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 Posted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 11:31 pm
To say that he felt tired was an understatement.
It was not just a physical tiredness, though this was in abundance, and made his body ache and his arms and legs feel as though they were mere dead weight, adding extra effort in his attempts to move them. However, there was a sort of mental tiredness as well; his thoughts, no matter how hard he tried to control them, simply would not settle down.
From one extreme to the other, it seemed.
It was bad enough that all he thought about was a dead person, his entire mind filled with Shiloh's face despite all of his efforts to keep that particular side of him at bay. Not only was he in adequate pain from the death of his boyfriend - the first steady, closed relationship boyfriend he'd had in pretty much...forever...but then the whole mess of the pods and Caelius had happened.
Too fast, too fast. He couldn't settle, but he couldn't sleep either. It was as though his mind were a string pulled taught and tight, so tense that it was close to the snapping point, his thoughts brittle. He'd made his way to Room #144 to rest, unwilling to face his own room, and then, when that had failed miserably (he'd stared up at the ceiling for what seemed like house), Ian had gotten up and made his way to the pod room, of all places.
He wasn't sure why he'd picked here. It was not the same room that currently housed Shiloh and Rep, but the main room, the one where most hunters awakened came from. Ian himself remembered tumbling out of his pod, disoriented and confused, Candace peering down at him with curiosity and a lighthearted greeting on her tongue.
Maybe that was why he was here - to go back to the beginning again.
Restlessly, Ian paced around the room, not sitting, but not standing still either. He picked up a rhythm, going from pod to pod to pod just looking at the names on the lists and examining with disinterest the way the devices hooked up to everything, eyes skimming along the metal tubes, the buttons, the levers. No one was familiar - not that he expected anyone to be, and besides, this was a distraction, something to counteract the insomnia and anxiety stemming from a lack of sleep and a fervent desire to stay away from the blackness that clouded him.
If he went to sleep, he would surely have nightmares, and Ian was not quite certain he could handle that at the current moment.
One of the pods he hadn't yet gotten to emitted a low hiss. Curious, and against his better judgment, Ian moved towards it, his steps careful as he peered at the door - which swung open suddenly a second later, steam billowing outwards. Ian let out a little wheeze of surprise and stepped back as a figure leaned forward, coughing as it slid down and then stumbled from the pod, staggering several steps before straightening. Ian turned away, a hand over his mouth as he cleared his throat to try and rid it of its dryness.
"Good grief," said the newest addition to Deus Ex Machina. "How unpleasant."
Ian froze.
The voice, which was somewhere behind him, was sharp and crisp, each syllable carefully formed, the faint trace of a Middle Eastern accent audible at the tail ends of the words. It was a distinguished sounding voice, proud and confident -
- and, to Ian's ears, all-too-familiar. He thought he might be hallucinating; after all, he was suffering from the effects of several days' worth of chaotic, messy, agonizing pain and weariness. His hand was still raised to his mouth from covering it at his cough, and slowly he lowered it, turning at the same time to face the trainee that had just awoken and who was now standing in front of the pod, looking somewhat out of place. He was tall and lanky, with dark brown hair that fell across his forehead in uncharacteristically messy slashes, and dark blue eyes that stood out against tanned skin. A white dress shirt, slightly wrinkled (although so white that it was actually rather difficult to look at), and an impeccable pinstriped vest.
He was staring, and so was Ian, who was having difficulty breathing, let alone speaking.
"...Alistaire," he said finally, and then, a beat later,
"What are you doing here?"
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Posted: Mon Dec 02, 2013 9:19 am
He remembered the smell of disinfectant.
It was a rather pungent smile, though at the same time, oddly familiar and somewhat reassuring because it reminded him of sterile cleanliness, which in turn reminded him of order in a place that severely lacked it. When things were clean and organized, they were easier to maintain, and it was much easier to focus.
This place did not smell of disinfectant, like his house had, but it smelled of cold metal and crisp air, which was a close second.
The pod was a strange contraption, not really one that he particularly wanted to experience again. Alistaire turned to look back at it, his gaze sweeping curiously across its many buttons and knobs before he looked back at the figure still standing in front of him, face white as though he'd seen a ghost. Though, if he thought about it, it was supposed to be the other way around; Ian was supposed to be the ghost, not Alistaire, because all this time Alistaire had assumed that Ian was dead.
Apparently not. Alistaire ran a hand absently down the front of his vest, smoothing out a few annoying crinkles and said mildly, "Shouldn't the question be posed the other way around?"
When Ian's face registered nothing but confusion, he continued on, a touch more coldly, "Shouldn't I be asking you what you're doing here? This place - whatever it is - hardly seems like somewhere that you of all people would want to be, Mr. Party Like It's Going Out of Style."
The jab was not missed, judging by the irritated flicker in his brother's eyes, but it change Ian's expression. His shoulders were stiff and tense, not at all comfortable, and he said slowly, after a moment, "I didn't plan on coming here, but things just...fell into place, that's all."
It was a lame explanation, and they both knew it. Alistaire studied his younger brother's face, slightly thinner than his own, less angled and more rugged, a day's worth of stubble showing along his jawline. "You're a liar," he said calmly, and stepped around Ian, his gaze moving to examine the room. "You chose here, didn't you? You wanted to get away from us, away from the real world."
It was a fair bet to say that was the truth, because in spite of their differences, Ian was easier to read than a children's picture book; at least, in Alistaire's mind. And now, as he turned back around to look at him, he could see the muscle flexing in Ian's jaw that indicated his mounting frustration.
"I came here," said Ian, "because it's what I wanted, not to get away from anything."
Alistaire didn't believe this at all, but it was hardly worth arguing about. Instead, he paced around the wide room, taking in the rows of pods, each of which housed a different person, a different human being. Strange to think that there were so many who were unawakened yet; vaguely, he wondered how long he had been in the pod.
"What day is it?" he asked, and Ian shifted his feet, looking wary. "December second," he answered, after a moment, and Alistaire frowned slightly, his thoughts annoyingly muddled. He couldn't quite recall the date he had been recruited, though he knew it was some weeks ago. Strange, but unimportant. He glanced at Ian's hand, at the bracelet's decorating his wrist.
"Those mean anything?" he asked lightly, and Ian tilted his head, slightly confused before apparently realizing what he was talking about, his eyes moving down his own arm. A faint, pale flush dusted across his cheeks, fleeting before it disappeared again. "That's none of your business," Ian said, which only served to prove Alistaire's point and answer his question. One of the bracelets was more worn than the others, familiar to Alistaire, some of the rope fraying, while the others looked newer, less used - a small, thin black one decorated with shells, and the other, a stark, bright blue and decorated with sunny yellow ducks.
Strange, Alistaire thought, for the latter was a terribly obvious contrast to the black shirt and jeans Ian was wearing, and also something that did not seem his style. Ian caught where his glance was and tugged down his shirtsleeve so that it covered the blue bracelet, his face an inscrutable mask.
"Relax," said Alistaire, rolling his eyes. "I'm not here to haunt you or anything. To be honest, I had no idea you were even here, I swear. It was just..." His eyes met his brother's. "...a fortuitous coincidence."
Ian snorted. "Go to hell, Al," he said disgustedly, and pushed aside, stalking towards the door. Alistaire watched him go with a look of amusement mixed with a rankled irritation at the uncouth nickname. "It's Alistaire," he snapped automatically, not that Ian would care; and the latter was made true when his brother, not turning around, just flipped him the bird behind his back before sweeping from the room, slamming the door shut behind him.
Alistaire was left alone in the enormous pod room. He stood there a beat longer, calculating his options, since Ian had given no instructions, and there seemed to be no one around who could assist him. And Ian had always been like that; resistant to change, immensely stubborn in his outright refusal at following simple rules. It was one of their great (and many) differences, Alistaire had learned early on. Where he was the good son, the intelligent son, the son who played by the book and played well, Ian was the rebellious child, the one incapable of doing things the right way and absolutely insistent on doing things his own way. They had always butted heads, never seeing eye to eye, and they were not about to start now, as he knew quite well.
After a moment, Alistaire lifted a hand and straightened his tie, smoothed down his vest again, adjusted his cuff links, and made his way to the same door Ian had exited from not even five minutes prior. Little brother, he thought, as he stepped into a dimly lit hallway with white walls; an institution, of sorts, if he had to hazard a guess. The recruiter had not been entirely specific in his description of the job, and accepting his offer had been an uncharacteristic whim, a strange risk to take for someone who normally took none.
But, as it turned out, that risk, that gamble had played out, because Ian, of all people, was here, and that alone meant that Alistaire had won, whether Ian admitted it or not. He started his way down the hallway, hearing muffled voices coming from the end of it.
Time to play a little game.
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