sixthiterationlogs | i’ve been putting sorrow on the furthest place on my shelf [closed to several]

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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.]

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Kira turns his head, profile over the greying shoulder of his worn thermal shirt and the strap of Ren's suspenders, but his gaze doesn't go far enough to look Graves in the eye. He's left his coat at the inn in his retreat, and the suspenders are clipped into the folded down ends of his overalls--odd, but at least he feels less like he got his clothes at the Gap Kids.

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.

Graves contemplates Kira briefly, weighing his answer. It would be very easy to lie, but what will be the point? The young man is attuned to magic, this much is clear, and very evidently bears no ill will towards his gifts.

"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?"

Ghosts, to Kira, were much less animated, much less determined to do anything but play out the feeling they echoed in death. They were manifestations of the images and ideas he got from interactions with the living--a loop of something unfinished, unexpressed.

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."

Graves looks down at where he's buried, and he thinks that no matter how accustomed he is to death, it still takes one by surprise. Underneath the stones lies a body, another one claimed by the village. Kira's close to him, he assumes. He doesn't know what kind of ties that they share, but the young man is evidently mourning him, and perhaps all that he could have been.

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.

Kira's devoted no small amount of his focus to judging Graves--casually, when he arrived, and less so after seeing Credence take to following him around. There was nothing about what Kira hopes to accomplish with Credence that benefited from telling the boy what to do, so he's only observed from the outside, at those times when life in a small village pressed the pair or trio of them together.

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."

That's the number one regret, isn't it? Wishing they had more time. When it comes right down to the cold hard line between life and death, the chasm that yawns between the living and the dead, it's not anything else they wish for but time, the only ever resource that stays finite.

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."

"I don't know about that," he says, some spark of his indolent humor returning. It isn't always the best of him, but it's a thing at the core of him, a flame that flickered in the sea of others' emotions and spirits. Sometimes that contrary nature was the only thing he could cling to, rebuilding himself around it like a man shipwrecked and alone, dragging materials around a fire in the dunes.

"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."

Graves doesn't argue semantics; it just seems unnecessary in the face of this kind of grief, but he nods at the spark of humor, and glances down at the knife and his cards. He must have them with him at all times, he notes, and he shrugs just a little.

"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?"

There's no overt sense that they're talking about Credence--there is only the verbal exchange, and the focus behind it, that says very clearly they are talking about Kira himself now--but he thinks of him anyway. Bending until he couldn't anymore, but Kira doesn't really believe in broken people.

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."

Progress is never a linear thing, it's a messy back and forth and back and sideways and it's never clean. But progress is imperative, if only for its own sake.

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?

They're things he's spoken of before, and he has little illusion left that keeping the things in your past to yourself does anything to keep it secret, in this place. There are more than cameras at play--would have to be, for the sheer number of them that would have to be hidden throughout the canyon, for the fact that one has yet to be found and examined.

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."

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i’ve been putting sorrow on the furthest place on my shelf [closed to several]

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