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Hospitals are kind of a nightmare for Oliver to navigate.
Like, a literal nightmare, not just the usual “oh, I don’t know what wing I’m in, what floor am I supposed to go to, I can’t find a map and all the employees look busy and I don’t want to interrupt them to ask for directions” sort of nightmare.
(Though that’s still a thing, too.)
No, it’s the kind of nightmare that looks like a veritable Gordian knot of corpse roots, writhing and sprouting and withering constantly before Oliver’s eyes as he carefully weaves his way through the halls, like he’s taking a tour of H.P. Lovecraft’s worst dreams come to life. Or doing that thing they do in movies, where the hero has to dodge their way through a room full of motion-sensing lasers. Or like playing Operation with a pile of sentient spaghetti. If the spaghetti was evil and also made of fear.
Well, Oliver wishes he looked like a spy movie protagonist, at least. It would probably be more accurate to say that he looks like an escaped mental patient, drawing stares from hospital workers and patients alike as he awkwardly hopscotches over obstacles that only he can see, ducking and squeezing and contorting himself to avoid any possibility of direct contact with any of the End's many appendages. It's a huge hassle, but it can’t be helped. Touching a corpse root is a uniquely unpleasant experience, and a few sideways glances from strangers is a price he’s willing to pay to avoid it.
(Oliver is pretty sure he just saw two nurses whispering to each other while shooting him concerned looks. Hopefully he can accomplish his task and get out of here before someone calls security on him.)
A tendril flails wildly past Oliver’s head, nearly clipping him in the jaw as it goes. He ducks absent-mindedly under it as he stops to consult the crumpled piece of paper in his hand, comparing the number written on it to the number of the closest room he can see. Looks like he’s in the right area, at least.
(He’s briefly distracted by the sound of a flatline ringing out from a nearby room. One absolutely overrun with pulsing black veins. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the inky mass of them immediately begin to ripple and engorge, siphoning away the terror of the deceased’s final moments. The End’s beautiful machinery at work. Oliver doesn’t know why it even bothers to take avatars. It seems to get by just fine on its own.)
Aaand it looks like the direction he needs to go in is blocked off by a broad river of roots, spilling out along the floor and neatly bisecting the hallway before snaking off in the direction of whatever poor soon-to-be-departed souls they’re attached to. Great. Just great. God damn it. This is a pain in the arse. Why is he even doing this.
(He knows why he’s doing it. It’s because the Web told him to. Or, more specifically, because Annabelle Cane implied that she would send spiders to crawl into his mouth while he sleeps if he didn’t do her this one small favor, and Oliver isn't sure if she’s bluffing or not, so he’s just going to go ahead and do as she says. Same difference.)
(She could have just asked.)
Oliver pauses, backs up a few steps, looks back and forth to make sure nobody is watching him, and takes a running leap over the tentacular floor hazard in his path, sticking the landing neatly on the other side. Ha. Success. Now, where was he. 357, 358, 359...ah, here.
Jonathan Sims is immediately recognizable when Oliver eases the door open and peers inside. Not because of how he looks; he mostly just looks like a man who’s been through a meat grinder. He barely resembles the prim, professional academic Oliver vaguely remembers from his death-dreams. If not for Annabelle’s directions, Oliver probably wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a crowd. Or, rather, out of a hospital ward.
No, Oliver doesn’t recognize Jon by his thin, scarred body, or his ashen face, or his pronounced eye bags. Oliver recognizes him by the thicket of corpse roots prowling restlessly around him, making frustrated grasping motions, held at bay by something Oliver can't see. Huh. Looks like being a high-level minion of Beholding comes with one hell of a benefits package.
The sight of the Ceaseless Watcher invisibly arm-wrestling Terminus for possession of its Archivist is so fascinating that Oliver almost doesn’t notice Jon’s other visitor until he’s right on top of her. She’s hunched in a chair next to Jon’s bed, a short, stocky woman wearing a black t-shirt with a cute cartoon ghost logo on the front. She looks tired and worried. She is also, Oliver can’t help but notice, very pretty.
And now she’s looking at Oliver like he’s an intruder. Oops. Oliver wasn’t expecting to encounter resistance on this mission.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t know anyone else would...be here," says Oliver, who is not very good at improvisation. Or coming up with lies on the fly. Or conversations in general. God, what should he do? Should he just leave and come back later? “Uh, I like your shirt.”
And now she probably thinks he was looking at her boobs. Damn it. It genuinely is a cute shirt, though. Oliver kind of wants one. It would go with his whole theme.
She thankfully ignores the shirt comment. Is she glaring at him? Is that a glare? Maybe that’s just what her face looks like. It’s still a nice face. “Who are you?”
“I’m, uh, a friend of Jon’s.” Oliver decides to try to keep it as simple as possible. Less ways for him to trip himself up. A Web developer he is not.
“...right.” Yeah, okay, she’s definitely not buying it. And she’s still not moving. What now? Is there anything he can say to make her go away?
"I kind of wanted to...tell Jon something? Something kind of personal?" Oliver hints, in what he hopes is a convincing tone of voice. Her eyebrows are slowly rising. Oliver realizes what he just implied, and hastily course-corrects. "Oh. No, no. Not like that. God, no."
Now her eyebrows are starting to look judgy. Those are definitely judgmental eyebrows.
"Not that there's anything wrong with that!" Shit. That sounded even worse. Her eyebrows are still doing the thing. Oliver feels sweaty. This is what he gets for trying to do something borderline altruistic. Why couldn't he just be evil. Evil people don't blush when talking to beautiful women, he's pretty sure.
"I've dated guys!" Oliver continues, for some reason. And then, because it seems important that she know this, and because he can't seem to stop his mouth from making talking noises, he also says, "Not...not exclusively, or anything. But I have."
And now she's looking at him like he's a bloody martian. God, Oliver needs to get out more. He doesn't talk to humans enough. He’s forgetting how to pretend to be a person. Or maybe it's just the fact that being around pretty people of any gender tends to make him lose IQ points.
"I'm Antonio, by the way," he says, because that's a thing that people do, right? Introduce themselves? Should he offer her a handshake? No, he shouldn't. His palms are moist. Oliver shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“You're...not human, are you," she says, after a small eternity of silence. She doesn’t phrase it as a question.
Oliver's shoulders slump with defeat. Well, at least he can drop the “how do you do, fellow person?” act now. “Yeah. I mean, no. Not human. Anymore. Technically."
Her expression is tense and wary. She looks like she’s one step away from standing up and putting herself between him and Jon like a shield, which, while a touching gesture, is kind of the opposite of what Oliver is going for, here. When she speaks, her voice is flat and cold. "I met something like you, once."
There's a pregnant pause.
"I mean. We don't...all know each other," Oliver finally replies, which feels like a surreal thing to say to another black person, but that's apparently just how Oliver's life is now. What the hell is he going to say next? I'm not anti-human, some of my best friends are human!
She does not look impressed. "It was evil." Which, yeah, okay, that's fair.
"Uh. Well. I wouldn’t say I’m evil, exactly. I'm more...neutral. True neutral." Yes, because describing your moral code in D&D terms is definitely something that trustworthy people do. Can you get it together for one fucking second, Oliver?
She continues to look at him like he’s the creepiest creeper to ever creep. Oliver takes a bracing breath, sighs it back out, and decides to try a bit of honesty. “Look, the only reason I’m here is because someone told me Jon was in a coma, and they think I might be able to help him.”
And now she’s looking at Oliver like the idea of him helping anyone with anything ever is seriously suspect, which is a bit unfair, honestly. What did he ever do to her? Oliver forges on, feeling kind of defensive. “I mean, I'm a death guy, so comas are kind of in my wheelhouse. Dreams, too. I think it's because sleep is basically practice for death. Wow, that sounded ominous. I'm sorry."
She’s still sitting there. Oliver feels like a bad comedian on a stage, waiting for the tomatoes to start flying. “If it wasn’t clear, I’m not actually planning on killing him.”
Ghost girl continues to stare at him with undisguised hostility. Oliver continues to slowly wilt under the weight of her gaze. Is there an entity that embodies the fear of humiliating yourself in front of attractive people? Oliver might be thinking of switching alignments.
(Oh, wait, that’s just Beholding, isn’t it. That explains a lot, actually.)
“You know what, I'll just. I'll come back later,” he says, at last, trying to muster up an appropriately apologetic smile. He breaks eye contact and backs away, gingerly eases the door open, and steps outside. She watches him go with her merciless, merciless eyes. Fuck his entire life. Why is this happening. Why him.
“Have a nice day!" Oliver says, like an absolute lunatic, before he closes the door behind him. Then he takes a deep breath, buries his face in his hands, and prays for death.
And then he stops doing that, because sometimes, when Oliver asks Death to do things, it says yes.
-
The next time Oliver goes to visit Jon, instead of the intimidating cartoon ghost woman, there’s a cute chubby guy with glasses sitting next to Jon’s bed. Oliver immediately pivots on his heel and heads right back out, because nope, nope, nope, he has learned his lesson, he's not doing it a second time.