Gimme Fiction :: [Napoleon Bloom // Coma]
Dec 3, 2013 1:21:07 GMT -5
Post by L△LIA on Dec 3, 2013 1:21:07 GMT -5
Four days, one hour, eleven minutes, and twenty-six seconds.
Bent low, she is hunched over the comatose body of a boy only a few years older than her. Anyone looking upon the scene can immediately see the desperation that wracks her body with choking sobs as she clutches the hand of her unconscious brother within both of her own, whispering her pleas into his ear with a voice so hushed it could break a heart foolish enough to meet the gaze of her tear-flooded eyes. Have mercy, this tragic expression begs whatever invisible ghost named God might be haunting this hospital ward, and please wake up. "I said wake up, Napoleon Bloom, you useless —"
Battles have rarely been fought with more ferocity than that which strains her voice in secrecy, pulling it so thin and tight that whether or not her vocal chords will snap against the tension is not a question, simply when. "— good for nothing —" Her bloodshot, sorrow-stricken eyes meet those of another patient's visitor across the room. The sister or lover or beloved friend (wrapped up in her own selfishness, Calliope Bloom currently cares as little about that difference as the witless patient she accompanies) shares a knowing grimace, thinking that the two of them understand each other all too perfectly within this moment, as they hold tight to the nonreciprocating hands of a pair of sleeping boys. That girl is wrong.
Calliope digs all ten of her nails into the flesh of the hand she holds, feeling the warmth of her brother's blood breaking through his skin to stain her fingertips red. "— lying, stealing, conning, drug hounding, self-centered —" If she hadn't bitten her weapons down over thoughts of how she will raise the money that will pay for her bother's life support — feeding tube, catheter, and a thousand wires her stunted medical education hasn't yet taught her the meaning of — then her nails might have been a force to be reckoned with right now. As it is, they are ragged as a serrated knife, but cut shallow of inflicting any level of satisfying damage... not that he is capable of feeling her anger either way. "— waste of space and oxygen." Long nails or short, awake or asleep, she is convinced he doesn't feel a thing. That's why he didn't give a damn when their brother Aesop was murdered in the Games a few years ago and that's why he can't be bothered to wake up now.
If he can't save himself, the least he could do would be to save her the trouble of being responsible for him. It's one thing when he goes off on a morphling binge or deals stolen medications on the backstreets downtown, but it's another when he asks her to help him steal pills when his supply runs low... or blacks out so hard he goes comatose. "Poe, you are such a gutless bastard." The sound that haunts her voice is a numb hatred. "You were supposed to be the one taking care of me or you were supposed to be the one to die. Where do you get off with this double-crossing bullshit?" Her voice breaks against itself, betraying its deadpan guise with a degree of emotion she thought she had long cut her surviving sibling off from. For years now she has told herself that he's not worth bothering with anymore and yet here she is, wasting herself on him again.
There are supposed to be stages to grief — she studied them in school — but she cannot escape this purgatory of rage. "I don't —" Once the crack appears, she is helpless to stop it. It digs into her badly mended seams the same way she attacks his palm now, ripping her apart until she is keening with frustration. Aesop used to fix things with something like magic, the kind of slight of hand that made her forget she was too old for games of make-believe, but she has grown too practical and jaded in his absence for daydreams. "I can't —" Instead all she can think about is how she can't afford to save Poe this time.
She is a high school dropout and it has been a long time since her family name was worth anything to anyone not in possession of it, so the impossibility of the responsibility literally laid out before her is more than she can take. Despite having told Poe that she wished he'd have been the one to dieand meaning those words, she'd never wanted to be personally responsible for killing him. "What am I supposed to do? What the fuck am I supposed to do with you?" She unravels. Throwing her head back as she sobs at the ceiling, one hand wiping uselessly at the tracks of tears snaking down her neck to pool in the ditches of her collarbone, scattered shadows of red dirty her skin in the wake of her desperate pawing. Already, his blood is on her hands and she cannot hold tightly enough to stop the flow.
Bent low, she is hunched over the comatose body of a boy only a few years older than her. Anyone looking upon the scene can immediately see the desperation that wracks her body with choking sobs as she clutches the hand of her unconscious brother within both of her own, whispering her pleas into his ear with a voice so hushed it could break a heart foolish enough to meet the gaze of her tear-flooded eyes. Have mercy, this tragic expression begs whatever invisible ghost named God might be haunting this hospital ward, and please wake up. "I said wake up, Napoleon Bloom, you useless —"
Battles have rarely been fought with more ferocity than that which strains her voice in secrecy, pulling it so thin and tight that whether or not her vocal chords will snap against the tension is not a question, simply when. "— good for nothing —" Her bloodshot, sorrow-stricken eyes meet those of another patient's visitor across the room. The sister or lover or beloved friend (wrapped up in her own selfishness, Calliope Bloom currently cares as little about that difference as the witless patient she accompanies) shares a knowing grimace, thinking that the two of them understand each other all too perfectly within this moment, as they hold tight to the nonreciprocating hands of a pair of sleeping boys. That girl is wrong.
Calliope digs all ten of her nails into the flesh of the hand she holds, feeling the warmth of her brother's blood breaking through his skin to stain her fingertips red. "— lying, stealing, conning, drug hounding, self-centered —" If she hadn't bitten her weapons down over thoughts of how she will raise the money that will pay for her bother's life support — feeding tube, catheter, and a thousand wires her stunted medical education hasn't yet taught her the meaning of — then her nails might have been a force to be reckoned with right now. As it is, they are ragged as a serrated knife, but cut shallow of inflicting any level of satisfying damage... not that he is capable of feeling her anger either way. "— waste of space and oxygen." Long nails or short, awake or asleep, she is convinced he doesn't feel a thing. That's why he didn't give a damn when their brother Aesop was murdered in the Games a few years ago and that's why he can't be bothered to wake up now.
If he can't save himself, the least he could do would be to save her the trouble of being responsible for him. It's one thing when he goes off on a morphling binge or deals stolen medications on the backstreets downtown, but it's another when he asks her to help him steal pills when his supply runs low... or blacks out so hard he goes comatose. "Poe, you are such a gutless bastard." The sound that haunts her voice is a numb hatred. "You were supposed to be the one taking care of me or you were supposed to be the one to die. Where do you get off with this double-crossing bullshit?" Her voice breaks against itself, betraying its deadpan guise with a degree of emotion she thought she had long cut her surviving sibling off from. For years now she has told herself that he's not worth bothering with anymore and yet here she is, wasting herself on him again.
There are supposed to be stages to grief — she studied them in school — but she cannot escape this purgatory of rage. "I don't —" Once the crack appears, she is helpless to stop it. It digs into her badly mended seams the same way she attacks his palm now, ripping her apart until she is keening with frustration. Aesop used to fix things with something like magic, the kind of slight of hand that made her forget she was too old for games of make-believe, but she has grown too practical and jaded in his absence for daydreams. "I can't —" Instead all she can think about is how she can't afford to save Poe this time.
She is a high school dropout and it has been a long time since her family name was worth anything to anyone not in possession of it, so the impossibility of the responsibility literally laid out before her is more than she can take. Despite having told Poe that she wished he'd have been the one to die
