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voice; un: lowell
cw: grief, talk of death, suicidal thoughts, language
[ The feed clicks on to ragged breathing, too close to the Omni ]
Who the hell killed Flynn? Some guy with a light sword. Give me names.
[ Yuri's voice is low and rough, somehow both heated and emotionless. His emotional state has been degrading since Flynn's omen led him to Flynn's corpse. He growls and there's rustling over the Omni ]
If you killed him, be at the Gate at midnight.
[ The feed clicks on to ragged breathing, too close to the Omni ]
Who the hell killed Flynn? Some guy with a light sword. Give me names.
[ Yuri's voice is low and rough, somehow both heated and emotionless. His emotional state has been degrading since Flynn's omen led him to Flynn's corpse. He growls and there's rustling over the Omni ]
If you killed him, be at the Gate at midnight.
private; video
Thanks. It isn't.
[ But he appreciates it all the same. At least people are trying. They're trying, even though Yuri feels like his heart's been ripped out and the wound is gaping open. He feels empty and numb and painful, and he can't really think straight. But he can answer Eddie's question. He probably should have thought to reach out to him, he'll know about... the weird stuff happening to Flynn's corpse ]
To Flynn? Some guy, maybe Maul, killed him with a light sword at the Gate. They dumped his body, and when I found him, he looked like he'd been dead for days, but it can't have been an hour.
[ He takes a ragged breath, looking away from the feed. He's sitting in the kitchen of his and Flynn's little house, hunched over the table. ]
His omen disappeared as soon as I was with him. She just laid down and dissolved. Smokey took him back here, and when I got home, he was...
[ He shakes his head, and pushes himself up slowly, bringing the Omni into the living room, bare but for the body lying on the floor. He stripped Flynn of his armor, leaving him in his tunic, arms, neck, and face exposed and covered in pale blue crystals ]
This happened. I was gonna burn his body, but Smokey won't let me.
private; video
(Eddie's at least trying. It's more than he's done in a while. Waking up in a new world might have taken away some of his increasing numbness. Maybe it was the new setting or the new body. He doesn't know. Yuri looked like shit, but Eddie knows he's looked just as bad, if not rougher when Richie's vanished. He doesn't judge.)
Maul's like that. He maimed my -- best friend. He's a violent dude and shouldn't really be trusted personally.
(Eddie had a more diplomatic relationship with Maul that was based on an unusual set of relatability rather than them liking each other, necessarily. He's barely shocked to hear that Maul continued his violence even here. There was no hope for some people and he knew Maul was just digging his own moral grave deeper.
But what's more interesting than Maul's expected violence, is the circumstances of Flynn's death.
To Eddie's credit, he doesn't have a strong visible reaction. He mostly stops breathing, barely obvious, and doesn't blink for a few seconds. He can feel a sprawl of anxiety start to work through his chest. His mouth turns a little darker in complexion, and small black clusters of spores start to grow at the side of his temple, floating off. It's...Definitely weird as fuck, but Eddie doesn't bother acknowledging it at all.
He's too...)
He's rotting.
(He doesn't mean to say it so bluntly, so clinically, but that's what was happening. Something that never happened to Sleepers before. And the omen-. His mind was frantically rushing through what that could mean.
Eddie's eyes dart all over. The crystals. What could it mean? His hands begin to itch.)
I'm sorry if this is insensitive. But can I...please examine him? I don't need to do anything. It's just...Sleepers never...We died very differently than that. We didn't...Linger...ever.
private; video
Sorry, that you know the feeling.
[ Since that means that someone he loves died, and Yuri... he knows the feeling, too. When he lost Niren, it changed the entire course of his life. Losing Flynn is worse, worse because Flynn is everything to him, has been since they were seven years old.
He can't think about it. Focus on the present. Focus on what Eddie's saying.
And on what's happening to Eddie. That is weird. Really weird. But if he can figure out what's happening, then it doesn't matter. ]
He is. Fast, too.
[ And the crystals.
Yuri doesn't really want someone in his space right now, but. It's important. It's important because some people think Flynn might come back, and he hasn't let himself hope, yet, but maybe Eddie can help figure out which way this is going to go. ]
Yeah. Come over. I'm in Crenshaw, have one of those lamps.
private; video -> action
(At some point, Eddie had gotten sick of talking about it too. It was emotionally exhausting. He doesn't even have the heart to tell Yuri right now that there were fates worse than death in this kind of situation. Death hurt, but vanishing...
He moves around once it's evident that Yuri's going to let him come over. Eddie can feel himself changing, a bit of blackness creeping into the corner of his left eye, but he ignores it. There's more important things than his panic.
And the last time he panicked...
No, he had to concentrate.)
I have a theory. If he's rapidly rotting. It could be...
(No. He wanted to see it first. In person. He gets together his bag and has it over his shoulder. At some point, he switched the video feed from his Omni to his own Omen. The video becomes a lot more detailed, and there's some constant motion as Eddie's observed through the eyes of Dolly. Eddie slips his Omni into his pocket.)
Great. That's easier then.
(Eddie walks off, Dolly on his heels, recording still. Eddie goes out to his greenhouse where his own lamp is, and he steps into the strange, whispering light. It was weird when he first did it, like slipping through that dark ocean again, only it was filled with voices and things that felt like fingers all over his body. But it lasted a few seconds and it didn't feel dangerous. It actually felt weirdly comforting.
He appears out of Yuri's lamp in a white, ghostly shape, before manifesting fully and stepping away from it. The black cheetah omen follows silently after him, finally no longer recording.)
Yuri?
no subject
In the small living room to the right of the front door is Flynn's rapidly decaying body. The room is empty except for him, a threadbare carpet, a pile of Flynn's armor in the corner, and a small kestrel, sitting at attention by Flynn's side. He looks up at Eddie, watching him with sharp eyes. ]
It's okay, Smokey. He's here to help.
[ Or at least to provide answers. Yuri moves into the living room, staying by the wall. He leans back against it to let Eddie work uninterrupted. ]
The crystals have been growing fast. There are more now than there were an hour ago, and they're everywhere.
[ Flynn's body is wearing just his tunic and leggings, his blonde hair limp, his face encrusted with those pale blue crystals. Yuri can't quite bring himself to look at Flynn's head. It doesn't even look like him anymore. This body isn't him. ]
no subject
Animals never made Eddie nervous anymore. They used to back when he let his mom believe he was allergic to all of them, or that they were all some threat. The only thing that still kind of unnerved him were crabs and lobsters. But the krestel? Eddie gazes back at it, mostly just feeling quiet respect for its protectiveness. Animals were so loyal.
Eddie slips the bag off his shoulders and kneels down next to Flynn. It's weird. He doesn't really know the guy, but he remembered meeting him and it was such a stark contrast to that guy. Vibrancy and life gone, leaving behind this husk. It's the first time Eddie has actually seen a dead Sleeper in person, and the black cluster expands across his eye. The pressure in the room seems to gradually drop, feeling heavier, like dense summer heat.
Dolly moves slowly to sit down on the other side of Flynn, neat and almost regal in how she poses, her head bowed to watch Flynn. She was recording again, but this time for documentation, not publication.)
Can I take some? (Eddie opens his bag, taking out a few different things. Tweezers, empty vials, and vials with some blood in them.
It really didn't look like Flynn. All the same, Eddie digs something else out of his bag: a small bundle of flowers. Baby's breath. They seemed like a flower Flynn might have enjoyed. He lightly sets them just next to Flynn's head, a silent gesture of humanity that Moira once told him was proof that he was more of Angela's pupil than her own.)
Can I - examine him in general? (He looks over at Yuri, his hands on his lap, but clearly he doesn't just mean visually.)
no subject
The big cat is pretty cool. Yuri pays attention to her instead of everything else that's happening. ]
Uh. Yeah, I guess. I... [ He isn't precious about death, usually. He isn't, but if there's a chance, any chance, that he might come back-- ] but not too much. I don't know how any of this works, but if he can come back, I don't want to hurt that chance.
[ Smokey watches Eddie intently, clearly choosing to trust him, for now. He's as protective over Flynn as Yuri is, something Yuri thinks he must have given the bird. If he is a part of Yuri, of course he wants to protect Flynn. That's just what they do.
He pushes off the wall ]
I'll be in the kitchen.
[ If Eddie needs anything. He can't watch this. Can't watch Flynn's body be poked and prodded. And Smokey will be there to watch, to make sure nothing awful happens. He trusts Eddie, as much as he trusts anyone here so far, but this is Flynn.
Repede moves to his side, following Yuri into the kitchen. ]
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I won't do anything much. (He promises swiftly. He had the skill set to perform a basic medical examination. Cadavers were the starting place of any med student, but out of respect for the two men, he won't do it.
He doesn't question it when Yuri leaves. He honestly couldn't stomach watching someone pick at Richie's body either. He tries to work quickly, efficiently. He peels off samples of the crystals, trying his best to not damage Flynn's skin in the process. He takes swabs from inside his mouth, under his nails. He scrapes away some decay and sees if there's any blood to draw - which, turned out, there was mostly ink with streaks of blood. He moves Flynn's body gently, mostly to see how stiff he was, how he felt.
He closely examines the wound he supposed killed Flynn. Occasionally, he stops to jot down quick notes in his notebook or murmur something to Dolly. Then eventually he sits back on his calves and just watches. Flynn's rotting, no doubt, but there's something else. It's like he's pulsing with the rot, the crystals. The air didn't smell as acidic as it normally would with a corpse, but it smelled...vaguely salty.
Eddie finally gets up from the floor. He puts most of his evidence away into his bag to be examined later, but brings the vial of "blood" or, rather, ink with him out into the kitchen.)
I'm not so sure he's as dead as he looks. (Eddie stops in the doorway to the kitchen, rolling the vial in his palm.) He's...dead, but I don't think he's going to stay dead. The parts under the crystal don't seem to be rotting the way the rest of him is. And this is um- what his blood looks like right now.
(He holds the vial out.)
That's not what blood looks like after we die. That looks a lot more like ink.
no subject
He goes from that to sweeping. And from that to wiping down the surfaces, refusing to think about Flynn. If he doesn't think about it, it isn't real.
By the time Eddie comes into the kitchen, he's sweating in the dim light of the lamps. Repede is watching Yuri impassively, looking very unimpressed. ]
So he's... going to come back?
[ Somehow, that hurts too. It's like a kick in the gut. A kick in the gut that makes his knees weak and he leans on the counter, his eyes feeling hot. Fuck. He hasn't cried in years, and it's been verging so much today, like he's going to break, like it's going to spill over the edge.
He takes a ragged breath, looking up at the vial through a curtain of hair. ]
Yeah, that. His blood was red.
[ Normal, he doesn't say. It didn't change. Flynn didn't get anything special, no new powers. He was just Flynn. ]
How soon?
[ Like Eddie will know. He needs to know. His hand balls into a fist against the counter, and there's desperation behind his eyes.
After all, what's the point without him? ]
no subject
(Despite the clinical words he goes with, Eddie manages to say this as gently as possible. He doesn't want to give Yuri hope for one direction or another. That would feel cruel, but one of the hardest parts about being a medic was the Bad News Part which...usually had open-ended ideas rather than solid answers.)
I think he's going to come back. But this is nothing like what we dealt with before. But it's also not ...normal death either.
(Obviously. Eddie swallows and shifts closer to Yuri. He almost doesn't touch him, but in the end, he decides to lightly reach out to place a hand on Yuri's shoulder. His touch was light enough that it'd be easy to shrug away, but the contact felt important. He doesn't tell Yuri that it's going to be okay.
But it was a gesture that he wasn't alone either. He drops his hand a second later, only mildly awkward.)
I'll see if there's anything unique about this back at my place. (Along with the other samples he took, but he wasn't about to get too clinical.)
Yuri, it's impossible to determine that right now. We don't know anything about dying in this place. I'm sorry. It could be a few hours or a few days. (Or longer. But...He felt that went without saying.)
I'd keep a close eye on him though. His body's still changing which could mean it'll continue to change back to life. He might be really vulnerable when that does happen. (If it happened.)
no subject
He drops his head and nods. ]
Yeah. Yeah, I'll watch him. I'll... If he's not back in, in a week or something, then I'll decide what to do next.
[ He lets out a breath, looking away across the room. What he hell is he going to do if he doesn't come back?
Well, he'll deal with that when the time comes. ]
Thanks. For looking at him. Tell me what you find.