[open] isn't that awful

[erbier]

CHARACTERS: Ilde, and relationships extending outward.
WHERE: Bearings
WHEN: Post Boom 023 - 027-ish
SUMMARY: Untangling the threads of disaster.
WARNINGS: Castor.

hush while i put all this shit together.

I have made some top level categories, but if you want to do something outside them, feel free to make a comment.

Organization Bout It Out OOC Organization Punch Everything Outline	Bout It Out Reviews With Lexa What The Goal Is Talks to Tiny Sam Ilde Performs Her Creepy Song To Creep Everyone Out -- Has fans in the audience, subspace hooligan types she has been building a fanbase with. -- Sam & Steve have each performed as unofficial 'managers' to keep up appearances. -- Watches all the matches upon recovery from performance, but is pretty spent. Says Some Creepy Shit To Nirad Snuggles With Ren
Explosion Gets Blown Up Sam & Ren Ilde Is Fine + Top Level -- In shock physically, exhausted psychically, trapped emotionally inside of Ren's tantrum. -- Refuses to be removed from the scene without Ren. -- Can't stop him, can't stop Steve. Darkling Checks On Her Darkling Goes To Comfort Ren & All Hell Breaks Loose Tells Petre To Fuck Off Comforted By Nate -- Finally lets him take her back to the Bearings once everything has concluded.	Recovery Goes The Fuck To Sleep -- Gets cleaned up with Angel's help. Checks on Tiny Sam Meets Up With Big Sam Bucky & Steve Ren & Hux Ren & Darkthing
Pre-Talks Ilde & Steve Ilde & Darkling Darkling & Sam Darkling & Steve Sam & Ren Ren & Steve Ilde & Ren	Upcoming Castor Meeting Prep For Underground Rank II Underground

Comments

[unsea]

[ Ilde's heart trembles, and his own mirrors it - for this is her world, and he is as much a creation within her memories as all of it is. He knows that her hands are on his face, that her mind is fitted to his own, but within... he is as close to Ilde's being as he could be, outside of being Castor. And though his heart shakes (foreign, confusing, amusing), he reaches for her hand and draws it into his own. Draws her to his side, as though in defense, as her king bears down upon them. ]

( I think - I can understand him. A little. )

[ Not the madness, though. The Darkling is a different breed of madman. He does not speak on the mount, his words are not feverish and painful to hear. He remembers what Ilde said before, he made us madmen with him, and he can begin, in fits and bursts, to comprehend her words. Had he been from her world, he would have been just as mad. Perhaps dead. He would not be himself - not prized, and certainly not feared. Ilde and her king speak, in two tones, but the same words, and even as he holds fast to Ilde's hand, his other reaches - stretches out. Gloved fingers spread, into the space between himself and her king. Her mad, frightening king.

The only thing that keeps him from bowing his head under the weight of her king's voice, is another. The cool, clipped tones of a woman recently dead. Scathing and vehement, as she promised him - you are destined for more than this world can provide, there is no one who can help you in this, you are alone but you are powerful, and you will bow to no other.

There is a distinct division within him, now. There is himself-as-Ilde, heartshaken. There is himself-as-himself, rebellious and proud. And there is himself-as-observer, scientific, darkly curious. He turns the palm of his hand, the outstretched hand that seeks to bridge the gap between his mind-body and her memory-king. The soft snap of his fingers, and there is liquid-thick, flexing, coiling smoke and darkness -- it emanates from him, the way it does from her king. He cups it there, in the palm of his hand, and it flows, placid and impenetrable, before her eyes. Though he hasn't taken his eyes from the madman. ] ( This part of him, at least. )

[ It's the first step he takes, to confirm what it is he does and is, to her. ]

( The rest of it - I. Could not begin to. )

[erbier]

[ Such a novel experience. To have someone shield her... To shield her from Dreus of all figures in her life. All of her attention leaves the Godking, turning instead to the Darkling, watching his magic materialize as he understands it within her scenery. She had known something of that. The way he discomfited but still enthralled. It was the taste of magic at the tip of her tongue. Too sweet. Too potent.

A gust of wind hits them, dirty with soot and dust, not terribly refreshing at all. Dreus wavers at the edges, dragged by the wind, as her focus drifts.

And so she lets it go. Drops the imagery like a curtain, abrupt, and looks into his face between her hands. ]

Show me.

[ Here. In reality. ]

[unsea]

[ She releases him, from her world and her memories. Reality is crisper, less disconcerting, than the presence of her king within her. He breathes in the city air, tastes the neon and the electrical exhaust, and it's very real. Certainly it's a lot less wild-eyed and mad, and his pulse, racing in time with hers, finally begins to untangle itself and return to being... his own.

Show me, she says. Where things are real and not implied.

Somehow, he's disappointed to see that - even in reality, he'd reached for one of her hands. They're still on his face, and delicately, he presses them down. Away from his person. Giving her the benefit of putting distance between them, once more. There's a measure of hesitance, in the way his mouth pulls tight, considering her request. And then it's gone. There is no hesitation, and certainly no shame in showing her -- he presses his hands together, the breadth of his shoulders tenses. When he pulls them apart, there is - it's just - black. Darkness, smoke and liquid both, flowing from him - created - spiraling up into the air around them. He curls it, instructs it. There is no doubt that he is, utterly and wholly, in control of it.

And he waits, without explanation, for her response. ]

[erbier]

[ Many gut instinct responses pass through her at his display. Nearly all of them revulsion. She remembers a thing like him: Ba-rahmy, one of Dreus's shadow sons, one of the more intelligent and complete creatures that could take on human guise as easily as he could take on beastliness. Ba-rahmy had joined the witches, and upon his capture by his father... Too ugly for Ilde to think about right now, not with the wound of Anakin's death still lingering on her like a disease.

Ba-rahmy had been so much like this man. That crisp unnatural beauty and grey eyes...

Like always, her emotions conflict. Desire and dread. Dangerous, this man is much too dangerous. She is clearly flustered, disturbed down to her core. But what had they decided in the midst of the flames? They had decided that her fear need not be so debilitating, a lesson she learned a very long time ago but needed to find a way to learn anew in a much vaster universe. ]

He has sons like you.

[unsea]

[ It flows from him: like blood, like breathing. A natural manipulation of matter, at its most scientific. Unnatural, obscene witchcraft - at its least understood. The flex of his fingers curls that darkness through the air, in lazy spirals and sweeps - there is no doubt that, he, seated before her, is wholly in control of what is, truly, himself. Through their connection, he feels the way she recoils. It's not her fault, he's seen her world. Her king. Even if he hadn't, he was no longer concerned with what was thought of him, in people's minds and hearts.

He doesn't ask her not to feel this way. Time has tempered his shame and his inhibition. ] We call it the Small Science.

[ With his eyes, he directs her to look up. Releasing his hold on his power, until it begins to fade away. Neon light and the glow of the Bearing's inner rooms regains its foothold, and he places his hands in his lap once more. ] I outlived my father, [ or so, his mother had said to him. What he means, is that he is no child of her king's. ] I am the -- there are no others like me. Are you afraid, Ilde?

cw: a little squicky and gross, I kind of tried to write around it

[erbier]

[ She inhales shallowly, tense. She is afraid, but she cannot stand to be paralyzed by it any longer. Ilde Vilmaine stares at him deeply, her pretty face surprisingly tranquil for the heat building in her throat, like a dragon building fire on its tongue.

The liquid of their thoughts is still freshly intermingled, and the feeling that she looses on him, like a well trained hound, is theirs. Both their horror. She lets the memory of Ba-rahmy seep: one so powerful amongst his kind, but nothing at all compared to the Godking. Restrained, subdued, helpless, hopeless, unable to die, unable to shake off his father's every invasion. So ugly, such abuse of body, mind, and soul. And no escape but the promised day of flame...

She releases it as abruptly as she did her vision, but this is less like the dropping of a curtain and more like the removal of a blade. ]

Yes, Shadow. I am.

[unsea]

[ The sensation of fear she had sung into existence during the tournament was a distant, muted thing. She had reached for others, not her own, and now, she was turning that power upon him. Fear, terrible in extremes and wonderfully useful when controlled, sinks into him. Seizes hold of boyhood fears ( they held his hands to the fire and laughed when he cried out, wicked men - far older, far crueler ), and upends them within his adult heart. The distance he had put between himself and a childhood, of powerlessness and movement, fearful as the rest of his people were of the hunt and the pyre.

She is scared of him, and uses that fear as her weapon. Held down as he is by her power, though, he can't find it within himself to appreciate her talent.

There are terrible things. Her fears build off his, and his off hers. Until she releases him, ] Effective.

[ Swallowing against the tremble in his voice, the rise of fury in the face of memories ( his / not his ) he'd long since dissociated himself from, he pulls himself upright. He's too hoarse for his own liking, shoulders stiff and hands -- well, he's glad they do not shake too violently. It's been a long, long time, since he felt fear like that. Centuries. ]

I am no son of his, Ilde. [ Of that, he can reassure her. ( And himself. ) ] I admire you, and so, I won't deny what I am.

[ Especially, he means, if it will feed her power in return. All the better for the nest. ]

[erbier]

[ Everything he feels is not only apparent to her, but familiar. She understands it all. The cruel hateful childhoods that were no childhood at all, the careful division between between those feelings and memories, the roil of anger when forced to confront them. This was how she had become so tangled to Kylo Ren, too many similarities... but the Darkling is not her brood, and he remains within himself, makes no attempt to take her mind the way the Jedi Killer had, the way it had backfired upon him although the tangling is pleasant to them now. ]

Yes, tell me.

[ She relaxes against the railing of the balcony, her eyes closed as she waits for the feverishness that accompanies her abilities to subside. It is not so terrible as it once was, perhaps because she grows used to it, or perhaps as her body grows more in tune with the symbiote. ]

What are you?

[unsea]

I'll show you.

[ As she showed him her world, when he had requested it of her. How easy it could have been to deny him such insight, and yet, she had touched him and drawn him in and given her vision up to him. Included him in monstrous sights and soul-numbing terror. It's familiar and foreign, all the same. Ilde's world, Ilde's fear, coupled with the gauntlet of psycho-technical battle performed for the nest's goals left him...

tired. Bone-weary and worn thin, within his mind and across his defenses. ]

I'll show you everything I can. But, another time, I think. I am... [ A man who needs to actually sleep, in the way that he hasn't. So, he begs her a courtesy: ] Forgive me.

[erbier]

[ A faint smile. That human need is almost charming, in him. ]

Of course.

[ She might, possibly, forgive him anything. ]

[unsea]

Then, [ a casual motion, for now that he has his hands under control, it's easy to lift one of her own again.

It's not often he has to beg a favor from another. Much less to rest, above all things. Power like his, when utilized, would only feed into itself. An Ouroboros of strength, one he has not tapped into since his own arrival. That is the first thing that he will have to remedy.

Her hand, yes. Her hand, he brings to his mouth. A chaste brush of his mouth over her knuckles, before he climbs to his feet. ] Allow me to escort you out?

[ ( The curtains in his room block out the city's light. It's very, very dark - he figures she wouldn't want to linger. ) ]

[erbier]

[ No one has done such a thing to her since... Dreus. There are little white scars on her hand from just such gestures, burn marks from one who held her beloved. Yes, it is time for her to leave. ]

Goodbye, Shadow.

[ He can object to the title if he likes, but it is his now and it suits her understanding of him better. He can be a shadow with no master, if he likes. Though perhaps it is her flames that cast the shape she sees in him.

For now, she doesn't try to look back upon him any further. ]