Comments | rosenhan_logs: The World Counts Loud to Ten

felis_fidelus in rosenhan_logs

The World Counts Loud to Ten

Nov 05, 2009 14:04

Day: 12
Characters: Edgeworth, Reeve
Summary: Exploration outside is a hell of a lot better than brooding inside. At least, that's the theory.
Status: Closed(?)//Incomplete

( Sie ist der hellste Stern von allen/Acht, neun/Hier kommt die Sonne )

@back yard, miles edgeworth, reeve tuesti

Comments 6

mentis_reae November 6 2009, 13:35:12 UTC

For fifteen years Edgeworth had had nightmares. Never had they been so detailed as they had been in the past week. Always there had been the claustrophobia, the terror, the desperation as it became more and more difficult to breathe, as his head started to pulse and the noise of the building outside crumbled around them. There had been the fight, the words indistinct in the fog of his memory. There had been the gun, and the gunshot, and the scream. But the death itself had been a blank spot. There had been the tacit knowledge that it had occurred, but his memory, even in dream, had shielded him for so many years from the moment when his father died ( ... )

felis_fidelus November 6 2009, 19:21:44 UTC

As absorbed as he was by his own thoughts, it took Reeve several moments to realize that Edgeworth was standing beside him now. It was the grey that had him entranced, the taint of Geostigma, as it had oozed from her eyes, her mouth, the very pores of her skin. He was familiar with it in the living. He had, after all, lived for two years himself with the disease, watching his flesh grey out and bruise, wither away. Had even seen it in the corpses of those who'd died in Meteorfall, via photograph.

But not in his mother. Her life up to her death, and her death, had been abstract, described in words by a little boy who'd been a far better son than he could have ever hoped to have been. Reeve hadn't even been able to bury her. Strangers had done it all.

And even with his guilt there was a bitter, childish hurt over the words she had kept hissing, undead and twisting the knife--

After a long silence Reeve raised his head and glanced at the other man. "What are you thinking about?" he asked, voice quiet, hesitant.

mentis_reae November 7 2009, 15:58:46 UTC

Reeve's voice was startling, for all that it was expected; Edgeworth drew in a breath at the sound and looked up with a wince. "Nothing," came his answer, absurd and defensive; he winced again, and winced more, at the clear childish automaticity of it, and looked over and opened his mouth to apologize but didn't know how. So he closed his mouth and cleared his throat.

"Merely..." His voice faltered slightly. He didn't want to be here, out in the open. He wanted to be in the library, in his room, where he might sit with a book, some story, and lose himself in it. He no longer read nonfiction books, needing instead stories with trite plotlines and pat resolutions, and he read them in great number with great voracity. They were a potent distraction.

"I'm merely thinking of - " Edgeworth looked at the deep and mortal water once more. "That I should like to escape."

felis_fidelus November 8 2009, 05:18:48 UTC

There was a brief moment when his lips quirked in what could have been called the attempt of a smile- 'nothing' seemed to be the automatic response for both of them. It faded quickly when Reeve saw the wince. Certainly he knew Edgeworth had difficulty expressing himself. Something, however, just... didn't seem right.

Maybe it was how defensive and small he looked, or maybe it was how he kept faltering in his speech. Maybe it was how he kept looking at the ocean with longing in his eyes. Something just didn't feel right.

But then again, very little did, on this, the other side of a nightmare. Reeve touched his face again, pressing at the bandage for the slight flare of pain, and wondered if the wounds would scar. Physical scars, to match the mental.

"Escape?" he found himself asking, looking back over at Edgeworth and waiting for elaboration. There were so many kinds of escape to want that picking one was almost impossible.

mentis_reae November 8 2009, 21:10:33 UTC

"I, ah..." What accounting could he give for the course of his thoughts? It had been a mistake to bring it up at all. It was shameful to be so weak as to think in that direction, be it simply running away from all of this or the darker, more permanent...Reeve had never thought and would never think that way. He was as hurt and as frightened as any of the rest of them, but he at least was resolute. Edgeworth lacked that resolve.

That was shameful.

"It doesn't matter," Edgeworth muttered in response, shaking his head slightly and then clearing his throat. "It's irrelevant." He took in a breath, then, and looked to Reeve, furrowing his brow at the injuries he saw there. Edgeworth's throat remained raw, and his wrist ached fiercely from when he'd jammed it as he fell. He was bruised. But otherwise, he was unhurt - quite unlike those who had been with him the night before.

"How are you?"

felis_fidelus November 9 2009, 02:05:38 UTC

"Mm." It was a non-committal noise, a sort of no-answer, as Reeve glanced at the prosecutor's throat and looked away. He hadn't acted fast enough. He'd let his mother's presence cloud his judgment, affect him, and Miles had been hurt for it. Filial responsibility should have made him react-- though it was with a sick feeling that he realized he didn't know to which family he was supposed to have responded to.

Giving a sigh, he glanced back out at the ocean, face impassive. "A few scratches. A few stitches. It's nothing." A shrug of his shoulder. "Nothing that won't heal."

It was an incomplete answer; it didn't even touch on his mental state. But with Miles as fragile as he looked, he didn't need the extra burden. So instead he shifted to look back at him-- well, at his shoes-- and took a deep breath. "It's not irrelevant, and it does matter. Something was bothering you. What did you mean by 'escape'?"