sixthiterationlogs | What goes on in that place in the dark? [OTA]

WHO: Veronica Sawyer
WHERE: Town Hall
WHEN: 24 February, evening
OPEN TO: ALL
WARNINGS: Mild self-harm, mention of death
STATUS: Closed to new threads

Dear Diary,

Well, I'm still alive, although I don't know if that was intentional.

Yesterday when I was cutting through the park, I was struck by lightning. Not directly; that's why I'm still here. If you think you know what that feels like, trust me that you don't. I wish I didn't.

I should probably be a big bundle of gratefulness that I survived, but I can't get around why.

It felt personal when Ren died, like he might have been on the right (wrong) track. He was always pushing so hard, all the damned time. Even when I told him to relax.

I don't know if this was a warning. Could it really be coincidence? Lots of people were struck recently, but only one died. Only one got a message etched on his roof. Did I just get the celestial equivalent of a smack with a rolled up newspaper?

Staring down at what she's written, Veronica fights the urge to tear out the entire page. You don't even have to read the content to see the abrupt slide from rational to ridiculous: The tidy block letters she'd adopted to save paper had been abandoned for her own massive scrawl weeks ago, looped across precious pages with all the eye-rolling angst of a truly mournful teenager.

The main room of the town hall is large, and every movement she makes seems to echo. It's cold -- Nobody lights the furnaces in the buildings that aren't being used -- and she'll have to leave for somewhere warmer soon, but the thought of the inn with its brightness and bustle of people is still too overwhelming to consider.

The sweater she has on over her clothes is black, large enough to nearly be a dress and perpetually slipped off one shoulder. She sets her journal aside and pushes up one saggy sleeve to reveal a strip of linen bandage wrapped loosely from elbow to wrist. Gently, she unwinds it and considers the livid, fractured pattern beneath. It seethes against her skin, tender and accusatory, and without thinking she presses hard against a shiny red line with her finger, pain flaring up bright and hot until she cries out and drops her hand with soft hiccough of sound.

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"Be alone in a bed," is his angry reply, seeing as she's not going to heal properly unless she gets to rest. Instead, she's walking around in too-cold weather and straining herself. It's not like he can talk, seeing as he's done the same after multiple injuries, but he also knows that the entire team had forcibly shoved him back into a bed. It's just his turn to be on the other side of this.

His arms are crossed as he looks at her darkly from under the brim of his hat, not pleased with the implication that to be alone, she has to come all this way. "You're healing," is what he says angrily, "you will only get worse, if you do this. I don't want to see you hurt."

Edited 2017-02-27 15:29 (UTC)

The impulse to snap back is still assuredly there, but so is the knowledge that this is the bed which she made for herself. The decision to move in with Cougar had been entirely her own, and for all that she had talked about potentially moving out, of finding her own place to give herself as well as the boys privacy, she's still there. And part of the reason for that is simply because it's nice to be taken care of.

It's just really fucking inconvenient right now.

"I'm fine," she replies, and pushes herself to her feet with a sigh, journal and pencil in hand. There's not much use to actively fighting this, so when she walks past him and outside, she automatically turns toward home.

She's not and he knows it, but he doesn't know if pushing will accomplish anything but her pushing him away. He knows that he looks to Veronica as a surrogate sister for the ones that have been out of his life for so long, but also, she's part of his team. Without Clay and Aisha and Pooch, there's the feel of something missing. "Conejito, you're not," he says, knowing she might take offense to the nickname, but given both her size and speed, he thinks it's a very apt one.

"Let me at least get you something to eat, while you rest."

Knowing that she's little doesn't do much to make being called a bunny palatable, but Veronica satisfies herself with merely tossing Cougar a quick, unimpressed glance in reply. He isn't leaving her alone, but he's softened enough that she can meet him nearly halfway without it chafing much of her pride.

"Just not invalid food," she replies, imagining a bowl of plain broth -- No hearty chunks of carrots or noodles here. "There's nothing wrong with my stomach."

"No, not invalid. I killed some meat in the woods," he says, though he's not sure what the name of the animal is in English, so it's meat. "We can sear it, put some dark greens. Give you protein," he says, wishing that he had some of his Mama's food that he could ply her with, rich food soaked with flavour that would make you forget how you feel. "Do you want a study?" he asks. "We can make Jake's room one, if you want more space."

He had been a moody teenager himself, once, running out on his parents and he knows he has no space to speak, but now that he's on the other side of this coin, he's beginning to understand the headaches he'd put his poor parents through.

"I don't need a study," Veronica replies, and instantly winces at her spoiled, peevish tone. She sounds more like Heather than she really wants to examine.

"Thank you for offering," she tries again, her tone more measured this time, fingers sliding her hair behind her ear. "But I don't need more space in the house. I don't know what I need. I mean, I've had three friends die in a year, they don't exactly give out a handbook for dealing with that."

He concedes with a nod of his head, because he knows what that's like. Sometimes, he thinks what they really need is to lock the door and talk, because there's that little piece of information that he's been keeping from her about Roque, something that he thinks that she, of all people, might understand. "Maybe rest," he allows. "Maybe talk. Right now, bed," he says, but it's not stern so much as worried.

"I will leave you alone, but you promise to sleep, at least eight, ten hours."

"I'm not going to sleep if I'm not tired," Veronica answers, although she is tired right now, has been tired for weeks. Where's the break point between concern for her being in bed too much because she's depressed, and thinking she's in bed too little because she's injured? How does Cougar even make that call?

"But fine," she concedes, some little balm in having made her point even if Cougar really couldn't give two shits. "I could probably use a nap."

"Then rest your body so it will heal," he counters, because wandering around at all hours will only strain it more. He's glad to hear her give in, just a little, and knows he's a hypocrite because he would protest much worse if he were in her shoes, but he's not. He's in his own very comfortable boots.

"It might not be better when you wake up or even in a week, but it will hurt less, if only just a little," he says in Spanish, knowing that much from experience.

She wants to say she knows, to remind him this isn't exactly her first rodeo, even opens to her mouth to that end. After a moment's hesitation, she closes it again with a sigh; being an asshole really isn't going to make any of this easier on either of them, and none of what's happened is Cougar's fault.

"I'll be fine," she repeats, and tries a wry smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "I'm resilient."

What goes on in that place in the dark? [OTA]

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