EVENT #010

[larkers]

WHO: Everyone
WHERE: New Amsterdam and any other megacity the Displaced happen to be in/travel to!
WHEN: May 28, 2512
WHAT: Golden-eyed monsters stream into New Amsterdam and other megacities the world over.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Violence, death, body horror, mind control, and transformation.

> EVENT #010

It starts in the middle of the night, when most everyone should be fast asleep in their beds, whether they're still taking up a cot in the safehouse or staying in their own apartment. One moment it's quiet, with most of the rest of the city having also turned in for the night, and then in the next? It isn't.

There will be mass confusion as the scope of the situation becomes clear. Monsters stream out onto the streets, thundering up the stairs of a train station, skittering out of construction sites, or climbing up the walls. Some of them fly. Others slither. Others run, loping forward with only one goal in mind: to find something to sink their teeth or claws into and to leave destruction in their wake at every turn. They are a horde, a swarm, a teeming mass of creatures that have no intention of stopping. All of them have eyes or bodies that shine gold and wherever they go, they seem to leave decay. Concrete turns black and porous where they step; plants wither and die.

There is no real preparing for an attack of this scale. New Amsterdam will awaken as the sound of these monsters crashing down on cars or bursting through storefronts or into homes forces people to run screaming from their dwellings or places of work. There is no discrimination in who these beasts might target, and no discernable pattern in where they go.

All that one can really tell is that they seem to want to spread out. They're constantly on the move, leaping from victim to victim, and they're relentless. No one knows why they've come, where they're come from, or what will make them stop. At least for now, the only option seems to be to cut down their numbers. It's time to fight the horde.

The first night will be utter chaos as everyone reacts to the monsters' sudden appearance, but by the morning hours news reports will start streaming in. This is not only happening in New Amsterdam, or wherever else a Displaced might be staying, but seemingly everywhere. Some cities seem harder hit than others, but practically every megacity is overrun with the creatures.

With no way of knowing who might have unleashed the monsters, all of these cities have essentially been turned into battlefields. Not many civilians are prepared to fight for their lives, and it will take a mobilization effort from the police, Morningstar, the Displaced, and anyone else who's willing to take up arms in order to survive.

◉ As a note, this attack starts simultaneously in multiple cities. While it's the middle of the night in New Amsterdam, the monsters will appear at other times of the day in other parts of the world depending on the timezone!

> BESTIARY

So as to not make this post overly long, we have compiled all of the monster descriptions into a Google doc here for everyone's reference!

> (NOT SO) SAFEHOUSE

For those Displaced who stay at (or spend any time in) the safehouse under the hoverbike shop or the Red Wings bar, they may become aware of the presence of the monsters sooner than others, due to the fact that at least a few of the giant mole monsters will end up burrowing up through the concrete basements to wreak havoc. The screeching noise of steel claws tearing through the floor will be sure to wake up even the deepest of sleepers.

This won't just be an occurrence on the first night of the attack, either. Unless something is done to deter them, tunnels leading straight into the safehouses will continue to be created, allowing even other types of monsters to find their way through (the smaller ones, that is). Where exactly they're coming from won't be entirely clear, though it's a safe bet to assume that they must have originated in the cave system somehow.

Suffice to say that El won't be happy about the safehouse being compromised in this way, though this isn't a possibility that ze or anyone else could have really prepared for. While ze can't do much to physically help with containing the invasion of the monsters, ze will offer whatever resources ze can—though Morningstar is going to be busy in plenty of other locations, as well, and they only have so many resources.

The Red Wings, being a Displaced-operated location, will also be in need of assistance, especially if it's meant to be a point of safety and a hub for handing out supplies. Speaking of—

> RED WINGS HQ

As things begin to deteriorate, Clarke Griffin and Stephen Strange sink their resources into Red Wings, adapting it into a base of operations for the Displaced. Clarke also called in PRESERVE to set up a checkpoint here, too, and anyone—from the Displaced to civilians—will be able to seek aid here. (Of course, Red Wings will be just one of a few locations throughout the city where they attempt to set up shop, but Red Wings may prove to be more fortified thanks to the talents of the Displaced.) Civilians will not have access to Red Wings' safehouse, however. That's still something that Clarke and Stephen want to keep under wraps, for now.

In the bar proper, there will be medical aid, supplies, and even weapons for those who can use them. During rare moments of downtime, the gang at Red Wings will also work on reconnaissance missions to find safe spots throughout the city to provide much needed protection and safety for the people of New Amsterdam. This task may be much easier said than done. Gathering intel on the monsters is a high priority, too, and for anyone who tries to capture a monster to learn more about them, the basement might be a good place to hold them. If the Displaced are going to be able to fight back, they need to know exactly what it is they're fighting.

However, the truth of the matter is that this attack happened quickly, and in the middle of the night to boot. As much as the group at Red Wings tries, resources are stretched thin, and they didn't have time to prepare as much as they wanted to. Supplies need to be rationed, bandages and stitches used for wounds that really need them, and if you're not a great shot, it might be best to let someone with more training take that gun you're eyeing.

More than anything, despite the difficulty, this is a way for the Displaced to help out as many people as they can, and a way for them to cement their humanitarian efforts and affect the population's opinion of them. The citizens of New Amsterdam are sick of this cycle of destruction, and are just waiting to be empowered. Now's the time to teach them to fight back and help them protect their city.

Red Wings' safehouse underground will be damaged by burrowing monsters as well, and will need protection. The bar itself will escape relatively unscathed.

> INVESTIGATING / GATES

Maybe the best way of dealing with the monsters isn't violence at all. Maybe there's a more strategic way to deal with this.

The monsters will be moving from city to city via the gates, just like the Displaced do. There might be a way to keep them from spreading, or at least slow them down, by shutting down the gate network. Of course, with the mag trains shutting down, getting back home could be an issue. One option is the delivery network of hover trucks. They'll still be running to get supplies from city to city, but their batteries don't run indefinitely, so these will be relatively local trips only. No getting from New Tokyo back to New Amsterdam with this method, unfortunately, and convincing a driver to let you hitch a ride might be a challenge, but it's doable.

Of course, there's also the question of where these things are coming from. Intrepid characters might be able to track them back to their nests, which are tucked away in wildly different places depending on the city. In New Amsterdam, they might be in the caves below the city. In other places, they might not be in the city proper at all, but just outside of it. It's important to keep in mind that the nests are far away from any of the action taking place elsewhere. Tracking these origin points may provide some answers, but the cost would be less involvement in the crisis taking place.

And then there's the matter of the monsters themselves. How can you fight an enemy you know nothing about? For those determined or crafty enough, capturing them might be an option, although this will take some creativity. Once these creatures are captured, they'll need to be kept contained, and kept alive. Just because they're monstrous doesn't mean they don't have to eat, after all, and some will need special environmental considerations as well, such as the mind control slugs.

What happens after that is up to the Displaced. Is dissecting them the best bet? Their internal anatomy won't be wildly different from most "normal" animals, with the exception of some creatures who have strange appendages or the like. Still, this might give the Displaced a better idea of how they operate and what their weak spots are. Sending samples to a lab is another possibility, if the Displaced can figure out how to safely store those samples. After all, the world is in a crisis, and no one is running tests at the moment.

All monsters, though, seem drawn to the blue light. When a Displaced uses a power or activates the empathy bond, the creatures will lock onto it, utterly transfixed, and if this is done enough times, that gold glow of theirs will intensify. What does it all mean? Maybe figuring that out will be a pathway to stopping their attacks.

> PITCHING IN

While all of this is going on, it certainly won't be just the Displaced who are heading out into the streets to try and stem the flow of the monster attack. These creatures are certainly not holding back, and no matter how much work might be put in, their numbers are overwhelming. Plenty of people will end up dead as a result, ripped to shreds or dragged off somewhere to be eaten. Yet, for some reason, these monsters are not as vicious toward the Displaced. They'll engage them in a fight and injure them, but they never go so far as dealing a fatal blow.

Seeing how that's not the case for the rest of the populace throughout the world, however, some groups and organizations will be rising up to do their part.

Police departments will be mobilizing in every megacity to put the monsters down, and while they are armed, it's not on the same level as the UNA. They also don't have any sort of training that's prepared them to fight monsters, but they'll still be putting their lives on the line to put a dent in the monsters' onslaught. When it comes to enforcing regular law and order, they certainly won't have the bandwidth for anything like that. Then again, most people won't be in any position to take advantage and commit crimes either, given the chaos that will be a constant everywhere.

Morningstar will also be jumping into action around the world. The New Amsterdam branch will be most likely to work alongside the Displaced and share some of their resources, particularly with those who are signed up as official agents or those who've supported them in the past. In cities like New Prague and New Beijing where the Displaced have made some contact with Morningstar before, they'll also be open to working with the Displaced. However, their resources are by no means robust. Morningstar is an organized rebel group, but they're hardly an official army in any sense of the word. They might be able to hand out a weapon here or there and they have a safehouse set up in almost every city, but beyond that, they'll mainly be getting boots on the ground to help with the fighting.

UNA soldiers who have been left without any sort of purpose or guidance will now have an opportunity to put some of that training to use. Their involvement will be much more scattered, though in some cases small groups of these soldiers who used to work in units together will reconnect in their effort to fight off the horde. However, having been cut off from the UNA in an official capacity, they won't have much in the way of gear or weapons. They're still formidable fighters, though, and now might be the perfect time to reach out and make a connection with some of them.

Mercenaries belonging to various different outfits, depending on what city they're based in, will also be joining the cause. Whether they're acting out of a basic desire to survive the attacks or if they're actually being paid by someone to go out there and risk their lives will be less clear, but they're some of the best-equipped fighters (other than the police). They also won't really find much reason to protest any of the Displaced pitching in to fight with them. The more firepower, the better, right?

A group of regulars from the New Amsterdam fighting rings will be rising up to add their fuel to the monster-fighting fire, as encouraged by Hawke and whoever else might know them well enough to reach out. Given that some of these people have illegal mods to enhance their strength or cybernetic attachments that can do impressive amounts of damage, some of them might hold their own against the monsters. Hell, some of them might even ask the Displaced to demonstrate some of their powers if they end up fighting together, as word of their abilities has become more known among their ranks. Either way, they'll be jumping into the fray with quite a bit of gusto.

PRESERVE will be involved on the other end of these efforts and will be doing their best to tend to the wounded and the dead, along with finding shelter and safe spots for people to barricade themselves from the attacks. It's not like the grand majority of civilians could stand a chance against these monsters, after all, yet not all of them can rely on their homes to be safe enough to stay in. They'll be quick to accept an offer of Displaced help, as they'll be doing their best to try and drag the recently dead to hospitals to get them put into medi-units before they're too late. Along with what's set up at Red Wings, they'll also be cobbling together other relief spots throughout the city for taking care of wounded and offering up what supplies they have (food and water, medical supplies, etc).

And what are the corporations doing in all of this? Well, suffice to say, mainly just panicking. Unsurprisingly, they're not much help during a crisis like this, with most of the super-rich opting to hide away in whatever highly secure bunkers they might have. Too bad that these bunkers might not prove so secure in the face of these attacks. Could that prove to be an opportunity if someone went looking?

> FINAL OOC NOES

Please refer to the OOC EVENT POST for all OOC info, including suggestions for directions on how to engage with the event. Given the spread out nature of this event, as well as the amount of additional details provided here, please direct all questions to our QUESTIONS thread below. This is, naturally, a huge event in terms of scale, and so we're certain there are aspects of it we haven't covered and questions that have yet to be answered. We do encourage that all of our players use the event planning post for any additional ideas and for touching base!

Please do not begin to thread out any aftermath until AUGUST 8, 2020, which is when we will put up the aftermath log and OOC post. If this date changes, we will provide a gamewide update as needed! As a note, the August calendar will be posted alongside the aftermath!

As a reminder, there is one power level up available for this event, granted for a thread of at least 5 log/action comments containing your character utilizing their power in some way during the event itself. They will need to reach the 5 comments required by SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 to be eligible. Submission will be handled on the wrap up post.

Our Activity Check will be posted AUGUST 1 at 12 AM UTC. It will run for seven days and close on AUGUST 8 at 12 AM UTC.

Have fun and fight some monsters! Or … whatever else you might do with them. 😉😏 Your secret's safe with us. 😙

> NAVIGATION

Comments

[wittingly]

[ As it turns out, Ian is annoyingly susceptible to the direct approach. It worked for Kyna not but days ago, it's pulling something out of him now. Hard to say if it's because it was way easier to dodge this kind of thing before or if it's something about himself that's changed, he honestly doesn't know. Pre-apocalypse, you could just block someone on social media and ghost them out. Post-apocalypse it was the goddamn apocalypse, most people were more or less on the same page about dealing with their own shit and leaving well enough alone.

Or maybe it's just here, or just Kyna, or just Nathan now.

In any case, that crystal clear, direct question has him pulling his eyes away from that spot on the wall and leveling them at the source.

Don't lie to me, coming from sharp blue eyes that hone in like a fucking laser. His lips part sticky-slow, catching in places as his mouth opens. It's to say, you're fucking intense, you know that? But... seriously, he's fucking intense, so that notion falls away before his throat unlocks to say it. What comes out instead is a tired, scratchy: ]

Fuck.

[ Fuck, okay. ]

Um—

[ He pulls his eyes away again because there's no fucking way he can make eye contact if he's gonna explain it. The spot on the wall that kind of looks like zebra stripes won't stare into his fucking soul or whatever it is Nathan's doing. ]

I teach. Taught. At this college— at Berkeley in California, I don't know if you, um... have a California.

[ Or a Berkeley, or a college, where you're from. This place is full of people from other goddamn realms and centuries.

Probably not the thing to fixate on right now. ]

They had this... fucking... Starbucks on campus. [ That part comes out particularly derisive, eyes rolling up to the ceiling. The last place he fucking went before it all fell apart was a Starbucks, Jesus Christ. ] It was like this... daily... thing. I mean, look at me, it's like written in my fucking... DNA or something. So anyway, I walk out, and some... asshole shoulder checks me. Just... fucking booking it. I mean, really going. Coffee hit the ground, I'm about to yell after him when like... two or three other people start taking off after him. And then people just started... screaming.

[ It doesn't go the way he thought it would, rehashing this for the first time. Doesn't go the way he thought it would two seconds ago, because he levels out into something a little distant while he talks. Maybe it's the alcohol finally doing its job, because the memory seems a little more dreamlike. He travels back in time a little in his mind, and his voice comes out raspy, breathy, otherwise steady. ]

It was like the fucking movies, that's the one thing they got right is everyone just... losing their fucking minds, running in a million different directions, trampling each other and just...

[ A scoff-shrug-head shake combo. Not that he has to tell Nathan, considering the same thing started going down while they were outside — or, similar, anyway. Middle of the night, fewer people on the streets, but the screaming and the running started up eventually anyway.

And then comes the slight wobble, a faltering, fleeting quake in his voice. ]

But I just fucking... stood there. Like a moron.

[acheless]

[ So Nathan stares, and waits, and listens. Ian looks away from him the whole time, but Nathan doesn't follow that clue of discomfort. Some people run when the tide drags out before the winds hit. Nathan's used to watching a storm hit shore.

Reminds him, a little, of something Bellamy had said earlier. How there are people that like it better here, because it isn't where they came from. Irradiated earths. Monsters, mayhem. Some part of Nathan's own sleepless hours have revolved around that — the real, objective truth that he's free here, freer than the bounds of the Menagerie, with no home and magic and named sentence. It fits strangely inside him, jagged and misshapen.

Must fit strangely for Ian, too. Coming from there to now. People screaming, running through the streets, tripping over themselves to get at a bare modicum of safety. Seeing it once, and then seeing it all over again.

Nathan inhales. The sound of it somehow seems to expand, ring out louder than it rightly should. Funny, how a couple sentences makes him get it. That cool head, that distance. The touch over his brow and cup over his eyes. The Falconry would've loved a guy like Ian. ]

We got California. [ Is what he says, at first. ] I'm from DC.

[ The rest, he takes his time on. Nathan resettles, swinging his legs around as he releases an exhale. It means he's not perpendicular anymore; he's facing Ian, straight-on, with only a couple steps of bathroom tile between them. Fingers loosely held in a ring around his own wrist. Relaxed, a little bit.

He watches Ian again. Pointed forward, quiet. ] 

How long?

[ As in: How long ago was that? How long did it take for things to fall apart? How long did you you keep it together, living in that?

What happened to you next? ]

Keep going, [ Nathan tells him. ] I'm listening.

[wittingly]

[ Ian would not have loved The Falconry back. He manages in the moment, he got particularly good at that, considering all the experience under his belt by now. Afterward, though? It's like it replays and replays and replays in his head, he obsesses over it, makes up for all the shutting down he pulled off twice over. He can keep on choking it down for a while as long as he's working, but when he runs out of things to keep his mind busy...

Well, he's in a bathroom stall with a guy he met one time, two shades before brown-out, trying not to be a woo girl at the end of the night.

It's not a deliberate choice to look away from his chosen focal point. It's that movement, the automatic instinct to look at someone who moved to face you.

Really just prying up all of his safety layers aren't you, man?

There's always room for another no, or two, or three, or four until the guy gives up. It's just that don't lie to me, and Kyna getting her foot in the door, and that he's unpleasantly drunk, and that usually steers him back toward an external, live on the surface level kind of calm. But it isn't.

So he's looking this guy in the fucking eyes and he's not happy about it exactly, but he also can't seem to break it. ]

Two years. Maybe. Started to lose track of time.

[ Because it didn't really matter, did it? All that really mattered were the seasons, nobody had impending dentist appointments or tax deadlines. Some people kept track. Some people still charged their cellphones, they stopped getting reception months and months ago but they like the familiarity and it tells them the date.

Ian wasn't one of those people. Chucked his phone in a river just a couple months in at Luke's behest. Started to kind of blur together.

But he wants to know what happened, not the sob story of how nobody got to use Instagram anymore. ]

It's gonna sound... ridiculous, or just... I'm not gonna be able to really explain it in a way that...

[ Fully encapsulates the magnitude of the whole thing, but he's not exactly a poet right now.

Whatever. Just fucking tell it. ]

It just looked like a fucking... corner. Like the corner of a cube, seriously perfect lines. I mean, it was, it turned out to be, but you couldn't really tell that because you stopped being able to... see the rest of it. The size of it, it was like Lovecraft's wet dream, it almost hurt to look at it. Came down out of cloud cover and kept on coming, and it just... It landed on... everything. City blocks, buildings, people, doesn't matter. It was nothing. Nothing did a goddamn thing to it, it just... settled. Stopped.

[ And it isn't even really that part, so much, that fucks him up. It's still so surreal, the shock hit him so hard, it was like everything went white noise. Didn't panic, didn't cry, just... stood there staring, dumbfounded, total disbelief.

Mostly, it's all the shit that came after that he doesn't want to live again. ]

[acheless]

[ Two years. Two years of a life like this one, running and clamoring over buildings until your feet give out. Two years of staring at the face of something unfathomable. There wasn't any part of Nathan's life he didn't know how to name — accounted for every spell, every casting, every decision. Every part of himself he carved away to make room for magic, to steal and hurt and lie, at least Nathan had known. Two years, but he'd known.

People band together in times of tragedy. Maybe, for Ian's world, it was like this one. People willing to fight less, to share exhausted smiles, shrug and smile and try to point towards some goal together.

Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was crueler, not kinder. Maybe Ian had to joke around about things that didn't exist anymore just to keep them alive, in-spirit, because the alternative was worse.

Nathan doesn't know if this is it. Some half-hearted fake zombie walk and a sports bar and an adjustment to insect protein, and then this: monsters, alien parasites. The real, true reality behind the curtain. (The quick look Ian had given him, in the mouth of that alleyway. The little way he'd said, Just in case we die—) There have been other cities destroyed, and Nathan isn't blind to the way the streets look. Mercenaries, politicians, people trying to band together in different locations and different names. Whatever's coming out the other end of this, it isn't going to be easy, blue glows or not. But at least most of them will be alive, maybe. ]

It doesn't sound ridiculous.

[ Nathan says. He fixes Ian with a steady look and Ian looks back, and it's not satisfaction he feels so much as it is that surefire knowledge that he isn't lying.

It's hard to look at, when someone tells you the whole truth. Half the time, it's because there's something in it that speaks to you, too.

Nathan hesitates. It shows in the way he stares down at his hands, at where he's holding onto his own wrist, trying to soothe away the dull ache of an old injury with his head gently bowed. For a little while, it seems like maybe he's run out of things to say. That he's listened, and he's holding onto this story, the misery Ian's telling. And that'll be it.

Instead, Nathan glances back up. His expression softens. ]

What're you so scared of?

[ Is it rebuilding? Is it as simple as the fear that this is it— that it's a life full of more running, more loss? Is it failing somebody, is it death, is it dying— what is it?

His world was ruined. Maybe this one is too.

But what the hell happened to this guy? ]

[wittingly]

[ It's a relief when Nathan peels his eyes away. It gives Ian the chance to, too — but it isn't immediate. He tracks over Nathan's form, the shape of his expression, his hand circling his own wrist. It takes a little too long for the details to sink in, but they do. There are things, flashes of images and speech and sound, that stand out vividly the next day when the alcohol fades out and you're left with blurry snatches and a hangover. This part, he thinks, will stay.

The silence settles in, and he doesn't look at that spot on the wall anymore. It's somewhere lower, or really it's at nothing.

Talking about what happened isn't a magic cure. He doesn't feel better, something's still hanging from his heart and swinging on it like a fucking chandelier. Maybe he feels a little better about admitting it, though. Talking about it to this guy, now that he has a little context.

His eyes have gone a little red, a little bloodshot, a little too dry in some parts and too wet in others, so he brings his thumb and his forefinger up to press into his eyelids. ]

It's, ah.

[ There's a slightly too long pause. A little harder to really pull that together within himself, let alone deliver it out loud. ]

It's how slow it all goes. Things falling apart.

[ He peels up a couple seconds later with an absent, audible and too-sharp inhale through his nose. ]

It doesn't happen overnight. There's no... ripping the bandaid off. Every day something gets a little worse. You lose power, you lose water, you run out of food. You get some new way to almost die, and you don't know when that's coming or what it is, it just hits you out of fucking nowhere every time. And it just... happens over and over again for months, like cancer.

[ So you just get to dread it, a semi-permanent state. A second later, a little thickly, hoarsely, absurdly: ]

And I was really fucking stoked about these showers.

[acheless]

[ Absurdly, impossibly, and yet somehow it gets Nathan to huff a laugh. It's even tinged like a joke — like there's real humor in it, dry and flickering to life. Nathan thinks about the house of the Menagerie and its old floorboards and shitty water-pressure and half-broken down tractor and thinks, yeah. There are those things. The small, quiet, good things that get stripped away until all you have left is bone. A hurt so large and deep you didn't ever notice until you were forced to.

Nathan knows what that's like. And yeah, he'll miss a good shower, too.

It's not a smile, exactly. Too weak, doesn't really reach his eyes. But it's an attempt at— comraderie, maybe. Something that connects, when his mouth curves just a fraction. ]

Can't have you losing your looks, huh.

[ Ian's still drunk. Nathan— Nathan doesn't mean for it to last too long. So he inhales, almost like he's gearing himself up for leaving or standing or some speech, or fight, or war. People do that, sometimes. They try to convince you just as much as they try and convince themselves.

Nathan just leans forward. Closer. Extends his arm, palm-up, fingers lax. ]

C'mon.

[ Not exactly a bloody, severed arm in an alleyway here.

But let him pay you back for it. You want calm? You want sobriety? That's fine. He has that in spades. He has flits of anger and frustration and worry and a quiet, more subtle longing. But right now, what he feels is calm. The feeling of floating in an ocean, without landmarks or sight, only water around you, and thinking that's fine.

Carrying a little more hurt means fucking nothing to Nathan. Even if it's only for a little while. ]

[wittingly]

[ His good looks stayed even when they were showering with lukewarm lake water through a PVC pipe, thank you very much. ]

You're not my type.

[ He answers, a drawled out deadpan echo from a few days ago — feels like longer than that. He's full of shit, though, and he doesn't spend a very long time eyeing the hand Nathan's offering out.

The truth is, it takes a few seconds to realize what it is Nathan's offering. He'd be quicker normally, that association would be near-instant, but now it takes just a bit to click into place. He's forgotten about it because it's not second nature yet, and if he were sober this is basically exactly the only time he'd be against using it.

But he's not.

So he does.

Callous-rough palm passes over Nathan's, and his fingers wrap around Nathan's wrist instead of his hand. A thumb settles on his pulse point, and then it just...

Hits him. Pulls the air slowly from his lungs, pulls his eyes shut without even noticing it. Half of the choking anxiety, the sheer fucking fear pouring out, replaced with that distant, floating calm he's been looking for all god damn night.

Can't really put a price on the relief that follows, or the smaller slips of gratitude. ]

[acheless]

[ It still feels, more than a little, like casting.

With Kyna, it'd been a means to an end. Get that worm out of her head. It'd been brief, and then he'd gotten fucking stabbed. With Ian, beforehand, it'd been necessity: cutting something off at the pass. This feels a little more deliberate. Cauterizing a wound before it can bleed over. It feels like casting all the more because of that, how everything gets dialed in that little bit closer, a window into someone else's entire core opening just for you.

And where magic might spill out — a small cord or vibrating wire or glowing tendril of magic, there to be reached, knit together with his own, it's just... fear.

Anxiety, fear, real enough and tangible enough that it pulls from Nathan too. It's like a punch to the gut. It's real and visceral, and to focus, Nathan looks directly at Ian.

Chest expands. Inhale, exhale, steady rhythm and breaths. A blue glow alights.

Nathan thinks about early mornings. Waking up before the sun rises. Settling the rhythm of his breathing into his footfalls when he runs, passing through the fields, the cool mists, the horses gently raising their heads in passing interest. The bond isn't the totality of what you feel. It's just what you feel right now.

Calm. Steady, ambivalent, the way a boat just rocks with the waves.

A little acknowledgement. Recognition at the forefront.

Threads of nostalgic feeling, faint and distant.

Nathan lifts his brows silently at Ian. A wordless Alright?, like that alleyway, minutes of quiet communicated in not much else. Nathan's not pulling away yet, but throwing the question out there. Waiting for the response. However long it needs to be.

Inhale, exhale. The silence extends.

The wait continues. ]

[wittingly]

[ He's greedy, maybe. Selfish, stingy, all of the above. It's been steadily mounting for days, he didn't abruptly plummet here from nowhere. He mitigated it over and over, today's just when the tether broke. This feels like the first real relief he's had since it started building up.

He's there a while. He's got no concept of time right now, frankly it's a little impressive that he had that entire fucking conversation without veering off too far to the left. Could be five minutes or it could be twenty, the only thing he's measuring is the space between inhaling and exhaling. Stealing Nathan's calm, using it like a fire blanket.

Heat dies down steadily, and it leaves in its place a split mix of relief and exhaustion. That post-catharsis fatigue that you feel inside and out.

His eyes open slow, and they take their sweet time dragging over hand and wrist and arm up to Nathan's face, his expectant look.

Yeah. Alright.
A short nod.
Acid neutralized with base.

His hold around Nathan's wrist reluctantly slackens, leaving space for him to pull away. Not exactly feasible to hang on all night, though he'd be tempted if he could. He's got enough to get by on for now. ]

Thank you.

[ A little raspy, and probably unnecessary considering the appreciation passing through his skin into Nathan's. ]

[acheless]

[ Twenty five minutes, is Nathan's guess. Give or take. And then he pulls away. 

Not quite quick enough to mask the brief blip of confusion, the uptick that sparks away from a distant, steady core. The thank you tips towards something uneasy, and Nathan gently slips his wrist out of Ian's hold.  All Nathan can do is nod back, though that tip of his chin is slow. Measured. When a wild animal stops thrashing, it's dangerous to be satisfied with it. It's not there for you. It wasn't calmed by you. It chose to stay.

For whatever reason -- loneliness or misery or terror or something else overwhelming altogether, like fear, the real primal fear of something larger and deadlier and more urgent coming back -- it stayed.

Nathan wets his bottom lip. He opens his mouth, a little bit, in the way that people do when they're preparing to say something. Takes a short inhale of breath that comes out loud, like a punctuation mark. An opening parenthesis.

Instead, he hesitates. Says, ]

Alright.

[ A full stop. Nathan's never been a you're welcome kind of guy anyway. ]

I'll get you some water. Stay here.

[ So he gets up. That soft noise of exertion again, though he takes a single step forward, bends to take that bottle of tofu cactus tequila or whatever the fuck it is. Tucks it under his arm, but he's not throwing it out.

Walks out. The door to the stall swings a little when he exits. When he comes back, it's silently, with two full bottles of room temp water. No painkillers or tylenol. Them's the breaks in rationed supplytime, California. ]

[wittingly]

[ There's a lot happening here, a lot of subtle details that Ian would love to be able to file away to examine later. If he were stone cold sober — ignoring the fact that this wouldn't be happening at all — he'd clock the expression on Nathan's face. The way he starts to speak but falters. The strange things that stack up to something he couldn't name.

But Ian's fucking hammered, so.

His eyes gloss over the finer details, drop down again toward nothing in particular, and he nods at that vacancy.

Alright.
Stay here.

He didn't have a whole lot of other plans, to be honest.

When he gently relieves Ian of his glass-wrapped mistake, his eyes track it back up and then pass to Nathan's face again. His nose scrunches, lips tuck into one cheek; the expression of a guy reluctant to see his alcohol go, but self-aware enough to know that hanging onto it is both sad and also a terrible fucking idea.

Never been a particularly irate drunk.

The span of time between when he leaves and when he comes back doesn't exist. Didn't get recorded in his short term memory, apparently. Not that it matters, nobody's gonna quiz him over that two minutes in an empty bathroom.

He takes that bottle of water. Twists off the cap. Spends a few silent seconds swallowing it down before his crown comes to rest on the wall behind him again.

He's content to stay like this until the water takes hold, until he's certain the puke potential has dropped to single digits. He's even content to sit in silence for it, except for one question that occurs to him after a while. Just a quiet, curious: ]

Hey man, why... why are you doing this?

[ Why are you here, babysitting this drunk asshole? ]

[acheless]

[ The reaction’s pretty immediate. A look of irritation, strong and deeply etched, takes its shape. 

Nathan glances up from where he's settled. Not from the ground, sitting like before, but from where he's been leaning against the stall frame, good shoulder taking the weight. One hand wrapped around his own bicep, just below where the thickness of his bandage makes it stick out oddly. He's fixed Ian with different shades in similar hues — annoyed, calm, frustrated, exasperated — and, for a split second in time, actively fucking murderous, a non-verbal exchange playing out in the alleyway.

Right now, he looks annoyed. Like it's a waste asking, and he's impatient and disapproving that it's been asked at all.

He sighs, hard. A little difficult to tell, whether he means it, or it's put-upon just a bit. Affect's still the same, anyway. ]

I don't know.

[ Clipped, dismissive. But Nathan does know. Probably okay to hedge your bets with a guy who's fucking this close to eating shit with how drunk he is, so maybe that's why Nathan doesn't bother to sell the lie.

He does know. Just seems a waste saying it, is the thing. ]

So you don't die during the night.

[ Partly true. Firmly, ]

Drink your water, Ian. [ And stop asking questions, is the unspoken end. ]

[wittingly]

[ Even drunk, Ian's not sure if he's buying it. So you don't die during the night, it's not like he's face down in the toilet or sprawled out with the potential to pull a Hendrix. Like he said at the start, he's in the right place to handle any upturn of the contents of his stomach, he's got enough composure that a stranger shouldn't be all that worried about it.

It's just curious. Not something he can puzzle out right now, but an interesting enough question that he'll wonder about tomorrow even if he forgets asking it tonight.

But yeah, alright, he gets the hint. Shut the fuck up, Ian. Don't push it after someone did you a favor.

He raises the bottle to his lips in compliance, but he mumbles into it: ]

You're such a fucking bear.

[ For what it's worth, he's not saying that because he's drunk. He'd say that shit sober, too. ]