[Gone, and somewhat forgotten. Your names are remembered and you are grieved, maybe more than you expected. Kids and teachers remember you. The children who tried to help that last day certainly remember you. Your guardians are stricken with a knowledge of their own failure, too late to take it back and too late to change their own ways.
Because It doesn't just enjoy the misery of little children in their final moments. It loves the grief and the regret too, the self-loathing, the actual loathing. Fear is best, but the rest balance the palate, and so it moves and obscures and manipulates in ways to best prepare a feast.
No matter. That was a long time ago.
When you wake this time, you remember your life and death in Derry. But you remember more as well. Lives in worlds far away from the hum of Chevy motors and Jerry Lee Lewis on the radio, from The Wizard of Oz and decoder rings in cracker boxes and yo-yos that just wouldn't sleep for you, no matter how hard you flicked them down. That stuff was real, but so were dragons. Spellcraft, awakenings, spirits and corrupted forms, companions and quests. So was the afterlife — irrationally, a place of regular murder, but also of free-wheeling prank curses and whimsical locales, philosophical debates on phones that spiralled into so much gossip and bullshit.
And yet, none of it seems to matter very much. You are yourselves and in your own bodies, as you were before Derry, but you feel very dimly about it. Disconnected. Can someone put the plug back in the wall socket? Maybe you only just woke up. Maybe that's why you feel free floating, mentally more of a mist than a person.
As you cast your disaffected gaze around, you see something.]
[Anders, you died in a snarl of fury. Too much injustice, too little boons to go around, too many bad decisions and too little fire to burn it all away. That rage still simmers in you but far away. As if it were a pot on a stove on the other end of a broad and placid inn. Out of sight, out of mind.
For now you stand at the side of a paved road. The trees rustle in a light breeze and paint dappled splotches of moonlight over your feathered cape. It's pitch dark, but you can just make out the sign stating the nearest gas station (2 miles ahead) and the nearest bed to rest (Derry Town House, 8 miles ahead). There is cricket song and a distant motor.
A slowly approaching motor. Headlights on the road.
Hey Anders. I sent you a ride. Can you dig it?
It's a voice in your head. But not a bad one, you don't think. A guiding whisper.
When the lights draw even and slow to a stop, the red and white ‘58 Plymouth idles next to you. You see your reflection in the passenger side window, and you look like an ordinary, middle class American man. Something Andy might have grown up to be if he got his act together. The you in reality is clad in clothes from your real home, your real calling, but maybe nobody else will see you that way.
The door pops open of its own accord, and the shadowed figure at the wheel beckons you in.]
[ well. he's used to listening to voices in his head. has he ever felt connected to his own body? it has never belonged fully to him anyway. it has been the chantry's by law, it has been the circle's by force, it has been the pearl's for coin, it has been justice's and kirkwall's and hawke's - but his?
he'll stand by the roadside, feathers shifting in the breeze, as the car pulls up. putting a hand on top of the car and leaning down to look in the open door - not getting in quite yet. his fingers drum against the metal. ]
... You look old, Karl.
[ but he knows he does too.
sliding into the front seat, pulling the door closed. ]
[He does look old. The dark of the interior doesn't help.
It's not until Anders takes his seat and pulls the door closed that he senses how old. The smell of putrefaction is soft in his nostrils — still seared from the sewer, after all these years — and Karl's neck makes a squishy, muffled noise as he looks back to the road. Pulls the car back between the white lines and follows the signs. Only 8 miles more.]
It's been some time. [He intones, and the voice rasps.] We need your help with something.
[ he can't bring himself to look over, to see more than he already has. to check if the mark is still there, burnt into his forehead-- no. not worth thinking about right now. drumming his fingers along the passenger side door, letting his head tilt back and his eyes close and the smell of the grave exist. this is why they burn bodies. like andraste on the pyre.
[ his senses deaden to the smell as he turns to look out the passenger window instead, his own reflection in the glass. karl is gone, he has always been gone, but it feels like it always does. as if his sightless corpse is just out of the field of his vision.
he'd asked him once to stay, and he is asking again for something. he could never deny him anything he truly asked, except maybe the truth. ]
[He may look away. It's understandable. There's very little that begs to be seen in the driver's seat. In this portion of his past. Or many other portions, for that matter.
Karl removes a hand from the wheel and points to the glove compartment.]
[ sitting up from where he was watching the ditch along the side of the road - broken fences and signage, litter and roadkill. glancing over at karl in the driver's seat. ]
I'm sorry. Do you know that I'm sorry? I know you asked, but-- ... It doesn't matter.
[Shadowheart, you were thankful to fade away for a friend. Embrace the emptiness and cherish your distance, accept the futility of hope. Love. You confront the wolf of your dreams and find it’s not the same kind at all. Terrible in a different fashion. Hungrier. You feel even the shock of that drift to the back of your mind. As it should be. There’s no need to dwell on such things.
You’re alone on a city street. Stood in front of a department store window. The woman in the reflection is pretty, if unremarkable. Jen if she had another twenty-seven years on this Earth. But when you reach up to tuck away a stray lock of hair, you find your ears are pointed.
It’s quiet out. Closing time is over, and the only souls still up on their feet are either doing shift work or committing sin. You’re neither. You don’t know what you plan to do, in fact, only that there is a purpose to your being here.
I’ve sent someone along to help with that.
Shar? No. Not quite. A new voice in your head.
A large shadow casts from the light of the streetlamp, drawing your eye.]
Hey. Come with me, yeah? I’ve got something to give to you.
she's quiet, tired, but this person appears and she feels relief. maybe the perfect person to see at a moment like this, more for any person on the planet than her specifically. strong enough to fight for her and warm enough that she always would. it feels easy to let go of some of that fear and trauma and to just want to trust.]
Yeah. But I've got to run a few things by you first.
[Karlach smiles, and commences a walk. Her tail swishes and flicks behind the pair as they go, and she glances around at the store fronts, the empty streets and topped up waste bins.]
Kind of a shite place, isn't it? This town. How did you find it?
[she tries to sort through her memories to find a good explanation for that. the answers don't add up to something that makes much sense, but on the other hand, she can't seem to care about that.]
I think a friend is from here. [except] And I think I grew up here. [she has never really talked to karlach about her past before, about her childhood. how could she have? she doesn't have one.] It was a rather shit place for it, I agree.
I'm glad to see you, you know. [actually, how much did she ever really talk to karlach about anything? she helped her with dammon, she listened to her, sometimes, or at least, found when there was a debate over what to do, what decision to make, she often couldn't bear to make that one that would make karlach disappointed in her, and following that instinct seems to have led her in the right direction. she told her once, offhand, that her favorite flower was a night orchid, and then more than a week later, when they were in the middle of wandering the shadow cursed lands and dealing with death and corpses all around, abruptly, she gave her one, told her she found it and thought of her. it was a purely friendly gesture and a small one at that, but it meant so, so absurdly much at the time.
We don't have time to stop and help everyone. I can't right every wrong the world over. Especially not here.
[an old argument, and one she doesn't even make with much force. their lives became a ticking clock, and she always felt she had to be the one to say so. to point out the stupidity in it. just because a little girl was missing. just because a farmer lost his last memory of his wife. just because the dog waiting by his owner's body will starve. just because a band of refugees pooled what little they had between them and asked. harder to explain what she was and wasn't supposed to do, but straightforward, logical, to just say no. it doesn't concern her. it isn't her responsibility. they don't have time.
karlach's ticking clock ticks a lot more forcefully than hers, so the argument doesn't work on her. she wins, has already won, won because the first time shadowheart reluctantly went along with all of that unbearable softness, it... it did feel important. it changed everything. all of those years of effort to break her, to set in stone who she was, and those small, pointless things they did together undid it all like a wave washing over her.]
[Fidelio, you went numb. Nothing mattered after losing Bax.
But you remember now. Your brother is dead. Your brother is alive. You are alive and you are dead. All of it is true, all at once. These truths lock together and push. Fight in your head to stake a claim in reality, until a cold splash of static pushes them out of the forefront. The paradox can persist, and you will carry on.
You’re sitting down in the hallway of a hospital, some uncomfortable chair with metal piping for arms. In your lap is a stack of papers in a round binder clip. Handwritten, page after page of intensive notes. It takes a moment, but you do recognize it. You only found one page back then, but this must be two or three hundred pages altogether. There’s no time to read it all, but you get the sense you don’t need to.
(The Fire at the Black Spot, a bar burning under the hands of hateful white men.
The Revenge of Claude Heroux, a lumberjack turning his axe on the union busters who slew his friends.
The Execution of the Bradley Gang, where the citizens of Derry banded together and tore five bank-robbers on the run into bloody, bullet-addled pieces.)
These stories join the war at the back of your mind. Not yet. It’s not important yet.
None of the passing staff or patients seem all that bothered by your ears. One flicks, catching a sound to the left. You see someone walking into the room just down the hall. She turns to look at you before she enters.]
[ everything feels a little fuzzy and distant, disconnected; he's been paying little attention to anything that's been going on in this hospital as he's been idly flipping through the stack of pages in his lap.
but junah... she always gets his attention. and she's always had him wrapped around her finger, so as soon as she gives him an instruction, he nods, picks up his papers and follows. ]
When Fidelio enters, she's stood with her hands behind her back on the opposite end of the room, behind the stiff, sterile bed.
In the bed is an unconscious man. Hooked to an IV drip with an elevated leg in bandages. Heavy bandages, the kind that suffocate you with their insistence you live. He's battered and cut elsewhere too. Deathly pale, even in spite of his dark skin.]
Agh...It doesn't look good, does it? [Junah casts a worrisome look down at the prone figure.] It was the femoral artery, I think. They're only buying him time...
[ help i was about to dm you like was that the word you meant to use...
it's rough scene to be sure, and he frowns at the figure in front of them. is his face visible? ]
Shite.
[ he exhales, tucking the pages under his arm and running his hand through his hair. he understands what that means; he may not be a healer like junah's sister, but he had some medical training, once. enough to recognise a probable lost cause when he sees one. ]
What... what was it that happened, exactly?
[ he must have heard something about it, and he's not sure why he can't put his finger on it now. ]
[his federal artery....bleeding out, just like america...
His face is visible. Truth be told he looks older than he is. There's grey in the sides of his close-cropped afro and more lines around his mouth and eyes than should be there in the slack expression of sleep. He's familiar, but only just so.]
Oh — you can let me hold those for you, I don't mind.
[Junah holds her hand out as she explains.]
He was attacked. They picked him up from the Library earlier this evening, and it's been a struggle to keep him alive since. He's lost too much blood.
[ he just waves his hand and shakes his head; it's fine. he's supposed to be the one holding her things for her anyway.
and... he doesn't really feel like he ought to be handing these off to anyone, especially not in front of mike. (that's his name, he's pretty sure, but not completely. how did he even end up holding these? is this going to end up another story in these pages?) ]
[Junah tucks her hand away, though she does frown at the brush off. Her eyes flick over the man's body, then she shakes her head and gives a sigh.]
No idea about the motive, but they think the culprit is staying at the Derry Town House. They've narrowed it down to just a few rooms...But, this doesn't feel right, does it?
[She looks into his eyes, and his head begins to hurt a little.
(promisetotry)
A man in a tub. The sewers. Bax falling. No one came.
(this world never wanted them, but he doesn't want this world either.)]
[ it feels a little like he's looking into a light that's too bright. the town house... he was supposed to find someone there, he thinks. get them out, but...
he blinks. ]
Sorry, what?
[ the request gives him a strange, uneasy feeling. he plays dumb, and doesn't move from where he's standing. ]
Reckon we ought to leave the repositionin' and everything to the professionals.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
holyspirits) wrote2025-03-09 04:46 pm
1985
Because It doesn't just enjoy the misery of little children in their final moments. It loves the grief and the regret too, the self-loathing, the actual loathing. Fear is best, but the rest balance the palate, and so it moves and obscures and manipulates in ways to best prepare a feast.
No matter. That was a long time ago.
When you wake this time, you remember your life and death in Derry. But you remember more as well. Lives in worlds far away from the hum of Chevy motors and Jerry Lee Lewis on the radio, from The Wizard of Oz and decoder rings in cracker boxes and yo-yos that just wouldn't sleep for you, no matter how hard you flicked them down. That stuff was real, but so were dragons. Spellcraft, awakenings, spirits and corrupted forms, companions and quests. So was the afterlife — irrationally, a place of regular murder, but also of free-wheeling prank curses and whimsical locales, philosophical debates on phones that spiralled into so much gossip and bullshit.
And yet, none of it seems to matter very much. You are yourselves and in your own bodies, as you were before Derry, but you feel very dimly about it. Disconnected. Can someone put the plug back in the wall socket? Maybe you only just woke up. Maybe that's why you feel free floating, mentally more of a mist than a person.
As you cast your disaffected gaze around, you see something.]
ANDERS
For now you stand at the side of a paved road. The trees rustle in a light breeze and paint dappled splotches of moonlight over your feathered cape. It's pitch dark, but you can just make out the sign stating the nearest gas station (2 miles ahead) and the nearest bed to rest (Derry Town House, 8 miles ahead). There is cricket song and a distant motor.
A slowly approaching motor. Headlights on the road.
Hey Anders. I sent you a ride. Can you dig it?
It's a voice in your head. But not a bad one, you don't think. A guiding whisper.
When the lights draw even and slow to a stop, the red and white ‘58 Plymouth idles next to you. You see your reflection in the passenger side window, and you look like an ordinary, middle class American man. Something Andy might have grown up to be if he got his act together. The you in reality is clad in clothes from your real home, your real calling, but maybe nobody else will see you that way.
The door pops open of its own accord, and the shadowed figure at the wheel beckons you in.]
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he'll stand by the roadside, feathers shifting in the breeze, as the car pulls up. putting a hand on top of the car and leaning down to look in the open door - not getting in quite yet. his fingers drum against the metal. ]
... You look old, Karl.
[ but he knows he does too.
sliding into the front seat, pulling the door closed. ]
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It's not until Anders takes his seat and pulls the door closed that he senses how old. The smell of putrefaction is soft in his nostrils — still seared from the sewer, after all these years — and Karl's neck makes a squishy, muffled noise as he looks back to the road. Pulls the car back between the white lines and follows the signs. Only 8 miles more.]
It's been some time. [He intones, and the voice rasps.] We need your help with something.
This town is tainted. You have seen it yourself.
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humming in response. ]
And am I the cause of Derry now?
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[Karl never once looks away from the road.]
There is an infection here. It can be cleaned.
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he'd asked him once to stay, and he is asking again for something. he could never deny him anything he truly asked, except maybe the truth. ]
Ask it, then.
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Karl removes a hand from the wheel and points to the glove compartment.]
Open it.
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I'm sorry. Do you know that I'm sorry? I know you asked, but-- ... It doesn't matter.
[ opening the glovebox. ]
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cw: reference to SA
CW: Mentions of bullying, mutilation, attempted child murder, patricide
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SHADOWHEART
You’re alone on a city street. Stood in front of a department store window. The woman in the reflection is pretty, if unremarkable. Jen if she had another twenty-seven years on this Earth. But when you reach up to tuck away a stray lock of hair, you find your ears are pointed.
It’s quiet out. Closing time is over, and the only souls still up on their feet are either doing shift work or committing sin. You’re neither. You don’t know what you plan to do, in fact, only that there is a purpose to your being here.
I’ve sent someone along to help with that.
Shar? No. Not quite. A new voice in your head.
A large shadow casts from the light of the streetlamp, drawing your eye.]
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she's quiet, tired, but this person appears and she feels relief. maybe the perfect person to see at a moment like this, more for any person on the planet than her specifically. strong enough to fight for her and warm enough that she always would. it feels easy to let go of some of that fear and trauma and to just want to trust.]
Something for me?
[yeah, she'll go with her.]
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[Karlach smiles, and commences a walk. Her tail swishes and flicks behind the pair as they go, and she glances around at the store fronts, the empty streets and topped up waste bins.]
Kind of a shite place, isn't it? This town. How did you find it?
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[she tries to sort through her memories to find a good explanation for that. the answers don't add up to something that makes much sense, but on the other hand, she can't seem to care about that.]
I think a friend is from here. [except] And I think I grew up here. [she has never really talked to karlach about her past before, about her childhood. how could she have? she doesn't have one.] It was a rather shit place for it, I agree.
I'm glad to see you, you know. [actually, how much did she ever really talk to karlach about anything? she helped her with dammon, she listened to her, sometimes, or at least, found when there was a debate over what to do, what decision to make, she often couldn't bear to make that one that would make karlach disappointed in her, and following that instinct seems to have led her in the right direction. she told her once, offhand, that her favorite flower was a night orchid, and then more than a week later, when they were in the middle of wandering the shadow cursed lands and dealing with death and corpses all around, abruptly, she gave her one, told her she found it and thought of her. it was a purely friendly gesture and a small one at that, but it meant so, so absurdly much at the time.
she never told her that, or much of anything.]
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[That tail comes to brush along the low of her back. A fond gesture.]
I think you can help this place though.
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[an old argument, and one she doesn't even make with much force. their lives became a ticking clock, and she always felt she had to be the one to say so. to point out the stupidity in it. just because a little girl was missing. just because a farmer lost his last memory of his wife. just because the dog waiting by his owner's body will starve. just because a band of refugees pooled what little they had between them and asked. harder to explain what she was and wasn't supposed to do, but straightforward, logical, to just say no. it doesn't concern her. it isn't her responsibility. they don't have time.
karlach's ticking clock ticks a lot more forcefully than hers, so the argument doesn't work on her. she wins, has already won, won because the first time shadowheart reluctantly went along with all of that unbearable softness, it... it did feel important. it changed everything. all of those years of effort to break her, to set in stone who she was, and those small, pointless things they did together undid it all like a wave washing over her.]
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Come on Shadowheart, you've got nowhere else to better to be. Not while we're here.
[Her engine flares. It's a warm light in all this dark. Maybe a too on-the-nose metaphor for how bright her love burns.
It's a bit searing, though.]
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FIDELIO
But you remember now. Your brother is dead. Your brother is alive. You are alive and you are dead. All of it is true, all at once. These truths lock together and push. Fight in your head to stake a claim in reality, until a cold splash of static pushes them out of the forefront. The paradox can persist, and you will carry on.
You’re sitting down in the hallway of a hospital, some uncomfortable chair with metal piping for arms. In your lap is a stack of papers in a round binder clip. Handwritten, page after page of intensive notes. It takes a moment, but you do recognize it. You only found one page back then, but this must be two or three hundred pages altogether. There’s no time to read it all, but you get the sense you don’t need to.
(The Fire at the Black Spot, a bar burning under the hands of hateful white men.
The Revenge of Claude Heroux, a lumberjack turning his axe on the union busters who slew his friends.
The Execution of the Bradley Gang, where the citizens of Derry banded together and tore five bank-robbers on the run into bloody, bullet-addled pieces.)
These stories join the war at the back of your mind. Not yet. It’s not important yet.
None of the passing staff or patients seem all that bothered by your ears. One flicks, catching a sound to the left. You see someone walking into the room just down the hall. She turns to look at you before she enters.]
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but junah... she always gets his attention. and she's always had him wrapped around her finger, so as soon as she gives him an instruction, he nods, picks up his papers and follows. ]
Right. Comin'.
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When Fidelio enters, she's stood with her hands behind her back on the opposite end of the room, behind the stiff, sterile bed.
In the bed is an unconscious man. Hooked to an IV drip with an elevated leg in bandages. Heavy bandages, the kind that suffocate you with their insistence you live. He's battered and cut elsewhere too. Deathly pale, even in spite of his dark skin.]
Agh...It doesn't look good, does it? [Junah casts a worrisome look down at the prone figure.] It was the femoral artery, I think. They're only buying him time...
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it's rough scene to be sure, and he frowns at the figure in front of them. is his face visible? ]
Shite.
[ he exhales, tucking the pages under his arm and running his hand through his hair. he understands what that means; he may not be a healer like junah's sister, but he had some medical training, once. enough to recognise a probable lost cause when he sees one. ]
What... what was it that happened, exactly?
[ he must have heard something about it, and he's not sure why he can't put his finger on it now. ]
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His face is visible. Truth be told he looks older than he is. There's grey in the sides of his close-cropped afro and more lines around his mouth and eyes than should be there in the slack expression of sleep. He's familiar, but only just so.]
Oh — you can let me hold those for you, I don't mind.
[Junah holds her hand out as she explains.]
He was attacked. They picked him up from the Library earlier this evening, and it's been a struggle to keep him alive since. He's lost too much blood.
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and... he doesn't really feel like he ought to be handing these off to anyone, especially not in front of mike. (that's his name, he's pretty sure, but not completely. how did he even end up holding these? is this going to end up another story in these pages?) ]
They got any idea who did it? A motive, or...
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No idea about the motive, but they think the culprit is staying at the Derry Town House. They've narrowed it down to just a few rooms...But, this doesn't feel right, does it?
[She looks into his eyes, and his head begins to hurt a little.
(promisetotry)
A man in a tub. The sewers. Bax falling. No one came.
(this world never wanted them, but he doesn't want this world either.)]
We should help him first.
Del, can you grab the pillow?
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he blinks. ]
Sorry, what?
[ the request gives him a strange, uneasy feeling. he plays dumb, and doesn't move from where he's standing. ]
Reckon we ought to leave the repositionin' and everything to the professionals.
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