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 Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2015 9:47 pm
Damian had gotten home after his conversation with Mont Blonc to find the apartment empty, which was good, because the silence gave him space to process what Mont Blonc had told him. He was struggling to understand it - to understand why Umber had sought that kind of information about him, and why he had decided on Mont Blonc as a source. Perhaps because the Squire was the only one of his old friends he had demonstrated a connection with, and that made him convenient. That was reasonable enough, but it still didn't explain why he would ask at all.
He had spent some time pacing around the apartment, trying to work himself up the courage to ask. Had even considered drinking, but the likelihood was that would make him stupid instead of brave.
Eventually he had just settled on the couch to wait, and started praying that when Shale actually got there, the other man was actually in a mood to talk, and he didn't freeze up asking the question. And that he didn't ask it in a way that would put Mont Blonc back in danger, or...there were so many ways this could go so very wrong.
But damn it, he had to know.Strickenized you know exactly why i have chosen this title
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Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2015 9:00 am
Shale did not return home expecting his roommate to accost him. In fact, he expected that his roommate would either be cowering in his room as per the usual arrangement, or out and about managing to look somewhat useful. Either of those situations suited Shale quite well, for the hunter endured residual ire that refused to fade. The pounding of his heart remained even as he fumbled painfully for his keys, dripped a few flecks of blood on the floor, and unlocked the deadbolt in an agony that left his hands wanting to curl in on themselves. After turning the knob, he stole his keys from their chamber and edged the door open with a shoe.
Inside, he found exactly the person that he didn't want to see.
Shale made an effort to communicate his displeasure of sighting Damian by refusing to acknowledge him whatsoever. Instead Shale stared toward the L curve of the apartment that led to the bathroom. He walked with both hands held just above heart level, pointed toward the ceiling so the scanty rivulets of blood faced a longer journey before they could stain the floor (for he detested the thought of another catastrophe like when Ashanite returned from murder). The manner of reaching his destination in the shortest time possible necessitated passing before the couch where Damian sat. He told himself he did not care. He told himself he would not mind this.
He told himself that if he were to break Damian's face open, then that sealed the fate of his questionable ineptitude. It rendered his efforts for naught. It displayed a loose cannon quality that the Negaverse frowned upon, and he further despised the thought of losing his very recent promotion.
See also: treason.
See also: insubordination.
Whether his roommate followed him asking questions over his busted knuckles or not, Shale told himself he would not care. Shale told himself that he would weather these questions to the best of his ability, and if he found those questions too irksome, then he would ask Damian to leave without physically assaulting the man. Shale told himself that he only needed to reach the bathroom, wrap his hands, and let go of the rest.Noir Songbird he writes the best fanfics okay
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Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2015 11:09 am
Shale was definitely not in a pleasant mood. Damian didn't even need to be a good people reader to know that. For a moment, he considered waiting, harassing Shale with questions when he didn't look like he was considering committing a violent homicide, but -- well, to be entirely fair, that might mean waiting a long time.
And besides, he was injured, which left a theoretical opening for Damian to make himself useful and possibly soften some of that fury as it was directed towards him. He could ask what had happened later, because he was both curious and somewhat concerned.
"Let me help you," he said, and said it in a surprisingly firm tone for someone who a moment earlier had been sincerely considering sliding out of the room and disappearing. "Your hands look awful." Start in on the actual questions when that was dealt with, because step one here was obviously endearing himself at least a little to Shale. Even if it was brief, just long enough to sooth his temper and get the answers Damian desperately wanted.
He stood up off the couch, careful to stay out of Shale's way, but he knew from experience that there was space enough for both of them in the bathroom, and he was familiar enough with handling minor injuries like split knuckles that he could actually do something, and not just sit around and make an idiot of himself.
A nice change.
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2015 12:55 am
Shale shot him a distinctly dirty look but didn't offer an objection. He gave no indication whether he even heard Damian on the second comment. Instead he leaned against the bathroom counter, over the second set of drawers where they kept cleaning supplies, and waited for Damian to follow with both hands poised upward.
After a minute, he turned around, bent his wrist to finagle the faucet on, and held both hands over lukewarm water to wash some of the blood away. It rinsed clear after several seconds, indicating the blood was not entirely his. He offered no explanation on whose it was; if Damian truly needed to know then he could go through official channels to find out. "It's just a few split knuckles." And he wasn't lying - with most of the blood gone, his knuckles looked significantly better than they did before, but the abuse still looked readily apparent.
"I can handle this myself." Shale thought back to the many years spent in the woods, where far more severe injuries were sustained and treated with hackneyed field medicine. He came out alright despite the myriad mishaps that he learned from over time; most of his scars healed well enough that one couldn't tell where they were.
Once his knuckles were clean enough that he could make a beeline for the med kit, he opened the cabinets beneath the sink and pulled the kit from the back of the storage area. Immediately it went to the counter and he ducked his hands back under the running faucet before fresh blood could drip over the tile floor.
He hesitated in moving back toward the med kit. "You're in the way." He did not sound pleased.
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2015 1:24 am
Damian responded to the dirty look with no more than a raised eyebrow and following the other man to the bathroom. Of course Shale couldn't simply accept help. It was possible - probable, even - that it was because of Shale's general assessment of his competence, but he was making efforts to improve his standing, and sometimes, apparently, he was going to have to push. It might also just be because Shale wasn't the type fo person who easily accepted help.
Either way, unless he was physically forced out of helping, Damian was going to make an effort.
"On both hands." He said, a basic rejection of Shale's dismissiveness of the injuries. "What did you do, punch a wall?" It came out slightly sarcastically, and it was also obviously untrue, given the blood on his hands, but sometimes Damian's mouth got a little ahead of him.
"And the world isn't going to end if you accept a little help to make things easier on yourself," he pointed out. "I promise, I do have some basic human competencies. I can clean and bandage an injury just fine." He had taken care of plenty of his own, but he didn't say that. Probably best not to remind Shale that his competencies were earned off of...well, incompetency in other areas.
He waited for Shale to finish washing his hands, and when him being in the way was so sharply pointed out, he had to physically resist the urge to move. Ordinarily he would have slunk away and disappeared long before this, but apparently not today. "Let me help you. Please. I wanted to speak with you anyway, so I can either wait or make myself useful, and I know I would prefer to do the latter."
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2015 1:44 am
Shale sighed through his nose. "Walls don't bleed," he answered unwittingly.
But literally beating someone to death hadn't been a part of his evening's objectives. The control of the situation left his hands in a heartbeat when a few choice words touched tender nerves. Now, he dealt with the aftermath both in pain, messiness, and personal disappointment. He found it far more difficult to deal with that personal disappointment when his roommate seemed desperately intent on sharing that with him. Ultimately Shale conceded to let it happen; if Damian wanted to make himself useful, then Shale would put up with the man's first aid temporarily.
But it didn't put him in an easier position for hearing what Damian had to say.
"I can accept help." Shale held out a hand for Damian to attend to. "But there's no point in asking of someone else what you can do yourself just the same." If he needed assistance with computers, Damian would be the first to know - but otherwise, he expected to handle the rest of life's challenges himself.
The sight of Damian's necklace peeking out over his shirt reminded Shale of a key step he had forgotten in the process. His stomach sank into a pit with the immediate realization, and his gaze lowered from roommate to sink while he considered workarounds. I've spent so long ignoring how I was raised. That might explain my behavior.
When he was certain Damian knew to attend to the injury, he watched the process impassively. "Speak," he invited brusquely.
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2015 1:55 am
For a brief minute, Damian considered clarifying the intended sarcasm, but he decided that ultimately it really wasn't worth it. Shale seemed in a marginally better mood, and pressing something wholly unnecessary that might aggravate the man all over again was foolish.
Once Shale acquiesced to accepting his aid, Damian took the hand nearest him, assessing the injury for a moment before starting in on cleaning and bandaging it. "Just because you're capable of doing it yourself doesn't mean you're obligated to," he said evenly, and while most of his attention was on what he was doing, he couldn't help but glance sideways at his roommate's face, and wonder what was making him stare down at the sink the way he was. He wanted to ask, but he wasn't sure how his concern might be interpreted. And besides, for all he knew it was something personal -- not at all his business. Even if he wanted it to be.
At least he was so far marginally successful at altering Shale's mood away from "homicidal." He hoped. Which would make broaching the topic of conversation significantly easier. Maybe.
How to frame this without feeding Shale's suspicions that he was a traitor? (Because he was sure Shale suspected that.) It wasn't going to be easy, since he would have to admit to speaking to Mont Blonc, and his connection to the Knight likely looked like a pressure point that might eventually draw him away from the Negaverse.
"I ran into Mont Blonc." Blunt, honest, no deceit. "He was sporting quite the nasty black eye - your handiwork, as I understand." His tone remained even, as best as he could make it, and he finished bandaging one hand, letting it go. "He said you were asking about me. Forgive my curiosity, but - why?"
He prayed he hadn't made the wrong decision on the simple basis of asking the question.
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2015 2:19 am
"Who?" The added comment that he was the perpetrator of this Mont Blonc's injuries clarified the identity - Mont Blonc must've been the squire he assaulted for information on Ashanite. So you've spoken to him since. This establishes a pattern of regularity. Saying so also implied that Mont Blonc felt safe enough around Ashanite to explain with honesty what happened to him. But what was the point? Ashanite was no superior to Umber. Unless... Was Mont Blonc seeking protection with Ashanite's hand?
Shale looked over his hand when the wrappings were finished, and found that the handiwork looked clean and tidy. He could still bend his fingers without too much pressure (even if they hurt terribly). When he looked back to Damian, he answered the question in a callousness that Damian likely didn't predict. "It's not your concern." He found the whole circumstance a terribly simple one.
"What I do or ask of who I meet is not your responsibility, either." Mont Blonc was something of a tattler, it seemed. He must've sought Ashanite for help, then. But what could he find from a Negaverse agent unless Ashanite was running a front for protection? Even if Ashanite wanted to protect Mont Blonc from him, Umber could down the captain with less trouble now than as a captain. Mont Blonc had to know that. So what else could it be? Were they trying to puzzle out the reason behind his asking? Did they hope to concoct a phony story to distract Umber the next time he came asking?
"Why do you want to know?" He asked at last, holding out his remaining damaged hand.
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2015 2:42 am
Shale's dismissive callousness was not what he had expected, perhaps - he had feared anger, mostly, but this was fuel to dig his heels in further and keep pressing. The premise that he had no right to know why someone was pursing information on him rankled.
"Damn it, Shale," he said, and it came out with a distinct edge of frustration. "You threatened someone's life in order to get Mont Blonc to talk about me, asked for personal details even I don't remember anymore, and you say I don't need to know why?" It was, in a word, infuriating to be dismissed so wholly out of hand. Losing his temper any more than it has flared for that moment, though, would be unproductive, and for a moment Damian curled a hand around the edge of the counter and squeezed, taking a long, deep breath in an effort to calm himself down.
"I want to know because I can't come up with a single damned reason that makes sense." He said, finally, when he was sure it would come out less angrily. "That's a lot of effort to put out to find out very little on someone you've said you couldn't care less about." Because even months later, that still stung, had still stuck with Damian as a dull ache that refused to go away. He couldn't see that he was in any better a position now than he had been then, even if he desperately sought to prove he was better than Shale had so harshly assessed that night. No amount of desperately wanting could change that his interactions with Victoria and now his further admitted ones with Mont Blonc made him look a traitor, fundamentally useless and a waste of Negaverse resources. So why even bother?
It still made no sense at all, and Damian was not comfortable with things that didn't make sense. If he was going to find himself in danger as Mont Blonc feared, he was fairly sure that shoe would have already dropped. So that couldn't be it. But what, then? Obviously actually getting answers was going to be a task in and of itself.
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2015 11:40 am
"Yes, you don't need to know why." Except his roommate would pry relentlessly until Shale told him. And while the hunter was no fan of that idea, he knew stubbornness when he faced it - and that, perhaps, explaining his motives might come to his advantage. Such a conclusion was drawn on part of faith, however.
"Yes, it was a lot of effort on a gamble." But we're in a line of work where taking chances is standard protocol. Shale looked to his hand while he spoke, flexed it, stretched the fingers wide, tested the pain thresholds as they waxed and waned with every movement. His knuckles hurt terribly, but he would grow accustomed to it. He always did. "But when I saw him, I saw the chance to interrogate him. I remembered him from the train station, when you came out with him and he railed against us like we were your captors. You didn't contradict him." He paused, shot his roommate a pointed stare.
"But I don't like leaving anything half-understood. Mont Blonc showed a lot of emotion for you. People don't do that for strangers they just met. You had to have known him. And I wanted to know how and why. I wanted to know who you were before, and I had reasons for that, too." He checked his second hand, found it, too, passable, and pressed both palms to the edge of the counter. He curled fingers tentatively and found their grip solid, but less than when they were whole.
"Actions tell a story about a man. About anyone. Tastes, preferences, decisions made, all of it applies. If it happens, it etches a picture of him. It's how I learned to hunt. It's how I learned to track. A footprint is evidence of an action. So is scat. So is the type of coffee he drinks every morning. Everything matters." His knuckles felt sticky against the wrapping where blood clotted and formed desperate bonds. He flexed harder, and these meager connections broke anew. "I spoke to Mont Blonc because he knew you, and if he were a close enough friend, he would know the type of tea you drank every day, or how often you visited the gym. These are tracks to me." He straightened up to level his presence toward Damian more fully. "Because, Damian, you might have changed your name and lost your memories, but you are still the same man you were before. Any detail I can find shows me where you've been - and from that, I can tell where you'll go. Once I know where you're going, I can head you off at the pass if I have to."
He let the silence linger for a beat before adding to his point. "You told me when you spoke of Victoria that you didn't intend to purify. I accepted that. But we both know your record with the Negaverse is thin. I needed a basis for my belief in that, if I ever had to give a report."
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2015 2:40 pm
Damian was fully prepared to keep arguing and pressing, because damn it he would have an answer that was more than a blithe brush-off. So much of his life was wholly out of his control that given the opportunity to wrest something, he was distinctly desperate to take it.
He didn't have to - an answer was finally forthcoming, of a sort. And so he waited, and listened, and considered. The pointed stare was met with a shrug - Mont Blonc's assessment was only partially inaccurate. Just because he was a theoretically willing hostage didn't make him any less of a hostage to the Negaverse. And as far as Shale knew, he had been dragged in kicking and screaming and struggling.
"We really did only meet once, that I can remember," he offered, whether Shale believed it or not. Having a huge blank in his memory meant that he wasn't sure if he had known the man under Mont Blonc's mask - perhaps he had. He did not any longer, and did not particularly want to. He was silent for the rest of the explanation, considering it carefully. Shale, it seemed, still saw him as prey to be tracked, a thing to be hunted. He could accept that - even if it felt strange, that he would bother.
He considered, briefly. He at least had a few clues to whom he had been - would it be received as a goodwill gesture to Shale if he passed them over, to let him learn what he could about the man Damian Howe used to be. "If you really are interested, I had a wallet when I woke up - and barring the highly unlikely conclusion that I stole it from my identical twin before I was corrupted, I'm comfortable concluding it was mine. It might provide you more than it provided me." An offer, made, and it was up to Shale to take it or not.
"But I'm not your responsibility - not properly. Why be concerned that you would have to answer for my actions?" Any sense of anger or frustration was long gone, left with only confusion. He should be far more used to that than he was, he suspected.
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Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2015 2:25 am
"That you can remember," he echoed back to Damian. "One meeting tells a lot about anyone." In that one meeting, there were seldom preconceived notions of who Ploutonion should be, unless told previously. In that time, Mont Blonc met Ploutonion as he was - did Damian not grasp that?
The wallet was a fair compensation on part of Shale's ventures. He accepted via a nod to the offer, and hoped he would see it in short order. He didn't expect to paw through the personal effects straight away, but perhaps when his hands no longer pounded in a distracting manner and he could manipulate objects with dexterous ease again. Shale suspected this would take, at most, a few days - but no further. He noticed with great interest that healing times decreased dramatically since becoming a Negaverse officer, and was still adjusting to their projection across time.
"I know you're not my responsibility." Shale pushed off from the counter and started out of the bathroom. "But I am your roommate. I am someone who spent a great deal of time around you. Why shouldn't I expect to answer for you?" He let the rhetorical question hang momentarily (and congratulated himself, in part, for learning how to use rhetoric) before he continued the L curve into the living room/kitchen combination.
"You are an officer of the Negaverse. You told me you have plans to assist the Negaverse by corrupting a member of a princess's team. I should be able to support you in that, especially if you can pull it off. If Laurelite calls you into question and asks for my input, I want to have positives to give her. I want to say that you're not the man you were before - Ploutonion."
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Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2015 10:55 am
It was true - one could learn a lot from a single meeting. Damain wondered, briefly, what measure of Ploutonion that Mont Blonc had taken that made him want so fiercely to protect him. It had to have been something, beyond just that they were brothers in arms, both Knights of the same dank, death-stained planet. Or perhaps that was all it took - a human connection to someone bound to the same terrible place.
The nod was sufficient acknowledgement of his offer. "I'll get it, then; I tucked it away, but I should be able to find it." He could remember fairly well where he'd slid it, in a drawer under some clothes, because he had decided not to look at it again lest he start obsessing about "Rhys Banner" and who he might or might not have been. That was not, for him, particularly productive - all it would lead to was measuring himself up against himself, and all but certainly coming up wanting. A pile of issues he did not need to give himself.
It was Shale's further explanation that left him, perhaps surprisingly, silent, and frozen for a moment before he got into his head that he should probably follow Shale and keep listening. Because all of that, together, sounded very suspiciously like caring. Like it mattered to Shale, in a positive way, whether he succeeded or not.
Shale actually wanted him to succeed. That was, for him, a surprise, because he had been so sure Shale would look for any excuse to be rid of him that he would be, ultimately, hoping for failure. "I...see," he said, finally, in a tone that said he really didn't, but given empirical evidence - unless Shale was lying, but he valued honestly so highly... "Thank you, then."
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Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 5:39 pm
"You're welcome." It was all that remained to be said between them, Shale thought. Damian, however, did not sound entirely convinced of his endeavors. He wondered if he shouldn't give the man lessons in tracking so he at least understood the basics - but so much of it changed since moving to a concrete jungle. No longer was there soft loam to take partial imprints of feet in motion, or branches broken by the chase. No, tracking took a very different form in Destiny City - one he was still growing accustomed to.
"If that's all, I'm going out again." He did not wait for objection; Shale already started toward the hall closet that contained their coats - mostly his, as Damian owned very few items at the moment - and started for the warmer variety. The weather grew cold, windy and damp; even the heat of rage did not cushion bones from it for long. Perhaps most unfortunately, his general's attire made no allowances for heat retention. If he were to draw conclusions over its design, he would consider it wholly showy and overly useless.
But, at least his cape formed a solid, weighted scarf for particularly chilly winters.
As he grabbed his coat of choice, a second thought occurred to him - he could invite Damian along. However, he loathed the thought of protracting a positive interaction for too long, for it may sour. Alone then, he decided, and made for the door.
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