InsaneJournal

Who: Just Daniel.
Where: R1.
When: 11:16 PM - 12:07 AM
What: It's just a few paragraphs in prelude to his later appearance in the Public Post.

Daniel could describe his trip from Piedmont to Bellum Letale as simply "cold" with no other adjective to properly encompass the experience. He couldn't find any other words, a circumstance that was, for him, fairly significant. He still did not like venturing outside too far, and if he looked up without a ceiling, he felt as if the sky might swallow the world--skyscrapers first, then tall trees, then he himself, all at once, down a giant Lovecraftian maw where there was only weightless, vulnerable void. Daniel disliked this change in himself more than all the others--though there were so many others.

He tried not to dwell on it in the cab, staying still and watching the lights blur outside the window, careful not to look too far upward. He overpaid the cabbie but it was worth it to avoid conversation or commentary when he hunched down into his coat--still Vlad's, oversize, now becoming warm and familiar as little else seemed to manage--and moved quickly into Bellum Letale. As he'd predicted, the stairs and hallways were deserted, and he saw no one even as he rode the elevator up the few floors it would cooperate, then climbed the rest of the way.

What little noise that spilled out from under the Penthouse doors seemed unnaturally loud, and hasty in his ill-fitting shoes, he drifted up the stairs and into R1. The sense of safety and security that enveloped him eclipsed the coat and surpassed everything else he could think of. Not even the big, empty houses of his childhood offered this sense of home. Daniel turned up the heat then paced slowly over the familiar cut pile carpeting, his weight leaving no sign as the familiar tracks were already pressed down into the old weave, moving from room to room until he was satisfied it was both empty and entirely his.

He stayed that way for a moment, standing absolutely still in his place, his place, and then he smiled and pulled his shoes off. He was in no hurry to find what he came for. His mind drifted toward the kitchen, and he wondered whether or not Rosalie had left enough in the cupboards somewhere, when he heard a digital clock tink the hour. Pain interrupted his movement that direction. It was a long, shuddering stab, an invisible blade that took him entirely by surprise, and a moment before the small sensory explosions of his shoulder hitting the ground and his hip following it a moment later made rubble of his thoughts, he had time to wonder if it was some delayed withdrawal reaction, some poison that turned blood to acid in the veins, or some new torture only in his mind.

When the pain shot down his spine he had no more energy to think of it again, and every cohesive inner voice was all asking for an end. His vision watered down to splashes of color and flickers of white light. He smelled dust and cut thread as he tried to flex his fingers against the sudden agony that twisted through his bones. He was screaming but he didn't hear it, and growing but he couldn't feel it. Everything was just torment, and the strange, ugly sound of ligaments stretching around twisting bones.

Until it wasn't.