one man who thought he knew a way to always get through [open]

[rosswood]

Who: Alex Kralie and you
Where: The gardens, the kitchen, and then the fourth floor
When: July 22nd
Rating: PG-13 (guns, mental health and trauma, panic attacks and dissociation, self-harm, Alex's foulmouth)
Summary: Alex returns from his canon update, four years older and filled with self-righteous frustration. Also he has a gun now. Prose or brackets, I'll match either!
The Story:

gardens; playing tricks on the mind, thought that he'd won this time

The breath is choked in his throat from the arm that looped itself around his neck, squeezing and squeezing even though he clawed at it. He aimed for the eyes, but his fingertips touched only smooth plastic. He managed to utter one final strangled shout, and when he breathes in again, he's somewhere else.

Green grass, a temperature easily more bearable than Alabama's ungodly heat, hills and flowers in full bloom. If this is what dying feels like, consider Alex underwhelmed. One hand automatically reaches for his neck, fingertips scraping about a week's worth of stubble, the bruises clustered around his throat where that masked bastard nearly asphyxiated him by crushing his windpipe. It still throbs, like the rest of him, but he doesn't grimace, or flinch, or groan. His jaw sets. He's stomached worse, far worse, and will likely suffer more for what he's had to do.

And all thanks to Jay goddamn Merrick.

His grip tightens on the gun in his hand. Two bullets went streaking out in his shock at being beset upon from behind, but neither scored hits on their intended targets. At least if anyone was dragged here with him, he'll be prepared. He'll be...

Memories that were formerly prickling behind his eyelids abruptly come spilling back. Wonderland. Of course.

So he's back again.

And he's alone.

The rustle of footsteps through grass sparks a flurry of panic rising in his chest, and he spins around to train the piece on whoever's approaching. Sorry, whoever you are. Instinct's a bitch, and his nerves are shot to hell thanks to almost dying just now.

kitchen; he’s roaming corridors and lies in wait for us all

He's been living on the road for longer than he cares to admit. He's been eating out of gas stations, fast food joints, going long stretches of time without anything but the plasticy water bottles cooking in the trunk of his car for god only knows how long, and he's tired of it. Now that he's starting to remember the way the place is set up, the first place he heads is the kitchen to make himself a goddamn sandwich.

He sets the gun on the counter with a quiet click. Then he thinks better of it, and keeps it tucked in his waistband.

He eats ravenously, with little regard for the mess he's making or who he might be offending with his nonexistent table manners. He hasn't eaten genuine food for weeks and maybe months, shut up. He's had no time for it, between Jay being a total moron and Jessica getting involved and Tim being the way he is and Amy being -

The sandwich abruptly starts to taste like ash in his mouth. He...Amy is...look, okay. Okay. He did what he had to, okay, she was getting into shit and she had no idea and it's not like he wanted to do it, but she's - and he had to - and -

Alex braces both hands across the countertop, eyes screwed shut behind his glasses as he tries to get a fucking grip on himself and not panic because he's not panicking all right, he's not, he's definitely not, he's just - he's fine. He's fine, he's fine, it's all fine, just breathe like a regular human being even if he's not, not anymore and act like you aren't some kind of hollowed-out fucking shell. Act like a person.

Instinctively, he gropes for the soothing side of himself (it's got to be himself, right, that voice that hums that it'll be fine, even if it hurts to hear any of those words slamming into his head, distorted and twisted and humming with a sense of wrongness he can't place), but it's gone. It's gone, and he's alone again. Alone and - fuck. Fucking shit hell goddamnit.

He's ended up on the floor somehow, back pressed against one of the cupboards, the handles digging into his back but that's fine, it's all right, and fingertips sunk into the flesh of his arms and - and that's fine too. They're scoring long red streaks down his forearms and a few of the scratches have drawn blood, but it's cool, it's fine, he's got this under control if he could just think through the grayed-out slowness of his own thoughts and turn back to his lunch, or dinner, or whatever's become of the sandwich lying abandoned on the counter, and stop freaking panicking over nothing.

fourth floor; but now you're just empty

Room forty-four, fourth floor. Bile curdles in his throat. It's like a sick joke, after all that shit that masked freak has pulled. Today is your last birthday.

He stands outside his room, still looking as haggard and exhausted and beaten and worn-out as he feels. He stands there for a really long time, momentarily lost in himself or not-himself or whatever alternatives to himself he can grasp at, really, he'll take anything, anything that means he doesn't have to live in his own insufferable head for five fucking minutes.

When he comes back to himself, his lip curls in a sneer. He flicks his middle finger up at the 44 symbol on his door, slow and deliberate.

Yeah. Fuck you, totheark.

Comments

[rosswood]

So it is a vampire thing. Figures. That little comment about the whole truth hasn't gone unnoticed either. Alex's brow darkens at the implications there. At least Damon didn't go to those lengths. That would've put an end to this friendship - if it can even be called that - very, very quickly, or at least put a hefty amount of strain on it.

"I'd be interested, yeah," he says, maybe too quickly. "No offense to you personally or anything but - I've kinda had it to here with people who make me do stuff I don't wanna do."

Or things making him do stuff he doesn't wanna do, he adds privately. Especially things.

[eyething]

Damon doesn't really blame him. He hasn't used it on Alex, but he could easily. He could use it now to force him to forget he has ever told him about it at all, but he doesn't. He leans back further as the back of his chair rests against the wall, and he doesn't seem like he's the least bit offended.

"You need vervain. You ingest it or you wear it. The closets give them out no problem."

It's just a regular herb after all.

No one would know it had such deep abilities to protect a person from compulsion. It also isn't super tasty to dip into the blood of someone on vervain but he's developed a tolerance to the taste of it over time, because Katherine did once upon a time.

[rosswood]

Vervain. He files the name away. He'll have to add that to the list of things he does semi-regularly around here, along with tallying up the days it's been and breaking all the mirrors that get a clear shot of his room on an hourly-or-so basis. They always mend themselves, but at least it puts them out of commission for a short while. He has a hammer he requested from the closets explicitly for that purpose. It takes him by surprise how easily he can visualize it, positioned by the door in case of an intruder. He wonders if it's dusty. Then he remembers he's only technically been gone a week.

He hums his acknowledgment, expression thoughtful. "How long does it last? Do I chow down on it once and I'm good to go, or do I wear a crown of the stuff, or what?"

[eyething]

Damon takes a deeper drink from the glass in front of him. "24 hours if you ingest it. If you wear it, it's not going to wear off," he says, but it won't be in his blood that way, which doesn't always matter. Damon has built up a resistance to vervain over time at least when it comes to drinking it in someone's blood.

It'll just keep him from being compelled, which is the biggest reason to take vervain in the first place. Compulsion is powerful. It can force people to tell the truth. It can make them forget. It can make them feel a certain way about something, anything.

"...never seen anyone wear a crown of it before."

He smirks at the visual.

[rosswood]

That almost prompts a smile or a smirk from Alex. A crown of greenery, as you do. Walking around with that shit on his head would feel ridiculous unless he was participating in a literal Greek chorus or something, he doesn't know, but at least he'd be vamp-free.

"Well, uh. Thanks for the heads-up." He acknowledges the tip with a vague toast in Damon's direction before taking another swig from his glass.

"How many of you guys are there here?" It occurs to him belatedly that he's got no clue. "I know about Angel, but he's not exactly the same type, or whatever. Not from the same place."

[eyething]

It would amuse the hell out of Damon at least, but it'd also be a little too obvious. It's best to keep one's vervain related accessories hidden from plain view so not every vampire knows how to remove it as fast as possible to get what they want regardless.

He smirks as he lifts his own glass up and then nods, taking a deep drink from the glass, before he shrugs at the question mostly because he doesn't know.

"Not sure. There's at least two others. Not like I know everyone from my world. Some people I met for the first time here, and they had an annoyingly in depth knowledge of me from my former Wonderland self."

[rosswood]

"Oh, great." Alex makes a face at that, and he's a little surprised at how natural it feels, slipping back into that sarcastic front. Like he's still him at his core. Like he didn't get all hollowed out.

"At least I'm the only one from my home here. And only like, one person remembers me from before. But that's bad enough."

And it's even worse that he got confirmation that It had been here too. For how long or for whatever purpose, he can't say. But he knows that if it can show up here once, it can show up here again. And that's assuming it's not ghosting around in his brain already.

[eyething]

Damon makes a face which is similar to Alex's mostly because he's in agreement here with that. He takes a long drink from his glass as he leans back, glancing over at him.

"I don't like anyone knowing more about me than I know about them." It's a weapon that can be used against him, and he doesn't reveal parts of himself easily, not to anyone. And he can't control what his former self did, and he doesn't like not having that control over his image, over who knows what and how much they know of it.

Yeah, he's going to need a bigger drink.

"So you were here before too?"

[rosswood]

"Apparently, yeah. Not that a lot of people recognized me. Just one or two, I think." And yeah, he hadn't been too jazzed about that either. Downright pissed, as a point of fact. And while he liked Philip well enough, it still rankled that it had never been his distinct choice to share the kind of shit with him. Maybe a past version of him.

He'd said that Alex said he hadn't gotten out. Guess he'd been right after all, huh.

"Doesn't sit right," he adds, with another swig of his drink.

[eyething]

"One or two is more than enough. Anything more than zero is too much," Damon says, and he has just- Well, no there are a handful that remember him from before, but there's one who seems to know him well enough to tell him what he feels and why he feels that way. It makes him feel sick.

He shifts where he is sitting but then he nods, glancing over at Alex.

"No, it doesn't. Not like there's any changing it."

But it doesn't sit right.

[rosswood]

"Yeah." Isn't that just the way. No escaping the way things are, just acknowledging them. Except Alex has never been one for blunt acceptance. He's always forged ahead, effected change even when change was deemed impossible.

He finishes his drink. He stands. His muscles are shaky, poorly adjusted to the sensation of alcohol in his system. He gives himself a moment to steady himself on the table.

"I should probably make sure no one broke into my room while I was gone," he says dryly, as if that's a possibility, which it is, because he happens to have more than his fair share of enemies with untapped and/or mysterious powers.

[eyething]

Damon looks up at Alex as he gets to a stand, and he can see the way his muscles are shaky as he does stand there. There's a dark look in Damon's eyes which could almost be called worry if he wasn't Damon but he leans forward on his knees with the glass in his hand before he looks up his way.

"Yeah. Y'never know... there was a video so people knew you were gone," he says like he believes it's a possibility, because he does.

If Alex has enemies, it's not out of the realm of belief that one might have found their way in. It's something Damon would look into especially given the enemies he has here. He holds the bottle out to Alex, and of course, he could get his own alcohol from his own closet, but-

"You look like you could use this more than me."

It's all he says as he leans back and finishes his own glass.

[rosswood]

There was a video. Someone cared. Someone - who's he kidding, it was probably Max. Max or Jane or Shepard. The pool of people who care about him and he cares about in turn is a rapidly dwindling one, and he's certain it won't last long before they all abandon him due to the disgusting thing he is. Or he attempts to kill them because - because he has to, right?

That's a laugh.

He eyes the bottle for a moment, then accepts it with a weary shrug. Sure. Why not.

"Thanks," he says, the word a dry, surprised pull, like he couldn't believe someone would think of him, could think of him.

[eyething]

Damon pushes himself to his feet, and he looks over at him in understanding at the dry, surprised sound in his voice. It's a feeling Damon has had before himself, but he knows he is far worse than Alex. Damon is the monster.

"Let me know if you go spy hunting... or anything else."

The last bit is tacked on. A normal person in this situation would say If you need anything... but Damon is not normal, not capable of that sort of open admittance of caring even in those rare instances when he allows himself it. And he has here. Otherwise, he wouldn't have done all this with the alcohol, with the checking in.

With that, he steps past Alex and heads out of the room.