twenty-eight ♢ spam & video ( cw: tooth squick )

[versusnurture]

spam } infirmary

[Before the pain hits, in that brief insensible moment after waking, she feels a stab of pride. She did it. She got him. She didn't win, but she fought back against the implacable, impossible, eternal enemy. She silenced him - if only for a moment, she silenced him.]

[It's after that that the pain hits, her head aching impossibly. She wants to die, laughs silently when she recognizes the irony. It feels as though she's cracking in half from her skull down.]

[But even the pain can't distract her from panic for long. While she was dead, it must have gotten worse. It creeps back up her throat before she knows it's there to push back down, her heart beating a hard tattoo in her chest as she sees-- hears-- smells red blood on her hands and the fur of the beast.]

[There is a man in the corner of the room. He breathes in and out. She can hear him speaking, one word only: "See." She can see his chest moving. She can smell blood on his teeth like he's breathing in her face.]

[She sits on her cot, staring at nothing, shivering helplessly, her throat as dry as the deadest desert.]

video

[It's later that the knives sprout. Thirty-two little monster teeth, each with a metal serrated edge, each curved just slightly, making their way into her mouth after pushing her old teeth bloody onto the pure white sheet.]

[They don't distract her as much as they should, though they cut her tongue up something wicked. She has questions - but she can't speak.]

[So in video she turns on a smile, her knife-teeth fitting together like perfect dentures, and holds up a small whiteboard.]

[It says, WHO ELSE CAN SEE HIM?]

Comments

[spam]

[tucky]

[Tiffany's sitting at a nearby table, sorting supplies-- without supervision from an actual doctor, she doesn't yet know how to do much more than that. Every once in a while she glances over at the people in the beds, checking to see if any of them are awake and needing anything-- and that's when she notices Abigail staring.

She looks at the corner, then at Abigail, then back at the corner.]

... What're you looking at over there?

lets just say this is pre knife teeth

[versusnurture]

[She can barely tear her gaze away from the corner long enough to address Tiffany directly. He's still staring when she does. She can feel it.]

You don't see him?

o7

[tucky]

Over there in the corner?

[She looks again.]

Nope, no one there.

[versusnurture]

[Shivering, she clenches her hands together in the hopes that she can ground herself, somehow, make herself more stable.]

But he's standing right there. There's blood on his teeth. I can't believe you can't see . . . See.

[tucky]

[... Uh. Tiffany looks around for a doctor, and when she doesn't see one, she gets up and goes over to Abigail's bed.]

Are you on any drugs right now?

[routemistress]

[Iris has tentacles, which, judging by the way she's using them to hold her drink and her cigarette, she's rather enjoying.]

Ouch. Striking, but it doesn't look much fun. I can't see 'im - Abigail, there's been some possession-type things going 'round, seeing men that aren't there might be related.

[versusnurture]

[Her frown is somewhere between irritated and disappointed. She erases her writing, scribbles something new.]

[IT'S MY DAD.]

[routemistress]

[Iris nods.]

I can see 'ow that'd be someone your mind might pick to manifest. I'm just wondering if it might be a sign of this thing that's going round, you know?

I didn't see anyone, mind. With me it were emotions running wild - like, it picked emotions I already 'ad and drove 'em out of all proportion. Doesn't seem like what you've got going on.

[versusnurture]

[Another sharp frown. I HAVE A LOT OF EMOTIONS.]

[She looks at the whiteboard. In retrospect, it seems like a stupid thing to say. Of course she has a lot of emotions, everybody does. But it seems worse now than usual. Starker, scarier.]

[Maybe she can afford to be honest, just this once. She erases and writes, I'M SCARED.]

[warisart]

[Ben is there when Abigail wakes up; he is stationed still and silent, unmoving, in the chair beside her bed. He is a deadly, trained gargoyle with a barcode on the back of his neck and violence in his bones, and he will kill anyone that comes near her right now. He should have killed someone sooner. He should have made it more clear what would happen to anyone that tries to harm Abigail.

He should have been there, but he wasn't so instead he is here - shut down, too angry to move, breathing carefully around the uselessness of his otherwise staggering guilt. Then she breathes in, and before she can even gasp another breath he is there, leaned into her space, catching her hands to stop her from doing anything that might hurt herself or disrupt the machines around her.]

Abigail. I'm here.

[versusnurture]

[It is hard, almost impossible, to look away from the man in the corner. The way he breathes; the way she can sense every motion of his chest, in, out, in and out, the way he looks at her, as though he could peel her skin from her body and eat her alive. It's a terribly familiar sensation, and it makes her want to scream and run and hide and give up and go along with anything he says.]

[But Ben is here. She has to focus on that. She has to look at Ben, eyes wide and tear-filled, and see him, his sternness, his heavy gaze, the way he stares at her as though his expression says everything necessary to say.]

[Everything necessary besides the one thing he does say, which is that he's here, and the implication, which is that she is safe.]

[She doesn't feel safe.]

Ben?

[I died, she wants to tell him, cling to him desperately, but her eyes shift over again to the man slumped in the corner.]

[warisart]

[She doesn't have to tell him she died. He already knows. He has thought of nothing else in the time since his warden item went cold in his pocket and now. She died. She died.

He glances at the corner when she does but, seeing nothing, his attention does not linger. He tightens his hands on hers.]

I'm here. [The only reply he has to his name; he does not add that she is safe now. He can't promise it, obviously, but he can promise that he is here.

That, and this.] I'm sorry.

[versusnurture]

Ben.

[This time it's an exhale, a slow and steady letting go of fear and pain - most of it, not all of it, but she lets him carry some of what's hurting her because he's Ben and that's what he does. She should trust him with it.]

[Even though the man in the corner is still staring at her, staring and smiling and shaking his head slowly back and forth. She lifts a trembling hand and points at him, right between his eyes.]

Ben, do you see?

[strangehistorian]

Oh, my goodness. Are you in pain? You're bleeding.

[versusnurture]

[Her eyes widen; she dabs at her face with her fingers, touches at the drying blood where her teeth fell out. Looks at her reddened fingers, then smiles in relief. She writes on her whiteboard, IT'S OKAY. IT DOESN'T HURT ANYMORE.]

[strangehistorian]

How are you going to put them back in when the flood is over?

[versusnurture]

[I HAVE NO IDEA.]

[adelphoktonos]

[Helena has white wings, bloody and bedraggled. They're huge, wrapping around to the front of her body, smearing blood in her hair where the feathers and her curls tangle together.]

Who do you see?

[versusnurture]

[MY FATHER, she writes, and then in careful penmanship, YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL.]

[adelphoktonos]

[It takes Helena a beat or two longer to read the words than it might someone else, but when she reads it, she smiles. There's a hint of something in the smile and her wings shift and twitch.]

I could be a real angel, now.

[A pause, then:]

How long has he been there? I see no one.

[versusnurture]

[SINCE I WOKE UP. She looks frightened now, though. If even Helena can't see him, he must not be real. She must be crazy.]

the latest but: spam, whenever you like

[thelastbullet]

[Kylar had asked him to check up on her, but to be honest, it even takes him a while to spot which bed she's in. They don't know each other, and although it's not strange for him to have death in common with someone, it's strange that it's her death they have in common.

He lopes up to her, trying not to look as awkward as he feels this is. His arm is in a sling; and depending on whether the flood has started or not, there are little curved ridges of bone coming through the fabric of his trousers.]

You Abigail?

spam, before the flood!

[versusnurture]

[She looks up at him from where she's been staring into the corner. There's something in her eyes, a haunted look, distant and devastated. She doesn't know who he is at first, and then recognizes him, at least by his face if not by name.]

[For someone more familiar, she would pat the blankets next to her and invite him to sit. For Jimmy, though, an unknown quantity not much older than she is, she just eyes him warily and nods.]

[thelastbullet]

[It reminds him of Pearl, towards the end: small and hurt, sunk away in the middle of a big white bed. Big eyes, brown hair, and the idea that a comforting future is too far away. Something twists in him at the memory, buried as it had been underneath time and distance and too much opium.

He stands at the end of her bed, his free hand rubbing at his mouth just once.]

I'm- a friend of Kylar's. He asked me to check on you.

[versusnurture]

[She narrows her eyes at this, untrusting and uncertain.]

Why couldn't he just come and check on me himself? [A challenge, though she feels too weak to really issue it with any strength behind it.]