Day 40: Greenhouse [Fourth Shift]

[toxicspiderman]

Most days, fish and chips (and a cold beer or three) was pretty goddamned high on S.T.'s list of perfect expense-account lunches. Today, the idea of picking at greasy hunks of unidentified bottom-feeder odds-and-ends (politely known as scrod, to the delight of teenagers all across the Northeast) didn't appeal.

He begged off and collapsed into his bed, after using his damp shirt as an excuse to surreptiously check the contents of his closet. Bingo. His nurse watched his little show, unimpressed but (more importantly) unsuspicious. Not that his hairy chest was much of a catch today, pale and sweating from fever. At least she didn't tuck him in.

The intercom woke up up right on schedule, and pulling the sheets back over his head almost won. But a handful of unanswered missives and a vague sense of duty dragged him out to the bulletin, and from there it was easier to stagger over to the greenhouse.

It was warm inside -- a deep, humid warmth that actually penetrated to the aches in more joints and muscles than he could remember the names of. Like a sauna, without the hassle of finding someplace to look that wasn't a mound of pasty middle-management cellulite. Or a sweat lodge, without the opposite hassle of being conscious that he was the only white guy in the room. In fact, besides the nurses in holding patterns, he was the only person in the room.

He located a tray of tomato seedlings going rootbound in their tiny six-packs, and a potting bench whose location was a quick-and-dirty approximation of equidistantly far from anything blooming. He assured his nurse he knew what he was doing, and after a couple of successful repottings, gently sliding the little seedlings out and loosening the tangled roots, she seemed to agree and backed off. It was, by far, the most fucking theraputic thing he'd found in this hellhole so far, and he let himself sink into the rhythm of the task.

[Free!]

Comments

[wantsyourzex.livejournal.com]

If she was leaving him hair now, that meant she must have been nearby... perhaps she was unable to take her eyes off of him for very long! He knew that the two of them had a connection.

ZEX watched Sam touch his face curiously, wondering what it meant and for a moment wondering if he should mimic the gesture just in case, but in the end he decided not to stress his wounded arm any more than he had already.

"She attacked you?" ZEX sounded almost disappointed, and he glanced around the greenhouse. Maybe Sam had committed the same faux-pas that had led her to attack him? He was sure she wasn't a violent soul, just... impetuous perhaps. "We spent some time staring at each other first... she made this sound when I asked her questions, but I'm sure she understood me."

It was a bit awkward to talk about this when she could be listening or nearby. ZEX again glanced around. "I'm afraid she got a little... rougher with me than I would have liked," and now with the impression that he was talking to someone else, "and perhaps with proper warning, I wouldn't have acted so hastily, but," and back to Sam again. ZEX raised his good arm and touched along the line of his jaw. It was still a little sore near his ears. "She held me here, and her fingers went through me. She was pulling at me, and she was so strong and heavy and so cold. How her skin felt, her fingers in me... it was extraordinary." At least it was now that he had some welcome distance to look at the experience without human panic clouding his thoughts.

ZEX looked around, and if he had any familiarity with human expressions, he might have tried to look apologetic for his invisible audience. "She... left me when I struck her in self-defense. She bled, the poor thing... she looked confused. Then she was gone, with only a few strands of hair left behind. I hope she doesn't hold my actions against me. I'll have to make it up to her..." ZEX toyed with the ball of hair in his palm. "Oh yes, if it's relevant, one of my companions tried to strike her when she knocked me down... but they couldn't see her, and it passed right through her. A shame that her special interest in me had to be so rewarded!" ZEX sighed. "I wish things had gone better between us! I've never encountered something like her before... hopefully in the future we can overcome our differences."

[boyking]

While ZEX was relaying all of his information, Sam began to quickly sort out what he had so far. He didn't want to come back for a followup interview if he could help it—opened up too many questions, for one, and he wasn't even sure he could get one considering how hard it was to grab a moment of anyone's time in this place—which meant he had to get everything he needed now.

So. The hair, the glimpses in reflections, all that was confirmed as a pattern. The sound ZEX mentioned was probably the death rattle Sam had heard at the time, as well. It raised the question of why this specific ghost made that noise—death rattles were common in the dying, but Sam had yet to encounter a spirit that made the sound a part of its motif. Why this particular one, then?

The selective visibility was rare in spirits, too, though not impossible. But if so, that meant it, what. Picked out a singular target only and ignored all the others?

Plus, ZEX said—

His thoughts halted abruptly. He tilted his head. "I'm sorry, did you say it—she—bled?"

He'd seen a spirit bleed before, sure, but that had been a result of one spirit attacking another. Ghosts weren't alive, obviously. They didn't bleed on a physical level. They couldn't.

[wantsyourzex.livejournal.com]

ZEX watched Sam tilt his head with obvious interest. Human necks were so flexible! "She did that same thing! Except, more so." ZEX was all too willing to extol her virtues to anyone who would listen.

But he'd asked him a question, after all. ZEX blinked. "Well, yes. I... struck her with something sharp, right here." ZEX touched his cheek. "Although, I did apologize afterwards, and it seems she doesn't hold it against me. It was dark, but I'm sure she was bleeding. She seemed so shocked..." ZEX sighed. Actually, his ghostly admirer's expression hadn't changed much at all, but he preferred to think of her as shocked. It fit in better with how he viewed the entire experience.

ZEX toyed with the ball of hair a few more seconds before looking back up. "Why, is that odd?" As if being able to materialize and dematerialize at will wasn't odd enough.

[boyking]

What?

Sam blinked again, thrown by the sudden change in topic and unclear as to what ZEX could possibly be referring to. Dean at a strip club had better focus than this. "Excuse me?"

Or. Never mind.

He watched ZEX play with the hairball, finding it a little fascinating on a certain level. He'd seen far more disturbing things than a hairball, but regardless. You didn't usually see someone toy with something like that after hacking it up.

"Well, you said all the other weapons went right through her," he explained. "I figured that meant she couldn't be hurt."

It was starting to fall into place now. The spirit was only visible to its intended target. No one else could see nor touch it, but the target could which meant that by selecting the victim specifically, it must've opened up some kind of connection, something that rendered it vulnerable in a way. He realized that the ghost hadn't left simply because it'd managed to lay down its curse; it'd left because they'd both struck it, hurting it. Not much, but it seemed to be enough to drive it away. Unheard of up till now and the question of why remained, but Sam was willing to go with the theory for the time being unless a better one came along. Or some new information blew holes in this one.

If he was right, though, what did it mean? That only its victim was capable of fighting it off? It was possible. That didn't solve the main problem, though. You could beat back a spirit all you wanted, the real solution was always gonna be a salt and burn. As long as the remains were out there, the ghost would never be able to move on. But maybe he could use this to buy more time.

"Your companions, she didn't seem to notice them at all? Not even after they tried to attack her?"

[wantsyourzex.livejournal.com]

"I wasn't sure I'd be able to hurt her either. After all, it seemed like she could make herself immaterial at will... she put her fingers in my mouth. One would think she'd just let all attacks pass through her. Perhaps it takes conscious effort for her to do something like that, although she didn't seem to have any difficulty remaining invisible." For a moment, ZEX sounded more serious than usual... mechanically considering her as a potential enemy to be dealt with, rather than a beautiful creature he needed to woo. Old habits died hard, but it didn't last long.

"No, she didn't seem interested in the others... she didn't react at all when my Teisel attacked her. Like he wasn't there." ZEX kept poking his hairball, then blinked a bit with a realization. "Perhaps it's because I'm not human? Maybe she felt a kinship with me as a result... that other person on the board who said they'd seen her, they said they were a..." ZEX could remember how the word they'd used was spelled, but had no idea how to pronounce it... well, he'd just have to say it and hope for the best. "A SHI NAG AMI? My apologies if I got that wrong, I'm not familiar with the word and I've only seen it written. But that means they aren't human either."

ZEX looked at Sam with a bit more curiously now. "Are you human?"

[boyking]

She put her fingers in his mouth? There was something...wrong about that picture. More so than the rest of the picture, in a way. Except possibly for the constant regurgitation of clumps of hair.

Sam started to ask if there seemed to be a reason why she'd, well. Reached into his mouth because ghosts tended to have a reason for the things they did, however screwed up that reasoning might be, but ZEX threw him another curve ball when he spoke up next. His brows furrowed. Shi nag—

"Shinigami?" he said, somewhat incredulously. As in, death personified? As in a reaper? What the hell was a goddamn reaper doing wandering around here? Then again, there'd been the goddess from this morning, but still. A reaper? Reapers weren't visible to the living. If it was here at the institute, though, then obviously people could see it.

Unless they were all dead?

At this point, that was as good a theory as anything. It'd sure as hell explain why Dean was here in a way that made more sense than a miraculous resurrection. Sam wasn't really sure if he wanted to take the notion of a miracle like that at face value or not.

Well, no. He wanted to. He just...didn't know if he could bring himself to do so. Sometimes it felt like he was only setting himself up for another round of Oops, just kidding, we're taking him away again.

And Christ, this was the second time in less than two hours someone had asked him that exact some question. The irony was almost overwhelming.

There was a split second of hesitation, barely noticeable. "Yes," he said, and it felt as if he were lying as much to himself as he was to ZEX.

For a second or two, he was silent before he felt an almost desperate desire to move the conversation away from himself and his level of freak. The question did give him an opening to bring up something he'd wanted to know from the start.

"Can I ask what you are, exactly, if you're not human?"

[wantsyourzex.livejournal.com]

"Is that how you say it?" ZEX said. "I'm... well, I don't know if you would have noticed the odd things that happen to language here, since you speak Human I'm sure. I don't, although... I'm sure that's what you're hearing now..." Trailing off... it was obvious this was something that bothered ZEX. "Well, pronounciation can be tricky, I suppose."

He wasn't really in the mood to think about that though. "But yes, I think that's what they wrote. They also said something about spirits and death, although I'm not sure if I believe any of it... I've always taken a more personal stance on such things." Besides, it made it more difficult for the Creator to punish him for crimes against nature if their existence depended on whether or not ZEX believed in them.

Sam's answer shot a hole through his theory though. There might have been some thread uniting all the people she'd visited, but maybe it was something only obvious to her. And possibly irrelevant in the end, since ZEX was the only one who seemed to appreciate her attention anyway.

"Did I not mention that?" ZEX laughed a little. "I usually include it in my introduction, although almost no one here has heard of us... I'm a VUX, a species native to Beta Luyten, although I no longer reside there." Not entirely by choice, but no need to mention that just yet. "I don't suppose you've heard of us?"