deercountry | o5 . bone house mingle!

[The wolf ducks her head down at the misunderstanding. No, no, that's not at all what she meant. She looks back and forth between Gideon and her sleeping human form on the bed, trying to figure out how to get her point across.

Okay, okay, okay. She can do this.

She puts her front paws on the bed barks sharply at the sleeping young woman curled under the blankets and drops back down on all fours before barking at Gideon again, hoping she'll at least put together that it's strange that the noise isn't enough to get a reaction from the sleeper.]

[It's hardly a shock that they don't have a way to at least keep the damage the Pthumerians can potentially do to a minimum. In her experience, there's a good chance that's going to take time, creativity, and probably a bit of luck too.

They'll figure it out.

The news that her magic did not come through intact causes Willow's eyebrows to knit together in concern. Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise, given magic in Deerington could be inconsistent at best, but somehow, she expected more of this world, where by all accounts, their situation should be far more stable.]

Umm... How 'not wholly intact' are we talking here?

[ So. This might be a tricky operation.

The thing trying to occupy this body is vast and unknowable, which is a fun twist, because the thing which should be occupying the body— this second one being Kaworu— is also vast and unknowable, but in a more carefully-restrained way. It's like he's looking at the tip of an iceberg, a little bit comforting white snow above a lot bit horrible eldritch glacier; and then there's another, fully-fucked-up glacier trying to press it out of the way. The situation is more slippery than he'd like, and he doesn't know what might happen if he changes the water line.

He doesn't know what will look out of Kaworu's eyes if he loosens the leash.

But he is God, and he invented soul-pinning. Maybe he can't pry the Leviathan away, but he can at least fix Kaworu nearer the top; he can stabilize things, lessen the slippage. Maybe it won't hold forever, with the gravity of the Leviathan still exerting its pull. But it'd make for fewer hallway floods, probably. ]

Let's give this a try.

[ He reaches out, palm-up, in offer. Kaworu has struggled up to sitting, so Kaworu can make the choice to take his hand.

When he does, God will fix his soul in place and hold it there, in the grip of blazing power. If they're lucky, it should— in time— start to feel like solid ground. If they're lucky, the pain won't last. ]

I'd invite you to give it a try, but from the sound of it, there's a risk of... headaches and mysterious feedback, I believe?

[ He does, at least, look sympathetic. ]

It's more consistently shot than in Deerington, if I understand correctly. We've been trying to crack the 'how' and 'why.'

[A shaking hand, clammy and cold, is placed into God's. And there's an explosion of pain. It's not physical, Kaworu is used to that sort of pain, but in the depths of his being. Like someone is touching and holding the sacred parts of him to keep his head above the water but it hurts. It painful to surface, to live, to be after so long of not doing so.

The boy makes a pained noise and ducks down, heaving up impossible amounts of sea water into the bin, hand clasping God's like a lifeline.

And then it's over, he sits there, gasping for breath but he can remember and feel that he is breathing. He looks up, a little wide-eyed, at the man who pulled him back from the depths.]

[No magic certainly does feel like a good reason for why she couldn't stand against Maul. She only barely got away from him the first time he had come after her because she took him off guard with a couple spells.]

Ah... Uh. It's probably not a good idea to even try then when I'm not feeling a hundred percent. I'm guessing we haven't had any real luck yet.

It's quiet enough at night that Midoriya hears the very soft footfalls. He turns his head slightly. Due to the aches from his warmblood, every movement costs him.

"Do you want me to pour you some?" he asks, voice a near-whisper. Kaworu has seen that gentle solicitousness before, but Midorioya doesn't pitch his voice slightly higher like he usually does when speaking to people. He's tired and burdened, but he's healed in more ways than one.

"I'll make you some ginger tea too. You sound like you need it."

He recalls with a pang a memory of his mom emptying a packet into hot water while he, a young child, sat and sniffled with a cold. Trench is less about modern packaging and more about tins, jars, and canning, but ginger and honey preserve well as a syrup too.

"So says the resurrecting king."

The voices answer in a soft murmur, quiet as the waves rolling endlessly onto the shore. Paul tucks his legs a hair's breath closer, his chin tilting down to further obscure his face.

"Life has gone on. It goes on. It will go on." His hands twitch tighter as a tremor runs through him, one that echoes in the shivering whisper of cold metal-on-metal as the ring around them stirs, then ebbs. "The fractal unfolding. I know. I dreamed of it, in the water." He breathes in, his shoulders rising only to fall further on the exhale. "I keep dreaming."

He lifts his head, then, and meets God's black eyes with the strange, flickering illumination of his own.

"Would you sit with me?" Plaintive and lost in a way that a thing that sounds like he does should never be. "Please."

[Whatever she means by the differentiation between magic and 'magic' mushrooms is lost on Paul, a faint confusion passing across his face before he shakes his head like he's clearing something from it.]

It's called thanergy.

[Paul reaches out and touches the collarbone of the skeleton, a note of wistfulness slipping into his words.]

Death energy. That would make sense, given the role of mushrooms in ecosystems...it has a symbolic resonance, which-

[There's nothing under his exploratory hand but clean, firm bone. He has to be imagining a look of mild reproach on the skeleton's fleshless skull, but he retracts his hand anyway, rubbing his finger together curiously. He sees the smut on them, but it flakes...wrong, somehow.]

...have you tried touching any of the fungi?

Gideon says it's not your fault, and it draws up tears that Paul didn't know he still had left, soft and dissolving. He makes a sound caught between whimper and keen, burrows deeper against her, and her words keep falling like warm rain.

And he's selfish, and he's weak, because he soaks them up as helplessly as her t-shirt absorbs his miserable, exhausted leaking.

"I still want it to be," Paul says, clinging to his voice as wildly as he clings to her, because this matters the way almost nothing else in this hideous place matters; this might be the only thing that matters, the fulcrum of the whole wrecked world, "I want it to be my fault."

His breath hitches hard in the back of his throat, a soft gag on a trickle of bitter brine, and he grits his teeth, his head unraised.

"I wanted to keep you together." Quiet, for all the shuddering tension of him. He sucks in a sharp breath, unwinds his fingers from bloodless tightness to flatten on her back in turn as he finds his feet under him. "I didn't want you to lose him again. I didn't want any of you to lose each other. If I could have - I tried, Gideon. I tried, and he's still gone, and even if he comes back, it's still-"

"-it's not fair."

Not so much.

[ Definitely sympathetic. It's at this point the kettle whistles, and God rises to retrieve their tea. ]

Back in a moment. You think about questions for us to run through.

[ The piece of Kaworu that he wants, the piece that's boy and not monster, writhes and goes brittle— and then he steadies, settles, begins to even out. God holds his hand through it all.

The bin threatens to run over with seawater, which is a problem for the hardwood floors. They'll get to that later. The house has, evidently, seen worse.

When Kaworu looks up, with the dazed and rumpled look of someone realizing the scope of just how fucked they'd been, God quirks a tired little smile at him. ]

Feeling better?

[Kaworu opens his mouth to respond but there's a final gag of saltwater into the bin before he manages words. He feels terrible, quite frankly, like he's had the stomach flu even though he's never had it but somehow, even this terrible weakness and nausea is better than the alternative. At least he knows he's here, in this room, and in this body.

He shakily reaches up to wipe his mouth on his sleeve.]

How did I get here? Where is here? What happened?

There's a shake of his head as he goes over and starts rooting through the cabinet to find another box of tissues (thank you Teacher). He opens the box just in time to muffle a sneeze into a handful of tissues. Then he blows his nose, as softly as he can, before tossing them away.

Kaworu ambles over the the table and watches Midoriya and the cereal, pulling his knees to his chest and sitting like a tiny bird in one of the kitchen chairs. Ginger tea? That sounds curious and he's instantly very keen to try something new. Then something twinges in the back of his head, almost like an itch, reminding him of something important.

Oh... Midoriya has been through a lot. He shouldn't be waiting on someone else, not in the middle of the night.

"You should eat your food and rest. You've been through a lot."

Kaworu folds up so small like a fledgling left in the nest. Midoriya leaves the box on the table in case Kaworu changes his mind.

"I'm fine enough to visit," he assures him. That's not much of an assurance, considering he's up at weird hours eating cereal, but his appearance is a stark improvement from the shambling husk that haunted Trenchwood. Less a cryptid, though he could still be accused as such at this hour, and more what he is: a tired but resolute young man. He puts the kettle on with his usual care and returns to his bowl. As the water heats, he pushes his cereal around with his spoon, not eating though he is hungry. Finally he looks up.

"I'm really sorry, Nagisa-kun," he says in an even lower voice, as if continuing a separate conversation. "You went through a lot too, and you came to find me."

Yeah. Jokes are good for all kinds of situations. Cheering people up, getting them to like you, that sort of thing. If you're really good at jokes, it can help people think you're hot.

[ ew! Gideon passes Kaworu a crumpled-up tissue, and then lifts up Shinji-kun and sets him on her belly. Good lizard. ]

Right? What the fuck, universe?

[ It's safer to complain like this, when it's half a joke. When she's not really asking for better. ]

[ Gideon stares at the large barking dog, the gears in her brain turning. She is clearly not putting anything together. ]

Hey, come on, you can't put your feet on her bed like that. If you wanna borrow a bed, you can use mine. I guess. Does that sound good?

[ is this???? how to deal with a wild animal???? ]

“I wanted to find you, so I tried. Why are you apologizing?”

Kaworu glances over at Midoriya, like he’s confused about the entire direction of the conversation. There’s no reason to apologize or any resentment on his part. He gives a shrug of skinny soldiers.

“I’m just glad you came to visit.”

[The fact that Kaworu is ready to defend himself is a good sign as far as Johnny is concerned. It would have been more annoying if this hadn't startled him or he had started crying.

He might be a fighter, Johnny could work with that.]

You can call me Sensei from now on.

Gideon told me you needed learn how to man the fuck up.

So I'm here to teach you how not to be a pussy.

From now on I'll be teaching you karate.

[ God should, at some point, change out of his soaked shirt. (The smell of brine still makes his skin prickle every time he catches it; it's been so long.) For now he is resigned to the situation, and drops back into his chair. ]

You've been ill. This is my study, which is, I hope, a bit more comfortable than the hall.

[He takes the tissue and wipes his nose and his hand before scooting closer to her and Shinji-kun so he can pet the best lizard in the entire world.]

...How do you get really good at jokes? Do you practice? What is a good joke?

[Petting Shinji, thoughtfully.]

I never really expected to end up in a place like this. To still... be.

...What?

[Kaworu is halfway to preparing to splatter this invader across the walls with his AT Field before he hears the name "Gideon". Still, crouched in a defensive position, he looks over the man.]

Karate? [Martial arts. He knows that much but-]

You don't look like someone I wanna call "sensei".

We don't make that distinction in my world - magic is just, magic. There's different branches, of course and some are more... difficult than others -

[Magic is a topic near and dear to her heart, and Willow's quite happy to compare notes with others from different worlds. She stops suddenly, though, as he asks if she's touched the mushrooms, and nods.]

Yeah, they -

[She trails off. Hold on. Since when do mushrooms explode into a rainbow of smaller ones when you touch them? That doesn't make sense, and realization is beginning to dawn that perhaps something isn't quite right about them.

She glances to Paul, and reaches out to flick one away from the skeleton's upper arm. It sends a shower of smaller ones into the air, and she reaches out to touch them, but it hits her that she doesn't actually feel them.]

They don't act like any mushrooms I've ever run into before.

Or that I have.

[Paul stares at his fingertips, his lips thinned. It's not the look of someone who is unnerved by the strangeness of the situation, or intrigued by its meaning. It is a look that says, very clearly, and this, too? So much for a respite into mycology.]

They must be magic, of one kind or another.

[His eyes twitch in their sockets, a suggestion of an upward roll that doesn't fully manifest itself. If his eyes had whites, they would have dominated their sockets in pale unseeing thought.]

We can both see them.. They don't impede the skeletons in their work. They don't behave according to physical or biological patterns we recognize. They aren't fully tangible. Shared phenomenon, unknown mechanism.

Are you a magic user yourself?

How did I get here...? Where's Paul?

[Kaworu trembles a little, pulling knees to his chest as he looks around the room. His memories are fragmented, broken into pieces that he has to put back together. The battle on the beach feels far away. He remembers seeing Paul there, yelling out his name and then it's darkness and pressure. Even the last few days are extremely hazy.]

o5 . bone house mingle!

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