singillatim | A beautiful fiction I invented to keep out the cold

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A beautiful fiction I invented to keep out the cold

Who: Chloe Frazer & others
What: Catch-all; open prompts
When: March and April
Where: Around Milton

Content Warnings: Self-injury content related to the echo effects. Descriptions of canon typical violence and murder. Talk about hunting/eating animals.

Chloe doesn't trust Methuselah as far as she could throw him, and a trip through a mine where she's forced to rely on the goodwill of a bunch of cop types does not sound like her idea of a good time. Also, sticking around Milton when most of the people who 'patrol' (imagine her air quotes) are away is a great opportunity to snoop in people’s houses.

Anyone who remains in or returns to Milton may find her either doing her usual wild running in the woods, checking her snares for snacks, or sneaking around newly empty locations to see what's been left behind.

Aurora nights are a different thing, however. Chloe likes to think that she's done her best to do right by the people that she cares about, but the truth is she's cut a few throats in her day, stepped over others to make sure that she would wind up on top. Something about the aurora this month brings every one of those memories roaring back. It has her running faster, drinking until she can't see, and doing risky climbs onto (and jumps between) rooftops, trying to escape the feeling.

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“Ah… look, don't worry about it.” In her current situation Chloe feels a little bad for being so disgusted. “I thought you were drunk and messing me around, but that's not what it was.”

Trying to get the heat off herself a bit, though she still hasn't put the rabbit’s remains down, “Looks like your friend took pretty good care of you, though. Good thing you had him looking out for you at the party.”

For some reason Chloe hadn't imagined bring caught by anyone who didn't have a similar problem if not the same one, and she's really not sure how to handle it. Not bringing it up seems safest.

Edited (Typo) 2024-03-21 01:32 (UTC)

There are a million questions circulating through his mind right now — just how many people in this place routinely feed on raw animals out in the woods?

....He definitely hasn't quite let go of the idea that all of them were placed here for observation and experimentation purposes. It makes the most sense, to his mind; the seemingly supernatural going-ons can possibly be explained with drugs, hallucinations.

Is there something 'wrong' with her, too? (...Clearly, right?) The more he talks to her, maybe the more he can find out. So Konstantin tries to stay normal, as much as he possibly can with the strained way he keeps his breathing, readying himself to flinch back if he catches even a whiff of the copper tang of blood.

"Ahhh, yes, he's been taking good care of me. Keeping me going while I get better." A little smile, but there's an odd pang in the center of his chest as the mention of Vasiliy, and he can't quite hide the soft ache that touches his eyes for a moment.

"He went, though — on that expedition. Hopefully there are no more upsets while he's gone, or I might be in trouble."

Ah, that explains a few things. An adventurer like this probably isn't used to being the one who sits at home while someone he cares about is risking his life.

“That's why you're out here, huh? You're fending for yourself domestically. Well, they're lucky to have him.”

That EMT is kind of intense, but maybe you want a really focused and serious doctor if you get hurt.

“I went on the last cave mission grandpa sent people on and we got good stuff but it was a lot. Happy to sit this one out.”

He gives a little chuckle — okay, Chloe's not wrong about that. "I've been trying to learn how to... cook?" He says the word like it's something new for him. "Vasya started up a little grouse farm for us, and... I've been thinking it'd be handy to learn how to prepare them better. Thought I'd try to find some things out here to put with it..."

He casts a glance around the snowy landscape; there's not much growing out here, but there are a few things to be found.

"There was another mission out of town, before this one?" He blinks at that, interested — and maybe a little desperate, if one looks closely enough at it. "Did everyone.. return all right?"

“Oh my,” Chloe smiles, eyes shining. “Is there anything he can't do?” It's kind of cute to see these two in their honeymoon phase.

It's kind of a mirror of her first meeting with Hickey, as she tries to keep talking and smiling enough to stash the rabbit corpse unnoticed.

“Yeah, when we first got here Methuselah put some of us onto a prepper stash some miner had set up in the cave by the waterfall. It was boobytrapped to shit, but we all made it out okay.” Yes, the tunnel had collapsed on her and Renny, but they'd both been fine, hadn't they? “Not nearly as bad as that stupid house.”

Despite the hitch of worry and ache, Konstantin can't help a certain softening to his own expression, something warmed. He's all-too happy to speak so favourably of his housemate; he holds Vasiliy in such high regards.

"So far I haven't seen anything." It's only halfway a joke, playful, because the other half is true. Vasiliy is... strong, reliable, resilient. In ways that have been almost surprising to witness for himself, at times. Who else would be all right with a man like him living in their home, occupying their bed? He's a monster.

Vasiliy's never treated him that way.

"He saved my life, really. He's... a good man. A great man."

The praise comes easily, but then his features are sobering again as he listens, as that worry and ache come creeping back in. (What if he never sees him again?)

"The Milton house? So you saw it too...." He frowns, adjusting the basket on his arm. "Do you buy the whole... 'all of this is happening because of some supernatural creature' theory?"

Edited 2024-03-27 01:42 (UTC)

Chloe hadn't actually seen the child ghosts: she and Billy had scarpered at the first sign of magic fire. She's still kind of mad about it, though, that Methuselah had sent them in there without adequate warning.

She gives him a thoughtful look. “Well, every time I've heard that before and called bullshit it's turned out to at least be sort of true, so…” That tree of life in Shambhala had done something after all. The water from Ubar, too. And now she's out here eating raw meat because of her super endurance, so yeah she does believe it a bit. “Something killed those people. You felt it too.”

Konstantin pauses at that. There's no denying what she says; he did feel it. The.... fear. The things that seem impossible to convey. The biggest part of him still insists that it's surely all the work of some drug, administered to all of them somehow. But... he can't know that for sure. Can't prove it.

Whatever it is, people have died. Are dying. The man gazes at the ground for a long moment, cheerful demeanour sobering. In truth, he's afraid to face any of that again. To face it alone. Last time he was reduced to something childlike in his own fear, Vasiliy was there with him. He's been there with him every single day and every single night since his arrival to this place. Being alone is... difficult.

"Hopefully it won't happen again any time soon. I think the grouse would all go into panic and I don't know if I can wrangle them all by myself. Never done this before."

He manages a smile, trying to nudge back into something familiar and light-hearted, despite what's weighing on his heart and the lingering discomfort of speaking to someone whose mouth is covered in blood.

“Yeah.” Chloe’s bloody smile is a little wobbly, but she makes a go of it. “After all your hard work out here, wouldn't do to lose your grouse.”

She hesitates for a moment, but this is already so weird, and she thinks they have something in common. This strange appetite.

“Remember when we met? The long aurora?” When you vomited blood all over my shins, she doesn't say. “Did you notice anything strange after that? About yourself?”

The question gives him a noticeable pause, a flicker of uncertainty. There have been a plethora of strange things about himself — granted, those came before this place, but.... this place has affected those things, to be sure. Konstantin still doesn't know how his situation may continue to pan out here, what new developments there may be with it.

"This place seems to be.... having some effect on me," he decides on, carefully. But to clarify— "On the sickness I had before here. Making it worse, I think. I don't know if the long Aurora had anything to do with that or not."

He studies Chloe thoughtfully but still conversationally, some attempt to keep it easy-going. He's aware this is a particular kind of territory.

"Something happened to you after?"

“Oh. That's strange.” Maybe it's more like Kieren, then, a pre-existing condition exacerbated by these new abilities and their demands on the body.

“I had a weird dream,” Chloe prompts him a bit. “Same night all that happened.”

Again, he gives a pause of thought. He hasn't forgotten any of the details — any of the dreams. That one was... less unpleasant than most have been, in this place. But for him it was brief, uneventful.

"I had one, too. After hearing a woman's voice. ...The same woman I think we've all heard before." He does know by now that people share dreams and experiences here, however it happens. Whether some mass hallucination or... something else.

"But nothing bad, that time. No three-headed monsters." A small smile, but humourless.

"The same one for you?"

“Yeah, I heard the voice, too. I had a dream where I was a stag running in the forest. You see anything like that?”

If he has, he’ll know why she's out here. Chloe can't decide how she feels about that.

He takes a moment to give it true, serious thought — but ultimately shakes his head.

"No, nothing like that.... That sounds nice, though. A nice dream."

Running freely, fast, the way a human never could. But this is clearly about more than just an innocent dream, and Konstantin looks her over carefully, brows lifted in concern.

"Was it nice?" Maybe it wasn't. Maybe something bad happened after.

“It was nice,” Chloe confirms. “Most free I've ever felt, I think. Afterward, I was stronger. I can run longer, faster, more sure-footed.

The only thing is…” She runs her tongue over her teeth, tasting the blood there. She isn't exactly self-conscious, but if she's wrong about him this could go south fast. “It makes you so hungry.”

He pauses, watching the woman whose mouth is coated in blood, speaking about running longer and faster and more easily. ....Did they do something to her? Give her some sort of drug? But that doesn't add up; the pieces don't fit. He had a dream too, just not the same one.

"Hungry....." The word lingers in the air between them, a question hovering just behind it. He's bumped into other people here who are hungry — a man feeding on an animal's heart, a boy sobbing into an animal's brains. Every few days he has to eat the remains of a grouse that his housemate slaughters for him. He pours the pulpy mix of blood and brains into a cup and that civilised act makes it easier, or at least he tells himself that it does.

"You mean in a way you can't control?"

Chloe had tried to convince Kieren that eating his brains at the table would make him feel better about it, but the kid hadn't really gone for it for some reason.

“It uses more energy, I guess, but it's so hard to hold back.” After having a taste of how easy it is to run like that, who would want to stop? “I thought maybe that's why you…”

Why he's been acting so weird this whole time.

So many strange little similarities between some of them here. What does it mean? He's wondered if Bigby Wolf and Kieren Walker have something inside of them like he has inside of himself, something that compels them to feed on blood, but here Chloe is saying that hers happened after a dream.

.....What if they put something in her, though? Something she doesn't know about yet. It's a possibility, isn't it? He pauses again, careful and a little cautious as both of them eye one another, waiting for some kind of answer.

"It happened to me..... before here." What 'it' is, he doesn't specify exactly. The odd relationship with eating, the sickness. The creature made him stronger and faster too, before this place.

"I was in a facility — research, experimental. I already came here fucked up." He laughs, a little. "Do you feel anything... strange inside of you? Inside of your body? Like something that shouldn't be there."

“Oh.” That does sort of explain some things, but it raises a million more questions. “Your friend, then, is he…” Is this a minder from home, meant to keep whatever is happening to him under control? “Do you need help?”

Chloe is quickly distracted by the other question, though. She hadn't thought of the possibility that the dream had put something into her body, infected her with something, and the idea makes her squirm.

“Like an implant?”

"He does help me. I met him here, when I first showed up. I probably would have died without him. He— keeps it stabilised. Keeps me stabilised— I need him."

He swallows against a sudden catch in his throat. The fear of what he'll do if Vasiliy doesn't return has been mingled up in the upset of potentially losing his dearest friend, but it's becoming more and more of a threat. He... needs him. He can't do this without him. No one else here knows what's inside of him; he doesn't have anyone else to trust.

"....Something like that." He pauses, running a hand over his mouth, uncharacteristically restless. "....They were trying to turn me into a weapon. Before. I wonder if that's what they're doing to people here, too."

Edited 2024-04-10 05:52 (UTC)

Something about the way he describes his situation makes Chloe think it's nothing like hers at all. At least it doesn't sound like the EMT is anything more than she’d initially suspected. Being dependent on someone who hurts you is no fun at all.

“A weapon…” No offense to Kostya but he hasn't exactly come across as powerful during their time here. “Biological? You said you were sick…” And he had got some blood on her just before she had the stag dream.

He knows how it sounds, which is stupid at best and dangerous at worst, and gives his head a quick shake.

"Nothing that can be spread to someone else. I'm just sick because... my body reacts poorly to it now."

Some days he wonders how much longer he can continue to live with some unnatural terror wedged inside of him, wreaking havoc on his organs.

"Before here, it made me stronger. I healed faster, had better endurance... it sounds almost like what you're talking about. That's why... I almost have to wonder if we've been experimented on by the same people."

“Oh.” If it is an implant, that kind of makes sense. Technology doesn't work right here most of the time, and can go haywire during the aurora. “That sucks, to lose access to it here. I don't know whether I could give this up now, even with the downsides.”

It does raise another question though. “Do you really think the people who did this to you are still active? You said you're from the 80s, right?”

Of course, what he's failing to mention is that the thing wasn't put into him by people, that the experimenting came afterwards, but... he can't discount anything, here. What if the scientists found a way to infect more humans? He'd barely scratched the surface of his own situation and the extraterrestrial entity that had tethered itself to him.

It's a good question, though. He pauses, thoughtful and still a little tense by default.

"I don't know. With so many of us here from different times... maybe they found a way to jump through, too." A beat, as he can't help giving a dark chuckle, running a hand up over his face for a moment.

"I know the pieces don't quite add up. It just seems that there's too much in common around here. I mean, I've... seen other people out here, eating like this. Like they're so hungry they have to, like they can't stop themselves."

And then he's lowering his hand, watching Chloe again.

"....I think they might even eat from people, if they get desperate enough."

Chloe thinks about Kieren too, his disgust and horror at himself. She considers her own hunger.

“I don't think we need to worry about that, at least not yet. What worries me is that if things get tight, those of us who need more might get cut off first. That's why I eat out here.”

If no one can see that she's supplementing with rabbits, what she eats in town seems normal.

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