towerofanimus | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Characters: Ronald and his tower Homies
Setting: Floor 13
Format: Starting in prose but following you!
Summary: After reawakening from his punishment and first death, a rather guilt stricken puppy goes to lick his wounds after hiding away for a few days.
Warnings: Feelers, possibly... and references back to his punishment which involves dead bodies, blood and mutilation.

The first punishments were always the hardest, maybe. He wasn't certain as he had no idea who was new and who wasn't. But that dream was too vivd, far too vivid to be just a mere dream. What if it was real? What if it was what happened before he was brought here? For all he knew, it could have been the reason he was brought here. When he closed his eyes, his mind's eye supplied the pictures which came in just as clear as the nightmare itself had.

He'd seen them with those lifeless eyes trained toward him in accusation. He'd seen the blood he never thought would ever be spilled scattered about over the ground. His fault. He could have stopped it. And yet he was alive through it all. Of course, logic said it was a dream but there was still another part of him that nagged. Nagged at his mind and told him it could be possible. It could have been the reason why he was brought here first. What if it was all true? What if he DID do it and neither one of them remembered? After all, William wasn't around. What if he was dead? What if it was all his fault?

So he'd been skulking around, trying to find a place that didn't kill him just to think. Sit and think. There were too many people in the dorms, even more in the cafeteria and still a bunch more in the lounge. But then he found the thirteenth floor where things seemed secluded enough for him to find some measure of solace. Ironically enough, it was a cathedral. The younger reaper had never been devout -- not that he remembered, at least, but there were those in their dying breaths who had prayed to some god or another. He'd heard what prayer could do for a troubled heart.

Irony indeed.
But he wasn't here to pray. He just needed to think.

He'd brought his hat with him, his favorite black fedora which he didn't find in his trunk but had appeared by his bedside after the entire ordeal in the Labyrinth. This he held to his chest as he entered, eyes scanning the entire area around him. There was something calming about the stained glass and the pews to say the least. The mumbing didn't bother him. The thought of ghosts didn't, really. He was a reaper. What was there to fear?

Wordlessly, he slipped himself onto one of the back pews and pulled his legs to his chest. His head rested on his arms which he folded over one knee with a deep sigh before burying his face against it again. That dream. Even when he closed his eyes he could still see their torn flesh and hear their accusatory voices. He couldn't face them. Either one of them. He knew he couldn't look Grell in the eye, not after this, not when the possibility loomed so close...

So it was with a groan that he pulled his legs closer against his chest and tried to curl himself into a tighter ball than was possible.

Maybe if he curled in tight enough, he could disappear.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Grell barely understood the concept of considering herself bad at anything, but she was beginning to wonder if she wasn't just shy of competent, when it came to keeping tabs on Ronald. There was, for starters, the whole matter of losing him, in the first place, and somehow turning up in the Tower nearly two weeks after his arrival. Then, just when she got it into her head to believe they had their metaphorical ducks in a row, and were poised to really hunker down and start trying to solve this mystery, her minion disappeared into the Labyrinth. She spent the entire period of Ronald's imprisonment, kicking herself. Sure, he could handle himself (even if he died, she knew he'd be all right). If she'd thought otherwise, she would have sponsored him. Maybe. But the point was, Ron had now been sucked out from right beneath her nose, twice in a row. Twice, in under a month. That was unacceptable, and gave her the distinctly unsavoury feeling of being off her game.

Not good. Not good, at all, and now it had been several days since those unlucky souls were released from the Labyrinth, and she still hadn't been able to find her partner in crime. Was he hiding from her? She almost thought he had to be, but she couldn't see why. Little punk. If he was doing it on purpose, she'd thrash him for it. Didn't he know she'd actually bothered to worry about him? How dare he keep to himself? How dare he not consider her feelings about the whole thing, and check in, like he ought?

But as luck so often has it, she found him just when she'd stopped looking. Mere minutes before stepping into the cathedral (one of the floors she hadn't divined any use for, and thus hadn't bothered to take a look at, yet. Her time seemed better spent in the library, or attempting to pin Sebastian down for more meetings over tea.), she'd decided to wash her hands of it. Ronald could turn up or not turn up. She wasn't going to be arsed to care, anymore.

...And then there he was, at the back of the cathedral, her eyes drawn to him as soon as she stepped through the doorway. She should have been relieved, but her overwhelming initial reaction was one of irritation. Because, as she'd just been thinking, how dare he?

"There you are," she called, voice rattling the stillness in the church. "What funny little game do you think you're playing at, making me traipse all over creation, looking for you?"

Perhaps he shouldn't have squirreled himself away like that. Perhaps he should have just kept to his room and miled away the hours there, staring at the ceiling and sorting his nightmare from what was real. But some childish part of him, the part of him that was still unseasoned to say the least, was what made him withdraw. But just as he'd scrunched himself up tighter, her voice called his attention -- or rather caused him to very nearly fall out of the pew he'd curled himself in.

Just like a hunter, she'd found him. Like a shark would after bleeding prey. But there was simply no hiding anymore. Maybe she'd smelled his fear. With a measure of reluctance and a slight groan of pain from the impact, he pulled himself up from the floor. There was a sigh of resignation as he glanced back up at her, biting his lower lip before speaking. "Wasn't playing a game." he finally muttered, hands jamming into his pockets. "Just... you... well..."

And his eyes turned down again, before he spoke. But when he did, his voice was barely a whisper, barely there, barely carrying the same brightness it once had. "You saw that dream, didn't you?"

Well, that was rewarding. She hadn't expected him to actually tumble, but seeing him do it gave her the same sort of satisfaction she sometimes got, from seeing screaming, unruly children get away from their mothers and take a dive in the street. That was exactly what Ron was like - other people's ill-mannered, ill-tempered children, with his sulking, and his hair. She briefly indulged herself in the thought that this was why it was such a crime she couldn't have her own children - they wouldn't be that way. They would be much, much better behaved. And have perfect hair.

"If it's not a game, it's just rude," she decided, tucking her fringe behind her ear, only to have it fall back out and across her eyes. "My darling Sebastian is better company than you are, but that's not the point."

Her last word was nearly cut off, though, by the look on Ronald's face shifting. She had been talking over him, until he asked her about the dream. On the one hand, she had thought that, like dying itself, was something he could handle. She ought to be irritated with him, if he'd let it get the better of him. On the other hand, he looked hurt, and try as Grell might, she had been legitimately worried about him, every time he'd disappeared.

She climbed into the pew beside him, perching herself in the corner where the back and arm joined, her heels on the seat. Even if she wasn't going to say anything comforting, he looked meek enough, now, that she didn't have to keep standing over him, while he had that look plastered on his face. "And? It's a dream. Are you really so sentimental, that you put any stock in something like that? I thought better of you."

Compared to William and Grell, Ronald was young. Inexperienced. Impulsive. Perhaps indeed a touch sentimental when it came to certain things, one of these being his standing in his senior's eyes. There was a moment when a frown came to his face as he attempted to put this frustration into words. Where would he even begin with this? Where could he begin? Wordlessly, he settled himself back onto the pew with his arms slumped over the backrest best he could. Words still failed him. Even more as his eyes opened ever so slightly to gaze upward at the cathedral ceiling.

"But what if it wasn't?" he muttered, still studying the way the stones cut and curved and spiraled about. The way the light danced off the stained glass. The way the mumbling around them seemed to be more of a calming mantra than a haunting drone from voices whose speakers weren't visibly present. "Didn't feel like just a bloody dream. Felt so real."

And there was the barest shiver that coursed through his system as he lifted his hand to stare at his palm. His eyes scrutinized it, seeking bloodstains that didn't exist, sins that weren't committed. Not in his waking world, at least. "I died out there." he managed to sigh, setting his hand back down limply by his side. "Died. You ever heard of that, Mister Sutcliff? A reaper. Dying."

"Miss," she corrected, without really paying any mind to what she was saying. It came out on its own, sometimes, and a barely conscious part of Grell even thought that if anyone was going to catch on, one day, and start calling her Miss Sutcliff, it might be Ronald. Because she knew it was true - he didn't like to be disappointing to his superiors.

Chin resting in her palm, she drummed her fingers against her jawline. Grell had had plenty of terrifying dreams, in her lifetime, and never placed any particular importance on them. It was a natural side effect of a volatile personality, she thought. What anger she couldn't act on, in real life, manifested itself in her sleeping mind, and yes, it was horrifying, sometimes, but it was gone when she woke up, and she didn't dwell on it. Nor did she really have the sort of empathy required to understand why Ronald was choosing to. The whole thing seemed pretty senseless.

"Of course you didn't," she said, after letting him finish his thought, for once. "That's ridiculous. If you'd died, you wouldn't have come straight back." Maybe it wasn't, to Ronald, but she thought that was a pretty reassuring thing to say. It may have felt like dying, but if it wasn't the real thing, what did it matter?

That same frown came to his face again. He was certain it happened, the dying bit at least. But he scruitinized his superior with a bit of an unreadable look; one that was caught somewhere between curious, scrutinizing and just plain pouty. Perhaps he was feeling a bit better, being able to talk to someone about it. Even if that someone had to be his senior who was, if anything, harsher in a way that William wasn't.

"Felt bloody real to me." he muttered, pulling a leg to his chest and folding his arm over it with a sigh. Without another word, he set his head down and continued to stare off in the direction of the altar. "I felt the killing blow and everything and it wasn't even from a Cinematic Record." Ronald added after a moment's thought, eyes half lidded from both thinking and perhaps from fatigue. He didn't dare get a proper wink of sleep, not after that moment. Perhaps one could say that even the very idea of him dreaming was terrifying. What if he'd see it again? What if the tower had done something to him. Though it was true. If he was killed, why was he still alive?

Perhaps this place really did something to you.

Grell might have loved talking, at length, about herself, but other people's serious feelings were somewhat disconcerting to her. Serious feelings, in general, weren't the sort of thing she liked to vocalize. She could go on for hours, if you let her, on the subject of her adoration of William, but would she ever bother to tell anyone how snubbed he actually made her feel? How she obsessed over it, sometimes, and for as much as she loved his stoicism, how deeply she wanted to wring his neck? No. She came close, with Angelina. Told her things she hadn't wanted to tell anyone, before, and wouldn't want to, again, any time soon.

So hearing real fear in Ron's voice, seeing real sleepless pallor tinting his face...it was uncomfortable, in a way. People shouldn't have feelings Grell couldn't just wave away. It was a little irksome to know that she actually gave enough of a damn about Ronald that she was still sitting there. With just about anyone else, she would have left after about five seconds of the look he had about him.

"You have a mind, don't you?" she asked, with a literal wave of her hand, even though she couldn't metaphorically wave the whole problem aside. "The mind's a powerful organ, darling. It can make you feel anything it wants. But really, you're forgetting the most important thing." She nudged his leg with the toe of her shoe, perhaps a little roughly. "I still say we were dead on arrival."

He admired them both for a reason: William for his professionalism and his ability to keep calm in any situation and Grell for just... being Grell. She never lost sight of her own goals and somehow always managed to knock some sense into him. Like now. Now, when he was nothing but a mess of everything and nothing thanks to that little mess up in the labyrinth.

Ronald had been listening despite the fact he showed no outward emotion, no singular reaction to anything she'd said so far. Of course the mind was a powerful thing. If cinematic records from maddened humans had anything to teach him, it was this. The mind could do whatever the hell it pleased without any regard for the rest of it. Even for one's sanity. But somehow, the entire speculation put his mind back on track and there was the barest semblance of a frown by the time she was done.

"That's a bit of a stretch then," he began, staring ahead and squinting ever so slightly in an attempt to focus on the details of the altar before them. " You think it was the dolls that did it? Overran the world and all? But Mister Spears saved us last minute. We can't be dead."

"Pulled us from the water, is what he did. As for saving us, what proof do we have? The water was raging, it could have taken us under, even if not for the dolls."

The more Grell repeated it out loud, the less it sounded like a cohesive idea, though. Sometimes, the smallest voice in the back of her head would speak up and say that she only still believed in it because she didn't know what would happen if she stopped. That was the demon's fault, curse him. Sebastian had asked her whether she really thought, as a reaper herself, she would have no recollection of her own death. And the fact was, she didn't think it at all. Whether it would be true or not, in practice, she couldn't imagine herself forgetting the act of dying.

"You know what I think?" she asked, more for herself, than for Ronald. "You don't, and I'm going to tell you. I think it doesn't matter. How we got here, if we're dead, it's all irrelevant to the matter of escaping. That's all that should concern you. How do the awful~ things you experienced bring you one step closer to getting out? "

Edited 2012-05-21 12:03 (UTC)

At first, he opened his mouth to protest. Call it either the gift or curse of eternal optimism but there it was, trying to make sense out of this entire situation. They were going to be fine, everything was gonna be alright, this was all a bad dream and they would go home soon. Wind in their sails and all that. But Grell was right. Somehow, she made sense every now and then when she wasn't raving about either Sebastian or William. Suspension or no, nothing was going to convince Ronald that Grell didn't have a decent head on her shoulders if she properly applied herself.

So the protests died down, as did his drive to push it onward. After all, she made perfect sense. So what if he managed to die, imaginary or no? The fact remained that he was here, she was too, alive and well and all that. They both were. "S'pose you're right." he finally sighed, letting a leg dangle from the pew. "Can't help but wonder though... and don't get me wrong, I get what you're saying but..."

And at this, he can't help but frown. If he said it, it would be almost admitting it to himself. "If we're dead then... what's the point of trying to go back?"

"What a stupid question," Grell replied, with a scoffing sound and a puff of breath as she blew her hair from her face, again. Her fringe was in want of trimming. What were the chances that any of her room mates, for as little as she had deigned to speak to them, might have a pair of scissors?

"I swear," she went on, "The very moment I think you're getting smarter, you go ask a thing like that." Not that she actually sounded more than superficially irritated with him. "If we don't get back, I suppose there's no harm in that, but who wants to stay here? This place is awful. We can't do what we like, I just know they're watching where we go," she ticked off her list of complaints on her fingers, as she went. "People are getting themselves maimed every blessed second, I haven't got even half of my clothes, and you wouldn't care to repeat what happened back in that maze, now, would you?"

But really, even if they were dead, Grell did want to go home. She loved London. After too long, she would miss the sight off it, miss the bad weather, miss perching on the rooftops, watching people come and go. Maybe she could take up haunting some nice house, or somewhere else equally amusing. It didn't really matter what they were going to do, when they got back. It only mattered that they returned, at all.

What did souls do after they died? Did they hang around in places like this waiting for their rebirth? Did they just disappear into the ether after being filed away into the Library's records? He was never really one to figure it out. Maybe it was brought up in class but he must have been absent that day. At any rate, he always thought it would never concern him what with his duties ending after collection and all that.

Funny how the world worked.

But he stretched out, arms over his head before settling them back down over the back of the pew. That little quip would earn her the smallest pout, his brows furrowing at the very thought that she considered him less than intelligent. “Well ‘scuse me,” he began, barely glancing back in her direction. However, she did make the most sense And it was this that caused that pout to disappear in favor of a look of resignation. “’Suppose you’re right though. We’d prolly be better off there than we are here. Can’t even get a moment’s rest. But hold on. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the mess on the fifth floor then?”

Grell shrugged. "What's the use? They have the technology to show us anything they like, but I don't need to indulge them. It's what they want, isn't it? For us to look, and get all maudlin about it."

Her dislike for authority and expected behaviours extended even here. Those viewing stations could serve only one purpose that she could see: an attempt at manipulating the emotions of the people trapped in the Tower. An attempt at deadening their hopes of escape. How many people, like Ronald, would question the point in escaping, if they were dead, or their worlds gone? More than enough, Grell thought. If she did bother to look at what was supposedly left of their world, she wouldn't be anything but angry, and less at the destruction, than at what she was sure was a cheap trick.

"Playing into their games~ has no purpose," she said. "Did you wonder why I didn't sponsor you, in the labyrinth? That's why." She had to laugh at the people who had sponsored their loved ones. What did it amount to? Absolutely nothing at all. The people inside still suffered and died, and the people who tried to help were punished almost as badly.

If anything, those viewing stations didn't do much to tug at his sentiment nor did it upset him at the least. (alright, perhaps for the shortest moment when it was still him and his lonesome.) They did, however, make him think. That and coupled with the fact that they weren't given a single word as to when and how the world was ending... it was all just too suspicious for him to get worked up over.

But he continued to listen in silence, tilting his head in a manner reminiscent of a very thoughtful golden retriever. He was lucky enough to have gotten one sponsorship at least and the food did last long enough to begin with. "Everyone ended up dying after all... and I don't suppose you got a glance at what happened to the winner, did you?" Ronald asked, pulling a leg to his chest as he turned his attention to the other reaper. "But... I can't say I knew about what happened to those who tried to help. What went on while I was in that labyrinth?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(no subject)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

[sorry, fixin typos]

No problemo! If you'll pardon my tagging speed. ;;;

pardon my speed as well >__<

o9 No worries!

no subject

no subject