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

cw: weird, ritual blood letting

[acidjail]

[She can feel all the frailty of his body pressing against her Lyctoral senses like a hundred needy whispers. The little hands of want every infirm body projects without knowing what an imposition it is to have them tugging at her hems, incessant in their yearning to be made whole.

Mercymorn slips her awareness inside of his blood in her palm like another ghost. She traces down the flickering signs of neglect to their roots. She could brush her fingers over the spongy hollows of his bones and know less about them than she can sift from the stray cells of his marrow. She could cut him open like a tree and count his rings and know less. He is so delicate, so vulnerable. Any little thing could destroy him, and here he is, pliant in the very cradle of her hands.]

God's, of course.

[As if she really does think it should be obvious - she, who has known God for all the time that exists in the universe that matters one bit, cannot be bothered to recall that others have not watched him dress himself for ten thousand schlubby years.

There's enough blood for her purposes now. She knits the slit in his elbow whole with a not ungentle swipe of her thumb. She considers leaving behind no mark. She spins up a thin webbing of scar tissue to seal the wound instead. A durable reminder. A covenant.]

And at least you have some sense.

[Perhaps she is enjoying herself. What of it? Should she not? How long has it been since she got to work properly, to her own satisfaction? How long has it been since anyone has looked at her the way they should look at her, in the crown of her glory?

Subtle grace puts it stamp on her flushed features as she dips her fingers into the blood and swirls. She keeps her hand cupped underneath her dripping fingertips as she lifts them to his chin and taps him there with her thumb, a tiny upward nudge.]

Up.

[A painted ward on his throat, and then she can really work. Cytherea's breathing comes in hard, shallow gurgles; Mercy pays no mind to Lazarus' shadow's raging. He can't stop her. Very little has ever been able to stop her.]

[hearthebell]

[Little deprivations over time, and large ones in single instances, have left stories on and inside of L's body. They're strange stories, but not uninteresting. All of them clamor together to make the point that the more one wants something, the easier it is for one to stay motivated and truly do anything to get it. Desperation, being the most undeniable and powerful mode of wanting, was easy enough to conjure. It was every bit as easy as making the body believe that there wasn't enough of anything, and letting the mind believe that it was at least somewhat deserved.

A man like that, L believes, can do anything. If only for a little while, until all that's been borrowed must be returned.

Wholly unaware of what it's like for Mercy to feel the unfiltered complaints, L believes that he's enduring this stoically for all its unfamiliarity and oddness. He cracks a satisfied half-smile to know that the sweater is John's, appreciating the trophy. He likes reminders in general, which is why Mercy might notice the scar seems to please him, like every other he's acquired in Trench.

He obeys, tilting his sharp chin. Mercy's tone had registered before the word it carried; he'd still instantly understood and reacted almost as quickly, like an instinct.

His eyes remain on Cytherea as Mercy works. He feels a restless sense of unease; it could be attributable to the violent fight Beyond is waging futilely against Mercy's efforts. It could also be because everything about Cytherea strips the gruesome mystery from death and the longer, nastier ways to reach it.]

Does he seem to be suffering?

[His throat bobs under her touch when he speaks, barely even curious. The question sounds like it's an obligation, something a good person would ask for compassion's sake. It doesn't reach his eyes, though; it's likely many things can't, or wander there in some wrong and mocking reverie.]

cw: eye trauma, blood ritual

[acidjail]

[ Cytherea's clouded blue eyes hold L's unblinkingly. The corneal abrasions that obscure them are fresh, much younger than a month's worth of accumulated damage to a body that can no longer repair itself. Cytherea is as whole as Mercy is able to make her, which was never ever very much. Her dead interest is frankly and indecently hungry.

Mercy paints the ward on Lazarus' throat in crisp, swift lines, using the curve of her smallest nail for the fine detail work. The lashings of mingled blood and spit are like the most delicate strokes of a watercolour brush over his thin, fragile skin. She focuses on spiralling outward from the vulnerable hollow of his clavicle, her expression still placidly focused. Her eyes only flick up lightly at Lazarus' question, a bird hopping from one branch to another, before they return to the matter at hand. ]

God is always suffering.

[ In the clinically cold halls of the Eighth House the portraits of the Necrolord Prime depict an impression of noble and perpetual sacrifice, the Emperor Undying lifting the souls of the Resurrected from the River with hands stripped down to the bone by the ravenous dead, the God of the Nine Houses sheltering his beloved subjects from the slings and arrows of their enemies with his own bowed shoulders. Mercy always insisted on personal approval of each new work out of the cloister cells.

To be God is to suffer. She thought someone ought to appreciate that. ]

But if you mean moreso than he was...this most recent cavalcade of fuck ups does not represent a high water mark in the annals of God's mood.

[ Perhaps this young man will appreciate it, even if not in exactly the way Mercy used to think it should be appreciated. ]

[hearthebell]

[Past the sound of the ocean and the absurdity of this unprecedented situation, there is a furious ghost over L's shoulder. When he'd asked about suffering, he'd been referring to his unfortunate shadow.

Mercy infers someone else in the question, who interests L far more, to the angry heartbreak of Beyond's likeness. He doesn't stop her or clarify, merely nods through the giddy shock of being further informed.]

Because he recognizes them as fuck-ups, or because others do?

[acidjail]

[ Unfortunately for Beyond and fortunately for L, solipsism comes too easily to Mercymorn for her to even notice it anymore. Everything in the universe comes down, in the end, to what the immortals trapped inside of it make of it. ]

Both.

[ She sits back on her heels once more, bringing her hands together now, folding them palm to palm like prayer, like a choirbook. ]

He is sensitive about shortcomings and failures in himself...his own greatest critic - but it's been a hideously long time since anyone but me was critical of him past that. Duty only ever wants to please him, and Patience is indulgence, and she... [ she glances at her own heaving ghost, a shadow falling across her face to almost make her mouth look soft ] ...she never had the heart for it.

He never has, either. Perhaps that's why he loved her more.

[ She opens her palms.

Other spirit magicians require the trappings of the flame and the offering, the invocation paired to the theorem paired to the will. Mercymorn helped invent several of them.

She hasn't needed them in a long time. L's blood and spit flickers with blue spectral fire in the curved cup of her hands, and she is as serene as a shipwrecked figurehead as a salt wind blows the wrong way from the sea. ]

Call to your ghost. Remind him of his name.

[hearthebell]

[One of L's greatest joys in Trench is punching holes in John's perception of himself as a god. If he was told that he contributed regularly to lapses in divine self-esteem, he would consider it quite the fluffy feather in his cap. He sets aside his irreverence while speaking with Mercymorn about the man, however, noting her ambivalence and sensing that her bitter and tempestuous nature seeks conflict among allies and enemies alike. It's probably not the time to throw down the gauntlet and insist that, actually, John has fierce competition for being his worst critic.]

Flatterers are liars. They're not masochists, like those devoted to the truth. We have to consider that its own reward.

[He punctuates his words with a wry smile. Loving the truth means loving the ugly and misshapen things, reveling in the flaws, cleaving to what's real even if it's horribly disappointing. L's a liar himself, of course, a brazen one, but only so much as any mirror, he thinks.

He also thinks that if John hates him, he must be a very good mirror, indeed.

He blinks his owlish eyes at Mercy's instructions. Speaking the true names of any of his would-be successors aloud is as taboo as speaking his own, whether or not it actually matters here. A battle briefly plays out behind his eyes, but he would rather be rid of Beyond than keep his secrets.]

Beyond Birthday.

[The call is more sober command than searching query. There's a distinct undercurrent of disdain, one that L couldn't scrub wholly from his tone. The specter twists as though in pain at the sound.]