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Entry tags:

{peter}

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Who: Peter
Where: Infirmary, then Zero. Both locations will be open to visitors.
What: Self-pitying nonsense, the consequences of his own actions.
When: After his little rampage.

For a boy who has never been ill in his life, the toll is a special kind of hell, and Peter makes his misery known, sobbing in a huddled ball on an infirmary bed, and later under it, preferring to press his pounding head against the cool floor between bouts of swearing and throwing things. No one has ever been this miserable, no one has ever felt so awful as he feels right now.

When it's been a full night and day and Jamie hasn't shown up, Peter finally forces himself to think outside how awful he feels. Waiting for a moment when he's alone, he creeps out from under his infirmary bed and pulls himself upright, scowling at the shaky weakness of his legs. He's going to get out of here.

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Lahabrea has not, as it happens, been waiting in the infirmary. True, he has waited long enough to make sure that Peter has been suitably delivery to the infirmary after his resurrection has been requested. But he sees no immediate need to remain and wait. Not when he is generally aware of the death toll.

(He does, however, stop to firmly suggest that the infirmary staff should take care to not leave any sharp objects near to where Peter is recuperating. There is no need to unintentionally cause a repeat of what has only just finished.)

That done, he returns to his own cabin and keeps a careful eye on his Warden item.

It's only when it appears that Peter is genuinely making an attempt to leave the infirmary that Lahabrea makes his way there, arriving by portal shortly before Peter manages to make it much further than the infirmary door.

"I see you are awake."

The comment is straightforward enough, but even so, Lahabrea seems rather less pleased than typical.

Peter still looks like the bloom of youth, with no pallor or shadows under his eyes, but there’s a tightness in his features that tells more truth about how he feels. Still, he bares his teeth in a smile up at Lahabrea.

“Can’t keep me down.”

Given this is the first time Lahabrea has directly seen the effects of the death toll, he has very little idea of what it might look like. But even so, he is not about to let the actions previous to Peter's death go unpunished.

"I had not intended to."

For one, the death toll is (he suspects) likely doing more than enough as it is. For another, he knows full well that letting Peter stay dead would be entirely contrary to the purpose of the Barge.

"However, neither will you remain here. You must yet answer for that which you have done."

Peter leans against the wall, not managing to make it look nonchalant instead of necessary. But trying.

“Why? No one died. And I didn’t burn anything down.”

"Do you believe causing death alone to be worth punishment?"

It's an honest question, for all that it's clear that Lahabrea is no less thrilled that it's a question he's had to even consider asking.

"Yes. If no one died, why should anyone else care?" And Peter barely understands caring if they did. "There's plenty of magic here, everyone will be fine. Or they can leave."

"It is not about whether or not they will be fine. It is that the actions were not acceptable. And should you not be able to see that, perhaps time in Zero will give you time to consider the matter."

Or possibly not, given what Peter has said so far. But at least he won't be terrorizing people immediately on the heels of having just done so.

"All that remains is whether you come under your own volition or no."

It took him a little bit not to be mad, and these days, making sure he's not mad is a requirement, not a luxury. Thus, despite his intentions, he'd missed Peter's time in the infirmary. Instead, he finds him down in Zero, looking far too much like the little scamp from the circus even if he smells like a fucking sewer took a dump in a dead rat.

"They told me you'd be down here instead of in the infirmary. How are you feeling?"

At least this time he’s using the cot, even if he’s lying across it with his feet on the wall and his head hanging down. It’s not helping his headache.

“I think I’ve been poisoned.”

"...I doubt it, but why do you think that?" And he'll sit down on the floor, unbothered by the lack of chairs.

"Because I hurt. Everywhere. I never hurt," he adds petulantly. That was for weaker boys.

"...were you killed?"

Because if so, the answer to why that's happening is a lot easier than poisoning. A lot more likely too.

"... I can't be killed."

But the new hesitance in his voice is a much more honest answer.

"There was a tiger."

"Yeah, you were probably killed."

He makes a mental note to check in with Arthur about killing someone who looked like a child. Just to be sure. That's not for right now, though.

"That meand no one poisoned you. You just feel like shit for a week after someone kills you."

Peter scowls, and rolls over, stiff in a very unchildlike way as he sits up.

"I've never died before," he says quietly, pressing a hand where claws ripped out of him. It didn't feel like he thought it would. He always felt it, when the boys died or the pirates. Warmth, like water scooped from a pot over the fire and poured down his skin, more intense and sweet than the summer rain of their blood.

He imagined they felt like something was emptying from them.

But it had just hurt. And it still hurt.

John nods.

"It's a strange thing. The pain of it..." He sits down outside the cell, on the ground. "But now you know."

He scoots off his cot and pulls the thin blanket with him as he comes to sit in front of John, hugging his skinny legs to his chest. He's wearing jeans, the waist tied with shoelaces for a belt and the cuffs hacked short at his shins. They're mostly stained a rusting brown, but his bare feet are clean.

"Can you die?"

"I don't know," he admits as he watches Peter shift around. There's a question forming in his mind but he's not sure if Peter's ready for him to ask yet. "I've been to the Dark World, but I also came back."

"What's the Dark World?" He rests his chin on his knees, because holding it upright hurts.

"The Dark World is the world into which the dead things from all worlds are dumped. By all logic, that would say I was dead, and yet, functionally, I am the same here as I was there. Thus... I can't be sure. Death is a limited concept, and I was not a limited being but there is much I've forgotten. And very few things are absolute."

"I'm the same as I was before the tiger. I'm the same as always." Does that mean he wasn't dead?

"This was in my own world, before I came here. Here, that's the way it happens for everyone, human or not: you die and you come back, same as before, but you feel like shit for a week."

Trevor's responsible for this. He armed the little brat, on the condition that he doesn't harm anyone minding their own business.

He walks down to the infirmary to go figure out how badly he's fucked up. It's late but he doesn't like to go in when it's busy, anyway.

It's late and dim, and therefore Peter's sleeping. Sort of. He opens one eye from underneath the edge of his blanket, and it takes him a moment to recognize Trevor.

When he does, he smiles.

"Pig-Hunter."

"Been called worse." He replies, sitting down on the bed next to Peter.

"Heard you got in trouble."

He shuffles into a smaller curl to make room. Peter doesn't like to touch people, and that's just more true the way he feels right now.

"They're going to put me in jail again. Be real funny if they tried to hang me this time."

He nods to the first statement, but says to the second in a murmur;

"They won't hang you. No one kills people here as punishment. Likely they'll do something worse than killing."

Trevor rubs at his mouth, annoyed with himself more so than Peter.

"Why'd you do it?"

He looks sidelong at him, picking at a dry spot on his lip.

"Because it's what Jamie would have done."

He nods. It's an answer: not a good answer and not one he agrees with, but one nonetheless.

"You remember when I said my one rule about weapons?"

A little frown creases the smooth spot between his brows.

"Why would I?"

"Because it's important. If you don't remember it, you get punished. Bad things happen. So my rule was 'don't hurt anyone with the knife unless you were getting attacked first.' And now you're feeling sick, in this bed, while everyone around you is going to be telling you what to do more often. You'll have less freedom."

"No one makes rules for me," he grumbles, pulling a fold of blanket under his aching head. "I can't have less freedom than this stupid place."

"Yes, you can."

Trevor sits back against the bedpost, taking care not to touch Peter.

"There's a lot of people with a lot of imagination on this boat. They can make your life a living hell." They did it to Trevor. He can see Peter being inflicted with a curse or two.

"And each time you figure out a way around it, you'll get tied down more and more."

He rubs his arm across his eyes, and leaves it there. They feel better covered.

"Some of the boys told stories about hell. They said it was full of devils and fire and lava and the devils'd make you dance in red hot iron shoes." And Peter'd spent a while trying to figure out how to make iron shoes so they could try it on a pirate, but had lost interest with his usual speed. "But I think it's here."

He gives a weak smile, tired with the emotions that threaten him with that statement.

"I caught a glimpse of Hell, once. It had fire and a dark desert with no sun. I remember it looked lonely more than anything. Like you could shout and scream and there would be no one around to hear, let alone care."

Trevor looks over his shoulder at Peter with his eyes covered.

"This place is shit."

After Peter's down in Zero, Zhao Yunlan gives the kid a few hours to deal with himself before he shows up at the cell door with his meal on a tray.

"Lunchtime," he says, one eyebrow inching up.

He wrinkles his nose at him from under the blanket, but sits up, wearing it like a hooded cape.

"When do I get out?"

"When your warden's decided what he's going to do with you," Yunlan says, unlocking the door and setting the food inside. He's keeping a wary eye on Peter as he does, ready for any sudden moves.

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