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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.
spam;
[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.
spam;
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.
spam;
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.
spam; tw suicide, racist language
Other people's discomfort doesn't mean much of anything to him, even if he can recognise it for what it is. He's not bad at reading people; it's just that he doesn't care. Caring is a human luxury reserved for people who still think there's some kind of hope or goodness in the world and any part of Snafu that believed that died long before his body did. He stares at Kieren, not warily but openly, waiting to see if the dead boy is going to answer.
The dark wound in Kieren's right arm, deep and unhealed but stapled over, gets a laugh, short and low and crawling with black humour, as Snafu leans forward to look with some amused interest. Suicide isn't a new concept either, not when he's seen men decide giving their sidearm a blowjob that ends with an explosive climax is going to be their great and final act on Earth with his own eyes, not when the fucking Japs had started sending in pilots to crash their own planes into their targets. He doesn't ask why. To ask that, he'd have to want to hear the answer and there's no room in him for sympathy for other people's pain. He flicks his cigarette then puts it back to his lips, speaking around it in a lazy drawl.]
Seein' as how it don't look like it stuck, guess you should'a tried harder, boo. Cut a little fuckin' deeper. Got yourself a gun maybe, if you really wanted the thing done right.
spam; tw suicide, depression
[Should'a cut a little deeper. Darkness closes like a fist around his heart, and his face falls, open and obvious and too weak. He wonders if it would've worked better with a gun. If he wouldn't have risen. If there would have been a way - could have been a way--]
[He'd never have met Amy. He'd never have met Simon. He would've left Jem behind forever. But it'd be a lie to say he never thinks about it, and his limbs feel so heavy, so heavy, like he just wants to lie down and be dead all over again.]
[Shame follows after, once the feeling clears away, which doesn't take so long, all things considered. The shame lingers longer, and he doesn't know what to attribute it to except weakness again. He knows he's weak, sometimes, he's come to terms with that, but it doesn't make it any easier when despair crashes over him like it just has. When he remembers what it felt like to die, how calm, how difficult, how easy at the same time.]
[He misses his sister. She'd hit Snafu in the mouth and laugh about it.]
We rose. [His voice is hoarse.] It worked, but we rose from the dead. It wasn't my choice.
[He wanted to die.]
spam; tw suicide, death in war
You can't dwell on any of it. A mantra, maybe taken too much to heart. He's good at not dwelling on anything, now. Whatever similarities there are between Kieren and Gene, he pushes them aside, shrugs them off easily and without hesitation. This boy isn't his buddy. He isn't even a marine. There's no reason for him to mean anything to him, and so he doesn't. Snafu sniffs, rolls his eyes at it wasn't my choice and continues to stare. Blows out smoke in a long, dismissive stream, then another drag that leaks out through his nostrils, clouding around his face, obscuring it.
Again, he doesn't ask why Kieren did it. Again, he doesn't ask how he rose from the dead. Instead he just leans back on the cot, smile still curling his lips like rigor mortis, cocking his head up and back. His voice is flat; he has no sympathy.]
Ever try again after you rose?
[The last word twists mockingly in his thick accent.]
spam; tw suicide
[Hoarse still, weak. He clears his throat, squeezes his eyes shut. When they open again, he imagines himself as he is, not as he was: his irises a brilliant white, his sclera gray and cloudy, his skin pale and blue-veined. He is dead. But he isn't dead anymore. He's more alive than Snafu is, he means what he said. He feels more than Snaf feels. Loves more than Snaf loves. Hates more than he hates, maybe.]
[He thinks he might hate his inmate. But he doesn't want to. He thinks he ought to be better than that, better than to be drawn in and twisted around by cruelty as he was before. Stronger than that, maybe. He wonders what Simon would say if he was in this room right now, then dismisses the thought; nothing Simon would say would be appropriate or helpful. He's too protective and too dogmatic. There's a reason it's Kieren and not him. There's got to be a reason.]
[There's got to be a reason, Kieren Walker.]
No, [he says again, shakes his head, almost but not quite smiling. The blue of his lips shows through.] I never did. I never needed to. Didn't want to, after a while.
Why are you asking? It doesn't matter to you. Are you that bored?
spam;
[He says it all eyebrows-raised self-righteousness. He and his warden both know what this is about: testing boundaries and pushing limits. Getting a reaction. He's right, it doesn't matter to him. But it matters to Kieren - it matters a lot, enough to sting - and that's interesting enough to catch his attention. His smile drops into something more vicious, harsher, staring flatly at Kieren. His voice is sharp and cold now.]
You're the one came in here wantin' to be all honest, ain't you? What'd you expect me to do, warden, start boo-hooin' 'bout all your pain and sufferin'?
spam;
No, I didn't expect that. I don't ever expect that, from anyone. And you can ask any questions you want, but that means I get to ask them, too.
[Not that he entirely expects honesty, either. But if Snafu's gonna ask a fuckin' question, he had better be prepared that a few good hits won't take Kieren down for good. No matter how cold he is in the voice or the eyes. Kieren's seen the grave. He's not a pushover. Not anymore.]
spam;
You got any to ask, why don't you fuckin' ask 'em then?
spam;
[He shifts forward, leans his cold hands on his cold knees, his cold eyes focused on the bright warm spot that is Snafu. In this moment he finds himself suddenly, vividly thinking of what he was, what he became during the Rising. On bad days he thinks he can remember what blood and sinew and brain tastes like, and on the worst days - days like today is becoming - he can't stop thinking about it. He thinks of Snafu in Lisa's place, then in Amy's. Then he just feels sick.]
Why did you ask? And are you bored? Two questions. I want answers to them both, please.
spam;
Zombies're s'posed to be like rabid dogs, ain't they? Killers? Why the fuck're you so different?
spam;
[He doesn't expect Snafu to respect him. He doesn't expect him to listen. But he also doesn't expect to be treated like trash. He's gotten used, he supposes, to being human again.]
Medication. Choices. Either or both, depends how much you want to hate me, I s'pose.
[How much do you want to hate me? he doesn't ask, because he expects he knows the answer.]
spam;
The answer to the unasked question is both a lot because of what Kieren stands for, everything he represents, the anger in his eyes, and also not at all, because Snafu doesn't really want to care about the warden enough for hate to come into it. Snafu hated the Japs because they were dangerous; hating Kieren would be like admitting his knowledge is a threat. It isn't. It means nothing. It's probably good Kieren doesn't ask the question. Not that he would have gotten the real answer, even if he had.]
You ain't special enough to waste my time hatin', boo.
spam;
[He clears his throat and leans back, rubbing the side of his neck absently. He remembers the file, all the little uglinesses, every tiny atrocity.]
Besides the Japanese. Besides the actual enemy, I don't understand what you hate, and I don't understand what you love, besides people like Gene.
spam;
[Maybe it means just a fraction more than nothing, after all.]
spam;
Why? Were you afraid?
[It's a stupid thing to say, just provoking, nothing more. But he can't help it. He's annoyed now, and he can't keep himself quiet.]