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: 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.]