Application: Liz, Shaun of the Dead

[dont_exacerbate]

It was a good thing Liz had been warned about Hogwarts--specifically, about how damned weird it could be. Unlike many applicants, she didn’t just show up in the Sorting Room; instead, she and Shaun had taken the Floo system through Diagon Alley, a trip that made the Tube look like a paragon of efficiency by comparison. At least the Tube didn’t get

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[waste_lock]

Nny paused, mostly because he appreciated her bar names. He found broken glass very useful at times. But...

"Why do you have a rifle?" he asked in a disapproving tone. "I don't like guns."

[dont_exacerbate]

"It's a leftover from a zombie invasion," she said, quite candidly. "It's got...sentimental value, though not the good kind." Liz wasn't sure she could fully explain that, and she had a feeling Shaun wouldn't want to. "Negative value, you could say."

[waste_lock]

"You should burn it, then. Or blow it up or something."

[dont_exacerbate]

Shaun had warned her that some of the people here were far from well-balanced, and this young man definitely seemed to fit the bill. Liz was nothing of not polite, however, and pushed gamely on.

"How could you go about blowing up a gun?" she asked. Hey, you never knew--maybe Shaun would go for that, too. The fact that he'd kept the gun at all struck her as deeply unhealthy.

[waste_lock]

Having never actually blown up a gun, Nny paused and thought about it. "You could stuff the barrel. Like, with gelignite or something. Then light it and BOOM!"

[dont_exacerbate]

...Well, yes, that would definitely be the easiest way to go about it. It sounded like the sort of thing Shaun and Ed would have done, once upon a time. "If I sneak this out to you, would you actually do that?" she said, quietly so Shaun wouldn't hear.

[waste_lock]

His face lit up at the very idea. "Do you want to watch?"

[dont_exacerbate]

She thought about the gun, and its significance to Shaun, and how very creepy she found his attachment to it. "Perhaps," she said. "I need to see if Shaun would, too. I think it would be good for him to get rid of it."

[waste_lock]

"Catharsis, hmm?" He had only the vaguest idea of who Shaun was. "I can appreciate the value of a cathartic experience."

[dont_exacerbate]

Liz decided that she really didn't want to know what kind of thing would provide this young man catharsis. She found herself rather glad that Shaun had told her about the no-kill spell.

"Something like that," she said. "It's dangerous, it's technically illegal, and it's got far too much negative memory attached to it."

[waste_lock]

"And the first two wouldn't bother you so much if it weren't for the third."

[dont_exacerbate]

Liz sighed. "Exactly. Shaun--" she nodded at him across the room "--hasn't got rid of it because he had to do something really terrible with it, and I think he thinks if it goes away, he's...losing something, I suppose. He can't let go of it."

[waste_lock]

Nny paused, looking conflicted. "Maybe. Maybe he would. Be losing something. Or maybe it has a hold on him, something wrong. But how would you know which it is?"

[dont_exacerbate]

Liz shook her head. "That's just it," she said. "I don't know. I don't think he'd be losing anything bad by getting rid of it, but then I'm not him. He had to shoot someone very dear to him, and I think he thinks that getting rid of it would be some kind of...I don't know, betrayal."

[waste_lock]

"You don't think." He took a step closer, suddenly radiating anger. "Don't you THINK that's a rather larger decision to make for someone else?"

[dont_exacerbate]

Whoa, whoa. Zombies she could handle, but invasion of her personal space by this rather unnerving young man was something else entirely. "I don't know," she said. "I do know that I want to take care of him--you understand? We all had horrible things happen to us that day, but he got hit the hardest, and I worry about him. I worry about his fixation on that damn gun."