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Who: Emmanuel and Julien
Where Starting at the LSR clinic
When: Backdated to the 25th of August, some time after this

Somehow Julien had completed everything he'd needed to. Maybe it wasn't that surprising. No major messes, not since the last time he'd been through, and there were no major deliveries of supplies either. Nothing popped up needing an extra pair of hands. And for the past few months he'd been tending to schedule lengthy shifts, so that on days without a lot of emergencies he could take his time and be thorough, and chat, and network.

So there'd been time to get his work done even while avoiding Aaron, slipping away silently at the sound of footsteps. Even while spending he didn't know how long texting about it. And even struggling with the urge to find a corner to hide in until he stopped feeling punched. This was the first time Julien had had a memory that was hard to untangle from what he felt and thought. Strider, he thought sometimes, and my brother at others, and he couldn't keep them straight.

He had to hold it together. Mostly he did. Whenever someone might see or hear him, he did. The reverend was coming by, and Julien planned to avoid Aaron some more and leave when Emmanuel left. This was earlier than he usually went home, but there was nothing else to do, and Aaron... Julien would text him. He couldn't talk to him right now.

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Emmanuel actually parked a few blocks away, in a slightly nicer part of town, and fed the meter before checking the GPS app on his phone again. It was pretty useful, he had to admit, even though the learning curve had been steep. He hadn't really been to the Dead District before, save for a brief period of peer-induced delinquency as a kid when he'd been dared to bring something back from an abandoned building. Even though the memory was pretty fuzzy, the area didn't seem to have changed much. He sent off a text to Julien and pocketed his phone, walking quickly.

After some debate, he'd decided to bring the knife, though part of him still thought it was a pretty terrible idea. Still, it was his only source of self-defense, and he'd been keeping it on his person more frequently. The only place he refused to bring it was to services, maybe because of tradition he couldn't shake. Maybe because he still sort of wished the old concept of the church as a sanctuary held true even for their mysterious enemy. Regardless, it was wrapped in a kitchen towel and then in a light jacket, which he folded up and carried under his arm. The envelope with his donation check was stuffed next to it.

He was able to locate the clinic within about ten minutes. He pushed open the door carefully, feeling almost self-conscious. At least he had an excuse to be there.

As something new to do, Julien fretted in the front area until Emmanuel got there.

As his friend looked in, he allowed himself a split second of a pleading look before rallying, drawing himself up and smoothing his features to reflect a more steady sort of concern.

There was a slightly purplish tinge to his irises - the way his eyes were made, reddening showed there, too, blood vessels showing among the granular pigment. Julien was a little paler than usual, too, and looked like he'd been running hands through his hair. It was disarrayed and not in the usual, deliberate way.

His voice at least was even. "Do you... want to talk to him? He's with a patient right now, but it probably won't take long."

Julien looked--well, he looked stressed, which was to be expected. Emmanuel had thought about what he might say to Aaron on the way there, but Julien was really the priority here.

"It's all right. We can catch up later. I'll just..."

He fumbled with the bundle under his arm a moment, trying to get the envelope out without exposing the knife. Not his finest idea. He held it up.

"I can just leave this. Are you hungry? Or would you rather go straight home." The least he could do was try to keep Julien's mind off of things, even if it wouldn't really work.

Emmanuel had... something there? Well, it probably didn't matter, people weren't supposed to come in here armed but he knew it happened all the time. Julien reached automatically for the envelope but checked himself.

"Okay..." He shook his head to try and clear it. "Okay, we have a donation box. It doesn't get a lot of checks, usually we take those into the back... It'll be fine, though, I'll text him about it."

Sometimes Julien wore a tie with a loose knot. Today he hadn't, and instead fiddled with his buttoned-back sleeves and the collar of his shirt, giving his hands something to do. "I... I really don't care, but I don't want to just go home yet."

"Thanks. I know it's not exactly the priority right now." He shifted his weight, reminded again of the weapon he was carrying, and a bit ashamed of his paranoia. But people had been attacked, and there was no telling what might happen. He reached for his phone instead.

"I, uh. Know a good Indian place. If you like spicy food, that is."

Closing his mostly transparent inner eyelids and holding them closed, he nodded. "Yeah. That's... fine. I-"

Unhappiness welled up again in Julien, who turned his face away. Normally - when his voice had been human - great enough upset had lent a high warbly tone to anything he said. Now it still left him unable to completely control how he spoke, but it sounded different. Like his voice split into two nearly-identical, faintly throbbing hollow voices, imperfectly synchronized and unharmonious.

"He's going to hate me." At least it was quiet.

Even though it had been a while--or maybe because Julien had gotten so good at imitating his own regular voice--the dissonance was a bit unsettling. Emmanuel was careful not to show it in his expression. Instead, he put a hand on Julien's shoulder.

"Why...would you say that?" He swallowed a bit. "Listen, you're just--you're just dealing with a lot at once. Give it a little time, all right?"

"He will, they all do, he's - starting to." Julien's breathing was completely unaffected, as deep and slow as ever. His voice resonated through the air sacs lacing his chest and upper arms, vibrating into whatever touched either like an enormous speaker.

"It doesn't... I... I can't keep it straight, it's just, it doesn't mean anything to him anymore - no, he never knew, I can't..." Still keeping his face turned away, he took off his glasses and rubbed his face hard, one flat-handed stroke from his forehead to his chin, and wrested control of his voice again. "God, sorry, I'm turning into a mess."

Emmanuel froze a little, awkwardly; Julien was younger than him, but still an adult, so he wasn't sure what kind of comforting he needed. They were friends, sure, but still...he settled for moving his hand to Julien's back instead, cautiously. Patted it a little.

"It's fine. Anyone would be upset, you know." Though it was just beginning to sink in how close Julien and Aaron must have been. "But he's not going anywhere. There's still a chance he'll remember. It's hard, and...I'm sorry." He paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts. "Just try to hold on to that."

"Yeah. I know. He's alive, and I know where he is, and - those are good." Blinking, Julien tried to focus. Which 'he'? ...Both? He couldn't keep them straight. After wiping his eyes again and setting his shoulders he finally looked back at Emmanuel. His pupils pinned small and dilated large and shrank again, but the rest of his expression was easier to read. "Can we go now? Please? I can't be here right now."

"Of course. I'm parked a few blocks down." He left the envelope with the check and followed Julien to the door, unable to help a slightly nervous glance around the empty street outside. He led the way down the sidewalk, glancing back a few times to make sure Julien was holding up all right.

"If you want--I can come back with you later. To talk to him."

Julien followed. He felt heavy, lethargic. Since he could watch several things at once he pulled out his phone and rapidly texted Aaron with the news that he was leaving early with a friend and there was a check in the donation box, and then he did something uncharacteristic. He turned his phone off.

The offer surprised him. For some reason his first instinct was to refuse and insist that this was something he had to do alone, but he metaphorically held his tongue and nodded. "I... Thanks." Julien made himself focus, realize that he'd seen Emmanuel looking about uneasily in his clear peripheral vision.

"No one around here should bother you if you're with me. They know I work at the clinic. I've been here... more than a year. Yeah. Since like June last year."

So much had changed since then. And now...

"Oh, it's...not that. People have talked about running into...other things. You know." Emmanuel shrugged uncomfortably. "I'm just not interested in a repeat of the mines."

He headed down the street, letting Julien set the pace. "Left here...ah, did you start working before all this, or...?"

"Oh. Yeah..." Julien knew there had been two occasions where swarms of little mutant animals had attacked the clinic. Hell, he'd mentioned them today on the network. But he hadn't been there either time himself, he hadn't even helped with the cleanup, and it had been months since anyone around here had shown him more hostility than a flat look.

Clearly no, he shouldn't feel safe around here. Nothing was wrong with his legs - he'd see if anything was coming, but he picked up his stride a little. "Yeah. Way back when I moved here, just about, I came into the Dead District with a friend and met him there, and... he was just interesting." Julien wasn't going to let on that Aaron covertly moonlit as a drug dealer whenever the funding was really bad. "And I found out about the clinic, and... I sort of bugged him until he decided he could use free labor."

He exhaled audibly, and while inhaling - Julien was well used to his own voice by now, and didn't always remember to entirely keep up the pretense that it was normal - said, "I should tell you something about the Apostle."

Emmanuel smiled faintly, though it didn't last too long. "I do remember him being...interesting."

Part of him was at a loss, though, in face of Julien's obvious distress. It was almost like grief, and he tried to imagine what it would be like. He couldn't say he was particularly close to anyone on the network, but if he were and they forgot...yes, it would be difficult. Someone you relied on, that you could talk to when things got hard. Especially with all the changes Julien had experienced already. Emmanuel figured his own definitely paled in comparison. The least he could do was try to replicate some of the support Julien had lost.

"You've remembered something else?" he asked cautiously.

"Yeah... You said you knew him? Know him?" It was difficult to imagine Aaron at a college. Julien knew the man hadn't been in Locke that much longer than he had, but Aaron had been, was, always so cagy about his life.

Back when Julien's eyes had changed and he'd been in a panic Aaron had come, and had been kind, and had spoke and acted as if he loved him. Part of Julien had said that that couldn't last. He couldn't rely on that. On some level, he'd known.

He will hate me, the thought came again, and this time Julien was fairly sure it was the Apostle's thought. He still had to blink hard and avert his face for a moment, and checked and rechecked that he could control his voice before he spoke.

"He... let's get to your car first. I need to figure out where to start."

Edited 2013-09-13 19:07 (UTC)

"Right. Not as...well as you, it seems, but..." To be honest, plenty of undergrad was a bit of a blur now. He'd spent a lot of time working and studying, since he was on loans and scholarships, without the support of his parents.

"Of course." He picked up the pace slightly, taking out his keys when they were a block away. It wasn't anything special; a slightly banged up dark blue Camry, the interior clean except for some papers and an empty coffee cup. He unlocked it and dropped into the driver's seat, checking the AC. Summer had apparently decided it wasn't finished yet.

"It's hard to picture him at my age. Guess he couldn't have been much like me..." He'd thought when they met that Aaron must have been startlingly good-looking once. Some of it still showed, now and then.

He watched the sky as they got closer, the ever-changing boiling colors behind the clouds. Stars showed between those, familiar now to him. They were soothing, in a kind of sad way. Whatever happened down here, they burned on.

Julien opened the passenger door and got into the seat with a weirdly graceful motion, no louder than a whisper. He kept the door open to let the heat inside out, since it looked like they weren't going to drive off just yet. Pressing his lips together, he ran his fingers through his much-abused hair and seemed to look through the windshield at the sky.

"The Apostle went... I have no idea where it was, or what it was, but he went somewhere that had this king monster that ruled or - absorbed, or something, the spirits of the dead. He was there to save some people from a school. ...I know what it sounds like, hah. It was really surreal."

"A little more serious, at least," Emmanuel tried, hoping to lighten the mood a little. He tugged at the neck of his shirt slightly.

He listened quietly, frowning a little, trying to arrange the concepts Julien was presenting in a way that made sense. "From a school...? So, students? And they were...dead?" It sounded worse when he said it aloud. "He sounds...very brave, then."

Julien closed his eyes for a moment. "Hah... That's not saying much, most of the time."

Put like that, he wasn't sure. "I guess I don't actually know if they were dead. Spirits, though, they came up. Maybe the students weren't... I don't know. The point is the king knew he'd done something horrible that he... the Apostle... wanted to stay secret. I don't know what it was."

"And just now - well, a little ago, I remembered something else. He did it to save my brother. His brother," Julien corrected himself, frowning. "He did something ...shameful to keep him alive. And I don't know what it was, but he knows, his brother loved him once and... stopped." His eyes were burning. Julien closed them again, harder, took a firm hold on his voice.

"It's really tough right now to, to separate that from this. God, that's annoying, it's..."

Deciding not to think too much about it, Emmanuel reached over and put a hand on Julien's arm. "It's all right. Just take a deep breath--ah, if you can." He swallowed.

"You mean...when he forgot, it made you remember something? I'm sorry." From what he understood about the pulses, echoes, whatever they were, something significant had to trigger them. "But you're here, right now. You're Julien, not the Apostle. You need to hold on to that."

Edited 2013-09-15 07:32 (UTC)

Most of Julien's breaths were deep. He made himself breathe more slowly and leaned back in the seat, letting his head tip back against the headrest, inadvertently showing that his Adam's apple was minimal these days.

He spoke slowly. "I think... I'm him without that thing. What he'd have been if he hadn't... betrayed people, or killed them, or whatever it was, for m-his brother." It was a new theory, and he didn't like it. Julien opened his outer eyelids and seemed to stare sightlessly at the roof of Emmanuel's car. "I've always wanted to be separate from him, it's always felt that way, but now... I don't know who's upset."

"Either way I knew it could happen. I- I made plans with Strider, about this, it's not really out of nowhere." He didn't sound convinced.

"Maybe both of you...are upset?" Julien's heartbeat sounded really loud all of a sudden. Strange. "Either way, you--"

No, it was his own heartbeat. He gripped the steering wheel with his other hand to steady himself, feeling like the bottom was about to drop out of his stomach. It had been long enough since the last one that it took him a few moments to realize what was happening. He stared through the windshield, eyes wide. It was only twenty seconds, at the most, and by the time it was over his expression had twisted into anguish.

The interior of the car was still way too hot for comfort, and he fumbled the key into the ignition so he could turn the AC on.

"Oh, God." It slipped out, unbidden and hoarse, as he tried to remember what they'd been talking about. The Apostle? Aaron? "Contingency...plans? Shit, I'm doing a terrible--job of being comforting." Considering how careful he usually was about his language, that was telling.

"I know, but-" it wasn't like Emmanuel to cut himself off like that. Julien drew his attention back that way, and then turned his head and stared human-style, direct gaze and all. Fogged with the day's issues it took him a moment to understand.

Julien wasn't exactly an expert at recognizing these things, but what else could it be? Despite the heat a part of him went cold. He drew his legs closer in and leaned forwards. A little nasty part of him was glad, he didn't know why, but mostly he was alarmed and worried, and it was almost a relief to have something different to focus on.

Before he could to think of what to do Emmanuel was out of it. He didn't have to - okay. Julien leaned back again and clasped his fingers together in his lap. "It's okay. Something bad?"

"I--I'm sorry. I really, uh. Wasn't expecting..." How does he even start? By trying not to think about it. Focus.

"I don't--really know. Just sudden, and--it's been a while. You know. So--mm." He swallowed hard, taking a deep breath. Yeah, maybe eating out wasn't the best idea.

"Let's, uh, get takeout." He shut his door, pulling his seatbelt on with slightly unsteady hands. Why now? Was it just random? Though he couldn't help thinking the anguish on that man's--Dean, his name was Dean. The expression on his face looked a lot like what Julien was feeling right now. Hurt, and...it was almost like betrayal.

The rest of it, though...it was too much. His ears felt like they were ringing a little. "I think--uh, I think the menu's in the glove compartment. If we call, it'll be ready by the time we get there."

"You really can't expect these things, they just... wallop you over the head like that." At another time he might have been able to make that sound exasperated, even a little amused. Now it was small. Helpless. "Every time. I'm sorry."

It looked like Emmanuel wanted to try and push it back, for now. Okay. Right now Julien didn't know if he'd usually try and say something. Now...

Now that he'd been distracted and then seen there was nothing he could do, Julien felt weirdly drained, like what he wanted was to be alone and curl up and wallow in unhappiness. But he knew he didn't really want that. "Sure. Are you, uh... are you fit to drive?"

Edited 2013-09-23 05:04 (UTC)

"No kidding," he muttered. At Julien's question, he took a moment to close his eyes and take a few deep breaths.

"I think--I am. Yeah." Emmanuel didn't really want to hang around here any longer than he had to. In fact, home was looking pretty good right now. "I think food will...help both of us."

[Sounds good!]

The drive and pickup were uneventful. Julien had stayed out of sight because it turned out the place they went employed some of his friends and he didn't actually want to talk to them right now.

The rectory was a victorian, painted white and modified into two apartments. It was actually directly behind the church, on the street running parallel to it. Emmanuel parked in the driveway and helped carry the food into the lower apartment. The inside was fairly clean and packed with a lot of bookshelves, though there were some dishes left in the sink. Instead of a table, there was a small bar set against the wall, with three stools. Emmanuel dropped his keys on the counter with a relieved sigh.

"You...want anything to drink?"

Julien sighed too, more softly, unconsciously mimicking Emmanuel as he set his share down and turned to see the place. Used now to how everything looked filthy always, he ignored that, though the dishes distracted him. Don't, he told himself, and nodded at the bar.

"Water's good. That's a cool design choice."

Emmanuel poured him a glass and hastily went to move the dishes to the dishwasher. "Oh, uh, I can't take credit for it, I'm afraid. The whole place was redone just a little before I moved in, so..." He trailed off, wondering if he should really have a beer at the moment. It wasn't like he was going to drink that much, he just needed to clear his head. If that were even possible.

"It suits me just fine, though. I don't exactly get guests often." He gave up and took a bottle from the fridge, fumbling slightly with opening it. He busied himself fishing the food out of the paper bag it was packed in, getting out silverware to replace the plastic utensils the restaurant had given them. A thought came to him belatedly, then--

"Not that I--dislike guests or anything. You know."

Julien had kind of wanted to do that - he'd learned to like cleaning, over the years. "Still, it's interesting. In a good way."

"It's okay." He leaned out a little and touched the back of Emmanuel's hand, briefly, and withdrew. When he was upset enough - even if it was a case of feeling for someone who was upset - Julien liked to touch someone, to assure himself that they were there. He tried to be conscious and careful about it. Maybe that was part of why, with Aaron - Julien smiled weakly. "I don't think anything of it. Even if I did, that doesn't really matter."

Settling on the stool, he sipped the water. Julien was getting tired of the taste of bottled, but he wasn't going to say that. "Besides, I don't have people over much. It's actually my sister's apartment, where I live."

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skip to E.'s place, maybe?

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