Aftermath: open

[priorly]

Who: Prior Walter (priorly) & OPEN
What: Event Aftermath: Small angry woodland creature refuses to Sit Down.
When: 24th+
Where: Sanctuary & around
Warning(s): language, mentions of torture/death, TBA
Notes: OPEN - tag in, wildcard, or get me at shewokeup or shewokeup#4794 to plot anything.




Sanct.

[Prior wakes at the sanctuary with bare arms and a voice in his head. of course, of course it's screaming.

Somehow the heavy metal bracelets all the captives in his camp had been accessorized with had done the one thing he'd thought impossible and cut off communications with the firmament. His head had felt heavy and strange and silent the whole way through, the one bar of relief in a symphony of terror and pain.

But, as promised, she only stopped down the road and waited for him. Now she's back and and announcing herself. For a moment, the recovery room fills with the sound of beating wings. Prior throws himself out of the bed and, when his leg immediately folds under him, against a wall for support.]

No. No, I will not- [Hand thrown up in a universal 'talk to this' gesture, he grabs the back of a chair and starts using it to clatter across the room.] I have been through too much shit for this shit. Fuck off.

[Find him exiting the room in this makeshift style, skin bruised and rainbow-scarred, the hollows under his eyes deep enough to have hosted excavations. Or catch up a little later, when he's acquired a wooden cane from who knows where and is still roaming the hallways in defiance of orders of bed rest and his body's own aching demands. He will not lie back in white sheets and stare at the ceiling. He'll die there.]


City Visits.

[Later on, he even manages to bully someone into getting him clothes. Black pants, black t-shirt, uncommonly plain and stark enough to make him look like a specter haunting the hallways. He's slowly piecing together what happened, who it happened to. Even the details of his own little cluster of captives got lost amid the chaos of the rescue. And the more he finds out the more his skin roils with a fury it's getting hard to tamp back down.

But first. There are visits to be made. Rooms in the sanctuary (they held people here, he hears, he can't imagine why this is considered a place for healing anymore). Apartments in the city. He waits for news from Thesa station, not going up there himself - not yet.

Catch him in a room, or making his way between them, learning to use the cane to navigate the shitty cakewalk that counts for a sidewalk. Just don't expect him to slow down.

He'll be in Byerly's room often, pacing by the window or catching the only sleep he allows himself in the chair or bed beside him.]


Solitude.

[The problem with playing host to an angelic prophecy that has for longer than it likes been denied access to its best vessel, is that once it has hold of him again he finds his prophecies going haywire. Talk about overcompensating. The world shifts around him, possible futures playing out superimposed over the mundanities of the present.

Life goes on as normal, in ways that shouldn't be allowed when his own life and so many others have been upended and emptied out everywhere. And that's hard enough to cope with, but it's a new degree of impossible when the same shopping street erupts into blue flame one minute, and sweeps through with a flood the next, before reverting to reality: old women buying their baguettes and looking askance at the man clutching a streetlight in an effort not to be swept away to drowning death.

It happens with people, too. Asking after him. He's always hated that, and he hates it more now that the thin line between past and future keeps breaking and he can barely tell the two apart.

After snapping at more than one friend, and a stranger in the street (I was just trying to say I'm sorry for what happened. / Well I'm sorry your husband screwed your sister but I'm not trying to console you for that.) Prior seeks out places he can be alone. Parks, back offices at Shades, even dark corner tables in little cafes. Find him there, but don't expect him to approach.]

Comments

[priorly]

[Fuzzy vision or not, Prior catches that flinch, waiting mid click of his cane to see what becomes of it. Does he look that terrible? Well good, people should look bad after what they've been through. He refuses to be trussed up under starched sheets until the bruises and the torn lip's healed and the crackle in his throat's soothed itself back down, and he's wearing a face more acceptable for public consumption.

People should know. They should. They should be forced to look at faces messier than his every day until someone at least suggests how this won't be allowed to happen again.

Though. One glance back in John's direction is all Prior really needs to know that he's already seen enough. The balled up fist at his side feels like Prior's whole body: clenched and waiting for something to swing at. Prior tilts his chin up, starting along the corridor again.

Deflection. Deflection's better than attack, with this one. And anger's better than kindness.]

You're still a terrible flirt.

[Take it, please, spare him the lecture that won't work, or the strong-arming that will work until the door shuts and footsteps recede. It's all been tried. He can't bear stillness, can't bear quiet, and a hospital room counts too much for both.]

I have things to do.

[enarms]

[ he doesn't. he doesn't take it, though he might've on another day. another day, his stance might at least have changed, or his approach softened. today is not another day. today sits squarely in the aftermath of the days that came before, and one wry stab at pushing him back won't sway him now.

Prior continues on toward him and John doesn't move again. his ground is stood and his chin tilts up in a near-match of Prior's display - slow, though. waiting. come on, then. you try me, Prior Walter. you just fucking try. ]

I don't care. Those things can wait.

[priorly]

Well I don't think the bed's going anywhere, either.

[One man can't fill a hall. If the mountain won't take the hint and back off, Mohammed will just have to go around it, whether it's bracing itself to resist or not.

It's not a quick rush of an attack. Prior has time to take in the new facets of Doctor Watson's features as he approaches. The man hasn't gone for healing, himself. There are people in the city who could neaten up those rips and tears with a twitch of their fingers. Maybe, like Prior, it's that he wants a visible marker of what he's been through. Maybe less people will ask how he's holding up when they can watch the slow heal of blood clotting and crusting at the corner of his mouth. Less people will ask what happened when they can read it on his skin.

Commonalities or not, Prior hasn't much intention of stopping for a chat. People keep trying to talk and he has less words now that he used to, it's exhausting trying to find something bland enough to send them away.]

[enarms]

Prior.

[ Prior's on the move, still, and as much as John's willing to do this he'd also really rather not have to. rather Prior nodded meekly, turned around and went back to bed. it's never going to happen. they are who they are: Prior is the man who'll try to walk past him and John's the one who'll get in the way. ]

Go back to bed, please.

[ John can't gauge whether or not his tone's patronising. it's plain, straightforward, devoid of any really space for request - just a doctor, for the most part. the empty firmness of medical necessity. it's perhaps the first time he's been like this with Prior, but what else is there? he's tired. Prior must be tired, too. and he for one doesn't want to talk about it.

this isn't a field hospital, as much as it's felt like it over the last few days. he doesn't have rank here. Prior's free to do or not do as he pleases - so it's a request. a request accompanied with John moving to stand as central to the corridor as he can, ready to cut him off for as long as it doesn't become ridiculous. (for as long, maybe, as he can stand to be confronted by him.) ]

[priorly]

[Of course Prior's free to do as he pleases. There is such a thing as against medical advice and this wouldn't be the first time he's checked himself out in the name of it. Months of not being listened to by the medical profession (by the state, by the senate, months of being a second class citizen fed drugs they know don't work and denied the ones that do) has harbored a certain mistrust of the medical fraternity, despite the number of hospital workers he calls friends.

It's not much of an improvement here, with something masquerading as a hospital that shuts its doors when things outside get bloody, that plays host to people who use the very building itself to bend first do no harm until it breaks. Prior is damned if he's going back to bed, here or anywhere else, thank you.

So it may be a request, but Prior takes it like it's an insult, drawing himself up as far as a battered body will let him. His hand on the cane splays out, a small plea to just stop.]

I have spent a week being fed medicines, being injected, given leeches that burrowed under my skin and I am not - I am not going back to a little white room and letting people medicate me. Maybe it's not permanent, maybe I'll take my pills again, but I do not want to let people fuck with my head, for now, or my body, for now. I am going, and I guess if I collapse out there someone will probably call you but I am not-

[He shakes his head, a small, sharp jerk.]

I am not.

[enarms]

[ it's going alright until close to the end. John's learned most of the rough details of the events surrounding each hostage situation, and they're all terrible. he can understand this reaction from Prior - it makes sense, not to want to be at the whim of medications and otherwise for now. especially him, used to it in other ways. he can follow. he can't back down, but he can follow. he very almost softens under it, almost lets his shoulders settle in response to the drawn form of the man in front of him.

and then I guess if I collapse out there someone will probably call you and John's jaw clamps shut. ]

I'm sorry. [ for what happened, and he is, and maybe sometime in the future he'll revisit that to walk around its edges and afford Prior whatever awkward trace of sympathy he has to give - but right now it just sounds hard, and pissed off, and like it might not even be about the events Prior described at all. ] But they like me here about as much as I like them. And given that I spent hours trying to drag people who'd been brainwashed to kill me or themselves before I could touch them out of one of the wards in the back, that isn't very much. Nobody will call me. And even if they did, if you think I have the time to come running to make sure you're alright when there are beds full of people here and across the city, doing what they need to in order to recover— no.

[ and he doesn't move out the way, but he does lose some of the tension of a man ready to stop. he won't be moving into the way either. ]

I hope you do alright, Prior.

[ but if he's going to make this choice, he can deal with the Sanctuary staff. John's not going to mop up after him - not at others' expense. not when all it'll be doing is reaffirming that he'll be there to do it the next time. no. ]

[priorly]

[There's no sense in which Prior imagines what he's doing is reasonable or well thought through. What it is, is survival, because the one thing he's sure of right now - and it may be panic that's telling him this, it may be that he's been shut in one room for too long already to bear any more of it, it may be that silence and solitude are two of the most terrifying words in his lexicon just now, but no one's offering to tend to the things running wild in his head and he is sure of it - is that he's more likely to survive if he keeps running.

Fight or flight's kicked in belatedly and hard, and he's not yet worked himself up enough for fighting. It'll come, though, watch him.

But his intention there was misworded or mistaken or both, and that he does correct.] Then they won't call you. I wasn't planning to ask.

[Not for John to drag himself across the city, nor for him to check that Prior's all right when there are roomfuls of people who aren't. He hadn't let John come for him during the riots, there's no sudden expectation here.]

I'm not taking myself off the Sanctuary's hands to spare them - or you - the work, or to cause more. I am going because if I stay here I will go crazy. And I am crazy enough. So.

[Somewhere in there his voice chokes up, already rougher than it should be with the number the gas did on his throat it stutters and stalls until he forces it through, sudden tears catching on his eyelashes with the forced reminder that he's at least as scared as he is angry, but anger's an easier thing to be.]

But maybe we all are. I don't think anyone's sane if they do all right after this.

[He should say something about what John tells him about his side of the rescue. The Prior of a week ago would have been all concern. But that Prior had less clawing at him, it's all he can do just now to see beyond animal instinct. He's got a headlight stare and if he stays frozen too long he's done for. So he moves.]

Don't let me take up more of your time.

[enarms]

[ John grits his teeth. he’s going to let him go. he’s going to let him go. he’s going to let him -

not much cop, this caring lark.

- oh, for... God’s sake.

John’s hand reaches out - not far enough to touch, not quite, he doesn’t want to risk doing harm or triggering anything (learned hesitance, maybe, but better to be careful, Prior’s already shaken). it hovers in the air between Prior and his chosen route, one final blockade. he’s spoken in anger and it isn’t what he meant... is, but not quite how he said it. Prior is both a friend and somebody to whom he has a certain duty of care, regardless of medical oaths and how long dead they are. trust is hard earned and easily lost and he’s not about to abandon anyone now. not now. ]

When you get wherever you’re going, rest. Please. Find somewhere comfortable and stay there for at least an hour. Keep your fluids up. It’s overexertion that’ll get you, and if you go too far you won’t have any choice but to stay in bed. And if you do collapse - [ John’s expression is earnest, but bordering on fierce. ] Be the one to call me. When you wake up. Of course I’ll be there. Of course I will. But for God’s sake, don’t need me to be.

[ keep yourself well. if you’re going to do this, do it as safely as you can. John lets his hand drop and does his best not to notice that it’s shaking. that he’s looked too long into the face of something he hasn’t let himself work through yet and that he needs to be anywhere other than here, in this building, with these people and the same smell still fresh all around.

he stands, steady as he can manage, and waits for Prior to go. ]

[priorly]

[He's all braced for resistance, muscle as tight as it can pull and then - look at that, all hopped up with nowhere to go. Or, no somewhere he's got to be, some unreachable place that's going to keep him running until he's worn to nothing.

Keep moving. Run. There's no reason for it, just a deep unresolvable fear of being still, but he's got to go.

Better that he go in John's good graces. The man's merciful and that's a rare trait, and Prior's fond of him in several ways. He moves to walk past, click-thud-drag and stops, shoulder to shoulder. His hand reaches out blind for that curled up, trembling fist, and wraps round it as Prior leans in to press a kiss to an unshaven cheek.

Thank you. He can't do the words, but he can do that. No promises of safety or survival, nothing he can't keep. And then, stopped long enough that whatevers in him's started to twist and thrash again, he moves on.]

[enarms]

[ he's not expecting it. perhaps he should've been. the contact is a shock, jolts him slightly - sentiment in the midst of all this packs a certain impact, and John's expression crumples under strain. he keeps the breath that's bound to stutter locked in behind clamped lips and grit teeth until the click-thud-drag of Prior's laboured steps carries up again, and then releases as best he can in a steady stream.

they both leave. Prior one way, John the other. he's been a bad doctor today, but perhaps an alright friend. which one of those is worth more he'll find out in time, when Prior's either worse or in a place from which he might be willing to sit still long enough to get better.

right now, John has places to be. the inside of a supply cupboard, maybe. or Thesa.

he opts for that, and before John's gone more than ten steps, he leaves his end of the corridor empty. ]