it's funny how your life can change

[kindofbroken]

The Compound felt small. Airless. Even more like prison than the island did. (Come on, Crews. What're you doing?)

Crews stood in the middle of the rec room, arms held out from his body, eyes focusing on some point just above his eyeline, completely still, completely silent. Slowly, his eyes closed, arms rising just slightly, up and away from his

Comments

[goingtodorking]

"...I don't think so."

Karen's got one finger tucked into the corner of her mouth, and she's dripping in plastic jewellery that the clothes box decided to give out this morning. She tilts her head on one side and studies him for a moment.

"I like your hair."

[kindofbroken]

Crews' smile widens a little bit as she answers, and he offers her a brief wink at her last statement.

"Thanks."

A beat.

"It's natural."

Another beat.

"I like yours, too."

[goingtodorking]

"Yours is prettier than mine," says Karen. ShorHor plods over, scuffing his trainers against the floor and looks up.

He doesn't really look impressed by anyone's hair.

[kindofbroken]

"Yours is longer."

Crouching down, Crews cocks his head to one side.

"And you've got more of it, too."

[wishesandsmoke]

Eden had made her way to the bookshelf as she so often did and had, for the most part, been ignoring the other people around, including the man muttering to himself. It wasn't like she never talked aloud, but she usually waited until she was either alone or in the company of her pets.

Looking back at the question, she arched an eyebrow and shrugged. "According to my parents," she said, deadpan, then flashed him a small smile. "But I don't buy it. Literally nothing?"

[kindofbroken]

Letting his arms fall back to his sides, Crews managed a quick shrug before returning the smile (somewhat surreptitiously, he slipped Reese's badge back into his pocket).

"More metaphorically," he said, cocking his head to the other side. "But literally, too. I think it'd be easier to be literally nothing than metaphorically nothing. Or at least, it'd be easier to seem like you were literally nothing. Cremation, stuff like that."

[wishesandsmoke]

"There are still ashes," Eden said. She'd thought about that before, about how weird it was to be dead and alive at the same time. It grew more and more distant as time went on, made it easier to take on odd conversations with strangers that touched too close to that. "There's still something. But feeling like nothing, that one you can do. Why do you ask?"

[kindofbroken]

"Just thinking about it." Shuffling his feet, he started towards the bookcase, tucking his hands into his pockets as he did. "Feeling like nothing. Losing someone. Losing a one. It doesn't ever really leave you alone, does it? Which I guess means you're still something to not leave alone."

[eggman_henry]

"That's an interesting question," Henry replied from where he was sitting and flipping through an old American Journal of Psychiatry. "I guess it depends on how you define 'nothing', really."

[kindofbroken]

"Nothing," Crews repeated, mouth forming a slight moue. "A shell. Empty. Nothingness. Lacking a whole." Bringing one of his hands in front of his face, he let his eyes run over the badge in his hand before he dropped his arms.

"Numb. Nothing. Somewhere in there."

[eggman_henry]

Henry thought about that for a second. "I've had many patients over the years tell me they feel like nothing inside," he remarked thoughtfully. "But that kind of nothing, I think a person can come back from."

[abbysciuto]

"Nope," Abby answered the question cheerfully. "I'm pretty sure that's a principle of physics since you have mass and stuff. You could get into an existential, Sartre-ish examination of a Schrodinger's Cat scenario, but that just sounds way too much like a really bad undergrad philosophy exam."

She was in the rec room to get another copy of one of the herbal reference books she'd gotten from the shelf years ago. The one she had had suffered an unfortunate accident and was now both exceedingly minty fresh and stuck together.

[kindofbroken]

"Yeah, you're probably right," Crews agreed, wrinkling his nose. "I think I'd hate being nothing. I know I hate feeling like nothing. I've kinda felt like nothing the past couple of months. It's a bit frightening.

"You looking for anything in particular?"

[abbysciuto]

She wasn't sure if that was a statement of depressive activity or just a statement, plus she wasn't a doctor anyway, so she just let it go one by.

"It would be frightening. There's always something that makes me feel like something, even when there's too much nothing. Maybe you need to find a something, not that I know you at all," she pointed out.

"An herbal reference guide, if I can find it. Mine is currently an excellent air freshener, but not so good for reading."

[kindofbroken]

"I do need to find a something. You're never a nothing with a something."

Rolling his shoulders back, Crews hummed, contemplating Abby's last statement. "A book on herbs turns into an sir freshener. You don't hear that one every day. What happened to it?"