🎵whistle while you work🎶(closed)

[load_aim_shoot]

Who: A. Rama Raju, Lanfear, William Gibson, Renny Oldoak
What: wilderness chore bonding time!
When: I'm thinking some time after the ghostly housefire, but it's loose
Where: the forest around Milton

Content Warnings: talk about food/eating/not eating, possible talk of fire stuff. will add as stuff comes up

Comments

[load_aim_shoot]

“It doesn’t have to be.” Raju’s voice is firm now, relieved. If William doesn’t remember, not for sure, like Raju doesn’t remember for sure, then that’s the answer. It has to be.

“Look.” He lifts his arm and pulls the blanket and sleeve back from it, pointing with quick, forceful movements at his forearm, leaning toward William as he talks, his voice starting to come out quicker, too. “There should be a snakebite here. Just here. But it’s completely healed, not even a scar. If whatever came between my… leaving and arriving here can heal me this way, maybe there’s been enough time between for you to have healed, too. We just don’t remember. I don’t know why someone would be taking people so close to death and moving them to Canada with no memory of any of it, but it makes more sense than being dead, doesn’t it?”

[notarat]

... oh no.

Billy is rapidly realising something here. Or maybe it's just his opinion, since he can't be sure of this just as much as Raju himself can't be sure of it, but he's pretty sure the other also died and is in denial about it.

Not that he doesn't understand the urge. Billy, too, wanted to live. Desperately so. It feels like a small miracle that he is somehow alive again here, but he's also fully convinced that he died somewhere in between back on the expedition and this place. There is absolutely no way he could have survived that. Surviving a snake bite - maybe that's possible, but surviving a knife in the back, straight into his organs, when he was already on his way out due to the illness? It feels impossible.

He wonders if Raju realises that too. If he's desperately trying to convince himself of the opposite because of that. At least Billy knows better than to call the other out for it. After all, if it's Raju's coping mechanism, then who would Billy be to take that from him? He's got so much experience with keeping his opinions to himself at this point, anyway.

"I suppose it does," he says, a small nod of his head. It isn't exactly enthusiastic agreement, but with how withdrawn Billy seems in everything and the specific topic being so serious, it likely doesn't stand out a whole lot. ".. though I am sorry to hear about your snakebite. That must have been a terrible experience."

Something that's just factually true, but.. you know, also a sliiiight diversion in the topic from having to agree with what might be Raju's desperate delusion.

[load_aim_shoot]

"It..." Raju's eyes are wide, expression half-frozen in the stubborn set that it'd been in. His gaze flickers down, away, then up again. He only realises he'd been expecting a fight when he, fairly abruptly, hadn't gotten one. Some kind of fight, anyway. Convincing him. I'm sorry about your snakebite feels so, so...

So normal, is what it feels. Raju's starting to feel a bit, now, like he's just gone on some kind of wild screed about the weather; he may as well have, for the level of importance William seems to ascribe to being convinced of it.

Raju straightens, leaning away again, watching himself tug his sleeve back down and the blanket over it for an excuse to look away. There really is no reason to be so... so passionate about it if it's true, is there? Of course there isn't.

"It could have been worse," he mutters. "I'm here, after all. You, ah— you thought you were in Hell, though? When you got here?"

It isn't exactly what William had said, but saying it helps Raju find some distance from a moment ago.

"You aren't the first person to tell me that." He tugs on his fingers, hurting with the cold already, then reaches inside the pocket he's sewn into the blanket and takes his mittens out, busying himself with putting them on. "The first person was Rorschach, incidentally. Seems to be a common belief here."

[notarat]

"I.. did not necessarily think so myself," he answers, though slowly, like he's thinking about it all as he says it.

After all, his thoughts had been a mess back then. What was he supposed to think, waking up in a place that still was so cold that it felt like it was seeping into his bones, lying there in the snow that was completely soaked in his own blood? All Billy remembers is a lot of his initial thoughts having turned back to the moment before it, the betrayal of it all only hitting him then. He mostly remembers thinking about Hickey, but..

.. well, there's no way he's going to share that here. Even if his initial impression of Raju has been relatively good, a lot of those thoughts had been complicated and messy. Billy isn't good at sharing his feelings in general, and when said feelings are considered sodomy, he knows better than to share it with anyone, instead shoving it all right back down.

"It was that same man who told me that as well." Apparently it's just how Rorschach is greeting all the new people here. Truly cheery, though unsurprising when Billy considers the way Rorschach comes across in general. "Just like you are saying though, none of this feels like the afterlife to me."

He will give Raju that. Even if Billy fully believes that they both must have died, they're somehow alive here.

Billy thinks about Raju's emotional near-outburst a moment ago. It causes a slight pause, but then he says: "We are alive here. We breathe. We eat. Our hearts beat."

He isn't too sure why he's saying it, really. It's not like him to reassure other people.

Maybe it's because he just really believes in these words, Billy tells himself.

(Maybe it's that he actually does want to reassure the other man a little, in return for the kindness Raju has shown him so far.)

[load_aim_shoot]

Raju watches him while he says it, takes a slow, bracing breath after he finishes, smiles in a tight, polite sort of way. If William is trying to reassure him like this, he was going a little too far. Damn.

Well. It's important, isn't it? It's an important question to know whether you have the answer. Regardless, though: Raju nods briskly, smile relaxing, as if William isn't saying anything he doesn't already know. "And need to sleep. And if it were hell, the food would be worse."

He looks down at his hands as he walks, still tugging at the edges of the mittens with a little more attention than he needs to pay to the way that they fit over his hands. "But I didn't mean to pull you off track. You were telling me about your first encounter with Rorschach, weren't you? You said you didn't really believe that he was right about where you were, even then?"

[notarat]

There's a slight nod on his end.

"It's.. difficult, isn't it?" It's like he had to decide on the word for a moment there. "While we are here, it feels impossible to determine the exact nature of this place. But even if we don't know for sure, it has never felt like an afterlife to me."

Partially because Billy has been iffy on ever fully believing in that idea, despite it being the norm where he comes from. Religion suddenly doesn't seem so attractive anymore when it's condemning you for what you are. For something you can't change. But the last thing he wants to do is get into a potential religious discussion with someone who seems pleasant enough so far, so he shoves it under the rug for now.

"So I told him that he seemed more like a man to me than a demon from hell, despite him wearing that mask. Me then implying it was strange for a person to wear that sort of mask was what got him to threaten me."

[load_aim_shoot]

It's never felt like one to Raju, either. But then there's the creeping doubt— how would he know? It certainly doesn't look the way that he'd been told time after death would but somewhere in him, unconsciously, he'd always assumed most of it was mostly metaphors anyway. He hadn't really thought about that until he'd been faced with— with the idea of the reality of it. And he really doesn't feel dead.

And aside from feeling, he can't be. He still has too much to do. He's the only one who can do it, and he isn't finished yet.

This has to be something else.

It doesn't matter. William doesn't need convincing of it anyway, and has asked for Raju's help with other things. "It is strange though, isn't it? Even the mask itself is strange, with those... things that move. I wanted to ask him how it worked; maybe it's a good thing I was distracted. What did he threaten you with?"

[notarat]

Thank god that Raju agrees with him on this one. Billy does like to think that Rorschach's mask is pretty objectively strange, but that man had acted like it had somehow been a normal thing. Despite the mask itself being odd enough - both in the design and in the way Rorschach always seems to wear it around town, to a point where Billy is pretty sure no one here must ever have seen his actual face - and then the way it seems to shift while you look at it being even weirder.

At least there's still some people here who have a good head on their shoulders, apparently.

"Nothing specific," he replies to the question. Though he also knows it didn't have to be specific. Not when Rorschach is so intimidating to Billy in general. "Only general harm."

And it probably doesn't take a genius to take a look at Billy and tell that he isn't exactly a fighter. Not when he's shaped like a stickbug, and when his pale skin and the sickly dark colouration around his eyes make him look like a stiff breeze could knock him over. If Rorschach wanted to hurt him, he easily could.

"But it is enough to make me hesitate on going near him." Alone, at least. It's why Billy is still walking in the direction of the library, despite what he's saying. Because he's got Raju with him here, and given everything the other has said so far, Billy likes to think he'll be able to rely on him.

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"Mm," he says, thoughtful. It would have been more helpful of Rorschach to be specific, so Raju could tell whether he was dealing with someone who knows how to fight. Swiss name, odd manner, American accent— it isn't much to know about a person. That's alright. Raju's confident in his own ability to improvise. Most people would rather threaten to fight than actually do it, and if Rorschach collected enough books into one place to call it a library, maybe he'll hesitate to get too physical somewhere that might damage them.

"Have you talked to him since?"