#Patients ( she cares for them but not much of a bound is formed) : Faceless - any being coming in her domaine for rest | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thedrunkendoc · 6 years

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The world was so quiet. So blissfully, blessedly quiet. For once in thirty years, it felt like. There was no rest for the wicked, as they said, and Jonesy Dawes felt it. From a screaming bloody birth to shrieking fights in the kitchen, his father’s knuckles bruised into his cheek, to raucous hollering with the men and women who came in and out of his life, his bed, his alleys and inn rooms and that one time in a docked dinghy. It’s hard to see sometimes how frantic a life is when you’re living it; the man with the drill rarely ever hears it.

Thirty years(rounding down--who cares about the change, really?) of fighting tooth and nail and there were years he told himself that it was just to stay alive. Other years, if he really looked at himself, he fought because it felt good and it felt right and he’d stare in the mirror until he saw his father’s face staring back at him, grinning with blood on his teeth. Maybe the fact just was that Jonesy Dawes wasn’t made quite right. Maybe he was missing a few crucial parts that made him work, made all the cogs turn together and the springs spring at once.

It was never a question of whether there was something wrong with him because he always knew that there was. But whether it was a birth defect or an acquired handicap he could never quite tell.

Because the fact was that Jonesy Dawes was inherently contrary. The truth of being at war with oneself is never quite as romantic as women seem to think it is, gazing upon paperbacks bearing men with flowing locks posed up on a seafoam-sprayed rock, shirt ripped open, synopsis labeling him as some rough-around-the-edges troubled soul in need of a good woman to save him. It didn’t usually work like that. Because as much as Jonesy felt overwhelmed by people and social encounters, the silences that let his brain run free were never better. As much as he wanted to be loved he couldn’t help but push people away, couldn’t stop himself sometimes. As sweet as those dreams of retiring by the seaside were, often he felt his hands tremble on the knife as he spilled salty guts and blood onto the dock and he wondered who would see if he just bent down and... tasted them.

Such was the life of Jonesy Dawes. Ever a man with a story to tell, he only shared the good ones, the good parts. He was a man who didn’t know himself-- who thought he did, but in the end there was bound to be more than a few doors left unopened in the hallways of himself. Those ones were always the hardest to open. Instead he fought, constantly, with friend and foe, lover and family. And in the end, he died alone, as he always knew he would.

“What exactly do you think you’re doing here?”

The world was so quiet. So blissfully, blessedly quiet. Jonesy didn’t want to open his eyes but that voice... he would know it anywhere. He shivered and peeked slowly. There was a sort of nothingness everywhere. Not dark, but not light either. Just empty of everything. And then a world came rushing at him like a fist to the face and he was sitting at a dying fire in Ashenvale. It was late, almost turning to morning by the look of the sky through the thick, lush tree cover. Alearah Duskgrove sat across from him and added some sticks to the fire, holding back her hair to stoop and blow into the embers.

She looked young. Her face was softer then, all those years ago before hardship made her features like stone, a mountain that moved for no one. A shame, really; she’d been pretty once. Jonesy curled his arms around himself and glanced around the fire. There were empty bottles strewn about, bits of bones from dinner left behind. He could still hear Mozelle’s laughter, smell Meike’s warmed ginger hair as she sat a little too close to him. That tiny tongue of flame flickered with his heartbeat, slow and fragile, only encouraged slightly by Alearah’s puffs of air.

Slowly, she sat up and settled her elbows on her knees. “Well? What are you doing, Jonesy?”

He scoffed. “The fuck am I supposed to know? Why don’t you tell me?” Jonesy lifted his hands, gesturing to the forest that just seemed to hum. No birds, no animals. Just a low hum. “What is this place?”

“Come, now,” she chided with a dubious look, “You know what it is. It’s Ashenvale. We can spend all night sitting here going back and forth but you really haven’t got the time for that, I’m afraid.” The elf pauses, peeking up at the sky. “Well. Not yet.”

“If you’re gonna just be a cryptic ass then we can just sit here quietly. Just answer my questions like a normal fucking person, would you?” He frowned over at her before realizing it, a lump forming in his throat. “Are you dead?”

“Mm. Third time did the trick, it seems.” Alearah straightened gently, exposing the gruesome hole in her gut; the only thing really amiss in the otherwise pleasant, familiar scene.

“Fuck... am I dead?”

Hunkering back down, she fixed him with an apologetic look. A look, but no words. Jonesy dragged a hand down his face, shoulders prickling as if that frazzled anxious sweat were about to start up, but it never did.�� “... fuck.”

“Yeah.” There the two sat in silence for a while. Jonesy sank back into the grass, landing on some crushed cigarette butts. Death felt so weightless. Pain-free and soft, like staying in bed on a Sunday morning. It took a while before he peered back over at her, realizing now that his sight was equal in both eyes--perfect, even. “We missed you, you know,” he offered gently. “Don’t think they’ll ever forgive you for going off and dying. I know I didn’t.”

“Well, some of us didn’t have a choice in the matter,” explained the elf, patient as anything, though her eyes couldn’t seem to meet his. “You’ve all been doing well. I’m sure that I can claim no credit and I would never deign to, but it makes me incredibly proud to see how well all of you have been doing. Willaude, Vathelia, Coit and Jenny, Aktius, Corthal. I don’t feel that any of you just got a job out of working with me. So many of you were so young, are so young. But this world is hard and cruel. Trying to go at it on your own only makes it harder and each of us needed each other. I believe that. Now look at them.” Smiling fondly, she waved a hand over the fire. The flame grew, just enough for small figures to be seen in the heart; Mozelle, tending wounded soldiers in a packed infirmary. Coit laughing in a bar with faceless strangers, scars bared to the world. Aktius swinging his son up into the air. “Don’t you see?” Alearah peered over at Jonesy, letting him watch the figures swirl about their lives comfortably. “I gave them everything I had and they took everything that they needed. My work was done.”

The rogue sat up slowly. “You didn’t have to die for all of that to happen, Ale. Some of us still needed you.” Idly, he plucked a daisy out of the ground and spun it round and round between his forefinger and thumb, unable to peer across the fire to her gentle, smiling face. “And I’m still here for you. Aren’t I?” Jonesy could feel her fingers brushing over his cheek, though her hands were laced in front of her. His head turned into the gesture like a stray cat starved for affection. “I see you, Jonesy. I see all of you. And I try to guide you as best I can. It isn’t always easy, stubborn mules the lot of you may be.”

“So... is that what we’re doing here? You’re... guiding me off to the next plane, or whatever?” he asked a bit hesitantly. The unknown was frightening, as always. But Alearah didn’t seem bothered by what waited for them, or her circumstance. Granted, it’d been some time. But her response was unexpected. She shook her head and watched him sadly across the fire. “No.” “No? Is this like, limbo? Am I stuck here?” “No.”

Jonesy scrubbed his face quickly. “So what are you doing here?”

The humming began to grow louder, slowly but certainly like the buzz of a beehive in not-so-far distance. Alearah stared up at the sky again a moment before speaking. “Just keeping you from going off too soon. Being a distraction, I suppose. Will you tell the others that I miss them?”

“What? A distraction for what-- Ale, what the fuck is going--”

That dark silence erupted into sound and light, something crashing overhead. The world was tinted green through his lids and his whole right side felt like it was playing host to thousands of insects, inside and out. His eyes snapped open and he gasped roughly for air, choking on a tube.

“He’s back! Where the hell is the medic?!”

A familiar orc stood above him, pulling the tube from his throat while a not-as-familiar Nightborne fussed around his right arm, pulling and jostling but without any pain. Jonesy opened his mouth to croak up at Doshaqa but she wasn’t looking at him. Instead she was yelling back to her extraction crew, men and women rushing around.

“Let’s go! We need to get him to infirm right now!” Jonesy Dawes closed his eyes, exhausted. Between forefinger and thumb he spun a small daisy round and round as the medics rushed him off to surgery.

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