ataraxionlogs | [openish]

[ There’s something so specifically, viscerally rich and red about the blood of earth creatures. It calls out to the eye when it’s smeared and spattered over the vivid greens of jungle undergrowth -- begs a closer look, when glimpsed at a distance.

This particular trail has had time to thicken and cool. The drops are medium sized and evenly spaced, dripped down through the foliage from head high. Broad, finger-painted strokes of red on black mark trunks where the source braced for balance in passing.

It’s easy to follow.

Eventually, there’s a nest of stirred leaf litter and earth muddy with blood where it looks like someone might’ve taken an unscheduled nap. The trail picks up again a few paces on, and on

and on

until the trees thin out entirely and the jungle opens into a trench scarred into the earth for miles, littered with stripped, splintered logs and blackened debris.

For an eye who knows what it’s looking for ahead, a body is visible at a distance: a living lump of filthy, blood-stained canvas, skin and scruff breathing thin in the shadow of a felled tree. For one that doesn’t, the blood trail weaves on out into the clear, staining dirt and bits of rock on its way to the same shadow of the same felled tree. A man is passed out in a slouch against the base, chin to chest. The parts of him that aren’t tarry with blood are the same dirt brown as the rest of the debris field; his jumpsuit is stiff with dust. Exposed steel plate glints through the fabric at his shoulder in time with his breath.

A stalactite clot of blood and snot stirs and glistens in the breeze. The wind picks up, and it drops from his nose to his knee with a quiet plap. ]

Edited 2015-09-20 08:02 (UTC)

[ It's been following for some time. Not swiftly, nor even particularly stealthily. Distance and silence cover its tracks. Blood illuminates his. Dry though it may be, it's not been so long apart from him that it doesn't remember where its from, whose it is. Blood has a vivid memory, though its life is brief.

It's a deeper shade within the shadows of the jungle, the thing that follows, its darkness dappled by the occasional infiltration of sunlight through the canopy, but never dispersed. Part of what makes it so quiet is its lack of exertion sounds. The huff and puff that usually accompanies a clamber through the jungle is conspicuous absent. The only noise it makes is the rustle of underbrush as it passes, and the occasional crunch of unseen boots.

When it reaches the edge on the great gash, where the trees give way and the sun and sky pour in, it pauses, as if in hesitation. Then, from out of its voluminous interiority it extracts a pale oblong and affixes it where something might be expected to have a face. And it is, indeed, a face- a porcelain mask that gleams in the sunlight as the robed thing steps out into the gash and makes its steady, silent way to the sad and bloody sack that has somehow managed to make it this far.

At first it simply looms, observing the bloody, wounded man from a distance of less then ten paces. Nearly a full minute is spent this way, as the blood dries on his chin and under its feet. ]

You'll die soon [ is a diagnosis delivered in a tone that is dry as a bone, and as hoarse as cracked leather bellows ]

Is that what you want?

Edited 2015-09-20 16:40 (UTC)

[ A full-bodied lurch clamps down into cramping silence before Erik is anywhere close to finding his feet, eyes crushed shut, teeth bared, straining. A choked breath pushes fresh blood out between them, and bubbles through the chunkier stuff sliding thick from his nose.

Nausea-infused pain floods the local empathic scene, if the shadow even has senses to assault.

It’s a solid minute before the twisting in his muscles subsides enough for him to breathe at a steadier wheeze, and longer still before he can force his eyes open. Eye, really. The left one is fogged white, currently the cleanest part of him.

What he sees before him floods prevailing confusion out into a bluescreen rage that knots his abdominal cramps back into a crippling, blood-frothing spasm. The overall effect is one of limited intelligence, but not something that wants to die. Probably. ]

[ What does nausea feel like without a functioning stomach? It might make for a fine kōan. The practical answer, however, is that the psychically broadcast sensation is still discomfiting, though without risk of physical impairment. The experience is there, and can find analogs in the thing's memories, but without means by which to retch it doesn't present much of an obstacle.

The rudiments of intelligence are also not irrelevant, philosophically speaking - sapient beings make decisions on the behalf of the cognitively inferior all the time, by right of their sovereign sentience. The ethics get murkier when the objects of that judgement are able to express dissenting opinions. But, truth be told, the question as to what is left of this creature besides its vitality is somewhat academic at this point. The calculation the thing with the mask makes as it surveys the battered man is rather more pragmatic:

Would anyone miss him?

A life is a terrible thing to waste after all.

The thing approaches, gloves hands meeting before it, one tugging at the other until the thick leather slips away to reveal a five withered fingers and a palm, its sallow skin laced with blackened veins. It slows somewhat as it draws closer, wary of sudden defensive violence, yet set on its course- a course that will see its desiccated claw come to rest on the man's fraught brow. ]

Anamnēsteon... [ is an invocation spoken like a request, and a word that translates into a truism: ] One must remember.

[ It stands to reason that those he remembers will be those that might remember him. ]

Edited 2015-09-21 18:04 (UTC)

[ Defensive violence manifests as a spike of power mounting in his bones -- warping the magnetic fields around him. It locks down into the steel plate he has in his person, into knives and nails and scattered debris, a preternatural hold on the metal around him that radiates deadly intent. But it dims at that first step, and fizzles out entirely after the second, fear an electric shock through the depths of his control.

Its hand is on him before he has breath to cry out, all gutteral garbling and blood spatter. He unroots one hand from the ground to claw it around the fingers on his face, eyes wide and white, spine twisting, and remembers:

Intense heat, crippling fear, old memories and sensations plucked out of key, ambitions and nightmares and nowhere to hide from what’s coming for him. His dread upon remembering. Uncertainty, guilt that congeals at the surface rather than break itself down for practical use.

He remembers Charles Xavier with a warm iron diffusion of feeling that betrays love, or something near enough to pass. His more afflicted affection for Raven, close enough to his heart to feel dangerous. Johanna, who lives in a tree, and Caprica, who saw him on his way out (+1 corpse), and -- his list of allies is on the short side, actually.

After the Jump, he’d taken water and started walking. Eventually, his head began to hurt. He kept walking. The headache magnified. His nose began to bleed, and then his ears. He’d tried to run through it, and blacked out.

Then he’d kept trying.

Now he’s here in the dirt on death’s door, straining to contort enough to bite off the shadow’s fingers with long white teeth marbled with blood. ]

Edited (i forgat writing) 2015-09-22 06:05 (UTC)

[ The ferromagnetic fragments hidden in the masked thing's robe shiver and rattle: a scalpel, a pair of shears, a bone saw- enough that, were Erik in finer fettle, the looming figure would now be going to pieces. But were that the case, it never would have approached so openly, so boldly.

The flow of thoughts sends the robed thing into a revery, a welcome escape from the tawdry material as it plunges into the intricacies of association that form the constellation of memory. The sophistication of this method is such that it experiences very little empathic bleed, and almost no mnemonic counter-transference. At most, Erik might catch a few fleeting impressions: brittle parchment flaking beneath fingers, the silhouette of a ruined stone structure, a bird's carcass stirring in the dirt. Nothing next to the immediacy of his own recollections.

The shade of Iezabel Sadonna makes a quiet hiss and withdraws her hand before either of them can experience the misfortune of her losing a finger to his teeth. That withered digit would not be tasty, of that you can be certain. She takes a moment to swallow her frustration, teeth grinding behind the mask. What she has seen is important, it just also happens to be irritating. She'd almost forgotten just how fine living can be. But now she wants it back, wants to taste food and feel the breeze and the sun. She wants to sweat and bleed and weep- or at least to have the capacity to do so.

But while that list of allies is short, it is but still too long for her tastes. Too many connections, too many for it to be safe; and those that are close to him are much too close. If she returns, rejuvenated, after having supped on his spirit, she cannot be certain that she won't be found out, not in that settlement of nascent auracles. She left the confines of camp precisely to avoid the stigma of her condition and its cure. She has no taste for irony. She'd rather savor roasted lizard.

If she returns with him, however, she may be able to circumvent that stigma entirely. And then this stalking about the periphery - an already risky resort considering her profound ignorance of this place, and the barriers to which this man's memory clearly attests - might become unnecessary.

For isn't it better to be a hero than a monster? ]

Don't go anywhere, [ she advises him, unnecessarily, as she turns away, moving among the shattered trees, searching for a means of conveyance. ]

And don't die. [ That would just be adding insult to injury.

She returns in good time, dragging an impressively broad frond behind her. She sets it on the ground next to Erik, then shifts to one side of him, lifting a booted foot and applying pressure to his shoulder, urging him, as best she can, onto the big leathery leaf. ]

Be calm, [ she says, even as she gives him a firm shove, ] I'm taking you back.

[ The fight’s bled out of him by the time she’s back, taking even limited lucidity with it. She only has to move his weight -- a nudge at his shoulder is enough to set him sliding slowly over onto his side. He sinks in himself like a sack of grain, friction scuffing to brake his uniform over scorched bark. Increased pressure speeds the process: he grumbles about Engineering as he goes over, eyes heavy, grousing difficult to decipher.

He doesn’t settle flush.

Instead he’s half on half off, face pressed into the frond’s middle, leaving a sticky, Lehnsherr-shaped stamp between the lobes. A yellow beetle fords a path through the matting of his hair. ]

Don't touch me, [ he breathes, muffled, nose flat.

Off to a good start. ]

[ Iezabel has reapplied her glove since establishing that mnemonic link. As such she is a position to promise, ] The word, if not the spirit- [ in that dust-and-derelict voice, the result of a purposeful filling of lungs that aren't doing much else right now. It's with gloved hands, likely preferable to immediate contact with those withered talons, that she tries her best to drag her new charge onto the frond. Either she does this now, or in a scant few meters when her burden catches on an upturned root and comes free.

The temptation to plunder him is ever-present, an impulse augmented by the peevish thought that, if he really valued his vital existence, he'd not be in this position. But in this state she is uncommonly obdurate, even by her normal standards, and now that her mind is made up it will take more than irritation to make her change course. The Vakis remnant only augments this stolidity, its patience interminable, millennia-old.

It's a good thing, too, because the going is not easy. Even once she manages to get an acceptable amount of his body mass onto the frond, she doesn't manage to drag it far before a tangled mass of half-pulverized vegetable matter rises up to block their path. She's not particular strong as it is, relying more on sheer perseverance than power or even cleverness, and this will be but the first of many.

She appears unperturbed, but then again not one solitary inch of her is showing. Without hesitation, however, she taps her forehead with her right hand, then a spot on her belly just below the navel, then raises the hand, palm facing out towards the obstacle. ]

Phthasteon rhusē- [ she intones, and within moments the thick knot of roots and splintered trunk begins to wither and crumble, clearing the way. The smell of dry rot assails them as they pass through the newly-formed compost that was moments ago a resolutely coherent mess of cellulose. Though really it only assails Erik; Ieza is as insensate as she is insistent and indefatigable. ]

Edited 2015-09-23 05:09 (UTC)

[ Erik lists in and out of consciousness, eyes rolled back, head loose on his neck. Occasionally the back of skull will bump over a root with force enough to rouse him, and he’ll apologize, or say, ] Charles, [ or anchor Ieza out of step with a tidal drag at all of the metal under those robes.

At one point he’s able to reach out and grasp onto a passing trunk with strength enough that the frond pulls away without him.

His beetle friend winds down the side of his nose all the while, making steady progress in the form of speckled tracks. Eventually it shuffles itself in under the turn of his collar, a bubble of yellow that snuggles in deeper against rough patches in the path. Truthfully the bug makes for better company. ]

[ It's not so bad for a while; they make good time, considering a mobile corpse is dragging a grown man across a thick jungle floor using the most improvised of methods. She shows no sign of tiring, at least, nor even any indications of exertion. The only sounds out of Ieza are more foreign-sounding words that, by and large, translate into fairly simple requests or commands directed towards her surroundings. And, by and large, her surroundings oblige her, usually shriveling up and dying in order to make way for the strange procession.

But of course this could only go on for so long. When Erik slips free, she notices the weight deficit too late, and the sudden shift causes her to stumble and fall forward. An arm comes up to shield her face - her mask, really - and after a moment's panic, gloved fingers tracing the porcelain contours to insure it is intact, she takes it off the mask, stowing it on her person before getting to her feet and rounding on Erik.

This gives him an opportunity to see her face, not that he'd particularly want to. It's not a pretty sight, those livid lips and sunken eyes, drawn cheeks framed by brittle red hair. The mask was always meant as a courtesy, but Ieza's courtesy has just reached its limit. ]

Serpent sucker! [ is an oath, not an invocation, and requires no translation. The curse is accompanied by a kick aimed squarely at his ribs. Truth be told, it's not much of a blow - there's little power behind it, and even less mass. Amazing how insubstantial the human body becomes when bereft of water. ]

[ The closer they get to camp, the steadier his breathing, and the longer he’s able to keep his eyes open. The closer they get to camp, the more coherently he’s able to realize the importance of escape.

Everything’s going perfectly according to impulse until he gets a load of her face.

His brows screw together and the hinge of his jaw swings open, sucking air where he’s caught, one arm hooked around a tree wider than he is. The other quivers behind him, elbow crooked into a crutch to bolster him upright where his feet fail to do much more than draw in away from her.

It’s the kick to the ribs that snaps him out of it, a sharp shock of breath that jolts adrenaline out of an exhausted loop and registers as physically weak.

His eyes take on a nastier sheen -- tangible realization -- and he heaves her away with a look, scalpels and scissors and bone saw all seeking to bury themselves grip-deep in the next-nearest tree with little care for the bits of undead flaking in between. ]

[ The sound Ieza's body makes as tempered steel tears through it is anti-climactic- no more ruckus than they were already making, tramping through the underbrush. The damage itself, too, is minimal, mostly lacerations which - for want of blood - present no serious risk to her structural integrity. Were it not for the robe she wears, they might fly free of her entirely, leaving her not too much the worse for wear.

But the robe - that mark of status she insists on donning, practicality be damned - is a durable thing, and not prone to ripping. When her embalming implements catch in the thick black wool, it turns her garment into a net from which there is no easy escape. The force of magnetized metal hauls her backwards, pulling her off her feel and driving her against the tree trunk with a sick crunch.

There's a moment when it looks as if he may have done her in, a singular ingratitude considering she opted not to kill him so that she might live. But to paraphrase an old proverb, you can't kill what's already dead; not so easily, at least. Her head bobs up from the pinioned scarecrow of her body, looking about as angry as a corpse can be- black tongue visible behind bared teeth, eyes as furious as their milky deadness will allow. ]

Katheudēteon!

[ The word carries a potency belied by its parched thinness, and the effect is immediate, felt as a numbness in the extremities, a heaviness of limb that is rapidly developing into a crushing, eyelid-drooping fatigue. ]

[ Crunch, and relief dulls at his vision, muffling harsh breaths into the start of a steadier recovery. There’s blood in his beard and crusted thick in his ears; currently his armored jumpsuit is the most recognizable part of him. He takes stock.

Everything hurts.

Then she lifts her head.

The arm he’s raised on spasms. He grunts, chuffs air, twists down over onto his side, pinioned, gasping into the dirt. And still, she can see him fighting anesthesia, nose rankled, teeth grit, until the last flicker of energy is sapped out of him and he sinks to rest.

If she knows a spell to close his mouth it’d be much appreciated. ]

[ With great deliberation, Ieza pulls out each of the steel implements that keep her held against the tree. When the last one comes free, she falls forward, not in the manner of the pratfall that started this little spat, but instead like a ragdoll. She collapses to the base of the tree in a graceless jumble, and just lies there. For a moment, there is stillness, save for the scuttling of Erik's carapace'd companion.

Then the sound of Ieza's voice emerges in a murmured dirge - mnēsikakeō, epimimnēskomai, diamnēmoneuteon - and with it a rustling and a stirring from beneath her robe. It take some time, full minutes, with regrettably no effort to improve Erik's state of affairs, though at least the beetle hasn't yet tried to make its home in Erik's open mouth, but at last Ieza rises to her feet with a few last unpleasant little popping sounds as the last of her bones remember their rightful configurations.

When she approaches Erik's prone form, it is with no small wariness. What he did was not the most frightening thing she's ever seen. The works of the Black Clasp were far more troubling. But even if their methods were extreme, they were intelligible. They were to be expected, or could at least be understood. But this- this doesn't make sense. She sensed no such capacity in him, no fractal edge to his aura.

She could wake him up, make him tell her, could even reach down and try to flip through his dreams, though one could never be sure of getting straight answers from a dreamer. But she's far too wary, now. Frightened, if we're being honest. Even a foreign praxis can be counteracted... but she sensed no praxis. This was- something else.

She carefully stows the metal implements in the hollow of a trunk, and performs a quick rite of recollection, insuring she can find it again. But she is not bringing the traitorous things with her, not until she has safely handed off her troublesome prize. And it is with somewhat more care and respect that she shifts Erik back onto the frond, seeing that he lies in an almost regal repose, arms crossed over his chest, head positioned so as to be elevated as she begins to resume the trek-and-drag. ]

[ Miles and hours and at least three shoulder-dislocations later, Iezabel reaches the perimeter of the relocated camp. The sun has dipped low, and the twin moons cast a pale luminescence that is only occasionally obscured by clouds. She pauses before approaching any further, fastening her mask over the misfortune that is her face and checking once more that Erik has not shuffled off the mortal coil during the march. It's not something she's all that worried about, but she has enough appreciation for the vicissitudes of irony to want to be sure she's rescuing a man, not recovering a corpse.

It's difficult for her, approaching others while in her present state. There's a reason she retreated from the community, beyond the healthy dose of misanthropy any sensible person possesses. But if she's wanted to return whole, she wouldn't have returned with him. The decision is made.

Despite the curiosity that has gathered about her in the wake of Erik's mystery praxis, she's had the courtesy not to poke or prod at the sleeper's mind. But from what she's already picked up on, she has a fairly good idea as to whom she ought to approach for the most appreciable gains in gratitude.

She begins to make inquiries about one Charles Xavier. ]

Edited 2015-09-25 05:42 (UTC)

[ Charles is alone, when Iezabel Sadonna returns to camp with her burden, watching the fire as it dries his boots and warms his fingers, having entered a state of partial meditation. Around him, the constellation of conscious and unconscious minds hum like an orchestra in perpetual warm up, and it's down to him to find some kind of melody in it. When it becomes too discordant, that's when it really starts to hurt, in his head and down low in his spine. Pain and relief balance on a knife's edge. The last of the magically numbing potions he'd indulged in were long gone when a quarter of the ship sheared away in its fall.

His eyes are closed, but open again when he catches-- something. Thought. His name. He casts a useless twitch of a look over his shoulder.

His own contemplative peace is concluded like a book being snapped closed, grabbing at the rough tree-wood he'd been leaning against to get to his feet, pain somehow less for virtue of being ignored, practically gone by the time he's pushed his feet back into his boots and started for the epicentre of relevant thought, gentle inquiry and curiousity. Urgency livening his stride. Irresponsibly, he left the fire unattended, but the most danger it's in is going out.

And so a not entirely exceptional man appears, following the verbal summons of some helpful NPC. He is older than the age median of the population, if equally ungroomed. He grips at his jacket to keep out bite of the coming cold. ]

[ There can be no doubt that Charles has encountered bigots in his lifetime, and thus no doubt that he can identify the qualities of a prejudiced mind: inflexible, intractable, reactive. The mind the quests for him is not quite the same, but there is a certain family resemblance, a marriage of elitism and rigidity that suggests staid stratification if not blinkered convention.

The possessor of that mind certainly doesn't look conventional. The inquiring figure is dressed up like haunted house reject, black robe complete with hood, and a placid porcelain mask with dark indigo lips that, if it is is genuinely preferable to whatever it hides, says a great deal about the face beneath it. As Charles approaches the figure's head tilts, and it speaks aloud in a voice that is bone-dry and effectively sexless. ]

Charles Xavier? [ it is an unnecessary question, requiring no answer - the recognition is instinctive; it's been looking for him, and he has come answering its call. It makes a bow, one gloved hand low on its belly, the other setting two fingers at its forehead. ]

I've found a friend of yours. He was in a bad way, but I've done my best to preserve him. Please, follow me.

[ Presuming Charles is not so pusillanimous as to refuse to follow the eery creature out into the deeper shades at the edge of camp, he'll find himself faithfully led to the frond on which Erik lies in his enchanted repose, a particularly ill-shaven sleeping beauty, awaiting his kiss. ]

He's confused, [ it explains ] and badly addled from his experience- he was nearly dead when I ran across him.

[ The masked thing stops a good seven strides away, gesturing to Charles, urging him to get closer but keeping its own distance. ]

We had an altercation along the way. I think you ought to be the first thing he sees upon waking.

[ The masked thing brings its palms together, and incants softly: ] Diagrēgoreōn.

Edited 2015-09-25 16:06 (UTC)

[ There had come a point over the last year and a half when Charles was almost sure nothing could phase him. Confessions of magical ability, non-human status, being from the far away future or the distant past, demonic possession, elf royalty, not to mention sleeping with people of several of these categories, and the knowledge that some kind of eldritch space god was mentally manipulating them all-- his education of the endless possibilities regarding how strange things can become has been fairly thorough.

Still. He stops short at the sight of the strange masked figure and its stranger voice, wearing reserve stiff in his expression, only confirming his name with a blink.

Of course, he follows.

Morbidly fascinated rolls readily over to worry, and focus diverts. He overtakes the masked figure even before it's stopped, Erik too unconscious to appreciate the noisy scuffle of dirt and leaf as Charles goes to his knees next to him. They should take him to the triage centre, surely there's someone with any kind of medical license left, and if not, maybe someone from the former crew, and his hands kind of pat-pat around on Erik's torso, trying to find the obvious source of injury before his attention snaps back up to one who brought him here, the twin rings of bright blue visible all the way around in the semi-dark.

A traffic jam of questions stalls him from choosing one, like what happened and where was he and who are you and what are you talking about an altercation and-- ]

What?

[ --he settles on, but the incantation is done, and he can sense the stir of wakefulness in Erik's skull. ]

Edited 2015-09-26 00:46 (UTC)

[ Blood has scabbed black in the threads of Erik’s jumpsuit beneath Charles’ hands, seams and patches saturated, glimpses of metal plate tacky with old splatter. It’s dried like tar in his beard, matted in runs from his nose and ears, smeared, scruffed in his hair and eyebrows and flaking crusty under his collar. He’s filthy with it.

And unscathed.

His bones all settle where and how they should. The scars in his armor are all familiar.

Diagrēgoreōn, though.

A deeper swell of breath sees him opening his eyes, shocky disorientation grappled onto Charles with a ferocity that’s hard-pressed to wind down into relief. He’d been trying to get away and something in the jungle brought him back, black robes all too easily muddied in with a black figure scratching and pulling at the edges of his vision, broad strokes of thought sweeping across a seismic readout that crushes at what little blood pressure he has left. His heart squeezes for his throat like a spooked octopus, breath agitating into a froth behind his teeth.

All of this frantic telepathic tattling and he hasn’t realized she’s still looming right there, seven paces away, like a rug thrown over a lamp. ]

[ Iezabel watches the exchange from her calculated remove, not requiring telepathy or even her auracular vision to know that even if some portion of Erik's panic is not precisely her doing, then certainly she's done little to help it. For all that the kick she delivered was pointless and stupid, it was probably the least frightening thing she's done since approaching the stranded man.

She is, however, quite innocent of any knowledge of properly eldritch figures. Sure, she's a revenant of an exceptional breed, if she does say so herself, but that still makes her a distinctly terrestrial sort of haunt. She does not concern herself with any such potential conflations, instead patiently waiting for Erik to come to his senses sufficiently to convey the facts of the matter- or for Charles to ask her directly for clarification.

Otherwise, she'll not interrupt the reunion. Even someone with her limited social skills knows when not to interfere. And surely, surely, the gratitude will be forthcoming. Soon. ]

[ Forgetting -- only for the moment -- the masked figure standing by, Charles places what he aims to be a calming palm flat on Erik's chest, eye contact met and trying to hold steady. ]

It's alright.

[ Except he can see fresh memory, and the tic at his jaw betrays his own tension at the things he's seeing, blue eyes searching, reading. There's only a subtle nudge that attempts to divert Erik's mind away from panic, influence kept minimal, maybe too much so, not wishing to simply roll him over but helping forge his own path away from panic.

There aren't any injuries that he can see or sense, save for the psychic trauma that's rioted through blood vessels, other neural pathways.

His hand goes out to lock his fingers over Erik's knuckles.

A part of Charles is a little angry. Maybe more than a little. It would be unhelpful, to say the least, if he were to express it right now. Instead, he looks up towards the thing standing several feet away. The-- woman, he wants to say. ]

Thank you, [ isn't utterly devoid of wariness. ] Do you know what happened?

[ Is it.

Erik’s good pupil pins out of focus through the back of Charles’ skull, breath caught and chuffed out in an undignified shudder that glosses wet at his eyes. His zen has been punched through with ballistic force, exposing razor edges, reflections of memory erratic and distorted.

But he’s listening, leashing upset and stifling a sense of stripped wire exposure. Parched tears wick into the creases of crow’s feet at contact, wetting the blood smudged at his temples a sickly red-brown. Something that feels very much like anger at how intensely personal all of this has become is squeezing into his chest cavity after his heart octopus.

This is an important moment for them all around, really, 8.5/10 drama at least. Ieza is no doubt already formulating the plot of an award-winning erotic fan fiction.

He’s still wrestling to feel a little bit less of everything when Charles asks what happened, dizziness included.

The realization that he isn’t the one being asked is very slow to dawn. Furrows bunch in between his brows by a matter of degrees, dumb distraction while he struggles to do the math. He tries to sit himself up to see, a bit like a worm cut in half and left in the sun a while. One with hostility already warming at its gut. ]

[ Surely it would be the hottest of eroticas, a bit of fic fit to warm the blood of even the most dusty of magical mummies. Particularly with all the sordid context, all the guilt and the shame and the torrid, displaced rage and passion.

But Ieza possesses none of that context, only the growing sense that she chose correctly when she sought out Charles. And the intuition that she's better off banking on his gratitude than that of the person whose life she actually spared/saved. She can perceive the ill will brewing in Erik's frustratingly humdrum aura. ]

From what I saw of his memories, he tried to pass some boundary. It caused him great pain, and eventually unconsciousness. He bled extensive from the nose. I could not discern precisely what caused this condition, but I know he had nearly killed himself in the attempt.

[ And since it's better to be out with it before Erik's mind works it up into more than it was: ]

During the trek you friend caused me to trip. I lost my temper, and I kicked him in anger. As you can see- [ she gestures at Erik's as-already-established-whole form ] -no harm was done.

[ She deems it peevish to mention that he broke a fair number of her bones in retaliation, particularly since her skeleton seems in sufficiently good shape right this moment. ]

I gathered you were important to him. I presume he is important to you. So I brought him back, and... here we are.

[ The silence she lets hang after this is somewhat expectant. ]

Edited 2015-09-27 06:23 (UTC)

[ Charles' hand keeps a grip on Erik's. That's nice. His other hand kind of firms up and applies pressure at Erik's shoulder to keep him still, which is less nice, but edged in the aforementioned anger is the determination to take authority over the situation. ]

She isn't going to hurt you,

[ he insists in Erik's mind alone. Equal parts plea to relax and force of will.

A little distracted, too. There are strange associations happening in the woman's mind, such as omission as to the harm that came to her own body, and what that means. Or doesn't mean. ]

Thank you, really, [ he says, again, maybe betraying his own nerve in echo, the hollow quality of his tone, but none of these things make it disingenuous. Fraught, mainly. Aware of physical and mental damage, of saline streaks cutting through drying blood, of the growing ill-will latching onto consciousness in Erik's skull. Here we are. He can sense she wants something, and that it probably isn't dismissal. Nonetheless; ] I can take it from here, and-- and let you recover.

[ The stoked ember flare of Erik’s temper ebbs as he follows the frame of Ieza’s narrative, which is accurate, to the best of his knowledge. His memory is moth-eaten, sinus passages and the folds of his brian claggy with blood.

But she had kicked him. ]

I killed her.

[ His throat is raw, dry, delivery straining urgent, voice a rattle scraped from the seat of his lungs. This is suspicious, she is suspicious. She shouldn’t have brought him back. She stopped him. She has ulterior motives. Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams. Erik insists from his position laid out on the ground, breastplate shuddering with the effort he’s making to push back. Not afraid, exactly, but electrified by paranoia.

Charles are you listening. ]

Edited 2015-09-28 04:48 (UTC)

[ For a moment, Ieza was concerned that Erik might cause real trouble. For a moment, she regretted waking him up, regretted the danger of permitting a competing narrative to the one of selfless labor and unasked-for heroism. But his frank confession serves as a nice segue to her essentially selfish, unheroic motives. ]

You certainly tried. As it happens, though, I am already dead.

[ And rather than leave any question on the matter, she unfastens her mask, and draws back her hood.

What lies beneath is less monstrous than simply tragic, frightening only in that death is always frightening to beings capable of conceiving it. What lies beneath is the visage of a young woman who died before her time, but who was carefully preserved, not in the name of open-casket cosmetic prettiness, but rather through pragmatic mummification: withered face, sunken eyes, livid lips and hair like brittle straw. ]

I was, however, hoping you might help me reverse my condition.

[ It is a touch more genuinely frightening when the corpse begins to speak. Her lips move, black tongue shifts behind teeth to form each word, but the process is far, far more deliberate than it might be coming from someone with blood in their veins- the operation of a machine rather than the natural expression of a body. ]

I have the means, I simply lack the material.

I'm handling it,

[ Charles lies.

If not all the way an intentional lie, just more in the spirit of getting Erik to calm the fuck down for a moment and stop thinking so loud than that of any confidence that this is being truly handled. He's certainly trying, listening, the hand attempting to keep Erik pinned to the ground finally slacking off by the time he shoots a glance downwards at Erik, eyebrow twitching upwards.

A shared experience of weirdness, rather than accusation.

When he looks back up, he drinks in more her appearance, his expression quite impressively neutral but unable to stow away his discomfort completely. It shades behind his eyes and is tense along his jaw. ]

Material, [ he repeats.

By now, he's physically withdrawn a fraction from his defensive crouch over Erik, allowing the other man to try to sit up, but a hand remains hovered sort of like when you let a dog off a leash and you don't all the way trust it not to go running off. Into traffic. ]

[ Repeated reassurance eventually permeates the thick of Erik’s skull, wearing his adrenaline shock down into a more manageable depth of thought. Exhaustion fills in the low places left behind, weighing at his sides, settling warm in his bones. It saps chemical fervor back through the roots of his circulatory system and takes the strength in his arms with it.

He’s increasingly drowsy despite himself.

This makes it harder to listen, and easier to trust. Taking Charles’ word for it feels like a luxury, even when it’s hedged by the eye he’s working to keep on him. His heart has coiled up into a cooling knot in his chest.

His opinion on the sinister strangeness about Ieza doesn’t waver, the underlying sentiment dumb in his eye, a steady no, no, no. That he doesn’t have any better ideas than to find a way to double kill her times infinity goes without saying. ]

[ She could try and put this delicately, but euphemism has a bad way of suggesting that what it hides sound worse than it is. Better a justificatory honesty, she judges. ]

Life eats life, [ she says, with the cadence of proverb. ] Even the trees feast on the worms that will feast on us. [ Not true in the way she means it, but forgive her a limited understanding of ecological science. ]

I need a living being. Something of appreciable size and complexity. Still living. Unbutchered. [ A steak, no matter how rare, will not do.

That this will entail larger problems of logistics, that she will want the delivery to be discreet, that she will be happiest given a steady supply- these are matters for future discussion. The sense she gets now, from that defensive posture, is that this interview might progress more smoothly when Charles is less... distracted. ]

We can discuss minutia and appendecta when the sun is risen. [ As if his help were assured, her request a settled matter. ] Please, tend to your friend.

[ She replaces her mask, fastening it with a silk ribbon behind her head, and raises her cowl. ]

He looks nearly as poor as I do.

[ She makes another of those bows, hand on belly, fingers on forehead, and then drifts into the darkness, shading away. ]

[ Charles doesn't offer correction with regard to her ecological science. He is listening, instead, obvious though it is that he is paying equal parts attention to what the cat dragged in. Her meaning is clear, and the solution is not, or how he can help -- but already niggling curiousity is feeding on itself.

Just not enough to waylay her when she finally withdraws.

Like she's an event passing by rather than a whole person -- or, more accurately, a problem he can deal with later -- Charles doesn't say a word, dropping his focus more completely to Erik. There is a conflictedness bringing tension to his expression, like he is on the verge of igniting some kind of argument, but he swallows instead. Words go as smoothly down as sand.

But, gentler; ]

Can you stand?

[ With help, evidently, a hand lifting. ]

[ Erik breaks the death grip of his stare from Charles to crane a look after the direction he last heard Ieza’s voice. His eyes are still glossy, wild around the whites.

It’s been a lifetime since he’s seen a dessicated corpse. Her hooded eyes and sunken jaw are viscerally familiar.

But she’s gone, and Charles is offering a hand. Erik reaches across himself for it, right over left, which will be the last thing he remembers -- whether Charles is able to help him up six feet or six inches, low blood pressure spins him into nigh immediate blackout. Still breathing, fast and shallow. His tongue sticks dry to the roof of his mouth, blood thickened hair damp at the nape of his neck where tears have soaked in.

Friendship can be difficult. ]

[ The sink of Erik's consciousness tiding under feels like something slipping from Charles' grasp and vanishing. Maybe Erik hears his own name startled out loud, but neither it nor the sudden tightening of warm hands prevent black out.

Meanwhile, in the land of the living.

They hadn't gotten far, but far enough that Charles feels obliged to grip and fold back down the rest of the way, one hand splayed starfish-style on the side of Erik's face in an effort not to cause further damage to that specific body part. The last lingering memories before blackness closes over echo like a light trick, and feel like cold poison. Personal irritation and its festered hurt at being Abandoned!! back at camp for whatever self-destructive exercise Erik was embarking on subsides, despite himself.

For a minute, Charles just sort of stays there, still, holding on to Erik and feeling the only somewhat unrelated existential panic at being stranded on this planet that he's been doing pretty well at keeping at bay all this time, before finally, he reaches out a psychic tether to the nearest helpful brain to help him drag Erik back to shelter. ]

The combined, cooperative influences of a blood transfusion, a saline drip and space benzos have allowed for Erik’s reintroduction to the wild in recent days. Sightings during daylight hours have been sparse, but it isn’t much of a stretch to suppose he’s sheltering with friends.

It isn’t as if he has to keep a low profile. No one knows what happened, and no one bothers him.

But for someone who is looking, after nightfall, a fire built up near the entrance to Charles Xavier’s tent is the place to start. Erik cuts a distinct figure at a distance, with a patch over his eye and his bandaged right arm, more of a scruffy mess than Rikku remembers. He’s seated on a stool hewn together from canvas and scrap, shaping the blade of a knife from a bar of steel by the firelight.

Edited 2015-09-29 00:27 (UTC)

She'd known he needed medical attention for some reason, which was why she hadn't approached him sooner. But his particular set of skills is perfectly suited to her particular needs, and she's pretty sure he's done (for the moment) with getting into whatever kind of trouble he'd been getting into.

But she knew what they said about assumptions.

Rikku tries to look casual as she heads towards the campsite, hands clasped behind her back as she meanders in that general direction. She probably isn't fooling anyone. Once she can really see his face, and his arm, she gives a little squint to herself. He looked like... someone she remembered. A man, cold on the outside but who tended a secret fire on the inside. A bad eye and a bad arm. The similarities are eerie. If only she could remember that man's name, and see if the comparison is accurate.

Instead, she speaks his name. "Who you been tusslin' with, Erik?"

Erik can feel her on the approach before he sees her, work stalled out for the beat it takes him to cross reference her particular constellation of metal over her gait to arrive at something familiar.

Bandaging at the crook of his elbow and old scars aside, his arm functions well enough for him to pass the blade off from one hand to the other. A charred towel serves as temporary insulation against excited metal molecules, buffering the pads of his fingers from contact burns. The knife itself is large, proportions blocked out for jungle survival.

“No one,” is the honest answer, delivered down to hot steel. He doesn’t look up.

“Charles is out.”

At first, she hadn't realized that he'd been shaping the metal with just his hands. But once she gets closer, she can see that he isn't using anything else. The sight chills her spine a bit, but not enough to make her turn around.

But it is a pretty big knife.

"Good thing I'm not lookin' for him, then." She doesn't know him as well, anyway. Not that she thinks anyone but Charles knows Erik very well, but at least she'd spent more time around the latter. "I'm actually here to ask for some help." She would've said "favor," but she wasn't sure Erik did favors. Honestly, she wasn't sure if he did help, either. But all she can do is ask, right?

Edited 2015-09-29 22:19 (UTC)

Oh.

Most of the shapework is done -- he slows in the process of thinning out the blade to look at her in the firelight. She’s in one piece, not carrying anything obviously in need of repair.

He’s lean by contrast, hollow around the eyes, and well overdue for a shave, but he’s also clean, and focused, and his inspection of her is low key.

“What sort of ‘help.’”

It’s not an immediate no, then.

She notices all the small details; Pops had always told her to, after all. And they had always proved the most important. Even with his injuries, he seems to be in working order. The Al Bhed engineer in her takes over. He can definitely perform the tasks she requires. Even if the machine is a little rusty or bent out of shape, it still functions.

Her smile widens.

"I got some stuff I need moved and taken apart. You can do it a hundred times faster than me, I bet, and it'll be nice and neat." A beat. "It'll help everyone here." She doesn't explicitly use Charles' name, but she knows they're buddy-buddy. Every little bit counts.

A less careful swipe of his towel sweeps soot from steel; the flat back of the blade swells into coal orange that fades to an unholy red. He releases it a beat later, metal set adrift over his palm to cool.

“Probably,” he agrees, dry for the time scales as she projects them.

Her emphasis on everyone provokes a harder look, borderline irritable for the implication.

“Pandering brings out the green in your eyes.”

Even though she's tying to be aloof and businesslike about this whole thing, Rikku has to admit to herself that what he's doing is super cool. She couldn't even begin to imagine how what he's doing is possible. Superpowers had never made much sense to her. They simply were. Even years in The City hadn't changed that.

Her grin only widens. The green in her eyes, as he calls it, only brightens if such a thing is possible. Spiraled pulpits reflect the firelight oddly. "Helps me blend in with all the trees and shrubbery." Making jokes is how she avoids direct conflict. She decides to play what she thinks is her ace in the hole. "It'd definitely help us get power up and running sooner."

Erik’s sense of humor is bleaker, blacker. He doesn’t smile back.

What he does do is rise to his feet, muscle biting in stiff at the small of his back. The knife drops nose down into the dirt and stays there, spinning oily smoke up out of the leaf litter.

“Whatever you need,” he says, “provided I have my pick of the leftovers.”

Refined metal doesn’t grow on trees.

When he stands, she thinks it's to walk away. She thinks she's blown her chance, that their technological recovery will take months longer. She doesn't even know if she'll be able to get to some of the equipment she needs without him. Even before the knife hits the dirt, she's planning out what to say to Charles to help convince him. He's a reasonable guy, he'll understand--

Except, he'd said he would help. Conditionally, but that's still help. For a second, she doesn't know what to do. But then she's all business again, even if her voice is tinted with a bit of self-satisfaction.

"Deal." It's an easy one to make, considering the circumstances. "We can start in the morning, unless you're good now."

“Deal,” Erik agrees, once he’s prowled close enough to get a better look, measuring her expression against the broad strokes of her posture. Pride sits lower in his shoulders than it did when they first met, older and wearier than the naked hostility he had pent up in his core in 1963. Especially now.

Under the influence, he’s positively subdued.

Subdued and distinctly underwhelmed by the self-satisfaction she’s taking in her victory.

“You haven’t mentioned what I’ll be moving.”

She reads his lack of excitement as simple weariness; it is late, after all, and he seems as if he's been through a bit of a rougher patch than the rest of them. Thus, Rikku lets it slide, allowing herself to be gratified enough for the both of them.

"Mostly scrap." Her tone is too casual. She decides to give a bit more detail. "Just, you know, scrap too big for me to move alone. Or with a group of ten strong, manly men. But you, you're the perfect manly man for the job and I only need one of you." Nailed it.

Silence.

Erik looks at her, expression unchanged, good eye flat in the firelight. No further questions.

“Be sure to spread the word,” he decides, at length. Presumably in regards to his being the perfect manly man, preferable to a group of ten strong manly men. His enthusiasm levels might be better suited to peeling paint, but she’s successfully secured his services.

“I’ll meet with you in the morning.”

[openish]

Iezabel Sadonna >> Debris Trail

Re: Iezabel Sadonna >> Debris Trail

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SOMETIME LATER...

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Rikku >> Chateau Xavier

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