Hansel fucking hates candy. (notacandyfan) wrote in incompletedata, @ 2017-10-19 15:27:00 |
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Hansel had been toeing the line since the grave digging detention, mostly because he didn’t want to bring any extra work to his Block mates, but he didn’t like it. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say he hated it. If he had the chance, he’d like to shoot that Hotel fucker right in his handsome face for the forced early morning workouts more than anything else. The only good thing about them were the results- Even in just a few weeks, he was noticing additional strength in his arms and back and legs. That could come in handy the next time they went hunting… If there was a next time. Fuck, he hoped there was a next time. It had been years since he’d gone this long between kills and he was starting to get a little… antsy. After dinner and a shower, Hansel used the newly repaired elevator (he loved the elevator) and headed up to Delta, to his sister’s room. He had a few hours to spare before he decided if he was sleeping in his room or in hers and, no matter what that decision ended up being, he wanted to spend some time with her. Gretel’s room, like all the others in Delta, still had its impossibly pink walls, lights, and garish rugs, but the atmosphere was considerably different; it tended to be a little warmer than her neighbors, usually because she kept a fire going in the ‘black box’ room once it had been adjusted to her purposes. The aroma of wood smoke lingered like an undertone, mixed with the heady scent of roses, threaded with the hint of spice, apple, and gun oil. She heard her brother come in before she actually saw him; Gretel could recognize Hansel’s gait in her sleep (and did). “I’m in here-” she called from the black room without looking up from the ancient pages she’d been studying for the last hour. Pouring over their mother’s book, distilling rose oil from petals boiled in a thick, cast iron cauldron (Sam called it a ‘dutch oven’), and idly sharpening one of her fighting knives with a flint, the flower-pink dress she’d been forced to deal with in the new block made her feel ridiculous, but she decided to aim her ire about this place toward more productive purposes. Since she didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. Hansel kicked his shoes off near Gretel’s bed before following the sound of her voice and the smell of roses to that weird ass room. “Smells good in here,” he said when he joined her. The smells in the room were the most familiar thing he’d experienced since waking up in this place- other than Gretel. Gretel was always familiar. “We killing someone? Who is it?” he asked, motioning to the knives. Gretel huffed a soundless response somewhere in the back of her sinuses; her mouth pulled a little toward one cheek, though her eyes didn’t lift from her work until she set the stone and dagger down on a rough-looking wooden table. “Who knows, here-” she said flatly, finally looking up. “Just keeping the option open- and, I don’t trust the dull pieces of shit they have in the cafeteria.” She pushed herself to her feet with her palms on the table, and moved to the boiling roses, where she checked the oil accumulating on the surface of the water with the tip of the curved knife- one of the pair Hansel had forged himself for her a few years back. “Did you eat?” she asked; the question had become the replacement for checking on his injections, since those had been replaced by a pill. Gretel still didn’t trust it, but he seemed to be doing fine- so far. Sometimes they could stave off the need for medicine with the right food, for a little while. Knowing when he’d last dosed or eaten was as natural to her as breathing. “Yeah, I ate,” Hansel said, leaning against the wall as he watched his sister work. The magic thing was… getting easier for him. Sort of. He still wasn’t entirely comfortable with it in general, but he knew he could trust a white witch- and there was one he trusted above all others. “Everything here is so sweet. How do these people handle it?” He had a hard time believing that there weren’t a lot more people around who had the sugar sickness the way he did. “Do you have enough roses for your oil stuff? Or do I need to go and track down more bushes?” “This should be fine for now,” Gretel sighed lightly, touching the tip of her dagger with her finger, then swirled the oil between that and the pad of her thumb. A shit ton of roses only made half a vial of oil, but at least the spell didn’t seem to use that much. Just a touch for each person who needed it. And if the weird swarm of people responding to the question she asked on the network was a sign of need, she was glad to have more than enough. “As for the sweetness… I have no idea. It seems everyone else is ...almost used to it.” Standing straight and shaking the excess oil from the knife back into the cauldron, Gretel set a more careful eye on her brother. Every day since he showed up, she was grateful to have him- even with the gnawing realization that they were, in fact, captives with no idea how to escape. Without him, she felt so untethered- lost- the stomach-twisting idea that their captors brought him here for a specific purpose refused to ever leave the back of her mind. But as long as they were here, they would have to adjust- to so many things. “So do you want me to wait for you to ask, or should I just start explaining Sam?” she said, jumping subjects only because the topic couldn’t be avoided forever. Hansel pulled a face at the idea of people being used to overly sweetened food. He wasn’t well, he’d accepted that a long time ago, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed running the risk of death if he wasn’t careful with both his medication and what he ate. That people all around him just took their good health for granted was annoying. “That healer said she wanted to adjust how many pills I take to make sure I don’t get sick. And I guess I have to eat regularly?” She’d told him a lot of things when she was talking to him about ‘managing your condition’. Hansel was used to Gretel deciding that they were beating around the bush too much and tackling things head on. “You can wait if you want but I think it’ll just be easier if you tell me what you think I need to know.” Gretel eyed him for a moment, mulling over the best way to actually go into the conversation. In the meantime, she sat back down at the work table, and set the knife down with a gentle clank. It covered her sigh. This was weird territory, for both of them. “I trust him-” That seemed the most important detail to start with. “He was one of the first people I talked with, here- not being an asshole helped at the start… then being a hunter went beyond that. Months went by without any sign of you… then this …scenario was announced, and I was on the list of names to be sent in. The night before it all started, I thought …” She didn’t have to go on; Hansel knew her better than anyone, and he’d seen the bloodbath that was the last few days of that experiment. “Then at the last second… they took him instead.” Hansel listened patiently, nodding even though his skin wanted to crawl a little. It wasn’t that he didn’t love and support his sister and her decisions. He did both of those things. It was just supremely weird for him to think of Gretel as anything other than… than… Gretel. But his feeling weird about things was his problem and he knew that. Gretel was a woman and could spend her time with whomever she wanted. “So… what? Is he… I don’t know. Courting you?” Was that what it was called these days?” Despite the fact that everything she said was the raw truth, Gretel still couldn’t keep a small snort from scraping the back of her throat. Courting. The idea was ridiculous to her- to both of them, even if it was the custom of people who didn’t grow up hunting evil from place to place until evil finally caught up with them. Maybe it still was the custom, but she didn’t think anything like that applied here- and even if it did, not to her. Not to Sam. “I don’t know to call it anything,” she told him, leaning an elbow on the work table, her fingers bridging her temple. “I… he and I agreed- it’s dangerous. After what happened before the caves, it’s pretty fucking obvious the powers that be like to use us all against each other. We’re doing our best not to play into that.” Well, that didn’t explain things at all. And Gretel wasn’t the only one who could cut to the chase. “So… what? Why are we talking about him if there’s nothing there?” Gretel blinked a little harder than necessary, huffing a breath through her nose while her eyes were closed- it wasn’t like she could blame her brother for missing the point, though she didn’t know if he did it intentionally or if she was just very bad at describing it. “There is something there-” she said suddenly, almost too quickly, and with a frustrated gesture from both hands. “I just don’t know what to fucking do about it… I’ve never been in this kind of problem before... “ Then she pegged him with a Look. “But I do know we’re talking about him so you don’t give him an unnecessary concussion.” He thought the chances of him giving the guy a concussion were small… More because Sam was about seventeen feet tall than for any other reason. But he wasn’t going to tell her that. Or him. Better that the beanstalk think that he was a little bit intimidating. “Don’t know what to do about it?” He arched a brow in his sister’s direction. “Don’t let these scientist fuckers decide what you do. You decide what you do. So if you want him, go get him.” In a conversation she had no idea how to anticipate, Hansel saying something that unexpected - yet still completely… him- shouldn’t have thrown her off, but he still managed to leave her momentarily speechless, and with a new bittersweet twist in her chest. In a heartbeat, the shock melted out of her eyes like the breath in her sigh, leaving them with a softer look for her brother. Still, it didn’t solve the problem. “It’s not that easy,” Gretel said, quietly. “You haven’t had enough time to see how they use everyone- Hell, they practically put all our weaknesses on full display in the last month. They absolutely know how much you and I depend on each other. They’ve already seen my weakness for Sam- and his for me…” She paused, only long enough to unset her jaw and roll her lips, listening to her own words in her head, praying Hansel understood- wondering if she even understood them fully herself. “I don’t want to give them a reason...” she finally continued. “... to target either one of us.” Hansel thought he understood why Gretel was so gunshy. He sighed as he pushed away from the wall to lay his hands on her shoulders. “Gretel. We’re here. They don’t need you or I or anyone to give them reasons to target any one of us because they already have them.” He rubbed her arms before pulling his sister into a hug. “Like I said… don’t let those fuckers decide what you’re going to do for you. If you want to… whatever… with what’s-his-face, then do it.” When he hit the target of what she was trying to say dead-on, a part of her was relieved, grateful that she didn’t actually have to say it out loud- then half a second later, and as he put the whole situation in the right perspective, Gretel’s stomach sank a bit. She had been here too long, been dangled on those strings, pulled and toyed with enough to leave obvious psychological marks. Just thinking about it put a little more need into the way she hugged him back, with her brow dropped on his shoulder and her eyes closed. She breathed out slow, feeling a little like she’d been sucker-punched. He was right. It still didn’t take away her fear, but he was right. Maybe it wasn’t an answer, but it was a step in some direction- and at least she knew he wouldn’t preemptively break Sam’s jaw. It was a long time before she felt she could actually put her thoughts into words, let alone break from Hansel completely. He was her other half in so many ways; she didn’t lose herself very often, but when it happened, he was always there to pull her back. Eventually she gave him another small squeeze and extracted herself from the hug with a long breath. “I’m meeting him tonight.” She still wasn’t completely steady about any real decision regarding Sam, but knowing she had her brother’s support did help, more and more. “Yeah?” he asked, letting her pull away when she wanted to. Hansel would do anything for his sister, anything in the world, but this was something she had to do on her own. They needed each other in a lot of ways for a lot of things, but this wasn’t one of them. That, however, didn’t keep him from being protective of her. She was his entire family. “He better treat you right. Like a lady. Or I’ll find him and break his nose, even if I have to climb a tree on purpose to do it.” The look she gave him- complete with deep-dimpled smirk, eyeroll, and silent, aborted laugh- contained no real heat. It was meant to be teasing, and thankful at the same time- something that would probably be completely lost or misinterpreted by most other people. “He’s been nothing but a gentleman,” she drawled quietly- leaving off the few instances where Sam definitely was not ‘gentlemanly’, in ways she had no complaints about. Her brother wasn’t ready to hear that. “-and I’m hardly a fucking lady.” “Doesn't mean the guy courting you shouldn't treat you like one.” Besides… it was the kind of caveat a brother had the right to insist on. Hansel leaned in and pressed a kiss to Gretel forehead. “I'll leave you to your roses and your tree man and… whatever else you do in here.” She didn’t fight him on it, because he knew more than anyone that she agreed. Besides the few and far between occasions when she chose a man in whatever town they were in for a quick, stress-relieving romp before moving on, her interactions with most were annoying- at best. At worst… she didn’t talk about it. “Stay with me for a while,” she looked up at him after the kiss; despite the conversation about Sam, she still felt intrinsically nervous about separating from her twin- and he’d only just got there. “The kitchen in this building has the best coffee…” “For a little while,” Hansel agreed. “I have to make sure I get back before lockdown.” He’d already slept in a common area once this week and he didn’t want to repeat that experience. He’d thought about joining Gretel, but he didn’t want to chance walking in on her and the tree. |