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 Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2017 7:01 pm
Faustite wrung his hands, rubbed his hands, worked the flesh raw for a single fleck of pale skin beneath the domineering black. None came. Staring back at him were claws shaped of soul-eating darkness, and all the desperate plights and excuses that bubbled up in his mind offered no release from such a wicked nightmare. Vomiting promised no answer. As he pressed forward, past the blacked mess left in the alley, past the prone forms and further toward the setting afternoon sun, a far more revolting theory crept into his purview.
Faustite knew not how long he traveled, or even if he recognized the area in which he now found himself. But there, among the rooftops, adrenaline weakened its grip on him. Abject denial gave way toward dolorous defeat while a thin fleck of pervasive excitement threatened to keep him keyed up. His emotional response over the affairs - the committed murders, the subsequent peversion of his body - fought with itself in endless circles. Nausea churned unendingly, begging for more displaced souls to fill the void. That same insidious excitement still thrummed lightly in the very center of his chest, in the area stretched most thin over his own starseed and the delirium it promoted left him conflicted. Should he simply pull it out and end this panicked misery? Should he eat his own as a wicked ouroboros?
Shaken as he was, his limbs worn out and his hand hanging uselessly at his side, he hauled himself to the edge of the parapet. He sat on the edge with his screaming wrist cradled in his lap at an impossible angle. Looking down at the steep drop, Faustite summoned his communicator into his still-working hand.
The frantic search for names went ill before; he had little hope for it now. But of all the broken soldiers that the Negaverse called its own, one still held possibility. One wasn't yet hollowed out by the slow boring of chaos through her person. Was it stupid to ask? Part of him thought so - the same delirious part that urged him toward the finality of it all.
In his hand, the crystal sputtered and crackled as it ate away his stolen energy. Tentatively, he spoke out over the wavelength. "Chrysocolla?" He waited, licking chapped lips. "I need your help." Another pause. "I need you to stop me." The crystal vanished from his hands and he waited - either for the world-shifting intervention of a superior officer or for the will to claw his way through this wretched, liminal space.daekie hope this works! she can summon him again maybe?
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Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2017 7:58 pm
She always kept her crystal communicator out when she was resting in Negaspace, on the odds that someone might want her and they wouldn't know any other way, on the odds she'd be called out of her peace for an operation -- today was not an operation, but her peace was certainly disturbed, and Chrysocolla paused mid-page to yawn as her brain caught up to what she'd heard - "Faustite," she said into the communicator, and more urgently, "Faustite, what's wrong-" but he wasn't responding, and she held no illusions he would without her intervention.
Alright, then. She'd always kept this room as a safe space; stocked with blankets, pillows, snacks and water, gentle lighting; a small basket at the corner next to the blanket nest, containing a few energy orbs she always kept on hand just in case. Chrysocolla folded a page to mark her place,
put the book aside, stood up and focused and pulled Faustite-the-signature -- she knew his signature just as well as she knew everyone's she'd ever met, it was so simple, like memorization always was -- she tugged him through the sludge that was the universe, pulled him to her side like she'd pull on the leash of a dog - and when she caught sight of him, her eyes were flinty-cold, not even half a second of sympathy before she was an Officer.
"Do you want me to get Cinnabar," she said, drowning herself in a vestige of calm she didn't feel. If she'd checked up on him, if she'd made sure, if she'd made more of an effort to be a proper ******** commanding officer -- in her head she knew as Poppy she'd be begging, who did this, Faustite, did you know -- but it was useless. It'd just be useless, to ask, when it was already done. She was so tired. "I can handle her. I know how to get her."
One sentence at a time.
"I have a mirror in the blankets -" and she put her hands on his shoulders, pushed him to his knees, still gentle - "Sit down, Elex. You look like you need it." If she panicked, he'd panic too, and he was already panicked. "Sit, and breathe, and we can talk. You're safe here, okay? Nobody's going to touch you. You have as long as you want. If you want anything, I can duck out of Negaspace to get it, but only if you feel okay with being left alone."Strickenized SHE'S DOING HER BEST and will probably have a panic attack at some point during this bc shes chrysocolla and is not super great at handling things the entire way through
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Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2017 4:58 pm
The breeze kicked and whorled in the way it often did before a coming storm. Faustite sighed into it, closing his eyes to the turbulence inside and out —
Fabric and matter and everything about him twisted in that insidious way that suggested he was the only one changing. His mind lurched to recover the sudden displacement in reality, to find himself not atop an imperiously tall building, but within one of the repurposed versions of the Cathedral's decrepit old rooms. He'd been but once, on a tour with Umber, and remembered them no further than as hollow graves for human ingenuity - for humanity, even. And here among its scattered contents stood a wraith of a girl, the one he knew as Chrysocolla. The one who tried to breath life into old ghosts of human decency in a faction littered with wraiths.
His emotions soon caught up with him, and he broke out of the dreamlike state that oft left him placid after such a vast, instantaneous movement through space. Grief and panic welled up into his lungs, stymied only by his panic - surely she would discipline him, surely she knew - and the mention of yet another officer allayed his fears none at all. Teeth clenched at the recognition of yet another general, another name of another wraith, another mention of handling.
Everyone here was a ******** object.
He remembered the sword in his chest, the cold, the delirious thrill,the etched derision on the woman's face. To find it here in this moment with his hands so blacked left him dumbfounded still, and that consternation bought him some time against the inevitable. "Who —" he stammered out, still finding his breath. "I don't know who that is. I don't want to talk to more officers, I've had enough —"
She urged him down, and at first he resisted, but continued pressure convinced him to capitulate. She mentioned safety, and he wondered what might threaten to eat him here. She mentioned a mirror, and he wondered what happened to his face. She mentioned that no one would touch him, and his thoughts lept immediately to her hands on his shoulders and he wondered if she had any credibility. But he boiled, most of all, with anger toward himself. Toward Umber. Toward the wretched state in which he found himself. What was he now, and what could he do for it?
"I don't know what happened to my hands." The admission still sounded raspy. "I —" He paused, scrambled for thought. "My wrist is broken. I didn't want to go to a hospital - not with my hands like this - I thought they might amputate them, and… Can you splint it?" The pain fastened him to reality, but Faustite was unsure he wanted to endure it.
Still, she told him of a mirror, and he felt through the soft folds of blankets to find it. As he viwed his own reflection, Faustite blanched with thinly veiled nausea. Black stared back at him with no sign of iris, no sign of sclera. Only endless black, framed by skin and lashes. He laid the mirror against the nearest pillow, still staring into it, as he traced the very edge of one eye with a black nail. "How can I get rid of this? I can't go back to my family looking like…" He breathed a short, shallow sigh. "It doesn't matter. I can't power down, either. Nothing is working like it should." Rage welled in him - rage at his predicament and at the unfailing giddiness that hunted him from dreams.daekie yes good i look forward to this
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Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2017 5:30 pm
"Faustite, hey, stay with me -" Chrysocolla scampered away to the basket in the corner of the room, pressing an energy orb to his mouth until he bit down, biting her lip. She was breathing poorly, but her voice was calm, because what choice did she have? This was her life, this was the rest of her life, and if she didn't think about it maybe it'd only hurt sometimes that this was all she was ever going to know. College didn't matter, even though she liked to pretend it would; Amphitrite had said as much, and she watched her sister throw away her days in pursuit of something she'd never find and said nothing about it because it wasn't her place.
It wasn't her place. It wasn't her place.
"Cinnabar was my old commanding officer," she kept talking, barely any time before it crossed her mind to let it cross her lips, "breathe, breathe, come on -- I'm not going to hurt you, I promise, just breathe, okay? I can splint it enough -- I've had to do it myself a few times." Her laugh was breathy, hitching, like if she stopped to think about it she'd remember none of this was funny at all, that they were children in a war that shouldn't ever have involved them; that neither of them were old enough to smoke, god forbid drink, and they had countless lives on their hands. That Faustite was barely sixteen, if he was sixteen at all, and Elex Yorke was dead and nobody would ever be at fault for his murder. "It'll be makeshift, but don't worry about it, I can claim I've got a respiratory infection or something - beg off school - or I can find someone who can fix it." Still, Chrysocolla was trying not to be all-business as she bustled around her room, picking up things -- a ruler, medical tape, bits and pieces she'd picked up now and then, stolen, taken because they'd come in handy sometime.
There it was, the key question.
Chrysocolla swallowed. Hard. It took her a few seconds to find her words.
"I -- I said Cinnabar because -- she knows what it's like, okay? She's half-youma too -- you can't go home, Elex, because you can't power down again. Ever. Your weapon's gone, whatever it was. This can't be fixed." Her voice hitched, harsh, desperately trying to keep it calm and doctor-to-patient, like she knew how to do this and wasn't just pretending at maturity she'd never before really had to grasp for. "B-but. You." Deep breath. Her shoulders were shaking. "Okay. D-do you -- want me to power down, or do you want anything, I -- I'm. I'm sorry. Where's Umber, I'm going to break his ******** spine."
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Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2017 6:18 pm
The orb tasted bitter, the energy needful. It warmed him where shock started to set in, where the heat left his body in slow, imperceptible strokes. When did he become so covered in sweat? It didn't matter so long as that same hopeless excitement for change lingered just beyond his sternum. What the hell was wrong with him?
Why was any of this happening? His hands were blacker than hers, than Umber's, than Arsenopyrite's. His eyes grew darker than anyone else's. Was it the guilt? Was it his folly for holding onto petty moralism in the face of wretched schemes? Wouldn't that be a trick. Being too good to deserve a normal body would be a convenient little excuse. But what good is it now? Here I am, staring back at a reflection that doesn't look like me. That is me. This is the reflection I have to face, isn't it? Yet the more he looked at himself, the more his throat worked up its sorrow. Working his jaw, he meant to swallow it down, yet some welled up to his eyes in ink-swollen tears. He sniffed, he blinked, and the trickle down his face looked more like watered-down paint than real tears.
But part of me says I'm free. Free from what?
"I don't care how you do it." His hand curled into the pillows before he turned the mirror over. He hurt, he felt drained, and all the stolen energy in the depths of their coffers coud not deliver him from this, he was certain. "Just do it. Please. It hurts," he hissed through his teeth. It hurts and I want to go home —
She's half-youma too —
"What?" The sound of the word came knife-sharp from his mouth. "No - that captain said that youma happen when someone forces too much chaos into your body. That isn't what happened to me. This can't be it. This can't be it!" But what rage he mustered crumbled then, and his breath hitched in short, despairing strokes. The black touch of tears lit on her pillows, staining them he supposed, but he didn't care. He couldn't care. As she went on, he realized he could never care again. This can't be fixed, she said. Suddenly he wished he never called her at all. Why couldn't he have pushed off from that building? Why did he let her pull him away when his whole life was now forefeit?
"There has to be something," he managed, licking his trembling lips. "There has to be. I need to go home, and go to school in the morning, and I have a test next Thursday…" He swallowed then, looking up toward the ceiling. He wasn't the only one here that fell apart. Of nothing else, the thought bestowed upon him a small, sardonic laugh. Of course it would be this way.
"Umber…" He winced as he tried to change position and disturbed his arm. Drawing his legs up, he wrapped his unbroken arm around them to huddle into his own escaping heat. Parts of his body shuddered and shivered uncontrollably. "He was training me before this happened. He broke my wrist after I tried to…" He paused, another laugh. "After I tried to kill him. He left and powered down after I told him about the creature at the junkyard. He wasn't my first choice of contact. I haven't tried to talk to him since." Though only a few short hours remained between then and now, he supposed. "I pulled a couple starseeds — I thought I needed them for this —" and you hated Arsenopyrite for speaking so flippantly. "— and that's when it happened. Whatever this is.
"… I'm going to need gloves and glasses. Sunglasses. The reflective kind."
In loss of innocence, there's just a little more freedom.
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Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2017 6:47 pm
"I'm sorry, Elex, I'm so sorry," she repeated it over and over like a mantra; Chrysocolla was gentle with his arm as she straightened it and placed the ruler in place, a rolled-up t-shirt to pad his arm (she always kept a change of clothes here, all blacks, all blacks -- blacks and dark reds -- long sleeves, long socks, all to conceal -- they were hardly the same size, her and Faustite, but as the shirt wasn't being used as clothing it did its' purpose well enough. And then the medical tape to keep his arm straight, keep it from bending, keep his wrist solid; the entire time her tongue stuck out of the corner of her mouth in concentration. "J-just -- lie down, okay? I've got painkillers in the corner, they're mostly for migraines and stuff, but they should work --" and she had already been awkwardly poised on her knees, legs half-splayed every which way, but when she finished her work she slumped and all the strength went out of her.
She was barely older than he was. Knowing that, it was just -- her glamour evaporated in iridescent sparkles, bright lights, half-a-second; sitting in front of him, teary-eyed, was Poppy Anania-Sedgwick in dark green cotton pajamas, barefoot.
"F-full youma," she stammered, "I think. Y-you can't -- they can't think. They're not Officers. But you, Cinnabar, General-Queen Tanzanite years ago -- it happens when your starseed - warps. And doesn't break, not all the way. Just." She sniffled. Her eyes were shining, and she swallowed the sobs threatening to break free down, because she was calm.
"I think...I've -- seen Cinnabar take a civilian appearance before, but...she has to time it. It's just a glamour she wears when she wants to remember her old life." None of this was funny, none of this was funny, there was a teenage boy sobbing in her room and his life was ruined - her henshin pen felt heavy in her hip pocket. She could walk away. She could leave.
She wasn't going to.
"I'll get them this weekend. I promise. I can -- if you want, I can get duplicates of coursework from some of my teachers, tell them it's for a cousin so you don't have to stop learning just because you can't." Her lips felt so dry. Her throat felt parched. It had been a long time since Poppy had talked like this, especially with such vigor, such effort. "And I'll find Umber and I'll ******** break every bone in his body for this. He should have told you."
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 9:50 am
Faustite tried to bite back what cries of pain he could, but as Chrysocolla straightened his arm, pain surged in unprecedented proportions. He seethed through his teeth in a ragged sound, straining his vocal cords in the process. Lightheadedness grew to perpetuity in their interactions. Nausea, too - after manipulating his arm so, Faustite wanted to vomit.
He needed no second bidding from Chrysocolla to lie back; he did so immediately after her ministrations. Faustite dared not to spare the extra second to look over the makeshift bandages, instead hoping that she rendered a viable temporary setting. And as he laid among his own dazed and scattered thoughts, he considered hospital treatments. Would they excise his eyes if they could see them? Would they cut off his fingers before setting his arm? Would he be able to withstand that, knowing that he could never see again or hold anything. No - he had to hope that Chrysocolla's setting proved spotless, and that he healed the injury adequately.
And that demanded a lot of hope that he simply didn't have anymore.
She offered painkiller, and he wondered why she didn't just offer the pills right then. Fishing around for the telltale bottle proved fruitful, he found, after just a few swipes in the indicated area. Childproof capping notwithstanding on this bottle, he managed to open it singlehandedly and shake a couple of the pills into his mouth. Opening a water bottle required a little more strength than what he had, but Chrysocolla's - or Poppy's - assistance was useful in more means than just giving him a place to lay and reciting all the information she knew. It had to be.
Swimming in pain, the facts given sounded distant. Nonsensical, even. A warped soul, a swallowed civilian identity. A monster forever. He swallowed against the rising lump in his throat, as ever-present as the sea. "How does she take her civilian appearance? I can't just vanish. I can't just…" He sighed as his thought slipped from him. Exhaustion weighed in where the strenght of starseeds no longer spported him. He wanted this conversation to end - he wanted to wake up the following day to discover that this nightmare ceased, that his eyes looked normal and his hands bore the same delicate fingernails that broke nearly every time he engaged in manual labor. He wanted to tie his shoes without pointed nails skewering his shoelaces and pulling snags. And he wanted to go home to a life he'd known for years.
But Chrysocolla was firm - there's no more Elex York to which he could return. Only Faustite remained.
He snorted, cold and mirthless, as he stared up at her ceiling. "If you get the glasses by sunday, wrap them."
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 7:46 pm
"I'll do what I can," Poppy murmured; at some point during Faustite's cries of pain she felt like something in her had shifted sideways, letting her watch, letting her breathe evenly again. Her shoulders straightened as she opened the water bottle, guiding it to his mouth like he was a small child, unable to fend for himself in any way -- nurturing, in a terrible sort of way. She'd never had a brother, had she? It didn't matter if she had; Poppy remembered nothing of the sort, and her propensity to emotionally adopt people had remained none-the-less.
"You need to sleep, alright? If the medication kicks in before then, I can take you to the infirmary if you're worried about my medical capability; they reset my nose back in March, fixed up my jaw...they're very competent, and they won't ask questions." Deep breath in, deep breath out; she ran a hand through her hair, mussing it up, pulling a few strands out under her fingernails.
"I don't know how Cinnabar takes her civilian appearance. I've never had to ask. But I'm going to go run over and talk to her immediately after this, okay?" Deep breath in, deep breath out. "There's not -- there isn't a lot like you still in active service. I think Lieutenant Carnotite still does her job, but she was a blogger or something; I'd have to ask her. So none of this is exactly on file to read up on - to know what shouldn't be done, what could be dangerous, what could hurt you. That's the last thing I want."
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Posted: Mon May 01, 2017 11:23 am
I'll do what I can.
"Okay."
You need to sleep, alright?
"Okay."
But I'm going to run over and talk to her immediately after this, okay?
"Okay." Painkiller often struck him hard, he knew, but made no mention of it to Poppy. Already the wooziness seized him, left the world reeling in slow strokes. And while Faustite kept his eyes shut, his good arm thrown over the black abominations, he felt the room shifting beneath him.
A slow, quiet, mirthless laugh pealed out from between clenched teeth. Does the Negaverse have use for bloggers? Is that what they'll do with me? Teach their teenaged mistake to go on the internet and spread the word of the Negaverse? Perhaps Carnotite just found a way to be useful beyond what ills befell her. Maybe most officers only spent a few hours a day at their duties, and the rest on the busy lives they led beyond the uniform. Maybe Carnotite wanted to show her worth, to seek an amendment to her bitter condition, by proving herself beyond her duties.
It's what they each hoped for, wasn't it? With each rung of the ladder climbed, they received another reprieve from humanity. Soon, perhaps, he wouldn't have to feel human at all.
Faustite bristled. These aren't my thoughts.
"Thank you for your help." The words seemed a paltry turn of phrase compared to her deeds - she summoned him there, offered a place to stay, food, drink - but leaving such necessary gratitudes out of the conversation cut against his upbringing. "Go ahead and ask Cinnabar. I'll still be here. I don't have anywhere else to be anymore."daekie i would've written more but suddenly i am a cat pillow
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Posted: Wed May 03, 2017 12:16 pm
Poppy's outside thoughts were vitriol, when they crystallized at all; she felt like an outsider, watching herself go about the duties, making sure Faustite was comfortable and putting a water bottle next to him - as well as a trash can, as she knew full well how nausea often came hand in hand with sudden wakefulness. She'd known it for two weeks straight; where every light and noise and sound had been cacophony, and she'd felt like the world was a distorted mass of color and light and noise - but she dealt with it, as well as she was able, and separated herself from the situation as best she was able.
Umber wouldn't like how she treated Faustite like a person, she figured, but also <********> him. She'd only felt this sort of gripping, gnawing, bitter fury in her captivity, desperately running Sylvite to the hospital, the Knight who had looked at her and laughed and laughed, her lips running dry no matter what she did - the screams echoing down the hallways, trying to be so small so nobody would hurt her - seeing her sister --
She'd clasped her hands behind her back at some point, digging her nails in as deep as they could go, and still thought nothing of it.
"You have the communicator, if you need me. I'm at school through morning to early afternoon most weekdays, but weekends I usually spend here; after 3:30 on weekdays I'm always available, unless I have student council or my sister wants to go out. If I couldn't stop Umber from doing this, I can damn well be the best teleporter the Negaverse has to offer with regards to getting you whereever you want to be whenever you want it."
As Poppy walked out of the room, her hands stilled, and she turned to look at him. "Don't thank me yet. Thank me when I kill Umber, right? Then we'll be even."
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Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 5:28 pm
You're on student council. Who put you there? It wasn't your doing. No one votes in broken dolls onto their student council board. No, someone knows how to play the game.
Faustite let his eyes unfocus into the neutral black of his sleeve, and watched with dull interest as uninvited colors orbited around the periphery of his vision. Pain left him a little delirious - just a little. Enough to see the whole of the world as edging just a little further into surreal fiction. Maybe he could dismiss his entire life as a dream, now. A passing fancy. A once-want of a normal childhood with a little too much money and a little too much curiosity. But that'd just be naïve, wouldn't it? Faustite hated the sound of such a word. Perhaps he hated it more than he dreamed of it.
But Chrysocolla offered freedom - more freedom than he had as a child named elex Yorke. She gave more freedom than what his mother granted him, in where he could wander after school or in how he could spend his free time. Routine left, and in its place fluxed control. He wanted to hate it - all of it. He wanted to despise every new facet of his condition but he couldn't bring himself to swallow down that awful giddiness that cemented itself into his person. Maybe the Negaverse's true insidiousness lay in such a feeling, in such a violation of his natural inclinations. Maybe Chrysocolla endured the same and it left her so, so hollow that she couldn't fathom the weight of a normal life.
"You'd damn him because he isn't around for this?" He smiled against his sleeve. "Interesting." He wouldn't question Chrysocolla's motives, not yet. He wanted to see if she might make good on her promise and leave the man for dead. A life cut short, surely, but what could he do for it?
"Fine. If you do it, I want to watch." And see what came of it, he supposed. Murder was a heavy act to weight someone's shoulders; would Chrysocolla buckle? Would it mean anything anymore, to hold a life in her hands and waste it away? Fascinating it would be, nonetheless.
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Posted: Fri May 12, 2017 6:12 pm
If Poppy had known what he'd thought, what he'd said, she would have been more hurt than either of them might have realized -- I'm real, she might have said, wounded; just because I'm Chrysocolla doesn't mean I'm not Poppy, that I don't have a life outside of this, it doesn't mean that - but she would have been lying, had she said any of that. She knew it was a lie just as much as Faustite would have; that her civilian life was a put-together fake to offer Chrysocolla a get-away at most, that she wasn't a real person at all, she was the shards someone had glued back together of a traumatized teenager's shattered mind --
She couldn't read minds, anyways. It was better that way.
"I'd damn him," Poppy said, calm, "because he was clearly not interested in fulfilling his duties as a commanding officer, didn't inform you about youmafication, and most of all was continually incapable of understanding that we are legitimately incapable of devoting the same time and physical sacrifices to the Negaverse as independent, working adults." She smiled, clean, precise. It was the kind of smile someone wore when they were -- well. When they felt no guilt about their actions of removal. "Because he isn't the kind of person who should have been trusted with this power, and because he put something in my skull because I wasn't cruel enough for his tastes and it would have stayed there until I died. Don't worry, Elex. If I find him, I'll make sure we have time and tools."
She knew blood on her hands as her first hazy memory, things that would never come back to her, things she didn't remember remembering -- purple hair, a woman's voice, the snap of a man's throat under her heel. But it felt so simple, in concept. (Someone else's hand in someone else's chest, her own hands around someone else's neck.) Umber was an adult -- she'd have the stomach for it.
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Posted: Tue May 16, 2017 6:01 pm
He put something in my skull because I wasn't cruel enough for his tastes and it would have stayed there until I died.
He put something in my skull.
The words gave him pause through the deafening pulses of pain. He put something in my skull. The thought alone was unnerving, and the implications more so - that he could change someone thorugh the use of violating their very being, differently than that of a Negaverse uniform, presented Faustite with a frightful composition of his commanding officer. Ever quiet and deliberate in his action, Umber decided that he could utilize Chrysocolla most effectively and most efficiently by augmenting her head.
He put something in my skull.
If he needed further convincing of Umber's ills, that time now passed. What came of his actions was insidious enough that the Negaverse should find a danger in it. His choices violated basic autonomy then, forced her thoughts then, because she wasn't cruel enough for his tastes. And that thought alone left him with a second consideration - what if the cause of his partial youmafication wasn't entirely within his own actions? What if Umber pressed him with subterfuge in mind? What if Umber broke his wrist knowing that he would take starseeds to recover? The possibilities mounted on one another, compounding with the pain to form a confused delirium. He wanted to shut the lot of it away for a different day. He wanted to alleviate himself of such convoluted ills.
"Then find him. Please," he added as an afterthought - a ghost of good manners. But what good were manners to the nonhuman? Faustite couldn't know. He couldn't think, not now.
Sleep threatened in its dull, droll manner, moiling for his attention amongst all the other revelations. "I'm falling asleep," he admitted at last. "But I want to know more when I wake up." The mention left to him could not pass unattended.
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Posted: Thu May 18, 2017 7:08 am
"If I'm not here when you wake up," Poppy sighed, "call me on the communicator, okay? But you really need to get some rest." Her smile flickered back to endlessly tender, like she was an older sister instead of a commanding officer; like this was all just some fever dream. "When you wake up, I'll come back, and I'll tell you what I know -- not that it's a lot, but." She bit her lip and seemed to decide that - whatever she'd meant to say - it was better left unsaid.
"Sleep well, Elex."
And she left the room, footsteps quiet and even.
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Posted: Tue May 23, 2017 4:17 pm
Call me on the communicator.
Call her like they were planning an afternoon out. Like the communicator was no different than a cell phone, and they were nothing more than neighbors-c**-friends looking to spend some time together. How quaint it was, how 1950s civil with their color-matched communicators to the deep, throbbing purple of the crystals on the walls.
Like mauve toilets matching tile matching sinks.
Matching lipstick stains on cups.
Matching Pepto Bismol vomit stains.
Yes, dear wasn't the right choice of words, but they were the first ones to come to mind. He answered through the haze without that stilted fragment of Americana. "Okay." A short, quick answer to match her short, quick retreat. No hug goodbye, no bright wave and smile. No, that nuclear family melted down long ago, long before their times. They were just reenacting the old pieces of history that they still knew through told and retoled and rehashed vernacular.
But she left, and took with her that midcentury modern dream. That flash of 50s idyllic meant nothing in a dark cave filled with old Ikea furniture and dusty water bottles.
But he could dream of it, if only for a while.daekie fin! please let me know if/when a followup would be good for you!
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