multiversallogs | Striking in complete silence / devastating, isolating, until I lose control

Entry tags:

Striking in complete silence / devastating, isolating, until I lose control

Who: Raylan Givens and Rachel Conway
What: Saving the day! Aaaand opening up a CR can of worms.
Where: Champion's Walk, Griss Twist.
When: Backdated a few days, in the midst of monster madness.
Notes: N/A
Warnings: Violence against monsters.

She'd been driven from her apartment three days ago, driven from her neighborhood a day after that. Rachel had managed to pack a bag on her way out, slung across her body now, full of what meager first-aid supplies she could gather and everything she could possibly use as a light source.

...Not that she intends to go that route. Ever. But better to be prepared for something you don't have to do than to be pushed into that corner and not be ready.

She's been moving through the city, doing what she can, sleeping when she can. She's hardly prepared for this; she's been a book editor and a tea house waitress and a low-level volunteer for a political party, there's nothing in her background to ready her for circumstances like these. But she couldn't just hide somewhere and not try.

The side streets tonight are reasonably quiet, if demolished here and there, bearing scars of earlier skirmishes. She makes note of buildings that look like they'll stay standing, and when she comes across the odd person wandering the street, she checks to make sure they don't need medical attention and then she shoos them off to the nearest safe place.

But as she nears Champion's Walk, the odd people become groups of people, and they're not wandering, they're fleeing. She catches the ones she can, directing them to a safe place, unable to get much out of them besides "monster" and "didn't want to be trapped."

There's a knot of people running through the open back door of a business that faces Champion's Walk. She fights her way through, dodging people, and she gets out the front door. She still can't see much--there's a group of people coming toward her, and some more, lit by the few street lamps still working, congregating by some buildings on the next block.

And then a shape moves between her and a lamp, flitting by so fast there's only a silhouette, and an impression of size. Great size.

She can't just stand here and do nothing.

Back through the shop she goes, back out the back door, but instead of joining the others fleeing onto the side streets, she takes one that parallels Champion's Walk. She sees another stream of people coming down an alley, and she squeezes through, popping out into the crowd of people gathered there.

"Who's in charge?" she asks the nearest person. "Is there anyone helping you guys right now?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Maybe I'll find a baseball bat. Someone's always got a baseball bat in zombie movies." He drinks one more glass of water for good measure, then says critically, "Course, usually all the heroes die anyway."

"That's a good thought. The baseball bat, I mean. Not the other one--don't even think something like that now," she says, but the chiding is very gentle, as such things go. "I've also seen people use shovels in zombie movies. Those might work, too, if we come across any."

He smiles wry. "Shovels or zombies? But I wouldn't worry too much. Odds are if the pretty girl doesn't get killed right off, she has a chance of being the lone survivor."

He is probably teasing her now.

She laughs, shaking her head. "The shovels, Raylan. I can't imagine a zombie's ever going to come in useful."

Rachel doesn't say anything about his teasing, but the color rises in her cheeks just a hint. "So let's keep an eye out for anything else that might make a good weapon, while we're out there."

"Sounds like a plan. If we're going to move, we should do it while we've got some daylight to play with." It seemed like things were worse, if possible at night.

"Presumably whoever runs this place won't let everyone get killed. We just gotta outlast it."

"Yeah, exactly. The gods need us and our ambitions, or whatever the party line is, so I imagine they'll do what they can to help as many of us as they can. We've weathered everything else this place has thrown at us. We can outlast this too."

She sets down her glass. "If you're ready to go now, so am I.'

"Alright."

They head out cautiously. Everything seems fairly quiet for the time being, and Raylan checks his CiD map before heading vaguely North.

After a little bit, quiet, he says, "We don't have to talk about this now, but... how long have you known you could do that. With the shadows and all?"

She glances over, flashing him a brief, faint smile--it's all right, she doesn't mind answering his questions.

"I knew pretty much all my life there was something different. Off. But I didn't see it for the first time, realize, like, exactly what it was, until I was twelve. I didn't tell anybody for the longest time. I was scared. And there was already enough in my life that made me stick out like a sore thumb, I didn't need one more thing. My mom figured it out because of-- because of something that happened when I was a teenager."

They walk a few paces in silence before she speaks again. "It was kind of-- I sprung it on her and that was an awful way to find out. I figured, like, the entire world didn't need to know but I couldn't go surprising people I cared about. So I tried telling them, eventually, but I can't think of a single time it went well. They always wound up distancing themselves, like it was too much or I was too scary now or whatever. After a while I guess I just stopped trying to get close enough to people to where I'd have to tell them. It seemed easier that way."

She looks over at him again. "I'm sorry. I really was trying to figure out how I was going to bring it up but then... this happened."

Raylan considers all that. Finally, he says, "I guess saving someone's life is a decent way to tell them, when you consider the alternatives. Makes them look like an idiot if they get pissed off about it."

He's still working it through, but his comment is honest.

"Yeah," she sighs. "Yeah, I guess I have set you up a bit. But for the record, anything you do or don't feel or think about this--I wouldn't hold it against you. You didn't ask for any of this."

Rachel shrugs. "Keeping my secrets intact sure wouldn't have brought me a lot of comfort if one or both of us had died as a result. I'll deal with whatever comes of it."

"Rachel," he says with an ironic grin, "you are very far down on my list of 'things I didn't ask for that happened anyway.'" And not just in Baedal.

"You're still you. It's weird - I'm not going to pretend it's not weird, but if you haven't noticed, I'm not Mr. Congeniality. I don't have anyone to avoid you with except my boss, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't like me."

"Thank you," she says after a moment, soft and earnest and maybe even a little surprised. "It's weird, believe me--I'm the one living with it and even after all this time, it's weird. But I am still me, regardless. That's something I think other people maybe lost sight of."

She's quiet a moment, and then: "...what is it with you and lists, anyway?"

She is, perhaps, gently teasing, and doing a pretty poor job of trying to hold back a smile.

"I just have a lot of things come in multiples, I guess." He's alert, but clearly less on edge for a bit of rest. "Had a partner once who kept physical lists. Whole notebooks. Never say much point in that, though."

"Whole notebooks? Sounds like work." She shakes her head, smiling; the rest seems to have soothed her mood, lifting her out of her earlier wariness and worry toward her usual laid-back cheerfulness.

Well, maybe the fact that he hasn't pushed her away is helping some, too.

"I don't think I'm organized enough for physical lists, but I guess lists are good if, like you say, you gotta keep track of a lot of the same thing at times."

"I didn't realize I was doing it, until you pointed it out," he confessed. "But I guess that makes sense."

"Well, I'm not surprised," she says, glancing over at him. "I imagine anyone who does a lot of investigative work's got some way of organizing all the information they take in or the tasks they have."

(deleted comment)

[pssst, wrong journal. :D do you want to repost?]

"Well, generally back home it was chasing fugitives," he says, glancing back as he hears a sound, but deciding it was nothing important a moment later. "It's fairly linear, as law enforcement goes."

She waits a moment for his appraisal of that sound. She heard it, too, but if he's not concerned she'll let it go.

"But it's still a lot of information," she points out. "I mean, I imagine there's a lot to keep track of, even if you're more or less traveling in a straight line. Where someone's been, where they might go next, who they know, what resources they have or might be looking for. It makes a lot of sense, now that I think about it, that you make lists. You probably always did. 'We're looking for this guy, he's lived in these four places, has these three known associates, likely took one of these routes out of town', and so on."

"I guess that's true, when you put it like that." He just never thought about it as lists until she pointed out the feature of his speech. "Usually the file on the guy comes to you - either from the police, or the FBI sometimes. You're just trying to finish it."

"Mm. So you're a guy who sees things through, too." Though that much, she'd already known, already gotten that sense from him.

"It also seems like a job that'd take some..." And here's a pause for an attempt at polite wording, "...testicular fortitude. I mean, like--not that all cops aren't brave and not that anyone ever wants to get hauled in by one. But it seems to me that a person who's been on the run would be extra desperate not to get caught, and more likely to take it badly when he's cornered."

He laughs. "I guess? Sometimes fugitives are just out due to dumb luck or law incompetence, but yeah, most of them are pretty desperate by the time we're after them." Of course, other marshals didn't end up shooting quite so many.

"We do other things too, but even so. It's true for marshals and for cops - you try not to corner someone you think is really desperate. Usually ends bad."

"Yeah, it seems like--"

She's cut short by the crash of a garbage can beside a building just ahead. She reaches over and puts a hand on Raylan's arm, both to warn him and to steel her nerves.

And then a cat saunters out from the toppled can, shoots them both a filthy look, and stalks off. Rachel laughs in spite herself. "That was, like. The worst horror movie cliche right there. God."

He laughs too, shaking his head. "All we need now is a creepy little kid singing a nursery rhyme or something."

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SORRY

No worries, it happens!

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