thecapitol | [SEMI-OPEN] And all the promises you've made

Entry tags:

[SEMI-OPEN] And all the promises you've made

Who | Sigma and Diana, Eponine, M. Thenardier, Initiate, and YOU and your loved one!
What | Catch-all log for Sigma and the "Thicker than Blood" plot.
When | Any time after the start of the plot.
Where | All around the Capitol, specify where.
Notes/Warnings | Thenardier and Sigma likely will get into a fight, warnings to be added as they come. Prompts for specific threads in the comments! Interactions with Diana are closed, but your character can tag in and have Sigma meet their loved one. Open posters can make a top comment. Also, Sigma and his lover have a significant age difference, so heads up!

[OPEN:]
Though she had been well thusfar, Sigma feared Diana's nervous constitution would get the better of her should they be ambushed by fans or tourists. It had taken years for Sigma to overcome his anxiety in public, and it was not a trait he had been cured of completely... and to the woman who had inadvertently had a hand in a mass extinction, he suspected unplanned spontaneity within the Capitol would not do her well. But the whole truth was that he had yet to explain Hunger Games to her and his part in them, and though it hurt him to lie he kept an eye on the programs she watched, the people she spoke to. They were both survivors of a long line of death games and she would not take the discovery well.

And so, as Diana began to fall asleep that evening, Sigma kissed her goodnight and dressed to head out on his own. Nye trilled and leapt onto the bed, seating himself on the blankets over Diana's legs - she sighed, but did not move. The Doctor watched affectionately as she drifted to sleep... how dearly he loved her. Were she to leave him again, or if someone were to hurt her... well, Sigma was uncertain of what he would do. Perhaps the fight the Capitol had been trying to goad out of him would finally spring to the surface. He'd cross that bridge as he came to it.

The Doctor took his leave and started out into the Capitol, hoping to come across familiar faces.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Diana never had- would never have- the chance to meet Kyle. Though Sigma's son shared only half of the couple's blood, Sigma could not help but have considered Kyle Diana's son as well. When Kyle asked to see his mother, Sigma had brought to him Luna, Diana's robotic replacement. Diana's metal and oil twin had not been enough for his boy, but Sigma could not raise the dead. He had wished there had somehow been a way for the two of them to meet under amicable circumstances.

Kyle was dead, now, but there was still one other Sigma wanted Diana to meet.

Sigma summoned Initiate Fraysong to District 10's suite ("Just yourself, for now, if you do not mind. Please understand she is not as used to the company of strangers as I have become.") and waited with Diana patiently. He thought to prepare her before their meeting. "Initiate Fraysong is a good friend of mine. He has a most unusual way of speaking, and he is loud, but he has a good heart. I am certain of it." Sigma smiled reassuringly. "I must also caution you that he is not human. ...You shall see, love."

His alter and descendant, his blood kin, have been left behind for the moment. His alter can make his way around well enough and... well, he wasn't so sure about Gamzee, but if he did as he was told maybe he wouldn't up and die. (Which still was much to ask. The Initiate is sure his commands will have been forgotten just minutes after his parting. There was no helping that kid. He'll have to hunt him down, surely, but for now, he puts the boy out of his mind.)

He heads for district ten, never having been on this level before. The elevator dings and he ducks out-- always mindful of his horns-- onto the floor. His paint is done as all it always is, and his sweeping hair is pulled back into its braid. His eyes search the room and fall on Sigma first, then a woman near him, with hair in bright auburn.

"BROTHER SIGMA," He greets first, with a nod. Then to her he speaks, "As solicitations of motherfucking presence were of him, he has come before thee. BEFORE THEE HAS MADE ALL TO SHOW HIS MOTHERFUCKING SELF. I shall let the wicked word of introductory come from the maw of he. WOULD YOU THEN BE DIANA? Matesprit-partner to Sigma?"

The quietude of the District Ten suite is much appreciated; Diana finds the company of too many people outright painful. What started as shyness has, with the discovery of her hand in the destruction of mankind, blossomed into full-blown neuroses, and she finds herself feeling incapable of functioning in the loud groups outside the Tribute center. Much of her time has been spent in the suite with Sigma, discussing medicine or nature or anything besides the truly important things.

"Oh..." Diana brings the fingertips of both hands to her mouth. She knew, mentally, what Sigma meant by non-human, but she hadn't really braced herself for that, and the loud, towering creature greeting her is a shock to her system. Still, despite her urge to outright hide behind Sigma, she is polite.

"I- yes. I am his matesprit-partner." She holds her hand out, wondering if that's a gesture this strange young man will understand.

As the Initiate enters, Sigma moves to place his hand against the small of Diana's back, providing her an anchor for her fear, a safe place to return. He in no way means this as an offense to the Initiate, and hopes Diana's behavior will suffice as an explanation. He does not believe he has revealed to the Initiate the truth of her survival...

Feeling suddenly quite awkward, Sigma clears his throat and motions grandly to the Initiate. "Diana, this is Initiate Fraysong." Sigma pauses, runs his tongue over cracked lips as he mulls over feelings he can't quite place. "He..." Sigma sighs. It's a difficult admission, even without Diana as witness, and he chooses words as benign as he can conjure. His voice suddenly becomes very small, as if he wishes for the Initiate not to overhear, though he's certain he will. "He... is like family to me. ...Initiate, as you know, this is Diana. She comes from a time much earlier than my own, but as far as I am concerned, it changes nothing." He did not want Diana to know that she perhaps did not exist in the future he belonged.

Fear is a common thing. Fear from strangers don't mean a thing except for where he knows he should feel the fear, and can't. There's no offence to be seen upon his features.

The gesture of her out stretched hand isn't entirely lost-- pacts made as they were, and things taught here, by escorts when all he didn't tune them out. He reaches out for Diana's hand and is careful not to scrape nor nick his claws on her flesh. Careful not to crush her.

The real warmth comes however at Sigma's admission, a flicker of a smile genuine over his face, that tries and fails to disappear completely after the fact. He masks it poorly with a grin and says, "IF IT CHANGES NOTHING THAN NOTHING OUGHT BE CHANGED. If all our own paid mind to our timeline respective ain't no one would make all to be motherfucking anywhere. HE IS PARTED FROM HIS OWN FAMILY BY THOUSANDS. But family still such regardless."

He gestures as he speaks, in slow flourish. He gestures to her as well, saying, "AND SO HE GREETS A WICKED SISTER AS SUCH."

She nods, remembering how long Sigma says he's been here, and it's not in her to be jealous for the time other people have had with him.

"A wicked...sister?" Diana looks confused for a moment, and then somewhat amused, and more than that - touched. Somehow, looking into the eyes of a creature from a race who didn't die on her behalf is comforting in a way it shouldn't be. In a way she won't complain about.

She pats his hand and closes hers over it. "It's a pleasure to meet you." Thank you for taking care of Sigma, she wants to say, even if that's a broad construction of caring for someone.

Sigma had met the Initiate's family and knew well what to expect; and though it was not his business, there was still one child he worried about. These concerns kept him up at night, nearly tormented him, until Diana finally took notice and asked him why he could not sleep. The next morning Sigma started the day early, hoping to search the Capitol for one Eponine Thenardier. There was something he had to be certain of, and something he had to make right.

If it had been Eponine's father that the Capitol had brought here... something inside of him told Sigma she needed his support, and possibly even his protection.

Eponine's... she's a little bit tired and a little bit sore. Thenardier had laid claim to her bed immediately upon seeing it, and Eponine couldn't be bothered to argue that point. Babet had gone for her little chair, which left the three siblings to share the floor space. She rolls her shoulders now, easing out the ache which came with sleeping on the floor. They'd been up late, her Pa and her, schmoozing with the hoity-toi of the Capitol. Or at least, he had been schmoozing. She had been trailing in his wake, smiling when he pinched her elbow, blowing kisses as ordered. And now he has her up again, much too overdressed in a fine Capitol style ball gown and too much makeup, eating a breakfast she could ill-afford in a restaurant filled with all the sorts of men who liked to sponsor Tributes.

They had been seated in the window, an advertisement for the business, obviously, which meant that more and more of the rich socialites were ducking into the restaurant to have a goggle at this new-style Eponine and her father. For her part, she's staring miserably out of the window, trying to ignore her dad and the people staring back at her.

Schmoozing is, horrifyingly enough, not a terribly difficult trade for Thenardier. He's hijacked Eponine's Stylist and convinced her to dress him in only somewhat ostentatious fineries, and his wicked tongue is proving excellent at flattering the needy egos of the rich and bored here in the Capitol. He seems all too eager to play up the plight of his poor, sickly, battered daughter, and Eponine's probably getting her share of humiliation, too, as he harps on how they were so poor that she had to go without education or bathing. The people around them give little gasps and titters.

"You don't look like you're enjoying yourself," he whispers at her, frowning. "If you aren't going to make a show of it then you need to act grateful, at least."

In contrast to Eponine, Sigma looked and felt years younger, Diana's presence nurturing him better than anything the Capitol, in all of their vast wealth, could provide. There is health and determination in his step as he searches the Capitol for Eponine. It is no small job.

Perhaps it is by random chance or by the whispers of enchanted Capitolites that leads him to the restaurant. From afar, he finds Eponine in the window and freezes - she looks so unlike herself, and so perfectly miserable. As a figure approaches to whisper to her, rage boils hot in Sigma's stomach. It's her 'father'. Before he can think better of it, Sigma walks quickly into the restaurant and requests to be seated. As one who did not kill, he can barely afford this meal himself, but he has no intention of eating.

"A place near the window, if you can manage it," he tells the server. He's not a popular Tribute by far and his presence is not nearly as valued as the girl's. He does, however, take priority over most of the waiting list and despite the crowd Sigma is given a seat a relatively short distance away from the window, one out of immediate view of passers by.

He cannot simply spirit the girl away without making a scene or being pursued, and he's aware of Eponine's disdain for him. Instead, Sigma watches and waits for an excuse to intervene.

"And what am I grateful for? You telling all these idiots I didn't wash for months on end? For tellin' 'em about the fleas and all?" Eponine hisses back, before flashing a quick smile at some of the closest Capitolites. Her cheeks are flushed a deep red now, and they seem destined to remain so for quite a while as citizens find a new game in asking her to spell difficult words, tittering at her mistakes.

"They ain't gonna give us money for this, Pa." She leans into him, placing her mouth close to his cheek so that it looks, perhaps, as if she is giving her dad an affectionate kiss. From this close, she can smell the sweat on Thenardier's skin, and that dirty, unkempt odour so familiar to her.

Despite Eponine's predictions, though, money, and a random copy of 'Learn Your Letters with Eponine' start to land on the table.

"People are all the same, doesn't matter where you go. Remember that." It's less imparting fatherly wisdom than a command for the sake of bossing. He most graciously bows and indicates that Eponine ought to curtsy and kiss a hand here or there, thanking the patrons for their kindness.

He has a keen survival instinct, likely more than anyone else in the family, and is well used to watching from the corner of his eye for the undercover detective and the horse-straddling policeman as much as the fellow criminal looking for an upper hand. As such, he notices the man with the strange eye watching them, and makes a mental note not to turn his back on him.

"You know him?"

It would almost appear as if they were getting along, as if her father were truly trying to help her, if not for the stories Sigma had heard. This man was a snake in the grass, and despite the front Eponine put on, despite the money and attention the girl was receiving, Sigma knew well that what smelled in public was rotten in private-

-He's been noticed. Sigma ducks under his menu, leaving just enough space for his cybernetic eye to continue to watch Monsieur Thenardier, but braces himself for a confrontation nonetheless.

Eponine glances up, following her father's gaze.

Oh.

Oh, it's Sigma. She'd been trying her best to avoid Sigma, to keep her father away from him. It hurts, you know? It hurts to see the two of them so close together, the man who dragged her up and kept her close out of need for money, and the man who had just loved her and looked after her.

She glances back at her father, at his greasy hair, and his sly eyes and his exuberant clothes, and turns back to him.

"His name is Sigma. Sigma Klim, Pa. He's a Tribute, too. He's..."

She pauses, struggling to come up with a description of exactly what Sigma was to her. She glances back over her shoulder at Sigma, at his funny magic eye and his funny arm hidden beneath his shirt.

"He used to love me. He looked after me in the arenas. He saved my life." She turns back to her real dad. "More than you've ever done for me, anyway." Slowly, trying to be subtle, she shakes her head at Sigma. The last thing she needs is for him to see her family in all their grimy glory.

He'd smack her if they weren't in front of proper company. How many of his sous had gone into putting good in the mouths of his worthless daughters, into keeping their shrill mother happy? And yet this man knows Eponine for maybe a year and has already earned her allegiance.

He grabs her by the elbow and starts to walk her over towards Sigma.

"'Used to'? That's a shame. You can't wring anything from a 'used to'." He stops the two of them right in front of Sigma's table. "Ahem, Monsieur."

His hearing is not so sharp that he can eavesdrop on their conversation, but it's clear to him without the words that he is being spoken of. Sigma raises his eye and tries to hold Eponine's gaze, undaunted by her warning. This must end today, he decides.

Once confrontation becomes inevitable, Sigma, for some reason, finds himself relieved. Let it not be said by anyone that he instigated a fight. Sigma lowers his menu, smoothing it out across the table, before he lifts both his organic and metal eyes to the man that fathered Eponine in one sudden and sharp movement. "If you are to say anything to me, I would advise you release her, first," he suggests coldly. "She is not to be forced into anything." It's a silent admission to the girl that he was wrong, as well.

She had dragged her feet the whole entire ten metres to Sigma's table. Whilst he tries to meet her eyes, she determinedly keeps her gaze on the floor, only raising her eyes when they reach Sigma's table. The entire way, she had been hissing her protests, that she wasn't going to 'wring' anything out of Sigma, but now she falls silent, imploring with her eyes that Sigma won't say any more to her father. Sigma's suggestion only shows that he cares, something that, perhaps later, with her father gone, will warm her to think of. But for now, it makes her look a liar. And it makes her father more likely to exploit Sigma for everything he's worth. Goodness knows Eponine doesn't want that.

"Monsieur, do not interfère. My Pa cannot make me do nothing I don't want to." She wrenches her arm away from Thenardier, just to prove the point.

Eponine is, of course, the more stubborn of the two daughters. Thenardier has occasionally idly wondered if it's because he allowed her mother to spoil her during the formative years, back when they still had the Inn. He lets her wrench her arm away.

"I'm afraid we're at something of a misunderstanding, here." He smiles, and it's one of those grins that shows too many yellowed teeth in the wrong places. "But I've heard you've been a generous sort of person with my girl."

Unconvinced, Sigma's eyes pass from Eponine to her father. He has the feeling this man is trying to win his opinion, somehow, but the Doctor reminds himself of Eponine's stories and it's enough to put a scowl on Sigma's face.

He must watch his words, lest the elder Thenardier turn something around on him. "I think fondly of her. I do not believe she does not deserve basic human decency, true. Why do you ask?" The Doctor hates himself so much that it is rare he considers himself above anyone, but Thenardier wouldn't be mistaken to interpret Sigma's words as condescension.

" Pa! Leave it." Eponine speaks sharply, talking over Sigma.
"Come on. Let us go. There's nothing for us here. Monsieur Sigma shan't give us a sous. Will you?"
She glares at Sigma, willing him to agree with her.

"Don't be stupid," he says to Eponine, although without much bite. "They don't barter in sous here. I only wanted to introduce myself to one of your benefactors."

He looks as if to bow, although he doesn't. Everything about him seems slimy, exaggerated servile now as the condescension rolls off him. "And to thank you for your generosity."

Sigma's eyes do not leave Thenardier, but he wonders why Eponine protests so. Is it possible the man would hurt her over something he says?

His eyes narrow, he can feel his anger beginning to boil. How dare this man pretend as if he were truly looking out for Eponine's interests. "Your thanks do not concern me. I would have helped her with or without your presence here. I am amazed the Capitol thought of you as a 'loved one,' to be frank." That was the purpose of this publicity stunt, was it not? To show Tributes that they had the people they loved in the palm of their hand? Sigma does not know the true art of ice cold composure as Akane did, but he tries nonetheless. He had rolled his sleeves up to his elbows earlier, and places his cybernetic arms on the table now to join his fingers. A few spectators have heard Sigma's words, and they watch him curiously. He does not back down.

He knew how angry Eponine became when Sigma spoke of her as if she were not there, so he turns to her at last. His expression becomes gentle and fiercely protective at once. "Eponine, my dear, I will not allow this spectacle to go on. Why don't you take a break from this crowd and the two of us go elsewhere?" He would have an opportunity to speak with her alone, that way, and to assess what he father had done to her.

She glances at her father as he speaks, and curtseys as he makes as if to bow. That is how they play it, isn't it? Polite, all manners, subservient to the great benefactors. Even if Sigma isn't really a benefactor at all - he's a friend, someone who cares, who saves her, a man who seems willing to love her for real no matter how awful she is. But it's so easy to be swept away with the old familiar, even here, and she finds herself dancing to her father's tune.

She's openly shocked at Sigma's words, at the implication in his assertion, and she looks back to her father to see how he takes it. He won't like it - but will he laugh it off here in the open?
She glances back at Sigma only when he talks to her directly. He wants to take her away. He'd promised to look out for her, a long time ago, if her father ever did arrive in Panem. Dear old Sigma, always so loyal, so good. But she hesitates, looking back at her dad.

"No." And it isn't because doesn't want to. On the contrary, she does want to go with Sigma. But she's quite positive that her father will fleece the wrong person and it'll be she who is being carted off to jail again. Either that, or he'll be making all sorts of deals without telling her.
"It ain't a good idea, Monsieur. Not for now. I will see you when the Capitol rid me of my Pa again."

"Here you're speaking like you're her father. Not that I mind," oh, he minds. Thenardier minds, "but that's some nerve, don't you think? What sort of nonsense has she been filling your head with?"

He reaches over and pats Eponine on the back, ignoring how she pulls away from him. "My little girl's always full of tall tales. She gets the storytelling from her father, I like to say. I hope you know better than to believe it."

Eponine has decided against liberating herself from this man, and while Sigma respects this decision, he does not drop his argument with her father. "I find that reassuring, sir. It is imperative that at least one of us does." He carries on to answer his question without missing a beat. "If there is one thing I know about Eponine, is it that she is honest with me. She has made her past and how she feels about her actions quite clear. When I have done something to displease her, she does not hesitate to let it be known. Therefore, I have no doubt that what she has shared with me is the complete truth and I certainly trust her word more than yours." An accusatory tone grows in his voice. "I will have you know that food and shelter are given freely to us in Panem. From what I understand... that means all that you could possibly have to offer her has run out."

Eponine just closes her eyes.

Shut up! Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP! Why is he still talking? Why is he going against what her Pa says? Has she not told Sigma enough times that it is fine to protest once, but then you give in before it goes too far? Why is he doing this? Is he stupid.

"Leave it, Monsieur. Do not make this your fight." She glares again at Sigma, before turning back to her dad.

"So I am a liar as well, Pa? I tell tall tales? Papa, when was I your little girl? At the inn p'raps. The first time you sent me out, p'raps? I think we should go away now. I have had enough of you both."

And she doesn't care about how many Capitol citizens are staring. She's fed up with both men and she wants to go and hide a while.

"I'm still her father, ain't I?" Thenardier's voice takes the edge of a knife but then Eponine, too, is sassing back at him. It's not that Thenardier's unused to being talked back to, but in public Eponine's usually cooperative enough - that's how she gets food in her belly.

"We'll be leaving, Monsieur." He gives Eponine a look as if she's going to regret this embarrassment later. When he looks back at Sigma his gaze is outright murderous.

Sigma glances to Eponine, admitting with a sympathetic expression that it is too late, before he decides to finish this. Perhaps it would be best if Eponine were to leave for what he is about to say. His words to Thenardier are slow and punctuated with ice; he considers all that Eponine has said to him, all that made her believe that she was worthless, and gathers up every bit of his revulsion against what he knows to be the source. "You are no father to her. You had a hand in her conception, and like any dog that sires pups that was the end of your contribution."

So he's leaving now? Part of Sigma is grateful that he's been convinced to no longer make a public spectacle of Eponine this day, but he cannot let this go. "Why do you leave, so you can beat on her in private for someone daring to stand up to you?" Sigma rose from the table and raised his voice, incensed that Thenardier would threaten them both silently. He is not a man who often resorts to violence, but Sigma cannot hold his tongue.

"If you dare to lay a finger on her-" He decides to change his wording in case he implicates Eponine as one who would run and tell him- "If I were to find a single bruise on that girl, I will see to it myself that you are never able to use your hands again." There was no going back, now. Sigma was completely prepared to take this discussion elsewhere.

For once, she's gobsmacked. She literally cannot think what to say and she stares at Sigma with her mouth wide open. She probably looks a bit like Azelma.

How could he say that? How could he think any of what he's saying is okay? She looks worriedly to her Pa: he won't like those accusations.

"Shut up." She says at last. There's venom in her tone, aimed straight at Sigma. "Shut up, you stupid old man. You know nothing of what you say and you make bad accusations against my Pa. You are stupid! Now shut up and leave us be, Monsieur."

She doesn't know what else to do. She looks back anxiously at her dad. "Come. We'll go now, Pa. There ain't nowt for us here."

"What I do with my own flesh and blood is none of your business, Monsieur!" Thenardier hisses it, the same venom as Eponine's in his tone. There's a certain acid to their voices that runs in the family, a capacity for hurt and for hate that is in kind. His lip curls and he grabs Eponine by the elbow.

"Come on, my dear, we're going." In agreement with that, at least, they flounce.

Sigma freezes up at Eponine's accusation. For a moment he's as stunned as she was, and when his eyes settle on Eponine he is visibly hurt. Wasn't she the one who had said she could not handle her father again? Why, then, did she turn against him now? Where Sigma had once believed he'd known her well, Eponine had become an enigma to him. Did she truly take after her father so?

He does consider letting them leave, but his guilty conscience will not let him: he will remember it as the day he failed to protect Eponine from a monster for all of time. Certainly that was an admission that Thenardier would hurt her, and even if it made Eponine despise him, he could not allow them to leave together. And so Sigma decides if words will not part them, he shall have to resort to desperate measures.

He rises from his table and approaches Thenardier with hateful, merciless eyes, a gaze he had practiced for forty-five years as he endured his time as Zero. With all the strength his cybernetic enhancements will muster and without remorse, Sigma seizes the wrist Thenardier held on to Eponine with, wringing it slowly until his order is obeyed: "Release her."

Eponine had already been yanking her hand away from her father. She had no intention of going anywhere alone with him, especially anywhere private. She knew that tone and those expressions too well, and she didn't want bruises on top of everything else, to deal with.

But then Sigma gets up and interferes again and makes it worse. Again. Can't he understand that he is making it all worse? Does he not realise that he is putting her father in a foul temper, one that he will probably unleash on Eponine and her sister. Eponine can't let Azelma deal with that, and so she'll bear the brunt of it. Again.

And then he actually grabs her father - her own arm, of course, moves with Thenardier's. She stops struggling to pull away though, going limp.

"I can look after myself." Eponine spits. Always he talks as if she's not here. But she makes no effort to move. Instead, she glares first at Sigma and then at her real dad.

"Papa." She switches her gaze between the two men so it's not really clear who she's addressing. "Papa, do nothing more now. Let it go. Please. For me."

[To be added after the M. Thenardier thread]

Sigma left his room in the middle of the night, careful not to wake Diana. From there he snuck down from the tenth floor to the outdoor pool... Though it went against his better judgment, there was one Sigma needed to speak with.

Did lususes- lusi?- sleep?

He made his presence known with a clearing of his throat, though he was as shy as he was intimidated. He’d seen what had almost happened to Gamzee and the force it had taken to stop it. Sigma was wary to keep his distance.

"Forgive me for waking you," he began tentatively. "You are... Initiate Fraysong's guardian, correct? At least, this is the name I know him by." He paused, trying to read the old goat's expression. "...I would like to speak to you, if only for a while."

The old goat's slumber is indicative primarily by the absence of the boys reflective and identical to his charge. The Initiate would hardly leave the goat's side when the creature happened to be awake, keeping the goat under control. Or otherwise just lingering, as if making up for lost time, even as there eyes would meet with a violence and promise of such within.

But a beast, no beast, especially not an Alternia one, sleeps so deep.

The seagoat's eyes up suddenly with the noise, sideways pupils set in gold and surrounded by indigo sclera (an inverse of the color placing in the eyes of his charge). They fall on the man before him and the seagoat starts to rise, water surging around and off him as he does. The sea monster's hooves stomp roughly in the grass, just outside the pool. It's a poorly hidden threat-- I could come out, I could crush you.

The goat's mouth opens just the slight bit the muzzle on him will allow, revealing needle-sharp rows of fangs over fangs over fangs, things no proper goat should have. He knows not the name of which the man speaks, but the goat knows enough the way of trolls to recognize it is in reference to his charge. The kid took a title. Kurloz could hardly have been old enough. His kid wasn't old enough for all too much of anything.

I would like to speak to you. The seagoat blinks slow and lowers his head some. He stares intently at Sigma, waiting.

At the loud and heavy stomp and the flash of fangs Sigma loses his resolve, his mind draws a blank. What on earth had been so important to discuss with this beast that he had risked his life to do it? He reminds himself - this may be the only opportunity Sigma has to speak with the Initiate's 'father', and if he wished to take over his role of guardian, this was a conversation that had to happen. At least, it would be the decent thing to do.

Sigma stands firm, puffs out his chest to feign that he is no frail human and the sea creature did not scare him. "I do not know why you are violent towards the Initiate, or if that is even your intention. Perhaps you are confused..." Their reunion did not seem warm to him at all, but trolls and their respective lusus were still a mystery to him. "The Initiate said to me that you wanted him dead. At the time I did not believe him, I chalked it up to something spoken out of pain. But is that true, after all?" Sigma turned his head. The other probably could not even answer him, at least not in a way he could understand. Sigma continues.

"I wish to reveal something that has no bearing on you, but listen closely: I killed my son," Sigma says in almost a shout to get his attention. "I made the mistake of putting my dream before him, and I killed him in order to get it. Doing so, though I had not known it at the time, I lost everything. Is that what you want?" Sigma's eyes narrow. "Know this: he still loves you, even in his hate."

Edited 2014-04-28 16:35 (UTC)

The creature, no bigger than a troll, tries to make himself seem bigger to the Capricorn. Oh, if it could laugh. The man was hardly a decent toothpick. The Capricorn curls an d uncurls its tail in the water.

The seagoat blinks its eyes in response to the first question. The beast's head lowers down some, closer to Sigma.

The goat wouldn't have had to kill his charge. Alternia did that to young trolls all over. Dead grubs, dead wrigglers. It was no less common than dead a lusus. Usually those things went hand in hand. Sometimes they did not. But a weak lusus or weak charge could still mean the death of the other.

This not-troll did not understand Alternia's ways. He was not a troll nor a lusus.

Or so the goat thought, until an unamed charge was claimed. Had both as such and as a cull. Killed for a dream. The goat leans down even lower this time.

His charge had survived. His charge was stronger now. Because of what had been done, his charge was made for Alternia and he'd last longer than any.

He still loves you, even in his hate.

There's a moment where the goat goes very still. The tail stops splashing, the hooves don't move. Then the seagoat holds the gaze direct of Sigma Klim and doesn't let it move.

If his charge still loved him... then his charge was a fool.

Edited 2014-04-30 02:48 (UTC)

The seagoat's reaction is one that is difficult for Sigma to interpret, but at the very least, he holds his attention. "You have left your mark on that boy," he says calmly, "but perhaps not for the better. He is wounded. I do not say this as a way to insult you. Unlike my child, the Initiate survived... You have nothing but my utmost respect." This had been the creature that had raised the Initiate, after all, and without him, he would be dead.

Sigma takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. What would these words sound like to this creature? He had no choice but to find out. "I do say this because I love him. He is not yet grown and I wish to look after him until he has found his feet, in your stead. But I cannot undo what has been done before my influence. What I seek is a peaceable resolution..." He lifts his gaze to see if the goat has lost his patience.

The goat's muzzle lifts with a level of derision. If the boy is wounded he will heal or die. The man claims no insult, but respect, yet the goat, in his already sullied pride sees a thing said backhanded.

I do say this because I love him. The goat is stilled once more, but with the end of Sigma's words, his hooves stomp down again, striking the earth as if to shake it with their force. He snarls out at Sigma as through his head drifts the feeling of a word.

Mine.

He offers an angry snort in its stead.

This man, this creature non-troll that resembles them still, would impede on that which he shouldn't. The goat chose his kid, one did not have two lusii. The man sought to take his place. He sought to kill him and stand where he would stand, swim where he did swim. He who confessed to the death of his own charge.

His head tilts as his eyes narrow, a question of challenge. Do you really think you can?

Do you truly think it worth it?

Edited 2014-05-13 00:16 (UTC)

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[SEMI-OPEN] And all the promises you've made

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