necrolord: /=- (like molars gnashing)
ᴛʜᴇ ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ ᴜɴᴅʏɪɴɢ ([personal profile] necrolord) wrote in [community profile] deercountry2022-11-26 11:27 am

14 . winter catch-all

Who: John Gaius and company.
What: As the cold sets in, the God of Necromancers gets restless.
When: Late November through December
Where: Gaze and the Sleeper Farm.

Content Warnings: Tagged in headers as needed. Note all the usual warnings of this character.

lipochrome: (18)

[personal profile] lipochrome 2022-12-22 04:48 pm (UTC)(link)
The only reason Kiriona can parse any of this is because she's seen Rocky, like, twenty times. They have cars in Rocky. The cars don't usually end up in the ocean.

Kiriona knows she's not supposed to be here before she even finishes crawling out of the ocean, choking for air not because she needs it but because the feeling of water stuck in her mostly-inert throat is really uncomfortable. She shakes herself dry as best she's able, but her jacket is far too waterlogged, so she strips it off at the risk of someone seeing the exposed gash across her neck. At least her chest is still covered.

And, as it turns out, the person up ahead won't be overly bothered about her wounds.

"'Sup, Dad?" Rhetorical question. Nothing good; he looks even worse than she does. "Thanks for the full-frontal family photo album experience."
lipochrome: (18)

cw: alcoholism

[personal profile] lipochrome 2022-12-23 05:18 pm (UTC)(link)
It's like he's been up all night with a bottle and an old man, except this time, it's the end of the world. Kiriona knows how this goes. She takes a seat beside her father, not bothering to look too closely inside the tent. (As soon as she's confident he's not looking, Kiriona will turn back and stick her tongue out at the sleeping slut.)

John shuts his eyes; Kiriona understands the impulse. She keeps looking out at the sea. It reminds her of something. She's not sure what.

"Mmm. What's Christmas?"
butnotyet: (011)

after everyone else (perhaps)

[personal profile] butnotyet 2022-12-26 08:41 pm (UTC)(link)
There's a man who's come out of the water, and his hair is grey with ash, plastered wet to his skull, and the only thing that's really bothering him about this little predicament is that there is no sword belted at his hip, now, because — because he's not old enough for it, yet, is he?

Augustine — A? — wipes the poisoned saltwater from his eyes, flicking it idly into the sand at his sodden feet, and quirks one eyebrow up at God, even as he starts to do his best to wring water from the rest of his clothes, impatient to be dry again.

"Hell of a time to act like that's the best you can do for a shelter," he remarks, idly enough — which is to say, not idly at all; which is also to say, tremendously idly, in tone and vibe. "Aren't you even going to seal it, my Lord?"

(Which version of him is this? How old is this man? Is he a Saint, yet? Does he know how lethal the very air is?)

His gaze is not turned outwards, to the water or the landscape, to the wreckage of a world and an Age of Humanity; it is focused, almost entirely, on the man sitting by the fire, with only fragmentary glances stolen at the golden-haired form on the ground beside him.

(... does he care?)
butnotyet: (013)

[personal profile] butnotyet 2023-01-08 07:03 pm (UTC)(link)
There's something kinetic about the grey sliver of a man standing ankle-deep in the sea still, there before God; his hands are restless, as they wring more and more of the poisoned brine from his clothes; his weight shifts from foot to foot, as unceasing as the relentless pounding of the surf; his blond hair is a bedraggled mop in his eyes, which are definitely grey — but are they a pure grey, or a charred-ash grey? Impossible to tell truly, with the yellowing of the sky and the light.

He's hesitating, if not quite stalling, as waves mark the passage of clock-free time since God's gesture of invitation. Maybe it's the casualness of the setting, or of God's response; maybe it's the presence of His (angelic?) Bodyguard, sleeping of all things — his gaze catches on her again, and he licks his salt-cracked lips to ask is she allowed to do that, my Lord? — only to swallow the words back, awkwardly folding himself up into the edge of the cleared sand instead.

Fragments of a centimeter are all that separate them, now, but they do remain separated; Augustine is not feeling quite so bold as to assume that God wants to be touched by one of His disciples, in this strange beachside wreck of a hovel of a shelter.

"My Lord," he says abruptly, all of five seconds after fully settling into place, the words nearly exploding from him like water from a poorly-blocked spigot, "why are we here? Were You waiting for me?"

(It's not the worst thing he could have said; he might have asked why this was supposed to be his home, after all.)
butnotyet: (004)

[personal profile] butnotyet 2023-01-09 03:40 pm (UTC)(link)
(The First Saint is named Patience.)

Augustine's reply comes so hard on the heels of God's Words that he very nearly outright interrupts Him. "If You hate it so much, my Lord, then why — why wait, why stay, why not just —"

Go, says the shape of his lips, the crease of his brow, but his voice is absent, silenced by the temerity of what he is — very nearly — doing now: his hands hover, with all the grace and stillness of a pair of hummingbirds, a breath away from God's shoulder, from His hand that covers His eyes.

Fragments of a centimeter separate them, even now.

"You've changed it," Augustine says, in a tone of voice that is somehow both his traditionally laughing form of reasonable and every bit as plaintive as any man faced with God's fallibility might feel. "Before, I mean — I remember —"

He is silent; his hands still their fluttering, momentarily, as he blinks several times, swallowing hard on bile or fear or a resurgence of memory (or, perhaps, all of the above); whatever he was going to say, originally, is gone now.

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hearthebell: http://vividwater.blog109.fc2.com (A ghosteen dances in my hand)

cw: emeto

[personal profile] hearthebell 2022-12-27 01:30 am (UTC)(link)
L doesn't feel well enough to swim, or well enough to stand. When he does, slogging ashore past bodies in roughly the same stage of decay, nausea has him doubling over and retching. It might not be strange for anyone else, but he hasn't lost the contents of his stomach over a corpse since he was a child.

That, more than anything, tells him that something is terribly wrong. Brushing away the soft and smudging ash, knowing that it will do little if anything to change a set course, he makes his way toward the smoke.

It's a Mourning. I could change this. The thought occurs to him almost immediately, and is tempting for several moments. Though his skin burns and dizziness lends a drunken weave to his steps, bringing his shins in bumping contact with stiff and rotting flesh, he likens the notion to screwing with a crime scene at the very best.

At worst, it would compromise everything he could possibly learn from the man in the makeshift tarpaulin shack. He has a feeling he knows who he'll find there, and as usual, there is some merit to L's gut feelings.

Not that his guts are in great shape. Better not to think about what's happening to him, or what he could do to save himself as the ash rains down on the just and the unjust alike.

"On the contrary, I've found that those are the most illuminating ti-"

His own throat cuts him off. It's hoarse and raw and gags on a hair-trigger. The cold and aloof dignity he'd had in mind when he formed the words, literally looking down on John as he would speak them, unravels. His legs are no good, here. He needs all of his strength to dry heave into the ash around his knees.

hearthebell: will credit if found (They'll be laying flowers on my life)

[personal profile] hearthebell 2023-01-10 07:30 am (UTC)(link)
Crime scene. It's a crime scene. L sets his brain to it like a metronome, on the off-chance he's still strong enough to act on the urge to change something in this mourning.

He spits weakly into the sand, naturally slumping forward to rest. When he realizes this is happening, he presses a hand at his side, pushing himself upright. It's exhausting, just prolonging the inevitable for one who can't mend. He wipes his mouth, having nothing cleaner than a radioactive sleeve covered in affected water and ash, but somehow anything is better than clinging specks of vomit on his face when he's talking to him, here, at the crime scene.

His bloodshot eyes linger on the shelter and the sleeping form within, trying to memorize it through the dim, distant sense of panic. Uniquely, if this is a crime scene, it's the first time a pile of unidentified meat is actually the least interesting thing about it to the detective.

It's Sodom and Gomorrah, Noah's Ark, and the Garden of Eden, perhaps in that order. Nothing about this situation is contributing to a clear and impartial mental state, though, so L focuses on what he does know and can never forget: people like him weren't supposed to make it here.

"And the rest of us."

It's a parry for honor's sake, while he struggles to understand how quickly his body is failing him. As usual, knowing in theory differs greatly from knowing from experience.

Aware of the effects of radiation sickness, L realizes that a quick death is probably the greatest possible mercy for someone whose veins are actively liquefying. He also realizes that he's unlikely to get that from John.

He steadies his breath, plants a foot and pushes himself to his feet. He looks less steady than he did before, which is truly saying something, but for the moment, he's upright.

"Your favorite poem. I've concluded... you misunderstood."

He gets all the words out, but his voice is quiet and creaky. He wonders if it was heard at all, and whether he hopes more for a quick end or healing prompted by curiosity.
Edited 2023-01-10 21:49 (UTC)
hearthebell: (I swear that I'll always paint you)

cw: delirious self-harm

[personal profile] hearthebell 2023-01-11 03:07 am (UTC)(link)
L's toes dig into the soggy, polluted substrate, rooting himself so that he might sway without falling. The world wavers and weaves around the Emperor and his bride, who remain a constantly clearer focal point. Historically, as long as he has one of those, the detective just doesn't quit. He shakes his head grimly, water from his sopping hair dripping down his neck. It is, strangely, not the first time he's realized that he'll be dead by the time he's dry.

Knowing there's an end in sight is some kind of comfort. His skin is tender and painful to the point where it feels like his own clothes are burning him. His stomach cramps and his head swims with confusion, to the point where it's a growing effort to keep this situation straight.

He shakes his head, again, before realizing that he did already. He could continue to not give up on not giving up a few more times, but the brain-boiling levels of radiation he's been exposed to are probably high enough that he won't even have a latent stage and return to some level of functionality as a dead man walking. That would have come in handy around the time his only real edge in his fight with a planet-killing self-proclaimed god, his wit, is starting to decay along with the rest of him. The ground seems to pull at his heavy and tired body. His ankles tremble as though they're complicit, wishing just as much to make him topple.

He doesn't. Something's been plucked out of line to stop a chain reaction of tiny but devastating consequences. If his skin hurt and his mind buzzed frantically before, it's nothing compared to the sudden gripping notion that this agony could simply go on, racing indefinitely on a treadmill towards elusive, blessed death.

The realization strikes. His body is his enemy more than usual, now that it can keep him caged as it burns. He digs his nails into the prickling side of his jaw, drawing blood with shocking ease. More pressure would probably peel away the skin.

He doesn't waste words when he speaks, not dying any faster but feeling every moment slower. His lungs try to escape his chest with every breath, so he keeps them shallow and careful.

"You are the wind in the cloud."

cw: emeto, blood

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unchoose: (Default)

[personal profile] unchoose 2023-01-06 07:42 pm (UTC)(link)
The sky is a wrong colour. He looks at it a while, treading in the filthy sea, before he puts his hand over his heart and murmurs to himself. It sounds like a prayer. He can make anything sound like a prayer.

It's a long swim to shore. He cuts through the water like a pelagic creature until he can put his feet to the bottom, and then he walks, skirting waterlogged debris until he has to tread over them with light, sure steps. He traces the arc of the beach to the only sign of anything still living here, dripping poison that touches him not at all.

When God looks up at him, he smiles, gently, and rakes his hand through his dark, damp curls.

"We have to stop meeting like this, Teacher," Paul tells him, "It's a bad habit."
unchoose: (008)

[personal profile] unchoose 2023-01-11 08:26 pm (UTC)(link)
The smile falls away, although John won't be able to see it. Paul looks at him, at his shoulders, at the golden-haired woman and what John has set aside for them, and his gaze never falters in its softness. Some unarticulated feeling clings to his eyes like a bruise before he blinks against the smoke.

The sand whispers under Paul's weight when he kneels at John's side, facing out towards the ocean from underneath the feeble shelter of the soot-streaked tarp. He takes the world in anew from this perspective: the dead sea and scalded sky, with all the bodies laid down between them.

"So this is when it was," he says, with delicacy tempered by deference to the terrible weight bearing down on the man next to him, king in the ashes, "I didn't know."
unchoose: (008)

[personal profile] unchoose 2023-01-11 10:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Paul turns his head to watch John cough. His fingers curl slightly on his knees, some other gesture suppressed and redirected.

"I would have." The agreement comes naturally. He leans forward and sinks the fingertips of one hand into the sand up to the first knuckle, then pulls them back. They're above the waterline. Nothing rushes in to fill the holes. He rubs the grit between the pads of his fingers as he settles back on his heels.

"Atomics," he says, seeing John out of the corner of his eye, "I can't imagine what you thought, looking at me."

Another ruined beach full of poisoned corpses and an infant star burning like ghostfire. The cosmic irony of it washes over Paul like the waters over the dead here, and he lets his eyes half-lid as it does.

The second gesture is not suppressed. He extends his hand like a man reaching out to a wounded animal, slowly and steadily, to reach for John's heavy, sunken shoulder.

"Or perhaps I can."

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unsheathedfromreality: (spent among the slain)

eventual cws: graphic radiation sickness, gas injuries, mercy kill

[personal profile] unsheathedfromreality 2023-01-08 02:11 am (UTC)(link)
The water is bad.

The air is worse, thick with ash, reeking of decay. Illarion--alive, sighted, beautifully symmetric in his outward self--gasps for it anyway as he struggles from the rotting sea. He can't not, even as he regrets it instantly--even as he feels the sting of pyrolyzed plastics and organic volatiles deep in lung and air sac and breathing bone. An awful reflexive inhuman cough wracks him before he can catch it back; there is blood on the back of his tongue. Gas, he thinks dimly, already reaching for the mask hung round his neck.

Stars and saints look kindly on the Dog Keeper and his gifts, even if the filters are wet and the seal doesn't quite fit. Better a struggle to breathe than drowning in his own blood.

The awful little shelter catches his attention, once he's got it to spare. Even through fogged and watering eyes the figure inside's familiar and the shrike can't help a rasping laugh. The mere noise turns his stomach.

He gulps back acid and trudges up the ashy dunes to present himself to God.

"This is she?" he croaks by way of greeting, gesturing around them. Ironic echo of a meeting on another, fairer beach in another, fairer month. This is the world that died? In war, he assumes; in the Conflagration that Imperial philosophers put so much stock in.

He doesn't know the worst of it. Nephele was--would be--spared one horror Earth wasn't; no one considered whether a nuclear reactor might be used to birth weapons. No one needed to, in a world that held the Throne, where loose fragments of its divinity could be used to the same ends.

He doesn't know he's already dead.
unsheathedfromreality: (spent among the slain)

[personal profile] unsheathedfromreality 2023-01-10 06:02 am (UTC)(link)
He looks, first, at the blonde and fragile form lying slack in careless sleep. This is her body, except he's witnessed this part of her before--through Omen eyes and stranger ((senses))--so he looks away to the dead beach and dead sky. To the heaps of organic wreckage, waste of an ecosystem's treasure. To the ash that still sifts down on him, piling up on his shoulders and hair.

This is her body. This is a charnel house, a mass funeral, a battlefield grave. This is--Illarion shakes his head, once, trying to dislodge a notion that's gotten stuck. This is--something requiring solemn witness. (Why? He can't catch hold of the thought; he only knows that it is proper.)

(A living shrike is never all in the visible world, flat as he might make himself. Most of Illarion's bulk isn't subject to the hail of radiation cutting through his meager three-dimensional cross section. Most of the swift-dividing cells in his bone marrow and gut are safely out of danger.

But his brain isn't.

His heart isn't.)

"She is--" beautiful, would be an abominable lie. The shrike turns his eyes from the sea and the smeary fog that seems to obscure it. That seems to obscure everything, though it can't hide John's too-dense form from his sight. It cannot hide the woman asleep behind the Monarch who bound her.

His heart skips a beat and clenches in his chest as he looks on her again. Like the clutch of intense paternal worry--like a spasm of pity--

(like the caul around the beating muscle filling up with fluid,)

--and he makes a low noise of dismay. "She looks cold," he says, lapsing to Shriketongue without thinking.

Then he shakes his head again--fiercely--and has to reach up to steady the gas mask. Only after that half-conscious ritual does the implicit invitation click; he ducks beneath the tarp, takes a graceless seat by the fire.

It's too warm already, just being that close to the flames. He unbuttons the collar of his uniform.

"How--how did it come to this, o Lord? What hurt her?" What could do this?
unsheathedfromreality: (spent among the slain)

[personal profile] unsheathedfromreality 2023-01-29 04:05 am (UTC)(link)
"The bombs," Illarion echoes dumbly. His fingers fumble on the fastenings of his coat, gone numb and insensible. He dips his chin far as the mask will permit, obsessed with the task, anxious with it.

It's too hot. Patches like heat rash (far worse than that) already mar his chalk-white skin.

"I know--bombs, lord. Artillery. Demolition. Worse-- But nothing..." His voice trails into silence as he stares around them again. Then he resumes struggling with his coat, removing it only with great effort.

And only with great effort can he reach to offer it to John, shy and trembling and vulnerable in his terrible confusion. "For her," he says and gestures. "It's hard to die. Cold. She needs-- she needs comfort."