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

boo wordskips *no expectation

[dignity_misery]

[Her eyebrows go up, undoubtedly amused, and she turns her attention down towards the food. Others had brought her things to eat. Saya, she thinks, did it to mock her. Karl did it because he didn't have the words to express his sorrow.]

It doesn't really take around me. I died five years ago, and was Reanimated. I wonder if I should just go back to eating flesh now.

[There's something wry about that final consideration, maybe expressing her lack of awe at the spread Crowley's provided.]

[itsjustafruit]

You could. It seems a little tacky unless you're going to drop the full sentences while you're at it.

[He brought it because he knows how much she can pack away. Bringing actual hospital food lets him keep his own self-image, because he certainly isn't the type to visit someone in the hospital out of charity or care unless he's taking on a little blessing for Aziraphale. This is definitely not one of those moments.

He's also on vacation and she's entertaining, so... ]

Not hungry? If you aren't, I'll eat it.

[dignity_misery]

[She makes a dry little noise, looking away distractedly for a moment. There had been times that she had wished her mind had deteriorated to that extent. She hates herself for that wish.]

I'm always hungry, but I'd like to see you choke that garbage down.

[Her eyes come back up, smiling faintly.]

[itsjustafruit]

[He shrugs and lifts the lid on the plate that previously held sad pseudo-meat and sadder corn. The wafting odor of rare beef and garlic sauteed asaparagus do not match expectations any more than the plump, almost-bleeding filet mignon and crisp green vegetables.]

Don't mind if I do.

[dignity_misery]

Tch.

[She laughs faintly, her head lolling back, eyes closed.]

He does magic tricks too.

[itsjustafruit]

Bite your tongue. [He pulls his chair over to the bed and drops the table until it's convenient for his use.] Aziraphale does magic tricks, and bloody dreadful ones at that.

[He picks up a fork and a steak knife that doubtless the hospital would never allow near a suicidal patient and cuts into the meat.]

What I do is more on the order of miracles. Want to taste a miracle?

[dignity_misery]

[She's still laughing, the sound of it is dreadful and bitter, not quite edging into hysteric, but there's something there that's ripping at the seams.]

What do I have to give you for this miracle?

[itsjustafruit]

I'm on vacation. No souls, no deals, no reports to file. I spent all day yesterday with two angels. [He holds up the fork with a bit of meat on it.]

You are helping to counterbalance that. Now, piece of meat or shall I eat it myself?

[This is his very best "real him" bedside manner. He knows how to play at being caring and kind, but vacation applies to that too.]

[dignity_misery]

Angels. I almost convinced one of them to finger themselves on camera for me.

[That's what she thinks of angels. And she opens her eyes again to look at Crowley out of the corner of her eye, that smile sloped to one side.]

Piece of meat.

[itsjustafruit]

If you tell me it was Dulcie, I might almost lose my appetite. [Almost, but not quite because he pops the piece of filet mignon in his own mouth and it is perfect because he would have nothing less.]

And for the innuendo, the first bite goes to me.

[dignity_misery]

No, the redhead that cockblocks Raphael.

[Raphael she can tolerate. He gave her a piece of jewelry at her wedding as well. Why hadn't she found that one and put it on instead? The smile almost twitches off her face.]

It's ladies first.

[She isn't a lady, by any stretch of the imagination.]

[itsjustafruit]

I don't know her. I know a Raphael, but I doubt the one I know is here, although I'd pay to see him with some of the curses.

[He cuts off another bite and holds the fork up where she can lean in to take it.]

I have been a lady from time to time, so first bite still goes to me. If you've been reanimated, I'm quite sure there's nothing on that fork that you can catch from me.

[dignity_misery]

She's usually male, loudmouthed deafeningly naive.

[This is all besides the point really, she's just murmuring what comes to mind. It's an inconsequential conversation, the first one she's had all day. 'Where are you going?' 'You'll upset Robert.' 'I'd prefer not to have had to start.'

She does lean in to take her bite, chewing fully before she opens her mouth again.]

Reanimates don't get sick. [A quiet agreement.] I don't know if it's the same with... this. My blood's still infected though. [A shrug.] Whatever that means.

[itsjustafruit]

[Let people who care ask her what she thought she was doing. How could you? Why? You have so much here! And all that rot.]

I don't carry disease unless I need to, and once again, on vacation, so tell me that isn't the best filet you've had all day.

I always pictured reanimated dead as much less lively in the eyes department, by the way.

[dignity_misery]

[It is rot. She is rotten on the inside. Chase has been trying for months to convince her to something other than just decay.]

It isn't the best filet I've had all day.

[The tired way she grins suggests she knows perfectly well that that wasn't funny.]

You never saw me alive. And you haven't seen the pictures Barbet took of me when I was dead.

[itsjustafruit]

[The worst day not in Hell is better than the best day... you know what, strike that, Hell has some tolerable days in comparison to what humans do to themselves. Case in point, this room and its occupant.]

Your taste buds must still be dead, because this is the best filet to be found in the City today.

[He cuts off another piece and holds it out to her.]

Try again, then tell me what I'd have seen if I'd seen you alive or dead for that matter that I'm not seeing now.

[dignity_misery]

[She shows her teeth, chuckling at that. Simple things amuse desperate people. And for all of her sass, she appreciates the food. She considers how to... tell this story while she chews.]

I was always restless, when I was alive. There was never anything challenging enough to do. I think you can see that, in the pictures. Karl has one, they fell out of the sky in April, I let him keep it. I was sharp, focused. [Perfect. She's used the word perfect before, and maybe the low reverence in her voice for this memory makes that clear.] The other pictures fell too, I put an envelope full of them through my garbage disposal.

[She tries to lift her hand to her face, to hide behind, but her restraints pull and she stares down at her hand in confusion for a moment before she laughs at herself harshly and puts it back down. Her head lolls back on her neck again.]

I took a bullet to the head. I'd been a fucking a joytoy caretaker, he put me back together afterwards and kept me as one of his dolls. He kept me inside, starving, for years.

[Her head swings to the side once more, brown eyes staring at her visitor, murky and empty.]

[itsjustafruit]

[Crowley just stares back at her, face half-hidden by his sunglasses. What expression shows is neither empathetic nor contemptuous. It's not a typical story for his world, but it has its echoes in any number of stories. Replace one detail for another and the overarching narrative isn't so different.]

Asparagus? [He picks a spear off the plate with his fingers and bites into it with small, sharp, very white teeth.]

How'd you get shot in the head?

[dignity_misery]

When I was sixteen I paid a little girl a few hundred dollars to tell the police Isaac Crew had touched her. When they arrested him they found the coke he'd been dealing and he went to jail.

[She relates this lazily, watching his teeth. Truthfully, Isaac had fucked her when she was thirteen. She could have made the complaint, but she didn't feel victimized by him, wasn't going to pretend to. So she'd gotten someone else to do it.]

When he got out, he had something to say to me.

[itsjustafruit]

But he didn't have anything to do with your reanimation? [He finishes his asparagus and picks up another spear, holding it out to her.] I think if I were revenge-minded I would have wanted to see you suffer even after you died, but hey, I'm a demon.

[dignity_misery]

Isaac was never that clever. That's why I wanted him out of the way, he'd outlived his usefulness.

[Her bites are slow and delicate, chewing slowly.]

Barbet was there, when he shot me. It was him. He always said I was too perfect to be beautiful, I don't know why he did it.

[Her hand jerks again, then falls back to the sheets, fingers twisting into the fabric tightly, bones and tendons in her wrists stark.]

[itsjustafruit]

Spoken like a man who has never seen true perfection. [He feeds her the rest of the asparagus and wipes his fingers on a linen napkin that must have been on the tray all along.]

So he what? Reanimated you and starved you until you were beautiful? [Back to the filet for a bite for himself before holding up another piece on the fork for her.]

Tch. Humans. He never gave us your level of imagination.

[dignity_misery]

No. [Her voice has gotten small, tremulous.] I was never enough for him.

[It isn't true. She was his best, his most prized. She was everything to him. What Carla cannot wrap her mind around is that he was not enough for her.]

I thought... When I made the wish, I thought it would be enough.

[She considers Crowley over the fork briefly.]

Is that what we are? Imaginative?

[itsjustafruit]

Yes, He gave you free will and imagination. Your lot have managed things that Hell could never come up with on their own. Half the geography Down Below is straight out of Dante now and there are demons who consider my report on the Spanish Inquisition to be a DIY manual.

[He wiggles the fork at her enticingly.] Eat it or I will, then tell me what you wished for.

[dignity_misery]

[The DIY manual makes her laugh, she sounds a little giddy with it, leaning in quickly to snatch the piece off that fork. Her moods are, clearly, rather unstable.]

The Ladybird brought me back to life. She... gave me a pulse and a heartbeat, anyway.

[But, as she'd said, her blood remained infected.]