deercountry | Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

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Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

Who: Johnny, Daniel, Ortus, Gideon Nav's Exquisite Corpse, Paul, Kaworu, Deku, Harrow, Maybe more?
What: Kidnapping, Forced Adoption, Getting these kids away from the Emperor
When: Shortly after boatgate
Where: The Bone House and Cobra Kai

Content Warnings: Probably references to Murder, Manipulation, Johnny Lawrence.

Prompts and Mingle will be in the comments.

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If you keep saying stuff like that, I'll start to get the idea that you're being underfed here, you know.

[ Not that Kainé looks young enough that she ought to have to be taken care of by an adult - or anyone else who could feed her, really. She already looks older than either of his own kids, or maybe her attitude just makes her look older than she is.

But even foul-mouthed Kainé over here still errs on the side of young enough that Daniel still can't help but fuss a little. It's in his nature.

Just enough that he can't help but ask. ]

.. have you been eating alright here?

"I love you too." He buries his face in his hair, and it brings relief like a silver stream smoothing over jagged rocks. He fits the thin curve of Kaworu's body against his and holds him like a storm will blow into the room and sweep him away in its waves.

"I'll be here. I've got you."

So close to what caused all this sorrow, he can feel a small shiver run through him though he's safe and holding someone close. He remembers the sounds of killing, whisper of knife against flesh, spatter and smell of blood, and Kaworu's voice only raising protest about Mariana. He knows what this chill is. It's the same tremble in his eyes he tamped down and hid from his mom the last time he left her.

He also knows it will pass, because this time he does not tamp it down but gives it the chance to heal like a lanced boil.

"If we all got what we deserved... Well, I'd be punished too. Can't think about people like that, or it would never end."

...Yeah?

[ Gideon didn't expect this reaction. A wince, maybe, or some light commiseration, but that's it. This guy barely knows her, what does it matter to him that her dad sucks? It shouldn't even matter to Gideon. She's away from him now, and that's all that matters. ]

It's okay. [ No, it isn't, but how the fuck does she save face, here? ] It was stupid of me to think I needed him in the first place. I don't, really. I've got my brothers. Fuck that guy.

[ Gideon forces some nonchalance into her tone, doable only because she's got years of practice. See, everything's cool, no need to worry! ]

Like, he doesn't even get half the babes Sensei Lawrence gets, so, you know. I'm doing so much better, really.

[ That's the mark of a good dad right there. ]

[ Sophia does not coo and pet as some Omens do. Her comfort is a quiet dig of snout into neck, pressure that insists on being felt. ]

We would have brought you back.

[ She had been tucked inside her Sleeper's heart when he dove off the side of the ship, reaching for a body he never quite touched. She had already been gone, thought they did not know, would not have believed. The moment when the covenant had been broken. ]

We bring each other back.

[ Like Big Boy does now, giving Sophia substance and form even if she cannot hold her own. ]

The force of Midoriya's grip and tug throw Paul off balance, pitching on his knees to shore up against Midoriya's side. He doesn't notice the sting of claws under the crackle of lambent energy sheathed Midoriya and the unexpected crash of their bodies. He doesn't follow Midoriya's gaze up, too preoccupied by the explosive, bloody claim that he makes.

It doesn't come as a surprise. Not a real one, when Paul remembers everything that's led to this moment, the things Midoriya has said and done since the ship sank. But it feels like a revelation, some veil twitched back from his own clouded vision.

He's dragged himself this far mechanically, one foot after another, always thinking to the next thing, and the next, and the next, so that the feelings dogging his footsteps could not catch up to him. Now, at the worst time, they do. He kneels, half-fallen, in the shadow of the Reckoning, and all he wants to do is curl himself under Midoriya's arm and close his eyes under the aegis of his protection.

"Hear him, Reckoning," Paul says, much quieter than Midoriya, finally lifting his eyes in shameless entreaty to another god of death. "Hear him and know your price will be paid for what we ask of you. We seek your judgment, laid over that house, against any in it who would harm Kaworu Nagisa, favored of your ill-done sister, her seas fresh on his lips - and I offer you this."

He raises his hand higher. Blood rushes down to his elbow, trickles along the curved muscle of his upper arm. He is shaking, with its loss or with awe, a tiny tremor that makes the droplets on his fingertips dance with reflected light.

"My contrition. My supplication." Fervency wrenches his voice. "Let me pay the debt I owe. Let it be me, and not him."

[ Kainé had to mature faster than she should have. If she hadn't been self-sufficient and resilient she wouldn't have survived. She almost didn't even with that. ]

I eat plenty. Don't worry about that.

[ She doesn't care much to be fawned over and condescended to, but at least this guy isn't in her face about it. ]

I'll make stew sometime.

Listen..

[ Daniel starts. Slowly. He's never felt quite as much out of his depth as in this moment. There's something vaguely reminiscent of the way she stands in front of him and says this, so dismissive, as if it's truly ever that easy. As if saying it like that often enough will make her stop caring, somehow. It makes him think a little of Robby, though that comes with its own troubled and complicated feeling that crops up inside of Daniel's chest in an unpleasant way.

He figures she probably won't like the way he suddenly sounds so serious in the face of her own lightness, but he can't help it. He can't just go along with that. It goes against everything he believes in, and so Daniel's eyesbrows knot together in very genuine concern. ]

.. Gideon, right? I know it isn't my place to say this.

[ After all, he's pretty much a stranger to her. This is the first time she's meeting him, and he's already throwing this ball at her.

But what else can he do? Who else will say it, if he doesn't? And the idea of no one telling her this is more sickening to him than anything else could ever be. ]

But.. it's not okay. Even if you mean that, and you're okay with it [ WHICH HE.. SEVERELY DOUBTS... ] that still doesn't make what happened okay. Nothing ever would. [ Daniel still can't grasp it. He knows she isn't lying about what happened, there's no way, but it's still so baffling to him how any parent could ever do that and still live with themselves. It goes several degrees even beyond the most awful stuff Daniel himself has seen. ]

Even though he sounds like a.. [ This is definitely the sort of pause where Daniel almost says 'asshole' and reels himself in at the last minute-- ] .. like a jerk, he's still your father. It's never stupid to think you'd need him, that's just what every kid out there feels.

[ Trust him. Daniel "daddy issues" LaRusso over here is an experience expert. ]

There's no blame here with you. Something awful was done to you by someone who was supposed to protect you. To love you. [ Isn't that every parent's duty? ] And if you happen to not be totally okay because of it.. then that's fine. And it's not something you have to talk about with me.

[ God knows that she probably doesn't want to discuss it with someone she only met today. Daniel is realistic enough to realise that. ]

But if you want to talk about it.. Talk about it with someone you trust. Whether that's one of your friends, or.. [ He can't believe he's saying this, but he's trying to be mature here, and trying to think of the best this for this girl-- ] .. or Johnny, if you trust him.

Midoriya unfastens his grip only long enough to clutch Paul (bleeding, shaking, desperately alive) to him by the waist should they need to leap away. The Reckoning jerks her head in what seems to be a scoff, but only after Paul is done speaking, so it is unclear what at. It is not enough to bring down death, or Midoriya would have sensed it coming. Probably.

The Reckoning drops to one knee with a shaking of the ground and leans down to get a closer look. She sways with more deadly grace than anything her size ought to. Her face is obscured by a veil, but she seems to take in the two ants before her with something more than eyes.

"So much for constancy," she berates in a bold, cutting voice that echoes with her size. "Contrition... What of the contrition of Kaworu Nagisa?" With her free hand, she unfurls two skeletal fingers battlesign-quick. She lowers one, but the other remains upright and expectant. Midoriya's heart despairs, and his vision fills briefly with red before it drips down his cheeks.

"I'm watching Kaworu too." I'm watching him carefully, or I'm watching over him. Both are true. He does not mean to be vague; it's the limitation of his native language. "He's hurting. I need to get him back. Help him try to do better. He's mine too!"

Her helmet turns just slightly to wordlessly consider Midoriya, who involuntarily surges with more power than is strictly safe for him. He can feel it rattle in his joints and jostle his tensed, spring-loaded cords. It chases the fear out of him, leaving nothing but feral, clawing purpose.

She jerks her head back to Paul. "Confess your crimes," she orders sharply.

Paul can withstand the scrutiny of the great Pthumerian. When she strikes the earth to shaking, he remembers the old man of the desert, the angel of the beach, the conqueror wyrm of the ocean come to claim him. He is before the vast, consuming eye of the universe, and he looks back into it from the threshold of a shadowed place.

But she speaks of Kaworu's contrition, and his heart clamors. She turns her gazeless sight to Midoriya's protests, and Paul goes tensely coiled next to the turbulent storm of Midoriya's rippling power inside the encircling anchor of his arm.

(If she touches him, either of them, Paul will fall back across that threshold. He will ignite in retribution, he will make himself a scourge. Black, cold knowledge lays a stilling hand on the back of his neck.)

But she pivots back to Paul, and the future clarifies. He called her. He knew what she might ask, what she almost surely would ask, the sacrifice not complete until she does. He swallows a citric acid scald in the back of his throat, something hot and vital loose in the dark hollow of his skull. Blood trickles from his nose, unfelt, as his palm still pulses in rhythm.

"I confess," he says, tongue heavy, "I confess to sacrilege against my Patron, Mariana, and her domain. To abuse of my power, to domination of others' will, to theft of their freedom. I confess to profaning of the blood," and he hitches in Midoriya's hold with a stuttering inhale. It is slippery as cool grey stone from a faraway sea, a hundred times as heavy.

"I confess to murder, twice over." He won't look away from her, however hard her regard falls across him, as long as it stays with him. "I confess to being a traitor to my House, an oathbreaker. Faithless."

They may as well be two kinds of killing. Jamis, the pirate. The heart of House Atreides. His heart. They jumble together in his thoughts, a roil of guilt and shame and intangible, impossible loss.

His father would have wept to see what Paul did.

"I am at your mercy," Paul says, in a stranger's soft, accepting voice, "I ask for The Reckoning."

[ See - at least he accepts what she's saying here. Kainé seems so direct to a weird extent that he doesn't think she'd lie about it so blatantly.

(There's always going to be some fussing though, Kainé, sorry. This is how Daniel functions.)

But he's at least willing to back down over this one and believe her. Instead the corner of his lip curls upright just faintly as he says: ]

Sounds good to me. I'd love to try it. [ If she was planning on sharing it with everyone here? He isn't too sure if she is, considering Kainé's levels of kindness - or lack thereof - still are a little hard to read to him right now, considering her attitude. ]

"You confessors always make your crimes sound so pretty, your disregard for others and their lives..."

Midoriya bares his fangs. He wanted to look at Paul at murder, twice over, but he will not take his eyes off the Reckoning. Every person closest to Midoriya has told him not to risk himself, knowing that he does. If the Reckoning lays a finger on Paul or Kaworu, Midoriya would do it again, no matter what happens to him. It would be a quick, ignominious end. There is nothing romantic about being dashed to the ground in pieces of red flesh, white bone, and green fabric.

Midoriya and his Patron are fundamentally opposed. Midoriya has not concerned himself with seeking justice or revenge. He is someone who saves others or shows them the right path. He is the hand that reaches out or the one that protects, not the one that punishes. And yet, his intent to save resonates with her own.

"Protector, hear me and obey. You will be an instrument of my justice, thus: Witness Kaworu Nagisa's contrition before the next moon. Humble him with the toil of atonement."

"I will," Midoriya growls, his hackles not entirely lowered, but recognizing a shared goal. The Reckoning curls her raised finger down.

"See it done, or I will. The curse as described will last until the next moon. Place your blood here."

Her fingers loom over them as she offers the pad of her thumb. When they have done so--Midoriya swiping the tar-smell of his blood tears onto it, Paul bleeding enough to eclipse that--she straightens and brings her sword in. Its movement cuts the air like a windmill, and the two boys look about as useless as a knight trying to fight one. She runs her stained thumb along its edge, drawing out a thin streak of her blood. She flips her grip to aim her swordpoint downward, perilously close to the young humans.

Midoriya tightens his hold, but Danger Sense is quiet. He breathes to Paul, "It's all right--"

She drives a third of the thick blade into the ground at her side. The soil near the edge of what John calls his property trembles and drinks the invisible curse like wine spilled on cloth.

[ Funny, really, given what will happen in a mere three days, regarding Duty, and (uncapitalized) duties becoming less onerous — but neither of these two are those who might read the future, to know what is yet to come; Augustine knows only what he intends, and the likelihood of the cost he will bear as a result.

No use crying over milk that not only hasn't been spilt yet, but hasn't even formed in the cow, however. ]

Small enough chance of that, I fear, [ light-heartedly cheerful as his tone may appear, ] but I'm certainly not opposed to being proven wrong in the matter.

Do let me know, if anyone finds they've left something behind by mistake — although you do appear generally quite well-equipped in the detail-orientation department, amidst the lot of you — and I'll have Alfred drop it by.

And otherwise, well... I do hope that poetry reading will be soon, my young friend. You've certainly got enough work produced and polished to carry it off; you'll just have to whittle down your selection to be an appropriate length to allow for questions and answers, I suspect.

«Or for signings,» [ Alfred interjects. ]

When Paul smears his blood over the god's thumb a curtain of lightning falls across his vision, the world eclipsed in brilliance as he drops his shaking, bleeding arm to his chest and curls his hand into a fist. Vessels narrow, blood clots, but there is only so much compensation that even his physiology can make for what now slicks arm and thumb and hallowed blade.

Like a crysknife, he thinks, before she flips the sword and Izuku whispers into his ear. The universe hangs suspended between the two, divine retribution and mortal solace.

The blade strikes home, and so does the thunder.

Paul takes a shattered breath like the blow split his chest and not the starveling earth, curving around his leaping heart as silver pours from his stunned open eyes. The curse shivers ephemeral at the edge of his sight, ripples outward and onward into a future bisected. The moisture of his eyes, of his lips, weeps with the faint sting of acid, a brackish tide drawn forth by the gravitic tug of the Pthumerian's will.

"It is done," her voice says with his throat, and then he slumps against Midoriya's side bonelessly, teeth gritted against a strangled whimper as a cascade of sparks tumble agonizingly down every tender nerve in his mouth. It feels like catching a star on his tongue and swallowing, white hot annihiliation boiling in the stains of his guilt, pain welling up from soul more than body.

But nothing bleeds besides the slit wound on his palm as the shadow of the Pthumerian's sword falls across them as she pulls it free.

Edited 2022-09-05 14:10 (UTC)

He's a Warmblood, this world's blood magic version of being Quirkless. He doesn't have anything to experience the effects of the curse being enacted on his behalf. He's already given away its best surge of power--or lack thereof--the inert quality that makes it ideal for treating Corruption and Beasthood.

As on the beach, someone speaks in another's voice, but it is not an Omen. It is Paul. Midoriya bends more securely over Paul, then curves them both into a bow, their hair nearly touching the grass. Those that would be superhuman are so small in front of the armored god.

"Thank you," he growls fiercely.

Then she is gone as quickly as she appeared, and air rushes to fill the void she left behind. The deep slit she left in the ground yawns balefully up at the sky. Finally, Midoriya disarms his Quirk. He sits up and supports Paul's weight against him. Amidst the uncoiling shock of relief, he attempts to grasp Paul's hand to stem the blood flow. His own face is smeared with rust.

"What happened to your voice?" he gasps. His own is thin and tremulous.

Paul numbly allows Midoriya to staunch the wound in a grisly echo of a handclasp, the silver draining out of his eyes like water from a cracked vessel. He swallows thickly, dreading what might slough down his throat from the wrecked throb of his mouth. He barely wants to skim his awareness over it; he cannot feel anything else so keenly.

"Punishment." No blood pours out, no greasy smoke. His voice is fractured and shivering, but it's his, and the agony is losing its keenest edge. "Part of the price."

All of him is shivering, a mimicry of shock. He shouldn't be so affected by the volume of blood lost so far, but he can already trace this deeper than the flesh. The fingertip of a god brushed under his chin, the faint candle flame of her might passed across his vision. His soul aches, jarred violently against its ephemeral moorings. He knows without knowing that he has been passed over by something far worse than this.

"It's done," he echoes, cold slicing down to his bones, exhaustion welling up in the gaps left behind. "Nothing will happen to him. She showed me." His hand spasms in Midoriya's with pain he doesn't feel. "It's time to go."

[ A brief absurdity: Ortus wonders if this is what the fabled tales of worried parents sending their cherished offspring off to their first Cohort rotation are all about, and if he should expect to find lemon candies and a fresh change of socks tucked somewhere in the box that Augustine has handed over. It's not an unwelcome thought, but it is a sad one.

He does not care for God's loneliness in his emptied nest. He finds he cares, with the ache of a bruise, for Patience's.

Perhaps he will drop something inside of his own. A pen, or a strand of polished knucklebone, or a few scraps of notation. Another reason to lure the Saint, or at least his cavalier, out of this place. ]

Perhaps I shall provide a brief background to the audience to avert some of the more common questions about bones. [ He resists the urge to place a hand on Augustine's shoulder, but only just. ] To leave more - space for 'signings'.

[ He is struck by the terrible and touching knowledge that there will be those who will insist on such a thing. ]

Do not be a stranger.

[ That is how people say goodbye in stories. Ortus nods to them both in turn, necromancer and cavalier, Saint and spirit, Augustine and Alfred, before he turns away, making his way to the truck being loaded now with the young alongside their belongings. ]

"Breathe," he reminds him, mind running its fingers past pages on signs, symptoms, and procedures. "You're safe."

A hand in his hand, and it is slick with blood. Midoriya works with his other hand to get what he needs from his belt. Gloves off, disinfectant ready, all of it passes in sharp relief. It should be a blur in light of how tiredly Midoriya slouches like a puppet with strings cut, but he will remember every bump of woven bandage under his fingers, every warm drop of paleblood daubed away. And he will not fall, supporting the shuddering one next to him with his weight. This is the one wound he can tend to out of so many wounds unseen.

He loops an arm around Paul and hauls him up, ignoring the weakness in his own legs. He guides him to sit in the back of the truck, where he pulls a blanket from the baggage and wraps it tightly around him.

He wipes Paul's face clean. (He's careful with the delicate skin under Paul's eyes.) Water is in order, and a steady arm--one that isn't his. Midoriya is too connected to everything that's shaken Paul, and his face is still streaked with his own warmblood besides. These are the thoughts that clip mechanically past each other as he resists the urge to put an arm around someone in need.

As Midoriya cares for his wound, Paul watches in numb quiet, as attentive to each detail as the other boy is, and he thinks: is this safety?

The question echoes in the sting of disinfectant he bears without a flinch or a sound, in the sponging away of blood, in the way he is raised up and carried and settled. He closes his eyes when Midoriya cleans them, still shivering, but the shivers have shuddered to nothing by the time he is done. Paul doesn't open his eyes to watch him depart, shuffling to the far side of the truck. Others join them, the last departures from this shadowed house, and the truck rumbles to life underneath them all.

The rattle of metal, the thump of wheels on a road not meant for them. Paul pulls the blanket closer around himself. He's still cold, under the summer sun, cold enough not to feel the pain in his palm or inside his chest.

Perhaps that is what safety is, this lifeless distance between himself and everything that he might feel. He hovers somewhere above himself, observing his own skin as a stranger, and he wonders if it hurts.

He opens his eyes and looks at nothing, and that is how he stays, for a while.

We do.

[ Big Boy flicks her tail, a thank you that is almost playful. It's not the easy dismissiveness of her Sleeper, though. It's not as difficult for Big Boy to make her gratitude felt, especially when Sophia points out they look out for each other. ]

But I hope you don't ever have to. She -- [ and there's only ever one she to Big Boy, a Sleeper who doesn't like her, but needs her all the same ] -- doesn't like going there. It scares her.

[ Sophia's Sleeper is probably scared too, and at that thought, Big Boy quickens her pace, sticking her snout into various buildings and crevices where a mouse's boy might hide as she goes. ]

[ Sophia grooms Big Boy's mane in answer, with a warm draping of solicitousness transmitted through the ephemeral connection of Omens. She knows about having a frightened Sleeper, held apart and away from themselves, and whatever suffices as her heart bruises for her fellow Omen and that laughing, golden-eyed girl.

If she has more to say, it's cut short by Big Boy nosing into a dusty backroom, where the body of Sophia's Sleeper stretches out his arms and blinks as the right soul surfaces behind the right eyes. He is fuzzy with absence, and so doesn't question the apparition of this unknown Omen until Sophia flickers a call to attention to him, as she often does. ]

Hello. [ His voice is scratchy as he sits up, rubbing at cheek creased with red lines of pressure. ] You're Gideon's, aren't you?

[ Oh! There he is! Sophia might recognize the emotion Big Boy radiates as similar to Gideon when she wins a fighting match, mixed with relief. They found him! He seems relatively healthy, too, as far as Big Boy can tell these things. He does ask phenomenally dumb questions, though, but Big Boy assumes that's common to all Sleepers.

Big Boy gentle nuzzles the top of his head in the way that Gideon sometimes musses his hair, a wordless yes.

It takes her a little longer to remember how humans work. Big Boy has to come down off the high of victory, first. Once the Sleeper is adequately greeted, she asks: ] Can you stand? I can help.

[ Paul has always loved horses. This small one is no exception. He leans into her nuzzle with eyes that half-lid again, letting out a warm huff of breath not unlike a horse himself as he runs a hand down her arched neck. ]

Aren't you something?

[ She's a well-turned mare, to his appraisal, which does not linger on the rough, shadowy patches that are not quite whole. He loops an arm around her as he levers up to his feet, a wordless yes of his own. ]

You came looking for me. [ Like she said, he thinks, and is not sure why. ] I'm all right. But - thank you.

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Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

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