034 x 430 // text // plan your own...

[dignity_misery]

[She trashed the apartment this morning. The anxiety mounted above and beyond what could she could handle, that knot of glass and tar inside of her chest unbearable, the crying inside of her head pulsating too heavily. It's been building there, behind her eyes and deep in her stomach and lungs, for weeks now. She's been counting down to this day, or maybe it's been creeping up to her. Climbing over her, choking her.

The wreckage is inevitable, furniture overturned and porcelain shards scattered across the floor. Her dog is clawing at the bathroom door now, and for some reason that she doesn't understand, she has this to share with the network,]

CAROLENA MARÍANNA MORIR
09/08/1986 — 03/26/2011
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR .

[[ooc; This post is a catchall for Carla's suicide. This is a blanket trigger warning for the entirety of this post and any comments that may follow. She will answer any network comments, but it will be timelined to before her final episode. Action from folks involved in this fiasco are welcome, as well as any initial visitors on Sunday (it takes 24 hours for the dead to wake up.)

By the way, it's her birthday. She's 30 today.]]

Comments

Private

[worldofourown]

[ The explanation isn't much to go by. But it makes the skin on his nape prickle, for reasons he can't yet say. ]

Are you all by yourself?

[ Other than the dog? ]

Private

[dignity_misery]

I'm alright.

[She's picking glass shards out of her knuckles.]

Private

[worldofourown]

[ The little voice in his head says, It's just mood, give her space, you can treat her out to something nice tomorrow. He first ignores it, then listens to it. Foolish, foolish. ]

[ He's going to pitch a sanguinary fit when he hears the news later on. ]

If you're sure.

[ OOC: Action for the visit on Sunday night? ]

1/2

[dignity_misery]

I am.

[She doesn't sound like she's lying, she doesn't sound like she's got a knife poised. She doesn't. She thinks she's alright. Upset, but alright. Even when she does bring the poison to her lips, she thinks she's alright.

Just deserving.]

Sunday Night~

[dignity_misery]

[Hello, Karl. Restrained and lightly sedated, there's a woman lying as still as a corpse in this bed.]

Sunday Night~

[worldofourown]

[ He's always hated hospitals. The sterile stench, the whiteness and lights. It's not an atmosphere conducive to comfort. It replicates all his ugliest memories. But for Carla, it's a slim ...concession? Payback? He approaches her bedside, pale, knot-faced, maintained a numb, uncharacteristic silence. In that silence, he's free to think of her last moments alive. What were they like? Did the details even matter? He was coldly enraged at the thought that, while he'd been distracted with the weekend's stupidity, she'd undergone this mortal struggle, all alone. He wanted to save her, somehow to carry out the violence for her, in a way that would leave her free. ]

[ But it's too late, it's already done. Perhaps his part is simply this? To -- not console, but just see her. ]

Carla.

[ He won't try to question her, but has no idea what else to say. ]

[dignity_misery]

[ It was never the hospital itself that troubled her. Her world was different than most, she knows that, and in her world she had been comfortable with hospitals. Her health was something to be looked after, checked up on systematically. Even here in the City, she didn't mind coming in for the blood tests that she found to be routine and common place. She had been avoiding something else in avoiding the hospital.

Carla stirs slowly when he speaks, head turning although she makes little effort to get up.]

Hello.

[Her voice is low-pitched, quiet.]

[worldofourown]

[ She reminds him, lying there, of a carbon copy of herself. Which, ironically, is what she thinks of herself, doesn't she? As I was, as I should be. Ignoring the empty seat, he settles at the edge of her bed. What is there to wish for her? Her recovery, which means returning to the City and its inane cruelties? A quick death? To hope she undergoes a miraculous change of heart that transforms her into a new woman, zesty, ready to live? ]

[ He has no idea. The silence around them is woolly with things that should never be spoken, or if spoken, never be absorbed. ]

I brought cookies. [ Holding up a big box. ] With those multicolored bits.

[ Better than flowers, okay? ]

[dignity_misery]

[When she stares up at him, she looks miserable. Her eyes are half-focused and large in her face, skin drawn taut from stress and exhaustion. She looks like she's cried herself out without any catharsis to the act. She looks like it's torturous to be trapped here, in her skin.]

I don't want it.

[There's no petulance in her voice, just resignation. It won't make her feel better.]

[worldofourown]

I know you won't.

[ City Dead don't get hungry. Which is odd, because Karl is always ravenous. It's a compulsion, he knows. Better than being sunken deep into your own misery, glutting on it. He reaches a palm out to her face, runs a thumb along her cheekbone. She can either shrink back, or allow the touch. Upto her. ]

It's strange. What am I supposed to say at a time like this?

[ He's all but forgotten how to comfort, to make the right noises. They'd be futile anyway. He can't take her in his arms, she won't cry and start healing like in some stupid cathartic movie-scene. Everyone's as sick as their secrets, but once the secrets spill out, they smear everything around you. Life just becomes bleaker and more pathetic afterward. He's learnt that early on. ]

[dignity_misery]

[She doesn't react to his touch in the slightest, not a flinch nor a twitch. She's limp, without will or desire. She's always hungry, it's always an itch that she can never scratch to satisfaction, and she has been starved before. Barbet used to feed her once a day, one steak and that was all. Starvation by a Reanimate's true desires, but when it came to their needs? They were undead. They did not die.]

There's nothing to say.

[She knows that. It's a long time past words.]

[worldofourown]

[ The passivity doesn't surprise him. But he doesn't pretend to like it. It's like watching Solomon, ex-animate, extinguished. Or worse. Himself in suicidal doldrums. At the back of his mind, little flowers are popping, red and flesh-eating, fueling a crazy rage. His head swirls with questions of, Was it worth it? What was dying like? What are you now, dead or less than dead? He wants to grab her and shake her, spark some life in her eyes. But if he touches her, he knows he'll snap her in two. ]

[ Instead, a sick tenderness chokes his throat. His voice isn't a whisper, but secretive like one. ]

I'm sorry.

[ That you're still alive. That I wasn't there. That nothing can fix this. Too many things, none of which mean anything now. ]

[dignity_misery]

[She dislikes apologies, as a general rule. She does not like to give them, and she does not like to receive them. They're useless little platitudes too easily spilled out, ultimately meaningless. Still, she had said that she was sorry to Karl once, and it was not in pity nor regret, but sympathy.

When he says it, she's sorry too. She... hadn't wanted to drag him through the mud with her, and she knows it's impossible not to feel it. She'd felt like she was tearing apart watching him savage himself.]

I know.

[worldofourown]

[ He lets his palm slip from her face to rest on her hand. Used to holding Diva's, hers isn't as small, but it's far more brittle. He can feel the little bones pressing between his. Skin cool and still as his own. Sometimes his own City Dead status strikes him, over and over, with disquiet and strangeness. But the most intense disquiet stems from the silence at his own center. Everytime he tries to relax, the absence is eerie. ]

[ How will she react, once the numbness breaks and realization catches up with her? A warped replay of when she first became a Reanimate -- transformed, forcibly, into something she never wanted to be. ]

Will you go to the Warehouse afterward? Or would you like to come to Phantomhive?

[ Big place, big room to herself. Space to think, but not a sterile atmosphere. Plenty of people -- strangers all suffering aches -- to distract her if needed. ]

[dignity_misery]

[ It's clear that she recognizes what is being asked of her, her lips part on a sigh that doesn't come and her eyes lower. Saya has already invited her to the Warehouse, the spider had been one of the very first to sit across from her in a chair and wait. Carla had refused her offer, and doing so had everything to do with the doctor who has tended to her here.]

No.

[Perhaps staying in Phantomhive would be less weighted, but she can't hide behind Karl anymore. The refusal stands for both possibilities.]

[worldofourown]

All right. [ Lightly pressing her hand. ] I won't wheedle or give you Eyes Of Guilt. But at least consider it. [ Although he senses her mind is made. ] In the meantime I'll stay here.

[ They don't have to talk. But he wants to be near. She's been scooped from the maw of disaster. But that doesn't mean she's safe. If there's a recurrence of this episode, he wants to -- Circumvent it? Help her succeed? Kill her himself and end everything? ]

[ He doesn't know. He just needs to be there. ]