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(( University AU with dead(?) Rose. I’ll accept any canon characters, but no OCs or genderbends, sorry. Please don’t match length, but give me plenty to work with for your response. Let me know if you've got any questions. Thanks for reading! ))
"Again?"
The protest came naturally, delivered with equal parts exasperation and impatience at having her no doubt Very Important Business interrupted. Said business happened to be a book whose cover boasted a key to the inner workings of the human mind and how to navigate the treacherous threads of thought and flow, but in actuality, Rose had switched the dust jackets and was thumbing through the Lord Anton Calfeld’s torrid exploits involving his brother's betrothed with reckless abandon. "Ooh," she murmured, her attention momentarily captured by a particularly ridiculous descriptor of the human anatomy. If she could only find her highlighter, her motivational list of instances that proved beyond the shadow of a doubt she could out-write any of these published hacks would grow ever-larger.
"Rosie." The sugary sweet nickname made her cringe, only to press her nose even further into the spine of her book. At eye level, so close she could focus on nothing else, the word 'moist' was displayed proudly in stark black ink, which was so much worse that Rose reluctantly withdrew to face the music. Roxy Lalonde--"Miss Roxanne" to her students--besides being her mother, was also the handler for a zoo of supposed adults that behaved more childishly than the underclassmen at her previous school. It went to show that age was not an indicator of maturity, as even though she was three years younger than most of her peers, Rose at least could manage to keep herself from passing out in the attractive bushes that dotted the school grounds on a Saturday evening.
The university at Innsmouth might not have normally granted entrance to a girl just shy of her seventeenth birthday, but Rose had managed to cut a striking figure. Her every action was precise, her words carefully chosen and intimidatingly complex, and her self-assurance that onlookers thought effortless all added up to a girl that seemed wise beyond her years. It also helped that her mother happened to have a mysterious amount of pull with the Dean of Admissions, given that she was a prominent figure in the science department and could charm any miser out of his fortune.
Rose was not so charming. Her area of expertise focused on getting underneath others' skin, intentionally or not, and it didn't do her any favours when it came to jealous colleagues. She was weary of the accusing stares of her peers, the whispers that followed her, the condescending tones of the rare adults who deigned to interact with her. She was already unusual enough that lying low and keeping her head down might have been a smart course of action, but Rose always had a bit of a problem with her pride and made it a point to outperform in any areas she could.
Pride or not, her mother was not to be dissuaded. Saccharine to strict in two shakes of a cat's tail, she was met with the dreaded kryptonite of all moody teenagers intent on rebellion: The Full Name. "Rose Marie Lalonde, you are going to march straight down to the boys' dormitory and give your brother his lunch. Who knows what kind of things those rough-and-tumble boys would get up to if they're left alone? How else will Mommy know if he's eating properly? It's a good thing that I don't have to keep an eye on my little baby now that you're here with me. Worrying over the both of you is turning this poor old woman grey!"
Rose bit back the urge to remark that Dave was eating properly and then some; he had the jaw-dropping ability of any growing boy to consume anything and everything in his path, edible or not. Why she was stuck as the errand girl whenever poor Davey needed a tissue for his sniffles was beyond her, but she was fairly certain that he liked her visits as little as she did. Lord Calfeld would have to wait. It was with a heavy sigh and much unintelligible grumbling that Rose swiped the offending package from Roxy's flawlessly manicured hands. It was the worst stereotype imaginable, a brown paper bag with her brother's name scrawled on it in looping cursive. She knew that if she bothered to check the contents, they would be equally pedestrian and probably accompanied by an encouraging note she'd pulled straight from some handbook or another.
No time to waste. If she was kept waiting any longer, Roxy might deem it necessary to pull out her next method of attack from a vast arsenal: The Foot Tap. Rose stood from her chair, privately lamenting the loss of its plush cushion, before an odd sensation of vertigo overtook her and suddenly it wasn't her mother's office she was standing in. It was only for the briefest of moments, but she could just manage to glimpse the drab grey of fog and a dark expanse of water just beyond before it was gone and she was left with watering eyes and a pounding head. "Ugh." This again. She blinked a few times to find her mother staring at her anxiously, hands outstretched as if to calm a skittish horse.
"Baby, are you alright? Was it another one of--"
"I'm fine," Rose cut her off, voice low and sounding not at all like herself. Rather than endure a round of rapid fire questioning, she swiped her coat as she left the room, shrugging into one side and letting the other sleeve trail behind her until she was outside. The day came with a chill that served as the first sign winter would be upon them soon. Alright, so maybe it was rude of her to turn tail and run when Roxy was only trying to help, but Rose didn't want her to know that she was having visions again.
It had started when she was thirteen, strange flashes that came without warning and only lasted for an instant. Rose was terrified, convinced that it meant she'd gone mad, the scholarly texts she tore through telling her quite clearly that this was how it started. In tears, she'd gone to her mother, no longer able to keep it secret, needing five tries to make the words come as shaky and unsteady as she felt. Roxy had pulled her close, stroked her feather-soft hair and cupped her cheeks until the sobs had petered out into sniffles, and told her she would be alright.
Distraught as she was, Rose didn't miss the cryptic mumble of how her mother had hoped the day wouldn't come.
Though she had been instructed to tell Roxy whenever she had one of her spells and to detail exactly what she saw, Rose was stubborn, convinced she could manage it if only she could piece together what it meant. That was obviously information she wouldn't get from her mother, so she had stopped sharing and instead pretended that they never happened. All the while, Roxy would pretend to let her get away with it. It was an odd sort of dynamic they had, but for all the fault she saw in her mother, Rose could never bring herself to hate her.
Having walked the path to Dave's dorm so many times, her feet carried her there even while she was focused so wholly on her own thoughts and on the wicked ache that still pulsed inside her head with every heartbeat. This had better be worth it. He had better get down on his knees and prostrate himself in front of her for deigning to deliver his PB&J and juice box right to his door. The campus was empty, devoid of boys lounging about here and there, and it might have been a bit nippy about but surely there must be someone--
No.
Not someone.
Something.
The word "monster" came to her unbidden just as the thing with rank breath and claws and far too many teeth rushed her with frightening speed. Suddenly, there were three perfect punctures in her gut where none were before, and Rose felt herself fade as her body dropped to the ground.
---
Cold. The kind of cold that leeched all thoughts of warmth from her mind. Did she have a mind anymore? Or was her consciousness simply floating, buoyant in a current that had her drifting where she could think nothing and be nothing. It was so gentle that surely she could fight it if she'd had a mind to, but that brought the question of minds up again, and she was so tired of pondering for one lifetime. Better to let it take her where it would, much better than thinking troublesome thoughts of resistance...
There was nothing. But now there was something, a very real something that didn't seem the type of something to stick her in the middle. It was a person, dragging at her harder than the river did (yes, it was a river, that was right, she remembered the river from her vision.) Did that mean this was destined? If there was no fighting fate, she didn't see why she should bother, but this person seemed frighteningly persistent. Life. She had to think of life.
Her name was Rose Lalonde, and her life was supposed to be a thing of greatness.
All at once, Rose was fully alert, the lingering cold of the river causing her to shudder. One look at her apparent saviour left her unimpressed; couldn't they have invested in a gallant white steed or something similar? Thoughts of knights and dragons and other such fairy tale pomp was enough to drag a manic laugh from her, one that was quickly cut off. This was no time to get giddy, Lalonde. It was time for action. Rose schooled her features back into what she hoped looked remotely professional, but take the frenetic energy away and that left her only with a bone-deep terror. Fighting all the way to put it in a snug little box where she could deal with it later, she took a deep breath to steady herself. "I'm going to assume that all hope is not lost and that I'm not quite dead yet. If you have any evidence to the contrary, I'll ask you to keep it to yourself while I figure out a way to get us both out of here."
2016-04-17 17:12:01 -
🌀
Batch one hundred and eighty three is a failure. The worst kind of failure. The kind of failure that learns from batches one through one hundred and eighty two, doesn’t respond to the most stern of reprimands, and claws its way out of the basement to eat the neighbors.
Fortunately, he lives in the middle of nowhere, in a dusty old Victorian that looks as if it was ripped from a storybook page and placed into the forest, soot and all. Perhaps it was. Unfortunately, this means quite the walk between the hole in his wall and the nearest neighbors. The moon is full according to his almanac, but it might as well be new for all that filters through the trees. Scratch tracks his along the straight path of a ley line until it happens to stumble upon civilization.
As far as he is concerned, Innsmouth is the end of the line. Pest control is far below his pay grade and -- at the risk of sounding unforgivably vernacular -- not his problem. Any action he could possibly take against the shambling abomination would no doubt prove just as harmful to the surrounding folk as whatever damage his failed experiment can do in its half-life. He’s looking forward to a quiet night in and a call to the contractor in the morning when the empty campus is not so empty anymore. Batch one hundred and eighty three rushes at the figure as time seems to slow down for Scratch. The decision is his; he can let it tire itself out and decay organically and perhaps make it home in time to enjoy the late-night radio, or he can make himself into some sort of altruist.
He sighs, the breath escaping him in a soft grey puff of condensation.
And he had been /so close/ to a quiet night in with a mug of tea, and perhaps some stolen manuscripts.
Frowning slightly, Scratch withdraws a pistol from his inside coat pocket and fires into the creature three times. Just as predicted, it rots in high speed, falling apart on itself until only dust remains. Where one door closes, neatly shutting away one set of problems, another opens; he’s shot the mystery student.
Scratch looks at the pistol closely, and then opens the chamber. Sure enough, the remaining three bullets aren’t lead. They give him a headache to look at directly, and seem to bend the surrounding air in a heat haze. He looks at the girl again, then at the bullets, then at the dead girl. She is definitely, indisputably dead. That’s not supposed to happen.
So much for making it home in time for talk radio.
---
Turn back the clock fifty years and Scratch would look much the same. A hundred, and except for some faint greying around the temples, he would be identical. A hundred and fifty, and one would finally see some progress.
In all his time, in all the distant lands he has seen during his studies, never once has something so hellishly inconvenient as carrying a dead girl through the woods in the pitch dark presented itself.
He’s not one given to episodes of nostalgia, but in cases like this, where there’s little else to distract him from the bloodied corpse of some young ingénue and the miserable state of his gloves from carrying her, the entire hellish operation is made easier by focusing on something else. Something cleaner. Something that doesn’t soak through his gloves with the kind of hot sting he remembers from medical school accidents in the cadaver lab and has him thanking the heavens she’s not alive to see him.
Homicidal failed experiments and dead girls he can handle. Stomach acid on his gloves and blood on his coat? Absolutely out of the question. He’ll have to change before he gets to work. And paint some appropriately powerful warding sigils on the gaping hole in his house. And stitch up the bullet holes, and give her insides a once-over with lime to counteract any remaining stomach acid, and attempt to make the basement workroom look somewhat respectable.
It’s been such a long time since he’s had proper guests. Even the undead deserve a bit of courtesy.
---
When she finally wakes, cold and wet and disoriented, his first thought is ‘Oh, to be young again.’ It seems to him that the undead, no matter their age, should be a fair bit less spry. Though he maintains the appearance of middle age, his line of work has taken its toll in its myriad ways: fatigue; aches; soullessness.
She, on the other hand, seems to be raring to go. “Slow down. You’ve had a rather eventful evening. I apologize for the smell. Formaldehyde, methanol, some lime. The bad news is it’s highly carcinogenic. The good news is that you don’t have to worry about that.” He casts a pointed look at the stitches down her front before presenting her with a neatly folded green-and-white square of clothes. It’s nothing flattering, but it’s the best he could do on such short notice.
“Because you’re dead. Rather, you were. I understand this might be difficult news, but do try to avoid fainting. There’s enough of a mess in here as it is.”
2016-04-23 02:19:44 -
🌀
🌀 ended the chat.
2016-10-07 04:33:56