ataraxionlogs | And darkness be the burier of the dead

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And darkness be the burier of the dead

CHARACTERS: Heather Mason, the bereaved
LOCATION: the Oxygen Garden
WARNINGS: gloom?
SUMMARY: Heather forgoes her usual grief reaction of KILL SOMETHING and tries to make something instead.
NOTES: wiiiiide open. Come share your Hotspur feels, folks. edit: so, um, it's been pointed out to me that the gardens are hydroponic. All the resulting inaccuracies within are the fault of myself and my head full of Sunshine (and that can be taken in several ways, can't it?). /crawls off to vomit in shame

[Heather'd had plans for after the jump. After spending all of them so far either feeling angry and sorry for herself or flitting around trying to play helpful hostess – trying to be someone she wasn't – she'd had something to sink her teeth into. Something to do. One message, short and sharp, and it should have scared her but instead it had given her a purpose. She'd been excited.

That seems almost indescribably sick, now.

Missing that purpose and waiting to hear on something that might give her another, she haunts the gardens. Keeps her hands busy in an effort to still her mind. Barefoot and with a bottle – one drink for her and one for Hotspur, because somehow she doesn't think he'd approve of her using it to numb herself – and a patch of garden she's commandeered for the purpose, beneath a sketch someone's left. With her hair still wet and dark earth on her pale hands, she replants what she's stolen from other plots. Rosemary for remembrance, of course, and iris for faith and valor. If there were poppies they're either hiding or long since pillaged, and what wouldn't she do for some edelweiss?

It's tempting to stake it out, fence it off, make a big deal of it. Make it official. The Max Southey Memorial Garden. But somehow it seems truer to his memory to call it what it is: an attempt – possibly futile - to scrape something good out of the terror.]

Did I ever tell you I was sort of a saint? [Her voice is flat as she digs, buries roots, pats soil. The water she gives the plants will do in place of tears.] Back where I'm from, I mean. Saint Alessa. Kind of a crappy one, as far as saints go. And of a really terrible religion. But it counts, right? There's a saint mourning you.

Just so you know.

[She won't ask to see his body. Bad enough that her last image of him is sad and troubled, rather than the lively, laughing man she'd met. Who'd made her smile and listened to her rambling, who'd talked with her about dreams. Who'd complained of chicken pox scars in places no man should have scars and apologized for lowering the tone on the same breath. She never did find that ice cream to share with him.

She doesn't know what they'll do with him, either. Once they're done with whatever it is they're doing. Sliced his flesh and scraped his bones to see what they can see, trying to cut information out of a man who'd never have held anything back, not if he thought it could help someone. Airlock, she supposes. It seems right.]

Give you the stars.

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“You mean if I'd been on the other side?” She shrugs, trying not to telegraph any of the things she's thinking about the sweetly gentle way he handles the rabbit, or the way the sound of his own language in his own voice curls warmly into her ear. Every self-preservation instinct she has is telling her to bail, to cop out with an I don't know. Another part wonders briefly if he's looking for reassurance that he did the right thing – and that she could give, because as much as she cares for Tillman he wanted his wife back so much that she doesn't know if he'd ever have taken the necessary steps if Netherlands hadn't planted that seed of doubt – but she's worried he'd take it as an attempt at flattery, a sign that there's still something rotten in her trying to manipulate him.

“I met a guy once. Spoke to him before I saw him. He made me think we were on the same side, that we wanted the same things. That he was trying to fix things too. And when I saw him, there was almost nothing human left in him. It wa pretty obvious he was beyond saving.” From the tone of her voice she may as well be reading a cereal box, but she wraps her arms around herself like she's trying to stay warm. “He attacked me, and I killed him. His daughter killed my father, so I guess I just thought of it like balancing the scales.” She lifts a hand to her mouth, bites at her knuckle for a second. “So I don't know that I should get a vote on that, really. I'm not very good at being objective.”

A swift nod is all she gets for confirmation, and once she begins speaking, he keeps his physical focus on Lodewijk. Despite that, and despite his gaze sliding toward her only to stick on that halfway point on the floor between them, he's not missing a single detail of her story.
Your eyes give you away, Belgium always laughed.
Even once she's finished speaking, and he's full of things he could say, he keeps his gaze trained on that spot. Lodewijk bounds out of his lap toward her and he lets it happen, watches it all as he picks up his half-finished cigarette and he thinks on everything she had to say. It's not exactly satisfying.

"I wasn't askin' if ya were good at a damned thing," he grouses, re-lighting his smoke. "Was askin' what you'd do."

Heather doesn't lie if she can help it. Partly because she's terrible at it - though that may just be that she's never had the practice - but largely because the lies in her life (and there have been a lot of them) have only ever lead to terrible things. But with his refusal to let her avoid the question he's putting that urge to lay her cards on the table directly in opposition with her most basic desire - that to survive.

But maintaining a heartbeat doesn't necessarily mean surviving.

The rabbit hops nearer and she extends a hand tentatively. Slow and cautious, like you would with a strange dog, though it's not the rabbit she's worried will get spooked and bite.

"I'd try to find out if they could be saved," she says, and the words roll off - damning herself turns out to be surprisingly easy once she starts - "and if it looked like no, I'd kill them."

Lodewijk has a better sense of who (or what) is dangerous than he does, and his grimace, once he remembers, is at himself for being a moron about it. About Lodewijk, about this whole damn thing. He waves his smoking hand: petting is fine. For now.

Oh, maybe that's what she meant with that story. His head tilts, slightly, eyes narrowing as he really looks at her for the first time in a long time. And before he even thinks about it, the practical presents itself.

"How?"

Because he had a hard time even making a dent in that thing.

Edited (icons) 2012-06-15 17:01 (UTC)

The fact that he's not trying to take her hand off helps her decide that wave means go ahead and not go away, and now she's starting to understand that whole deal where they take pets to visit kids in hospitals. There's something incredibly calming about that touch, the warm soft fur under her fingers.

"I don't know," she says, honest and simple. "If they were the ones I'm used to... aglaophotis forces them out, or a flauros can trap them. But I don't have either of those. There's the seal of metatron. That's just a symbol so it'd be easiest but I haven't had the chance to test it." Not as herself, anyway, and they'd stopped Alessa when she tried. Of course, maybe that was a sign that it would have worked.

"I don't know about the other kind. I'll ask. From what I heard if you destroy the body they just leave and try to find another one, but there's got to be a way."

Just because he's letting it happen doesn't mean he's not keeping a hawk's eye on every little motion she makes, and every little twitch his rabbit makes. Luckily all Lodewijk does is flop at her feet and yawn.

She might as well be speaking another language, given how little he understands about the demons from her world, but the last part is easy enough to follow. All he can do is sigh and rub at the bridge of his nose, though - there's no good way to say I still don't trust you, but it's stupid to admit if it turns out he's right.

"Iron. That worked." He purposely locks eyes with her for the next bit, which probably does give his wariness away. "An' Christo, sorta."

Yeah, she remembers Christo just fine, along with the look of sadness and regret and resignation she copped when she flinched at it. Her hand is still petting at the rabbit - almost unconsciously now - when she sighs.

"Yeah, but all they really do is tell you if one's in there. Iron hurts, pisses them off. Christo lets them know you're onto them. Better not to give them a reason to go after you until you have a more permanent solution. If they're all like her it'd be all the excuse they needed to kill you."

Does that help, Netherlands? Not only can she hear it, she can say it right back. Hell, she'll drink a cup of holy water and read the exorcism herself, if someone'll jot it down for her.

Christo lets them know you're onto them - for some reason that jabs at him more than anything else she's said, and the rest washes over him, noted, heard, but not thought about too much even if it's the more sensitive information.

And while it does help, she's just launched the conversation onto something almost as rough.

"You - " No, wrong way to start that. "How do ya know that much. About what it thinks."

She shakes her head, pulls her limbs in closer. Curls in on herself, like that'll keep the memories out.

"She let me see. When there was nobody around to mess with, she started showing me things. When she figured out how much I hated it she just... left it on. Like an open feed." All of a sudden it's hard to meet his eye again, but she makes a special effort. "I didn't want it."

Fuck. His frustration is written all over his face, even as he tries to wipe it off...

He shoves his hand over his eyes as he soaks that in, rubs the information into his temples like someone might rub a particularly stubborn poultice into their skin.

"How much."

Her hand moves up to rub at the back of her neck, the rabbit momentarily forgotten. It'd probably be better for both of them if she could just lie - only what she wanted, or I don't remember, but she can't bring herself to do it.

"Everything," she says, and it comes out a whisper. She takes a breath and tries again, because she at least owes that much. "Everything."

If he knew, or assumed, that she was a liar, they wouldn't even be here. But now that he knows that, she's a liability.

Well.

He doesn't like having to weigh someone between the scales of emotional and practical worth, but sometimes it happens, and when it comes down to it he'd rather another's neck be laid across the chopping block. He has sixteen million other citizens to think of.

"How much."

Details. What did she say, what she spin and wheedle and weave, precisely.

"Everything!" She snaps, hating it, hating this, hating every minute of it. "What she wanted, what she planned, what she pulled out of people's minds. What it's -" she falters, memories bobbing to the surface - "what it's like in Hell."

Which is worse, believe it or not, than knowing things about her friends she never wanted to know. Fire and pain and the stink of sulfur, and all the time a whispering in the back of her mind - this is where you're going when it's over, little bitch, so don't try anything cute.

He goes white.

Not pale, but white, and it's a distinction. One is drawn from instinct, and one not.

The floor is more interesting than ever.

"What - "

Fuck, there are way too many questions to ask and way too many questions that he doesn't want the answer to.

"...she did, huh."

He flicks at his lighter a few times.

"...everythin'." And, hey, he tries to sound flippant. Lighthearted.

"You're fishing," she says, and it's less accusatory than it might've been. She's wrapped up in her own upset at the moment, but not so much she doesn't notice the color drain from his face and the nervous flicking of the lighter. Ever so gently, she reaches and gives the rabbit a little push in his direction.

"I saw everything she wanted me to, but she's gone. If you want me to tell you something you're going to have to ask." Clueless, maybe, but he's not the only person the demon went after and far from the easiest, and she's had more than a month now to try and forget it all.

The rabbit, he nearly bristles at the rabbit, and scoops Lodewijk up with two long arms before anything else could possibly happen. He almost shoves her back for it, too - there's a truly awful, destructive flash before he settles for the coiling, tensing, defensive fortifications that come up, almost before he notices.

"What did she want ya to see."

And that brokers no place for argument. No shit he's fishing, and no, for now he's not willing to give away anything.

That spike of anger is as obvious as it is frightening, and in response she goes very, very still. It's unusual for her, with her reactions almost always falling under either fight or flight - usually fight. But she knows how strong he is now and yes, she's scared. Especially since she's pretty sure the honest answer to that question isn't the information he's looking for.

"That I don't matter. That there's nobody here I know who wouldn't give me up in a heartbeat for somebody else."

Her tone flattens out again, and it's partly an attempt not to get dramatic and provoke him and partly the fact that it hadn't been a surprise at all. Even her father had pulled her out of the flames as an alternative to coming away empty-handed, not because he'd been looking for her.

Terrible, maybe, but the protective, possessive part of him is more than pleased to see the fear there. The stillness, the knowledge that she fucked up - no one pushes his rabbit.
That she's afraid of what he could do? It escapes him entirely, because for now, she's a citizen. To truly act out against a citizen... it's unspeakable.
That answer... actually does the job. At least, it shuts him up and saps the rage right out of him, only to be replaced with an odd combination of pity, irritation, and embarrassment.

He stops staring at his rabbit, looks up and replies to her with something he accepted centuries ago.

"It's the same - on Earth." Rome would give him up to Germania, HRE to France, then Franks, then Austria, Austria to Spain. Napoleon to Louis. He's done the same. It's how the world works. "If ya die, someone takes your spot."

And that actually is flippant. The Earth is round, the grass is green, and if you die someone else will take your place.

"Guess I'm just used to being the replacement rather than the one being replaced."

It's not something she's saying to grab for pity, just a fact. Honestly, she's thankful for it. It got Harry to take her from Silent Hill, got Douglas to stand by her side when she went back. Jenna seeing Elena in her got her a friend when she needed one, Tillman missing his daughter got her gun seen to and bought her some measure of protection. It's not something that makes her sad, it's something she's started to count on.

Which is probably why the prospect of having it flipped on her scares her so badly. Damn if she doesn't want to ask him about it, too, but if there would ever be a less appropriate time she can't think of one. Instead she stays still and quiet, tries to think of something else he'd want to know and comes up empty-handed. She's too tired and confused to make the connections she'd normally make, and too intimidated to try outright asking again.

"Oh." Being the replacement isn't something he's very familiar with, but he assumes it stings just as much as getting replaced - despite the fact that Heather doesn't sound too bothered.

He thinks it over, pets Lodewijk, tries not to apply the topic to the rabbit, and lets the conversation lapse into awkward silence. That there's nobody here I know who wouldn't give me up in a heartbeat for somebody else, she said. Her clarification doesn't change his response. Not at all. The same thing happens regardless of which end you're on. Or which end of the universe you're on, for that matter. People are still shitty whether they're stuck on a spaceship or stuck on Earth.

"Doesn't matter where ya are," he mutters, broad hand stilling over Lodewijk's back. "Still sucks." His hand moves again, and as an afterthought he adds, in the same bleak tone, "Cunty way for her t'tell ya that."

Her determination to keep her face blank goes right to shit with that. First it's wide-eyed confusion at what sounds like sympathy and then, just as quickly and in spite of everything, the corner of her mouth twitching up at his phrasing.

"Yeah, it really was." And there it is, movement. If only a shrug as she watches his hand over the rabbit. "She wanted me to give up, I think. Stop fighting her. Not that fighting her did shit to slow her down."

Well, fuck. He wants to know, he hates not knowing, not understanding what happened - but every answer just sucks and pushes them a little bit further out of the safety of the weird trench they're in, toward those landmines.

"How - " She's looking at his rabbit. His shoulders tense for a moment, because this entire situation has him on edge and the first thing he's looking out for is not himself; it's Lodewijk. But she doesn't do anything but shrug, and he abandons that line of interrogation.

"No, it didn't," he finally agrees.

Edited (what are verbs who needs those) 2012-06-19 08:48 (UTC)

So this it it? They're reduced to echoing back at each other? He clearly wants to know something he's not willing to ask, she's too anxious to either outright ask him or throw information at him and see if some of it sticks. Too worried that if she pushes too hard she'll shove a hole right through this weird kind of half-truce, because it might be brushing up on terrifying but hey, he's talking to her.

And as much as it pains her to admit it with everything that's happened, she misses him.

Now that she can move again she's contracting in on herself, folding up. Ankles crossed, knees pulled up to her chest, arms looped around herself. she can't think of a damn thing to say and her gaze catches on his face, hoping for a clue in the line of his mouth or in his eyes.

He'd like to think that if he keeps staring at the floor and petting his rabbit, this will all blow over - she'll come up with some other thing to talk about and they can go on ignoring - whatever this is - everything - but there's still the part in his head where he thinks maybe she's demon. The survival part.

And he can't ask "Is there any way to prove you aren't" because, well, if she is.
If she is, she'll stack the deck.
If she is... she's doing a hell of a job of acting normal. Nervous. Something. What he would expect, at least.

So between wary, fleeting upward glances at her, he continues staring at the floor as his smoke burns out, trying to formulate some half-assed strategy given half-assed information. Medbay is out. Christo is out. But causually setting Lodewijk aside, suddenly launching forward to pin her to the floor, hand over her throat -

He goes with that.

Her back hits the floor and her hands come up to latch around his wrist, but they're just her hands - small, scarred, and sadly her for very human, which makes tugging at him pretty ineffective. There's a part of her telling her just to close her eyes. She already knows she can't hope to fight him off, and if she doesn't struggle it'll at least be quick.

Even now, though, she can't bring herself to just roll over and die. So she keeps pulling at his wrist, tries to get enough purchase on the floor with her boots to push away, and looks him right in the face. Yes, there's probably enough fear and panic in her expression to drown out what anger she can put into it, but if he's going to do this? The least he can fucking do is look her in the eye while he does.

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