29. stray

[heisrisen]

[Public video, backdated to September 23]

[The video is from the lab. Barbara and Iris can be seen a few feet behind, scrutinizing a monitor; Mal is visible, prone, on an examination chair, looks a little haggard, maybe dozing. The Emperor looks a wreck. A very composed wreck, clothes clean and hair passable, reclining in his own exam chair, but a wreck nonetheless. He has deep shadows under his eyes, his gaze loses focus, trails about, then jitters and darts, his jaw clenching as he tries to get his attention on track. The camera frame actually shakes slightly, hand trembling as he holds it. He flicks his eyes back to Iris and Babs once, as though to confirm they're occupied, but doesn't bother whispering. His voice is raspy, physiologically strained.]

Listen. Listen. There's going -

[A fit of coughing; brief but violent.]

There's going to be a door. Don't go through it. Don't go near it. Don't - don't be arrogant contrarian divas for once in your lives, and take my word for it. All of our -

[He jerks his head to indicate Babs and Iris, a little wildly.]

They did the work. Rigorous. It was falling apart, but now it's not, the other - the hell barge. It ate us. It killed us, and ate us, and put us back together from its - ichor, and the door is the maw. I'm not - mad. I am appropriately mad. I'm unraveling, but I'm right.

[The camera is shaking a little harder now, and Babs comes over, gently pries it from him. He makes a soft wounded noise, looks lost, before she turns the camera away from him and onto herself.]

He is right. Everyone who went through the door, or was seized by it, has displayed similar symptoms each time we approached the other barge, and everyone who let us analyze them shows evidence of the mirror barge itself woven into them. Normally it lies dormant, but right now it is using that connection to drag us back.

You don't want this to happen to you, and you don't want to strengthen that place. The door is usually found on deck, and very obvious. Stay clear.


[Spam for Sylvanas]

[After he's released from the lab - or before? Was he in the lab for something? He can't breathe, and he can't stop breathing. His vision swims and he stumbles, sags against a wall. No, a door. Something about -

- he jolts back to his feet, fear spiking, a jumble of adrenaline and invisible thorns. He wants to run, doesn't, walks with all the dizzy dignity he can manage, mouth dry, glancing behind him. The butcherman - no. He rubs the hem of his shirt between his fingers. There's a scar - belly, not lungs. So the butcher hasn't got him yet. No, it's something else.

He knows where to go. Not why, not what he's running from or whether he's alive or dead - neither seems quite right - but he knows where to go. The door is - the right door, not - wood, not steel, heavy and warm, handcarved, worn smooth but without chemical varnish. He traces the old mechanism of the latch, thinks of Çatalhöyük, the city built before doors. Intermediate history.

He thumps against the wood, whole-bodied, weary. He's safe here.]


[Private to Morgana]

[Raw, urgent, choking the words out before he forgets, scrawling make morgana leave on his arm so he can repeat it, if he has to.]

You're a warden. You can escape, you can - the planet I gave you for Christmas. Go. You should go there, if you can't go home yet. Tell the admiral to send you there. A month. A month should be enough?

Comments

[imfollowinghim]

[Bucky looks awful. Dark rings around his eyes, stubble on his chin that's at least a day old, and he's got that hunted, angry, terrified, vicious look of an animal that's been backed into a corner and isn't happy about it. Not at all.]

Get it out. [He doesn't fully understand what's happening because he keeps seeing flashes of something else, somewhere else, but he hears enough to understand what's happening to him, and he wants to be sick.

His hands are shaking as he holds the communicator, because if the serum makes good men great, and bad men worse, what the fuck does it make him? What the fuck does this make him, if he got eaten and put back together wrong, again?]

I don't fucking want this, I didn't fucking want this, get it out of me.

[heisrisen]

There is no you. There's. New you. It's all you. You died.

[imfollowinghim]

I'm already dead. [He sounds... a little hysterical.] I died a long fucking time ago!

[heisrisen]

You're an infant.

And this is the land of the dead.

[imfollowinghim]

Fuck you.

[bodilesswarrior]

I don't think we can. [Her voice is low, gaze solemn. She can't make them better, and she hates it.] Not right now, anyway. Once we interface with the Mirror Barge again - maybe I can find some options.

Private, sorry, and cw for destruction by fire

[darknessb4me]

Kill them. Burn the bodies. Our ship will remake them.

You know it's worth a try.

Private

[bodilesswarrior]

[There's a slight grimace, but she doesn't look shocked or horrified.]

Maybe. I can ask if anyone's willing.

private never be sorry

[heisrisen]

[It feels like a deep breath of air, like a splash of cold saltwater, sudden clarity.]

No. That's not - you've seen the rot, this ship can't purge us, it's tainted too.

Not cremation. Burial at sea. The hook is in the bait, so spit it out.

And it has to be all of us. You hunt, I'd forget.

[A little wild-eyed, but fierce, focused.]

We go overboard.

[He struggles to his feet, almost falls, lurches toward Mal's chair.]

[imfollowinghim]

Maybe. [Bucky laughs, and it sounds hollow and miserable.]

Maybe I'm better off being dead.

[fireincarnate]

No. [Yeah, she's been paying attention. She responds before thinking, low and fierce.]

Life means hope. You're going to get better, Bucky. You're going to be fine.

[imfollowinghim]

You don't know that.

voice;

[adelphoktonos]

Not ate. [Her voice is a rasp that barely sounds human at all.] Still eating. Still-- eating and eating. It's still eating.

voice;

[heisrisen]

Predation to parasitism to consumption husbandry. All true. Simultaneous. Quantum carnivora.

[forsaken_queen]

[While the whole Barge has been going slowly crazy over the impending Mirror, that no one can control or stop, save the Admiral, and he was about as likely to stop it as appear on deck and dance a jig in a pink kimono, Sylvanas had been dealing with her daily existence. Things had been happening in her life on the Barge, oddly not horrible things.

But one of them seemed to be an increased traffic to her room. The thump gets her attention, and she knows it's not Vergil. He's keyed to her room, for one thing. He could just come in. (She highly doubts he would without knocking, still.) For another, she doesn't smell those telltale scents that proceed him, cologne and polish. It's not Zane, either, or Arthas. And for once in a long, long time, she's not so surly and anti-social to just call out to see if it was anyone worth bothering with. She gets up, and goes to answer the door, albeit with a sword in her hand.

When she lifts the latch, the door swings open, heavier than it should, because there's weight against it. She makes a split second decision, and reaches out to catch whatever -whoever was falling into her room.]

[heisrisen]

[He's not entirely graceless, just weary, resting against it but not quite on the verge of actual collapse so when the door pushes open and he swoons stumbles into her arms, it's mostly gentle. She's so cold, and he wonders if he's feverish, but - no, Sylvanas, it's her, that's why he's here. All the tension drains out of him in a soft sigh.]

Sylvanas. You caught me.

[Not surprised. A little smug, if anything. He knew she would. He didn't know he knew but he knew.]

[forsaken_queen]

[The surprise vanishes under the realization of who it is. Then it's not just her body that's cold. Her face closes down into a tight icy expression. She firmly puts him from her, back on his own two feet. It's not rough, just very deliberate.]

What are you doing here?

[heisrisen]

[He wavers, frowns a little - pouting, really - but manages to stand where she puts him.]

I don't know. I don't - everything's wrong. I can't think, everything's in pieces, I didn't know -

I trust you.

[This is the only thing he's sure of.]

[forsaken_queen]

[What the hell is she supposed to do with that? He's obviously having mirror symptoms; she saw his little public service announcement. And he'd wandered here, to her, in his time of need. Wasn't that always the way?]

Well I don't trust you [anymore.]. You're sick, who let you wander around in this condition?

[Private]

[youwillgotohell]

Can't.

[She speaks, and pauses so long that she's not sure what she's arguing. She replays the message, and shakes her head, swallowing hard. It doesn't help: her throat feels raw, and every brush of saliva, of air, is a dagger.]

Won't leave. You, and Zane, and...

[She rubs her forehead. There are others, and she can't remember. She coughs.]

I'm not scared anymore, Aslan.

[She's too exhausted for it.]

[Private]

[heisrisen]

I'm scared. For you. You got out, you have to...

[Private]

[youwillgotohell]

Beg him to send me home?

He won't.

I won't.

[Private]

[heisrisen]

[Be free, he might have said, if he could finish his own thoughts, she escaped, she earned it. But.]

It can't get you too. It can't. It can't.

[Private]

[youwillgotohell]

Hasn't it already? Isn't that the point?

[She wasn't completely honest. She's still a little scared.]

[not here]

[youwill]

[Hannibal is interested.

Maybe he is one of the few: this does not scare him, does not freeze his blood and paralyze his bones. Certainly, things could be worse: certainly, he could be miserably ill, incapable of curing himself. Certainly.

But he does wonder how the Barge devours them. How it recreates. He wonders if, going in aware, he could remain aware long enough.

And why not power the other ship? Last he was there, he liked it better. This time, mayhaps he'll take a side trip.]