logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

characters: everyone.
location: around town.
date/time: october 9-17.
content: the hallucinations begin...
warnings: psychological horror. please cw tags appropriately.

it's probably something that shouldn't be said out loud

October 9 feels like a normal day at first, save for the red lighthouse beam cutting through the darkness overhead. You know by now—or you've heard—that the lighthouse is only active during ferry arrivals and events... And there's definitely no ferry docked at the, er. Beach. The town is quiet, the forest spirits behave business-as-usual, Rastus doesn't know what's up. Whatever's going on, you'll have to figure it out for yourself.

And you will, though the hallucinations are subtle at first: objects moving when they shouldn't, people's proportions looking just a bit off, voices in an empty room, and so on. Is it just your mind playing tricks in the darkness? Might be! Will did warn you all about the effects of living without a sun and a proper day/night cycle.

As the days go on, the hallucinations are harder to ignore, no matter how much you may wish to wave them off as flukes. What's wrong with everyone's faces? When did all the howling start? Who do you hold onto when the world drops out from under you? And those hands...

While you might know it can't be real, it certainly feels real. But at least it can't last forever!

...Right?

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Those words should bring a smile to her face but they only serve to twist her insides, Scarlett painfully aware that with just a few words she could put an end to that growing sentiment. It would be easy, like stealing candy from a baby and yet when she looks at him her mouth goes dry. Those very words turning to ash on her tongue.

"Because I can take care of myself." Her tone not unkind, Scarlett unable to reject him completely. "I've been through a helluva lot worse than anything you can throw my way." Her smile a little forced, not quite reaching her eyes.

There it is again. That thing where people seem to think they can do things alone, endure awful things without help, when they don't have to. Is that why Scarlett is... uncomfortable? Is that what that tightness to her features means? The Soldier watches her a long minute while it considers her reaction. She didn't say it was her friend... but it doesn't exactly expect that. Its designations are its own. They don't have to be reciprocated the same way.

Besides. She cares. She's proved it many times, now.

Maybe it's the hallucinations. They make everyone act more upset and unhappy than usual. The Sergeant doesn't offer any insight, so the Soldier decides to accept that explanation for her stress, and it finally answers, reiterating something it'd said on their second meeting. When she first said it could hang around if it wanted to, because she didn't mind having it there.

"That doesn't mean you should have to." And it shrugs just a little. "But I know you're shit at accepting help, anyway. I'm used to it."

If she were to be truly honest she'd be able to admit that he is her friend. She certainly feels that when she's around him, has the emotions a person usually feels when they have somebody they've come to care about. She even says and does things that suggest it's true, but acknowledging makes it that much harder to process. If she doesn't recognize it as truth, then she won't need to feel that rising panic that comes from allowing another person to get too close.

What she can't do, however, is reject that statement. It's one thing if she holds back and waits for this to blow up like she's sure it will and then he leaves but another thing to lash out and hurt him in order to hasten what she sees as his inevitable departure.

"That's - I'm not..." she can't even disagree with him with a straight face. Scarlett's features twisting with annoyance as if to mask the flash of vulnerability beneath. Every argument she wants to make in her defense will make a hypocrite out of her and while she still believes that not allowing herself to need others is the best thing for her, she doesn't actually want that for him. He'd be better off with other friends, other people to care about. She couldn't be what he deserved and protect herself at the same time.

"It's the only way I know how to be." Finally managing to be honest, perhaps more than she'd like.

Oh. The Soldier has said that before, or something close to it. As much as everyone tells it to be a person, to find its name or pick a new one, as much as it or anyone else would want it to learn to live without fear or find things for itself to do without orders... it doesn't know how to do any of those things. Orders and punishment and the ice are all it knows.

Except now it knows grilled cheese and origami and Queen. And a little bit about friends.

The Soldier thinks for a long moment, turning that over, looking a little sad, maybe. "You have programming, too," it says at last, looking into the middle distance. "Maybe not the same kind as mine. But you have it. And you don't know how to get around it, either." It blinks and looks up in the direction of her face again, expression evening out. "It's okay. I understand."

She stiffens at his words, wanting to reject them but there's more truth in what he's saying than she cares to admit. She didn't have handlers and trigger words and memory wipes that shaped her the way that he did. She did, however, have a father who was more like a General than a Dad and she had years of life teaching her that she had to be a certain way or she was only going to end up hurt or dead. She couldn't change the way she viewed the world any easier than he could, but until he'd said those words she'd never really seen it that way.

"You know." Shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "For somebody who is supposed to be incapable of relating to people and the world around you? You manage to do it a lot better than I ever have." She could fake it better, but she never felt like she fit in anywhere. She never really understood what drove people if they weren't homicidal Vampires. In a lot of ways, she was still a child. Stunted in her emotional and social growth at the age of fifteen.

"I may not be very good at interacting with people, but I am very good at reading them," the Soldier says with a little shrug, looking aside again. She's not comfortable, and now the Soldier feels steadier about why. It understands the feeling. Maybe they've been talking about her for too long, on top of the hallucinations. It can anticipate her need to change the subject without her having to ask, since that might even make her more uncomfortable.

Besides, that was practically a question. It can answer for her, from that knowledge that comes without needing to remember the details. The details have been having fun revealing themselves through the hallucinations lately, anyway. "I've had a lot of handlers. Most of them were. Pretty evil. It was safest to learn what a handler wanted before they had to ask."

He says shit like that and it makes her feel like her own issues are stupid. She doesn't do things out of fear of punishment. She's never had anyone exert that level of control over her - though one could argue that she has, more than once, she just doesn't recognize it. She feels like a complete asshole standing there and agreeing that it's just how she's programmed when what she's experienced can't even come close to the kind of shit he's been through.

Her weight shifts again, her discomfort growing and it's getting harder for her to push it back down. Especially when the words that fall past her lips only have the potential to make it worse.

"What about me?" Her features pulled into a guarded expression. "What do you think I want?"

The Soldier looks at her sidelong. Puts on its blandest tone, the one that says it's attempting a joke, and says, "Probably to stop talking about stuff like this."

It's another attempt at diffusing. Distraction may be in order, if she'll let it.

Thankfully, it has a great distraction ready. "Here. Here, this is better." It looks away and pulls out its tablet, showing some of its lingering excitement over its brand new acquisition. (Let's not tell her where we got it.) The Sergeant hasn't been saying much since they found Scarlett, but he does pipe up enough to agree, (Yeeeeah. That will be the wrong kinda distraction.) The Soldier says with a little but real smile, "I got music."

She lets out a huff of air, a silent release of laughter that manages to sound closer to relief. Scarlett not realizing how much his answer scared her until he'd carefully avoided it with a break in tension.

She can't deny the part of her that just wants to walk away, but that's not so easy to do when the Soldier is present and the kind of things she'd have to do or so to get him to leave? Scarlett is an asshole but not even she can bring herself to hurt him like that.

"Music?" That does manage to distract her, Scarlett's eyebrows scooting up her forehead. And yes. Best not to mention the C-word at present. She might end up distracting her fist with his face (Crowley - not Tinman.)

If only the first words to come out of her mouth weren't; "How did you manage that?"

"The tablet camera has a recording function, both audio and video," the Soldier explains with something resembling cheerfulness. It's muted, like most everything about its emotions, but it's still pretty clearly actual happiness. Despite hallucinations, despite Scarlett perhaps not wanting it to be her friend back, despite having to diffuse a situation with her when it had never wanted to have to manage her the way it would a handler... it has music.

And besides, the play seems to have possibly worked. She looks less tense already.

"Listen." The Soldier pulls up "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen. It hasn't gotten to Misty yet to try and record her music, so Queen is all it has, but Queen is also awesome so it's not complaining yet. "This is fucking amazing," it says, and hits play.

"Queen?" Her gaze lifting from the device to look at him, the fact that this was the song playing on the ferry when it crashed? Unfortunately not lost on her. Still, she won't mention that fact, at least for his sake. Not when there's something akin to a childlike wonder about him at having music.

"How long has it been, since you heard music?" Wondering if he even had a sense of time for that. If he had any frame of reference for something from modern times or not. She couldn't even say that she does, not with the way she grew up. It felt like her music taste stalled somewhere around the late nineties, early naughts.

Please don't, Scarlett. It had completely not heard the music on the ferry because it had been first in the midst of mission focus, and then in the midst of absolute panic. Don't ruin this song for it.

"I don't know. I must have heard it sometime in the sixty or seventy years HYDRA had me, I was out in the world on missions at least a little," the Soldier shrugs, still smiling, eyes down on the tablet and the little bar slowly moving across the app screen, showing the progression of the song. "And I don't think I'd have this kind of reaction to it. If I hadn't loved it Before. But I don't remember any of it. So this is almost like the first time."

He's not the only one who can avoid certain subjects to ensure the other person doesn't get upset.

"Heh. Yeah. Queen were very big. A little before my time but - they were still popular right up until the radio stations and the internet went down." While the sound of music is a welcome change, she finds herself more intrigued by his reaction to it. A surge of warmth that's easier not to analyze coming from watching him find that kind of joy in something.

"I guess there's a lot you don't remember if you like or not..." More like a revelation. She's always known he was different but just how far that reached hadn't fully sunk in.

"Pretty much." Not remotely a revelation, to the Soldier. Just its standard functionality, or lack thereof. It doesn't begrudge her haven't not considered that, though. She's an actual person, after all, she already knows these things about herself. "Did discover I love coffee too, though. Aziraphale made me some. And Rosinante let me try his cigarette, that was great. So. I've found things I like." And it's even admitting out loud that it likes them, which is kind of a huge step-- even if only to a friend, in a quiet place well away from other people, particularly designated handlers or techs.

A couple plates in its left forearm are even clicking together under the hoodie it's wearing. In time to the music. That might be a little weird, or possibly kind of funny.

"What?" Her face screws up at the mention of smoking. "No, don't... don't do that." More a strong suggestion than an order, judging by her tone. "That shits addictive. Plus it stinks and makes you taste like crap." The closest thing to a real boyfriend that she'd had was in high school and he used to attempt to smoke. All she could remember about it that kissing him was like making out with an ashtray... not that it should matter in this situation.

"You want like, waffles and ice-cream with... bacon and maple syrup. Probably just as bad for you but at least it won't fuck up your lungs or smell nasty." Managing a wry grin as she lowers her guard just a little. It was much easier when the focus wasn't on her.

As for the arm? In the grand scheme of things? Not the weirdest thing she's encountered where Tinman is concerned.

"Taste like crap?" the Soldier repeats, voice edging a little bit into both amused and incredulous. "Scarlett. No one is going to be tasting me. That's disgusting. I wouldn't worry about the addictive part. Drugs and things. Don't affect me as much. I can't get drunk. And the dosage the techs would give me of whatever they wanted to try that day always had to be high."

And, which will probably make her feel the best about the situation, it adds, "Besides, Rosinante has limited supply, I'm not going to be bumming more. They're his."

She opens her mouth to explain what she meant but very quickly closes it again. It's hardly surprising to her that he didn't think about things like physical affection but at the same time, it just wasn't something she could begin to try and provide context for. Instead, she simply drops her gaze, staring beyond the halo of light provided by her lantern. Lifting her hand to scratch her eyebrow as she casually sidesteps any further discussion.

"Good to know." See, way less awkward. (No it's not).

If Scarlett doesn't like cigarettes, maybe it will have to rethink wanting them. ... or else just make sure not to visit her if it's managed to smoke one somehow, until the smell is gone. (Fuckin' moot point if we don't have any.)

The Soldier shakes its head, and goes back to the subject that doesn't make her awkward. "Misty has music. A lot of it. I'm not sure how well we'll be able to record it, if all she has are headphones, but I'm going to try. Before her device runs out of power for them. I could share them with you, if you want. And the Queen." Because everyone must want music, right? Any time they want, they should be able to listen to something.

It's going to start getting weird if she keeps bringing him up but the fact is? He's the only smart person she knows so he's her go-to when it comes to anything, especially relating to devices.

"You should talk to the Doc." Oh, she's aware how much Will would love that. "He'd probably be able to hook whatever it is right up to a tablet and rip the music for you. Then everyone could have it?"

And then it's not anyone doing something nice for her, it's just her getting the same as everyone else. Scarlett logic, even when it's not on a conscious level.

"Maybe. Once things calm down, maybe." Having some kind of cable to just directly move the music from Misty's discs would be much easier than trying to record it through tiny headphones. "For now, I'm trying to take advantage of not being afraid of every damn thing to keep an eye on other people. Misty's music can wait a little. People not hurting themselves or each other is more important."

Besides, it still has Queen. That'll tide it over.

Just keep calling him Doc instead of doctor, Scarlett. Doing great, there.

I mean... does it make it better or worse when you know that she calls him Doc as a mark of sarcasm?

Keeping an eye on other people... and yet he was standing here with her.

"There are people who get hurt a lot easier than me ya know." Her weight shifting from one foot to the other

You're gonna make it say it again, Scarlett. "Other people aren't my friend. I wanted to at least check on you." Especially since it has mostly kept to following from a distance for the past week, lest it accidentally hurt her, itself. Not-remembered shouting matches not withstanding.

The music, still playing, transitions into "Friends will be Friends". Irony. Mostly, that's just the one that comes up next alphabetically, but it's still a little funny.

Her eyes close at those words, Scarlett pressing her lips together to keep the words trapped in her mouth. A thousand things she could say that would easily send him away, but she can't so easily force out. She hadn't had a friend in... well honestly, ever? Not unless Axel counted and even then she wasn't sure she could say what she and had was anything close to a traditional friendship. Hell if the world hadn't gone to shit she doubted they ever would have been anything close to friends and she wasn't sure that if it weren' for this place, she and the Soldier would have been either.

Or maybe, in a messed up way, he was the only person she could have been friends with. If only she had a clue how to feel about that.

"I'm alright." Managing to infuse some sincerity into her voice as she opens her eyes to look at him again. "Not sure I can say the same for anyone around me but - " But she's used to things being fucked up like this. Hell, she was probably one of the few who found a level of familiarity in this current situation. "Just a bit on edge is all."

If it weren't for this place, the Soldier would be either back with HYDRA where friends aren't allowed, or on the run after refusing to complete its last mission so friends would be inadvisable. So... yeah, probably true in more ways than one.

Sometimes being used to something just makes it worse. Says the person who feels like they, also, should be used to things like this, and who had to resort to magically taking its fear away to keep functioning. It considers her for a moment, then nods. "Good. And what you said to me, about coming to you if there's a problem. I hope you can do the same."

Her mouth becomes little more than a hard slash of color across her face. The emotions stirred by his words sitting uncomfortably in her chest. Again her weight shifts, Scarlett rolling her shoulders back as she tries to stoically suppress the feelings that create an internal, staticky buzz.

"Yeah." Lifting her gaze to look at him, perhaps too directly for his comfort but she's focused on trying to be casually unaffected, as opposed to not accidentally freaking him out. "Of course."

Though you had to wonder if either or them truly believed she ever would.

EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

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