[Oswald watches him through his puffy, heavy-lidded eye, his chest rising and falling slowly. Even from his dreamy, whisky-soaked daze, he can sense a weight to the confession. He doesn’t know what to say to that, for a while, any more than he knows what to make of the expression Alfred’s face is holding. It’s achingly soft and frank and open; a look meant for the dead boy in the backyard, he decides. Not him. He has done nothing to earn it.]
Well... fortunately for you, [Oswald spreads his hands in a weary, bitter parody of some once-triumphant gesture, fingers still hooked around the mug] I am not dead yet.
[To claim he is ‘very much alive’ would have been an overstatement. It’s not just that’s he’s bruised all over, stiff and swelling up. Not just all the scars he collects from year after year of brushing shoulders with death, the toll this life has taken on his body. But that this – stumbling his way from moment to moment like a disaster survivor, bleeding and lost – isn’t living at all; he’s just watching time going by.]
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Date: 2024-11-09 03:48 am (UTC)Well... fortunately for you, [Oswald spreads his hands in a weary, bitter parody of some once-triumphant gesture, fingers still hooked around the mug] I am not dead yet.
[To claim he is ‘very much alive’ would have been an overstatement. It’s not just that’s he’s bruised all over, stiff and swelling up. Not just all the scars he collects from year after year of brushing shoulders with death, the toll this life has taken on his body. But that this – stumbling his way from moment to moment like a disaster survivor, bleeding and lost – isn’t living at all; he’s just watching time going by.]