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

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.]

[necrolord]

Impressive, right? Not even one fistfight. No messy deaths.

[ He has dropped onto the little couch, which looks intangibly worse for wear after its stint with a half-Herald upon it— he's gotten the blood out, obviously, but the vibes are tarnished— and slouches there, still drunk, his arms slung over the back. John sets aside the little golden necklace he'd been turning over in one palm, and looks at Illarion in open assessment. ]

I think, [ he murmurs, ] my promised reward is to be miserable.

[unsheathedfromreality]

You thought these were possibilities? [Illarion's tone, what there is of it, is somewhere between scolding and teasing.

He crosses to the couch and leans hipshot against it. Shrikes are, by their nature, immune to rancid vibes.]

As you desired. What sort of misery do you wish, o Kindly Prince?

cw: vague NtN spoilers

[necrolord]

Should we count how much of the guest list I've murdered? It's higher than you think.

[ Ha ha. Augustine's up to twice, and never mind that John didn't drop them to the Stoma and John didn't pull the trigger. It still feels like twice, maybe three times; maybe four; there was the ocean, and the portal, and so what would be one more? What would it even matter.

Thinking of Augustine loops him back around to thinking of the shrike before him. He screws up his face in distaste, at being asked. ]

I've already sampled so many. [ He splays his hands out like look at this bounty of horrible shit. ] And so've you, I think... you've been through it, too. Some of it on his behalf. [ His stands unexplained and unneeded. ] You've been looking after him.

[ He'd felt the kiss. ]

cw: hungry hungry sadistpillar

[unsheathedfromreality]

You were there at Tabris' invitation, not to stalk new victims. If anyone still sought bloody-handed revenge on you, I expect you would sit in the sand and look so-- [He does a remarkable imitation of John's most-worn pained expression.] --as they are taking it out of you.

[But it had, as they'd observed, not come to that; John had darkened the edges of the party, and had verbal strips torn from him, without it coming to blows. That's still a surfeit of misery and Illarion will concede that.

Even if he looks faintly disappointed in having to do so--in having the conversation take a turn toward him, instead. (In the opportunity slipping from his talons: He'd whetted his appetite on panicking Augustine and other tiny, petty cruelties. How satisfying would it have been to have a willing victim for once--one who'd wallow in what was done to him? Don't dwell on that.)]

The dead what the living cannot, so the living do not. It is good I can do this for him, after all he has done for me. He has needed someone, it seems.

[He is pointedly not thinking about who Augustine's other bonds link to, or what they might have felt, in that one expression of need.] Poor company as I may be for that.

[Given his givens.]

[necrolord]

[ He catches it, the shift of expression. Hard to place whether it's genuine disappointment— the shift of feathers feels like it is, for as little as he can claim to read a shrike— or just unease at having the tables turned. John is drunk; John has had a complicated day; he doubles down.

He has needed someone stings him. It shouldn't: his Saints have always been to each other what John couldn't be to them. But damned if he doesn't want it anyway, hungry as an animal for scraps. ]

Don't sell yourself short. A heartbeat isn't prerequisite to be there for him.

[unsheathedfromreality]

Not a heartbeat, o Lord, but a heart itself.

[Illarion is not drunk. He can't be drunk--but he can be pushed to recklessness in other ways.]

The dead--we do not feel things as keenly as the living. [He feels very little at all, when not corrupted. (He will not think about how he feels his feathers half-roused with unease.)] Ours is no true resurrection.

[necrolord]

[ John clearly turns this over in his mind: he looks Illarion up and down, assessing and thoughtful, with the sharp and distant interest of a scholar. ]

And why is that thought to be?

[ He sits forward, now, over his knees. He's still drunk; his movements are still heavy and unconsidered, the weight of his attention tipped forward without anything to mask it. ]

I don't do true resurrections, anymore. I'm out of the business. But I could take a crack at it, you know... I could smooth some of those edges. No offense to you, but someone did a rough job.

(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.

[martyrofduty]

Pyrrha raises the whiskey and drinks. She'd settle for middling stuff except living with Augustine means the good kind.

She looks between Augustine and John, the two reliable sods at seeing her win every one of Cytherea's Who Had the Hottest Cavalier games. "Time to play catch up," she declares, "Time for Who Had the Hottest Adept."

She looks at Alfred, the other cavalier present.

[unsheathedfromreality]

"Which am I counting as?" Illarion asks, accepting his vodka (neat). "For the sake of curiosity, since I am assuming I am out of this game."

He's a necromancer by effort-magic, but only a very poor sort by Imperial standards; did that make him an adept? Or was his martial proficiency enough to make him a kind of cavalier?

[butnotyet]

Alfred looks, for a moment, as if someone just tried to get him to drink the whiskey — full-on snakes-drink-by-demonstrating-they're-just-straws and everything — only for it to have gone up his nose, instead. (Assume, for the moment, just in case, that that isn't how they drink.)

«How much of this is because I'm the only one who never slept with any of them?» he demands, mostly of Pyrrha, but the laughter is leaking in around the edges of his voice, hinting that he's nowhere near as irate as his words could be indicating.

"That does seem likely to make you the least-prejudiced among us," his brother points out, managing to suppress his own laughter, if not the merriment in his eyes — or the momentary wary uncertainty, as his gaze flicks past Pyrrha's.

«Anyway, based on sheer volume, the answer is Valancy regardless.»

(Humblebraggart she was not — which doesn't even get into the —)

"You'll have seen Valancy and Cyrus in that painting Pyrrha put up on the door," Augustine adds, as a maybe-helpful aside to the quiet shrike. "And as for your question — I suppose you might have been either, at some point, but I'm not aware of you having had a permanent partner in your necromancy; it's almost as if you started out being told you should act as a Lyctor from the start, I think —"

Augustine falls silent, looking at him thoughtfully. Now, there's an idea, if he can just pin it down properly — something about that, about souls, about having extra that's always reaching for the River, about placement, and the Nephelian dead-and-undead, if he can just find it, buried somewhere within several thousand years' worth of memories of things that never really happened...

He needs another drink, is what he needs; he knocks back what's left of the whiskey in his hand as a start to it.

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.

[martyrofduty]

Pyrrha huffs a laugh. "Don't forget I can feel what's happening over there," she says, "Reaction times. Dexterity. Bodies tell a lot if you listen." It's social, friendly. The night back home is going well. The beach wasn't the disaster it could have been. There's no need to rake him over the coals that very second.

She pulls out graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows. "I'm roasting, you're building s'mores," Pyrrha directs. "Keep them in that perfect state of goodness while you're at it." A task, something to focus his attention. Plus it lets her practice her ranged technique, only the marshmallows get treated nicer than D's internal organs will.

The first one bursts gently into flame alone on a small plate.

[necrolord]

"For this I will forgive you," he tells her, and pops a raw marshmallow into his mouth. Still, he obediently crinkles his way through the package of graham crackers and starts separating out chocolate. Some of the enjoyable haze is burning off: he's waiting for the other shoe to drop. Pyrrha never pulls a guy aside to make s'mores just for the hell of it.

[martyrofduty]

She rolls her eyes, affectionate. It'd be such a nice moment, if they had the luxury of them. It's something she's never believed she'll get, but she wants it one day when they've put in enough work, when they've built community, when Trench is more than a blood filled dumpster bonfire on the beach.

"I met someone new tonight," Pyrrha says, dropping just a touch of the humor from her voice. A signal, as clear a signpost as, say, shooting him in the face since he's paying attention. "Said I should learn more about her. I want to know your take. You good for that?" An honest question. The answer can be no and that's that. It's s'mores, it's relaxed, it's life.

[necrolord]

Yeah, yeah: now they're getting down to it. He leans back against the counter on his elbows and worries a chocolate wrapper with his thumb.

"Might as well," he says. He already has a feeling.

[martyrofduty]

They haven't even managed one s'more. Pyrrha extinguishes the flame from the marshmallow on the plate, picks up the goopy mess with limited structural integrity, and sets it on a graham cracker. Carry on, it says.

"Anna Amarande," Pyrrha says the name like firing a bullet.

[necrolord]

No shock there. He tops it with another graham cracker and watches the chocolate start to melt. In payment for tolerating this conversation with something approximating good grace and humor, he eats the first sacrificial s'more.

With crumbs on his chin, John says:

"Not sure we have time to unpack all of that." But he carries on, with marshmallow guts between his fingers and chocolate smudged down his thumb: "She's something interesting, physically and necromantically. I've had a decent look, and there was a time I thought she might ask me to dig my fingers in— I mean, less weird than that sounds, obviously— for science. Decent hand with a sword and a bolt of lightning, too. She's a Coldblood."

Like you could be said, but John doesn't often acknowledge the ways in which the local gods have changed them. He deigns to acknowledge one of the elephants crammed in here with them, as though that might satisfy her:

"We got along alright before the boat trip."

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.