sixthiterationlogs | [MINGLE] Wendi-go-go to the inn

[MINGLE] Wendi-go-go to the inn

WHERE: 6I Village and Inn
WHEN: 27-31 July
OPEN TO: ALL - Mingle
NOTES: The Wendigo threatening the village will be killed mid 28 July, with a Blue Lily, per these threads. Plot details here. Note: The final fight is close enough to be seen from the upstairs inn windows.
WARNINGS: Wendigo attack mingle, please warn in comment headers if discussing violence, gore, or related trauma. Possible mentions of character death.

The urgent warnings come from villagers returning south from the lake: a creature twice the size of a man, antlered and voracious. Larger than any they've seen on the plains, stalking its way to the main village. Some might have their own names for this hunger in a skin of shadow; others might remember that it was the first to claim a life, in their village's short history.

Whatever context one has for it, best to secure all pets and loved ones before it arrives. With weapons and food stores at the inn, the call goes out to gather — And to bring back any tools, because there's no telling what doors and windows can do to stop such a creature.

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He's fine, he really is, he just has a fractured rib or two and he's covered in blood and Peeta just died. His eyes duck at that last thought, flit down and to the side like he's averting her gaze, like she'll condemn him for it. She won't, hell, he doesn't even know if she knows Peeta, but he uses her like a mirror to reflect back his own guilt over the loss for a second. Just a quick split second before he's filing it away again with militant efficiency.

What it means is he doesn't notice her hands coming up, and he's not quite quick enough to jerk back before she touches him.

"Wait-" He starts, rather than answering her question. Ironically, nothing seems to happen until he shoots an arm out to push her back. That of all things triggers the volt, the height of the blue lily still riding through him, cracking loudly as it splits through his palm and arcs through that point of contact on her shoulder.

It all happens so fast, there's no time to even remotely think about reacting. By the time my mind even becomes aware that something is wrong, I'm on the floor, body rigid, and awareness just... fades away.

There's only a moment before I begin to come to again, painfully aware now of the hunch of my own shoulders and anger burning hot under my skin. I'm growling — GROWLING — until I manage to wrest my gaze away, panting as I twist myself into a little knot of rage on the floor, trying to hide what's happened despite knowing how pointless it is. I've been in this position before, after all... and had people I loved literally run from the room in terror and disgust.

Seriously, someone just kill me now. Oh wait, I'm already there.

He's already shifting to the balls of his feet to pull her from the floor, already slipping a hand in his pocket for the lily so he can try to take her down to medical without giving her another thousand volts or whatever it is, when she turns. It's a feral thing before him, red eyes and bared teeth, an animalistic growl as gone and inhuman as the wendigo he just slaughtered outside.

It freezes him in place, wide eyed and properly shocked - no pun intended- for the first time since he's arrived here. Unconsciously, he takes a step back. It's self defense more than anything, because his first instinct is she's going to launch up off of the ground at him like the Wendigo did, some dying thing on the verge, lashing out and ready to bite out his throat.

He doesn't run, he plants himself. Evidently he's fight over flight even with a couple cracked ribs. Shoulders drawn back, fists clenched, he doesn't even manage to get out what he's thinking which is, aptly: what the fuck?

I should have told him before. I realize that now. The worst thing about it is that I know better. Keeping this a secret from people I care about never turns out well. Now I'm crouched on the ground like Gollum with the One Ring while my one-armed not-boyfriend stands there ready to knock me down the hall. Again.

"I'm sorry," I finally manage, still turned away, the growl giving way to a hitch in my voice. "I'm sorry." The pain of the moment before is beginning to fade, and with it the rage, but I'm not turning around until I know I don't look like I'm about to go on a brain bender.

If there's anything more bizarre than seeing the girl you went on a date with turn into some kind of red-eyed creature of the night, it's hearing that growling voice apologize and curl in like they're- she's terrified. It definitely keeps him from reacting offensively, at least. Keeps him still, even has him tentatively relaxing the muscles in his arms that had been prepared to take a solid swing.

What in the name of Christ is happening right now?

Turning away does them both a favor, actually. Seeing her blonde hair and the back of her fragile neck rather than glowing red eyes make it easier to remind himself who it is he's looking at.

There's no disguising the disbelief and sheer caution in his voice when he finally remembers how to speak.

"...Liv?"

"I should have told you, I'm sorry," I repeat, and there's a waver in my voice, but at least it's close to normal now. God, if I'm not the queen of crappy timing; I can't imagine a worse moment for this to happen.

"Are you okay?" I quietly ask, still hunched on the ground, hair curtained around my face as I stare at my stiffly curled fingers slowly opening against the hardwood floor.

The temptation to reach for her is still there, it presents in the subtle curling and uncurling of metal fingers that never actually make a move - partly because he's afraid he'll zap her again, but more because he's afraid she'll try and eat his god damn face or something. Whatever that was- whatever she is- that's not human. That's sure as hell not human, and the thing is he has no idea what it is. Nothing he's ever seen before, and he's seen a lot.

"Should have-" he repeats incredulously, but cuts himself off before he finishes. Brushes off entirely the question about how he's doing, because the bigger concern is how she's doing.

Or rather, what she's doing.

Or rather, what she is.

Which, even in his present state of mind, sounds like the most hurtful damn question someone could be asked (he knows that one first hand) and so he softens it and turns it into, "What in the hell was that?"

Not much softer, but. He can only do so much.

Well, here we go. That fact that he's still standing there is in itself a miracle, but this isn't Peyton, it's a guy who punches out monsters with a metal arm. He could probably take me at my worst. Maybe.

There's a clatter at the end of the hall and I jerk my head around toward the sound — This isn't exactly where I'd hoped to be right now, but that doesn't mean I'm looking to have this little chat with the whole damned village. I'm not Sam. I can't send off a text about my sexy orgasm powers and cross my fingers.

I don't know how I look when my eyes dart from the end of the hall back up to Bucky, but I at least feel mostly me again, and I pull in a shuddering breath as I climb unsteadily to my feet. Hot tip: Avoid getting struck by lightning, zombie or not, no matter how attractive the guy is delivering the voltage.

"Can we go in here?" I say, pointing to the room I'd just been in and already slipping past, head ducked, without waiting for an answer.

She does look normal again when she looks up, normal and more than a little defeated. Frankly, she should be dead if the lightning coursing off of him's potent enough to kill a Wendigo. Granted, it had come combined with an arrow directly into the spine and it had been close to the end to begin with, but.

Still.

She's back on her feet faster than any human ought to be. Because she isn't. is she?

He hesitates as she slips in, but not for long. Just a beat or two, and then he's cautiously shuffling in after her. If he's being honest with himself, a paranoid Russian part of him whispers that she's taking him in there to try and kill him without the risk of witnesses. A clean job.

Except that's ridiculous, and he shoves the notion down as he quietly clicks the door shut behind him. He doesn't ask, simply stares at her, rattled and expectant.

"So, um," I begin, shaking my hands out at my sides, fingers still tingling. Even through the detrius, I can see on his face that trying to soften this blow is not the option I need to take, and I pull in a deep breath, square my shoulders and look him straight in the eye. "I'm a zombie."

Which may or may not mean anything to him at all, I belatedly realize, since he's from the 40s. Romero was in the 50s, I think, but I don't remember for sure.

"I went to this party, it was on a boat— That doesn't matter," I correct with a shake of my head, thoughts skittering around my brain. This never gets any easier. "I was scratched. I died— Drowned, I think. Maybe. I came back."

The word zombie pulls forth from him a little cock to the head like he can't quite believe what he's hearing. Eyes squint, brows knit. He's heard of them, sure, he saw white zombie in 1932 when he was fifteen and what she did doesn't look a damn thing like the picture he'd snuck in and watched. I am a Zombie came out in 1940. Doesn't quite meet that mark either.

Somehow, it's a little harder to to wrap his head around this than Sam being a vampire.

His hand curls absently around the doorknob as a thought occurs to him.

"Eats brains daily," he remarks, a sudden dark understanding.

"Yeah," I force out, my voice gone rough with the effort. "Small animals mostly. Things we catch anyway." Not that it's been in any way satisfying, but now is definitely not the time to mention that Ravi's got a couple of human brains chilling at home in the fridge.

"I didn't— I don't kill people," I eject, my eyes wide, pleading. "I'm a medical examiner, a coroner. I— Oh god, why am I still talking?" Sighing, I drop my chin, rubbing my hand across my forehead. "I didn't want this, I don't want this. I've lost... so many people in one way or another to this. But it's who I am now and I can't change it."

So she wasn't kidding about the squirrels, then. At least, if she's being honest about it. He's got no real way of knowing other than a lack of deaths spread about the town (Peeta aside, obviously). His eyes seem to drop as he thinks about this, flickering from left to right and then back again.

It's a lot to swallow.

They flicker up at her desperate plea, and it's because of the way she sounds, the way it resonates with his own personal history, that he drops his hand from the doorknob. I don't want this, she says, but it's who I am now and it tugs at his strings. Plays him like a violin.

"I get it," he murmurs finally, hesitantly. His feet find a careful path toward the bed, and he tentatively lowers himself onto it. Scrubs a flesh hand over his mouth, because...

Wow.

This place is fucking insane.

"Does that... happen often?" He asks finally, turning his head to look at her. The incident in the hallway, the red eyes, the growling.

This is the point where he's supposed to walk out. He'd been halfway there, hand on the knob, and I'd already been steeling myself for the inevitability. That he stays, that he settles in stuns me so much that it takes me a moment to answer, staring at him slack-jawed in disbelief.

"No," I manage at last with a quick shake of my head. "Just if I'm in pain, or..." I trail off, clearing my throat. "If I haven't eaten in awhile." And I don't mean pot roast. "I'm sorry you had to find out that way. It's just... It's not exactly easy to fit into casual conversation— Hey, you're cute, did I mention I eat dead people's brains to solve crimes? It doesn't really work."

He's been a fan thus far of the cavalier way she throws out things like you're cute and nice ass or whatever, but this time the sentiment sort of leaves him floundering all the more. How in the hell is he supposed to begin to broach this whole thing? On top of that, how damn ironic is it that the women he's gotten the closest to here are already dead? He's not sure if it's foreshadowing or meant to be because he can't exactly re-kill them on accident. At least, not that he knows of.

He gets why she'd keep it a secret. He's not one of those guys in soaps or sitcoms who get pissed and walk out because why didn't you tell me and something something trust. This isn't something you just come out and say, unless you're Sam apparently. God knows he's got absolutely no room to judge her for wanting to hide her skeletons deep in the closet.

Or her brains, he supposes. Her closet full of squirrel brains.

"Christ almighty," he mutters to himself, threading a metal hand through his hair, pushing it back. Not for the first time he finds himself thinking I was supposed to just be a guy from Brooklynn. The weirdest thing he'd ever banked on seeing was the war. Granted that's long since been blown out of the water sometime around alien invasion, but occasionally reality checks in him so hard he gets sent clean back to his roots.

Another second ticks by, and he thinks he finds his footing again. He levels her with another look, sweeps her skin with a quick glance, checking for burns. For lingering damage from the shock. Falteringly, he asks, "You okay?"

"I'm okay," I reply, the words soft and a little choked, but I manage to keep my chin from trembling more than a handful of seconds. This isn't what I'd expected, not at all. Maybe I should have, but— Well, Major had been a really good guy, too.

"Just a little tingly. Are you okay?" He hadn't answered me before, although I'm definitely not blaming him. That he's exhausted is obvious, but walking and talking are good signs. I can't tell what's beneath the filth, but after everything, maybe he can't either.

"Broken ribs?" I add with a nod to the binding.

It would've been nice, he thinks distantly, to have been able to scrub off the dried and flaking blood that sticks in patches to his bare and exposed shoulders before they started this conversation. They're starting to itch, and frustratingly he can't quite reach to scratch them without aggravating his chest to the point of ridiculous pain. The serum ruined his life, the least it could do was stick around and make up for the bad times that follow it. Typical.

His eyes drop from her and to the floor again, but it's not out of fear this time so much as fatigue. He nods, hair falling in matted pieces along his cheekbones.

"Seems to be the verdict. Didn't exactly get checked out by a professional," it's the faintest trace of a joke aimed at her profession, the tiniest, flattest little thing that suggests they might come around to being okay pretty soon.

As for the state of his ribs, well, Natasha's pretty experienced in field medical. Hard to tell without an x-ray as well, but there isn't much to be done for it regardless.

He should tell her, he thinks. Tell her the truth, that she's not the only monster in the room. He chews the inside of his cheek, but can't seem to segue into it just yet.

Edited 2018-07-29 07:39 (UTC)

"They'll be painful— annoying for awhile," I quickly reply with a little hitch to my voice, reaching up to swipe the tears from my eyes before they can fall. It's such a little thing, that scrap of levity, but my gratitude is overwhelming.

"I can look at them if you want, but I doubt I'd have anything different to tell you." It isn't a difficult diagnosis; he probably knew himself before anybody else gave their opinion. It will, however, be both painful and annoying for a long time. A month or more, maybe.

"You need a bath," I add with the faintest flicker of a sympathetic smile. What he really needs, I think, is that hot springs where we first met, with its warmth and impossible healing powers, but it's a long walk and Bucky looks like he's about to fall over. "I can go draw one for you, if you want?"

The peaches. They help with healing, too. Maybe there's still some down in the pantry.

Absently, his flesh arm curls around the bindings on his chest. It's going to take some getting used to, but she's right, he knew the diagnosis long before Natasha gently prodded at him in the privacy of his room. Knew it shortly after ramming into that tree, probably, but had been so focused on the fight he didn't even feel it until after the beast was dead. The asset does not feel pain. A mantra he'd been made to repeat more than a handful of times over seventy years.

Whole hell of a lot of good it does him now.

"Rather have a prescription for something strong if it's all the same to you, doc," he answers dryly, shifting to look at her again. The curl of a small smile disappears as quickly as it comes when he realizes with a sort of jolt that she's crying. It stops him, cuts him short, because- hell- when's the last time he's seen someone cry?

(Tony Stark, 2016, listening to Maria and Howard die. He can still feel it.)

His lips part again, at something of a loss for how to handle it. Human instinct says to reach out and touch her on the arm, and he starts to except there's a pretty high possibility that he'll just- he dips his hand into his pocket and pulls out a rather crumpled, blood-stained flower.

"Hey, can I-" He starts, then stops himself. Not sure it's the right thing to do, not sure that asking her to take on a few hours of inconvenient static cling is worth the stupid notion he's got rattling around in his Wendigo-addled brain.

Edited 2018-07-29 08:06 (UTC)

The only reason I can recognize the tattered thing in Bucky's upturned palm is because I've had my own experience with the blue lilies. At the time, I'd been horrified at what havoc I'd created, blasting a whole damned tree in half, but now that I've been on the other side of the lightning, I'm thinking the tree was the least of the damage I might have done that day. Ravi had still been all-human, then. I have no idea if he would have survived.

"Can you...?" I gently prompt, brow furrowing. Take a bath without electrocuting himself or someone who turns on the taps downstairs, maybe? A pretty good question, now that I think of it, but somehow I doubt that's what he means.

Which is an altogether different question, one that will eventually put the cherry on top of the shit day he's had so far if it turns out he can't even scrub the blood off of himself tonight.

He seems to falter, though, as he thinks more on what his plan had been. To- what- to press the flower into her palm just so that he could touch her? Let her run the risk of throwing someone into cardiac arrest on accident because for a minute he'd been thinking about maybe- hell, maybe just leaning in for a second and-

He huffs out something soft and self deprecating. Shakes his head a little to dispel the notion, and curls his fingers around the nearly used-up flower again.

"Nah, nothing," he says around a strained smile a little more closely related to a grimace. It's the ribs talking, right? The fatigue.

"It's not nothing," I say, if only because that much is obvious. My head's still spinning, and not just from the physical jolt in the hallway, but I feel like I've missed something here I should have picked up on.

I step closer, falter, and then settle down on the mattress beside him. I shouldn't touch him again, I know that much, even if I'd like to at least wipe some of the blood from his face. But I can sit, at least — Let him know that it's okay, whatever it was he wanted to say.

"Can you what?" I prompt again, canting my head to better look him in the eye.

His thumb presses absently along the petals of the flower, wilting already and starting to fray at the edges. Clearly there's no getting out of it with an easy dodge, and frankly he's never been much of a coward. Eyes flicker over her as she settles in beside him, a safe few inches away. A rueful sort of apologetic smile plays at his lips when her eyes find his, something soft and maybe a bit downcast.

"I wanted to see if I could lay a hand on you without frying your heart out of your chest, but I'm not so sure how these things work," He mutters, flicking his eyes down to the thing laying on his open palm. Are they less dangerous over time? Less potent with a petal instead of the whole damn flower? Not exactly the smartest risk to take for probably an even stupider long-term notion anyway.

That day with the tree, I hadn't even thought about touching someone else, I realize now — I had, in fact, if only to check Owen's pulse. Did intent matter, or had I just gotten lucky? What just happened in the hallway, was it because Bucky was tired and unfocused, or had the effects just worn off for me more quickly?

It doesn't matter. Maybe in the long run, Ravi in a lab doing experiments kind of way it matters, but it doesn't matter now, and I lay my hand over Bucky's without a tick of hesitation, my pulse suddenly hammering in my ears.

Oh god, I am in so much trouble here.

Her fingers press over the petals of what can only technically still be called a flower at this point, and he wraps his hand around hers in turn, an automatic gesture, the pads of his fingertips against the backs of her knuckles. It's probably a terrible idea, he thinks. He knows, actually. There's a good chance they'll walk out of here and accidentally burn holes into the walls, start some kind of fire, maybe electrocute someone on accident.

It's probably also a bad idea that he's sliding his left hand up her arm, her shoulder, her neck, to curl there under her ear. Cold, but with the extreme gentleness that comes with being too keenly aware of how unyielding metal can be. It's supposed to be a comforting gesture, it really is, meant to be empathetic. Meant to show her that he's not all that bothered by the shadow that took her over for a minute, because he's always been better at doing rather than telling, and people don't touch things they're afraid of.

It's probably a really terrible idea to duck in slowly, a hesitant sort of thing that pauses midway through and then resumes again after a heartbeat, to press his lips to hers.

But he does it anyway.

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