Just a Little Bent

[andhiswife]

As far as Darrow antics go, this one might top the list for bloody eeriness. At the cottage, they can almost pretend nothing's happened. Between the garden, the chickens, and the staples she always keeps well-stocked, there's no immediate threat of starvation. The power hasn't failed yet, but even if it does, she thinks they'll be able to work around it — neither she nor Anne are exactly accustomed to being without it anymore, but that doesn't mean they've forgotten how to get by.

And surely things will go back to normal sooner or later. They always do, and she refuses to believe that—that whatever this is might be special in that regard.

But it's still unsettling. Even though it only seems to be the locals who have vanished, there were always far more of them than anyone else, and never has she felt the difference so keenly. Whole blocks are abandoned, shops either permanently shuttered or, more often, left unmanned mid-shift: the lights still on, but no one at home. But what she hates most are the littler signs of lives abruptly interrupted. A lone briefcase sitting at a bus stop; half-drunk beverages glued to their coasters by dried condensation; shopping carts left idle halfway down an aisle.

Regan is taking it especially hard, and no wonder.

It would be easier to avoid town entirely, and she'd be lying if she said she wasn't tempted. But she can't abide the thought of hiding out in the countryside when there are still plenty of people who need help. Not when her hands still remember how to feed a Village.

So she's stolen a bakery. Or, well... borrowed. She's borrowing a bakery.

It hadn't been hard to find. Even cleaning it up hadn't been too much of a challenge: people had already made off with the displays' contents, so there was little rotten food to be dealt with. Obviously there were no fresh ingredients worth salvaging, but things like flour, baking soda, and spices don't go bad overnight. There's plenty to start with, at least.

Getting the word out had been the bigger challenge. She's texted everyone she can, and Saoirse has made some very colorful signage to post in the bakery windows and in other places around the city, letting people know that there are fresh-baked goods available. She can't imagine charging for any of it, but after the first few hours (and some discussion with Anne), she'd added some signage suggesting that she wouldn't question where any raw ingredients might have come from, if people wanted to bring some.

It's mid-afternoon when she slides two more trays of muffins into the oven, sets a timer on her phone, and then steps out of the kitchen for some slightly cooler air. Her hair is falling out of its bun and she's probably a mess, but it's satisfying to see people eating something she made: something fresh and good that hasn't come from a bloody can.

[ooc: a mini-gathering for the vanishing NPC plot! If your pup knows Greta, you can assume they've received a text; otherwise, there's plenty of signage letting people know there's still one functioning bakery in town.]

Comments

[loficharm]

Martin hates this. It hasn't gotten better or easier. His and John's little jaunt through the public library took the sting out for a few days — it was comforting to have that little adventure, in more ways than one. But time wears on and the problem doesn't fix itself, and Martin still feels like he's trembling on the edge of one of his own nightmares.

It's a relief to get a text from Greta, both in a practical sense — they're starting to worry about their own dwindling food stores — and simply because it's nice to hear from one of the most reassuring people he knows. So he's on his way to find her little appropriated bakery, striking out on his own almost as if to challenge his own fears. Maybe he can stay there a while. Find some way to help. Anything to take his mind off it.

The streets are so oppressively empty that it startles him whenever he catches movement, even though that ought to be a comfort. He relaxes at once when he recognizes Regan, though it's still a bit surprising to see her out on her own. She's fussing with a sign advertising the bakery, and she looks about as tense as he feels. Which makes perfect sense. He saw her world — he remembers it sharply enough, and he was only there for relatively short time. A dream, technically. It still haunts him. He hadn't explored much beyond Regan's family's home, but it is easy enough to imagine how hard it must be hitting her to see Darrow in this state.

It may be hitting them for different reasons, but he thinks he can imagine all too well how she feels.

He adjusts his walk, approaching her at a wide angle, hoping to catch her attention without startling her. He lifts his hand to wave.

[negative_feedback]

It's too slow to be one of the creatures, but she still jumps a little before she realizes who she's seeing. Martin. It's good to see him. It's good to see anyone out here with her, in the abandoned street, but she's glad that it's him. She gives him a relieved smile, and offers a wave back.

"It's good to see you," she adds, one-handed as she holds a freshly cut-out letter in place while the glue dries. There are probably way more efficient ways to do this, but Saoirse's proud of her hand-cut lettering, so Regan figures that taking the time to glue them in place isn't such a bad thing. Besides, it does help the signs stand out better.

[loficharm]

Martin smiles, first apologetically, then warmer at her greeting. "Same," he answers; his signing ability is still very limited, but he's gotten better at understanding it, at least.

Not that that does them much good while she's stuck with only one hand at her disposal. Awkwardly, slow and unsure of himself, he gestures at the sign and asks, "Can I help?"

[negative_feedback]

She nods with a smile and shifts to the side to give him space in front of the sign. It's easy enough to see what she's doing, and she offers him the glue stick, then the next letter. It's a quick-drying glue, something of Saoirse's from school, but there's still that window where things can shift if they're not careful.

While he holds one letter in place, Regan can glue the next one, and slowly, 'SUPPLIES WELCOME' comes into view along the bottom of the sign. Saoirse had wanted to write 'BRING YOUR OWN INGREDIENTS' but that was way too long for the signs, and way too many letters to cut out for her small hands.

"How are you?" she asks when her hands are free.

[loficharm]

It's nice to be able to do something helpful, even a small thing like this, and he suspects that may be why Regan is out here doing it in the first place. He resists the inane urge to make small talk — even more useless now than usual — and tries to imagine this sort of silence being a natural or even comfortable thing. It isn't, though. It isn't natural for him, and it certainly isn't comfortable to stand on a city street and hear nothing. He wonders if there's a difference for Regan, as well, apart from the visual and how it must remind her of home. He thinks there must be, though he really can't imagine it.

When they're finished, she asks after him, and he smiles faintly.

"Okay," he says with a little shrug, and fumbles a bit before just reiterating, "Okay." His expression and general body language should make the sort-of clear enough. "You?"

[negative_feedback]

He's probably as okay as she is, and she offers him a wan smile that suggests she regrets asking. "Okay," she agrees. She hesitates, then sighs and finally explains, "You read about 'deafening silence' sometimes. It used to make me mad, until everything at home. I finally got it. It's like that again." She looks around and gestures at the empty city. "I can almost feel it, like I'm carrying it on my shoulders." She wonders if it's the same for him. If the quiet is like a weight on him, the way it is on her, the way it seems to be on Anne and so many others she knows.

[loficharm]

He watches carefully, keeping up with her explanation at a bit of a lag, but well enough that he can offer a look of sympathy and a nod when she's done. He may not be able to imagine what it's like for her, but that doesn't mean he doesn't understand, on some level.

"I think I know what you mean," he says after a moment. "Sometimes..."

He trails off, his hands hovering uselessly. Christ, even if he had stronger vocabulary, he's not sure how to explain this.

"Sometimes I feel that way even when it isn't like this," he says finally, matching her gesture to the city. Then he hesitates, embarrassed, wondering if he should even be talking about this with a kid. He doesn't really think of Regan as just a kid, especially after seeing the world she came from. But that's not necessarily a good thing. Just a sign of how quickly she had to grow up.

"It's good to talk to people," he says a bit awkwardly, offering a faint smile. "Reminds me I'm not alone."

[negative_feedback]

There's more he wants to say. She can see it in the aborted way he moves his arms before he course-corrects. She wants to ask, but if he doesn't want to talk about it, then she'd just be prying at a scab, wouldn't she? She doesn't want to do that.

Still. It is good to talk to people.

Regan hesitates, then says, "You used to not, right? Talk to people. Saoirse said, when she first met you, you were... distant? At first I thought you were shy, but she said you were lonely." She smiles a bit ruefully. "She's good at seeing stuff like that." Even when you don't want her to.

[loficharm]

He's a little taken aback by the question, once he parses it, his eyes going a bit wide before he recovers himself with an awkward chuckle. It's not exactly something he hid. He even tried to explain it to Regan, once, before he really knew how. And it certainly doesn't surprise him that Saoirse picked up on it and talked about it herself. He smiles a little, fondly remembering how kind she'd been at her birthday party, a while ago now but still dear to his heart.

"She is," he agrees. "And she's right. I was really lonely."

It's hard to convey what that means. He hesitates, mulling it over.

"You've talked to John, right?" he says, knowing the answer but finding it more polite to ask. "You know how our home is... weird."

[negative_feedback]

She and John had sort of traded stories. It'd been weird, and a little scary to think about them going through that, but she'd understood a lot more by the end — and felt a little better, too. John's ability to understand ASL with pretty much no effort had made telling her story a lot easier than with most people. She hadn't had to hesitate, or slow down, or backtrack. He'd just known.

That's still so weird, when she thinks about it.

She nods, quietly encouraging him to continue.

[loficharm]

He isn't totally sure how much detail John's gone into with Regan, nor how much he wants to go into himself, but it's good to have some sort of mutual baseline. He nods in return and pauses for a moment, trying to work out what to say and how to say it. The difficulty isn't just that the story is odd or frightening; it is also personal and painful. He wants to avoid it and doesn't know if he should trust that impulse; he feels obligated to confront it, and doesn't know if he should trust that, either.

"I've always been lonely," he says eventually, his expression as matter-of-fact as he can make it. "That made one of the, um..." He flounders a bit, his sign not good enough to word this with any nuance, and in the end he gives her an apologetic look as he digs out his phone and types it out: "One of those Entities from our world feeds off of loneliness, just like the one John and I sort of work for feeds off knowledge. And it was feeding off me for a while."

Once she's read this, he hesitates. He could just keep typing it out, but that feels both too difficult and like it would be rude, or lazy. He'd rather work on getting better at this, and the focus of just saying it is a better distraction than having to write it out, having to sit with it like that.

"So..." He pockets his phone again. "When I came here, that was still... happening. It was hard to stop."

So unbearably, painfully hard. He still thinks about it sometimes. He still has dreams. He still feels, on very few and very small occasions, the little wisps of cold fog chasing around the back of his neck.

"It made me feel like there were no other people in the world, sometimes," he says. "So, all this..." He gestures around them and then lets his hand fall, just staring at the empty streets for a while. Then he looks back at her. "It's hard."

[negative_feedback]

He needs to rely on his phone a little to explain some of the finer nuances, but it's not that big of a deal. She nods when he reads it, and lets him continue. She can't really imagine a world where there are whole entities that feed off of people's fears and pains. It's hard enough believing the creatures that she'd lived with, and she'd seen them. She can't really imagine what Martin had been through.

Haltingly, Regan moves closer to him. She doesn't know if this is the right move, but she'll figure it out pretty quickly, she decides. She pulls him into a hug, arms around him and chin on his shoulder. For very different reasons, the current state of the city has them both uncomfortable and afraid, but she thinks they have similar solutions. She steps back, a little embarrassed at her unsolicited action.

"Come on," she says. "You should come back to the bakery."

[loficharm]

"Oh-" he says aloud, just a startled syllable escaping as she steps in to hug him. He's surprised, but not at all averse, and it only takes him a second to relax into it, his hands resting gently on her back as he returns the gesture. It's nice. It's really nice.

When she steps back, she looks just as embarrassed as he feels, but he still manages a smile and nods at her suggestion.

"All right," he says, and touches her arm before she can turn away, wanting to make sure she sees him: "Thank you."

[negative_feedback]

Regan smiles, warm and a little relieved.

"You're welcome," she answers.

It's easy enough to lead him back to the bakery. She knows the way almost by heart, now, just by sheer virtue of how often she's gone out with glue and a stapler. The signs are more thickly placed the closer they get, until they come upon it. There are plenty of people there. Anne, Greta, and Saoirse, of course, and other people have been coming and going. There's even a tall, slender redhead there, holding a jug of milk. The way she nods at Martin, Regan thinks they know each other.