deercountry | i wear the sunglasses at night

[ Inside the cocoon is the corpse of a girl.

While the cocoon sheds one grotesque layer by one, she lies inside, unmoving. She would look at peace, like this, except for the deathly pallor of her skin, the discoloration about her eyes and nose and mouth, or the slight swelling at her joints. Still, for a corpse, she's not half-bad.

The ugliness of her body is made somewhat better by the fineness of her clothes. She's dressed to the nines in Cohort whites, with beautiful trim and an intricate rapier at her side. Her hair is perfectly coiffed, with a care that Gideon never gave to it in life.

She doesn't move until someone approaches the shedding cocoon. But when their shadow casts over her, her eyelids flutter, as if waking up. When she opens them, they're a cold, clouded gold, and they give away nothing. ]

Okay, okay. You can back the fuck up. I've got this.

Edited 2022-10-13 04:38 (UTC)

[ Prince Kiriona Gaia the First, Her Divine Highness, First Lieutenant of the Cohort, Emperor's Life Guards, Heir to the Emperor Divine, first of the Tower Princes is doing her best to talk to other people as little as possible.

After finally hauling herself out of that cocoon, she immediately heads for her designated cot. Or, rather, her former cot, because she does not intend to stay here. She's fairly quiet, as far as these things go, aside from snide remarks like damn, I really lived like this, huh muttered under her breath. She grabs a sack and starts methodically packing up her stuff, starting with all her magazines (save one, called The Biggest Sword. That one's for kids.) She packs her clothes. She completely ignores her two-handed sword -- she has a pretty snazzy-looking rapier now, courtesy of her Lord Dad -- and she only lingers on a second-place trophy for a little while. God, what a piece of junk.

(She packs it anyway, and it feels like the plastic of it is going to burn her skin off. Except that's impossible, because Kiriona doesn't burn anymore.)

It's weird, seeing this place after six months away. There's an unreal quality to the entire warehouse, and, on some level, Kiriona is fine with it not being real. If it's not real, it can't be taken from her. If it's not real, it doesn't matter whether she ever really belonged, whether this Harrow cares about her her any more than that Harrow. (Doubtful.)

Ultimately, it doesn't matter. She's got places to be. ]

Look, hey, I know my social calendar's in real high demand ever since my sick promotion. Doesn't mean you can be all up in my space. [ She makes a shoo gesture to whoever has tried to approach her, and if that doesn't work, Kiriona will just try to walk right past them. ] I'm outta here. You can give my bargain basement cot to someone else, or better yet, [ her voice is really dry now ] stack it on top of another for maximum comfort.

[ Wow. Crazy. ]

[ Kiriona probably should have told John she was on her way. You know, so he could prepare the fanfare and everything. Instead, Kiriona's arrival is a fairly quiet affair: she shows up to the house in Gaze donned in some fairly singed Cohort whites with a sack slung over her shoulder. She strolls in like she owns the place, not even bothering to knock, because hey. She basically does. She saunters up the steps, towards the top-floor bedroom, flings her sack into a corner of the room and herself on the bed. Now that's a bed!

Later, Kiriona can be found in various places around the house. She stands in front of the refrigerator for a while, because the cool air and general smell of food is nice, even if she doesn't technically need it. She goes outside, inspecting the changes in plant life. (It's all fairly boring.) And she trains, fucking around with her rapier, practicing the relatively new technique until she isn't thinking about anything, or anyone, else.

If approached, Kiriona will offer a cocky smile that's more of a sneer than a grin. ]

'Sup. Missed me?

[ When Kiriona begins to emerge from the cocoon, Kaworu is the first to know.

He'll feel cold all over, initially. Numb. Then there's an itch at his neck and chest, like the skin is meant to be broken free, like there isn't meant to be any skin at all. The feeling builds as Kiriona excavates her way out, and it'd be fair for Kaworu to think he's missing a heart, that someone ripped it out of him and left emptiness in its place.

Who knows if he's surprised to see the corpse prince? Kiriona, meanwhile, is surprised to see him. It's been so long. And Kiriona knows, with horrible certainty, that while he might have chosen to bond with Gideon Nav, he didn't choose to bond with this.

She's hurting him. He deserves a clean break. The guilt churns wrong in whatever is left of her stomach, and all Kiriona can think about right now is how to make him stay away.]

Stop following me. I'm getting out of this dump.

Edited 2022-10-14 03:21 (UTC)

[The figure that trudges up the winding cobblestones to the house in Gaze does so in unpretentious black robes over black canvas trousers tucked into black boots, a battered duffel bag under his arm and an ancient rapier at his hip. His close shaved head is bowed as a pilgrim’s as he comes up to the door and lets himself inside, as the last one did, to make his way past the skeletons with old companionability.

He finds the room where the sack is flung into the corner and sets his duffel bag on the floor beside it, emerging to descend the stairs once more with marked deliberateness before he heads outside to the light flashing from the gilt braids and lovely blade of Kiriona Gaia.

She turns to him with her crooked grin bent into a sneer on her lifeless, and he is almost struck dumb thereby, the grief in his dark Drearburh eyes as keen as it was when he first laid her in state in the house behind them.]

Yes.

[He looks at her a heartspan longer, his face nearly as bare as her own, the sketch of mandible and teeth along his jaw the stark paint of a cavalier far from his home and facing terrible foes. It is with the paint of Matthias Nonius upon his unworthy features that Ortus bows to her, at last, as formal as a picture book.]

I beg your indulgence for my delay.

[Chara steps out of the house and sees Gideon training. They'd only arrived to drop off some notes for John, notes they know he'll "get around to" when he's done living in his honeymoon with his shackles. They said hello to the Shrike, politely (not so politely) ignored everyone else, and were going to leave before they started sprouting flowers.

But this is new.

Gideon is different. Nastier, immediately, though it's a bit hard to tell given the animosity she aims their way most of the time. But they make note of the sword in her hands, the power resonating from her, like empty hunger for something that can never be fulfilled. They're familiar with the feeling. She looks every bit the fairy tale prince that they tried so hard to be.

They smile back, pleasant, polite, perfect and not at all sincere.]

They dragged your cocoon around. It gurgled a fair bit when approached. I didn't notice anything different. [They watch the blade still. There's something strange about seeing her use it like that. It's unnatural.] Traded in your sword for something shinier?

[ Most of the time now, Harrow watches over Gideon as Gideon had once watched over her.

The time has been a little longer than her own, and the more she realized that the more she panicked about it and had to quell the urge to express this fear to someone, that something was wrong. She sublimated it so hard she forced herself to spend more than ten minutes a day not at the cocoon's side. Made herself do other things and not obsess intractably.

... just mostly, because obsessing over corpse women who do not notice her is her greatest talent, even if it is also her greatest weakness. This is not a skill anyone needs from her. It is not a skill Harrow needs from herself. Or wants to have. And yet: here it is. Almost every time the cocoon does anything significant, Harrow is there beside it. She leaves for a few hours a day, maybe, but never consecutively.

At first when there's enough motion that a person could clearly be appearing, Harrow's face almost gives away her hope and even excitement to a stranger: those eyebrows are up high enough, eyes wide enough, that the emotion is blatant to anyone who actually spends time around her.

But when she gets a look and everything is completely wrong, it's very little effort for Harrow to swallow emotion; she feels so much at once that it all explodes and caves in, and she's left profoundly void of anything except rawness and fear and self-loathing. (The rest of it is still there, but it's frozen away in chains in a box in a cave in her head.) ]

I —

[ Harrow backs the fuck up.

Harrow's voice is very small. ]

All right.

[ where is abigail pent to tell her this isn't real either? ]

[Johnny was not a stranger to people in the dojo taking a shift toward hostility and moving out. This was the second time that he had experienced it since he opened up the warehouse to wayward teens and it wasn't any easier this time than it was the last time.

For the most part he let's Gideon or whatever her name was go about her business. He... Isn't exactly eager to get into a fight with someone he had generally liked as much as her.

He does a scan of her "room" once she's gone and takes note that the trophy is gone and scoops up the magazine and her left behind sword. There... Was definitely something up here.

He puts those away somewhere for safe keeping before he meets her at the door to see her off. Even if she isn't particularly looking for a send off. He still didn't know what was going on, but he wasn't going to push for any answers yet. He still respected her and he was going to try and show that as she left.]

Good luck out there, kid.

[He raises a hand to fist bump.]

[Paul sidesteps in front of Gideon as neatly as he would in one of their sparring matches, a supple flow of grace that doesn't match the blaring alarm in his wide eyes or the supplication in his upraised hands.]

Wait. [It's an outright plea, plaintive and laced with fear.] Stop - stop, all right? Listen.

[Paul knows the ways that humans move, down to the faintest involuntary flutter of pulse and eye, and he knows what Gideon looks like, dead and still and drowned, and now he knows, with terrible, soul-cutting knowledge he will never be unable to undo, what Gideon looks like dead and walking. The hideous wrongness of her easy, unbound motion in this lifeless frame scrabbles at the back of his eyes and squirms in the back of his throat, but he can't tear his gaze away from her, like if he stops looking, she really will be gone - out the door, or somewhere further away.]

Whatever happened to you, we can fix it, but we can't do that if you won't talk to me. So talk to me.

[This was supposed to be a good thing, a good day. The news of her coming out of her cocoon had sent him all but flying back here to find her like this, halfway out the door, and a tumult of horrendous possibilities fight it out for dominance inside his struggle to comprehend. One thing shines through, blazing in the dark, and it lights up his voice in stark shadow.]

Don't leave.

Edited 2022-10-13 16:58 (UTC)

[There is a walking corpse in the kitchen.

And it isn't Illarion. Wonder upon black wonder, it's Gideon Nav, whom the shrike thought wisely quit of the house months ago. The sheer hideous novelty of her being right there, before the icebox--being dead as he is, pierced through the chest and stopped-of-heart as he is--briefly stops him in his tracks.

He stands in the kitchen doorway for a long and silent second, incongruous market-basket in his offhand. This is an ill sign, he knows, without having to read it in bone or entrails. It is a singular event that would put a frisson of shock down his spine and slow-curdling horror in his gut if he still had the capability. (It has, it does; it is only his ability to recognize and act on it that's disconnected.)

Then he steps into the room, calm as a windless day, to meet her question.]

I cannot say, [he replies, setting the basket down on the counter. He does not unpack it; that would be improper.] I have not yet been introduced to this you. Though it suits, mm, better and worse than the cocoon.

Napping in her room, Pyrrha stirs to the sound of someone coming home. It's not the weight of footsteps Pyrrha's most familiar to in this house—John's or Augustine's or Mercymorn's or Heartnest's or Sarah's. That put her on alert. Rapier. Spear. Pistols. The knives she slept with on her person. The sound comes from both doorways, the hall and the bathroom shared with what had been an empty room. That tells her where the person is. At baton size, her spear's in her left hand as she goes to lean in the doorway to the newly occupied bedroom from the bathroom.

She leans in the doorway taking in the change in skin color, far deader, and the flashy uniform. It's only been six months since they parted ways on her end. While the corpsified look makes it hard to judge how much time has passed for Gideon, she doubts it's been enough to earn those medals the usual ways. Even if she's been a busy girl.

"Welcome back, kiddo," Pyrrha says, "How long's it been?" She motions toward the makeover.

[ it’s been a very, very long time since falco has set foot in bone house premises. shortly after his last birthday, paul’s even, to be right on the money. even before falco had promised his brother, before he used his omni when he should’ve put it down— he wanted to come. he wanted to talk to her. something has gone so unsaid and ripped a hole through their basis.

even falco was terrified of the prospect of losing one more piece of family, now, more than ever, when he had reason to believe there wasn’t one for him to go back to in the first place. trench was all he had, for the limited time before his expiration date. he wanted everyone close. he wanted to love them and cherish them because one day, they’ll be gone, but he’s likely to go before either of them. he thinks, at least. he likes to imagine his peers would die of age.

he tries the door, so wide and perhaps not as intimidatingly tall as it used to be nearly a year ago. there was no answer, but then again he hadn’t banged loud enough against the frame. he’d keep slipped and missing his footing. maybe there’s a window mister duty could see through and show him the ways around for kiriona. he leaves a bit of a slime puddle by the front door. sorry about that.

around the yard, it would have to be. once falco rounds the corner, approaches, and finds what he’s looking for— maybe she didn’t it was him. maybe she did. falco noticed her. his frame from top to bottom is damp through his clothes, wet. he’s sickly and only doesn’t look as dead as her because he wasn’t, well, dead, but he might as well be close, so green and ghost white, how the purple slime dripping off his cheeks blots his skin and makes him look bruised.

his lips are parted and they quiver. his eyes are wide and shocked and moreover, filling with liquid tears. did he miss her? yes. oh, yes, he did. she was a raised corpse, and he, perhaps a walking one, with how he wordlessly closes the distance that separates them. he doesn’t wait for her. he walks until he’s close to booking it to her. ]

[The the start of awakening was miserable but he endured. A small price to pay to see his sister again. Then cold numbness starts to sink in, but instead of starting in his extremities like a small leak. His S^2 organ seems to pump it out like blood in a beating heart. At first it hurts and then... nothing.

It's just emptiness. Like he's nothing but an outline with a vast blankness within. He knows she's why he feels that way.

So he can't leave her.]

What happened? Don't you... remember me?

[ Kiriona hates the way Ortus looks at her. She hates his bow even more, a gesture she reads as both pitying and pretentious. She doesn't need either. She doesn't need anything, anymore. ]

Delay? Didn't ask you to come here, dude. You don't like this shit anyway.

[ Wrist work is a whole other beast, with a rapier, and Kiriona goes back to practicing it. It's an excellent excuse to not look Ortus in the eye. ]

You can go.

[ If he wants to play-act cavalier secondary, fine. There's his order. ]

[ A smile like that would have annoyed Kiriona, once. But a perk about her new body, title, and general station in life is that she generally doesn't give enough of a fuck to be annoyed about anything. It's like a weight off her shoulders, in some ways. Kiriona returns the smile with a lopsided sneer of her own, and a raising of her eyebrows. ]

Mmm. Must have been some hilarious gurgles, then.

[ She flashes Chara the sword, very obviously showing off. ]

Sure did. Honestly, it's kind of a pain in the ass compared to a two-hander, but you know what they say: heavy is the crown.

[ Her death is so hard, truly. ]

[ Kiriona is too single-mindedly focused on her exit to notice Johnny stashing away her former sword for safekeeping. It's not like she cares that much about that old hunk of metal, anyway -- it was just a piece of shit Aiglamene scraped up for her. Amateurish, really.

She stops dead in her tracks when she sees Johnny at the door, however. There was a part of her -- a stupid part, maybe -- that assumed he would just let her go. After all, it's so obvious why she can't stay here: she's a disgusting corpse. She's her father's daughter now, truly. They don't want her here, she doesn't belong here, and most importantly, if she leaves, then no one can take her from them ever again.

Kiriona does not vocalize any of that. She doesn't say anything at all for a while, and instead looks a bit lost. That only lasts for a moment before she locks up that expression, throws away the key, and replaces it with a scowl. ]

Come on, man. I'm not a kid.

[ She does not return the fist bump. ]

[ Paul Atreides blocks Kiriona Gaia's way, and for a half-second, she thinks she might laugh.

Six months ago, she might have cried. Six months ago, another girl would have taken him into her arms, mussed his hair, and breathlessly told him how much she missed him. She might have even told him how fucked-up it was, waking up in another world and knowing you're missing someone, but you don't know who. But Kiriona learned a thing or two, out there in space. The most important one was that Harrowhark never gave a shit about her.

Kiriona laughs, haughty and cold. ]

We can fix it? Who's we? There's nothing to fix.

[ And Paul gives a shit about someone who is not her. He cares about someone he wants her to be, someone who never really existed. He's not even asking her if she wants to be fixed. He doesn't even care. And when she leaves, he'll plaster over this memory with a better picture of her, and maybe they'll both be better off for it. ]

Move.

[ Said in the voice of a crown prince, a corpse prince, a person who has learned how to give an order. ]

[ Seeing this guy doesn't put Kiriona on edge as much as she has been compared to the others. He's not being a dick, for one thing. It's wild, how few people know how not to be a dick. The fact that the entire dojo is getting shown up by a bird is just embarrassing. ]

Crown Prince Kiriona Gaia. [ She does a little flourish. It's horrible. ] My father's perfect sword hand. I have a longer title, but it's a bit of a mouthful, and sometimes I can't be bothered to remember it.

[ She says this all very nonchalantly, like it's not a big deal. It's almost like a challenge: he better not think it's a big deal, either. ]

Are you gonna put that stuff away, or what?

[ This question again. Kiriona rolls her eyes; she's dead, not stupid. ]

Duh, I remember you.

[ There is a feeling in Kiriona's chest that is almost like a dampness, but that doesn't make any sense. All she has is a hole. There's nothing there to get wet.

(It does not occur to her that her confusion is not her own.) ]

What, you need me to tell you twice? I don't want you to come with me.

[ There. Even clearer. ]

[ Kiriona sees someone out of the corner of her eye, but that's not enough to make her stop training. She keeps alternating thrusts, parries, sidesteps -- all the moves she knows, in the hopes that whoever is there will just go away. She doesn't want to talk to anyone right now. Frankly, she feels like shit, and the only thing that doesn't make her feel like shit is her sword.

But when Falco is properly in her view, she stops. She sheathes her blade. Because here's the thing: he's monstrous, too.

Kiriona doesn't move towards him, but she doesn't move away from him, either. ]

Damn, dude. You're leaking like crazy.

[Ortus remains, implacable and opaque as he straightens to standing and observes her at work. He is no swordsman himself, and never will be, but he understands full well why Aiglamene prized Gideon above him as a student. She is a marvel at what she does, fluid and swift as thought.]

I can.

[He agrees, tepid in his placidity.]

I will not.

[A flat, unadorned statement, as utterly neutral as a statement may be. He can. He will not. That is the state of affairs.]

Then why are you leaving?

[He exhales slow, like breathing too quickly will aggravate the hole in his chest. ...The hole in her chest.

It makes his entire body hurt.]

You're the one who brought me back. That's why we have the bond. The bond means we should stay together.

[ it's a start, at the very least. wanting to run would mean she didn't want a conversation with him either. now, he's in a pickled predicament to want to hug anyone, but he does lower his gaze in hopes that it would ease the sting from his eyelids. ]

My friend said . . . I lost a fight with a jar of jam. [ there's no humor or attempt at humor with the tone he conveys it in— he's simply repeating. it doesn't balm anything, as he would've liked. in truth, he is a thin barrier between trench and something unholy. he is just a touch more possessed, or close to being. even as he brushes the inside of his arm over his eyes, across his forehead to wipe, it just makes him look a touch messier. ribbons of the goop extend from their contact points until they stretched far enough for them to break off. ] Can I stay— for a bit?

[ after a shivering pause in his breathing, he adds: ]

I won't take long.

[The closest Paul has ever heard Gideon come to that laugh was on the shoreline, when she came back from the depths of the ocean. It had been terrible then. It's worse now, the sound calcified and refined to a cutting edge. There is time in that laugh, a whole unknown swathe of it.

She orders him to move. He plants himself like a stake in the earth, mouth hard and eyes burning.]

No.

[Gideon may have learned to give orders, but Paul was born to them, and he meets imperial condescension with flat denial like one of his knives deflecting her sword by a critical degree. If she wants him moved, she'll have to move him - and what only fuels his rising, pent up panic is that looking at her, he thinks she might.]

What's there to fix? This. Whatever this is that you think you're doing. [Fear is a whetstone sharpening his voice.] When did you run away from anything?

[Johnny just watches as Gideon or whatever she was calling herself now decided how she'd respond to this. Well he's not exactly surprised when she doesn't return the old signs of affection that they used to share. There's a brief moment where he looks hurt, but he's quick to hide that way and shrug it off with all the bluster he can manage.]

Right. Forgot. You're a certified badass, there's a difference.

i wear the sunglasses at night | canon update catch-all

cocoon; cw: description of corpse (1-2 tag-ins here, please!)

dojo (ota)

bone house (ota)

for kaworu

later

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my apologies that my insomniatags are either three words or this gosh dang novel

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later

Shows Up

outside!! later!!!

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