Coping Who: Rowan and Liah Where: That little bitty house When: Late-ish
Juniper had fallen asleep during Pirates of the Caribbean-- which the previous owners of this house did, indeed, have-- which had to mean she was really tired, since it was her favorite movie. So once the movie was over, it really hadn't been all that hard to get her teeth brushed-- using someone else's toothbrush and toothpaste, which she complained bitterly about-- and get her into borrowed pajamas that were way too big for her and had cut holes for her extra arms-- and put her to bed. In fact, the complaining she'd made was pretty much too sleepy and incoherent to really even count as complaining.
So Juniper was in bed, sound asleep. And there were creatures howling and screaming outside in the streets. And suddenly Rowan felt like being in a darkened room with just a sleeping little girl was way beyond anything he could stand at that moment in time. Not that the rest of the house was much brighter-- it seemed prudent to keep as many lights off as possible, so as not to attract any of those noisy beasts, so actually the only lights on were ones nowhere near windows, like bathroom lights and the kitchen light. And all the curtains were tightly shut.
Rather than bother Verity, who was shut in with Jasper anyhow, Rowan decided to make another try with Liah. Conversation over dinner hadn't gone very well, but maybe now it would go a bit better.... He crept out of the master bedroom, where he was planning on sharing with Juniper whenever he actually slept, and went looking for his friend, his wings half-open behind him and torn shirt-slits flapping loosely. He needed to get some buttons, or something....
Liah had taken the bedroom with the computer desk, and she had the lamp on the desk turned on for a little bit of light, but beyond that, the room was in darkness. She'd made sure the window in the room was locked and the curtains tightly closed, and she was dressed for bed in an enormous t-shirt she'd found in one of the drawers in here; it was so huge that the short sleeves hung down past her elbows and the hem reached her knees. She was wishing she could sleep, but she couldn't, because every time she closed her eyes, she saw horrible things. Blood, death. Monsters, her own brother among them.
She'd been mostly silent since she'd left Rowan, Verity, Juniper and Jasper to go look through the kitchen, but she was beyond being worried about what their new acquaintances might think of her. It was all she could do just to hold herself together, and her current activity wasn't helping all that much. She had her sketchbook out, the one that she'd crammed into her shoulder bag as she'd left her house for the last time, and as she sat on the carpeted floor, her back against the side of the bed, she flipped through it. Her gaze was wistful as she looked at the sketches as if they were photos of old friends she'd never see again and tried to breathe around the boulder that seemed to be sitting in the middle of her chest.
From the faint light from under her door, Rowan presumed she was in the bedroom she'd picked out for herself. He eased up to it, walking softly and slowly because, well, he did really ache... and he didn't want to alert Verity, in the room next door to this one, that he was there. He knocked gently. "Liah?" he asked into the quiet house, also keeping his voice down. "You in there?"
Rowan. Of course, who else would it be? Liah's head had lifted from her sketchpad and she stared at the door, worrying her lower lip idly between her teeth. Did she want to talk to him, alone, where he might figure out how close she was to falling apart? She didn't see that she had any choice. It was Rowan; she couldn't just tell him to go away like she might with a lot of other people. "Where else?" she replied, speaking just loudly enough that he could hear her. "Come in." She tucked still-damp blonde hair behind her ears and shifted the sketchbook to the floor on one side of her.
Of course she was in there. He opened the door and poked his head in with a little grin. "Hey...." Then he slipped inside and closed the door behind him, coming over to where she sat and crouching in front of her, wings half-spread behind him in a kind of unconscious balancing act, keeping him from falling over with their unexpected weight by spreading out a little and finding his center of gravity again. "Anything new in there?" he asked, lightly. Though if she could draw anything other than dark-and-horrible right now, he'd be impressed.
"Hey," Liah said, pulling her knees up and making sure the t-shirt was pulled all the way down over them. She could feel the hem brushing her bare feet as she sat curled up like that. She couldn't help but follow the feathery curves of the tops of his wings with her eyes; she'd never thought she'd see anything so fantastic outside a movie or comic book. She shook her head a little, as if to bring herself out of it, and replied, "Nothing new. I didn't draw anything since before." Liah didn't know if she could draw if she tried. Just the thought of it filled her with a dull sort of emptiness, a hollow spot where her enjoyment of sketching as a diversion had always been. Just one more thing to unnerve her.
"Anything you drew would probably be all creepy, anyway." Rowan shifted a little to sit, cross-legged, on the floor instead of crouching. Since he wasn't planning on leaving for a while, anyhow. His wings pulled in a little closer, a little bit around them both, with the leading pinion touching the bed to either side of her. "I know if I was a drawing type, I wouldn't have anything in my head to draw except the shit making all that noise." Another pained-sounding howl sounded somewhere outside, as if to underscore the words, and he flinched.
Liah was scared enough without trying to draw the things that were utmost on her mind, but she didn't want to admit to that, so she didn't say it out loud, just nodded. The sound of the howling from the yard or the street, she couldn't tell which, made her shiver; if she'd been alone, she might've literally hidden, maybe pulled the blanket from the bed over her head or crawled into the closet. It reminded her of being a little girl, scared of the dark... except now the monsters were real. "Why can't they stop?" she bit out, haunted eyes meeting Rowan's for only a few seconds before her gaze twitched away. Why can't it all stop? The last part she couldn't bring herself to say, but she thought it.
"Dunno. Maybe they still hurt?" Rowan hazarded weakly. "I do... and I'm smart enough to keep it to myself." Sort of. He was telling Liah-- but he wasn't attacking her, either, so he thought he had something on the monsters, there. He shook his head a little. "I dun even know.... Maybe they're scared as we are." Empathy wasn't something Rowan was really much good at, ordinarily, but he couldn't forget the sight of his own little sister and his brother twisting out of their normal shapes-- howling in agony-- sprouting limbs and tails and spines and--
He shuddered a little. Yeah, not thinking about that. Not not not not not. Nor was he thinking about how he'd just admitted that he was terrified. Ooops. "I mean, if I were out there? I'd be pretty damn scared."
His words brought Liah's gaze back to focus on him. He hurt. Her eyes traced what she could see of the wings again, and she realized that of course he did. She didn't see how something like that could happen to a person painlessly-- both that and what had happened to Juniper. Would Excedrin help with that kind of pain at all? The idea made her want to laugh, or maybe cry. If she cried, though, she was afraid she'd never stop. "I'm sorry," she said, blinking carefully and averting her eyes to Rowan's neck. "Had to be awful for you, with Juny and... everything." She didn't care if those things outside hurt or were scared, even though her once-beloved brother was amongst them. He'd killed her mom and Tricia, and he'd tried to kill her. Even if he couldn't help it, that didn't make her feel all that sympathetic to him, at least not right then.
"Could've been worse, I suppose," Rowan shrugged, a bit awkwardly. He didn't want to say it was worse for him than for her. That wasn't fair, or nice. Though he thought it probably had been, saying it would just sound horrible of him. "And I took some advil... might help." He pushed his hair back, wings twitching a bit, one brushing her shoulder before he pulled it back forcibly. "How're you doin'? Not hurting, yourself, are you?" She'd changed, too, after all. Even if it was just to be... phase-through. Sometimes. Since she was obviously solid enough, right now.
Liah thought that he was completely downplaying it, but she didn't call him on it. Maybe he needed to do that in the same way that she needed to keep herself tightly clenched like a fist, so she wouldn't break down. "If we leave here, we should take as much of that kind of stuff with us as we can," she said idly. It was odd to have to think that way rather than just stopping at the nearest drugstore and buying some. That was a thing of the past, she feared. She firmly tucked her hair behind her ears again, because the damp blonde strands kept slipping loose, and shrugged too as she answered his question. "Not hurting. I don't really feel any different." Stressed, sad, terrified... but physically, she couldn't feel what had happened to her.
"I ain't planning on leaving here any time soon," Rowan said, glancing at the curtained window anxiously, over the top of the bed. "Not unless we have to. It's pretty... pretty fortified and shit, you know? And we've got plenty of food...." At least until it started to go bad. But hopefully by then, the monsters would have-- like-- killed each other. Or moved on somewhere else. Or something. Or maybe by then he could fly, and he'd just go raid the nearest grocery store. He shook his head. "But I guess if we have to, we should bring whatever we can." As long as they had time to pack.
"I didn't mean tomorrow," Liah clarified, doing her best to keep her tone non-snippy. But they couldn't seriously stay here forever, she didn't think. She wasn't exactly anxious to be out in the open amongst the monsters and god-only-knew-what might be roaming around, either. She just hated uncertainty. How long could they hole up here, what was going to happen, would anything ever be normal again? She rubbed at her eyes and put her head down on her bent knees. "But we should be thinking about it for sometime." Verity probably already had all that covered, she thought as she remembered his remarks earlier. Still. Liah wasn't the sort that would trust somebody she didn't know, until they'd proven themselves to her.
Groaning a little, Rowan asked, "How come you guys hafta be so damn reasonable and planning-ahead-y?" It almost came out like a whine-- almost, but not quite-- and he sighed, bumping her shoulder with a wing on purpose, this time. "Verity was out there making lists before dinner, of what shit we had, and talking about using perishables first, and shit. Why can't you both just be scared shitless and taking it as it comes, like me?" That time his tone was joking, though he had to admit to wishing they wouldn't be quite so efficient. It made him feel stupid that he really hadn't, couldn't, think about that kind of thing yet.
It took Liah a few seconds longer than it probably should have to answer his question, even if it seemed that he was asking it in jest. She contemplated her bare toes, the nails painted in neon-green, before turning her head enough to catch a glimpse of his face. "Maybe pretending we can handle it is how we can cope," she suggested, her tone flat and her voice very soft. Personally, she didn't think she was coping very well, but she was doing what she could with what she'd been handed. "Pretending it's okay that almost everyone I ever cared about is either dead or a fucking monster." Her eyes were shiny but no moisture escaped them. It was as close to the spoken truth as she'd allowed herself since this had happened. She bit the inside of her lip, hard, until she had control of herself, then added, "You don't think I'm scared?"
"Kinda hard to tell when you're holed up in here not talking to anybody," Rowan pointed out with a little grin, but he said it remarkably gently, for him. Because, after all, she had pretty much said as much, anyway-- and knowing her, hiding was how she showed being afraid and unbalanced. It wasn't like her. "Guess we all act pretty different, when the shit hits the fan...." He shook his head, this time resting his wing against her arm, since his own hand wouldn't really reach and was too personal a thing, anyway. "We'll stick together. You and me. No matter what. Okay?"
Liah couldn't imagine what she'd possibly want to talk about right now, hence her holing up. It wasn't like her, because usually she was all mouth and all opinion, making it clear she was around no matter where she happened to be. But the world had shifted beneath her feet-- beneath everyone's feet-- and she hadn't figured out a way to adjust to that yet. As to whether she ever would... well, that was a subject heavier than she wanted to tackle this late at night, that and her mother's death. She wasn't the only one who'd lost people, after all. "We'll stick together," she agreed when she felt that her voice would work again. "Pinky swear." She held out one hand to him, blinking suspiciously bright eyes and trying to smile, her head still down on her knees.
Chuckling, Rowan put his pinky to hers and wrapped it around. "Pinky swear. Stickin' together, through thick and thin. And feathers and walking through walls. You gotta show me that sometime when we're not running away from something." Because now that he wasn't running for his life or in a complete panic, he actually thought it was kind of cool. He wished his weirdness was actually cool, instead of all weird and useless, since, you know, he didn't know how to fly.
"Sticking together," Liah repeated. She couldn't think of any way in hell to put a positive spin on what had happened, but at least she wasn't alone. Rowan was a friend she knew she could trust, no matter what-- and here they were. She wasn't especially Mary Sunshine, but right now she needed to believe that they'd find some way to keep themselves safe and alive. "So you think there'll be a time when we're not running from something?" she cracked, wrinkling her nose at him. With a little sigh, she sat up and half-turned, putting her hand through the bed up past the bend of her elbow. Maybe she was showing off a little, but he'd asked, and it was better than dissolving into a soggy, weeping mass, which could very well happen if she didn't distract herself.
Though he'd been about to snark back that they weren't running anywhere, right now, her demonstration was an effective distraction. He stared at her arm and the bed, fascinated. "That's so weird. And that doesn't hurt? It's not, like, hard to keep your back all solid and your arm all phased?" He did have to wonder where that sudden power came from-- the same thing that made him all bird-i-fied, or made the monsters?
Liah grinned impishly, something that made her look like her usual self. "It doesn't hurt," she affirmed. She pulled her arm out, leaned up and put her other hand through the wooden nightstand, pulled it out again. "I don't even think about it. Like, I didn't know I was doing it at first. Something was chasing me--" Her expression darkened a little. "--and I went into a building, through the wall. Wasn't until a few minutes later that I realized I did something strange." Something dire had gone wrong, swiftly and suddenly, and this was the result. As far as she'd been able to see, you either died, turned into a senseless monster, or ended up with something like what she had or like Rowan and Juniper had. "Verity," she said suddenly, frowning in a puzzled way. "I wonder if he has some kind of... thing."
"You know, I really got no idea," Rowan admitted, frowning. The thought hadn't really occurred to him-- a lot of thoughts hadn't really occurred to him, but then, with everything going on, he wasn't surprised. It wasn't like he was the sharpest tack in the box, after all. "He hasn't said anything, if he does. And it sure ain't obvious. Maybe I oughta ask him. Unless you and me and Juny were flukes, and he and his bro don't have anything weird."
Liah sighed, using both hands to scrunch her damp hair in the hopes that it wouldn't look like complete ass when she got up in the morning. "I guess I don't really care as long as they aren't gonna try to kill us in our sleep or anything," she said. "Well, Verity." She couldn't imagine Jasper making an aggressive move toward anyone-- he was so quiet-- and actually she didn't think Verity had that in him either. Her default, though, was not to trust anyone who hadn't proven themselves to her in one way or another. It was safer that way. She shrugged a little, abandoning her efforts with her hair. "Mine isn't obvious either just to look at me," she said. "Could be something like that."
"I could try'n be a blowdrier, if you like," Rowan suggested dryly. He knew what those motions meant. "Might be the only thing these things're good for." He gave the wing a teasing flap, creating a cool breeze aimed in the general direction of her face. Not quite blowdrier level, though. "We can ask. He's probably smarter than me--" Rowan only had trouble admitting other people were smarter than him sometimes. "--so maybe he has some ideas about this whole... thing, and all. What kept us alive and not-- you know." He didn't even want to say they'd died. He just didn't.
Liah chuckled at his comment and the wing flap, feeling marginally better. Rowan could do that for her, when she'd let him. "That's okay. I have a lot of hair. Might tire your wings out." She snorted suddenly. "Hey, did you ever hear that joke? One man says to another, 'I flew from Detroit to L.A. today,' and the other dude says, 'Wow, I bet your arms're tired.'" It was a dumb joke, but it amused her. She leaned her head back against the bed, her face tipped in Rowan's direction, the smile fading a little when he started talking about practicalities again. "Maybe," she agreed. "It wouldn't hurt to ask, I guess." She didn't want to think about so many people being dead, either, especially those who'd been close to her. She'd never get to sleep then.
Perfectly happy to get back off of practicalities, Rowan focused on the joke, chuckling. "I bet these things get tired. Hell, it gets tiring just trying to hold them up so I don't trip on the damn things...." He flipped them shut, now, over his back-- and winced as that all but crushed the feathers against the floor, then opened them again and folded them more carefully, so that the pinions stuck out on either side of him, laying against the floor instead of smashing into it. "It's like learning how to fucking walk all over again," he grumbled.
"That would be kind of inconvenient," Liah said. "What if you wanted to sleep on your back? You'd crush them." She watched him try to adjust the wings, thinking that they somehow went with his overall look even if she couldn't have explained why. Honestly, it would be odd to see Rowan with extra limbs or something, so maybe having wings instead was the way to go if he had to have something added. "Did you have to think about how to move them, or does it just happen, like me walking through stuff?" She hesitated a beat, watching him, then smiled a little and extended a hand toward him. "Can I?" she asked, not wanting to touch the feathers if it might hurt him. She was impulsive and normally wouldn't ask to touch someone, but this was a little different.
"A little of both," Rowan admitted. "Sometimes they just do stuff, like opening or twitching around, sometimes I have to tell them to do stuff, like fold. They don't like to fold much." But then, they still kind of ached when he folded them, so that might have been why. "I can make them beat, or move to touch or block something. So I mean, it's like having a foot, I guess, only a kind of twitchy foot. On my back." Which sounded dumb, but whatever. At her request, he shrugged, and flipped one open again, curling it around in front of him where she could reach it more easily. So maybe a little positive attention wasn't a bad thing, and he wasn't gonna say no, even if he wasn't going to outwardly look like he'd like it.
"Wonder if it'll be easier when you've had them longer?" Liah mused. She tried to imagine how she'd cope if she suddenly had a huge-ass pair of wings and couldn't even begin to. She probably wouldn't deal with them with nearly as much grace as Rowan seemed to. It was neat the way he unfurled one of his wings and put it into easier reach; he certainly made it look effortless. She ran her fingers over it, almost petting it, a smile blossoming on her face. "Soft," she remarked. She should have expected that, because feathers were soft, right? She'd seen bird feathers in their yard on occasion, and when she'd picked them up, they'd always felt just this way. Uncharacteristically gentle, she stroked over the layered softness again and then looked up at his face.
He was watching her face, and he was actually blushing a little. Having someone actually touch the wings was-- weird. It felt good, actually: even if the insides ached, the way the skin underneath reacted to having the feathers touched felt like someone akin to getting goosebumps. Throw in the look on her face and how gentle she was being, and he just didn't know how he felt about the matter, aside from a vague kind of "good". When she looked back at him, he blinked, blushed a bit more, and scrambled to say, "Yeah. Yeah, they are, pretty much. Hope they toughen up a little, or it'll be interesting learning how to fly and shit." Because dammit, he was gonna learn. He had them, right? So damned if he wasn't going to try and make them useful.
... besides, he kind of wanted to see what it was like. Flying. Who didn't dream of flying?
Liah smiled, actually feeling a touch of a blush wash over her own face. That was extremely rare, something that most people didn't see. She prided herself on being very tough to rattle. She held his gaze for a few seconds and then looked down again, idly smoothing down the feathers she'd touched before reclaiming her hand. "Do you really think you can fly with them?" she asked him. It was neat, almost fanciful, like something out of a comic or a movie. Suddenly, abruptly, she wanted to draw him. Maybe that would be a way for her to get back into sketching, something for her to draw that wouldn't be dark or frightening. He'd think she was goofy if she said the wings were beautiful, but that was how she felt. Soon she'd try her hand at that; it would give her something to do while they were holed up here.
"What would be the point of getting 'em if I couldn't use 'em?" Rowan asked, though there was a little anxiety in his tone as he looked at the big expanse of blue-gray feathers. "That'd be like you being able to put your hand through a wall but nothing else. Or something. So... I think so." I hope so. He just didn't know how, or if he'd ever have the room and time to learn how-- if he could even figure it out. He put on a smirk, looking back at her as he got the wing closed behind him. "Wouldn't that be awesome? Just... glide over the city, or somethin'? No need for a car, or even shoes, cuz I could just fly everywhere?"
"I don't know." Liah shrugged. "I didn't know if they worked or if they were just decorative." It would be hard to say if a pair of wings like that could actually support the body weight of a human, lift him into the air. If they could support him... well, that would be really cool. "It would be," she said. "It'd probably be a safe way to get around, too. Unless, you know, some of the monster things could fly." That wasn't a happy thought, but she had no idea what to expect anymore. Her vision of what reality once was was now completely shattered.
"Let's not borrow trouble," Rowan told her quickly, borrowing a phrase his mother had used more than once, and then winced when he remembered where it came from. He could remember her so clearly, saying it, just last week, when Oak was worrying about something or another, like he always did. His mother, who was dead, and Oak, who was possibly worse than dead. His eyes stung, and he looked away to try and hide it. "Verity said he'd help me at least find out. Thought we could find, like... a fenced in school or parking lot or something...."
"'Cause this day's trouble is sufficient for itself." Liah's brow furrowed a little. "I didn't get that right, I don't think. It's something Tricia used to say." Tricia, who'd had her head caved in by Liah's brother. It was her turn to look down, not wanting to think about how horribly gentle Tricia, who'd loved quoting Bible verses and other bits of homespun wisdom, had died. She blinked in double, then triple time, then felt reasonably okay again for the moment. "Why do you need a fence?" she asked. "So nothing'll get in while you're trying it out?" She couldn't think of any other reason.
Because she had ignored when he did it, Rowan ignored when she did it. It was only polite. Besides, bringing up her own lapse would bring his back, and then they'd both be bawling, and then where would they be? "Basically, yeah. Give us a little safety, for a while, and a lot of space to work with. We could both fit on his bike in a pinch, and if it worked-- well, I could always fly away if I had to." He shrugged, and his wings went with his shoulders, which felt weird enough that he glanced at them. When they were folded, he felt them a lot more than when they were open. They were touching more of his skin.
Liah was thankful that Rowan was thus far willing to overlook any emotionalism she showed; she was literally afraid that if she let herself cry, she wouldn't ever stop, so she was doing her best not to let it happen. "I guess you guys are leaving me to babysit then," she said dryly. "Thanks." Somehow she couldn't imagine them being willing to take the kids along with them for that. She didn't really mind, though, if they'd consent to stay with her. Jasper didn't know her at all, and Juny knew her slightly. She sighed and put her head down on her knees again, wondering if this long, long night would ever be over. It already felt as if it had been dark forever.
"It'll give you something to do," Rowan said with a grin. "Maybe you can even just put in a movie and see if they stay out of your hair while you draw, or something." This time when he touched her, it was to nudge her foot with his foot. "So does that computer up there work? Maybe there's games or music or something on it." Anything to get their minds off the situation at hand, right?
"I didn't even think of that," Liah said. "Movies. Like, if there's a DVD player, even if we can't get TV reception, we could still watch stuff." Her expression had brightened a little at the thought of something besides utter boredom. When Rowan nudged her with his foot, she nudged him back. "I dunno, I didn't even try to turn it on. We could see, I guess." Music could be a very good thing. Of course, with her luck, it would be all shitkicking country or something bizarre like death metal, but she thought it was worth checking into.
"Well, come on!" Rowan said, and started unfolding himself-- wings included-- offering her hands to get up with. "Let's see if these guys who lived here were actually had anything cool on their computer." This was something he could do, and something that, perhaps, he could enjoy. They both needed something like that, now. And lots of it.