unknownseas | hey mom, dead mom, i need a little help here

hey mom, dead mom, i need a little help here

[ ...All of that happened, huh. That's the sentiment each and every week, and it's no different this time. Except, this time they've lost more people than before. Five.

The gathering invitation is slipped under everyone's doors, but it specifies something a little different. ]

[ That's a good two hours or so of difference. Enough time to wander around, for sure.

But, in the garden, at the appointed time, there's a variable arrangement of fresh-cooked food. A good amount of beef stew, some Chinese hot pot, and...watermelon? Just, an absurd amount of watermelon, cut up and set on plates. All the food's set on tables that seem to have been moved from the library, and the ground is littered with blankets, for those who don't want to sit on the grass.

And yes, she did not lie. There is, indeed, a variable fuckton of alcohol. (And coffee, for our underaged.)

This has become routine. But, we're still here. We're still alive. ]

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...I've mostly been keeping busy. I haven't really given myself time to stop and...think.

...Yeah, I can't say I blame you.

[It was a mess, though one he wasn't quite as deeply affected by as some of the others.]

I've mostly just been in here. You know I like staying away from the rest until I've cleared my head a little. Went into Rose's room for a while. Sort of wish I hadn't.

...Oh. Oh, you too, huh?

[ One of her hands rests on a pocket in her shorts. Beneath it, paper crinkles. ]

Yeah.

[He's quiet for a moment. Do many fucking slips of paper covered in handwriting that isn't his.]

I don't know why they keep leaving things like this for me. I don't want them.

It's because... I don't know. Maybe they think it'll give us closure. A neat little bow.

I know why, I just -

[Maybe it's because this entire week has been bad, because everything frought and he's been a string wound entirely too tight for too long, but something in him just

snaps.]

Rose spent her entire fucking letter apologizing to me for not being able to solve my problems, and she somehow thinks I'm a good enough person to task with telling her friends some shit about her world that seems pretty goddamn important, and -

[- and god, he started out calmly enough but he can't seem to stop himself, he hasn't been this pissed in a long time

(this is my life's work!!)

and he hasn't gotten up but he's gripping the bed at his sides so hard his knuckles are going white - ]

- And Ema, that stupid bitch, she felt the need to tell me that I'm a strong person dedicated to the truth and saving people and all sorts of other altruistic shit that I don't know what to do with, and Lif, who didn't know me at all, apparently thought we fucking bonded enough to draw me pictures of his goddamn dead family, and when will all of you get your shit together enough to realize how much I've been fucking lying to you?!

[God, that's. It's a lot, and he isn't quite sure what to do with himself once that's out there but he finds it at least mildly acceptable to angle his gaze downward and glare at the empty three inches of space in front of his face.]

[ He starts on Rose, and Della knows something's going wrong. Before everything starts to amp up, like a beating drum. She almost opens her mouth to say something, but his hands tense up and he plows forward, tearing through--and though she jumps at first, she stays still, despite the close proximity.

No moving. No talking, either, for a few seconds. ]

What have you been lying about, William?

It's one of those things, Della.

[He shakes his head a bit; he laughs a little, the sound shaky and generally hollow.]

Once I tell you, you're always going to know.

...Does it have to do with your company?

A lot of things. The corporation. My life's work. What I do. What I've done to people.

Pretty much everything.

Done...? [ That's the first thing that gives her any pause. ] What... [ ... ] Can I ask what wasn't lies?

[It's easier to figure that out, honestly.]

...If it has to do with the situation here, I mean it. I'm not sabotaging you. I'm not fucking over our chances at getting out of here. What I think about all of you guys is questionable but kind of irrelevant.

But I am on your side. That much has always been true.

[Mm.]

My wife and I work for a pharmaceutical corporation, in the middle of a viral outbreak resulting in huge amounts of undead. I used to have a friend in the same business who died a couple months ago. That's all been pretty accurate. I got shot to hell and back, that's pretty accurate too.

Those sound like pretty good groundwork.

I knew for awhile that you just kind of...see people differently. I don't care about it. I mean... It doesn't affect my opinion of you.

And...I figured there was something with your company. The kind of work you did, or...testing, or something, the more you'd talk about it. ...But, honestly... You're right. Sometimes people need to do things to survive. I still don't think it has to...that it should be like that, everywhere. But, that's not a luxury everyone has.

Oh my god, Della.

[He sounds amused; it isn't a nice tone.]

Yeah, I've done some things for survival's sake. Sure. I like being alive, and sometimes staying alive means you do stuff that you don't want to do. But sometimes you help your best friend murder your boss so you can take over his research, and you create the goddamn virus that caused the outbreak in the first place.

I don't cure people, Della. That's the thing you're not getting. I create bioweapons.

[ Like the mad scientist in the horror movie. Della's fingers knit together in her lap. ]

...Why? Why...all that?

Because it's a challenge for me, when very few things are.

[Doctorate at 14. Unrivaled intellect and talent in his field. Only one person who's ever, ever upstaged him, and she's been dead and buried for fifteen years.]

It was never about the people. It wasn't about the deaths, either - those just didn't matter at all to me, it wasn't like those were the goal.

I just genuinely love what I do, and this was one of the few ways to do it all I wanted, with very few boundaries. No restrictions, no morals. Just the challenge of creating and designing things to do whatever the hell I wanted them to do.

[ ... ]

Were you ever creating a cure? I don't think so, but I still want to ask.

What I told you about what I was creating was technically accurate. The G-virus was intended to affect the human immune response, and essentially change life as we know it. Those that could bond properly with it would be essentially perfect beings - intelligent, adaptive, and functionally unkillable.

Not so much a cure for the zombie plague as it was a cure for the human condition itself, in other words.

[ After a few long moments, Della breathes out slowly. ]

To mutate people, William?

[ It's still William. ]

[He notices, and he isn't sure how he feels about that.]

Yeah.

...So why... Why now, after all this time, are you telling me? Why do you care, that you keep lying to us?

Because shit like this - [he gestures vaguely toward the letters, the notes] - isn't real.

It's not the first time I've had it happen; I've seen it before, I've talked about it with Al. You get sentiments like this sometimes - people being nice to you, people in the civilian sector wanting to be your goddamn friend - but none of it's real, none of it's for you. It's just for the person everyone thinks you are. Once people learn anything about what you actually are, you're fucked.

You ever tried living like that, Della? You can have anything you want, but none of it's yours. Not really. It's for some other person everyone sees when they look at you. It gets old real fast.

Edited 2020-05-17 09:04 (UTC)

Are you mad at us for liking the person you presented to us?

No. Not really. That'd be at least a little counterproductive.

Then what part of this are you mad at us for? [ ... ] What...do you want this to change?

[ The tone to her voice, it’s gotten...increasingly tired, increasingly soft. Maybe an outburst would be better. But she can’t seem to manage one right now. ]

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