ph_logs | the sound is not asleep [closed]

the sound is not asleep [closed]

Who: Father Mulcahy (

not_a_traitor), Zivia Birnbaum (

tehilim127_1), and maybe another
What: Mulcahy has a hard time with the aftershocks of Number 2's visit
When: 4 days after the party; September 25th
Where: His house, Downtown Hollow
Warning(s): Paranoia, ptsd, destruction, eating disorder, others in headers

It all starts simply enough. Mulcahy retreats to his house and entertains no visitors. I need some time, Mulcahy says, and who could blame him? After a night like that, it'd be difficult to deny him some peace and quiet. He's been something of a recluse for more than a year now. (Though perhaps a little worrying is that even Gaeta is denied his company, and he's taken a brief leave off of work. Even in his most reclusive days, he never did that; too committed to the work.)

After a day or two of this, though, his sending stone goes mostly radio silent. For those who do manage to get a call out to him, the conversations are short and strained.

Then, one more day of total silence; and then, one day, Zivia and Gaeta both find themselves tracked down by one of his two companions: Peter, jangling frantically at Gaeta, and Connor, stamping and huffing insistently at Zivia, both demanding they follow them back to the Father's home. When they arrive, the door is locked and the curtains are all drawn--but there are sounds coming from inside. Wooden, mostly--of wood being struck, wood creaking, wood splitting, but none of that seems particularly good. Concussive impacts thud out from the upper floor. Once in a while, there's a grunt and labored breathing.

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It hardly seems fair that Gaeta should be so worried, when he himself disappeared for two whole months earlier this year. And he couldn't even blame that on the return of one of his literal worst nightmares, either. He tries, with effort, to be patient through the silences; tries to meet Francis where he's at during the few stilted conversations they have by sending stone. He needs time. That should be easy enough for Gaeta to give.

(Though when he realizes, like a dull kick to the ribs, that one of the quietest days fell on what should be Gaeta's 30th birthday, after one recalculates the Colonial calendar to match Marrow Isle's --

Well. It's not like he ever cared much about it anyway. Doubly so when Mulcahy is doing so poorly.

Still, though.)

He abandons everything when Peter finally finds him, racing as fast as he can to Mulcahy's house. As soon as he hears the noises inside -- shit. Shit. He pounds on the door and calls out, "Francis?", though who the frak knows if any of it is audible over the crashes and thuds.

Despite everything, Mulcahy is not one of the strongest people around, and there are plenty of brief windows of silence in between all the destruction of the wood; the pounding at the door is met with a startled, frightened gasp, and the clattering of something heavy and metal onto the floor.

A long silence. (The silence, the reclusiveness—it has always been about the need to hide. To not be seen, and be hurt.) Then, out of breath, a little too slow, and seeming almost to list to one side, his voice calls out: "I'm alright! Just—doing some renovation!"

It is a lie, and Gaeta knows it.

His resolve solidifies. His worry, already near a fever pitch, kicks a few notches higher.

"I'm coming in, all right?" he says, and doesn't wait for a response before trying to open the door.

"No, no, it's alright, really—"

It had been locked, but it isn't as though Gaeta wouldn't have been given a spare key by now. (Which is in itself a show of immense trust when it comes to someone like him, which seems so far away now. But in the midst of this storm, it's proof still: he ever does love him.)

Splinters pile across the floor—what's left of it, given that Mulcahy seems to have pulled up a great number of the planks from it, as well as the walls and the stairs. Some doors are still intact, but others have been taken half off their hinges and the knob mechanisms ripped out and smashed apart. Upholstery is scored open and disemboweled. The radio is beaten to bits. Some clothes lie about with parts of their stitching ripped up; a pair of boots is torn apart. Almost everything that lived in a cabinet or a shelf or a drawer has been taken out and put on the floor, and some of those drawers have been taken out too.

(Gaeta's gifted tea set is perched neatly on the largely untouched altar.)

Scores and nicks show themselves everywhere. Mulcahy has always been paranoid of wires, but it feels like this as much a thorough search as it is a fit of many, many, many years of rage.

Mulcahy himself... it's hard to say when he last slept. When he last ate. His wide eyes are both as laser-focused on Gaeta as they are far away, and he shakily clutches a crowbar in his splinter-ridden hands. He's coming apart and destroying everything as he goes, like a spinning machine that only knows how to accelerate as its pieces go flying away.

He stands up and does not say get out. He says, "Leave me alone."

Beside Gaeta, Peter jangles indignantly.

Edited 2025-10-14 14:58 (UTC)

Gaeta takes it all in. He exhales, very, very slowly.

Well, he thinks, with the odd calm of the worst finally coming to pass, it's happened.

Two is gone, but he invaded Mulcahy's home all the same. He's in the splinters, the glinting fragments of the radio, the loose stuffing that oozes from the couch Gaeta slept on for hundreds of nights. The awful, shaking, hunted wildness in his love's eyes. There was no escape after all; just not in the way either of them thought.

Gaeta moves his cane, placing it carefully in one of the few spots not strewn with debris. He steps over what looks like a chunk of kitchen cabinet. "No," he says, and while it may be kind, even gentle, it's implacable, too. "I'm not going."

From the corner of his eye, he notices the unbroken tea set cradled alongside Mulcahy's religious relics, and his sturdy calm threatens to waver.

"Hello?" comes a voice from outside the house, friendly curiosity a thin veneer over growing alarm. "Mulcahy? Are you home?"

Oh, God. She can't see him like this. It's bad enough that Gaeta is here, but Zivia, too—he can't stand it. What do they want? What do they want? He wants so very, very badly to disappear, or at least for everyone to just stop looking at him.

Peter zips outside to signal to Zivia, jangling and gesturing to the doorway with his thin arms, and Mulcahy's breath catches in his throat, grip tightening on the crowbar as he steps backwards. A frustrated noise issues from his chest. It is taking an enormous effort to not just start throwing things.

"I, would like very much," he enunciates, tight and bitter, "to be left alone."

Edited 2025-10-16 02:20 (UTC)

Gaeta glances over his shoulder just long enough to clock Zivia's arrival. Connor's out there, too, he notices; he must have tracked her down just like Peter found him. All right. Good. Maybe backup will help.

He turns back to Mulcahy, but doesn't move any closer.

"I don't think that's a good idea." Quiet. He holds out his free hand. "Can you give me the crowbar?"

He twitches. Mulcahy knows where he is. He knows that he is in Pumpkin Hollow, and these two are his friends, and yet just beneath that, his heart pounds with the same alarm and fury as when the Village's "guardians" would step into his house unannounced. Irrational, unmutual behavior, they'd say. Like it was ever "irrational" to want to burn the entire place to the ground. Sometimes they'd brandish syringes; for your own good.

Let it not be said that Two ever broke him all the way. Mulcahy's anger is his own.

He glowers at Gaeta. "No."

"I'm sorry," comes Zivia's voice, still from outside, still light on the surface and worried underneath, "didn't mean to intrude, it's just that your ... your goat came to find me? So I thought something might be wrong."

(She can hear another voice inside. She's waiting for it to say something loud enough for her to hear.)

"Please," he says, a little louder. (Probably loud enough for Zivia to hear now.) "Francis. I'm not going to hurt you. I swear. Neither is Zivia -- can you hear her? It's just us."

He swallows, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. He doesn't quite manage it.

"It's just me."

Francis. Oh, stop, stop, stop. Don't speak to him so softly. No. No love like this. Even this can be used. It never happened to him, but he remembers a particularly haunting incident where someone's lover had been hypnotized into wearing a locket on them at all times, convinced that their partner had given it to them. It turned them into a living tracker. Gaeta could love him with his whole heart and it would still doom them both.

No. No home. No peace. No love.

Mulcahy backs against a wall and lashes out with the crowbar across the debris on the floor, sending random objects and splinters flying. A sloppy and heavy-handed hit. "GET OUT!" he shrieks, voice breaking with the force—more than either of them have ever heard him use. He thinks about saying something vicious, something cutting to really drive them off, and in his dizzied state can't find anything but simple, desperate fury. "Get out! Get out! I don't know why you're here! I don't know what you want from me! Stop it! Stop it! I didn't do anything! Just let me—just leave me alone!"

Connor trots towards the doorway, ushering Zivia towards it, determined and unmoved. Peter floats back towards Gaeta's side and twitters his indignant protest.

Edited 2025-10-16 11:24 (UTC)

"Mulcahy --"

Zivia stands in the doorway, making no move to cross the threshold despite Connor's insistent nudging.

"I'm sorry. We'll -- I'll try. Felix ..." Her lips press together in worry. "Come on. Come out of there."

It's the scream of a wild animal; the screech of a hull beginning to buckle under the immense strain of one too many jumps. And it is neither of those things, because there's nothing that compares to a loved one rupturing along all their seams all at once.

Gaeta ducks, just quick enough to avoid a larger piece of broken ceramic that hurtles past and smashes on the wall behind him. He barely catches his balance and shakily pushes himself back up to his full height. In the glance he chances toward Zivia, she'll be able to see the resolute look in his eye -- and the flickers of panic, too, like lightning along the eyewall of a hurricane.

"We can't leave him here."

Look how much damage he's done to himself already. How can Gaeta see that and walk away?

(Once, he turned his back on his best friend, believing she'd be fine by herself, and thirty seconds later she was dead.)

"I know. I know. But -- you need to back off. Even just a little."

She holds up both hands, palms out and empty. "Mulcahy," and god, she doesn't know what to do with her voice -- "this is your place, I'm not going to step in without your permission. I'm not here to do anything to you."

Something in his chest withers to see Gaeta duck away from something he did. All the same, his grip on the crowbar doesn’t loosen.

Their voices are ever a balm. Soothing, reassuring, mostly steady, and of all the people Mulcahy knows, they especially have always been such sources of sanctuary for him—but they’re still human. Still capable. A pattern means nothing. Every promise can be broken.

He seems about to say something when suddenly the blood drains from his face and he crumples forward, shaking, clutching at his stomach. Connor, a blameless animal, pushes past Zivia and Gaeta both; and after a moment, while Mulcahy’s still bent, noses gently at his head.

Godsdammit. She's probably right. Gaeta's about to relent -- not far; just a few steps backward, closer to the door, to give Mulcahy some breathing room -- when Mulcahy buckles.

"Francis -- "

So much for backing off. Gaeta follows right behind Connor. Maybe it's a small mercy that there's so many debris scattered around: it means he has to move slower, more deliberately, so he doesn't trip over anything. Much as his heart wants to rush forward, he can't.

But he's at Mulcahy's side as fast as he can nonetheless. One hand hovers at his elbow, not quite touching.

Mulcahy’s hairs raise as he feels Gaeta’s presence. His hands twitch to lash out at him with the crowbar before he thinks better of it. Through the gut-twisting, hollowed pain, still crippled, he bares his teeth and slaps Gaeta’s hand away instead.

"Felix --" A warning, worried look. "Please come here?"

Still carefully outside the door, though it takes everything she's got to stay there; though she has to keep putting a foot back down, like calling an unruly dog to heel, again and again.

"Mulcahy. Are you --" and the question reforms itself even as she's speaking it aloud, between one word and the next. "-- have you been eating at all?"

(Always the first questions, when she's had to help someone with a complex problem back home: have you eaten? have you drunk water? have you slept? Like the help desk guy, she used to joke, asking is it plugged in, is it turned on? -- not that that's likely to be the real problem, but that leaving those unchecked can make the real problem impossible to even address. And here he is, her dear friend, white in the face and on the point of collapse, and in her own distress she's nearly forgotten to ask.)

The smack doesn't hurt. (Physically.) But it knocks a switch somewhere inside Gaeta; sends the bottom dropping out of all his tension and dread. For a moment, there's nothing left but an odd weightless feeling before numbness settles in like a heavy blanket.

There's nothing he can do.

Slowly, he backs away. Keeps both hands visible as he retreats to Zivia's side. Keeps his mouth shut.

The question hits him like an arrow: so sudden and shocking it just confused him, and then, slowly, he realizes just how much he’s bleeding.

He has to wait for the sudden pain to abate before he answers. (By then, Gaeta is gone, and he’s alone again.) Mulcahy attempts to hoist himself back upright using Connor as leverage; instead he slips off, dropping all the way to his knees.

“I…” Still, clutching the crowbar to his chest, like it’s the only thing keeping him alive and awake right now. “I—haven’t. I haven’t kept anything down for…”

…

Oh. He has no idea what day it is.

“I… I can’t eat.” A day at least. “I want to eat.” A day at least of starving himself over ghosts, and he eats little more than a bowl’s worth of anything on any other given day. “I want to eat. Oh, God.” Five years imprisoned of starving to survive as best he could. Almost two years free and he hasn’t managed to fix it. Six years and his pantries still have dust in the corners, and he halves all his recipes, and half of his grocery budget is just food for the birds and cats and his spirit-pets. Six years of worrying about accepting invitations and letting people see how little he puts on his plate. Six years of hunger pangs and fatigue and feeling sick, sick. To not have enough to eat is one of the most abominable miseries. At least in the Village he had an actual reason. Now he does it to himself, because… because.

His voice is thick. His arms and shoulders shake. Hallelujah; there is still water in him enough for tears. “I—I, I can’t eat, but I want to. I do. Please believe me. I want to eat. I just want to eat.”

Edited (forgot the cw) 2025-10-17 04:03 (UTC)

Her eyes spill over, like a cup filled too quickly, before she's aware it's happening.

I want to eat. The simplicity of it hits her hard, right where she lives. It's anguish on his behalf, and threaded through it is a dismal feeling of uselessness. Of having failed him; of failing him right now, by not knowing how to help. What earthly good is she, if she can't even --?

(All she can think of, suddenly, is the day they met, a year and a half ago, in the galley of that wretched hive-ship. He searching for bread and wine; she able to offer part of what he needed, but falling short.)

There isn't time for this.

Zivia's hand presses to her chest, and a very faint murmur moves her lips, and her shoulders lift and fall again with a deep breath, and her face clears.

"Mulcahy," she says, low and steady, as the last tears slide down her face and fall away. "May I ... will you let me give you something? Like I did at the casino."

There is nothing he can do.

Zivia's doing -- something, at his shoulder. A murmur, a faint charged prickle in the air that Gaeta has categorized (in a somewhat facile way) as the movement of magical energy. Offering something useful as Mulcahy sobs and begs for relief. At least she's here. All his own spells are too practical, and what use is a cup of tea and company when the nightmare has crawled into the waking world and spent days destroying Mulcahy?

Days of this. Gods. I didn't want to push you, said Louis when they talked; I thought you needed time. But maybe if I had...

(And Gaeta told him, softly, there was nothing you could have done.)

There has to be something. He's hungry. He won't eat, but he wants to eat. Maybe -- maybe there's still a little food somewhere in the cabinets. Something easy. A loaf of bread.

Gaeta goes to look, half in a daze.

Peter is there with Gaeta to track down what food is left, but it’s a dim sight. Strewn about here and there are all of the things that can’t consist a meal of themselves, like salt and spices and sugar, but of the things that consist of real food, there’s… the can of peas that’s been around for about half a year, a thing of dried tomatoes, a container of oats, and the very end of a loaf which Mulcahy seems to have already taken a few token bites out of. It’s not stale yet; seems to be from Max’s.

Nothing else, though.

“I—I don’t know,” Mulcahy says to Zivia, and he means it. He doesn’t know. It worked last time, but he still doesn’t want anyone near him (as much as he’s dying to simply be held), and—well, it just might not stick. And he would hate very, very much to go through that cycle again, nevermind to do it while people are there.

The blind rage is beginning to evaporate. Mulcahy seems to be diminishing with every passing minute. “I’m afraid to try. You don’t understand how horrible it is, to, to make the attempt, and a minute later be…”

"No," she says very steadily, "I don't know what that feels like. I can imagine it's horrible."

A beat.

"Is it worse than this?"

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cw mentions of home invasion and medical abuse

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cw eating disorder

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cw eating disorder cont.

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