queenoflogs | i want you here (open)

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i want you here (open)

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jemerite and You (open)
Date: July 17th
Summary: He can't do this to her.
Warnings: Zinc's world is vaguely offensive in its necrophilia? Her narrative can be kind of gory. She thinks about killing things, a lot.

She wakes up cold.

She's often cold, unless sitting in open sunlight, or curled up next to the heating unit that does a poor job of keeping Barbet's large studio warm in the wintertime. She hated the cold, really, it was a constant reminder of the stillness in her chest, but what she hated the most was waking up cold, like she'd been dead the whole night through. Barbet shouldn't have left her, she hates when he does and she usually wakes up as soon as he stirs because it's cold and it's lonely--(perhaps the loneliness is the worst. She... she hates that feeling, she wants to rip it out of her mind and ruin it forever.)

There is a moue of discontent on her lips already as she sits up, but it does not take her long to see things are very changed. And she knows exactly what's happened.

He's abandoned her. He'd drugged her and left her out here in the woods to die. The certainty of it rocks her, and causes a deep twisting sensation in her stomach. Hate. Hurt. Misery.

"Barbet?" She looks around herself, but all she sees is the cat approaching with the scroll in its mouth. Zinc hisses at it furiously, settled forward on her hands and knees like an angry little animal. The cat seems nonplussed, but it sits down, tail swishing. Zinc ignores it as she gets to her feet unsteadily, looking around again, sees only trees and she can't smell him anywhere. How is she meant to track him down and kill him if he's erased his scent?

"You can't!" She shouts, hands curling into fists, her well-kept nails biting into her palms with the fury of it. He would scold her for that. "You did this!"

She sees the path out of the clearing and begins to follow it, but what she sees only deepens her despair and that cat is following her. "I will eat you, if you do not get away from me," she snarls gutturally at the fluffy thing. Its eyes narrow at her, smug and nonreactive. She hisses, but carries on walking.

All she finds is forest and field. And, eventually, she drops down into the grass and simply begins to scream. Wordless, furious, keening. He can't do this to her. She can't even weep in this decaying body, and it's his fault that she has the desire to at all.

[ooc; I always write log openers in prose, but feel free to switch to action.]

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Zinc freezes, going very tense and very still, the stillness of something that does not breathe. She looks up at Jessica with dull eyes for a moment before she makes a little motion with one hand, pointing at the girl and her splotches.

"What is wrong with you."

She was never quite a germaphobe, but it was always important to be careful, to have your latest shots. Maybe it doesn't matter anymore, now that she is dead, but she remembers.

Siiiiiigh. This again. She withdraws the hand and takes a breath.

"They don't know, we gave up on doctors, I was born like this, it's not vitiligo, I'm not albino, and it's not contagious. Anything else?"

Zinc doesn't look entirely convinced on the not contagious part, but she lowers her eyes now that there is no hand reaching towards her. She's silent for a long time, lost in the mire of her own thoughts and the twist her frozen heart.

(Barbet wouldn't leave her. He's kept her this long, he brought her back, he wouldn't leave her. He did this, he can't leave her. She needs to go home or he'll forget about her and find something else to care for. God, the thought of someone else in his bed infuriates her and she grinds her teeth, shaking with it.)

"What do they do, here?" She's not being careful with her words, mumbling a bit. "This is... a zoo? You said zoo?"

Once again, Jessica wishes she had better upset people skills. "Um... Sort of? We're kind of... some weird combo of pets and dolls, I guess. We just kind of," shrug, "hang around until they start messing around with us."

Her lip curls, the words remind her of home, of Durban and her heavy backhand. Her jaw had still been purple--(she had still be alive)--when she had met Barbet. She was never one of Durban's dolls, she never will be.

"No," she rumbles darkly. "I am not."

Only for Barbet, because he treated her like a human--(except when he thought of her as a corpse and pushed her away, and it stung every time he did.)

"There's... not really much choice in the matter." Please don't hit me or something...

Choice. She had once been free, completely free, intelligent and beautiful and aggressive. Anything she wanted was hers for the taking. She has nothing now, no choices, just one man who was responsible for her pain but who she was helplessly devoted to.

"...he will tell Facon. She will find us. Kill whoever stole me." She doesn't say this with much conviction, a murmur to comfort her misery. She lowers her temple to rest on her knees, looking worn out and pathetic.

"Um... it's kind of unlikely, really, unless this person knows anything about, uh, dimensional travel or something. But, y'know, if she does, cool."

Her hand hovers over the lady's shoulder; she's not sure whether patting would be a good plan, given the previous reaction.

"Um... I, uh, made a brochure if you want to know the, uh, rundown. I'm assuming you can read."

She looks up at Jessica sideways, still and expectant. Her emotions are difficult things, others spent their whole life learning them, she was like a child, experiencing them in flavor and fury for the first time. Less than a year now, it's still so difficult, anger is still so potent. But now that it's cooled to sadness--(loneliness, she never knew how easy it was to be lonely)--she wants the touch.

"I can," she agrees, a bit contrite, knows her snarling is what has that girl's hand stopped like that. She reaches up with her cold hand to pull Jessica's the rest of the way to her gently.

"Wow, where'd you come from, Antarctica?!" She's freezing! Still, Jessica does offer a shoulder pat and squeeze.

"It's at the library. (I really need to start carrying one with me...) If you're okay to walk..."

Zinc stares at her for a moment, pained. But perhaps they are even now, after she made her own demands about the girl's strange skin. Still, it's been a long time since she has spoken to anyone who did not know what she was. She makes no comment on it now, just begin to gather herself up slowly. She is not the most graceful, and it's awkward getting to her feet.

"Not..." she hesitates, a flash of angry frustration touching her mouth, but she pushes it down. "Very quickly."

Barbet let her take his arm when they went out. Almost like he cared, it was nice, it was warm.

Jessica automatically moves to help her up, pausing only a moment to make sure the reaction isn't cringing in horror.

"Well, it's not like we're being timed or anything, so..."

She leans into the girl without complaining, although it will do nothing to hide the fact that her skin is cold and lifeless. She doesn't usually dress like this, so much skin bare.

"No?" She murmurs that, might be joking, but Barbet never appreciates her jokes, they come out half-hearted.

"Well, OK, there might be some creepy observer somewhere keeping track of everything, but I doubt it'll make any difference to us. I don't have anywhere to be right now, so it's cool."

She supports the new arrival without complaint, trying to figure out where she's felt skin like this before.

"I, uh, didn't get your name."

Her shambling is not as terrible as the others, she does what she can to keep her muscles and joints working. Her focus tends to be on her hands, they were important to her once, very important, she couldn't do her work without them. She can't make her plates any longer, the details were too minute but she can still use a fork, she can write to an extent, shuffle cards, play video games. The walking is harder, all she can do is pace the studio, sometimes begging Barbet to take her out for a walk, but he doesn't like it when she's out, he's always worried one of the gangs will snatch her up. She effectively belongs to no one by gang law, she's free game.

"Zinc, I'm called Zinc." It was what Barbet called her, it was who she had always been to him, she did not want to go back to being Carla if he would not call her that. Carla was dead, Isaac saw to that.

"You involved with batteries?" Someday, Jessica will not make bad, nerdy jokes. Today is not that day.

She frowns at Zinc's legs. "I get the impression you don't do a lot of walking. Do you have, um, braces or something usually?"

She gives a dry little laugh. She does like jokes, has a sense of humor, especially when the jokes are just this side of tediously obvious. It annoyed her keeper, had before she was dead, but it had never stopped her.

"No, no braces, I stay inside."

Kept inside, and out of the sun and away from the elements where it was safe and where Barbet could keep an eye on her.

"Holy shit, like all the time?!" She glances over with what appears to be mild surprise.

Wait... concern about possible disease, difficulty walking, strange skin...

"You have some kind of, um... condition?" She's not terribly concerned about the possibility of contagion- she assumes Zinc would've mentioned that- but kidnapping someone sick seems like a terrible idea to her.

She's very contagious, but she's also very used to being surrounded by people who are inoculated. Everyone was, only the very poorest were deprived of the vaccination, and they remained the gangs' most favored targets. Zinc has assumed completely that Jessica would be up to date on her shots, and realizes that is a mistake, giving Jessica a guilty look.

However... if Jessica were going to turn, she would have done it by now. Perhaps her own affliction was counter to the virus, Zinc had no idea.

"I..." Is Jessica going to abandon her if she's honest? She's been abandoned once today, she doesn't want that. "I'm a Reanimate."

"A..."

THAT'S what it is! The fetal pig...

She blinks and glances over Zinc again. Zombies are not something she would've expected, but then neither were robots, angels, or... whatever Sephiroth was. (She avoids following that last bit farther.)

"That explains things, I guess. Never met a, um, reanimated before."

"Most haven't," she agrees faintly. They were mostly urban, in cities with harbors, the zombies were most easily transported by water. They were kept to their sides of town, their corners, where the gangs could keep an eye on them, and an eye out for the feeders and the CDC. Most people stayed away, but the johns knew where to look.

She's watching Jessica curiously, maybe waiting for the reaction of disgust, but she hasn't pulled away from her yet.

Jessica's reaction is muted, mild interest. "I mean, I'm pretty sure they don't exist where I come from."

That surprises her, she almost trips over her feet, but she just slows down a bit, regains her balance.

"No, it's everywhere."

"Whoa, careful!" Jessica is apparently decent at catching stumbling people.

"Not where I come from. Uh, I forgot to mention that, I guess: People here come from, uh... different worlds. And times and stuff."

Zinc barely weighs anything, she's not too difficult to catch hold of. She used to be athletic, physically strong and capable. It all would have deteriorated anyway, but she is also deprived of the food she needs far too often.

"We vaccinate, everywhere, everyone, to keep it contained."

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