13 . autumn catch-all

[necrolord]

Who: John Gaius and company.
What: After a rough summer, the King Undying lays low.
When: September - October
Where: Mostly Gaze.

Content Warnings: Tagged in headers as needed. Note all the usual warnings of this character.

Comments

qrow.

[necrolord]

[ John Gaius has hardly shown his face since the mad violence of July.

August drove him indoors not with the rain, not with the floods, but with the beasts that spilled out of the sea: he'd frozen in astonishment and dawning horror, the first time he beheld them. He'd looked like a man taking a knife to the gut. He'd shut himself inside and, at the urging and desperate corralling of his partners, his minders, rarely come back out.

Mariana's month passed for him in a low, miserable blur. But it's September, now— his anniversary, a full year of captivity— and it finds him out in the crisp air, pulling a wry and humorless smile at the flocks of ravens overhead.

Qrow may not recognize the man in the Archives, down in the dark and quiet of the deep stacks. But he'd be hard-pressed not to notice him when he turns, the two of them suddenly alone in a narrow corridor of books, and Qrow is faced with all-black eyes. ]

[bolstafir]

[Most people who know Qrow are aware that he spends as little time as possible involved in scholarly pursuits of any kind. Information-gathering as a spy is blessedly not the kind of learning that requires books or classrooms, but there are some extraordinary sorts of situations that nonetheless call for the former.

Having one's house burned down is something that qualifies, he guesses. Sure, the library with all its lost books is getting restored with magic, which is admittedly pretty cool, but there's something to be said of building something new over the ashes of the old, and Qrow finds himself with a sentimental urge to find some new fairytale collections for the new house when he passes by the archives one day.

This turns out to be a mistake when his red eyes lock with black, and he's faced with the man he considers the reason for several of his most recent problems. He could handle this with any measure of maturity or grace, given the fact that the situation resolved itself two months ago. He could.

...He does not do that. John not only has the distinct misfortune (ha) of being an indirect source of all the chaos in July but also a reminder of some painful times which Qrow prefers to bury when he can out of that same sentimentality that has him in the archives in the first place.

It happens suddenly, really, as though Qrow were possessed by the urge much like a Sleeper might be beset by Beast transformation, like a Huntsman of Remnant might be by a Chill -- one moment Qrow's at the shelves, and the next he's pivoted at his heel and swung a fist directly at the Emperor Undying's jaw.]

[necrolord]

[ John recognizes, in the aftermath: damn, this guy can move fast.

This thought occurs to him only once he's been slammed backwards into a stack of books, which come clattering down off their shelves. A grand old hardcover tome whacks him on the head; another strikes him on the foot. He makes a noise that is not even a little dignified.

He imagines being shushed by a librarian for his suffering, and breathes a low huff that's nearly a laugh. But no one materializes at the end of their aisle: it's just this new guy and the King Undying, picking himself up and gingerly rubbing his jaw. ]

Hello to you too.

willow.

[necrolord]

Son of a bitch.

[ He doesn't even sound angry: he sounds, if anything, incredulous. Amazed. He's believed since the first day that they were fucking with him— he's known since August's watery hive-swarm that it's acutely personal, that they comprehend what they're doing— but he didn't truly expect this.

John Gaius sits in a boat on a river which has not yet turned red. He knows it will, because he's seen it play out before. And he knows who the corpses are, strung up as carrion along fenceposts in the coming distance, because Willow once watched him go distant and remote as they were laid out for his viewing. It's been one full year.

He turns to her. It's not a big boat. God just claps a hand on one wooden side, and never mind how it rocks slightly around them. ]

I'm starting to think me and boats don't mix.

[ Ha ha. ]

[frogfear]

[She had genuinely tried to avoid contact with the ravens' feathers, and the birds themselves on the whole since September hit, but it hasn't been easy. She has not forgotten the horrifying boat ride down the river last year. Somehow, knowing what to expect doesn't make it easier.

It's resignation she wears on her face as she glances at him with a sigh. Never mind that this is the last person she wants to be here with. Especially a second time.]

I guess not. So, we're doing this again, huh?

[necrolord]

Looks like it.

[ He settles in and does not look at the corpses lining their path. He knows who it'll be: Augustine, Mercy, all the rest. The real salt in the wound will come at the end, with ravens picking out her eyes. ]

Wild they think it'll work twice. Any decent haunted house should change up the material, right?

after kaworu's party.

[necrolord]

[ They make it through the night without major incident, unlikely as it seems. By the end, John has rallied from his low and tense exhaustion: he still smiles like he's wry and hurting, but he doesn't look so much like a man on the verge of picking a fight just for the interest of catching a blade. When he drops onto the couch, there is no glint of exposed bone. He is bare of Omen-smoke. It could be a hell of a lot worse.

He still rubs at the space between his brows and says, heavily: ]

Someone pull out the grown-up drinks.

for illarion.

[necrolord]

[ Later, when the whiskey is gone and John is heavily drunk, he rises with the sort of decisive huff which means That's that and has to catch himself on the back of the couch. He leaves Augustine and Pyrrha to their current argument and turns towards his study, as though he'll go retrieve another drink, or just get sidetracked picking at research until the sun rises in the morning. Neither would be unusual. It's the natural end to a Mithraeum evening, John wandering off and leaving his Lyctors to squabble in the stale aftermath of a party at which no one had fun.

Except that he turns a slow and lingering gaze on Illarion, before he goes. ]

hello,

[unsheathedfromreality]

[Well, and well.

Illarion doesn't need to see John's face--his shrike's eyes in a human setting--to know what that long pause implies. He waits a decorous minute, then unfolds himself from where he's perched on the couch, setting aside his long-nursed cup and flashing Saint and Martyr a smile in (temporary) farewell. There's a promise he's got to make good on.

The house isn't home and sanctuary enough for him to have shed most of his clothes, but he leaves his boots behind to pad barefoot in John's footsteps. His Omen stays behind, too--an implicit calculation he won't need her eyes where he's going. The study and the way to it are familiar; what's not is letting himself in without announcing it beforehand, which he does as well.

He does at least use the door, even if he need not, and eases it shut behind him with the least click.]

It did not go so poorly, [he assesses, of the party.]

(whether or not the party games continue)

[butnotyet]

"Never have I ever wanted to bring you a sippy cup full of milk as in this moment," remarks Augustine, as dryly as he ever has — but then, he's also still the member of their (reduced-in-number as it is) household with the ~fanciest~ taste, the one who actually cares the most about their liquor cabinet, and how thoroughly (and with what) it's kept stocked — so he goes to get the grownup drinks anyway.

When he returns, a few minutes later, pushing a lovely (bone) bartender's cart before him (all the better to save having to get up again every time someone wants a refill, or having to juggle multiple bottles whilst navigating doorknobs), he passes out drinks — whiskeys, vodka, a bone sippy cup full of a strong White Russian — as appropriate.

[necrolord]

John takes the stupid bone sippy cup with a smile threatening the corners of his mouth, tired but shockingly genuine. As they settle in, he raises the cup in cheers, and drinks his White Russian like a toddler.

It feels, however fleetingly, like a successful night with the people he loves.

snack break | for John

[martyrofduty]

"You need something in your stomach to absorb all that bullshit," Pyrrha chides Augustine in friendly fashion. Her whiskey is nearly drained—she solves that problem—and she stands to solve his. Even if he doesn't get them until the next day, he'll handle the dishes.

Casually, she taps John on the shoulder as she walks by. "You're with me, lightweight," she says. Then she looks across at the shrike, someone particularly interested if confused to some degree in taking care of Augustine, "Watch him for me. I'm trusting you."

That all sorted out she heads to the kitchen and a corner of quiet.

[necrolord]

"Lightweight," he moans in protest, thus proving her right. He's flushed, which doesn't take much doing, and feeling good with it: he unfolds himself upwards without further complaint, glad for the company. Glad for the companionable air.

He knows this is going to be trouble, but for just a moment he pretends he does not see it. He ambles into the kitchen at her heel.

live bug reaction; cw: animals in distress

[unsheathedfromreality]

Illarion had left the party and left Iskierka behind. She hadn't minded--she has so little to mind with, and besides she had her own s'more to peck on where she'd settled down to keep a faceted eye on Petrie as he slept.

Then something very bad happens to her Sleeper.

She screams loud enough to wake the dead and tumbles off her perch in a spray of graham cracker crumbs and melted marshmallow. Petrie wakes with an answering shriek of alarm and only barely ducks a huge flailing feathery tail that sweeps everything around him to the floor.

In seconds and a drift of Omen-smoke it's over, and a new-old creature curls into herself on the floor, eleven feet of shivering misery.

human dad to the not-quite-rescue!

[butnotyet]

Augustine and Pyrrha were in the midst of the sort of tired, meaningless, often-enough-wordless conversation that anyone might have expected, between two old veterans of the same fights who'd known each other for centuries-or-more — teasing about whisky vintages, delicately dancing around the simple fact that if John goes off to be, ah, intimate, by himself or with the shrike or with anyone else, well, both of them will feel it —

And then, well, there's screaming. And some of it is Petrie's — his son, more or less, emotionally if not societally speaking, and the only one of any of his sons present in Trench (thank goodness) — and some of it is unfamiliar-but-not, and he vaults the couch more quickly than if someone had been shooting at him, in order to get back to Petrie's perch —

— or rather, what's left of it.

The pterodactyl is clinging to the curtains and wailing out his confusion and fear; easy enough to persuade him to latch, shuddering, to the front of Augustine's shirt, instead. The creature on the floor, however — that takes him a long, long moment, chirping wordless soothing sounds at Petrie while staring down at it, to realize that Iskierka had been watching Petrie, that Omens are unkillable, that no monstrous other dragon-or-dinosaur broke crashing through a window in order to eat the mothbird — that, in fact, the window is one of the only things in the immediate vicinity that isn't damaged — and he asks, in a very low voice, as one would with a panicking animal, "Iskierka? Is that... well, you, more or less, in there?"

«I think it is, anyway,» Alfred allows, peering at her dubiously. «Here, let me take him,» he adds, coiling up around Petrie and floating him away in the mind-twisting way that has nothing to do with a snake's preferred means of locomotion that he seems to have mastered, and only just in time, as Augustine freezes, between one step and the next toward the creature on the floor, as he's hit by pain and panic and sick dread and horror and a desperate need for it to stop —

"Fuck," he breathes, or whispers — breathing is a bit hard, at the moment — and forcibly walls away those emotions enough to move again: scooping up all eleven miserable feet of miserable dragon-omen, grateful that she weighs about as little as she possibly could at that size, and storms off toward John's room, cradling her as delicately as a newborn.

OTA, sometime in october.

[necrolord]

[ God comes to awareness in the woods.

This is deeply inconvenient, but it's also the kind of bullshit he's frankly getting used to, by this point. He brushes pine needles off his pants, examines the little golden dragon in his palm, and sighs long and slow through his nose. Then he starts walking.

Congratulations, Sleeper: there is a man coming out of the woods just ahead of you, the evening sunlight pooling dully through the trees. Your relief to have company might be tempered when you realize it is a man with black eyes, the white rings of his eyes glowing faintly where he stands in shadow. ]

Looks like we're hiking buddies.

[umbraportation]

[ For the briefest moment, Nico wakes up thinking he fell asleep in the woods outside camp. Not unusual if he's that exhausted, but he hadn't done anything too draining before sleeping.

Also, quickly realizes he hasn't seen camp in a few months, so this is probably some of Trench's monthly events. He checks that his sword is still at his side, along with a weight in his pocket that hadn't been there before. Some kind of item that looks either like a pocket watch or a compass - pieces are missing, so he can't say for sure.

A presence draws closer, one unlike most others he's come across in Trench. Everyone has a death aura, some faint that tells him they'll live a long, natural life - and others thicker to indicate a shorter life. This one feels more like the Greek deities back home, and kind of like D, so it isn't really a surprise that it turns out to be the necromancer God. The demigod tucks his hands into the pocket of his coat. ]

Wanna make a bet on whether there's something "creepy" in the woods? [ His tone is light, clearly joking and not at all put off by who his hiking buddy is. ]

[strongroots]

[ Honestly, it's true: the guy isn't the most appeasing sight to find out in the woods.

But it could be anyone that gets the reaction the man does: Robby pausing with a step back, glowing blue clasped in a fist, eyes surveying the one ahead with a furrowed brow. Last time this happened - ending up in the middle of shit-nowhere - and meeting another, it meant running for his life. There's the annoying consideration that this will be a repeat, and that doesn't make him lose the frown he wears.

He does drop some of the tension of his shoulders, however; makes himself appear less suspicious, gives a tip of his head that's nonchalant. ]

It mandatory around here we've got to get lost somewhere once a month?

[ Unimpressed; but even the tone is on purpose, looking to gauge the other.

This kind of thing puts him on edge. ]

Latter part of October-- definitely after the middle!

[slightlytaller]

[Hiking buddies.... says the man with black eyes to the other man who was hiding in the shade, the hood of his weather resistant coat pulled up over his head despite the lack of rain. Lord El Melloi II, sometimes called Waver Velvet, just wanted to be home. His nerves felt abuzz with uncertainty while he studied the affable stranger from behind the sturdy glasses he wore.

Though they had never met, he was aware of this man. From the network, from conversation with various people in town--

And from Anna Amarande, who had left him a chilling note before she ran up a hill to make a deal with God. If he seemed a little pale-- no, he didn't. If his canines looked a little sharp while he frowned and dug out a cigarette for the nth time that afternoon-- no, they didn't.

Instead of immediately commenting, he lit a cigarette-- and offered one to the man who would be God.The piece of a clockwork device that he had in his hands when he woke up amidst the foliage was glowing in recognition of a similar piece. Their fates were sealed.]

Suppose so, [He commented mildly, not even bothering to mask his natural accent that was as muddy as the Thames in his clearly exhausted and corrupted state.]

I've been out here for hours looking for a trail. What's it take to get to town and get a cuppa, hm?

[He wanted to believe that tea would be enough to temper the jolting static that felt like it was crackling in his veins.

Tea wasn't going to be enough.]

[wapples]

[Billie's not really sure how long he's been in the woods. It feels like it's been awhile, though, and he's sitting under a tree for a little rest when he spots the familiar figure.

He minds the necromancer a whole lot less since he helped Vyng recover from his Mariana induced blindness. Actually, the guy seemed pretty okay once Billie got him to the farm, even fussing over the boy's unruly dog.]

Hey - what're you doing out here? Don't you have, I dunno, skeleton stuff or something to do?

[dynatox]

[ Terry doesn't even notice the change in setting; he's so far gone at this point that they could throw him back in the ocean and he'd drown without realizing it. All he knows is that he's terribly alone. Wasn't his Captain here with him, just a moment ago? How ever will he get home on his own?

Crouched on all fours, he's not quite as intimidating as he is standing tall, but there's a look in his eyes like a starving animal.

He wants his Captain back, but he'll take anybody. It's pure coincidence that he calls out the right name: ]

John? [ He shuffles closer, his voice raspy and low. ] John, is that you?

[ And he keeps coming closer, green blood spilling out of his mouth as the scent of roses fills the air. ]

for mercy, late september.

[necrolord]

He carries her home, cradled in his arms like a child. No one stops him; Pyrrha and Augustine have the good sense not to disrupt this reunion, or simply the exhaustion not to try. Even her gaggle of followers, frightened and grimy and resolute, didn't do anything more than posture at him in her defense. He turns that over in his mind as he walks.

He lays her on the sofa, gentle as anything, in the room he has finally begun rebuilding into something other than a cage and a ruin: there are leatherbound tomes and notebooks, bits of bone and bloodstone, most of his wards dropped and left abandoned. It's not like he gets company, anymore. There's no one left to poke through his stuff who would bother.

John goes to fetch a chair, and a wet rag to ease the grime from her brow, and a teapot.

[acidjail]

The young man with the port-wine stain consuming half his face had kept his distance as he shadowed them through the other world with the taut certainty of someone aware that it would make no difference. The crossbow he cradled never quite lifted to the point of a threat, but it had hovered just beneath the threshold of one until that other threshold was crossed, watching God performing the ritual of transmission upon his fallen Saint with flat, illegible eyes.

Echoes and repetition: when John returns to the room with his small objects of domesticity, Mercy’s eyes are the same, staring straight ahead and through at the simple lines of a rapier set in a humble display rack below a net hung above it as if the owner might, at any moment, come to collect her things for practice.

She does not look up at John, or even seem to take notice he has return, lying curled on her side in her ragged, ruined clothing with sodden boots still on her feet. Her hair, no longer shorn to blunt angles, falls half across her blank face.

On the back of the couch, Cristabel perches in a stray beam of sunlight. Her wings shimmer when she flaps them like she might take flight, but she does not, only calls to him, soft and tremulous: Thank you, Lord.

October 31

[hearthebell]

[John's comings and goings in Gaze are monitored just enough so that, on some point during the 31st, a Trenchie lad of about 18 is able to approach John with a guitar.

He strums a vaguely menacing minor chord, and looks a little scared, but launches into a rollicking song that he belts for all nearby to hear.]

John Gaius, is it? So your name isn’t wrong?
I came to deliver a message in song.
Before you walk off, know it’s tailored for you,
Selected and planned around things that are true.

An event will be hosted, with pomp and aplomb,
I’m assured that it’s promised to be quite THE BOMB.
When it’s dark as the tomb by the sounding sea,
The hands and the drinks will be free, just like me.

Your winged seraphs of mortician’s design
Don’t substitute love, or substitute wine.
If you’re worried the fallout will go to your head,
The life of this party, at least, isn’t dead.

[The final note is a falsetto octave's reach, accompanied by a chord plucked string by string, sustained to maximum effect.

The lad's quite good, but he starts to hurry away almost immediately. In addition to paying him, L covered a tip three times over, advising that he should not expect one from the recipient.]

[necrolord]

[ It's a shame L hasn't come to watch God's reaction: John's expression is a glorious slow escalation from startled bemusement to dumbstruck offense. He rears back a little at dark as the tomb, as though he's actually been hit. He takes in the Poe and the personalized digs with an edge of amazement, like he cannot actually believe the nerve.

Which means there's only one person who would've sent it.

The kid hustles away like he's fleeing a natural disaster, and John lets him go. He, apparently, has an invite to follow up on. ]