[drp] folie à deux (trash)

[medigel]

shatter

He doesn't remember breathing when the encasement breaks, but the pain is indescribable. Maybe he's dead, then. Maybe the blue infection struck close enough to enter his heart and crystallized its frantic seizures. Something fractures at his touch at any rate, maybe before he's dragged to the tents, maybe after.

Time
didn't
matter
before,
it certainly can't now.

It's a limbo that reminds him of the desert heat and the blaring sun, and he cringes at every beam of light that invades his space, curls up and muffles his tired sobs because he can't remember now if his escape from the horseman was a dream or not. If it would be better to be back there than it would be here, if his traitorous choice for survival has been witnessed and documented. If this has only just been a lengthy hallucination while he dies of thirst in an underground cage, mourned by no-one. If Chel regrets.

If this is real.
If someone has come by
and seen the giant
reduced to a ball
of barely contained life,
nearly unrecognizable
even without the bandages.
The ******** shame of it.

(If Chel doesn't regret.)

But above all else is this: beyond nightmares and illusions is the fact there is no dagger under his pillow, and that is the thing that keeps him up at night more than anything else.
 

[chiickadee]

crystallize

It felt like a soft, gentle fall into darkness. There was an irony to it; fighting the darkness for so long only to return to it gently, willingly. The embrace came like sleep, and she wondered if this was what death felt like.

(Tenebrae wanted to point out that if she had the energy to wonder, she wasn't really dead. That, and that he was disappointed).

She was tired of infirmary tents being familiar. If Jack could find similarity to the desert, Chel could find similarity to the Sahara too. Once Jack had stepped in front of a horseman for her, and she still ended up with a hole in her stomach, in another goddamn infirmary tent. Now she had a crystal on her chest and an even bigger hole.

It's bizarre, to be lauded for her actions for once. Chel wasn't exactly hidden on the battlefield, and many saw her collision with Jack. Techs see her blue crystal and for some reason, they think it's a commendation. She isn't met with suspicious glances and whispers; they applaud her courage. When she asks where Jack is, the smiles fade a degree and the suspicion sets in.

She wants to punch them in the face. She comes close to doing so.

Recovery, shaky steps, hard breathing; these are all things she's used to. Chel can't count the number of times she's been unstable now. She fans away the people that tell her to rest. I'll rest when I'm dead, is a familiar phrase.  

[chiickadee]

shatter

He's covered in bandages. It's ghastly, the cuts she's left on him, the bruises left where the armor pinched too hard. What's more horrifying is that she can't tell which she's caused and which are Merlin's.

(Is a separation of blame necessary at this point?)

She knows that as the Good Girlfriend™ she should fall asleep waiting for him to wake up. She should hold his hand, fend off techs, be there when he wakes up. These are things written in her brain by too much television, attachment to movies and pop culture.

But her feet take her backwards. First a single step, then a few. Then she's walking away from the tent, almost angry. Her pace is quick, but she can't bring herself to a run. It's just a walk, a directionless walk, and an arrow to anyone who stops her.  

[medigel]

bruised

It feels awkward to breathe—not just from the memory of how to live again, but from the scar radiating across his chest. There's nothing the techs can tell him about it other than it's blue, and maybe that's all it will be. But he swears there's a subtle weight when he takes a breath, like the crystal armor is still underneath the scar tissue trying to encase him from the inside out.

They let him go eventually. No chains, no bracelets. He can still feel the collar, however, the invisible leash around them all. We're watching you. They know, then. It takes him more than he's used to to walk out with the same carriage of distant dignity he's known for instead of ducking his head and leaving like a wounded animal. Another layer of armor, this one personal, just as choking, just as heavy.

He wanders aimlessly for the better part of an hour before he feels a little less claustrophobic. It's another hour, after nibbling and forcing some water down, after pacing more and feeling too restless even in his room, that he finally pushes himself up the stairs and knocks on her door. "S'me."  

[chiickadee]

Bruised

Silence. Door unlocked. She'd gone from visiting Chris straight to Jack's room, then straight to the quarantine. Her room was, for the most part, untouched.  

[chiickadee]

Brittle

Chel leans on a windowsill (or what constituted one). Time to think, but no thoughts.

Her fault, her fault, her fault.  

[medigel]

bruised

The empty sight touched a nerve for some reason. All that preparation exactly for nothing.

He yanked the sheets back and stretched out on her bed but didn't sleep, boring a hole in the wall as his legs dangled over the side. It was as if just under the scar, something festered and itched his temper. The feeling came and went normally--it was why he had begun finding people like Peyton and Leslie at all--but he had never felt something this overwhelming since...well, he supposed, not since the first time he threw Chel in quarantine.

If she wasn't here, maybe Chris. If not Chris, ********, maybe she did make the damn trek to throw herself back in that corner again, as if it mattered now. Just like when she had visited Nevada's grave.

A short period later, Jack got to his feet and stormed back down to his room. He hoped whenever she decided to return she'd look at her bed and wonder. No ******** way he was going to yank her a** out again if she didn't want to be found this time. Instead, he grabbed his headphones, jacked the volume up, and tried to vent the excess energy through music more vocally angry than he could be right now.
 

[medigel]

brittle

Quote:

Text to Chel: Are we going to ******** talk or not?

Stormy had ignored him for more than a year before he got a significant conversation out of her. He would be damned if he had to sit and repeat that again.  

[chiickadee]

Brittle

Her response came in about five minutes. Much shorter than a year.

Quote:

Text to Jack: kk. @ the hous

 

[medigel]

Brittle

It took him a moment to understand "hous" didn't mean her dorm. It seemed to take even shorter than that to get him outside, sunglasses on and hands in his pockets. Anger lurked still but had cooled to a simmer since leaving the infirmary tents, and it was appeased somewhat with the purpose in which he strode. At least they were communicating. How much would get communicated, he didn't know, but four words was a start. Anything was better than being forced alone with his thoughts; he imagined it had to be the same for her.

Jack announced his presence by loudly kicking a piece of debris as he approached the weathered Victorian home.
 

[chiickadee]

Brittle

Chel stared out the window until it became socially awkward for her not to acknowledge Jack. Her arms were patterned with the grain of the wood from pressing into them too hard. The odd thing was that there was nothing outside of the window. What had once been a fenced backyard was now a plot of dirt with debris around it. There was nothing to see.

She couldn't meet his gaze, not from anger or rejection but from fear. She put her hands up the same way she did whenever Chris looked to them, the same way her mother did when her father approached with his fingers clenched in fist. Surrender, retreat.  

[medigel]

For someone who had demanded a conversation, Jack strangely didn't jump right into it. He glowered somewhere in the space above Chel's head and out the window as well, his face darkening the longer he did so. The simmering didn't disappear, but it left spaces behind, hollowing him from the inside while still leaving a stinging residue.

"Why here?" he eventually asked as he lowered his gaze to hers. Her gesture made him wonder if he still appeared threatening, or if it was still under her misguided belief of godhood.
 

[chiickadee]

The glare on his face wasn't helping her fear. Her hands retreated back to the wood of the house, as though she'd be able to phase through the building and run away again. But how could she run?

She cringed as the crystal dug into her chest from the motion, slight discomfort compared to the glare.

"I dunno," she mumbled, eyes on the ground, uncharacteristically shy. "Needed some good vibes maybe."  

[medigel]

How Chel could get good vibes from a house he hadn't even officially claimed, much less cleaned up, was beyond him. It sounded closer to another excuse to just avoid him. But Owain was nudging his consciousness now that they were finally in the same space together (she is scared, dear one), and Jack sighed through his nose and tried to push some of the tension out.

He took his sunglasses off and folded them at his shirt collar. "Surprised you didn't bring your iPod then," he observed. That was a pointless sentence. He tried again after a pause. "What're you afraid of right now?"
 

[chiickadee]

Chel's downward facing eyes scanned the ground for a moment longer before she turned to face out the window again.

She sighed, eyes unfocused. Tired. "Cut the crap, would you?" Almost playful. "What's there not to be scared of right now."