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sixthiterationlogs2017-11-02 12:53 pm
3ofswords) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2017-11-02 12:53 pm
[reset] 001 | the shit is running and it runs deep
WHO: Kira Akiyama
WHERE: Fountain, Village
WHEN: November 3rd and later
OPEN TO: OTA with closed starters
WARNINGS: Gunshot wound and recovery description
Fountain (Mark)
Cold and exhausted were feelings he was well acquainted with, but neither had gone this deep before. The fact of water and depth scrambled immediate memory; the cold of the water scrambled everything else. Cool shadows weren't specific enough to blur for his eyes, but the light above was surprisingly uninviting, sparking only that insect response to move toward it.
When had he fallen into water? Had he really made it back to the garage? Had he fallen at the shot scraping his head and only dreamed getting up?
Checking his pockets for the orange bottle was too much to ask of them, right now. He needed air to keep up the questions; he needed more visual cues to fill in the answers. Swimming wasn't something he'd done often, but he knew his head with its held breath would aim up, and there was at least that much light, showing a surface to be found. Kira raised his hands toward it, cupped them outward, and pulled himself toward the world like splitting a hole to crawl out of.
It was even colder, topside; his head broke enough to suck in a breath, spit it out, take a better one. His arms and shoulders rested at the top of the water, treading it as he looked around: a stone barrier, a short lip, open sky and trees. Water fell behind him from tiered stone, the deepest fountain he'd ever—well, the only fountain he'd ever fallen into. His hair plastered to his face, and dark clothes stuck to his chest, billowed up from his arms like water-wings before they deflated with his strokes. It wasn't far to the edge, and cold as it was—he set his hands to it, cautiously peering over.
It was some kind of park, the grass poorly kept, the trees edging in naturally, rather than within thin fences.
The strangest part was the thin layer of snow.
It had choked New York for months now, no services running to clear it—and no room on the car and body clogged streets for them to run. He'd hidden face-down in it on his way into the safehouse, and he'd fallen back into it after the shot—
One arm slung over the edge, bracing his side against it, he touched the tight skin over his temple. There was a rough patch, curling back into his hair, a raised texture under his fingers. The hair was still haphazardly clipped away, where Nicky had cut away a bloody mat to stitch him up. Just a graze. Just lucky enough to move his head at the right time, like luck ever had anything to do with it. Kira coughed, a tickle running down the back of his head and throat, and stopped examining the wound. He couldn't feel the stitches any longer, but it felt closed, and at least it let him know—that much was real. The shot, the care. He'd made it back to the garage. He'd finished what he'd set out to do.
Rolling himself over the edge of the fountain, he stayed low to the ground, cold earth at his wet back. The sky held no more answers than it did when he broke surface, or when the light was shifting on the water. Clouded, cold. The sun was setting, painting the scene pink and orange, but the dark didn't worry him. Dark was better now: without the rule of law, nobody had to wait for dark. They could take aim in the daylight and pull the trigger.
It was the loudest sound he'd ever heard, the hottest thing he'd ever felt. He'd already been throwing himself to one side, and the glancing blow had whipped his head right into the brick. When he'd woken up in the snow, his coat had been gone, with his cards, his cigarettes—but the orange bottle had been stuffed down into his underwear, elastic holding it at his hip. When he'd gotten up and shaken himself down, it had rolled out of his pant leg onto the pavement.
After that—he doesn't know what else was real. Nicky patched up his head, and someone had taken the pills to Ty's room. Had he gone there after? Had he woken up with a hand in his hair, fought off the collective panic of the safehouse and allowed the loss of his cards for the sake of Ty, awake, recovering?
Laying out in the cold wasn't going to resolve it. Kira curled himself up, shaky on his feet. Looking down at black scrubs, stuck to his body with heavy water and thinly falling snow—he didn’t question them. He wasn’t feeling the cold much at all, except where it tightened his chest. He needed shelter before anything else.
Coughing so hard it pinched the muscles in his back, he pitched one step forward, two more, before he tripped over his waterlogged boots and hit the frozen grass with a muffled crunch.
Inn (OTA)
Whatever he does or doesn’t believe about this place, he’s keeping his mouth shut until he has the strength to deal with it. So far no one’s walked him by the wall of strung up cops or offered him jerky of questionable origin—he wants to believe this is some waypoint, some remote safe haven in upstate New York they were transported to while he was unconscious. But if it is, everyone’s gone off the fucking rocker.
He’s never been here before. Certainly not as recently as three days ago. The gap in his memory, between getting shot and Ty’s sickbed—that doesn’t contain a fucking year.
It itches him to move, even as his body protests. Wrapping a blanket tighter around himself, he moves away from the fire, starting to explore the lower floor of the inn. The blackboard waylays him for awhile, especially finding his name at the top of it. A house description, a—man or woman’s name, he can’t really tell. Rook, in the same location. Eleven months. Fuck.
Wandering away from it, he roots around at the bar, finding nothing for his nerves. The kitchen is next, the fire banked low this late. The dim lighting is something he’s used to, trying to avoid being seen in the dark. When he bangs into a chair despite all his practice, he muffles a curse into the blanket folded over his hand, held close.
The hardest part of this, inability to locate alcohol notwithstanding, is this: feeling half blind and deaf to the world. No warnings, no sense of the people around him. Everything he used to keep himself safe stripped away. Everything that would tell him if these people were lying.
He hopes they’re lying about the booze, at least, as he presses onward to start going through the cabinets.
House 39 (Bodhi)
It takes another couple of days before he’s recovered enough to brave the cold. A closet upstairs outfits him with sweaters and coats, and he manages to find the brick house he supposedly cleaned out—which hits him with the first piece of evidence that he might have existed here. The maps, carefully stacked by the linens, bear his handwriting, if not his actual cartography skills.
He loses several more hours exploring the space, finding touches of occupation. Trinkets in a bedside table, a pack of clothes that don’t—look or feel like his, but there’s a box in the closet that has his name fixed to it on a tag.
Kira Akiyama.
His full name, scraps of wrapping paper inside. From a December past? How many winters has he lived in the last four months?
Finding gloves and a pair of jeans, he layers himself again for the cold, and starts the trek across the village to the house marked on his hand-drawn map. Bodhi might be there, with the rest of their things. With answers of some kind, further proof that he’s existed here, or proof that this is an elaborate delusion.
He assumes it isn’t the burnt out husk of a house lightly dampened by snow, and climbs the porch of the other where the path ends. It’s an odd thing, knocking on a door you supposedly own, but he does it all the same. The first thing he hears is a dog’s low bark, rising with the scrape of claws on wood. Then the call of a bird, a clatter at the window that draws his eye—is that a crow?
Then, footsteps, and all he can do is square up and stare at the door.
[Kira's been canon updated as well as reset; he now comes from 3 days later than his first arrival, with knowledge that he did save his boyfriend and a healing graze wound to the side of his head.]
WHERE: Fountain, Village
WHEN: November 3rd and later
OPEN TO: OTA with closed starters
WARNINGS: Gunshot wound and recovery description
Fountain (Mark)
Cold and exhausted were feelings he was well acquainted with, but neither had gone this deep before. The fact of water and depth scrambled immediate memory; the cold of the water scrambled everything else. Cool shadows weren't specific enough to blur for his eyes, but the light above was surprisingly uninviting, sparking only that insect response to move toward it.
When had he fallen into water? Had he really made it back to the garage? Had he fallen at the shot scraping his head and only dreamed getting up?
Checking his pockets for the orange bottle was too much to ask of them, right now. He needed air to keep up the questions; he needed more visual cues to fill in the answers. Swimming wasn't something he'd done often, but he knew his head with its held breath would aim up, and there was at least that much light, showing a surface to be found. Kira raised his hands toward it, cupped them outward, and pulled himself toward the world like splitting a hole to crawl out of.
It was even colder, topside; his head broke enough to suck in a breath, spit it out, take a better one. His arms and shoulders rested at the top of the water, treading it as he looked around: a stone barrier, a short lip, open sky and trees. Water fell behind him from tiered stone, the deepest fountain he'd ever—well, the only fountain he'd ever fallen into. His hair plastered to his face, and dark clothes stuck to his chest, billowed up from his arms like water-wings before they deflated with his strokes. It wasn't far to the edge, and cold as it was—he set his hands to it, cautiously peering over.
It was some kind of park, the grass poorly kept, the trees edging in naturally, rather than within thin fences.
The strangest part was the thin layer of snow.
It had choked New York for months now, no services running to clear it—and no room on the car and body clogged streets for them to run. He'd hidden face-down in it on his way into the safehouse, and he'd fallen back into it after the shot—
One arm slung over the edge, bracing his side against it, he touched the tight skin over his temple. There was a rough patch, curling back into his hair, a raised texture under his fingers. The hair was still haphazardly clipped away, where Nicky had cut away a bloody mat to stitch him up. Just a graze. Just lucky enough to move his head at the right time, like luck ever had anything to do with it. Kira coughed, a tickle running down the back of his head and throat, and stopped examining the wound. He couldn't feel the stitches any longer, but it felt closed, and at least it let him know—that much was real. The shot, the care. He'd made it back to the garage. He'd finished what he'd set out to do.
Rolling himself over the edge of the fountain, he stayed low to the ground, cold earth at his wet back. The sky held no more answers than it did when he broke surface, or when the light was shifting on the water. Clouded, cold. The sun was setting, painting the scene pink and orange, but the dark didn't worry him. Dark was better now: without the rule of law, nobody had to wait for dark. They could take aim in the daylight and pull the trigger.
It was the loudest sound he'd ever heard, the hottest thing he'd ever felt. He'd already been throwing himself to one side, and the glancing blow had whipped his head right into the brick. When he'd woken up in the snow, his coat had been gone, with his cards, his cigarettes—but the orange bottle had been stuffed down into his underwear, elastic holding it at his hip. When he'd gotten up and shaken himself down, it had rolled out of his pant leg onto the pavement.
After that—he doesn't know what else was real. Nicky patched up his head, and someone had taken the pills to Ty's room. Had he gone there after? Had he woken up with a hand in his hair, fought off the collective panic of the safehouse and allowed the loss of his cards for the sake of Ty, awake, recovering?
Laying out in the cold wasn't going to resolve it. Kira curled himself up, shaky on his feet. Looking down at black scrubs, stuck to his body with heavy water and thinly falling snow—he didn’t question them. He wasn’t feeling the cold much at all, except where it tightened his chest. He needed shelter before anything else.
Coughing so hard it pinched the muscles in his back, he pitched one step forward, two more, before he tripped over his waterlogged boots and hit the frozen grass with a muffled crunch.
Inn (OTA)
Whatever he does or doesn’t believe about this place, he’s keeping his mouth shut until he has the strength to deal with it. So far no one’s walked him by the wall of strung up cops or offered him jerky of questionable origin—he wants to believe this is some waypoint, some remote safe haven in upstate New York they were transported to while he was unconscious. But if it is, everyone’s gone off the fucking rocker.
He’s never been here before. Certainly not as recently as three days ago. The gap in his memory, between getting shot and Ty’s sickbed—that doesn’t contain a fucking year.
It itches him to move, even as his body protests. Wrapping a blanket tighter around himself, he moves away from the fire, starting to explore the lower floor of the inn. The blackboard waylays him for awhile, especially finding his name at the top of it. A house description, a—man or woman’s name, he can’t really tell. Rook, in the same location. Eleven months. Fuck.
Wandering away from it, he roots around at the bar, finding nothing for his nerves. The kitchen is next, the fire banked low this late. The dim lighting is something he’s used to, trying to avoid being seen in the dark. When he bangs into a chair despite all his practice, he muffles a curse into the blanket folded over his hand, held close.
The hardest part of this, inability to locate alcohol notwithstanding, is this: feeling half blind and deaf to the world. No warnings, no sense of the people around him. Everything he used to keep himself safe stripped away. Everything that would tell him if these people were lying.
He hopes they’re lying about the booze, at least, as he presses onward to start going through the cabinets.
House 39 (Bodhi)
It takes another couple of days before he’s recovered enough to brave the cold. A closet upstairs outfits him with sweaters and coats, and he manages to find the brick house he supposedly cleaned out—which hits him with the first piece of evidence that he might have existed here. The maps, carefully stacked by the linens, bear his handwriting, if not his actual cartography skills.
He loses several more hours exploring the space, finding touches of occupation. Trinkets in a bedside table, a pack of clothes that don’t—look or feel like his, but there’s a box in the closet that has his name fixed to it on a tag.
Kira Akiyama.
His full name, scraps of wrapping paper inside. From a December past? How many winters has he lived in the last four months?
Finding gloves and a pair of jeans, he layers himself again for the cold, and starts the trek across the village to the house marked on his hand-drawn map. Bodhi might be there, with the rest of their things. With answers of some kind, further proof that he’s existed here, or proof that this is an elaborate delusion.
He assumes it isn’t the burnt out husk of a house lightly dampened by snow, and climbs the porch of the other where the path ends. It’s an odd thing, knocking on a door you supposedly own, but he does it all the same. The first thing he hears is a dog’s low bark, rising with the scrape of claws on wood. Then the call of a bird, a clatter at the window that draws his eye—is that a crow?
Then, footsteps, and all he can do is square up and stare at the door.
[Kira's been canon updated as well as reset; he now comes from 3 days later than his first arrival, with knowledge that he did save his boyfriend and a healing graze wound to the side of his head.]
no subject
Though he might go with the flow if it got him something to drink, even as consideration of their supplies forces him to ask: "Are you sure? If you're saving it for anything, I'm not going to die for not having it."
His sanity might fray a bit, but, he's dealt with worse.
no subject
Moana went to dash up stairs before pausing. Her hands held out towards Kira while her eyes glanced towards the glowing coals. "Watch my fish." With that she turned and disappeared through the door. She was fast without shoes and didn't want to risk burning her food, which she had been waiting almost all day to eat.
She returned in about ten minutes. It took her some time to dig up the bottle as it had fallen beneath a lot of the reeds of milkweed that were currently being stored in her room. "Here. I don't want it." She assured him as she passed over the dusty bottle. "Everything okay?" Something seemed off but Moana wasn't going to push it. She remembered people disappearing and then reappearing and not being able to speak a word of the language. Maybe Kira forgot? If so, he didn't need people blaming him for what he can't control.
no subject
Is this how they live, here? Is he going to have to learn?
He's definitely finishing off what she offers.
"It's still in there," is the extent of his expertise upon her return. The smell has more or less filled the room, and it isn't bad. Maybe once he gets the hang of it--it can only be an improvement over the rationing back home. At least the rations here are fresh. As for her question--everything is about as far from okay as it's been in months, but he isn't sure how to say as much to someone who apparently knows his drink preferences. "Things are better now, I guess," he answers, with a cheers raise of the bottle by its neck. "Where did you get this, anyway?"
no subject
Moana has been in the village for almost a year. Things are different from her island but she's acclimated to the new setting with relative ease. Even without being the chief of this village; the urge to help and guide those around her had remained. Kira was acting weird but Moana thought that he was always acting a little weird.
She decided that he was more tense than he had been before but that didn't clue her in on what was wrong.
Her attention turned to the fish and she crouched down to poke at the wrapped creature with a stick. Pieces of the leaves crumbled away, leading Moana to think that it was finished cooking. Using a pair of tongs, she carefully removed the fish and placed it on the counter. It was too hot to eat but she'd used a knife to cut it open so she could pick around the bones once it cooled off.
As she worked she looked back at Kira, her dark eyes filled with an even mixture of curiosity and confusion. "We're you there?" She didn't wait and instead responded to his question. "There was a feast. That happens sometimes, not very often but the people who bring us here give us stuff. I have a pet pig, Itiiti, he hunts mushrooms and roots for me. He was given to me in a box. The feasts are a little more strange, they're usually set up here and I've been told they're meant to mark holidays sometimes." Moana had different holidays than most.
no subject
Kira leans against the counter a ways from her work, examining the bottle in his hand. He'll drink it later: kind of dire circumstances to get drunk in the public floor of a communal space, with some kid who hasn't acquired the taste trying to cook a few feet away. "I don't think I was; they only last so long," he guesses, trying to find an answer that doesn't make his situation so obvious. There might be more to learn if he keeps it up.
no subject
She turned towards her fish and carefully began to separate it into two halves. Steam rose from inside as she slowly began to pick out the bones and cartilage that she couldn't eat. Her stomach grumbled as the delicious smell filled her nose. "Well. There are sometimes feasts." She repeated herself a bit, trying to reorganize her scattered thoughts. "I don't know why but maybe because the people who brought us here feel bad and want to give us something." She pinched a bit of her fish and popped it into her mouth. It was very hot but she was too hungry to care.
"Hungry?" Moana gestured towards the fish that she was both snacking on and preparing in front of her.
no subject
Fish is a lot easier to think about, though this is probably the first time he's having it fresh, cooked plain in a fire. Compared to the fact of having tried literal dog food in the last month, picking bits of meat off the bones is the most amazing thing he's eaten in awhile. "God, this is good," he sighs, digging in like Mark hadn't already fed him. He knows he should go slow, get used to it again, but he's still operating on the logic that there might be nothing after this and ten people willing to eat it if he doesn't make it disappear quickly enough.
no subject
Her lips pulled into a warm smile as Kira began to pick at the fish. "If you eat too fast you'll upset your stomach." She laughed as she pinched a bit of meat and popped it into her mouth. There was plenty of fish so she wasn't worried about him eating it all. "If you're still hungry I can catch more." Fishing was easy, relaxing and something that Moana enjoyed doing.
She took another small bite before picking at pieces of the skin. The crispy pieces were her favorite.
no subject
Even as he says the words, they feel odd in his mouth. The idea of making it to spring at all is a little strange, but doing so here twists it from lost hope to banality. Working theory is that he got out for three days, and he doesn't remember a thing. How many times has he done this? How many winters is he going to have to go through before this ends?
Assuming he believes he's doing it at all. The sensory fact of the fish is weighing in reality's favor.
no subject
"In the spring." She assured him. "It's easier when the water is warmer. I've made traps but I have them in the ocean." She didn't know when she'd travel across the breach next to check them.
no subject
no subject
It was strange though not as strange as other things in the village. "I can show you where the breach is. If you want to go and see." Moana traveled between the two villages frequently though with winter coming she'll have less chances to go down to the shore. At least, if she didn't want to freeze to death.
no subject
For now, all he can do is eat his fish, and put his trust in an earnest guide. "Once we've got some light and I've found some clothes that fit, sure. Blanket capes are an indoor fashion choice only."
no subject
"Just tell me when. I'm usually around here if I'm not already on the other side of the breach." She didn't mind waiting though she'd be going across herself in a few days.
no subject
To just - treat him like he doesn't know what to do. He really doesn't.
"Thank you," he says, rather earnestly. "You're possibly the most helpful person I've met." Mark had saved his life, but he'd also been rather out of sorts about the memory thing. Kira's settling that at a draw.
no subject
Maybe the overseers did something and he just needs time for it to all come back. Either way, Moana felt like she'd chosen the right course of action.
"Should I leave now? I was going to get ready to head to the breach tomorrow. I'll be back in a few days if you need anything."
no subject
"Go ahead," he says, hating to keep her from anything when she's already gone so far - giving him the bottle and her fish. Just because she didn't want it; just because she could get more. Maybe things are fucked up, but at least things seem - good, in a basic way. The people, at least. "I'll keep an eye out. If I don't catch you before you head over, we'll figure it out when you get back."
no subject
Moana flashed him a warm smile before turning to head out. She always had things to do and places that she wanted to be but it was only because she couldn't bare to feel idle. All of her tasks could be pushed around to another time, so she really didn't mind pausing to help someone out; even if they didn't remember her.