somethinghuman | (no subject)

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iron bull,
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He meant to hold out longer. He really did.

Back home, he could go weeks to months without feeding. The new hunger, no matter how strong, was easier ignored in a dead city. There may have been the occasional feral street dog or unfortunate pigeon to help sate it, but they were just a crutch. Something to help ease the churn and ache that came from something that knotted up in his throat and head and demanded he appease it.

Darrow wasn't a dead city.

There were living everywhere. Even alone on an empty street, he wasn't alone. Every building had humans behind its walls, the air itself was saturated with the smell of living pounding him between the eyes. It made the hunger rear and demand he do something. It made his teeth bare and clench.

He didn't want to hurt anyone. He'd promised. He'd promised himself and the people he'd met that he wouldn't.

But the new hunger demanded.

He was sitting at his open window when he smelled blood. Fresh, alive, cloyingly metallic. It made him dizzy, and even without making a decision for it, his feet turned to follow the smell out the door and out the building. It wasn't human, he knew that, but the smell of feral pain and fear was bright and hot, and he couldn't help it. It called him and he was so, so, hungry.

When he found it in the alley, he mostly just thought: That's really sad.

The cat had clearly been hit by a car. It's back leg was mangled, it's pelvis at an odd angle. There were drag marks on the ground from where it'd tried to take itself to safety.

It was in pain, and pitiful, and there was no way it would survive anyway.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry I can't help you. But I can make it stop.

He made it quick. He owed it that much for the pain it was in, and for what he was about to do.

It didn't taste right. Not the way the new hunger wanted. But with blood slick lips and a mouth full of flesh and fur, at least the smell of living was easier to ignore.

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There was something oddly meditative about eating. His head could just kind of float while his hands and mouth did the rest, a mechanical and repetitive process. Shovel the food in, chew, swallow, repeat. The cat might not taste right, but it helped ask and sate the new hunger's desire that he hunt something bigger, something smarter, something human.

It was unsatisfying, but at least it did the trick.

He should have been paying more attention, though. Darrow wasn't home. The streets weren't empty. There was no promise of privacy. Instead of worrying about another corpse coming along to try and steal his meal, he actually had to worry about being caught.

Oh no. Oh no, no, no. No.

Shoulders stiffening and hands freezing from where they were about to shovel another handful of flesh into his mouth, he looked up. There was no mistaking that voice or silhouette. Oh shit.

"Hngh," he grunted nervously, suddenly very aware of what he was doing. "B-Bull?"

"Yeah. Are you eating a... cat?" He was pretty sure the thing in front of R used to be a cat. There was a trail of blood down the alley, so he was also sure the thing had been injured or dying when R found it. Scavenging.

Well, that wasn't good.

He considered for a moment, then slowly turned around to block the alley - and R - from view. "Go ahead and finish up, kid. Then we'll talk."

Why do I feel like I'm about to get grounded? Still, Iron Bull wasn't... angry. Instead of immediate disgust he just seemed perturbed, and that was actually pretty good considering what R was wrist deep in cat belly. That didn't stop the anxiety from rearing though, and it took a second for him to stop staring at the large man's back before he quickly tried to finish eating.

Despite the new hunger, his appetite had retreated. But food was food, and he didn't know what would happen next, so he quickly tried to sate himself while sneaking glances at Bull's back.

When he was finished, he almost wished he wasn't. But he sucked it up and tried to wipe his face on his sleeve, really only managing to smear the blood further. Wincing, he shuffled a few steps closer. "D-done..." He announced, wondering what would happen next.

Bull turned when he heard R's voice. He looked back toward the cat, which looked more or less savaged and wasn't much of an animal anymore. Good. A stray dog could have done that, or a fox - something other than a sort-of-human-boy.

He looked down at R, taking stock of him. There was no disappointment or judgement, only mild concern.

"Here, hold your hands out."

He waited for R to do as he said, then uncapped the water bottle he'd been carrying. He got R's hands wet. "Scrub them together, then rub your face off a bit. Use this." He took a handkerchief out of his back pocket and passed that to the boy.

Okay, so this is different. The instructions were not what he expected, so he just followed them carefully. What point was there to arguing anyway? He was a bloody zombie in an alley. Even if he turned and went straight home, it was a few streets away. People might turn a blind eye when he was quietly minding his own business, but a blood smeared Corpse would probably draw the wrong kind of crowd.

Still. Getting caught tearing into a fresh animal corpse felt oddly like getting caught with his pants down. Embarrassing. with a healthy helping of shame on the side.

He carefully scrubbed his fingers and face with the water and handkerchief. There was still blood and more than a little hair in his teeth, but he ignored it to focus on his lips and chin, mindful to try and clumsily scrub at his neck and throat in case he'd drooled.

When he was done, fabric was dark and sodden. With a guilty grimace, he held it out. "Thank... you."

Bull looked R over once he was done cleaning up. He took the bloody, wet handkerchief back and put it in his pocket; he'd deal with it later. He was good at getting blood out of cloth. And he was sure Dorian had a spell for it.

"Any time. So uh, this your usual eating habit?" He managed to not sound judgmental; he was looking for information, and if R felt ashamed, it was going to be hard enough to root it out.

Usual? Not quite, but sort of. Opening his mouth, R paused and tried to think of the best way to answer. Iron Bull knew of undead, but as far as he knew, they weren't his kind of undead. Did the Corpses where he came from eat the living? Would this be new, or same old, or just weird for him?

Hell, it was weird for R, and he was the one doing the eating.

Realizing his mouth was still open, he shut it and shrugged. "It's... w-weird." He hedged, not sure just how much information he should provide. He could lie by omission and let Bull think that animals were the only thing he ate, even if he knew that wasn't what he was hungry for. This is the absolute worst. "Get... hungry. Need... living."

If he had been anyone else, it might have worked. But Hissrad was still alive and well, and for twenty years he had been a spy. Not much got by him. Especially when R was not that great at lying in the first place.

"Uh huh. Something tells me that half-dead cats aren't your prey of choice."

The undead where he came from didn't eat things - they didn't need to. They were dead bodies, possessed by demons or some other kind of magic. But R was, still, a kind of living, and living things needed to eat. He'd said something about biting when they first met, and with biting might come eating. There weren't that many puzzle pieces to put together.

"Are you a danger to people here?"

Oh no, this isn't good. It was probably the one question he couldn't get away from by just shuffling away. It warranted an answer, and one he really didn't want to give. Especially with Bull still blocking the way out of the alley.

He wouldn't say he was afraid, per se. The large strange man had an unexpected way of making him feel fairly at ease. But when push came to shove, telling a giant that you were hoping to be friends with that you ate brains just wasn't an easy situation to navigate. It was nerve wracking.

Am I dangerous? Yeah, but I don't want to be.

"Not... eat," he finally said, shoulders sagging in defeat. "Don't... want... to hurt... p-people." He glanced back at the ripped up animal, wincing at the smear that had once been a living creature. "Smell... living... here. Too... strong. So," he waved a hand. He might as well commit now that he was this far. "C-cat."

Bull took all that in, and he nodded. "Alright," he said. And for a moment, that was all. "Alright. Are you still hungry?"

R couldn't eat people - obviously he could not be allowed to hunt down people in Darrow, even if there were some that might deserve that kind of end - but there had to be some way to see him fed. Bull wondered if the flesh needed to be newly dead, or if raw, refrigerated meat would do.

If R blinked, now would have been a good time for an exaggerated one. Instead he cocked his head and regarded Bull in surprise. As far as reactions that was the best possible one. No scorn, no distrust, just acceptance. Maybe even concern.

That was... easy.

Considering it, he tried to decide if he was still hungry. To some degree, he was always hungry. He didn't know what his body did with the food, but the new hunger itself was greedy. Before Julie, he was like a junkie waiting for his fix when a new brain came along. Now, with Perry rattling around his head, the desire for brains was more physical than mental. But brains were off the table. So were people.

Now that his shame had retreated, the hunger pulsed again. One little half-dead cat wasn't the fix he needed. So he nodded.

"C'mon, let's get out of the city. I know it might not be the same, but-- we'll see what we can do."

Bull was a good hunter, and R needed to hunt something down and eat it. It couldn't be human, and maybe it wouldn't be the same as R's apparently natural prey, but hopefully it would sate some of that urge, and some of his hunger.

He moved down the alley, making sure that R stayed close to him for the walk out of town, and into the countryside. The sun wasn't quite down yet, and deer and other grazers would be active in the twilight.

Okay, so this is happening. Struck a bit dumb, R fell into step with Iron Bull and followed. It was almost familiar, like forming a hunting pack, but instead of M and a few other dead eyed slow-as-molasses corpses making their way into a city, they were on their way out.

Still, no matter how easy going Bull was being about it, the entire thing felt awkward. Like before when he was this dead guy that seemingly didn't eat at all, he was more normal than a dead guy that ate not dead things.

"S-sorry," he felt the need to say. After all, the giant man was giving up his night to make sure R didn't go off and eat anybody.

"Asit tal-eb," Bull said in response to R's apology. "You cannot apologize for being what you are, and, for now, this is what you are. It would be cruel to force you to be anything else. But we cannot let you kill innocent people."

R seemed to have some hope, or some notion, that he had not always been this way. Dorian talked about his condition like it might be a disease, and diseases could, potentially, be cured. Maybe, somehow, R could get past his current nature. But he needed to survive until then.

"What happens when you don't eat?" he asked.

I don't want to kill people, either. He didn't say it, but he hoped that Bull knew that. He thought he might; if he didn't then he might not be as helpful as he was. Instead he was being almost pragmatic about it. R wanted to eat, but he needed to not eat people. Now he was trying to help.

Thinking, he tried to answer the question as best he could. It was hard though; Darrow wasn't like before. The new hunger fed off of the scent of Living, and at home, there were only ever a few living at a time. During the empty stretches had just come numbness. But R thought he might remember the earlier days of his death. Vaguely. Amorphous and cloudy, he remembered the new hunger being insatiable. It'd been hard to think of anything except eating when food was prevalent. It was only when humans became scarce that his head cleared. That's not good.

"New... hunger," he tried to explain. "The s-sickness... wants... to eat... living. Smell... living... and... the hunger... g-gets... strong. T-too... strong. Can't... think. Need... to eat... to stay," Shrugging, he floundered before tapping his temple.

Bull nodded as he listened. R had to eat to stay alive, to stay sentient, to stay present; but, possibly, it took him further from his humanity. It was a difficult balance to strike, but maybe not impossible.

"We'll do the best we can, then," he said as he looked over at the kid. "Hopefully it works. Might be a weird question, but how are you with uh... hunting?"

Hopefully. But it wasn't sarcastic; he did hope. Darrow was a place to start over, not the place to start a new zombie outbreak. He didn't want to eat another brain and see what he'd seen in Perry's, no matter how much he missed riding the wave of emotions and memories. Cats and rabbits and whatever they could find wouldn't be what the new hunger wanted, but maybe they could make it work anyway.

I just want to fit in. Is that too much to ask?

Shrugging, he considered the question. "Can... smell... food." That had been established, but it felt like pertinent information. "Slow... until... time." Vague, but he wasn't sure how to explain the rush that came when his body was ready to feed.

"Good, because I didn't bring any ranged weapons with me, and throwing a knife in the fading light might get tricky."

He could do it, his aim was good, but maybe it would be better to just get R close and let his own hunting methods take over. Bull had to admit to himself: he was kind of curious.

He felt a faint buzz in his pocket and he took his phone out to check it. He typed out a message to Dorian, promising the mage he was fine, he just needed to help a friend before coming home. He looked over at R with a wry smile.

"You've got my kadan worrying about me."

It was a weird thing to make him miss Julie, but it did. Most guys probably wouldn't think of the time their crush had thrown a knife into their chest as a fond memory, but R... well, not to sound conceited, but he wasn't most guys. Odd is it might be, the slowly fading hole in his chest was pretty much all he had left of her. That, and a steeping brew of guilt, and a half forgotten dream where her hair shone in the sunlight.

He never got to tell her about it. Or ask her if she really thought they could exhume the world somehow.

Glancing over, he tried to return Iron Bull's grin. He wasn't sure what the man meant, but he sounded fond. "Wh-what's... kadan?"

"My heart," he answered. Kadan wasn't necessarily that straightforward in translation, but that didn't matter. Dorian was his kadan. He would go home after making sure R was squared away. He didn't mean to make Dorian worry, and he was sure that telling him that he was out in the woods with an undead boy would not assuage any anxiety.

"Back home, our countries have been at war for... about as long as either of them has existed. I think he was appalled, at first, to find himself working with a Qunari spy."

That was an interesting dynamic. Almost familiar too. Intrigue piqued, R looked to Bull eagerly. Love stories were fascinating, even before Julie, but especially after. Something about the longing, the strife, the beauty of it. It was feeling about as strongly as the living knew how.

"You... s-still... fell... in-in... love... anyway?" He asked, wondering if it had been mutual or disjointed. Had either of them ever felt like he did, holding Julie's hand, and wanting in a way he hadn't known was possible?

"Yeah. Maybe not at first, maybe not for a while, but... it happened. Even if I thought it was impossible, or dangerous, or just plain ill-advised. It happened." He knew Dorian came from a slightly different reality, one in which certain choices allowed Bull to exist in a certain way in his memory; Bull didn't have that, and he had memories now that confirmed his dedication to the Qun to the very end.

Absently he touched his chest, where his shirt currently covered his new, inexplicable scars.

"There was a lot of verbal sniping at first. He'd ask if I enjoyed killing his countrymen, things like that. I flirted because it was fun to see him flustered. And, I realized, that he liked it."

It wasn't a fairy tale love, no matter how much Bull looked the part with his horns and eye patch. But it was a more grounded, realistic love. The kind that came from time, and was probably messy, and needed the work put in. Like all of life. It was probably selfish, but R liked that.

Nodding along, he tried to imagine it. It was difficult, he didn't know Dorian, but from the little he knew he could imagine Bull's easy smile fighting it out against someone's bluster. It made him smile. "L-like... for-forbidden... love. But... you... s-still... did it."

Smile fading to something a bit more wistful, he thought of Julie. He doubted she'd loved him, but he thought she felt something. Whether it had been fondness, or pity, or merely friendship he didn't know. But he was pretty sure what he felt for her might be love. He still did. She was out of sight, but not out of heart. "Girl... back... h-home." He confided. "L-living... girl."

Bull chuckled. "That's what Varric called it. That's how Dorian thinks of it, and Dorian is a person that is inclined to do the forbidden. I thought he would disappear once his curiosity was sated. But he kept coming back."

Fondness softened his features as he spoke; Dorian was unique in all the people that ended up in Bull's bed while he was in Thedas. Dorian came back. Dorian stayed.

He grinned when R confessed his own romance. "A living girl, huh? How'd you meet her?"

I ate her boyfriend?

Not exactly the usual way to meet girls, living or otherwise. Throw in the fact he'd saved her via technically kidnapping her and it really didn't paint the picture of romance. But he'd kept her safe. And when she was determined to leave, he'd gone with her instead of trying to force her to stay. That had to mean something, as weird as it probably looked.

Shrugging, he decided to avoid the topic of Perry and brains. "C-city," he said, remembering the way Julie had looked to him when he first saw her. Hair wild and too many shades of gold to count, a determined look on her face as she cocked a shotgun. I should have been scared she'd shoot me, but instead I still think that's the hottest thing I've ever seen. "Hunting... with... dead. S-saw... Julie... and wanted... h-her... safe. Kept... her... s-safe."