the sound is not asleep [closed]

[lovethyneighb_or]

Who: Father Mulcahy (lovethyneighb_or), Felix Gaeta (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.

Comments

[not_a_traitor]

Gaeta nods. Briefly, he rubs his thumb over the center of Mulcahy's palm, in one of the few splinter-free spots.

"I think it's like adjusting to anything after spending so long in different circumstances," he murmurs. "Worse, this time, but -- similar. It's only been a year and a half. I still hoard food; I still half-expect a Cylon ship to jump into orbit someday, even though nobody in the whole frakking system has space travel yet. And that's without me running into any Cylons at the gala."

He turns over Mulcahy's hand. Gets to work on his knuckles.

"It takes a while to learn that you're somewhere else." A soft sigh. "And I guess it takes longer to forget where you used to be. Doesn't help when the worst reminder possible suddenly shows up again."

[tehilim127_1]

She pauses in the doorway back into the living room. Not at all sure she should be hearing this from Gaeta; hesitating to join them while he's still speaking.

So it's only when he falls silent that she steps in, holding up the tweezers. "Here," she says. "All right if I bring them over?"

Trying to keep the question light, as though it's perfectly normal to ask permission before approaching.

[lovethyneighb_or]

Mulcahy looks up. "Y-yes. Thank you."

He turns Gaeta's words over in his head. Oh, leave it to these two to be able to make his most frantic, rabid anxieties sound sane again. Yes, it's true; he's in good company among the haunted. He wonders how many of them have destroyed their own houses because of it, though.

He goes quiet again.

[not_a_traitor]

Gaeta murmurs a thank-you of his own, accepts the tweezers, and begins to pick out the smaller fragments he couldn't get with his fingers alone. He lets the silence pass by unremarked.

"I don't know how long it'll take," he says eventually. "I wish it was faster. For both of us. But I hope someday it isn't a, a reflex anymore, to look over our shoulders, or doubt, or -- be this afraid. Because we'll finally know for sure we're somewhere else."

[tehilim127_1]

Zivia's taken a seat on the floor, just over an arm's length away, tucking her skirt under her legs with the ease of unconscious habit.

"What I've heard," she says quietly, "from people with reason to know, is that it does pass. There isn't a simple or fast fix, but it does pass."

[lovethyneighb_or]

A pause.

"I fear that I won't make it that far."

He feels so cold.

"This is going to kill me. Look around you. I can feel it. The way pieces of me have been carved and carved away. Shreds of my spirit falling in ribbons. I can no longer eat. I cannot drink. I cannot sleep, or go outside, or bear the gaze of my neighbors; I can hardly exercise, I play no more music, I cannot keep my house, I..."

(Did Gaeta ever even know that he was a musician, once?)

"I am losing too much. Incomplete beyond repair, like a tree without most of its branches, struggling to live before it dies. One day, soon, it will have been too much, and I'll slip off into the dark."

He looks up. "Felix. I'm—sorry, about... all of this. I know that you didn't ask for any of it. If this is too much for you, I'll understand if..."

[not_a_traitor]

It's so familiar. Francis says, this is going to kill me, and Gaeta hears the echoes of the last stragglers of humanity, all of them losing more and more each day. What isn't lost ends up crushed and molded for the sake of survival until there's simply nothing left. It is inevitable; it is impossible to change. The weight Mulcahy describes cracks his heart along all the fault lines Galactica created.

(He thinks, I could've sang with him, if I knew him before.)

But they're both somewhere else. There must still be a chance. And if there's not -- gods, Gaeta knows what he wanted most desperately in the last days of his own unraveling.

He gathers both of Mulcahy's hands between his own, lifts them, and presses a kiss to an uninjured spot on his knuckles, eyes bright. "I'm not going anywhere," he says.

[tehilim127_1]

She shuts her eyes, hard, for just a moment, then opens them again.

It feels cruel, to insist that he keep trying. Heartless. But she can't think how to say anything else.

"Francis." Very low, and very clear. "Please believe me. You are not beyond repair."

[lovethyneighb_or]

He can't make himself believe it. He was getting a little better, but things like this just keep happening and he's going to get worse, unmeasurably worse, the way the patients in OR would deteriorate so quickly without any warning at all. He's brushed against it over the last few days, that vast black spectre. It'll get him. He sees no future of otherwise.

And yet. Still. Gaeta does not let go, and Zivia is still here. He can't make himself believe those words, but the insistence means the world.

"I need help." Strained, quiet. "I—I very badly need help, but I'm—I couldn't let myself weigh on other's lives like that. I just can't stand it. I won't do it."

[tehilim127_1]

"I don't --" Her voice wavers, almost breaks, firms again.

(Of all things, it's the relief when he says I need help that's pulled the tears up into her eyes. That he says it, when she's been fighting so hard not to tell him you need help.)

"I don't think," slow, careful, each phrase gingerly placed, "if that's your worry, I don't think you realize. Just how much. The loss of you. Would weigh on our lives."

She has to swallow before going on. "Helping you ... if you could let us ... would be so much lighter to carry."

[not_a_traitor]

Gaeta nods. He can't wipe his eyes while holding Mulcahy's hands, and he refuses to let go; all he can do is blink rapidly to try and dispel a few tears.

"We're willing to take it on," he says. "It's worth it. I swear. Francis, what I asked for, going into this, was to be with you. I didn't ask for it to be simple, or easy, all I asked for was... you. As you are."

A brief, muted sniffle.

"Zivia's right. Whatever weight you think you'd put on us wouldn't be anything compared to the weight of losing you."

[tehilim127_1]

"And it isn't just the two of us."

Only a few words more, but she can't not say them.

"There are a lot of people here who care about you."

[lovethyneighb_or]

How, he wants to ask. How can anyone feel so fondly for as bitter a creature as him? How can so many love him for anything beyond a fond, distant pity? Who among them; who?

He moves an exhausted, hunched movement, then straightens; abruptly, he feels his cross thud against his chest.

... No. Mulcahy's eyes achingly shut. No, he knows who. All those people who scrounged in the dirt and the bushes for something so pitifully inconsequential for everyone but him. And—and around one finger in the hands that Gaeta grasps, an enamel ring.

He almost thinks, Lord, save me from my own foolishness—but, no. He seems to have beaten him to the punch.

He puts his head down. Worn to his last nerve, no fight left to him, Mulcahy breaks one hand from Felix to reach for Zivia as well as him, and weeps.

[not_a_traitor]

When Gaeta scoots a bit closer, it is with no less caution than before. He doesn't let go of Francis's hand as -- carefully, ready to pull back if he makes any sign of flinching away -- he settles an arm around the other man's shoulders. He will gather him as close as he allows, while still leaving space for Zivia to do the same if she wants. (He's not familiar enough with her religion to realize she may not be able to.)

So soft it's barely above a breath: "I love you."

[tehilim127_1]

As she so seldom does, as she's done before for much the same reasons, Zivia takes the hand stretched out to her and holds it.

No words; just the grasp of hand in hand, saying without words I'm here.

[lovethyneighb_or]

He clings to them both, in Gaeta's loving embrace and Zivia's fond touch. He'd reciprocate the words if he could get much out between the tears, but Mulcahy has always preferred to cry as silently as can be managed, and now is no different. But that in his still-frightened state he has continued to allow them so close... he hopes that means enough.

His frantic strength leaves him. Eventually, the tears slow, and with it his breathing. For the first time in days, Mulcahy's heart calms down.

[not_a_traitor]

He feels it: the slow sag of releasing tension, the easing of the pulse at his chest. Gaeta wants to weep with it, too.

Instead, he turns just enough to touch his lips to Mulcahy's brow. Whispers, again, I love you.

And then, fractionally louder, "Do you want to try and sleep?"

[lovethyneighb_or]

No response.

He’s already out, asleep right where he sits. Seems like his body was ready to hit the kill-switch the moment the coast felt clear.

[tehilim127_1]

"Oh," Zivia whispers, smiling unsteadily, "he's out. Can we ... d'you think we can get him to the couch?"

[not_a_traitor]

"Oh thank gods," he sighs out, in a similarly unsteady rush. He looks up, judging the distance to the ripped-up couch. "I think so? I'll need help so I can..."

He tips his head toward his prosthetic leg.

[tehilim127_1]

"Yeah," she says, keeping her voice low, and shifts to get to her feet. "Just one moment, I'm gonna cover the couch first, then tell me how to help you up."

There's a curtain on the floor that's been torn from its rod and had its hem ripped loose at the edges, but otherwise left intact; it'll do. The fabric's thick enough to keep stray springs from poking through, and smooth enough not to scratch a sleeping man.

[not_a_traitor]

Once the couch is covered, Gaeta softly walks Zivia through the best way to get both him and Mulcahy off the ground. It's tricky, with Francis practically dead weight and Gaeta loathe to let go of him for long, but they manage. One careful, awkward step at a time, they make it to the couch and settle Mulcahy there as comfortably as possible.

Gaeta heads to the bedroom and comes back with the blanket Mulcahy gave him for Givingstide last year: warm fleece and wool, sized to match the couch. He tucks it around him. Smooths a hand over his hair; cups his cheek, briefly, before kissing his forehead again.

And then he sits down on the floor again, back propped against the couch, and drops his face into his hands.

[tehilim127_1]

Zivia sinks down next to him, tilting her head back and letting out a long sigh.

"Hey," she says after a moment or two of silence have gone by.

[not_a_traitor]

Gaeta raises his head; runs both hands over his hair, with a similarly long sigh that catches against the thickness in his throat. He looks out over the destroyed room.

"I didn't know it was this bad," he whispers. "I should've checked on him sooner."

[tehilim127_1]

"I didn't know either. I don't see how either of us could have. Thank god for Connor and Peter."

She rests her mouth and chin against one loosely curled hand for a few moments, then gives him a closer look.

Gently: "Hey. Are you all right?"