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Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 4:38 pm
The days in the infirmary were starting to feel like a blur but getting out hadn't dulled any of his emotions. He could still feel everything boiling inside him; anger, fear, dread, sorrow. All of it was just waiting to come pouring out at some poor soul who probably wouldn't deserve it. Aviyana hadn't deserved some of the things he'd said to her but she understood. She'd forgive him because she could see. Another hunter wasn't likely to be so forgiving.
So he'd made a choice. There was only one other hunter he trusted, who he actually thought might help him and he knew it would only end baldly if he didn't everything on his own. It still might end badly but at least there was more of a chance that it wouldn't if he had help.
Chewing on his lip he knocked on Arland's door, trying not to wince as the fresh skin on his arms tugged. Hopefully the older hunter was actually in and he wouldn't have to wait and possibly lose his nerve.
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Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 4:59 pm
"It's not locked." He called out from where he was seated, in the middle of a mess of paper and pen. Ink spotted his fingertips just as much as it did the sheet of parchment, streaks and lines, jumbled images and thoughts.
The desk was the only part of the moon trainee's room that actually looked as though it belonged to him currently; a mess in the middle of blank, sterile white walls and sheets. It was almost as if he had brought the infirmary back to the dormitory with him, finding it much easier to lose himself that way than anything else. There were no frightening flashes to find in posters, no way an insect could hide behind clutter that wasn't there. The white was safe, but it was hardly him.
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Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 5:07 pm
He pushed the door open and looked around the room for a moment. It didn't look like he remembered but, with how much stuff was broken in his own that wasn't surprising. "Um ...are you busy?"
He paused in the door way. If Arland didn't want company he could go. Most likely back to bed since that's what he still seemed to be mostly dressed for but maybe Arland didn't want to talk for once
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Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 5:35 pm
"Hm... Oh? Busy?" His brow lofted slightly as he glanced up from the paper he had been starting so intently at that he hadn't looked away until he had heard the sun trainee's voice. He was peering over the rim of black plastic frames that had slid down on his nose enough that he would soon have to either push them up or let them fall off, the lenses doing little to hide the dark circles under his eyes.
The glasses were hardly the only difference, however. His head looked... Smaller, was it? Or maybe it was just the difference in the volume of his hair. He still hadn't quite figured that out himself, but it had been necessary to remove the dreads after the events of the Sahara and of his two options he had opted for the less drastic but more painstaking route of asking someone to assist him with coming them out. It had been a part of his recovery that he hadn't quite recovered from yet, his hair feeling considerably lighter and strange although still pulled back, this time into a low ponytail at the nape of his neck.
"Come in."
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Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 5:45 pm
"Yea. You look busy." He waved a hand at the desk and the papers covering it. "If you're in the middle of something I can come back." He shut the door behind him anyway though as he stepped into the room.
"You look like you're not sleeping either." It was hard to see the circles under his own eyes but he knew they were red from rubbing at them while he tried to stay awake. His hair was knotted up into a bun, held in place by a small stake that looked suspiciously like Aviyana's handle. "You ... you said once if I ever needed to talk..."
His hands were clenched into fists tight enough to look like they hurt where they hung at his sides as he stared at the floor somewhere between the two of them.
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Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 6:10 pm
"No, I'm not busy, I just..." He held the papers out to Inoke in a manner similar to how one might envision a mad scientist in a movie, waiting until the other hand taken hold of them before standing, making another gesture for the sun trainee to take his chair as he made his way over to shut the door.
The papers that he had handed over to the other were filled with nonsense. One word here or there, dark angry lines and the occasional something standing out of them; eyes in the darkness, thousands of legs in the lines. It was the sort of thing he had been turning to when he found himself unable to sleep now without the sedatives that had kept him under in the infirmary long enough for the majority of his injuries to heal.
"Sorry. It's crazy... Do you want something to drink? Make yourself comfortable."
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Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 6:15 pm
He flipped though the pages looking at the lines on them. At one point in his life he probably would have been frightened by them. He'd have wondered how someone could come up with this stuff but now it was just another form of nightmares. "I guess this is a better outlet than knocking someone's teeth in." He grinned slightly before walking over to sit on the edge of 'Lands bed rather than the chair.
"Do you have a bottle of water?"
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Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 6:23 pm
"Makes me feel a little bit like Johnny Depp's Ichabod Crane, to be honest." He managed to crack a small smile at that, but it didn't quite make it to his eyes leaving more of a haunted look behind than anything else.
"I don't know if I've got it in me to knock anyone's teeth in right now..." Instead of answering the question about the water he opened the chest at the end of his bed, drawing a plastic bottle out of the dwindling package he had left, holding it out to the other young man. "Could go for being knocked out, though. Bet the sleep would be nice..."
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Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 6:28 pm
"I've still got some of the sedatives. They gave me extra." The other hunters who'd finally let him go had been afraid if he didn't stay out more often than not until he chilled out that he'd hurt someone other than himself. "Not the same as actually sleeping though. Not restful." He shook his head and cracked the bottle open so he could get a drink.
"I can't stop thinking about it."
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Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 6:36 pm
"Between the dehydration and the demolition, I can't remember a lot of it. Bits and pieces, though; enough to be terrified." He made a gesture to the drawings before turning his chair around so that he could straddle it, crossing his arms to rest them on the back of the chair lightly. Inky fingers left smudges behind on the wood, just as they had left small traces behind on the bottle of water.
"It's like losing track of everything except for instinct; survival. I haven't felt that way... For a really long time."
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Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 6:42 pm
He laughed softly but it was hollow. "I remember all of it, from the second those ******** bastards lit me on fire. I've burned once before ... something i've tried so hard to forget." He pushed his bangs out of his face before taking a drink. "I read somewhere once that smell is the best memory trigger. I'd thought i'd forgotten what my own skin smelt like when burned. I can't sleep without the drugs, i've broken have the s**t in my room, Vi keeps telling me to stay away from the training fields because she's afraid i'll, that i might kill someone."
He was trying not to crush the bottle in his hands, not wanting to waste the water, but his hands were trembling from the effort. "I kinda wish i was just using up drawing paper like it's nothing instead."
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Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 7:17 pm
"Considering what was under our skin, I don't think they had a choice. They might have warned us, but I don't think it would have made things any easier..." After all, what if it hadn't worked? What if they had died anyways? Wasn't it all just part of the price they payed upon signing up to be a part of the great Deus Ex Machina?
"If you came looking for a sparring partner I don't know how much good I would be to you, but I can try... Or if you just need to talk." Talk. His own mouth went dry just thinking about it, eyes drifting down to the water threatening to splash up and out of the bottle as Inoke's grasp tightened on the plastic. His tongue flicked over his lips as he tried not to think of how cracked they had been, how parched he had been... How precious a bottle of clean water would have been as they had all waited together in the quarantine zone to face their fates...
He swallowed hard before glancing up, brown eyes dark as they met the other man's gaze. "We all deal with things in our own way, man."
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Posted: Tue May 27, 2014 5:56 pm
"I'm pretty sure they could have dealt with it better than burning us." He hissed, the fingers on his empty hand digging into his thigh. "They didn't even try to find another way. It's like ..." It was like they'd known what would happen and how to deal with it. He'd played that over and over in his mind and it just made the thought worse every time. The thought that the higher ups had sent them somewhere that they knew would get them killed or injured.
Shaking his head he stuffed the cap back on the bottle so the water didn't end up going everywhere. "Maybe this was a bad idea. Here." He held the bottle back out to the other man as he stood up. Talking about it was just making him angry again. "Talking about things just make three shrinks give up on me anyway"
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Posted: Tue May 27, 2014 6:51 pm
He held his hand up to halt Inoke from getting too far, shaking his head slowly at the offered bottle of water before gesturing for him to sit back down. He didn't seem as though he would take 'no' for an answer, although he didn't seem as though he quite had the strength to force him to stay either.
"I think... If they had a choice to act in another manner, they would have. I don't know what those things were, what they could have done to us, but they were inside." His words were spoken with complete revulsion and it was obvious that the afterthought left him sick, tempted to gag. "What better way to purge? To cleanse? It didn't scar." Not physically, at least.
"Stay."
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Posted: Tue May 27, 2014 7:06 pm
"Anything but that!" he snapped. "Anything would have been better than fire. Why not drop us in boiling water? Acid? If they can make fire that doesn't leave marks they could have picked something, anything else." Hell they probably could have pulled the insects out one by one and he'd have enjoyed it more than everything that being burned alive again brought out.
"I've ... that was the second time i've been burned down to the bone and the first was more than enough for a lifetime." He was shaking slightly though whether it was from anger or exhaustion it was hard to tell. "Fire doesn't cleanse. It destroys."
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