breakaleginhalf | Come Sail Inbox

Will it sound terribly ominous if I say it's better discussed in person? This device lacks any kind of nuance.

[Well that's a great start.]

Yours, mine, or over coffee?

Mine will work. Not 119, 134.

Yeah, sure. I'll be there in a bit.

[He has to take a few minutes to work up the will to ~~live~~ move, but eventually he's gently knocking on 134.]

Thank you for coming.

[that's her greeting when she lets him inside, and it's a very tidy, quiet space. aside from the extremely cursed art that's hanging out, it looks completely normal, with one bed that's been constructed to give more sleeping room than the one bed provided.

on the standard bed are some clothes she's been folding to tuck away, and she puts the folded pieces into one pile before moving it aside and deciding to just sit on the bed.]

...Is everything all right?

The extremely cursed art gets a lingering look, but when Helena speaks Gil turns to face her instead, his tone even and distant.

"How specific do you want me to get?" He sits on the couch as he talks, letting his arms flop between his legs. "Cos I feel like you won't let me get away with 'it's fine'."

"No. Let me put it this way, Gil."

She turns in his direction, knowing she can't make eye contact, but considering it more polite to give the vague sense.

"This is the second time in four weeks I've been woken up at the hour that the dead are known to wake by quite...dramatic shouting. And both times, I've heard your voice. I'm...not trying to eavesdrop, and I'm not trying to blame you for my own sensitive hearing, just..."

Helena pauses, trying to figure out her words.

"Can you tell me what happened, so I stop wanting to get annoyed at everyone whose voices I overheard?"

"Sure. I killed Crichton."

The words come too easily. It doesn't feel like a confession, but an admission of guilt from being caught in the act. Airy and distracted.

"When he came back, he and Arthur were having a fit about something. Wayne and I tried to stop it, and instead I broke Crichton's whole fucking face."

"So that was Wayne I heard. Was there...good cause for you to intervene there?"

This is the nice, polite, gentle way to ask why he was bothering to get into their business. You can kill a man and yet not go starting a second fight with him first thing in the morning. And why was Wayne involved?

He snorts lightly. Derisively. "Because they haven't made gift baskets for 'sorry I blew you up with your own gun' yet, so I figured I'd at least try and do it in person."

He's glad Helena can't see how dishevelled he looks in the exhaustion and stress of it, as he rubs his face with one hand. "You heard how well that went, obviously."

Edited 2023-04-08 08:23 (UTC)

"Then their argument was happening separately to the one you got involved in."

The phrase why are you getting involved in people's arguments at unearthly hours of the morning hangs over them like the sword of Damocles. Instead, she inhales, exhales.

"From what I managed to pick out, it sounds like it was all a series of accidents that fell over on each other, which I can understand. Why'd you kill him in the first place, though?"

"Because he put the gun in my face?"

The other hand lifts to join the first as a low, tired rumble escapes him.

"I've never met Crichton before, so I didn't know it wasn't actually him when I met him in the buffet. Hes got some evil split personality thing. We got into an argument, I punched him, he threatened to shoot me over it, and I bit his gun. Which blew us both up."

With the dismissive, rushed tone of 'let's get this over with'.

"When I went to apologise for blowing him up, I only brought Wayne because he knows Crichton and I wanted him to like, help keep the peace, I guess. Fat fucking good that was, thanks to me," gets added as an absent mutter.

If he's not looking at her, he might miss the way her hand raises a little, the universal reflex of hold on.

"If they were already upset before you got there, you shouldn't blame yourself for it going sideways. It sounds like there was a lot of room for things to get complicated even if you all came in calm as anything. Recovering from dying's an emotional thing to start with."

As much as she had just wanted to figure out what in heaven's name had happened, this was different.

"And you didn't know destroying the weapon would kill the both of you. Given the circumstances, trying to get rid of it was the most logical choice."

That gets a loud, derisive snort, and Gil fwumps sideways to lie on the couch.

"Don't give me that much credit. If you stick something in my face I'm gonna bite it. It's not smart, it's not fucking logical. It's base instinct, and I hate it, but I can't not do it apparently. Perks of being a broken piece of shit."

And that gets a frown.

"I don't understand. You're broken because you have instincts?"

It's a deliberate playing dumb, but at the same time, she's roommates with Erin Peters. She's not going to be calling anyone broken because they went through something difficult.

He can smell Erin all over the room. He knows she's playing dumb.

"I'm a Changeling. I got turned into an apex predator who needs human flesh to survive, and set on by people whose only function in life was to kill me. I bite. And that's not an instinct I'm good at controlling because it was magicked into the way my body functions now."

"That doesn't mean you're broken."

Under her words, there's a stab of fear, turned inwards, directed at memories and sorrow that had colored her words before.

"It means you've been changed. Those are two different things."

Gil shifts so he can look back at Helena.

And then he rolls off the couch, back to his feet.

"Gimme your hand. I wanna show you something."

She holds her hand out in the air, waiting.

"If you think whatever you're going to show me is going to change my mind, I warn you, I can be quite stubborn."

He takes her hand gently; even through the Mask his hands feel rough, and he lifts her hand to his neck.

So she can feel the thick, keloid-like collar that circles his entire neck. A scar that no-one should rightfully be able to survive. And his voice rumbles gently beneath her fingers as he speaks.

"I am broken. That's how the way I was changed worked."

She's quiet for a long moment, her touch featherlight, and it might seem like she's about to drop it, before her free hand moves to push up her other arm's sleeve, up to her shoulder. In several places on her upper arm, there are marks like the flesh has been torn, gouged in a line and left to heal. Not the full encircling like his neck, but proof enough that something happened.

Not a Changeling, no magic upon her. Not the same thing. But something all the same.

"I may not know you, or your story. But I know you're more than you're giving yourself credit for."

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