obsession with death

She shouldn’t have grinned at the comment about the devil taking over the world, but a wide smile passes across her face anyway. It’s a morbid thing to smile at, something that should instill fear in them instead of that rebellious nature, but she can’t help and sit here and think it’s funny that outside these walls the devil has taken over the world and here they are sitting in a church feeling like outsiders. 

It was funny to her because she didn’t feel at home in the apocalypse run by the devil, but didn’t feel at home in a church either and if neither of those were places where she fit in, she didn’t know exactly where it was she was supposed to be. 

Probably right here. Not in this church and not in this world, but right here, next to Niko, picking at his jeans. 

She let’s Niko play with a strand of her hair, tilts her head so he’ll have easier access to it, because as much as he enjoys the affection, she enjoys it right back. Likes that there’s someone who likes her for who she is without wanting to get in her pants. Likes that there’s no ulterior motive to this friendship and no end in sight. That she doesn’t sense that Niko will one day just grow tired of her and kick her out of his life. 

She rests her chin on her arm and looks over at him, smile still light on her face as she watches him, just appreciating his existence here in the moment because she couldn’t imagine doing this without him. Couldn’t imagine any other existence for her. She would have died in that bar she’d holed herself up. Whether she’d drink herself to sleep or just let the monsters come and get her, she had been on a path to destruction. Then Niko had walked in. 

She still finds it funny she’d never seen him coming. 

“Tell me about California again,” she asks of him. 

The comment seems to amuse her anyway, and he doesn’t put much thought into it beyond that. Maybe the human race has already lost. It doesn’t matter much to him in the end, as selfish as the thought is. His world’s always been a fucked up place, all that’s ever mattered to him are the few people in it that have ever made him feel like he had a place here.

Castor. The coven. Alice. Justin, but that’s a less comfortable thought when he’s sure he thinks about him more than the other man is thinking about him. Right now it’s easy to swear that doesn’t matter, his promise was to get Alice to the other side of the country and he meant that much. More than he thinks she might really understand.

She doesn’t say much, and it leaves Niko quiet in return, because he isn’t sure what to do with Alice when she’s silent. Most people he’s eager to fill the space with something, anything he can think of, with her he figures it means she’s thinking something deeper than she might usually voice, and he’s not in any rush to interrupt that. Whether she ends up saying it or not, he just watches her back as she seems to study him, lips pressed shut in an easy smile.

He twists the strand of hair into a curl before letting it go, watching it bounce lightly around her face before she breaks the silence. He doesn’t expect the question, but he doesn’t challenge it, he just laughs before giving a lazy shrug of his shoulders. “Which part?”

He’s certain that his explanation of California would be different from a thousand others. It was home to him, but that had nothing to do with the place. It was the people who had finally taken him in, given him that home he craved. “Like the beaches, the clubs? Music scene’s pretty awesome, but the people are all fake as hell. Or are you asking about the coven?"

For a good while, Bryce is just stuck staring at the wreckage of bodies in front of him. The gore itself isn’t anything to stare at. Considering half the things they’d looked dead in the eye, it wasn’t the worst. But life was supposed to have rules. Monsters, war, even death had rules, or so he thought. The kid damn near twiddled his thumbs and upset all of that, and Bryce didn’t know which thought was more unsettling, that one’s will could be spread into multiple empty shells, or that it could overwrite someone else’s on this large a scale. What was the difference, really, between this pile of undead limbs and the still-living forms of the people around them?

Bryce snarled, shooting more dirty, hostile looks over at Niko like he couldn’t help himself. And he couldn’t. It wasn’t right, and his memories, his conscience, all screamed for him to stop giving a shit about congeniality rewards and eliminate unbalanced threats in his midst. 

“I could pull each of your scrawny limbs from your body ‘til you’re like that fuck from the Oblongs, if death truly evades you.” He didn’t know the truth or depth of Niko’s quips but he stepped onto his side anyway, eyes narrowing viciously. “I don’t ‘get over’ things, especially not when said things sleep where I sleep, where my family sleeps, doing God-knows-what and becoming God-knows-who.”

It isn’t fear he feels; just tired. The threat settling like ice over his chest, that urge to separate himself from this moment altogether following quickly on its heels. Maybe it was stupid to show off, but that comment still stings more than the idea of being ripped apart. 

Magic wasn’t shit. 

He misses Cas. Abruptly and desperately, so much it’s pathetic, and he’s sure the man himself would tell him as much. He’s capable. He can take care of himself, but Castor would’ve had something better to say. Something smart, or scathing, or maybe he would’ve just bled the man dry already and called it a day. Either way, he would know the answer, when Niko’s not even sure why there’s a question. Months of travelling with them, he hadn’t thought he’d find himself sitting in a moment like this, one so achingly familiar.

But Cas isn’t here, Niko doesn’t know the right thing to say in response to any of that, so in the end he just puffs out a laugh. Something short and void of any real amusement, when he just feels exhausted by it.

“Dude. Do you ever just fucking listen to yourself? Come on. You sound like a caveman.” The laughter fades on a sigh before he straightens up. Fist hitting his chest, brow furrowed in mockery of the harsh expression of the man in front of him. "Me strong man. Me smash scrawny witch ‘cause he make fire.”

He shakes his head before he slumps back. Thumb pressing hard against the sharpie still in his fingers, but he can’t get himself to focus on the runes anymore. “It’s such a fucking limited world view. A body is just a vessel. Destroying it isn’t some ultimate solution, you know? It doesn’t always mean true death. It just makes a mess.”

It’s a startling honest answer to a question she never asked. In fact, it even feels like a confession. Worst of all she thinks she understands, wanting to be the kid chosen, wanting someone to love her or at the very least like her. Just a little bit. Just enough so she’d be chosen. It makes her sad, actually, a sudden little stab of it as she looks down at him and his smile.  It’s why Doe answers an unasked question about why she doesn’t smile as much, “’Never made a difference if I smiled or not.”

Then he’s picking up on the question she stopped too late and Doe braces herself for names similar to her own. Except that’s not what she gets. Steven. The simplicity of it gets a sudden, quiet laugh from Doe, ducking her head and hiding the smile as she shakes her head, “That’s a terrible name.”

Doe takes too long to answer the question about parents or anyone else at all. She considers lying, maybe mention Tali and exaggerate their relationship. Niko’s already moving on as she fiddles with her jumper, still, hand hidden away as she considers if or how she’ll answer. They sound similar enough, Niko would understand. Doe can’t decide if she wants this stranger to understand her because he’s nice and friendly but that doesn’t change the fact he’ll go at some point too. A future disappointment.

Niko’s laughing, though, at her comments on how far away he’s going. Not that she feels silly for it, especially because he’s agreeing with her. Sort of. And Niko keeps talking and describes Alice. He talks like he’s younger and it has her watching him, actually looking him in the face without scrutinizing him or watching fearfully for some give away to what he’s thinking. Just. Watching the person she’s talking to. 

Pretty is a word that makes her nose wrinkle even if he’s only being nice about his friend. She can’t help it. Fortune-teller, though, does get her attention, and the rest after that. A friend made after everything happened… and they’re still going round together? Doe rarely accepts the judgments of others, but she’s curious, more than curious. It’s like… like finding a unicorn. 

She blazes past his enthusiasm for his home — a concept that holds no real meaning to her beyond something described in books — because she’s more stuck on the idea of making a friend last that long. A friend like that who didn’t die on each other with monsters around.

“You mean… you and Alice have been together this whole time? Like… like a whole year?” She searches his expression for the lie. “And she’s from California too? Or is she just going with you?”

That answers that.

She doesn’t respond when he asks about her parents, but after that comment, Niko doesn’t need her to. He doesn’t consider himself the smartest man in the room on any given day, but he doesn’t need it spelled out more clearly than that. They’re both orphans, never claimed by anyone. And it has her name settling in with a different kind of clarity, effort put into keeping his face neutral as he wonders if Doe ‘like the deer’ is more like Jane Doe, the unidentified. 

He doesn’t ask. There’s a stab of sympathy that won’t let him drop his gaze, old, familiar wounds feeling closer to the surface when it’s reflected on someone else. Someone still living through it, still a child, still lost. It almost makes it worse when she laughs at something as simple as a name, because she looks too much like a kid then. A happier one, like he imagines it’s supposed to be like. For a moment his teeth hook the corner of his lip, old habit even if there’s no hoop jammed through it anymore. 

“Don’t feel bad. Didn’t make a difference for me either.”

It’s an effort to keep his expression cheerful, or at least neutral, that new awareness of the kid in front of him settling in. And a quiet regret that he doesn’t know what to say that might be comforting, any advice that’ll sound hopeful or positive. 

“Yeah.” He nods in easy agreement, a quick smile that’s half grateful for something else to focus on. Even if he doesn’t have to wonder long why she’s so fascinated by that idea. Chances were, no one stuck around for her that long, and he understood it better than he wanted to. That belief was still there in the back of his mind, that no one stuck around. No one stayed. A shadow of a thought that haunted him more than he liked, even with that growing list of people trying to prove him wrong. Even Castor. “The whole year.” 

He shakes his head, because it’s his hopes resting on the place and fewer of hers. He was the one clinging to that belief that his coven was still standing, that the man he viewed as closer to a god wouldn’t let anything happen to the rest of their family. And they were in it together now, little thought that Alice wouldn’t find a place there too. 

Niko makes a joke that maybe the cards are the work of the devil and she narrows her eyes at him like the words are incredulous for her to believe. Though she can’t say for certain that it wasn’t. She just knows that her cards work. Her cards actually did what she sought out to do with them and not everyone had that sort of ability. It makes her itch to get her hands on them all the more. 

“Then the devil’s got too much idle time,” she counters and watches him him back in the chair. Like they owned the place and it’s not too far fetched in her mind. Owning whatever place they walked into and she knew this place was different. There was someone who called this place home, more than just their little group of squatters. She couldn’t do the normal things that they did when they came to new places and start to defame the walls or break down the furniture to build forts. There were expectations on behavior that she had to be distinctly aware of. 

A shrug escapes her when Niko asks if that’s what she really thinks and she doesn’t honestly know. It has her placing her hand in her chin and looking out at the little sanctuary some more. She didn’t know what to make of this place or the people who called it home. Didn’t know why they would allow other people to come and join them and for the most part, Alice wonders where the others are. If they were so inviting of people, she wondered why their little group was one of the few people who took residence here with these nuns. 

“I dunno,” she says simply to Niko. “Either way I’m gonna bust out their wine when they’re not looking.” 

She gives a snort when he says that Buddha wouldn’t mind and reaches over to pick at the bottom of his jeans, that familiarity with each other not stilling her hands or making her think that she was out of line to play with him. “Buddha seems like a cool dude.” 

“Isn’t that a saying? Something about the devil and idle hands?” His nose wrinkles for a moment, even if there’s no real annoyance that he can’t recall the rest of it. He’s sure one of his foster mother’s used to say something like that to him, but he’s alright with how hazy the memory feels.

“Anyway, he’s probably too busy taking over the world.” It’s easier to just laugh at it, as if he’s as careless as the posture he adopts. Kicked back and carefree, an illusion that he’s always clung to tightly. Who he wants to be, instead of every fear and insecurity that always seems to be fighting and screaming to make itself heard above the rest. At least they’re quieter here, quieter with Alice. 

There’s gratitude for that he rarely voices, or thinks on with any real clarity. The question of where he’d be if he hadn’t found her, what kind of group he might’ve fallen in with. Maybe he’d still be alone, and that seems even worse. Only the dead for company.

She puts genuine thought into it after he does, and a quiet laugh escapes him at the answer she finally comes to. Maybe they’re not welcome here. He can’t draw runes on the walls to keep them safe, she can’t read her cards. Or even half the things they might do if there wasn’t a man on a cross watching them just about everywhere they went. But it didn’t matter much when he didn’t expect they’d be staying that long.

“Think you’ll have to get in line. Already saw one dude with a bottle.” He stretches a hand out to toy with a stray lock of hair for a moment, as if in some childish retribution for the way she picks at his jeans. Not that he minds any of it. He craves those small affections more than he cares to admit, easier to breathe in his own frame when they’re offered.

Easier for a honest laugh to escape him when she comments on Buddha, his head bobbing in agreement. “The chillest.” 

Niko leans in, speaking in a lower tone like he’s sharing a secret. Doe only smiles at that. Tali said similar things. Well. She said things that vaguely fit that idea but she said things in her own, special way. It’s told as a joke, the idea of the nuns scolding them physically. Doe purses her lips, a silent response she doesn’t dare so out loud: if they ever tried it they’d regret it.

Doe picks up every little detail she can: and Niko drops many of them. Each nugget of information adding up to a much clearer picture of him. An alarmingly similar picture. So similar she doesn’t really know how to respond. 

She listens to the story and she’s thrilled by it. A big part of her ( that she wishes were smaller ) is jealous. It paints a different experience than Doe in her various ‘homes’. There were never cute nicknames like that for her. She was often told to smile, not that she smiled too much. A sullen child who brought bad luck where ever she went. Niko questions if the old lady was making fun of him and she only shrugs her shoulders. Sounds like she was nice, Doe thinks it was probably a good thing.

“It’s fine,” she says at the mention of him talking too much. It happens often with Doe, some people would fill the long silences she left for them like it was their job. But she doesn’t press for the story of his surname because she knows sometimes that’s just a trick to get out of talking about something. “It suits you, I think… I mean, you have smiled a lot.” One conversation wasn’t enough to go on but for a first impression, it’s true.

Doe desperately tries to think of any nickname she was given that could’ve turned into a cool name. A cool name where she could throw out a little story like Niko every time. It’d be great, she thinks. It must feel great to have some history that someone could share and it’d make them happy too. Not look at them with pity.

“What else did they…” Doe begins to ask about the other names but swiftly decides against it. Maybe not everyone was as nice as that Japanese grandma. Doe shakes her head before quickly dismissing it entirely, “Nevermind.”

Doe startles again, a quick step back quickly as Niko’s moving. Gangly legs crossing over and he’s… sitting down. Just sits. Cross-legged on the floor and answering her question without pause. It’s weird. She eyes him out cautiously, confused why he decided to sit on the floor, but deciding it’s not a bad thing just a weird thing. Like nikoniko.

Doe doesn’t hide the wide-eyes at his answer because Venice Beach and California seem like a whole other world. She’d never even been out of this state. No, not even this city. “That’s super far.” Maybe that’s silly and it only seems so far because she’s a lot younger and smaller. The next question is one she should’ve expected. People would always ask and she’d usually have a quick answer or a lie. The real honest is that Doe was simply going to keep going. She tried to leave before things went bad and that had to be good enough. It made her last this long.

She fidgets more considering the thought, fist finally uncurling but still hidden in her sleeve, picking at the jumpers threads. It’s a relief to know this group will keep moving but it only makes her more aware of how little a plan she has for herself. A whole group of people, with one goal in mind? It sounds too good to be true.

“I dunno,” Doe shifts away from her quick answer immediately into her own questions, “ Why California? And who’s Alice?”  Two rapid-fire of questions was probably a good way to see if he’d keep up his smiles and patience with her. 

If his rambling bothers her, she still shrugs off his apology easily and he accepts it as genuine. Her expressions so far reflect too much honesty, whether she means for them to or not, and he’d like to think he’d catch it if she were just being polite.

It’s not a question, just a comment on something he’s wholly aware of. That smile that lingers on his lips as if on cue, but he still answers it like she’s asked one. A slight shrug of his shoulders accompanying it, idle fingers finding the holes in his jeans to pick at. “People like you better if you smile. Most people anyway. And I really wanted them to like me. Probably too much.” 

It still matters to him, more than logic or self-respect swears that it should. Ingrained in him too early on, desperate for someone to take him in, some family to call his own. Even now with the words past his lips, his own name seems like some vain attempt to hold onto that kinder moment. An old woman smiling fondly at him, instead of all the ones that came after. Most with too many children beneath their roof grabbing him firmly by the arm and demanding he stop crying out so loudly every night.

“What else did they call me?” It’s a guess that’s the question she started to ask, but it seems a safe one. His smile only wanes slightly, a good dozen answers he could give her. Other children could be cruel, called freak enough times that it might as well have been his name. 

But it seems important to feign unbothered by it, even more than usual, because she is still a kid. In a harsher world than he had to grow up in, and it feels stupid he still can’t shake it when compared to that. He settles on the kinder answer with a quickly flashed grin. “Steven.”

It’d be easy to let himself sink into those memories, that old heartache somehow always too close at hand. No matter what else he’s been through. But he fixates less on his own history this time, watching her a little more closely just for the questions she’s asked. How little it phases her to think he’d been in some mixed family home. It says more about her than it might him, and Niko hesitates for a moment, that question he hadn’t wanted to voice seeming slowly more important. 

“Can I ask… you have parents somewhere? Or someone besides the nuns?” 

He strongly suspects he already knows. To the point where it’d surprise him if she had anyone to name at all. But he still laughs when she comments on just how far it was, willing to linger on that instead if she doesn’t want to answer him at all. “Yeah. It was a quicker trip on a plane.” 

“Alice, BFF, pretty, dark hair, fortune teller? Well… not right now. Nuns frown on that too. Met her right when all this started. Kills at mini golf, you’ll like her.” He says it with more confidence than it might warrant, but he’s blinded enough by the people he cares about that he can’t fathom someone not liking her. “California’s where I’m from. It’s where home is. People I wanna get back to. Also, it’s rad.”

He’s… nice.  Genuinely nice to the point Doe could very nearly be suspicious but he’s the first to ask really about how she’s looking after herself. The question is more like something that lady from the government with her clipboard and boxes to tick to make sure she was in a good home would ask Doe. Caring but indifferent. It was her job to care, after all. It’s not his.

Doe nods, “Yeah. They’re nice to me. I mean, maybe a bit boring but…” It’s a small thing, but she genuinely smiles at her own joke and glances up quickly to see if he’ll find it funny too. Except he’s already laughing and her Pokemon related yelling isn’t met with annoyance much to her surprise. 

Niko’s smile is huge, apparently genuine delight that she got the Pokemon reference. That train of conversation, though, is quickly pushed aside because of his next sentence. A bombshell to Doe: He picked it out himself.  Doe feels like a connoisseur of names at that moment, appreciating it and looking at the man it belongs to. She decides it fits him perfectly. Niko. An odd sounding name but nice once you get used to it. Just like him, she thinks, but he’ll need more time to prove himself.

“It’s a really good name. Does it mean anything? Nikoran, I mean. King’s… obvious,” and she smiles again, something small. That’d be a cool name too. Although Doe thinks King would be a good first name for someone other than herself.

Niko tells her off for apologizing and she can’t help the reflex to duck her head in shame and wait for it to pass. He’s not being mean, she knows that much, but he’s trying to making her feel better in a way others have scolded her. Doe doesn’t want to touch him. Or anyone for that matter but… Maybe it’ll be ok? Nice was a relative term and often enough people proved they were only nice for so long. Or they were nice and died. Maybe it’s dark of her to hope Niko will fall into the second group. Nice but not for long.

She forms a loose fist with one hand, takes a steeling breath in before she does it. A barely there moment of contact and she hopes he’ll be satisfied with that. Doe’s immediately pulling into herself, sleeve up and over her hand still in a fist. She pushes past it and moves on quickly, “Um, you said cross-country? Earlier? Where are you going?”

There are worse things the sisters could be, worse people the girl in front of him could be staying with, but he’s still delighted at her answer. That quick flash of humor that keeps his smile firmly in place. Leaning forward slightly, voice lower like one of those nuns might walk around the corner at any second and catch him talking about them. 

“I mean, what do they even do for fun? Sit around and talk about all the things they can’t do?” Not that he’s all that attached to any of his vices, and it’s funnier to him that it’s those basic theological differences that have him on the outside looking in. Whatever’s out there, and he doesn’t pretend to know, he doesn’t think they’d approve much of what he could do. Not when most of the living don’t. “That’s good though. That they’re looking out for you. I keep waiting to do or say the wrong thing and get my wrists slapped.” 

Though the joke would likely be less funny if he had been raised by a ruler wielding nun. And he couldn’t be sure if simply wandering around didn’t fall under that category of ‘the wrong thing.’ His existence might be sin enough, that quiet hissing in his ear fighting to serve as a constant reminder of it.

His nose wrinkles at her question, more out of embarrassment than anything else. “Sorry. That was another Pokemon joke.” 

“So, there was this little Japanese grandma at one of the homes. Real cool old lady. She used to call me ‘nikoniko’ then laugh and pinch my cheeks. But uh... I liked that better than anything else they tried to call me, so I kept it. Mean’s ‘smiley.’ Or just smile. Something like that. I was never super sure if it was a good thing or if she was making fun of me, you know?” 

“King’s uh...” He stalls out briefly, and even if the meaning’s obvious, it’s always harder to try and explain the man he got it from. At least in any normal terms, because he wasn’t a father. If he had to put him in familial terms then older brother might be closer. None of it fit right. Castor was Castor, and in the end he just shrugs. Even if that feels too dismissive. “Man, that’s a long story and I’m already talking too much.”

Which he feels worse about by the second, watching the way she shrinks in front of him. He almost tells her it’s okay, she doesn’t have to fist bump either, but he gets a quick bump of knuckles against his before she’s pulling back. His smile flickers, an effort to keep it in place just watching her reaction, a thing he can’t help but feel guilty for.

She asks another question though, and he jumps on that chance to change the subject. Ankles crossing before he folds himself into a sitting position in front of her. If it’s not his height putting that uncomfortable look on her face, he can at least take that factor out of it. “Venice beach. Well, I am anyway. And Alice. Everyone else is just ‘oh, yeah, California’ but it works out.” Not that he cares, callous as it might sound even to himself. As long as he gets home, they can settle in anywhere they like. “You headed somewhere? Or you think you’ll stay here?”  

Bryce is almost determined after that to pay the witch no mind. Or half a mind, because he can never be truly at rest with his back to one of them. As hard as he might try to accomplish that, there are things he can’t turn off. Things he can’t ignore, particularly when they unfold right in front of his face. There’s enough of a pause where Bryce almost starts to forget the conversation entirely, but once it’s through, he notices almost instantly as the revenants reach some unnatural, collective…calm. They just stop. For a very brief moment, mind you, but one that would be impossible to deny for how universal a motion it is. Like they’re all of one mind. They stop grappling for him and start reaching for each other; for themselves. 

Bryce takes one, staggering step backwards, spine straight and eyes wide as he watches. It takes him a moment to remember, to feel the intent behind it. He turns away from the gate, confident that the source of this influence wasn’t from demon outside, but within. He sets his eyes on Niko again, icy cold with pupils thin. He’s silent, listening to the sound of the revenants ripping themselves apart behind him, until the noise is low enough that his hiss sounds deafening.

“Yes, you did.” 

He snarls as he glances back at the horrific mess on the other side of the gate, just indiscriminate mounds of flesh in some places. True, he’d been dead set on killing them all, as well. But this wasn’t…no one should have that kind of power. 

“Fucking freaks playing games. You need to be put down, same as them.”

It’s a long moment before Niko even glances at the mess he made, the undead on the other side of the fence left ripped apart by vengeful spirits. Ones he holds the leash to, and he can feel them still, even after his will’s been carried out. His attention doesn’t linger on the aftermath long, for no other reason than because it’s boring. 

So is the reaction he gets, and he can’t stop the quiet sigh that leaves his lips. Disappointment, maybe. Hurt, even if he wishes it didn’t. There’s still nothing pleasant at seeing disgust looking back at him through anyone’s eyes.

“Yeah, probably.” If he should argue, he doesn’t, too busy trying to bite back the old familiar sting of those words. Every designation that he’d flinched from as a child, spit at him again now like none of it’s changed. Only the amount of vitriol in the other man’s voice, because he’s not the annoyed kid trying to sleep in the bunk above him, he’s witness to exactly what Niko’s capable of at his very worst. Or best. He knows which Cas would call it.

He shrugs his shoulders like it doesn’t matter, because really, it shouldn’t. One man's opinion of him is pallid and worthless in comparison to what Castor thinks of him. Talented, powerful; and he clings to those few compliments the man’s offered to him, even if it feels like collecting scraps off the kitchen table. He’s lived off less, it’s enough to sustain him now. Even if it keeps his gaze firmly on his own hands, instead of the other man. 

“But enough folks have tried and it just won’t take. So looks like we’ll both have to get over it.”

The humming of the Jaws theme song escapes her and she makes another biting motion towards him, but this time her teeth don’t find purchase. There’s a lazy smile across her lips and she climbs up onto one of the pews, sitting on the back of it as he gives his viewpoint of the place. 

At first it’s just a comment and she nods her head because, yeah, this place was pretty pious. A little too much for her liking and even if she was mostly playing when she’d proclaimed her joy at not bursting into flames, there was some truth to the idea that she was stepping into someone else’s house uninvited. That this had never been and never would be where she belonged. 

Crossing her arms over her chest, she leans over them, closing in on herself when he says that there’s lots of ghosts in the garden. She makes a face when he adds on that perhaps they’d buried bodies back there and she can’t tell if he’s joking or not. She wouldn’t put it passed those nuns, that’s for sure. 

Then the question comes about what she thinks of the place and she’s quiet for a little moment, staring up at the crucifix behind the pulpit. She scratches slightly at the side of her face. 

“Shit, I don’t know,” she tells him. “They think my cards are the work of the devil and banned them,” she complains, scrunching up her nose, whining a little bit because she wanted to get a good read on the place, but she also didn’t want to be the reason the group got kicked the heck out of here. 

Another moment and she looks over at him. “We probably don’t belong here, you know? If God was saving them, he’s probably pissed they let us in here.” 

Niko laughs again before he makes himself more comfortable. Feet kicking out on the back of the chair in front of him, legs stretched out and fingers laced behind his head in some attempt at casual. There’s the distant thought that the sisters would probably disapprove of that too, if they walked through the doors to find either of them like this.

But Alice had a way of making even bad ideas seem like good ones, the familiarity of her in front of him now just reminding him of golf courses and abandoned bars they’d holed up in. It made it easier to try and ignore that vague unease that threatened to crop up.

“Maybe they are the work of the devil.” He wiggles his fingers at her dramatically, even if the thought doesn’t bear any real contemplation. As far as he’s concerned it’s just her own brand of magic. Maybe not like his, but close enough.

“You think so?” He tilts his head at her, brow furrowing slightly as he gives that some real contemplation. Maybe that meant the kinder thing was to leave, before things got any more blasphemous just from their presence alone. Though he’s just as quick to wonder why they’d post signs everywhere if they were going to be selective about it.

He shrugs after a moment, because in the end he’s not really convinced there’s a god to piss off. “Buddha wouldn’t mind. I’m just saying.”  

He’s still friendly and cheerful despite Doe’s short answers. The tall man agrees she’s definitely not a nun, and it hits Doe that he was probably just joking with her. Definitely was joking and she’d gone and taken it too seriously. 

“Yeah. Just for now…” It’s enough of an answer, she thinks, that he may not pry beyond that. Or he will. Ask why it’s only ‘temporary’ or how long she’s been here. Doe decides to beat him to the punch, abruptly continuing to explain herself more, “There’s more monsters than usual outside so I starting hanging out with them. ‘Cause of the gates. ” It was an odd way to think of it. Hanging out with nuns. It’s nearly a funny thought. 

There’s never any time to even smile, though, because he does say something about her name. It’s not a lot but she knows he might be fishing for more. So she nods with a barely audible ‘thanks’ and hopes they’ll move swiftly on

Doe’s grip tightens on the torch as he holds out a hand to greet her ‘properly’. Nikoking. She gasps in recognition. “Like the pokemon?” Doe blurts out the words, stumbling to an awkward stop as he’s saying practically the same sentence with one key addition: ‘not’.

“Oh. Sorry, it’s just… that’s cool, you know? Nikoking. Two names but it’s also one name combined? Like, you got a three-in-one,” Doe begins her ramble and only feels sillier by the second. Especially because now she’s completely ignored the offered hand and probably looks rude on top of it. “Um, sorry, I don’t like to…” she frees a hand only to wave at his outstretched hand. It’s then she looks at his hand properly and sees symbols drawn onto the back of his hand. She frowns and unthinkingly tilts her head to the side, trying to look at the back of the hand currently held out to her. “Sorry.”

She doesn’t mention anyone else in her answer. Maybe she wouldn’t to a stranger, which seems like the safest, smartest route for someone who looks so young. But it still drives home the thought that she’s alone, and for a moment his lips press together, fighting to keep that smile on his lips, and hold back any more questions. He’s not prepared to deal with a kid with dead parents, especially when there’s the uncomfortable thought squirming through his brain that they could be any one of the ghosts trying to whisper so desperately to him now.

He keeps ignoring them, nodding his head at her answer instead. “Makes sense. The gates are why we’re in here too. One more pit stop on our cross country tour.” The thought’s barely past his lips before he focuses on her again. “They’re nice to you? Feed you and everything?"

The words that tumble over his have him laughing abruptly, probably louder than he should be in the dark of night. And it’s only the thought of nuns coming to chastise them both that has him tamping down on it quickly. Still, he’s left with a bright grin, rocking back on his heels. “Shit, you’re the first person that got that.” 

“Picked it out myself.” Which was close enough to the truth. King was Castor’s name, it was given to him like a gift. One of the most cherished things he’s ever received. "It used to be Nikoran, but I evolved.”

His hand hovers there, for long enough that he notices, but he isn’t offended when she waves him off. There’s no room to be, not when it’s simply habit he beat into himself. Shake hands, be polite, as if those things could compensate for everything else that was wrong with him. “No ‘sorry’s.’ What are you even sorry for?” 

His fingers curl into a fist instead, and he can’t pretend that part of it isn’t just him trying to find some way to put her at ease. “Fist bump?”

Doe is the only who can see the other so she keeps her invisibility for a few more moments. He’s tall. Like, stupidly tall but not as serious as a tall person should be. He’s stepping back even saying ‘woah’ like a comic sound effect.

The stranger accepts her apology super casually as he’s rubbing his eye. Still adjusting from the sudden light but not annoyed. At all. Then he tops it off by looking at her and laughing. A short thing but she doesn’t know if it’s a good short thing or a bad short thing.

He’s friendly seeming and smiling but he looks… odd. Pale with tattoos and she doesn’t know what that means about him. They’re not exactly scary tattoos either ( not like Tali’s marks but she’s not scary ) they’re colorful. She doesn’t stare long enough to tell exactly what they are because he might not like that.

She frowns at his words. It’s not like she’s dressed like a nun or anything. And she has to look down at herself after that comment, as though she needs the reminder of what she looks like. “I’m not a nun,” Doe says with a little too much annoyance.

“Um. Doe. Like the deer.” She clarifies out of habit born from the fact people seemed to always expect something a little longer. Or they’d make a bad joke, best to beat them to it. State it as a fact. For a long moment, she stands quietly and… Yeah. She doesn’t say anything else.

She’s never sure what to do with friendly strangers.

There’s enough relief that she’s not one of the sisters that Niko doesn’t mind the short answers, or even that trace of aggravation in her tone. Most of the time he’s oblivious to everything but blatant aggression anyway.

“Of course you’re not.” His cheerfulness doesn’t wane, even if it's tempered. He doesn’t want her left with the impression that it’s her he’s laughing at. Only at how seriously she is when she corrects him, like he might really believe otherwise. As much as he believes in not judging anyone by appearances alone, the tiny, scrappy thing in front of him doesn’t look like she’s in line to take her vows any time soon.

“You just hang out with them?” It’s the closest he’ll come to asking if she has parents hiding out here too, when it’s an easy assumption that the answer’s probably no. Just about everyone’s lost someone. If she’s sneaking around here by herself, she’s probably alone.

Though it’s tempting to ask just which one of her parents came up with the name she gives him, a thing he keeps to himself. “Huh. That’s a cool name.” 

He offers his hand out as he introduces himself, a habit he’s never bothered to try and rid himself of. Runes still etched on the back of his hands in black sharpie, but it doesn’t occur to him to try and hide them from her. Maybe the nuns. It seems like something they might frown on.  “Niko King. Not like the pokemon.” 

The large group of strangers arrival was unnerving, to put it mildly. So she hid away. Two months in the monastery meant she knew all the crooks and crannies and all of the Sister’s routines so generally she moved around without being seen. It was difficult to keep that up with all the new faces around but after a few days, she thought she had a general sense of their routines.

It unnerved Doe so much she started to keep her knife on her at all times. She fashioned a holster for it from socks and attached it to her belt, a solution she was quite proud of.

Doe tiptoes through the empty halls, carrying a small wind up torch to light her way. Past sleeping bodies who had never seen her. There was a sense of pride in that, being unseen despite being stuck in the same building as them. Apparently, the universe isn’t always in her favor. Doe turns a corner and the torch lands on a person. She jumps back, light flicking up into the person’s face.

“Sorry,” she says quickly. Eying them up and down before pointing the torch down to their chest, away from their eyes, and having to let them look at her. Doe’s quick to train her expression into something neutral even as her heart races. “Didn’t mean to…”

Niko’s been gently encouraged to sleep at night by more than one woman with a cross around her neck. Advice he’d usually be happy to take, but this place is louder than he’d thought it be, summoning too many childhood horrors that he’d prefer to leave forgotten.

He’s just taking a lap, he needs a bottle of water, he’s armed and ready with excuses in case he comes across one of their pious new friends. Little interest in finding out whether those cliches about nuns and their rulers were true. 

He still starts when he rounds the corner and gets hit with light in his eyes, a quick step back a hastily expelled “woah,” and his hands up, like he’s facing an arrest for wandering when he’s not supposed to be. Tense until that apology comes, and it has him settling in slow degrees, that quick reminder repeated in his head that they can’t really do much to him.

“It’s cool.” He says it before he gets a look at her, squinting against the bright light directed at his face. He’s still blinking the spots from his eyes when it falls away from his face. Heel of his palm rubbing at one eye before he finally gets a good look at her. And that’s almost as startling as the spotlight that fell on him, a short laugh of relief escaping him as he looks down at her.

“Well shit, I didn’t know nuns came in pint-sizes. What’s your name?”  

Bryce doesn’t know exactly what response he expects, but what he starts to get from Niko ain’t it. Yet even that feels almost familiar now, something like the dozenth time this has happened. Talking straight to people who couldn’t give a shit. Goofballs, morbidly carefree. The younger man gets about halfway through his strange animal-like tangent before Bryce’s expression falls into one of expectant, bitter scorn and he turns back to the gates, neck and head shaking loosely as he shoves his knife back into some eyesockets.

“Again and a-fucking-gain, Bryce, I don’t know why you fuckin’ try,” he chastises himself under his breath, grunting as his knife hit bone and slid from its intended path, the revenant on the other end snarling and still grappling, spraying unnecessarily against his front. He wrenched the blade free and drove it home a second time, grimacing down at his soiled clothes as he stepped back again, sighing heavily at how many revenants continued to moan even after he’d dropped dozens.

The ‘offer’ to help reaches his ears but Bryce only turns halfway around to glance at him, gaze hard and distrustful. “I don’t need your help. Do whatever the fuck you want. But none of that magic shit.” Scowling, he resumes his fool’s errand for no other reason than stubbornness at this point.

It’s embarrassing, how slow Niko is to pick up on the thought that the man in front of him might not like him. Or at least, what he can do, but the two are inextricable from each other as far as he’s concerned. It has him quieting for a moment, finger pausing in their work to stare at his back. Diligently slicing through the monsters at the gate.

“Well. I thought it was weird.” It’s more to himself, trying to ignore that anxious feeling squirming in his gut that always seemed to come with any sort of rejection. It was like reflex, muscle memory kicking in and making him sick with it.

He’d rather ignore it, ignore the man in front of him, forget about the swiftly soured conversation altogether. And he could, easily, if it weren’t for the last comment that reaches his ears. That magic shit. He frowns, even if the expression is directed down at his hands. The circle he’s drawn on the back of it, smaller symbols etched within. Everything Cas has taught him, exercised now with dedicated precision.

It’s not shit. It’s his salvation. He almost says as much, but his mouth won’t move. 

His hands do. Palms pressing together, feeling power rushing through his veins, the runes sparking to life. Lips moving softly, the words barely whispered beneath his breath as he calls on the dead, the restless; spirits that rise alarmingly swiftly to his commands. Maybe it’s better left unsaid or unconsidered, just how many seem to haunt this place.

Not a thought for now. It’s enough that they rise when he calls them, obeying the soft order he gives. Pitting the dead against the dead, spectral and luminous as they reach up from the dirt with wasted and bony arms. Reaching for the shambling corpses on the other side of the gate, and Niko doesn’t have to look to know how swiftly his order’s carried out. He can hear the sound of ripping and tearing flesh as they’re torn apart. 

“haunted or not – i probably annoy the living sufficiently to see the sense in avoiding pissing off the dead.  i’m sure they have better things to do in their - afterlife - than haunt me.  that would just be inconvenient for everyone involved.”

nuns…. ew.  he’d be okay with the church, even the atypical horror movie spookiness of the area outside.  but not the nuns.  just… something about them.  sure, he gets that - in general, they’re good people and devout and… all that ‘god’ type stuff.  there’s just something about them that flip this whole ‘visit’ into uber freaky.  and he honestly can’t help it…  there is a slight crease to his brow though, attempting to work out the reference –

“people like us?”

–meaning people flitting around the wasteland and not offering their lives in the servitude of a god who apparently has gone on an extended vacay given the amount of hell wandering around on earth.   or… people like us meaning… something along the lines of what oddities might happen should jae wiggle his fingers in a very similar manner.  because - fact is - while he’s superbly attuned to reality and his own creations in ‘unreality’ - he hasn’t got the foggiest clue about much else to do with magic.  

“mmhm… i guess that solidly puts me on the entertainment committee then.  i think you have to have a very square jaw, a very large gun and total lack of a sense of humour to have that vote, my friend.”

or perhaps you just had to not be ‘people like us’.  

he does - however, take a glance over one shoulder, then the other, a small squint as his present companion seems to look… behind… or…. past or… through him… or… something.  and as his own eyes fail to reveal anything, he just glances back in confusion.  the laugh helps though, or he might just be having a minor panic that something creepy was behind him.

“huh?  goddamn what?”

“You’d be surprised.” Or maybe he wouldn’t. Niko’s barely restraining his curiosity at this point, all forms of magic drawing his swift and ready attention. And he doesn’t have the first idea what the man in front of him knows. If there’s anything good to be said about how far he’s been trapped from home, it’s the varied nature of the people he’s met along the way.

It doesn’t matter whether Jae can relate or not. If he knows anything about spirits or the dead, though it seems safe to assume he’s not. It’s enough that there’s definitely power standing in front of him. What form it takes is almost irrelevant.

The question slips by for a moment, he can’t help the joke that follows. “Hey, I’m very comfortable with the size of my gun, thanks.” 

Though he’s not wrong, neither of them seem to fit the prerequisites for leading the charge. It’s a laughable thought. Niko anywhere near ‘in charge’ of any of this. He’d kept himself and Alice alive long enough on their own, but if it were up to him they’d be camping out at amusement parks and bowling alleys. Chances are he would’ve blown right by the church.

His shoulders lift in a shrug. “Witches. Heathens. Either one I guess. Same thing depending on who you ask, I’m sure.”  

It occurs to him distantly that he might be crossing lines, too blunt, too fixated on that colors that surround the man. There’s a certain level of secrecy that used to be maintained, but it seems like such a pointless thing now. “You’re so bright.”

Alice laughs and growls, grinning as she bites at his shoulder, holding her teeth there for a long moment before she pulls away and starts walking up the center aisle. Her arms hold out to the sides like she’s daring God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit or whoever to smite her right then and there. Walking into someone else’s house and she didn’t even take her shoes off. 

Stopping right in the center of it, she looks around and the smile stalls on her face because now that she’s here, she doesn’t find it so great. There’s no real sense of holiness that she can feel, just a weird…ritualistic feeling that sets her uneasiness. She doesn’t let it show on her face, but she turns back around and grabs on to a pew on either side of her, stiffening her arms to swing between them, her legs dangling as she looks back at Niko. 

“Well? What do you think of this place?” she asks him and while the tone of her voice is nonchalant, it’s something she really wants to know. She looked to Niko for guidance when it came to those sort of things and now that they were following a group instead of choosing the places themselves, Alice wasn’t reading her cards to get a feel for where they were going. It was like walking in blind and it was something she had to get used to. 

The comment earns him teeth in his shoulder, a thing that pulls a laugh from him even as they dig into leather. “Okay, ow,” he says, even if it’s only mock offense taken. He rubs at his arm, shaking his head at her as she pulls away. “Little shark.”

The question pulls his gaze away, fixating on the gold Jesus set up behind the pulpit, the windows behind it that just look out into green. It’s strange in it’s own right, that they haven’t barricaded the glass, or posted guards. His fingers drift along his knuckles, the spells he’s scrawled there in case of emergency. He’d feel better if they were marked on the walls.

But he shrugs after a moment.  “Very uh... pious.”  

Which just makes him laugh again. Faith had never been a part of his life, at least not the kind that belonged to a Christian god. It seems blasphemous to think Cas had taken that role, that all the ritual and blood he’d offered up had been to a living man, instead of a long dead one.

He changes his answer after a moment, fingers wandering across the back of a chair before he slumps down in it. “Lots of ghosts in the garden. I think they buried bodies there.”

He flashes a quick smile, only half kidding before he nods at her. “What do you think of this place?” 

there’s a small shift as someone joins him, shuffling slightly to make a little more room - for as much as he likes to ‘invade’ the space of other people, he likes to think he’s accommodating if they decide to join him in his.  it’s a familiar face but one he hasn’t had the chance to address one-to-one.

he’s about to glance back through the window when words reach his ears which cause something akin to a comedy double take.

“what?  no… why on earth would i be looking for ghosts?”

– asks the man who in previous months had been attempting to follow insects down the cracks in the walls to get to wonderland.  so, okay - maybe sanity is a little looser around the edges in general definition than it used to be.

“this place is creepy enough as it is without spectres and spirits and…. more dead things in general.  but – any shelter in a storm and all that… probably.”

because jae’s entire experience of ‘dead things’ is either 1) sombre funerals with open caskets which were weird as fuck in his opinion.  and he’s pretty sure that the poor dead dude didn’t need ogling while they took their – long nap.  or 2)  stuff rising up with all of the hell shite blasting across the earth and attempting to kill him and everyone else around him.  so… not fun times either way you look at it.  and the ‘probably’ tagged onto the end discerns that he’s not entirely convinced that their latest resting stop is a superb choice.

“think we’ll be here long?”

Niko’s grin only widens at the reaction he gets. “Why wouldn’t you be looking for ghosts? You don’t think a place like this is haunted?" He holds up his hands, wiggling his fingers like it’s the intro to a horror story better told around the campfire. It doesn’t occur to him whether or not there’s anything blasphemous about that.

The funnier part, to him anyway, is that it’s entirely true, and he’s fully aware of it. It simply seems like a kindness not to mention how present and how close the dead always were, whether or not they were shambling around right outside their windows.

And this place had more than it’s fair share. 

“Yeah. Don’t think nuns are fans of people like us though.” It might be blunter than he should be, but if he can’t recall the man’s name, he can recall seeing him briefly while his soul sat less settled in it’s frame. Enough to make his vision clearer, to see the color that sparked around him. But that was from a distance, and there’s curiosity tugging at him now. 

“Dunno. I’m not on the planning community. More the ‘picking the music’ one.”

His response is already half distracted, because patience is something that comes and goes with him. And there’s no reason not to embrace it now, the slight shifting in his frame nothing he thinks should make him some affront against god. All he wants is to see a little clearer, and he does in the next moment. The man in front of him abruptly the brightest thing in the room. A collage of colors, the whole spectrum radiating from him.

Bryce doesn’t know what he’s expecting from a man like this. It’s unnerving, people who never take anything seriously. ‘People’ that exist unnaturally, unbothered by things that should unseat any normal person, if you could call Bryce that. He doesn’t know how anyone can sit in this place and not feel like a captive, a caged animal waiting to die from one direction or another. The man behind him just keeps drawing on his hands; Bryce glances at him over and over, more disturbed with every look he gets and at the notion that anything he said was ‘sick’. It was just truth. 

“The only thing you’re lucky to not have been is a fish,” he snaps, bristling at the unsatisfying response he received. Bryce turns away from the gates again, shrugging off a pathetic grab from one of the revenants beyond it, and squinting at the witch in the shade. 

“No, like us. This place.” He sneered at the other’s relaxed scribbling. “Is anything you’re writing over there actually going to help the people who’ve been feeding and protecting you this whole time or are you just fucking around unnaturally for shits and giggles?”

He’s too oblivious to the distaste directed his way, mostly because he isn’t paying enough attention. Too much of it devoted to making sure all the lines are straight and clear, more dedication invested in the beginnings of his spell than the temporary disturbance at the gate, and the man causing it. Castor would be disappointed in him if he didn’t, and it doesn’t matter that the man isn’t here to see his workmanship.

Though he has to stop briefly at the words snapped his way, body shaking with another laugh, this one more genuine. Head ducking as he chuckles, shaking his head afterwards. It’s just a pretty broad category of luck, and if he doesn’t consider himself to have ever had much of it, he’ll give him that one.

“Well, sure. But I’m pretty glad I wasn’t a cow either. Or an echidna. Those things are weird as fuck; did you know they have a four headed penis?"