Work Text:
- Giovanni
“Hey, Gabe, you’re the rules and regulations guy. Can you convince A to get me a cat?”
His already preoccupied expression deepens, turning into a frown. “It’s Gabriel, as you well know. And no, I can’t.”
“Why nooooot?”
“Cats, and animals in general, are hardly sterile.” Giovanni has often thought it’s a pity Gabriel doesn’t wear glasses. His monologues would greatly improve from being able to straighten his glasses to make a point. “A cat could pose a serious risk to your condition.”
Yeah, because I’m going to live for soooo much longer as it is.
Giovanni flops back against his pillows, heaving as big of a sigh as he can muster. “Worth a shot,” he mutters. Gabriel frowns even more, crossing his arms in annoyance.
“You could put all of that energy to better use, couldn’t you?”
“Yeah, yeah, but what’s the point? Hey, maybe a cat would motivate me to use my energy for a higher purpose!”
“You are an impossible specimen of humanity,” Gabriel grumbles, but suddenly there’s nothing behind it. His right arm dangles at his side; the other reaches across his body, scratching at his right wrist. His eyes are strangely dark and hollow. Even to Giovanni, who is neither particularly observant nor particularly sympathetic, it’s unnerving.
“Gabe? You feeling all right?”
Gabriel seems to shudder – or maybe he shakes himself back awake, because his brown eyes are sharp and walled off again when Giovanni meets them with his own.
“Never better. I have more work to do. See you again soon.”
He leaves, like he always does, without a backward glance. But just before he opens the door to go, he hesitates, stiffening, and begins to scratch his wrist again.
-
Giovanni doesn’t count days anymore. He doesn’t even count hours, or intervals between the times when people check on him, adjusting his IV, offering him food he doesn’t want, or trying to make awkward small talk with him. By now, most of them seem to have stopped really thinking of him as human – which is fine. Better not to have them dwell on his existence. It’ll just cause them pointless sadness when the time comes.
No, the only thing Giovanni still keeps track of and tries to wake up for is when Michelle visits. He kind of hates that about himself because he’d really rather no one be too attached to him. But he can’t help it. She’s just a little snip of a thing – he’s not actually sure she’s old enough to be working here – and it’s nice being around her. She talks a lot, like Carmen did, but she’s never loud the way Carmen was. Her whispery voice doesn’t make his head ring.
Normally, she tells him all the news – how other experiments are going, how her other friends are – stories about people Giovanni rarely ever sees, because their work doesn’t involve him.
He likes being around Michelle. She’s so excited about everything that sometimes he forgets that he’s in pain, that he can’t really see well anymore. (He’s not sure he ever could see well, but nowadays everything seems extra hazy.)
Today, though, she’s quiet. She still talks, but it’s intermittent. She mostly just brushes Giovanni’s hair, so much longer now than it was when he volunteered all that time ago. She’s begun to do this for him frequently, and most of the time she braids it too, tight enough to last a few days, but not so tight as to make the base of his skull throb. Giovanni is too tired to make many attempts at conversation, so he doesn’t really mind the quiet. But when Michelle finally finishes braiding his hair and rises, murmuring something about needing to eat before her next shift, he remembers something that’s been bugging him.
“Hey, Michelle?” They’ve technically already said their goodbyes, and she’s halfway to the door when he calls out. “How’s Gabriel doing? He hasn’t come by recently.”
She stands there for a moment as if transfixed – all but her trembling hands. When she turns back to face Giovanni, he sees her lips trembling too, as if she is trying not to cry.
“He, uh- um, well-“ She stutters for a while, then suddenly, she looks down, and her voice goes very quiet.
“Gabriel’s dead, ‘Vanni. He was, um, he was really sick, and he-“
“What?” The idea seems so ludicrous. Gabriel, who was always so calm and rational and careful, sick? Sick enough to have died?
(But Carmen was always smiling, and she died too.)
Michelle takes one, two, three shaky steps toward him, and then suddenly she’s collapsing against him on the bed, hugging him and crying, and oh, Gabriel would have hated her climbing all over a patient like this, Giovanni thinks as she clings to him and sobs.
“After what happened to Elijah – do you remember Elijah?” Of course he does. She was a funny girl, always tripping over herself and messing stuff up, but being around her made you feel a little more cheerful.
“I remember Elijah.”
“Gabriel, he couldn’t- he couldn’t stand it, what happened to her. He started wearing different clothes, and scratching himself, and, and…” Her expression is full of boundless horror as she looks up at him. “It was so horrible, ‘Vanni. His wrists, his neck – he’d clawed them so badly you couldn’t even tell where the wounds were that- that killed him…”
She buries her face against his chest, sobbing, and Giovanni pats her back awkwardly, trying to soothe her. He can’t begin to imagine neat, orderly Gabriel like that, his body ripped to tattered shreds. So he thinks, and yet somehow, the image doesn’t come so hard to him. He doesn’t question for a moment that what Michelle has told him is true.
- Daniel
Daniel is feeling good about today. He’s finally managed to figure out a coffee that little Michelle likes – a lot sweeter than his own tastes, but hey, he’ll take a win for what it is. He kind of wishes Kali hadn’t sat with them at lunch; he’s not used to having someone almost as tall as him around, and she has three times his presence on top of that. Kali’s not bad, though, just intense, and Michelle gets all starry-eyed around her, which is cute to watch. He can definitely believe the kid is as young as she looks when she’s with Kali. She’s like a fawn tripping over herself trying to keep up with the adults.
He wishes he didn’t relate, when it comes to trying to impress Kali. But now lunch is over, Kali’s off to do whatever she does, and he and Michelle take the same path for a while, so they’re walking back together. Michelle walks slightly ahead of him, blithely chattering about “Miss Kali.” Daniel is lagging behind her on purpose, just to make sure he doesn’t accidentally outpace her with his long stride, so she turns the corner first, halting abruptly, hands flying to her mouth as her eyes go wide. Daniel nearly bumps into her back, which probably would have knocked her down.
“Michelle, what’s-“ The rest of the sentence never makes it out of his mouth, because now he sees what Michelle saw. A motionless body, back pressed against the wall, half-curled in on itself. One hand still grips, claw-like, at the blood-matted purple hair.
“Shit,” Daniel breathes, at the same moment that Michelle finally lets out a scream, lunging forward like she’s going to run to Gabriel. Daniel grabs her around the waist, trying to hold her back as she struggles, crying out, straining toward that wrecked body. Daniel doesn’t know much – not nearly as much as A or Carmen or Gabriel himself – but he knows he can’t let her go over there. He can’t let her touch that corpse, not knowing what killed Gabriel. He doesn’t know what it could be, but he can’t let it hurt her too. Still, she’s surprisingly strong, and he has to fight to hang onto her. Then, just when he thinks he’s going to lose his grip, Kali’s there, grasping the arm that reaches out for Gabriel, pulling Michelle against her. Together, they hold the girl there until she exhausts herself, until that desperate, keening cry trails off into soft whimpering.
Over Michelle’s head, Kali’s eyes meet Daniel’s.
“Can you check if he’s breathing?” she asks, and Daniel balks for a moment.
“What if- what if-“
“He’s not contaminated,” Kali says, eyes turning to Gabriel. “There is nothing wrong with him. I should know. I’ve had to hold him down for every examination, long enough for them to properly restrain him.”
Daniel doesn’t know what Kali is talking about. Examination? Multiple examinations? Why? Still, he has no reason to doubt her, and even if he did, Kali is a known entity who scares him more than the unknown of whatever did this. He lets go of Michelle and walks over. He hesitates then, not wanting to dirty his clothes, and feeling awful for it. He steels himself and kneels at the edge of the bloody mess, reaching out gently.
“Gabriel?”
There’s no response, no movement, and the hand he touches is far too cold. Daniel tries to push Gabriel’s sleeve back, meaning to feel for a pulse, but as he does, he understands where all the blood came from.
It begins just beneath where Gabriel’s clothes – always long-sleeved, always carefully layered, ever since Elijah died – would normally cover. The cause of the wounds is clear – even if blood weren’t coating Gabriel’s nails, there are areas where the marks of scratching still appear as scratches rather than gaping wounds.
The most apparent is where Gabriel’s turtleneck – always so neat, always pulled up over his chin – has been ripped open, revealing, as Daniel pulls the cold, grasping hand away, how Gabriel had torn open his own throat.
He half-turns to look at Kali and Michelle, and he doesn’t have to say a word for them to understand. Kali drops to her knees at his side, a single breath shuddering out from between gritted teeth as she gropes at one wrist, then another, then at Gabriel’s neck for a pulse that isn’t there.
“I heard he saw what happened to Elijah.” Daniel doesn’t truly realize that he’s the one speaking. Everything seems far away, and Gabriel’s blood is sticky on his hands. “Not, not how she died, but I heard he saw her-“
He hears a horrible noise, the squealing of a stricken animal. Michelle reels back from where she stands, unable to look away from all that is left of Gabriel.
“Michelle, hey, hey-“ He leaps up, grasping at her small wrists as she tears at her hair, keening. Gabriel’s blood smears across her hair and skin. Michelle’s breath comes only in sobs as Daniel crouches, making his gaze level with hers.
“Kiddo, kiddo, calm down…” He tries to soothe her like he would his own little sister, like it’s just a nightmare, like they can wake up. Any minute now the dream will fall away. Any minute now Gabriel will walk around that corner and chide them all for wasting time.
“Michelle.” The girl stills at Kali’s voice, and Daniel turns toward it. Kali is standing now, Gabriel’s body absurdly small in her arms. Daniel heard Kali’s breath hitch as she searched for a pulse that no longer beat, and yet now, her back is straight, and her gaze is iron.
“It does Gabriel no good to cry for him,” Kali says, “but if you must cry, do it later. We have a duty to him now.”
She doesn’t falter a bit as she walks past them, despite the weight in her arms. Daniel doesn’t know where she’s going, but Michelle staggers after her, and Daniel feels compelled to follow.
- Kali
Kali tries not to dwell on her regrets. She has plenty stored up in the dark corners of her heart, but she has never been the least bit tempted to let them loose. Unchained, those regrets would surely become a tidal wave, swallowing her with rage at her past self.
Blood has never bothered her. Still, she feels the need to shower as soon as she gets the chance – to scrub away the memory of Gabriel that lingers on her skin. The small, superstitious part of her hopes that by doing so, she can wash away anything that ties him to this place – to let his soul, if he has one, be free.
She’s not so self-centered as to think she was the only thing that bound him – although she, of course, bound his body physically time and time again, from the first time A ordered an examination, from the first time Gabriel refused.
Kali had respected Gabriel – calm, practical, resourceful even after their early losses. So it had shocked her, being called on to help restrain him. The way he had shrunk in on himself, small body coiled like a snake about to strike, as she approached him in that examination room.
“Just let them examine you,” she’d said to him, as he cowered there, looking up at her. “I don’t want to force you anymore than-“
“I don’t need to be examined!” That desperate cry was directed not at her, but at A, who leaned against the wall, watching with cold and distant eyes. “There’s nothing wrong, I’m fine-“
Yet the wounds revealed as she held him down for others to examine told a different story. Then, it was only small scratches around his wrists and ankles. In time, it spread, symptom of a disease that only Gabriel’s eyes saw. What had once been weak resistance turned to desperation. Once he had lashed out at her, clawing at her face to try to make her back off. Kali couldn’t blame him for that. Restrained time and time again, forcibly stripped and bound because there was no other way to assess the damage when he refused to cooperate – in that situation, Kali, too, would have lashed out, and far quicker than Gabriel had.
“It must have hurt so much,” Michelle had said numbly, as they waited to hear, officially, that Gabriel was gone. She sat on a hallway bench, gripping Daniel’s hand while Kali leaned next to them. Before today, Kali had dismissed Daniel as a showy aristocrat, entirely different from and irrelevant to her, but now she was glad he had been there. He was gentle with Michelle, in a way Kali could not have been, like she imagined an older sibling should be.
“He’s not hurting anymore,” Daniel had said, squeezing her hand. Now, as the last traces of blood wash down the drain, Kali hopes Daniel is right. Gabriel’s death, by no means unusually horrible under normal circumstances, had not been a fitting one. The three of them who had seen his corpse would never again be able to think of him as the rational man he had tried so hard to be. That legacy, to her, was somehow more tragic than the reality of his death. Still, even that was far from uncommon. His, she was sure, would not be the last ill-fitting death she would see.