A/N: i'm finally back!! this update's gonna be good!!!!! but dont expect to have too much after this... whatever. enjoy! and please review!
I had become accustomed to listening to the scratching of his old-fashioned quill across the way as I pondered my loss of a name, so when there was a slight click, and then a long period of silence, my eyes narrowed. I looked up, raising my eyebrows expectantly. "Yes?"
His expression was almost too intense for me to handle. My eyes instantly darted back to the table as I slouched and fiddled with the buttons on my annoyingly white polo shirt. I could feel his eyes on my head. "How long must I stay here?"
I looked up, chagrinned. "I don't know," I said frankly. "To be perfectly honest, I'd probably say a pretty long while."
It was hard to tell what he thought of this. "Alright. So can't I do this paperwork later?"
I laughed with a harsh acerbity that surprised even me, raising one incredulous eyebrow. "What else do you have to do?"
He smiled in a way that was oddly benign. "Oh… anything really. Count the floor tiles… Read the bible… I'm sure you have a copy of it somewhere."
Wordlessly, I pulled my slim pocket bible from my apron and slid it across the table to him. He laughed, and then continued. "I could drink coffee." My hands immediately went protectively to my cup. His smile was far off, almost nostalgic, as if he was thinking of something sweet that lay vaguely in his memory. "We could dance…"
First my eyes narrowed in something close to consternation, and then my eyebrows went up quizzically. "To what music?" I scoffed, but didn't feel as sure of myself as I should have.
He had a strange look on his face. "Music that only we can hear…" He stood and took my limp hand, tugging at it with the insistence of a child. I think the man enjoyed discomfiting me.
I very quickly snatched my hand back from him and cradled it to myself, shrinking back. What am I afraid of? I asked myself, and the rational part of my mind fell silent for once, unable to produce an answer. "I-I—d-don't—umm—" I stuttered, trailing off pathetically and looking up at him in equal parts confusion and fear. I was terrified of something, but I wasn't sure what.
"It's jus' dancing," he told me softly, reclaiming my hand and pulling, even more persistent this time. "No worries in that." He pulled me up to standing position and feeling awkward, I followed his lead.
He pulled me in dizzyingly close to his lean frame and began to sway, humming tunelessly and spinning me, leaving me disoriented and rather confused. Presumably, the life that I didn't remember had not included much dancing.
My head was reeling and it had only been a few seconds. I couldn't handle it. I stepped back, clasping my hands behind my back and then rethinking that decision and crossing my arms defensively over my front.
I slowly shook my head, feeling pained. I didn't want kindness derived from sympathy. I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes briefly and when they reopened again, I had regained control. "Surely there's something else you can do for entertainment."
He smiled rather bleakly. "None of those things are half as much fun."
"Maybe that's not the point," I rebutted. Why do I feel like I'm pleading with him? I wondered, feeling conflicted.
Understanding flickered briefly behind his eyes and he made his way back to the table, seating himself at the papers and gesturing that I take a seat across from him once more. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, but I sent him a look of intense warning that should have shut him up, but instead, made him smirk. I rolled my eyes and ignored his antics, retaking my place at the table with relief.
This is how it's supposed to be. Me being mad at him, and him being the annoying scoundrel that he is. My coffee was now tepid, but to keep up appearances, I took a sip. The soothing scratch of the quill resumed and I allowed my mind to wander freely. My eyes drifted around the diner, sliding past the linoleum tiles and the garish booths. My vision slid in and out of focus until everything overlapped like a patterned but translucent fabric. The sharp lines and hard edges softened as right angles rounded, and the glare of the fluorescent lights diminished as a warmer light, fueled by my imagination, flooded my vision. I could make this place beautiful, I realized, but as soon as the thought popped into my consciousness, I grimaced unthinkingly, and the new image of the diner that I had created shattered like a thin sheet of glass. But purgatory isn't supposed to be beautiful.
Sparrow's amused voice interrupted my reverie. "What are you making faces about?"
I was instantly back on the defense, feeling as if I had let my guard down. He was smirking, the smug git. It's not like my expression has anything to do with you! I thought in his direction (if that's possible.) "I don't know," I answered mulishly, suddenly feeling sulky. I was moping, and I knew it, but I did nothing to stop it. I pouted, glaring slightly. "Why do you care?"
He did not answer the question, removing his hat from his head and looking at me speculatively, ponderingly trying to puzzle me out. He thoughtfully fingered the braided ends of his goatee. "You always seem to think I have ulterior motives," he commented bemusedly, completely ignoring my question. Cheeky punk, I thought to myself. "Why is that?"
"Your past shows that generally, you did have ulterior motives," I retorted snappishly, glaring.
He shrugged as if to say, 'You have me there.' He smiled widely, showing several glittering gold teeth and spreading his hands in a gesture of surrender.
My mouth dropped open in shock. "Damn it, you're enjoying this aren't you?" I said. I clapped my hands over my mouth and then snatched them back to my side as I realized that Sparrow had begun to laugh. I hadn't cursed, even in thought, for years! Just as Sparrow opened his mouth to resume our verbal skirmish, God's voice boomed nearby.
"To my office," God ordered. "Now."
I glared daggers at the pirate in the red booth and stood, walking briskly to see my boss in the office, my palms sweaty as my heart threatened to burst. The door's glass window had written in fading gold letters, 'The Powerful One.' The once resplendent gold letters were now peeling and old, but I knocked and entered without giving the condition of the office much thought.
I immediately began apologizing profusely, kneeling in front of the ominous oak desk that separated God from the workers. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to do it, I just lost my sense of control," I said plaintively, wringing my hands and feeling like a bit of a ninny.
I could feel God's gaze searing my back as I stared at the puce colored carpet. God's anger was like a vehement, venomous hiss of sound, and the pressure of being in God's fuming presence and godhood was painful, threatening to fling my joints apart in any second. My bones rattled and the room heated like a fire, building temperature until it was almost unbearable. Briefly, through my pain, I wondered, I hadn't thought that God used torture, but within moments all thoughts had been scorched from my brain. I realized after a moment that I was writhing on the floor, and if I heard correctly through my torment, someone was laughing at me. My spine felt as if it was twisting in my back, and I thought I heard it making alarming cracking sounds until suddenly the pressure was lifted and the room was cool again.
"Just make sure it doesn't happen again," God said coolly, leaving me as I trembled and collapsed, sprawled in a heap on the floor. My throat was hoarse from bottling strangled screams that had clawed at my vocal cords, and my breathing was shallow. A weak glance at my arm showed that there had actually been fire in the room, but the sufficient burn wasn't the worst I had ever seen, though it throbbed terribly with my pulse. Barely conscious, I whimpered and tried to move, before yelping in pain. I sniffled dolefully as tears welled up in my eyes.
I'm not sure how long I lay there curled in fetal position, crying as I slipped in and out of consciousness, but eventually, there was a great POOF! that made me land jarringly in my 'room,' bringing on a fresh leak of tears as a layer of skin on my burned arm peeled off. I looked up to see Jack staring down at me in horror. "What happened to you?" he asked, dark eyes wide.
I winced as I moved painstakingly to a sitting position, saying ruefully, "It's best not to get on God's nerves."
"You seem to enjoy saying cryptic things," he informed me dryly. "D'you mean to say that the loving, compassionate, all-forgiving Christian God did this to you?"
I nodded weakly, slowly stretching my back and hearing the bones click back into place as if that's how God had meant it to happen. I cradled my burned arm to my chest and shivered in the too sterile air of the diner. I looked up at him flatly, deadpanning, "Would you happen to know anything about treating burns?"
"How long has it been since you got the burn?"
"I don't know…" I groaned, "But it feels like forever."
"Let me see it," he said, a familiar 'I'm being patient' look on his face and in his tone of voice.
I slowly moved it, so as not to accidentally rip more from the flapping fragments of skin that surrounded the raised welt of the burn. It had already begun to swell and blister, and spread across a large portion of my lower arm. He winced in sympathy, but took my arm and turned it over to examine the delicate skin on the opposite side. The stinging redness of a more minor burn flared like a fire there so that the whole burn seemed to wrap around my arm.
"We'll deal with the front first," he said wryly. He pulled a small vial from one of his various pocket-like attachments and uncorked it, adopting the lecturing look of a teacher. It surprised me that he could pull off the look of a teacher, what with the gold teeth and dreadlocks and whatnot. He held it up slightly. "This is lavender oil. For inflammations, the treatment of acne, the repellence of fleas, and most importantly—" He winked. "For skin burns," he finished, the timbre of his lilting voice blending pleasantly with the sounds of the diner. He took several drops of the clear liquid and spread it gently over my arm while I let my breath out in a long hiss of restrained pain. He put his fingers close to my face, and the floral smell drifted up to me. "That's what it smells like."
I just stared at him uncomprehendingly, letting my mind wander about as he slid out of focus. Soon, there was two of him. I squinted slightly at the two identical people in front of me until they merged again. The simple convergence of the two figures gave me an odd sense of satisfaction, paired with an oblique sense of contentment. I was deliriously happy—literally.
He seemed about to continue in his lesson, but then stopped and peered into my face. "Are you—" He put his hand to my forehead and then looked at me oddly, like I had just sprouted several reptilian heads. "You're feverish?" When I didn't answer, he checked once more. He looked slightly exasperated. "You're feverish," he answered flatly for himself.
I registered a minute later what he had said and fished around in my apron pocket for my Advil. I held the Junior Advil bottle up triumphantly, opening it and shaking three small pills out. Once they lay flat in my palm, I showed them to him proudly, saying with immense satisfaction, "Advil; also known as Ibuprofen. Used to reduce swelling, to ease pain, and to bring down a fever." With that, I grabbed a nearby water bottle and popped the pills. He raised his eyebrows (apparently they didn't have Advil in the seventeenth century or whenever/wherever he was from, or perhaps he just found my behavior odd) and continued to tend to the burn.
"My first burn," I commented sourly. "Seems odd that I didn't get it 'til I'd already died."
He smiled, but didn't look up. "Well, how didja handle it?"
"Badly. It was like a living Hell…" I stopped.
" 'Cept that technically you're dead… and this is purgatory," he finished.
I smiled ruefully with a cynical chuckle, and then sighed. "Sometimes I'm not so sure," I murmured, more to myself than to him.
He looked sharply up at me, his eyebrows shooting up. "About what? Do you mean to say—"
"Nothing," I interrupted hastily, adding fiercely, "I don't mean to say anything."
He went back to the tending of my arm and we lapsed into an uneasy silence for the duration of his cleaning the wound. Finally, he sat back and appeared to be done. I ventured a glance down at the arm, but looked away as I saw the extra layer of dead, loose skin flapping like a demented flag whenever I moved. I grimaced and very quickly stopped moving.
"Bandage that," he ordered. I reflected that he probably enjoyed being able to order me around. "And y' should drink some fluids too." He stopped, stood, and stretched languidly, making my spine hurt (from what? Envy?). He felt my forehead again and smiled briefly in satisfaction. "Now, I've got some paperwork to do." As he swaggered away, he stopped and called back briefly with a hint of a smile in his voice, "And y' owe me a shillin' for that, just so's y' know."
