tame the ghosts in my head

[enabeled]

WHO: ABEL GIDEON and YOU.
WHERE: Specified locations.
WHEN: 22nd - 24th / Saturday - Monday
WHAT: Gideon processes some interesting news.
WARNINGS: Mentions of murder, violence. Otherwise, let's go with TBD.


( A ) SATURDAY | malt shop

[ Surgery is not a profession that normally grants a person normal working hours. Even at his "probationary" status, Abel Gideon can be called upon late into the night, weekend or not, and every time he first debates complying and then proceeds to, because it's very to maintain good behavior in bursts.

"Bursts" being a good term for it, since when they end they pop like water balloons.

He doesn't turn up for his shift tonight. He dresses for it and heads out into the night in the direction of the hospital, but there are other things on his mind; by the time his shift was meant to start he still isn't there, he's barely paying attention to where he is. The evening catches him walking without much direction, carefully lining up thoughts to be examined, and when he finally drifts from his haze he finds himself in front of a malt shop. He hesitates but steps inside and takes a seat -- the way the evening has been proceeding so far he might spend hours here, since the moment his thoughts drift he seems to lose great stretches of time. ]

( B ) SUNDAY | beach

[ Sunday is different. Sunday he utilizes his powers -- some of them -- for the first time in a long time since he'd first discovered them, the ability that he could conceal his identity entirely by willingly assuming another persona. He was wary of this power for that very reason, but it is useful today when he determines he needs something that can only be obtained through misdirection.

They don't allow just anyone access to certain poisons. Even if he isn't 100% decided, yet, on using it.

But Frederick Chilton does seem guilty. Signs are there. Gideon is operating slowly on the 90% chance of it being so, the 10% remaining benefit of the doubt granted by those two years of treatment. He stores his weapon away for further consideration later, feeling remarkably self-controlled for someone who was just told his identity -- who he had been, once, and not who he is now -- had been dismantled willingly after all. He feels that way at least until he finds himself at the same beach he'd been to last on Valentine's Day without remembering much about actually getting there. One moment, home... the next, he's looking at the spot where over a month before, a couple lay dead beside each other, hands folded over the other's in a postmortem embrace. There's discoloration to the spot from their blood, but most has faded. A few miles down the shoreline a memorial had been erected where the bodies had ultimately been found, where the water had dragged them, something simple where people could mourn and leave flowers behind. This spot has no flowers.

Gideon still has on the remnants of his earlier disguise -- a sky blue shirt and sunglasses -- though none of the intent to hide himself as before, so in accordance to his powers it no longer is a disguise. It's just Abel Gideon dressed particularly Florida tourist-y today, on a bright and balmy Sunday afternoon by the beach. ]

( C ) MONDAY | park

[ After two days of contemplation, a double-shift at the hospital seems apt to clear his mind. He's there from late Sunday night until well into Monday, and takes his midday break in the nearby park with his lunch, sitting at one of the chessboard tables. It even has all the pieces -- or most, at least, as he doesn't bother counting them all off -- which amuses Gideon distantly; the residents here certainly do seem honest. Honest enough, anyway. There's swaths of blood across his uniform sleeves, one splash of particular vibrancy across his chest, but he doesn't take pains to hide them if he's even that aware that they're there. Surgery can be messy work. Stressful, too, if one lets their mind linger too much on the gravity of every moment, how life and death each procedure can be.

Gideon himself feels more efficient, these days. The life and death of others somehow doesn't weigh quite so heavily on his mind, and stress can make all the difference. At least it had in the past... but rituals could be stabilizing to a troubled mind. The breakdown has already happened, so in theory, he has no where to go but up.

In theory.

He unwraps his sandwich. ]