apocalypsehowcomm | Over the hills and far away LOG [OPEN + Closed prompts]

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Over the hills and far away LOG [OPEN + Closed prompts]

Who: George Milton + various
When: July
Where: Various locations in Gloucester, on the train, in and around ADI
Summary: TDM Prompts + July catch-all
Warnings: scopophobia; paranoia; unnatural animals, thalassophobia; mild scopophobia, bodily harm, stalking, bullying, altered perception, alcohol abuse, discussion of mercy killing/murder, mob "justice," gun violence

Train Home

George can be found in various parts of the train throughout the ride home, the dining car, the passenger area, the scenic window look-out, or the sleeping cubbies when it's dark and late. Pick a place if you want to talk to him about the events in Wolf's Pen or anything else. He's quiet and a little subdued but approachable and willing to talk.

Birdswatching

Maybe it's because he has spent so much of his time outside in his life, or maybe it's because he has always been extra wary of eyes on him, but it doesn't take George long at all to notice something is very off about the birds in the trees and in stealthier spots beneath bushes on the ground watching.

He pulls the brim of his LA Dodgers ballcap lower to conceal as much of his face as possible when he faces you and says, "This is a new one. What do you make of it? Think we ought to cut patrol short?"

If they're just watching, that's one thing. There's no guarantee they'll keep it to that. In his thin, short sleeved t-shirt and jeans, he doesn't feel nearly protected enough from sharp beaks or swarming talons. Not all of those birds are small or harmless, if they got it in their heads to get punchy.

Current Events

Riptide

((OOC: Please note, I'm doing 2 of these. 1 rescuing someone else, 1 being rescued. After that, George would be getting out of the water and not getting back in. First come first serve.))

1. Rescue

George has been enjoying himself in the water, a good swimmer even if being in the surf is new to him. He's swimming slow laps out beyond the breaker line when he notices you shoot past him, and whether you realize you're in trouble or not, he realizes it. "Hey!" he shouts, changing his trajectory almost immediately.

"Hang on! I'm coming for you!" He picks up speed to cut through the water to catch up.

"Relax if you can. If you fight me, we's both gonna drown."

2. Help!

Well, he'd only just managed to get someone else to safety. Whether the current shifted or he somehow managed to get further to his left than he intended, he feels himself very suddenly in a strong pull and sweep. Instinctively, he goes to his back, face out of the water and as little of him under as he can manage. It's still very fast, very far, and he's feeling both nervous and a little queasy when he looks back toward shore.

That's a long way to swim when a body is already tired out. He's looking for anything he can grab onto, and if not, trying to scull sideways to get out of the worst of it.

Poseidon Quivers

George is no artist. He'll be the first person to say it, but building sand castles isn't half bad. He's enjoying himself except for his legs going to sleep under him. He has just finished a rounded turret with a bucket when he's standing up and trying to walk it off. "Damnedest thing," he mutters.

He's wearing a LA Dodgers baseball cap, a plain pair of red swimming trunks that hit mid-thigh, and a cheap pair of sunglasses. His unfortunate permanent farmer's tan and very white legs are on full display, the latter covered with sand.

We Feast upon the Flesh

"You little bastard!" George is swatting his ballcap unsuccessfully at a seagull that just lunged in and stole his entire hotdog out of its bun. "Did you see that? Unbelievable!"

OR

George is sitting on a lounge chair hunched over a plate of food protectively and watching out for any sign of bird movement with paranoid eyes. He's eating in quick, decisive bites. If you draw close, he says, "Better watch your food. Those damned birds are out for blood today."

Spot the Difference

((OOC: Just one thread for the actual artifact, please, since it doesn't make sense to me he'd continually handle something that hurt him. I'll take repeat threads for the other injuries appearing later. First come first serve for the knife part.))

Wearing a pair of thick leather work gloves, George has picked a box and begun carefully looking at, taking pictures of, and cataloging the items inside. He's not keen to discover any weirdness. It's part of the job, and after the events in Wolf's Pen, he's both more resigned to this aspect of it and a little more confident in his ability to handle things.

He has a knife in gloved hand he's turning over to look for odd markings on the blade or handle. A strange sensation stabs through him. He glances down to see a spreading red stain on his white t-shirt on his right side over his ribs. "What the Hell?"

Setting the knife aside, he untucks the shirt and begins rolling it up carefully. There's a five inch gash across his ribs, not quite deep enough to need stitches. "You got a better angle on it. How bad is it?"

OR

It's lunch at the cafeteria. George is digging into a sandwich and some chips when a long wound opens across the back of his left hand. He drops the sandwich and grabs his hand, grimacing in sudden pain. "Aww, Hell, not again. Don't suppose you could grab me a handful a' some of them napkins, could you?"

He's bleeding onto the tray and table despite efforts to stop it with one hand clamped hard to the back of the other.

OR

It's another morning heading out for patrol around the perimeter of the dog park. George seems cheerful enough if a little subdued, his left hand bandaged and his ballcap set a bit low. He doesn't like the idea of the birds able to read his expression easily. He's setting a rapid clip until he suddenly stumbles and grimaces.

"You gotta be kiddin' me," he grumbles. "Hold up. I need to check something." He hobbles to take a seat in the grass off the sidewalk and moves to pull off his left work boot.

Studying

George can be caught in various places around ADI with a study book from the DMV. He doesn't try to hide it if he's caught with it but will need to be approached or spoken to if someone wants him breaking away from his work to engage.

SOL/Handwave Prompts

((OOC: Feel free to pick anything from this list as a log prompt if you want something lighter or fill it out if we've threaded at least once before.))

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"I think it could be seen that way maybe." His brow furrows. He's staring at a spot on the floor just beneath his seat. "I don't know."

He tugs at the denim of his jeans just beneath his knee. "We had...all kinds a' problems all the time. Over the past year or so, he'd gotten worse. Doin' things with women that scared 'em. You gotta understand, he didn't have a mean bone in his body. He always wanted soft things in his hands, you know? He kilt animals sometimes, pettin' 'em too hard.

"He got a mob after both of us before Soledad, grabbing and ripping a woman's dress. We hid all day in a drainage ditch up to our chins while they hunted us with horses and dogs. I.. Nick, I tried so hard to keep him in line. Always telling him not to do stuff like that."

He sighs. "He never remembered much. Jes' some shit I told him to keep him entertained on the road about this stake we'd get one day. I never thought he'd kill nobody. I don't know what I'd have done if I thought that. There was nowhere to put him that wouldn't be cruel. I thought if we could get that stake, I could keep him there. He'd probably have killed the damn rabbits petting them too hard, but at least... He'd have been safe. Everybody else would've, too."

Nick nods again when he stresses that his friend wasn't mean or violent. "I understand." It's too easy to picture someone very strong, but unaware of how to control that strength, or how it might hurt on accident.

"Sounds like it was difficult, taking care of him all by yourself," he says gently.
The 1930s was not well known for its enlightened views on the differently abled, nor for pleasant conditions in the "official" channels to deal with them. "It's incredibly hard to look out for someone like that, even if they're not different. And you didn't even have means or resources of your own. To protect him like you did... I see that as an act of incredible kindness and sacrifice."

Now he sounds like Donna, and it just catches in his throat. He blinks quickly a few times, wishing it was daylight so that when he glanced at the window, he didn't see his own pained and pinched expression staring back at him. He swallows thickly before he can continue.

"It was hard, and I was... When we first started, I was jes' a dumb, mean kid. Sixteen. Lennie was a year younger. I was always pickin' at him, getting him to do stupid things so me and my friends could laugh. 'Til one day I told him to jump in the river, and that dumb bastard done it. Almost drowned. I pulled him out, and he jes' hung onto me thanking me for saving him, when I was the one what almost got him killed in the first place."

He pinches hard at the bridge of his nose, clearing anything trying to fall. "I never done nothin' like that again. But I wasn't... I wasn't soft. I gave him lickin's when nothing else got through his head about things, and I was always giving him Hell. That's what he called it."

He presses his mouth to a thin line. "I think the only reason his aunt asked me is 'cause she knew there weren't no one else. Not 'cause I was good or decent, or 'cause I'd know what to do with him. There jes' wasn't nobody. I was always asking myself if that was a good enough reason. If I didn't do more harm than good. For Chrissake, he killed a woman. And I should'a seen it coming after that last ranch. Should'a watched him closer."

It's hard not to interject, to keep offering the thoughts as they come to mind. But Nick gets the feeling George isn't looking for advice or platitudes. These are things he needs to say out loud, express in his own words instead of having them forced out of him by some supernatural nonsense.

So Nick stays quiet and lets George talk. He's quiet until there's a pause. Then he takes a (simulated) breath and lets it out in a (simulated) low sigh.

"It wasn't your fault, George. I know it's hard to believe, when it comes to a complicated situation like that, and it feels so personal, but... none of it was your fault."

"It sure feels like it was. Ain't a day goes by I don't think about it. Try to figure out what I could'a done different. So many things I could'a done different." Things erased forever by the pull of a trigger.

"Every time I drink a soda or eat my beans with ketchup, I think about him. How we never had enough a' what he liked. How...I wasn't enough." He shakes his head and leans it back against the seat.

"If you'd a' knowed him, I don't think it'd be so easy to forgive me. Anyway, I wanted you to have the choice. Know what kind a' person you's pallin' around with. Saying is a right stand up guy. 'Cause I ain't." And allowing people to say those things feels dishonest when they don't have context. "I'm a hard sumbitch. I always have been. Don't know how to be no other way."

"I know it does," Nick says gently. "It always does. Probably always will, on some level. That's how it is, with... with things like that."

He's quiet for another moment as George gets down on himself. Says he's hard and doesn't know how to be any other way, even when the facts seem to indicate the very opposite, to Nick. But that's how it is.

"Listen, George..." He laces his fingers together. "I won't tell you I really, fully understand. I can't. We're from different places, different times... but I do know what it's like to live on the edge like that. In a place where there's no safety and no guarantees, nothin' but what you can make for yourself. I know what it's like to be desperate, and what it's like to just plain survive." It's not so different from the wasteland, where the difference between living and dying for most folks comes down to whether or not they can protect themselves and what little they have.

"Hard and soft, right and wrong, good and bad, black and white-- anybody who thinks the world's that simple hasn't really had to live in it." He glances at George with a quietly grim smile. "It's not up to me to forgive you. It's not up to me to judge you. But even if it was, you wanna know how I see it?"

Nick has told him enough here and there of his world that he doesn't have a hard time believing any of it. Even the way he looks when ADI isn't disguising him speaks of a hard existence, weathering all kinds of difficulty. Enduring. It's his turn to listen without interrupting beyond a short, quick sniff or two. His eyes sting. It might be the first time he's felt really seen since he got here, and even though part of him is relieved, part of him hurts for it. Feels like he doesn't deserve it.

"Yeah," he says, voice quiet. "Yeah, I do." What Nick thinks matters to him.

"It's not fair, what happened to you both. And I'm sorry for that woman, too. But what those men wanted to do to your friend wasn't justice. And what you did wasn't murder," says Nick gently.

"All that time, you could have left him to fate, left him to a cold world that'd grind him up without a care. But you didn't. You took on that stress, that worry. Even when your back was against the wall, you chose to spare him that pain and cruelty. You took that hurt on so he wouldn't have to feel it. Even now, it's eating you up, and Lennie didn't have to know a bit of it. Wounding yourself so deep to spare a friend... to me, that's the definition of mercy."

He hesitates a moment, then decisively reaches out and sets a hand on George's shoulder. It feels warm and human enough that he can't tell the difference, probably.

"I know what I say and think can't change how you feel, and can't stop you from wondering what-if. But I don't think you're hard, George. And I don't think there's nothing else to you, either. I'm real sorry that happened to you."

Donna had said it, too, the same words. It's not fair. It hits harder sober, and he wishes he was still holed up somewhere in a dark closet where nobody could see how messy it is when everything spills out. His face screws up as he turns it to the side, a hand pinching his mouth hard to force it to keep its shape and to keep the sounds down to nothing more than harsh, staccato breath through his nostrils.

Mercy. It felt like desperation. Like his back to a wall and teeth at his throat. Like any other choice would have killed him, too. And maybe that's the truth, but he isn't sure it isn't killing him anyway. Slower. A different kind of gut shot. Nick's hand feels like Slim's that afternoon, an anchoring weight and understanding beyond spoken words. If it hadn't been for Slim, he's not sure he'd have made it to Soledad the evening after at all.

He holds up a hand halfway, a wordless request for a little time to collect himself. Knuckling at his eyes and wiping the wet off his cheeks with broad swipes of the other. It doesn't take long. "I ain't figured out...how to live with it yet. When I do, I'll let you know."

It's not easy to fall apart in front of someone else. Especially not for a man, and especially not one of George's time. So Nick gives him his moment, keeping his hand on George's shoulder, keeping weight and pressure steady to let him know it's still there.

"I hope you do," he murmurs. "And I hope, if there's anything I can do to help, you'll let me know."

"You do a lot, Slick." His eyes are still watery, red. He can't control that, and he decides maybe for now he doesn't really need to. "More than you know."

Just being there, a steady, affable presence in his life, somebody who sometimes sits with him at breakfast even when he doesn't need to eat, who enjoys the same radio programs he does, who seems to be a good enough judge of character he can't completely discount his esteem, no matter how counter it is to his deep down self-loathing and cynicism that the good things in life aren't meant for him and never will be.

He draws a ragged breath and reaches across to pat the hand on his shoulder, grip it briefly before releasing. "That's the only big secret I got. We gonna live together and be friends, it's the one I needed you to know." There's a long pause. "Thanks."

It's hard to believe that a guy like this, a guy who's had to be broken into the concept of Nick's entire existence is calling him a friend already. But Nick's never been the type to take a friend for granted. It's the least he can do to be worthy of the title.

Nick squeezes again as George grips his hand, giving another acknowledging nod.

"You're welcome, George."

With the crisis point past, he's quiet for a long time, a comfortable kind of quiet that speaks of thoughts soaking in and an adjustment to this shift between them, closer, more trust, at least on his part. Eventually, he's ready to set the issue behind them for now. When he straightens, it's with less fidgeting and a calmer demeanor.

"What you looking forward to about gettin' back?" If anything. Aside from his own bed and bathroom and the general routine they were starting to establish, he hasn't set many roots in Gloucester yet. He connected more to Robin in Wolf Pen than any of the natives there.

Nick lets the silence linger as long as George needs to collect himself. If it were someone else, he might offer for him to go ahead and let it out. But he gets where George is coming from, as far as showing his emotions goes. Even that much of a crack must feel like falling completely apart to him, and Nick knows focusing on it or encouraging it won't be welcome.

He smiles when George does speak again, and shifts back to something closer to their normal interactions. "Seeing my own face in the mirror," he says, quite honestly. "Sounds stupid, probably but... going this long without it's made me kind of nervous."

He taps his fingers idly against his leg. "Well. That, and getting to relax in the apartment again. Hotel rooms always feel so stuffy."

"Naw, it don't sound stupid at all. I hate you has to do it." He knows he wouldn't like it if he had to look like something he isn't on top of everything else he's already dealing with. It would feel too much like lying all the time.

"You got that right." He wants to stretch out on his own bed with his door closed and maybe sleep fourteen hours or so to wring some of the stress of the trip out of him. It's still hard to believe they did it.

"Be good to get back to the shows. What you think happened in Lake Wobegon while we was away? You think the Whippets won their game?"

The trip's been so taxing that even Nick feels like he could use a nice, long nap. Maybe he'll go low power for a while when they get back... it's not exactly the same, but it's nice to give the ol' processor some time to compile things and run diagnostics.

First though, he's got a long, thorough date with a screwdriver, a toothbrush, and a box of baking soda. There are little nooks and crannies in his exposed joints where he's still smelling fish.

"I bet they did. Through some hapless ninth inning miracle." Nick chuckles. "Wonder if they started looking into the World's Biggest Pile of Burlap Bags mystery. I was hoping to hear more about that."

"I bet." He's more perked up now, not fully bright but not sunk down low in his head. It's a welcome change of subject. "It's always such a close call. I wonder if we'll ever get to travel out that way. I'd sure love to take in a game."

He laughs a little, too. "You does love you a good mystery. Maybe we'll both get some a' what we want with them updates. I been thinkin' it's right nice a' the radio to follow some little middle a' nowhere town like that. People's always in such a hurry. It's a good reminder it ain't that way everywhere."

Nick opens his mouth, briefly, about to gently correct the misconception... but then closes it again, with a wry little smile. Nah. It won't hurt anything to let him keep believing that.

"That's right. It's easy to forget how things are for the humble folks outside of the cities." Case in point, the people of Wolf Pen they've just stepped in to help. "And it's nice, to hear about the simpler life."

"Yeah," he says, settling back in his seat and bringing one heel up onto the edge of it with his knee cocked high. "Yeah, it is. I always loved me some baseball. Never did get to catch many games. Nothin' big. I like watchin' it on them big tv's at some of the bars. You got any sports where you's from?"

"Sure do. Soccer's always popular, for lack of equipment. Folks love their darts and billiards and card games, if you can find enough pieces. And baseball, in fact." Nick chuckles. "Sorta. I mean, there's two versions, the real one and the one ol' Moe Cronin made up as a sales pitch for his homemade bats... tourists eat that one up. As a matter of fact..."

He's not really told this to anybody else yet, given the place is just a short drive down into the city from here. "Diamond City's built out of the ruins of the baseball stadium, down there in Boston. Shops and buildings and a farm and a reservoir, right there on the field. My house is just past second base."

"You know you can't say that and not tell me what them rules is," he says, laughing.

His eyes widen a little before he needlessly looks around to be sure nobody is passing by in overhearing range. "I'm gonna be workin' to get a driver's license and see about puttin' in for one a' them company cars. If I can, we could drive to Boston. If you wanted to see it." Sounds like something George might want to see from the ignorant viewpoint of a man who has yet to see a truly large modern city.

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Over the hills and far away LOG [OPEN + Closed prompts]

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