Aftermath: open

[priorly]

Who: Prior Walter (priorly) & OPEN
What: Event Aftermath: Small angry woodland creature refuses to Sit Down.
When: 24th+
Where: Sanctuary & around
Warning(s): language, mentions of torture/death, TBA
Notes: OPEN - tag in, wildcard, or get me at shewokeup or shewokeup#4794 to plot anything.




Sanct.

[Prior wakes at the sanctuary with bare arms and a voice in his head. of course, of course it's screaming.

Somehow the heavy metal bracelets all the captives in his camp had been accessorized with had done the one thing he'd thought impossible and cut off communications with the firmament. His head had felt heavy and strange and silent the whole way through, the one bar of relief in a symphony of terror and pain.

But, as promised, she only stopped down the road and waited for him. Now she's back and and announcing herself. For a moment, the recovery room fills with the sound of beating wings. Prior throws himself out of the bed and, when his leg immediately folds under him, against a wall for support.]

No. No, I will not- [Hand thrown up in a universal 'talk to this' gesture, he grabs the back of a chair and starts using it to clatter across the room.] I have been through too much shit for this shit. Fuck off.

[Find him exiting the room in this makeshift style, skin bruised and rainbow-scarred, the hollows under his eyes deep enough to have hosted excavations. Or catch up a little later, when he's acquired a wooden cane from who knows where and is still roaming the hallways in defiance of orders of bed rest and his body's own aching demands. He will not lie back in white sheets and stare at the ceiling. He'll die there.]


City Visits.

[Later on, he even manages to bully someone into getting him clothes. Black pants, black t-shirt, uncommonly plain and stark enough to make him look like a specter haunting the hallways. He's slowly piecing together what happened, who it happened to. Even the details of his own little cluster of captives got lost amid the chaos of the rescue. And the more he finds out the more his skin roils with a fury it's getting hard to tamp back down.

But first. There are visits to be made. Rooms in the sanctuary (they held people here, he hears, he can't imagine why this is considered a place for healing anymore). Apartments in the city. He waits for news from Thesa station, not going up there himself - not yet.

Catch him in a room, or making his way between them, learning to use the cane to navigate the shitty cakewalk that counts for a sidewalk. Just don't expect him to slow down.

He'll be in Byerly's room often, pacing by the window or catching the only sleep he allows himself in the chair or bed beside him.]


Solitude.

[The problem with playing host to an angelic prophecy that has for longer than it likes been denied access to its best vessel, is that once it has hold of him again he finds his prophecies going haywire. Talk about overcompensating. The world shifts around him, possible futures playing out superimposed over the mundanities of the present.

Life goes on as normal, in ways that shouldn't be allowed when his own life and so many others have been upended and emptied out everywhere. And that's hard enough to cope with, but it's a new degree of impossible when the same shopping street erupts into blue flame one minute, and sweeps through with a flood the next, before reverting to reality: old women buying their baguettes and looking askance at the man clutching a streetlight in an effort not to be swept away to drowning death.

It happens with people, too. Asking after him. He's always hated that, and he hates it more now that the thin line between past and future keeps breaking and he can barely tell the two apart.

After snapping at more than one friend, and a stranger in the street (I was just trying to say I'm sorry for what happened. / Well I'm sorry your husband screwed your sister but I'm not trying to console you for that.) Prior seeks out places he can be alone. Parks, back offices at Shades, even dark corner tables in little cafes. Find him there, but don't expect him to approach.]

Comments

city visits!! but in the sanctuary

[enarms]

[ the Sanctuary is the last place John wanted to be after the rescue. not a big fan at the best of times, finding the people he'd set out to save trapped in a ward off from the rest and left unnoticed and unassisted has done nothing to garner any love. and then there's what happened in that ward. the thing he'd love to be far, far away from. the duties he'd love to abandon for the sake of not being reminded of— but he's been reprimanded before for his stubbornness, the hypocrisy and futility of it in the face of other people's need. taking his fury out on the Sanctuary now would only deny people who need it the medical attention he can provide. and he's too stubborn to be a coward about the rest. John had taken that first night away, spent it in his office at Shades, patching himself up and sleeping off the worst of it, keeping out of the way as the tail ends of the rescue effort turned into the beginnings of the recovery. and the next day he went back to the Sanctuary, and started work.

for the most part, he's avoided the bedsides of friends. those are conversations he hasn't got it in him to handle. but as the days go on and people start to drift home, overcoming the worst of it and moving on to their own more private recoveries, the number of people up and about, testing their legs, also rises. so he catches glimpses of people here and there, familiar faces. ducks into doorways, swerves down other corridors.

John's first response on seeing Prior's face is to flinch - visibly, no small twitch but an active movement to turn around and go suspended mid-action, caught on pause. the result is a jarred half-turn that stops short, with John's eyes still fixed on the man hobbling as gracefully as any man is able to hobble down the corridor towards him.

John's second response on seeing Prior's face here, seeing Prior hobbling down the corridor towards him, seeing him in clothes instead of bedclothes and on his feet instead of resting, is: ]

What are you doing out of bed?

[ barked. a fine hello, for the first time they've seen each other since before he was taken. but just because John hasn't been in to visit doesn't mean he hasn't been watching. doesn't mean he hasn't had somebody fill him in on the details of Prior's state, on his progress, on how he won't stay in his fucking room.

one hand bunches into a white-knuckled fist at his side, the one external giveaway of the sheer effort it's taking to keep him stood where he is. whether he wants to go toward or away he doesn't know - and he hopefully won't find out if he can just keep it balled up tight enough, with blunt half-moons pressed into his palm.

John has his own bruises, ugly and angry across his jaw and high on his cheek, lip healing from an earlier split. but rather that be what shows on his face than what's going on in his head, the roiling mix of fear and fury, heartbeat almost obnoxiously loud and leaping in his throat. ]

[priorly]

[Fuzzy vision or not, Prior catches that flinch, waiting mid click of his cane to see what becomes of it. Does he look that terrible? Well good, people should look bad after what they've been through. He refuses to be trussed up under starched sheets until the bruises and the torn lip's healed and the crackle in his throat's soothed itself back down, and he's wearing a face more acceptable for public consumption.

People should know. They should. They should be forced to look at faces messier than his every day until someone at least suggests how this won't be allowed to happen again.

Though. One glance back in John's direction is all Prior really needs to know that he's already seen enough. The balled up fist at his side feels like Prior's whole body: clenched and waiting for something to swing at. Prior tilts his chin up, starting along the corridor again.

Deflection. Deflection's better than attack, with this one. And anger's better than kindness.]

You're still a terrible flirt.

[Take it, please, spare him the lecture that won't work, or the strong-arming that will work until the door shuts and footsteps recede. It's all been tried. He can't bear stillness, can't bear quiet, and a hospital room counts too much for both.]

I have things to do.

[enarms]

[ he doesn't. he doesn't take it, though he might've on another day. another day, his stance might at least have changed, or his approach softened. today is not another day. today sits squarely in the aftermath of the days that came before, and one wry stab at pushing him back won't sway him now.

Prior continues on toward him and John doesn't move again. his ground is stood and his chin tilts up in a near-match of Prior's display - slow, though. waiting. come on, then. you try me, Prior Walter. you just fucking try. ]

I don't care. Those things can wait.

[priorly]

Well I don't think the bed's going anywhere, either.

[One man can't fill a hall. If the mountain won't take the hint and back off, Mohammed will just have to go around it, whether it's bracing itself to resist or not.

It's not a quick rush of an attack. Prior has time to take in the new facets of Doctor Watson's features as he approaches. The man hasn't gone for healing, himself. There are people in the city who could neaten up those rips and tears with a twitch of their fingers. Maybe, like Prior, it's that he wants a visible marker of what he's been through. Maybe less people will ask how he's holding up when they can watch the slow heal of blood clotting and crusting at the corner of his mouth. Less people will ask what happened when they can read it on his skin.

Commonalities or not, Prior hasn't much intention of stopping for a chat. People keep trying to talk and he has less words now that he used to, it's exhausting trying to find something bland enough to send them away.]

Cheryl's apartment

[sweetwater]

[ after everything that's happened, Cheryl can only conclude that everything is bullshit and it's likely that none of them will ever be truly safe again. what choice does she have other than to try and keep her head up?

the apartment is quiet. Peter died. she tries not to linger on that thought, but it's hard to think of anything else.

Prior is a welcome distraction, despite his own scars and baggage. she greets him at the door with as much warmth as she can muster. ]

Come in, have a seat. I've missed you.

[priorly]

[He hasn't come to sit down, though he's leaning heavily on the cane in one hand: a new addition, alongside the goth attire. He has come because everything is bullshit and it's likely none of them were ever safe to begin with, but it means something to see her whole and largely unharmed.

There were too many teenagers stuck in there with him. A girl with red hair. It haunts him. A lot of things do. And he's heard that Peter died: they all could have. Now the least-lucky few of them are upstairs being rebuilt and how the fuck does that work when they tell him they can't even get him a cure?

Prior knows people supposedly being regenerated too. How's anyone supposed to know it's the same person when they come back? God knows Prior doesn't feel the same person he was a week ago.

He finds a smile for her, but it's tight, a muscle strain on a face not currently built for such things.]

You, too. Do you know they wouldn't even let us send postcards? Of everything, that might have been the greatest injustice.

[The attempt at humor falls flat, even to him. He dips his head away as he passes her, turning to the window.]

I keep thinking I ought to get drunk. Or stoned. You'd think I'd sell my mother for a quaalude after all that but I-

[He's even refusing painkillers.]

I can't do it.

[sweetwater]

[ she follows behind him, thankful to have company. the apartment has felt horrifically empty without Peter. every other time his absence has meant he's just a call way. that's not the case now. ]

The problem with quaalude is it eventually wears off and then you're back where you started. Might as well not even tempt oneself with the blissful nothing of medication.

[ Cheryl softly rests a hand on his back. ] Have you been sleeping?

[priorly]

It's not that. I don't want anything else screwing with me, you know?

[He leans back a little into her touch. Not too much, can't relax too much or he might fall completely.]

It's been screwed with enough. My head is loud enough, I don't want anything else in there that isn't me, even if it's supposed to quiet it. I'm scared. Of that.

[He turns his head and the answer to her other question's as clear as if he had NO in permanent marker across his nose. He's caught the odd scrap of sleep, an hour here and there at other people's bedsides.]

If you mean that like have you been skiing then yes, at some point I dimly remember. Recently, not really, no.

ii.

[latkje]

[ Nash finds Prior outside Byerly's room. He's carrying a bouquet of flowers that he frankly stole, cut with a blade that wasn't meant for weeding. ]

I thought I might find you here.

[ He's fixed his face, healed without a trace of scarring. And Nash knows, because he keeps catching himself in windows, in the pools of water left on the ground after it rains. It had taken him a few days to save up the magic for it, especially with all the other healing that was more pressing than fixing the scarlet twist on his left cheek. People had stared, even as he worked their wounds closed, stared and weighted him down with the staring. It was an unfamiliar feeling, and he was glad to be rid of it.

But, even in his world, there were some scars that couldn't be spelled away. ]

[priorly]

[Prior has a few new scars himself. Colorful tracework over the lines of the veins in one arm, faint but enough to keep startling him from the corner of his eye. That's part of why he's bundled up from wrist to throat now, making everything in between a blank, ignorable void.

If Nash has been working to avoid staring, though, he's currently shit out of luck. It's all Prior can do for a good few seconds, stare and swallow down a hard lump of fear that chokes up at the synaptic connections made between sense and memory. The evacuation is mostly a blur: bullets, burns, a toxin he can still taste at the back of his throat and a mind still mostly fucked by the whole experience. But if there's one focal point to it, it's staring blue-eyed back at him right now.

Words don't seem to come as a natural response, he moves his lips and doesn't find anything to say. Your sister's name is Julie. A test he can't risk trying in case the walls crumble and it's all been a trick to begin with.

So he nods, keeping himself in place by the finest of threads even as he checks the hall for the quickest way out.]

He's still sleeping.

[Still. It's been days, and Prior's close to trying Dramatic Measures to get through to him but the fear it's put in him only shows in a twitch in his cheek, bitten down quick.]

But give them to him anyway, they'll brighten things up. I'll - I'll come back.

[latkje]

[ For a moment, he wonders if that damn burn is back, but no. His lips move the way they're supposed to, with none of that paper bag stiffness. He almost reaches for the side of his face anyway, but instead runs his hand through his hair. ]

These are for you. His Formerly Imperial Highness is supposed to bring me flowers.

[ It's a sad joke, but hey, that's when you're supposed to make them. His eyebrows arch, taking in the furtive glance, covered limbs, the cane Prior must have picked up somewhere. ]

But I can leave them here if you want.

[priorly]

[Prior's lips work around an oh, but the sound doesn't quite get there in time to match the movement. In what might be becoming a leitmotif, the idea that Nash would have come to see him hadn't really occurred. He's done enough, one more person beyond the one in the room behind him that Prior has to feel responsible for dragging into hell.

Yes, yes, responsible's a big word to use for a man who would have come, anyway, a man who would have gone, anyway. Prior's not the one who made them what they are, but somehow to have had the advantage of it adds guilt to the fraught little tangle of emotions he's already preoccupied by not dealing with.

Oh.]

They're pretty.

[And whether it's unexpected kindness or just things catching up to him now he's stayed still too long, suddenly Prior's turning his head, a palm pushed up over his face in a not-subtle attempt to stop the emotion that's showing there. He's not let himself cry yet and at some point it will get too hard to blink away what keeps welling up, but he just about manages now.]

I - I don't have a room.

[Thank you is what he wants to say, but it seems too little and too much.]

Sanctuary

[dendarii]

[ Miles has been in and out of the Sanctuary since this whole debacle came to a relative close. For his own needs, as always, but for Byerly and Prior as well. For while he may not know Prior all that well just yet, shared fondness of Shakespeare is enough to make him fond enough. He floats between the two rooms, checking in on both men.

As he does now, when he catches Prior leaning heavily against a chair. That. Looks rather painful. He winces instantly in sympathy, remembering doing much the same in his own sickrooms. ]

You would heal faster in bed.

[ Said with the tone of someone who deeply understands the dread of lying in bed for too fucking long when you're full of energy and/or frustration. ]

[priorly]

[Far from full of energy, Prior's finding terror and blind fury make a fair substitute. He hasn't been down long - even the medicated unconsciousness administered as a mercy while he was too messed up to refuse it hasn't been much competition for the wrath of heaven. But Prior intends to be.

He sees the door open and starts clattering determinedly toward it, leg dragging but one obstacle cleared. It takes a long moment before he realizes Miles is on the other side of the handle.]

No. [He's quite clear, looking back over his shoulder to a room already a mess, blankets tossed to the door.] No I wouldn't. I need to get some clothes, get out of here, get

[And by now it's clear there's no one else in the hallway.]

...Is it just you?

[dendarii]

[ Well. Terror and fury are a certain kind of energy; Miles sure recognizes that too. He stands in the door between Prior and the exit, doing some mental calculations of his own. Yes, he is the only one in the hallway. Could Prior knock him over and leave? ... Probably, but Miles could easily be stubborn too. If he wanted to be.

He takes another look at Prior's face, though. And decides otherwise. ]

It is, yes. Where are you going?

[ He'll help. If only to balm his own feelings of helplessness. ]

[priorly]

[Knocking Miles down isn't, in fact, the first thing on Prior's mind. He's not precisely tank material, hopping across the room toward him like a broken bird. It's the empty corridor, the lack of other faces waiting at his door that has him thrown for a moment.

Well. He'd never promised Byerly he'd be able to stay safe. That that turned out to be unwitting prophecy in itself is hardly Prior's fault.

Still. He'd have expected -

Something other than this absence. An anxiety he doesn't have explanation for settles low in his chest. Stupid. Prior sets his chair down and rests both hands on the back of it when he reaches the doorway, getting breath back into sandpaper lungs.]

I haven't decided yet. Why, are you coming?

solitude

[flashystyle]

[Dorian would like to believe he wasn't purposely avoiding their household, after everything was said and done. It was just that he didn't have time, he'd think, as he sits back and replays the events over in his head for what feels like hours. He didn't know what he could possibly say, he'd think, as he poured over the countless different lines of conversation he could provide if he just went over. He's too just too injured to go out, he'd think, as he changed the bandages of an injury much more minimal than any of them received.

He would like to, but he doesn't believe it. Dorian knows he just couldn't visit Prior knowing he was at the bedside of someone he utterly failed to rescue in time, on top of the lingering wariness of the unknown when it came to Prior's powers. He'd come by to lay wards around the place, make sure it wasn't possible to for anyone to break in unnoticed, but not a word of dialogue was exchanged. The guilt was just too heavy for a time, and he didn't have the stomach to try and play the "it'll be alright eventually" card when he doesn't really believe that himself.

He still doesn't. When Dorian does finally approach him, it's when he's spotted his familiar figure in the park, and after he's talked himself up into doing it. He doesn't announce himself, simply taking a deep breath as he slows to a stop next to Prior, and looks on rather than directly at him.

Whether it be peace or inner turmoil that he's interrupting, he doesn't know. He doesn't know how to broach it. Everything is shit.]

... You know, if you concentrate very hard on how beautiful this place can be... [He finally outstretches his arm, gesturing out to the grass of oncoming spring.] ... You almost forget that half of this planet's inhabitants are assholes.

[priorly]

[Everything is shit. A sentiment that Prior Walter could buy up and print on greetings cards to pass out rather than saying hello.

He's found himself by a small stretch of water, maybe man-made or perhaps a convenient crater to host a natural puddle. The water is clear blue and reflects the treeline on the opposite bank, and it feels the faintest fraction like home in a way that hurts and soothes all at once. He'll come back in summer, at the point in the afternoon when the light overlays everything in gold. It would be nice to see it, then.

Now his attention's easily dragged upward, leveled on Dorian's profile with a detached, assessing gaze. This is in how he greets people, now, with an analysis of what they've been through.

There's no shame in not having visited, the Sanctuary or the House. Prior's been keeping his own vigil but even he needs to get away from it sometimes, when guilt and fear start to curdle together in the pit of his stomach. The whole city's a fancy parlour dance of bruised people sidestepping each other, why would Dorian be different.

So Prior sighs, and his lips curve without really finding the shape of a smile.]

It's all trees for me, from now on. A little rough around the edges but real saps further in.

[He turns back to the water.]

I've never had the vaguest problem with assholes. It's the indifferent I can't stand.

I'm your dreamgirl

[vorrutyer]

[ He dreams for days. Sometimes coherently, enough that it reaches almost to the point of lucidity, almost to where Prior could reach - and sometimes sunk so deep that his mind is near catatonic, nothing more than a murky eddy through the dark. Never reachable. Always down too deep. On some level, perhaps, he's cognizant of the fact that he's drowning, recognizes it - it's why, when he dreams near-lucidly, he dreams of great open stretches of water, not a boat in sight, bobbing in the water with his head scarcely above. There is not the desperation, the fear of death, that would come in the water in real life; there's peace, instead, in this state of not-yet-drowning. ]

[priorly]

[Prior's awake, for days. He's not always at Byerly's bedside, there are other places he has to visit, and other people wanting to stop by and see the man who's out like there's an apple wedged in his throat, too. There is no apple, of course. Even fairytale logic's too simple for this. Doctors are among the visitors, and every vital statistic and possible treatment's been checked and tried and given up on. Nothing they can do. He's there and not, lips parted, drifting somewhere out of reach.

Prior lays down beside him, sometimes. Head on his chest, a hollow facsimile of other nights that have lasted through to morning, just warmth and conversation. He catches fragments of sleep here, mind dipping into something dark, distant and unreachable.

The rest of the time he paces. The rug by the window has a track marked into it as everything in Prior tells him to keep moving except his heart, which tells him he can't leave.

Eventually, nearly crazy with fear and frustration, he chases out the last well meaning well wisher and tells Miles to keep the door closed and everyone out 'til morning at least. No exceptions.

The sheets feel stiff and too cool when Prior lays down on them, curling in against Byerly's back, close enough that his breath brushes the nape of his neck as he settles.]

I'm sorry. [He's said it to a silent room so many times and it still comes out a little choked.] I'm sorry, baby. You would have killed me if I hadn't called. And maybe you will for this, too, but I can't just leave you in there.

[It takes a long time to fall asleep, listening to his own rough breaths overlaying Byerly's slow, deeper ones.

And then a door opens into darkness. An ocean, or - something. There's a light behind Prior, blinding, until he steps forward and it slams in his wake. He's standing in dark water up to his ankles, with a vague feeling that it should be closer to his chin. In a moment his eyes might adjust enough to be better aware of his surroundings, but for now-]

Huh. Well, if I'd known I would have dressed for the beach.

[vorrutyer]

[ It takes a moment to know who it is, whose face it is. This is the first time in so long that he's had to use any sort of conscious thought that it's like shaking off sleep in its own right. He stares at the interloper, and recognizes - ]

Prior?

[ Where had he been before? There's a vague memory of a boat, he thinks, a misty sort of recollection. It's the only thing that makes sense. (There was a time, once, when he was younger, when he'd been swept off into the water and had been carried along by some current and deposited on the beach, saved by some fickle twist of fate when he was too drunk and too limp to save himself.) But hadn't he been alone? So, vaguely, he says - ]

You weren't with me.

[priorly]

[The water's wide but sound carries here like they're in a small, echoey room together. There's a pang of regret in Prior's voice as he replies.]

No. I would've been if I could.

[Water dances round his ankles as he walks to Byerly's side, crouching there. There's nothing solid beneath him, but it doesn't seem to matter so long as he doesn't think about it. He thinks about raising things up.]

But I'm here now, and it's time to stop treading water. [The arm he offers out to be held onto isn't as frail and birdlike as the one twined with Byerly's in a bed somewhere miles away. He's whole and healthy here, a good twenty pounds heavier, someone who looks and feels young and strong.] Come with me?

[There's a boat now, out on the skyline, silhouetted black.]

after their discussion...

[shashka]

[ Ocelot manages to track down Prior quicker than he thought. call him paranoid, but he'd rather not talk about anything out in the open. hell, he'd probably rather not talk on the Station. after all, the Obriters seem to know everything about them. ]

You think this is going to work?

[ Ocelot really doubts it. the problem is, of course, that the Orbiters hold all the cards right now. they see everything. and their insistence on being as vague as possible hasn't exactly helped matters. ]

[priorly]

[Precisely why Prior doesn't feel the need to maintain an air of privacy anymore. He had a name badge when he got here that told secrets he'd never shared with anybody. There's nothing they can't know.

He's pacing (as much as one can, bound to a cane with a leg that drags like a sullen child) down the hall when Ocelot catches him, slowing to turn and take a minute to focus on him. It seems to take that long to process. Tiredness and a single-minded purpose combined.]

I have no idea, I just know I'm going to try.

[shashka]

The only thing you might succeed in is getting put back into stasis if you're not careful.

[ Ocelot is rarely an honest man. but in this case, he also feels Prior's rage. ]

We're all pawns right now, subject to the Orbiters' will. For all we know, they might be listening to us right now. [ a pause. ] We still don't really know their motives. We only know what they've told us, if you're the trusting sort.

[ and Ocelot really isn't. ]