Move dust through the light to find your name

[forthedog]

It's been cool but now it's warming again; the Realm had had its own cycles and so had the Island, and now he's learning this place. He knows summer when he feels it, even without the calendar on his phone, and summer is coming fast.

And somehow he feels like it's going to be a bitch of a one.

He spent the last night in a bar--an honest to God bar with AC/DC blasting from an ancient jukebox in the corner, and at least it wasn't the bar he'd found Sam in--and his opinion of it had improved slightly when some change in his pockets had bought him a couple of Pixies songs. He had taken some shots, lost track of them. Thought in a bored kind of way about seeing if the blonde a few seats down the bar with the extremely low-cut top and the extremely fake tits would take him home.

Realized how easily boredom can blend with anger. Paid his tab and wandered back to the apartment, alone, sometime around three.

Now he's got a hangover--nothing especially bad but just enough to make everything else seem slightly more shitty than usual. And he's in the park, which is probably not the best idea, but at least he's not close to the burn scar of the World Tree and whatever's growing there now. He hasn't been back since the fire. But he thinks he might be edging around it, in his mind and in space, looking for a way to return. He hasn't yet decided to his own satisfaction how much of this is simple masochism.

He's still not sure how much pain is actually necessary for healing.

On the path, no one else in sight, he whirls suddenly and slams his fist into the trunk of the closest tree. Pain daggers up his arm and makes his eyes water, but it's sharper and realer than the ache in his head and the deeper, harder ache in the center of his chest. His knuckles are bleeding in a few places and he stands there, sucking at them, not surprised to find the metal taste of it comforting. Blood. It always comes back to blood.

Neil is in his blood. Like poison. Or like a drug that, once injected, needs to keep flowing through the heart in order to keep the body alive.

Fuck.

Comments

[uncannyaim]

"Abraham could be a real dick sometimes," Andrea answers, then laughs, because even when she says that, she can't keep the fondness out of her voice. "I think I told you, the first time I met him, I had my gun on him. He took it away from me and hit me with it. He and Rick had this weird, prickly relationship at first and Rick... he saved me. So I was on Rick's side."

But he'd grown on all of them. He'd proven himself to be loyal and protective. "But he was a good man. He had my back."

[forthedog]

"A dick, but not all the time." He laughs again, a little wry, but he's more pleased than he's really showing. It's not exactly an unflattering comparison, it seems like.

And Tom would probably agree with it.

"Sounds like just about the best I could do. So thanks."

[uncannyaim]

"In terms of the people I knew? Yeah, Abraham's just about one of the best comparisons I could make," she says honestly. Sometimes it still amazes her, the people she'd ended up with. Glenn and Maggie, who were sweet and kind and somehow still so normal in the fact of everything. Abraham, Rick, men who were fighters. Willing to do anything.

But then, she'd turned into that type of person, too.

"So do you feel better?" she asks. "Than when you did when you were punching the tree?"

[forthedog]

"Yeah," he says. He lets out a breath and scrubs a hand down his face--shit is still fucked up and probably will be for the foreseeable future, but the finer edges of hysteria have faded back into the shadows.

"Feel almost human again." He pauses. "Thanks for that, too."

[uncannyaim]

"Yeah, my soothing presence is like balm for the soul," Andrea says with a completely straight face, then laughs, unable to hold it for long. It's exactly the type of thing she would have said to Dale, once upon a time, exactly the sort of thing that would have made him laugh.

"And how's your hand? I'm less good with hands," she adds.

[forthedog]

He glances down at it again, grimaces. It had felt profoundly dumb immediately after he'd done it and it's not improving with time, though at least it's unlikely that he'll have to explain it to anyone. One more perk this place has over the Island.

Fewer people to give a shit.

"It'll heal," he says, and shoots her a tight smile. "I've had way fucking worse."

[uncannyaim]

"I'm not sure if I could be relieved or concerned," she says dryly, but she knows what he means. And if it's not broken, then it will heal on its own, so she leaves it alone, figuring Mike will know best if he needs a doctor to look at it.

"At least there's a hospital here if it gets infected," she adds. "I know I wasn't on the island long, but I have no idea what they'd do there for a major infection."

[forthedog]

"They never could do much for anything major," he says, gritting his teeth slightly as memory floods him again. It does that sometimes--manageable background baseline and then spikes of it intense enough to almost make him dizzy. Like PTSD, he thinks, and almost laughs.

"I spent enough time in that fucking clinic. I know."

[uncannyaim]

"It's weird," she says thoughtfully. "I wasn't there long, I guess, but it's still strange to meet someone who was there before I was." Not just there, but there and gone. For the most part, she doesn't know what to make of it, how time doesn't seem to matter in quite the same way.

It makes her wonder if Dale couldn't come forward, come to her. Or if she even wants that anymore. It's confusing, not as comforting a thought as she thought it would be.

[forthedog]

"I don't even feel like it was me, a lot of the time," he says, looking away again. It still sounds crazy saying it like that. Is crazy. It doesn't make it feel any less true.

"Feels like it just all... happened to someone else. Far as I know I'm the only one like us really feels that way."

[uncannyaim]

Andrea nods, not because she understands what that must be like, but because with all the things that have happened to her recently, she isn't beyond believing anything he might tell her now. Especially about a transition like that. The island made so little sense to her while she was there and she isn't going to bother trying to figure it all out.

"But you remember it?" she asks. "Even if it doesn't feel like it happened to you?"

[forthedog]

"I remember some things." Ordinarily this would be edging into territory that he wouldn't be willing to touch with someone else, or would at least have rankled under and done some snarling. But Andrea's already an exception to a couple of rules. One more doesn't feel strange.

"More's coming. Lot of it's still kinda hazy."

[uncannyaim]

"That has to be weird," she says, shaking her head. All her memories of the island are clear and although they can be hard at times -- she misses people, even though she'd only known them for a few months -- she's still glad they're all there, all in tact. Having some of them missing or having them come back piece by piece has to be unsettling.

"Even the bad stuff... I want to remember it, you know?" she asks. "Which is probably one of the least sensitive things I could have said."

[forthedog]

"Fuck sensitive," he grunts, scuffing a boot on the path. He's never been good at it, never even really preferred it. Hard truths still seem better than lies.

Unless you can ignore that the lies are there at all.

"Anyway, doesn't feel like I got a lotta choice. Maybe that's easier."

[uncannyaim]

"No sense in fighting it one way or the other," she agrees, thinking there's a lot of wasted energy in the world. If the memories are going to come back, then they're going to come back, no matter what Mike does or doesn't do. As far as she knows, though she's hardly a doctor, there isn't much that helps any sort of amnesia.

Although it's not quite the same thing.

"I guess I just mean... if there are things you can't remember, then you can't, right?" she asks. "That doesn't have to change the here and now."

[forthedog]

"Guess not." Except that doesn't feel right or true, not for him. Maybe for other people it is, but he's always been terrible at this. Terrible at pretending. Even just to himself.

"Unless part of you does remember. And it drives you fucking crazy trying to get you to pay attention. Look at what you don't wanna see. That's why I was..." He trails off, spins a finger next to his temple and shoots Andrea a significant look. "Why I am. It's better, not fighting it. It still isn't good."