Videte Ne Quis Sciat

Lars Seeing is believing

[colm-faulkner]

This is a very good patient-to-patient dynamic we’ve got going on here, y’know? Could really knock a few heads as best bros. [Not like he trusts Lars, but the other man seems virtually paranoid.]

[lars-mackenzie-blog]

Head knocking's never been my thing. Don't get ahead of yourself.

[rivers-run-shallow-blog]

What is the expression… you get what you give?

Although ‘try’ in this instance is inaccurate, I believe. I have no motive. It was simply a comment.

[lars-mackenzie-blog]

Oh, fucking hell. You always this cute?

[rivers-run-shallow-blog]

[Felix shifts our from behind the shade of a tree as though weightless, and he’s idly glancing at his cigarette as he replies] Rather a vague question, don’t you think lad? There would be many a he’s, many a she’s, many a places.

[lars-mackenzie-blog]

Vague? No, your answer was vague. Try your pretentious shit on someone who cares, kid.

[colm-faulkner]

[…That made sense. Duh, Colm.]

Yeah. Colm. But, “just me" kind of meant, “just another patient." [He should expand, tell him that patients aren’t harmless and that most staff aren’t harmful, but words have never been his forte. Pictures and alcohol have been his forte.]

[lars-mackenzie-blog]

Right, because the patients here are all completely harmless? Lars. And for now I'll believe you when you say you won't hurt me, but that's mostly down to the fact that there's a guard within earshot, not because I find you trustworthy. [He sounds more confident than he is. The guards are no safer than the  patients-- maybe less so. They have power, influence. If they were turned, there would be little Lars could do]

[aranea-makara]

Um, Elowen? [He’s not a face that she’s seen before. A week ago that might have stopped her from making any sort of contact, but now she finds it harder to care. He looks fine enough, and it isn’t as if she hasn’t escaped being murderer before.]

[lars-mackenzie-blog]

[The girl's timidity sets him a little at ease. Not much, because Fiacre isn't above using the skin of the innocent, but it is less common. There is still tension in the line of Lars' jaw, but he nods] You look scared.

[colm-faulkner]

Uh… Just me. [Colm puts his hands up in front of the other male, signifying surrender.] Not gonna hurt you.

[lars-mackenzie-blog]

'Just me' tends to be more reassuring when you've actually got any idea who the other person is. 

[lars-mackenzie-blog]

[The trouble with the halls is that they're claustrophobic. Closed in. But outside doesn't prove much better, the cloudless sky and stagnant air just serving as a reminder of how intensely vulnerable he is. Rabbit in the headlights, he thinks, with the grass soft beneath his bare feet. The walls surrounding the garden won't do much to keep Fiacre out. His only safety is in movement and even that small privilege has been removed, shackled as he is to this building now. A crack, as of a stepped on twig, jerks Lars' head around so fast he thinks he hears an echo of the crack in his own neck]

Who's there?

[rosewood-asylum-blog]

[lars-mackenzie-blog]

It could have happened to anyone. Lars wasn’t special, he didn’t stand out— he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. When he was on his solitary way home from school at the age of nine, it was common politeness that prompted him to agree when a middle aged man approached him asking for assistance. His naive young mind didn’t push him to ask what sort of assistance, and so he blithely followed the man home, wondering what his mother was going to cook for dinner.

Lars never found out what he was having for dinner that night, because the man didn’t need assistance— he needed an innocent victim. The house that Lars found himself taken to wasn’t the suburban white picket fence home he had expected, but a run down shack in a very poor state of repair. The walls were papered in pictures of flowers cut from magazines and catalogues, and though he was chained up for the first few days, the shackles didn’t last long. They didn’t have to, because Lars was kept weak enough that he couldn’t walk if he wanted to.

The man revealed himself to be Fiacre, king of the faeries, and Lars had been fortunate enough to become heir to the kingdom. Daily the young boy was fed a tea made of flowers that would help him transition into the faerie ways, but this tea was brewed with small measures of foxglove and nightshade and it kept Lars in a constant state of illness— always drowsy, unable to keep down any bread that was thrown to him, he became grievously ill. It was part of the process, Fiacre said.

Kept in such a weak state, Lars retains very little memory of these days. He was barely conscious and one day was much like the next. It never became clear what ‘Fiacre’ wanted with him, because he was left more or less to rot in his grimy shed. After years had passed, the media buzz surrounding the young boy’s disappearance faded, and slowly he was forgotten. He might never have escaped, were it not for a hiker passing by and hearing the sounds of vomiting from what looked to be an abandoned shed.

His family were of course ecstatic to have him back, and Lars’ health recovered with the reliability of youth. The man that called himself Fiacre was submitted to serious psychological evaluation at a mental institute, safely locked away, but Lars didn’t feel safe. It didn’t matter that Fiacre’s body was incarcerated, because he could simply take on another body. Such is the power of the faeries. Lars became skittish, and he saw Fiacre everywhere. It was easy to identify the faerie king, because his skin had a blueish grey hue and his teeth were uneven, pointed like a wild animal’s.

Any time Lars saw Fiacre, he ran. At sixteen he was old enough to live alone, and he quickly lost contact with his parents, travelling around the States as unpredictably as he could manage. Should he stay still too long, or allow anyone to get too close, Fiacre could easily find him again, and Lars couldn’t allow his life to be taken over like that. He wouldn’t become one of them, he wouldn’t. It was no way to live, often going hungry and sleeping rough, but it felt safer than a more typically secure life. Much to his own surprise as much as anyone else’s, Lars lived a relatively quiet life. It was erratic, yes, and unstable, but his early adult years were safe at least from the threat of Fiacre. Any glimpse of him, and Lars would simply hitch hike five states away.

Years and years he spent trying to evade the king of the fairies, but Fiacre was clever and fast and Lars eventually resigned himself to never truly being able to escape the king’s pursuit. With a sense not of sadness but of relief, he put the plug in the bath and set the showerhead running, surrounding himself with iron pots and pans and knives. Submerged in the water, he knew he was safe— running water and iron are two of the most fatal downfalls of faerie-folk. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on one’s perspective, the woman that lived downstairs heard suspicious sounds and called the police, and they dragged Lars from the bath before he was able to complete the task of drowning himself.

It became apparent that years of unresolved troubles following the kidnapping had been affecting Lars, and he should clearly have been put in therapy many years ago. Although Lars insists that it is too little, too late, and Fiacre will still be able to find him here, he has been admitted to Rosewood where the doctors can ensure that he doesn’t cause any further damage to himself in the pursuit of his recovery.

[astarbucksgirl]