Yes you are, my love, the astronaut, crashing in the name of science

[carnagecarnival]

Who| Initiate and OPEN.
What| Initiate is Not Okay and is being obvious about it. Do you wish to bug him? Make him pay for his kills? Kick him while he's down? Offer support????
Where| Around the tower. 
When| Some days after he flips his shit and Eddie stops him here. 
WARNINGS| Language. Drugs. Clawing up the self?

The noise, the... everything, it ain't gone. It's fuzzy and soft and there but out of reach. It's there but it doesn't touch him. Just a short while ago his own self would've looked down on something like this, but he? He's okay with it.  He is O-motherfucking-kay. And frankly there ain't much what his old self would like of this all right now. But fuck that guy, right? He laughs. Yeah, fuck that guy.

He's been in his room for a while. He realised eventually that everything in there was broken to shit, but he couldn't remember doing it. Was he out of it? Was it someone else? He wasn't real sure until he started finding things missing. If it was him he'd have just left it broken. So someone else was here. He can't find it in himself to care.

For a while he just sat in the room they gave him and he spaced. He'd flow back and forth like waves on the shore, between tearing at the walls and himself, putting blood everywhere, smashing what ain't already broke, and then being perfectly motherfucking fine. He's just there. He's chill. What a great gift he's been given. A miracle. A precious thing. He'd have to thank Eddie later. Soon. 

Finally, with the rolling around of one more day, he steps outside. They've given him armbands, his stylists, upon his request. Just like his old subjugglator uniform but more over, it helped hide marks. They eyed his paint funny because it's more messed than usual. But they didn't touch as they knew better and he left it as it was. 

He reaches up every few second for the small gold goat skull hung from his neck. He doesn't think about what it means though. Today, he decides, he's just going to walk around. Maybe see who all else is here. Yeah... sounds bitchin'.

He walks like a ghost through the building.

Comments

[69problems]

The Signless hadn't been around for the Initiate's breakdown earlier. He'd been in the building, certainly, but all the way up on the top floor. He knows the Psiioniic didn't come back, though, so it's not too surprising to him that when he next sees the big indigo he looks like shit.

He knows he shouldn't approach after what happened in the arena and certainly not after the Initiate has permanently lost his moirail. He also knows he should at least thank him for his kindness toward the Disciple. Maybe if that's all he says and he leaves right after there won't be problems.

Taking a deep breath, he approaches, though he keeps a healthy distance between them.

"Fraysong?"

Just say it. Say it quick and then leave.

"I wanted to thank you, for what you did for the Disciple in the arena. For taking care of her."

He knows the Initiate didn't do it for him, but it meant a lot all the same.

[carnagecarnival]

Coming to him was a stupid idea. Risky, foolish, and dumb. Naturally, that is why the Signless is here. The siren call of stupid he was unable to resist. He ain't even surprised.

He stops, looking the Signless over with a dead-eyed stare. The Disciple is back-- brought back in place of the Psiioniic, it's a taunt, it's-- Terezi will be happy about that.

"The fuck are you getting your descant up on for? SHE DIED, MOTHERFUCKER." He hates that word suddenly, because it makes like maybe his moirail should be the same. But he's a different kind of-- gone from his head is all that, he ain't letting that in. "In agony was she and you want to thank? SOMEONE GOT SAY ON AT YOU TO MAKE OF IT?" Would be surprising. Lots of people let their stylists and escorts walk all over them inexplicable.

[69problems]

He shakes his head, taking a step back to further widen the safe distance between them.

"No. I'm saying this all on my own. You tried to help her, and you kept her alive even for a little while, and I'm grateful for that. That's all. I'll leave you be now."

Another step back, nice and easy. He doesn't want another fight, really, seriously, promise.

[carnagecarnival]

Something shifts when he steps back. He's just gonna leave, just like that.

"That's all," He repeats dully. "THAT'S MOTHERFUCKING ALL? Are you fucking KIDDING me?" He doesn't even notice the hop-skip of his own voice, the way the fluctuations scrape. Gets all without noticing a thing but the Signless wanting to turn away. His face turns from disbelief, then to anger.

"GOT HIS ASS BEING GONE, SIGNLESS! And you ain't even got NOTHING in you to say anything? I KNOW YOU KNOW, MOTHERFUCKER. I know you got the knowing of you. YOU LOVE HIM, YOU MADE SURE AS I KNEW, AND GOT IT ALL MOTHERFUCKING TELEVISED AND STUCK UP ON RECAP! And you got nothing? NOT A DAMN THING. Dammit, fuck you, FUCK YOU! Could all come down stone-slide on what I did, and where I fucked up, what I said. YOU COULD RUB IT ALL THE FUCK IN WHERE HE IS IF HE AIN'T DEAD, YOU COULD, WHO'S FAULT-!" He stares at Signless, swaying where he stands. "Anything, but you just... nothing."

He laughs. He shakes his head. He doesn't know what he expected anymore. He doesn't really want those things but that it's just forgotten, Mituna is forgotten, he doesn't want that either.

[69problems]

The Signless visibly deflates. Yeah, this was definitely an awful idea -- he should have waited, talked to Terezi, said this while she was there.

"I didn't want to rub salt in the wound," he says, trying to keep his voice as soft and non-threatening as possible. "I wanted... I wanted to let you mourn him in peace. There's nothing I could possibly have said that would help pain like that."

He knows that no matter what he said his words would be twisted into something negative, mockery or needling, and he thought that remaining silent was the only safe option. Apparently not.

[carnagecarnival]

He opens his mouth, all rearing to snarl, to saying something what could bring about hurt. But then he stops. Then he slumps.

"HOW?" He asks. "How are you like this? WHAT MOTHERFUCKING MADE YOU LIKE THIS? What the fuck up and got you to be this way?" He starts at Signless like he can't hardly believe in his very existence. His face is twisted up to something terrible but it ain't rage for once. It's part hypothetical, like he doesn't really even expect an answer.

"ANY OTHER MOTHERFUCKING TROLL WOULD BRING STRIFE DOWN, DON'T YOU DAMN KNOW? Any fucking other would point out sins done, punishments deserving. POINT OUT MOTHERFUCKING FAULT. I know it ain't above you, I've seen it in you, so how in Messiahs names do you do it?"

[69problems]

The Signless opens his mouth, closes it again. He doesn't know what to say. There's the long answer, of course, the one that takes into account his childhood and upbringing and visions and beliefs, but he knows Fraysong won't want to hear any of that. That's not really what he means.

"I don't see any reason to hurt someone who's already hurting. I don't see any reason to hurt anyone at all, and so I try not to, and sometimes I fail -- I fail badly -- but..." He worries his lip.

"But just because I could hurt someone doesn't mean I should. You're already in enough pain, you don't deserve more, especially not from me."

[justoutrunyou]

Sandy had been lost in her own heartbroken haze and hadn't heard the Initiate was back, nor anything else he'd been up to.

So when he came across her sitting at a table in the training hall pouring over a book about plants she was surprised and offered him a weak smile.

Pruna's Duck sat comfortably on the table, chewing on what appeared to be a page from the book.

"Sup?"

[carnagecarnival]

She smiles and he misses the part where all he doesn't really want to and returns it back anyway. It's just as mangled, just as crooked. There's no soul in it.

He recites dully, "THE CEILING, ROOF, THE SKY ABOVE. The fleet ships tailing to the dove. THE MOONS, THE GODS OF US BELOW. The Sun, the stars, and all the ghosts."

His eyes glance to the duck, thinking all to point out the obvious-- thinking to crack its neck, thinking to hold it-- but he opts not. He looks her face over. She looks like shit, really.

"YOU'RE BACK," He says. "But you ain't whole."

[justoutrunyou]

His response made her smile, but it was more like someone had drawn a smile on her face to try and respond properly. It fell as he observed what anyone could see. No sense in drawing it out really, he'd find out sooner or later.

"Pruna's gone." She explained and found her throat felt choked when she said the name. It came out croaked like someone was strangling the words out of her. "She died weeks before I did and never came back to the Capitol. I guess they must have given up on her."

Duck seems to sense her unhappyness and waddles over to spit out the paper that was in his beak as if he was offering it to her.

[carnagecarnival]

The hand that had settle on the table jerks. Claws sink in and the parts around his fingers actually crack like it's just putty to him. He stares at her, wide-eyed. His mask of cold calm has slipped right off in that moment. Then his face twists, his eyes close, as he forces it all down and back. His hand lifts from the cracked table and his claws are tugged free.

"NO," He says as he starts to sit. "It ain't a matter of giving up. SHE DID NOT MOTHERFUCKING FAIL. This no failure of hers. THIS IS GAME AND TOYING."

He watches the quackbeast with narrowed eyes.

"To be expected of war."

[justoutrunyou]

His reaction might have startled her once, but she lacks the energy for it now. Instead she lets his emotions wash over her like a warm bath and takes comfort in knowing she isn't the only one hurting right now.

"She saved me, again." Sandy explained. "The last thing she did was save me from being eaten again. Then they sent that...thing after me. The thing that looked like her but wasn't." She began to tremble and gripped the table for support.

"I had to kill it...it looked like her but I had to. It was going to kill me if I didn't." Fresh hot tears burned in her eyes and Sandy was surprised that she had any tears left.

Duck didn't seem to know what else he could do for her so he sat down and rubbed his head into her comfortingly.

[carnagecarnival]

He doesn't know what has him rising again. He doesn't know what guides him to her. Trolls don't-- fuck what Kankri said, fuck worlds past, there was no reason for trolls to-- have instinct for these things. Wrong, unnatural, disgusting.

He settles down beside her this time, his eyes looking over her head. His hand rises to the side of her head, pulling her nearer to his side. "YOU DID RIGHT, LITTLE SISTER. You made all of goods and correctness. THEY WEREN'T REAL, HIS OWN LITTLE BLED AND IT WASN'T OF RIGHT BLOOD." A wrong sickly hue instead of indigo. He knew then, but he hadn't wanted to believe. It was easier to pretend Gamzee was just... tortured to be catatonic, who the fuck was he kidding?

"A Nameless got her brave up and on. YOU'VE BEEN BLESSED A VERY SACRED AND SPECIAL GIFT. Do not forget that." He says it like he's reminding himself.

[ka_sera_sera]

After Roland'd learned what had happened to Cuthbert in the arena, he hadn't given the Initiate a single thought. His was the hand that had dealt the blow, but in the arena things are... different. Roland hasn't been here long, but he knows that much. It's the gamemakers who force them into the arenas, and them who chose not to bring Cuthbert back, and Roland hadn't thought for a second to blame the Initiate for any of that.

So Roland's reaction to seeing the man who'd killed his friend is, vaguely, a bit of a surprise. His step falters, he feels his face grow hot as his skin flushes. There's nothing to be gained by doing anything here and now, not even if all he does is talk. Roland knows that. But for a moment Roland can't make himself move, and only realizes halfway into that moment that he's begun to stare.

[carnagecarnival]

He feels eyes on him. But it ain't just that. He always feels eyes on him here, he's an alien, an anomaly, and he ain't exactly small. He commands fear and attention, he's grown use to the looks. And he's gone into himself, separated himself from the world so there's a gleaming film over it all, softer and realer (only not real at all).

But Roland looks with a different flare and maybe it's that, or it's luck, good or bad, that has him turn. In a sharper state, he might be able to parse the look he's getting, but not now. He frowns in confusion.

"BE SOMETHING OF PLIGHT, BROTHER?"

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland just stares a brief moment more, gathering himself. He takes a breath. "Yes. Several somethings." He makes one of his quick decisions then, less an actual decision and more a feeling, and holds out a hand. Not too many of his feelings on this matter are clear - even fewer now that he's seen the man's face - but the two of them are connected now, though the Initiate might not know it. "We've met, but only briefly. Probably foolish to let that continue. Roland Deschain. Cuthbert was my- he was mine. I don't know if you know his name, but you should remember him well enough."

[carnagecarnival]

He starts at the hand, staring down at it. He's been practising, learning these human habits. Enough so he can even offer such out. But it still makes him uneasy. He stares at the hand, then his eyes-- indigo set in yellow-- rise to his face. He takes the words in.

"Knew him. WAS FOND OF THE YOUNGEST VANTAS. Asked him to stand ash once before they fucked around both. LIKED MY KIND FOR REASONS UNFATHOMABLE." A beat. "I culled him. HE HAS NOT RETURNED... HAS HE?"

Cuthbert was an irritating pissant, but the Initiate looks more tired all the same. This is going to make a problem, he can feel it in his bones up already. He starts to reach out. But he readies to pull Roland down. Roland is a human, most likely, and so he probably can't pull off his arm through this but... better safe.

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland's jaw tightens. He swallows. Gives a small, brief shake of his head and, slowly, reaches out to grip the Initiate's hand. The grip's neither tighter nor looser than it would be for one human of his world greeting another, and he tries to keep a hold of the Initiate's gaze. "It's not how he would have wanted to die. He would have been... ashamed."

"I owe not you, nor you me," he decides a second later, and lets go of the Initiate's hand, and steps back.

"But I think I should know you one way or another, Initiate." What does Roland mean by that, specifically? Know more about him, maybe. It doesn't matter. So long as they don't keep walking around the same building ignorant of one another.

[carnagecarnival]

Nothing. No attack. The Initiate can't read the man for no easy anger, nothing, and that unnerves. There's no reason this should be a positive encounter and that tells him to stay on guard. Roland may be looking for weak points, or fears.

"If a motherfucker so does wish such. CAN'T GET A MOTHERFUCKING GUARANTEE ON HE WILL LIKE WHAT ALL HE MAKES OF UNCOVERING," He says. He does not say he will still defend himself if attacked. That should be obvious.

"You truly are of the same world as Cuthbert then? YOU GOT FOR THE SAME WAY ABOUT YOU. However subtle," He muses, looking Roland over. Then he continues, "HE PAINTS, DOWN BELOW IN TRAINING CENTERS. You've likely seen it. AND I WILL NOT LIE, FOR ANY QUESTION WHAT BE ASKED."

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

Her hands have been full after her death. She nearly misses his violent tantrum but she can't miss the cause. Psiionic is gone and a part of her aches. They never really made amends. Initiate and her, they were working on things in their hop skip two forward three back sort of way. The wounds are still raw with Psiionic. He never forgave her and she could never bring herself to tell him the things she told Initiate, that it wasn't her fault, that she did want he had wanted then. It's all wrong and backwards and she hates it. She hates that she can't fix it.

The Initiate helped her. He kept her alive for as long as he could and even with the pain...It still felt like something shifted forward in that moment. She's almost afraid to go see him. They're due for a slide back. They've gotten too far, been a bit too open with each other or something. Things will slide back.

Yet here she is, approaching him. She walks a little closer, sees the skull around his neck, feels her words freeze in her throat. She almost walks away. This is a fools errand. What will she even say.

"I wouldn't have come back if I'd have known." She shakes her head, "I mean, I wouldn't...I didn't... I know they don't trade one of us for another but I'd rather he was here than me."

Because Terezi can handle it, she's smart and strong. Signless has Karkat and his strange group of half moirails she's not sure she understands beyond his need to be pale for the world. The Initiate had Psiionic. It's not really fair.

[carnagecarnival]

He doesn't know what to expect when he first sees her coming. Some of the numb of him has a vague registering of her, that she is still here, she came back. But that's all. He stares at her as she waffles in her approach, then speaks. It cuts clean through his fog.

He wants to tell her it doesn't matter. Tell her it ain't true and legit. He's lost before, he can deal with it. He's been hurt, he can manage. They're trolls, it happens, it was inevitable, of course he knew that. Of course he knew he'd lose his most precious and important, that's how the world worked, why he got stronger and he is certainly strong enough a troll not to feel or acknowledge something like this.

But he's not. It's all lies, all hoofbeastshit. He is cut to the bone. There is a new hole in his head and his heart and his soul, and it cries loud and sharp around the bleeding edges with all the other holes in him. There ain't enough of nothing in the world to distant that.

His hand rises up and curls around the goat skull. He tries not to do this, not in front of her (and there's an anger stirring distant in there, that he's been reduced to this). He can't. His body crumples inward, head bowing and bangs falling, free hand rising to cover his face. A hard shudder wracks through. He doesn't want to do this here, in front of her, but he can't stop it. It takes too long for him to do so and his paint is a mess again, even more than before, when he rises.

"DON'T say that, they'll USE it," He says. "DON'T GIVE nothing..."

He looks through her, or anywhere but her. Truth is, he would try and trade. He'd trade anybody, anything. He'd give up whatever all he has left. But he can't and he hasn't anything to give that they'd take.

"TEREZI. She... needs you... OTHERS. Keep the mutant's mouth shut..." He mutters. His head tilts up, like staying still is the cause of the pain. He tries to smile, which in itself is weird all things considered, but the smile itself is warped and twisted, half-crazed. "DIDN'T DESERVE HIM. I know that. KNOW AT EVERYBODY HAS MOTHERFUCKING KNOW. But he... he deserved much better. SO MUCH MORE." Not to be strapped to a ship, not to be tortured, not to be left behind, forgotten, made to live and live, not this.

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

She can't look away. What happened to them, to have her here and him broken like this. Hating was not so long ago and she doesn't know where they stand. With these broken pieces of hate scattered all around them, just waiting to be picked up, to be twisted in a wound too fresh or too old. He's ruining all that perfectly good platonic hate and wasn't it Terezi who started it, ruined that first bit, or was it just her on that rooftop, offering peace. She liked it better there, she thinks bitterly, they knew where they stood. Their place didn't shift with every little thing.

She's lying to herself, she hates hating platonically. It burns up energy, it's awful, it reminds her of the person her lover became, it reminds her of the person she might have been if she hadn't been curious to stand in a crowd and listen.

"He has two other moirails. I'm sure they could keep his mouth shut if they just both sat on him. He's small enough." But her attempt at a joke falls flat, too dull and too sad.

"You made him happy--I don't really know much beyond that. I kept out of your way. To give him space, because I hated you. You seemed to make him happy. Lord knows Mituna deserved that much."

She drags her hand through her hair, catching on a knot that makes her shake her hand free. It's just mindless, a gesture to keep her hands from balling up in nervous anxious fists.

"I'm sorry. For patting you on the cheek. I don't know what I was thinking."

[carnagecarnival]

He shakes his head. Because he doesn't know what she was thinking either and it still makes his pan get to faltering in lack of understanding and the... what all was in the gesture. He doesn't know how he's supposed to feel about it.

"Who are we motherfucking kidding? THERE AIN'T ENOUGH MOIRAILS IN THE WORLD TO ZIP HIS FLAP." He tries to joke. He tries to just let it roll off him.

You made him happy.

It ain't fair. Messiahs, why punish in this way? It ain't motherfucking fair.

Messiahs, Messiahs, please, he can't do this, he can't do this again.

The nearest wall meets his shoulder. He stares down and he breathes, ignoring the shake and shudder of barely restrained something slamming up against the soft walls he's made on his insides. There's no more space in his pan left to worry about her watching him, what she's thinking, feeling, watching the one who ruined her life break down like this.

...He did this to her. He did this.

"How can you stand it?" He croaks low, face still to the floor, gasping for breath like he's drowning. His claws dig into his scalp. "HOW DID YOU MOTHERFUCKING STAND THIS, SISTER, THIS IS--"

If there's indigo on his face it ain't acknowledged. If the hair hanging loose in his face covers it, all the better.

"Impossible shit all gone to the real, I'D CULL FOR this I'd..."

He shakes his head again in place of words he doesn't have yet.

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

Her hands are curled into fists. It's all that keeps her in place, all that keeps from walking and patting his cheek and the shooshes she wants to say are wrong. It's wrong, it's wrong on levels she hates. His moirail is gone and she shouldn't. She can't be his moirail, she has one, one she thinks would hate the idea--and it would never work. Not eye to eye, they've said a thousand times in a thousand ways. In blood and paint and words harsh spoken. They're different, he hurt her a thousand ways and she hated him so intensely, so vividly remembered the dreams where she killed his older self, drowning in indigo and waking up with tears and splinters of rock under her nails. She hates herself for these stupid urges, for hating him a few perigrees ago and finding him stupidly pitiable in this moment. She looks away, finally, before she can give in to the urge to run away, bury herself in Terezi's room and wait for her moirail. Her stomach flips as he speaks, churns up memories of burying herself in her hair, curled--just like him, hard to breathe, ready to murder and cull and scream for the want of him, of them--and she sits down hard right there against a wall and stares into space. She can't look at him break down, it hurts.

"I screamed, I cried, I learned to live alone. I had to survive. They would have wanted me to survive so I did." She stares helplessly at her hands, not at him, not at indigo she might see if she looked.

"They wanted me to live so I did. Despite everything. He'd want you to live too--I think. If the same things hold true, if he hadn't changed so much in the end. He never thought he deserved anything himself half the time, he wouldn't want anyone to bury themselves over him."

[carnagecarnival]

Was that it? Was that how it was to be? A thousand sweeps for him, a half-sweep together, and then another motherfucking thousand more without? He doesn't want to live that long. He's never fucking wanted to live that long. Truth up and told, it was a scar, the sort of trophy you showed off once you had it but you sure as shit didn't try to get it with no purpose.

It sounds like a sentence. It sounds like lifting the head for collar and chain so as to become a slave and servant. But for him? Would he do it for him, for Mituna? Yes. Yes, of course, yes. But he'd rather do it with Mituna here. It still looks like something bleak. This all, this place, has quickly turned from being one of the best things what happened to him, to the worst. He can't even go back now. He can't be Highblood, every dream is shot. He can't remember what he's doing this for.

No, he can. He's doing this for blood. He's doing it for vengeance and conquer and making those motherfuckers suffer for what they've done. He will drag their screams to the end times. He will stretch their guts, their pain, to the end of the world. And then they will understand a fraction of their sin. Though he is not The Highblood he was still Messiah chosen. They whispered to him for nights and nights in his lonely days and they showed him, he is their champion. He is the Messiahs' hand of judgement, their voice of reckoning, and he will make these people pay.

"HE'S SUCH A MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLE, my beloved, my starshine." He makes a truly miserable noise. "SAVED ME, DID YOU KNOW? Wouldn't have been a pan left in me for them to get their revive on. PAN-BROKE SOUL-DEAD THIS MOTHERFUCKER WOULD HAVE BEEN WITH WHAT ALL THEIR POISONS GOT INFLICTING. He saved me, gave me purchase, gave grace. AND I CRUSHED HIM in my motherfucking ARMS." He can remember it all. Coming apart, the sheer un-fucking-realness of that, and then suddenly being held together, Mituna's shoosh fixing his pan as it broke, followed by the sound of some whole other thing breaking, and in his mind he was child trying to scramble to fix the broken thing as the dark slipped down.

"I already owed everything to him," He says, "-for his love, for silencing the holes and holes and holes up in me. AND WITH IT I FOUND A LIFE DEBT OWED FOR HIS PAIN. And he gave me another in that moment then. TWO MOTHERFUCKING LIFE DEBTS. I'm never going to be able to repay. I AIN'T GOT NO POWER OF LIFE. Ain't no good at that."

He could be angry at Mituna, for leaving him these debts. Could, can't. There isn't a scrap of real anger what to direct at his gold-blooded brother. His fingers have moved from his scalp to curling around that little goat again. The other hands smears paint. His face is ruined.