Voices from Heaven (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thespaceopera) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
driftfleet2015-10-20 10:06 am
thespaceopera) wrote in driftfleet2015-10-20 10:06 am
Entry tags:
Sweet dreams are made of these...
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The Romans used to kill flamingos just to eat their tongues. And your tongue is very feisty.
[Birds again. What on earth could that mean. Maybe she sees you.]
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It's a good thing I'm not a flamingo, then. Who are the Romans? [a beat, he looks down again.] Or what. A Roman, maybe. Your ear looks lovely, by the way.
[boy, he is not from Earth. and boy, does he not bother separating those two things with a logical pause or any change in tone. he starts to walk over the other evidence bags, towards Abigail, as he'd very much like to put some of these things down on the counter next to her.]
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The Romans, [she drawls, her speech slurred, her eyes shining,] were an ancient civilization that lasted in one way or another for two thousand years. They conquered, like, most of Europe. That's a continent. And a bunch of Asia. But then they fucked up because nobody can have that kind of power--
[And as soon as he gets close enough to reach the counter, she hops off and into his arms whether he likes it or not, knocking all of his carefully-balanced parcels to the floor in one fell swoop. If he catches her, she'll giggle again; if not, she'll land on both feet but stay leaning against him, swaying slightly.]
--without abusing it.
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a second of surprise later, he remembers the rest. he steps pointedly on the rolling crucible, putting the breaks on its concentric journey around his leg.
what a frustrating girl. he's disgustingly charmed.]
You're a brat.
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A bratwurst is a sausage. [Her tone is lofty.] I am not a sausage. I am poultry, or veal, but not a sausage. I was elevated, see? Better than pigs. Closer to God, or the devil. See?
[She wraps her arms around his neck and hugs him tight, wriggling gleefully. Then, as an afterthought, since he has been sweet and kind to her in his own way and thus opened a door that wasn't supposed to be unlockable in the first place, she leans up and stage-whispers:]
My ear is in the crucible.
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so he doesn't actually mind all that much. besides, 'I am not a sausage' is one of the silliest things he's ever heard announced by a human being.
oh, but then the twist, the reveal, the mystery is solved. he... looks back down at the jar under his foot, and then he looks up at the rest of the room, and then he looks back up at as much of Abigail's face as he can manage, what with her being very close to his face and all.
and he stage-whispers back:] That's kind of a weird place to keep your ear.
[not that he can think of many better places to keep one, but... he looks back down.]
Should I go get it?
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No no no. It's not important. I don't need it anymore.
[Which appears to be true: at some murky point in the last few minutes, she has lost an ear - returned to the physical state she appeared in on her first day. She doesn't seem even slightly bothered by this.]
Besides, it's evidence. Just like the tea. For people who have to solve the mystery, solve the crime. It's a whodunnit. Except I already know whodunnit and he's de-a-ad.
[Sing-song! And then she leans in close and boops Robin's nose with her nose. Boop!]
I really like you, though. So I can solve all the mysteries for you.
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it takes the span of a slow blink to move past it, acknowledge any of the other things that are probably much more important. his eyes stay a little wide, though. he doesn't remember the last time someone booped him on the nose.]
... On a scale of one to ten, how much do you think I'll need my arms?
[seeing as he only has one available, at the moment. the other is committed to holding up Abigail, which he's already assumed is going to just be his lot in life for the next however-many hours.]
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[She rolls her eyes ceilingward, thinking thinking thinking . . . not seeming to notice his confusion . . . thinking. Eventually:]
Not much. Because it's my head and I know where everything is in it now? Most things. The important ones. Not the ones that are like - why do I like the things I like? What am I going to be when I get old? What's the prettiest hair color? But the big things, I can unlock those. So I'll be your arms and your eyes.
[A beat. And again: boop!]
And your ear.
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he tips his head forward while he tries to not crack up at the tiny throwaway joke regarding her missing an ear, but there's still a bright little smile on his face when he looks back up.]
I'll tell you a secret. I hate these rooms anyway. If we already know the ending, I'd much rather it be a guided tour.
[his weight shifts, he lifts his foot, he boots that little crucible politely away from the both of them.]
I'll have a name for you by the end of it. I'm afraid Coil already got the Shrike, the creepy little bastard...
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Coil? I don't know Coil. Or if I know him I don't know I know him. But it's okay - the Shrike was my dad, and I'm not him, so I'll be something else.
What kind of thing do you want first? A good thing or a bad thing? Or some tea?
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[he's all right letting her do all the snuggling, but... in light of the moment, and since he doesn't have a crucible to pick up anymore, he decides it won't kill him to wrap his other arm around her shoulders and give her a little squeeze. because she has also been sweet and kind to him, and now they're about to go on a little adventure, and he's actually kind of looking forward to it.]
I'll pick... A bad thing, first. Maybe some tea after, if I'm all traumatized.
[or maybe not, if he loses the stomach for it. either way, he would rather see something nice after something terrible, rather than let a good thing get ruined by the following tragedy.]
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[She nods, feeling secure in his arms. More so than she would be if she were sober, but not that much more, because she thinks if he was going to hurt her he'd have done it already. For a moment she just thinks, bites the inside of her cheek, hm hm hm, and then nods decisively.]
Is it okay if we start from the beginning? And . . . is it okay if they're--
[Her happy smile shifts quickly to a sharp frown; she looks down, focus on the neckline of Robin's shirt.]
They're mostly bad things . . . maybe I can come up with better ones for you. Go stand by the antlers?
[They have to start there.]
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his own smile eases away with his steps. he doesn't want to get cocky.]
It's okay if they're mostly bad things. That would be-- [a huff, in the shape of a short laugh.] --Familiar, at the very least.
[and he prefers the beginning, honestly. it may not be as pressing as the things at the front of the room, and it's certainly not as eye-catching as the corpse... but bad memories are nothing but fleeting nightmares, if they're never given context to build on.
and here they are. he gets up pretty close.] Like this?
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[She leans on him a little bit more as they cross the room to the rack of antlers. It's nice. He's nice. Sharp-edged and dangerous, but nice, and she thinks he could probably hurt her if he wanted to, but it doesn't seem like he wants to. So it's okay to let him hold her. To be a little tired.]
[Last time she was in this room like this, she was dying. Again. So much dying, it's so silly. She's not going to die anymore. That's part of what makes her so confident, is that she knows that she just won't do it.]
[They're close now, so she reaches up, lets her fingers hover half an inch from the nearest tine before pausing and looking at Robin as if she's just remembered she's forgotten something.]
Oh. Before we start, you should know - Abigail. It means "father's joy".
[And then she taps the tip of the tine like a princess pricking her finger on a spindle, and the room melts away around them, all Dali-clocks-in-the-desert fluidity, walls sliding down to nothing like molassese or clotted blood. What's revealed in the absence of the sterile kitchen is an autumn forest, beautiful in orange and red, and a girl - Abigail, naturally - with a rifle over her shoulder. Next to her - hovering just behind her, really - is the same balding man from the room, only he looks much more alive now, quietly pleased with her progress.]
[He says something to her that can't be heard, and she cocks the rifle and shoots, just one shot. An animal falls; turn and you'll see it's a deer, a doe, young and healthy and looking very surprised to be bleeding out.]
[The woods are crowded in on all sides, then, by racks of antlers, and when the clattering commotion of their approach clears, they've been confined by a dark log cabin, a hunting lodge. Here is the same girl and her father, as well as the same doe, dead now and laid out on the table. The girl has a knife in her hand, and she's scared. She doesn't want to cut open the doe's belly and let her guts spill out. But her father takes her face in his broad hands and hushes her:]
Use every part of the animal. Otherwise it's just murder.
[So she steels herself and turns and slits the doe's belly bottom to top, and once she's reached the top of her slice, the doe's head falls back and she isn't a doe anymore, she's a girl with dark hair and pale skin and blue eyes . . .]
[Blood washes over the scene in a rush, although it never touches the onlookers; when it slops away like the ebbing tide, it reveals a train. The girl is sitting across from her father. He looks eager; she looks nervous. When he spots his prey, he gives her a look. It's clear they've done this before. Reluctantly, with horror in her eyes, she stands and slips past him - but once she gets into the aisle she's all sunny shy smiles, a girl who's not used to traveling alone but determined to make friends all the same.]
[She walks down the aisle like she doesn't have a target in mind, and when she sees the other girl, the one who looks like her, with dark hair and pale skin and blue eyes, she leans in slightly and asks:]
Is this seat taken?
[. . . And the scene fades, leaving the two of them alone in the kitchen again, save for the three speechless father-phantoms. Abigail lowers her hand from the rack of antlers and sighs.]
Gross.
no subject
Robin has met and talked to and even peeked into the minds of many, many murderers over the course of his life. catching serial killers was practically a part-time job of his, back home. so this is disturbing, but not particularly surprising.
what surprises him is that the victims both have dark hair and blue eyes. others, he assumes, would have followed the same pattern. Abigail, the girl in his arms right now, grew up in the roles of both an accomplice and a target for her father's mania.
she may not have fully realized it, at the time, but she obviously knows it now.
so when the scene finally fades, he doesn't look angry or worried... but he is frowning, looking contemplatively out at the three figures.]
... Isolating.
[she must have been so pitied, so feared, so alienated by both. he knows humans; his own human instinct is to apologize and to distrust, even though he knows she's become a different creature since then.]
What's the locket for?
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It's a picture? Of me and . . .
[Leaning over his shoulder, she points at the man with dark hair - Will, although Robin won't know it yet.]
Him. He killed my dad. There's a memory in it, too, and that's of Will, but, um. Also not. You're supposed to need keys to open it - all those little vials - but.
[She smiles brightly.]
I'm your tour guide! So if you want me to open it, I can.
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he doesn't linger, though. he looks at the man, glancing briefly at the back of the head of one of the figures in the room--trying to see if they're the same, as much as he can.]
Ah, that's... [he looks at the locket again, and then finally up at Abigail's smiling face. he's still holding her just as he has been.] I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious, but I think I should give you something in return.
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[Abigail gives Robin a chastising look, leaning in to boop his nose in a disciplinary way.]
That's not how friends work, you know. I learned about this. Friends do things for each other just because, and don't need anything in return.
If you want to give me something, then I want to have it. But you don't have to.
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[and what else is there to say to that? he's surprised, having this explained to him. and then having to think about it--because it makes sense, he's heard people say that, but he sure doesn't follow it or believe it himself. he's a very selfish creature, there's almost nothing he does that doesn't get him something in return.
then again, he also doesn't have many friends.
so he thinks about it for a moment, trying to decide if he's all right with all of that--and admittedly reeling with the thought of her doing all of this for him but turning down an equivalent exchange...]
... Okay, I've changed my mind. I want to ask you a question.
[he lifts his hand... so he can boop her on the nose with his finger. smiling.]
But I'm going to wait, I might find my answer if we keep going.
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[She wrinkles her nose when he boops it. Boop!]
Just make sure you remember it, in case I don't give you the answer. And--
[Lifting up the locket that hangs around his neck, she waggles it in his face.]
Open or shut?
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Open, open. Absolutely.
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[And she begins trying to pry it open. Which turns out to be a lot harder than expected. She tries to open it with her fingernails in the groove first, which culminates in her needing to suck on her thumb to soothe the soreness of her nail away. Then she tries to bite it open, which does nothing. Then she whacks Robin on the shoulder with it, mostly because she's just frustrated.]
[In the end, she hits on the possibility of wedging the seam of the locket against the tine of the rack of antlers above them. It pops open in a second, and she frowns at it like it's an incorrigible child before pulling it back towards them, holding it open so Robin can see what's on the inside.]
[As it turns out, it's a picture of a girl who looks a lot like Abigail, but not exactly the same. Abigail's in the picture, too, but her smile isn't as wide and her eyes aren't as sharp, and in the picture she's got both ears and a scarless neck.]
[The memory that follows comes upon them like waves lapping softly on a tropical beach; there's none of the inherent violence of the first set, just two girls on a brisk autumn day, wrapped in coats and scarves, talking in the leaves. One is nervous, one is confident but wary. No points for guessing which is which.]
"Did you talk to the news?"
"No. No! My mom doesn’t want me talking to you, much less the news."
"Since when do you listen to her?"
"Well, clearly I don’t. I’m talking to you right now. Everybody thinks you did it, you know?"
"So you think I did it?"
"I don’t think you’re the type. Then again, I didn’t think your father was the murder-suicide type. Although I guess the hunting could have been a clue."
"Mine or his?"
"Both, now that you mention it. . . . I don’t think you did it."
[And the memory fades, leaving Abigail with her head nestled lightly against Robin's shoulder.]
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[which absolutely makes sense. about as much sense as the locket being tricky and stubborn. he'd thought that by "I can open it", she meant "it opens by my command" and not "I can probably wedge it open if I chew on it for long enough."
but when it finally opens, he gets a soft memory and not the churning madness from before. he watches the both of them talk with the same sort of patient attention, but it doesn't take nearly as much thought to process.
so he's less absorbed in it when he comes back this time. it's calmer for everyone.]
That was nice... [a comment, but not commentary.] A friend?