|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 11:23 pm
Despite his questions being somewhat rhetorical and Jack's irritated attitude, Chel answered all of the questions patiently. "S'freaky 'cause you ain't supposed to kill people unless they're bein' bad. It's not somethin' you want to do, but somethin' you sometimes gotta." It was a pisspoor explanation, at best. "Stuff's abnormal when most people don't do it, but that don't make it bad. Death's natural, yeah. Hurts a ********>" There was something surprisingly encouraging in her voice when she said, "You ask hard questions, y'know that? Means yer real smart."
Chel tousled the clone's hair again with her free arm. "Don't do that little man. I know you got powers 'n all, but it's still gonna hurt." Of course, Chel had no clue if it felt pain or not. She didn't know anything about clones. Nobody had ever taken the time to tell her.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 11:34 pm
It dragged its teeth and scrubbed its tongue before tilting its head up to Chel. Her motions meant nothing to him without context, but her forthright answers were something to digest. "How do I know it will hurt if I don't try?" he asked after a few moments.
Jack started to pick up the pace.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 11:37 pm
"'Cause you got other people to tell y'otherwise I guess." She had never really considered it, and didn't think complexly enough for an interesting answer. "Thing is, if you die you don't get to know what other stuff'll feel like. So it's kind of shitty."
She prattled on, trying to keep up with Jack's enormous legstrokes, but struggling somewhat with both the pace, her cuts and the child.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 11:43 pm
"Your experiences aren't mine. You are not me." The clone fixed his hair by dragging his hands from the back forward, unaware yet that the original did it the other way around. "No-one is quite like me. Not yet." More statements, no pride, no wistful edges. The more discomforted Jack was, the more calm his clone seemed to be.
At least, until it started to copy the dark look and accompanying silence one frosty giant exuded all the way through the walk.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 12:00 am
It took Jack the better part of an hour to get the scanner to lock onto a signal, and that was after making sure the thing was charged enough after its near constant use throughout yesterday and some of today. He had to filter through previous registered signals--old trails, their own Fear shields, that of the horseman and student they'd fought (easy enough, given their signatures were condensed in that alley and easy to exclude). Once he was certain he had found the correct tracks to trace, he warned Chel he'd be out, ordered them a light dinner through room service, and ported out.
Some twenty minutes later, having had to deliver the clone straight to the labs before explaining that there was confirmed horseman activity they wanted to check out as well, he returned to the hotel and promptly dropped on the bed, exhaling what felt like the longest sigh he had ever held in. Even in their success with the clone, it still felt like a hollow victory. All he wanted to do was ignore the rest of the day, even though he knew that was impossible.
"How are you holding up?" he asked, looking up at the ceiling. Finally, the tense undertones from before weren't present.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 12:08 am
Chel had her back to the door, her noise canceling headphones blocking out Jack's entrance. There was a long, glassy look in her eyes, one that usually got filled with an electronic screen or calling someone to hang out. Having neither option available, she'd turned on the T.V. for all of two minutes before getting bored and instead receding into her music.
She didn't register Jack's presence until the bed dipped. Then she looked over her shoulder enough to see his form. She saw his lips moving, but missed the sound as she took off the headphones too late. "Sup?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 12:30 am
"How are you feeling?" he repeated. The music was loud as usual: he could hear a woman belting I crashed my car into the bridge, I watched, I let it burn, not for the first time. Had they not been lounging on an incredibly expensive-looking bed, he might have mistakenly painted them back in one of their rooms. "We can't keep the horseman waiting for very long. Once it's dark, we need head out."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 8:27 am
Chel was tired. Chel was more than tired. Walls of words both insulting and supporting her (but mostly the former) were lazily gripped between her fingers as she'd been tweeting earlier and stopped. The weariness from the battle early had only managed to triplicate as she'd laid on the bed, as though resting had somehow made it worse. Now her head hurt, she was still covered in cuts and there was something off about the way she was gazing at him, bags under her eyes and reddish tint around her eyes from staring at a screen in the dark for too long.
Jack was understandably antsy. Every inch of him screamed that he was ready to hurl himself out the door, despite his tired entrance. It was little things that Chel picked up; the look in his eyes, the jiggle of his leg.
"I'm good," she told him, snapping the headphones out of the audio jack and leaving them on the bed. "We can go now." Chel creaked as she sat up, imitating something like Owain as she brushed herself off and moved to her bag to pick up a different shirt to cover the bandages with something not coated in blood.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 10:00 am
He watched her and sat up, wincing. The horseman's final barrage hurt more than he let on. "You need to clean yourself up first," he said. "Rest. Have you been on the phone this whole time?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 10:12 am
Chel changed her shirt none the less, switching into a shirt that had kittens on it overlayed with a grungey black paint splatter texture.
"Not the whole time. Was just talkin' with some people." Uncharacteristically she tugged her ponytail down and let her hair splay out a bit, running a hand through it a few times to alleviate some of the tension in the wavy mess.
"You sure you wanna stay down? Horseman's still out there." Conflicting words for someone who was already crawling along the edge of the bed to curl into Jack's side. Chel was the poster child for rejuvenation by physical touch.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 10:25 am
"And going after it as ragged as you are now only means more trouble for us," Jack replied. "That last horseman was hitting you hard enough." Rearranging the pillows, he propped himself up and invited her over. Both legs were on the bed as opposed to one ok and one off—he meant to stay for longer than a few minutes.
He checked his phone. "Two hours at most," he declared, and it sounded like an echo from the beginning of the mission.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 10:32 am
"I'm fiiine," she whined, closing her eyes and breathing slowly. "I got the clone. I'm awesome." But the pathetic noise she made as she curled up and crunched her bruises wasn't.
She stayed quiet for 20 of those minutes, threatening to fall asleep at any second. Then she quietly said, "Are you always like that when you hunt Halloween or did that reaper remind you of someone...?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 11:32 am
He'd closed his eyes somewhere in those twenty minutes, but it was hard to relax even with Chel at his side. He wasn't hurt as bad as she was, he could still move, he could still fight—still kill, as it ******** was one of the ones from the Sahara," he answered. "He didn't deserve a quick end like that." Jack's passion had gotten the better of him.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 1:46 pm
"********," she murmured. "Woulda killed him myself then." Her grip tightened in a lazy sideways hug. "Glad you got to do it yerself then."
In a say-no-more (unless you want to) kind of way, Chel kissed his arm through his shirt, moving the conversation along. "If it hadn't had a go at my shoulder I woulda been fine." Between her fight with Peyton and this horseman battle it was becoming more and more of an issue. She feared what would happen if it got worse; especially in consideration to firing a bow.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 1:56 pm
There was always more to say was the problem.
"How bad is it?" he asked as he turned his head towards her. "It's been bothering you a lot lately. Did it heal wrong?" The clones he could debate with himself (metaphorically and literally) for ages, but he wanted to focus on what he could possibly do something about.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
