singillatim | ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ɪs ʙᴜɪʟᴛ ʙʏ ᴋɪʟʟᴇʀs

( He's been having dreams, lately. It starts as the same one, every few nights. The girl, the house, the children. He stands beside her, staring up at the charred remains of a burned-out husk taken by fire.

He had a sister once, is the thing. When he was very young, in the days he still believed in knights. When he was a child, and he was still capable of pretending. He played at being a knight, and she a Lady, or a Princess, or a Queen — or whatever nobility happened to be on her mind at the time. She'd be taken prisoner, kidnapped, attacked by dragons, and he'd gallop in on a stick horse and save her. She'd been younger than this girl in his dreams (and so had he, for that matter), but his mind draws the connection anyway.

He'd lost his sister to the same force he'd lost half his face. He'd been no fucking knight back then, and he couldn't save her any more than he could save himself.

Nor any more than he can save this girl, as his legs stand rooted and unmoving while older children call her a freak and hurl their stones. The burning, furious desire to stride up and snatch a little brat by their shirt collar rolls through him just as hot as the fire that took her house, that took his face. But every time he dreams it, he's frozen, and he can do nothing.

It seeps into his mind like a poison, and soon, even on nights he doesn't dream of the girl, he dreams of the house. He dreams of it being on fire. He dreams of being trapped inside it with her, too busy trying to claw his own way out to pay any mind to her screaming, or his sister's screaming, just a few doors down. The guilt and the fear mingle, grappling for dominance.

Daytime finds him drawn there, eventually. The itch in his mind is obnoxious, infuriating, he can't shake it. He can't fucking stop it. And so he stands before it, arms crossed over his chest, staring darkly and contemplatively up at the burned out shell. Stewing, visibly. Silent, and brooding, and staring, for minutes that stretch into hours. )

[Chloe’s been having the dream too, but she's had her own experiences with the house: wandering into it unprepared because Methuselah - who had been there, he knew - hadn't given them adequate warning; the fire that had sprung up around them; her near escape with Billy Gibson. Hickey had told her there had been ghost children inside, but she hadn't seen them. The dream girl’s relatives, clearly.

The mother and daughter aren't buried in the cemetery, and Chloe hadn't seen anything in the newspapers she’d looked through. What had happened to the girl? What had she been capable of? It's those questions that draw Chloe back to Milton House.

One of the new guys is standing there staring at it.]

I wouldn't go in there if I were you. Haunted.

( He doesn't startle, but there is a swift sharpness in the way his eyes cut to her, in the subtle movement of his hand a little closer toward the hilt of his sword. It does not ever make contact, he relaxes before his fingertips can alight upon the hilt, but the wary, mistrustful tension in his shoulders remains.

Suspicion lingers in the furrow of his brow, in the way he looks her over from top to bottom in a way that reads judgmental rather than salacious. Checking her for weapons, not checking out her figure, but a thoroughly searching look nonetheless. Evidently he must deem her not much of a threat, because eventually he pulls his eyes away from her to settle them on the house again. )

No such thing as ghosts.

( He grunts, unimpressed. If those were real, he'd have a fucking legion of them haunting his ass by now. )

[He probably can't see her handgun, holstered at her lower back under her impractical red jacket, but she is wearing a tactical knife openly in a sheath at her thigh. Nothing compared to a sword, though.

Chloe grimaces, looking back at the house too.]

Maybe not wherever you come from, but here… there's something in that house, man. When I was in there it caught fire out of nowhere, and look at it.

[Yeah it's a shell of a building now but it doesn't look like it's burned recently.]

( He can't see her handgun; he knows they exist, but they're a new enough phenomenon for him that he doesn't know instinctively where to look for it. He's seen more rifles than any other type of gun, and those are far harder to hide. This is a lesson he'll have to pick up on later, and probably from learning it the hard way.

That little pig-sticker at her thigh doesn't scare him, though, so her threat level's ranked disproportionately low.

He considers her commentary, his eyes narrowed at the house as she talks. It caught fire out of nowhere; the trill of frigid discomfort that runs down his spine at the concept is more than enough to rectify the lack of fear he feels for ghosts.

At length, somewhat distantly, he mumbles: )

Didn't plan on going in there, anyway. Nothing left to see. It's a pile of rubble.

( Which probably begs the question: what the hell is he even doing out here, then? Even he isn't so sure. )

Yeah. No offense but you look like you'd go through the stairs either way.

[Chloe hadn't wanted to walk on them and she's a lot smaller.]

Methuselah put us onto this place back in the spring, but he didn't warn us about anything.

( -you look like you'd go through the stairs; he turns to level her with just the flattest, least impressed look of all time. Except, she's bloody fucking right, so he can't even come back at her with anything. Weak-looking shit support of a husk doesn't seem like it could hold a normal man, let alone one of his mass.

The look fades away back into something stoic, guarded, maybe thinly contemplative as she carries on. Methuselah; that old cunt. Been hearing a bit about him.

He's curious, even if he's not keen to admit it. )

Put you onto it, the fuck does that mean? What do you know about it?

[Chloe’s so used to garnering that reaction from people that she just smiles back mildly. She's right, isn't she?]

Oh, you know. “A great tragedy, a black mark on our town’s memory, oh I can't talk about it, it's too sad,” like of course people would be curious about it!

Didn't see much in there besides a few family photos myself, but one of my friends said he saw child ghosts.

[ Levi doesn't share that same dream, but still he has enough of his own to dwell on, especially after receiving that little gift from home last month. He sleeps poorly as it is, usually just a couple hours at the time, both wary of unsensed danger and body unbalanced by years without natural daylight. ]

[ And when he can not sleep, he wanders. So it's no wonder if he ends up near the spot Sandor does at the same time at some point. He notes the man seems to be standing more firmly, his injuries likely improved since the last time he saw him. That's good. ]

[ The look on his face isn't particularly relieving, however. ]

[ Levi observes the man from a distance for a bit, but finds no explanation for the way he's fixated on a burnt ruin of a house that looks like it's been that way for months, maybe years. He thinks he can make a guess, though, even if it may not be entirely accurate -- the giant guy has burn scars, after all, and they've all heard voices from home just a few weeks ago; maybe it is persisting for him. He approaches, slowly and deliberately in the open, stopping just far enough to not be perceived as an immediate threat. ]

You look more constipated than usual.

[ Hello. Wanna talk about it? ]

( Though Sandor does not turn, does not glance, it's clear by his lack of reaction that he'd sensed Levi's deliberately telegraphed approach. Were it a complete stranger, he'd have likely turned to clock them, scope them for weapons, gauge whether or not they were a threat.

But he knows this one. The likelihood of a man intent on healing him turning around and attacking him unprompted later is low. Pointless, wouldn't make sense. If he were inclined to make a move, he'd have done it while Sandor's leg was still fucked all to shit.

Hardly a beat passes between Levi's observation and Sandor's flat retort of: )

Fuck off.

( It's intended as a rebuttal over constipated, rather than as an order to actually leave — though he doesn't bother making that clear in the few contemplative seconds that follow it before he speaks again. )

What d'you know about this shithole?

[ Likewise, the coarse greeting receives no particular reaction from Levi in return, the swearwords rolling off of him like water from a duck. He did set the tone with his own introduction, after all. He simply waits a few moments longer for some sort of an elaboration -- and does receive one. ]

[ There's a guess to be made whether the man is talking about this world in general, Milton, or this particular burnt house he's staring at. The gut feeling tells Levi it's the latter, unfortunately that just happens to be the topic he knows the least about. ]

Not much. It used to be a normal town, though. With normal people. The first of us that got here, they... found a lot of bodies to bury.

[ ... Oh.

This guy.

A part of Bigby isn't too surprised to find the other standing there, glaring at the house as if the house caused him some sort of personal slight. Even though Bigby knows it can't have - ever since it started randomly bursting into a fake fire over half a year ago now, it doesn't really seem to have done anything to anyone anymore. And yet the other is standing there, staring all the same.

He kind of wants to leave this to be someone else's problem, but depending on whether or not the other has chilled out, it might leave them with more trouble than it's worth.

So he resigns himself - stepping over close enough to be able to talk to the other, but not getting all up close and buddy-buddy with him either. ]

Trying to pick a fight with a house now?

( Oh.

This fucker.

Bigby earns himself one brief once-over, a fleeting up-and-down glance as though Sandor's putting him through an on-the-spot assessment. Whatever he'd been looking for, there's no indication on his face as to whether or not he finds it as he turns his eyes back to the house in question. )

Why, were you planning on eating it first?

( He fires back dryly, flat and unbothered. Mister wolf who eats everything and everyone for centuries whatever the fuck it was he'd set like an absolute batshit madman a few weeks back. )

Very funny. [ And yet it's not a full offended very funny at that. It sounds a little exasperated, sure, but Bigby sounds gruff and exasperated at the worst of times. People have certainly said worse to him. This is hardly anything.

If anything, the fact he's not offended is made clear when he bothers to add: ]

Wouldn't go in there if I were you. [ A warning he would have left behind for someone he truly couldn't stand, but his opinion of the other is.. well, more neutral at this point. He thinks Sandor's a pain, mostly. ] It's made people randomly hallucinate fires when they did that before.

[Rorschach never liked sleeping much even before he'd come to Milton. After more than a year of sporadic strange dreams, he liked it even less. He'd been having dreams of the girl and the Milton House. He remembered holding the ghosts of what he had to assume were her brothers when he'd gone in, holding on until the fire was gone and he remained somehow untouched by it.

He saw someone standing in front of it on this day and he stared at Sandor curiously. He'd seen the man walking around but not up close. Rorschach was glad for the fabric face he wore, for it kept his blatant staring less obvious if he kept his head facing forward and only looked a little off to his side. Aside from being a full foot shorter than the Hound in height, the most striking feature about Rorschach was the mask he worse. Pure white and covering his whole face, the black marks on it moved around slowly, often forming into symmetrical patterns that just as soon dissipated into new ones. He stood there, hands in the pockets of the trenchcoat he wore constantly, alternately glancing at the house and at Sandor.]

ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ɪs ʙᴜɪʟᴛ ʙʏ ᴋɪʟʟᴇʀs

→ ᴏᴘᴇɴ; ᴍɪʟᴛᴏɴ ʜᴏᴜsᴇ

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject