Sacrifices - Prologue
X-posted to headinatray for shits and/or giggles.
Fandom: Reanimator
Rating: G(gets a bit higher as the story progresses, obviously)
Genre: horror/adventure/drama
Pairing: Herbert/Dan, slight Herbert/OC(implied)
Summary: At the end of another long journey, Dan is sick. In seeking help for him, Herbert finds someone much like himself…or perhaps even worse.
Sunlight floods the compartment. Someone’s bag jostles his elbow. Dan is annoyed.
Herbert, sunk inside a filthy hooded sweatshirt, tries simultaneously to be inconspicuous and observe everything. His hand, the uninjured left, grips tightly to his bag. It has been ever since they left Carson City. His uneaten cup of ramen cools on the tray before him, cheap cocoa congeals with a line of scum around the rim.
Dan is tired.
The old Slavic woman behind them gums her dentures with a satisfied air, horrific squelching noises that can be heard even over the din of the train on the rails. Her loose-weave bag contains unidentifiable lumps of produce or something else; celery sticks out the top like a flag.
Dan is sick.
He’s been sick since they traveled, homeless and penniless, through Utah, sleeping in frozen streets and abandoned houses.
Herbert doesn’t care.
His right hand swathed in bandages and protected by a stained, oversized work glove, Herbert West stares resolutely out the window and not at Dan. Dan fights against the nagging suspicion that he is a failure, that his mere presence is a detriment to West’s professional work. He disregards it because that sentiment, like many others, is instilled not from any internal basis, but implanted by Herbert West himself.
Instead, he suppresses a racking cough and stares out the opposite window.
It’s nice here. Certainly much greener than Utah. Or Colorado. Or even Massachusetts.
Dan fights down a pang of longing as he imagines the Miskatonic valley as it would be right now, oaks and maples just budding into green, the river swollen with spring rain. The green here seems almost fake, a day-glo neon that has no business in nature.
Never mind. It may not be his valley, but he would learn to live with it. Just as he had learned to live with the plains…and the hills…and the coast.
Herbert wets his lips as if to speak, but Dan doesn’t even incline his head anymore. They’ve been running for so long now, so long, he can’t even count the bathrooms he’s been sick in, the hasty wash-ups so as to avoid suspicion from the local police, the dine-and-dash breakfasts. Herbert has grown tired of him, Dan thinks to himself idly, tired of his insistence on being warm, clothed, fed. Tired of his moral objections, his susceptibility to suggestion, his sentimentality.
Now in this valley, in the last pause before spring proper, they will start anew once more, climb with tooth and nail above their abject working conditions. A new start on the opposite side of the country, away from academic oppression and those who would see them dead. Away from a lifetime of memories, away from comfort and familiarity and routine.
The train rolls into Berkley station.
Dan is tired.
~`~`~`~
A/N: so this is the prologue for a (hopefully) longer story, crossing over with a collaboration of Lovecraft’s which struck me as a little…familiar, shall we say? I apologize in advance for any geographic/locomotive inconsistencies, I am a bit lazy when it comes to research in that area.
Fandom: Reanimator
Rating: G(gets a bit higher as the story progresses, obviously)
Genre: horror/adventure/drama
Pairing: Herbert/Dan, slight Herbert/OC(implied)
Summary: At the end of another long journey, Dan is sick. In seeking help for him, Herbert finds someone much like himself…or perhaps even worse.
Sunlight floods the compartment. Someone’s bag jostles his elbow. Dan is annoyed.
Herbert, sunk inside a filthy hooded sweatshirt, tries simultaneously to be inconspicuous and observe everything. His hand, the uninjured left, grips tightly to his bag. It has been ever since they left Carson City. His uneaten cup of ramen cools on the tray before him, cheap cocoa congeals with a line of scum around the rim.
Dan is tired.
The old Slavic woman behind them gums her dentures with a satisfied air, horrific squelching noises that can be heard even over the din of the train on the rails. Her loose-weave bag contains unidentifiable lumps of produce or something else; celery sticks out the top like a flag.
Dan is sick.
He’s been sick since they traveled, homeless and penniless, through Utah, sleeping in frozen streets and abandoned houses.
Herbert doesn’t care.
His right hand swathed in bandages and protected by a stained, oversized work glove, Herbert West stares resolutely out the window and not at Dan. Dan fights against the nagging suspicion that he is a failure, that his mere presence is a detriment to West’s professional work. He disregards it because that sentiment, like many others, is instilled not from any internal basis, but implanted by Herbert West himself.
Instead, he suppresses a racking cough and stares out the opposite window.
It’s nice here. Certainly much greener than Utah. Or Colorado. Or even Massachusetts.
Dan fights down a pang of longing as he imagines the Miskatonic valley as it would be right now, oaks and maples just budding into green, the river swollen with spring rain. The green here seems almost fake, a day-glo neon that has no business in nature.
Never mind. It may not be his valley, but he would learn to live with it. Just as he had learned to live with the plains…and the hills…and the coast.
Herbert wets his lips as if to speak, but Dan doesn’t even incline his head anymore. They’ve been running for so long now, so long, he can’t even count the bathrooms he’s been sick in, the hasty wash-ups so as to avoid suspicion from the local police, the dine-and-dash breakfasts. Herbert has grown tired of him, Dan thinks to himself idly, tired of his insistence on being warm, clothed, fed. Tired of his moral objections, his susceptibility to suggestion, his sentimentality.
Now in this valley, in the last pause before spring proper, they will start anew once more, climb with tooth and nail above their abject working conditions. A new start on the opposite side of the country, away from academic oppression and those who would see them dead. Away from a lifetime of memories, away from comfort and familiarity and routine.
The train rolls into Berkley station.
Dan is tired.
~`~`~`~
A/N: so this is the prologue for a (hopefully) longer story, crossing over with a collaboration of Lovecraft’s which struck me as a little…familiar, shall we say? I apologize in advance for any geographic/locomotive inconsistencies, I am a bit lazy when it comes to research in that area.