gideon nav (wedobones) wrote in valloic, @ 2020-11-09 15:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, ₴ inactive: dan torrance, ₴ inactive: gideon nav |
Leading up to the event, he was feeling a little tired - more the ‘drained and stressed, over Vallo’s bullshit’ type of tired, rather than the heavy coat, heavy bones sort of feeling. He managed, however, remaining bright blue-eyed and bushy-tailed for work and classes (only a few weeks to go on those, and then he’d get a winter break, at least). Today, he was making the rounds and wearing his usual scrubs, organizer with all the medical supplies he needed attached to him, unfashionable-yet-comfortable sneakers, and a blinged out stethoscope hanging around his neck (the charm hooked onto it was glittery, picked out by Claire); imagine his surprise when he went to the waiting room and found a certain dinosaur chaser out there.
“Gideon Nav,” he feigned shock. “Did you come to see the Snooze Room aesthetics?”
Well. It was pretty chic yet comfy cozy, if he did say so himself.
“Doc Dan Torrance,” Gideon answered, stretched out in a plastic chair like there might be a photoshoot at any moment and she was the long-limbed, bemuscled star. She unfolded herself with the air of an elegant praying mantis and tipped her sunglasses down, taking in the full affront of Dan’s outfit. “Tombs,” she said, “I like the bling.”
Standing, she stretched, three things popping one at a time in her back. “I admit,” she said, righting her sunglasses back on the perch of her nose, “I was curious. I mean, ‘The Snooze Room’ has this-- air about it, in the name. And that air is boring as balls. No offense. But then I thought to myself - what if this boringness is trying to hide secret layers of awesome? That’s not just an observation,” she said tartly, “that’s also a bleedin’ metaphor for you, by the way. Just to be clear. How are you? You look like an out of order vending machine. The big day’s coming up. Obviously.” Her voice lowered, contrite. “I know you probably haven’t forgotten or anything.”
An out of order vending machine? So sweet. Dan wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not - it probably wasn’t, but you know. He knew he wouldn’t win any beauty contests - and hopefully Allison still loved him even though he came home exhausted but fulfilled after a full day of doing the nurse thing and developing an even finer appreciation for modern medicine.
“Oh, this vending machine is in order,” he replied, with a twitch of a smile. “Put a quarter in me and see what happens.” Did he know what that meant? Not at all, but he also wasn’t a comedian, just a guy with sparkly shit on his stethoscope and a slight case of wedding jitters. “I’m pretty excited about the big day. Come on back though, I want to hear about how you’re doing and assess whether you need a refreshing nap or not.”
He turned to lead the way, heading into the appropriately-dubbed Snooze Room - he’d washed and changed the sheets recently, the bed as comfortable as laying down in a candy-floss cloud, covers that were sensitive to anyone with allergies. No blue light to be seen, not in here, and no electronics - no television, no phone chargers, nothing. Just a literal kiss of cool, since temperatures that weren’t boiling hot helped induce sleep, and soft lighting - the walls were also painted green, and that wasn’t an accident.
The pumpkin pillows were still on the bed too - they were more for show, but very festive. “Make yourself cozy,” he offered, setting his clipboard down. “The bed’s a lot more comfortable than the waiting room chairs, at least.” He’d heard that cracking like a glowstick out there, Ms. Nav.
Gideon made a face that looked halfway between a gag and a snicker; the Ninth had never been much interested in heath, physical or otherwise. “Rub dirt in it” was about as invested as she was in anything. Still, she liked Dan and she kept her snarky comments to herself, at least until she rounded the corner into the actual Snooze Room in question.
“Tombs,” she exclaimed, turning in a full circle to get a good look at it all. The bed, the ambience, the temperature, the GOURD PILLOWS. Gideon hadn’t complained about Vallo’s weather, because what was the point, but the place was so damn hot to her after the frigid temperatures of Drearbuhr. This was a breath of fresh air. “You really didn’t spare any expense did you?”
Still, she was Ninth-born-and-bred to the end, and contrary besides - she took a seat in the floor, folding her knees into criss-cross applesauce. Gideon had teased Harrow relentlessly about Harrow’s distrust of anything too nice, but apparently it was a dyed-in-the-wool tomb brat philosophy. “What do you want to talk about, Doc? Do you need to see my sword for this? Didn’t bring the big one, but I’ve got the dinky little cavalier needle.”
“Ravi gave me the black card and trusted me with it, so...” Dan shrugged, but he was pretty proud of the way the Snooze Room turned out. Of course he bought other medical supplies, state of the art equipment and was in charge of figuring out what exactly the clinic would need (it was no humdrum establishment either, they had the capabilities to perform surgeries here), but he was also glad that he was able to set up a niche area for his own purposes.
Even if certain individuals were going to choose the floor over any of the furniture - but that was okay, Dan wasn’t really the type to force people (especially friends) to do things they didn’t want to do. Personally, he went for one of the chairs, but he hoped Gideon would make her way to the bed eventually.
He’d lived for decades with literal hungry ghosts locked in boxes, in his head - he could wait. He would wait. “So, three hours of sleep a night? Why is that?” he asked. Patiently.
Gideon, who smelled an actual conversation brewing, wrinkled her nose. “Why not? Got used to it forever ago. People make do with less all the time.” She picked at a piece of lint on her black pants (for Gideon had never broken the habit of wearing all black), and squinted up at him. “You said you helped people sleep. How? Assume it’s got more finesse than a mallet to the back of the head.”
People with psychic abilities or magic powers generally gave her the willies; Gideon was live and let live, and of course had seen some things in her own world that might give other people nightmares, but she didn’t consider necromancy magic. Magic was strange and unknowable, necromancy was just… energy. Energy being rerouted by some sad sack in a black hood.
A lot of times, magic tended to give Dan a creepy-crawly sort of feeling too - but they had magical healers at the clinic, and he’d seen it in action when magic healed Allison’s throat, enabling her to speak again. In general, however, he preferred modern medicine but recognized magic had its place - in some worlds, maybe it was even as commonplace as it was in Vallo; he tried to keep an open mind.
So he didn’t blame others when they were wary of telepathy, or the Shining in general - he’d tried to drown his own abilities for years because he didn’t want to deal with them. Because he was afraid. But then he’d gotten to a point where helping people helped heal him too - it was a way for him to take control back, in a time when he sorely needed to. Maybe helping people die wasn’t an obvious outlet for his particular talents, but when he was sitting with someone on their last few breaths and they couldn’t talk but he could understand them anyway, it made them feel less alone in their final seconds in this world.
That was good enough for Dan.
“You don’t have to make do with less. Or only three hours,” he pointed out. “But as for how I help, it’s just - reaching into someone’s mind, gently pulling the blinds closed. It doesn’t hurt and I’m not rooting around looking at thoughts or memories. Just kinda easing them into a good REM cycle, a deep sleep. We call it the Shining where I come from - powers of the mind. Most people Shine, but don’t always believe it or even know it at all. Some Shine really bright though.” He guessed he could ask if Gideon ever watched the fucking movie, since he’d seen it casually bantered about on the network, his childhood psychological trauma reduced to a piece of celluloid for others to critique but whatever. Dan wouldn’t talk about that if he could help it.
Gideon hadn’t watched the movie - she poked into people’s general worlds, just to see where they were from, but as soon as things started sounding particular person she noped out. So The Shining as a movie and a cultural phenomenon had largely passed her right by, and she hadn’t been called to the Overlook either when it was here, so all she really knew about Dan’s home was that it seemed kinda shitty and arbitrary.
“‘The Shining’ sounds nice,” she said slowly, “but I bet it’s not, actually. Things like that always seem like they’d be fabulous if you go by the tin they’re in, but then you open it up and it’s a solid ‘what the actual fuck’.” She figured he’d tell her more if he wanted, but wouldn’t push it either way. No one wanted to talk if you pried their jawbone open.
With a snort, she propped her chin up in her hand. “Didn’t have a bed in the Ninth. Just a slab, and a blanket so I wouldn’t freeze.” Gideon said it petulantly, knowing she was being kind of a pill and unable to stop herself. Admitting there was any sort of an issue wasn’t something Gideon did as a rule; it was why she and Diego got on like a crypt on fire. “I wasn’t a real citizen there, you know? I was indentured. Figured out here that you lot would know the Ninth as Pluto - the planet, or not a planet, not gonna get into that mess - but it’s no longer called that when I live. Just the Ninth House.”
Was the Shining nice? Sometimes. Sometimes not. The quintessential problem with it was that Dan always got more information about people than he should have. Sure, telling someone where he lost his watch was a neat trick, but it came along with knowing his thoughts, his fears, his dirty little secrets - even if Dan did his best to not dig around in people’s thoughts and memories, however; he got surface thoughts fairly easily, and there was no helping that - just people wandering by, a blip here and there, a whisper that faded as quick as it had come, like the dawn at sunrise.
“At first it wasn’t so nice,” he admitted. “Adults didn’t believe me about it, when I was a kid. I tried to drown it with alcohol and drugs. Because I was tired of hearing people’s thoughts, because humanity is mostly garbage. But because of the ghosts too. That didn’t work, though - thought I might try helping people with it instead. That’s why I’m here, doing what I do.” He vastly preferred clinic life over the night shifts in hospice at the hospital.
And he didn’t really mind talking about it either; he’d already held it inside for too long, and it ate away at him, suffocating him. “Pluto, huh?” He hadn’t known that about Gideon - it was interesting to learn. “It’s hard, to go someplace and have access to all these nice things - took me awhile to get used to having a roof over my head, after my best friend helped me get back on my feet again. Does it feel like that for you?”
Gideon may not have liked talking, and she may have been a trashcan on fire when it came to giving advice you should follow, but she was a good listener. She looked away as Dan spoke, not that you could tell with the dark tint of her glasses, absorbing the information he was readily giving. Sure, she’d known that he’d had his troubles with booze and drugs, but it was different hearing it firsthand. Made her want to sit a little straighter, fold her hands a certain way, adopt a posture of someone who wasn’t made awkward by vulnerability, but she killed the impulse, because she didn’t find it honest.
“Comfort’s not comforting when you’re not used to it,” she said, responding to his direct question first before adding: “Do you like here better than home, then? At least when it’s not tossing evil hotels at you?”
“Yeah, I do.” Dan didn’t even hesitate to respond in the affirmative. “I was dead at home no matter what. I don’t really regret it, because of course I’d die to save my niece - I wasn’t going to let those monsters take her.” The True Knot, and if what Rose said was correct (and she wasn’t just fucking with him) - then she wasn’t the last one after all. There were more out there, snatching children, snatching their steam to stay youthful and to eat well, live long. But he did what he could to protect Abra in that moment, to help equip her with what she’d need to fight back.
And she would fight back. That he was certain of - she was strong. Powerful. She’d be alright.
His fingers went to the stethoscope he wore - and that was another thing, he wouldn’t get to do nursing work back home either, even if he was still alive. Even if he wanted to. Frazier was just kind of a dead end - good for a guy who wanted to blend into the woodwork and stumble through his day-to-day routine, not really good to live out dreams. But anyway. He tilted his head a bit, thoughtfully. “Comfort’s not comforting when you’re not used to it,” he repeated, agreeing. “But maybe you can start small. It’s okay to let your friends help you - it’s okay to want to rest.” Or take comfort somewhere, in little increments.
This, at least, was solid ground. Gideon knew what it was like to accept death for somebody, to weigh up your life versus theirs and do the math that led to you jumping in front of something that would very much like to kill you dead, and then give it the finger for good measure. She was still pissed at Harrow for wasting her death, obviously, but Harrow was gonna Harrow and there wasn’t shit she could do about it now.
“Rest.” She snorted, tried to determine what she could possibly say to the sleep doctor to get him off that track. “I had a lot of time in my own head back home toward the end. Well. Wasn’t even my own head.” Gideon frowned and waved her hand, wanting to explain, unwilling to condense it all, unable to properly tell him her motivations without doing so. “So-- magical ritual to become a Lyctor-- the cavalier (that’s me) and the necromancer (that’s Harrow) meld together and become one, and sadly, not in the fun way. The necromancer absorbs the cavalier to become stronger, to defeat an evil foe. Only… Harrow fucked it up.” She exhaled, trying to keep her temper from really flying, and gestured with her hand. “I got like… I dunno, I’m not versed in this magic stuff - half-absorbed? LIke, I fucking died, don’t get me wrong, but she refused to… I don’t know… use me like she should.” She shrugged. “So I basically got to scratch my ass for eight months metaphorically while she tried to figure out how to defeat this horrible monster thing without actually being a full Lyctor.” Gideon shook her head, making a barfing face. “Fucking no one deserves eight months of listening to Harrow’s thoughts. But I got out, I made it here, and it’s so bloody normal. Didn’t have normal at all back home, even when I wasn’t a banished memory dragging chains through Harrowhark’s terrifying brain, and I just don’t want to slow down, you know? I don’t want to miss it all. Because people go back all the time - all the time, Dan!” When had her voice gotten so intense? She felt like she was dragging it over a pit of gravel. “I could go back to a universe where I’m not even as good as a ghost. I get to be a person here. You get to be a person here.” She nudged him with her fist. “You get to be married here. Why on earth would anyone want to miss any of this?”
If nothing else, Dan was a good listener - in some cases, the Shining helped with that; when words didn't come, he still understood. He could feel. And he understood better now - eight months was a long time to just be watching, observing, half-absorbed and not a full person. Every minute must have been excruciating.
"But if you don't slow down, you'll hurt yourself," he uttered quietly, a rumble of words. His voice was calm, soft. Like he was coaxing a kitten out of a tree - went with the ambiance of this room, anyway. "People do disappear all the time. I'm afraid I will, or Allison will - but I want to be able to fully appreciate what we have so not only do I try to live without that fear at the forefront, but I try to - not tip too far in any direction. You know?"
Balance was very much an important part of figuring out The Mysteries of Life for anyone - and it was hard. Fuck, he knew it was hard. Many things were, however.
Gideon felt like her face was too hot, and she leaned back, pressing her shoulders against the side of the bed she had refused to acknowledge thus far. She already regretted bringing up people disappearing - it hadn’t really affected her yet, had it? And of course it had to be on Dan’s mind. She wasn’t the sort to want to bring anybody down, even if she was a mess of chaotic emotional goo.
“My dear Doc,” she drawled, the corner of her mouth quirking up mirthlessly, “are you preaching… could it be… moderation in all things?”
“Something like that,” Dan’s mouth quirked up too, almost to the point of being a half smile - but it was a warm expression, plenty of fondness. “And also it’s...well, no matter what you do, you could still disappear at any point. The risk is always there, because that’s the way of this world. Even if you are awake twenty-four seven, a non-blinking caffeinated shell of a human. Or even if you sleep every single day away. So you may as well take good care of yourself, the way you deserve. As a whole person. And it’s a really good whole person, Gideon.”
He meant that. She was pretty great - brave and bold as brass, and funny to boot; he was pretty sure Gideon could make anyone smile. Even the hardest of hardasses.
Going back to a world where they were either dead or close to it, a world that didn’t appreciate the way they shined - sure, he could see why she didn’t want to return. For many of the Outlanders, home was not where the heart lay.
Gideon scrunched up her entire face, which given the size of her head, was really saying something. Compliments made her feel wobbly and uncertain and weirdly buzzed, and so she reached out and patted Dan’s arm very quickly and firmly.
“Doc,” she said, “don’t take this the wrong way, but I will goddamn sleep like The Undisturbed and Holy Locked Tomb on this here silly fluffy cloud of a bed if you promise never, ever to say anything that sincere to me ever again, long as I sort-of live, forever.”
Silly fluffy cloud of a bed. Oh, Dan’s poor Snooze Room - if these walls could talk, they’d say, ‘hey!’ But really, he was going to take that as a compliment too, similar to the vending machine quip.
“Okay, deal,” he agreed, chuckling in an undertone. He stood from the chair, moving to pull back the covers on the bed that, thus far, Gideon had refused to acknowledge. But at least she was willing to acknowledge it now, so that was progress. “Climb on in - you can even take your shoes off if you want.” And the sunglasses which, again, optional - but he hoped she didn’t sleep in those, during the few winks she managed to get.
With the air of someone recently sentenced to death, Gideon kicked off her shoes and set them to the side, lining them up so that the toes pointed toward the bed. Her sunglasses she set on the side table, blinking blearily with hazel-gold eyes before they adjusted - the lamp was much too bright, of course, but it didn’t make her vision water, and so she tucked herself into bed as if it might eat her at any moment.
“Am I supposed to think of anything? Count? Or just… dunno… lay here?”
Dan settled too, chair pulled up by Sleeping Beauty’s bedside. He switched off the light, so the room was pleasantly dark - something soft, not there’s something waiting in the shadows to kill you. “Just think of a happy memory,” he instructed, glad that Gideon was sloooooowly easing into getting more comfortable - shoes off, sunglasses off, and he realized he hadn’t seen her eyes very much; they were nice though, the color of gold dust.
“It can be anything, from any time.” He wouldn’t go rooting for one since they’d already established that she was wary of mind-reading abilities, and magic in general. No sense in making that worse by poking around in her head without permission. “Pull it to the forefront of your mind.”
She muttered “titty mags” in a bid to be snarky even in her final waking moments, but Gideon did not think of dirty magazines as she closed her eyes. Instead, she thought of a lukewarm swimming pool, and of Harrow in it, pressed against her, her lashes wet from chlorine and tears, and of the secret her Necromancer had shared in the hushed darkened air. It hadn’t been happiness, purely, but it had been something quite like contentment, and it was the sort of memory that she frequently went back to, and turned over in her mind looking for cracks in it. She had never found them.
Well, titty mags were a decent happy memory, Dan supposed. Still, he focused on the one Gideon actually pulled up - the way it felt, the contentment of it, any worries disappearing like rain pattering on summer earth, a closeness that was comforting but still gave space to breathe. That feeling was everywhere, no more worries - no more cares, at least not for this moment and the moments thereafter.
Sleep, he encouraged with a gentle, psychic nudge - this time it wasn’t necessarily a soothing warmth, like with so many, but a refreshing coolness, ice on a pulled muscle or a bruise. Sleep, the word repeated because it sounded so tempting, didn’t it? It’d be okay to give in for just a little while, wouldn’t it?
(the chill was comforting, a quiet morning in the early morning before the sun began to rise - and he gently pulled those mental blinds closed) Sleep.
Gideon tried not to fight it, but it was in her nature to - she fought herself and good sense all the time. She tried her best to focus on the dim green light of the swimming pool, on Harrow’s worried, smiling face, on the smell of treated water and the feel of Harrow’s fingers on her jaw. It wasn’t real, she knew, and she could almost here a voice with a cadence like Dan’s - but she’d gone to this place before, and so she let it take her, and curled up within it, her physical body loosening and her head slowly lolling to rest more naturally on the pillow.
The blackness itself was comforting - she’d missed true darkness, here in Vallo. It was almost like returning home to the Ninth, but some kind version of it that had never existed, and never would.