sixthiterationlogs | [CLOSED] a new you for the new year

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[CLOSED] a new you for the new year

WHO: Kira Akiyama
WHERE: The Inn
WHEN: December 22nd, afternoon
OPEN TO: Credence Barebone
WARNINGS: Mentions of bodies and mass graves, possible mentions of Credence's backstory content
STATUS: N/A

The disease had swept through Manhattan before the heavy snows, bodies abandoned in their neat bags along ditches dug in the park soil when it finally fell in earnest, coating them entirely. January had looked deceptively clean, the untouched snow a blanket over the looted vehicles, the abandoned furniture, the piles of garbage and the corpses of those who had laid down and died in the streets--from the virus, from starvation, from stray shots on either side of a waning conflict.

The moon was always sharpest in that phase, and there had been every reason to stay inside. Snow was hard to weather on an empty stomach, but harder still to see in, to know if the person approaching was friend or foe--for them to know the same of you. The circumstances of their isolation were different in the village, but Kira still finds himself itching all over to wander out, to-

To finish what he started. It's been a week, as best he can tell the rising and setting of the sun in the greyed out skies. He's been back to the fountain, he's walked as far as his body can stand along the river, he's sized up the people who seem most capable of escape and yet, remain here. The only preservation for his hope and sanity is the absolute insanity of the situation: seven days in a place where Latin-shouting senators eat with Victorian women and Credence tries to explain what must be Depression Era games with dust motes and household items, might not be seven days at all. The strange gaps in his knowledge might be indication that this is a delusion of the cold and stress of quarantined Manhattan after all.

He could still wake up. He could still fix it.

But the grey days blur on, and he wakes from a fitful slumber to find the sky darker than it was when he dozed off in his small room. His body is starting to resent the rest, might even be ready for another trek along the river when the snow clears, but there's so little else to do. His mind needs it, to shut down and not scratch at the walls of its cage over and over.

It's certainly easier to stay awake when he isn't staring at his own ceiling. Rolling himself out of the bed, he wraps the thick blanket Credence had found for him in his closet in lieu of the woolen coats, and crosses the narrow hall to the opposite room. He leans at the door for a few moments, rubbing the sleep out of his face, before extending his hand further from the cocoon of warmth to tap his knuckles on the door. He doesn't bother to call out: there's something in the room, and if it isn't Credence, he'd probably rather it not answer.

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Credence hasn't had a room this big before. He hasn't had a bed this fitting, too--this one is large enough that his feet don't dip over, and sometimes when he's trying to go to sleep, he likes wiggling his toes and hitting mattress instead of cold air. It makes him smile against his pillows, like it's something forbidden.

When he was younger, he used to have nightmares that monsters that killed his real parents were under the bed, waiting to snatch a bare ankle and pull. It didn't help that Mary Lou was insistent on having him sleep as little as possible. If he has time to sleep, he has time to work.

But here, with the kindness of everyone and the strange welcoming, this place is really starting to feel, more and more, like a second chance. Like purgatory, but something above that.

Home.

The weather is dreadful, snowing and nonstop, and while Credence doesn't mind it after a while of bustling around the inn and fixing a window as best as he can, eventually he feels like the cold seeps into him, nestling right in his bones. He politely asks permission to take a nap, even though he already knows the answer is yes, and slips off to do just that.

The door startles him out of his pleasant slumber--the kind of jolting awake that happens when you dream you're falling and hit the ground--and there's a small gasp behind the door. Credence takes a brief moment, still in his working clothes, to hastily smooth down cow licked hair. He's in the middle of doing so when he opens the door, barefoot and frantically pressing the heel of his hand down his bangs, a slump of hair on the right side of his face sticking straight out. He'll get there.

"I'm sorry, miss, I didn't think I slept that long, I'll be down in--Oh."

It's not an unpleasant oh, though, seeing this stranger who looks more like a marshmallow than anything else at the moment. He's burrowed in such a curious, strange way that Credence steps to the side and automatically lets him in, alert and ready to listen.

There's not much in his room, of course, but what is there is neat and tidy, cleaned and recleaned whenever Credence gets nervous, which is often.

Kira blinks a bit more of the sleep away, yawning his easy smile apart as he wanders in: Credence's bed is, for once, not entirely made. Without a thought for why he's really in here, he turns on a socked heel and flops across it, still in the blanket.

He can just stare at Credence's ceiling instead, feeling out the room that holds whatever Credence is through the night. It looks and feels much like his own.

"Did I wake you this time," he asks, legs half off the bed. He had a dream that morning of someone trying to shake him out of his coccoon. He had it rather often, here, and almost always rolled away to go back to sleep.

Edited 2017-01-15 21:42 (UTC)

"Um--" Credence knows he can't lie, he just doesn't really want to admit it, so he half-falters, shoulders bunched up, head dipping like he's in a permanent shrug. He closes the door behind Kira, noting how lackadaisical the other moves, like he doesn't have a care in the world. Even burrowed under blankets and flopping right into Credence's white-and-sunflower set, he has a strange amount of grace to him.

If Credence were the envious type, he would certainly feel it now. Instead, as Kira's taken up where he had been, he decides to sit in a chair, pushing it to the side of the bed. He sits properly, politely--back as straight as he can and hands clasped in front of him.

"Yes," He confesses, and there's a bit of an embarrassed flush. He's forgotten to flatten the one cowlick he has left. "It's okay, I wanted to get up anyway, sir. But--I'm a little confused."

He looks from the closed door, to Kira, and then leans in, whispering conspiratorially.

"What are you doing here?"

By now, Kira is well used to acclimating himself to Credence's presence. He closes his eyes and waits out the spiral of shame-fear-confusion-shame, the way Credence assesses himself at all times, and always finds himself wanting. The kind of life he had before is sometimes so obvious that Kira thinks he must really be from the last century--some period where the absolute abuse of one's children was nodded at like the state of the weather, and that child could go out into the world expecting it from new sources.

Or make up a source, carry it on their back like a shadow.

Opening one eye, he peers at Credence perched in the chair, his cowlick, his clasped hands: "You watch me sleep, Credence; am I not supposed to come to your room?"

It's gentle teasing, and he knows he shouldn't even do that much--but he can't see how coddling Credence ever gets him to any kind of balanced place. Kira softens it with a smile, at least.

"Oh--no, I just--" Credence knows Kira's teasing. Or at least he cuts himself off because he realizes it, and winds up half-smiling. It's his version of an actual grin, at least--the only time he'd actually let himself smile properly.

He's used to Kira by now. Enough that he dips his head bashfully, but he doesn't apologize. He knows this is just something the other does now, even if he's not quite used to it.

"That's what I mean. I normally visit you. Are you not feeling well? Do you need something? I have apples, um--these really good sticky nut cakes, too."

And the next thing he just blurts out, unsure of where it even comes from:

"Do you dream?"

It's only an overall pity for Credence and apology for waking him up that stops Kira zeroing in on sticky nut cakes, though the followup is a neat distraction. Sitting up from his blanket, Kira lets it fall back against the bed, hunching his shoulders opposite Credence in his thermal shirt and scrub bottoms.

"Doesn't everyone? Or do I dream of anything in particular?" The well of pity runs dry, and he arches a brow, that teasing smile lifting a corner of his mouth with it.

"No--I mean, yes--" It's less that he's flustered and more that he's having problems trying to articulate himself. It's a good problem to have, considering, but the question had just ran away from him. That's why, while Kira sits up, Credence picks at his pants at the knees, concentrating on that and nothing else. If he tries to focus on his words too much, he'll just get frustrated.

"Do you dream about your mother?"

Kira looks at those hands, wondering if the question is very much related to the scars tearing across Credence's palms. He considers it--out of repsect for it's asking, and out of not be able to ignore the line of thought--

He doesn't dream of the future anymore, only the past, and Etsuko is a large part of his. It was only recently he lost her, only a few years that he made her less than a daily part of his life. When he'd moved out, he'd gone all of two blocks, and when the shop was in danger, he'd moved his parents immediately into his apartment.

Mirroring Credence's posture a bit, though letting some slack into his posture, he sets his nails to his own knees. "Not constantly, but yes. We were...very close."

Parent, teacher, confidant. No one had or ever would love him like she had, and the weight of it always crushed, a bit. Sometimes he dreamed her a mile tall, crushing the city around him.

Credence smiles.

It's small, and it's shy, and it's rare, but he smiles. He's genuinely happy for Kira, and the idea that someone could be so close to their mom is more than enthralling. He feels like he shouldn't pry. That maybe, if he asks, the illusion shatters.

And still, after that smile is there--just a flicker, just a faint touch--he leans forward again. It's quiet, conspiratorial. He's leaning forward again.

"Would it be too much trouble if I ask you to tell me about her? What was she like?"

Wan is the only word for Credence: his pallor, his posture, his brief displays of emotion. Good or bad, moving slow and gentle as a leaf turning out for the sun. But Kira would say he was waxing here, growing just a bit as he dares to ask, as he dares to lean in close.

He'd had to walk a line, navigating Credence's idea of space. Credence didn't seem to think he deserved much of his own, but gave it in yards to the rest of the village. Kira had to bridge the gap first, touching elbows, asking for items and closing a hand around them to tangle their fingers together. And always without flourish, without reaction, as if every casual touch was perfectly normal and cause for little concern.

It had been more challenging than it might seem, when every brush of contact opened the dam on his muted senses, and the shadow of him flooded in, and Credence himself was a concave at its bottom, holding it, waiting for something else to reflect.

Waiting for Kira. Right now he wants him, wants his memories of his mother, to be a sun to his moon. Something to help him wax until more of him is out of that shadow than in. Can the truth suffice? Could Credence sift through the way Etsuko's love had carved an inverse of hate into him, seven years of self loathing, and take away the good of it?

Could anyone?

Kira lets Credence lean into his space without moving away, and smiles back. "I saw her almost every day, even after I moved out. She took me to work, so I could learn everything about our shop, and so she wouldn't have to worry if I was lonely or eating my own homework in a fit of poor impulse control. And when we finished at the shop, we'd go upstairs and cook enough to feed a dozen people, even if there were only four of us."

That's appealing. Credence doesn't know what people like Kira eat, so he imagines it's a big Thanksgiving feast every night. Cranberry sauce, too--and he almost smiles, just a flicker, before he nods. Yes, of course--yes--Kira comes from a good family. That's why he's a good person. He has a mom. A mom that loves him.

He wants to ask a million questions. Little things, like 'what shop?' and 'can you cook now because she taught you?' but he's fixated on one. Just a little, innocuous question, and it occurs to him that if he asks it he'll probably look like he wasn't paying attention. He's new to social settings, but he figures it's nice to acknowledge to the other person you've at least understood what they were saying.

"That sounds like the most wonderful thing I can think of," he says, and he genuinely means it. "When you were little, did she--did she sing to you?"

There it is: wanting. It's a feat in and of itself, that Credence even lets himself. Maybe the prescience isn't gone, maybe there was something that dragged Kira across the hall, to be here for Credence to ask. It's bittersweet, remembering Etsuko when he really--he really might never see her again.

He might never see any of them again, and instead of being dead, instead of leaving them to live with it and skipping the consequences, he's stuck in them. Everyone's alive, except--

Think of a wall, she'd say. Just a wall, white as the glare of the sun, stretching in every direction, forever. You could bend or you could try not to break, letting everything hit against it. Credence's wanting, Kira's own ache for it, the avalanche of their meeting rolling down the hill of everything Kira has left behind. Credence lost his own mother early, Kira knows that much--but he lost his no more than six months ago.

"Yeah," he answers, a muted quality to him. More matte than shine, with his pillow creases and messy hair more apparent, and the thinnest hairs growing on his face, and poor Credence wouldn't know he was a terrible sun to try to brighten against. "Nothing fancy, or important. Just the nonsense you sing to kids who don't know better. Teach me words and animals, that kind of thing. It wasn't one of her talents, but she tried."

Something's wrong. The problem is that Credence doesn't know enough to know what it is, or how, or even why--Credence has never had a friend before. How he can know how to fix something he has no clue happened in the first place? It's not like he has experience in any of this.

He tilts his head, quietly trying to suss out the issue, hands placed gently on his lap. His usual gesture, hunched over as he listens to the other. It's going to bother him, what happened, what caused the sudden shift--because it was something, Credence is far too attuned to micro expressions courtesy of Mary Lou--but he can't go right out and ask. Instead, he continues the conversation. Does that make him selfish?

Most likely.

"It sounds like she loves you very much."

Edited 2017-01-30 17:20 (UTC)

Lips rolled in and pursed, he nods, the motion carrying past its necessary end. What a strange thing, to not want to think about. What an impossible thing to complain about. There's no telling an orphan with torn up hands: my mother loved me more than anyone, maybe only because she knew she would lose me.

At least she still had his father, at least she still had Chiyo. They could still look like a normal family from the outside. They could still have a child to take care of them when they were too old to take care of themselves.

He got them out of New York: that was something.

When he comes out of the thought, he notices Credence. No more spilling over toward the bed--he's tucked into his seat again, proper and polite and holding back. Kira isn't so self-centered as to think he hasn't been noticed, but he's always banked a bit on Credence being too polite to ever push. He could never tell him anything, and it just wouldn't come up. He could walk out the door right now, and Credence would simply live with it. "I--" he starts, then picks at his knee again, tugging out the fabric of the long johns. "There was a crisis in New York, when I'm from. I helped my parents get out of the city, and that's the last I saw of them. I don't think they know I'm alive. And she does, she does love me very much, so I know that upsets her a great deal."

He knows that gesture. Maybe it means something different for Kira, but for Credence, he does it when he's telling a story he's not sure he wants to tell. He wonders if this is the same--if the gesture is universal or not.

Credence can listen, at least. Credence is good at listening.

"I'm glad," he says after a while. Kira has family. If he goes back--Credence isn't sure if they will or not--he can surprise them. A dramatic reunion, like the books he sometimes reads when Mary Lou isn't looking. Poignant.

"Can I ask what happened?" He says after a while. "What crisis?"

He wonders if Kira, too, has had a strange creature stalk the cities of New York. He wonders if Kira has met someone like Credence.

It feels like such an abstract thing, talking about it instead of living it. Especially to someone who is from so far before in New York that the after won't have the same effect. But maybe Credence can understand the chill of a street that never stood still suddenly emptied, suddenly home to corpses instead of crowds.

Disease might be exactly as frightening as it should be, in Credence's time period. If Kira just called it TB it might get the entire point across in one go.

Taking a breath, he blusters it out in a sigh, leaning back across the bed with his head tilted against the wall, chin against his collar. It takes some of the urgency out of it, to laze back with his hands at his sides. "Someone put a disease on the money people were spending for the holiday. They had to lock down the city and trap us inside after awhile to keep it from spreading, and because some of the survivors were getting violent.

"I'm not sick," he adds, because that had been Ravi's first concern. "I might be immune, but it still wasn't safe to be there. It was a bit like here--it was too cold, and there wasn't enough food. But unlike here, not everyone tried to share, so it was dangerous to go anywhere. I spent a lot of time in an old garage, cooking for people with what we had."

He swears he sees it--the way Kira's jaw tenses just slightly before he all but melts into the bed. Credence might be imagining it, he's not sure, but he thinks he suddenly gets Kira a little more. How all of the languid movement is more than just something people from his world are like--maybe it's the same way Credence curls into himself.

Credence hides from the world physically. Kira hides emotionally, he thinks.

Or maybe, like usual, he's wrong. Credence listens and listens carefully, taking in the little glimpses of the other's past. How he makes it sound so casual, but he's sure it isn't. It sounds like nothing he can imagine, until he likens it to the children and other people in the slums. It's a better picture.

"They all left you alone?" He asked. It doesn't even occur to him to ask if it's contagious--Credence doesn't care, nor did he even realize it could be, over here.

"Why would they just leave everyone like that?"

He looks down himself at Credence, who is still that concave shape inside, trying to fill up and reflect, and he can't blame that at all. He's done that, used his gift to just learn and project back at others, turn the tide away from himself by being a curved vessel instead of a real person.

Kira doesn't doubt that Credence is decent at reading people. There might be biases toward caution and a greater ability to read anger than joy, but--in his position, it would always be good to be able to read the moods of those around you.

Hopefully, he's found nothing to fear in Kira's moods. He prefers withdrawing to lashing out, though a cold exit might just put Credence in fear of future violence. All he can do is shrug around his own ears, flicking his gaze to the crawl of sunlight on the walls. "I'm sure it was very complicated, and that no one liked doing it. They were trying to get us out when the helicopters were attacked, I think they've been trying to make it safer before they come back. When I came here, we were close to communicating with the outside again, and had gotten better control of the supplies being sent in. We weren't abandoned, our help was just kind of...chased off."

It makes sense, in a muddled sort of way. It's enough that Credence can understand it, and understand where each side is coming from--even if he doesn't like it. If there's one thing he's learned since Mr. Graves came to the city and found him, it's that not everything is so black and white. There are strange shades rippling about, some darker and some lighter greys woven within.

Credence nods, drinking it all in. He has a lot of questions, and they bubble up to the surface all at once in a dizzying fashion.

He opens his mouth, and then shuts it. When that doesn't work, he presses his fingers against his palms. When that doesn't work, he shifts his entire posture so he's facing Kira dead on and asks the first question that comes to mind:

"What's a helicopter?"

It makes him laugh, a soft glimmer of noise in the dully paneled room, as he rolls himself up to sit at the edge of the bed again. Back up out of the dark stories, leaning into Credence's space again.

He tries to draw the shape of four fanning blades over his closed fist: "It's a big machine that flies, but it has a fan on top, so it can go up and down without needing a big runway, the way planes do. You can't put as many people on them, but they're good for landing in small places to help people get out, or taking injured people to hospitals."

The twenties are too far back for him to know what was or wasn't invented in the time between, and what else might require explanation. He knows Credence isn't stupid, he'll get it if Kira talks it out enough, but the gaps in Kira's own education are both of their downfall. "If you've ever seen a bird land on the ground and jump back up again, that's kind of the point. They were going to take us across the river."

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[CLOSED] a new you for the new year

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