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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“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.

Konstantin folds his arms over his chest thoughtfully, still keeping it conversational, but something digs in and takes hold and he's hesitating.

He should tell her. The way he should tell more people here. That he has to feed from animals too, but it's because he has to ensure he doesn't have to eat people instead. That there's an extremely high chance one of these days it could happen anyway.

He should tell her because people deserve to know how dangerous he could potentially be — but there's another reason too, maybe a little more selfish. No matter the small differences, something's going on with her, and it'd be... nice, maybe, to have someone there who's something like him.

"I can understand that," he nods; it's a valid concern. "Are you keeping it from people? You don't want them to know?" He gives his head a quick shake — "I won't tell anyone."

“People know I can move faster, but only a few people know about the cost. Mostly other… people like me. People who had the same dream.”

It's hard to hide her improved capabilities, but she's made efforts to conceal her hunger.

“I know they're all about team meetings and stuff right now, but when push comes to shove I don't expect any of them to stick their necks out for this.” She gestures widely, indicating her entire situation.

Konstantin gives a laugh — not one of his usual bright things, but something more hollow. With it, a nod; he agrees. Understands.

"No, I don't expect it, either. And there's already a monster we can't beat. What happens if they think there are monsters among us who can be taken care of?"

A beat, a shift of his hand to his hip.

"My condition... it means I have to feed on a hormone found in blood. Works best if it's from brains. I'm sure people wouldn't take well to that."

“Brains…” Chloe pauses, remembers Kieren’s confession. Zombies are real, here. “Are you a zombie, then?”

He laughs, but it's not with as much bemusement as it once might have been. Since arriving in this place, he's met a varietypack of people — including a man claiming to be a werewolf (and maybe these days Konstantin is beginning to wonder if Bigby might actually be telling the truth) — and such words aren't quite as far-fetched as they once were.

"Nothing like that. .....At least, I don't think. I am pretty sure I'm dead back home, but."

He's definitely not the kind of zombie that she means, in any case.

"The kind of sickness I have isn't... human. It's alien. I contracted it when I was up in space, and it... changed my body. Is still changing my body, maybe. I don't know what this place might do to me."

The combination of 'held in a research facility' and 'pretty sure I'm dead' paints a picture that Chloe isn't a big fan of. Now right at this moment they don't, as they say, have time to unpack all that, but she’ll be thinking about it.

“Oh.” What a thing to have to worry about when this place is already changing people on its own. “So this thing you think someone might have put in me, it's… alien?”

He's aware he's sharing quite a bit here, but it's still not crossing a particular line — keeping certain truths carefully padded beneath other truths. Besides, if he can maybe... help some of the people here, he... has to. He has to try.

"I know how it sounds, and maybe it's not the case, but... if the people who kept me were researching that kind of thing, maybe they experimented around with other people, too."

He doesn't want to freak Chloe out needlessly, but... it's a possibility, isn't it? Still, he tries to keep it as light as he possibly fucking can, offering a little smile.

"I don't suppose you had any experience with.... aliens in your time, did you?"

This is a question that is somehow difficult to answer. She's seen zombies (of a sort) and evil bugs and tree sap that makes you immortal and hallucinogenic water. Any of those could be an alien thing.

“I don't know. I've seen weird stuff, but… how would I know? Did you see writing or anything?”

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