capeandcowllogs | Call and answer

Entry tags:

Call and answer

WHO: Mary and Katurian
WHERE: His hospital room
WHEN: Tuesday evening
WARNINGS: Angst angst angst emo angst violence angst
SUMMARY: Mary tries to help Katurian again, against Desire's influence. It does not end well. Takes place after this post.
FORMAT: Para, probably?

It made her feel like a rather horrible human being, but Mary did not want to do this. She did not want to go see Katurian and she did not want to help him at all. And those desires certainly manifested themselves in the strangest of ways. For heaven's sake, she had walked! As Mary Batson-Bromfield! It had been a while since she had done that, and she had forgotten how much slower non-powered travel was.

This entire mess made her feel confused and scared. She could not ever remember an instance when she wasn't practically tripping over herself to help someone. This time, though, she was delaying it as much as she possibly could. She had even taken the time to poke around on her comm as she walked, hoping to distract herself. Poor Katurian.

It wasn't hard to feel awfully sorry for him, and she did genuinely enjoy him, even if he was a little weird. And on most days, she wanted to do what she could to cheer him up because he just seemed so very, very sad. Which is why it bothered her that she didn't want to do so now.

Soon enough, though, the hospital was in view. It took her a few tries to actually walk into the building (whywhywhywas she such a horrible friend?!), and when she did, she spent a bit of extra time poking around the gift shop.

But her conscience soon overwhelmed her reluctance, and fighting a growing sense of nausea, Mary went up to Katurian's room. She peeked in, hoping absurdly that he wasn't there. "...Hello?"

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Katurian was afraid. What had started as sudden, overwhelming bursts of fear settled into a steady wave as he approached the end of his first week in the hospital. His hands trembled. He sweat. He couldn't help but think about the three-hundred and twenty stories from back home he had yet to record, but his thoughts moved so fast that the plots and words blurred together. Girls, boys, razors, knives, fires, lakes. Which one went where? If he had a pen, he told himself, it would all become clear again. It would all line up.

He needed a pen.

He asked the hospital staff to give him one. Again. And again. And again. They started paying closer attention to him around Sunday, and that morning, he had a nice, long talk with a woman who asked him questions he didn't want to answer, about his job, about his home life, about the world he lived in before, and a few hours later, he was certain they were whispering about him. With the stranger's revelation, Katurian was sure that at least had someone to blame, but he couldn't shake the fear that this was the end of him, that they would find him crazy and never let him publish a single thing. They'd keep denying him notebooks. He'd never write again.

'It would stop when it was satisfied,' the stranger had said. When what was satisfied? What more could it crush in him? During the day, Katurian mumbled the stories he could remember under his breath and pretended he could feel the smooth keys of typewriter under his fingers. At night, he cried.

When Mary arrived, he made an effort to sit himself up in bed, but he didn't smile this time. He just stared at her with wide eyes. "Come in," he said.

He looked positively awful. Worse than last time. The feeling of nausea returned tenfold, and it took everything in her power to step into the room.

"Hello," she repeated softly. She took another step forward and considered it great progress. What was wrong with her? Why was she doing this? Another step, and this time she bit her lip to fight her sickness. But he needed her, and Mary couldn't live with herself if she didn't try to help him out. A few more steps, and she was within arm's distance of his bed.

She hadn't brought anything with her. Katurian noticed immediately, and while he wasn't sure why he expected anything else, he felt his stomach lurch. He started trembling again. Moving towards him was painful for her - he could see that, too - and all the hesitance in her face he immediately transformed into his own misery, helplessness, his inability to get that one thing he needed.

"Mary," he said.

He touched her arm. The human contact was nice, he told himself, but in reality, all he could think about was how she wasn't going to help him, and it made his skin crawl.

Edited 2010-04-01 01:46 (UTC)

She didn't recoil, and she was proud of herself for that. Instead she sat down on the chair from the other day and gave him a weak smile. "Are you feeling any better today?" she asked.

One thing rang true in her heart, despite how much she'd rather be anywhere but here right now: she and Katurian were still friends. And because this entire thing was so very obviously against her general nature, she suspected outside forces at work. Which was why she was going to try her absolute hardest for him. Even if she was fighting the urge to simply transform and fly out of there as fast as she possibly could.

"No," he said. The word was out before he could even think about lying. Each day had been getting progressively worse for him, his will bending like a tree in a hurricane. He gave a long, shuddering sigh and raised his arms to cover his head before hesitating and lowering them again. Like Mary, he was fighting impulses. The impulse to vomit. To scream. To tear the sickeningly calm wallpaper from the walls with his broken hands until someone listened to him.

She hadn't brought anything with her.

He thought this would be easier. "I'm sorry," he choked out. "I shouldn't have yelled before. I'm not supposed to be blaming you, I shouldn't be blaming you because it isn't your fault, and s-someone who knew my name without my telling them said this, so I think there's some truth in it, you know? I think that's a good sign."

His words grew frailer, quieter as he went on, dissolving into a near whisper at the end. Immediately, he picked up the volume again, but it sounded unnatural in his throat. "So you should be able to help me."

Edited 2010-04-01 05:02 (UTC)

"I'm sorry too," she replied instantly. "I am. I'm so so sorry and it is my fault because I should be able to do something for you." It was impossible for her not to frown at his agitated behavior, and an slow, cold fear was building in the pit of her stomach.

"I'll try my best."

"Do you have something to write with?" he asked. It was a pleading question he already knew the answer to, but he felt like he should ask it all the same. "A n-notebook? A tape-recorder? Would you like my address? Because I could give you my address if you need it, and I have a very nice typewriter back home o-or the nurses..."

It was difficult, really, sustaining the words for any period of time.

She had never heard him stumble over his words before. He always tried to have such command over words, and to hear him stutter disturbed her. "Uhm... I don't."

And that was all she said. She didn't offer to go find one (an action that should have come as naturally to her as breathing), and she didn't make a move to go ask one of the nurses. Mary swallowed hard. She was supposed to be trying, but the more time she was here, the more she felt that she simply needed to leave.

"Mary," he said, and tears were in his eyes, tears he didn't even bother trying to hide. Should he be crying? No, he told himself. Crying didn't accomplish anything. Crying was what he did when he was too weak to act. He couldn't afford to waste away in this hospital bed. He was going to waste away.

He reached to touch her again, the tips of his fingers just outside the bandages. He tried to speak, but there were just more tears. What could he do?

Well, his tears were all it took for her own to start falling down her cheeks. She hated to see him so vulnerable, and hated herself for being the one to drag him this far down. She quickly moved her hand to mop up her tears, for all the good it did.

And when all was said and done, no matter how much she wanted to want to help him, it was as impossible as an ant moving a mountain. "I'm so so sorry," she said. "I wanted to come back, and I wanted to try and help you because I know how much this means to you, I do, but I just... I just can't!" The very idea makes her hurt so much inside she's close to vomiting herself.

He shuddered at her touch, and his own reaction, the nausea he felt, was enough to make him pull his hand back from her, too. He sniffled. Breathed. Calmer, yes, you can be calmer, he told himself, and he straightened up. He watched her with bloodshot eyes.

"You're giving up on me."

"No!" she denied quickly. "Not on you!" Her voiced softened and she gave him a sad smile. "Never on you. But on myself, if anyone."

She sighed heavily. "This shouldn't be so hard! I don't understand why I can't just help you!"

"It's someone else," he said. "I told you it's someone else." Katurian had spent most of his life being the patient one, the one who was willing to start over again and explain it all slowly. It was impossible, now, with his thoughts racing, his needs tearing at his body and mind. "And that's why you should be able to help me, because it's not your fault, because you can say no to it, if you'd like. Y-you can resist. Mary. We're supposed to be heroes."

Well, obviously it was someone else. Mary knew herself and her behaviors quite well, thank you very much, and this was so very out of character for her that it had to be some other influence. She felt herself growing irritated with him, (oh, another emotion that she didn't usually feel!) because of course this wasn't her fault! And who was he to tell her what kind of hero to be? She knew how to be a true hero better than the majority of the City, when you got down to it, so it really was a bit rich of him to be saying that!

It took her a moment to swallow down her annoyance.

"Okay. Okay, let's try," she grit out.

"First I need something to write with," he said, trying to keep his voice calm and even. "Come on, Mary. Step by step. I need something to write with."

He was angry, too - or frustrated, or confused, or terrified out of his mind. It was hard to make sense of himself. It was easier to draw patterns in words that weren't his own feelings, in narratives and characters, but if he could do that, he wouldn't be like this in the first place.

She took a steadying breath, bit her lip, and slowly began to stand. She had never had to undergo this sort of effort before, not for something so very mundane. Something to write with. A pen. Okay. A pen. She could do that. A pen.

"Step by step, right?" she repeated. It was less about confirmation and more about preparation. Standing and getting out of the room was easy, not transforming and bolting out a window was hard. Mary paused at the doorway and looked over at him. "I'll be back. I'll come back, Katurian."

He stared at her, wide-eyed. She sounded like she was reassuring herself more than anything else. Was there a risk she wouldn't come back? No, of course there was. Of course. Everyone so far had been willing to let him drift closer and closer to the edge, and he knew it was unlikely for her to be any different. Still, he had hoped.

"Yes," he said. He bit his lip and nodded. "Y-Yes. Thank you."

It took her a good ten minutes to move beyond the outside of his door. She knew she was drawing strange looks from the nurses, but it couldn't be helped. Mary was not, as a general rule, a creature of wants and desires; and so to have two very strong desires warring very strongly within her almost shut her down. Step by step. And it was just a pen. And it was to help.

She was Mary Marvel, and she could do this.

Even if the simple act of asking to borrow a pen from the nurses' station, left Mary feeling exhausted and physically ill. Clearly, her struggle must have shown on her face, for the hospital staff forced her to sit. She drew the line at having tests done; Mary knew what the problem was, and it wasn't anything the doctors could fix.

But it was another ten minutes before Mary could vacate her seat. And so it was, twenty minutes later, that she dragged herself back into his room, sweat beading on her temple showing how much of an effort it had been to do so.

She knew she shouldn't be, but she was rather proud of herself.

He became convinced that she wasn't coming back.

How long could it take to find a pen? he thought. His muscles shook. His bones shook. How long? He spent the majority of the twenty minutes with his head buried in his knees, as though that might keep the nurses from asking questions, as though avoiding eye contact meant avoiding everything else. Every time he heard footsteps approach, he snapped his head up.

When one set of footsteps approached his room, when they were Mary's footsteps, he saw her, saw the pen, and laughed. It was a rough, quiet laugh that barely left his throat, but all the same, it was a laugh. He cut it off almost immediately, though, as the next need crossed into his mind.

"Paper." He looked around the room, the smile fading from his lips. He was beyond 'hello's and 'thank you's.

Paper. Oh, God she had to go back and get paper? She wasn't sure she'd make it back from a second trip. It had been so hard the first time around. Instead she inched into the room. "Maybe there's some in here," she offered.

It was another ritual he had, looking for pens, papers, notebooks in his hospital room. He long knew that nothing like that was in there - he would've dragged himself out of bed if that were the case. Still, each time he thought about it, he had to look. Just to be sure.

Each time, there was nothing.

"No," he said. Panic sank back into his voice. "You need to bring me paper."

Edited 2010-04-13 03:34 (UTC)

Leaving again would mean that she wouldn't return. Mary was almost certain of this. So she bit her lip and tried to think of a solution. "Are you sure? I mean, I'm sure there's some somewhere in here." She started to look around the room vainly, knowing perfectly well that she wasn't likely to find anything and secretly relieved because of it. She checked near his bedside table, in the cabinets on the far wall, and even in the bathroom. It wasn't like she searched particularly hard for it, either.

She wasn't even trying. Before he realized it, he was raising his voice. Yelling. Shrieking, almost, the way the sound caught in the back of his throat and grew higher, just out of his control. "No!"

Calm down, he tried to tell himself. Calm down. But he couldn't, he couldn't, it was too late. Too late for everything. He was shuddering, waves and waves of tension gripping his body. He started kicking himself out of bed. "I'll look for it myself. I'll look myself!"

She rushed over to his side, forgetting all about the pen and paper and just wanting to make sure he didn't hurt himself any further. "Mr. Katurian, please calm down!"

By the time she reached his side, his feet were on the ground, wonderful ground, and he thought about what those feet would feel like running, running, running, out of this room, out of the hospital. Into salvation. He was going to have to earn it himself. How didn't he see that before? All of his thoughts whirled and settled on the idea now. Everything drew towards it. Everything.

He flung himself up off the bed.

"Katurian, please!" Mary cried, desperate and terrified. He wasn't acting like her quiet, odd friend anymore, and she didn't know what to do. But having him sprint from the room didn't seem like a good idea at all. So she move to block his exit.

He stumbled forward a few steps, his head reeling, the world turning around him, and then he saw Mary there, Mary the obstacle, Mary the traitor like how Cameron betrayed him, like how his parents betrayed him, like how his brother betrayed him, and his skin crawled and ached.

And then he stumbled to the side, the waves and dizziness too much. He didn't fall but it was close. He extended one arm to balance himself and brought the other to cup his forehead. He was drowning.

Edited 2010-04-19 04:47 (UTC)

No matter how much she had been bewitched to not want to help him, reaching out to catch and steady him was second nature. She'd quite forgotten about the pen she held in her hand. "Katurian, you can't be up like this!"

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Call and answer

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I am so sorry this took me far longer to write than anticipated.

no problem <3 (ahsifoasfa edits)

<3

Re: <3

<3 forever!

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Jesus WEPT I am so sorry this is so late.

Re: Jesus WEPT I am so sorry this is so late.

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