priorly: (> golden)
Prior Walter ([personal profile] priorly) wrote in [community profile] nysalogs2018-03-25 12:54 am

Aftermath: open

Who: Prior Walter ([personal profile] 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] 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.]
latkje: (xv.)

[personal profile] latkje 2018-04-02 01:42 am (UTC)(link)
My religion doesn't allow for coincidences, but it doesn't follow that we were chosen.

[ And the term chosen is so vague, even in the legends about the Stars of Destiny. ]
latkje: (xxxiv.)

[personal profile] latkje 2018-04-02 02:03 am (UTC)(link)
Then they also need to consider the question of who's doing the choosing.

[ It would be wrong to say Nash believes in fate, but he is from a place where fate is something apparent, heavy, like old proverbs, or chains around the neck.

At the rest of it, he tilts his head. ]


A conspiracy.
latkje: (lxvi.)

[personal profile] latkje 2018-04-02 02:57 am (UTC)(link)
And I was chosen from the moment I was born, and only started hearing voices in my head after I stopped being— well.

[ After he'd failed, really. He knows this is a different kind of chosen than what Prior means, but that's the point: they can't reasonably expect their experiences here to match up with the ones they had back home. But that's an easier thing to point out than to practice.

The Temple teachings say that suffering is a proof of guilt, that providence will shield the righteous from the arrows of truth. But Nash didn't learn about torture in the Temple. ]


And what if we aren't important to their plan?