deercountry | All that I am

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All that I am

Who: Allen Walker and Shouto Todoroki ~~with guest appearances by The Fourteenth...~~
What: September Paleblood effects, and getting trapped in a version of Allen's horrific world and life for a time courtesy of a cursed book/the Absolute Immersion prompt 🙂 Many CW for mentions and flashbacks of Allen's very abusive childhood. also red light districts. (to date: pet death/abuse, child abuse, suicidal impulses of a child)
When: Later September
Where: Their house, and then Victorian England sorta

[ When Shouto had become blind, it had been Allen who fret and fussed more than he needed to. Hovering by his side and always ready to take his arm and steer him gently this way or that, explaining whatever the goings-on were with an animated chatter born first from concern and then increasingly just out of enjoying conversing so later on. Describing the world and especially the people around them like someone reading a particularly good story aloud might and getting caught up in it with an actual delight.

It wasn't so bad for him after all, he'd say, since he lost first his sense of taste (that was insulting but something he dealt with just by pouting at dinnertime) and then touch. Annoyances more than anything, nothing that bad. Touch bothered him more than he thought it would, leaving him staring down at his hands with an unsettled expression from time to time when he thought no one was looking, but he tried to avoid letting that on.

When Allen lost his sense of sight, he became almost unsettlingly... quiet, actually. Not complaining even a little. But off, perpetually distracted and a little jumpy at the slightest noise or sense of movement. With it ironically around the same time Shouto finally regained his own vision. Something he expressed relief for -- it'd be rather silly and unfortunate for them to both lose their sense of sight at the same time, wouldn't it? -- but that was a little hollow too.

Whether Shouto thought to read to him or it happened by accident when Allen was half-dozing near him one day when he asked him out of bored senseless curiosity what he was reading, it was one of the few things that made him perk up. Even if he usually dozed off on him, it was comfortably and amicably so and eased a lot of his restlessness. Something he started to look forward to and ask him a little more eagerly each time what he was reading that day.

Today, he wrinkled his nose at the smell of this new book when he came back with it. Musty and old, and something that just... unsettled him on some very deep, instinctive level. Like if black magic had a smell. Easy enough to pass off at the explanation it was handed to him from someone in Gaze offering free books to passerby, everything there was a little weird and derelict, and the explanation it was a story (apparently) about an exorcist who saved souls was enough to both baffle and intrigue him. Weirdly... spot on, wasn't that? But curiosity alone was a good enough reason for him to shelve any misgivings and settle in, leaning his chin on his shoulder and peering over like he was actually trying to peek at the pages he couldn't see. Also, Shouto's monotone could put anyone at ease (and to sleep). Allen's disarmed and lulled off pretty quickly, relaxing as the tale begins and meanders vaguely around a nameless boy who loved too much. Who was thrown at odds against the home he had always known first for wanting to save those they wanted him to destroy, and then for finding out he was fated to become their enemy and the very thing that would destroy them and the world.

Allen stops dozing off and becomes very awake. Very quiet, and very still.

Shouto can get to the part where the boy says goodbye and leaves in order to keep his home safe, and that's when Allen will fumble for his hand. Grasping his wrist tightly with alarmed urgency. ]

Shouto. [ It's laced with a strange sort of fear, a rising panic. Stop reading.

It's also too late.

Reality... warps. Uncomfortably so, like vertigo but pulling your soul inside-out instead of your stomach. It feels like falling. Falling forward into freefall, which... is accurate. At first it feels like falling into a vacuum, and then the wind is quickly rushing past their ears. They burst through what feels like a thin glass pane of light that shatters harmlessly around them and melt away, geometric patterns in the sky, and the air is crisp and cold; the first kiss of winter, and for the first time smelling clean and entirely without the odor of blood, decay, and industry that clings to Trench. Into the middle of a city park, rows of brick Victorian buildings lining the sides of it with a clocktower and castle in the distance.

They're also about fifty feet up in the air, upside-down and in rapid freefall. ]

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[ Staring, but this time with awe. ]

I don't know if... that's about "creating" something in the same sense... [ He blinks for a moment, shakes his head slightly once as if clearing something. Grips Shouto's hand tight, and this time it's like Allen's the one who needs it. ]

But that's true. [ He shifts to slot in next to him, their sides lightly pressed together as he leans against him ever so faintly. Grateful. More comfortable doing so now that there's no one else around. ]

It was his way of fighting, I think. Just to make people smile and maybe forget their sadness for a while.

[ His head tilts down to look at him, but all he can see is a sea of white. He gets a sense that there's more to his answer than he understands but there's little he can do about that. Shouto doesn't know his world in the same way Allen does. All those details that make up the whole are far too many for Shouto ever truly to understand his world, but he's given him enough to build an image viewed through his unique perspective. ]

Fights are about creating opportunities to prevail.

[ He slips an arm around his waist, locking them together. ]

Maybe that's what he left you.

[ Maybe that's what he left you...?

You're... so much sometimes, you know? Even if that isn't true at all what he said, because there's so much sinister mystery around Mana that Allen could never know but it's enough to throw doubt, but even if that's so, the very idea of that, said like it's so natural, with such clear support...

He wavers for a moment, almost like he's fighting against relenting, against accepting that— before he sags against him then. ]

Thank you. [ Softly said, plain and simple. Even if it's not true... it'd what he'd like to believe. That's why he squeezes Shouto's hand gently in gratitude and— ]

[ Flinches, then. Outright. ]

—tte. [ He tries to bite the pained sound back but doesn't quite. An arm coming up to wrap around his middle instinctively as if to protect it as he... looks confused? ]

??

[ He jolts and releases him in an instant. Did he do something-- ]

What's wrong?

[ No, it isn't that. He doesn't think? He didn't even touch him there. Allen's hand is just over a spot low on his belly, where one of the uglier scars he had that seemed like something has pierced him straight through front to back is.

He blinks, shaking his head like he's trying to find a way to brush it off as not that serious—but even he knows there's no brushing this off. Expression a bewildered sort of dread as sweat starts to bead along his temple. This pain-- ]

My stomach, suddenly...

[ He's up in an instant and kneeling in front of him in the next. There's no quiet inquiry this time, he simply reaches for his jacket and pulls at the buttons, pushing up his shirt to quickly check on the injury. Precise and to the point, Shouto focuses on his task with single-minded intent. ]

Is the pain internal or external?

[ Open wound or internal bleeding? ]

[ Shouto's quick work has him jolting up in a manner like he hasn't for months, not since he became more comfortable with him and had first relented in letting him take care of him when he first came back from the ocean. Like Allen's scared—and not because of the wound. ]

Ah! [ Alarmed, not pained. ] That's— [ neither.

Shouto pushes his shirt to aside to reveal not blood, but a twisting mass of feathers. Brilliant glowing white the same as Allen's Crown Clown, but instead of its gentle swaying these writhe as if in anger or pain. They seem to be plugging up a wound that's re-opened from the scar that had been on his stomach, where the skin's peeled back as if it wants nothing to do with it—

Skin which has also started to turn a festering grey. ]

Edited 2022-10-29 17:52 (UTC)

[ His eyes widen in familiarity. This isn't the first time he's seen this mass of feathers floundering ceaselessly. The same thing happened to Allen in his dreamscape. They were running down a flooding path with monsters clambering at their heels. Shouto slipped on all the blood and fell into the dark waters, which meant game over. Allen saved him before he hit the water by taking his place. The image of what happened after still haunts his dreams. Allen lost control of his Innoncene morphing into feather-like wings that flew them to safety. At a price.

This was that price.

His hand jerks away from the festering feathers that he once witnessed in the snow-filled hills of his dreamscape. Back then, the pain stopped when he-- Shouto smashes his hand against the feathers to freeze the mass in place just like he did back in his nightmare. Only this time, he has his quirk. Quick and precise, he attempts to freeze the mass of feathers before they hurt Allen even more. ]

Edited 2022-10-29 18:39 (UTC)

[ He'd... scream you know. He should be screaming. In the instant before he blacks out, he actually finds it strange that he doesn't hear himself because of how much his body is screaming at him.

Maybe it's because it happens in a fraction of a second that just seems like it lasts forever. The agony that comes the moment his palm pushes flat against stomach and feathers—against the supernatural wound that's re-opened as it should have been all along in this time and place.

I've... reverted. That's the truth he hadn't want to realize. Had been trying to deny since he first saw the figure in the mirror.

His eyes cross, the wires connect, and time resumes for him as Allen screams. More than someone ever should when they had seemed fine the moment before. He passes out in an instant, boneless. Shouto's quirk activates, freezing over the glowing feathers until they're a strange kind of twisted, delicate sculpture.

...and as Allen slumps they shatter through the ice. Exploding outward without any warning and with punishing force straight through Shouto's palm if he isn't fast enough, like spines of a razor-sharp sea urchin that doesn't give a damn about material rules. ]

Edited 2022-10-29 20:09 (UTC)

[ The last time the feathers realized themselves Shouto buried him in a mountain of snow, eliminating the threat. This time, his quirk offers him precision. Goosebumps prickle at the back of his neck at the terrifying wail. The scream is a shock to his system, lending him another reason to act.

The feathers freeze into a delicate framework of contorted feathers captured in a miasma of ice that holds no more than breath before shattering before him, exploding outward in shards of ice. In a knee-jerk reaction, Shouto expands his palms like a dome to protect himself from the explosion. His arms and cheeks still end up sliced but it's nothing compared to the razor-sharp needles that tear through his palms piercing the flesh like soft butter.

It all happens in an instant, his reaction time nowhere close enough to save him before he's sent tumbling down the steps clutching at his hands. A scream rips from him as his shoulder hits the stone steps. Left then right, then left again before he steps on a wide step. The pain is excruciation and he's fully awake to feel every stabbing needle that nearly makes him black out. ]

[ So unfortunate for Shouto that while there's a similarity to Crown Clown's wild and also mutated outrage from before with now... this is also something else entirely. In neither case were they hurting Allen despite their appearance, twisting not in malice against him but in pain and animal rage themselves at the attack against their very essence. Against "Allen's" very essence.

The rot.

It makes no move to follow him, the mass of feathers coiling for a moment as if watching him like a living thing in a way that's entirely impassive; moved not even a little by his cry of pain, and with the same sort of eyeless intensity as Timcanpy. They relax after no further attack, losing their razor edge, and retreat back within themselves. Retreated like an animal to lick its wounds, and squirming still from where they seem to spill out of the old gut wound on Allen's stomach that never looked like it healed fully. Where a closer look would reveal they're more like something that's from within that's escaped instead of blood. Shifting ceaselessly as if trying to find a way knit the body whole again, even as there seems to be a necrotic taint, a greyness, spreading from the edges of the wound.

Almost protectively, as Allen is out cold. ]

Edited 2022-10-29 20:44 (UTC)

[ Ragged breathing follows the feather's retreat. Nerves keyed up, he doesn't notice the animal-like quandary in his direction nor the way the mass withdrawals into Allen or the protective manner they seem to spread over the grey wound. He's too far away, the feathers too bountiful to give him even a glimpse of the wound beneath in the second he had to look at the injury.

Shouto grits his teeth and stands. Ignoring the pain radiating from his hands, he makes his way up the stairs and back to Allen's unconscious form. His hands twitch in pain during his assessment. Takes a deep breath before he tries calling him. ]

Al-len.

[ Nothing. There's no response, save for the way the feathers seem to pause slightly before stirring again. Whispering among themselves in the faint ruffling, almost crystalline sound that Crown Clown's down always has.

He's boneless and unresponsive. And, if Shouto makes any move to touch him again, has become quite feverish. Something that's gotten worse throughout the day, since he first had those twinges?

Apparently. But it's also getting much worse much quicker. ]

Edited 2022-10-29 21:09 (UTC)

[ With his skin impervious to extreme heat or cold in short periods of time, his ability to assess the temperature of another is always a concerted effort on his part. It's why he didn't notice Allen's rising temperature throughout the day, but seeing him now, the feverish look gives him enough insight to check his temperature. Ignoring the mass of feathers, Shouto reaches for his forehead and finds him warm to the touch, warmer than he should be, and activates his quirk to cool him down. It's not freezing this time, but cool enough to help bring down his temperature. ]

Allen? Can you hear me?

[ His breathing calms enough for him to ignore it like he's done with the pain. He's worked through worse when he was less capable. He can work through this. ]

[ The Innocence lets him work, stilling slightly when he moves to check Allen's temperature, but going back to not minding him after. It has no reason to care, not as long as he doesn't move in a way that can be perceived as an attack. Its own sentience is separate from Allen's, as is its threat assessment. Something that's kept him alive in the past more than once.

It never forgot, after all. How that ice had killed its host once, before it could move to save him.

Allen seems to breathe easier at the cooling touch, his repose gentler, but still doesn't respond. If he had just passed out from pain shouldn't he already be awake again?

Yes. Yes he should, but he hasn't and shows no sign of it—nor will he anytime soon. And the sun has already half set. ]

[ No response leaving him one choice. He kneels down beside him and picks him up off the ground. There's nothing more he can do here and with the sun setting, he prepares for a retreat.

Shouto carries him down the steps and into town. Their passing garners the gaze of the crowd and a fair amount of whispers. In the nicer side of town, the constables are alerted, and when one tries to stop them, they slide on ice slamming into the ground while Shouto keeps on walking. The whispers grow louder. Children cry and run away from him. Shouto keeps walking until the city streets turn murky, and the crowds merely give them a passing glance.

Shouto carries an unconscious Allen into the inn they left that morning bridal style catching a raised brow from a few patrons, but no one stops him. The owner makes a comment, but Shouto doesn't stop to respond, retreating up the stairs and into their room. Despite carrying Allen for more than an hour, he doesn't break a sweat.

Carrying him bridal style, Shouto sets Allen down on the bed. He checks his temperature before closing the window he left open that morning to air out the room (probably when Allen wasn't looking) and starts a fire. Once the room starts warming up, Shouto starts removing Allen's boots alongside his sweater and pants, leaving him in nothing but his undergarments. ]

[ Allen's oblivious to it all, which is really for the best. Though in the coming days, if they were still there, constables might be asking around about two strange-looking boys that people keep reporting as causing trouble... This is when it's unfortunate to stand out in a crowd.

Although throughout it all, there's a flicker of movement behind his closed eyes as if dreaming.

Even undressed and cooled down, his fever is unabated. Continuing to climb and refusing to break, he mumbles occasionally; nonsensical things. Once, "Mana." The wound itself and his Innocence don't appear to change or look any different, just as restless and festering as before... though the greyness has spread though. His whole body has an ashy hue. More than that—it's like his skin itself is turning an unnatural grey, worsening with his fever.

The course of it will run hours. Through parts where it seems like he's restless, dreaming, and through the fever finally breaking and soaking the sheets in sweat while still he doesn't wake. If Shouto tries to bandage his middle at all he could succeed in that, though it wouldn't seem to do anything. The feathers of Innocence would squirm and seem to dislike it, writhing in pain as even Allen grimaces in deep sleep, but not attack him for it. They also don't fit within bandaging well though, so it would do very little. It isn't a condition or state it seems like much of anything will help with— other than a cooling touch. He seems to calm and rest easier at that, whether it's at his brow or holding his hand. Something deep within him beyond the fever that's gentled by that.

It's shortly after the fever finally breaks that he stirs. Very lightly at first, and it's probably quite late. He doesn't move to sit up though, no such large movements, but his breathing becomes more controlled and quieter with consciousness. His skin has returned to its usual pale hue as well, like they greying broke and left with the fever. His eyes flutter open finally then, like someone just waking from a very deep and long sort of dream, and he takes a long and slow breath.

Holds it like he's tasting it, the air— and then exhales softly. Something so easy to mistake as relief as he glances to the side without moving his head. To take in his surroundings and see where he is with gentle, quiet golden eyes. ]

Edited 2022-10-30 11:42 (UTC)

[ A clean cold towel carefully changed every half hour. Fingers pressed against his wrist to register his pulse when the task is complete. His trip to the bathroom to wash the used towel before ringing out the water. He returns to the room then, and sets the towel in front of the crackling fire to dry. No more than ten minutes pass before he's back at his side again to check his temperature and breathing, at which point, it's impossible to ignore the withering mass of feathers.

Shouto looks upon the frenzy with concern in his mismatched eyes. He settles down beside him, letting his fingers skim through his hair, allowing himself this one indulgence before addressing what cannot be ignored, and buries his worry in the cold. Steady eyes fall to the feather-like protrusions emitting from what seems like a wound in his stomach. He sets a bandaged hand above the mass of feathers that remind him so much of his cloak and cools the air around him. There's no ice, simply a drop in temperature that seems to slow their movements. In the aftermath, Allen seems to rest easier, which spurs him to keep up the cooling touch until the next half hour hits and he begins anew, marked by the grandfather clock that chimes twice an hour.

He's made a routine of this in the hours that pass. Between the moment he sets Allen down on the bed to when he opens his eyes to find Shouto with his back to him, carefully adding another log to the fire with his bare hands. When he stands and turns around, he freezes in place at the unnerving golden eyes that looked nothing like the stormy grey he knew so well. ]

... Allen?

Edited 2022-11-02 03:08 (UTC)

[ -- "Allen". Sure, yes. Right. Blast. He blinks once, calm and collected, and there's a lot he notes very quickly in that a fraction of a second. One, this guy is addressing and looking at him with familiarity—and looks weird as hell with that spliced appearance. Another exorcist he didn't know about somehow? That's irritating. Two, the Innocence wound still hurts like a bitch. Great.

Third, why the fuck is he just in his underwear with a human. What are you, some pervert?

But his expression remains perfectly composed. It's a shit situation with a lot of unknowns but his cover isn't blown, so. What would Allen do? ]

...Mn.

[ Smile warmly like a dope, probably. It's a pretty reliable guess with this guy, and he begins to sit up gingerly. Grimacing for a second at the pain, worse due to the state of himself right now, and making a few quick guesses. Festering Innocence wound, fire, cool cloth, concerned look, some sort of inn room or whatever...

He offers a soft sort smile to Shouto, or at least the way he thinks Allen would offer one to a friend. Which he's very good at assessing, but there's a slight disconnect. It's empty of the usual feeling; his genuine nature.

More dead in the eyes like a shark. ]

Sorry... how long was I out?

Edited 2022-11-02 03:26 (UTC)

[ Shouto notices none of the subtle differences in the smile Allen gives him upon waking, but there's one major flaw in his expression that leaves his feet planted on the ground where he stands. ]

Why are your eyes gold?

[ Fuck, why'd this one have to be more observant than that science guy. Although clearly he's clueless about what that could mean. Point in his favor. ]

Are they? [ He blinks, reaching a hand up to touch the corner of one eye. Damn he's good, feigning surprise like this. ]

I don't know. Is it something to do with the Innocence maybe?

[ Like the smile, Shouto fails to see past the feigned surprise and nods in answer before stepping in his direction. He sits down on the bedding next to him and reaches for his forehead to check his temperature, then his wrist to take his pulse. ]

How are you feeling?

[ Wow. The guy actually bought it? He knows he's a good actor, but even he would have to admit the excuse was kind of a weak one.

He's cautious at the approach, having to reign in literally everything as his skin crawls at the touch, but he keeps it off his face of course. Stuffs it down to be disgruntled about later and lets the guy check his vitals, that's normal and expected after all, and likewise "Allen's" vitals have also stabilized. Even the fever is down and seems gone to the touch, though the wound still looks unnaturally infected. ]

Better. [ His gaze flickers over Shouto, lingering as he tries to size him up, though he's careful to do so with a soft expression. Hm. Cuts on his cheeks. Bandaged hands. ] How long was I out?

Edited 2022-11-02 04:22 (UTC)

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