Welcome to Gaia! ::

Cass had been allowed to see him. He'd let her. He wanted to. Yet now she was back home, at his request, to sleep in a bed, just one night, for his sake. Now, as the night came over Deus again, Marcus felt himself active, more alert, like the drugs didn't make him so sleepy, that he simply had more energy.

Now he was alone again, his name back on the list of active hunters.
Living hunters.
No long MIA or (Suspended).

Just a hunter, stuck in the infirmary, half his bandages off. Able to move a bit again. Yet still not knowing the extent of damage. No mirrors. No replies when he asked. Silence, just as he found himself in that night.

Silent, alone, and wanting to go out and just feel alive again.

There was a wheezing sound that came from Marcus, followed by what sounded like a laugh, half coughed out.
His hand lifted, grabbing the magazine, pulling it into his lap. Every motion was slow, but it was smooth. Progress. Fingers pushed a button and the bed lifted him into a sitting position. Down fell the sheets that covered his torso. The scars visible.

Jagged edges lines that traced his right side. Markings of something not quite tribal, not quite indian, not quite geometic or islamic or anything but a mishmash, macabre, yet almost beautiful in their intricate woven pattern and shape. It showed just how twisted the minds of who's mercy he'd been under for only just a few days. It only added to how disturbing they could be- the knowledge that some where still red, red after a week of healing- just how deep some of the scars and damage had gone.


On a moon hunter no less.


"Home." His voice was raspy, yet it was loud. Another sign of progress made. "She's been here. Made her go home. Not healthy, sleeping cramped with me." Reaching out with his good arm, Marcus turned his head, the scar that ran down his eye keeping it shut for now. The one running across his mouth exposing teeth as the smile widened.
"You been good?"

Hell would have been kinder.

Hell would have simply let him die but alas, Marcus hadn't been in hell, just trapped. Trapped in what was, in his mind, some chamber used for ritual sacrifice. It was all he could remember. All he wanted to remember.

"She sleeps next to me. Curls to side. Left. No pain on the left." He kept his words short, reaching over after for the small cup the kept filled with water and straw to keep his throat from drying up.

"She frets a lot. After a while, I want.. space. I don't want her to see them."

His scarred arm lifted from the bed, the detailing going down, ending at his wrist. "Famine." He gingerly pulled the cover over himself best her could with his good arm. Hiding them. Trying to.
"The heir." He sighed, eyes closing.

Her laugh echoed in his mind. Insect. Just an insect.
"I wonder.. if the mist's death is what drew them off. They were.. carving. Praying. They wanted me to be their moon." His whispered it, the tiniest edges of fear, real raw and true fear seeping from his voice.
"They wanted to make me into their moon." A shudder ran through him.

His next breath was long, slow. "The pendant was defective." As if it explained it all.

"Powerful." he muttered, good hand reaching to his ear thumb running over the weapon that had saved his life for better or worse.

He didn't move the sheets.

"Told me I'm lucky." He kept rubbing the weapon. "Dunno. Male and female pair- they were doing something. Ritual. Table was made to catch blood." He remembered it. The sight of it. So much. So much red. So wet. So warm. Fresh.

Metallic in his mouth.

Alive.

He wet his lips again. "Outside the house- passed out after the fight, pendant dead. Woke up on the table. To them." Another shudder.
"Didn't look around. Wonder if they tried to make a sun." He frowned, the scar that was his face showing teeth becoming jagged and ugly.
"If they have a sun."

Marcus laughed again- that wheezing laughter as lungs racked with air after healing. Inflating after collapsing, being punctured. After breathing had come to a stop for a few nearly deadly precious seconds.

He turned his head to face Dakota fully, hair falling to the side to expose his face- the jagged scar that ran down and sealed his eye, the one that ran from the corner of his mouth across his jaw opening as he smiled, teeth as normal as could be.

It hurt, and he winced when the wound was pulling skin, mouth closing, jagged smile gone. "I didn't want a kiss. ....didn't take rejection well." He sipped at his water, gasping as it went down, soothing yet burning at the same time.

The melancholy had begun to settle in, that feeling that maybe he had died, that this was a dream and he was still captured. That maybe this was a hallucination he was making up just to escape reality. If he closed his eyes, they'd open back in his little hole of hell.

Yet being asked what Dakota should do. Could do-

Idle, Marcus's good hand went to the magazine. He chucked it back at Dakota with a grunt, painful or not.

"Train." He coughed, that grating laugh underneath. "When I get out-" Wheezing, "-we train."

Finally, after a moment of that idea, the idea to be able to hold Dis in his hand, the idea of killing the ones who'd done this to him. "Kill them."

"Cass kisses only. You-special occasions." Marcus would have been a liar to say it never really was a thing to just not joke of Dakota's little inclusion. "No homo." He added, rasping and laughing as best his body could allow.

It was odd, as tired, in pain, and utterly out of it as he was, Dakota still made him laugh. He helped in a way that gifts didn't. He was just his friend, just utterly Dakota.

"Thanks." He held up his hand, not quite able to make a fist but trying. "Remind me of...living." It was hard to articulate and form the full sentence, but he hoped Dakota would get it. He was his friend, and he reminded him why it was just good to feel alive.