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[after the most recent horrorshow broadcast, he'd probably been the only person to run opposite of the 'guilty' marked houses; but while it's still playing on his phone, Badou tears ass through the streets towards the hospital instead, red sneakers vaulting up three flights of stairs two at a time]

[the third floor is as it always is; stark, bright, quiet, smelling vaguely of mildew and disuse. he slams open door after door, his heart thudding loudly in his ears, thinking a harsh reversal of what he's been thinking since that first midnight feed; please let there be nothing let there be no one let there be shitall no no no]

[Badou doesn't ask for much, want much, hardly anything at all -- but even when he does (maybe especially when he does), it doesn't make much of a difference]

[a fluffy, stupid head is laying in a hospital bed, and Badou can tell that idiotic hair from a mile away, because it pisses him off so goddamn much, and it does now, too]

Edited 2013-10-21 20:15 (UTC)

[and for once, that need to know, the demanding fire in his brain that never, ever goes out and never, ever stops burning for information, flickers and dies; when he'd woken up in a room with Barnaby, he'd turned the place over, looking for signs of whoever dumped him here. he'd looked at the stillstill body for injury, he'd tried to work things out, gotten disgusted, gotten frustrated, got focused]

[here, now, Badou can't even look at the other boy's face, doesn't even want to know his expression; a sick green eye snaps off of stupid, idiotic black hair to a stupid, idiotic skinny chest, and then to the floor]

[after a long, long moment, Badou doesn't approach the bed, doesn't cry, doesn't call up anyone. his hard breathing from running through the town is harsh in the room, awful and loud, and he feels stupid, and young, and worthless; tomorrow the feed had said, and tomorrow had come]

[it feels like a handful of months ago; like there's an oozing black infection still in his eye, in his head, making his hand radiate pain and his thoughts muzzy and slow. and just like a handful of months ago, Badou finds a corner (where he can see everything, where he can pretend he is safe) and folds up into his own limbs, awkward teenage legs and shoulders all bad joke angles. he makes a cage of those stupid, coltish arms, tucks his head between them, and focuses on the suddenly difficult pushes of air going in and out of his lungs (too clear, too clear)]

[these are the facts, that turn oxygen to nothingness inside him: Gau Meguro will only look like he is sleeping, but he died, and no one could do anything to stop it]

[Badou couldn't do anything to stop it.]

Edited 2013-10-21 20:16 (UTC)

[when badou goes, immediately, inevitably, she follows. it takes her minutes to realise he's gone, to snap back from a name in red, to registers what it means and where he's gone and then she's flying off in hot pursuit (despite not wanting to see what she knows they'll find there, despite not knowing what to do when she finds him once he's found it).

she's been playing video games with Chuck lately-- learning, trying to learn, some new outreach to boys out of reach and friends close at hand --and as she runs she's reminded vaguely of those little flitting sidekicks, the fairies and fireflies that flutter about heads and dart after heroes and mutter wordless wisdom into ears. she's no mutterer, but the rest fits.

something else that fits: their collective health is low, and she's going blue.]

[fleet feet carry her fast, would have even faster were it not for her hesitance to catch up (time, time, needs time to know what to do here, what good is she if there's nothing to be done). but her arrival is unavoidable and eventually she's introduced by the pattering plunge of feet, the drag of unsteady breath.

she stops-- short.

sure enough, the illusion shatters. the hope she's been nourishing, the flame of something to hold on to, withers. a little bird stares at a body and feels, momentarily, like a vulture.

steps start up again: slow, precarious. they carry her one- two- three paces closer to a boy she barely knew but was starting to. a boy who had invited her to join him in learning how to talk to one another without words. a boy who had befriended (in an odd sort of way, where neither would ever admit it) Badou Nails and become someone worth committing to the streets for.]

[something - the shift of a shoe, a heavy quiver of breath dragging out of time with her own, something - catches her attention and draws it away from the empty shell. she finds the reason why she's really here, why she really came. blue eyes land on him and stick there as in one short moment her focus does what Badou's has been doing gradually over days: narrows to nothing but him, nothing but a bunched up pile of bones hunched in and around itself with nowhere to go, nothing to do, no possible way to escape or progress.

there is nothing she can give him. nothing, between him and the body of a dead friend, that she can do to ease the rigor mortis of the living.]

[one step, another, and she twists her trajectory away from the past to dwell on the present. four, five, six steps and she's thinking on a night under stars and over cars. seven, eight, nine and it doesn't really matter what he may or may not want, does it? ten, eleven, twelve and she halts, eyes on the back of a ginger head, knowing he knows without needing to see who's hovering over him, waiting for who knows what.

it doesn't matter what he wants because he wants nothing. it doesn't matter what he wants because she can't give it to him. it doesn't matter what he wants because she doesn't care if he flinches, doesn't care if he pushes her away, doesn't care if he stands up and runs.

she can't give him hope, but she has to give him something.

Nill crouches, slowly and precisely in front of him (shaking slightly by now, but that's hardly surprising), breath as steady as she can manage - and curls in. her knees hit the floor and she folds herself, arm covering arm and over a back, arm covering arm and up into hair, still separate, millimetres away from touching. the only points of contact made are the slip of fingers into firestrands (instinct, desperate to sooth, only able to thumb gentle circles into a scalp, no replacement for the churning mess beneath it). her breath ruffles against the back of his head, trembling and warm.

the beauty of silence is that, without sight, it can almost contradict existence. perhaps he'll accept this, perhaps he won't - it doesn't matter. that's exactly what she's offering. a second skin, to be shed or worn in place of his own.]

Edited 2013-10-22 00:37 (UTC)

[the silence isn't loud enough, isn't big enough to sink into the deep holes of loss that widen daily in Badou's heart, but it does soften their razor edges, makes that tumbling crash into darkness at least less sharp and pricking (the suffocation, the dizzying sink, there's nothing to be done about that). but she brings a familiarity two-fold; he used to huddle with other lost boys like this, all shallow breaths and hunched up bodies, protecting their soft bellies at rest (and fucking always), sharing warmth if not contact, sharing company if not friendship]

[but she also brings her own familiarity, everything about her that smells like home. it's not like what Heine and the other kids from the pits stink of, all electric strata and desperation -- it's the scent of what makes Badou unfurl and breathe and smile on any other day, all summed up in kind hands and accepting eyes and sardonic looks, the quirk of her mouth when she's messing with him, the sway of her hair when she's sleepy and tottering on those stupidly small feet, the voiceless, doggish huffs she makes when she's soundlessly laughing her ass off, the nothing-weight of her body against the heaviness of her presence]

[and those fingers, just wisps of feathers and fur on the wind, but that gentle, intimate touch at his skull is enough to shatter nerves all across his head and down his spine like a sledgehammer]

Edited 2013-10-22 02:58 (UTC)

[it's just an inch; an inch collapsed forward into her touch, into her trembling and airy space. he doesn't know what she needs right now, has been selfish since the midnight feed (fire burns air up, devours it, every time), but his lungs are being shredded with every breath and he can't spare a thought to anything else but the rush of blood and pump of ventricles in his own body]

[he doesn't want to lose it, doesn't want to hurt anybody right now if only because it would have no effect, it would change nothing that has already happened; one day, he'll put a knife through the Landlord's face and sink bullets into his gut. it won't make a difference that today, here, he is nothing but a boy battered and breaking against fury and loss, uselessness and hatred]

[I had to save myself from thinking that drowning was my only fate, Gau had told him, with warm water lapping at their scarred skin and loud voices for once hushed]

[instead of believing him, believing in such stupid things, Badou should have told him; there is no fighting undertow (the ocean's a big place, and the sun doesn't touch even a whole quarter of it)]

Edited 2013-10-22 03:23 (UTC)

[Nill's breath sighs against his unwashed hair, and it's just an inch]

[her heart is beating somewhere in front of him, even if he can't hear it over his own selfish one, and it's just an inch]

[her knees tremor in the air before his own, and it's just an inch]

[but it's an inch he's never given, not willingly, not since After Dave Fell]

[Badou is not strong, like walls, like iron, like Gau Meguro; he just doesn't break, and there is a difference]

[Badou slumps forward an inch, and backwards miles and miles and miles]

Edited 2013-10-22 05:16 (UTC)

[the clatter of footfalls, loud and echoing followed by softer, swifter, and carol looks up from her task, from the cold, collected investigation of another body, a corridor away. time is up, and something in her had known, just known, that this was where she needed to go.

she's taking the rooms one at a time, slowly, methodically. afraid to finally find the resting place of someone (another someone; there have been so many, too many, why can she never get used to this?) who is dear to her.

the steps, both pairs, fall silent, and she's already guessing at who they belong to as she makes her slow, halting way toward the source. left arm clutched to her in a sling, ribs aching from a sudden shortness of breath.

she sees the two of them first, huddled there against the wall, and it takes her a long, dull second to realise what they're doing -- holding each other like it's their only refuge. carol recalls both times she'd tried to hold badou, when everything got too much for her to bear; the way he'd flinched away from her, like he had to escape, like she was going to hurt him. the ache in her chest grows sharper.

he's found someone he can trust, and it's not her. it was never going to be her.

when she can't look at them any longer without it hurting, her eyes slide across the room -- and fall on the bed, half-rusted from disuse and abandonment. on the figure laid across it, impossibly young, deceptively peaceful.

the quiet is broken by a strangled noise. carol doesn't even register it, doesn't even realise that it's coming from her own throat.

no.

she makes to touch him, to card fingers into his hair, but she can't bring herself to do it; the hand is withdrawn abruptly and placed over her mouth as she backs away, one step, two, and hits the opposite wall.]

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