apocalypsehowcomm | - dad to the bone - log

Who: Gil Arroyo and YOOOOU
When: September catch-all-like-thing
Where: Various
Summary: Various prompts/etc based on the TDM, and some others! (Okay there are only three right now but I will be adding more.)
Warnings: ~~None yet, will edit as necessary.~~ Okay yeah the third prompt got gory, oops. Murdery, bodies-in-a-blender-ish gory???

i. a cracked bathroom mirror is a serious issue. you need to look into it.

He knows for a fact it's not just him, and Gil isn't sure whether or not that's a good thing. It's good in that he's not losing his mind. It's bad in that this has to be leading to something, and it can't lead anywhere good. After the ghostly train crash last month prior to the circus's arrival, he's on high alert for any clue as to what could be going on. Even though he still doesn't know what he doesn't know, so it leaves him floundering a little as to where to start.

He still wishes the bullshit with the mirrors would stop.

At first it's annoying, unsettling, but innocuous. Gil avoids mirrors as best he can and gets on with his day. But then his own reflection changes. Subtly, at first, his face looking not quite right out of the corner of his eye. When he stops to look, though, all is well. Except for those couple of times his movements are out of synch.

But soon the changes get harder to ignore. His hair, a beard, the color of his eyes. When he turns to confront his reflection, it's Martin Whitly, the bastard serial killer who nearly destroyed a family he never deserved. Who's still doing it. Martin's face doesn't match up with his own expressions, instead giving Gil that infuriating little smile of his and a waggle of eyebrows.

On a very public street, without pausing to think about what he's actually seeing, Gil slams his fist into an ancient store window hard enough to crack the glass and bloody his knuckles.

ii. have you heard of Duvet? they're an amazing cover band.

Once again, Gil is dubiously glad it's not him alone hearing the creepy music. It doesn't take him long to put two and two together with the drowsiness and music itself. It also doesn't take too long for him to notice that it gets more intense around the cemeteries. He saves more than one person (maybe your person?) from walking into traffic, and grabs a tray before a half-conscious waiter dumps it on drowsy patrons.

He's not immune himself. At first he fights it with caffeine and other mild stimulants, until he realizes those are keeping him awake at night and making the tiredness worse. At one point, on a street corner, he nearly falls asleep with a cup of coffee in-hand.

He dumps it in the gutter out of spite.

He's not sure when the music starts to meld into a half-forgotten memory. That's when it really starts to get to him. The more he focuses on trying to recall whatever it is, the more he loses track of where he is. What he's doing. What kind of danger he might be walking himself into.

Help???

iii. you shouldn't murder an elevator. it's wrong on so many levels. - cw for Much Blood and Death

He's starting to build connections. Or trying to, in spite of the warnings. He needs information, and he doesn't trust the people at ADI to tell the whole truth. Including about whether or not they should associate with the uninformed. He wants the perspective of people outside of their circle.

Which is unfortunate for the people he befriends.

It starts when he goes to his slowly-becoming-usual diner, with its slowly-becoming-usual spot. The waitress he always sees isn't there. A perky little redheaded kid who isn't out of college yet, taking a semester off to help her parents transition to assisted living. The owner hasn't seen her since two days ago, which isn't like her. The cops haven't found anything, her place is intact. Her parents are desperately concerned.

When he steps outside he feels eyes on him. Or not... eyes. Just a sense of something, lingering in his wake as he walks. When he looks back, there's nothing, but he doesn't tell himself he's being stupid. With this place, who knows.

The next day, a homeless man he made a point of bringing sandwiches and coffee--not for information, just because--makes the papers for being plastered against an alley wall. It's like, the article says, he was unzipped along invisible seams and hung up on the bricks, but no one could determine why the body stayed there when there was nothing to hold it up.

Gil stays around ADI the next few days, wanting more than anything to check on the people he's met in town. Knowing with awful certainty that he's the reason they're at risk. Anyone who's met him can tell something is off.

He breaks eventually, when his phone calls to several people continue to not be answered. Goes out to see if he can find those ones, tell them to be careful, let them know he won't be coming around any more. The whole time, as soon as he steps outside, that watched feeling dogs him.

Another one of his contacts is missing. One gives him a terrified look and bolts as soon as he gets close. The third one, though--the third one. They look wary when he explains that he's not going to be in touch any more, then wide-eyed when he's mid-caution, and then the guy screams. A shadow rushes over Gil's shoulder, wrapping around the unlucky contact, reducing the man into something shapeless before spraying his corpse out against the wall of the house they were talking in front of. It looks just like the paper described it. Unzipped, and hung like a nightmare anatomy display.

Gil staggers back a few steps, gun clearing holster. He brings it to bear on the shadowy mass but doesn't pull the trigger right away. Will it even hurt this thing?

?. it's not wrong to play poker as long as it doesn't get out of hand - wildcard meeee

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He nods, a signal of both agreement and approval, before he goes to the fountain in question and rinses off his knuckles. It stings--of course it does--and makes him feel like an idiot, but he'll grant himself the concession that he's been on edge for weeks now.

Gil turns back toward the other man, shaking water off his hand without wiping it dry on his coat. Kind of pointless to rinse off the blood only to get random detritus in the cuts. "Lead the way."

Winter is already at a nearby park bench, waiting patiently, gauze and an ace bandage in either hand. The goggles are in a pocket now, so it's only the lower half of his mask.

"Sit," he says. It... looks like he's planning on wrapping that hand up, himself. You gonna let him, Gil?

Gil sits, offering his hand knuckles-up. Yeah, the guy intimidates him. He's awkward as hell and looks like he's lost most of who he is to whatever he's been made to do. But the first step in bringing someone back from a place like that is connection, and the first part of connection is some kind of trust.

"You came prepared."

"It is better to be prepared," Winter agrees blandly, and dabs at the cuts gently before pressing the gauze hard against them to staunch the fresh blood. With his other hand, he starts wrapping the ace bandage around both.

Then, quiet but with a little more tone to the words, he adds, "The m. Medical supplies are mostly for me. I do not heal as well here." And he won't let anyone else come near him with the intent to doctor. He can't. "But I have more at the apartment. So helping you is fine."

Gil inspects him curiously. "As well? Is it a magic thing?

He has no idea what's magic and what's not, around here.

He shakes his head a little, still wrapping. "There is no magic in my world." If there was, HYDRA would have taught him how to fight it, dammit. They were thorough enough about everything else. "But I am different from a person. Made for killing."

He clamps down on the instinctive response that no one is made for killing. Kid gloves. This guy is feral in a very different way than Malcolm was as a kid, but the feralness is still there.

"Who decided that?"

"The ones who made me." Seems pretty obvious, there, champ. Then, so it's not a completely circular conversation, he adds, "A group called HYDRA. Wanted to give the world the freedom it deserves. Which is probably not freedom at all. Actually."

Well, well. There's an independent thought at the end of that statement. Gil studies the bandage on his hand as Winter finishes tying it off, impressed with how tidy it is without being surprised.

"Freedom usually isn't freedom with people who talk like that." He flexes his fingers. "If they're wrong about that, they can be wrong about other things, too."

Gil nods to Winter, knuckles still stinging but at least covered up. Malcolm is going to ask him about this later, which is unfortunate, but there they are. "When you say they made you... what do you mean? How did they make you?"

And the only reason he feels remotely safe saying it out loud is he hasn't found any hint that HYDRA exists in this world. So. Nobody can possibly punish him for speaking the truth all of them probably knew all along.

He ties off the bandage, mouth a thin line, before saying shortly, "There was a Chair. Maintenance. Reset. Order only comes through pain."

Gil's expression twists into rage before he can get himself schooled, but it only lasts for a few seconds. He manages to get his expression under control. He's had practice. Too many long-ass years of practice.

"They tortured you," Gil says, his voice flatly calm.

"Maintenance," Winter restates, eyes carefully on Gil's hand and even more carefully removing is own from it now that the gauze is in place. It's not torture if you're not a person. It's just maintenance that happens to hurt a lot. It doesn't matter. "Reset. I have twenty hours of memories prior to my arrival here."

Twenty hours. Only twenty hours. The stubborn logic that Gil has always applied to the world around him bucks a little at the possibility, but slowly--very slowly--he's getting dragged back into a more youthful position of open-mindedness.

He hates it, thanks.

"So you were..." He has to gather himself a moment to keep the revulsion out of his tone. "In-between maintenance when you got snagged."

"I was on a mission," Winter explains. Then he frowns, because he wasn't on a mission at that point, exactly, was he. "I failed to complete the objective. I. Did not return to the handlers."

The handlers would have made him try to complete the objective and he didn't-- want-- that.

- dad to the bone - log - OTA -

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