Every Little Helps [Cassiel/Dale]

Surprisingly (or not), Dale hadn't been formally introduced to the idea of washing things, at least under that name. It just wasn't something you needed to know while there was little to get you dirty, and you didn't have to deal with body odour or most other issues associated with hygiene. As it was, as much as a desire for cleanliness had been ingrained into him, he didn't exactly see why he couldn't wear clothes that were filthy or stank. It was, yes, better than being naked.
And then there was the 'rules' thing...he didn't know what they were, but..."Things don't keep you safe because they say so." The words were spoken with a wary and...slightly pained tone?

A question about what the word 'represent' means is cut off. Looked like they were both leaving that for now.

He 'had' to have a food he liked more than others...? Why? That...that didn't make sense. What's the point in that?
He took a moment to think about it anyway. If he had to pick something..."Bread? Easier to find, and I need less of that before I can manage without food for a while."
Cassiel probably would have been appalled by any of the bread he actually got to eat.

As they walk in and Cass directs him to grab a table, he takes a rapid scan of the area and grabs a free table by a window.
One of the people just stepping away from the ordering station scowls in Dale's direction as he takes their intended table, before going off to find somewhere else to sit.
As he waits, Dale looks nervously around the area, getting a read on the layout of the location he was in. After some wriggling in his clothes, the head of a small, robotic dog pops out from the back of his collar, looking out the other way.

"Okay...?" He wasn't going to exactly trust what he'd just been told...but he'd find out what it was he was on about.
Later.
From someone else.

Dale looks at the drink before him, and back to Cassiel, noting just how much he seemed to be enjoying his own cup of the liquid. Slowly, he picks up the cup and brings it to his lips, taking a mouthful of the grape soda and swallowing it down. It tasted decent enough, more of a taste to it than just water, but even as he rapidly began to metabolise it he didn't understand quite why the person across from him was so happy because of...
...there was way more energy in this stuff than he knew should be in a liquid. At least, in his experience.
Why...? Just...how was...?
He had to look into this more.
He downed the rest, at a speed that would have probably caused an actual human an intense level of agony, before placing the cup down and putting his hands on the table. "You...need my hands, right? I don't know how it works, but...I think I'm ready?"
Worming his way around his collar was Chip, the little dog making a great effort to get up from out of his shirt. Eventually, he found his way out and onto Dale's shoulder, the pup's visual display looking between Dale's hands and Cassiel as he sprawled out on Dale's shoulder.

He didn't see why he had to do it, and frankly he really did not exactly feel comfortable doing so, but in the end, Dale closed his eyes. They were around people...and while before that would spell his doom, here it meant there was at least some level of safety.
Plus, he had this guy's hands. If he really needed to, he could swing this guy about like an average piece of wood. It wouldn't be hard.

Focusing on what could be, while a strange thing, was something he at least had something of an idea of. He had to think about what could happen in the future, the things that might happen tomorrow or a month from now.
...that, was even more unnerving. As hard as he tried, bleak visions of the future were all that came. Men in white coats that ordered about people in uniforms carrying guns like his, dragging him away through a swirling form where all he was would end - his mind disappearing first, and then the rest vanishing away with the rest of the world. Visions of being eaten, bite by bite, by a monstrous form with a void for a gullet and eyes that promised only a pain it would take much pleasure in.
Chip, taken whilst he slept, leaving him to wander alone without him wondering where he was as all the things the dog kept away returned to ruin him.
Of all the fates that could befall him, the last seemed by far the worst of any.

His hands came away from Cassiel's as he felt them being released, and he felt the deep pit that had formed during the reading expand at the words he had heard. He hadn't even noticed how badly he was shaking until he felt Chip nuzzling against his face, granting him just that bit of self-awareness he needed. He took the little dog into his arms, holding him closely and tenderly as he nuzzled into his chest in turn.
Dale drank in all the comfort he could from Chip's presence, the haunted face of his shaking form looking for all the world like he'd come to know a fate worse than any apocalypse. "...I don't know what world. I don't want to know what world. I never want to see that world again. I won't go back there. I won't. I won't..."

This was wrong. This was all wrong. They changed. They were different.
Their expression was wrong, unlike what it was. The bright tones they spoke had turned dark and dire, the small boy now carrying a grim bearing and speaking ominous words. This wasn't the person he was talking to before.
They'd become something else. It reminded him of all the things that were wrong before. He hated it hated it hated it hated it feared it ran from it recoiled from it froze before it stared into it heard doom from it felt futility from it it knew it knew it knew it knew it knew it knew it knew it knew

It said to stop it said he failed it said to let people in but the people wanted him gone

Changing, warping, smiling wrong, pretending to care til the care was gone, ripping and tearing into his body, taking his mind and leaving there nothing

Said he was trapped by the heart he had
Said not to fear when the thing was dread

That he could have what we wanted, all that he sought
But before him spoke proof that the idea was-

Chip was barking madly, drawing attention to the pair. For a minute, Dale had literally stopped breathing, the passing of air that imitated life grinding to a halt as trauma set in.
He had been still as a corpse.
Dale looked slowly down at Chip as if in a trance, barking silenced for a look of worry. Squeezing him a little closer, he looked up at Cassiel as if seeing with newfound eyes, scrutinising the every facet of the boy before him for any sign of what had emerged.
It was gone.


"...are you you?"
"Why were you not you?"
"How did you come back?"
"Nobody ever came back."

...how did they not know what happened to them...? It was their body. They were the one saying all of it, but still...
How did they not know?
"You weren't you just then...it looked like you, but you weren't. You sounded different. Acted different. S-said..." He couldn't talk. He couldn't say it. The words stopped, and he didn't know why.
Skip that bit.
"Happened to people before. Changing. They're like they were until they aren't. Say they work together, live together, and then attack each other while looking like it never happened, everyone else too." He pauses. "You didn't do that. That never happened here yet. But you were not-you. Different. And then, you're this again. Never happened. Always stayed changed."

"No memory..." So whatever happened stopped him remembering things? That's why he didn't know?
...what if he'd not remembered things too?

He didn't buy that there was no reason to worry, but for now, this person wasn't doing anything. The other them didn't do things more than say things, but the things they did say were...they made him feel wrong.
And yet, he needed to know. What they meant, how they knew, what it did, how it did, how they showed up and where they came from-
He had so, so many questions, and he needed answers so badly.

Dale shakes his head at Cass's offer. He didn't know how well they knew stuff, how much they knew - if he could find him anyway. But if he went with him, they'd be gone like that, and any hope of learning would go with them.
Scaring people by holding hands would do nothing there, and they weren't strong enough or enough like those before to stop people.
"...don't. I'll find you again."
Walking out under the stares of the people his earlier incident had drawn the eye of, he finds himself with much to think about.
He glances back through the window to where Cass is.