cain. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
blyat) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
meadowlarklogs2019-04-02 04:06 pm
blyat) wrote in meadowlarklogs2019-04-02 04:06 pm
https://i.imgur.com/Fe9yilS.gif
WHO: Cain, Markus, Fitz, Peggy, Riku, and Sora. We're doing our best.
WHERE: The Facility.
WHEN: October 12, during the sleep event.
WHAT: Continued from here. Cain went in guns blazing, rolled a crit fail, wiped out the party, and now they're going to need the power of friendship to save them.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Language, gore, disassociation/ego death, psychic death, JUST DEATH, buckets of guilt, and Disney Magic™ (including KH3 spoilers). Will update as necessary.
[The impact of their actions doesn't register at first. Due in part to the immediacy of his ability, Cain can only watch as the spear is extracted from its tangled bed of roots, blinking out of visible existence and reappearing several meters to his direct left. The weapon glints in a refraction of eerie, milky-blue underwater light. Where there would be a rush of success upon victory — moving the immovable — and where he might feel the tickle of curiosity in the aftermath, there's nothing but a peculiar emptiness. Slight and small, like he's disengaged from the part of his brain that processes raw information into higher function, a brief interim where no single thought enters his head, and he looks at his surroundings with a detached faraway appreciation. Meditative, almost, all pain and pressure from the landscape's oppressive environment gone.
And then it grows.
A yawning void eats through the peripheral of his awareness, even as he turns at last to check on Fitz and Markus. It's at that point his sense of individual self begins to slip, and the people he's looking at have no names, felt more in physical warmth and closeness. Cain extends a hand out as if to touch one of them on the shoulder — but stops, fingers spread, dark eyes lowering down to look at his own arm as if he doesn't recognize it. It doesn't feel as though it should belong to him. His gaze travels further, over limbs and torso dressed in the sleek black material of a flight suit, and that feeling of disconnect only heightens, mind elevated above the anchor of an unfamiliar body.
Slowly, gradually, another sense begins to bleed into the fine boundary of Cain's (but not Cain anymore, not Alexei, not anyone, what is he?) consciousness. Pinpricks of light at the edges of his mind, little flashes of red scales, the gauzy white outlines of humanlike shapes in the distance, and the two solid pillars of men in front of where he stands. Life everywhere. Death, too, clinging onto the dredges of what once was. Cain watches himself begin to fade from the feet up as if unattached to the process.
Death, watching Fitz and Markus now succumb to an intense and severe pain he doesn't feel at all. There's no fragment of sympathy, there's no sadness — only an impression of responsibility. The entire facility becomes a single entity stationed somewhere in his mind. And then Fitz and Markus are no longer alive, they're dead, a hot spray of blood and red guts and cooler blue mechanical shards across the surrounding area, but he doesn't feel anything beyond the understanding that it happened as the effect of a singular cause.
An imminent air of rightness overtakes the man who was there only moments ago, before he's gone, disintegrated into nothing.]
WHERE: The Facility.
WHEN: October 12, during the sleep event.
WHAT: Continued from here. Cain went in guns blazing, rolled a crit fail, wiped out the party, and now they're going to need the power of friendship to save them.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Language, gore, disassociation/ego death, psychic death, JUST DEATH, buckets of guilt, and Disney Magic™ (including KH3 spoilers). Will update as necessary.
[The impact of their actions doesn't register at first. Due in part to the immediacy of his ability, Cain can only watch as the spear is extracted from its tangled bed of roots, blinking out of visible existence and reappearing several meters to his direct left. The weapon glints in a refraction of eerie, milky-blue underwater light. Where there would be a rush of success upon victory — moving the immovable — and where he might feel the tickle of curiosity in the aftermath, there's nothing but a peculiar emptiness. Slight and small, like he's disengaged from the part of his brain that processes raw information into higher function, a brief interim where no single thought enters his head, and he looks at his surroundings with a detached faraway appreciation. Meditative, almost, all pain and pressure from the landscape's oppressive environment gone.
And then it grows.
A yawning void eats through the peripheral of his awareness, even as he turns at last to check on Fitz and Markus. It's at that point his sense of individual self begins to slip, and the people he's looking at have no names, felt more in physical warmth and closeness. Cain extends a hand out as if to touch one of them on the shoulder — but stops, fingers spread, dark eyes lowering down to look at his own arm as if he doesn't recognize it. It doesn't feel as though it should belong to him. His gaze travels further, over limbs and torso dressed in the sleek black material of a flight suit, and that feeling of disconnect only heightens, mind elevated above the anchor of an unfamiliar body.
Slowly, gradually, another sense begins to bleed into the fine boundary of Cain's (but not Cain anymore, not Alexei, not anyone, what is he?) consciousness. Pinpricks of light at the edges of his mind, little flashes of red scales, the gauzy white outlines of humanlike shapes in the distance, and the two solid pillars of men in front of where he stands. Life everywhere. Death, too, clinging onto the dredges of what once was. Cain watches himself begin to fade from the feet up as if unattached to the process.
Death, watching Fitz and Markus now succumb to an intense and severe pain he doesn't feel at all. There's no fragment of sympathy, there's no sadness — only an impression of responsibility. The entire facility becomes a single entity stationed somewhere in his mind. And then Fitz and Markus are no longer alive, they're dead, a hot spray of blood and red guts and cooler blue mechanical shards across the surrounding area, but he doesn't feel anything beyond the understanding that it happened as the effect of a singular cause.
An imminent air of rightness overtakes the man who was there only moments ago, before he's gone, disintegrated into nothing.]
no subject
Unlike before, Riku knows not to voice his concern. Instead, he closes his eyes, reaching out for Markus' heart. Even if he speaks those words, it's obvious to Riku that the core of Markus has returned. It might take time for everything to shift into focus, shift into how it's supposed to be. But that doesn't matter. He's back. So, there wasn't a need to voice it in the first place. (Which is a relief. Riku's gotten the impression that Fitz likes to do things his way.)
He reopens his eyes and watches, eyes passing between Markus and Fitz. No need to interrupt, even if he's right there.
Well, at first.
But eventually he does, tipping his head forward in recognition.] Hi. I'm Riku. [His words feel deceptively simple, which isn't a bad thing by his estiamtion.] Let me know when you feel ready to go. I'll make sure we get out without any additional scratches.
[Because they were already lost, weren't they?]
no subject
He registers a sensation at his arm, exposed, open. An expert touch slotting plastic-white back into place, illusory skin crawling back into place. And then Fitz, there in his sight, leaning forward with fingertips brushing beneath his chin — and in droves comes the feeling of relief, an emotion far kinder than what he’s so recently experienced.
Eyes snap up to meet him. Recalibrate. Carter and Cain, waiting. The earth grounds itself, steadies on its axis.]
Right, I— [Recalibrate. Programs settling into normalcy. Breathe. He does, even if he doesn’t have to, lungs filling.] Peggy and Cain…. Cain, he’s all right?
[And then, stepping into view, a stranger. Markus’ eyes trail from his boots sunken into ash, up to his face.]
I’m… [It’s hard to understand what’s exactly happening, but he knows that this place — dry and grey and dead — is not where he belongs. Not where any of them belong. Markus nods, pushing his weight into the sand, trying to heft himself up on his own.] Right. I’ll follow both of you. Wherever you need me to go. Thank you for... for helping me.
[Because there's one truth he knows for certain, despite the nebulous nature of a decaying dream: if not for their intervention, he'd still be stuck in that place, a ghost haunting the remnants of a ruinous facility.]
no subject
Cain’s with Sora and Peggy, so he’s going to be.
[ There’s little doubt in his mind that damage was done before Peggy and the boys arrived to help them. The head and the heart can only take so much, if they’re lost in another world. But it’s a problem for later, when they can privately note the damage, both internal and external.
For the moment, he stands (chest smarting, pain rising) and offers his arm for Markus to grab on the way up or after, should it be needed. Once he’s standing, Fitz nods to Riku. In normal circumstances, Fitz would portal his way where he wanted, ask for clarification or propose a plan, but Riku and Sora were immovable in their belief that their path was the only one — it’s up to them now. No time for anything else, when the others are waiting for them.
The parameters of the mission were set when he awoke, and he’d really, really, really like to get this over with so he can succumb to the ache all over his body (from this dream and all prior to it) and see that every one of his friends is safe. ]
Ready.
no subject
He turns back ever so slightly, extending and open palm to them. Riku offers an encouraging smile.]
Let's get you both back.
[Back to where they can't risk being lost. Riku worries that for however long they're in the dream, it may mean they can be. He doubts that it could happen under his watch, but ... well. No point in being sorry.
Soon after, they dive up and out. Riku will reach out to them later to check on them.]