Where kindness was forgotten | Open

[killedwithlove]

WHO: Cole and anyone game to deal with him
WHAT: Cole goes exploring underwater and doesn't like what he finds
WHEN: Early/mid January
WHERE: The flooded corridor or elsewhere in Anchor
WARNINGS: Cole. Probably distressing topics, will warn as necessary.



Cole didn't tell anyone he was going exploring. He explores all the time, but there's a new bit to explore and people are forgetting, and not like he makes people forget, to smooth over bad moments, but forgetting and having themselves reshaped by it.

He goes down under the water, not breathing because he doesn't really need to. He goes down the end to begin with, where others have been and are going and he drifts about, increasingly uncomfortable with what he finds there, with the trembles and quiet reshaped by those things.

In the search for answers, he picks a door and goes inside, thinking his way to the other side and into stale air and memories.

Minutes later, Cole appears in a burst of smoke and hoarfrost that spirals from his feet. He exists for a moment, already running, wet and covered in a fine layer of freezing water that cracks and falls as he runs.

He doesn't know where he runs. He moves with thought and without it, real one moment, smoke another.

He eventually calms. Whether anyone finds him before that or after that is to fate.

Comments

[eudorapatch]

Patch is not all the way down in the flooded area. She's a bit removed, debating a course of action. Weird stuff, way beyond her understanding, and perhaps beyond her ability to handle. She knows that she'll be no help whatsoever with any of the technological issues. She can barely handle her new phone. She's not sure she'd be able to do much with anything she found, not even sure she would know what it was. Of course, that doesn't mean it's not worth trying. Might be smarter to go with someone a little, well, smarter.

An unexpected displacement of air beside her derails that particular train of thought. "Cole?" He looks wild. That's definitely unsettling. "Cole, what happened?"

[killedwithlove]

Cole looks around, eyes wide and pale, cold and pallid and deathlike. "Hate the eyes, hate them, staring, endlessly, come closer, gouge them out, no, don't come near!" He shies back and away. "It's bad. They were bad? Nothing makes sense. Don't touch anyone!"

[eudorapatch]

If Patch understands Cole properly, he's not really alive. He's also not dead. He's not tethered to life and death the way a human would be. He's just Cole. It doesn't make it any easier for her to see him like this.

His assertion to not touch is all that stops her from putting her hands on him, to try and calm him. It halts her mid-reach. "All right. I won't touch you. I promise. It's all right. Just... look here." She puts her hand in the center of her chest. She does her best to project a feeling of calm, of the certainty that it'll be all right, that she'll help him in any way she can.

[killedwithlove]

"You could have it. I could have it. I don't, but I could. Don't touch anyone. They might have it, it might have crept and crawled and cajoled their caution." He hugs himself tightly. "It's not all right. Trapped, it doesn't make sense, nothing makes sense, numbers make sense but we deserved this, our pain and penance and purgatory."

He shakes his head and tries to hide further into the black hoodie.

[eudorapatch]

"Could have what? Cole, please, is there another disease? Are people getting sick again?" The last one was awful, and if it's happening again, they need to get everyone who's been down there into a quarantine as soon as possible. "Please let me help you. If you don't have it, and you can't get it, then it's safe for you and me to touch. Can I take you somewhere quiet?"

[killedwithlove]

"No. Not disease, but contagious, catching, comforting, cold comfort. If you forget your woes, they're not gone, just not troubling you. I could get it. I could forget again. And if I forget, it gets bad. I stop being me if I forget and be something else. Someone else."

[eudorapatch]

All right. Good.

Or rather, not good. Very not good, but information that she can parse.

"All right. There is something down there that is infecting people, and making them forget things. The forgetting is contagious? If they touch someone else?" That is, fuck, that is terrifying, but being informed is a good first step. Can they quarantine for selective amnesia the same way they would for disease? "You don't have it. I haven't been down there yet and no one has touched me all day. Let's go somewhere quiet? Will you let me take you out of the hallway? Please?" If it's passed on by touch, they'll be safer in a place without foot traffic, right?

[killedwithlove]

"I have to let others know. Not near them, but tell them, voice to voice it won't spread, not on sound and sight, not scent or taste but touch and tactile tumbles." He squirms on the spot, physically uncomfortable with the presence of the memories and impressions.

He rubs his eyes. "They watch. Leaning, leering, looking claw them out, come close I'll claw them out! It doesn't make sense."

[eudorapatch]

All right. More information is good and Cole has a point. Not only that, but Patch has something useful to offer. She pulls the phone from her belt and holds it up. "The network. We can warn people there. It reaches everyone quickly. I know you don't like it, but I can do it for you. I can help." She might not be the most tech savvy person ever, but she can use the network. Together they can get this information out there as quickly as possible. "Can you tell me what they look like? What can't we touch? Let's start there."

[killedwithlove]

"The idiot balls. If you touch them, they make you forget, so you're content. And then when you touch someone, they forget. You mustn't forget. The bad things help make us who we are. This is our punishment, the eyes are the punishment, watching us..." He flinches back from where the hidden door was. "They were kept there."