Kyle Van Allen (arty_kyle) wrote in rrinitiative, @ 2013-04-28 16:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | day fifteen, kyle, kyle and wren, wren |
Comfort
Characters: Kyle and Wren
Setting: Wren's room
It took Kyle a little while to get to Wren’s. There had been throwing up in the middle somewhere there. And then having to put himself back together again as best he could. It was far from perfect.
He almost didn’t make it, matter of fact. It wasn’t until he’d left his room again that Kyle suddenly realised that Wren now lived in Block B. Which meant passing the infirmary again. Where there was a dead body. And all of that blood. Too much blood. She was dead. He’d never seen a dead body before.
It meant that when he finally knocked on Wren’s door, he was crying again. He just wanted it all to go away.
Wren opened up the door, and saw Kyle standing there, in tears. So, instead of greeting him, she merely opened the door up wider, reached out for him to give him a hug. Sometimes people needed that little physical reassurance, and she was going to see if that was appropriate now.
When she did that, Kyle practically launched himself into her arms, not holding back at all. “Can I stay here?” he asked her, his face buried in her shoulder. “Please - I don’t want to go back.”
"You can stay here as long as you want." Wren told him, able to alleviate that immediately. She also hugged him tight, then started leading him into the room, shutting the door behind them. "What's happening?"
“They’re dead,” Kyle said, realising that he didn’t even know who it had been, other than it had been a woman. “We were on patrol and we went into the infirmary, and she was there, and there was... blood. So - so much blood.”
Oh. she thought. That...was not good. In many, many ways. She did, however, know a little something about dealing with the dead. She'd been adrift in a sea of them, after all. She led him to the couch, and sat him down, sitting next to him as opposed to giving him more space. She held one of his hands. "I'm sorry you had to see anything like that." she told him, voice soft.
Kyle sat on one end of the couch, brushing at his eyes. So much for holding it together. “...I didn’t know what to do,” he said, quietly, not looking at her. “I still don’t know what to do.”
"I know." Wren said, voice gentle. "I understand. Probably better than you would imagine." she added. "The unfortunate thing, is there isn't a right answer, here. You saw something awful, you can't unsee it, and you need to learn to focus on a point ahead. I know the instinct is to just stop dead in your tracks."
"My first instinct was to throw up," Kyle said, dryly. Well, after screaming - there had been that as well. "But, yeah - I don't... I just didn't want to be alone right now."
Wren rubbed the back of Kyle's shoulder lightly. "Sounds like a reasonable reaction to me." she told him. "And you don't have to be. So, that's just fine. Is this the first death you've dealt with up close?"
He nodded. "Yeah - I've never seen anything like that. There was just so much blood." he could still see it in his mind's eye. Pooling around the body, slightly darker at the edges, clinging and viscous and nothing like the movies lead you to believe.
"I'm sure people will be looking into it." Wren said. Not that that seemed to have helpled Becka. And now there was apparently a second female victim. Different crimes, but both women. Wren had to wonder if that was a sign of some description. She didn't mention it though. "Until then, you'll have someplace to stay, and if you need anything, just say so." she added. "I think that was one saving grace when I was dealing with so many dead. There wasn't a lot of blood. Just...too many people."
Kyle looked across at her, a frown flickering across his face. "What happened to you?" he asked. He had always avoided asking people about their pasts, but that was unignorable, and Wren was his friend.
"How I came to be in prison was prompted with a mass suicide...or murder, depending on how you look at it, I suppose." she said, voice slightly quieter than before. "Brian told everyone to drink wine that was poisoned, that one of us would be 'chosen' by 'fate'." she continued. "I had no idea he just didn't bother to poison mine."
"Then he disappeared. I didn’t know it at the time, but Charlie had already gone to try and get the police to help, but he was too late. Everyone I've ever known, besides Charlie and Brian, died that day. Including my mother. Whatever he gave them was pretty fast acting. Most people didn't make it out of the barn. So it was just me, and what seemed like this endless sea of the dead."
And once again Kyle was reminded why he Just Didn't Ask. Because he really hadn't wanted to know that. But there wasn't a choice - not when it was something that had happened to a friend. It was truly awful, but she had lived through that. The least he could do was hear her story. He reached out and took her hand. "I'm sorry," he said, the words feeling hollow. How did you even approach that kind of level of terrible? Words were so insignificant.
Wren gave his hand a squeeze. "I appreciate that, but it was a long time ago. I'm just telling you because I know what it's like to be faced with the dead, to have to stare down something awful and unexpected. I know how helpless it feels. I know it's hard to close one's eyes without seeing it again. I just...I understand. I wanted you to know that, not just think I was saying it because that's what people say."
"Thank you," Kyle said, not asking any more, since she had made it clear she wasn't expecting that and he didn't think he could actually cope with hearing about it. "I just didn't want to be alone right now." And he'd needed to be somewhere safe and uncomplicated. Wren was that. He couldn't have gone to Adam, not now. Not like this. He couldn't deal with the politics of turning to Adam right now. Meg was out - she simply wouldn't have understood why this had gotten him so upset. As for anyone else - he didn't feel close enough to anyone else that was still here.
Wren gave him a little hug. "And you aren't." she said. "Would you like to do something distracting?" she asked. "We could watch a movie, or you could talk to me about how you've been liking the books I lent you, or anything at all, really."
Kyle gave her a small but genuine smile. "The books were great - really great. Fascinating, really," he told her, though he didn't want to go into it too much. He had a plan, and he would prefer her not to know about it. He liked surprising his friends, though it occurred that he didn't know what was going on with the surprise they had talked about for Adam. Maybe, now, with everything that was going on, Wren wouldn't want to do that any more. Kyle considered talking about it with her, but decided against it. He would wait, at least until she and Adam had had a chance to talk things over. No point asking questions when things were so up in the air.
"I'm glad." she told him, with a smile. She almost told him that tarot was so much more visually pleasant than other forms of divination but didn't. Because that could lead to questions of what wasn't, and she just wasn't going to say that reading entrails got ugly. It was the last thing he needed to think about. "And remember, you can pick my brain about it anytime you want." she added. "I wanted to thank you again, by the way." she said. "When I moved, when I was mid-crisis, the only thing in my room that actually made it up on the walls, or even out on display was the painting you gave me."
"Why are you thanking me for that?" Kyle asked her, his brain so full of what he'd seen and the aftermath of that that it wasn't processing properly.
"It was helpful. Even when I was feeling empty, I still knew I wanted that up. That still had a place, even if nothing else did." Wren explained.
"My pleasure then. I'm glad you like it. That it helped," he told her.
She smiled. "Do you listen to a lot of music?" she asked. "Or have some favorite songs, or genres? I've been exploring that a lot of late. Anything you would like me to hear, that would be appreciated." she said, wanting to give him something that should be mindless to do. It would expend enough concentration that he wouldn't be thinking about bloody corpses, but not so much that it would take real effort.
"Do you mind if we just went with your original idea and stuck a movie on?" he asked get. "Maybe something light. Something silly. With a happy ending." and no blood.
"Of course." Wren said, not minding. Something light and happy she could do. She wasn't entirely positive what would be a good choice, as she wasn't overly familiar with movies, but she imagined hitting the comedy genre would work. Then, hopefully, Kyle would be distracted enough to let himself relax. Breathe. Anything that wasn't thinking about what he'd witnessed.