PLAYER PLOT: fear is the mind-killer

[fullmoon]

CHARACTERS: You and all your least favorite things.
LOCATION: Shipwide.
WARNINGS: Violence, gore, monsters, psych trauma. (Please warn for any potential triggers—e.g. medical horror, eye stuff, recollection of past sexual trauma—in your subject lines.)
SUMMARY: Boggarts. See the plot post for a full timeline if you want to forward-date; otherwise, watch this space for updates.
NOTES: Whatever happens, however this ends, remember that it's Draco Malfoy's fault.

JAN 22

If you've been paying attention, you should already be on edge. Ward and Resnik have returned without many answers. There's the dead pirate again. The Tranquility is being pursued. People are talking about violent confrontation like it's inevitable, any cycle now. Any day. And now Morgoth is back, somewhere in the corridors.

If you keep an eye out, you won't find him. But you might find something else.

JAN 23

Never mind about Morgoth.

JAN 24

Despite very well-intended claims to the contrary (see above), the mounting evidence suggests that boggarts can be killed. Also, there's probably more than one. Sorry about that.

Comments

[sweetmotherofgod]

[So he doesn't go for the joke.

His pulse may slow but hers ratchets up, whooshing in her ears as she finally starts to have some inkling of how dangerous he could be. It takes her a moment to answer - mouth suddenly dry, throat sticky, prickle of heat marching up her neck.]

It's not me. [Pleading. People have tried to kill her for that before.] I can't do that anymore.

[sorrycharles]

[ A series of longer breaths is necessary for him to suture his patience back together. Irritation bites hot through his elbow to his fingertips, striking through individual notes of tendon and gristle.

He hasn’t let go of her.

But he isn’t squeezing with strength enough to harm, his eye still locked wolf bright on the door. ]

Are you hurt? [ isn’t so much an afterthought as it is a late spark amidst more pressing problems. ]

[sweetmotherofgod]

No.

[She isn't

but there's the fleeting thought that if she was, the better move would be to lie about it. There's no Anderson here to guilt him into seeing someone wounded as anything other than a liability.]

I don't know what she wants. It's usually - revenge.

[sorrycharles]

[ Less swiftly than she might like, the deadbolt catch of his arm around her begins to ease into release. Slowly at first, he unwinds from around her and then disengages entirely, touch fading back and aside in time with a rustle at his shirt.

The smother of his breath fades with him, no longer humid at her neck. ]

She isn’t real.

[ It’s hard to tell who he’s trying to reassure, belt hanging open, the edges of his skull squared off flat. For the moment he seems very content to stay in the bathroom. ]

[sweetmotherofgod]

That doesn't usually stop her.

[She is not, in point of fact, trying to be a smartass. It's panic, slowing into a dull throb that thumps like her heart as she swallow hard and tries to line up an explanation. Finally, finally, she turns her head to look at him straight-on. Her voice is still a whisper cranked piano-wire tight.]

Like that, she's a projection. My - her real body was always somewhere else. It never meant she couldn't do things.

What do you know? Why is she here?

[sorrycharles]

[ Heather may catch a flicker of Erik’s expression failing into wary, breathless, wrinkle-browed ??? in a mirror reflection of his profile. He’s late to close his mouth, but he’s done most of his breathing through it so far anyway. ]

There’s a boggart, [ he says, at more of a croak than a whisper.

‘A boggart.’ The wrinkle between his brows creeps back in as he considers how best to explain a fucking boggart. ]

Something to do with the wizards. [ Magic.

He should have paid better attention, more chagrined for every second that passes without further elaboration. ] Tyke made an announcement.