It's our dramatic twist. Come watch the magic tricks.

[hostage]

WHO: Jesse Pinkman, Joseph Kavinsky & Joel Miller
WHERE: The Murder Cabin
WHEN: September 30
WHAT: Kavinsky got his brains ate and now Jesse has a corpse in his living room.
WARNINGS: Did you read that? Brains got ate. (I know that's not how it works but basically.)

[Jesse's stopped keeping track of the hours.

It doesn't usually take more than a day, right? For most people. For the ones that do come back. But the sun's gone down and up and down again, and Jesse's still sitting on this couch, staring at a body that used to belong to a boy but now doesn't seem to belong to anyone. An empty thing, skull reattached to brain by gauze bandages. Bandages! Like he just got knocked on the head is all.

Jesse doesn't require sleep. Actually, he requires very little in order to survive at all, so he keeps vigil long after the rest of the world has gone to bed. Because he knows it's terrifying to return from death alone. He knows it from experience.

Staring at this corpse. Just staring at it. As if he could will it back to life. If he hadn't been so late, he could have. He could have. But now Kavinsky's dead and there's nothing to do but wait for either rot or resurrection. For a while Jesse was screaming, and then he cried more quietly, and now there's nothing else to do except watch for a pulse, watch for a breath, watch for any movement at all. Jesse's been staring for so long he can't remember if Kavinsky was always this pale, if his eyes always looked that hollow. He's watched Kavinsky die so many little deaths in order to dream, and now he's just. Not. Coming. Back. Is he?]

Comments

[pillz]

[it's slow going until it isn't. the meninges smoothing itself out after the torsion of removal, knitting itself shut around the inert gelatin of his brain. hacked-off blood vessels rejoining, and then his skull sealing in minute degrees, bone structures remembering themselves, the toxic marrow and spilled blood retreating from necrotized tissue. within the first day, the nanites had it sorted. if jesse had removed the bandage, there wouldn'tve even been a line on his pretty little forehead, but for the faint, chic ones that frowning and cigarettes had put there.

but after he's healed, he doesn't live right away. the sun goes up and comes down. the subtle chemistries of life remain glaringly absent. no bio-electricity in his brainstem, no shuffle of blood in his veins, no squeeze in his heart. never mind the complex activity that constitute high brain functions and kavinsky's personality. (but who wants that.)

and then, all at once, he's back.

hhhungh. air in his lungs and eyes wide, his heartbeat starting from the gate like a pistol shot.]

[hostage]

[The moment it happens, Jesse jumps to his feet and rushes forward. He'd laid Kavinsky out on the cushions opposite him, and he kneels beside them now to get a closer look at what's happening. He hasn't witnessed a nanite revival before, only felt it himself. It looks so much more violent than in his own hazy memories.]

Joe!

[An urgent whisper, not a shout. He's trying not to be terrifying. As much as he wants to reach out and touch Kavinsky's arm, he holds back.]

[pillz]

[kavinsky's vision cuts in. color. texture. who even uses wood on ceilings anymore? and that's the first thought he has. the second is he registers a face, terrified and unhappy, and that in and of itself is familiar even before the wrecking, falling, cracked-and-chunked avalanche of other

memories.

he means to say, fuck you, but it comes out in an incoherent, animal yell instead. he doesn't quite have the feeling back in his hands or his feet, which is probably why he promptly falls inelegantly off the couch. halfway onto jesse. elbows and arms and spitting like a cat. he's still joe.]

[hostage]

You're okay!

[He's telling both Kavinsky and himself, and the kid can claw if he wants to, but Jesse does his best to gather him in his arms and keep him from sprawling on the hardwood floor.]

Don't - hurt yourself, okay? You're safe - You're safe here, I promise.

[pillz]

[either gabriel grey is lying to him, or jesse pinkman's telling the truth.

or gabriel tells the truth, and jesse always lies. safety doesn't ring true, though, and the sudden circle of arms around his shoulders couldn't be more alien if little green men were marching down jesse's wrist, except for the scrap of sensory recall that maybe there was this one time not that long ago but

you know the real problem is: kavinsky is always lying to himself, and he's equally and always onto his own game. so he tells himself he made that up; he sees the pink rings around jesse's eyes and thinks he's making that up too. and he gets up, off jesse, pushing the older man into the floor, and then he thinks to himself, he probably should've made up a gun, if he was gonna make up anything.

and he bolts for the door.

(the cushions are ruined, by the way. it's subtler than the last dozen things jesse saw him pull out of his dreams; he might not even see it until later. the blood and semi-liquid rot seeping out of the fabric casing and the filling, oozing onto the floor, the stink of human death. when it's all said and drained, there will be enough to have constituted the contents of a 17-year-old boy's corpse.)

(it'll be a good idea to burn them.)]

[hostage]

[None of it matters right now. The only thing that matters is that Kavinsky's scared out of his mind and making a run for it.]

Wait!

[Jesse scrambles after him, a few steps behind but faster for having the full use of his limbs and none of that post-death grogginess. He reaches the door at the same moment Kavinsky does, and slams his hand against it to hold it shut.]

There's nothing out there, man. It's miles of cold, dark forest out there. You'll fucking freeze to death, okay? Stop.

[pillz]

[there are children who, when scared or startled or pushed back by a dangerous older person, end up shrinking down. kavinsky doesn't shrink. he flattens against the wall, but it makes him bigger somehow, his spine straightening out of its usual hangdog (frightened) slouch.

jesse's words finally hit him. not that it's surprising to know it's cold out there, that there are trees, that there's nothing. seems like the kind of place you'd take a dead person. a person you'd want dead. not that jesse wants him to wait, either. but it's fucking ridiculous, this point, for anybody to think cold will kill him.

kavinsky raises an eyebrow. it's the most human expression that's touched his face for the past few minutes.] You know that's bullshit, [he rasps.]

[hostage]

[Thank god. He's speaking. With words.

Jesse eases back an inch or two, but he doesn't let go of the door.]

Your powers won't be working yet. Not completely. It takes at least a day for you to get back to full strength. Don't push yourself.

[And that isn't even the point. Even if Kavinsky was in the condition to be running through ten or twenty miles of wilderness in the pitch black of night...]

This is a safehouse. It's just you, me, and my bodyguard. Nobody else knows we're here and we're gonna make sure nothing happens to you, so would you just - just take a shower or something? Please don't go out there like this.

[He can't let something terrible happen to Kavinsky again.]

[pillz]

[there's a slight movement of kavinsky's head, his eyes shifting across the older man's face. slowly, that weird simplified lizard paranoia eases away. and the shitty, permanently sarcastic teenager starts to emerge a little more, pessimism and cynicism and basic deductive abilities returning to him.]

Y--

[his voice sounds like a botched engine. he coughs.] You don't want me to know where we are, [he finishes. but he doesn't sound angry. it's reassuring, like finding your center of gravity again. one hand stutters up to his own forehead. he almost touches the bandages, and then he stops mid-motion. it's probably not hard to imagine why.]

[hostage]

You're not as dumb as you look, Kavinsky.

[He's trying to say that as warmly and as casually as possible, but his voice kind of wavers at the end of it, like he's choking back fresh tears. Because the sight of Kavinsky's hand drifting toward those bandages reminds Jesse of what he found the other day, the state that Kavinsky's body was in when he was brought to it and the torturous process of trying to repair it.]

[pillz]

[kavinsky opens his mouth. to ask, or to bitch. but then he closes it again, his lips sealing, disconcerted. mostly by the bandages. maybe a little by the look on jesse's face. it must have been bad.

well, he's survived people not wanting to fuck him before. (by like three days, but whatever.) (and it's hard right now, to imagine wanting anything from people at all.) he doesn't remove the bandage. if he's fucked up and ugly, he doesn't want jesse to know about it. (there are a lot of things he doesn't want jesse to know.)]

Where's your fucking bathroom?

[hostage]

[A small victory. Jesse's shoulders drop in relief.]

Over here.

[Not a long walk for dead boys with unsteady legs. Jesse finally moves away from the door and crosses the room to another door beside the kitchen.]

There's a towel in there already. And, um. You know, just tell me if you need anything.

cw verbal abuse about terminal children, homophobic/misogynistic language, suicide., etc. forever

[pillz]

You know, it's a good thing you ditched the nursing gig. [kavinsky wipes his nose with the back of his hand. he starts to plug his way over to the bathroom in question. the first thing he'll do, of course, is try the windows-- without real expectation, but he can't not try.] You have shit for bedside manner.

Crying all over those bald kids and HIV leper faggots and dumb sluts looking for a clothes hanger. [he pushes the bathroom door open and looks warily at the mirror.] You'll make them want to kill themselves.

[it's not like jesse had expected him to be a gracious guest.]

night of day 2;

[pillz]

[day 2 went okay. kavinsky spent most of it on drugs, even going so far as to attempt and lose multiple games of solitaire and 'cook' something horrifying made of multiple apocalypse foods.

he walked around outside a little. not trying to run away— explaining that he was looking for the best place to start a fire, and drug the nightmare-stained pillows out, but forgot what he was doing before any actual pyrotechnics began. at some point, he created some type of slingshot and went after a woodpecker that wouldn't shut up in the afternoon, but it hadn't been too far away from the house. the bird had escaped uninjured, anyway. he followed through on his promise to masturbate inappropriately but just once, to some embarrassing results that he decided, even under the influence, did not bear repeating.

he was still on drugs when he went to bed at midnight. an oddly compact sleeper, he scrunched up into a little ball under his blankets. his hair, without gel, fell in his eyes and he complained about it fiercely at the older men through the ceiling for about five minutes before suddenly passing out.

at two in the morning, the generator goes on. a thin hum in the distance that bears no real resemblance to the noise of a bonesaw. but despite this, he wakes up screaming at two ten, his voice climbing out of his throat so fast it cracks like puberty all over again. he kicks off his blankets, eyes blank with terror.]

[hostage]

[By the time 2 in the morning rolls around, Jesse isn't upstairs but out on the porch with a cigarette and a glass of whiskey. There isn't any real need for him to keep watch, but it's something to do when one has no desire for sleep whatsoever. The night is quiet as usual, not so much as a suspicious rustle from the bushes.

Which is why it's so alarming when a scream erupts from Kavinsky's room.

Jesse chucks the cigarette and knocks his glass over on his way into the cabin, through the door and inside Kavinsky's room not five seconds later. When he flicks the light on, it's like he thought: Nothing's there but Kavinsky's terror.

Jesse knows the feeling. This is why he doesn't sleep even for relaxation. There's no rest in resting.]

You're okay, Joe. You're okay...

[Jesse repeats that a few times, hushed murmuring as he hurries to the bed. He reaches out - not physically, but empathically - to rebalance some of those chemicals surging through Kavinsky's brain. It means inducing a good level of panic in himself, but at least Jesse knows what's happening.]

[pillz]

[you could phrase what's happening in a couple of ways: panic attack, first of all. as jesse drains the pounding rush of adrenaline out of him, he can identify the symptoms easy. the brain chemistry of horror, crashing heart, heat flooding uselessly through his veins, the lung-deep pinch and burn of hyperventilation, noosed off yet again by a choking sensation. nausea pitching queasily through his guts though he's numb everywhere else.

and secondly: kavinsky is remembering.

jesse can't read minds, but it's not too hard to guess. he'd seen the mess the man had made of kavinsky's corpse. and now the boy's hands are around his own head, his fingers pale with fright and bony with effort, a sharp contrast against his dark hair. he's spread them around his own skull, mostly behind his ears, digging his nails as if he's trying to pinch the shape of his head together. or check that it is. his palms shake a lot, but they're inching around too, flattening against the little whorl of hair on the back of his scalp.

he calms down mostly because jesse makes him. gooey face in his knees, clutching his head. parenting isn't normally this hard, although there probably isn't any reliable source of information on the matter inside this house.]

[hostage]

[It's breaking Jesse's heart all over again. Being the survivor isn't nearly as horrible as being the victim, but Jesse immediately flashes back to that night and Kavinsky's corpse on the ground with brain matter on full display and he chokes, too, remembering the brief feeling of Kavinsky's death as he tried to take it for himself.]

Y-You're safe now.

[It doesn't sound convincing when he's fighting back tears and trying not to hyperventilate from absorbing Kavinsky's panic. He gets closer but he doesn't touch, getting just within range in case Kavinsky needs something to hold onto other than his skull.]

Hey... Hey, it's over.

[pillz]

[kavinsky looks at jesse, finally. he almost kind of even sees jesse, standing just beyond the edge of the bed in the semi-darkness, the light falling in from the rectangle of the doorway.

there's nothing quiet about the way he looks at jesse. for one thing, he's still making those stupid awkward gibbering panic sounds, foolish and animal, snot all rubbery and shiny on his lip and under his nose. he's made fun of people who lose their shit the way he's losing his shit. he'd hate this, if he weren't so deep in it that he can't remember anything besides,]

But I c'n hear him.

[he whispers it. just in case sylar can hear them too.]

[hostage]

I promise he's not here. I promise. I'd never let him in here. I'd never let him near you.

[So, so slowly, Jesse kneels on the edge of the bed and leans in. He's murmuring those reassurances the whole time, trying to drown out whatever Kavinsky's hearing, sure to make his whole presence known so it doesn't get mistaken for another's. For the killer's.]

Come here. You're okay. I'll protect you.

[He doesn't want to grab hold of the kid, so he invites instead, ready to gather Kavinsky up in his arms.]

[pillz]

[nothing that jesse is saying sounds true, but everything else works: he's here and real.

so kavinsky goes there. ants make rafts out of their own bodies when faced with flood, and the most solitary of jungle cats come together for biological imperatives. even virii are built to get in. all of it, to stave off final death. kavinsky's not even as resilient or independent or dangerous as any of those things. it's always been easy for him to cave in on the promise of companionship.

he balances his head on jesse's shoulder without letting it go, just in case pieces fall off still. he puffs and blows. the fabric of jesse's shirt grows clammy and sticky. but he probably knew what he was getting into.]

[hostage]

[He did.

Jesse holds Kavinsky with matching strength, no intention of letting go until Kavinsky himself wants to draw away. He's crying, too; silent tears betrayed by the occasional shaky breath. He wants so badly to make this better somehow. This whole damn tragedy has been one crushing reminder that he still can't fix everything, that he's still powerless when it really counts.

Rocking slowly, cradling Kavinsky like a child, Jesse reminds himself to keep talking so the demons don't get loud again:]

One of the first times I had to hide out someplace - 'cause I tried to kill these two shithead bangers and their boss was after me - I was hiding in this closed-down laser tag, like, arcade thing. It felt like the dumbest shit, you know? Like, the last time I was in one of those places, I was maybe ten. For a birthday party or whatever. So I was hiding there for like three days and and just kept flashing back. Feeling like I was ten again, but also not. All by myself playing skeeball and shit, half-thinking my mom would show up and tell me it was time to go home and half-thinking... you know. It was so weird. It didn't feel real.

[pillz]

[it's kind of hard to hear stupid skeeball stories when you have your hands over your ears and are making miserable monkey sounds. so kavinsky starts to dial it down. the pitchy whine of kavinsky's fear dwindles down a bit into damp mouth-breathing. he loosens his fingers, only to register the muscles in his hands protesting from the strain. his knuckles creak in a way that he feels rather than hears.

he hears jesse now, mostly. the sound of his voice. jesse keeps saying 'you know?' and kavinsky doesn't, but he half starts to believe he could. yeah, yeah. he knows arcades. three days by yourself sounds horrible though. he'd joked about it before in his old life, but he does hate to be alone.

he puts his hands on his downturned face instead, wiping shit off, clumsy and slow.]

[hostage]

[It doesn't matter, really. He's not saying anything. Just making noise, just forming the words that come to mind without much thought given to why. Why that's what's in his head right now. He couldn't say if he was asked.

Jesse doesn't quite let go of Kavinsky, loosening his grip only enough to give the kid some space to clean himself up. He sniffs, betraying his own tears again, and turns his face away in case Kavinsky looks up.]

[pillz]

[kavinsky doesn't look up. plausible deniability. he figures he'll let jesse pretend he's not crying and jesse will pretend he isn't crying, and at this point hypermasculinity is so deeply ingrained in the boy's psyche that he operates on an entirely subconscious level. putting his hands on his face doesn't end up actually improving matters too much. he's sticky and gross.

but it muffles his mewls of self-pity a little, so there is that.]

Did you turn on the machines, [his voice is very raspy. smaller than normal, but audible in the quiet.] I thought arcade games don't work if you don't run electricity t' that shit.

[hostage]

The electricity was still on.

[Tentatively, Jesse's palm runs up and down Kavinsky's back in a slow massage. It's difficult to comfort someone when you don't know how much touching might be too much.]

The owner was trying to find a buyer for the place, so everything was still running. There's a tip for you. If you're ever squatting someplace, pick one with a realty sign out front.