deercountry | wolves in the middle of town

Which promise?

[Paul is as sharp as the obsidian crackling under Oscar’s feet. His hands do not come down as he looks at the other boy with those perfectly blue, perfectly lambent eyes.

(Somewhere, he knows he is not being entirely fair. Somewhere else, hungrier and colder, he is so sick of being entirely fair. He is so sick of everything, sick to the marrow with his compromise and allowance and forbearance.)]

To who? [He tilts his head, nearly birdlike himself.] You seem to make so many.

[He didn't move-- at once a small prey animal caught in a clearing, his hazel eyes wide and reflecting the ambient light around him as he stood and fought his impulse to flee. The wind whipped at his thick hair in reaction to the temperature fluxes that Paul had invoked with his flame and whispered across his ears with the threat of a storm.

He held his ground, with his fidgety fingers held inside his coat for the lack of a weapon to hold. Without the familiar weight of the Long Memory or the hybrid weapon Hawthorn that Ruby had crafted for him, he felt unanchored-- and alone.

All he could do was breath in the cleansing air of the sea. ]

That's not mine to say, [he uttered, willing himself to at least give the appearance of calm. Spine straight, shoulders held solid, he looked up at Paul with obvious concern written on his face.

As much as he wanted to tell, he knew he couldn't. Sometimes he still saw those bold letters when he closed his eyes: don't let him go astray or I'll kill you again.

There was no way in this lifetime that he could tell Paul about the project Chara had given to him under threat of death. He didn't want to fall from the sky again.]

To whom am I speaking with?

[The question was gentle but firm-- and an unintended echo of a question he had been asked two years ago. Having witnessed the strength of Paul's forebears and the odd cadence of his ability to act as a channel for messages beyond Oscar's understanding, he had to ask.

Perhaps, even, he was talking to the book itself. ]

[Oscar's refusal to tell him tightens Paul's jaw and strikes sparks around his eyes like struck flints. The fire rises about him, whirling and coiling, whispering with eager hunger for Oscar's calm expression, the fear that lies beneath it.

(You can't trust him. Liar. Sympathizer. Usurper. He seeks your place.)]

Paul Atreides.

[Paul closes his hands into fists and drops them to his side like stones, stepping back and shaking his head. The fierce cant of his expression shifts to one of restrained frustration.]

Don't look at me like that. I'm not going to hurt you. [He's not. He won't.] If you came here to tell me you were right, you could have saved yourself the trouble.

I wasn't going to do anything like that,

[Oscar said with a sigh of relief despite the eager flames that licked the air between them. It was just--

Fear.

Anger was the expression of this fear, like it was with so many other people and situations he had encountered since he left his Aunt's farm. Rationally, Oscar understood the Why of it and could even sympathize. When Ruby went missing just before the dream's final collapse, hadn't he been angry too?

Lifting his hands in a gesture of good faith, Oscar took a tentative step across the crystalline sand. There were a multitude of avenues he could take, but it seemed like the direct approach would serve best.]

I'm just here to make sure you don't get hurt... Or do something that you'll come to regret.

If you keep getting closer, you're going to be the one who regrets it.

[Paul takes another step back himself, matching Oscar's stride. Despite the words themselves, they aren't a threat, but a flat, bleak statement of fact, and an eventuality that Paul can nearly see overlaying the stretch of moments to come. He cannot tell if it is prescience or horror that conjures the vision, but it's a vivid one in either case.]

We can talk with you over there.

[Safely away, out of the reach of Paul and his fire, which shimmers the air around him with its passing.]

I'm not going to do anything, and as for getting hurt - I don't think you have to worry about that, either.

[The few Beasts that approached him in the first stretch of time soon fled, driven off by a fear greater than their hunger. He'd done his best not to hurt them, either. The smell of burning hair took a long time to disappear.]

I'm not worried about that,

[Oscar clarified in a quiet tone, continuing to press forward despite Paul's retreat. Shimmering sparks which lingered in the air crackled harmlessly against the faint green glow of his Aura-- the physical manifestation of his very soul and a mere fragment of the dregs of real magic which still lingered on Remnant's surface-- as it activated on simple trained reflex. Such a feat never would have been possible before he left the Farm, and it was only through months of training alongside Ruby, Qrow, and later Ozpin that it was even possible.

Anything was possible still, even in Trench. The only limits were the ones they had placed upon themselves with or without even realizing. It was the weight of judgement and fear which blocked their progress and put up walls between themselves and others, and it was this weight that caused them to lash out when those walls were breached.

Not even the distance of two years could fully erase the horror of Ironwood's bullet breaking his Aura and knocking him down from the city that floated in the sky. Oscar was afraid. But, he had learned.

And--]

I'm not a hero like Deku is, nor am I whatever kind of otherworldly creature Kaworu is.

[He said plainly, hoping to bridge the distance between them with the power of his words alone.]

I'm not a cyborg warrior like Anna, a Karate master like Johnny, or even a licensed Huntress like Ruby.

I'm just a guy from a farm that was a long train ride away from the nearest city-- and I've made mistakes that people older than me would be surprised by.

[Oscar lowered his head with a sigh, watching the seashells mixed amid the broken up slag beneath his boots while he thought of Qrow, of Ironwood, of Salem--

Of Julia.

More sparks of flame, getting stronger with every step, dissipated against his Aura. It was holding.... for now.]

Please, let's just sit down and talk. Paul--

[Looking up in that moment, he cast Paul a plaintive look of earnestness and despair.]

I'm not afraid of you. I could never be afraid of you.

[Oscar presses forward, speaking quietly and inexorably, but so much of it turns to static that he will only be able to reflect upon later as sparks bite experimentally at the barely-there field of Oscar's Aura. Bits and pieces come through as Paul navigates backward on the sand, frustration turning to anxiety turning to a growing horror as Oscar does not stop - speaking of farms, of mistakes, of not being afraid.

Oscar brings his hazel eyes up from the sand, full of heartfelt sorrow and concern, but over those lies the reflection of blue, brilliant flame, Paul only a blaze of light-devouring heat in his black pupils, and it shivers in his blood.]

I said stay away from me.

[His voice lashes out short of the weighted chain of the Voice he has sworn he will not wield again, but Paul does not need that voice to wield furious, imperial authority, an order quieter and fiercer than a shout.]

Do you think I am playing a game with you, Oscar? If you want to sit and talk, you sit - do you think not being afraid of me is going to protect you? Do you think that's what this is? A test of how brave you can be?

[The noise he makes could nearly be like laughter, if it had anything but pain in it.]

Fire doesn't care how afraid you are - it only burns.

You're the one who said it, not me.

[He did stop then, acquiescing to the imperial authority for the moment but his gaze firming up like the ground during the summertime heat. Watching Paul in this state was... hard. But, so was watching Ironwood in those final moments before his judgement snapped.

"Then you're just as bad as she is, James." Oscar had said when Ironwood lashed out at him with words as rigid and sharp as the ice that comprised the tundra landscape that Atlas floated above-- that Ironwood had seen himself as being above.

It had been a bad choice of words; he wasn't going to make that mistake again.

With fear clenching at his heart and working its way into his bloodstream, he fought with his own instincts and tongue for the grace that was only granted by those that understood time. Although the memories of millennia were not necessarily his, they were still in his hands to hold and touch. He could still emulate, embody, embrace...]

And I didn't say that I wasn't afraid; only that I wasn't afraid of you.. There's.... a pretty big difference between the two.

[He sighed, and allowed the tension in his shoulders to drop for the moment.]

I am afraid. We all are. That's part of what makes us who we are-- what makes us people and not Pthumerians or Gods.

But, I'm not going to give up on someone important to me because of fear.

...Besides. Fear is a regular friend on Remnant, and fire is something anyone who has worked on a farm knows something about. I respect it and what it can do, but that doesn't mean I'm going to just let my friend burn up inside of it.

Edited 2022-10-18 03:13 (UTC)

[Oscar finally stops. It unsticks the flattened, cornered look haunting the edges of Paul's expression, takes some of the tension coiled in him out. He looks less like he's on the verge of flight himself.

If only he could grow wings, and take himself as far and fast from here as he could to throw himself on the ocean's mercy. To find waters cold enough to quench him. But this will suffice, in the here and now, this scant breathing room and the space to speak into it.]

I'm the one who said what?

[Paul lets the heaviness of exhaustion creep leaden into his voice, the brittle, itching prickliness of his blood a concern so distant from his grander ones he barely takes note of it.]

Afraid of me. Afraid of what I can do. However you want to play with the words. [Bitterness laves his tongue; he permits it.] I fail to apprehend the difference, but please. Go on. You must have something to say, coming all this way to try to set yourself on fire for my sake, for a promise who won't tell me.

So speak.

[The suggestion that he didn't care about his own personal safety in the least struck a harsh, discordant note-- for even Jaune, in all of impulsivity and simplicity had made mention of something similar that was to happen in a future that Oscar did not yet know. The little bits and pieces he had heard suggested that his actions would come from a basis of doing what he could to protect his friends. In many ways, this was no different.]

You're the one who's saying it's a game, [Oscar replied, looking away from the lambent blue that was Paul's flames. He wanted to take wing as well-- to go towards Paul. Instead, he held his ground.]

It's not. Not to me.

Making sure that someone I care about is okay is never a game. We need to know that we're not alone to survive in any world. Even if it sometimes feels like we are.

Edited 2022-10-18 16:17 (UTC)

[The manner of paradoxical reversal here would interest Paul in an abstracted sense if there was not so much tethering him to the concrete. Here, alight with the banked fires of all that he has held back, he wishes to hold onto his rage as dearly as he has wished to banish it from him since he first awoke on these shores.

He would rather be angry than feel it seeping out of a crack in him struck by Oscar’s worry. He would rather caulk the gaps with resentment and distrust than let anything Oscar has to say reach him, worm into the dark, endless space past even the fury that arcs off him in orbital bands.]

It isn’t to me, either. [He rubs just below his eye, not shifting his gaze from Oscar.] A game. I know you don’t always think I take things seriously, that I don’t reckon their weight.

[He lets out a sigh. It’s too quiet to hear over the whispers of fire. It can only be seen in the hitch and fall of his shoulders.]

That’s all I ever think about. The weight of things. Their consequences. What I might regret. What I do regret. [He doesn’t glance away, but he looks like he wants to.] I’m sorry I raised my voice. I’m - I didn’t think you’d come looking for me.

[Not leaving him alone.]

Why wouldn't I come looking for you? I told you that I'd help you.

[And it hurt to hear that this was what Paul had thought of him-- as someone that wouldn't help, who didn't have faith in his friends. Those ideas were the very things that all of his friends had worked towards in Remnant, even when they were forced to split their party and work without being able to coordinate. Not trusting each other would have led to disaster.]

...You don't need to carry all of this alone, you know. I meant it when I said that I'd stand with you.

Because it's not safe.

[A breath short of saying that he isn't safe, but the implication hangs heavy anyway. It diminishes him, makes him softer, more human, inside the blaze of his own sort of aura.]

But that's never stopped you before.

[Almost wry, almost a shivered exhale of something far short of laughter.]

All right. Here I am. You found me. What now?

I live with Qrow Branwen. My Patron is Dorothea and I've still got her gift from last year. Trust me when I say that's more dangerous.

[At least he could see Paul-- and see where the flames were coming from. Those two factors made a significant enough difference for Oscar to trust both Paul and his own instincts on the matter.

This was a far different situation from when he and Ruby tag teamed the Lamp, without even knowing that it was drawing Grimm towards them and everyone around them.

Hands still raised, Oscar be stepped forward. ]

Just stay there, okay? I'm going to try something.

--Diggs?

[He called softly, and his little omen manifested nearby. They were a small deer-like creature about the size of and with the wings and feathers of a Bird. Their plumage matched the tones of Oscar's owl shape, and they looked on with large, sad eyes.

Oscar cast the little omen a wry smile that was more sad than sweet,]

... Just stick around, okay? Maybe we can help our friend feel better.

[Paul does trust Oscar. That's the catch of it all, the reason he hasn't ordered him off this beach or plunged himself into the sea to swim out from under Oscar's scrutiny. It stills the objections on his lips about relative levels of danger and holds him in place, watching what Oscar does nearly as owlish as Oscar watched him to begin with.

He still steps back when Oscar steps forward, like a dance partner, like a reflex. But only one step, and no further, as Oscar calls his amalgam Omen that - even now - Paul looks at with the soft wonder of new discovery.]

What are you?

[He asks the Omen, in the gentle, low voice he uses on wild things, crouching down to one knee to get a better look at them. At the edge of his flames, a tiny black shadow trembles, falls away from him to squirm on the sand, and Paul covers her with his hand almost at once without glancing down.]

[Diggs took a moment to reply, quietly regarding Paul steadily with their dark eyes while Oscar slowed to a stop as he drew near. With a voice as gentle and as vast as the sky far above them rang clearly in the space between the flames.]

I'm what remains of the dream carried by the child that fell through the world.

[The concepts of 'dream' and 'remnant' collided with the theme of his favorite fairy tale, and it was enough to cause Oscar to suck in a soft breath as the memory of his own pain was brought to the surface once more. Mentions of her made Oscar uneasy-- but, underneath everything he had decided to do was his own feelings about a girl he had never met.... and now never would meet.]

She never had a chance to be a kid, or grow up to find the kind of person that she was supposed to be.

[Oscar explained quietly, his own voice barely carrying over the groping grasp of the sea. He glanced between Diggs and Paul with a pained look in his eyes before he finally shook his head and explained himself.]

We thought we were saving her. At least-- I thought we were saving her.

Instead, I made a terrible mistake. A girl that never got to live is remembered as a monster...

And I'm here.

[Underneath the cover of Paul's hand, his sheltered Omen twitches at Diggs' words, but has no answering ones of her own. Paul strokes her side (shaded away from Diggs and Oscar both) with his thumb, gently, habitually.]

No. She never did.

[Julia Sodder, the much remembered. Julia Sodder, the hopelessly revered, her salvation all beyond her now. The girl whose bones this world awakened from, and all of her aspirations cast off to never be.

Paul knows who Julia Sodder is. Sometimes, he feels like he nearly knows her himself, that pale and lingering ghost.]

It wasn't only your mistake.

[Paul holds his other hand out towards Diggs, palm up, enticing but not demanding. He doesn't look at Oscar, but his coaxing softness isn't only for the little, grave Omen.]

Which part of that do you see in me? [An odd question, after everything else, or perhaps not.] The little girl? The dream? The mistake? The people who made it?

[Both boy and Omen glanced at each other in what was plain trepidation. Not for the first time, Oscar felt exposed by Paul and his keen insights into the hidden layers of how people worked. Tentative, Diggs stepped forward and nudged at Paul's fingers with its nose; despite everything, the sheer intimacy of the gesture had heat rising to Oscar's cheeks.

Such a gesture had only been shared between himself and Ozpin, their linked souls making matters of this nature seem as comfortable as sitting in a library with only a book for company. The only others he knew who probably shared such a relationship had been the younger Pines twins-- now asleep in the sea while they continued their lives on their Earth.]

...I played a bigger role in it than most of them.

[He explained tightly, looking out towards the sea in an impulsive, desperate attempt to not be seen further.]

I was hurting and not thinking clearly. The world was ending, Salem had arrived and made her mark in our lives. Ozpin died getting us the only clue we had to guide our decisions, and Ruby and I both played messenger to relay what we knew in the week before Ozpin returned for a second time that season.

[Oscar bit his lip, and fought off the hot, angry stinging that prickled at the edges of his eyes.]

When I look at you, I see that girl. I see her brushing off her bumps and bruises, because nothing hurts worse than the loneliness in her chest.

[Julia. And the Girl who Fell Through the World.]

And, in that girl, I see what I could have been in another world...

And in another lifetime.

Edited 2022-10-30 01:48 (UTC)

[Paul feathers his fingers over the Omen's tentative nose, stroking lightly down his unreal Omen's pelt without venturing much further as he listens to Oscar's half-explanation, half-confession. He lifts his head halfway through, when Oscar tells him what he sees when he looks at Paul, his expression unreadable and distant.]

Have you ever heard the one about not stabbing the messenger?

[He asks, tilting his head slightly to one side. It's not a mocking question, or a judgmental one, despite not being intended to be answered. He turns his attention back to Diggs. It's easier to look at him than it is to keep looking at Oscar - to see Oscar looking back at him. He isn't the only one in this conversation with a capacity for perceiving people accurately.]

You trusted what you were told. You interpreted it according to what you knew at the time. [His own Omen shivers hard under his cupped hand.] I know you. You did what you thought was the best thing to do...and you didn't save her, even though you wanted to.

[He slips his hand up behind the deer-like Omen's ears, thumbing the base of one more gingerly than a scratch.]

So it feels like you didn't save yourself. So you wonder if anything could save you, in that other lifetime. So here you are, wanting to save me from my loneliness. [He exhales, slowly.] Would you believe me if I said I know what that's like?

[A shudder worked it's way through Oscar's soul as, despite everything, Diggs tentatively leaned into Paul's tender touch. It was rare when Oscar felt so vulnerable and exposed, and rarer still when the circumstances were so fraught and yet still so delicate. He wanted to reach out and breach the physical divide, but he felt like a livewire on the edge of falling into the depths of the sea.

Farm life had taught him to swim, but it didn't garner him with any comfort in open waters.

Releasing a breath he didn't realize he had been holding, Oscar finally sunk down into the wet sand. Crouching still wasn't something he had mastered with his prothesis, even with Ironwood having shared some Atlesian schematics upon it's creation. Some things took time-- even Yang, the best fighter he knew, had trouble adjusting to her arm.]

...I know, [he said quietly while Diggs' ears twitched under Paul's fingers. He still felt his face burning-- but, that was okay.]

Anyone who knows how Kings and Emperors play knows it in their soul. I just...

[He sighed.]

I just don't want to see you get yourself hurt or do something you'll regret while trying to help someone you care about. Maybe--

[He shakily sucked in a breath at that point. The subjects he was bringing up was known to everyone he had lived with through the collapse of Julia's Dream, but not something he had discussed at length with anyone he had met since. It was easy to keep to his old friends and not talk about old hurts.

In this case... Paul needed to know. ]

...Maybe the way you're trying to help Kiriona is only going to hurt her, like what happened with Julia. Or, maybe it'll hurt you in a way you can't come back from.

Like it did with me.

[The ocean rolls quietly against the shoreline as Oscar speaks. Paul's Omen swells under his hand until his fingers can no longer hide the segmented coil of a creature that is distinctly not a mouse, her sides heaving as if in exertion. Paul traces her huddled form with as much gentleness as he strokes down Diggs' slender neck until Oscar is through, his heart dredged up and heaved onto the sand between them.]

Oscar.

[The sympathy in Paul's tone is frank and unguarded as he looks at the miserable lines of Oscar's shoulders, the concern etched on his round farm boy's features. Oscar cannot help but be expressive with his large, shining eyes too often prone to worry.]

What is it that you're afraid I'm going to do?

[There is so much more to take apart here, starting, perhaps, with Oscar's belief that he has not come back from the ways he has been hurt, but this is where Paul wants to start. It's where he needs to start, because for all of his guessing, he cannot know unless Oscar says it aloud.]

Be honest with me. As a friend.

[Oscar shifted uncomfortably, unable to meet those eyes that were as deep and honest was the ocean near them. The frank concern he saw written on the other boys face reminded him momentarily of Ruby and her convictions-- her belief that everyone deserved the opportunity to be helped, if they so wished it.

Wordlessly, Oscar rolled up the loose pants covering the prosthesis that Paul doubtless knew that he had and finally dared to meet that gaze. Diggs nudged their little head into Paul's hand, as if quietly urging the young prince to pay attention. ]

I got this while trying to save my sister from a terrible enemy right when the dream was falling apart,

[Oscar explained, running his fingers along the plant-like filigree he had painted into the Atlesian based tech that bore the marks of Ruby's whimsy. ]

Salem had awakened in the Dream... And it was a mess. Her first acts included killing a guy I started to see as a brother... And turning Ruby into a monster.

[His brows furrowed as he heaved a sigh. Even a year and a half was not enough time to discuss the trauma the was Salem.]

The adults from Remnant-- General Ironwood, Uncle Qrow Branwen, and Ozpin all did their part to keep her contained, but it was... Brutal. They killed her-- over and over and over-- until she had lost enough from the compounded deaths that she couldn't hurt us anymore.

-- My point is, Paul: I know that it's like to do everything you can to save your sister.

I just don't want to see you be like me, and get yourself in deep trouble while you're doing so.

Edited 2022-11-13 15:17 (UTC)

[He asks too much. Sometimes he thinks all he does is ask too much. Oscar still talks around the answer, like what lies at its heart is too much to name - or maybe he's afraid that to speak it is to invite it. Paul remembers, a long time ago now, Oscar explaining the resonance of emotion with their own Grimm Beasts.

He pays attention. He doesn't look away from Oscar's wounds, or the unspoken implication behind the whole unfolding story. It's there between the lines, if he keeps his ear sharp, and lets himself take it in as it is.]

I'm not going to hurt anyone else.

[He weaves apology and comfort into one strand through the words, sinking back slightly into his heels as he swallows. The flames around him might seem dimmer, or that might be a trick of their fey, deceptive light.]

Even if I could fight Teacher [he could, he knows he could, like this, he knows he knows he knows -] it wouldn't change anything. Other people would get hurt. Gideon would be one of them - Kaworu, Midoriya, you - Falco and Johnny - Lazarus - Anna - the whole city could be ash by the time we were done, and he'd wash up on the shore, and it would be for nothing.

I know that wouldn't bring her home. This isn't that kind of fight.

Sometimes I think it never was.

[People with silver eyes really cared nothing about themselves.

Oscar knew that look that darkened Paul's face, recognizing it from the times he had caught his reflection in the glass windows of the citadels of Atlas. He knew something of what it felt like to stand above and regard the world below-- and not see yourself as part of the equation. ]

... You don't get it,

[He said, tentatively reaching out as if he were approaching a wild animal. ]

You need to not let yourself get hurt, either. That'll set off a chain bigger than anything you can do alone.

[How many times had be seen Ruby hold back tears under the weight of her responsibilities? How many times had she even reached out to Oscar-- a total stranger at the time-- when she was hurting herself?

He didn't want that fate for Paul, and he could tell that Paul didn't see how he stood at the gravitational center of so many people with powers beyond what he could reign in. ]

Edited 2022-11-21 13:11 (UTC)

[Paul should warn Oscar away again when he begins to reach out, or draw himself back. He brought this danger here, and it's his responsibility to protect others from it, as he only just finished trying to explain.

But he has been keeping his temper. He has been trying to be reasonable. He has been trying to do everything he thinks Oscar wants him to, trying to do everything it is he wants him to do, and none of it seems to be enough. Frustration sharpens the line of his jaw and thins his mouth.]

I don't 'get' it?

[The colloquialism is flat and hard in his mouth. He takes his hand off Diggs and brings it to his own knee as his Omen stops shivering and begins to coil, slow and sinuous, a soft circle in the sand.]

Who do you think is going to hurt me? What - just tell me what it is you think I am going to do, since you seem to know so much about it. Not Ruby, not your Professor, not anyone else. Me. What else do you think I'm going to do that's worse than this?

[The fire surges, bursting with colours real and unreal, the dull red and pale blues of dying stars and every shade between.]

Or is it that you don't believe me, Oscar Pine?

wolves in the middle of town | october catch-all

post duel

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cw: referenced self-harm

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