etrayamemes | TDM 001

Entry tags:

!tdm

TDM 001

⏵ arrival⏴
Arrival goes as anticipated. Characters awaken in the pristine, new hospital, greeted by Aurora and potentially getting a rundown of what's happening depending on their approach to being dropped somewhere new. The door to their room opens, and new arrivals are left free to explore their new environment.

Or what exists of it anyway. Exiting the hospital will show that there isn't much of anything just yet. Generally, Echo can build new facilities before new arrivals awaken, but it appears that this time… well, it didn't happen. The apartment complex exists, standing just beside the hospital, and there are a few facilities that are half constructed, companion bots carrying around rebar and other necessary bits and pieces, but they're not quite ready. Oops. But maybe, just maybe, one of those half-built facilities is familiar - a childhood home, a favorite supermarket, the run-down garage they worked at as a youth, a grounded spaceship in the middle of one of the massive bridges connecting land over rivers.

The companion bots will offer quiet apologies if approached; they were expecting new arrivals to touch down, but not quite this early. They'll be ready soon! A few more days at most, they promise. In the meantime, do not stray too far from the hospital. While most of Etraya looks habitable, they have not finished verifying that it's safe for its new inhabitants.

The apartment building and hospital are safe, and the land directly around them is fine, but beyond that? Stay away. But hey, the hospital's cafeteria is fully stocked with cuisine from across the multiverse! Please feel free to settle in, choose an apartment, and get to know your new friends.

⏵ water you doing?⏴
Decide not to listen? Well, the companion bots had offered their warnings.

Etraya is a new establishment, one that received newcomers before it was ready. And as such, the land has not quite been prepared for their arrival. Wandering off the land the apartment building and hospital are settled on comes with very, very poor results. Take a step down into the river below, and you'll find yourself uncomfortably hot. Or cold. Or hot and cold, because whatever that 'water' is, it wasn't meant to be played in. The only way to resolve the temperature regulation issue, as Aurora informs, is finding a buddy to cuddle up with. Those who are lucky may have a nearby friend they're familiar with and don't mind leaning a shoulder against. Those that don't? Well. . . have fun having a very uncomfortable conversation with a stranger, asking them if it's alright if you lean into them or hold their hand for a bit. Any physical contact will do, as long as it's directly skin-to-skin.

Except that's not where the contact stops. Characters will find that, for the next several hours, they'll feel everything that their companion feels. Frustration, anger, amusement, homesickness that comes from being so far away from their families and friends - all those feelings? They're not your feelings, they're our feelings now.

No explanation is given for how the empathy bond and the temperature regulation are related, but it may have to do with how since they had decided not to listen, it was time to test how well they could cohabitate with their new friends.

⏵ bonding bingo ⏴

Maybe it feels a little too much like Obi-Wan had when receiving Leia's message, but all new arrivals are their universe's only hope. Except they're not the only ones arriving, and not the only ones who are trying to keep their worlds safe. Instead, they've arrived with several others who carry the same weight on their shoulders. And they aren't meant to go through this alone. The people they've arrived with are both their new companions and their competition. Both comrades to fight beside and enemies to battle against, depending on what the specific mission of the month is. But currently?

They're here to bond. It's important to get to know those who they'll be spending the next unspecified but lengthy amount of time with, isn't it? To that extent, Aurora's hologram waits just inside the hospital's front doors, offering bonding bingo cards to those willing to participate. It's not necessary, but she does specify that this is one way to get ahead: cooperation is important, especially given what they're going to face together. Bingo cards are three long and three across, and offer a multitude of activities you can do to check each box off.

Some examples include:

Learn someone's biggest secret

Get into a fight

Tell someone something that you've never admitted out loud to

Throw a drink on someone

Win a game of pool in the apartment building's recreation room

Cheat on a card game without getting caught

Hug a new friend

Get stabbed

Steal something important to someone

Pull off an elaborate prank on a stranger

⏵ matchmaker ⏴

When the earpiece is put on, a nice green HUD(head-up display) lights up in front of new arrivals. It asks them for their name, which is fairly standard for these.

Except it seems it wants them to put together a profile to help pair them off with other new arrivals. For some, this information may autofill with what Aurora was able to discern about them from watching them in their home worlds. But some lucky individuals may catch their profiles before they're posted live, and have the opportunity to edit out information included in fields, even if they're not able to clear it out entirely.

Welcome to Aurora's idea of matchmaking. Have fun getting paired off with a buddy or four, with your profiles exchanged between one another. Maybe they're the perfect match. Maybe this is a nightmare in the making.

⏵ OOC ⏴
Welcome to our first TDM! We're excited to have you here. For more information on character arrivals, click here. For any questions relating to the TDM please reply below. All other questions can be directed to the FAQ.

⏵FULL NAVIGATION⏴

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Krouse steps inside, careless of the door that doesn't close all the way behind him. The secret is out. Whoever brought her here knows all about Noelle already. He's not thinking about that yet.

She looks better than she did when he last saw her. No gaping wounds, no residue of char, no wild, whirling panicked rage. It's still awful, seeing what they did to her embedded in all of those scars. So little about her is like the Noelle he knew two worlds and a different life ago. Her upper half, now so much less than half, almost matches the lower.

But scars are what you get by surviving. If either of them had known that, back then, maybe they could have done something different.

He wishes he had some too. He wishes they'd fucked him up like they fucked her up, so when he walked closer he'd have something to show for the time since besides cropped hair and darker circles under his eyes.

She says she missed him, too, and maybe he doesn't need any of that for her to see it anyway. He couldn't stop his eyes from welling up if he tried, and he's not trying. The only reason he blinks is because he doesn't want to stop looking at her eyes, warmer than he's seen them since the rest stop.

Krouse stops close enough that he could reach out to touch her. Not her hands or her face, but the tangled coils of her amorphous limbs, lying still and peaceful on speckled hospital linoleum. She swallowed him up and spit him out once already. There's nothing left to be afraid of. ]

I'm sorry. [ He says, tilted up like the shock of a laugh after something terrible almost happened - ice cracking when you're too far out, but not enough to drop you; a car rushing a corner that misses by inches. ] I didn't mean to make you wait.

[ Krouse is close enough to feel Noelle's warm breath on his skin, hear the squelch of mucous-slick organs pulsing in time against one another. From here, Noelle can get a better view of his eyes. If Krouse thinks he doesn't have scars, he's wrong. His gaze isn't quite as intense as it used to be. He must be so exhausted, Noelle reasons. She wasn't the only one with a collar around her neck. Krouse's was just more difficult to see. ]

It's okay. [ Noelle says, surprised at the relief in her own voice, surprised that she believes it. ] I had to get my bearings.

[ That's a funny way of saying sob for Marissa and Oliver and Jess and Luke - and Cody, even, why the hell not. Her killers, her best friends, people she'll never see again. Noelle remembers the portal, and she still hopes they're safe, wherever they are.

Noelle keeps looking down at Krouse. It's just the two of them, again. Whether or not they're against the world is something for the world to decide.

A smooth, green tentacle uncurls itself from the base of Noelle's body. It reaches for Krouse, slowly, tentatively. It stops before it can touch him. Krouse has asked for permission like this so many times, albeit with different limbs. Noelle is pretty sure he knows what she's about to say before she says it. ]

Can I?

[ A more confident person would leave it at that. But even though Krouse is happy to see her now, Noelle still remembers all the guilt and horror. She won't ever be able to forget. ]

I - I won't absorb you. I'll take care of the clones. I know it's a risk, but -

[ Noelle cuts herself off there. She swallows, and lets Krouse make his choice. ]

[ Every version of Noelle that he imagined who knew any of the things he's done has hated him more than she ever did before. The times he tried to picture apologizing to her, she never forgave him. The only Noelles who could stand him were the ones none of this had happened to yet - the ones he hadn't happened to yet. Imagining them had been the worst of all, every fitful dream waking him slicked in sweat and guilt.

He would never have dreamed of this. She hasn't even touched him, and his chest fizzes and pops like how she used to talk about her power, before she couldn't stand talking about it. ]

Yes.

[ Krouse never begs. If anyone ever keeps something from him that he wants, or that he needs, he retreats into confidence, playing it off like he's got something tucked up his sleeve for just the occasion.

She's offering this to him freely, and his voice is pinned soft to the back of his throat, the sharp planes of his face made vulnerable by the naked appeal shining out of his dark eyes. His mouth trembles, half-parted, and he doesn't force it set. ]

Please. [ He shifts closer, no more than an inch or two, his whole body leaning towards her like water tugged by the moon. ] It's okay. I trust you.

[ To do anything she wants with him. Whatever she wants from him. He's only ever wanted to give her anything she could ever ask him for. ]

[ I trust you. Noelle hasn't even touched Krouse yet, and she already knows she holds his life in her hands. At this point, anything left to say is stuck in Noelle's throat, so she just nods.

One tentacle winds its way around Krouse's waist, but does not squeeze especially hard. Another snakes up his spine, like a stake supporting a baby tree. All the eyes in Noelle's lower half are trained on him, focusing intently on the finest motor skills Noelle has ever demanded of this part of her body.

Once she's confident Krouse will be comfortably supported, she lifts him up, then sets him in the palm of a large, clawed, scaly hand. It looks like it belongs to a cross between a bird and a primate. Noelle picked it because it's neither slimy or sharp.

She raises the hand, still carrying Krouse, up until it is level with her upper half. Krouse wouldn't have seen this part of her body this close up for a long, long time. There was always too much flesh in the way. Here, Krouse can see the warm brown of her eyes, the lines and pockmarks in her skin, the tiny freckles on her nose. She's still crying, and Krouse will be able to see that too.

He doesn't get that long to look before Noelle throws her human arms over his shoulders and pulls him close. ]

[ Krouse wasn't good at being touched. Too self-conscious and too rigid, always second guessing how he held himself in relation to anyone else who got close enough to try it. There must have been a time when he was pliant, but those childhood memories were fuzzy and unmappable.

He had to learn how to be handled as he passed through a series of blindfolds and restraints, dependent on the guidance of prison guards at his elbows every time they took him out of his windowless cell. He knows how to let himself be moved, when and where to relax in anticipation of pressure and force. Giving himself over to the mechanization of the group had been easier because of it, an extension of a principle.

It's different with Noelle. He doesn't have to convince himself to untense, the only feeling he gets when her tentacle slips up his back that of aching relief. The memory of a tentacle, even maybe this one, coiling around him and dragging him in doesn't seem to have anything to do with this gentleness.

The last person who was gentle with him was Noelle. She'll still be the last one. He's as grateful for that as he is for the gentleness at all, the ache an almost feverish warmth in his chest.

Perched in her palm, he can see every shade of brown in her glossy irises. There are so many more than he remembered. He wants to count them, one by one, until he can't forget.

And somehow he's still surprised when she pulls him in closer. It's the first time he locks up, startled awkward all over again, and then he stops thinking. He throws himself into the hug like she's pulled him freezing and breathless out of deep water, his arms looping tight around her back as he buries his face in the crook of her neck, in the soft fall of her hair, in the warm and present closeness of her pulse. His hand fumbles up to the back of her head, cradling her like the fragile and perfect thing she is.

When he starts crying again, he doesn't try to stop. It'd be like trying to stop breathing, choking off something vital and irrepressible. He gives himself over to it as recklessly as he gave himself over to her touch, and it's quiet all the same, exhausted little shudders heaving his shoulders as he dissolves into nothing but this moment. ]

[ Krouse's touch is like a meal for a starving person. Important, necessary, needed. Too much. It makes Noelle's skin buzz and her stomach churn, but those are both sensations she's long since grown used to. She won't let go.

Noelle buries her face into Krouse's newly-cropped hair, weaves her fingers into the fabric of his tank top. The first sob comes when Krouse cradles the back of her head, a place that hasn't been touched in two years. It sends a shudder down her shoulders, and when the tears come, she doesn't bother keeping them quiet. Krouse has seen Noelle destroy a city for nothing but grief and rage. He can stomach hearing her cry.

She holds Krouse like that for a while. In places like this - hospital rooms, prison cells, places to hold and store monsters - it doesn't really matter how long it is. Time is a luxury for other people. Noelle has more tears to get out, and eventually, those tears turn into words. ]

Should've done this sooner. Or told you why I couldn't. [ Her breath hitches; she keeps going. ] Didn't want things to get - [ A sob threatens to turn into a cold, choked burst of laughter. Noelle lets it. ] - weird. Fuck.

[ It's not that she's saying this to Krouse. It's more like: someone is here, and maybe they'll listen, and maybe Noelle will finally be understood. She'd like that, after everything. ]

[ Krouse has heard Noelle cry in every way a person can cry - stifled whimpers, howling grief, these heartbroken, wracking sobs - but he's never felt it. He's never been able to hold her through it, anchoring the unsteady rhythm of her hitching chest inside the circle of his arms as her tears soak into his hair.

He's wanted this. He would have done it any time she asked, pushing through the curdling clot of his fear for her sake, and to hell with the consequences. So hearing her say that she should've let him should be some kind of vindication, however bittersweet, that he wasn't wrong for wanting it.

Krouse shakes his head blindly, stomach twisting up with a spurt of acidic guilt. ]

Why would you have told me? [ He murmurs, thickly. ] I didn't - I didn't let you tell me. I didn't let you tell me anything.

[ He'd thought he did. He'd sat there with her as she ran through every ugly thought and every awful feeling, soaking them up like penance, and he'd taken every word to heart. But he hadn't let himself understand. Maybe he couldn't have understood until he was the one locked up in a room he couldn't get out of, with nothing but his monstrosity to keep him company, every eye turned on him full of revulsion he could feel even when he couldn't see it. But that'd just be another excuse, and he's past making excuses to her. ]

I should've listened to you. [ He says, even quieter, a broken and too-late confession. ] I'm so sorry, No'. I fucked up. I fucked everything up.

[ The vial wasn't really a vial. Not for Noelle. It was a little paper cup, with flowers on it. Small, easy to hold, just large enough to use it to swallow a pill or two. Krouse had to help her drink. It hurt too much to hold. Noelle still remembers. He laid his fingers over hers, tipped the cup up, and nobody else had touched her that gently since.

If it happens, he'd said, blame me. ]

Wasn't just you.

[ Noelle murmurs into his hair. It would hurt him too much to agree, hurt him too much to disagree, so there's the truth instead. ]

The rest of them didn't let me tell them, either. Didn't even want to look at me. Too busy remembering somebody else.

[ Noelle's tears slow. Her voice drops, and a little bit of that old hollowness starts to creep in. She lets her forehead rest against the top of Krouse's head, and she closes her eyes, like that even matters anymore. ]

There was a portal. I think Tattletale made it. I don't know. They had to kill me before she was going to let them use it. I hope they made it home, and then - then they'll never have to see me again.

[ When did they draw the line between the old Noelle and the Noelle she changed into? There never was a point where they looked at each other and said it. They never talked about any of it, not really. Half-finished sentences, the starts of discussions no one could bring themselves to see through.

But they did it. Even Krouse did it. You have her memories, nothing more. It doesn't matter what he was trying to convince himself of. The things someone wants to believe say as much about them as the things they really do.

He knows the difference between feeling like she was gone and actually losing her now. He never thought it'd matter. With Noelle's scratchy, hollow voice at his ear, nothing else seems like it ever could've mattered. His heart finds a new way to break, another tiny fracture in a kaleidoscopic cobweb of them.

They were supposed to be her friends. Her teammates. He was supposed to take care of her. He was supposed to make her happy. ]

They got home. [ The hollowness is catching. It echoes with regret, the complicated barbs of guilt. ] Everybody else.

[ Another promise he didn't keep. He didn't have a thing to do with it. And maybe he should take after Noelle, and find it in his heart to forgive them for what they had to do to make it out, but he's never been as good of a person as she is. The best he can do is not tell her what he thinks about it.

Krouse strokes her hair, readjusting how they're aligned. The part of her he's holding onto is still small enough to make him want to hide her, but he stops at evening them out, each of them holding each other up. ]

I'm still happy to see you. [ Earnestness cracks through the shell that threatened to envelop him. He can't help it. Doesn't want to help it. ] I know, I shouldn't - I don't deserve to be. But - I thought about you. I thought about you all the fucking time. And I know I can't fix it, but - I'm here. For whatever you want. Anything.

[ It's when Krouse's fingers run down Noelle's hair that she finally shudders, and that loosens up one final, choked sob. Every instinct demands that Noelle curl up in response to his touch, not because she wants him to stop, but because she still wants, after everything, to be less. It's a complete fantasy, when Noelle now takes up more space than even entire rooms will allow.

They're holding each other up. Two survivors, pulled from the wreckage. Noelle's fingers release Krouse's tank top, and she finds his shoulders, instead.

She's still holding them when Krouse says everybody else, when Noelle pulls away in stricken horror. She shakes her head, like that's supposed to make a bit of difference. ]

No. No, you were supposed to go home, too.

[ The hollowness has fled Noelle's voice, replaced by a tight, desperate urgency. Her grip tightens again. There's motion, underneath the palm that holds up Krouse. Tentacles begin to churn. Noelle has to say what she needs to say quickly, before she throws up. ]

I wanted you to have a life. Ever since I worked out Coil couldn't fix me. Longer than that. I don't know, it's - it's all mixed up. Not all the moving around I made you do, or figuring out how to buy meat wholesale, or - or any of that.

[ After a while, every time Krouse came into visit her, he'd smell like smoke. This was after hanging out turned to visiting, because you don't hang out with sick people. Noelle knew he did it to relax, to calm himself down before having to see her. She's sure of it.

I'm still happy to see you. Noelle hears him say it, even if she can't register it, can't understand it. It nestles into a corner of her heart, where guilt washes over it like the tide. ]

[ Krouse only needs to see the look on her face to know he's already fucked up again. He's had her back for five minutes, and he's found a brand new way to hurt her, because he didn't fucking think. ]

Hey. Hey, hey -

[ He keeps one hand on the nape of her neck, brings the other up to cup her damp cheek. Her face fits to his palm like that's all his hands are for, fingers long enough he can steady her jaw at the same time he wipes futilely at the tears pooled under her eye. ]

You never made me do anything.

[ His urgency matches hers, spurred on by the panic he can see over the panic he can feel stirring under him. He knows exactly how dangerous it is to be inside the reach of her tentacles when she gets like this. He doesn't look away to line up his retreat. ]

And it's okay. I'm okay.

[ He ducks in, impulsively, touching his forehead to hers. Their noses brush together, and another spike of bittersweetness sprouts even in the midst of his overwhelming need to convince her that he made it out, somehow, in some way that matters.

You were my life, he doesn't tell her. You were my whole life. Where was I ever going to go? ]

There are a lot of things I'm sorry for. [ He tells her, gently. ] But staying with you isn't one of them. It was never one of them, Noelle. I stayed because I wanted to.

Edited 2024-02-26 15:24 (UTC)

[ Krouse touches her cheek, and once again, Noelle adapts to a new sensation. She'd forgotten what this felt like, if she ever felt it at all. Her body as it is now experiences so much, all of the time: sight out of dozens of eyes, taste on dozens of tongues, touch on a myriad of limbs, all with different sensory receptors. The sheer volume of information would be too much for any normal person. It's too much for Noelle, some of the time.

She cups her human hand over Krouse's, and for a second, she thinks about coaxing it off her face. The second passes. Noelle leaves it there, and she leans, ever so slightly, into the touch. When Krouse touches his forehead to hers, she doesn't pull away.

He doesn't get it. That's the Krouse she's always known. Sweet, underneath all the barbs and bravado. Earnest. Too full of feeling to see the big picture.

How does she explain to him that he shouldn't want to? That what he wanted, what he really wanted, all those worlds ago, was a girlfriend, and now Noelle is barely a girl? She doesn't want to be dismissive. She just wants him to understand. Maybe it's cruel, to ask Krouse to share in the worst fucking knowledge of all time, but Noelle can't bear it alone. She's been alone for too long. ]

If you stay, [ she says slowly, methodically, rough voice quavering over shaky breaths ] you'll have to go back to the way it was. You know how it is. If I leave this room, everyone else will see a monster. They'll try to kill me again.

So - so I have to stay here, except I don't know how long I can last. I don't even know how long I can keep talking to you like this. I'm going to get hungry, and then I'll destroy this place, and - and -

[ The faint gurgle of a stomach, churning. Noelle can hardly speak over it. Her voice drops to a whisper. ]

- It's not fair. To any of us.

[ The last time Krouse touched Noelle's face, it was soft and smooth and terrifyingly cold. The ripples and divots of her skin are a warm and foreign topography, nearly as new as how she leans into his touch.

She's telling him she wants him to go. Abandon her like everyone else, turn his back and close his eyes and walk away. She thinks she's being fair, like she always wants to be fair, one of the things about her that made her give him a chance in the first place. ]

Then it's not fair.

[ He concedes, level and soft. For years, he strung her along with fragile hopes and real promises. When she'd spit them back in his face, that had been fair. The best he could do hadn't ever been good enough. Hindsight made that clear. He can't do that to her again, as much as he wants to, half a dozen arguments for ways they could get around it already putting themselves together unbidden.

So he tells her the truth. ]

Thing is, No', I don't really care if it's fair. [ He holds her gaze, dark eyes intense and steady. ] I just care about you. And whatever happens, or doesn't happen, I want to be here.

It wouldn't be like it was, okay? It wouldn't. Because I won't be like that. I won't make you do it alone. Not ever again.

[ Noelle knows exactly what she could say to make him stop. Four words, and it'd all be over. They would hurt Krouse worse than any of her teeth could. Don't dismiss my concerns.

But that's not quite what he's doing, not this time. He knows it's going to be bad, whatever it is that happens when she steps outside that door. (At some point, while Krouse was talking, if turned to when.) That doesn't seem to matter anymore. So she won't write him off, not yet.

He wasn't that bad, at the end. Good enough that Noelle didn't want to hurt him. It's still her and Krouse, against the world. ]

Like I said, [ Noelle replies, slowly. ] it wasn't just you.

[ She's not saying yes. She's not saying no, either. Call it a probationary period. ]

It was that whole stupid world. [ Noelle's mouth twitches, the corners of her mouth upturned in bitterness. Her cheek moves underneath Krouse's hand. ] We should've gotten to kill Coil. What did he ever do to that bug girl, anyway?

[ Krouse can't tell if she believes him. There's no reason she should, and nothing he could say that would convince her if she doesn't. He's not sure he even believes himself, as much as he means it in the moment. He's let them both down too many times for that.

But she's giving him the benefit of the doubt one more time. Just one more time. Krouse blinks back a fresh surge of disbelieving tears, squeezed out by the clench of the raw pulp of what might be what's left of his heart, after all. ]

I don't know. [ He shakes his head slightly, forehead rocking against hers. ] Not enough.

[ It never made any sense. The Undersiders had the best deal of all of them. Coil was a bastard, but they were the bastard's favourites, no matter how hard the rest of them tried to measure up. He's run it back over and over, and he still can't make it add up. Villains are always double crossing each other, but why then? Why had Skitter been so determined to fuck everything up right when things were starting to work?

There'd been that girl, but it couldn't have just been that. Skitter didn't act out of the goodness of her heart, if she even had one. Just another excuse for doing whatever she wanted to do in the first place, a cascade of dominos that happened to put her on top every time.

If Noelle asks what happened with Skitter after, he'll tell her. He hopes she doesn't ask. He wants to tell her almost anything else. ]

You showed them, though. [ There's an almost-dreaminess in how he says it, wounded admiration cloaked in the trailing shroud of grief. ] You made them all have to face it, how screwed up it all was. They couldn't cover it up.

[ He still didn't know all the details, but he knew bullshit when he heard it, and he could read between the lines of what they asked him. It wasn't just the so-called heroes she'd taken down that had them pissed off. It was bigger than that, more important. ]

[ Noelle doesn't ask about Skitter for the same reason she isn't asking about Krouse's jumpsuit. There's no reason to make him say something terrible that she already knows.

Besides, she's too busy trying to figure out if Krouse is proud of her. Mars couldn't understand why she hated the world, didn't get that Noelle was being genuine when she said not yet. She wouldn't have forced Marissa to pay, just like she isn't forcing Krouse to pay. Just like how she still kept talking to Oliver after they'd worked out what he'd done, albeit through a computer screen. If she ever hated them, that was the thing in her brain. Hating the world, she's come to realize, is her.

To the extent that division matters anymore. Noelle knows what she did, when she ceded control of her body to that thing in her head. ]

Okay. [ Noelle says, and now, she's taking special care to make sure her voice is only coming out of one of her mouths. ] I guess that's good. Their world is so fucked up. I know the hologram woman says we're supposed to save it, but.

[ Noelle shrugs, a tiny movement compared to the rest of her. Krouse will know what she means. It's a little difficult for her to care about that place, and besides, Noelle has a more pressing concern.

Bile collects in the mouths of her lower heads. She doesn't have a lot of time to ask, but it's still good to check and make sure. ]

You're not afraid of me? Even though I wanted to kill them?

[ Noelle remembers New York. She remembers Boston. She remembers the cage they put her in, after, and how that was supposed to be for the best. ]

[ Krouse pulls back from her then. Not far, and not fast. Only enough so they can see all of each other's faces. He looks at her for a second, one that feels long and sweet and cool. His palm comes off of her cheek tacky, so he curls his fingers to brush dry knuckles over her cheekbone. ]

No.

[ He tucks a strand of her hair behind a ear bubbled with scar tissue, amazed all over again at the impossible privilege of being allowed to do so. The unsolvable puzzles of a broken world fade back into noise. They're nothing compared to her question, and to what he knows it costs to ask. ]

I'm not afraid of you.

[ All that time he'd spent being afraid, despite his best intentions. The dull adrenal blurts of instinctive fear when one of her mouths snapped or her limbs twitched too close, the helpless heartbreak fear when she'd start to cry, the worse fear when she'd stop. Fear of breakdowns and their aftermaths, the ever widening trail of bloody wreckage they left behind. The fear that kept him up at night and the fear that kept him out of reach and the fear that kept him going. It's all just ash, crumbled away.

When she held him in her mouth, she didn't bite down. ]

I wanted to kill them too. [ He lays his thumb along the sweep of her jaw, the graceful line of that strong bone. ] And you didn't hurt me. Even when you couldn't see me. You kept me safe.

[ The only thing that hurt him was himself, and he can't blame Noelle for that. Krouse smiles at her, faint but unwavering, the glow of a faded nightlight at the end of a long, dark hall. ]

Hey. [ He says, with a conspiring lilt. ] Do you want to get out of here?

Edited 2024-02-28 19:35 (UTC)

[ It used to be so difficult for Noelle to look at people. She never knew whether the rest of them understood that when she said don't look, she was talking to everyone in the room.

Krouse pulls back, still touching, and Noelle looks. There is no judgment in his gaze, no disgust or fear. Noelle can be confident on that front. She trained herself, over the years, to sniff those things out with exacting precision. She knows. There is only a softness, one that Noelle had always been so terrified of naming. She doesn't name it now. That's not the point. Instead, she lets it blanket her, as if someone is tucking her into bed after a long and terrible nightmare.

By the time Krouse speaks, Noelle already has her answer. For the first time in years, she believes him.

It doesn't make up for anything. Not for the weeks and months and years spent alone. Not for the way he used to look at her, like he was looking at a photograph kept in a shoebox in the back of his closet.

The door is still open, just a crack. Fluorescent light streams through. She can't carry the ledger through it, so she casts it aside.

Do you want to get out of here? She does. She does, and she does, and she does. Are you asking me out on a date, Noelle nearly asks, but can't, because her jaw has opened up in a way she doesn't remember, a sensation as new as Krouse tucking her hair behind her ear. Noelle nods, burying her face into the crook of Krouse's neck, hugging him close one last time. Her throat makes a strange noise, rough and unpracticed. She says, choked: ]

Yes.

[ The noise resolves into laughter. Noelle lets Krouse go, and begins to lower him to the ground. ]

Just - [ She takes a breath, deep and shaking ] - just give me a second. I'm going to throw up.

[ Krouse can leave. He can stay. Noelle's voice sounds strange between her ears. There's so little shame in it. ]

[ Noelle's laughter shivers through him like a breeze through chimes. Krouse feels it everywhere they touch, in the birdlike flutter of her shoulders inside his arms and the puff of her breath over his skin.

He loved her laugh the first time he surprised it out of her. He loved it every time after. He loves it now, dusty and sweet.

When she draws him away he takes it with him like a crumpled note tucked into his palm. He goes without clinging, but his fingers skim her arms one more time on the way down, like she holds onto some faint gravity he can't resist until he's pulled out of her orbit. ]

Okay. [ He says, on his way down. ] I'll give you space.

[ Time and necessity eroded so much of Noelle's privacy. Her body turned into a traitor, spilling her secrets out in angry scrawls of mutation. The worse it got, the more Krouse had to see, knowing how much she hated the new wet and bilious intimacy forced on her.

But as he backs up, bumping into an as-yet intact hospital bed and hoisting himself up to sit on its edge, he watches her face to judge if he'll look away. He's already seen everything there is to see about her, inside and out. He knows what her bones look like, glistening and raw. He watched her tear open and knit back together, spew bodies and blood with equally frantic urgency. There's no shadow left behind the curtain. There's just her. There was only ever just her. ]

[ Noelle nods once as she sets Krouse down, and then she turns around. It doesn't really matter which way she faces - there are eyes throughout her lower half, so she can see Krouse at any angle. But she doesn't want to look at him with the eyes in her human face, not when she's about to do something so totally inhuman. Maybe there was still a little shame she wasn't able to shake, after all. ]

It's going to look like you. I'm going to kill it.

[ Krouse has seen the worst of what her body can do, Noelle knows. But it's different, now that they're not in a fight. Harder to look away. At the very least, Krouse deserves a warning.

A wet, lurching sound gurgles from somewhere deep inside Noelle's lower half. Several mouths open, one roars, and a stream of black-green bile pours forth, thick and putrid. Noelle aims for the corner of the room, but it still splashes against the walls, pooling around the base of the hospital beds.

True to Noelle's word, a figure hauls itself up out of the pool of vomit, shivering and covered in sick like a newborn. The clone stands hunched over, his spine arcing too high out of his back, his arms too thin and too long, his hands larger than his face. His eyes are overdeveloped, bursting through the skin cauled over his remaining facial features. The texture of his skin is identical to Noelle's: wavy, pockmarked, and blistered with scar tissue. His hair is long, thin, and stringy.

He takes a step towards Noelle, one hand dragging on the ground, the other reaching for her, just as the other Krouse reached for her face moments ago. Vocalizations that are unable to become words escape his throat. Noelle whispers something just for him, and reaches out a limb.

The sound of snapping bone echoes in the hospital room. The clone does not move again. Noelle covers her face in her hands and allows herself one last, strangled sob for the road. ]

Let's go. [ Noelle murmurs from behind her hands. ] Let's just go.

[ Krouse knew what he was agreeing to when Noelle said she'd take care of it. He told her that he trusted her. He put himself in her hands without a second thought.

It still takes almost everything left in him to stay where he is when she gives him that last clear warning. He leans forward like a bird of prey on a branch, fingers curled into the scratch of hospital sheets, and bites through the urge to offer to intercede.

He always tried to carry this for her. He pretended that he could, like this was a burden he could shift from her shoulders to his as easy as the strap of her backpack. All it ever did was make them both carry it twice.

Touching Noelle means someone dies. If Krouse didn't believe her when she said she could handle it, he should have said no. When she flexes and spews, his bent shadow unfolding in the slick mess, that no shudders in his choked throat. He believes her. He trusts her.

And if sheer force of will counts for anything in a universe that's always been indifferent to anything he's ever really wanted, some part of his stooped reflection does too. He can barely see it past the space she takes up as it gets closer, gangling and sickly delicate as it moves, but he sees the too-large eyes, the elongated span of its hands.

Nothing she could ever make out of him would ever want her to hurt. Neither of them can help it. When the unmistakable sound of bone cracking inside meat bounces off the walls, Krouse slips off the bed and to his feet, his face as skinned over with steady calm as his clone's was with skin. ]

We're going.

[ He echoes, softly, skirting around the spreading edges of vomit without looking down. There's another set of doors across the room, double wide. He pushes one open, then the other, kicking down the doorstops on each to hold them in place. The hallway they open into is wider than the one he came in through. ]

Let's get you some air.

[ There's a tremor at the edge of his words, a horrible longing buried underneath. When he turns around to face her again, he feels as shaky as the crumpled body on the floor looked, sick with the same want. One more touch. One hand on her back, or on the swell of a crooked limb. It's okay, even though it's not.

But he can't. All he can do is look at her, understanding dark and liquid in his eyes. ]

The sun's out.

[ The sun's out, and it's beautiful. The sun's out, and they're both murderers, and it'll still be warm. ]

[ Noelle's shoulder's go limp. Her head hands. Her arms fold around her torso like a straitjacket. She digs her fingernails into the skin in her sides, right over long, red scars. The skin, so fragile from repeat trauma, breaks. At least she isn't covering her eyes anymore.

Should she have let this clone go free? It was going to hold her. She had given it hands to do just that. The only free touch Noelle has anymore comes from her clones. Everything else she has to pay for.

A memory bubbles up like bile. Noelle rests on an unfamiliar couch. She squirms once, then moans. She is covered in blankets, but it is still so cold. She doesn't know why it's so cold. Someone presses soft, gentle fingers against her skin. They murmur, in a soft and lovely voice, about a pulse. Noelle flinches all the same.

Of course. This is what she wanted. Noelle can't find it in herself to be grateful for the reminder.

The bulk of Noelle's monstrous half lurches forward. It is no longer accurate to say that it steps. Claws drag and scrape against the linoleum, like a soldier crawling on their belly. Tentacles slither. Hooves stomp. Hospital beds and IV drips crash against one another as Noelle lumbers over and through them.

The sun's out. Noelle's nails dig further in. What will it feel like, when the sun beats down on her skin? Will it burn?

Suddenly, Noelle wants the memory to come back. She wants to remember what it was like when Marissa used to touch her gently. But the thing inside her mind is silent once again.

Noelle passes through the double doors. She follows Krouse down the hall, hunched, so that her head doesn't scrape against the ceiling. ]

Is it going to feel good?

[ Mumbled, quiet, nearly slurred. Noelle can't touch anyone. She understands the reminder. But maybe - just maybe - she can hope that the sun is going to feel good. ]

[ Krouse mostly walks backwards.

It's not the fastest way to guide them out of here, but it's also barely a decision. There's no magic in his attention that will help tether her to the earth, keep her lucid or calm, but he can't stop looking at her like there is. Every half-pivot to scout ahead for obstacles, of which there are blessedly few, comes with a hazy stutter of anxiety. ]

It will. [ He promises, pushing a rolling bed into an alcove. ] I think it's spring. It feels like spring.

[ It was winter before, not that it mattered. Almost Christmas again.

Noelle's holding herself too hard. He wants to ask her to stop; he knows what it's like to need to dig into your skin so you don't come out of it. ]

Do you remember that field trip we took for biology class? Out to the Leopold Center?

[ He barely remembers it. It'd seemed so stupid, at the time. Just another busy work box on some educational enrichment checklist, a half-day of hanging in the back of the group with Luke tuning out instructions and making the bare minimum effort to fill out a worksheet about trees. It had been before he'd really started to pay attention to Noelle. Just another girl in class, tucked in on herself with her head down as she hovered at Marissa's elbow.

But it'd been a bright, sunny day, and the air was clear, and the worst things that had ever happened to them were the kinds of things that happened to people with normal problems. ]

It's kind of like that.

[ Another set of double doors under a glowing green EXIT sign. Krouse leans up against them, hands on the push bar. ]

...here we go.

[ His voice is almost as soft as hers. He pushes back on the door, and the sunshine spills in with the clean, fresh air of a world being newly made. ]

[ It's a good question. Noelle's gaze flickers down to Krouse, and there's a brief moment of eye contact where Noelle nearly comes out of the fog. Trying to access the memory gives her something to work at. They'd gone on a hike.

She still can't remember the sun on her skin. They started moving her under cover of darkness early on. They were fugitives, Krouse had told her. It was going to be okay. She didn't walk right, not even in the early days, with all that growth on her legs. It was going to be okay.

Her rampage didn't count. The sun was drowned out by bullets and spears and forcefields and teeth, until it wasn't.

The doors open. The first thing Noelle does with her freedom, even before stepping outside, is flinch. But there is no army outside, no firing squad waiting to put her down. There's only a field of grass and Krouse - always Krouse - holding the door open.

Noelle steps through the door. She looks up. Squints. Her arms loosen, and her entire body - human and monster - uncurls.

If she starts crying now, she won't be able to stop. It's warm. A gentle breeze tosses her hair. For the first time in years, she doesn't smell raw meat, or decay, or death. Her animal heads yawn and close their eyes, like cats sleeping under a sunny window.

She'll look back at Krouse eventually. She trusts that he's still here. Right now, Noelle lets her body feel good. She closes her eyes, and tears still escape from under the lids anyway. ]

It's nice.

[ Hushed, reverent, and impossibly, impossibly lucky. ]

[ The sunlight picks out every shade of copper and cinnamon in Noelle's hair. She towers over the scenery like some wild abstract sculpture, every disparate part finally in harmony. When her heads yawn and sink into pacified calm, Krouse thinks of just hatched baby birds, all vestigial feathers and knobbled spines and bulging blue veins.

He drops back against the cinder block wall and looks up at her, his cresting edge of fear melting away under the warmth reflected off the back of her closed eyes. ]

Yeah.

[ When he'd stepped outside for the first time, it'd rolled over him like a wave. He hadn't been sure it'd do the same thing for Noelle, but he'd hoped.

It's been a long time since he'd hoped. Even longer since it paid off. It's such a small thing, this temporary reprieve. Nothing about their situation is any better, the horizon of possibilities they're facing just as bleak as they were inside the hospital. Noelle's predictions hover over them like pale wings.

But right now, they're still together, and Noelle's almost happy. He'll stay in this moment as long as it lasts, vision blurring in the glow of an open sky. He doesn't blink it away. ]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: prison brutality

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: ableism

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: suicide implications

no subject

no subject

cw: body horror, ableism

cw: body horror, ableism, emeto, minor character death

cw: body horror, ableism, emeto, minor character death

cw: self-harm

cw: self-harm

no subject

no subject