changeit | 02 ☢ hits you so much harder than you thought

Entry tags:

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

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.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Yes?

[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.]

[Kieren doesn't share Simon's so-called power of disappearing. Not in a place as small as this, anyway: the Enclosure is the second place he tries after Kieren's cabin. He lopes up beside him, hands in the pockets of his puffy coat, and asks without any preamble:]

Merriell Shelton?

[He could dodge around it. He could. But it seems like an idiotic waste of time to act as though they both don't know what he's going to ask.]

Why him?

[He glances up, giving a tired smile. Not totally surprised to find Simon here, after all.]

He goes by Snafu. [His words are positively drenched with irony.]

Why him what?

[Gene isn't sure he knows how to explain it. Explain any of it, but here they are.]

Why're you so close?

If it's private, I understand. It's just it'd be important to know, if there was something else.

Does he. [He can't help but smirk at that, of course.] Well, that was fast.

Have you met him?

We met when he showed up. He's--

[Distasteful, he'd say, but sticks with just making a face rather than being explicitly, totally rude. For now.]

[And, unsurprisingly, Gene still isn't sure what to say. If this was face to face, he'd probably just shrug, because it's a relationship you won't get unless you've been where they've been.

(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.

[Oh, Kieren. Simon doesn't speak your language completely just yet, but that face, he knows.]

That bad?

Yeah.

[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.]

[That makes him go quiet for a moment, pensive. He glances around the empty, scrubby moor, pursing his lips.]

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.]

[He visibly relaxes, like a full-body exhale, his shoulders loosing their tension as he looks out into the landscape - not at Simon, but for Simon - with relief.]

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.]

And I suppose killing him and raising him from the dead's not an option.

[He's teasing, but there's an apology behind it: he can't answer this for Kieren, as much as he'd like to. It was different for him, sharper and more easily defined. He knows exactly when he started caring again. John and Victor had made certain of that whether they'd intended to or not.]

[By now, Snafu's worked out how the Barge runs, what the whole deal is, and it really doesn't bother him all that much. Being judged after death isn't exactly a new or novel concept, even if this whole set up was a surprise. The Barge is, honestly, one of the most stable places he's ever lived. "Lived." Fresh food and water on tap makes this closer to heaven than hell, and that's good enough for him. (Being turned back into a kid was kind of fucked up but he's gotten good at ignoring fucked up shit.) He might not have expected to get a warden assigned to him so quick, but it is what it is.

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.

[Kieren laughs, breathy. Apology accepted, easily; he knows it's not that simple.]

Not an option here, no way. Though I s'pose you could give him a speech if you wanted.

[He closes his eyes and tilts his head up to the sun, which he knows is false and which he couldn't quite feel anyway.]

You're not worried at all, are you.

[The joke gets Kieren an exasperated if fond smile, but what follows makes Simon stop and glance over at him, brow creasing.]

Worried about what? You and your Snafu?

Edited 2014-12-16 04:00 (UTC)

[Right. Well. Here goes nothing.]

[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.]

Nah.

[He shrugs, glances out at the moors again.]

You and your . . . someone. Sometime.

Depends on who that someone turns out to be.

[He nudges Kieren's shoulder lightly, the corner of his mouth twitching back up a bit.]

What happens if Gaz shows up?

[That face he was making before? He's making it again now, only so much worse.]

Chuck him over the side?

[It was going to be Kieren or it was going to be Gene, so he's not at all surprised when the former steps through the door. What is a surprise is how Kieren looks.

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.

Edited 2014-12-16 05:14 (UTC)

Dealing with him as my someone, I meant. I think we'd all be royally screwed then.

[Except now this has him thinking of who his inmate might wind up being, and that reminds him of the disturbing stories he's been starting to hear from some of them. He frowns, the humor fading from his expression.]

Kieren?

[It's tough. Everything he's heard so far is based on hearsay of other hearsay. No one seems to have proof of anything. But if Kieren says it, if Kieren says he believes it, Simon knows he will, too.]

Is it true what they say about this place? That all the inmates are...

[He looks up at that note in Simon's voice, a plaintive tone that he only hears so often, when Simon needs answers and Kieren happens to be the one holding them. It's an uneasy sense of power, that if he says the wrong thing, or the right thing the wrong way, it could be shattering. He doesn't want to shatter Simon. He doesn't want him to be breakable in the first place.]

[Looking back at him now, Kieren worries his lip, knowing the answer, uncertain if it'll help in the least.]

I met one person, she said she didn't remember dying. That she would remember. But everyone else I've met.

Yeah. They've all died.

[Kieren can't decide whether or not to be offended. On the one hand, it's good, it's got to be good, that Snaf doesn't respond with disgust. It's what Kieren expects from everyone even now, and when he doesn't get it, it's usually a tight knot of relief in his belly.]

[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.]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 4

02 ☢ hits you so much harder than you thought

private

[Spam]

private

[Spam]

private

private

[Spam]

[Spam]

private

[Spam]

[Spam]

[Spam]

[Spam]

[Spam]

spam;

[Spam]

[Spam]

spam;

[Spam]

[Spam]

[Spam]

spam;

[Spam]

[Spam]

spam;