𝙿𝙴𝙽𝙰𝙽𝙲𝙴 𝙸𝙽𝙱𝙾𝚇 ;

[dadyl]

𝚃𝙴𝚇𝚃. / 𝚅𝙾𝙸𝙲𝙴. / 𝚅𝙸𝙳𝙴𝙾. / 𝙰𝙲𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽.

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[dadyl]

No. They just gave you all new shit to deal with.

[ And they might not be done with Gabe if Daryl is any indication. If his signs could sound bitter against Gabe's chest, they would. But he doesn't say the part about Gabe possibly facing more torture because now that they've been altered, there's no getting out of here alone until whatever's being done to them is over with. Not unless someone else comes to help. ]

It work underwater? Like, can you get around?

[ He loosens his grip on Gabe, prepared to let go if he's ready so he can test his own agency out. He might not have a tail and Daryl will have to get those boots off for him, but if he's stuck in here, hopefully he can manage himself a little until this is all over.

Because at least everything here ends eventually. ]

[minuteofangle]

So far.

[ Gabe shifts back with a frown, one hand still on Daryl’s shoulder to center himself. It’s been a long time since he went swimming but it’s coming back now that he’s no longer actively dying. He runs some quick environmental scans, trying to switch from air flow to tracking water currents.

It’s strange, but so far it’s holding. ]

I know how to swim. Just been a long time since I’ve done it.

[dadyl]

[ Daryl is hesitant to let go completely because he'll lose his ability to talk to Gabe if he floats out of reach. He's found that there's more to his senses than just sight and hearing underwater, that vibrations and temperature play just as big a role as those senses he's familiar with, and he can't help wondering what Gabe feels - and how much of what Daryl feels is from his new... augmentations. ]

Yeah? I was never a swimmer.

[ He'd always avoided it whenever possible because it had always meant getting undressed. He was a hunter, not a fisherman. Except when he absolutely had to be. And he'd never, ever had time for fun. ]

Ain't got a choice, now. Just a new way to be trapped.

[minuteofangle]

For now.

[ Gabe frowns, thinking. Treading water for a moment, getting used to the feel of it. His clothes feel heavy, especially his boots, but he can work around that. ]

Hey. Can you breathe above water at all, or you stuck in here?

[ Just covering all their bases. They can't plan unless they know where they stand first. ]

[dadyl]

[ For now. Daryl's tail swishes in sullen agreement even though he doesn't say anything at all. Everything ends, here. It just takes time. At least he has his own mind, this time, if not his lungs... and so much else. ]

No.

[ Another frustrated tail switch that can no doubt be felt in the undulating water, and then Daryl uses the muscles he's become acquainted with over the last two days to propel himself down Gabe's body to his feet. The other man's legs are moving awkwardly in the water and he makes quick work of the boots, allowing them, now water-logged, to sink to the bottom of the tank.

Then he tugs Gabe back down to eye-level. ]

You don't think the first thing I tried to do was get out and find you?

[minuteofangle]

[ With anyone else, Gabe thinks he'd be lashing out. Kicking, fighting, making a fool of himself in the water. With Daryl he only tenses for a moment, then relaxes and lets Daryl tug his boots off. It's easier to move without them, a literal weight dropped off.

God, this is fucking weird. But he steadies himself, and floats, and settles by inches.

It's not bad, in the water. It feels almost weightless. He reaches out to trail his fingers across Daryl's chest, feeling out the shape of him again. Orienting himself. Some of the scars are familiar, the overall shape.

Other things are different. The texture of the scales. New scars. Some won't last. But they know each other still, even like this. He wonders, briefly, what they'd do if they couldn't sign to each other. Pantomime in the water, maybe. ]

Okay.

[ He kicks forward so he can bump their foreheads together, quiet affection to center himself as much as Daryl. ]

Just trying to figure out where we are. What we've got with this bullshit. Yeah?

[dadyl]

[ Every time Gabe touches him, little shivers of bioluminescence follow his fingertips along Daryl's scales and his gills frill out appreciatively at the sensation. It's harder to be self-conscious about what he is now when Gabe is touching him, when he's surging forward to press his forehead to Daryl's. Even underwater the gesture is familiar.

He's just so relieved to have been found. Even if it was like this. ]

We're in a big fish tank. No way out that I can figure. And if air is no good for you now...

[ That's what he's been left to assume after Gabe's reaction to being above water. ]

You don't seem... much like me. Maybe you'll wrinkle.

[minuteofangle]

[ It's strange. He can't mark the colors but his tech is sensitive enough to pick up the movement, the minute changes that shiver through Daryl. How he moves in the water, with that tail. How graceful it all seems. Gabe trails his fingers through the water, trying to think. ]

They're probably gonna drag me back out to finish the job.

[ It's signed without much emotion. Shit happens. It's predictable. ]

Unless they thought you were going eat me. I think they do shit like this just for the fun of it sometimes.

[dadyl]

[ Probably. Daryl's spines flare up at the thought because he knows that when they do, when whatever happens next eventually happens, he won't be able to stop them from hurting Gabe more. It turns out that even after a year, it hasn't gotten any easier for Daryl to feel helpless here. It's even worse when the inevitable is so obvious and specific.

Or is it? He hadn't thought of that one. It isn't like they've made feeding him a priority, though. ]

Maybe I still will.

[ But he butts his forehead against Gabe's affectionately and then, on a whim, swirls his big, agile tail around his body to hold him with it. It's exceedingly strange. But nice, too. Maybe. It's hard to tell. ]

I haven't seen anyone get eaten here.

[ As if he needs to clarify the joke. His fingers linger against Gabe's chest, idly tracing nothing until he decides to continue. ]

Drowned, though. I did see that.

[minuteofangle]

[ Gabe isn't sure what he'll get if he laughs underwater so he bites it back and just smiles, pressing their foreheads together even as Daryl's tail winds tight around him. His goddamn tail, jesus.

Madness upon madness, it barely even feels strange anymore.

The closeness helps, though. It's familiar. Comfort enough.

Gabe nods against Daryl, cycling his tech again. Scanning the tank, trying to get a better picture of it. ]

Fucked up way to go.

[ Not how he wants to die. But then, they don't always have a choice. ]

Haven't been in the water since before I lost my eyes. I mean really been in the water, you know?

[dadyl]

[ Seeing him smile is something. Even underwater, even distorted in the way Daryl is growing used to after the surgery to replace his eyes with ones better suited to seeing underwater, the fact that Gabe can still smile for any reason feels good. Daryl's gills shiver again and a ripple of muscle works its way down his tail all the way to the ragged, fanning fins at the very end. ]

I never liked swimming.

[ And because he can't leave it at that, ]

It's dangerous to do it alone.

[ Not to mention pointless, if the goal is 'fun'. Daryl hasn't ever been good at finding time for that. ]

Did you miss it?

[ 'Before they took away your choice?' is the unsaid implication. ]

[minuteofangle]

[ Briefly, Gabe wonders if that’s because of the scars. No way to hide those in the water. But it’s also a threat, a vulnerability that others can and do exploit. If you can’t hide in the water, someone will find you.

He nuzzles against Daryl, thinking. He’s gotten used to the feel of the water now, and they way his lungs don’t work quite the same. ]

Sometimes. Used to go with my friend when we were kids. Felt good. Felt -

[ He hesitates, not sure he’s got the words. ]

It was good. Then I had to do it in training and that wasn’t.

oof the scars, he knows him so well ;;

[dadyl]

[ His tail might already be wrapped around him but Daryl slips the arm he doesn't need to sign against Gabe's chest around the other's back, just so he can hold onto him in a way that feels more familiar. When Gabe nuzzles against him, Daryl's gills ripple in what amounts to a sigh and he wonders if maybe Gabe is cold. He'd grown used to the water almost immediately when he'd been tossed in, but Daryl had been so much farther along in the surgeries than Gabe is now. He's so utterly human that it has Daryl worried. ]

Take it that means you've seen someone drown, too.

[ Not to mention he's probably felt the beginning effects of it before today if it had been a part of his training. Gabe doesn't bring it up often, but every story from that time is a horror. ]

It's okay. I ain't seen Carol around here, yet. That means she's still on the outside.

[ And that means she's going to find a way to get them out. That, at least, is something Daryl isn't worried about. He can count on her watching his back like he can count on Hell jerking them around in the first place. ]

She'll figure it out. [ Or she'll do her damned best. ]

[minuteofangle]

Yeah. I have.

[ It's signed simply, and without emotion. That was one of the lessons in his SERE training. Not everyone made it out whole. Not everyone made it out alive. The instructors called it a good thing. Said culling the weak links made them all stronger.

Run with the pack. Don't slow the others down. ]

And I've been waterboarded. I know what it feels like when you start dying.

[ That moment when it stops hurting. That's when you know you're really in trouble. But he puts that thought into a box and locks it away, shaking himself. It doesn't matter. He isn't drowning now and neither is Daryl. They're together and they're stronger that way.

They'll make it through. ]

Good. Good. She'll play it smart.

[dadyl]

[ He had assumed as much about Gabe's training, given what he's already been told about it, but another ripple shivers through Daryl's body at the mention of waterboarding. That's exactly what it had felt like for the first minute he'd been thrown in here - the waterboarding that Leah and Carver had subjected him to. The memories come roaring back down, even as his gills work just fine. ]

I ain't never felt anything like it. Ever.

[ And he never wants to again, it had been terrible seeing Gabe struggle before his new instincts had kicked in. He might not know the first thing about how Carol will go about helping them, but he trusts her to figure it out. If anything can be tried, Carol will try it. ]

I wouldn't be alive if it weren't for her, you know.

[ Broadly, true, but specifically as well. And maybe they aren't alive here, maybe not exactly, but he's alive back home because of her, full stop. ]

First time she saved me? Me and Rick, all of us... We were about to have our throats slit. Be bled out. For meat.

[ It still seems surreal just signing it. But it had happened - and everything that had happened afterwards had been real as well. ]

We got caught by a group that was eating people. Easier to lure us in than hunt for food themselves.

[minuteofangle]

[ Daryl hasn't told him a lot of specifics about the world he walks through back home. The dead came back, things went to shit. Being alive means fighting. The last part is familiar, even if the specifics aren't.

Gabe tries to imagine that. Facing an enemy hungry and desperate enough to butcher other people. It's an ugly, brutal picture. ]

That's fucked.

[ But Carol saved him. Saved the ones with him too, sounds like. ]

There are people back home that buy corpses. Organ grinders, we call them, because they take what's left. Repurpose it. Bones, teeth, augmentations. Even the muscle tissue. Everything. But they don't kill people for the meat. Jesus.

[dadyl]

[ Daryl just nods when Gabe declares it fucked. It was. It was years ago, so many years, and still, Daryl isn't sure he's ever seen anything worse than the killing floor. The piles of bones and carcasses in the yard, the train cars full of other trapped people. The cattle.

Realizing that the people there were all wearing and using their peoples' things. ]

They hunted us after. After we helped Carol kill most of them. Tried to eat one of ours slow.

[ At least, he'd been told all about it. He and Carol had already been heading into the city after Beth when the cannibals had attacked the church. ]

We met plenty of other bad groups. Crazy ones. But nothing like them again. Even when the world got even meaner.

Not everyone goes bad.

[minuteofangle]

[ Horror after horror. Gabe takes it in, toggling his tech so he's sure he's not missing any of Daryl's signs in the water. It takes focus. Sometimes he thinks he misses things, nuance that he'd be able to grasp if he still had eyes. But he knows this because he knows Daryl, and what it means to survive in the aftermath.

Some things just bleed true. Even across worlds. ]

Not everyone.

[ He tips his head back, listening to the water. The strange clarity of it. ]

You didn't.

[dadyl]

[ He loves him for signing that because sometimes Daryl still wonders. He's done a lot of things to stay alive, to keep his people safe. All things he would do again in a heartbeat, and how much more would he have been willing to do if it had meant saving those they'd lost? Maybe he doesn't want to know.

It hadn't mattered before he'd ended up here. But in Hell, he's had more than the rare occasion to get caught up in those thoughts. ]

We always tried to be the good ones. The ones working to keep people alive. Whenever we could.

[ They'd gotten good at it, but his world has been rotting for a long time. It's getting harder and harder to survive no matter how much experience they have to rely on. ]

I thought I knew people were bad before. I didn't know shit.

[minuteofangle]

That matters.

[ Gabe trails his fingers absently through the water. He was cold earlier, but he's adjusted to the temperature. How long can he stay in the water like this before it starts fucking him up, damaging his skin? He apparently can't breathe oxygen anymore, so that's fun, but the rest?

Thoughts for later. He keeps floating, hanging close to Daryl. That feels safe, at least. ]

Think most of them are. But not all. And it matters when you try. I -

[ He hesitates, his signs stalled. ]

I need it to matter.

[dadyl]

[ Bad or weak, he's learned that sometimes it doesn't matter which it is. Both are dangerous when it comes down to it. But he also knows Gabe's position back home is so much more complicated than Daryl's own fight for survival in his world. Of course, Gabe needs the trying to matter, so Daryl nods against his forehead and makes sure that Gabe feels it. ]

It's mattered here.

[ Here, there are ways to measure it. Daryl is sure, more than ever, after his conversation with Bucky. ]

You and me. Carol, too. We been here, what, how long? A year?

[ There's a pang in Daryl's chest when he realizes what he's saying and again, his tail betrays him and squeezes Gabe a little tighter. ]

And we haven't changed. We don't normally look any different.

[ Not like the many he's seen with demonic changes they deserve. Not like Monika. ]

So it's mattered.

[minuteofangle]

[ It hasn't escaped Gabe's notice how some of the sinners end up with fangs, claws, shit like that. Henry had fangs, he remembers. And sometimes people end up with crazy shit for a while, or forget themselves, but then it fades. They don't keep that, though they carry the memories.

He bumps his forehead against Daryl's, pressing closer for a moment. Almost too close to sign. ]

More than a year, for me. And I'm still - human, at least. We all are.

[dadyl]

[ Gabe gets so close that Daryl's gills ruffle again, but the part about them all still being human hits hard. He doesn't feel human, scaled and spined and more than half his body made up of tail. He feels so alien that he's holding onto Gabe just to remember what it means to be himself and that comment, signed awkwardly against his chest, does it.

He takes hold of that signing hand in his own altered one and just cocks his head to the side enough to lean in and kiss him. He doesn't know if it will be the same, he's betting it won't, but he's been trapped here with nothing but his thoughts for two days. He's grown to miss Gabe in ways that can't be expressed in words.

The kiss isn't as weird as he'd thought it would be, but the moment their noses brush together and their lips meet, another burst of bioluminescence runs the length of Daryl's spine, sparkling and refracting around them in the water. ]

[minuteofangle]

[ It's the first time he's ever been kissed underwater. To Gabe's faint surprise, it isn't that different. It's just a moment, with this man, this person he trusts, and that lets it settle warm in his chest. All easy physicality as their noses brush and then his tech suddenly picks something up. There's -

Gabe cocks his head, running scans. He reaches out to run his fingers along Daryl's collarbone, trying to zero in on it. ]

Something's different. Did you do that?

[dadyl]

[ This is familiar, at least. Living suspended in the water isn't, his existence in his body isn't, but kissing Gabe somehow is. Despite how his skin responds with a little light show, Daryl lets himself relax into the moment - and perhaps one thing is feeding the other, and vice versa.

But oh, he likes how they can talk now without having to break their kiss. He's going to keep that, that is, if he ever gets put back right again. ]

Not on purpose.

[ Daryl deepens the kiss, even strokes his tail's strong grip down Gabe's legs, and the colours along his spine develop and shiver. ]

When you touch me... parts of me light up.

[ He doesn't know how else to describe it and when Gabe's fingers trail over his collarbone, his scales respond in kind. ]