Dietre Henrich Abendroth (sonataind) wrote in repose, @ 2017-10-04 11:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | *log, dietre abendroth, nilus doe |
Who: Dietre Abendroth and Nilus Doe.
What: D has a vision.
Where: Quiet Home.
When: Nighttime. [Backdated before the party.]
Warnings/Rating: Low.
Dietre woke with a start, overcome with a familiar feeling of dread. The darkness around him was disorienting, and he could not recall what had frightened him out of sleep. Not that it would make much of a difference, really. Maybe it was the shock of having actually been asleep at all. The boy sat up slowly, beginning to wonder if he was awake or not. Part of him hoped he wasn't, if this was a nightmare, then he'd be alright. If he was awake...then anything could happen. But the fact he was able to consciously debate if he was or was not awake led him to make the unhappy conclusion that he must be awake. And that was...not good.
He could feel his heart begin to pound and knew there was nothing he could do to stop it. He had been through all of his before, the mounting fear and paranoia, becoming aware of every dark corner, crevice and shadow, the tension building until it burst in a fit of terror. There was no knowing what could happen, only that something would.
Dietre lifted his feet, concerned about an attack from below. He could see better now, but that was no help. Sweat trickled down his back, but he just sat on the bed and waited. There was no stopping the inevitable. A crazy person could not will themselves to sanity. And then he saw it, so easy to miss at first, but once noticed, impossible not to see. The outline of a head and shoulders, more than a shadow, a blackness so deep it seemed a hole punched in reality. It looked as though someone was sitting at his desk, staring at him, yet where the moonlight fell with a silver glow across the seat of the chair, there was nothing. There was no bottom half to the figure. Just a head and shoulders fading into nothing.
Like always, he found he couldn’t look away, some ancient instinct held him still, telling him that the moment he took his eyes off of a predator it would strike. Though he could see no eyes, he knew his stare was being returned. He could feel his skin crawl where that invisible gaze roamed and his stomach twisted in fear.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he inched backwards off the bed. Eyes locked on the figure, he continued to back away, eternally grateful that it did not sit between him and the door. He reached behind himself, fumbled for the knob, then carefully squeezed through the opening before slamming the door shut the moment he was out. “God...” A prayer whispered with the breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. Now it hit him, the despair of having experienced yet another hallucination, the reinforcement of the knowledge he was insane, the terror of the unknown.
He walked aimlessly a ways down the hall, fearful that the dark figure would burst from his room after him. At some point he began to weep. He couldn’t help it. He knew that the moment a night-nurse or orderly saw him, he’d be forced back into his room with that thing and the very idea terrified him. He could only stand there, alone and trembling, face buried in his hands, crying silently as he had a thousand nights before.
“You’re lucky. Doc has such high hopes for your recovery, John.”
Nilus was being pulled along the hall, dripping wet and wrapped in a thin towel. Recovery was a joke. The angel shivered, his teeth chattering with the effect. He was more and more human by the day, it was exactly what they had wanted. What he wanted. He looked every bit like the basket case they made him out to be, disheveled and appearing like a sad, drowned rat.
He gave pause to a sob, his eyes darting to find the source. Someone was praying.
“Back to your room, Mr. Abewhatsit. Well beyond your bed time. Lights out was hours ago.” The orderly warned Dietre, his grip on Nilus never faltered- fingers too rough and digging. He held fast to the patient, tugging his body along as Nilus separated himself from that corporeal form. The orderly would forget about the man crying in the hall altogether.
The angel watched them walk away, disheartened by the abuse he suffered. His wings were dry now, sheltering Dietre from the shadows that seemed to follow him. The thought that seeing two of him could possibly distress his friend further never crossed his mind.
He offered a warm smile, speaking words long forgotten to him gently. A comforting prayer that lit up the dim hallway. He didn’t look like himself- at least not what he appeared to others as. He wore armor, a tunic and perched atop his head was a halo of light. No sign of wear or tear. No bags under his eyes to plague him. “Vile little things, failed experiments. My Father locked them away, but every once in awhile… They slip through the cracks of the imagination. Such is the price of free will, he didn’t want anyone to know about them. But you do. A lot of people tell stories about them, boogeymen. Monsters in the closet.”
Nilus moved in close enough to whisper into his ear, “They will consume you if you let them.”
He heard a cry not far off, a familiar voice. His own. Or a husk of himself. Bruises bloomed over his wrists and ankles as if he were a watercolor painting. He was being strapped down and sedated in his room. Odd. The man currently in charge of him had a habit of mistreating patients, but he was normally docile after hydrotherapy.
“Dietre. They can hurt you, but you can control them.”
As if on cue, Dietre heard the sound of footsteps approaching. Sniffling, he hastily wiped at his face, scowling at having been caught in such a weak moment and frustrated that his tears continued to fall despite his efforts to stop them. The orderly was not alone, D was surprised to see his rec room companion being dragged by. He was equally dismayed at the state the man was in, recalling Misha’s concern over his treatment. It seemed the boy had reason to worry, John certainly looked as if he had been through something terrible. Dietre paid so little attention to most of the patients around him that he was woefully ignorant of how barbarically the majority were treated. His father may have thrown him away, but Henrich Abendroth’s influence protected his son from the sort of suffering inflicted on those without families with a name and money behind them.
“Was ist das..!?” Dietre exclaimed in a hiss, stumbling back as John seemed to split in two, one being dragged away, the other standing mildly before him looking as though he had stepped out of a renaissance painting, bathed in radiant light. He could scarcely hear what the man-- no, angel? was saying.
His tears forgotten, Dietre stared, his normally blank face twisted with confusion. Surely he was sleeping. This had to be a dream. Yet, it seemed so very real, just like all of his other hallucinations.
“...What are you talking about?” He winced at the whisper, jerking away, too worked up and the moment to tolerate someone invading his space. “I don’t understand--” Pale gaze shifted, following the shape of John’s wings. He thought back to the feather he found beside the man’s easel. That had been real, hadn’t it? He was sure he had it still, tucked safely away in his desk drawer. “Are you… real...?”
Nilus tilted his head in obvious wonder at the question. “Of course I’m real, aren’t you? Would you prefer the other form? The orderly isn’t so kind,” and he said nothing more on the subject. He prefered not to talk about the state he found his body in each morning, or wonder about the twitch from the electroshock. He wanted to forget, but it made him feel more human.
His wings folded neatly behind his back, imposing. Gold and white. They’d turned ashen in many places, singed from the fall. He moved around to stare back at Dietre as if he were looking at him for the first time, “The things that plague you. The shadows,” he tried, “those are real.”
Things that fed off of energy. Hellfire licking at them, leaving behind lasting impressions on this plane. The angel scowled at the darkness creeping in the shadows. This place was susceptible to their attacks. They preyed on those who couldn’t protect themselves from their whims. Dietre attracted them like moths to a flame. There was something special about him, more than he knew. He could control them if he had the right tools. And that was a frightening thought. Rather than try and explain what they were again, Nilus could show him. He could keep him safe.
“If you’d allow me, I can provide knowledge. It only takes a moment.” A simple touch.
Real. What was real, anymore? Misha had assured him, once, that John was real, that they had talked. But did that mean that this John, winged and haloed, was real too? ...Which had been the one Misha talked to? And those those things, those monsters… God, he didn’t want them to be real!
“No-- No, I don’t want to know…!” He lifted his hands as if about to cover his ears, but they did not reach their goal before he dropped them again. Denial was safer, the truth was too terrifying. All his doctors had always assured him that the things he saw couldn’t hurt him, that he had no reason to be afraid. But here John was telling him otherwise, telling him they could consume him. He’d much rather believe his doctors. Still, that feather…
Moving slowly, Dietre drew closer to the winged man, hand outstretched. His eyes couldn’t be trusted, but he had to know. Fingers timidly caressed the singed plumage, full of power, yet soft as clouds. Solid. Real.
“...Does Misha know what you are?” Eyes narrowed in thought. The other boy told him he had never met John, so how did they talk? Why did they talk? And why did Misha seem so interested in a man he didn’t know?
Nilus watched as he inched closer to touch, curious as to what the human thought he was doing. He made no effort to stop him, even extending his wing for those prying fingers. No one had ever been so gentle, it certainly wasn’t a familiar sensation. It was an odd feeling, almost intimate. He was sure Dietre hadn’t meant anything by it- just that genuine human need to touch things they didn’t understand.
The angel drew back, fading into a more familiar figure to resemble what the other man came to know him as. The faded youth with dark circles, the light had all but gone out behind those eyes. He was standing there in a hospital gown once more, his hair curled from the icy water he’d been tossed into not long ago.
More notably, the bruises forming on his temples. Nilus gave a shudder, his wings folding in tight to alleviate the discomfort performed on him. “Would you have believed him if he told you? I’m broken like the rest of the beings in this place. It doesn’t matter what I am anymore.”
He shook the thoughts from his head, his eyes downcast. He was staring pointedly at a small figure behind his friend. It bared its teeth to the angel and Nilus banished him with a single touch to the top of its formless head.
“Be gone. You have no power here. Nor over him. Go back to the shadows.”
The light was blinding enough to fill the hall. The bulbs shattering with the power behind the smite that took little effort. The creature howled in pain as it disintegrated, leaving nothing but a mark on the floor. He regarded this with a tilt of his head, “I can help, Dietre. I can teach you to control the unknown. You don’t have to be afraid.”
Dietre was quickly getting the impression that, if John were indeed an angel, he had not been sent to save him in particular. The heavenly vision of him dissolved, returning to that sad, dripping wreck of a man Dietre had seen being dragged off. Whatever John was, he had clearly been abandoned, just as he had. Holy fathers were just as bad as human fathers, it seemed.
“No… I don’t want to believe in this, even now.” There was still a chance he was dreaming. He jumped when John reached behind him, whirling in fear to see what had crept up while he was distracted. He watched in horrified awe as the being was destroyed, flinching and cringing as the lights blew overhead.
His breathing irregular, Dietre let John’s offer go unacknowledged for now. Instead, he peered anxiously up at the broken lights. “...I don’t think we should stay in the hall.” Surely that blinding flash would have been noticed? And the idea that someone might come, and not be able to see John, made Dietre quite uneasy. He was too logical to accept all of this easily. He needed time to digest it, bit by bit, and that would be impossible if he also had to deal with an orderly’s questioning, or the the interference of another patient.
“You’re right,” the angel spared a glance to the ceiling, then to the broken glass on the floor. It was easily fixed but not forgotten. Clearly something had happened and John didn’t have the energy to wipe the memories of everyone in the immediate area.
Upon further inspection of his friend, his heart was weighed with a terrible sense of guilt. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said anything at all. He wasn’t good with words. Telling him all those horrible things wasn’t his best idea, but angels have never been known for their tact. Sugar coating was best left to demons.
“What are you doing out of your room? You shouldn’t be here!”
Nilus froze on the spot, clearly terrified of the voice that was coming towards them. It was the same orderly that had just strapped him down into his bed.
He had to get him out of there. His next words were hurried, “Dietre. Tell me where you feel safe. I’ll take you there.” He had enough energy to do that.
Startled by that sudden, angry voice, Dietre jumped and whirled around toward the sound of it. He glared a look of icy fire at the approaching orderly, ready to put up a fight, not for himself, but for John’s sake. He usually took quite a passive look on those in power at Quiet Home, they mostly didn’t bother him. A life of isolation led to him being rather self absorbed, and because he did not care about the people around him, he tended to be blind to how they were treated.
But John was different. And now that the veil had been lifted from his eyes, he found himself seething with the same sort of hate normally reserved for his father. Before he could do, or say something that got him in trouble, he was distracted by the urgency in John’s voice. He didn’t have time to think about things, so he answered reflexively, “T-the carnival.”
“But how can you take me there? It's too far away..!” And could he even go such a distance if he were split apart? None of this made any sense.
Nilus gave no warning as the orderly neared, gently taking his hand and then they were gone. He’d give his warden a new memory of this later, make sure that Dietre was never there. Last thing they needed were rumors of an escape attempt. The trip took nearly a blink of an eye, then they were standing in the middle of a deserted carnival.
The angel felt out of place, standing there in nothing but a hospital gown and bruises for miles. His wings were poised as if he’d flown there. They had, in a sense. A touch of relief passed over his features as he kept a gentle hold of his friend’s hand.
It was a comfort he hadn’t felt in ages. Humanity.
“Nothing is out of reach,” he informed him, curiosity getting the better of him. “You feel comfortable here?” He asked, dropping his hand in favor of wrapping his arms around himself. While he’d been out of the Quiet Home on a number of occasions, this was the first he’d been to the carnival. It was unnerving to say the least.
What happened next was too much like a dream, and again Dietre was plunged into doubt. It seemed in a blink of an eye he was standing in the center of the carnival. He sucked in a sharp breath, disoriented not only by the sudden change in scenery, but how the carnival was familiar yet strange all at once. He had been there after hours before, but never when every light was out, no soul left to be seen. At this hour, those that lived at the carnival were all in their own tents and caravans, set off to the side of the grounds. Dietre and John were quite alone.
“Y-yes…” He did not feel exactly comfortable at the moment, alarm bells going off in the back of his mind, warning him of trouble that was sure to come of this. Trouble for him at Quiet Home, or even trouble for him here for being there when he wasn’t supposed to be.
Sure he’d feel better if they weren’t just standing out in the open, Dietre gestured for John to follow. The only place he could think to go was the burlesque tent, where he’d find a sense of safety with the homely little piano he played for the shows.
It was dark, and once he entered the tent, he couldn’t see a thing. Fear stopped him in his tracks just within the entrance, and suddenly it did not matter that nothing bad had ever happened to him at the carnival. He was scared of the dark, and all he could think about was the terrible shadow man in his room.
Stumbling, he backed up into John, his heart pounding. “M-maybe out here is better.”
Nilus gave a gentle nudge to Dietre as he backed out of the tent. The last thing he wanted to do was have him tuck tail and run at the first sign of these shadows that plagued him. The dark left them hilariously outnumbered, but he urged him forward anyway. There was no reason to fear the dark with an angel around. He snapped his fingers and the tent lit up like a beacon.
“You are no fool, Dietre. You have every right to fear the dark,” he stepped around him, his eyes darting around the tent in genuine curiosity. “But you’re stronger than you realize, and I can help you reach that potential. You won’t need me at your back,” he’d rather like Dietre to think of him as a friend. Not the shield. His days as a guardian angel were short lived and disastrous. “But I can’t think of a better place to spend my time. I apologize for the deception, but who believes in a higher power anymore?”
It was the most he’d said in a long time. He was in a tremendous amount of pain, mind, body and grace. He allowed the horrors inflicted on him because they made him feel human. They made him feel.
The angel moved up the rows, taking a spot in the very front and center. His hands folded politely in his lap as he looked up at the lights and the stage. “Not the best circumstances, but I wanted to hear you play. I’d hoped you would feel safe here. If you don’t want to play, I understand.”
He turned to look at him, a faint smile tugging at his lips, “But I wish you would. I think it would bring comfort to the both of us.”
Dietre dragged his feet, unable to move forward of his own volition until the tent was filled with light, revealing there was nothing sinister laying in wait. Being able to see made him feel better, but at the same time he worried that someone would see the light and come to investigate. He let John walk past him, taking the opportunity to stare.
There were too many questions he wanted to ask, they jumbled and twisted together in his mind, each vying to be first, but only clogging things up so that none could be asked at all. Could John really help him? The possibility was more than tempting, yet he struggled against being seduced by such a promise. What was in it for John? Nobody performed miracles for nothing, not even God. Dietre wished he had his cellphone with him, wished there was someone he could ask for advice. What would Misha say? And would Liam even believe him?
In this sea of confusion, talk of playing the piano was the only thing that made sense. Ever since John gave him that painting, he had hoped to repay him with some art of his own. “...I’ll play.” He made his way toward the stage slowly, wading through the fog in his mind.
The world came into better focus once he lowered himself to the piano bench. This was home. This was comfort. Even so, he was not in a state capable of anything complicated. His fingers plucked out a piece endlessly repeated during his childhood when he was still learning. Fur Elise. Short. Simple. Beautiful.
He played much like the masters of their art. Nilus had always enjoyed music, despite being one of those beings that could learn it in a day. There was no passion behind any instrument he picked up, just a mimicked action and sound. He was a warrior class, not those lesser who made beautiful music.
It quieted his mind. It suddenly dawned on him. What he was putting himself through, the own personal hell he created to keep himself grounded. He chose to be locked away, he chose the horrible things that happened to this vessel on a regular basis.
They made him feel human.
But, perhaps, he didn’t want to become a monster afterall. There were few people that made him think that there was some good left in humanity. Dietre was one of them, despite the horrible things he’d done. Nilus was no saint either.
Interest was painted across his face, interest and intrigue. Who was Dietre? Why was he so attached to him? He reminded him of a very close friend, but more importantly, a friend that had lived on and thrived even under such harsh conditions. Dietre inspired him.
Nilus was gone, leaving a feather behind on one of the benches. He wasn’t gone for good. He appeared next to his friend on the bench, watching his fingers dance along the keys. “Play from the heart,” he rested a hand over the human’s, “Play me something from the heart.”