knowing your life was my life's best part

[roartonrisen]

It's so quiet, when he stands out here staring into the oblivion of space. If he still had a heartbeat, if he were still alive and his heart could race against his chest, it'd be all Kieren could hear. One moment, he'd been at the surgery and now he's ... here. Wherever here is supposed to be.

After everything that's happened today, it expands and stifles him at once. There's still bloody black bile on his chin that Simon hadn't managed to wipe away after the Blue Oblivion and there's blood on his hands. It's not black, either, it's red and it's Amy's. There's so much that Kieren doesn't understand, Exhausted, he's grateful that he's had his shot of neurotryptiline because if he'd found himself in this vast unknowing hotel with the danger of going rabid again, he doesn't know if he could fight it off twice.

His hand shakes as he pushes his hair off his forehead. Or maybe it doesn't shake and maybe Kieren is just associating past behaviour with the things he's feeling right now. He might not have a beating heart, but the grief that's seized him like a monstrous thing clawing at him feels as if it can break him.

So walking through the front door of the surgery and losing Simon somewhere behind him? Finding himself wandering out of a massive hotel the likes of which Kieren has never stayed in before? Yeah, that's new.

He'd stopped at the desk to ask if they were PDS-friendly, but the concierge had stared at him first as if he'd gone mad, and then he'd taken a longer look at Kieren's mousse-less face, his contact-less eyes, and had recoiled like most living people tend to do. Before she could even answer, Kieren had excused himself and managed to get outside, where he'd found all of space waiting for him, as if Roarton hadn't been mad enough and he needed to be in some parallel Doctor Who-like universe.

Eventually, Kieren can't walk any further and sinks down onto a waiting bench near one of the gardens, thinking that he's going to have to find flowers for Amy. He's going to have to find the biggest, brightest, most moregeous flowers in the world and litter the cemetary with them. Weary and exhausted, Kieren stares out into space and wonders when it is that he's going to stop getting his friends back only to lose them again.

The sound of footsteps draws him from his thoughts, because if the front desk had reacted the way she had, Kieren's senses are all on alert, not sure where he is, and definitely not sure how they react to PDS sufferers. The last thing he needs is to have made it through today only to find himself at the end of a sharp stick or a gun. Pre-emptively, he holds up his hands, trying to control the situation. "I come in peace?" he ventures warily, not sure if that's bound to help him or get him even more scorn.

Kieren currently looks as he does in the image here. Kieren is technically a zombie, so there is some information in this link regarding his appearance.

Comments

[namesgiven]

She's being foolish, she supposes -- she knows. Her world, as of late, has shown no room for any sort of softness. But she sits down next to the boy anyway, practically able to feel the pain of his youth. She pulls the handkerchief she carries out -- white, plain, the time for embroidering gone years ago -- and gently wipes at his chin.

"I'm Vanessa," she offers as she appraises his face. She wonders what conclusions their good doctor would draw just from looking at the boy, but she is more limited in her medical knowledge, only able to reconfirm that he isn't a vampire of her world.

"What we can and what we have are often startling different," Vanessa answers simply. Though the words stir to life a memory not so far in the past, struggling under the confines of possession, begging Ethan to kill her, to release her -- death a much easier solution than overcoming the pain, the temptation, or whatever was inside her.

[roartonrisen]

He's not really used to anyone apart from Amy and Simon being so hands-on with him. Mum's always so wary and with the way things have been lately, he can't really imagine getting much affection from them. The only trouble is that he doesn't feel it at all,, her touch to his chin. "I'm Kieren," he introduces himself, staring at her and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Either she's got to be like him or there must be something else in all this, some interest she holds that's not entirely natural. "I'm not a threat," he assures, quietly. "It's just that someone forced me into it. They put something in me that turned me rabid, but I fought it," he's determined to say, proud to say it.

"I didn't want to hurt anyone else, not now. Not ever. And I didn't," he says, simply. "You're not put off by me, are you," he says, beginning to realise that she's not like the other Roarton residents.

[namesgiven]

They put something me that turned me rabid. She knows, implicitly, that he isn't speaking of what she went through, but the words are right there. Easy to interpret. But that's being human, she chides herself. A rare vestige that even her motley crew maintains: the need to relate, to belong, to think that even the strangest and most bizarre of events can be understood by some other member of the human race.

No.

She can also read between his words: He didn't want to hurt anyone, but at some point, at some point along his path, he did.

"No," she understands simply. It was, after all, those traits that drew them to Mr. Chandler and Dr. Frankenstein. They were valued for their collisions with the unusual and then their ability to stand up underneath those pressures. They all had their twists, their peculiarities, but -- and maybe this was a naivety -- there was something that compelled them to remain more human than not, whatever that loose definition had become.

"Would you have me change my mind?" Vanessa asks, still smiling.

[roartonrisen]

He swallows back his wariness, which has been living so close to the surface as a survival mechanism these last few years. Roarton has been a dangerous place and Kieren isn't naive enough to pass it by. Yes, he wants to be optimistic about the fact that things had got better after everything with Rick, but he knows that's not reality.

"No, I promise, I'm as normal as someone like me can get," Kieren assures with a crooked smile. "Which, strictly speaking, is probably not the best endorsement you'll get today." The world doesn't see PDS sufferers as normal and for a very long time (up until recently), Kieren had been on their side.