drums-on-skulls: .05.21.03. - you became me/patchwork [luc-rune]

May 21, 2003

.05.21.03. - you became me/patchwork [luc-rune]

[condo - fight scene]

(luc)
MY kin.
[..you, not from you.]

Rage rattles through his body, every corrded muscle every nerve rattle snap electricity shuddering on the edge of that one moment. Wounded Ahroun. Father-Figure. Packmate. Traitor. And its like time slows down, the pores on face growing larger to emit the coarse hairs that would create grey pelt. Mouth stretching and distending forward into muzzle where teeth drip fang sized -- and hands form into the enormous paws of the Dire Wolf.

Guess It was the wrong thing to say.

(james)
there are times and places that one begins to hate what they are
when they're victim to the tides of the moon
when they're suddenly no longer human and simply the irrational animal

this. would be one of those times.

he can see what's in Luc's eyes (traitor) and that just kills something inside of him
he doesn't regret what he did to Eva
as much as he treats kin as equals - when they're wrong they deserve what's coming, just like any Garou
in his eyes, she was wrong, and he'd let it go after he walked out that door
(that's the way it was between him and Dire, that's the way it was between him and Decker - that's not the way anymore)
but now? but this? that it's gone beyond just them and dividing pack?
it wasn't worth it
(something in him breaks, something in him hates)

a part of him figures he should just stand there and take it - let Luc just tear him to pieces rather than see the betrayal in his eyes
a part of him responds to the raging beast that's leaping for him
(I won't back down, not even from you)
shaggy brown coat replaces skin and bloody shirt
heavy lupine body slams into the Skald
(bring it)

(luc init 15, james init 15)

reroll: luc 4, james 3

luc
reflexive: resist pain, 1wp, 3 rage - 1-4 bite, dex brawl = 8, 8D10 Dice Roll: 2; 1; 4; 9; 8; 10; 7; 4
reroll 10: 6
4 successes , Damage Str+1 , str 3 + 3 form modifier + 1 bite + 4 successes = 11 dice.

11D10 Dice Roll: 1; 6; 7; 1; 4; 6; 2; 7; 6; 1; 4

james soak: 7D10 Dice Roll: 5; 2; 6; 10; 10; 6; 7 - no damage

luc: 2/4 Action: Bite.
Dex 4 + 2 form modifier (i forgot last time) + 4 brawl = 10 dice.
10D10 Dice Roll: 3; 5; 6; 4; 5; 1; 5; 10; 7; 10
2D10 Dice Roll: 1; 3
5 successes.

Damage: str 3 + 3 FM + 5 succ. + 1 bite = 12
12D10 Dice Roll: 5; 4; 10; 6; 7; 2; 1; 10; 3; 8; 5; 8
5 damage, roll soak.

james soak: 7D10 Dice Roll: 3; 2; 10; 9; 7; 5; 7
james: 1 damage

luc: 3/4 Bite. Dex 4 + 2 form modifier + 4 brawl = 10 dice.
10D10 Dice Roll: 5; 7; 7; 10; 10; 4; 4; 5; 9; 1
2D10 Dice Roll: 9; 1
6 successes.

Damage:

str 3 + 3 FM + 6 succ. + 1 bite = 13
13D10 Dice Roll: 5; 7; 1; 10; 10; 5; 6; 7; 10; 6; 1; 2; 4
5 succ

james soak: 7D10 Dice Roll: 6; 10; 7; 4; 7; 1; 2
james: 2 damage (3 total)

luc:
4/4 Guess which action.

Dex 4 + 2 form modifier + 4 brawl = 10 dice.
10D10 Dice Roll: 6; 7; 8; 9; 10; 3; 3; 8; 8; 2
1D10 Dice Roll: 10
1D10 Dice Roll: 3
8 successes

Damage: str 3 + 3 FM + 8 succ. + 1 bite = 15
15D10 Dice Roll: 7; 6; 7; 6; 1; 8; 6; 6; 10; 8; 8; 4; 4; 2; 9
1D10 Dice Roll: 1
9 damage --roll soak @ -1

james: 6D10 Dice Roll: 5; 3; 3; 2; 3; 1

(luc)
MY KIN.

Chill. Cold. James makes comment but even as he's speaking he knows the overgrown nord isn't really listening. My Kin. And you wonder why the get are feared, cause the knee-jerk reaction of hatred and loathing. What else but tribe could explain how this grinning teen, could snap so suddenly -- cold front in august - and lunge forward in razored death.

Don't fuckin tell me...
how. it. is.

James is a warrior born and more than ready for him, shifting forms even as the oversized lupine charges forward. A flash of rage is nothing to battlehardened veteran and the first to blows are shrugged off. Really, James does not want to fight him, his heart simply isn't in it...

and for the boy, it is only red. It is only rage. [..her arms broken/ 'Get out of the house, now.'] his words, and flesh to rended. And rend it does--the last few bites finding purchase on some deep gory home--

Blood on mouth.
His packmate.

-Click-

And the Wolf stops mid-bite. Form melting away into the lanking human albeit stained in blood. [..this is my brother--what am i DOING?] He shudder faint and wobbles a bit arm reaching out to brace his form over the sprawled body of his mentor.

I fuckin WANTED to be you.

There is no release. The pleasure of lunch coming back up through ironlined rib cage is denied as is most of the satisfactions of his too short life. "Fuck this." He grabs his coat and walks out.

(james)
MY BETA.
(my mate)

most would run in fear from the fabled Get
but the Bone Gnawer doesn't back down
meeting the grinning death without pause
(never bank on tomorrow, because it may never come)
but his heart isn't in it

this is all too fucking familiar
he knows what it's like to hold betrayal in his eyes
he knows what it's like to charge at the one you looked up to
he knows what it's like to taste your mentor's blood coating your throat
somewhere in the flurry of lethal bites - he stops fighting back

this is gonna suck.

there's something in deep umber eyes, half glazed to look back at the Skald
time freezing as the rage-drive attack suddenly stops
(you wanted to be me.... you just became me....)
something in those eyes said he would have let Luc kill him

(I'm sorry.)

that's when the Fenrir storms away
chrinos head thunking back to the carpet
wondering how he's gonna stop the bleeding before Rune comes back and finishes off the job

(rune)
Hours later (two. three. four.) the Glass Walker returns. The Beemer had been there the whole time. Wherever they went, they walked. Wherever they went, they stalked through the dark suburban streets into the black heart of the Jersey sprawl.

It wasn't that hard to find what she was looking for (Combat the Wyrm wherever it breeds), for the Wyrm breeds all around them, even in the heart of the Weaver's controlled, mindless little paradise of order. Two miles away, or five (it didn't matter. She could have walked to the ocean. She could have kept on fucking walking until she did find something to kill.) they crossed the choked and thickened barrier between worlds and emerged into a surreal landscape.

Amidst the ghostly ruin of an old development, (where once humans dreamed and still they breed like rabbits, like fleas, parasites on the mother's skin) they fought the foul chimera that feed on despair, that swallow pain and inspire hatred, apathy or indifference and dance beneath the shell of the Weaver's untouchable web.

Hours later: (how many?) she returned, battered, new wounds still smoking, old wounds (acid burns down the long length of her legs) supperating and oozing clear fluid over cracked and broken skin. Around her neck, livid red splotches from the sticky suckers of some landgoing octopus, ear to fucking ear, a blighted necklace, with matching marks on the inner knuckles, the distal ends of her fingers on either hand. Soot smudges her cheek, and blood mars the corner of her mouth: hers, her packmate's, another's.

Outside, she stands and stares at the darkened windows, reflecting the rise of morning light, silvered and golden and tainted by the ever-present pall of smog. Dawn always follows a long night, but for how long, really, now?

The city is reflected in those windows, or what they can see of it. These clipped and manicured green spaces, these falsely gabled would-be houses, these cars all parked in neat little rows, these lying little sidewalks. No one here walks anywhere. No one talks to their neighbors. No one gathers on the porch of an evening. There are no bonds. Beyond them, to the east, the vision of that from which they have fled, a tangled mass of concrete and asphalt, glass and crumbling brick, the metal snakes of the morning commute, the broken bones of half-a-dozen dying (dead) cities, marrow sucked clean out.

Wearily, she shifts her hand through her lank hair, pushing the strands away from the sharp planes of her face. Her reluctant steps are impelled by the sudden gunning of an engine, the sound too-loud, somehow, after the strange humming, chittering silences of the spirit world. It's all surreal, even the sound of her own footsteps on the concrete stairs, even the familiar creak of her door on its hinges.

(james)
he lay there for quite awhile
dammiting about what he did
dammiting for what happened after
dammiting for the fact he is continuing to bleed on Rune's carpet
it's not the gushing expulsion of new wounds
that's slowed enough now to a steady, irritating leak

by the time the sun begins making the heavy curtains over the balcony glow in dawning light
he's somehow moved his mauled, aching self into the kitchen
(it's far easier to scrub the stain out of the tiled floor)
long muscles of his back pressed up against the fridge
(Gaia that feels good)
legs tucked up for boots to brace his body against supportive frigidaire
dreads spill down over his shoulders
chin's slightly lifted towards the ceiling in silent thought
dark eyes lay closed in the animalistic features of Glabro face

until that door creaks open
pack
he hadn't been paying attention, far too lost in his own thoughts (and healing)
the gaze drops down, looking at the towel pressed against the worst of the wounds on his belly
frown working over his lips at the pull of cotton threads against congealing blood
half wondering if the t-shirt that got caught between will now become a permanent part of his flesh
the nearly empty beer bottle complains in hollow thunk as it's picked up and drained
settled back at the edge of the small pool of dark maroon that has become his throne

"If you've any peroxide I can clean the carpet."

(rune)
There's a volcanic chain of islands sketched in the carpet, the largest of the islands is closest to the door, and she almost stepped on its landmass before she looked and stepped around it.

Minute movement in her face: the tightening of her jaw, the narrow flattening of her mouth, hard, which finds some echo in her exhausted eyes. Like some primitive explorer, she follows the trail - marked, not only by the seep of his wounds, but by the blood-stained scrape of his hands upon the carpet - through the living room, to the cool tiles of the kitchen where blood congeals on rather than stains the floor. Her shoulder grazes the doorframe as she watches him from beneath and behind half-hooded eyes, and her mouth purses into a strange expression, closed and tight.

"Jesus." Breathed more than spoken, the word, accompanied by another shake of her hand through her filthy hair. Two questions come to mind, and perhaps he can see the wish to ask, and the will to cut them off in the way her lips part and then close again, accompanied by a minute and weary shake of her head. Her feet are bare, and there is something oddly fastidious in the way she steps so lightly around the pools of his blood on her kitchen floor with only grazing glances down to guide her. Small humor, distant and unhurried (the absurd, here, to offer. The absurd, here, to ask.) in the hitch of the corners of her mouth, upward. "Tell me that wasn't your first thought?"

When she gains his side, she sinks into a crouch, wincing out a hissing breath as raw flesh is stretched in movement and cruelly dragged against leather. A moment to catch her breath, occupied as she picks up the beer bottle at his side and lays a cool thumb across his cheek, fingers splayed beneath his jaw. "You shouldn't be drinking."

(james)
"Was a toss-up between Hi honey, welcome home, dinner's a little late..."

half laughed, half coughed
(those ribs would still be rather tenderly cracked it seems)
and that inspires a length of silence as she's making her way through the blood (his blood) on the floor
the pressure against the wound over his belly is returning, too
because he can feel the steady spread of warmth that signifies leakage
he can't help the slight grin tossed over his features as she crouches
normally so straight and perfect teeth predatory and jagged now
it melts away with the soft sound that's unconscious in his throat
the smallest sigh as head tilts into the cool touch of her fingers

"I know, but some bastard put the orange juice on the top shelf."

by the wry twist of feral smile - that bastard was probably him
slowly (bones grind, flesh weeps) he reaches to mirror the gesture
thumb tracing beneath the swell of her lower lip
smearing the remnant blood
(hers, her packmate's, another's)

"Have a night on the town without me?"

(rune)
"Yeah," her dark eyes sweep down, low over the ragged edges of the wound not quite concealed by the sodden towel, then dance so easily (and necessarily) away. His feral smile is returned in only half-measure as her eyes return to his face, skimming his neo-caveman features - the jutting jaw, the sloping brow - before settling, so briefly, on his eyes. "No objections, I hope?"

Her head falls to the side, her hair sweeps across her shoulder and tickles the raw red welts circling her neck. The look is searching, and the movement carries her mouth almost out of his reach, though his fingers still graze the smooth, unbroken skin of her cool cheek. She smells of the city's spring night, rain and smog, and blood and ash. She smells, still, somehow, of the dark and luminous otherworld that houses the other half of their sundered souls, though all these scents but small effigies of the whole, soon drowned in the thick, clotting scent of his congealing blood.

Rising then, abruptly, she spins and flings open the cabinet, with more force than is entirely necessary. The hinges grate through their full arc of motion and the door slams against the next, then begins the journey back until it collides with her elbow: arc to arc to arc. She draws a steadying breath and grabs a glass blindly. Her fingers leave smears of ash and oil on the surface, whorled fingerprints, distinct, identity carried there, somehow. In lieu of orange juice, she offers him water: ice from the freezer opened above his head, the rush of frigid air downward, the subtle hum of the compressor, cubes clinking against the glass, and then cracking as she fills it with water at the sink.

"Drink this, instead." She does not offer this while standing above him. She crouches to offer him the cool, slick glass. Her eyes, like her mouth, unreadable as they find his again. "Better for you."

(james)
the thicker lines of his lips purse a little, almost a thoughtful frown, yet still half a grin
(not as long as you always come home to me)
but whatever he could remark to that simply isn't said
whatever questions he has on the scents that make it to him
(above and beyond the smell of his own damned blood)
those fade away, too

he's just watching her as she rises
flinching slightly at the sudden smack of cabinet and rebound
but the instinctive reaction is put to good use
body weight shifting and pivoting about his hips
legs slowly crossing, BDUs smearing through the drying blood
(he's covered in enough of it, at least then it's on him and not the floor)
torso beginning a slow fold over itself to ease the pressure on the bellywound

there's a.... pause..... holy fuck he forgot about the nutshot
he remembers it now
and dark eyes momentarily.... close
(keeeeeriste)

accepting the water from her without question
though there's a fairly severe wince at the shellshock of cold liquids hitting his insides
at least the beer had warmed a bit

"Do you want to know?"

soft words break the long, thirst-quenching silence
rough and gravelly over primitive throat

(rune)
When he closes his eyes, she looks up and away. The ceiling seems appropriate. This respect, then: not to look. It's far from human respect (to witness, to know), but not animal, either. In the end, their's is a kind apart, of both and neither, and both and neither find expression in every action. There's a sky, beyond, and a morning star shrouded by the choking brown smog that captures and diffuses the early dawn light.

"I'm not sure if I want to know, or not."

She offers him the edge of a wry half-smile as she sinks from her haunches to the floor beside him. His blood is slick beneath her bare feet, beneath her body, and the sink is really a barely controlled slide. Later, she will strip his clothing and bind his wound more completely. Later, she will stand behind him as he struggles up the stairs to their bed. Later, she will dose him with Xanax as meager balm for the pain, and watch as he falls into a fitful slumber. Then she will return, down the bloodied steps, to find the peroxide hiding somewhere in the cabinet behind her head.

Now, she takes the glass of water from him and quenches her own thirst, then sifts an arm around his shoulders, gingerly, as she offers the glass back. She doesn't look at him, not precisely. She looks up and away, but she is beside him, now, and she isn't going anywhere.

Posted by james at May 21, 2003 12:00 AM

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