The Clock Froze Around Midnight, I Can Feel It In The Room [October Catchall, OTA]

[hearthebell]

Who: L Lawliet (Lazarus Sauveterre) and CR old and new
What: Catchall for October; includes event prompts and slice of life wildcards.
When: Throughout the month, dates are ambiguous unless otherwise noted
Where: Various places in Trench (flexible unless specifically noted)




[October is a season of change and loss, and in Trench, it’s not really any different. L nevertheless feels a sense of restlessness that manifests in snappishness and irritability; exceeding what usually visits him in the ambivalent season of his birth.

He goes about his business anyway, keeping to his own odd schedules and doings in a mostly solitary routine. He avoids contact with others this month, not least because the typically stoic detective is struggling to discern when his mood will shift and his tears might start flowing and refuse to stop.

It’s better, perhaps, to guard what he’s always known to be raw in a month where he can feel it so keenly and plaintively.]

Comments

I. Second Death

[hearthebell]

[It’s not terribly unusual for L’s cases to take him to odd parts of Trench. Paranoid about even those he hires having it out for him, he’s careful about planning the time, locations, and manners of his investigations so that they’re unpredictable, which is why he feels no deep sense of dread or foreboding when he makes his way to the graveyard in the wee hours of an early October morning.

He notes the freshly dug holes in passing, but keeps his eyes on the prize. L brushes aside some leaves, breathing a satisfied sigh as he picks up the missing heirloom locket. He’ll return it tomorrow to his client, collect his fee, and all will be well.

Except, he doesn’t remember to. Not until two days later, when everything else he’s forgetting simply overtakes it in a powdery avalanche that leaves him numb and blinking. It continues over the first week of October; you might approach him, knowing who he is while he seems to not recognize you. You might call him by the name “Lazarus” and receive a puzzled look in return. You might reference some experience or relationship that you share and have him shake his head in bewilderment, but it’s clear that he’s not firing at his typical sharp capacity. His mind has gone from steel trap to sieve, which is tragic, but even early onset dementia doesn’t work quite this fast.

Something’s up. Maybe you encounter him in the early days when this is still relatively new and it can be passed off as a scattered brain due to a lack of sleep, or maybe you see the draugr at his back while he struggles to remember simple words and his omen shifts formlessly, unable to remember that she’s a whale. If you've heard of the draugr and the endangerment to those whose footsteps they haunt, perhaps something can be done.]

i. second death

[poorlittlesange]

[Jin Guangyao would never be so presumptuous as to proclaim himself an expert on any subject beyond being able to read a room, but after three draugr encounters of his own, he is inclined to consider himself at least a journeyman at dispatching them. The first time had been the most frightening, of course, because he had been the monster's intended target. The second time had been exhausting because destroying the draugr's physical form had been only half the battle; calming Mike's fractured mind had been the rest of it. And so by the third encounter he'd opted to exit his home each morning prepared, just in case, which means that he is as ready to provide aid to this stranger as anyone is liable to be in Trench.

He rounds a street corner en route back to the Willful Machine after spending his morning meditating near the Pale Sanctuary, and that is when he spots the draugr dogging L's heels. Steeling his resolve, he quickens his pace to close the distance between them, already fishing a weighted talisman from his qiankun bag and activating the sigils on it with a burst of spiritual power. Then with a flick of his wrist, he sends the talisman hurtling through the air like a precisely aimed paper missile. It lands with the force of a literal boulder, knocking the draugr to the side and pinning it to the ground.]

Excuse me, xiongdi, [he apologizes afterwards, though he keeps his eyes fixed on the draugr as it snarls and thrashes where it trapped by the talisman's spiritual power,] I hope I did not startle you.

[hearthebell]

[L startles violently at the sound and the shockwave, stumbling back and away from the pinned creature. His dark gaze flits wildly between the newcomer and the paper missile.]

What is...?

[His eyes linger a little longer on the man, clouded with a type of fear he doesn't usually have to feel. Usually, his burden is remembering everything, not hardly anything at all.]

Have we met? If so... I suppose I wouldn't...

[He stares harder, as if some detail might jog his memory.]

cw for draugr decapitation

[poorlittlesange]

[Jin Guangyao sees a reflection of his own fear in L's eyes, of losing his greatest asset--his mind--and all of the vulnerability that follows in that state. It doesn't move him to compassion and sympathy, precisely, but what does it matter if his actions remain the same?]

No, xiongdi, we have not met. [This, said with gentleness and delivered with a smile calibrated to be as nonthreatening as possible.] Please do not trouble yourself on this matter.

[He returns his attention to the draugr where it remains pinned and thrashing and snarling to the ground. The stink of it is almost unbearable. Already he can see the effects of the talisman are beginning to wear off, the edges of the rice paper beginning to singe and burn as it consumes the spiritual energy granting it its power. Jin Guangyao unsheathes a curious-looking sword from somewhere in the general vicinity of his waist, directs a pulse of his limited spiritual strength straight into its flexible blade, and then lashes the blade around the draugr's throat; this method proved most effective when dispatching Mike Enslin's draugr, and Jin Guangyao sees no reason to fix what isn't broken.

Once the blade has tightly encircled the monster's throat, the sharp edges sinking like tines into the flesh, it should be pretty that Jin Guangyao is going to tear its head off. Unless stopped, that is exactly what he does.]

[hearthebell]

[He stares quizzically at the other man, as if to question what reason he could possibly have to not worry over this matter. It might as well be comprised entirely of worry, after all, leaving room for few other thoughts and feelings.

He thinks he's heard something about creatures like these in the last days, but he can't be sure. He wouldn't be sure if they were a completely normal sight in Trench, because he doesn't remember where he was or what he was doing even five minutes ago. The creature has really made a feast of his memories, leaving little left.

He doesn't stop Jin Guangyao. Just watches, wide-eyed as a newborn who knows nothing about the world, as the thing's head pops off. Almost immediately comprehension begins to seep back into his expression as his memories begin to return, but the shock of it leaves him momentarily dumbstruck.]