Gretel (_gretel) wrote in helladjacent, @ 2017-11-19 20:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | !jumps: all hallows hotel, character: gretel, character: jim hopper, character: negan |
Who: Gretel and Negan, and later Hopper
What: Discovering costumes, adventures, and a grumpy midwestern cop
Where: Around the hotel
When: Day 2 morning
Rating: Language, Storm Trooper death, and mild painless gore.
When he woke up alone in his own room, the first thought that went through Negan’s mind was panic that Gretel wasn’t still in bed with him. She never just disappeared without saying anything. A quick check on his PDA told him she was still there, though, and a few texts confirmed it. It also confirmed that all of her clothes had also been replaced, just like his.
He didn’t even need to think about which costume he would be wearing. The options were Captain Hook, a mailman (who the fuck actually wanted to be a mailman for Halloween), and what he ultimately chose- Han Motherfucking Solo. Lucille was gone, but she’d been replaced by a blaster that he wasted no time in testing on the lamp in his room, and promptly getting screamed at by a ghostly maid that appeared out of nowhere. It was completely worth it.
It wasn’t until he’d gone to collect Gretel that he saw Judith’s pictures on the net, which had him snickering to himself as he mosied down the hallway to Gretel’s door. With his eyes still on his PDA, he knocked.
“Hey- you ready yet, Your Highness?” he called. The nickname slipped out without thought, and without him really registering that it wasn’t what he usually called her.
Gretel’s choice of wardrobe for the week wasn’t exactly difficult, either- even though she had literally no idea what any of the three actually were. One, maybe a little- the hooked nose certainly looked like a regular feature of a number of hags she and Hansel had killed over the years; it and the strange, stiff black hat and dress it came with were carefully avoided. The thing next to it- a dress of loud red and white stripes that was far too short for her liking- was also pushed aside.
Thankfully what was left not only looked practical (save for the stark whiteness of it), everything was surprisingly comfortable. She’d been mildly surprised at how each piece of the ensemble fit like it’d been tailored for her when she noticed the weapon and holster were the only things left in the huge cabinet.
“...alright, then,” she sighed to herself, strapping the holster to her hip and thigh before examining the blaster. She’d seen plenty of firearms before- those from her own time all the way up through the distant future- it wouldn’t be difficult to figure out. Besides; she had a good feel for it already.
The knock pulled her attention, with only a fleeting awareness of how oddly comfortable she was with a title Negan- nor anyone- had ever called her by; Gretel holstered the gun and stepped toward the door, only then catching sight of the crown braid she had definitely not done herself. She blinked at her reflection a few times before deciding to let it go. It was comfortable, anyway.
“Ready for what?” she said- more a demand for information than a question- as she opened the door, not terribly aware her tone had changed.
Negan took a few seconds to take in Gretel’s appearance after she opened the door, immediately recognizing her costume and grinning so wide it nearly split his cheeks. She’d arguably gotten one of Leia’s better costumes, too; although picturing her in the slave outfit was amusing for him, he didn’t think she would be so enthusiastic about it.
“For nothing- just general ready-...ness,” he said, leaning sideways against her doorframe with his forearm resting on it, and his other hand on his hip. “Look at you. I get a kiss good morning, sweetheart?” His smirk was just as smarmy as it always was, undeterred by the snappiness in her tone- if anything, it just fueled him on. And their costumes were really working for him. Between this and his daughter turning into a dewy-eyed pothead, it was going to be a good week.
Gretel was very accustomed to Negan’s breed of smarminess- she’d seen it from him since the first time she found him eating ice cream in the lounge. That was months ago… maybe longer, and throughout their twisted life together in the hotel, it became something she enjoyed about him- on a certain level. Not only that, but they’d shared a bed a lot more often than just last night, even if they hadn’t woken up together, thanks to the hotel’s antics. There was no reason why she wouldn’t have greeted him with a kiss, especially after her own flare of panic when she first woke up alone.
So why did she suddenly feel like slapping that grin off his face?
Taking the eye-roll that occupied her expression without her realizing it for a moment of reflection, Gretel decided it was the word sweetheart. It bothered her on a level she didn’t understand.
But also the smarminess.
“Have you done something to earn it?” she snarked back with a slightly haughty air she hadn’t intended, but there was an upward twitch of her lips at one corner.
Negan wasn’t used to this kind of attitude from Gretel, but he didn’t really find himself all that surprised by it, either. He was used to her being sort of sassy- giving him just as much grief as he gave her, but there was always a little bit of a softer edge to it. Just a little, because that was Gretel.
This was different, he could see it in her eyes, and he liked it.
“I rolled out of bed and managed to get dressed by myself,” he said matter-of-factly, before leaning in closer to her. Normally, he might’ve already had his arms around her and the door shut behind them, but teasing was proving to be a hell of a lot of fun by itself. “C’mon, sweetheart. You’re starting to hurt my feelings.”
Normally, Gretel would’ve just deepened her smirk and pulled him into her room by the shirt cuff on her own, and not just to shut him up (in the best way possible), but for some reason she was starting to realize had something to do with their new wardrobe, his leers and slow creep forward felt like boundaries being pushed. Boundaries he should know.
And the more he pushed, the more driven she was to push back.
“You poor thing,” she drawled back at him dryly, shifting weight from boot to boot, probably to compensate for the way her gut tightened. Nerves? Good nerves. Like the way she felt with him every day, especially in the beginning. Those went deep through, equal in both Gretel and this new… persona that came with the clothing, that was quickly melting together in a way she was having trouble separating. “Somehow I think you’ll survive.” Then, she pointed at him with one gloved hand, the other set on the curve of her hip. “And don’t call me ‘sweetheart’.”
Just like before, he could see the way the things he said hit her, even if she tried not to show it. She betrayed everything in her eyes, and the tiny (and sometimes not so tiny) cracks in her expression that he was always looking for. But her sarcasm didn’t usually come quite so quickly or easily, and that just made his smirk change as he sighed boredly and turned so he was leaning back against the door frame instead of sideways onto it.
“Fine, Your Worshipfulness,” he decided on with a dramatic roll of his eyes. Pushing himself up off of the doorway, he took a step back, bowing with a sweeping gesture down the hall. “After you, Highness. Breakfast is waiting for us to cook it downstairs. If there’s anything left, anyway. My kid and her boyfriend turned into a couple of potheads and they’ve already been raiding the kitchen this morning.”
The sarcastic new moniker earned him an unimpressed look, almost a glare, but not quite, and not just because she had no idea why he was calling her royalty (and even less as to why she was accepting it). She let it pass- for now- mostly so she could grab her PDA from the bed stand and listen to the rest of what he had to say.
The hallway portraits snickered at them, or seemed to, as they made their way toward the stairs. Gretel kept herself in stride along with him, but found herself forcing a slower pace than normal; she had a lot less concern for what was around them than normal; her focus was just as sharp, but centered almost completely on the two of them.
“What’s a pothead?” she asked, turning her back to the hall and walking backward to face him- at least for a few paces. “Please tell me it’s not what I just pictured in my head.”
Negan wasn’t very concerned at all with their surroundings- at least, he didn’t appear to be. He was keeping an ear out, but having already been fairly unconcerned the day before, the costume only added to it. It didn’t even occur to him that it was the costume, because it really wasn’t much different than how he felt on a normal basis. The only thing that started to strike him as weird was that somehow their relationship felt like it had been set back a few months. Their connection was still there, but there was some barrier that he was trying to push past like he had before.
“What- people with actual pots for heads?” he snorted, smirking at her. “Nah, they’re hippies.” After a beat, he realized she probably didn’t know what that meant, either. “They’re gonna be high off their asses smoking pot all week. Y’know, weed? Marijuana? I’m sure we’ll see ‘em at some point. Mostly ‘cause I want some fucking pot.”
Gretel tried her best not to look like she had no idea what he was talking about, and thanks to the influence of her clothing, her expression bordered on annoyed rather than curious. She turned it away once she realized it wasn’t something she wanted him to see.
“I take it that ‘hippie’ is a good thing, since you don’t seem overly concerned,” she observed a bit dryly as they started down the stairs- but a thought flashed through her mind on the next beat that stopped her in her tracks. With gloved hands on the railing, she turned a strikingly honest look up at Negan.
“If they’re…” She stopped, rolling her lips together like she always did when working something out, and having no luck. “-what are we?”
“For her? Hippie is a fucking great thing,” Negan said. “I love her, but that girl does not know how to relax about anything.”
He paused behind her on the stairs, watching her work through the question before she asked it. Then his grin was back, because clearly, what they were also wasn’t a bad thing.
“We are Han Solo,” he pointed to himself, “and Leia Organa,” he pointed to her. “Two of my favorite fucking characters from Star Wars. We went to Star Wars world! Remember? Anyway, he’s a bounty hunter, and she’s a princess he broke out of captivity. You got so fucking lucky with her costume, too. You could’ve been wearing a metal bra and a skimpy skirt with no sides instead.”
Gretel’s eyes drifted down at herself, not only because he was pointing out something she supposedly wasn’t missing about her wardrobe, but also trying to think back to this ‘Star Wars’ world. It had to have been a while ago, but not too far since he’d been around. When it clicked, a memory flashed behind her eyes of who else had said those two words together, in connection to a place the hotel had brought them.
Aidan the vampire and the three-mooned desert. She remembered, but was clearly still trying to draw the connections.
For some reason, learning the identities they were supposed to be portraying didn’t clear much up.
“You.. rescued me...” she summarized, watching his face. Her head tilted quizzically. “Then why do I feel like I need to slap you all the time?”
“Because Leia thinks Han is just some scruffy, jackass bounty hunter, and pretends to hate that he doesn’t kiss her royal ass like everyone else does,” Negan said, shrugging and resting a hand on his hip. “But she secretly loves it. Or, not-so-secretly. She’s kinda like you that way.”
With a wink, he walked past her and continued down the stairs, ignoring the quiet ‘ooohh’ from a painting of a ghostly young woman who apparently thought their conversation was entertaining. To be fair, it was- they were barely an hour into it and Negan was enjoying the shit out of it. It would’ve been a little better if Gretel had context, so his next goal would be figuring out how to watch the Star Wars movies in the hotel.
“Hurry up, Highness. Breakfast is waiting.”
It had to be the costume- that’s what she was telling herself every time he said something that just dug under her skin like a thorn, especially that last quip, which left Gretel half speechless and weighing just how to react. It left her face looking somewhere between taken back and mildly offended.
The painting didn’t help.
“You piss off-” she pointed at the portrait and started to follow him, doubling his pace to catch up.
“What exactly do you mean by that,” she demanded without thinking, taking the stairs now at his shoulder, or a little in front of him- the way he kept walking away also got on her nerves. “What is it that I supposedly love but pretend I hate about you?”
“My phenomenal sense of humor,” Negan said, seemingly unconcerned with whether or not she was keeping up. He was just rolling with it, especially since she was. He realized she probably couldn’t help it, but if it really bothered her, he’d probably know.
“My highly expressive vocabulary,” he added. It was the nicer way of saying that he said ‘fuck’ every other word. Pausing on the stairs, he turned so he could cut her off, his arm blocking her way as he grabbed onto the stair rail and smirked up at her. “And most importantly, you love to hate that my rugged good looks and devilish smile make your knees go weak.”
Gretel’s eyerolling was typically much more subdued than it was currently; as he rattled off his list, it was in full force- so much so that she nearly ran right into him when he stopped them both.
That also annoyed her, but not nearly as much as how right he was. She knew it without question, both on the surface, thanks to the costume’s influence, and well below it. Still, she managed to harden her expression; her chin lifted, nose wrinkled and eyebrows raised in quick, fiery defiance that didn’t completely reach her eyes.
“You’re awfully close to feeling how ‘weak’ my knee is right now…”
Negan didn’t seem at all deterred by her comment. If anything, his smirk pulled deeper into his cheek, and made his eyes light up.
“Oh, sweetheart- you wouldn’t do that,” he said, and his next comment was entirely Negan: “You like my dick too much.”
Just like before, he turned and headed back down the stairs again without giving her much time for reaction. They were just rounding on the third floor by then, but Negan paused at the bottom of the stairs, sticking his arm out again to block her. This time, it was because he saw two very familiar white uniforms just outside the library door.
“Hold up, Highness,” he whispered. “We’ve got company.”
Again he was right, and again, he got way too much satisfaction out of it, leaving Gretel with tightly pressed lips and a growled huff of frustration; again she started after him, getting in a good breath for a sharp-tongued rebuttal when -thankfully- he cut her off.
Something switched almost immediately when she caught just the corner of a shoulder and arm- white armor, black weapons; Gretel had no idea who they were, but the strange flare of hatred she felt at the sight of them went bone deep. It was so jarring, she lost everything she was about to say- gone, like a cloud of smoke.
She also had her blaster in-hand, almost without realizing it.
“We need to get past them-” she whispered close to Negan’s shoulder, her eyes locked on the landing, same as him. “-behind us, there’s nowhere to go.”
Negan had his blaster out, as well, debating their options. They could go back, but they’d just be playing the waiting game and hoping the Storm Troopers were gone the next time they came back down. No, they needed to go past them, one way or another. But standing there watching them, it was clear that they hadn’t been noticed yet.
“Stay quiet,” he whispered. “I think we can sneak past them.”
They didn’t have that far to go, after all. But he still kept his blaster out, and stayed close to the wall, every footstep slow and careful while he kept his eyes on the two Troopers lurking nearby. He only started breathing again when they’d made it within a few steps of the next set of stairs.
“Hey! You two!”
He’d breathed too soon. Just as he turned to look at the two Storm Troopers, they were being fired upon, and he ducked out of the way, pushing Gretel towards the stairs. “Now’s a good time to start running!” He fired his blaster twice, before running down the stairs after her.
Gretel kept herself as closely pressed to the wall as possible, her finger set on the trigger guard of the weapon she had never seen before as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She felt her heart beating tighter in her chest, under the white jumpsuit and warm vest- how much of it was nerves of her own versus this Princess she’d supposedly merged with, she had no idea. Neither was she thinking about it, especially when they were spotted.
There hadn’t been time to raise her blaster before Negan was shoving her forward, and she sure as hell didn’t fight him on it; instinct grabbed her just as hard as she bolted down the stairs toward the second floor- laser blasts screaming past both of them, too close for comfort; one clipped the railing right after she passed it- it burst into sparks and a few flames. She spun around the landing, twisting back to fire a few covering shots back up at the six Troopers chasing them so Negan could get around the corner, too.\
But they weren’t anywhere near out of the woods.
“Keep going down-!” she barked at him, getting off three more shots- the last of which slammed into one Trooper at the throat; he toppled down the stairs, briefly tripping up the rest.
“If we’re lucky, they’ll aim like they do in the movies,” Negan commented, taking the stairs as quickly as he could manage without tripping over his feet. Despite the fact that they were being shot at, he still thought this was fucking awesome- but he also thought smashing his way through a mass of the dead was fun, too. His sense of fun was a little… off kilter.
As soon as they reached the second floor, he paused at the corner to fire a few shots up at the five still chasing them. He hit one with a headshot, but the rest just kept coming, firing shot after shot that just barely missed the two of them as they fled.
“The dining room-” he said, rounding the landing so he could shove open the wide double doors. “C’mon, we’ll trip them up-”
With a grunt of frustration, Gretel got one more blast off before turning to follow him. The second floor offered almost as little cover as the stairwell, save for more space- usually the ballroom was completely empty save for the piano, and the dining room was rarely set up for actual dining... but as soon as she saw the tens of large round tables decorated with ‘spooky’ cobwebs, lit candelabras, and plates of ghostly food being eaten by ghostly guests, there was a spike in her optimism.
They didn’t have a lot of time to coordinate a plan- seconds, if that- so she just followed Negan to the nearest table and helped one-handedly shove the thing over.
The ghosts weren’t happy. As soon as the pair of them took shelter on the other side of it, they were being pelted by non-corporeal globs of potatoes and beef wellingtons.
“I’ll give you this-” she huffed at him, sitting shoulder to shoulder against the underside of their cover. “-this is definitely a fucking first for me.”
“Me too,” Negan breathed, panting as he grinned at her and then glanced around the edge of the table. “Isn’t it fucking awesome?” He pulled his head back as soon as he saw the remaining four Troopers coming through the doorway, and turned his face right into a misty mound of mashed potatoes.
“So, plan is-” he started, before ducking to the side slightly when one blast shot straight through the table. “Shoot and try not to get shot!”
He moved, running out from behind the table and firing rapidly on his way to the next. There were shots following him until he got to the table and shoved it up on its side, ducking behind it. After another few shots, he managed to take down another Trooper, and narrowly avoided being hit.
“Oh- fantastic plan-!” she called after him, thick on the sarcasm, though the only heat it contained was the half-panic that came with being in a firefight- a literal fire fight, as opposed to something with the more conventional weapons she was used to. Still, there wasn’t time (or room) to put anything else together. Gretel’s concentration wasn’t on planning so much as stamping out the little flames on her vest shoulder, left by the blast that grazed it.
By the time she was no longer on fire, Negan had already up-ended his table and engaged in a fury of laser shots; one quick peek around the corner of her table saw two of the armored assholes were charging right for her. If she popped up to shoot, one might pick her off while she aimed at the other…
“Tell me why this is fun again?!” she barked while spinning herself around on her ass, and planting the bottoms of both boots on the underside of the table. A hard breath and a harder shove by her legs sent it careening right into the two closing in on her, knocking them down in a clatter of limbs and armor. Gretel popped up and picked them both off with two shots, then finished off the last one with another, all in the span of two seconds.
Negan was exchanging shots with the last Trooper, watching Gretel out of the corner of his eye. The grin was still on his face, even when one blaster shot whizzed straight past his face, and the concurrent ones that followed trailed him as he scrambled backwards out of the line of fire. Eventually, he ran out of table, but he had a theory to test anyway.
Storm Troopers had terrible aim. He stood up, being fired upon in plain sight, took a couple of seconds to aim, and got the final Trooper with a headshot. Smirking, he blew the smoke coming from the end of his blaster away, and looked down at Gretel.
“I probably should’ve told you- they almost always fucking miss,” he said, going over to her and offering her a hand up. “Besides, they’re fucking assholes. Being on the winning side of a fight with them is gratifying as shit. I’m going to figure out how to show you the movies at some point. You need some fucking context.”
Context or not, her heart was still going a mile a minute, and the singed edge of her vest smelled like no burned substance she’d ever encountered in her life. Who the hell knew what it was made of, but it sure as fuck wasn’t fireproof.
“Right- almost,” she huffed to herself, holstering her blaster and surveying the damage… of which, there was plenty. “So these fuckers are from the same…movie... as our costumes-” Gretel added, tucking a piece of escaped hair from the braid back behind her ear, working out the logic behind her eyes. She’d been in the hotel long enough to realize what was happening. “-I have a feeling this will be an interesting week for everyone.”
They made it down the rest of the stairs and into the kitchen without further incident, though Gretel’s theory seemed to be proven by the gauntlet of arrows sticking out of the walls between there and the lounge. She was examining one of them after having shared breakfast with Negan- despite the angry bitching from the ghost cook- when a post on her PDA to the side caught her attention.
“-a newcomer,” she announced, pausing to read the message, then bounced her eyebrows up in obvious conclusion. “-seems he’s the reason for the arrows. He needs help de-skewering himself.” She was already getting up to answer the call.
“Well, shit,” Negan said, setting his dirty plate in the sink but re-filling his coffee mug to bring with him. “That’s fucking rough. At least we didn’t get turned into human pincushions, huh?”
He was surprised that whoever the new guest was had made it back up six flights of stairs with arrows in him- and the fact that there wasn’t a trail of blood. There were a couple of Storm Troopers, and some damage from blaster fire, but he was expecting a little more carnage. By the time they’d reached the guy’s room, he was halfway done with his coffee and wishing he’d brought a bigger mug.
“What’s this guy’s name, anyway?” he asked.
Considering the man had managed to coherently post a distress call on the network and answer questions, she didn’t think his injuries could have been too catastrophic. Though there had been a shit-ton of arrows in the walls.
“Jim Hopper,” she answered when they arrived at the correct door; Gretel tucked her PDA in her back pocket and used the back of her knuckles to knock on the door. Hopefully he hadn’t passed out since his last message.
“Just a minute-” came the gruff call from inside the room.
“He sounds cheerful,” Negan observed. But to be fair, the guy was supposedly skewered right now, and he had a feeling that probably didn’t feel too comfortable.
Soon enough, the door opened, revealing some version of Indiana Jones in his mid-40s, plus some extra weight, and with some added stress around the edges. Considering he had an arrow through his upper arm, he looked fairly good. His color was decent, and aside from looking justifiably irritated, the arrow didn’t seem to be bothering him that much. Or bleeding, for that matter.
“Hey- Gretel, right?” he asked, reaching out with the hand of his non-injured arm for her to shake. “Jim Hopper. Thanks for coming up.”
Gretel didn’t even bother tempering the mild surprise on her face; even one arrow to a non-crucial part of the body would render anyone pale and sweating with pain. As he shook her hand (which she offered almost by instinct- and maybe more because of the costume she was wearing), she noted he looked frazzled- at best.
“Uh-yes… no problem,” she answered, getting her thoughts back, though her eyes rarely moved from the wooden shaft sticking out of his arm. Once she had her hand free, it gestured toward the bearded Han Solo next to her. “This is Negan… You- want to do this here or- I have supplies in my room…”
Hopper shook Gretel’s hand, then turned to Negan to shake his, too. Negan regarded him with his head tilted to the side, smirking because they were both Harrison Ford characters, and sort of confused and impressed by the fact that he apparently didn’t give two shits about having an arrow in his arm.
“Honestly, I mostly need help gettin’ it out, and I didn’t know how much it’d bleed before,” he said, stepping aside so they could come in. “But I pulled the one out of my leg, and it just kind of, uh- oozed… corn syrup?” He looked about as confused as he sounded. “They didn’t hurt going in or coming out.” He still limped a little, because his leg had still suffered trauma, but he didn’t feel the pain from the injury at all.
“Fucking corn syrup?” Negan repeated, looking at Hopper more curiously now- or more specifically, his injuries. “That’s fucking wild.”
Moving into Hopper’s room, Gretel moved the table-chair out and gestured for him to sit in it while he explained what happened. While he and Negan went back and forth, her attention was zeroed in on his arm- after she angled the nearby lamp to see a little better.
No doubt, it was in there good, given how long she knew the arrows were, and the fact that she’d pulled at least two out of her own brother’s body over the last few years. She wouldn’t be surprised if it was half-way through the damn bone.
The fact that neither arrow hurt still didn’t make any sense, but she couldn’t exactly deny the evidence right in front of her face.
“You’re saying this... doesn’t hurt.” Gentle as her touch was as she pressed two fingertips against his jacket, an inch from the stuck shaft, it still should have made even the most hardened man go rigid with pain. She looked up at Negan. “-and what the fuck is ‘corn syrup’?”
“No, it-... not the way it should…” From the look on his face, Hopper was a little more surprised by her second question than by his response to her first. He was used to the arrow in his arm, now. Negan caught his look with a grin.
“Don’t mind Gretel. She’s from the dark ages,” Negan said, glancing around the room while Hopper was distracted. He could smell cigarette smoke, but there wasn’t much else in the room for him to look at or observe. “Corn syrup’s cheapass liquid sugar, basically. People mix it with red food dye to make fake blood, so I’m guessing the hotel just thinks it’s being cute or some shit.”
Gretel shot Negan an unimpressed look over Hopper’s shoulder, but it didn’t last long. If she learned anything else from being this close to the wound, it was the fact that it certainly did not smell like blood; she’d certainly smelled enough of it in her lifetime.
“Cute is not the word I’d use- and seventeen-thirty was not the dark ages,” she muttered, not as an invitation for debate, but because this stupid costume insisted she get the last damn word. She went on before he could interrupt again, this time addressing Hopper. “But for what it’s worth, you’re lucky things are the way they are this week, because pulling this out wouldn’t be nearly as fun… It’s buried in the bone.”
And of course by ‘fun’, she meant something entirely different.
“Sit on your hand so it doesn’t move,” she told him, disappearing into his bathroom briefly to grab a dry washcloth, which she wrapped around her hand for traction. Whatever the red substance was coming out of the wound, it was still slippery.
“Lucky me,” Hopper scoffed, but he followed Gretel’s instruction without complaint and sat on his hand. He knew she was right- if he was feeling any of this, it’d be torture. As it was, he was sort of wishing he’d gotten himself a drink before he bothered coming all the way back upstairs.
“Fucking corn syrup,” Negan repeated again, sipping from his coffee and going to sit on the edge of the bed. “Don’t even get me started on how much bullshit it is that the first time you get hurt here barely even fucking counts.”
Hopper looked at him with a flat, unimpressed glare, one that he was fairly used to being on the receiving end of. He definitely should’ve gotten himself a drink before this.
“First time I got hurt here, I got attacked by fucking Christmas demons,” Negan continued, not that anyone asked. “That sucked.”
Gretel didn’t know if Negan was going into the subject to keep Hopper occupied while she took care of his arm, or if he was just talking to hear himself do so- either way, she kept her focus on what she was doing, and didn’t contribute to that particular conversation.
That week had been a particular level of hell for her, and it brought up thoughts about her brother she did her best to keep at bay since he disappeared- again.
First, she tested how rigid the arrow was by putting some pressure on the shaft to see how much give the arm displayed- just as she thought, there was virtually none. His arm may not be in pain, but she doubted it would work right for the rest of the week. With that in mind, she curled her hand around the base, close to the leather sleeve it was sticking out of as possible, and braced her other hand on his shoulder.
She didn’t yank, that would’ve caused more damage. Instead, she took advantage of the fact that he wouldn’t bleed out, and wasn’t thrashing in agony, to work the thing side to side until the bone let it go.
Hopper could only sort of glance down at what Gretel was doing, and ultimately, decided to angle his head the other way. Watching wouldn’t help, and he didn’t want to get his head in the way. Though there wasn’t any pain, he could still feel the arrow moving around in his arm as she wiggled it back and forth, and the unfamiliar visceral sensation made him grimace.
“What the fuck’s it feel like, anyway?” Negan asked, watching with slightly perplexed fascination. Injuries were a lot cooler when they weren’t painful, or apparently life-threatening. Hopper said he’d been shot in the leg, too, but the only evidence of that was the darker, sticky patches on his pant leg and his hobble.
“Like she’s pulling an arrow out of my arm,” Hopper responded. He let out a breath like relief when she finally got it out, looking at it, and then his arm. He could sort of lift his arm, at least, but his grip felt weak when he clenched and unclenched his fingers. Shifting forward in his seat, he worked his jacket off, laying it over the back of the chair so he could try to get a better look at his arm. “Jesus… thanks. I couldn’t get a grip on the damn thing to pull it out myself.”
Gretel couldn’t stop herself from wondering if the hotel would suddenly turn all their senses of pain back on randomly; she’d been here long enough to anticipate the worst, and right now, that definitely seemed like the worst- at least, for Hopper. She didn’t mention anything about it, only suppressed a little twist in her stomach at the close-up of an arrow coming out of living flesh and bleeding in an entirely unrealistic way. When it was over, she tossed the arrow on the table and tried to wipe off her hands.
“You’re handling it well enough,” she commented- an observation and a question wrapped in one- as she moved to sit on the edge of his bed beside Negan. “What sort of world are you from?”
Hopper was starting to realize he was going to be having the same conversation with everyone he met. Maybe he should have posted something on the network so that people stopped asking him. But since Gretel had come up and given him help, he decided to light up a cigarette and be a good host until he was finished with it.
“Hawkins, Indiana,” he said, pulling the pack from his pocket and shaking one out. Six left. Fuck. “Small town in the middle of nowhere where weird shit happens.”
“What year was it?” Negan asked. Time was just as important as location when it came to everyone’s different worlds.
“1984,” Hopper replied, lighting up and taking a drag.
“That’s like… thirty years before me,” Negan said, mostly for Gretel’s sake, and scratched his beard thoughtfully, before he grinned a little like he was remembering something. “That was a good fucking year.”
Though she appreciated the bit of context from Negan, it didn’t give her any idea of what kind of ‘weird shit’ Hopper was used to. He was a difficult read; didn’t say much, seemed guarded, but that wasn’t anything new. She had no idea what his ‘costume’ was, either, or how much that was influencing his manner.
It was all just Gretel’s usual process of sizing up the new arrivals as soon as possible, to see how much help, or trouble, they might be dealing with. Negan may have recognized it even without her crossbow. She had the same look in her eyes.
“What was your occupation?” she asked next, after glancing to Negan with brief curiosity as to what made 1984 such a good year. Back to Hopper, she offered a little information on herself, so he didn’t feel like he was being interrogated. “My brother and I were witch hunters.”
Negan just winked at her, wrinkling his nose a little bit, and decided he’d tell her later if she really cared. It was nothing huge- he’d been eighteen at the time, he’d moved out of his house, and spent the whole summer working on cars and smoking pot. He could’ve done a lot fucking worse.
Hopper didn’t bother keeping the surprise off his face, though it didn’t show much. One of his eyebrows raised, and he took a pull from his cigarette before he answered.
“Chief of police,” he said, holding the cigarette between his lips so he could reach with his good arm for his empty coffee mug to use as an ash tray. Then he looked at Negan. “What about you?”
“Physical education teacher,” Negan answered with a grin and a wiggle of his eyebrows. “I lit a fucking fire under those little fuckers’ asses.”
“Uh-huh…” Hopper nodded a little, staring at his cigarette while he ashed it. “How long’ve you been here?”
Gretel hadn’t known what the wink was for, but once again found herself both enamored and annoyed; if this kept up, it was going to be a long week. Even the fact that Hopper confessed to being a law man didn’t push its way under her internal arguing. Maybe that was a good thing; her negative bias against men of the law sometimes got the best of her. In the pockets of her vest, her fingers tightened a little, completely without thought.
“It’s been more than five years for me,” she answered him, then glanced toward Negan. “I found him a bit less than a year ago.” Then back to the Chief of Police. “The two of us have been here the longest of everyone.”
Hopper nodded again, trying not to let the fact that she’d been there more than five years bother him. He’d already been gone from El for too long, but five years? He got the feeling there wasn’t much of a point in asking if there was a way out, especially not if she’d been there for so long.
“How bad does it get here?” he asked instead. If he was going to be stuck there, he at least wanted a better feel for what he was dealing with. “I know the gist of how this place works, with dying and resetting and… whatever. But how does this week compare to other weeks?”
Something in Gretel’s jaw tightened, though it wasn’t hugely noticeable. She was still on edge from her and Negan’s encounter in the stairwell, from wondering what else the hotel would throw at them, at everyone else, if they would suddenly all start feeling pain again, once the damage was done…
“Things can get good,” she finally told him, letting go of a breath through her nose. “And they can get bad.” There was no misinterpreting her tone; she wasn’t the type to exaggerate. “This week... “ She shook her head. “I don’t know- it’s still early. I’d say the lack of pain or malevolent ghosts is a plus, but there really is no way to tell where things go from here. We don’t even know what kind of costumes everyone were forced to pick.”