[spiders in my head]

[reckoner]

Who: Gaelio Bauduin, a very bad time, you...? like. it could be you. i'm sorry if it's you.
Where: Around Shehui (see prompts)
When: Day 187
Open/Closed: Open!
About??: warnings for uh. . . tl;dr and a VERY BAD TIME. Including bloody imagery! McGillis Fareed dropped disappeared. This is a problem for Gaelio Bauduin. AND MAYBE YOU, SUCKER.



[ A - OUT AND ABOUT ]

[ Four days ago, his telepathic nudge rebounded, making certain what he has spent every hour since struggling against: McGillis Fareed had been released. The pain of it a guarantee, but with Qri missing, he had room to suspect Shehui. Julieta had torn her signet from her chest. Having assisted through that, it's unlikely that McGillis would had replicated the experience -- this not the successful experimentation of Ein and his A-V. But, if Shehui had take notice...

But, the monitors were unreceptive and unhelpful. Four days, and he sleeps less and less, three of them in the throes of migraines born of sending nudge after word after demand, each and every firing back. He takes more shifts here and there, the first at the bakery, knowing for which he'd signed up.

So you might have seen him there, a terse employee. You might have seen him storming through the halls, approaching the apartment that once bore that name, along with Yusuke and Carmilla. You might have been in that apartment and questioned. Severe, but restrained, not yet on the brink.

Maybe, instead, having a slight existential crisis in a supermarket, staring at a shelf for fifteen minutes without moving. Or, with twitching jerks of his chin back over his shoulder, convinced of someone in the periphery. Someone who might, indeed, flicker, until he looks.

Still, nothing too alarming. But... ]


[ B - HADAN ]

[ But by the evening of the fourth day, flowers cover more and more of the city. The bakery's closed in mourning. Hadan, explained a citizen. We bid farewell to the lost. Thick, redolent petals. Throbbing skull, straining eyes, conversation cycling through his head, a broken and jarring loop.

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

At a corner, he leans a dizzy moment against a post, hand braced in woven stems. ]

The machinations of a parasitic witch, after all.

[ Beneath his breath. His fingers beginning to fist.

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

Tighter, white-knuckled. But they had stepped past the constraints of her Fate, seizing their own, or hadn't they? What else if both kept trapped, regardless of the rest, if speech exposed, if he only killed his enemies, but

My enemy, the facts of our births assuring it, but... my only friend. All that I know of friendship.

But he isn't here. Truce dissipated, fleeting steps toward understanding stopped against a precipice, no path forward.

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

What had McGillis understood? Leaving him behind once more, to stew in incomprehension. Perhaps they had gotten it wrong. Perhaps losing his resolution yet again had been a misstep. But whether he was meant to understand him or meant to kill him, one anomaly remains: he can do neither without him. ]

Then why --

[ Gaelio wrenches the flowers from the post, swinging out and back, ]

-- am I still here?!

[ slamming his fist into the side of a building. Pain ricochets up his arm. He looks down, dully, as blood seeps from his knuckles, around the petals clenched.

It's only then he notices he almost hit someone in the process. ]

...Sorry.

[ He doesn't sound it, but in that moment, he doesn't sound much of anything. ]


[ C - GHOSTS ]

[ Close to midnight, less likely any would walk through this park. The night's close to temperate in this regulated climate, the snow gone with the season. Gaelio sits against a tree trunk, directly across from a bench.

The bench is empty, unless you step close enough for the illusion to catch. He does not intend for it to catch, but he's sloppy with the spread in the moment, with control. Evidenced enough by how the two figures that materialize keep shifting.

A serious young man, slight and uniformed. Or, without arms, without legs, protrusions down his spine. Sometimes his eyes glow red. An imperious woman. Or, weeping and bloodied, dying.

Gaelio sits, stares. To his left a piling of flowers, some taken from the buildings in fits and starts, some purchased. To his right, a rather stereotypical bottle, as though a drunken hobo in a park -- but it's wine and it hasn't been uncorked. In his lap, his hand is a pulpy mess, blood still dripping. He might have lashed out against the inanimate a few more times.

The woman speaks: We were both losers, weren't we? If we hadn't been, he wouldn't have...

But her voice fails, gurgling blood. ]

Rest Carta. Please, I --

[ The young man interjects, eyes red, buzzing through his head, around him: If you weren't going to kill him, you should have let me die.

That shuts him up, as if struck. When he puts his head in his hand, he leaves red streaks on his cheek, in his hair. ]

I know. I know. I know. Ein... What should I do?

[ A haggard question, meant for the dead, but on hearing someone (y..ou?) approach, chin snapping up and eyes fixing, it's as though he asks you. ]

Comments

[skincares]

[Surprise flickers across Carmilla's face, erased beneath a controlled veneer of calm. The edges of her mouth curl into a more genuine smile.]

I enjoyed his game of masks, however he intended it to go.

[Knowing one's "true self?" Ha. Carmilla didn't want emotional intimacy from McGillis. What she wanted was a sense of control. She wanted to sink her nails into him, to tear through his masks while he attempted the same. She wanted to defeat him and, in doing so, regain a sense of the stability she's forfeited through her being here. She knew he would lie - and he knew that she would too. That was what she respected in him.

Ah. But this situation was becoming stranger and stranger. A man who admits to wanting revenge against a vanished foe. Who looks - for all purposes - distraught by the disappearance. No, distraught isn't quite the word. Carmilla doesn't say anything for a moment. Her eyes, golden and sharp, focus intently upon Vidar's face.

She wonders why he would bother to chase after someone he's dedicated to kill. Is it a matter of claiming his prey? If it was so, she could sympathize. Murder was a personal act - especially if committed for personal vindication or pleasure. Killing is a madness as passionate as love, with none of its softness.

Carmilla tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, the motion slow and deliberate.]

You've only yourself to blame for losing him, then.

[She speaks in honeyed tones.]

It matters little what you were to him. You let him go.

[reckoner]

[ Murder was indeed a personal act, though he had less felt the attention of it while the victim. His correction, needed to dismantle any notion of protection, spoke a truth: Gaelio Bauduin had risen as Vidar, masked and biding, so to fell him. No, to understand. No. Understanding his nature, to deny such a creature, to thrust blade full to heart. No, no, but to compel his eyes, to understand, to fell --

He hadn't understood, had struggled to understand, had believed it, removing his mask before Bael, reclaiming his name as he swore that man's end. Taken thereafter by Qri, his mask the price, their last stage thieved --

and so, who was he? Vidar, Gaelio Bauduin. What was McGillis, his and their murderer. His friend. How they'd seemed to exceed definition.

There had been a measure of control in metaphor and masks, in speaking with a woman so deliberately foul. The cauldron's spilling in his head, the fumes building against the lid, the shock of waking from a foolish dream and panic's ready sweep beneath it -- he could stand, tense and brittle, but carve a space from it.

A futile chase, a meaningless woman.

She isn't any more than that, even so saying. Rationally, he understands, not wholly divorced from the rational. That McGillis disappearing in this way could be only Qri's fault, Qri or Shehui, no matter his efforts or attention. He understands no less the edge in her stare, the careful movement with her hair, her measured and targeting words.

She means to goad him, to drag him down.

Not wholly divorced.

But he smells salt's spray. But the beach, and the snow, confessed closer -- Because I can't let you go -- I couldn't let go either --

You let him go.

Eyes fringe white.

The beach, hand on hand on cheek, hands, to reach, to hold, to seize, hand on, his, a beginning in stretching out his fingers, in the offer of palm, an ending in loosing his grip, in letting go, because he's gone, because he hadn't killed him, because he'd held him, because he

fingers convulsing at his side, writhing up his wrist, eyes now lidding as his arm jerks up, lashing out.

When brutish, the light ought to be red. Ein ought to coarse down his spine, thrilling ferocious through his mind. He can imagine the red, if not the thrill, as his hand lurches for throat, meaning, as much as he can mean it, to pin her against the door. As she leans on frame, he would force her there, would lean close, gritting. ]

You've cut me. Are you satisfied?

[ White hair, pale skin, almost death pale, and his magic flickers with the horrifying resemblance -- not yet. ]

Tell me more of what you don't know. Tell me I meant nothing to him, because that you missed -- it matters. Look at me as he cannot and tell me.

1/2

[skincares]

[The people in the coven are soft. Too soft. No matter how many times she pricks at them, no matter how many times she bites, there is always someone there to offer forgiveness. Carmilla can bark all she likes. In the end, she knows that there is an idiot to pull her back from the brink, a refuge she doesn't deserve from the loneliness she aggressively plants around herself in an effort to remain untouched.

Yes. No one can touch her without her permission. Not emotionally, not physically. She is a symbol just as much as she is a monster. The noblewoman, the idol, a thing that has been elevated above typical humans. That is why, when Vidar bites back she is astounded. A choked and surprised sound slips out of her. His presence explodes over her - large, muscular, furious - penning her in with no easy way out. He is close. Not touching, but close. It's enough for her to feel each angry pulse in the palm of his hand and how dare he touch her, this common man who denied her prestige, this swine of the lowest blood, this NOBODY, how dare he HOW DARE HE--!]

[skincares]

[The scream that tears from her - strangled and furious - is closer to a monstrous, inhuman shriek. Surprise gives away to white-hot anger, burning in her throat, beating fast and hard against the hand infringing on her. If Vidar wanted a conversation, he won't be getting it. What he receives, instead, are her claw-like nails tearing at his hand before darting for his face.

There's no haughty act now and no reasoning in those golden eyes. All that remains is a murderous instinct to hurt.]

[reckoner]

[ Whatever impetus had forced her hand against his scalp those weeks ago might have intimated this. Not this, but something vicious and coiled beneath her haughty smile. Not this, because embroiled in his own undoing, he cannot retain much of her. His focus divided into still shattering facets, a different face above his hand. Faces -- the only one whose neck should cord beneath his hand, and one he'd sooner cradled, had cradled while lifting her corpse from the cockpit, too late.

White hair, death white skin, a tugging within him, the susceptibility in unhinging. Shadows beneath her eyes -- an illusion begins to coat her, though he's half-witting in it, though he'd recoil -- but she shrieks.

The sound wretched and ripping, felt against his palm, and so startling as to smash the beginnings of the mask, of Carta. Pain punctures along his hand, through the fog of fury and the start of self-deception. She claws at his hand, but even as his arm flinches back, releasing her, surprise fails to further jerk him into a firmer hold on sense. Instead, it jolts him into reflex, battle-honed, though much of his experience had been within metal and machine.

Only --

Only, he might have ducked away, preserved his face. Thrust his hand between or stepped back, attempting to pull back from his own rush.

Instead, indifferent to his body, pieced and stitched together from two and nanomachines down his spine, he turns his face into it. As though welcoming her nails down the scar that already stretched from brow to jaw, disappearing below collar. Taking it, and with that the opportunity to grab for her wrists, one hand to each. Breath hissed out from the gouging. If he manages to get hold of both, he'll keep her against the door, arms overhead. Regardless- ]

That isn't right.

[ Half-wild, half-chiding. ]

Not like that! Try again, Lady Bathory, if a lady would so behave. That isn't the sound of him, of anything but a beast.

[skincares]

[If a lady would so behave. Said as though she were a slow, unpromising pupil. This wretch knows nothing about her life - knows nothing of what she sacrificed for the sake of the station she was born into. She was never given a choice to be anything but Lady Bathory and when she dared to act upon what she was taught, they--

Her rage is still boiling. It twists her face into an ugly, hateful expression, even as Vidar forces her hands against the wall. She flexes her bloody fingers. Thinks of how, if she were at her full strength, this rat would already be mashed into pig feed.]

You--

[She spits out the word, teeth bared in a snarl. At last, words have returned to her, if only because she sees the blood on his hands and face.]

What do you think you'll get from me? I'll eviscerate you for laying your filthy hands on my person. I'll gut you alive!

[reckoner]

[ She had cut him, cut his tether to too taut restraint.

Yet, like this-- his eyes pass over her, right half-shut against a particularly well placed gash. Just where his eyebrow had been lopped off by scar tissue, a path carved to the lid below. A drop of blood beaded out, weighing on purple eyelashes. More of that red on her fingernails, tips. New trails in the scarring on the back of his right hand.

Lower, to her contorted features, all the more a spitting creature. Unable to flail, only able to rage, howling ineffective.

It's pathetic. Nothing like Carta, imperious in name and position but uninterested in the ladylike. Nothing worth prolonging. From her, only one thing: ]

Nothing.

[ Realizing it, his eyes dimming with the realization. Like this, she cannot reach him, and the frothing of fury recedes, though keeping disdain. Leaning closer still, tone sibilant and gravel. ]

A serpent, are you? Lying in wait for the heel. How many have you bitten, to warrant now crushing your head?

[ His fingers tighten -- but only a squeeze before release, Gaelio stepping hard back, lifting a defensive arm between them. ]

But you aren't mine, and I am not yours. My blood stains only his hands. Come for me and I'll make an exception.

[skincares]

[Gaelio saw a glimpse of it in the marketplace. A helpless monster who could only gnash its teeth and bare its claws, though it could not go beyond its short leash. Chaldea had offered a purpose for her, however temporary it was. Her family had assigned her a purpose, though she botched it miserably. Even now, she's still howling for the sake of appearances, to make it seem as though she's someone.

(She isn't.)

Carmilla is breathing heavily, both from physical exertion and from anger. Without thinking, her hand darts up to brush back the stray strands of hair that've fallen out of place during the small altercation. Pathetic. Even now, she's still concerned about her looks.]

Good.

[She sneers it.]

If I see you again, pig, I will have your head.

[Carmilla is the serpent, for there's no other creature she can be. No longer young, no longer naive to her atrocities. She knows what part she has to play and she will play it until her name is erased from the Throne of Heroes.]

[reckoner]

[ Tempting, or nearly.

Had he room enough in the blitzkrieg of his mind for levity, for mockery, he would grant her it. The head of the Baptist, on a platter for Salome. It would be a simple enough illusion. To reach for his skull and pry it from his neck, to lob it at her, to cause her to feel the weight and cooling skin and bone of it.

Have it. Until he permitted it to fade.

Instead, he looks at her, down at her, shoulderblade against the wall opposite the door. Already dismissive, noting her fussing with hair. Blood trickles down his cheek and he makes no motion to stop it, even with his eye now shut. ]

Be careful, Lady Bathory. If you speak empty and hot so often, I'll take you even less at your word.

[ He'll need find Yusuke a different way, to scrape together those meaningless details, mapping the route that dispersed abruptly into thin air. As though he might better understand, understand any whit more, by knowing his very last movements.

But she'll give him nothing, so he turns to stride away. ]