spellbinders | [WORLD ONE | OCTOBER INTRO LOG]

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[WORLD ONE | OCTOBER INTRO LOG]

Who: The new coven members and old blood
Where: In and around the hub island
When: Day 92
Open/Closed: Open to All

All characters are told briefly what their powers are by Genette -- no extemporaneous details. For instance, if your character has the ability to detect lies, they'll be told as such -- no warning about limitations, repercussions or the like. They'll also be given a variant of this letter so they aren't totally ignorant of the situation -- though of course adapt this letter to the current setting and surroundings of the game.

This setting may be familiar to you -- maybe you caught a glimpse of it when you first visited. Maybe this is your first time experiencing this weird world and the panic is setting in. If you're totally lost, a tall human woman with a long scroll of paper will stop by to give you the run down. She'll also give you a letter, which may give you more questions than answers since the information is a wee out of date. (Maybe someone else can fill in some gaps for you).

What is at first painfully obvious is that you're ill-equipped. Any magic or powers you had previously are suddenly replaced with an empty hole in your being. That's not all that's gone, but perhaps that's what's most pressing.

Another thing you may notice is that there are others just like you, wandering around and just as confused. If you feel so inclined, you may want to ask around and see if anyone else knows what's up.

cook some of this (poisonous) eel, salt some boar jerky or cut into one of these rabbits

By the time afternoon sets in, everyone should be a little more adjusted -- or, they should at least be a little more aware of the situation. From there, things still need to be done and exploring is always an option!

Night finally falls on the exhausting day, and it's time to rest. Thankfully the island is beautiful at night, especially the sky. The night is filled with space worms, relaxing mist and wondrous sights in the stars.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Though delayed, it is as though the whisper of exertion of McGillis's fingers against his wrist disguised inhuman strength. Gaelio staggers back, releasing him, hands falling dead to his sides. With an unsteady turn, he takes another step away, wavering on his legs. In this confused, yet settling moment, he thinks again of how his legs should be: without Ein, without that which must not be here yet he moves, they would be senseless, and he would fall.

He does fall, but not through becoming victim to yet another of his own illusions.

Gaelio sits heavily, right there on the ground, and drops his head into his hands. Long breaths, then, behind the black cages of his fingers. ]

Bael. Yeah.

[ Distorted, but muted agreement. As if that had been an answer to why he would not kill Gaelio again. ]

Fate hasn't brought us here at all. But you must return to Bael. At that height -- only from that height, can I strike you down. You with those methods, and I, only then, will we... understand...

[ His voice quavers, and he swallows.

It's hard to believe like this. It's hard to believe after that. Desperately scrabbling through all that emptiness. Resolved to the necessity of brute force, brute power, which could only be achieved by the likes of Kimaris and Bael. Only that McGillis would understand, and yet, against the tree, it hadn't felt like it.

No matter his efforts, this chasm... ]

Terms. [ Flattening out. ] Why? You said them. We won't kill each other, but we can't work together. So we stay out of each other's way.

[ Simple, simple, simple, don't shout, don't scratch into scalp, don't kill him yet, kill him now, but Gaelio's alone now, hasn't felt this lonely for two years Ein, has only felt this lonely for two, and lonelier, and as lost, wrenched off the path finally found. ]

[ Won't acknowledge him that far, or has spent years acknowledging him too far.

The tension in Gaelio's white-knuckled grip buried at his collar, shifting to his throat, hums against the quiet placement of his own touch. It's as if the more he avoids striking back at him with matching fury, the more Gaelio is wounded. It occurs to him a little too late, the thought that he might be seeking fire to stoke and give meaning to his own.

The strange logic, born from twisted origins brought on by McGillis, that lies within that train of thought begins to take hold and spread.

His demand settles with a little more clarity. Why not, as though Gaelio was fit to kill once, but not twice? Effort exerted only at his convenience. Even McGillis's all-encompassing rage passes over Gaelio if he allows it to lie dormant after the fact of their clashing. His death becomes nothing but the stepping stone he'd described it as, and with no stones to step on here with it, not worth the effort to pursue again.

Far from the much stranger truth, and yet, it would be convenient to allow him to believe it...

Gaelio's features return to him. Something wrenches in him, to see them twisting from this distance. With clarity sinking in, the shadow in his heart flutters, lifts, and as Gaelio staggers, McGillis turns his wrist and tightens fingers, the gloved hand slipping away from him grasped once before it goes.

The shape of it barely felt, but somewhere in the back of his mind, the wellspring of memories that he keeps hidden and tucked away sings with this new one. A stolen addition. Dead, but alive, a pulse there, warmth. The shape of it.

Gaelio goes and sinks to the ground. He sits there as if the weight of this interaction has alone felled him. His voice strange, his rambling agreement bringing them to yet another standstill. He sounds less certain than he did in Bael's hangar, that understanding would be achieved once they reach and fall from the greatest of heights.

McGillis lifts away from the tree and stands above him, watching him crumple and fold and unfold: incredible, the extent to which he is an external creature. All that passes through him colors and becomes the air around him. That hasn't changed about him.

That fluttering shadow persists, the veil of his expression responding.

He speaks again of terms, and McGillis watches the ground now. ]

Fate had a hand in bringing us here, or we would not be here. That the two of us were chosen for it...

Edited 2017-10-10 17:32 (UTC)

[ That's either an incredible coincidence, or the deliberate continuation of their conflicting paths mapped out in the stars.

With Gaelio's survival, with his determination to face McGillis in Bael, he begins to consider the former over the latter. Perhaps they're meant to learn something or complete something here before they can move on to the final act. This could be a necessary detour rather than the unfortunate disruption of their goals. Genette's letter mentioned that all worlds hung in the balance with this decision. Perhaps it's true -- perhaps the future of their world, and the future of Gjallarhorn as he seeks to shape it, hangs in the balance too.

In that case, he would have to embrace it whole-heartedly. And if that is the case, he wonders if Gaelio's suggestion is quite right. True, that it's the same one he would've suggested himself.

McGillis dares to take a few steps closer. He kneels down to meet him eye-to-eye. ]

Do you think that's possible to do?

[ Nothing condescending in the question, for once. Their new residence is small, the population small. Sooner or later, they may have to deal with each other again.

With violence off the table, the conundrum deepens. ]

Is it possible we're meant to understand something in this world before we'll be able to return to our own?

[ Did he veer off his path at some point? Is the universe righting it for him? ]

I don't know. I don't know if we can avoid each other for long, either. I suppose we can try.

Edited 2017-10-10 18:33 (UTC)

[ Gaelio does walk tightropes, blinded and deaf. The roar of his heart the bleak encouragement of a small crowd of dearest corpses. He would charge McGillis with never hearing his words, with being incapable of it, and yet sitting here now, cannot comprehend McGillis's.

McGillis had initiated each talk of truce. McGillis first spoke the impossibility, of close enough, of their working together. McGillis now speaks of fate, persistent with it.

That McGillis would, in isolation, he would expect. Sweeping concepts had ever drawn his murderer and once beloved friend. Even ascending in Bael, he paused to permit destiny in the tormented alliance of Ein and Gaelio, in the machinery that sent ripples through their spines and lashed both men to ancient behemoths, the gods and heroes of old. Destiny did not fit ill on Gaelio's tongue, the only word with taste, that and revenge. For two years he staggered, stumbled, held aloft on another's legs, guided and guiding, knowing not the shape of the path, not where it would cross, but only where it must lead, as it had always ever lead, and would only ever lead: to McGillis Fareed.

In Bael's hangar, Gaelio had understood his destiny and seen the path, laid out then in bloodied brick. There would be blood, and he lived for that. And he removed his mask.

Because of that, he... but behind his fingers, within the hunch of his back, he resists, needing to resist, every word that McGillis would preach surely with too many facets and all meaning to cut. Every promise, everything greater, because Gaelio had once believed he shared in another dream, foolish enough to see Fate in that, as well.

Snapped, but without vehemence, with the articulation to crack it out, but the words sinking, dull -- ]

A parasitic witch's machinations hold nothing of Fate.

[ ...and yet, when he removed his mask... ]

Edited 2017-10-11 04:43 (UTC)

[ ...and yet when Vidar removed his mask, when Gaelio Bauduin reclaimed his name, he had done so with one understanding, if only one: he must kill McGillis Fareed, a man whose comprehension permitted only the speech of force and power.

Within hours of that reclamation, of that definition, he woke here with only McGillis Fareed familiar and known.

What to think, trust, or suspect of the elevated mage responsible for their displacement, Gaelio could not say. Having followed the road of his Fate to one man's death, only to be imprisoned with that man, unable to bring that death as it should be dealt, it must be an impediment to Fate, black malice, sparking frustration that would consume him in blazes.

And yet, McGillis nears, kneels.

McGillis looks at him.

His eyes are not empty.

How the tumult beneath his skin, a crawling or a beating or a storm, which must be destruction. Gaelio looks between the bars of his fingers, and wants to reel back, does not want to reel back. His hands sink and as McGillis begins to speak, they too begin, finding fists, wanting fists, remembering violence, but his right betrays him.

His hand remembers a different touch, more immediate, scalding through cloth. A touch he must forget, like the sorrow in the woods. A touch he cannot forget or understand, and so first his left hand falls, confused by the loss of synchronization with the right, knuckles scraping in the dirt. His right --

Possibility. Fate. Understanding.

How dare McGillis speak of understanding, to hold this now above him like an elusive dream in spindled gold and sun beam. It must be still masking utility, some darker purpose, and if McGillis admits that he does not know, he feigns vulnerability in this renewed plot.

Nothing true beneath the masks, Gaelio struggles to remind himself, only rage, only power, only...

-- hovering, just in front of his face from which it began to slip, twisted, fingers partially curved with the interrupted fist, and beginning now to straighten, as if to reach, to reclaim something else.

Gaelio shoves his hand down, slapped against the ground, bracing it still. ]

You suggest I work with the man I must kill, because we cannot feasibly avoid each other. It's sadistic. It's sick. It's --

[ Should scramble back, should eke out distance, should swing a fist, should deny him firmly, if not yet through meted justice. None of that, just this burning in his overexposed eyes. Bubbling, abruptly out, like bile spat up, ]

-- stop, stop saying we, don't be eager for us to understand this, but never each --

[ other. Gaelio chokes it down. ]

[ The timing of it comes back to him, as Gaelio's hands fall away from his face and McGillis is struck, yet again, by the proximity in this new setting. His unsettled energy sweeps through the space in between, unsettling in turn, but McGillis stays level on the ground with him.

He urges himself to think clearly of the overarching line of events. As always, proximity affects clarity. They were taken at that peak moment after they met again, after Gaelio found and firmed his resolve, after McGillis found and woke Agnika Kaieru. Before the fighting began.

A parasitic witch with a curious timeline and choice of victims. No matter her reasons or intentions, she had the power to bring them here and take them away from the course they were on. Trusting in power and trusting in fate, he thinks he sees now that the two are converging here -- or the possibility of it. Gaelio's hands ball into fists, his erratic energy easy to predict, while McGillis remains perched and motionless.

Their strife cannot easily be forgotten. Sixteen years of it, more of it than Gaelio ever knew, but no matter their strife, he must consider what lies beyond it. No matter Gaelio's intentions to kill him and retain the current world order in the process, no matter that he has always been and always will be an enemy of his.

Stay still, he tells himself, and think not of stolen touches, or the hand that seems to hover towards him now. But that McGillis cannot remain motionless for. Unexpected, unpredictable, resulting in his eyes widening a small amount, a surface reaction he fails to tamp down. Gaelio's hand floating in the air -- a bird paused in flight, injured from a shot -- and then that violent drop to the ground. Slapped down, as though he would like to punish it for its transgression.

Proximity: the bright wrath and tumultuous uncertainty in the deep blue of those eyes holds him, for a split-second.

His mouth thins out into a line, creasing at the edges, slight signs of upset manifesting.

It might be sick. They are already sick. They've been sick for a long time. Gaelio crashes further into their little world, and the absurdity of it mattering more than what might be at stake. The bare bones of it: this is more important for us to understand.

Gaelio won't be able to hear that without taking it as more fuel for his revenge. The people he left behind on his way to reform Gjallarhorn, once again shunted to the side, Gaelio included. This time Gaelio is the sum of it, his unfinished thought buzzing at the back of McGillis's mind, a small prick of heat at the back of his neck. As if the unspoken word had itched its way right under his skin.

If it's more important to understand, but Gaelio can't hear it, then maybe --

Maybe, it isn't. Or maybe it can't be, just yet. Something inscrutable in the way, before he can reach salvation.

So close, just a short while ago. Or not close at all. ]

"Never" is not true. I don't know the point of speaking it, since you have no cause or reason to believe it. In truth, I believe all that's left of us is our last fight. The timing and circumstance of its delay makes me question that belief.

[ Beat. ]

I have no viable suggestions, Gaelio. Only my thoughts to share in a predicament that is as strange to me as it is to you. You're under no obligation to hear them, or entertain them, but I thought that...

[ ...he might understand. ]

[ Why, the white exposed around rings of blue-green. Why, what Gaelio had turned too soon and seen among the trees. Why, fingers curling against his gloved hand. Why, the lining of that mouth, so close that Gaelio cannot help but see. As Gaelio has been ever unable to help but see, without seeing anything at all. Why, the continued joining of their eyes, the steady focus of those irises, as though McGillis actually looks at him.

What cruelty, that McGillis wears these masks so well. What maddening cruelty, to have settled on his answer, grasped at destiny, buttressed his resolve, and be stolen from it. His resolve secured and without doubt when finding the creature of self-professed immunity to emotion basking in his symbol of power and force. Readying mass deception and a savage hand. Stolen with him.

How strange that man had looked, how unfamiliar, with the distance of height and water and metal framing between them. Though he'd dreamt eyes like those for two years, buffers and barriers had killed him. In the hangar, McGillis stared at and spoke with eyes and words that suited the monster, cold and lasting indifference, affected only by power. How unfamiliar, but having to become familiar, for how true. More true than every memory, jumbled and scratched out and confused into bleeding pieces.

McGillis kneels close, their faces almost level but for the curve of his back. Their eyes unwavering, blind. So close, and his voice is not cruel, and his features are not stone, though they crack. So close, when McGillis denies the truth of never, and that, at least, is cruel.

For a muddled moment, Gaelio spirals out.

They had tumbled out of him, his words, and he picks with care over them, to understand each syllable of the reply. Don't be so eager for us to understand this, but never each (other).

"Never" is not true.

Is it implicit or direct, that McGillis suggests he had once been eager for them to understand one another? Depthless, Gaelio's failure. The stone will never hit bottom.

I don't know the point of speaking it, since you have no cause or reason to believe it.

As though more yet remained of them, to him, than that stepping stone, than a fool viciously discarded for his utility to a dream he'd believed he shared. Than a last clash that McGillis professes now to doubt as their absolute, though it must be Gaelio's absolute, all that remains of sixteen (eighteen) years, as mandated by Gaelio himself, though --

cast out doubt, kill the traitor who understood only authority, might and brute force, understand one another through murder and that power, but he understood that McGillis only understood, but he'd struggled for two years to understand, but he understood, but this faintest suggestion of more and a thread pulls taut through him, thieving from other stitches and opening seam skin, spilling out tissue, a thread of doubt, of more, of more, of some trace of the soft-hearted emotions he'd long believed he saw while reaching for sixteen years.

So close, but not enough that Gaelio believes he could touch him if he did reach. He would not reach. It could not matter. He must kill him, has decided upon it, and had reached and touched hundreds of times, thousands of times, daring more and further, but never reached, never really touched, never understood.

Spiraling, for that moment, his eyes are glassy, unfocused.

He crashes back, flinching, fingers scratching then loosing in the dirt. Mouth opens, closes, purses through a swallow.

McGillis would share his thoughts, seeking a sounding board in this impossibility. Gaelio should tell him to speak to anyone else, some new fool to trot soppily behind, or to the trees. He wants to hear nothing else from McGillis, a creature of fabrication and duplicity.

He wants nothing else, but to hear from McGillis -- too close to terror, what surges for that, and Gaelio yanks the reins, sucks in a breath, expels even. ]

You are not saying what I think you are saying.

[ Simple, measured out slow, like a prayer one might repeat as a soothing shield against a night terror, to steady his own heart. He cannot be saying, not truly, what Gaelio once wanted. Gaelio pushes against the dirt then, rising to a less steady stand. Brushing his gloved hands against his coat, a layer of browning remains, all that white better suited for sterile space.

He looks at his hands.

Had it been real, the graze of those fingers muted through cloth? Had McGillis begun to hold, as though to keep, as he wrenched back? Insanity, but his own fingers had extended. ]

You are incredible, to ask this of me. Is it because you are unfeeling that you do it so easily?

[ Curse that festering thing, fraying in the dull conviction of his voice, threatening it. Doubt. He would not reach. It cannot matter. He does reach.

He offers his hand. The test of it silent, but manifest in the severe, corded stretch of his arm. What he would reject if so given. The test double-sided, bilateral. ]

I'll hear them.

[ His mouth twists, derisive. ]

If I don't, I'll go mad wondering.

[ And they may be here for some time. Amidst baffled disconnect and jarring return, amidst all the constant chaos of his mind, Gaelio is not impervious to the stark facts of their situation. Yet, he cedes to nothing, agrees to nothing more. ]

But that's all.

Edited 2017-10-12 13:53 (UTC)

[ It's not that it doesn't unsettle, to have to face it.

A lifetime spent searching for Bael, for the soul of Agnika Kaieru, and believing that once he had the power of both all would fall into place after that. It's not that it doesn't unnerve him to be snatched from the destiny he'd so believed in and dropped into another place altogether. Rather, as with all unsettling emotions, McGillis feels them pass through him, finds places for them deep inside, and moves on. If not constantly in motion, there's no way to avoid coming apart at the seams. He still believes in it --

He must believe in it. Needing it to keep from losing all, he must understand how to fit this new and unexpected development onto the same path. It was never straight and narrow in the first place. But it was never meant to be truly disrupted.

Only, with Gaelio...

He doesn't know how to solve for him. Again, no way around him except for through him. Less with a violent hand. Only...

It must be impossible. Gaelio will see him as mastermind and monster more than man, which is preferable to how he might have looked at him as the man who is not Fareed, the stars shook from his eyes by other unbearable truths. McGillis can barely fathom coexistence with this man, let alone cooperation -- and especially after the crimes committed against his old friend, old enemy. He can barely fathom that he has told him some piece of the truth, some clouded shard of it in his never is not, and even as he speaks, the words sound far away.

Words that numb the tongue, until he's unsure if they've been spoken or thought. Words that numb him through, to keep others under tight lock and key. Within this man in front of him, only the seeds of his destruction. He can't ever forget that.

Is he meant to forget that?

Gaelio's measured mantra tricks him into believing he has not spoken the first. He is not saying, so it follows that he did not say (why would he?), and what follows is an imagined response he thought up to confirm it to himself. He stares forward again; more blank than before, but patient, ever patient, waiting for new words to spring from Gaelio's lips, direction in the form of something solid.

New ones. Solid ones, brow knitting as he processes them. ]

[ Eyes follow up, follow Gaelio pulling himself out of the dirt and glancing at his palms.

Is it because you are unfeeling that you do it so easily?

There's something solid. That old sense of alienation, brought on by his own actions and by the inescapable facts of his condition, an inescapable condition. He was never able to bypass it. All that's left is to assure that others are afforded a better chance. So that someone like McGillis can be with someone like Gaelio, and do much better.

Something like that. It doesn't matter anymore -- or is the lesson scattered somewhere in between? Steelier at the comment, as if to protect from it, but the effort proves empty -- a hand reaches out to him with clear intent to help him stand. He nearly startles.

His imagination again? Gaelio's power of illusion, some strange trick to see how McGillis will react?

Shoulders snap up some of the tension to keep a twitch down. His eyes focus on the outstretched palm, outstretched fingers, on each detail of them and the glove that lines them. He can't understand, not even with Gaelio ceding to hear the ideas trickling to life inside his mind. It's impossible to understand, and dangerous, but it follows this new narrative taking shape among the old ones. It feels like a challenge.

It feels like he should resist the urge to flee.

Another beat, his heartbeat, and guided through that, hand into palm. Without looking up -- allowing his hand to flow into that hand is frightening enough, thank you. ]

I -- wouldn't want you losing your senses.

[ McGillis pulls himself up, and no matter how abrupt and strange it might feel, he's then incapable of fighting back a wave of nostalgia. Conscious of each muscle in the hand he is permitted to hold for this moment, still unable to look and take heed of the expression that will be on Gaelio's face. He can't imagine what it will be.

Two years spent believing him dead. Two years spent with the ghost of his touch and a voice in his head.

This time, there's no need to disguise his grip, or to let go before time is up. ]

You might reassess when and where you want to kill me.

[ Wry, but admittedly scattered. He looks steadily at their joined hands. ]

[ An assortment of minutiae obliterated in an instant. Before they shred and fade, he snatched at them, wondered. The inscrutable expression McGillis wore as Gaelio slammed back into himself. The shift in his shoulders as Gaelio holds out his hand, as though affected. As though Gaelio could. It feels like reaching, brushing, that he could incite something in muscle and bone.

But he is reaching with different muscle, different bone, and before satisfaction can spark, though smoke had begun in the period between extension and touch, McGillis reaches, too. He accepts his hand, and the challenge in it, and as the pieces go to pieces, Gaelio can no longer keep hold of the nature of the test. Its purpose, what it would gauge, in either McGillis or himself.

What a terrible mistake.

Foolish, maybe, to be surprised when the man proposing cooperative understanding takes his hand. But the curl of those fingers, securing, around his palm, thrusts him past surprise. Blows him back past the invariable simmer of his fury, to matting beneath his back, sweat damp on his brow, in his hair, through his shirt, and how wide stretched his grin as he looked up at McGillis. Always with the light framing gold, always with the halo, always with that small, enigmatic smile that put emerald in his eyes. He'd never knocked and kept him down, and so always it was McGillis who reached out his hand and Gaelio who took, pulled to his feet. If, sometimes, he let the momentum carry him, leaning into the giddy weariness that draped after a long session, he might stagger shoulder to chest, feeling his shirt damp, too.

No, he hadn't ever kept him down, but he could make him sweat. He'd liked to make him sweat.

He knows this hand. He knows it through their gloves, through fabric muffling touch. He knows how the calluses should feel, the imprint of whorled fingertips. He knows these bones, these muscles, the shape and solidity of that grip. McGillis pulls himself up, does not let go, and Gaelio --

Gaelio's staring, too.

Gaelio, too, unable to lift his chin, find those eyes. White gloves both, but already Gaelio's dusts brown. Fitting, that McGillis keeps untouchable, pristine, the red that must coat him not seeping through. McGillis stands upright, but keeps hold, has not let go. Gaelio understands through the rushing in his ears that this prolongs no less because his own hold keeps firm. They grasp one another's hands and continue in it, and why? Difficult, to push through the thick confusion of memories, the bone deep familiarity of this, irresistible gravitation toward familiarity, something known, something certain.

What if he doesn't let go?

Would McGillis keep hold?

It must be a challenge volleyed back, McGillis's own test, sick and duplicitous, but Gaelio cannot convince himself, static and tides hushed in his skull. He must already have lost his senses, for this, but that's far, too. His thumb twitches, more flutters over a knob of knuckle, feeling. His lips begin to move, silent breaths that stammer, as the skin creases above his eyes.

Then McGillis speaks of killing. ]

Edited 2017-10-14 04:11 (UTC)

[ That's right.

This hand that destroyed him and those so dear. This hand he must in turn destroy. As if he'd forgotten. Unacceptable, that, and so only displaced. Another betrayal of his hand, of the heady intoxication of memory. But he cannot trust his memories and this inebriation is poison.

His hand convulses, tightens. This hand has not felt small-boned and fragile for years, strengthened and capable, even his bones hardened. Yet Gaelio squeezes for a moment, a desperate and fraught, struggling beat and three, as though the bones were bird hollow and might obligingly shatter. As though he could break the spell in them as easily. Or, by holding as if to shatter, he could finally grasp something as real as this felt.

But he can't, he knows he can't, and it isn't real, however it feels. Gaelio releases, fingers aching from the effort, and yanks his hand back. As if he shoved it into a fire and numbed himself to the agony of it until the skin had charred and curled off, exposing bone. That's the white, the dirt coat only ash of flaking skin.

He speaks through his teeth, wary of what might spill without their caging. ]

It isn't a matter of want.

[ Too much spills as is. Both in content, and the rupturing in his voice, too close to misery when he must be furious. He keeps pulling in his hand, protective, locks it on his opposite elbow. But with one arm curve across his middle, it feels vulnerable, an acknowledgment of the wound. Then, he jerks his other hand up, to the right elbow, crossing his arms awkwardly. ]

Go on.

[ Must, he must draw his eyes up, find that face. Like he must kill him. Must, has to, must, even as he understands less and less. His fingers clutch now at his own arms, squeeze. A game, it had to have been. Even if he lost by pulling back, he'd had no remnant option, not with his heart pulsing down his wrist, through his fingertips. If they'd held much longer, if McGillis had chosen to hold his hand that much longer, he might have... ]

Edited 2017-10-14 14:37 (UTC)

[ Overly conscious of it, the both of them. It's not terribly unusual that they would become distracted and stall. These are unusual developments.

How bizarre to find themselves hand in hand, after a history turned red with blood and open declarations of more to come. One, or both of them, should see to withdrawing touch as quickly as possible, with goal of standing achieved. Like Gaelio, McGillis finds himself awash in a sea of memories while he keeps drawn to the sight and locked in the sensation of an equally joined grip. How well he knows this hand, not only through hundreds of spars, but the shape of it laid on his back, on his shoulder. How its presence often signaled a precursor to Gaelio's voice close by his ear.

He recalls the way he used to speak -- the warm way he used to speak to McGillis. The warmth of his touch and his voice, and though he'd thought himself a touch-averse creature, how he would secretly and silently delight in Gaelio tromping past that boundary in small ways.

It had seemed, back then, that there was only one person who did not make his skin crawl.

But that should no longer be true. This touch should be similar to dropping his hand into a bed of hot coals. It should burn him. Pain receptors should flare and warn of the danger. How strange that Gaelio holds with as much strength, that he keeps holding... that his fingers twitch into a graze of thumb over knuckle, reminding him of the uncomfortable thud of his heartbeat, reverberations felt against eardrums.

He nearly looks at that, eyes wanting to flit up and check. The difficulty of that simple task proves too much. There's fear edging in, coming at him from somewhere, but it isn't easy to pin down the source or the true reason. He should be afraid that Gaelio will pull a weapon from somewhere and use this moment to his advantage, but that isn't quite it, and he --

Lost in the memory of contact, memories he had tried to suffocate, it proves difficult to face that scarred visage from this close.

Gaelio's touch morphs again, a crushing grip that he cannot place the meaning behind. As if he's trying to discover something. Violence and innocence both mapped into it, like the child who holds his pet with too much strength.

McGillis risks curling the pads of his index and middle finger in. The squeeze of the other hand changes the angle of his hold; this quiet stroke could be an accident. Nonetheless, Gaelio wretches away after that, stealing his hand back with force that McGillis is grateful for. It shatters that odd reverie, shaken from the state he was in and, at last, he's able to lift his chin. ]

[ Neither of them can afford to forget. There's too much at stake.

Gaelio yanking his hand back, shifting his arms, and speaking corrections through his teeth. A splash of cold ice-water, desperately needed. This was the danger, even back then. The enormity of looking, of acknowledging, that would swallow him whole and keep him from achieving what was necessary above all else to achieve. So when Gaelio corrects him, it isn't a matter of want, a striking amount of understanding lifts up and underlines those words.

They echo. He closes his mouth too tight.

It was never a matter of want. Those daydreams he used to entertain, when he was younger and able to afford it every once in a blue moon, of simply leaving. The insane notion that Gaelio might go with him, if he explained everything.

Cold settles in. There was nothing to those dreams. The only substance he could find were in the ones that he could hold without feeling them slip through his fingers like sand, and the timing of remembering is all wrong. Though -- those words, spoken through teeth gritting, and the haunting twist of Gaelio's scarred features -- it isn't about want, it isn't, and god, he does understand that.

McGillis takes a careful, steadying breath. He exhales through the nose. He notices, after a moment of delay, that his hand is still poised in the air, and he curls his fingers into a fist as he tugs it back. It hovers by his chest for another second, before he finds his way to crossing arms, mirroring Gaelio's posture and closing, closed, body language.

Go on.

Prompted to continue, but the sentences previously forming in his mind have flown away. He remembers the concepts, of course. It's the exact phrasing that escapes him for a few seconds.

An odd pause and silence quickly filling the space in between. ]

Genette mentioned that the fate of all worlds hangs in the balance with this witch's decision to take us. What if that's true? Both you and I are attempting to change the course of history itself, and now we find ourselves here. Forced into a standstill until we can return home.

[ When he does find his voice again, it's with a little too much haste in the beginning of his speech, until he settles into an even rhythm. ]

If we are meant to accomplish something for her, for ourselves, I think it must be essential to the well-being of our world. Something vaster and greater than our current understanding will allow us to see. It almost seems as though conditions have been created for us to fill in some missing step.

[ His eyes close to half-slits. As he reconsiders this line of reasoning, his chin drops again. ]

If all holds true, then the significance of our dual placement is difficult to ignore.

Edited 2017-10-15 00:31 (UTC)

[ Of any other, Gaelio could better believe accident. McGillis was, is a man of deliberate motion; if he could plan each breath he would and mete it out exacting. His masks so convincing because of the intricate detail, the smallest brushes painting the finest lines. What he knows of McGillis makes comprehension more difficult, and his determination to comprehend makes the allure of self-deception a prohibition.

Would that he could believe that the movement of those fingers had been involuntary, a reflex prompted by the force in Gaelio's clutching hand. If not that, then a result of the severity of his retreat, fingers only seeming to move through his own motion. But the lie in that rings clear. He would need first jumble the order, twist time, one a heady sequence of swimming beats before another.

Twice, now, Gaelio has felt McGillis's fingers curl against his hand.

Better that he could peel back the glove and the skin with it, shave off what lingers.

It feels impossibly long, the space between Gaelio's demand and McGillis's voice. The space between his hand's retraction, and the gradual fist that must remember, must coax itself to pull back. Left hanging, a suspension that spoke incompletion, needing a last unknowable something from Gaelio -- and Gaelio would, in this as well, through plain ignorance be unable to provide. Everything of him calculated, so what meaning in that, in his touch?

He watches fist brace against chest, and arms mirror, and is spared from wondering at that, too, by speech. Gaelio lifts his chin, his eyes, narrowed in premature defense.

Another correction hatches on his tongue, squirms raw like maggots, that he had not been trying to change history. That he had been forced to give up on sweeping things when the metal choked as surely as his tears. That he'd pledged himself to Rustal's narrow line only to thieve from McGillis his dirtied rerouting.

But it would be a petty, semantic thing. To change the course of history or to keep it, or less with the purpose of keeping it, but that a byproduct of his more insular ends. Though he has easily seen destiny in their collision, Gaelio less readily sees himself as a man that would affect the world, except through McGillis. Regardless, affecting the path, and Gaelio had said he would hear him.

How easily these words roll off McGillis's tongue, though strangely quickened at first. His dreams that were only deception, reaching for a galaxy and consuming lives with brutish indifference. Of course this would appeal to him. Fate and vastness, and magnanimously permitting meaning in the placement of a man he'd once discarded. Gaelio's fingers tighten on his arms through it, his teeth again grinding, the impulse to step forward and strike heady, blinding --

tempered.

He cannot shake it off so easily. As loath as he is to hear sense in this man's words, as much as it must be a betrayal of Carta, of Ein, and of his core precepts finally made solid and braced on his shoulders, as much as he would distrust it. As much as he feels the warring within him, between what should have been crushed and what rallies, frenzies, against it. Between how easy it had always been to hear him and follow, and revulsion that any part of him would still hear and sway.

As much as, as loath as, but the timing of it. The incredible timing.

After two years, after wavering and wavering and a hundred agonies, he had firmed his resolve and fixed his crosshairs immovably on McGillis. Deny, kill, and live as Gaelio Bauduin, dog to Rustal Elion, for that alone. His purpose, his drive, deny, kill, understand, and let them rest in peace. That tremendous, definitional step.

Only, within the span of a few hours, he had woken here, indeed, forced into a standstill for how twisted and shallow would be the meaning of exacting it here. Right or wrong, he cares less for the well-being of their world than he does for their current understanding.

Is it possible we're meant to understand something in this world before we'll be able to return to our own?

That question of before, now rephrased, but his struggle keeps the same -- Gaelio's interest is only in understanding McGillis, and being understood in turn. If McGillis speculates true, then it may be one of two: that he will come to see beyond their fractured divide, or that their understanding of one another might be better effectuated here.

Off the battlefield, away from the machines of legend, from Ein's guidance and company, without denial, without bloodshed.

But he must kill him, for Carta, for Ein.

But as soon as he had decided that, without doubt, they were stolen from the only method through which it could be respectably done.

If the letter spoke true. If Qri truly was essential to every universe and world. If they could truly read meaning in their selection, and only theirs -- and as McGillis could eviscerate him so easily, yet again, what purpose in lying, in feigning this, in using him, in manipulation?

god, it's provocative.

Dangerous.

He can feel it. Feel the beginnings of exposure on his face, creasing in his brow, bright and soft and bleeding in his eyes, in the contortions of jaw and mouth. ]

It might mean nothing.

[ Disgusting, how little it sounds as though he believes it, a frantic last attempt at resistance.

And with McGillis, it never means nothing.

Not for Gaelio. He'd thought, having no alternative but to believe, that for McGillis, it had been only that.

How cruel now, to offer this, as though they could be everything. When it cannot be true. When he still must kill him. ]

It might be lies, she might be a parasite, nothing of fate or well-being, nothing about our world.

[ Or it might all be true. That missing step... Gaelio swallows, forcing himself to some semblance of task, of order, of what grandiose conceptualizing would become in concrete practice. ]

...even if it isn't, what do you propose? You began by noting our impossibility. We might not be able to avoid each other, but do you expect me to seek your company? I won't follow you again. I won't let you use me again. I don't know that you're capable of working with someone, instead of using them.

[ Relationships reduced to utility may have been the norm within Gjallarhorn, but Gaelio had believed and took solace in exceptions. In Carta, who had no use for him, but kept close and imperious. In Ein, what he'd wanted for them, until the man took that blow, until they became all symbiotic~~, disfigured~~ use. In McGillis, especially McGillis, in the dream that by standing at his side, he and they would be more. Fooled into believing he so stood, that fool had been killed by it, his cherished havens stolen. Not again. ]

Edited 2017-10-16 04:48 (UTC)

[ It might mean nothing.

Strange that those words would strike him into feeling something.

Gaelio either implies or outright states that he would continue to seek understanding, far past the point where it should matter.

Having partnered with Rustal, a man who has undoubtedly shed some light on McGillis to Gaelio as a way to uphold tactical advantage, he demands understanding while asking no questions of him. Nothing has changed about the nature of their relationship. He has no true interest in him beyond justice for his fallen Gjallarhorn compatriots, his true comrades. His continued interest in any facts outside of that goal seems to be little more than utility to his ends, that trait which he professed to hate, but which was so uniquely Gjallarhorn.

McGillis learned it because of them and perfected it through them; having mirrored it in sight of his own sense of justice, he must remind himself that the illusion of Gaelio, always a tempting one, can only lead him back into their ruinous stronghold.

Those lies, though not deliberate ones, as Gaelio disguises the ones born in his heart with his genuine purity, would also lead him to his ruin. He was being led, until he took control of his destiny.

It might mean nothing. This straining for understanding or meaning on both of their parts would then prove to be a pathetic endeavor. All that's left is for them to fight at the end, for McGillis to impact world order or for Gaelio to uphold it. That must be their fate. He must remember his life lived in anger, passed onto Gaelio through the end of his Gundam's blade.

Those eyes that look upon him with suspicion and hatred finally speak true. He faces them now, the dim light of intrigue sparking under the layered control built into his countenance, wondering what he had missed, if he had missed anything in this man. He had believed that he could stoke that which he faces now during their first fated encounter, Gaelio's buried indifference turning to proper hatred after learning of McGillis's nature, but memory reminds him --

It didn't go the way he thought it would.

Blanker, as he hastens away from the memory. ]

I do not expect that. I have no expectations.

[ The dull thud of those words, dropped carelessly.

A half-turn, McGillis sets his eyes on the forest, withdrawing. He means to leave soon. ]

If there's more to this than we are able to solve for at our current juncture, we can count on it to reveal itself to us with time. And, as you say, it might mean nothing.

[ Gaelio hadn't sounded like he quite believed it. McGillis doesn't either. But he won't pursue Gaelio or attempt to bend him into shape, not here, not now -- utility is a fact of existence, whether it was denied or accepted, but he's done enough damage to this one person. There's no sense in continuing it.

Inducing suffering, inflicting his presence on him for the sake of an abstract thirst for knowledge, feels like too heavy a burden to assume. ]

For now... I suppose we wait. That does seem to be our only option.

[ Interest, use, utility, comrades, falsehoods and truths -- if Gaelio could hear, he might argue, might chafe.

He hears only expectations, or the lack thereof.

That chafes enough.

As it seems Gaelio had expected, despite everything of himself, because of what plummets within to hear it. Feeling that, hearing that, slaps him with the shocking realization of his own birthing expectations.

Again. Something missed, though he stared without blinking, though he strained to hear past the thunder of his heart and the gnawing, splitting in his mind. Again. His failure to reach even with contact, even with his hand long and deliriously held. That McGillis had responded to his initial conclusion of necessary avoidance with Fate, with a tantalizing and terrible suggestion of more, not quite a promise, but in the way of all marvelous declarations from that oiled tongue, feeling it.

Obliterated with such ease, as McGillis does.

McGillis had, has no expectations, but Gaelio --

He could be forced over with it, dizzy and gagging, this rush of self-hatred, a noxious fury bubbling in his veins and oozing, that he would have -- that he might have wanted it. That by countering continued separation with Fate and a missing step they alone, together, could fill, McGillis had meant to say, had truly said, would then explain -- this is how we must be together, for we cannot understand one another apart.

But McGillis's fate amounts to waiting. How Gaelio wants to crush his own heart, again, for having looked to hear different, after knowing and speaking the certainty that anything else was infeasible, unforgivable. The contradictions of his heart, though he had finally settled it, should have, had believed in that, too. Two years he has waited, made patient even as he simmered and reduced to less than fumes. Be patient again, but having seized the answer only to have it threatened, snatched away then clumsily replaced, he struggles to keep hold of patience. To wait again.

Clamp down on urge to step forward, seize his arm, wrench him out of that partial turn, keep him facing completely, keep his eyes, demand that he not look away from him, demand that he stay, but for what, when the only thing Gaelio can truly be certain of, is that to keep by him will drive Gaelio into further ruin? Sick and sadistic, that hasn't changed. He must kill him, that hasn't changed.

Nothing has changed.

Why, for a moment, had he begun to heed the siren song of impossible otherwise, one abandoned so swiftly. At least a sour reminder to keep his ears plugged with this man, lest he be smashed again against the rocks. But what could be understood with wax stoppering sound? Must he be smashed again to understand?

And if for a moment, three heartbeats too long, some of this shows on his face, then at least McGillis has already looked away. Already gazed for forest and trees, and not to the fracturing, spider cracks spreading, a mess of beseeching devastation, of want of the intangible and unattainable, and yes, of rage, of hatred, hatred born of a hurt that hasn't stopped bleeding, even as it scars over, and over.

Gaelio swallows again, tries to smother it out of his features, pulls his eyes away. A farther tree. He can do this, too. ]

There I thought you were a man who seized fate, rather than awaited it.

[ His voice not as empty, as calm as he might have liked, throbbing with the words that betray his stupid frustration even as he chokes it down. Still, heavy enough to pass for dull. ]

But I suppose you have bided your time before. Fine. We wait.

Farewell, McGillis.

[ And he, too, will turn away. ]

Edited 2017-10-16 17:03 (UTC)

[ It's true that Gaelio had not quite rejected the theory, but rejecting the notion that they could ever work together towards it will amount to the same thing. And, as he hastens further into himself and away from the man standing nearby, McGillis is inclined to agree.

After all...

If he had faith that they could see eye-to-eye, as much as was needed for all that he needed to do, he would not have made the same choices. Ridding himself of Gaelio did not grant him anymore political power than working with him would have done. In the end, power on the council mattered less than power over the council. The overall point was that Gaelio's presence provided an eternal distraction, and keeping him around, abreast of traitorous developments on top of all else, meant bending to him or softening to him. Risks he could not afford to take.

He looked away, he pretended not to see, but when not pretending to himself...

Even pretending called for draining effort. His missteps within those efforts exist in the living proof in front of him.

Rustal will use this man to destroy him, this man he had failed to destroy. He cannot accept it, but neither can he thieve from Gaelio the destiny he's rightly earned. He crawled out of the grave for it. Reasons, explanations, motivations, truth -- the truth is that he deserves to feel nothing but hatred for McGillis, to envelop himself in the type of anger that cleanses with fire. The kind that washes out torturous self-doubt, the glorious kind that rids the mind of tormenting thoughts and replaces all with steely certainty.

He's certain there can be no higher form of internal peace. On top of all else, he's loath to encourage Gaelio that he needs to understand what would only torment him further. Even Fate cannot convince him to take such a step, having already done grave injury to this person. If Gaelio says it would pull him apart to search for the meaning in this -- having been forced to endure his own tormentors in the past, it echoes uncomfortably, and he accepts it.

However.

If, out of the corner of his eyes, gloved hands pinning down the cloth of his sleeves, he notices a flash of Gaelio's crumpling expression, then he feels the tug of him beyond the confines of his control, that which tugs him in different directions while he attempts to walk a straight and narrow path.

And so it goes. An uncomfortable tingling sensation, the ghost of their hands intertwined, McGillis guiding the twitch of his palm into smoothing out a fold at his sleeve. Gaelio's voice gives way to the weight that flashed across his face, not quite seen, not quite looking.

He can hear it, though.

McGillis lets out a sigh. If anything escapes into his voice when he opens his mouth on a reply, it's only an odd bit of exhaustion. ]

Keep in mind that expectations, present or absent, are never set in stone. Having none is an admission of your points. I understand what it means to propose this to you, a proposition which amounts to a vague guess at best. I won't argue with your decision.

If, however, you chose to seize it...

[ Well, that might be miracle and proof enough. On the tip of his tongue, he fails to disguise a whisper of want, the hint of further intrigue. They both turn to leave -- he allows his arms to drop to his sides, only their backs displayed to each other as they part. ]

Farewell, Gaelio.

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