Work Text:
Clark stares at the person in the yellow hazmat suit. The two stare at one another and then he turns away, continues walking even as he hears the sound of several voices. He doesn’t care much for these…things. He’s seen a few and stuff but they aren’t inherently interesting and honestly, they make such a mockery of such a different place. As though wearing those hazmat suits and talking all scientific like will get them anywhere. He moves into a room and pulls his bag off his shoulder, recently he’s been messing with going in and out of his new home. He brings things for Clark but usually just nabs the essentials like paper and pencil. He doesn’t need food because he has a plentiful food source and water isn’t a problem considering he can get that odd almond tasting water that is far more nutritious.
He sets the papers on the wall of this familiar room and pushes the whiteboard, uncaps a marker and starts drawing. He tapes more pieces of paper as he maps out the everchanging expanse, really, there isn’t a reason to map it out. It’s always changing, always molding into what it wishes to be, what is convenient for it but that is the point. There is always change and mapping out not the change, but the rooms themselves gives him an idea of what he can expect per transition. He doesn’t really care about that considering he loves this home of his and it’s forever changing halls but he enjoys the idea of understanding something that is so intrinsically different.
He sets the marker down and grabs a pen, sets his stuff on a table and then pulls his button-up off. He grabs another shirt and places it on, it doesn’t stink much after he cleaned it but it is stained, not that he minds though, it fits and that’s really what matters. He sketches the new room type he found and writes notes about it, it really is so amazing what this place does because it really is so weird. He can go through a room and go back into the same room he was just in, he could go through a room and be five rooms ahead. He could go down through a hole only to be jumping out of one, sliding down a hill only to be walking through a door. The way the brain adapts, the way it makes him curious never ceases to amaze him.
The endless rooms, endless lights and gentle song that it sings is entrancing, mesmerizing. God, what was he doing before this place? Why hadn’t he found such a perfect place in the past? Perhaps it was because he wouldn’t have appreciated it the way he does now, perhaps it’s because he couldn’t comprehend it beforehand. Either way, that’s in the past because this is in the present and the present is nothing short of inspirational. He tapes the paper to the wall and then moves to the fridge, opens it and takes a cup out filled with a clearish liquid, tinted white.
“Good afternoon Kat, how are you?”
She just stares, he sighs and nods.
“I know, it’s always weird, isn’t it?”
“...”
“Yeah yeah, I get it. Well, I’ll let you be, talk later.”
He closes the fridge door and sips on the liquid that fills his mouth with a viscous yet runny liquid. His hands move without much thought, they set the cup down and continue drawing, lift the cup occasionally to drink from it before going back to drawing those lovely rooms that made no sense. He smiles, drinks a bit more and then tilts his head back. He stares at some folks in hazmat suits, they stop when they notice him. He just keeps sipping and then sets the cup down, these…infectious bugs are always finding his little home, not that it matters, it’s as though this place likes him because it changes the layout so often he gets lost sometimes. He’s never not found his home though, and even when it’s found he has nothing to worry about, why should he worry? It isn’t his problem, it never was and never will be.
He listens to a cut off scream and then frantic running as he turns back to his work. He had stopped drawing rooms at some point and was instead drawing Clark because who else would he draw? Clark, the angel of this land, the one who understands him. The one who is always there, who is always wandering these halls and knows it by heart, the one who traces his hand against the wall and understands it so much more than he ever could. Such a beautiful relationship, to be a chosen of this most sacred world, of this home. He can hear those screams reverb off the walls as he draws, sketches one his obsessions before pinning it to a different wall. His eyes trace the room scattered with drawings of this pervasive place and that guardian of it.
Clark turns as the familiar sound of walking makes it through the halls and to his ears. His eyes meet his own, stare into such familiar yet drastically different eyes that stare with a knowledge he couldn’t possibly understand for so long. Those hands drag bleeding bodies into the room and then set them down nearby, they reach out and use the rags he had found to clean the blood off of them showing the contours. God, he wishes he could understand what it was like, to trail his fingers against the damp yellow walls and understand the language that this place spoke, to turn an eye to a light and understand why it flickers and buzzes the way it does.
“Good Afternoon, Captain Clark.”