the chilly worlds, and the silent fields

[sputnik]

Who: Konstantin Veshnyakov + various
What: catchall / open & closed prompts
When: through March & April
Where: various places in town

Content Warnings: This character comes with a parasitic alien entity by default. More content warnings will be in various thread headers.

Comments

[burying]

[ Kieren's quiet as he listens, his expression thoughtful, brow furrowed a little. There's a small, tight-lipped smile and he nods. It's not contagious — he almost wants to laugh. Kieren doesn't think he'll... ever really be able to get sick. Not from stuff like that. Diseases, infections. Can a body that's only half-alive get sick? He knows this place has affected him in ways: made him hallucinate, made him feel pain. But— but actual sickness? He doesn't think so.

He's just— he's just there. Suspended. Never getting older, never getting sick. He hasn't changed in over four years. Jem's nearly older than he is now. Kieren Walker, eighteen for the rest of his life.

A hormone found in blood. There's a tiny inhale, sharp. That... sounds foreboding, and Kieren's face goes a little rigid. He tries to keep himself composed, because the last thing he has any right to do is be absolutely horrified — It's the most effective if it comes from brains.

Oh, fucking hell. ]

I mean— well, needing a hormone to fight a disease isn't... totally 'out there'. [ It comes out a little awkwardly because what does he even say to... all of that? ] I— I guess it's like... um, there's stuff like hormone replacement therapies, and stuff. Or— chemicals, to help when something happens and your body can't make things on its own anymore.

[ Granted there's stuff his body can't make on his own anymore. That's why he needs Neurotriptyline. But, yeah. Kieren huffs a little; Christ this is mad. He's a zombie and this guy's a cosmonaut with some funky infection that requires him to eat brains. Kieren isn't sure where he wants to laugh or cry. ]

Sometimes the world's really small.

[ Smaller than any of them ever actually realise. ]

I'm sorry. [ He looks to the man for a brief moment, his mouth upturned and sympathy in his brow. Commiseration. ] That sounds really shit. Just... all of that. I mean, it's good the guy you're living with's doing that for you, at least. That you've got help for it. Makes it a bit easier, but—

[ God, it's really shit. ]

Is that just... there's no cure or anything? You can't... fix what the infection did?

[sputnik]

[ There's so much to this he can't say. That the hormone is what the 'disease' feeds off of — that they're symbiotically bound. The only reason that hormone stabilises his body is because it stabilises the creature who eats it. They're connected more severely than anything imaginable, although this place... has seemed to alter some things. He has to wonder just how strong that tether may be, here.

(Could the creature be killed, now? Without him also dying? How would he even test something like that?)

He looks over at Kieren as he keeps walking (still at an easy pace, conversational, although.... now that he's noticed the boy doesn't seem to be winded at all despite the odd shuffling gesture to his gait, Konstantin does pick it up juuuust a tiny bit.) There's a small smile at the words — 'I'm sorry.' He's sorry, too. Sorry for both of them, sorry that it's something somebody else in the world can relate to at all. Sorry that it's somebody so young, and kind.

There's something about feeding off of the brains of a thing that makes him feel..... tainted. Knowing that the most important source of life of a living being has been consumed by him — and before here, it was humans; the creature fed on human brains, more than he could count — makes him feel.... like a stranger in his own body.

Has Kieren fed from a person, too? Is it just animals? He won't dare ask that. ]

There was a doctor. She was trying to help me find a... cure. A way to be rid of it.

[ Tatiana. Is she..... still alive? She'd risked so much to help him. To save him. He hated to leave her the way he did. ]

Very little is known about it, so she thought... if I could get to a better hospital somewhere, find the resources, there might be hope.

[ .....But. But. Some part of him insists that it already knows that's all that it ever was. Hope. How in the world could any doctor with simple Earth medical facilities separate an alien entity from his body? Something capable of adaptability and functioning beyond anything ever before documented?

It can't even be outside of his body for more than an hour before he starts breaking down. He needs it, to survive. ]

...In any case, there's certainly no help for it here. I'm just trying to find ways to help manage it more easily. [ He draws in a slow exhale, and then breathes it out through his nostrils with a puff of white fog before looking back over at Kieren. This brings him back to thoughts he's been nursing ever since he'd last encountered the boy, kneeling over a torn-apart thing out in the woods, face dripping with blood, weeping. ]

...Have you found any ways to make your situation easier?