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taxonomites2011-08-08 04:34 am
smecker.livejournal.com) wrote in taxonomites2011-08-08 04:34 am
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[Visual] [Location- Random Warehouse]
The tablet briefly displays a skewed glimpse of what looks like a makeshift science lab inside a large empty warehouse-- the emphasis on makeshift. A few library books stacked on surfaces, spines bearing titles like Chemistry for Students and Practical Science. There's bits of pipe, a sink, projects scattered in phases of half-completed.
Paul Smecker rights the tablet, and takes a breath. In one hand he has a pair of safety goggles, which he sets down on the counter with a level of care that is a marked contrast from the last time he made a broadcast.
"Hey, Taxon," he says after several awkward seconds. "I don't know how many people got a chance to know her, but Alexis Castle's gone."
He pauses, opens his mouth as if to say something else, then just shakes his head and presses the button to end the call.
Paul stands there a moment in the silence of the warehouse, then sets a plastic bag full of supplies down on the counter. No need for them now. Class for Alexis has been canceled, permanently.
Paul Smecker rights the tablet, and takes a breath. In one hand he has a pair of safety goggles, which he sets down on the counter with a level of care that is a marked contrast from the last time he made a broadcast.
"Hey, Taxon," he says after several awkward seconds. "I don't know how many people got a chance to know her, but Alexis Castle's gone."
He pauses, opens his mouth as if to say something else, then just shakes his head and presses the button to end the call.
Paul stands there a moment in the silence of the warehouse, then sets a plastic bag full of supplies down on the counter. No need for them now. Class for Alexis has been canceled, permanently.
[location- a city park]
He looks up when Wyatt approaches, shades his eyes with one hand against the glare of the sun and squints at the other man.
"Hi, cowboy," Paul says tonelessly. His eyes flick to the coffee cups; he snorts.
"Did you booze up mine?"
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Wyatt shrugs, taking a seat beside the other man - close enough that their knees touch - and hands him his coffee drink. Now that he's here, he isn't sure what to say, if anything at all.
"Wasn't sure you'd want it. Brought a flask instead." This is punctuated by a soft pat to his breast pocket.
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He leans back against the bench when Wyatt sits down next to him, takes the coffee in one hand and has another drag on his cigarette with the other. Paul leans his head back and breathes out the smoke at the bright summer-blue sky overhead, deciding not to ask for the flask just yet.
"How's your day going?"
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It somehow doesn't seem adequate. Doesn't feel right to talk about her like this - behind her back, without her knowledge, when she's not here anymore. And, perhaps even more to the point, he isn't sure what he can say to take the edge off what seems to him like a pretty shitty day. Well, there's one thing, but Gods know how much actual good it'll do.
He might as well give it a shot, hope for the best. "Talked to Fitz last week. Seems 'going home' isn't a euphemism after all... This is his second tour of the place, says he went home in the interim--"
And this is the bit he doesn't at all know how to process. "And he didn't remember one thing about Taxon while he wasn't here."
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"Evidence for the going home scenario, then," Paul says with a shrug. "I'm not surprised about the memory wipe though. They have the power to change us however they want-- cleaning this place from our memories is probably a chump change parlor trick."
He sighs, stretches out his legs, leans back on the bench to stare at the hot sky overhead.
"Whatthefuckever."
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And if/when you get to go home, you don't get to remember it. All the shit, and you don't even get to keep your memories.
Paul goes home, who knows if he'll even survive. Cain saw his bloodied shirt when he first arrived here, and that amount of blood you don't get from 'just a flesh wound'.
He goes home...and he won't even get to keep the memories.
Wyatt takes a deep breath, looks over, and pushes the dark thoughts away. Paul's got enough on his mind to have to deal with more crap.
"Anything I can do to make you feel better?"
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"Shoot me and put me out of my misery? Or take me somewhere secluded and re-enact scenes from my favorite porno? ....Jesus. No, I'm fine. Just... processing." He stares down at the coffee in his hands-- it's really too hot to be drinking it, but Wyatt brought it. He takes a sip.
Any of them can go, anytime. There's people here he doesn't give a shit about; there's others like Alexis where he's just as glad they're no longer here, for their sake, but all the same...
And there's a few he gives a serious fuck about. Like the man sitting next to him on the bench.
Paul tosses his cigarette to the pavement and grinds it under his toe like an offensive insect. His now-free hand drifts over to Wyatt's, brushes the other man's fingers in passing before settling on the bench.
"Thanks for the coffee."
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He presses air out of his nose, spreading his fingers to cover Paul's on the bench. He agreed not to advertise, but also not to hide - and to his mind, he can't find one single thing offensive about one hand touching another.
"If one day I'm no longer here..." Oh, what the fringe. He lets go of Paul's hand, sliding two long fingers into his breast pocket, coming out with a teeny tiny little thing. A trinket, really, but he holds it out for Paul to see as if it's not just a painted clay horse with what seems to be a bullet crammed right into it.
"I want you to have this. It's not a Hell of a lot, but..." He shrugs. "Call it a lucky charm."
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Yeah. It's too close to what he was thinking on himself, nothing here is permanent. He closes his eyes-- only to open them again when Wyatt says I want you to have this.
(The last time someone he had been genuinely interested in in that sense had given him something, it had been a gun. Well. Unless he counts the brothers, who gave him nothing but headache and heartache and moral catastrophe.)
But the small thing in Wyatt's hand is neither of these, and he stares at it blankly for a moment before picking it up, the forensics mind in him unable to resist looking at it.
"What is that, a .38?" he asks, brows knit. Yes, he's more focused on the bullet right this second than the horse. Blame a lifetime of being trained to focus on bullets.
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"It saved my life. And then I fell backwards out of a window and plummeted into an ice covered lake."
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Have a suspicious look, Wyatt Cain.
"What the hell's in the middle, Kevlar?" A brow arch, and then the rest of the word register. Paul opens his mouth to say something about Wyatt Cain's fucked-up world, changes his mind, and just shakes his head.
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"So you're made of Kevlar, is that it? Jesus Christ." He shakes his head and hands the toy horse back to Wyatt for safe-keeping. "Why the hell did you have a pottery pony on you, anyway."
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It's the closest thing he's got to something substantial, something that well and truly matters where material belongings are concerned. It's hardly worth a fractured sliver of platinum, but it's the most precious thing he's got.
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"I'll take care of it," is all he says, and puts it carefully into a pocket.
Paul picks up his coffee again, stares out at the park.
"...the ice cold lake thing sounds good right now. Not so much the plummeting, but.... it's hot enough I'd be willing to get back into the water."
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"I'm...not good with lakes. Thought I was, but turns out I really don't like them," he says, making a slight face at the memory of having to walk across the drawbridge to the Northern Island.
"But there's always the Sanctuary pool..."
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He studies his shoes for a bit. They're scuffed. He doesn't remember when they got scuffed. Goddamit, there was a time he'd have had these fuckers polished after getting a little stray fingerprint dust on them. Did they get scuffed during the zombies? No-- no, that pair had gotten wrecked, he remembers now. He'd replaced them entirely by means of employing the good ol' five-fingered discount.
And now the aliens have started paying him.
They give you the toys, they give you the hatches, they give you the tablets. They let you march through the motions of having jobs, and they think it makes up for things like Alexis, like vampires biting you, like dying.
There's a trash can next to the bench; Paul tosses the rest of his coffee into it and stands.
"Sanctuary pool, check. Sounds good to me. Let's mosey, cowboy... I have to stop and steal me some new shoes along the way."
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Even if lately, even hatched coffee seems to be tasting better.
Falling into step beside his friend, he turns to him with an unreadable look on his face.
"When you say shoes, I hope you mean proper ones." As in 'not heels'.
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Back in his normal octaval range, he says, "No, regular shoes. Replace these. I... should probably get some work boots, really, with what we've been doing on the birdhouse."
At least he knows Wyatt won't make a Village People reference.
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"Nothing wrong. It's just, if you want us to get nothing done...
"Work boots is a safer bet, but not by much."
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He may be humming YMCA as they walk towards a tram line to take them to the Sanctuary. The sun's hot-- but hell with it; he's not giving up. And it's good to know you're not alone.