Ladislav Jankovic @ladislav-jankovic - Tumblr Blog

lynsey-ziegler‌:

Lynsey felt ashamed when he asked if she was praying. It was a noble concept. A believable lie that might make her seem like a better person if she went along with it. But she couldn’t. Even if she’d come here desperate for ‘signs’ or the chance to speak to her parents, she also didn’t want them to win by admitting she honestly thought prayer helped. Swallowing, Lynsey looks away from the stranger, facing forward again as she thinks. Ultimately, her hands lift off her knees in confused throws, a defeated shrug, while she grins at the dark humor of it all.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” she admits, laughing for what felt like the first time in years. Lynsey keeps her smile and eyes low for a second before breathing in and listening to her back rock quietly against the pew behind her. “‘Spent every week in church when I was a girl. I listened to all the wisdom. I want to believe my words will reach the people I’m missing but I just don’t.”

She huffs, immediately bending over backwards to quell her outburst. She didn’t even know this man. The last thing she needed was to be labelled as a hysterical something-or-other. Sniffing, Lynsey glanced at Ladislav again, frowning when she noted the familiar tome in his hands, and immediately feeling a different kind of regret.

“…no offense.”

The brutal honesty of the answer surprises him a little bit and for just a moment, he stands there at the back of the chapel and watches her. And while he barely knows her, he finds himself wishing she could have that peace of mind to know that her prayers were reaching someone. That some sign could reach out to her and give her some comfort.

Clearing his throat, he shakes his head when she tells him no offense, but he takes a few steps forward and finds his own place in a pew towards the back, sitting back and looking towards the front of the chapel, towards all the religious symbols strewn across the room. He had the bible in his hand, he had the prayers in his head, he had the words in his memory. But he couldn’t rightfully say that he didn’t relate to her sentiment.

“I did not go to church as kid. I went to prison. Try to find God. Memorize his book,” he held up the bible with a wry smile on his face before he puts it back down in his lap. “Speak to him every night. But...I do not think he is listening. I do not know why I still do it every day.”

#lynsey

pvttycake‌:

It was an issue–she knew for sure when she kissed him again that this was a problem. There was a time Patty could read every move before it came. But Ladislav‘s hand splayed across her back she inhaled deeply around him and hardly felt the urge to breathe out again. He reached to hold her face and she followed suit, less of a cup and more thin fingertips lightly feeling their way across his stubbled jaw, testing the strong edge of it. The wine on his tongue overpowered his taste but it only enhanced the subtle sweetness of his lips and–

Patty huffed, eyes closed, brows knit together in frustrated bliss when he pulled back to breathe words across her face, ridiculously intoxicating for how short they were. She didn’t let him go far, couldn’t. For every moment his mouth hovered over hers instead of on it, Patty felt herself nudge forward, the tip of her nose greedily ghosting his face, inhaling the scent of his skin until it felt thick in the back of her throat. Instead of waiting for him, Patty kissed him again and kept at it until she felt absolutely drunk off the affection, slipping off his lips and dropping her head to the meat of his shoulder. She hung there, content, her arms around his back, relishing in his body heat.

Eventually, she dragged one hand around to lay in front of her against his chest, watching her own fingers trace unplanned patterns into his t-shirt, pressing deeper in places to test the plushness of his muscles. Then she gave a heavy sigh and mumbled without moving. ‘You really do somethin’ to me.”

Only a breath after he pulls away, she’s already pulling him back in. It’s intoxicating, the way her lips find his, the way her hands travel over his chest and he lets her have whatever she wants from him, kisses her back with a ferocity that he can’t quite control. There’s more than just lust running through his head, more than just a blank sort of arousal in his mind. He’s thinking about her going out with him to practice what he can do with the marks on his hands. He’s thinking about her hands closing around his when he’d put his through a wall. He’s thinking about her standing at the middle of a labyrinth and holding her hand out to him, like she was some prize in the middle of it.

There wasn’t much in this world that made Ladislav want to be a better person. Not anymore. Wasn’t much that he could say he wanted to fight for, not much that he could say he wanted to pull him from whatever darkness was threatening to consume him. But he could say that about her. Could say that her standing there holding out her hand to him would get him to come to her each and every time she did it.

At some point, she pulled away from his lips and laid her head to rest against his shoulder. He turned his head so his lips were pressed against the top of her head, just breathing her in and looking out at the yard they were in. The words she whispered had a smirk crossing his lips.

“Is good for you? What we have?”

#patty

thexseer‌:

Her head tilts at the chuckle. Maybe it’s a hint. Maybe she can anticipate the answer - but she finds herself almost overwhelmed when she tries, her thoughts branching out in too many different directions, again and again and again until he speaks. And she decides then that she might like speaking with this man, who answers so easily, succinctly enough, with an explanation she hadn’t even asked for yet.

“Do you really?” She grins airily, excited to be faced with something she’s never experienced herself. Scooting forward in her seat, she props her elbows on the table, resting her chin in her hands for just a moment before straightening up once again. Her expression quickly shifts into something more thoughtful.

“They say that’s bad for you. Doctors, and all those kinds of people, they say it’ll kill you.” Not that she’s particularly judgmental about it. It doesn’t matter to her, really, what people do with themselves, just as long as they listen to her when it matters. When she’s right. Now, with this, she’s only curious, having grown up hearing horror stories about blackened lungs and mechanical voice boxes. And the older she got, the more concerned she was with preserving the sanctity of her own voice. Cigarettes are something of a distant bogeyman to her.

“Shouldn’t that scare you away from it?”

Ladislav nods and pats his pocket where he has a pack of smokes sitting just now. If he’s supposed to hide them on the premises, he doesn’t. He’ll follow rules as much as he can when he’s in someone else’s home, but there are limits to the type of things he’ll be able to cut off. Especially when these nuns weren’t allowing them to leave through the gates.

Though when she says that the cigarettes will kill him, that doctors say so, he just snorts because it’s not the first time he’s heard it and it won’t be the last. His sister used to tell him it all the time. The problem was, it didn’t really resonate with him the way it should. Dying from lung or throat cancer was a possibility, yes. But his life had been on such a wrong path from the start, he figured something else would always get him first.

“Maybe,” he consents, that it should scare him away from smoking, but he gives a shrug like it doesn’t matter to him one way or another. “Never seen myself growing old. I am going to die young. Probably not from smoking.”

#Tali

thexseer‌:

She looks up to see those familiar, indiscernible shadows - only recently familiar, at least, hiding behind the eyes of a few from this new group. But it’s a happy man, with a self-satisfied grin, and she wonders if he knows about those shadows. She’s not sure she’d be smiling so easily, if her eyes were so darkened.

“You know, I was, once. Not the way you mean, but I was.” A smile spreads across her face at the thought. “Before all this, years before. I was Mother Superior in Agnes of God. I looked very nice in the habit, I think.” For such a fairly confident claim, the words are rather passionless. Like she’s talking about something else. It feels like that, certainly, sometimes. She used to be so small.

“It seems like such a boring lifestyle, though, I could never do it for real. Could you?” She holds a finger up promptly, playfully, clarifying her question before he finds a different meaning in her words again. “Be a priest, I mean? Unless you were very tricky, and shaved your face very well, I think, and you could try pretending to be a nun.”

He doesn’t know if she’s joking with him or not when she says that she was a nun, a long time ago. So he just quirks the corner of his lips up and nods in acceptance of the words. If she was a nun, then so be it. He’d believe her and he’d respect that.

Though the question gets posed to him whether or not it was a lifestyle he’d be able to do. For a moment, he thinks about it and the idea is so preposterous he has to give a small chuckle. He knew the Bible in and out, knew the passages because he’d studied them and learned them and believed in their concepts and their message. But to preach the message? To live the lifestyle?

There’s a small shake of his head. “No,” he answers with some certainty and then gives her a small grin. “I smoke too much.” It’s a joke mostly, but there’s not a part of him that wants to tell her what would really keep him from it. The fact that he’d taken a life, the fact that he’d been to prison, that he’d been a wayward teenager, that he’d done things that were far from priestly.

#tali

lynsey-ziegler‌:

Lynsey hated what she was about to do. With every fiber of her being, she hated it, to the point where she actually felt some natural resistance to every step forward she took right up until she reached the doors to the monastery’s chapel. This was the room they used for morning service back when the world was whole, or so she’d been told.

Little pews sat in rows in front of a small, empty podium. There was a large, adorned cross on the wall behind it, as well as scattered around the other walls and windows here. It was a small space but far from private, each wall mostly made up of large windows that looked out into the garden. But there was no one she could see outside. So, after a moment of looking around, she stepped forward and took a seat in one of the front-most pews, staring at the cross on the wall with heavy focus, playing with her own fingers above her knees.

“…’you there, mom? Dad,” she added him in seconds later. She thought about asking after her siblings as well, but didn’t quite have the energy (or the stomach) to name each one of them individually. Only Sadie, the only one of them who reveled in the conservatism of their upbringing. For a while, Lynsey’s quiet. This feels like a joke, but one she has to go through with anyway. How much longer could she leave it, knowing she’s probably never see them again, living or dead?

“Can you see me?”

Whatever she was trying to do was interrupted by the sound of the door pushing back open behind her. Lynsey looked to it with a start but forced herself to relax moments later, unsure whether she was annoyed or grateful to have been interrupted.

There’s a bible in his hands, one of his own possessions. The temptation to take a look at the different bibles that could be found in a monastery like this was there. The temptation to claim one as his own. They had different versions than the one he had spent so much time reading in prison and a different version than the one he had now in his possession. But there was just something about stealing some nun’s bible that didn’t sit right in his stomach.

The funny thing was, he was bought into the idea of religion. The idea of Christianity as a whole, but he’d never really experienced a proper Sunday service or the traditions that generally went with practicing said religion. He’d never taken communion, had never learned the prayers or songs from a hymnal that most people associated with religion because it was something he’d self taught himself. So truth be told, he never knew if he was praying in the right way when he did sit down to offer up silent prayers. Never knew if there was a certain structure that needed to be in place or if it was simply making a wish and saying Amen at the end.

The other temptation he had was to ask. Ask these nuns what they suggested, if they could teach him, if it was even worth asking for salvation for someone like him. He just hadn’t worked up the courage, because he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the answer. Wasn’t sure if hearing that he was beyond salvation was going to sit right with him either.

He didn’t expect someone to be in the room he entered and when he saw them startle, he paused in the doorway for a moment before making the full decision to intrude on whatever it was they were doing in her.

“Are you praying?” he asks as he enters, almost ashamed to be interrupting.

#lynsey

pvttycake‌:

For a second, Patty almost backs down. Ladislav stares at her and it’s been a long time since any man’s been able to fluster her just with that, but she feels the urge to look away and laugh, even if she keeps her arm up and waiting. Thankfully, he starts walking again. She relaxes, a small dip forming in her outstretched arm as she waits with the palm up instead, blinking, mouth parted pleasantly when he gets close and pushes his fingers through hers. It kills the game a bit, the fun, but replaces it with something else, something like the pull she feels when he has to move almost beyond the length of their mutual armspan, gently tugging her weight off one of her feet as she leans to keep his hold.

Finally, Ladi makes it to the center. Her hand returns to her and he steps in close enough to fill every space in her peripherals, bringing his eyes up only now like he’s a master of Hollywood romance. She’s too old to act like a girl, blushing at her feet. But she feels herself melt a bit when she stops dodging and looks all the way up at that gaze, chin pointed playfully high with a thin, tempted smile.

“Stop asking,” she says delightfully, the sentence feeling familiar in her mouth with him here. Just as familiar as this, her hands pushing up into place onto his shoulders as she stretches up into him and presses her lips to his, left hand curling around the base of his neck to coax him even closer.

He doesn’t know what he expects when he gets to the center. He’d just been focused on getting his hand into hers as quickly as possible. Enjoying that she’d had it outstretched to begin with. There weren’t many people that he could say he was comfortable with. Weren’t many people he’d consider his friend or on his side in this group and mostly that was his fault. He knew how abrasive and off-putting he could be. But she’d seen through it even that first day they’d met. She’d been seeing through it ever since and there was a special place for her in his heart that he didn’t know how to tell her about. And it had nothing to do with the language barrier.

Only when his hand finds hers, she doesn’t stop there. She pulls him closer and her hands place themselves onto his shoulders while her lips reach up to meet his. Familiar words echo between them and Ladislav feels his body instantly reacting to them, remembering the last time she’d told him to stop asking and he can’t help the smile that forms on his lips as he has them pressed against hers.

As a hand curls around his neck, he curls one of his own around her waist, pressing against the small of her back. He pulls her closer, so she’s pressed up against him and lifts a hand to cup the side of her face, enjoying once more the taste of her lips, the feel of her skin, the warmth of her body. “No asking,” he confirms with her in the span of a breath it takes him to pull away.

#patty

thexseer‌:

It still tastes like blood.

No matter what Tali does, the sharpness seems to linger on her tongue, no less oppressive now than it was when she first came to this place. So she’s leaning into it. The wine might have been close. It was a nice color, a nice texture, but… thin, maybe. Thinner than what she was hoping for. Now she sits with a bag of trail mix spilled across the table in front of her, carefully and quizzically separating the components into piles. Raisins could be closer. There’s a linear satisfaction to it, at least. That could mean something.

“Would you like my nuts?” Her words break the silence first, the sound of footsteps reaching her ears as the question comes to a conclusion and a newcomer seems ready to join her in the otherwise empty area. She might have grinned in satisfaction, pleased with her skills in perception, pleased to see and hear and know in so many directions, if she weren’t trying so hard to concentrate. “I only wanted the raisins, I think.”

The question catches Ladislav off guard. He stops where he is, forgetting altogether where he was headed in the first place and looks over at the girl splitting up her food. He gives a laugh, stuffing his hands into his pocket because he knows enough about the English language to make a dirty joke out of the question she’s asked him. Though, not quite enough to explain to her why he’s laughing in the first place, so for a moment he just stands there with his jaw crooked at her.

“I have my own,” he says and grins at his own cleverness. Though afterwards, he rocks on his toes and lifts a brow again at what she’s doing. He wasn’t so hungry that he was going to take someone else’s food from them, even if they were saying they didn’t want it. The more important thing in the moment, however, is that she’s not someone he recognizes.

“You are a nun?” he asks, unsure what else to think about it.

#tali

pvttycake‌:

Patty keeps her mouth shut but smiles tightly at his reluctance, and also the knowledge that he was going to try. ‘Cause she’s asked. In order to keep him trying, she doesn’t say anything about it, just twists in place playfully in silent encouragement for him to reach the center, as she did. Only, he stops. Frustrated, or probably embarrassed.

“You just started,” she chuckles, as if expecting this. “Technically, you’re supposed to get to the center and then leave the center. You’ve got to at least do that before you judge. Come on.”

Patty lifts an arm and holds it out in his direction, wiggling her fingers enticingly as she steps around in the center like it’s all a great big interesting game. She kind of just wants him to meet her there. “I’m waiting.”

Ladislav chews his lip when she tells him he just started. She explains the whole point of it again and he takes a breath, opening his mouth like he’s about to tell her it’s stupid again, but then she holds out a hand and tells him she’s waiting. It squares his jaw and for a moment, he just looks at her standing there, like some prize at the center of it all. It’s almost tempting to just step over the lines and go and meet her without following the path.

But, for her, he sighs and walks the rest of the path, keeping his head down until he’s close enough. Not quite at the center, but his hands reaches out to find hers anyway. He doesn’t look up at her, just holds her hand there as he makes his way the rest of the way before he reaches the center.

He looks up at her when he reaches it and gives a slight smirk, because whatever he was supposed to find, she’s a distraction. “Now what?”

#patty

have you witnessed any “miracles” or strange coincidences?

“No. No miracles for Ladislav. Only bad things.”

#answered #Anonymous

Do you trust the monastery and the sisters as fellow believers?

“I don’t know. They believe in God and...it is hard to say this place is not somehow different from the rest of the world. There must be something to it.”

#answered #Anonymous

pvttycake‌:

Surprisingly, Ladislav seems as curious as she was. “Well…I don’t know. Maybe it’s supposed to be subtle.”

She followed his eyes down to stare at the symbol again. She felt more when she was walking through it. Not that there were too many paths to take. But for an attraction that people used to travel to visit, Patty expected something a bit louder. Maybe that wasn’t God’s way.

“I do feel…inspired, I guess? If that makes sense.” Patty paused to look back at him a second, her smile growing in a mixture of playfulness and mischief. “You should do it, too. See for yourself. Bring your little bottle.”

Ladislav gave half a smirk when she tells him that maybe it was supposed to be a subtle thing. That she felt inspired. He can’t say one way or another how he feels about the labyrinth or the idea of walking it and when she asks him to do it too, he lifts ab row at her like she’s just asked him the most incredulous thing she could.

Only then he’s taking another sip of the wine and stepping towards the labyrinth’s entrance. He digs his toe into the dirt there and gives her a look that says he’s completely doing this against his will, before he takes his first steps along the path.

He doesn’t make it far, only a semi-circle before he stops and holds his hands down at his side in exasperation. “This does not work,” he whines.

#patty

pvttycake‌:

As weird as it is, Patty keeps standing in the middle as if she’s waiting for something to happen, in part because of what she’d been told, and in part because it seemed too interesting and deliberately placed to be nothing at all. She was distracted by her own hopes so much, she didn’t notice Ladislav’s approach, looking up only as he called out to her. Instinctively, the corners of her mouth tried to turn up in a smile at the image of him standing there with that bottle in his hands, but her mind took every opportunity to return to thinking about the circle around her now.

Patty shrugged, looking down at it as she spoke, restating what she’d been told by one of the sisters earlier. “Supposedly it’s an ‘ancient symbol of wholeness’. Walking the maze represents ‘journeying’ to a sacred space deep inside you, so when you leave, you understand better who you are. Or something.”

“Tch,” Ladislav greets that sentiment with some of his own. He looks down at the chalk markings on the ground, tracing them with his eyes and it’s nothing he’s ever heard of before. He’d been through the Bible countless times and not once was a labyrinth mentioned in its passages. He didn’t know what to make of it, because his entire attachment to Christianity and God was through the bible. He hadn’t known something like this was attached to the religion as well.

But, he wasn’t above exploring something new to try and find who he was. He was almost ashamed to admit just how drawn he was to the notion that something so simple could help with it and if Patty hadn’t been standing there watching, he might have given it some more thought. Maybe when she wasn’t looking.

“Did you find something when you walked it?”

#patty

pvttycake‌:

Since arriving, Patty had found herself drawn to the sisters. Maybe it just fascinated her, the fact that they claimed their belief kept them safe through all this. Whatever the truth was, it was strangely easy to just sit and listen to some of them as they lovingly recounted tales of their monastery. After getting somewhat of a lecture about one of the attractions hidden in the garden, Patty made her way out there alone until she found it, a paved section surrounded by thick trees.

The sister had called it the Labyrinth. It was a large maze drawn in chalk along the ground, one large symbol that, after a while of curiously staring, drew Patty to walk forward, following the imaginary walls until she came to stand in the previously-empty center.

Ladislav didn’t know what to make of this place. Maybe simply that he didn’t belong here. If there was still doubt in his mind that the markings on his arms were meant to be demonic in nature, the it was only brought home by how out of place he felt here. So he’d done the only thing he could think of and he’d raided the sisters’ supply of communion wine. He’d only taken one bottle, but it was enough to take some of the edge off and now he carried it with him as he walked the grounds.

He spots Patty before he figures out what he’s looking at on the ground. Some sort of maze drawn in chalk that he has no idea the purpose of. It looks stressful to him and he stands at the edge of the chalk lines, toeing it with his boot as he takes a sip of the wine.

“What is the purpose of this?” he calls out to her.

#patty

.photo-prophet:

Kathryn had almost missed the head peaking out over the edge of the roof of the building, the movement just barely enough to draw her eye. She hadn’t even thought to explore the roof, but the idea suddenly gripped her and she couldn’t think of not doing so. She spun on her heel to head and find the way up to the top, not caring much who was up there, or why. Perhaps that was a bit foolish but she didn’t see it in the moment.

If there was one thing she’d learned with this group, you couldn’t make assumptions to whether or not they wanted your company, you simply had to do your own thing and make amends where needed.

She pushed the door open slowly to exit out onto her destination, moving toward the edge herself, pausing only at his question. Everyone always seemed to think people wanted something of them. Perhaps they were usually right, but Kathryn usually didn’t ask much of others if she could help it.

“A view,” she deadpanned, for she hadn’t actually come up here for him specifically as much as actually wanting to see what was visible from the top. She waved away the blown cigarette smoke as she closed the gap between them,” You can’t keep it all to yourself, sadly.”

Ladislav snorted at the comment. He wanted to tell her to just watch him, that he could keep this rooftop to his own if he wanted to, that he could do whatever he wanted to and there was nothing she could do to stop him -- but what would be the point in that? What would be the point in making enemies in this group. These people were all he had now and he was going to have to start accepting that.

So he simply turned around and looked back out over the parking lot, his back to her as she came up to him. He’d dismissed her as a threat as soon as he’d seen her and one of these days that was going to come back to bite him, but that wasn’t going to be today.

“Is bad view,” he told her, mouth crooked to the side as he looked out over the buildings around them. They weren’t that high up and he wished he could see more. Wished he could see where they were headed, where they were going and what dangers lay in their way. But all he could see were empty rooftops, ran down streets, the slight movements here and there of monsters that had no right being on this earth.

“Nothing exciting.”

#kathryn

.beastxfprey:

Eli lifts a brow at the words, but if it’s a less than friendly greeting, it’s nothing that’s ever mattered. Apathy had always served him best, because no one could hurt him if he didn’t let them. If he simply didn’t care whether he was unwelcome or not then there weren’t a lot of places where he couldn’t simply make himself comfortable.

There’s a shrug of his shoulders, boot shoving the door shut behind him in a clear declaration of his intent to stay. If only because he thinks the man would prefer it if he didn’t, and Eli had always been contradictory that way.

“Same thing as you, comrade.” He can’t tell just what kind of accent it is that greets him, but in the end that doesn’t matter much either. The words are still true, up here for the same reasons, and he doesn’t hesitate in making his way towards the edge of the roof. Setting himself there comfortably, despite how many feet might stretch out below him. He’d never had any real fear of heights and it’s less now with the distant thought that he could be down there in a second just by pulling on that power in his veins.

He doesn’t test it, instead going for his own pack of cigarettes, pounding one out and shoving it between his lips before he nods at the other man. “Got a light?”

Ladi isn’t sure what to make of the man. He invites himself over like he owns the place and while there’s a certain annoyance there at it, there’s a certain admiration too. It’s not someone he’s spoken to before, not anything more than a comment in passing here and there. But he’s seen him around. Enough, now, to know that if the man wanted to be here, he’d be here and nothing Ladislav was going to say would change that. So he didn’t try, just accepted it.

The man settles onto the edge of the building, swinging his legs over the edge like he’s not afraid of the drop down to the floor and Ladislav just leans on the edge a bit more, inhaling deeply as he takes the smoke into his lungs.

When the man asks for a light, Ladislav digs out his lighter and hands it over to the man nonchalantly. “Comrade,” he repeats with a huff, though there’s a smirk on his face as he says it because he thinks it’s funny that most American’s think his accent is Russian, like there’s no other possibility that anyone from that region of the globe is from anywhere else. Hell, there were a couple of guards in the prison who had dubbed him as The Ruski.

“Typical American,” he spouts, blowing smoke at the man, but it was done in more of a playful manner than anything. He leaned further against the concrete divider that separated the roof from the drop down to the ground. He let his arms hang down, head dropping as he looked down at the ground and spit, watching it’s descent to the ground below.

#eli

.kane-e:

Kane has no idea who exactly saw his little… moment. He’d drained a couple cases worth of cider and no stronger disposition could’ve saved him from the aftermath. He slept for most of the next couple days and after that, he couldn’t bear to stick around. So he picked up his old habit again. Solo trips out, supply runs or scouting trips, it didn’t matter what he set out to find or do. Only that he got some time out, away from the group, enjoying solitude and the chance to shoot anything that moves.

It was probably about time he stopped doing it. Their anniversary had passed. Kane made a fool of himself and ruined a photo. It was no good to keep lingering on the past.

Despite everything, Bryce had made a good point. He didn’t have to die with her, Kane has to go about figuring out how can he live without her. It’s harder than he thought. It was an immediate reaction the moment he set foot in the store again. Considering where to settle down and rest and eat was intimidating. Kane didn’t want to stop moving. So. He headed for the roof.

Gun on his shoulder, all his belongings on his back, he thought he might settle for the rest of the day out here. Alone, preferably. He doesn’t get that.

Ladi, looking serious and stoic, blows smoke Kane’s way and turns back to look at the horizon. The question could be a thinly veiled ‘fuck off’ but it seemed friendly enough for Kane, “Fresh air.”

Only for a moment, he pauses before shutting the roof door and going over to join Ladi. Kane drops his bag on the floor against the roof’s edge, the rifle flowers with a clatter then Kane with a sharp exhale drops down back against the wall. Now settled, he opens his bag and starts rifling through it. “Think I’ve got some… smokes in here… Somewhere.”

Ladislav hadn’t been worried when he hadn’t seen Kane around. Used to the man’s antics of going off on his own by now. He’d done it so often at the base that Ladislav stopped being afraid that he’d never see his friend again. He hadn’t thought he’d keep up the habit here, but he wasn’t worried about the man never coming back. Kane always came back.

Maybe it was a stupid thing to believe. He didn’t know how long the group planned to stay here, didn’t know if it was their plan to move on to something else bigger and better or to bunker down and enjoy the good weather while they had it. Ladi wasn’t involved in those decisions and didn’t want to be. He enjoyed being along for the ride and as far as he was concerned, he was in Kane’s van until the end. That meant that Kane was going to be there. That meant that Kane was going to come back whenever he went off on his own.

The sad thing was, Ladi knew he wouldn’t be aware of it if something happened to the man. No one would go looking for him because no one would know how long he planned to be gone. What if one day Kane just decided to up and leave? More unlikely now that he had a brother here in the group, but the thought still crossed Ladi’s mind as Kane announced he was here for the fresh air and headed over to the edge of the building where Ladi was leaning.

As he dug around for smokes, Ladislav watched him for a moment. He always came back...different. Sadder, somehow and now was no exception to that. If Ladislav was a better person, he’d probably know why that was. He’d probably inquire about it and make sure his friend was okay. He’d never been good at that stuff.

“Where were you?” he asks instead.

#kane

.pvttycake:

Patty just blinks at him at first. With the confirmation that she isn’t scared, he seems to have moved on to the next possible alternative: disappointment. It’s not much of a sigh she lets loose, just a gentle deflating motion as her shoulders drop and cheek tenses, a form of helpless protest.

“No,” Patty shakes her head, answering with a high tone that finishes her sentence for her. That isn’t it. She didn’t know how to explain it, though, without…accusing him or worse. To take the pressure off her in the moment, Patty looked around them, as if scanning the terrain, then sighed more audibly and reached for his wrist, taking it and turning, all but dragging him behind her as she made her way off the road, away from the revenant’s body. “Let’s talk over here, okay?”

It gave her time to figure out how to say what she needed to, at least. Looking around for something that wasn’t so out in the open, Patty let go of Ladislav when they started to hop over dividers. She led him all the way off the turnpike towards the only other buildings nearby, finally stopping on a hill underneath one of the on-ramps looking down on unlit hotel signs. Bending to a knee again, Patty pulled her pack off her shoulder and dug around in it a bit until she pulled out one of those single-use antiseptic pads, turned to face him and waved her free hand for him to approach as she tore it open with her teeth.

“It’s complicated,” she said finally, moving to explain as she reached for his hands again, pushing the moist cloth back over his knuckles to clear the grime and blood away from where they’d split. “I think it’s a good idea…the practicing. Getting control. I think it’d be good for you but I…I don’t know. I’m worried it’ll make things worse at the same time. I don’t want to see you get so mad that you don’t care about anything anymore. Or anyone.”

Pain strikes her heart, imagining how things might change. How she’d go from watching his face to his back, always turned to her. Getting used to that, instead. It wasn’t fair to compare Ambrose’s descent to the man before her now; for all she knew, the marks had nothing to do with it. But Patty couldn’t shake that instinct. She slowed at cleaning Ladislav’s hand, but stayed holding it, trying meticulously to clean all the dirt out of the texture of his skin while staying quiet.

No. she tells him and he stays quiet as she looks around. Stays quiet as her hand curls around his wrist and she leads him away from the revenant starting to rot on the ground. There’s a feeling settling in his chest that he can’t quite place. A low compared to the high he’d just experienced while he was laying into the revenant. Something like regret, or pain, or...he can’t quite put his finger on what it is that’s settling into his chest.

She leads him down the turnpike, away from the road and they have to crawl over barriers to get out of the open. He’s quiet even when she starts digging into her pack and pulls out an antiseptic pad. He almost tells her no, that he doesn’t need it, but he lets her do what she wants to do with his busted knuckles. He leans heavily against a concrete barrier and watches her work, then listens to her when she starts to talk.

He doesn’t know how to respond. She tells him she doesn’t want to see him get so mad that he doesn’t care about anything anymore and he doesn’t have the heart to tell her that that ship has already sailed. That the day he’d beat in some guy’s skull on the pavement because he’d had the audacity to touch his sister was the day he’d truly lost himself. Maybe not right away, maybe following the events immediately he still cared for things. But then the world had ended and he had lost his sister too and what did that leave him in the world?

Only that wasn’t rightfully true anymore and he watches her face as she tries to work with his knuckles, tries to get all the dirt and grime from them. It stings, but he doesn’t flinch. He can still remember the way she felt against him, the way she sounded and the way she tasted. He’d be lying to himself if he said that it didn’t mean anything.

“I care,” he tells her with a slight smirk on his face because he can’t quite be serious about it. Not right now. “I would not have ask you to come with me, if I did not.”

#patty

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Ladislav Jankovic