Dan Torrance (andgoodnight) wrote in evaluation, @ 2019-12-06 19:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | !rooms: 3: day 1, the shining/doctor sleep: dan torrance, the shining/doctor sleep: rose o'hara |
Who: Dan Torrance and Rose O'Hara
What: Debating the finer nature of life and death. Also, wrestling!
When: Day 1, morning
Where: Universal Park
Warnings: References to murder, death, torture... they have the best chats.
Status: Closed/Complete
Unsurprisingly, Hell looked like a snowy wasteland. It was also giving off weird Soviet bloc vibes, none of which made any sense at all to Dan. Oh, fine, he knew all of that was incredibly melodramatic and he wasn’t actually dead (probably)… though how still remained something of a mystery. Given that his last conscious memories involved a lot of fire and the fading awareness that he’d lost more blood than anyone could hope to lose and keep breathing, finding himself alive and in possession of a strange note and suitcase full of even stranger belongings went so far past weird that he couldn’t begin to process it.
So. True to form, he decided not to deal with it at all. He left the suitcase in a room that he wasn’t ready to call his own, pocketed a phone he’d yet to look at, and headed out into the brisk morning air. Snow didn’t bother him, really. It should, he supposed, but it was familiar enough to be almost soothing.
Plus, it helped him feel as numb on the outside as he felt on the inside, which was a nice symmetry.
It wasn’t a scenic walk. The landscape remained grim, vaguely oppressive, and chilled in a way that couldn’t all be attributed to the weather. He kept his head down, chin tucked into the coat he’d dragged out of that mystery suitcase, and did his very best not to make eye contact with anyone. The static that usually fritzed and fuzzed along as background noise in his thoughts was suspiciously absent, but Dan could only take that as a kindness. He could barely figure out what he was thinking right now and didn’t need anyone else cluttering things up.
Eventually he found himself studying a sign that he couldn’t read- wrong language, way too Cyrillic- but had to assume involved a warning about the frozen, uninviting pond about a yard away. “If this is a metaphor,” he muttered, stooping to pick up a rock so he could toss it out across the ice, “It’s a little on the nose.”
Even in Hell, Rose had a way about her – a silky sort of charm, and the grace of a spider.
Naturally she assumed she was in Hell. Where else would she go? Because Hell was the Overlook and this looked very similar but then again it didn’t - it was cold, very cold, as cold as the hedge maze. Like tiny, tiny teeth, nibbling on her fingers – it was that kind of chill, and the fact that her head was quiet was an additional chill entirely, a drip of freezing water trickling down her back and jangling her nerves. It set her jaw on edge.
After centuries of feeling the comforting, warm cloak of her extra senses, having them torn from her in death was disconcerting. To say the least.
She felt so human - so lost, literally, and when she found herself in a drab, dreary room all alone she didn’t stay in it for long. Just long enough to find the warmest articles of clothing in the nearby suitcase, pulling on the long peacoat and buttoning it up. She’d find whomever had her hat, and kill them later – rage didn’t require a murder to happen via brain explosion. Rose could make do with her bare hands just fine.
So that brings us to where she was now, outside and trying to get her bearings, when she saw him.
Her fingers curled, baby raptor claws itching to dig in and tear flesh from bone – the rage only intensified, lava that buried villages near Mount Vesuvius. Her fingers were cold and she almost grabbed that dog by the scruff of his neck to sear her imprint, but no. Making him vastly uncomfortable would suit her better, so she strolled up from behind and her presence loomed, body touching his, because what was a little contact between friends who had been inside each other’s heads and seen everything?
“It’s Russian, Danny,” she purred delicately. “You mean a man of your talents doesn’t read in Russian?” Because Rose did. Of course she did – she was 700 goddamn years old, you think she only knew one language?
She’d been around, she knew what it had been like to live behind the Iron Curtain – children walked to school proudly wearing their shiny little red star badges, a beacon close to their hearts, such a grand time of brainwashing before the crumbling of the Soviet regime.
So lost in his thoughts that he didn’t hear footsteps crunching up behind him in the snow, Dan outright yelped at the voice that purred right into his ear. It had been a long, long time since anyone had been able to sneak up on him- damned near a decade now- and he was woefully out of practice at being surprised like that.
Double the surprise and make it worse once he clocked the voice, and Dan scrambled, graceless and panicky, away from Rose. He wasn’t exactly lithe in the first place, made bulkier and more awkward in layers and snow, and he almost tripped over the sign he’d been studying along the way.
It was a wonder he didn’t go right into the pond. Or… onto the pond. Either way. Both?
“Fuck,” he spat, hand clutching at his chest, right over the trip-hammer beating of his heart. He couldn’t feel her, couldn’t hear a whisper, and the immediate urge to shove her right out of his thoughts stuttered when Dan realized that wasn’t the issue. She wasn’t in his head. She was right here, alive and breathing.
Same as he was, and just as fucking improbable.
Probably he ought to exclaim something cliche, something like, You’re dead! But, frankly, that applied both ways here and was ridiculous anyway. Instead Dan blinked owlishly, eased back another step, and barked out a rough laugh. “Guess this really is Hell. I had my doubts.”
“Oh, sweetie - “ The lioness bared her teeth in a snarl, a grin that was mad and untamed as the spill of brown hair about her shoulders; Rose took a neat little step forward, damn near crouched and ready to spring. “Now don’t you wish you took me up on my offer? No consequences?”
Shadows seemed to shroud her, because even on this pristine landscape of white, Rose remained the flash of darkness. “Since - you obviously ended up in Hell no matter what.” Being a hero - that was so stupid. So pointless - maybe now he would learn.
It pleased her that he was dead too.
“But you still have something I want,” she informed him and, with the dexterity of a snake, she sprang, because she still was guided toward the path of violence, because she still had a bone to pick with him (or conversely, to pick her teeth with his bones), because she needed to see -
Down into the snow she dragged Danny-boy, or at least she attempted to, kneeing him in such a way to theoretically cause loss of balance - frigid hands grasped at his face, his throat and she squeezed like it was whiskey on tap and -
Nothing.
No steam. “What did you do?!” Because yes, clearly his was his fault.
Regrets were familiar to Dan as breathing. He had more than his fair share, thanks, but not taking Rose up on her offer? That wasn’t on the list. He wanted nothing to do with her then, wanted less to do with her now, and he was already shaking his head even as she lunged and toppled them both into the snow.
He swore again, scrabbling to push her away, and it wasn’t just physical shoving. Or… it shouldn’t have been. But when he reached for that particular edge, the shine that had always been there even when dulled by drink, nothing rose to meet him. Empty. Hollow enough to echo.
Gasping, flushed, Dan choked out a thin, “Not me.”
Because it wasn’t. He hadn’t done a thing. Eyes wide and frantic, he shoved harder at her, trying to get his knees between them to dump her back into the snow and give him some space. “I can’t,” he wheezed, “Can’t feel you either.”
Rose shrieked, the irritated howl of a banshee, because of the knee right in her lady parts and also because it was the only appropriate reaction - when this dumb hospital janitor had killed her family, all she could do was scream then too. She’d been as powerless during those moments as she was now though, ironically, she’d been in possession of her extra senses then. Her own shine, her immortality. Everything she’d spent hundreds of years painstakingly building.
What was she now? That was a question she didn’t know the answer to, and did not want to consider quite yet.
She had a deathgrip though, hands on Danny even while he attempted to shake her off of him - eventually she relented, rolling over onto her back, then her knees, perched there in the snow like a feral cat. “Then who is it?” she demanded. “Your heart beats. You’re alive. This isn’t - it’s not even the same country.”
Christ, she was like one of those spider monkey things- all clinging, spindly fingers and long limbs and too much energy considering it was freezing fucking cold out here and Dan hadn’t quite gotten his breath back after being knocked over. Apparently, crazy came with an extra fuel tank.
Would’ve been nice to know, he thought, and fumbled to get himself away from her as soon as she stopped using her fingers like claws to secure them together.
Dan ended up crouched awkwardly, panting, eyes pale in a face gone red from cold and exertion. “I don’t know,” he snapped, baring teeth at her for a moment. “How would I?” He hadn’t done this, whatever this was. He’d died, and he’d been at peace with that decision. It had been very final, right up until he opened his eyes in that crackerjack box of apartments back there, and he’d just assumed that this was some really bizarre version of the afterlife.
Or possibly it was one of those coma dreams. Though he was positive about the death thing, Abra had some pretty good tricks of her own. Counting her out would be stupid.
She was going to kill him in his sleep. Or at least, Rose wanted to - smother Dan with a pillow to reverse whatever force brought him here (she doubted it was Abra. That little snot would send Rose spiraling to hell with a smile on her face, even if she would bring back what’s-his-name. Point was, they wouldn’t be here together).
But no. There might be use in keeping him around. She didn’t need to feed now, but she would later. Of that she was certain. “You’re lucky you’re too handsome to die a second time,” she said, voice like a dripping, poisoned honeycomb. “At least not by my hand.” Pity, really. It might relieve some stress.
By someone else’s hand, who knew? She didn’t know these people, didn’t know anyone else in those apartments. They hadn’t seen the truth of her, the way Dan had - that she was half woman, half demon; she’d rip the bolts of this very building loose with her teeth because rubble always did look so good around bare feet.
Shoving slender fingers into her coat pocket, once she’d found her footing again, she pulled out the note she’d discovered in her apartment. Much of it didn’t make sense, but she picked up on a few clear nuances. “You know how fucked the KGB is, don’t you? Or did you not study that in school?” she asked.
The minute Dan got a chance, he would absolutely warn everyone in earshot about Rose. Hell, he’d take out a billboard. Was that a thing here? He’d make it a thing, print up a warning sign in neon letters ten feet high, slap a picture on there to make the point clear. No one deserved to die the way Rose killed people.
Not people. Children. Innocents. Kids just like Dan had been, once upon a time. He shuddered to think that he might’ve ended up buried in some forgotten, forsaken hole in the ground, leaving his mother to put up missing posters while wondering how the universe could be so cruel to her as to pile loss on another loss.
He gingerly stood up again, dusting snow off as he glanced around to see if they’d gained unwanted attention. So far, he couldn’t see anyone watching, but. Without being able to reach out and be sure, he was feeling increasingly paranoid. “What?”
Attention swiveled back to her, then to the note she held. “You think that thing’s serious?” He’d skimmed his and the finer details went right back out of his head.
“And you don’t? What do you think it is then?” Rose wanted to know, like he was intellectually deficient for even inquiring. Go on and tell aaaaaaall the world about her, Danny - when the pangs of hunger returned, gnawing at the pit of her stomach and she couldn’t take steam from her usual source, you can bet your bottom dollar that she’d be taking it from him.
Wouldn’t be a good meal, like sitting down to a fine filet mignon and a bit of foie gras (and honestly, humans ate veal, what was the difference in what she ate?), but he did have a unique taste about him. Rich, very rich. Smoke and medicine. It would do.
She stepped closer, blue eyes electric even without the eerie hunger in them. She didn’t take them off of him. “They took your shine, they took mine - if that’s not serious as a heart attack, Danny, I don’t know what is.”
Dan had no idea what this was or why. If there was some higher power plucking them out of the jaws of death, why would it go sticking them into the Soviet bloc? That served no purpose, so far as he could tell, unless it was meant as punishment.
Which, okay, brought them back around to Hell, but somehow he thought debating the finer points of faith and the afterlife with Rose might be one of those activities better avoided. Like flossing with razor wire, for example.
He edged back, eyes narrowing. “They took yours,” he repeated, slowly puzzling through that. Coming to a conclusion, he cocked his head and tried on the faintest ghost of a smirk. “That means you’re human, doesn’t it? Factory reset, back to the basics.” Welcome to human frailty and all its inconveniences. That, he thought, almost made this whole fuckup worth it, just to watch her flounder. He’d deal with Soviet Hell if that was part of the payoff.
Factory reset. He thought himself to be clever, didn’t he? But Danny was wrong. Rose may be physically human, but she would never lower herself to be on their level in all of the important ways. She would admit that she’d lost the game, at the Overlook - she paid the price, lost not only the game but her life and her family. The ones who had been counting on her for survival - she was their leader, their caregiver; she nurtured and loved them. Now they were gone.
So yes, she’d lost, but she’d be damned if she was going to let him laugh at her.
“Darling, do you think that just because I’m human I’m going to learn to be more like you?” Rose scoffed. As if she could actually be anything other than what she was? (a goddamn nightmare, is what she was).
The sapphires of her irises swelled with a bemused kind of interest. “Listen - “ Fingers reached out and gripped the collar of his coat, so he’d stop backing away from her. What was there to be afraid of? She was only human, after all.
“I think we can come to an understanding. I’m going to make you an offer I rarely make - “ Yes, again. But this one didn’t involve an axe or a death battle on hotel stairs. “I don’t need to feed now but when I do? You’re not going to just let me waste away. Because I can take steam from you, willingly, or I can take it by force someplace else - you get what I’m saying, sweetie? So handsome - “ She patted his scruffy cheek - such a good boy, looked just like his father. Too bad that whole thing didn’t work out. “In return, well, I suppose you’d get to ask for anything you’d like.”
And wasn’t that nice of her? Telling him she would downgrade in terms of meal quality and offering something in return? Being human sure did make her soft.
“Okay, this,” and Dan grimaced as he reached between them, covering her hands with his and prying, none-too-gently, “Needs to stop.” Her hands didn’t feel fragile in his. They felt like claw and bone, a raptor waiting to strike, and his expression went cloudy with revulsion as he let her go again with a shake of his head.
There was nothing he wanted from her. Nothing. He’d like to forget she’d ever existed, but that was a little tricky, all things considered. If he drank enough, maybe.
But he hadn’t let go of his sobriety yet, and he wasn’t starting now. Like hell. She’d gotten one victory and that was enough, wasn’t it? Took his life, or good as, and he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of taking his sanity (or whatever remained of it) too.
Her offer, such as it was, was initially met with a scoff. Right, she was offering to make him a meal, like it was such a fucking honor. But. Then Dan thought it through- thought about people here who maybe had no idea what had just landed in their midst- and blanched, mouth going flat and some of the color leaching out of cheeks made rosy in the cold. “You want to do this,” he muttered, and he sounded like a man agreeing to put his head in a noose, “You don’t touch any kids. Not one. I find out you have, I swear I’ll find another way to kill you and I’ll make it stick this time.”
“Oooh, now don’t threaten me with a good time,” Rose gave a little shiver, for the sake of dramatics, regarding Dan with cool blue eyes, swamp-lashed and vaguely hungry. She hadn’t lived off of real food in awhile - it tasted fine, but it did nothing for her - yet she wasn’t so naive as to think that after hundreds of years, she’d just...become human.
No. Her shine was coming back. Her steam cravings too. All of it would return, she refused to believe otherwise, so it was beneficial to be prepared.
But sure, fine. If this was truly the end of their long, rickety ride of chaos and blood, then so be it. They’d take another path and see where it ended up - and now back to serious business. “Deal,” she agreed to those terms, extending her hand. “Do you want to shake on it? Or seal our bond another way?”
She was open to ideas. Of the ‘no consequences’ variety.
There was never really an end to chaos and blood. Dan hadn’t lived even a fraction of the time she had- and he wasn’t asking, didn’t care, wasn’t up for palling around and swapping stories- but he’d begun early with nightmares and hungry ghosts and he’d ended up right in the same place without ever meaning to because life was just full of funny symmetries like that. Everything went in circles.
They’d go back to violence eventually. They’d killed one another once. They could do it again.
He’d like to think the universe would balance it all out for them; realize the mistake, undo it with the same whim that brought them here in the first place. But Dan was never that lucky.
“I want,” he sighed, looking put-upon, “To pretend this is all what happens when a human brain hits boiling point, but I guess that ship has sailed.” Reaching out against his better judgment, he grasped her hand again for a quick, perfunctory shake. “Deal.”
“By now, Danny, you should know that we don’t always get what we want,” Rose tsked, clasping his hand in hers before letting go. Who knew, perhaps they were always destined to be a part of each other’s stories - an intricate tapestry. He killed her and his ghosts dragged her under, but he’d ended up there too. Forever a part of Overlook’s madness and mayhem, neither of them safe from the black edge of life’s cruelty.
Now they were here. And she couldn’t deny she enjoyed getting under his skin - she didn’t want him to murder her again and she would prefer not to return the favor, so, perhaps they reached an impasse. For the moment.
A brief, shining moment. To go along with her brief glimpse of shining humanity - the one lone dormant shred within her that agreed to eat fast-food drive through for the duration of her afterlife, and that sang like a harp string. She tried to ignore it.
“Anything else?” she asked curiously. “It’s cold and you’re blushing. Is that because you think I’m pretty?”
It was probably because she’d tried to shove his face in the snow earlier, but why not pretend?
“I’m aware,” Dan exhaled, dryly. Story of his life, often by his own design. Self-sabotage had been the name of the game for at least a decade, and climbing out of the hole he’d dug had been the decade that followed. More or less, anyway, and it was sort of exhausting to think of in those terms.
Dying apparently got you a lot of very late introspection that wasn’t even remotely helpful, and he had no one here with whom he could talk it over. His sponsor was dead, courtesy of Rose’s creepy little family. Maybe he’d find another one. Probably not. Personal responsibility was late in coming, but he’d gotten there eventually.
He gave her a look, a cutting flash of pale eyes, and snorted out a plume of fog. “You’re a monster.” Like she didn’t know. Hell, maybe she took it as a compliment. She seemed the type. “I’m going back. If you get the sudden impulse for a swim…” Trailing off, he gave the pond a speculative look. “I say go with it.”
Stepping back, Dan turned on a heel and started to trudge back through the park, hoping he had his bearings right. Time to get on with living again, whether he wanted to or not.