Participants:
| Scene Title | Indestructible |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Ethan wants to put his ability to the test. Eileen doesn't. |
| Date | February 25, 2011 |
Old Dispensary: Ethan's Room
He had been carving again…
But then his mind wandered. He grew curious.
The dispensary was safe again. With Feng most definitely dead, they didn't have to worry about their safehouse being compromised any longer. The occupants have started to flock back into the house, there have even been invitations for new people to come stay. If they need it. There hasn't been an answer either way at this point. But the old residents of the dispensary are clinging back to their old home.
Ethan himself has been laid up in his room for a while. Not able to do much more than sit up and walk around a little, he is currently sitting up in his bed. His eyes flicking to his window, rain pattering softly against the pane.
An empty bowl sits on his dresser, there had been soup in it not too long ago. Broth. A few empty water bottles are scattered on the ground. One half full bottle resting on the ground next to his feet. Ethan stares down at his wrist. A figurine held weakly in his hand. He peers with curiosity at his wrist, the carving knife moving from the figurine to poke at his flesh. Poke poke. No blood. No broken skin. Ethan tilts his head to the side bringing the knife up before driving it back into his arm a little more powerfully. No blood. Ethan's lips thin out, the knife is dropped.
Glancing to the dresser, Ethan tilts his head some at the pistol that sits there. He wets his lips.
He reaches for it…
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" demands a voice from the bedroom doorway, and it does not belong to Feng Daiyu, back from the dead. It belongs to his daughter, who did not expect to find her father with a gun to his head (because that's where it is when she finally locates him after almost a month of searching), though later she will be glad she was able to find him at all — right now, however, her voice is sharp, laced with tension and the kind of cutting fury that snaps off syllables and makes her consonants sound cold.
So is she, but because she's standing there in clothes soaked through by the rain and long strings of inky hair plastered to her face like streaks of grease running off her scalp. One hand clutches at the doorframe, the other — wrist locked in a brace — she holds across her midsection with fingers curled at her side.
On the other side of his window, the iridescent black-green of its feathers standing out against the snow gathered on the window's concrete lip, a magpie gives an irate flick of it's long, slender tail.
"Fuckin' birds."
Ethan growls at the window. "You gonna tell on me?"
His gaze returns to Eileen. "Listen princess. I'm pretty sure I can't die. So I just need to test it." Holden murmurs, bringing up a staying hand. "I'm fairly confident. So just let me do this alright?" The Wolf asks, sounding somewhat pleading. He pushes himself back some, but the sight of her.. The gun drops down from his head some.
"Come 'ere." He murmurs, hand going onto his lap pleadingly. He's bare to the waist, cuts and bruises scattered around his body.
The words that are coming out of Ethan's mouth may as well be in a foreign tongue that Eileen doesn't understand for all that she comprehends them. If she has learned one life lesson in the entirety of her life, it's that a final destination is the one thing everyone with their feet on the earth has in common.
Everyone dies.
"If you pull that trigger," she says, and although her voice is hard, she's still stepping into the room and moving toward him, "I'll never speak with you again."
The gun is placed down. "You think I'm crazy." Ethan answers quietly. He watches her as she moves in. He frowns down. "I'm not crazy." He announces quietly. "I can't be 'urt." He points to the knife on the ground. "Grab it. Stab me. Anywhere. It won't work. Won't break skin. Nothin'." Holden attests, pointing to his knee. "Do it."
He goes back to lay on the bed. "It wouldn't 'urt me." He reaffirms, folding his arms over his chest.
Eileen's response is not to stoop, bend and scoop up the knife in her dominant hand, but to step down on the blade with the toe of her boot and, with a flick of her foot, send it spinning under the bed where neither of them will be able to easily retrieve it. Through the window, the magpie can see the shadows on his skin where the contusions are and the angry red that borders his lacerations. Old scar tissue is white and wrinkled in the room's dim light.
It seems to Eileen that Ethan can very much be hurt. She sits down on the edge of the bed and touches the back of her hand to his face, then turns it to cup his jaw in her palm, leaning in to rest her forehead against his. Her skin has a texture like cool, polished stone, smooth and slick with rain, but yields when touched in a way that stone doesn't. Her mouth is cold against his cheek when she kisses it.
His own skin is cold to the touch, his arm climbin up to rest around her shoulders. Pulling her into him, Holden goes to rest his head against hers, his chin ducking down. "I'm not crazy." He reaffirms. He lifts his head weakly, turning his chin to press his own kiss against her forehead.
Ethan's head then goes to lay back against the pillow. "I survive everything, Eileen. I crashed a car into a building. In Takrit, that explosion. 'ow many times 'ave I been shot? I don't die, Eileen. A building dropped on top of me, princess. If the mass didn't kill me, the freezin' temperatures should 'ave. I didn't so much as go a little blue." He goes to stare down at her. "Explain that to me."
Eileen tucks her body against Ethan's side and fits her head under his chin. Her legs do not span as much of the mattress as his do, making her presence on the bed more or less as unobtrusive as it can be. She would not lay with him like this if she had grown up knowing what he was, but she also wouldn't call him by his name. The hand at his cheek is still.
It is times like this that she wishes Kazimir was still with them. The old man was good at giving explanations, and the one she offers draws from what she remembers of him, and what knowledge he passed on before their world changed. "You're not crazy," she agrees. "Arrogant. You may be hard to kill, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. There are an infinite number of possibilities — immortality is only one.
"No one is indestructible."
"I am indestructible."
Holden grins a little bit as he reaches over for the pistol on the dresser. "In the foot. If I'm right. It won't 'urt me. If you're right, I'll be off my feet for a month or two and learn a valuable lesson to listen to you forever." He glances over to her then back to the gun. It's handed over to her weekly. His head moves slightly to plant a kiss against her hands.
"I thought you were dead when the dome went up." He explains gently. "I.. I didn't like that. I missed you, princess. 'ave you been alright?" Ethan pushes himself back some, eyeing her quickly. "You're 'urt." It couldn't be Feng.
"'oo?"
"A force of nature," Eileen says, turning the gun between her hands as if deliberating when in fact there's no deliberation happening at all. She needs Ethan on his feet. Mouth pinched, she ejects the clip from the pistol and tucks the weapon down the back of the jeans Brian gave her, its grip snug against the curve of her spine. The ammunition she keeps in her hands, bare fingers curled around it — her ring clicks against its edge.
Her mind turns to the members of their family who aren't present. Raith up on Pollepel, and Gabriel—
Wherever Gabriel is. She curves her thumb along a strip of mottled purple between Ethan's ribs, applying just enough pressure to remind him that while he might believe that he's indestructible, he isn't immune to pain and is still sore. "Did you tell Gabriel what you told me?"
Ethan frowns deeply. What the hell.
Holden squirms away a little from the push. Ow. His head lolls back on his pillow. "I don't know. When 'e found me I was a bit loopy. I don't know what I said to 'im. But listen. Shoot my foot. The side of my leg. Come on. I'm telling you, this will work." Holden frowns down at his daughter, his brows making a V when he realizes he's begging his daughter to shoot him. Ahem.
"Why can't you trust me? You think I'm stupid? I've never done anything to 'arm myself if I wasn't sure things would pay off. If I wasn't positive, I wouldn't shoot me foot." Holden growls, "Or me head. Just shoot me, god damnit."
"I'm not going to shoot you." On this point, Eileen is firm, but she also understands the importance of compromise in a relationship. Her fingers count his ribs beneath his skin, feeling for an open sore on his side that she can exploit — in his current state, it does not take her long to find one, and when she does she takes a moment to circle around the edge of the wound with her thumb again. The texture of it tells her more than the magpie on the other side of the glass does, and she knows she's located what she needs when his skin stops feeling smooth.
She does not supply him with any warning when she digs her fingers into the cut, pushing under the skin to excite the nerves there and sent a jolt of pain scissoring through his gut and bowels. What she expects is a rush of warmth against her hand, something wet and sticky and smelling like blood, but there isn't any.
She pushes harder.
Ethan's brows crease, his teeth bare. A light growl rolls out of his lips. His hands ball into fists. Clenching them tightly as she burrows into his scratch. He looks down at his cuts. No blood. Nothing. Just the annoying pain. Why does he still get pain? That's not neccessarily fair. But pain can be beared. He can fight through pain. Injury is a little more debilitating than the symptom of pain.
Pain can be ignored.
And so Ethan does his best ignore the pain shooting up through his ribs. And instead he smiles. His bared teeth flicking up slightly to become less of a snarl and more of a 'see?' smile. "See?"
"I do," she concedes. "I'm sorry for Daiyu — all this time, and he thought you were on a level playing field." Eileen's hand spreads across the injury, shielding it with splayed fingers. Her eyes close. "It's important that we don't speak about this around Gabriel until we understand what this is — if it is what you say, then it's going to be difficult for you to work together. His mortality frightens him, and he's more sensitive than he lets on.
"Everyone has moments of weakness, Ethan — but please don't go inviting one by telling him what you think, because you're wrong. You have to be. Do you understand?"
Ethan gives a light nod.
He won't admit that Gabriel wouldn't even be able to take it even if he wanted to.
Ethan's hands clasp weakly over his stomach. "I don't want to make 'im feel bad." Ethan murmurs, it's genuine. He doesn't want to be a stumbling block for the poor guy. Turning his head some, one hand leaves his stomach and raises up to her head.
Fingers idly combing through her hair he smiles lightly at her. "You see now." Ethan mumbles, glancing to where she hid the gun. "Shoot me."
Slap is the sound of Eileen's palm coming down flat on the injury with enough force that it sounds like something hitting water and could be heard from the hall outside if she and Ethan weren't the only ones in the Dispensary.
That probably means no. Also: "Stop asking." And if they hadn't been apart for so long, and even longer before that, she'd be drawing away from him, mattress springs creaking as she sits back up and climbs to her feet — instead, she allows the fingers in her hair and turns her face against his shoulder, silent in his company.
She will lay here for a few more minutes. Regardless of his opinion, it's always possible they'll be their last because she isn't.
Indestructible.
