Work Text:
For Elijah Elkwood, there’s no greater satisfaction than proving to others that Hell on earth exists here and now. He laughs at them, jokes with them with an undisputed distant affection in his voice. Where have you been? This whole time? He shows them Hell in a delicate gesture that seems like the unfolding of his hands, only his hands are dark- bloody.
—
Todd Allison is a fair proficient when it comes to scheduling and remembering his daily routine. He has sixteen plants to feed, five to feed later, and a couple nocturnal ones that needed watering. It isn't exactly time consuming when he paces himself, but after a while he starts feeling the pangs too.
"You need to remember to eat once in a while," Todd Allison didn't understand why Clancey's nagging words decided to haunt him now. "Coffee doesn't count, neither do sweets. We're all busy on this case but ultimately useless if we don't get enough energy and rest." Todd Allison wonders then why he didn't tell Clancey to stuff it then. Maybe he was too tired.
A while later he's flipping toast off an iron surface, letting both sides brown significantly before setting it down on a plate. He idles, he eats. He approaches one of his larger plants and sees that it's soil is dark and still damp. He can't imagine most of these plants surviving if he wasn't here to tend to them. There's a purpose for him still, to thrive and eat and rest- so that he can wake another day and tend to them. Some might consider that dismal. He honestly doesn't mind.
"See," A bite. "We're both eating now, aren't we?"
—
“C’mon, everyone! Buck up!” Bentham doesn’t think he could reach out to all of them and give them a good shake- and he’s not sure he really wants to. He knows they all have their own ghosts plaguing their thoughts, their own doubts creeping behind their shoulders and sing-songing into their ears. He knows it’s easy enough to be afraid, but he doesn’t want to be afraid.
“We’ll get right to the bottom of this. You’ll see, we’ll have it cracked eventually. Isn’t that right, Rousseau?”
“Since when did you get so sanguine,” Rousseau sneers but says nothing else. They’re all on some precarious clifftop, waiting for the next light breeze to billow them to one side and plunge them into an abyss. He sees it behind their eyes. But he thinks he can hold his ground. Bentham resolves to be unshakable. This is what they were picked for.
Peter Bentham definitely…won’t be shaken.
—
“…What’s so scary about that?” She actually likes the idea of running heedlessly amidst a herd of pounding, trampling beasts and listening to their thudding in her ears.
Cyril lifts a brow and squints one eye at her- Petunia notes that they’re starting to look a little too red around the corners. “Excuse me?”
“For starters, you could get stomped.” Landon hands her a glass of cider. “Among other things.”
“Trampled.” Cyril nods and gives her a smirk he knows is far too ugly and not inviting at all. “Have you ever seen a horse hoof make a dent in guy’s head?”
Petunia’s cider suddenly tastes too sour. “Of course not!”
“Great! Let me detail it for you.” Cyril takes her glass, downs it, and continues his story about how he somehow robbed the wrong truck and found himself in a congregation of loose, rampaging horses.
—
Hana likes to pick out Todd’s scruples, and daily she tries to pry one from him that hasn’t been thinned out several times before.
“When you squint, your brows pinch and make a wrinkle. Did you ever notice that?”
Todd Allison already knew he had wrinkles when he squinted but who gave Hana the right to point it out? He’s still one jab short of an outburst. “Well...now that you mention it. Do you really pay that much attention to my face, Hana?”
“Wh- Oh! You think you’re so clever!” Hana’s apron flutters when she spins to meet him and his wrinkly brow head on. Norah sweeps silently and dutifully beside them but still smiles when she realizes that when Hana squints through her glare, it matches Todd Allison’s exactly.
—
“You can’t play the piano!”
“Haha, how do you know? You’ve never seen me play on a piano before.” His fingers stumble over invisible keys and Petunia can almost hear the ding ding ding each time a finger stabs down.
“Well, I…would have known.” She finishes lamely. But Elijah smiles and moves and his hands are caught in a ghost rhythm, forever held in place by a song she cannot hear. She knows almost everything about him, she thinks. Doesn’t she?
“Are you sure about that?” Elijah keeps playing the piano and Petunia, despite her best efforts, hears nothing.
—
On their wedding night, Clancey asked Cecilia: “What on earth possessed you to pick me of all people?”
He remembers asking this because Cecilia had laughed- she laughed so much some tea had gone up her nose, and they had both laughed then. Cecilia was wearing all of her jewelry, even her too large seashell necklace, and she would glimmer each time she moved. It seemed so long ago, that time, when he thought he would never be parted from her. As of late he’s just busy. He catches himself sleeping at his desk instead of their bedroom. Some nights he wonders if the bombings, the calls, the investigations- he wonders if they’ll ever end.
“Poor Lowell.” She says one night, and Clancey notices she isn’t wearing any of her jewelry. “You look absolutely dreadful, dear!”
Cecilia takes a minute to realize what she’s said and by then Clancey is laughing for the first time in a long time. She doesn’t look the same as she did on their wedding night- but still, to him she’s glinting. She’s shimmering.
—
May does tend to keep most of her old items and necessities from Elijah’s time as a baby around. She knew they’d come in handy again soon. “She’s going to sleep in it?!”
“Yes, Elijah, for the hundredth time. And don’t climb all over it, it was a gift.”
“You can’t let her sleep by herself in there!” Elijah proclaims with his voice and it echoes loud enough for May to hear shuffling nearby. She sees Meredith in the corner but doesn’t call to him yet. “She’ll sleep next to my bed, you know. And why are you so against it?”
“You’re making her sleep alone,” He protests again.
“YOU slept alone in this very crib!”
“I know.” May finds herself staring at her young son’s intense stare. “And look how that turned out.”
May's sudden snort and laughter signals her defeat.
—
"I had a dream last night," Cyril says it as if it's a miracle, as though all of his nights have been blank and uninhabited by images up until this moment. "That my mouth was full of gold teeth. And I spent a whole damn dream trying to knock them out."
Landon laughs. "That sounds painful."
"It was agony. I was socking myself over and over again, and then I rammed my face into a fucking wall." Cyril rubs his chin, not expecting to feel a pulse of a bruise or a bloody vein danging from his gums. He smiles a rueful smile. "I just had to have those gold teeth."
"And? Did they fall out?"
There's a clink of glass, and Cyril grips his own jaw like a trap, lips flattening and brows dipped. He looks into his drink and sees himself caught in a grip that might've not been his own, if he didn't know any better. Landon smokes silently and waits until Cyril relaxes and then smiles. "Don't remember." He says.
—
Elijah is cunning in the sense that he is able to step quietly away from a conversation and not expect anyone to stop him in return. He slips out of grasps and tangles with his words, easing back like any slick, well-defined politician would. He separates himself from the rest of the pool the minute something tangible and threatening shows itself- Elijah is good at slipping away.
"It's not running, not even that." He explains once to Meredith when they are alone again, confined to shadows and four walls hidden from view. Never does he find himself prompt to explain his actions to Meredith, but when he does he says it with a smile that seems to form involuntarily on his lips. "I know exactly what I'm doing, Meredith. We'll be safe."
And does Meredith ever know. He can tell the moment Elijah shifts a foot and he's already a step behind him. He can see the change in tone in which Elijah brings a conversation to a halt and leaves one stumped, stupefied. Meredith is very thankful for the times Elijah has pulled him and himself from the imminence of attachment, especially regarding those they don't know and will never know again.
But what Elijah doesn't know, is that Meredith also hopes. Hopes he won't just as easily, and just as silently, slip from his fingers.
—