. Explain any of it, but here they are.]
private
If it's private, I understand. It's just it'd be important to know, if there was something else.
private
(At least Kieren's not asking about the rest of it right now.)]
That's just how things are. I trust him. If I didn't, we'd get killed. He's saved my life more times than I can count.
private
[Kieren's not sure if he believes that. There is something about Snafu. He just doesn't know what it is, yet.]
Re: private
Anyway, that doesn't quite feel like the important part to him.]
But we were, and I'd do anything for him. Without question or hesitation. [That comes out firm, and if there's any doubt - there isn't, really, because he trusts Snaf to respect him and Gene knows (hopes?) he's a good guy, so he wouldn't worry about Snaf asking him directly to do something terrible for him - it doesn't show. Somehow, Snafu's become one of his closest friends, and that's not going to change just because of the Barge.]
private
[He's quiet for a moment, processing this. It seems like the time to start pressing for more information, more background on Snafu that might not have been in the file, but the thought disquiets Kieren. He isn't even totally sure that he should have gone to Gene with this.]
Is there anything you want to ask me, then? [There, that feels. Marginally better.]
private
I don't know. [Yes, he does, but he doesn't know what, specifically. Maybe more about where Kieren's from, what qualifies him to help, if he's talked to Snaf at all before now, how much he knows about the war. Maybe just ask if he gets that Sledge wants to help his buddy however he can, and let him know he's glad he got a warden who seems like a decent enough guy.]
Why'd you want to come here?
[And that might be too personal, but it comes out easier than the rest of it.]
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[Spam]
Merriell Shelton?
[Spam]
He goes by Snafu. [His words are positively drenched with irony.]
[Spam]
Have you met him?
[Spam]
[Distasteful, he'd say, but sticks with just making a face rather than being explicitly, totally rude. For now.]
[Spam]
That bad?
[Spam]
[A hapless sort of shrug.]
I don't know how to explain it. You'd have to meet him. It's - he's -
[What is the word.]
When someone just doesn't care anymore. [He moves his hand like he's picking through the air for the words.]
[Spam]
Not like you and me.
[It's a question, phrased like a statement -- because Simon certainly knows what it is to stop caring about anything, and he knows there was at least one point at which Kieren did, too.]
[Spam]
Not like us, no.
[And maybe from that, Simon can understand - how does he help someone to care again when he really doesn't know how it happened for him? He remembers not caring, and he knows he cares now, but the time in between was chaos and pain and aching loneliness and a few moments of perfect happiness, increasing in pitch and frequency as time moved forward into the now. He cares, now. But if he can bring someone else into caring, that's the real, terrifying question.]
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spam;
There's really only two people Snafu would expect to come knocking at his cabin door after the Admiral's announcement and if it's not either one of them, he's got Gene's KA-BAR on his belt now. He hasn't bothered locking the place since his buddy gave him the combat knife. He doesn't bother getting up from where he's lounging on his cot, either, just calls out:]
Door ain't locked.
spam;
[He forces himself to hold his head up as he opens the door and enters the room, cold eyes looking around with curiosity and a touch of nerves. He wasn't expecting to have to duck canvas, but he does, barely.]
[Do you always leave your door open? he wants to ask, but instead just stands there, his tongue pressed to the inside of his cheek. Waiting.]
spam;
Snaf's seen a lot of weird shit since he ended up on this ship: this is just one more weird thing and he takes it in. He leans forward, elbows resting on knees and stares, openly and without any kind of self-consciousness. It's not a judgemental look, though, not hateful or disgusted; instead, it's a oddly blank kind of curiosity, not shocked but more just as if Kieren were a creature in a terrarium. He's dead. That's plain enough. He's dead and it's dead in a way that Snafu isn't, for some reason. Snafu's been around enough corpses to know what dead flesh looks like: he's intimately familiar with that kind of waxy pallor, the sallow blue tinge to the skin. His eyes - pin-prick pupils in a mass of white instead of those too-brown irises - are the thing that get to him, because that's not how most dead guy's eyes look. Maybe it's a further extension of the filmy cloudiness that settles over a corpse's eyeballs, but he's never seen something quite like that before.
He's walking and talking - well, not talking so much right now: more walking and looking nervous - and he's here because he's Snaf's warden. The blank curiosity flattens into a half-smile and he glances away in a way that conveys disinterest - seen it all before - rather than disgust.]
Hell, I thought wardens were s'posed to be more alive than the rest of us, not more dead.
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[On the other hand, the utter lack of interest pricks at him. He thinks he might actually be angry, not because he thinks he's special enough that everyone should be interested in him, but because in a way he was expecting this reaction from Snaf, too. The detachment. He doesn't, in this moment, like being proven right. It's disturbing.]
[Not to mention incorrect. His expression shifts imperceptibly, hardens, a touch of that same steel that meant so little to Snafu before.]
I am, actually.
[He doesn't elaborate on this. Just sits down cross-legged on the floor with his hands folded in his lap.]
spam;
[It's not that he's completely unaffected by it, but the unsettling feeling meeting those white eyes churned up in him doesn't show on his face. He glances back to Kieren as he sits - on the floor, rather than one of the other cots, which was probably a good choice. It's not like he's keeping them untouched because they're Burgie's and Jay's and that means anything, he's not as sentimental as that, but still. One conversation and a trip to the library doesn't mean he knows him from Adam. And this Pavuvu shack is Marine space, even if it's not a place anyone in their right mind should call home.
He pulls his cigarettes - harsh, cheap, unfiltered - out of his pocket and lights one up before adding, maybe with the tiniest bit of curiosity:]
You sure don't fuckin' look it.
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It doesn't bother you, does it. [Not quite a question.] I don't ordinarily walk around like this. But I thought I should be honest, for a start.
[It feels as though he's suffocating, suddenly, wasting his breath. He takes another, slowly, and looks Snafu in the eye.]
I am dead. I was dead. And buried and all. But then I came back.
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Ain't like you're the first dead fucker I ever saw, just the first one still up an' walkin' around.
[Someone else would probably ask how he came back. Snafu asks a different question instead.]
How'd you die?
spam; tw suicide
[What overwhelms him more is that question. It hits him like a brick in the chest, along with the realization that he has to answer it honestly. Has to. Because if he hides it, it's a weakness, and he's tired of people using it against him. People like Bill Macy and the vicar, saying he couldn't handle the world and he can't handle it now. He knows instinctively the way prey animals know that if he gives any ground to Snafu it will be used to hurt him later. If he could just trust him - but he knows he can't.]
[And he doesn't want to be ashamed anymore. He doesn't want to hide. Simon coming back just made that clear. It made it so he couldn't choose, Simon's bare-faced presence meaning he could either avoid him or be honest about what he is but not be near him and hide - but it made it clear that not hiding is the right choice. That he shouldn't have to hide anything.]
[It's anathema to him, being this open. But maybe wanting to hide is what locked him up in his own head in the first place.]
[He rolls up his right sleeve and leans forward to show the long, deep, dark gash in his forearm. Looks at it instead of at Snafu.]
I killed myself.
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