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 Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2022 10:55 am
It was an hour, perhaps two, after the slow black tears had dried and dewy numbness settled inside him. Muffled his thoughts like a soft blanket, insulating him, distancing them from the tumultuous horizons of happening. He had stayed against his desk for all that time. He was glad for the lack of disturbances.
After another handful of minutes, Faustite forced himself to his feet. His leg ached, but its pain was a whisper to his wrist's shout. It was then that he saw himself to the infirmary, hoping the breaks and bruises would tell the story that he was reluctant to voice.
It was when he came back that he saw the box: an unassuming thing, squat and rectangular, sitting on his desk. Placed deliberately for how it sat there, obvious, begging him to sit and inspect it. As he rounded his desk, he discovered a frame that he hadn't noticed before; he never kept photos in the office for fear and expectation that they may be used against him. But this one wasn't a photo —
Handwritten sheet music, looked like. And a tag taped to the corner, confirming its sender.
He wondered, at first, if these things showed up due to his absence. Like paying tribute to a god, hoping for more rains, but — he doubted it was that. Alkmene was a practical one; if he recognized that Faustite went missing, he would spend his time looking instead of making offerings to an altar-desk. So, then, these were gifts. Out of the blue? While they swelled his heart in that quiet, boyish way that he always struggled to smother, he tried to temper his emotional whiplash with his confusion.
So, sitting on his desk with his foot on the stool and his leg crossed over a knee, he set the frame atop the glass top and summoned the bearer of gifts.
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Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2022 3:06 am
The lurch of a summoning at first lit a sense of horror in Alkmene. Faustite was missing, so who would be calling him? Before he had the full chance to register where he had been called to and by whom, there was a brief moment where he was half-certain he was being yanked into a General-Sovereign's office to be told that Faustite was gone and he was adrift.
But no. No, instead, there--behind the desk--with the gifts Alkmene had let sit, when he came into the office and found no General and signs of a long absence--was, indeed, the one he had been looking for.
It was warm, int he office. Like it should be.
"You're alive," he said, and there was an almost-crack in his voice, a stemmed tide of emotion, because if he let it all spill out he would undoubtedly spill too much. "What the hell happened?"
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Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2022 5:43 pm
Faustite's attention cast off from Alkmene's face, to somewhere beyond his shoulder, where it lingered for a breath, then two, then returned to Alkmene.
It was his flaw — some kind of personality defect in him, he was sure — that he often kept to himself. Most of his team knew his civilian name, but hadn't known his real name. Hadn't known anything about his history as a human, or the General who had him last, or the General before that. Most of them didn't know his prior youma, Squiddy. They may have assumed that Headache was his first.
So when Alkmene asked what happened, he didn't have an answer ready. He had only bruises and a splinted wrist.
"Lysithea's gone," he said at last, trusting his emotional weariness to keep an even keel. He slid from his seat on his desk, started to skirt it as he pulled a cincher from nowhere. "Defected," he added, as he fitted the leathery piece around his metal midsection. While he tried, twice, thrice, his left hand flinched and twitched with each spike of pain, and he could not fit together the clasps with only his right.
Sighing something tremulous, he said, "Need your help with this."
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Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2022 7:40 pm
Lysithea's gone.
It didn't answer the question of what had happened, but it was like a blow. Alkmene hadn't known her well, but he knew she was important to Faustite--that he'd called her his sister. Maybe it had been true, maybe it hadn't. Sometimes, in the right way, lies had a way of becoming their own truths, and if there had been affection there...
"If she had anything to do with this," Alkmene said, and there was tempered heat in his voice, "I'll kill her if I find her again." It didn't really seem in Lysithea's nature, but maybe he'd misjudged her nature. "I mean, if you'd rather she live, fine, but otherwise."
Alkmene inhaled. Exhaled. Faustite made a request of him--and the cincher was invaluable anyway, given that it allowed for much easier physical contact. Which Alkmene wanted very much right then. So he moved behind, carefully pulled the garment into place, let his fingers find the clasps--it wasn't so different from some of the pieces he wore as a civilian--and then, once it was done, with some delicacy, he slid his arms around Faustite's shoulders from behind and pressed his face against Faustite's neck.
It was warm. Which meant Faustite was vital and on fire and alive.
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Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2022 4:57 am
Hugs often came with a blade sharp fear that he had to swallow down. Knowing that, when body touched body like this, people burned. And there were certain people in this world — if only a handful — that he never wanted to see as ash.
And those people, they could tell. They were aware of it, he thought. They found it in the way his muscles first tightened when they touched him, and the way he consciously relaxed them under his touch. Still, he was always challenged to pull someone in close, to press them against a grate that was banked by a single piece of material. If he was Eion, he had fewer concerns, but —
He wrapped his arms around his boy's chest, and they settled downward, over skin, at the small of his back. Cool skin felt pleasant to touch, and his boy was here now, something real, someone to affirm that he was in a place that could be safe. He smelled Alkmene's sweet shampoo, whose scent he could never quite place.
Both wrists hurt terribly, but only one was broken. He pressed his more functional hand against the small of Alkmene' back, urging him closer.
"She's why I'm here." Alkmene wasn't one to hold hands or dote, but he expressed his care in a fierceness that craved the end of their enemies. Ever quiet about what he wanted, too. It was a terrible thing, Faustite thought, to have to love so covertly. But Alkmene endured hardships that he could never understand. Perhaps that was a reward, after all.
"Fault Ilse instead. She defected. Tried to kill her, but she brought a Saturn Knight at her beck."
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Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2022 9:01 pm
Alkmene felt the tension, waited, let it pass. He stayed where he was; an act of trust and, also, an indulgence of his desire to not let go, to not let Faustite out of his sight until he was certain his General was fully healed. Not a wish he expected to have granted, but he got a moment, here, to let himself think he could.
Not that Faustite needed his faulty, unreliable protection, but the thought was there.
Anyway, Faustite was pulling him close, and that was enough. And he had a better explanation. Fine, alright, he owed Lysithea one get-out-of-murder-free card, since apparently she'd done something to ensure that Faustite got back to them--to him, and tot he rest of the team. Ilse, though....
Alkmene hissed softly.
"Ilse and this damn Knight, then. I'll do whatever I can to bring you their starseeds." Not worth bringing into the Negaverse, Alkmene judged. Maybe that wasn't for him to choose, but who was going to reprimand him for executing a traitor and an enemy?
"You've gotten checked out, yeah? By medical?" The injuries were obvious not just by eye, but from the way Faustite handled him; how he made use of one hand and not the other. Something Alkmene was all too familiar with.
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Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2022 9:33 pm
A fiery boy of all the boys. Temperament matched Faustite's middle. He knew there was no dissuading that, just as he could not beg his own core to stop burning. "Take someone with you. One likes to ambush with the other," he cautioned. "And your magic is more fickle than the rest."
It was a riddle yet unsolvable, and while Alkmene did not bemoan it vocally, Faustite assumed it grated him all the same. For what good was it, to be a senshi, if the crux of his powers were so unreliable? Of course, Alkene could improvise; there were few problems that a can of hairspray and a lighter could not resolve (or, at least, transform into an eminently easier problem to solve). But when pitted against enemy magic and weapons, despite Alkmene's resourcefulness, that put him ever at a disadvantage.
"See if Tama knows something about your magic." Little did he trust the cat, but that one had more experience than Albite's kitten. That much was demonstrated at their group meeting.
Faustite let his hand slip off of Alkmene's waist, hoping to ease its growing soreness. For the question, he rolled his eyes. "Much as medical can check me out. Most of them never know what to do with me." And the ones that do were always busy with others. In demand, he supposed, because they weren't dead from the neck up.
"Saw the frame and the box when I got back," he added, with a nod in their direction.
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2022 2:00 am
"I will," Alkmene promised. He even meant it, actually. "Waste of time to pick a fight I can't win." Lilith would be good backup, maybe--especially if his magic happened to cooperate for once. Or Albite, he was pretty sure he could trust Albite to have his back in a fight.
Or, y'know, his magic could start ******** working, and he could stop feeling like an attractive piece of decoration and start feeling like a useful member of the team, but that was, apparently, asking too much. At least there was another cat, now--bless Haymitch, but Alkmene did not get the impression he was particularly on point with his Guardian knowledge.
"I'll have a chat with him," he said, and then he sighed. "If he'll even help. Didn't exactly seem the fun, cooperative type." But he would have to try. There had to be some kind of answer. Something he could do to make it cooperate. If that thing was "just keep using it until it worked," fine. Whatever it took. "And as for medical, what, they can't splint a wrist? I can do that." There was a bubble of frustration underneath, at the constant dismissals his General recieved--just because Faustite had unusual biology didn't mean he wasn't still human, wasn't still worthy of being treated as such. And really, Alkmene was completely geared up to be frustrated about that, except, well.
Ah. Yes. If Faustite had seen his gifts, that certainly explained him being summoned. He was very glad his skintone didn't show flush easily, because he was sure his cheeks went red, and he tried to shrug it off.
"I stopped by with some Valentine's gifts. How I figured out you weren't here. Came into the office and it was cold--and it's never cold in here. I didn't exactly leave them on purpose, just--the question of where the hell you were was a lot more important, and there for you anyway, so. Uh. Chocolates and a transcribed copy of Verdi's 'Dies Irae.'"
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2022 6:09 pm
"Then ask Kamacite, too." If their newest cat could do nothing with itself, they would have to look outside the team. "Been a senshi for years. Might know something, or have heard something." And Alkmene was far more situationally aware and far less loud than Albite; Faustite doubted he would cow the dark sun.
And if neither of them knew, then what? Perhaps Axinite knew something as the head of Information. If not him, then they would ask the Queen. Even if he wanted to sidewind all over her shoes like a demented cat.
He rolled his eyes at himself while Alkmene was hidden from view. As the topic turned, he examined what became of his wrist. They managed a splint, yes; they managed many parts of him that still behaved humanly. But most of medical loathed to deal with his carbonaceous blood, or worry about transfusions, or look into his fiery side. He hadn't blamed them much, for he didn't want to know the details of his inner workings either, and that had only recently become a growing problem. Seemed it dovetailed with his increasing temper.
"They managed that." It looked… Serviceable. Not neat in the manner of a practiced hand, but she had been someone's protege, a Lieutenant whose triage skills were newly being put to use.
"Forgot about Valentine's," he explained as he separated from the boy. He picked up the metal frame with his more functional hand, examined the curve of each handwritten note. "Never got one before. Had mandatory ones in grade school, but nothing from the special ones. Stopped thinking about it after…" He breathed a smoke-laden sigh. "Everything."
He set it down only long enough to open the glass door to the bookcase behind him, then set the frame inside, where it stood among his steadily growing set of chapbooks and poetry anthologies.
"Thanks for that. For being here. Make it up to you sometime."
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2022 10:39 pm
"Kamacite, got it," Alkmene said. That was helpful--a Senshi who had been around for a long time. Maybe he had some idea of if there were others who had faulty, messy magic that wouldn't come to heel the way magic was supposed to. Lilith had never had such an issue, which meant there was something about Alkmene--and he was not happy with the idea of it being a personal inadequacy.
Ugh. Little to be done.
He took a look at the splint, and there was still a frown on his face--it looked messy, but at least it was the messiness of ordinary inadequacy, and not lack of care, as far as he could tell. A huff, between his teeth.
At least Faustite didn't seem too upset about the whole thing.
"If you need a better one, let me take a look; I'm not trained, but I've got some experience." Not something he intended to elaborate on, but put out there nonetheless.
He casually pulled himself up to sit on the desk, now that they had come apart; it was, he knew, sturdy enough to hold him, glass top or no, and he sort of liked it as a seat.
"I haven't exactly had much occasion to celebrate for a long time, so. I get that. Most of the guys I've been with haven't been worth it," Alkmene said. Unspoken, though obvious--'you are.'
He couldn't help but smile to see the framed piece put away. It had been a risk, he knew, but...something to show dedication and affection.
"Anyway, I--it was something I wanted to do, so. You're welcome. This, what we have--it's important to me."
And that was exactly as sappy as he was willing to get, but he hoped it was enough.
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Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2022 5:50 am
"Wasn't Rockatanskite this time. Think I'll survive." That Alkmene could, and would, help meant fewer possible trips to the infirmary. Provided no one ran him through, beat him within an inch of his life, or blew him into chunks. Again.
He hated that each of those could be finished with again.
"Won't object if you got into first aid. Would be helpful. Extra boon when your magic is sorted." When that happened. However it happened. Senshi magic was such an austere thing — not quite like youma abilities, though they ran similar lengths of time. He could produce fire from himself, real fire with effects one could expect from any source of fire, but senshi like Albite or Alkmene or Lilith? Potent illusions at best, easily ignored distractions at worst.
And for magic so transient and tenuous to stop working altogether? Faustite would understand if Alkmene was sorely offended at the powers that be. His source of magic, after all, was a rock in the sky instead of his own body.
"Used to get so excited for it." Faustite moved to sit, and was Eion once his a** found the stool. Opening the box demanded a measure of care and finesse with one hand, but he managed after a few quiet moments. "Forgot about it, then that wish came true." He smiled wryly for it.
He decided, then, that neither of them would have to suffer man's fickleness. Winced when he beckoned Alkmene to scoot closer. Wrong hand, he learned too late.
"Stay a while."
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