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sixthiterationlogs2017-02-13 03:48 pm
3ofswords) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2017-02-13 03:48 pm
i’ve been putting sorrow on the furthest place on my shelf [closed to several]
WHO: Kira Akiyama
WHERE: The Inn, the riverbank
WHEN: Feb 14, midday and evening
OPEN TO: Casey, Benedict, Graves
WARNINGS: Grief and mentions of character deaths
STATUS: n/a
i. Benedict; Graves - leaving the inn or at Ren’s grave
Someone was fucking with him.
Deaths weren’t enough, leaving friends and family behind, being hurt, being afraid and without answers--none of it was enough. They kept adding to the notes and map left by the woman, already disappeared, they kept trying to have civil discussions about what was happening and what to do about it, but Kira had held the note in his hands and could only discern cruelty. Beyond the fact of life could be and into the fact of someone is trying to be.
Maybe their captors were like the wendigo: once captives, warped into something without care.
Maybe they were just assholes.
To Kira Akiyama: There are always more fish in the sea. He’d dropped the note back into the box of rose petals and pink champagne, moved enough of them to see the Durex label and taken his hands up entirely. If he’d any doubts of the time passing, or the consequences of being here so long--the box served to turn his stomach in confirmation.
He’s dead; he’s dead and that meant too many people now. It turned his stomach again that he would even think of Ren, staring down into that box. It turned his stomach to see Casey, head tilted with a dog’s curiosity, the box and the boy in his room and the note like an accusation. We see you, it said, clearer than piles of gifts, clearer than the fact of the pod in the canyon wall.
Maybe they weren’t just former captives turned cruel, maybe they had people like him. Turned inside out, using their impressions of people to design an ugly gauntlet. Maybe he’d be the latest tool in their belts, with the way he’d shoved the box at Casey, used the box to nearly shove Casey just to get away from them both. “Another one for you,” he’d lied, pushing out of the room and making for the exit, needing to get away from them all, the cloud of emotions he doesn’t want to feel, doesn’t want to know, take advantage of, filter into some database to be regurgitated as salt in a wound.
Casey had told him not to know anyone, not to ask or let them answer, not to let them ask about him. To imagine someone else in their place, someone dull and blank, and in this way, never get attached.
Before he hadn’t died, before he’d promised Ty a dinner, before he lost the cards that held the emotions of the city at bay: he’d been better at it. He’d have laughed at the note, and tipped the champagne down his throat, kept his pockets stocked and his standards low.
Now, wandering out the door and down the path, the air crackling over his skin and his pulse telling the powers that be do it, just do it, he wants to go back for it and toss the box in the river. There are too many people here he knows too much about, people he might not stay for, but who he would try to take home with him, to spare them something worse. There are people he would mourn, and one he already does, a knife slid next to the knife of Ty, and the note twisting them both in his side. It isn’t even conscious, to swing past the fountain and head south through the village, until he’s looking around at the trees, biting his lip, knowing he’s orienting himself toward one in particular.
They’d carved a four pointed star into the base of the tall pine, after they’d finished the grave. He’d made a joke in his head about letting Ren down one last time, as they’d carefully positioned the body, and he’d tossed one of the die in after him. He’s down to two, now, an odd set of talismans that let him feel like--he’ll know, if anything happens to Casey or Credence. He’ll know if anything happens to Ren’s grave.
It’s exactly the kind of shit he shouldn’t be doing, if he’s going to pretend someone picking up on his impressions of others is any kind of rational thought. In the absence of a rational world, did it matter? Has anything been rational since he was sixteen, or since his parents were driven out of their home, the city set upon itself?
Ren had been, he thinks, coming to a stop at the rocks piled over the grave. Ren would reject his emotional display over a box of bullshit and give him something useful to do, make him spar, hit him with a stick until they were both tired of getting nothing out of it.
And he’s rational enough to come here, not stare into the depths of the fountain again and wonder exactly how decomposed his ex is. A knife is a knife, and he’s bleeding out from the loss, but Ren is a cleaner cut than Ty. Ty is rust and fever; Ty is how he pulls the knives out of his guts and starts putting them in other people.
If he thinks about Ty right now, he’s going to jump back into the fountain and, one way or the other, not come back out.
“I can’t believe how much I miss you, you fucking asshole,” he breathes, staring at the star over the thick roots, finally releasing some of the tension that the gift had sung through him. If the aim of this place was cruelty and confusion, maybe the best thing he could do was walk away, calm down, and ignore it. “I have much better people to miss, you know. The least you could do is haunt me properly, bang some pans around and turn off the lights at the inn.”
ii. Casey - back at the inn
There is no hour early or late enough to ensure Casey and the box are gone when he returns to the room--but there is an hour after the sun sets, after Kira remembers he was out without his coat, overalls undone and held up by a pair of suspenders, cards and dice stuffed in the pockets--where he’s too cold to dodge someone for anything at all.
It isn’t Casey’s fault he walked in when he did, or his fault that Kira is so bad at taking his advice. Following his own rules, two months in a place and his roots finding literal representation south of the village.
He’s here. For better or worse, and he does no one any favors pushing Casey out of his way and never coming back. When he comes up the stairs, he doesn’t quite enter the room, leaning in the doorway. Looking at the coat left on the bed, the angle of the knife left in its deep pocket, and his eyes eventually finding the open window, the hammock swaying slightly in the breeze.
Casey has made the climb out the window and onto the roof enough times that there’s a trail: a scuff on a branch, a warp to the trim where a hand has grasped, a boot print on the wall, over a ridge of siding. Kira slips and grunts enough times on the way up that there’s a pair of eyes to meet when he gets his head above the roof’s edge, and he lays his arm out across it, hand palm up and open, a wordless request for help.
[Options specified for individuals. The box contains: one 187ml bottle Stella Rosa champagne, one 8" diameter, 2-3" deep box of chocolate covered strawberries, one 50ct Durex Condom variety pack; all empty 'packing' space filled with red and white rose petals.]
WHERE: The Inn, the riverbank
WHEN: Feb 14, midday and evening
OPEN TO: Casey, Benedict, Graves
WARNINGS: Grief and mentions of character deaths
STATUS: n/a
i. Benedict; Graves - leaving the inn or at Ren’s grave
Someone was fucking with him.
Deaths weren’t enough, leaving friends and family behind, being hurt, being afraid and without answers--none of it was enough. They kept adding to the notes and map left by the woman, already disappeared, they kept trying to have civil discussions about what was happening and what to do about it, but Kira had held the note in his hands and could only discern cruelty. Beyond the fact of life could be and into the fact of someone is trying to be.
Maybe their captors were like the wendigo: once captives, warped into something without care.
Maybe they were just assholes.
To Kira Akiyama: There are always more fish in the sea. He’d dropped the note back into the box of rose petals and pink champagne, moved enough of them to see the Durex label and taken his hands up entirely. If he’d any doubts of the time passing, or the consequences of being here so long--the box served to turn his stomach in confirmation.
He’s dead; he’s dead and that meant too many people now. It turned his stomach again that he would even think of Ren, staring down into that box. It turned his stomach to see Casey, head tilted with a dog’s curiosity, the box and the boy in his room and the note like an accusation. We see you, it said, clearer than piles of gifts, clearer than the fact of the pod in the canyon wall.
Maybe they weren’t just former captives turned cruel, maybe they had people like him. Turned inside out, using their impressions of people to design an ugly gauntlet. Maybe he’d be the latest tool in their belts, with the way he’d shoved the box at Casey, used the box to nearly shove Casey just to get away from them both. “Another one for you,” he’d lied, pushing out of the room and making for the exit, needing to get away from them all, the cloud of emotions he doesn’t want to feel, doesn’t want to know, take advantage of, filter into some database to be regurgitated as salt in a wound.
Casey had told him not to know anyone, not to ask or let them answer, not to let them ask about him. To imagine someone else in their place, someone dull and blank, and in this way, never get attached.
Before he hadn’t died, before he’d promised Ty a dinner, before he lost the cards that held the emotions of the city at bay: he’d been better at it. He’d have laughed at the note, and tipped the champagne down his throat, kept his pockets stocked and his standards low.
Now, wandering out the door and down the path, the air crackling over his skin and his pulse telling the powers that be do it, just do it, he wants to go back for it and toss the box in the river. There are too many people here he knows too much about, people he might not stay for, but who he would try to take home with him, to spare them something worse. There are people he would mourn, and one he already does, a knife slid next to the knife of Ty, and the note twisting them both in his side. It isn’t even conscious, to swing past the fountain and head south through the village, until he’s looking around at the trees, biting his lip, knowing he’s orienting himself toward one in particular.
They’d carved a four pointed star into the base of the tall pine, after they’d finished the grave. He’d made a joke in his head about letting Ren down one last time, as they’d carefully positioned the body, and he’d tossed one of the die in after him. He’s down to two, now, an odd set of talismans that let him feel like--he’ll know, if anything happens to Casey or Credence. He’ll know if anything happens to Ren’s grave.
It’s exactly the kind of shit he shouldn’t be doing, if he’s going to pretend someone picking up on his impressions of others is any kind of rational thought. In the absence of a rational world, did it matter? Has anything been rational since he was sixteen, or since his parents were driven out of their home, the city set upon itself?
Ren had been, he thinks, coming to a stop at the rocks piled over the grave. Ren would reject his emotional display over a box of bullshit and give him something useful to do, make him spar, hit him with a stick until they were both tired of getting nothing out of it.
And he’s rational enough to come here, not stare into the depths of the fountain again and wonder exactly how decomposed his ex is. A knife is a knife, and he’s bleeding out from the loss, but Ren is a cleaner cut than Ty. Ty is rust and fever; Ty is how he pulls the knives out of his guts and starts putting them in other people.
If he thinks about Ty right now, he’s going to jump back into the fountain and, one way or the other, not come back out.
“I can’t believe how much I miss you, you fucking asshole,” he breathes, staring at the star over the thick roots, finally releasing some of the tension that the gift had sung through him. If the aim of this place was cruelty and confusion, maybe the best thing he could do was walk away, calm down, and ignore it. “I have much better people to miss, you know. The least you could do is haunt me properly, bang some pans around and turn off the lights at the inn.”
ii. Casey - back at the inn
There is no hour early or late enough to ensure Casey and the box are gone when he returns to the room--but there is an hour after the sun sets, after Kira remembers he was out without his coat, overalls undone and held up by a pair of suspenders, cards and dice stuffed in the pockets--where he’s too cold to dodge someone for anything at all.
It isn’t Casey’s fault he walked in when he did, or his fault that Kira is so bad at taking his advice. Following his own rules, two months in a place and his roots finding literal representation south of the village.
He’s here. For better or worse, and he does no one any favors pushing Casey out of his way and never coming back. When he comes up the stairs, he doesn’t quite enter the room, leaning in the doorway. Looking at the coat left on the bed, the angle of the knife left in its deep pocket, and his eyes eventually finding the open window, the hammock swaying slightly in the breeze.
Casey has made the climb out the window and onto the roof enough times that there’s a trail: a scuff on a branch, a warp to the trim where a hand has grasped, a boot print on the wall, over a ridge of siding. Kira slips and grunts enough times on the way up that there’s a pair of eyes to meet when he gets his head above the roof’s edge, and he lays his arm out across it, hand palm up and open, a wordless request for help.
[Options specified for individuals. The box contains: one 187ml bottle Stella Rosa champagne, one 8" diameter, 2-3" deep box of chocolate covered strawberries, one 50ct Durex Condom variety pack; all empty 'packing' space filled with red and white rose petals.]
no subject
He had looked at the box, seen the tag, and he knew. He knew Kira's name. He could see Kira's face without looking at him. He didn't know what the rest of the words meant. He had put the card in his pocket and taken the box to the roof, his hand in the rose petals for a while. He had marveled at the silk-velvet soft of them against his roughly scarred and worn skin. Chapped from cold, thick from work, uneven from the damage he had done to them over the years.
He stared off into the deadly sky with a defiant lack of fear and watched the lightning crackle and cut through the air. His hair stood on end at times, with the electricity of it. The metal in his pocket seemed to hum with the energy. He had dealt little with lightning in his life, but he knew what it had done to at least one man. He had seen the body before they had covered him with dirt instead of ash.
By the time Kira seeks him out, he's quelled the storm inside him and replaced it with the one around them. A strong calloused hand meets Kira's, grip firm and hold fast. He slips his harmonica back into his pocket and pulls Kira toward him and up, his feet digging into the rough surface of the roof. The box is still against his hip, not forgotten but not touched either. He had barely looked through the contents. Despite what Kira had said, it wasn't his.
There were a pair of rose petals in his pocket with the note, already bruised from handling. Too soft for his rough handling. He doesn't confront Kira on the note, doesn't ask where he's been. He just keeps his footing on the rough and holds on until Kira is safely seated on the slightly slanted surface. Then his hand drops, the physical contact lost, but his eyes still lingering, dark and soft with a lack of sleep. There's still dirt under his nails, his hair wild, the scruff on his jaw darker and thicker, his clothes a bit more worn and tattered every day, new tears and holes appearing with each passing day.
He doesn't focus on the feeling in his gut that he's made a mistake sticking around Kira for so long. It's justified. He's learning. It'll be fine. He slips a hand back into the box, his mind on a scarred hand, a fountain and a bottle of alcohol. He tugs the bottle loose and reaches over himself to offer it over.
no subject
What would I'm sorry, or I know, add to the moment?
The box creates the space they need between them, suspended on the roof by the grit of its shingles, the grip of their hips digging into its sides. One foot of safety for Casey to pass the bottle across, for Kira to take all hands away and be in his own space, uncurling the foil from the neck in a single looping ribbon. A petal drops onto his thigh, pink stained, white at the base, and he holds it curled over his thumb. Tests the soft texture between it and his first finger, feels the low burn of something on his right.
It feels like lightning on purple clouds, the underside pink to red in the setting sun laid out before them. The glass bottle is smooth in his right hand, the petal soft in his left. He isn't much more put together when he turns to meet Casey's gaze: he's worn the seams near to open inside the arms of both his shirts; worn his clothes from black and white to shades of grey; let his hair grow into his eyes and over the tips of his ears, and for all that he sleeps, there are ashen prints under his eyes and a sharpness to the angles of his face.
On a whim, he lifts the petal with his thumb, and touches it soft to a vein grown too close to Casey's skin, a crack in the thinnest place, just under his eye. It's the only spot of color on him, blue under the pall of an eternal winter, and it suits him enough for Kira to blow a warm breath out through his nose. Not a laugh, not a smile, but the ghost of that feeling. "We both look like shit, don't we."
no subject
"We do." He agrees, a nod and tired eyes moving as he studies Kira's face a moment. He reaches up a hand to take the petal from Kira, and lets it rest between his thumb and forefinger. He isn't good with soft things. He likes the way they feel, likes having them around, but he doesn't know how to handle them with anything but a touch like he's handling the thinnest sheet of ice and trying not to break or melt it.
"Everyone does, eventually." He offers, pulling his gaze away to look off at the other rooftops. "We're just ahead of the game."
no subject
Whatever, it probably cost six dollars on the corner and was just an alternative word for wine cooler. He'd put pinker shit in his mouth at the clubs, and he tips a sip back, the bottle a pink glow against a darkening sky, before offering it over. "Did you go through the rest?"
no subject
"It's not mine." He returns, giving Kira a curious look. He still wasn't sure why he had felt the need to lie and claim it was, but he didn't feel like pressing hard. It didn't belong to him, and he wasn't taking something that wasn't his. No matter how little he feared Kira slitting his throat in the middle of the night.
no subject
"You can go through and use anything of mine," he reminds him. "I didn't want it, I should have just said that." It's as close to an apology as he'll give, and he motions to the hand Casey has sitting in the pile of pink and white petals: "Go ahead, see what else it's got."
no subject
Recognition doesn't light up in his eyes as he turns the box of chocolate covered strawberries in his hand, and eventually he gives in to looking over to Kira. A raised eyebrow and a tilted box aimed in Kira's direction are his reply to the almost apology.
no subject
It doesn't make up for the note, but, he hasn't seen that since he walked out.
"Here," he adds, passing the bottle back to free his hands for the wrapping. His nails skim a small bow out of its ties and slit the edge of the pink plastic, tearing it away and stuffing it back into the box. Under the lid are eight strawberries, large and bright red before going green and white around the stems, dipped in dark chocolate with white drizzle. Not the fanciest he's ever seen, but nothing you'd grab at the bodega, seven pm the night-of.
Offering the box over for Casey's inspection, he tells him, "Eat as many as you want."
no subject
"What are they?" He doesn't wait for the answer before biting into one of them, and the surprise of the juiciness of the fruit and sweetness of the chocolate makes him give it a second look as he chews. The fruit was a different kind of sweet than the chocolate.
Kira was not wrong, however. Casey did like it. He had alwys had some hesitance in eating chocolates, or sweets, because they tended to increase hunger rather than sate it. But food was far less of a problem in the village than it had ever been in his life.
no subject
Chiyo had always liked to make chocolates with their mother, citing tradition when he teased her for licking utensils clean. She would give him one for Ty each year, and he'd roll his eyes but deliver it all the same. Does your sister have a crush on me, he'd ask, and Kira would have to roll his eyes again, breaking off a piece of the decorated heart, No, she just knows I'm too lazy to make my own.
"It's kind of stupid," he added, looking back out at the sky as he sunk his teeth into the fruit. The chocolate cracked around it, too sweet against his tongue until the tart fruit took over. Flaking a crust of it off with his thumb, his second bite was better, more strawberry. For now, he set aside questions of how they stayed fresh, how they arrived, what might be in them.
no subject
Kira's world had as many unknowns as the camp seemed to, if not more, and Casey often found himself mulling over all the things he didn't understand or have familiarity with.
"Couples." He finally decided to go back to speaking after a bite of the second strawberry, savoring this one far slower than the last. There were only so many in the box and he didn't think they would be seeing more of them.
"Like the married sort?" He knew a thing or two about marriage in theory. There were even those rare people he ran into that had somehow managed not to lose the second party to their ill-fated pairings yet. It had always seemed a dangerous threat, but he supposed it would be nice in a world less like his own and more like this one. Having someone consistently around that it wouldn't be as much a mistake to allow feelings to muddle up and endanger things with. Somewhere death was just a bit less prominently featured.
He could still feel the card, folded up in his pocket. More words than just the wrong name. He wanted to know, but didn't want to ask.
"You don't like the holiday." It's almost a question, almost an offered answer. Something about it had set Kira off in a way Casey wasn't used to seeing. It wasn't Kira calling it stupid that tipped him off, at least. If Kira didn't respond to the last bit, he wouldn't press.
no subject
It doesn't really surprise him that the ash choked future doesn't stress dating, and he snorts, flicking the stem of his strawberry out over the gutters. "A lot of people don't. It's the kind of thing that makes you resent being alone, even though it's just another day like any other."
Tipping the bottle again, he watches Casey sidelong: the note doesn't refer to anyone specifically, leaves it up to Kira who he wants to recoil from, sink guilt in his guts over. It could be Casey, up on a roof at sunset eating strawberries and drinking champagne. All he'd have to do is tip the bottle the other way, dig the rest of the items out of the box. All he'd really have to do, he thinks, is ask.
Something in the thought, tied to that note, strung with every one of those petals--it makes his skin crawl. Finding his footing on the shingles, Kira stands up, bottle in hand, and surveys the village laid out before them. Between the lightning and the cold, the paths are mostly empty at this point, and he can see one of the buildings across the way, something sturdy, probably no one trying to live in it. Swinging his arm back, he hurls the bottle as hard as he can: pink alcohol arcing across the dying light of the sun, and a shatter to tell him he's hit the opposite roof.
Breathing deep, eyes closing for a moment, he knows he accomplished nothing in the act, but he feels a little more in control. No more alcohol. No more fucking fish.
"Like I said, it's stupid."
no subject
There's more there, he thinks, then just resentment of being alone. Maybe Kira's world puts more weight into being part of something than his, but there's a stronger set of emotions in destruction than just general resentment.
If he still had his weapons, he might have suggested other methods, but the carving tools in his pocket wouldn't offer Kira the same catharsis. Usually when people started getting into moods, Casey left. He'd done a shit job of that, lately. Even without the canyon walls to keep him leaving, he kept finding reasons to drag his feet all on his own.
Ignoring the rest of the box's contents, Casey pushes the strawberry box back inside and slides it away a few feet from where he's sitting, his opposite side and away from Kira. He slumps onto his back on the roof once the box settles enough that he doesn't have to worry about it sliding off.
"Sounds it. Candy's a cruel joke, anyway. Only fills you up for a second and then you're hungrier than when you started." He roots around in his pockets, fingers brushing against folded paper, sharp edges, and the cool metal of the harmonica and casings before finding something wooden, alternately smooth and rough. He tugs the carved feline free from his pocket. He switches hands with it and offers it up, resting on an open palm angled in Kira's direction.
A gift, a peace offering, a distraction. It's whatever Kira wants it to be. But for Casey, it's a token of time spent on something that reminds him of two of the reasons he lingers in the village beyond his comfort range rolled into one. Lately he's not so sure he's any different than the cat, but the imagery of it feels very much like Kira in his mind - lounging about, observant and quiet with the appearance of laziness to those who only view it in the times it's sprawled somewhere warm.
no subject
Right now, he wonders if Casey speaks at all because he thinks Kira needs it, and the little carving is a more tangible expression of his placating nature. But it's also a gift, edges smoothed by Casey's own hands, sitting neat in Kira's palm.
His expression softens for the shape of it, and he wonders if it's somehow precious to him, a reminder of something he'd never managed to put his hands on and study before. "Thanks," he says, moving slow and careful to sit at his side again. "It's good. You're good at this," his own words to drop into the silence, to drag himself out of the building clouds of a darker mood. "I was being an asshole," he adds by way of apology.
"I've been an asshole, for awhile now. Thanks for not running off on me."
no subject
The ones who try to drag him into pointless conversations sit less favorably with him. It's a waste of energy, and nothing is gained from the exchange of words. He looks away after being sure Kira has accepted the gift, his eyes back on the sky and his tongue running over the taste of the sweets still clinging to the backs of his teeth.
"I have had a lot of practice." He appreciates the compliment, though. An expression of appreciation for a skill he's worked hard at getting better with. It's one of the less useful skills he possesses, but the feel of carving is reassuring and settling when his nerves wind up from the sheer volume of people around them. A powder keg, filling more with each passing week he lingers. Set to explode with the wrong clash of opinions or thoughts.
"We can't all be saints." The words aren't his. They don't hold the right meaning on his tongue, but he's heard them more than a few times, enough that the general meaning is familiar. He doesn't tell Kira that he's worth the bad moments. It unsettles him that he thinks it, but there's a familiarity in Kira's presence that keeps growing, and he's started to lean into it, rather than away.
"It's the rest of them that make it worse." For him. For Kira. He hasn't missed the way Kira's energy and mood shifts with the crowd. He's no where near understanding the full extent of it, but it would be good for Kira to get away from them all for a while he thinks. And it's only partially his own selfish urge to run that feeds those thoughts.
ren's grave.
Graves work is in the shadows, the duty to protect and defend a much more sacred one than a bid for the limelight -- a natural consequence of high office that he has always eschewed. He's out on a walk this afternoon, contemplating following up on what the young man's started, perhaps with a more pointed, definite purpose aimed at achieving the objective of finally creating this band of elected leaders when he hears a familiar, faint voice not too far away.
He spots Kira before he gets to hear him clearly, and the young man's clearly holding some kind of conversation to the thick roots of a tree. It's a strange new acquaintanceship that they have, the hallmarks of it an affinity for magic (not that Graves has informed him of that in so many words), Graves' bemusement with Kira's sartorial choices, and Credence.
The words are not meant for his ears, but it's easy for him to read his mood just like this, a melancholy that is almost tangible in the set of his shoulders.
"I'm sure there'll be opportunity for that." He says by way of greeting, hands by his sides and not in the pockets of his coat.
no subject
He catches sight of a hand, just below the edge of Graves' thick sleeve, the fingers curling in and tightening. It makes him picture a different hand: thin, black driving gloves, the hand curling to test the leather.
Inconsequential, really. It's another reason to miss the wards, to get to look when he wanted. If there are limits to memory, he'd rather not waste it on the small things. He'd rather have felt the man coming, perhaps soon enough to move away through the trees. As it was, he has no reason to be short with the man, or wander away from him--fun as it might be to measure his reaction to either. "Do you believe in ghosts," he asks, following the angle of his head to turn his body and look at Graves properly.
no subject
"Their existence isn't predicated on my belief in them."
In fact, he wishes they did, because then he'd very aggressively disbelieve the entire lot of them out of existence. They tend to terrify the entire damn lot of No-Majs, stoking the embers of distrust and hostility towards the supernatural, the magical.
"Do you wish to see him?"
no subject
Ren would have plenty of reasons to haunt this place, he thinks, remembering their final conversation. Remembering the torrent of frustration and exile he felt when Ren grabbed his arm to stop him.
Looking down at the layer of stones he'd set to discourage scavengers and rain from disturbing the body, there were already black beetles crawling between. "Not really," he says, but he isn't sure it's the true answer--just the one he should give. He shouldn't want to see him again, because: "It wouldn't mean anything good, if I did. There was so much he wanted to do, even just in this place."
no subject
He doesn't miss the sadness, the question raised of life after death. Despite what Kira says, Graves supposes he wouldn't much begrudge seeing him again. He could be wrong, of course, but it doesn't matter. A man is dead and buried, and his friend mourns.
"Tell me about him." He says finally, looking over at Kira.
no subject
He hasn't found Graves especially wanting, but he's let a bias linger, let it grow between them like clinging ivy. It pays to be cautious about people.
It makes this gesture--Graves taking the time to stop and speak with him, Graves humoring an acquaintance over the death of someone who was even less so--feel kinder than he imagined the man bothering to be. Capable of, yes, but inclined toward--Kira digs his hands into the pockets of his overalls, squaring his shoulders, feeling smaller and less deserving than he'd like to seem. "He would have been the person to scout with, that you were looking for. He was determined to beat this place, but he didn't want to just do it for himself. Just because he wasn't nice--"
He stops, looking sidelong at the pile of stones. "No, he wasn't nice, but it made it feel even better when he gave a shit about you. He was trying to teach me to defend myself, and sometimes it was like we barely understood each other and others it was like we were the only people who did. I just wish there had been more time to figure it out."
no subject
The great equalizer -- it turns all men into dust and memory. Graves is listening to Kira's eulogy about this man he barely knew, the fact that this elusive young man's forged a friendship with him, and in those words a glimpse of what he reveals of himself, perhaps. Graves has been curious about him ever since they'd first met, and while he has no patience for divination (it's an inexact method, nebulous at best), there is something to Kira that warrants a better look.
He's close to Credence, and the latter clearly thinks highly of him -- he never misses how Credence talks about Kira; for all intents and purposes he might be one of his first few friends, something he's so sorely lacked all his life. But Kira doesn't know what Credence is, what he carries inside of him, and Graves wonders if the day comes when the truth spills out, if Kira, too, would turn on Credence out of fear of what he doesn't know.
Perhaps not.
Graves' thoughts turn towards the rocks again, the body buried deep within. "I'm sorry for your loss." And he means it. He means it every time he says it; to the mothers, sisters, brothers, fathers, sons and daughters of the Aurors who had died in skirmishes, to the wives and husbands when he stands at their doorway and chooses to tell them personally instead of penning down parchments.
He looks over at Kira briefly, then at the rocks, paying his respects to a man he has only met once; his insight into him provided mostly by Kira's words. "There won't be another one quite like him."
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"Everyone's like someone else," he continues, still looking at the stones. "Everyone's made of the same things. It's why you can become something else when the setting's just right. The meek can emulate bravery. The kind can become cruel. Maybe that was what stood out about him at all, to me. He didn't want this place to change him, but it left him frustrated."
He finally lifts his gaze back to Graves, hands over his knife and his cards, but relaxed, touching only out of habit. "I don't know if was admirable or unfortunate. Both, I guess."
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"Those who cannot bend, break." Because that's just the way it is. Graves is strong-willed, uncompromising in his ideals and what it takes to achieve them, but he's also aware that sometimes, where needed, one must take all steps necessary to achieve the desired end, even if it means doing something you don't personally like.
Where the greater objectives are concerned, one's personal feelings on the most expedient method is secondary to achieving it. "Although I imagine that's not the case here." A beat, because Graves is not wholly heartless, despite what others back at MACUSA might say. "Are you all right?"
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Even when he sleeps well into the afternoon, manages a bath, a glass of water, and gets right back in the bed--he hasn't broken, he hasn't changed very much, except the loss of some old progress.
A shame: he'd started to like the person he'd become after surviving the helicopter. He'd done brave things, he'd fallen in love. Bending had only been a matter of opening, and caring, and expressing that care in action. Now it meant burying people, accepting ugly gifts, accepting that they were under a constant surveillance.
"I've chosen to be," are the words he feels out in reply, like tonguing a bad tooth. It's a smooth, even movement to place his hands and their comforts back in his pockets, and turn his attention back to Graves himself. "People were dying in the New York I left. We had no supplies but what we could scavenge. Before that, my mother rented our spare rooms to other psychics and their families, not all of them there legally. They dodged the inspections: belongings would go missing, things would appear that we had to dispose of before the next one. If I just think of it all like that, things that happened already, it's easier to deal with."
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Graves neatly compartmentalizes his associations -- there is little overlap between one and the other, Credence tucked away in another part of his mind. Credence, who has come to trust him a little more, who is perhaps broken, just a little, and who hasn't the faintest idea how to seal in all the cracks. He spares a thought for him, too, just one, before he looks back at Kira, wholly focused in this moment right here with the younger man, silently listening to all he has to say.
There's much one can learn about a person if you speak less, and Graves is a man predisposed to acquiring knowledge however he can have it. He takes in that story, the idea of New York in a wild disarray, the troubling imagery that it inspires.
"Why were they dying?" And is it only the psychics, the ones with magical ability?
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He leans back against the tree beside Ren's grave, feet keeping their purchase on the roots, and crosses his arms over his chest. "Someone engineered a disease, and released it during the holiday shopping. They had to close off the island to keep it from spreading." As a civilian, it was the kind of thing he shouldn't have known, like he shouldn't have known his mother's buildings was one of the first to be gutted, but he'd known too many of the agents investigating the matter to live in blissful ignorance. "I didn't bring it with me, obviously," he adds, remembering Ravi's reaction to the news.
"Some people though, they died from the same things we're dealing with here. Limited supplies and being stuck in a single area with other people."
leaving the inn
The fact that it's his gauntlet arm is no comfort — the bandages mimic the weight of his copper-wired gauntlet, but there's no tingling in his palm from the weapons crystal, just a low-level burn that has yet to go away.
Since he's been avoiding the kitchen and the bedroom he shares with Kate alike, he's been fare more attuned to the comings and goings of those around him. When he sees Kira all but flee out the door, a look on his face like he's seen a ghost, the uneasy rumblings in the back of his mind push him to his feet and out the door. If he can't help his own relationship, maybe he can help one of his friends. It will, at least, give him something to focus on that isn't his own sick dismay that he somehow managed to fuck up the one truly good thing he's managed to find for himself since emerging in this habble. And if Kira doesn't want his help, or doesn't even want to see him, well. Perhaps a walk will do him good.
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The nature of the place only lets him sense it some of the time, and he's not well versed in other kinds of awareness. He doesn't hear Benedict's footsteps, he doesn't catch his reflection in the windows of the buildings he passes. He just feels him, the shape and internal softness of him, with an echo of pain in his hand like the injuries are somehow linked.
It's unlikely Benedict means him harm, little need to turn in his retreat to look at him and express: I see you. What is likely--he might need help with his arm, help his girlfriend isn't willing to give the last few days. Stopping in the path, he drops to a knee, fussing with the laces of his boot to give Benedict a chance to catch up and state his business.
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"Hello Kira," he calls out softly, just loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to draw attention from anyone else. "Forgive me, but. Are you alright?"
Fiddling with the sling around his neck, he stops a few paces away and tries not to look as awkward as he feels. He's fairly certain he's failing. "You seemed upset when you left, I'm sorry if I'm intruding, I just thought perhaps you might...like some company?"
He doesn't sound very sure of that.
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And Benedict's had a rough time of it as well, enough that he's feeling generous, if grudgingly so. "That's sweet of you," he says, voice edging around its own honesty, feeling out the words as he tries them. "I was just...walking, without really thinking about where. Is there anywhere you like to go?"
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"Most days I go check on the bees," he replies, tilting his head back the way they came, over to where he and Mr Watney had set up their ramshackle skeps and hives. Benedict has been slowly, laboriously, building skeps for the bees, but without the proper materials, it's been slow going. And then winter descended on them with a fury, trapping him inside, and the bees have had to make do with what they were provided, which was one hell of a far cry from the orderly boxes Benedict tended at the Temple. "They aren't doing much at this time of year, but I like to go talk to them anyway."
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He hadn't been sure what they really were, the first time he saw them. Ren had found him staring at stumps, squinting at a muffled hum, the auroras not quite bloomed to explain it.
His comment isn't a no, though, and he carries on his course until the path splits around the rows of houses, hopping off it to make for the field. "For some reason I thought the bees were Mark's."