thebastion | Day 255

Entry tags:

Day 255 - Yeah no

When: Day 255, midday
Who: The Helmsman and anyone who trips over his prone body
Open/Close: Open
Where: The middle of the Bastion, facedown
What: You know what's nice? Grass is nice.
Format: I'll match
Warning: Blood warning/minor self harm in Aoi and Disciple threads

Ever since he'd been brought to the hospital in the middle of the night by Aradia and the Disciple, the Helmsman has been quiet. His throat has been in no condition to really speak, which had been one thing, but besides that... Any attempts to speak with him have just earned a narrow eyed look and thinned lips, although he'd gone along with attempts to feed him and put him into some cleaner clothes.

Apparently, today's the day that changes because anyone going about their business in the Bastion is liable to notice the gray-skinned and horned alien laying facedown in the middle of the little settlement. The clothes he's wearing are far too big for his food-deprived skinny body but despite what it looks like, he is breathing and is alive.

Don't mind him, he's just gonna be here for a while. If you trip, well, that's your problem. Suck it up.

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She'd watched him from afar, lips pursed, as she had come across him collapsed in the middle of the town. Space, she'd told herself. Space. As much as she wanted to wrap her arms around him, space was what he needed. She was still his hallucination to him. Still his mind coming up with unlikely scenarios of rescue. Rescue she could have provided before now. Rescue from eternal life.

This lasts ten minutes before she walks over and crouches beside him.

"22. You alright?"

Oh. Oh it's her again, or, well, not really her but what his mind has crafted from old memories and expectations and "I wonder"s that he had stored over so many centuries. From the familiar olive eyes and the roughness living solely in the wild would bring... It's a pretty good hallucination. He'd tip his hat off to his own broken mind, if he had a hat to tip.

And hands that could functionally work.

He shrinks a little bit when he hears her voice, even as much as he marvels at it a little bit. Usually his hallucinations of her are so much more judging, so much more upset and betrayed. It's nice to hear her all soft and concerned for him again, like it's 'before' and he's just suffering from another migraine that would normally have her sweeping her fingers across his face.

There's a muffled sort of noise but even with the grass in his mouth it wouldn't make sense.

"Well. You made a noise so I'm counting that as alive, if not okay. I suppose neither of us are okay, you least of all."

She shifts on her heels, eyes running over the healing scabs, the lines that will scar. It's an odd position to talk to him in. Odder still to contemplate how he will heal. If he will heal. The mental part seems to be going just swimmingly.

"You don't have to talk to me. Or look at me or whatever is going on where you think I'm still fake. I thought a half dozen nights would convince you I'm not going anywhere but who knows how long your hallucinations lasted."

Her voice feels rough around the edges, hesitant in a way it never was 'before'.

And that tone hurts to hear. He hates it when his mind gets creative and finds new ways to hurt him. You'd think after so long, it would just give up... but nope. A shame, because every new trick still manages to hurt.

He nudges his head to the side, still staring with tired mismatched eyes and those goggles attached to his face. Hazy and thin, psi forms in the air to spell out words in Alternian. 1'm t1r3d 0f th12 2h1t d11

The flicker of psionics in the air is what makes her turn her head from the ground it had settled on. Her breath catches in her throat and her eyes burn with the sudden twin emotions of relief and sorrow. He's speaking to her. She'd waited so many patient nights for that. She tries to blink away a tear before it falls, keenly aware that tears solve nothing like this. She'd only be pushing her pain on him. Her voice cracks at first, then steadies.

"I--I understand. I got tired of the dreams. Reliving it all, imagining you there, saving you only to have you slip from my grasp at the last moment. I imagine--a thousand sweeps is a long time to dream of rescue. Nothing to my dozen or so." She fixes her gaze to his and whispers.

"I'm so sorry. I should have saved you--or--you would have wanted me to kill you but you and I both know I couldn't have. I'm so sorry."

Edited (html fail) 2014-12-04 07:27 (UTC)

She's saying so much he wants to hear- sympathizing with him, still wanting him, wanting to have killed him before they could have buried him in wiring and prying tentacles and binary and the suffocating scent of salt.

Yeah. Yeah, this has to be a hallucination. Only hallucinations are remotely kind to him, which says something about what's become of his life.

The psionics fade out, rearrange themselves into something new. D1d y0u d13 n1c3ly?? 1 l11k3 t0 pr3t3nd y0u d1d. 0n3 0f u2 2h0uld h4v3 b33n 4ll0w3d to. Not reassuring, not like he thinks it is, but maybe out in the wilds she could have lived and died quietly. Signless didn't, he'll never be allowed to, and Dolorosa...

He was that kind of slave, once. No slave ever gets a nice quiet death. You can only pray it's quick.

"You know, a bed would probably be more comfortable," Colin says, staring down at the prone body before him.

He's carrying a cup of juice, and he was making his way back to his workshop when this lump of Helmsman decided this was a good spot to rest.

She shakes her head at him, and her hands curl up in her lap, betraying her uncertainty with the topic. She's still sure he thinks she isn't real but she can't ask for more right now.

"I didn't die. I haven't--that I remember. If this what happens after death, I'm okay with that. But I don't remember it and I'm not old enough to die in my sleep. Or brave enough to end it before then."

She takes a deep breath and forces her fingers out straight, smooths them against her legs.

"I don't think this is the...afterlife or whatever. You were still alive in there. I woke up alive out there."

[Guess who's too caught up in her jog to notice the asshole lying around on the ground? Yeah.

Aoi steps on him, yelps, and, her balance lost, tumbles to the ground.

+1 prone body hanging out in the grass!! She's kinda dazed; give her a minute.]

Yeah, it's a great place to be, thank you very much. Colin's response just has red-blue energy crackling around his hands until the Helmsman can move his hands to give Colin the 12th Perigee's Eve gift of double middle fingers.

He knows what he's about, son.

After a bit of fidgeting, he finally moves his head so his chin is resting on the grass and can squint suspiciously at him. The energy shifts from his hands- which then flop down uselessly on the ground- to form words in Alternian in the air. Of course, since no one but trolls knows Alternian, it's a moot point.

Oh well.

Now trying for an afterlife spin? His mind isn't keeping its story straight now. He shouldn't be bothering with all of this, really. Maybe he should just go along with it for once, pretend he really has been rescued and Dii really is alive and things can maybe be okay for a while longer.

Problem with that is that it's always more disappointing when he comes back to reality.

So the alternative choice is just to say nothing at all, wait it out in stubborn silence like he was at the hospital, but... He's a sucker for the people he cares about. So many sweeps, and that hasn't changed. So he replies again.

0f c0ur23 1'm 4l1v3. 2h3'2 t00 9r33dy t0 l3t m3 d13. 1 2h0uldn't h4v3 t0 expl41n th12.

[Asshole and PROUD, thank you.]

[Also, rude as hell. While Aoi is still on the ground and confused, Psii is just going to smack her foot with psionics. It feels really like any regular smack, only not as... physical. Which might be weird for someone not used to them but oh well.]

[Deciding not to dwell too much on the fact that whatever just smacked her foot is really bad at smacking things, she reflexively kicks back at it. Only then does she roll herself back over and start to pick herself up only to realize that oh, that's kind of a person lying around on the ground??]

Oh! Hey, are you all right?!

Is it her, or has the Bastion been getting even stranger lately? She met one of these horned people before, and that was a weird enough conversation that she actually has to wonder if lying face-down in the grass is normal for them.

"That's not the best place to rest. You might get trampled." Unless... he did already. They do have a lot of large birds around.

Colin smirks at his reaction, and he responds with a casual scratch of his cheek with one middle finger. Then the hand holding his glass extends the other. Colin looks with dismay at his juice-holding hand, and crossing the two middle fingers, he seems to attempt to pull it down.

But nope, it's just going to spring right back up in regal display of its opinion.

"Sorry about that," he says, looking at him with an apologetic expression. "Seems to have a mind of its own. I can't do anything with it."

He has yet to lower either of the offending digits.

[That should probably hurt more than it does, but he stopped giving a shit about pain a while ago. At the question, he finally looks up and squints at her from behind a pair of pink goggles literally attached to him.]

[He shrugs. Doin' pretty good beyond all the way nothing is good.]

No birds yet, just a very energetic sports girl. There's a kind of muffled sigh at the advice before he moves his head so his chin is on the ground and he can look up at Zuko. Flashing red-blue energy suddenly crackles into existence, forming a pair of small stick figures in the air. One is laying on the ground, the other is running... Whups, tripped.

Hopefully she gets that. He's already figured that Alternian isn't going to work for anyone but two other people in the Bastion.

Zuko actually starts back a step at that, sorry if she's not the most comfortable with sudden crackly energy. She relaxes halfway when it forms into a picture, though she still clearly doesn't understand how that's happening.

"That... could probably happen, too." Your image has no past-tense markers.

Um.

[Shrugging and squinting is not entirely reassuring? She picks herself up, largely unperturbed by the fall—she's an athlete; she's had worse bruises—and holds a hand out to help him up because that's probably what you're supposed to do when someone answers "are you okay" with a tacit "I'unno"???]

Oh thank the horrorterror gods, an asshole. The rest of his hallucinations have just been sad and affectionate. It's about TIME his mind started being a shithead to him. He perks up a little, not quite smiling but at least interested.

The same energy which had formed the Alternian words crackles around Colin's wrists, trying to turn his hands around so that the engineer is flipping himself off. It's not the strongest effort, so Colin can probably fight against it easy if he wants.

Alas, the bio-goggles attached to his face act as effective psionic blockers beyond a range of his own body. He can't pump out his usual strength. It's a tragedy, really, that he can't force other people to make rude gestures at themselves.

"How was I--I mean I could...gather that she wouldn't. If she kept you alive this long. Emissary thought that's what happened. She said her empress kept her alive for a thousand sweeps and--it's complicated and honestly makes little sense."

She breathes in slow, then lets it out in a rush.

"You still think I'm in your mind. Okay. I don't know how to prove I'm not. Except it's a really long hallucination but I guess it isn't in the grand scope of things."

Yeah, that's the problem with pictionary... No tenses. Either way, he shrugs and then paps at the ground. Zuko. Zuko. C'mere. It's important.

[That is generally what you're supposed to do, and you are good people, Aoi. A shame that this asshole doesn't care anymore, but he has a feeling he'd just make her more worried if he refused. So a peculiar red-blue glow settles along his arm as it moves up to take her hand.]

[He doesn't actually need much help. That same glow spreads to the rest of his body, clinging closer to it instead of a general area, and lifts him up effortlessly. 'Hovering' is the answer of 'how the fuck did he get out of his hospital bed', if you were curious.]

"What?"

She's still cautious after the weirdness said pictionary, so she's keeping some distance. She'll lean down a bit closer though.

Little sense... He'll say. There's a tired sigh, and energy moves his hand almost like he's thinking of touching her knee. It vanishes in an instant, however, and his hand flops down lifelessly against the ground.

He'll stick to making words. Those can't disappoint him.

D0 y0u h4t3 m3??

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Day 255 - Yeah no

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talk of death and mercy killing

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Mention of suicide

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