Prompt 11 (Burning Bright): This time of year there are candles popping up in just about every shop selling anything. Maybe you stopped by one of these shops yourself, or maybe a friend wanted to get you a thoughtful gift, but somehow you’ve come into possession of a pair of candles. They don’t seem to be anything spectacular upon first glance; they are pretty and well made and have a pleasant fragrance. They would be pretty decor on their own, but once you light them, they really shine. Nonstop. For twenty four hours. No matter what you do, you cannot put the flame out. No wind, no water, no fire extinguisher–nothing–will extinguish the flame. You just have to wait until it burns itself out. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem very flammable so you don’t have to worry about other things catching on fire in the meantime. Wherever you keep the candle will have a pleasant smell for several days after the flame extinguishes.
Faustite didn't know what day it was. He used to keep track of them. He used to give himself a day off every week, usually each Saturday, so he could spend time with his boys, or go exploring in the Rift, or be as unproductive and indolent as possible.
Ever since the incident, however, he didn't know what day it was. He didn't ask, and they never told him. Instead, they told him to focus on recovery. That he shouldn't mourn, because they'd find some other solution when multiple rounds of surgery failed. They told him he needed more PT before he could get out of the wheelchair, even if only for a moment, but they wouldn't give him a date or a day. No matter how many days passed, the answer was always the same: he needed more time. He needed more healing.
Faustite thought of telling Albite to fetch him a starseed. He thought of taking one from the emergency stash that Heliodor collected. But each time he thought about it, he was reminded of the simple fact that he couldn't swallow anything more than the barest sips of liquid. He'd never tossed a starseed in his grate before, either. Would the end result be the same? Would he heal himself, or grow more youmafied for it? Not that such a fate seemed so terrible anymore; at least he would have full control over his body again. At least he wouldn't be confined to a chair and beholden to the graces of others in taking care of him.
Albite was out for the moment, not that Faustite could ask where he was going. Albite volunteered that information nonetheless. The cupboards were depleted and he needed to run to the store.
Faustite didn't want to go with him. He asked to be placed by the bay window in the turret instead, where he could look out at the surreal landscape that ensconced the sunken city. If nothing else, he could daydream a while, maybe lose his own dolorous condition in the swirl of foreign, counterfeit stars that rendered a mockery of earth's sky. Maybe he'd catch glimpses of the youma that usually milled around the house sometimes. But if fate wanted to spare him, then perhaps he would fall asleep, never to be roused again.
noir songbird
for alkmene to bring some candles~
Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 3:29 am
There was something objectively agonizing about being helpless. It was helplessness that had dogged Alkmene's heels int he White Moon, he gathered--helplessness that had made him cast aside Malachi and become. And yet helplessness still bit at his heels as a Corrupt Senshi.Magic that refused to work, had to be beaten into cooperation, practically. But he overcame that, too, and he was Eternal, and the bargain was supposed to be that he could do things now. He was useful, powerful, a dangerous weapon in his General-King-beloved's arsenal, in a way where it was a delight to be wielded.
And yet. Here he was, helpless once again. Not for himself, per se, not like it had been--but helpless to do anything to help Faustite, who was suffering. For the first time,h e wished he had some kind of magic that healed, that could fix things--but he wasn't the Senshi of nice, soft things. Envy didn't fix, it wounded. It consumed.
His hair-flowers were a reflection of his dour mood; withered blooms and sharp thorns, a tangle in his hair to reflect the tangle in his chest.
It was stupid, he knew, to come visit Faustite with nothing but himself and a pair of candles. But stupid little gifts were his eternal mein, here, and a pair of homemade blackberry tea-scented candles certainly felt like a stupid little gift. and maybe something so small and human might be welcome, when Faustite was confined to Negaspace for however long his recovery took.
His footsteps weren't exactly quiet or sneaky, but Alkmene still called out a subdued "it's me," as he moved into the room. Otherwise, he was quiet--Albite was here far more than anyone else, which meant Faustite was, inevitably, getting his ear talked off constantly. So rather than more inane chatter, he moved himself so that he was in Faustite's field of vision, and produced the pair of candles from subspace, setting them on the windowsill.
Faustite had heard that some people had luck with their situations by changing their perspective. It was a strange tip, and a stranger one to act on, but with little else he could do, Faustite elected to experiment. Without any guidance for it, he couldn't come up with much; it felt altogether like an insult to tell himself that at least he could still see out of both eyes. But something that he'd always had, something that he'd taken for granted, being retained instead of lost only exacerbated his anger and sorrow for what was lost.
The other side of that, the other side that he tried to explore, was the benefits of being silenced. He couldn't be expected to provide answers in short order if he needed to sign and someone else needed to interpret. He wouldn't have to shout over a crowd for silence if he was giving a briefing and they were acting up. Nor would he need to speak during a briefing. But none of those circumstances excused him from such scenarios — they only rendered them more challenging. Thus was Faustite left at a loss for turning over his situation in a more positive light.
Being unable to walk felt more imprisoning than all other setbacks. He couldn't bob his leg in his usual restless demeanor, for one leg was yet too mangled for it and the other suffered lances of pain at the peak of such a movement. His hands were ever sore, shot up as they were, so moving them was more of the same.
Faustite tore his attention from the window when he heard a voice accompany the entrant to his room. He didn't need to look to see who it was, but being able to look at Alkmene was its own pleasure. Save, perhaps, for now, when it looked like the plants on his head had died and were being dried for a funeral bouquet. It was only belatedly that his attention fell to the candles in his grasp, which were then perched on the windowsill like a signal of times long past.
He motioned for Alkmene to have a seat on the bay window. It would've suited him, having that unearthly light of a false sky as a backdrop to his cool-colored outfit. Clashing with that would be his own warm flame, and perhaps that of the candle. As he thought about it, he summoned to hand his strange charcoal pencil and wrote Thanks on his arm, which soon vanished from the stark surface to appear somewhere else in Alkmene's periphery, ablaze for only a few moments before it ceased to be.
noir songbird
Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2024 12:51 pm
A gesture of invitation was more than enough, and Alkmene sat himself down on the bay window seat, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back on his hands. His eyes flicked to the view out the window--the Rift, as strange and ethereal as ever, awesome in the archaic sense--something to inspire awe, wonder, fear.
But he only let himself dwell for a moment before turning his attention fully to Faustite, as that magical, fiery "Thanks" wrote itself at the edge of his vision. Enough to see it, to smile, to nod--though his smile was neither as broad nor as flirtatious as it usually was. There was a seriousness inherent to the situation, and it even weighted Alkmene.
"A little bit of literally brightening the place up, you know." From his subspace, he produced a pack of matches, and shifted to sit up so both hands were free and he could light them. "I swear, I didn't used to be a craft fair kind of person, but you find the best s**t there."
As Faustite's attention lingered on them, he realized that he hadn't paid much thought to candles in years. Surely, when he was a human, he thought about them in the context of romance — candlelit dinners, candles floating on the surface of water, tea lights in a bowl served at a beachside wedding — and he had surely liked them for their soft ambience. But then his life jettisoned him down a more utilitarian path, where he had forgotten so much of what appealed about the sentiment behind gestures and gifts, and he learned to use himself as a light source, and candles became superfluous things that provided less light than the roaring fire behind his grate. But that was the world he had to live in, not the one he chose to inhabit.
He reached for one, but that reach stopped when Alkmene showed his intent to light them. That, too, was at odds with his usual reactions — why waste matches when your husband was on fire, he thought — but there was an intent behind that, too. That he needn't waste his energy on such a task, simple and easy as it was, nor should he have to suffer the aftertaste of wax wick in the back of his mouth.
Faustite could appreciate that, and swallow down the small protests that Alkmene was wasting perfectly good matches.
His arm wasn't much of a writing surface. He often had to write around the holes where arrows had pierced him, so the resultant writing was sloppier than his usual hand. It slowed the conversation and it limited what he could write at any given time before that writing was displayed to Alkmene, in chunks, that was an abysmal approximation of a real dialogue. But there was nothing else for it, so he wrote nonetheless:
Used to like visiting those. Seeing what people could do with their hands. Been a long time since I had candles.
noir songbird
Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2024 1:59 pm
The pack of matches disappeared back into subspace with half a thought, and Alkmene took a breath to take in the smell of lit candle. Warm, comforting, pleasant.
...Maybe he needed more scented candles for his apartment.
The pencil might be clunky for having a dialogue, but Alkmene was glad for it anyway--better to be able to converse than not, and now he had a new piece of information to slot away. He'd thought the gift a little silly--but it seemed that he'd fallen accidentally into something better than expected, which made him feel warm, and brought a more genuine smile to his face.
"Good. The one I found is running every weekend until Christmas--I'll stop by again, pick up some more." And some other gifts, perhaps. The sort of handmade things one only found at such places; perhaps another dish of succulents, because for all that this house was shared, it ever felt to Alkmene as if it needed more life, more green. It was the nature of Negaspace to be dark and oppressive, after all.
And, when Faustite was well enoguh for it, Haru would have to take Eion on a shopping excursion. There would surely be a fair to find, no matter the time of year.
The words burned, smoldered, then vanished as smoke. The words were as tenuous and transient as Faustite's hope that he could recover enough to use his legs again, let alone walk with his boy around an innocuous craft fair to stare at knickknacks together. He was well aware the impossibility of it, perhaps too acutely, though Faustite felt there was little he could do for it. Positivity all but seemed worthless in the face of recovery.
Faustite sighed through his nose, the smoke of it rising lazily toward the ceiling. His smoldering attention fell on the boy briefly before returning to his arm.
They said I might never walk again. I don't want to be trapped in this chair forever.
And the intimation behind that, he couldn't yet bring himself to state. He couldn't bring himself to ask that of anyone, let alone the boys he trusted most to follow through with his wishes. It was a frustrating standstill, a crossroads which he couldn't pass, no matter how he wrestled with the notion in his head. The Negaverse had little use for a wheelchair-bound officer, and Faustite himself had little lust for a life where he couldn't feel the simple pleasure of being able to walk wherever he wanted, or feel the wind through his hair as he ran. Unable to express himself in body or in voice produced a life so antithetical to how he used to live that it seemed cruel and unusual to go through with it.
But to ask was yet beyond him.
Sorry, he wrote there after. Been on my mind a lot.
noir songbird
Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2024 3:21 pm
A simple "I'd want you to be there" stuck in Alkmene's throat. It would be so easy to say under other circumstances. Easy to offer the invitation, but...
It sat heavy in his chest, this knowledge. That Faustite's doctors thought he might never walk again. That this might be his life, forever--confined to a shrunken world, removed from the front lines--it felt...wrong, to even contemplate. It also lit a spark of anger in Alkmene's chest, one that wanted to find that b***h of a Princess and her little helper and make them pay in blood for what they'd done. Not something he could accomplish on his own, not yet--but he could plan.
He shook his head, briefly.
"Of course it's been on your mind. But there was magic to put you back together when you got blown apart. There has to be a way to fix this." He needed it to be true, if he was honest. The thought of losing Faustite...he'd thought he had, for that terrible, too-long night between the failed purification and the notification that Faustite had ascended to General-King.
"And we're all here for you. For however long it takes."
Albite was confident he would pull through, even when he doubted himself, but Alkmene was more practical. Alkmene did not want to settle for faith when there were options to be had — fixes to pursue. Things that had set him right once before when others were just as hopeless about a cure. There weren't any little bones for Taenite to nick from Axinite's office this time, but if there was an alternative, he trusted Alkmene to find it. The boy didn't stop looking for better ways to get what he wanted, and those better ways had led him to Faustite.
Can't keep living through youma's bodies. It asks so much of them.
But he'd done it — he'd needed to if he wanted to stay sane. Always the lower cadre of youma, being the ones who could seldom talk or manifest anything beyond instinct. To possess the smarter ones was a punishment that really only Headache deserved, and as much as that youma was aptly named, it seldom deserved Faustite imprisoning it like that. Still, he sorely needed those moments of freedom, fleeting as they were, and frightening for Albite just the same. If nothing else, they reminded him of the things he missed — the things he needed to find a way to recover for.
He looked at the candlelight all caught up in Alkmene's dead flowers, like a dour reflection or a funeral procession. All this dreariness — there was no way around it now, was there?
Your flowers are wilted.
There was no way for him to fix that. either.
noir songbird
Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2024 6:09 pm
Alkmene nodded, firmly. If he had to scour the entire stupid universe for a way to help Faustite recover, then so be it; there was an answer out there somewhere.
"Asks a lot of you, too, to be restricted to whatever you can get with youma." They were different, after all; most, in Alkmene's experience, small and animal and only so capable. And the ones that were smart enough to be more useful were also smart enough to be annoying. Then again, his experience would always be different--as a Corrupt, he was less "comrade" or "master" and more "convenient snack."
Still. It was something. Even if that something seemed so woefully inadequate, by Alkmene's judgement.
He frowned, at the mention of his flowers, and reached up to pluck one out of the twisting thorns. Dead and wilted, indeed, and it made him huff, displeased.
"Yeah, well." He twirled it between index and middle fingers, shaking his head. "I want to be able to do more. To help you now, rather than in the theoretical future, when I find a fix." A wry, bitter little smile. "I don't like it. Seeing you suffer. Knowing that there's nothing I can do, with my own hands, to help someone I love."
Normally, he was careful with the word. These were not normal circumstances. And anyway, if Faustite didn't know the shape of his devotion by now...
But it should go said, between them, in this little moment lit by flickering candlelight.
Cheater, he wrote. That Alkmene should get to say it when Faustite was robbed of uttering a single word… But that could as well have been the core of Alkmene's powers rubbing off on him. How could it not be, when he was met time and again with the instinct to say what he could no longer express? It was like Albite's obtuse little games where he puzzled out ways to make exceptions for himself, but Alkmene never acted with that manner of unintentional hurtfulness.
Nor did Faustite think it was meant to wound him, though wound him it had. There was always and ever room to make amends.
Alkmene had professed his regret for being unable to help Faustite while Faustite had been staring at those everburning flames. He understood the sentiment — there was something arresting and helpless about being made to wait, even if it was on one's own abilities that one depended for that moment of salvation. Faustite hated it, too; he saw that struggle often in how he wanted, desperately, to be halfway decent at his job, but the road to that aim was a winding one that he needed to walk with his own two feet. Knowing that never erased nor invalidated the frustrations that came with being made to wait.
Faustite wasn't a waiter. He didn't work in a ******** restaurant. Neither did Alkmene, though he was sure the boy would get good tips.
He supposed that his next request wouldn't be of much help, and might be detrimental in the long run, but it satisfied that impulsivity for 'something better' and Alkmene's impulsivity for 'some way to help right now'. So, taking up his pen again, he wrote out one last inquiry, in a manner that only Faustite worded inquiries:
Get the whiskey from the cupboard downstairs.
noir songbird
Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2024 5:03 pm
Alkmene cracked an actual, genuine smile at the accusation, even if it was still tinged with a hint of sadness.
"I'll say it again, when you can say it back. Promise." It would be easier, he hoped, a second time. And require much less dire circumstances. But making ti a "when"--making this a little promise between them--it helped, Alkmene thought. A certainty to look forward to, when Faustite was more healed.
The request got a nod, and Alkmene hopped off the window seat.
"Be right back with it," he said. Inadvisable, sure. Not the greatest coping mechanism or whatever. But sharing some whiskey sounded like a good enough time to him.
As he moved by Faustite, he paused. Leaned over to press a kiss to Faustite's hair.
"I'm glad you're here," he said, and then he wound away downstairs to retrieve the requested bottle.
Faustite didn't know if he could meet that 'when'. The surgeon that tried to treat him doubted it. He was told that regaining his voice would be either magic or a miracle, but he shouldn't lose hope because they lived in a world of magic. Because Faustite himself was half-made of magic, but none of that magic ******** helped him right now. None of that magic let him speak to his boy, his husband, in the simplest terms. He couldn't express anymore but with his hands and actions.
The gesture, small yet grand as it was, felt reassuring in ways that any hopeful outcome spoken by a nurse could only hope to compare. He reached out to squeeze Alkmene's hand before the boy departed, all pleasant looks on the way to the door. It would open, it would shut, and for a time, Faustite would be left with his thoughts.
All of his boys seemed to accept what had happened. Perhaps they didn't like it, perhaps they didn't think it was fair, but they were looking for ways to live with it. And maybe they didn't think that Faustite's invalid status would last for the rest of his life — maybe some of them thought it was putting the cart before the horse to think so far ahead about it — but they were trying. Like Alkmene, they were making do in a manner that befit them. And that, in itself, was reassuring that they cared about him far beyond the ways that he could express himself. That his ability to walk on his own or his dependency on their willingness to wheel him around hadn't dissolved the strong bonds he formed.
He wasn't at their level, however. Be it a product of what he endured to get to this point or his youmafication or the prematurity of it, Faustite trailed far behind them in his ability to readily accept his circumstances. Where Alkmene could wear a steeled expression and march on unhindered by what happened to him, Faustite lacked that intrinsic strength for his own plights. So. however long this lasted, even if it was indefinite, Faustite recognized that it would take him far longer to reach that same level of acceptance.
Maybe, someday, it would come. But until then? He would rage and he would weep, silenced.
noir songbird
could work as a fin/ftb if you want it to? but i am all for continuing too!
