Isaac Seirawan of Greenwich House (seirawan) wrote in sense8s, @ 2015-08-29 21:06:00 |
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Elias woke up to an empty house. He blinked awkwardly, then reached out to look at his phone to check the time. It surprised him that both parents managed to sneak out without him so much as stirring, but it had been a long day followed by an even longer night, holding his hands behind his back as he watched Dr. Nesser repair a mitral valve. It was a surgery he knew well enough, but any opportunity to be in the room, to be in the only place in this whole bloody country that felt somewhat familiar, he’d take. Even if that meant 22 hours straight. He rolled off his couch and rubbed his eyes as he stumbled into the kitchen. His stomach growled, so he made a beeline to the fridge to pull out a plate of cheese and a jar of jam. Both got dumped onto some fresh bread and he shoved it in his face. He needed coffee. And then there was a man in his kitchen. The man looked around, seemingly even more confused to be there than Elias was to see him. He wore a jumpsuit that could have almost have been a nurse's, but somehow clearly wasn't. The sun had already set in Victoria, Australia, the shadows cast through the barred windows growing longer and longer until fading away, but Dono could tell that the day was only just beginning. The man who looked like he had just woken up was a good clue. Bewildered, Dono looked at him and held up a glittering kitchen contraption by its black, plastic handle. "What the fuck is this?" The voice rang in the air with an air of familiarity, though he couldn’t place where he’d heard it, or if he’d ever heard it. He was pale and blonde, with hair that curled past his ears and covered his jaw with a rough scruff. He wore a strange single outfit that reminded him of a mechanic’s coveralls, which nonetheless made Elias feel entirely underdressed in his boxers and no shirt. “Coffee press,” Elias replied aloud. He should be panicking that there was a strange man in his house. He didn’t know why he didn’t feel that way in the slightest. Probably, he thought, because this was what sleep deprivation looked like. “What are you doing here?” he asked. It was, after all, the obvious question. "How am I supposed to know?" Dono asked. Something about the way the man spoke was strange, different, but Dono couldn't place just what it was. He squinted at the device in his hands ("coffee press" only clarified somewhat just how it worked), then at the man. Dono judged he could take him in a fight, easy, if it came down to that. "I was in free hour, just minding my own business when -- where is here anyhow?" “Stockholm,” he replied as he took a few steps forward towards this rather obvious beginning of a mental breakdown. Elias felt that this had to be the cause, that this was an auditory and visual hallucination brought on by… stress. Sleep deprivation. Maybe some delayed side effect to some chemical sprayed by Assad’s planes. A combination therein. He didn’t feel crazy, but wasn’t that always the way? He reached out a few tentative fingers to take the coffee press from the man, deliberately reaching out for where he held it in the hopes of proving this all an illusion. Dono handed off the coffee press, though Elias's answer only seemed to confuse him more. "You don't look Swedish," he said. It wasn't the most politically correct thing to say, not by a long shot, and Dono didn't care about things like that, but somehow he knew that he was right, that this man was not a Swede. That was his coffee press in his hand, the plastic warm where the man had held it. That was an interesting, if slightly scary, development. “Syrian,” he replied as he looked at the press, then looked back at Dono. “You do look Swedish, but you sound… English?” he guessed. Dono laughed heartily. "Nah, mate. Aussie." 'Syrian' didn't mean much to him, beyond a general sense of otherness. Dono hadn't followed news much to begin with, and he'd been in prison since before ISIL even joined the fray. He could access some media, but he didn't make it a priority to catch up on Middle Eastern conflicts. He gestured at the coffee press. "How abouts you brew us up a cuppa?" he suggested. "The coffee where I'm at right now, it is pure shit." Dono had the sort of laugh that rolled from his body in an almost infectious way; Elias found his curious face lilting up into a half-smile as he turned to set the press on the table. “You are somewhere not here?” he asked. And then he could see it. The scenery changed so abruptly that it made Elias stop short, the coffee press forgotten as his large eyes scanned the cement walls. “Ya allah,” he said quietly, eyes settling on the bars covering the window. "What'd you go and do that for?" Something shifted in Dono's demeanor. Though his voice remained jocular, the mirth dimmed, not quite imperceptibly. Maybe the change in scenery had triggered it, or maybe it was the Arabic interjection, which was not as unfamiliar to him as he'd expected or wanted. "Now there's no hot water." He looked back to Dono and, once again, he thought that there should be some fear coursing through him to be suddenly imprisoned with this intruder into his life. But fear was not what he felt. Instead it was… no, not shame. Inevitability? But it was a feeling he knew and, even more strangely, a feeling he felt as keenly as he felt his own surprise. “I do not know how I did this,” he replied softly. Elias had done this before, briefly, seeing a woman and a man on a bed in a hotel room, but he did not know how he’d done it then either. “Why are you here?” he asked him, no threat or temerity in his voice, just an automatic, inexplicable concern. "Popped a guy for asking questions," Dono snapped. The mirth had gone completely, but anger and irritation weren't its only replacements. His voice held a hint of melancholy, of contemplation. He too remembered the hotel room, the woman lying on the bed while the man stroked her hair. He reached out and touched the walls, feeling the rough concrete under his fingertips, then reaching out to touch the iron bars. It felt so real, so impeccably real. “I can leave here. I think I will be okay,” Elias replied absently. "Good for you," Dono sneered, almost forgetting that he too had left -- that he was only a short time from leaving for real. Elias closed his eyes for a moment and thought of home - of the mish-mash of donated furniture and cheap storage shelves, the kitchen with it’s fastidious cleanliness, the window onto an early summer afternoon. If he’d have ever heard of the Wizard of Oz, he might have clicked his heels too. He opened them again and, sure enough, he was home. Dono sat back onto his cot. He was where he had started, but even after two years, it was not home. |