eachdraidh | second shot ☢ VOICE - VIDEO (open to seelie & unseelie)

[It's take a lot of building himself up to making this broadcast. First, he starts with voice. ]

Err - listen, Jem, if you're listening in, close your locket over.

[It's an odd thing to say, but when Kieren switches to video, it should become apparent why. He's bare faced, eyes white with star burst pupils. The more they get used to the light, the more they'll start to look like pin-pricks as the video goes on. There's dark, purple-blue circles under his eyes and a yellowish tint around them. His mouth is blue and slightly black at the sides. He swallows out of habit, the feeling of a phantom lump lingering in his throat.

He looks like death, quite literally. There's a reason he's been mostly using the audio option to communicate. ]

I guess I just wanted to offer full disclosure here. To both courts, really.

[He chews his lower lip. ] So, some of you know my sister already? I don't know how much she's told you about home, if she has at all. But she might have mentioned something called 'The Rising'. You can probably tell where this is going.

[He has no idea how Simon can be so confident about what he is, at home. He wishes he were here now, for support. ]

If she hasn't, well - the dead rose from their graves and started eating brains for a while. It was - well. It wasn't really ideal. I was one of them.

[Well - it feels sort of good to have that off his chest. ] I'm better now, obviously. No brain eating or anything like that. No eating much of anything, really. I just wanted to be honest, I suppose. Better that than keeping it a dirty secret.

[He sucks in a breath. ] So yeah. That's that, then.

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Sort of. I'm still dead.

[He pauses. Considers his next words; he promised himself to be honest here. He looks vaguely uncomfortable. ]

I could still revert back, if I don't take my medication or if it stops working for some reason. It's not a cure, it's - a treatment.

What's the medication like? What's it do? It doesn't dull the brain functions, obviously, so it's not the Bliss--is it widely available? Or is it only held off to the rich? And for that matter, how is it--

[ thomas pauses for a second as it all hits him like a freight train, that he in fact shouldn't be asking these questions of this poor dude, who looks...kind of uncomfortable. ] I mean...sorry. There's just something similar in my world, is all. We haven't gotten that far. You're friends with Jem, right?

She's my little sister.

[So many questions, but he gets it. He sucks in some air, lets it sit in his lungs, useless, and then exhales. ]

I'll try and explain it. To be honest with you, I was in the treatment center for a while, but all they really told me was that it helped with the regrowth of brain cells. I was dead, dead before the rising. I was six feet under and if things were normal I'd be bones by now. But I'm not.

[He's not sure he's ready to talk about how he died. Not with strangers. ]

It's readily available to every partially deceased person, where I'm from. The United Kingdom has this thing called the NHS? So it's prescribed to us by doctors. I don't know how it works in abroad? Before the rising, there were loads of places that had to pay just to see the doctor.

[And then, gently: ] I've seen a lot of zombie movies. They never find a cure, it's awlays so bleak - but I'm here, I'm talking, I get to see my mum, dad and my sister every day. If you've got something similar back home, I don't know if you'll find a cure, but you've got to keep trying.

[We're people, he wants to say. They might not be the same as him - but being mindless, killing people without thought or reason - he gets it. He knows that life. ]

Oh--she's great. [ kind of awkwardly, but, it's true, thomas already likes jem a lot.

he is incredibly thankful for kieren's existence right now, because he actually answered all of his questions--that literally never happens to thomas--and he takes in everything he's saying like a sponge, trying to commend it all to memory. the fact that in an alternate universe, there's some kind of cure for something just like the flare...

(he's still trying not to think of newt. that this guy looks like him, sounds like him. that maybe the medicine could bring his dead best friend back to life. he doesn't want to know what newt would look like with the bullet hole in his brain.) ] I see...thank you. So it took a long time for treatment--are you still taking it here?

[ however, the questions stop as he talks about a cure. "you've got to keep trying". wasn't that what WICKED was all about? over and over, they said they had a cure, lied to thomas and the rest that everything would be okay, that their infected friends would be just fine. WICKED is good, they'd said, because WICKED was the only place trying to find a cure. but by doing so, they'd harmed thousands, caused the Flare in the first place, and killed so many of the people that Thomas cared about, imagining them actually finding a cure was almost laughable.

their "solution" had been an uninfected area for munies. some kind of paradise. he frowns, and it's obvious, looking down at the ground for a moment as he responds to kieren properly. ] Would you still want the cure if the only way to get it was to kill people who didn't deserve it?

[ talk about a heavy question. he does explain himself, a beat later, actually looking at the camera again. ] It's complicated, at home.

I don't want any more people to die. If — if that were the case, I'd rather just be shot down.

[He sounds like he means it. His voice is tight; too many people have died, because of him. He's lost too many friends, killed too many people too.

No one else can die on his watch. ]

As for the treatment - I've got my six month supply with me here. Are they killing people, where you're from? To find a cure?

[ shot down.

the video abruptly shuts off--it's for just a few minutes, because thomas needs ten seconds to compose himself, to not flashback (there's a dusty road and a scorched out sky, there's a boy with blonde hair and pale skin and bloody fingers and he's familiar and ruined, bloodshot eyes and red welts where parts of his hair used to be--

and he says, please, tommy please, and there's hope and misery in a pair of brown eyes he'd looked into a thousand times, just on the precipice of madness, holding the gun to his forehead and begging, and tommy was obedient, he'd always been obedient, and he shot his best friend--

it feels like he can't breathe, like he's right back there with newt over him, screaming for him to do it, to stop being such a coward (he was a coward and newt had always hated him ) and it's the voice and the blonde hair, the accent, of wry jokes and a kind hand to a new, scared greenie, and thomas killed him, for being just like kieren was, now ) and when he does return the video function, the locket trembles, as if his hands were shaking. in and out, thomas, in and out. ]

Sorry. [ he doesn't offer much explanation besides that, though, his voice kind of hollow. ] The...the only way they think they can find a cure is through the brains of the immune. If they can localize the gene that protects the brain from the effects of the virus, then they can make a vaccine or something.

[ when he's wiping the fog from his brain and trying to pretend he didn't just have a total freakout, thomas realizes something. ] Only six months?

Edited (sO MANY EDITS I'M SORRY ;;;) 2014-08-18 22:58 (UTC)

[He hesitates. ] Yeah. I think - the boons people are talking about. I can ask for more.

[He hopes, anyway. But there's the other thing. ] How many people are immune? Are they - killing them, for experiments?

second shot ☢ VOICE - VIDEO (open to seelie & unseelie)

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