❛ have you come to laugh at me in my miserable state? ❜
hospitals archive painful memories in linoleum and light, fluorescents leach the world of shadows and james hopper wears the visitor's sticker with adhesive curling. he pauses with fingers hovering at the curtain's edge as though contact might transmit guilt. because this is not the karen wheeler preserved in civic memory ⁽ the lacquered myth of bake sales and block parties ⁾ this is, instead, a karen wheeler re-rendered through catastrophe, footnoted by trauma, neck braced and skin mapped. this version of the world feels grammatically incorrect. when he does pull back the curtain, she speaks to him first: acerbic, armored in humors and the sound cleaves right through him. he reaches for a soft of levity with the desperation of a drowning man that claws at driftwood, knowing full well that jokes are a coward's currency but also the only thing keeping his ribcage from splitting wide open in public. “ actually, i have. front-row seats, popcorn. the works. ”
the line lands deliberately asinine, a sacrificial offering to the 'god of normalcy'. if it earns even some microsecond of breathy amusement, it might just be worth it. and when it does, memory intrudes with distant visions of lockers, laughter, a girl held together with much more composure than the things that pressed in from all sides. a girl who needed help even then.
hopper clears his throat, steps forward as though gravity as reasserted its claim. he holds up the vase of flowers he's arrived with. “ these're uh, for you. ” sets them upon the window sill with almost liturgical care, adjusts the vase twice, three times, because any bit of stillness right now would undo him. when he turns back, he removes the chief's hat upon his crown, some older respect and awe. alive, he thinks. a blunt mantra. alive enough to be irritated or aware or simply just here. he lowers himself into a chair at her bedside, posture folding inward with elbows on knees. hopper's gaze is careful and cataloguing, witnessing without trespass. “ .. how're you holdin' up ? ” it is a flimsy question and jim is aware of this, a placeholder of syllables dangled over things he cannot articulate quite yet. those who have hurt, those who have vanished. outside, that world continues such indecent rotation indifferent to things such as this. and hopper remains seated, hatless, reverent and present in the long and illegible aftermath.
＊ ☆⠀ * 200 RANDOM DIALOGUE PROMPTS ... ACCEPTING.
