(Untitled)

[taketheearsoff]

Who: Cohen and Riku
When: Backdated to January 2nd, right after Cohen receives the core's gift
Where: Felton Theater Stage
Summary: Plastered dead people and high emotional tension
Warnings: Dead people and yelling. Lots of yelling. Maybe. Also, spoilers for Bioshock.

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[walkthedawn]

Riku arrived an hour before the theater opened, as usual, to get his lists and check up on things at the theater. He wasn't thrilled with the night before either, and there would be a lot to clean up today, but he still needed to be at work like the good assistant he was. He wondered, sometimes, how Cohen even managed to keep the theater during times like these. The Joker never should have been allowed to have a part in the production, and Riku had been against it from the start

[taketheearsoff]

"My god! My god, my god My God."

Cohen hadn't registered Riku's presence immediately, he was far too enthralled with the art. Then he had the same feeling, the very same of when the little moth hovered behind him, staring up at his part of the collaboration. Sander turns and spies his most - precious - sheepdog...and he smiles; wide and devious. Cohen's insanity shined through for just a second. His facade of sanity briefly peeling away into the old artist he had been, the section eight from a withering time in a sinking city.

"Do you see it?"

[walkthedawn]

Did he see it? Of course he did. He could see the plaster molds in their frozen poses, the rabbit masks hiding their faces. The blood that had long since dried still looked like it was drooling down their throats and onto their suits. The pictures they hold are even worse, filled with men that have been cut down and ripped apart by fire, bullets, and probably numerous other things.

Is that what Cohen wanted him to see? Did he want him to see how disgusting and horrific it was? "This...is yours?" he asked, voice quiet, throat constricted.

[taketheearsoff]

"This - was - ours! A collaboration with one of my greatest...disciples. He wasn't among the four, oh no, he was the best. I tested him, little sheepdog, and he proved most worthy. He was like an angel fluttering through the fort. I could hear his wings as he descended on the others. Flip flapflipflapflip flaaa~p.

And then - he was gone."

The delusional gravity of Cohen's own words meant nothing to him. In his eyes, everything was right. This - monument - was everything. He turns back to his work.

[walkthedawn]

Riku felt sick, listening to him. "This... These are your-" His disciples. Dead. Something he and some other man had done just because he wanted to complete some grand scheme of a masterpiece. He reached out slowly, hesitantly, his hand touching the plaster models.

He was thankful that they weren't warm. They had been dead a long while.

"Mr. Cohen, you...let them be killed?"

[taketheearsoff]

"Let them? They were practically begging for it! Those - louts - they used to be beautiful! They all had potential, and then, it was wasted. This was my gift to them. Don't you see?! Before this, they were infected. The Doubts that spread through the fort, contaminating every employee--every worthwhile creature I had at one point considered above the Moochers. And then the venom spread.

I've done them a favor! Here they are, captured forever, freeee of their kinks and defects! They're free! Free from the ravages of time itself."

And then he turns, slowly, and eyes Riku up. He slips his own mask on, assuming the identity he had long ago dropped, the fleeting image of a man with the ocean on his shoulders coming into view of his mind's eye.

"I certainly hope that isn't doubt I hear laced in your words."