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Entry tags:
Aftermath: open
Who: Prior Walter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
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.]
priorly) & OPENWhat: 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
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.]
no subject
Well no wonder you're so goddamn afraid. All right. Fine. I'll take yours. I'll just... I'll take yours.
[If no one's going to make this easy, lets make it harder. Prior slips under the water like a fish escaping the catch, a spray going up before he resurfaces, splashing and gasping lungfuls of whatever counts for air. His hair's slick to his forehead and the water's like a cold slap but after that it feels like he needed one.
And both his hands take both Byerly's, under the water. Present and real and here, wherever the hell that happens to be. And he can't help it, sue him.]
Do you?
no subject
[ It's odd; when Prior comes down into the water with him, it feels less threatening. He feels more buoyant. And what a monster that makes him. He can see Prior struggling, looking like he might slip under, but he...
His hands tighten on Prior's. God. ]
Why do you think I wouldn't kiss you?
no subject
[Said between urgent breaths. He doesn't have Byerly's calm out here - he isn't, will never be one to give in to the idea of slipping easily away.]
I thought you knew too much about me to want to. I lost all my mystique.
[The disease, it's always been that or some other form of defect, in the back of his mind. Knowing, knowing Byerly wanted something and held back, there had to be some repulsive force behind it. In Prior's vocabulary, love is the opposite magnetic pole.]
no subject
Harder to slip when you have someone to hold to, though. It hurts to know you'll hurt them. ]
You've seen some of the people I fuck. You think I need mystique? [ He closes his eyes. In the dream, in its strange logic, he can still see everything, every flutter of Prior's expression. ] If someone holds your heart, you shouldn't give them cause to crush it.
no subject
I've seen a lot of the people you fuck, I could close my eyes and trip over one on any given street. And I don't give a crap about the number or the names, but forgive me if being the only intolerable creature in a city with plenty of people I wouldn't show an interest in from the end of a very long bargepole didn't make me appreciate it was out of love.
[For someone with enough bruises of their own, it's been - well, dispiriting. And that puts enough spirit back in him to fight to keep his head out of the water a little more.]
And as for your heart - if you got food poisoning once, I hope that you never ate again. You idiot, you're not even protecting anything, keeping yourself downtrodden so that nobody can step on you again. I'll use love against you, is that it?
no subject
[ Shouldn't Prior know that? He was betrayed by the man he loved. That's how it always goes. Love turns to loathing. There's never another way, not in all the love affairs that Byerly has seen and been a part of and destroyed. ]
And you'd become someone that could be used. To get to me.
no subject
[One hand's on the move, steadily up Byerly's forearm, to clasp his elbow: a better grip.
Yes, he was betrayed, beaten and battered by love. But love didn't end with the betrayal - it would hurt less if that were how it worked. He doesn't loathe Louis. And somewhere, in a city that doesn't exist anymore, Louis still loves Prior, and loathes himself too much for anyone else to bother adding to it.]
I've been halfway in love with you for months, did you know that? And I didn't think I could risk it again. But in the end, I can't risk not.
no subject
[ Prior is many things. Subtle isn't one. Dishonest isn't another. ]
But it doesn't matter now, does it?
no subject
[That grip on Byerly's arm becomes a tug, becomes a dead weight pulling him down and under, and Prior's sinking too, vanishing beneath the dark, smooth surface of the water first. There's no light under there, there's nothing except Prior's hand tight on Byerly's arm and then his mouth pressed to his, sharing air.
And above them, waves form on the surface. Crashing forward in inky curls and then starting to recede.]