a. (ota)
[ It’s New Year’s Eve, and Raskolnikov wishes he’d stayed home. Everyone here is stupid on drink and excitement, half the American locals seem to be wearing the most hideous glasses he’s ever seen, and there is so much noise. The noise is perhaps the worst part, and he has the strange, childish urge to put his hands over his ears.

He takes a drink from a stand, not bothering to ask what it is, and wanders through the crowd, snapping at anyone who bumps into him. He’s so wrapped up in his general dislike for everyone here that he stops paying attention to where he’s going, up until he runs into someone.

Still clutching his cup, which miraculously hadn’t spilled, he snaps, ] look where you’re going!


b. (ota)
[ He wakes up on the ground, curled in the fetal position, gasping for air as though he had just run across Petersburg. What had that been? Some sort of hallucination? He’d seen unfamiliar faces, been in an unfamiliar body, and now he feels as though he’s wearing the wrong skin. It’s wrong. This whole thing is wrong, everything about this place is wrong, and —

— he’s panicking, there is blood on his hands and he’s holding an ax, there is a body, two bodies, at his feet —

— he breathes, and that helps a little. He forces himself into a sitting position, even though his head spins and his stomach lurches. He needs to— to do something, to get out of this place. Is he going mad? Is he already mad?

He turns to the nearest person, ignoring how good (or bad) of a condition they’re in. ]

What happened? What is this? Did you see that too?

[ His voice is strained, taut with fear and desperation, and he looks like a madman. Still, there is something about him that is perhaps pitiable. ]

[ Walking, murderous mannequins. This can’t be normal, even for America.

They’re terrifyingly strong and fast, and some of the others trapped in the store have been fighting them, shooting the unfamiliarly modern guns the store has (what sort of store sells guns?) and wielding all sorts of makeshift weapons. Raskolnikov too has a weapon, a long kitchen knife with a wooden handle and gleaming blade, but he certainly isn’t using it to fight. No, he’s hiding in one of the women’s dressing rooms, clutching it against his chest.

Should someone enter the dressing room, he’ll jump nearly out of his skin and point the knife at them with the sort of terror that betrays his inexperience with fighting. ]

a. (closed to Agathe)
[ Maybe it’s because he was researching the people he’d seen — the people he’d been — on New Year’s Eve. Maybe it’s because he wanders Sweetwater at all hours of the day, muttering under his breath. Maybe they’ve discovered that he had killed, back in Petersburg. Or maybe it’s just because he’s Russian. That wouldn’t surprise him. But whatever the reason, he goes to sleep in the house that’s supposed to be his and wakes up strapped to a chair.

He panics. What else is he supposed to do? He thrashes against his bonds and shouts at the man in the room with him. At first it’s threats, and then, as time goes on and his pride wears away, he starts begging. Pollock doesn’t listen. Doesn’t even react. Let me go turns into let me sleep, and even that dissolves into incoherent babble. But even after what feels like hours, days, months of sitting awake and staring at the screen, Raskolnikov still talks, arguing with Pollock and with himself and with his mother and sister when they appear in front of him. We’ve missed you, Rodya.

Norman Pollock must grow weary of it, if such a man is capable of growing weary, because the man finally injects him with some sort of drug, and then Raskolnikov couldn’t talk even if he wanted to.

He isn’t sure when he finally falls asleep, but he wakes up in his own bed. ]


b. (ota)
[ Whatever it was Pollock had used to sedate him still hasn’t worn off, though it’s been three days. His hands won’t stop twitching, spasming enough to make the muscles ache, and his face and lower limbs have become strangely stiff. He doesn’t want to eat, and even though his mouth is drier than he’s ever felt it, he drinks barely enough to survive.

He spends two days cooped up in his house, a strange restlessness building under his skin, until he can’t take the sitting around and doing nothing. Not knowing what he’s doing or where he’s going, his mind wrapped in the morning fog of Petersburg, he leaves the house and shambles through the town. His movements are stiff, corpse-like, and anyone who sees him will know almost immediately that something is wrong. ]

a. (ota)
[ Though Raskolnikov hasn’t seen this much snow at once since he lived with his family outside of Saint Petersburg, the cold is something he’s quite used to. The Americans are spoiled here, used to mild winters and electric heating, but he had spent many a night lying on the couch in his closet of an apartment back in Russia, using his ratty coat as a blanket, the cold seeping into his bones. He is experienced with temperatures low enough that tears freeze on faces, and fingers and toes turn blue and then black. This is practically tropical.

He layers up, because he would be a fool not to take advantage of the thick clothes in the house he now lives in, and goes outside. Immediately, the sharp air makes his lungs burn and face redden, and even though the snow reaches past his knees he still manages to tromp a path from the door to the street.

The realization that he’s going to need to shovel this is an unpleasant one, and suddenly he wants to turn around and go back inside. But there are plenty of other people outside, and if the Americans can shovel snow, then so can he. He isn’t very good at it, though, visibly struggling. Things reach a head when the thick, heavy snow manages to break the head of his shovel off. So it’s with quite a bit of reluctance that he goes up to a nearby house. If the family living there is still inside, he’ll knock on the door; otherwise, he’ll tromp right up to them and stand there awkwardly until they acknowledge him. ]


b. (ota)
[ The power goes out, because everything in this town seems to go wrong. Still, this at least is something he knows how to deal with. There are matches around the house, and even a few candles for light. He takes all the blankets off the bed and drags them to the sitting room, putting them on the couch and forming something of a nest. Any food in the refrigerator goes into a spare room in which he’s opened all the windows, so that it stays cold. And then, after a moment of contemplation, he drags the carpets into the sitting room and pins them to the walls for an extra layer of insulation.

There are certainly people in Sweetwater that aren’t as experienced with this sort of thing as he is, though. After a good half-hour of deliberation, complete with pacing and muttering under his breath, he comes to a decision.

Anyone in their houses might hear a knock on their door. Standing outside and bundled up so that only his eyes are showing is Raskolnikov, with a box of candles, matches, and food. ]

Hello. I don’t mean to intrude…I only wanted to offer my services, as they might be called, in case your power is out too. [ The mitten-clad hand not holding the box gestures vaguely. ] I have experience with these matters, you see, and if you need any help…any at all… [ He trails off, feeling quite awkward. ]

[ Have an idea for something? Feel free to hit me up! My plurk is chaoticgood, if you’d like to do some plotting over there, or just throw something at me! ]