capeandcowllogs | the sun is coming up over the hill

Entry tags:

the sun is coming up over the hill

WHO: The Narrator and Nina Sayers
WHERE: One of the bridges over the river.
WHEN: Wednesday, March 16th, evening.
WARNINGS: None? Or maybe these two are their own warning.
SUMMARY: A chance encounter.
FORMAT: Starting with paragraph.

When it comes time for his release, the doctors are practically begging him to go. With his pain-free bruises and treasured scars, he is the living disappointment to the very idea of a hospital. The early doctors of ancient Greece, Hippocrates, whatever, they had nothing on this. The doctors drop his paperwork on the bed. Clean pants. A shirt. Socks. You're all set, they say. You're free. When he doesn't move to get up, they wait until he does.

He doesn't want to leave. He wants to be a horizontal statue with his eyes fixated on inane courtroom dramas, women with sweeping blonde wigs crying over lovers whose bodies look cut out of cardboard, sports commentators with voices whose volume would never be appropriate for a polite indoor setting, such as a hospital. If he imagines hard enough, he can see himself in their worlds. Mowing their lawns. Drinking their coffee. Breathing their air.

Anything but superheroes, he thinks. Anything but superheroes.

"Do I have to go?" he asks, but he's already unrolling his socks.

He was in the hospital five days for internal bleeding he wouldn't have even recognized if Selina hadn't brought him in. Apparently, starting fights in a constant state of hatred while also being unable to feel pain does wonders for the human body. Next time, he'll need to take notes.

The day before the doctors kick him out, another hospital calls him, NOHoPE, a name that rolls off the tongue and mouths mine. NOHoPE, the place of no hope, tells him that his boss has disappeared, and maybe he'll be back in a few days or maybe he'll be back never. The Narrator says that's well and good, but can he have some sick days please, can't they understand how stressful is it to be the puppet of some chatty Nazi transplanted from alternate World War II or whatever, can't they leave him alone? NOW? And they hang up and he tries to decide if he's fired.

When he leaves he has no where to go except to Tyler. And Bellatrix.

Tyler has his mattress and Tyler makes him sleep on the couch. And he does sleep. Like a rock. Or a corpse. He ignores the Network because maybe that'll be an easier way to get back home. Everyone who stops posting is assumed to be disappeared. If enough people believe his absence, maybe they can send him soaring into oblivion.

Six days after his release, he goes to the river and watches down below from the pedestrian bridge. He takes out his communicator and imagines dropping it into the murky water. In his mind, it hits SMACK like a belly flop and then it shatters into a thousand million billion zillion pieces and all the superheroes go away and the sky opens up and he is normal and he is living his life again. He'd imagine himself going in after it, but it's Wednesday and he can't die. The metal will take the fall for him. Like a noble hero. It's dangling over the edge, held between his thumb and forefinger, oh no it's going down oh no do you have any last words, but he can't let it go. His muscles are stuck.

Today, he's a different kind of statue.

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Nina made sure she didn't think about her days spent in the hospital. Stuck in a bed until you were told to go, no cause or reason for blood, no one to turn to, just a strange voice on the other end of the receiver that was supposed to have been her mother. It was only then that the new reality had begun to set in. There was no mention of a missing, possibly dead ballerina in the news. No one had come asking for their missing, possibly dead daughter. Not even the nurses or doctors had made a big effort to collect her information. Words like 'import', 'dimension' and 'porter' were thrown around like some sort of jargon. Those were dark, lonely and confined days, followed by more dark, lonely and confined days in a strange and cold apartment.

Nina often wondered -- why she was here, what she had done to become the center of some carefully planned and detailed cosmic joke. If at first she thought she had been the only one to be put through a machine and given a device to record her experience, she was quickly proven wrong when more voices popped up on the network, telling and retelling the tale of how they had been ripped from their homes and placed here. Some called it a prison, some told her to think of it as a new beginning.

Only one person had asked her what she thought it was.

And Nina still thought about him. 'Tyler Durden' quickly followed whenever she allowed herself to pause and contemplate, which only drove her to brush it away as quickly as possible. Thinking about him made her nervous and scared. There was something about the way he took an extra second to observe her and the way he grinned at her. How blunt and persistent he was about the blood, enough to show up at her apartment and make her feel like a trapped mouse. But it wasn't just that. Above the fear and aversion, there was, somehow, a loud voice that urged her to turn away and close up before he found out too much, because he thought she was crazy.

The sound of a car beeping snaps her back to reality. Nina jumps a little and turns her head, watching the vehicle simply drive on. It wasn't directed at her -- just another driver taking a little too long to let the passenger leave. She breathes and composes herself, brushing stray hairs behind her ear. It's caught up in a bun again, her idea of formality when it comes to presenting herself for a job. One hand slides down her bag's strap, the other tucks into her coat's pocket and she quickens her pace.

Nina has taken a walk across the bridge to look for work and is now making her way back. She showed up with nothing in her hand, just the dog tags and communicator in her bag, hopeful that it would serve as explanation and excuse for no further information. The very few that paid enough attention to ask her a few questions always wanted to know what she did before coming to the City. 'Ballerina' was not mentioned once.

As she makes her way back to Terry's apartment, eyes fixed on the ground, the image of a man standing perfectly still with something apparently stuck between his fingers -- she recognizes the communicator -- catches her focus momentarily. She frowns at the odd scenario with slightly parted lips. Her head turns as she walks by, eyes still focused on him, but she slowly decides to continue on with her routine.

And yet, something brings her to stop. Nina looks down, blinking and tensing her brows, pressing her lips together with hesitance, curiosity and a many 'what if...'. Give it another ten seconds before she gives in and walks back to him. You're going to regret this, she tells herself, but the image of Andy offering her a few kind words and friendly conversation over their shared condition as imPorts pushes her to do a little better.

She approaches him carefully, head slightly tilted to the side, wary enough to keep a little distance. Her voice is soft.

"... Are you okay?"

The voice is electricity (bloody stomachs, quiet cries, please, you have to help me) and his whole body jerks before he wheels around, nearly dropping the communicator into the water right then and there. He's only partially surprised about how he catches it, how he clings to it like a lifeline, his knuckles growing white with the force.

"Oh." It isn't even a word, oh. It's a breath. A gasp. It's the torrent of memories and his thoughts echoing Tyler's thoughts echoing his own thoughts, and oh, he's so close to how it's all supposed to be that he feels like he's going to be sick. He never expects this.

"I'm sorry, you--" He swallowed a whole gulp, hand reaching for his forehead before dropping it. This close, all the healing bruises on his face and shoulders were perfectly visible, shades of gray and purple and orange. "You scared the shit out of me."

Nina is startled. It's only then that she gets a full glimpse of the man's face and, unsurprisingly enough, it sends a wave of shock and repulse that she barely manages to hide. She has to blink and wave her head softly with a soft grimace.

"I'm sorry." The apology is stuttered and a little urgent, her eyes drawn to the shades of violence on his skin. Her expression is paved with morbid curiosity, hesitance and concern, torn between leaving and helping, completely unaware of the memories echoing in his mind or that she should find this voice familiar. She'd be gone by now otherwise. "What happened to you?"

She doesn't recognize him. Does she? The thoughts twist in his skull. He still remembers how she hung up on him moments after he revealed he knew Tyler. When he views the memories of her through Tyler's lens, he can practically taste his satisfaction. His twisted curiosity. Of course she's afraid - she'd have to be an idiot not to be.

"It's not anything serious." He keeps a stranger's distance in his words, but he can't look away. His eyes, too wide, hang on her face, trying to recapture whatever interest Tyler could possibly have in her, though the feelings never quite align. He knows why he's interested. Having arrived in the City caked in blood himself, her situation provides the promise of an answer. The way out. He doubts Tyler - what with his new, shining human body - would be so keen to embrace that.

"But thanks." An afterthought. He stumbles over the words. "Yeah. Thanks."

Admittedly, the concern snags his interest, too. That she'd turn back for him. That she asks after the bruises everyone else goes out of their way to ignore.

Nina looks unconvinced, but any further doubts or questions are kept silent, not just because it isn't any of her business -- she's a little fearful of the answers, too. The instinct that tells her to avoid strangers and remain safe in her little bubble of isolation is urging her to be satisfied with his reply and get back on her way to Terry's apartment.

"Okay." She nods, but there's a moment of debate. She parts her lips to say something, remains silent, then changes her mind and gets ready to turn around and leave. "... good afternoon."

"H-Hold on." It might be a demand, but isn't very demanding, the way he says it. It sounds more urgent. Desperate. He claws for an excuse to make her stay, something like you dropped your wallet or I dropped my wallet or you should take me to the hospital, I am a very sick person but it all happens so quickly. Only the truth tumbles out. "Don't I know you?"

Wrong. Question.

He regrets it the moment he says it. She's going to run away again, once she knows. But he lets it hang in the air because that's it, that's done, and if she leaves, he tells himself, it isn't like it matters. It isn't like he cares. She's just some woman with blood staining her stomach. She's a fantasy. Like everything else. Whatever.

(The way he grips his communicator, though, he isn't sure how much he believes that anymore.)

Nina turns her head. She doesn't look scared, for once, just surprised and a little cautious. The first thought that crosses her mind says he is going to ask for her help -- probably to take him to the hospital -- and said thought only sparks her inhibition and selfishness. The concern that reflects in her eyes is almost a lie -- she's actually worried about having to help this man and thinking about how inconvenient and uncomfortable it would be. Just the possibility that she might have to go anywhere near the hospital weights unpleasantly in the back of her mind.

Then comes the question. Her reaction shows only in a twitch of her eyebrows. If anything, she just looks like she's narrowing her eyes in an effort to place a name on his face, but she knows perfectly well she won't find one. This stranger doesn't look like anyone she'd become acquainted with (and yet here she is, in the product of her own mistake). He's just making conversation and trying to establish a connection for some sort of agenda, she thinks.

There's a lengthy pause between his question and her answer.

"... I don't think so." There's a little pause. She almost sounds polite. "I'm not from here."

Then again, neither is he.

"From the Network," he clarifies, giving his communicator a light shake. He lets himself loosen his grip, and for a moment, it's like he was never thinking about throwing it into the river at all. Like it had never been in danger. He expects it wouldn't have shattered anyway - it would have sunk to the bottom, sparking and sizzling the whole way, or it would have floated down the river into the ocean, schools of fish using it to talk to other schools of fish who had, suddenly and mysteriously, tumbled in from an alterante universe.

But he shouldn't be thinking of this, he thinks, tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth. He should be speaking.

"It's obvious I'm not from here either." There's something almost chiding in his voice, but he recognizes and corrects it, his tone growing sheepish in turn. "That's probably where I saw you."

Edited 2011-03-20 03:31 (UTC)

Nina goes silent and presses her lips uncomfortably with a soft frown. The fact that she takes a particular distaste to being called out (no matter the context) piles onto that little alarm that rings when his voice starts to become just a little more familiar. She's still trying to match it with a name or conversation, but...

"I'm sorry." She says so with a tinge of guilt, even if it's false. She's just using it to mask her apprehension, trying to make sure in her head that she never showed her face on the network. "I don't really use my communicator..."

He watches her carefully, and he can feel his own anxiety, his own awkwardness grow, as though everything Tyler has ever done for him is meaningless. He isn't equipped to deal with this. He isn't the kind of man who can pull the answers out, who can make someone whisper to him all of their deep dark secrets. He isn't the kind of man who gets other to pledge themselves to his word. Is he?

"I do recognize you." Take out the 'probably.' Make it official. Demand. "I know I've heard your voice before. You were in a hospital."

It's very obvious and undeniable, now: Nina is no longer anywhere near comfortable with this conversation, partly because of the reminder of the hospital, partly because of the new tone the man took on. She frowns and purses her lips, struggling a little to get the words out.

"Who are you?"

Evasion makes sense. Names are commitments and late night phone calls and an unspoken vow to keep in touch, thank you, and while he needs to know about her, he's hardly ready to go this far. Please. Be reasonable.

"Clyde," he says. There's only the slightest hesitation on his lips. The name is neutral but distinctive. It's different from the one he gave Selina and his old boss, but if he sticks to one, it's as good as giving everyone his real name. With several identities under his belt, he's a ghost. He barely exists. "Who are you?"

Clyde. It doesn't ring any bells. If anything, it just contributes to the confusion and big pile of information that Nina can't work with. All she can take is that he knows more about her than she knows about him (and yet he asks for her name?), and that's never encouraging. Much less in a place that seems bent on making sure you know it's watching your every move and throwing little signs to throw you off every other day.

Nina shivers and inches up her shoulders with a little tension when she feels the wind pick up. Small details on her face shift when she looks away, arches her eyebrows, presses her lips, blinks and returns her focus to the man, still avoiding eye contact.

"Nina." She answers quietly. There is another frown directed at the man when she changes the subject back to him, vaguely shaking her head. "... Are you sure you're okay?"

He drops his own eyes. This is going to be difficult.

"I'm as okay as I'm gonna be," he says. He tries to relax his shoulders but his muscles are locked together, forming bricks and boulders under his skin. The movement, the shrug, is awkward. He takes the moment to drop his communicator into the deep pocket of his jacket, as though that's what he meant to do all along. "I mean, this place is pretty screwed up." Screwed up. Not fucked up. Fuck-ed. No harsh consents. Child friendly, practically.

He must still be trying to make an impression.

There's a large part of her that agrees with the statement, if not the entirety. There's a conscious refusal to express her opinion, however, feeling it would work against her. He's trying to make conversation and make her stay and she doesn't know why. Just because he remembers she used to be in the hospital? Not likely.

"I should go, so..." She pauses. "If you're sure you don't need anything."

"N-- N-No." His voice catches on the letters. How embarrassing. But he thinks about that less, the embarrassment, than how he doesn't want her to go. How nothing has been solved yet. "Don't go. I'm one of the people that talked to you. In your-- your message. I'm the one who wanted to know what you think this place is."

There's a sharpness, a determination, at the end of his words, absent from his stuttering, uncertain beginning.

Dancing around the issue only gets him so far.

There's something about the way he insists on talking to her that makes it desperate, and that scares Nina. It takes her a full second to fully realize who she's talking to -- it's when he brings up his question that another wave of dread presses on her stomach, remembering the alarm she felt once he told her who he was affiliated with. Possibilities upon possibilities cross her mind, too, paranoia settling in to tell her he might have planned this. This city is filled with enough coincidences.

Nina wants to walk away but is stopped by the thought that he might follow her. She wants to say something that will magically reach his head and make him let her go, leave her alone, forget about her and let her forget about him. The only thing that comes to mind is an almost voiceless accusation.

"Did he send you here?"

At first, he's startled. Affronted. She's accusing him of working outside his own desires, of being merely a hand on an arm, a tool (like the first monkey shot into space), when in reality, this is what he needs. This is his own battle. For once it's his own battle.

"No." The deniable is automatic -- he'd answer the same way if she told him he had two heads. But then something else settles in. Tyler's hands on his throat, breath in his thoughts, a bullet in his mouth and nothing solved.

A second head.

"No." His words are more forceful now, like razors between his teeth, as he steps forward, his muscles thrumming with harsh reassurance and inward fear. "No, I came on my own, and you're going to talk to me."

Nina doesn't just look scared when she takes a step away from him, hand clutching her bag's strap very tightly, shoulders shifting like it will somehow make her smaller, untouchable -- Nina actually looks offended. Not by words, but by the man himself. His presence, the bruises on his skin, the demand in his tone, the look in his eyes.

"I'm not going to do anything." The eyes returning his gaze are very close to a glare. She is rejecting his approach and shutting herself away into a protective shell, brows creasing into a defensive frown, but she imagines all kinds of danger she is in. She imagines angry shouts and a forceful hand grabbing her arms and forcing her to stay. That is the only thing that stops her from simply turning and walking away.

You're going to regret this, she told herself, but the image of Andy offering her a few kind words and friendly conversation over their shared condition as imPorts had pushed her to do a little better.

And now here she was.

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the sun is coming up over the hill

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