Event Log: Dust to Dust

[hadrielmods]

Who: All characters participating in the event
What: The event log for the Dust to Dust event
Where: All over the city!
When: January 14th-17th
Warnings: A big ol' mess.

It starts off small: the wind picks up, particles of sand and dirt and dust begin to fill the air. You might not even notice at first, not until you have to wipe the dust off your windows to see outside. After all, it's been a long time since Hadriel has experienced weather, and it's never experienced a weather event not caused by the gods before.

But the gods aren't in charge of the weather now, and even if they could prevent this dust storm, they have way too many other things to do. So it's up to you to deal with it, and as the wind rises and the dust storm moves into the city, there'll be plenty to deal with.

Once the storm is at its peak, it'll be almost impossible to see outside - and it won't be safe to go wandering, either. Entirely besides falling and hurting yourself, if you aren't wrapped up well enough the particles in the air will abrade your skin. Love that sandpaper feel! Oh, and breathing? Yeah, better make sure your nose and mouth are covered, or else they'll be full of sand, too. Hope you've got some goggles stashed away to protect your eyes. Luckily, it won't last too long - 'cause you'll have plenty of cleaning to do once the storm is over.

► This log covers January 14th-17th.
► Feel free to make your own logs, as well
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you foolishly get scoured to the bone, please let us know here.

Comments

[tongueamok]

[Carlisle's voice is equally small as he responds, ink dripping from him; the stress is terrible upon them both, even if his is more visible.]

Perhaps it should have been us both so many years ago... but here we are, still alive. Perhaps we should take advantage of it.

[Glacius wouldn't want to hear either of them talk like this -- he wouldn't want them arguing. The alien's hearts are too kind for either of them.

Carlisle turns his head away, glancing out the window. The storm outside seems so quiet compared to the one thundering in his chest. He speaks again, his voice barely audible over the squall.]

Do you... want to live, Kate?

[dedikated]

Keep telling myself that. ( That she should take advantage of it. She tries to, under the banner that it's what her family would want. That it makes no sense for her to be given this chance Marc so deserves and keep wasting it.

It doesn't make it any easier to take advantage when every voice in her head reminds her that Marc could and would do far more with these ten years than she has. That, perhaps, if Marc was alive, they would have made better choices with regards to Manchester and not spent that decade trying to repair everything. It certainly doesn't make it any easier when Hadriel is in trouble and she knows that Marc would be better at defending them, would be better at knowing what to do. What the city needs.

Back home, she at least felt some purpose with what she did at the clinic. While she knows, logically, that it's better the clinic doesn't rely too heavily on any one person, it aches to know that the thing she's spent seven years learning is barely more than a little useful here. That her effect is limited to first aid and organising shelves. )

... Yes.

( But despite it, that still holds true. She has things worth waking up for, both here and back home, but still—

Still. )

[tongueamok]

[Carlisle was hoping to find some relief in her answer, praying that, upon hearing whether or not Kate does want to survive this, he would have a better understanding of her.]

As do I.

[And yet, he feels something else churning in the pit of his stomach, something vile and terrible and surely indicative of the abomination he is.]

And you have the chance to do that here. You have the chance to survive this, and to keep living, and to do great things... and of that, I am envious.

[He feels his nails dig into his palm, and hopes that is sweat or blood that's pooling against his skin rather than more ink brought on by his unraveling nerves.]

I am envious that you have time. You have been offered an opportunity to live up to the expectations of others, but you still risk your life, insist you're unimportant as you throw that gift to the winds. You would gloss over your own death as though it didn't matter to- to anyone. To me. You would treat me as though I cannot make my own decisions, moving my entire apartment without so much as a word of consent, but when I worry incessantly over your well-being, you rebuke me. Why? Why can you not see what you have?

[And if she could, why would she not cling as tenaciously to it as he would?]

[dedikated]

( That she can understand, even if she can't understand what it means to have your life on a timer in that way. They've all but completely avoided the fact of Carlisle's mortality since it was shared, replaced it with bickering and unspoken worry. She doesn't want to accept that Carlisle's right about it, but it's unique to his world, and they're here in a city which barely allows them to fix basic injuries half of the time.

Everyone she's lost, she's lost suddenly. No warning beyond the risks of a job, a lifestyle they'd survived for nearly seven years. The lingering inevitability is entirely alien to her.

In other words, she doesn't know how to deal with it.

But she knows her answer to what Carlisle asks as surely as she knows anything. )

Not much point if you lose everyone you have.

( The idea of being alone again, devoid of everyone who's become friends, close to family, is terrifying. It took so long to learn that pushing people away was a terrible idea, she doesn't want to lose the ones she's let in. )

[tongueamok]

I have already lost everyone. And now, as I near the end of my miserable existence, I would give literally anything to not lose what life I have eked out in these final years. To not lose Glacius, to not lose Miss Rey, to not lose you.

[Ink drips heavily from his eye, escaping the crevices between his teeth; he wipes it onto his sleeve as usual, the stains he has to wash out more numerous every day. There is only so much he can do about them -- only so much he can do at all.]

Fine. Fine then. [Ink smears across his cheek as he drags his sleeve along it.] Risk your life on some heroic aspiration of saving others... [Like his father, like his uncles, like so many lost to him.] But should you ever act as though your survival and you aren't important ever again, so help me I will force the thought into your head until you believe it.

[He said he'd give anything to keep what he has, and if that means damning himself, then so be it. Maybe he'll rethink that later, but as he's standing there, the storm outside as while as that in his chest, ink pouring from him like old wounds reopening, that's as much a threat as it is a promise.]

[dedikated]

( To not lose you.

Those words are rarer in Kate's life than she realises before they're said. It's a punch to the gut. So much between herself and Marc had been unspoken, and that spiralled out into everything else. She lost the ability to say those sorts of things to anyone, and in turn, they didn't say them to her. Faith did, but she said them to everyone. It took most of a decade for them to even say they were best friends - took Kate dying in a city they should never have been in in the first place.

Hearing it from Glacius is one thing. Hearing is from Carlisle, who for so long had prefaced all his arguments with how it would hurt Glacius' feelings, is another thing entirely. One that's enough to stun Kate into silence, into stillness. Something different from the usual stillness of a viper about to strike, or a cat stalking its prey; this is like a person frozen by powers and magic.

With nothing more than a few words.

The storm continues to bluster outside, battering the building and howling, ringing in her ears. It takes the crash of something against the door to finally snap her out of the speechlessness, and then only to say; )

I'm not letting you die, Carlisle.

( It's true, she has no idea how to fight this kind of death. It can't be fought by weapons and claws, and his world and the rules of it are nothing like her own, or Hadriel's. But she has to figure out some way of keeping him alive.

He's become too important to her to simply give up. )

[tongueamok]

You say that as though you have a choice in the matter, Kate.

[Her reassurance should be something that brings him comfort: it's what he wanted, isn't it? A sign that she's actually listening to him rather than deflecting his every -- and often nonverbal, unfortunately -- attempt to reach her? No, that wasn't it, not entirely. He wants her to see what she has, and perhaps her insistence is a way of showing that. How sad it is, he notes inwardly, that she wastes it on the unattainable.

The storm continues to rage outside, but what fury lingered in his voice drips away with the ink from his eye, from his nails, from his lips. Bit by bit, it is worn away, just as he is.]

You may choose to throw yourself into danger on behalf of others in the hopes that your sacrifice will change the outcome for the better... but there is little, if anything, you can do about this. That anyone can do.

[And just as he struggles to come to terms with her methods, so he has struggled to reconcile himself with his impending end. He's had years to deal with it, but has only found recently that he wants things to be different -- that he desperately wishes he could change his own fate with the same arguments that might change the minds of others, that might change how they see themselves and their own worth.]

[dedikated]

( She sees what she has. That's why it's worth protecting. Worth letting it continue to influence her world back home and the city here. And what she has here includes Carlisle. It very much includes Carlisle. He's been part of her life in Hadriel since her very first flat here, and the idea of letting him die. )

So we just give up on you, then?

( Seriously? That can't be the answer. The people here have fought so much. Carlisle has fought so much, even if not as directly as herself or Glacius. There's a reason he's the first person she had in mind, even over her own clinic staff, when she got whipped across the face by a Null's limb. She's fought so much. She's seen and heard about people coming back from the worst things.

She may not have a clue right now, but that doesn't mean she won't eventually.

Hadriel help her, she's beginning to sound like Faith.

There's a pause, long enough for it to seem like Kate's done talking, long enough for her to try and get a handle on her emotions again before they spiral out into something more. Think of what Glacius might do. Think of what Sweets said about keeping her urge to compete in check. This isn't about winning a fight. It's about stopping one.

For once. )

... Y'said it were part of your condition, aye? How's that... function?

( Call her curious. She's shaky on the details. If they were told to her, it was probably a long time ago. )

[tongueamok]

[He lets her talk, then he lets her think, wondering all the while if he should fill the silence with more words. They haven't seemed to make her understand so far, but then, he finds himself pleasantly surprised: she doesn't keep arguing, but asks for more information, tries to figure out just what it is he's saying rather than fighting against it. She makes a pass at understanding, and that's more than he could have hoped for.]

I have always known a young death was inevitable, but I only recently learned why through Glacius' assistance. I —[he rubs idly at his middle, feeling pangs from his old wounds at the mere thought of his worsening affliction]— I have an aural tear, a- a literal rupture within my very essence. Even if I use no magic at all, my energies spill from me, and will until there is nothing left.

[dedikated]

( The reaction - the sudden whited out, glowing eyes - comes all but automatically, as if those words triggered some vague memories from a time where all of this had to be done through her glasses. )

... That's what it were.

( She'd overlooked it at the time. It was unsettling, but she'd been focused on making those enchantments and he kept saying the coughing was nothing.

Well, at least that's proven bullshit. She should have called it out then. Fuck's sake. )

[tongueamok]

What? What what were?

[His eyes narrow as hers glow. Has she always been able to do that? His own apparently glow these days, but hers? That's new.]

What are you doing?

[dedikated]

( Give her a moment, one where she seems to stare directly into him, despite the lack of any colour to her eyes.

There's a blink, and it's over. And her eyes are back to brown. )

There's claw marks, in your power system. Or whatever you want to call it.

( That's an answer, right? )

[tongueamok]

[He doesn't like the way she looks straight through him, nor does he like the answer she gives.]

They are aural channels, and yes, something like that. That's what I tried to tell you. You didn't explain what it was you were doing just now, either.

[dedikated]

( Yes, and she listened. She just... needed to see them. And to think. )

Checking your powers.

( OH RIGHT. )

Same thing I did with those sunglasses.

[tongueamok]

Oh.

[So that is new, then. He assumes she must have learned it somewhere along the way, improved her skills enough that she can use them without the glasses. That's not uncommon for magicians.]

What, did you not believe me when I said there was a tear?

[dedikated]

( Basically.

She'd argue being called a magician, though. )

Not that.

( Her lips purse together before she speaks again, because she's pissed at herself for never bringing this up before. )

When we were making them trinkets... Saw something that looked weird. ( And yes, she's kicking herself for not asking, but he was coughing ink again. He was coughing ink and- ) Saw so much weird shit with people's powers that I didn't think it were anything but how yours manifested.

( Now she's thinking differently. )

[tongueamok]

Weird?

[His brow knits, his hand wrinkling his outfit as his fingers curl against his abdomen.]

You- could you see the tear? And the energy lost from it? Why did you not say anything?

[She just answered that. She couldn't have known -- he wouldn't have known, either, if not for Glacius' own inspection.]

You can see what will be the end of me, then.

[dedikated]

( She wonders. Wonders because this is her job. The thing she's actually supposed to do at clinics. Back home, however, a rupture in someone's power system would need actual healers. It'd need medications and work far beyond what her own abilities offer.

Her lips still pressed together, Kate brings a hand to them in thought, her eyes shifting from deep brown to something translucent. Nowhere near the flare of power seen moments ago. This is lingering, her gaze not moving from his abdomen. )

What's the difference between it and your other powers?

( It presents so incredibly differently that Kate can't help but think they must be separate entities in some way.

Either way, she wasn't kidding when she said she wasn't about to let him die. Especially not if this may just be the kind of thing she spent years training to help stop. )

[tongueamok]

[Even without him actively using his abilities, the putrid energies still spill from his middle, visible only to someone with the ability to see such things. The feel of that drain is too subtle for even Carlisle's awareness most of the time, but it is ever-present... as is something more, a soft, but steady light housed within his chest. That would be the Mote, what gives his eyes their newfound glow.

Carlisle shakes his head, seemingly confused by the question.]

It's not a 'power' at all. It is a wound, one possibly tied to another plane of existence.

[dedikated]

... Great.

( That's definitely out of her line of experience, as evidenced by the expression that flickers over her face. The new light is certainly drawing her attention, but it isn't the main thing she wants to focus on right now. What needs to be focused on is this wound and wounds can be patched up.

At least, that's usually the case. )

What stops it being patched up?

[tongueamok]

[His brow furrows.]

It is an aural wound. One cannot simply apply a bandage to one's energies, Kate. My scars have long healed over, but they flow from me regardless, drawn into an abyssal maw.

[dedikated]

S--

( She bites her tongue before a word comes out. Sure, they can back home. Back home, powers are biology. She's not working with back home though.

Maybe it's time to start at the beginning. )

Explain. All of it.

( She's not convinced that there's not an answer somewhere. That they're not able to save him.

She is not going to lose a friend because of something relating to the one damn thing her power does. )

[tongueamok]

[A noise rumbles from the back of his throat, something disgruntled enough to express that he's not sure she's listening to him. She's certainly not said why she's demanding an explanation to begin with.]

I don't know what it is you want me to tell you. I've already said it's an aural tear, you know what I can do because of it. And I'm now well aware just what it is this wound is doing to me, why exhaustion clings to me at all times and why no amount of energy from Glacius can sustain me.

[dedikated]

( Because of it is news to her, at least. As is the energy from Glacius, which - she assumes - is the new glow she can see. But still, it's like the obvious isn't obvious enough to Carlisle.

She breathes deep, so she doesn't snarl the words at him. )

I want you to tell me how your powers work so we can fix this.

( Slow words. Deliberate words. )

This is my job.

[tongueamok]

You probably know more about how I channel than anyone, Kate. [Save for Glacius.] You saw me do it dozens o— wait, your job? Since when?

[Because last he heard, she was a power magnifier and enchanter of some sort, but didn't do that anymore. He never did get the gist of what it is she does do now, though.

Also, way to continue to not answer her demands, Carlisle.]