deercountry | You have shown me the sky, but what good is the sky? [CLOSED]

Who: Ariadne, Ezra, and Wesker
What: Possession by the Snow Woman
When: February 8, possibly going into February 9
Where: Starting at Serenity Garden, then moving to Lumenarium

Content Warnings: Potential violence, harsh language, backstory trauma

It was in Ariadne's nature to help. There was nothing to be done about it. So it was only natural, then, that when she heard cries for help, someone begging for rescue from the cold, that Ariadne would follow the sounds. Compulsion wasn't necessary. It was already part of her blood and bones. Perhaps she could have found someone to join her, lately. But really, Ariadne was alone more often than not, most of the time. She didn't see any reason to bother.

And then she didn't remember any of it, anyway.

Just waking up in the woods. It wasn't all that unusual for her to wander. Admittedly, blacking out was something unfamiliar, but she barely thought about it. Shivering, she just wanted to get out of the cold, to find someplace to warm.

Too bad nothing could chase away the shivers and the fog on her breath.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ezra does not routinely patrol, exactly. He never goes out into the woods specifically to hunt beasts.

But he has befriended many of the hellhounds around, and semi-regularly wanders with them, which sometimes means joining their hunts for food. It's mutually beneficial, really. The hounds get Ezra's senses lent to the hunt, help if a pack runs into something big, and a lightsaber makes for a quick and mostly bloodless death for their prey.

Less blood is almost always better for everyone, here.

So Ezra is not exactly alone, when he feels a tug in the Force, in his forest meanderings. He asks his canine companions to walk with him, before shifting directions.

He steps speed up, when he spots Ariande, and he's immediately reaching to dig his spare cloak out of his bag for her.

"Airy?" He knows how she usually presents in the Force well, by this point. Something is decidedly...off.

"Hey, what bring you out here?" he asks, with careful lightness, as he moves to drape the cloak over her.

With reflexes Ariadne didn't normally show, she batted the cloak away, a low and angry hiss escaping from between her lips. Alastrians often hissed in the presence of humanoids, especially when they were bound as familiars. Ariadne's parents used to hiss, but she found the habit distasteful.

Like it was proving right everything said about her people.

But as Ariadne wasn't entirely home at the moment, her body fell back on certain primal instincts.

She glared at Ezra. There were pale, blue lines around her lips. A deathly pallor across her skin.

Yes, something was decidedly...off.

Ezra can't think of any other time Ariadne has rejected affection, much less hissed at him. He draws back just a little, but tries to keep his demeanor calm.

He can't tell what is going on yet, at all, but she definitely looks beyond chilled. So, low and gentle, he says, "What do you say to getting you somewhere warmer?"

She let out a noise that was just...downright cold, really. A laugh without any kind of joy in it. Too controlled to be a cackle. Too short to be a guffaw. "Warmth is just a bedtime story parents tell to their children, to hide the reality of the universe," she replied dully. "Like security or love."

The last word dripped with venom.

"Don't use pretty words with me, child."

Ezra goes very still and his voice drops low and cold.

"Who are you and what have you done to Ariadne?"

Ariadne rolled her eyes, the sound strangely like ice cracking. Admittedly, her eyes were a little bloodshot. Maybe sunken in?

Or was that just a trick of the light?

"There you go, trying to explain why something in life isn't to your liking," she said. "It's adorable, really."

Not giving an inch -

"I know my friend. This is not how she talks."

"Do you?" She whipped around to look at Ezra, her eyes dead and still, the faint blue tinge spreading slightly across her lips. "Do you know anything about her at all? How isolated she is? How alone? Unloved? Lost?"

Of course, there was more than one way to be lost.

And what Ariadne--the real one--was experiencing was a confluence of several. But she didn't elaborate. That wasn't the point. Her pain wasn't the point.

The point, it seemed, was to hurt him.

"You know nothing, little boy. None of you do. Jedi, Sith, your heads are far too stuck up your asses to notice the rest of us."

If these words come from Airy in any meaningful way, Ezra is choosing to believe they don't come from her in her right mind.

Even if Airy truly does think and feel these things, it should be her choice how to express them. Whether to hold them close or let them go. Not this...whatever this is, speaking for her.

To hold onto the hurt that wells up, at implied accusation that he does not love, that he is blind, would be to disrespect his friend, he thinks.

He takes a breath, and raggedly breathes it all out, before deciding to speak to try to sidestep this persona and try to speak to his friend's true self, more directly. "Airy, I love. And I hope you feel like you can come to me and talk about your hurts. Right now, I'm going to figure out and get help, ok?"

"Oh, you're going to need help," she replied in a low, raspy voice. Ironically, she sounded just like her mother. But to so much as think that would have only compounded the hurt. Her mother was gone. Her father and siblings too. She was the last of her kind, even before Deerington and Trench. Where she was the only.

And Ezra, for better or for worse, was about to get a taste of just what her kind was.

Her fingers twitched at her sides for a moment, before her talons slowly slid out. Across the darkness, there was the sound of metal against metal. Like a sword being drawn from its sheath.

Those talons grew and grew.

More than a foot long before their tapered points rested, filled with eagerness and potential, at her sides.

"I don't think you really want to do this, Ariadne," Ezra replies steadily, and he draws his lightsaber, with one hand, and flicks it on.

He has no intention of even touching her with it. But making it will make her - or whatever it is that speaking through her - hesitate. Hopefully long enough he can use his other hand to get the blaster he has tucked away under his cloak.

At the same time, he reaches mentally his hellhound companions. Careful, he impresses on them. Noise. Movement.

"I definitely don't want to hurt you."

"Of course not," she purred, the light of the blade making her skin ironically green. "You would never want to hurt anyone. You're too noble for that. One of the good guys."

Disdain dripped from her voice like rainwater.

Thicker. Like honey. Which was a twist of the knife, considering that she wasn't being her normal, sweet self. Was she being herself at all? Something buried deep inside, beneath the kindness and consistent patient?

Hard to say.

But what was incredibly obvious was the fact that she decided she was done with words. She took a swing at Ezra's side, instead.

Perhaps Ezra has heard talk of a focused and pragmatic yet somewhat fearsome Blood Minister at the Lumenarium; perhaps Ezra has lined that up with an odd sort who's posted to the network but rarely shows their face.

On bringing Ariadne to the Lumenarium and asking the attendants, one might lead the two of them to an office and exam room on the third-floor rear.

The door opens and a tall blond male humanoid looks out, clad in a tan lab coat over a black vest and an open-collared royal blue shirt, his eyes hidden behind blue-tinted dark lenses, his face impassive.

"May I be of assistance--" He starts to say, then his sangfroid breaking, replaced by a subtle wrinkle of concern. "Ariadne..." he murmurs. Collecting his professional composure, he half-turns his face toward Ezra. "I take it this is more complicated than frostbite?"

You have shown me the sky, but what good is the sky? [CLOSED]

Ezra and Ariadne

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Wesker, Ezra, and Ariadne

Re: Wesker, Ezra, and Ariadne