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 Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 2:41 am
The alarm clock would read 2:00 am when Rep woke up. He was lying in his bed -in a bed - and it was slightly warm, tropical summer, humid, and the window was slightly open, as it always was.
Of course, he wasn't alone, and a shape next to him stirred, the only shape next to him, slowly at first, hair untangling from the sheets to cascade almost infinitely around her. She turned around, so she was facing him, and smiled.
"Restless," she said, teased, and then placed ice cold fingers along his arm, so cold they seemed to freeze his skin on contact. "Go back to sleep."
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Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 3:42 am
Rep was always a bit slow to wake up in the morning, drowsy and sluggish from fitful dreams. He didn’t sleep well as a rule and found mornings disorientating. Typically, his dreams were bizarre, thanks to his artifact spending most of his nights immersed in the violence and cutthroat politics of blue kingdom, but this was different and he didn’t know if it was real or not. Generally, it was best to assume that everything was real on Deus until proven otherwise, so he did. He stirred and as he took in where he was and who he was with he suppressed the initial desire to outright panic.
Instead he pushed aside that kneejerk reaction and gently sighed, stretching out, not fighting or removing the cold touch, resigned to compliance of a sort with what he was asked to do. Harrison wasn’t there, nor was Jordan but that would be a concern to be dealt with when he figured out where the ******** he was.
"What if I'm awake now?" he said lazily with the subtle hint of a challenge.
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Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 1:40 pm
She simply laughed and leaned over, kissing his forehead like one would a beloved pet. A moment later, she was in the next standing next to the open window, just her and her long untangled hair and outlines of a thin white dress.
"Come now, this is a favour and there is much to do before-" She stopped herself, and instead, gave Rep a strange, sly smile. And then, one outstretched hand, as if expecting obedience. "Do keep your eyes closed until I say otherwise."
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Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 1:51 pm
And Rep, being Rep, felt a traitorous surge of self worth at the kiss, for a moment against all his wishes he felt worth something, of value to her. And yet he knew that feeling that way was ridiculous, a twisted up feeling in his chest when the logic of who and what she was warred with the ravenous and insatiable need Rep always had to be worthy.
He sighed, and - though with anyone else he'd tell them to go ******** themselves, that he'd never bow to them, never be tamed or led, never defeated or controlled - he closed his eyes and complied.
He owed her, after all.
"Fine." he said gruffly.
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Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 2:16 pm
It was cold outside, but not as cold as her hand, gripping like claws his own. The first thing Rep could hear as soon as he knew he was outside was the sound of someone crying. It was just a muffled voice at first, indistinct, but the more they walked, the louder it grew and the more recognizable. It was Jordan, Rep knew that without any doubt, and he was crying in a way that should have been impossible.
The crying felt broken, and immediately Rep knew without a doubt what Jordan was crying over, even without opening his eyes quite yet, even without his mind being able to process what he knew. Someone had -
- "Not yet," she warned, more sternly now, and her cold grip cut through the crying and the one thought that hadn't quite surfaced fully. "Don't open your eyes."
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Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 2:26 pm
Rep held on to her hand, feeling in some deep and visceral way that it was important to keep the cold hand in his grasp. Around her he always felt insane, as if everything was all wrong. There was a dissociation, a sense that he was outside himself looking in, that some detached part of him felt disgust for the vulnerability and need he felt, the way she seemed to flicker always between all three facets of womanhood to him, the maiden, the crone and the mother
She was terrifying and yet he couldn't help but be helplessly hopelessly drawn to her. He remembered vaguely a story, a story about a guy who went to hell...hades? He went somwhere to rescue someone and they were like don't ******** look behind you, don't ever look back, don't look back or you'll die, don't look back or she'll be dead forever.
He remembered that story because it felt like his entire life.
The crying was horrible to hear, because he knew who it was and it hurt to know he'd seen the other man cry too many times. This was worse, this was something worse and there was a stab in his chest as though someone had taken the black twisted ceremonial dagger artifact that hung there and plunged it into his heart at the thought of it.
He didn't open his eyes, just - like a child - he held onto her tighter.
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Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 2:38 pm
But the further they walked the worse it got.
Not the crying exactly, the crying itself was gone. These voices weren't even recognizable but something about them was pulling him down, as if tangible hands were dragging at his feet forcing him to take two steps back for every step he took forward. His legs felt leaden, heavy, and it was a struggle to even stay conscious. There were voices too, nonsensical voices, and they were all repeating a single word over and over again-
- But her cold grasp of him, less a hand then the feeling just pure numbing cold would not let him even begin to make sense of it. Every time he tried, he forgot, in cycles, over and over again as the voices repeated, as his mind tried to formulate a concept of what they were saying and then quickly forgot trying to. It was a taxing process though, and at some point he had forgotten so much it was difficult to remember what he was doing in the first place.
And he was so tired, and the voices were still hammering at his window to remember a very specific -
"Are you tired?" she questioned, but it was not concern in her tone. "Is this as far as you can go?"
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Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 2:47 pm
Everything disintegrated around him like a bad trip, the world feeling like it was spinning around him, hands pulling at him, weight across his shoulders, everything coaxing him down, down down to something that his nature told him he wanted.
He couldn't hear it, he couldn't tell what was out there, snapped back into the beginning of his thought process like sleep paralysis. He couldn't - couldn't wake up - but to sleep ...sleep felt like death here. It felt like the only way was out, that there was no way back.
Rep kept going because his whole life it was something he'd gotten very, very good at.
There had been so many times where he'd thought he could go no further, where everything was unbearable and that it would be so sweet, so very satisfying just to rest.
But every time he came to a point like that there was something in the core of him, that blackened and twisted voice in him, that feeling that was like a great dragon coiled in him, fat with decades of sapped confidence and leeched potential that looked at him, curled its lip and spat that he didn't deserve rest, that people like him had nothing to look forward to but the hope that one day things might be better, that there'd be something more.
To give up was to surrender to that feeling, to admit with finality that he deserved something he knew with an iron certainty that he did not.
He was tired but he shook his head because he was always ******** tired and even in spite of it, in spite of the toxic draining bitterness that sloshed around inside him, that he had never yet found the furthest point he could go to.
"I... I can keep going." he said through gritted teeth, with a voice so fragile it didn't feel like his own.
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Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 3:15 pm
"Of course," she replied, and it Rep had expected to be commended, it was a lukewarm response.
The last segment, well, it was indescribable. It was simultaneously the feeling of waiting for something incredible to happen and the terror of knowing the inevitable would happen at the same time. It was anticipation, and it wasn't his anticipation or hers but something far more abstract and impassive.
This part though, it felt easier, and she laughed a bit as she lead him, and it felt like she was also in her element as Rep felt underneath his feet where it had been void the cold texture of stone, and then soft grass and occasionally the sound of birds, wings, fluttering overhead. There was the light rush of free-falling water, and the bare glint of sunlight on his skin.
"He never changes," she said, but it felt like something she simply remarked because she could. "Despite being the one who wanted things to change the most."
At last, when it was just purely grass underneath his feet, and it was soft and warm and it was impossible not to hear the birds and wildlife and fountains of water, she stopped. "We are here."
But if Rep opened his eyes in front of him was a cage. It was very specifically sized for him, almost a small room with an assortment of pillows, all in various animal pelt colours decorated fastidiously along the corners. Next to this specific cage was a smaller line of them, all with various animals of all shapes and sizes. A white bird that looked like it was sleeping, a small rodent - probably a rat of some sort -, a house cat, and then oddly enough, just a potted plant. None of them seemed too interested in Rep though, and she just stood there, waiting.
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Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 3:29 pm
Rep spent his entire life in a flurry of overwhelming emotions, every high impossibly high and every low almost intolerably low. It was perhaps this roller coaster of daily ups and downs that gave him the ability to stand the strange mingled anxiety that the place they passed through now filled him with.
He kept his eyes closed, feeling vulnerable and clumsy without his sight, normally keen. It was like being a blinkered or hooded wild animal, led by a tether, and his pride resented it.
But still, some other part of him, the principled and loyal part said that he owed her and she had gained his respect, so he endured.
The place they found themselves in was more pleasant to Rep, used to wilder places, used to animals and to the water, reminded of the cliffs in the summer. Finally he was permitted to see and opening his eyes, he looked around himself, immediately drawn by the animal pelt patterns, his favourite sort of decor.
Her strange collection of pets (or what he assumed were her pets) got a passing glance from him.
"You always struck me as someone who'd keep something big and scary, a lion, a tiger, something like that." he said idly, in typical Rep fashion thinking aloud. "Something ******** dramatic you could lean against and look completely ******** beautiful."
He looked back to her. "But aye, where is here?" he asked. "And what do you want from me?" Because he wasn't about to insult her and himself by assuming for even a moment that she'd brought him out here out of the kindness of her heart.
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Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 3:50 pm
"It wouldn't be something I would choose," she responded simply, unmoving like the neat rows of headless statues behind her. "If you do not sleep, then you belong here, is that not a peaceful solution?"
One of the cages rattled, but it was difficult to tell which one.
"Motivation," she continued as response to his questions, stilling the rattling cage, "Passion, concern." That sly smile again. "What is not his becomes mine, and everything here is mine."
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Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 4:02 pm
Rep faltered a beat, giving the cold figure a look of uncertainty. He wasn't good at hiding his emotions any more than he was at controlling them and once again he felt out of his depth. There was anger there, anger at her for speaking in riddles, but very quickly that slinking dark voice in his subconscious twisted it around as a weapon against him, she wasn't speaking in riddles, he was probably just too stupid to understand and that was all there was to it.
He was startled briefly by the cages. "Look. I want to do what you ask." he said. "But I want to keep my memories. Beyond that I'll do whatever you say, and you can have whatever you want from me."
Because at the end of the day, he didn't place an inherent value on anything else other than Harrison.
He looked at the cage again. It reminded him of that horrible, horrible reaching white cage he'd almost fallen into in a portal malfunction, saved only at the very last minute from whatever fate it had represented. He didn't know if he wanted to face that again.
He didn't know who the "he" was she referred to either, and he found that concerning. Feeling bold he asked anyway. "Who is he?"
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Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 8:04 pm
And the moment Rep asked that a part of him knew it was too late.
Several things happened simultaneously the moment Rep tried to ask, and ultimately, to remember. The first was the churning that had been in the back of his mind, firmly suppressed this entire time, there was what felt like a snapping sensation and then the barricade broke and he almost knew what it was, what the crying had been about what the voices had been saying, chanting, repeating over and over and-
- in that same moment, only a belated second later, cold hands pushed him into the cage, he was falling, deeper, deeper than the cage should have ever been, and there was a click as the door closed above him and he was falling deeper still-
- And then silence. It did not hurt when he landed and Rep found himself instead, waking up in the Death division office. It was late, probably evening, and it was only on second inspection that Rep might have realized it wasn't actually the office but a room that appeared to be the office. Draped over all the desks were the usual division culprits, in a light sleep: Mark, Sam, Oz, and even his own lead, who for a moment almost looked like he was still awake if not for the fact that none of them were moving or consciously aware Rep was around.
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Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 10:17 pm
Rep didn't have time to brace himself for what happened, hit by a wall of realisation and strangeness like a tidal wave. There wasn't time to resist and he wouldn't have known how to even if he could have.
The cage was a horror, one he struggled to understand as he fell.
Only he didn't have to.
He was somewhere else. Somewhere else, the office..or...something like the office. Everyone else was out for the count, and that in itself was deeply ******** worrying. Death division didn't just take naps (apart from Mark who took naps all the ******** time) and it mostly meant people could be at risk.
His first instinct was to try to wake them, starting with the one who looked most likely to actually get up.
"Sir." he said aloud, not sure it would work at all.
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Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 10:40 pm
But even the noise didn't help - none of them stirred. They were breathing, perhaps, but felt more like unusual statues rather than their actual selves. For a moment though, Rep could have sworn he saw a pair of eyes staring right at him, from where Sam was sitting, and when he turned around Sam's eyes were indeed open, but the latter was still unmoving.
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