capeandcowllogs | 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

the sun is coming up over the hill

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject