My spirit aches...

[the_marshal]

WHO| Wyatt and all the insomniacs.
WHAT| Avoiding sleep.
WHERE| The Lounge
WHEN| One night, so late one might call it early, before the crowning.
WARNINGS| Some talk of nightmares, but nothing too terrible.



Night time was the worst. While the sun was up, while he had people and things to distract him, he could push the bulk of his troubles to the back of his mind. But at night, once things had gone quiet and he was alone with nothing but the sound of his own thoughts, they would all come rushing back.

Alcohol helped - took off the edge - but there wasn't a drink strong enough to stop the nightmares. The images that haunted him once his eyes finally closed.

Faces taunting. Sometimes Dora, sometimes Neeshka. Howard. Max. Sometimes a combination. At once beautiful and terrible. Dead and alive. Screaming. Whispering. Blaming and crying. 'Why didn't you do more?' 'Why didn't you save us?'

Sometimes, trying to put sleep off, he would pace for hours, to and fro across the floor of his room. Others he would flee into the training room, throwing knives until his arm burned and his back was sore. Tonight...

Tonight, he sat in the Lounge, a cup of black coffee, steaming gently on the table beside him. His chair turned out so he could lean over a trash can. In one hand he held a lump of dark wood, vaguely familiar in size and shape. In the other, was a small dinner knife.

Painstakingly, he worked the latter against the former. The point digging and turning, putting the finishing touches on a pair of tiny eyes.

Comments

[the_marshal]

Knife ringing careful circles into the face of the buffalo, he didn't immediately look up.

"Some might call it that," he replied, a tired, self-depreciating smile flitting across his mouth. He risked a glance at her. "Myself, I think it's a might too early to say."

[doc_holi]

Holiday gave a chuckle. "Well I think it looks pretty good so far. Much better than what I could do." Not that she tried before. It looks pretty difficult to mold something like that out of nothing.

She walked over to him and sat in the couch arranged across from Wyatt.

[the_marshal]

He chuckled, bringing the buffalo up to his mouth to blow the eyes clean with a gentle breath of air.

"Oh, I don't know, a fancy doc like yerself?" He stretched at his jaw with the hand holding the knife, amused, as he looked across at her. "I imagine ya'd be quite handy with a blade."

[doc_holi]

"I'm more used to guns, actually," she answered with a tiny smile, "Doesn't mean I don't have steady hands, but creativity seemed like something that my sister had more of than me."

[the_marshal]

Another laugh, low and rough, like stones beneath a boot heel, as his eyebrows lifted.

"A lady after my own heart." He looked back down at the buffalo, the flat of the knife tapping against the shaggy hump on its back. "Outside the dinner table, I never had much use for a knife either..." His mouth twisted, fell. Sobered. "Until I came here."

[doc_holi]

Holiday stayed quiet for a moment, letting the silence pass between them before she shifted in her seat. It wasn't that she felt awkward. Just restless. "How long have you been here, Wyatt?"

[the_marshal]

He sighed, a long exhale through his nose. The knife turned up and started digging at the little animal's hide, scratching lines of fur.

"A year? ... Maybe a little less." Too long, however one looked at it. "Whatever five arena's equals out to."

Six soon. That particular knowledge was a knot in his spine, a pressure against the back of his skull.

Another arena was looming and there was once again not a thing he could do about it.

[doc_holi]

Holiday looked down to the floor for a minute. There wasn't much to say about that and there was certainly no real comfort that she could give to change that fact.

Eventually, she looked back up to him. "What did you do back home? I don't think I've ever asked you that."

[the_marshal]

"I was a U.S. Marshal."

He could feel the star in his pocket, heavier now with the addition of Howard's rabbit's foot, whenever he moved.

There was still pride there, in the man he had been. It eased some of the hardness out of his mouth, softening him by fractions.

"Servin' outta Dodge City when they took me."

[doc_holi]

Holiday gave him a small smile. "Honorable work, especially considering your home. People like you are famous where I'm from."

[the_marshal]

"So I've heard."

He paused, knife tip in the wood, and looked up, his brow furrowed. "Never much understood why. We were just men, doin' what we thought was right. No different I'm sure than those that followed after."

[doc_holi]

Holiday shrugged. "Maybe so, but you've set an example, I think. People look up to you, for whatever reason."

[the_marshal]

He was silent for a long stretch, staring not so much at Holiday, as past her as he chewed over her statement.

"'Probably for the best they can't see me now," he said finally, eyes slowly flicking back over to her. "I ain't been doin' much example settin' anymore."

[doc_holi]

"My perspective says otherwise." She didn't watch the footage or the tapes, just some commercials they showed that made her sick anyway. Still, she had found that he was one of the better ones. Not like some of the more... disgusting people here.

And she had not forgotten what he did for her at the last Cornucopia.

[the_marshal]

"...Tell me about yerself, Doc," he said abruptly, changing the subject after another pause.

He didn't want to talk about himself anymore, about what he was or wasn't anymore.

"What's the future of yers like?"

[doc_holi]

She smirked a bit before leaning back. "Oh, you know. Biological warfare gone wrong. Mass plague. People turning into monsters at the drop of a hat. Babies in cribs changing into demons and killing their parents. The entire fate of a cure on my shoulders. Things like that... It's not always as bad as it sounds, though."

She didn't hate her life back home by any means, but sometimes it did become too much to bear. Still, Holiday at least had her pseudo family back there to keep her head on straight. A luxury that wasn't in this place.

[the_marshal]

It wasn't the first terrible future he'd heard about and, really, compared to all'a this... bad was kind of relative.

"Can't see how it could be: not if folks like yerself were there, doin' yer best to help people."

That's what counted in Wyatt's eyes.

[doc_holi]

She gave a small smile to the wall past him. "Our best isn't always good enough."

Holiday took a breath and seemed to come out of whatever jumble of memories she had been in to look back at Wyatt again. "But thank you."

[the_marshal]

His head tipped, a soft, pleasant lift returning to his mouth.

"Just callin' 'em like I see 'em, Doc," he replied honestly. "Lotta folks don't even try."

[doc_holi]

Her smile grew a little more and she nodded in thanks again. "It becomes difficult to ignore after awhile, though."

[the_marshal]

He nodded.

"That it does." But then he arched a curious eyebrow at her. "But what can ya do? Stop? Somethin' tells me that ain't any more yer way than it is mine."

[doc_holi]

"Sometimes I wish it was," she honestly replied. "But you're right. Stopping just isn't right, for here or back home."

[the_marshal]

"And, iffen it helps," he shifted, shoulders squaring, looking at her knowing eyes. "Ya aren't alone."

[doc_holi]

She looked back at him for a silent moment, making sure, before giving him a very small smile. "I know."

[the_marshal]

He stared back, mouth mirroring hers.

He nodded, once - an affirmative, as if they'd just closed a deal - and then turned back to his carving.

The companionable silence broken only by the sound of his steady work.

[OOC: Wrap?]