thecapitol | I'm just a stranger in a strange land

Entry tags:

I'm just a stranger in a strange land

Who| Alain and OPEN
What| Alain arrives, in a rather desperate state
Where| D7 suite and around the Tribute Centre
When| Just before the Binding plot (slightly backdated)
Warnings/Notes| TBD

One moment, he was riding hell for leather in the gathering darkness, hunched low in his saddle, a bullet-graze in his thigh and his heart in his mouth. The next, he woke up in a strange room, alone, with the pulsing pain gone from his leg and the horse vanished out from under him. His heart, though, was still pounding, and although he put up no fight when he was led to the suite, he wasted no time in leaving it again. His gun was gone. That was bad. Worse, more frightening, was that the two guards who had taken him here had given him no echo of the Touch. They were cold and dead as automata, without any sense of personality. And all that might have frightened him, but for the fact that there was a more pressing issue at hand.

He had to get out. He had to get back. Blood pounding in his ears, he cast around for a weapon, and, finding none, decided not to linger and search - a gunslinger is his own weapon, Cort's voice echoed in his memory. Instead, swallowing, he set out into the strange new land, walking fast, taking in all that he could around him. The place was foreign, reminded him of nothing more than the old broken-down machines of his world, but shiny and new. And confining. Too confining. He had to get back.

In short order, he was thoroughly lost, fighting down uncharacteristic panic. He tried to reach out with the Touch, but found nothing, not even the sense of the Touch itself. That was horrifying, but he had no time to be horrified. Is this the Clearing? he thought at one point, desperately. Am I dead? But if he was dead, then who would bring the message through? If he was dead, then the gunslingers were dead, too, and Gilead's last hope with them. He couldn't be dead. It was unthinkable.

Unconsciously massaging his forehead, where a sharp knot of pain was gathering, he took a deep breath and cast around for someone to ask. The next person he saw, he approached, ignoring that dull sense of emptiness where the Touch ought to have sensed their mind. "Cry pardon..." he began, and cleared his throat.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Karkat plainly sounds like a teenager, voice a bit rough but perfectly intelligible, speaking English just fine like everyone else here. Not that he has the choice, as he's learned.

Of course, he's not surprised by Alain's reaction. He's not the first person around who's never seen a troll, but he does gather that he must be new, which his words make all the clearer. He frowns, because this isn't going to be a happy thing to explain.

"You can't. And I'm not saying that to stop you or anything like that, but I'm saying it's beyond your control to do. It's all up to these picky jackasses in charge who goes where when, whether it's here or home or not," he explains. "Worse, going back seems to demand the act of dying in the Arena first, and there's no guarantee you'll get to stay there. I went back that way myself, and yet here I am."

It's a lot to say at once, but he feels no need in holding back or lying about the nature of their captivity. False hope hurts worse than honesty, in the end.

Alain is quiet for a long moment, taking this in. If he were a hastier person, he might just sweep it aside as he's tempted to do, and find someone else to help him. But even with the adrenaline thundering through him, and the desperation pounding at the back of his mind, he's a more thoughtful kind than that. So he is simply quiet, wiping his hand over his mouth and searching Karkat's face for a lie. Now, more than ever, he feels the sucking absence of his Touch, which ought to fill out the picture for him; now, swallowing, he pushes back that absence and tries to focus.

"You're sure?" he says at last, quietly, meeting Karkat's eyes with a hard, searching look. "Can I petition them? I have to go back." He swallows, weighing the dangers of sharing his position against the need to make it understood. After a moment, making his decision, he says slowly, "If the message I carry does not make it to my brothers, we are all lost. The last of my kith and kin, the last forces of the White... they will all die. You are not who I must beg, I kennit, but please, if there is aught you can think of, any way I can return..." Even if it's only for long enough to pass on the message. Even if it costs him his life. He needs a way back.

"Yes, I'm sure," he answers, and it's without the usual impatience he'd affect. This guy sounds earnest with his wants, and Karkat can't keep from sympathy for it. But for the first time, he's grateful for the time he went back, if only for the knowledge it imparted.

"Listen: if time where you're from is anything like it is for me, then what has to happen will happen regardless. But I'll put it this way. If you ever go back - and it won't be your choice when it happens - things will take off from the last time you were there," he explains, gesturing some with his hands. "You won't remember this place. Whatever you were doing then you'll go on doing, and what will happen will happen. You might come back here after; you might not. Like I said, it's not up to us."

He hopes at least for this kid's sake that doom doesn't work the same way there. Dying is never fun, but it's worse when the permanent kind hits you because of how time wasn't supposed to go.

"That..." Alain sighs deeply, looking wearier than anyone his age ought to, as if all the last twenty-five years of his life have all piled in on him at once. He drags a hand over his face, and tries to smile. "That's some comfort, I guess. Thankee."

The words that come to his mind are ka like a river, like a wind, but he keeps those words to himself. They're a comfort sometimes. Here, they only ache, because he's felt the future waiting for them back home, and it's blood and darkness. For him, or for them all? He doesn't know. He doesn't want to. But even less does he want to be caught here, like a fly in amber, in that not-knowing.

Still, it's better than that frantic desperation, than hurling himself against a brick wall trying to finish his mission, than knowing he's failed them because he can't get out of here. So he's not lying - it is a comfort. It's just a cold kind of comfort, is all.

"Thankee," he says again, awkwardly. "Uh." Belatedly realising that he hasn't introduced himself or done anything but demand, he sticks out one fleshy hand, rather abruptly. "I'm Alain, do ya fine. Alain Johns."

Karkat doesn't smile back, but he has the kind of expression that suggests he often doesn't. His eyebrows do twitch at his expression of gratitude, though, and twitch again when he goes on.

"Karkat Vantas," he answers back as he takes his hand to shake. His own is grey with nails bright to match his horns, pointed a bit like claws. "But where the heck are you from? You don't talk like humans around here, I'll tell you that much."

He is at least glad Alain has taken the answer, and for the prospect of another topic. As much as he's accepted his own fate, this is easier, and he is curious about this guy. Better an ally than another enemy is the mindset he's taken to meeting other Tributes, and this one's given him no reason to revoke that.

Alain gives the question a little more consideration than it might seem to require, letting his hand fall back to his side and clearing his throat. "Gilead," he says at last, low and careful. "In the Barony of New Canaan." Then, looking around, "Far from here, and fallen into ash and ruin. When last we saw it, it was naught but a nest of slow mutants. The world has moved on." He can't help but let that spill out. The grief, the anger, the bitterness is still all too raw to hold back fully, especially when he's so bone-tired.

Gilead might mean something to him if he had ever bothered to ask Roland where he came from, but he was so weird that Karkat was always asking about something else. He never knew any old Canaan to compare against the new, either. Those things he writes off, and what words he might have put to them die as soon as the m-word hits his ears.

"What do you mean by slow mutants?" There is an edge that's invaded his tone, a certain suspicion wound into it and the slow press of his eyebrows down.

The rest, the ruin and ash, he'll get to once this is done, but you don't grow up a mutant to not tense when you hear the word off another tongue.

Edited 2015-04-25 15:04 (UTC)

He takes in that change, not fully understanding, but knowing he's on risky ground here. After the day he's had, he finds it hard to be surprised. It's difficult to expect any kind of respite, after everything. Saying the wrong thing seems like the least of the evils he's done today.

Still, he has no wish to make enemies, especially not of someone who has treated him kindly enough, and given him the answers he needed. Clearing his throat, he shifts his weight and tries to think how best to explain.

"They are..." he begins, hesitates, then continues: "...I guess you could call it a sickness that afflicts them. It's worse in the Outer Baronies, or what used to be the Outer Baronies, but as Farson's forces moved in, they came too. One alone is pitiable, for he is only a man with a sickness. But in a mob... and they ever travel together..." He's trying to put this carefully, but he pales a little at a memory, and cuts to the chase. He still isn't sure what it is Karkat objects to, but he means to make it clear why it stung. "They had dug up our dead. Eaten the bodies and smashed the bones. Defecated and desecrated and torn apart even the ruins. They turned the Hall of the Grandfathers into a charnel house. And when I touched their minds, they were..." Like a club with nails in it. Blunt, sharp, inhuman. "Hollow. That's what I mean by slow mutants, sa... s... sir Vantas. And I cry pardon if I offended by it."

Karkat's expression doesn't improve much as his listens, but there is something considering to it. It doesn't sound like they were anything good, but it's hard to judge solely by the thought of someone set against them. It doesn't tell him enough of what he needs to know.

He breezes past the apology to ask instead, "But what is their mutation? What set them apart, and what was their problem with you?"

Even the comment of their minds being hollow doesn't win him over. He's sure there were highbloods who would have assumed the same of him without ever exchanging a word if they only knew what set him apart.

"Whatever it was, it happened long ago. Mayhap even in the days of the Great Old Ones." Alain shifts again. This isn't what he wants to be talking about, really. He isn't sure he wants to be talking about anything at all. He feels drained, enervated, and altogether not at all up to a history lesson. But he brought it up, so he can hardly refuse to answer now. Not without good reason. "They hate the light. It burns their eyes, I think. And most suffer from sores, sloughing of the skin. Some have missing limbs, or too many. We'd have left them in peace, but that they harry villages and homesteads. They have enough intelligence left to speak, some even have a kind of low cunning. They can do a deal of damage, and they're not picky who to - cattle, horses, children, aught they can lay hands on." He shakes his head, chewing on his lip and frowning a little. "But those who know gunslingers at all... they fear us, yes, but only as any creature fears something faster and stronger. They have no particular problem with us, that I know." His mouth twists. "Or at least, they didn't until the Good Man drew them into his army."

Here his eyebrows draw up, if together in the middle. "Hmm." It's about a vague as an answer gets, but after a moment he shrugs and says, "Alright."

They're definitely nothing like him if they're that fucked up. Weird amounts of limbs and sores, and maybe that hollow mind thing has more weight to it with the rest of what he said. But most important is that Alain said they would have left them in peace if given the choice of it. That means something.

Just not enough that he'll explain his issue. He doesn't know him near well enough for that.

He waves his hand. "Okay, forget that topic. I don't know about your Great Old Ones or your Good Man or whatever, but I don't care. Tell me later if it comes up and it's that important," he says, tone much lighter.

"And since I'm not a complete asshole, I invite you to ask what you will about me. Don't think I missed your reaction when you first saw me. And yes, I can gather than you've never seen one of my species before, so skip the obvious statements about that."

A ghost of a smile flits over Alain's face. He hadn't been about to make any such statements - he's not one for saying things that don't need to be said - but he can relax a little at Karkat taking it in stride. That doesn't mean he's quick to speak, though. He mulls it over a long time, considering what he actually needs to know, before saying at last, "Are there others of your kind here? Other... what ought I to call your race?"

He's trying, in a roundabout way, to get a handle on not only Karkat but the place he's found himself in. He really, really wishes Cuthbert were here, though. Conversation never was Alain's strongest suit.

He gives Alain his moment, but as it stretches longer his mouth pulls into a frown, until he outright huffs a sigh when he finally asks. "Does it always take you that long to think of basic questions?"

He said he's not a complete asshole, not that he isn't one at all.

Just the same, he launches in. "We're trolls, and if you world has anything by that name then consider us entirely unrelated. Humans aren't even from the same part of reality as us." He points around his face as he continues. "Note the horns, the skin, the teeth. Trolls are always grey, and our horns are always orange, but the shape and size of both horns and fangs are variable among individuals. If you run into a guy who looks like me but older, though, that's my ancestor. Also, if you see fins," he says, putting his hands at the sides of his face with fingers pointed out, "those are sea dwellers, and yes they are still trolls. There's only one of those here now, though."

It's a lot to unload at once, but aside from being a blabbermouth (it runs in the ectobiological line), he figures it better to say a lot if this guy is going to take half an age just to ask the basics.

He does pause briefly to roll over names and titles in his mind before finishing out, "There are six of us here now if you include me."

Alain looks rather sheepish. "There's a reason I rarely do the talking," he admits by way of an answer, hunching his shoulders in a way that makes him look rather younger than he actually is. "I'm a better listener than speaker, say sorry. And it's been a long day." Understatement of the century. "Do people come and go from here often, then?"

There. That question only took a few seconds to come up with. That's progress!

Alain's choice of wording catches him up again, and quirks his eyebrows with it. "I will say sorry when and if it pleases me, thanks."

The question is a good one, though, and his features press inward as he considers. "Honestly, I don't keep track of how often. Considering it means someone not coming back from the arenas..." His lips twitch downward. "It's not something I like to think about."

He nods understanding. It may not be the most satisfactory of responses, but he can't pretend not to sympathise with it. He knows too well what it's like when people don't come back.

"And they heal you of all of it?" he asks after a moment, shifting the subject a little. "The hurts you take, the scars?"

Edited 2015-04-26 16:57 (UTC)

Karkat relaxes with the next question. It's easier to answer, and not so unpleasant.

"You don't see any scars on my neck, do you?" He tips his head to show his smooth, unmarred throat. "They put everything back to normal, like it never even happened. I'm not even sore when I wake up after."

Alain rubs his forehead again, almost unconsciously. His head is still aching, a slow, steady throb. Waking up without being sore sounds rather nice, from that perspective. But either way, it confirms what he had already gathered; the power of these people, in healing as in transporting their victims, is incredible. Which does, at least, explain why he woke up lacking the injuries he sustained earlier.

He woke up lacking something else, too. Perhaps he should be more circumspect about asking, but he has to know: "They took something from me, when they healed me. A... a sense. You might call it magic. Is that normal?"

His eyebrows go up, but only a little. "Unless it actually is magic then I wouldn't call it that, but yes, taking away people's special abilities is normal. Trolls sometimes have psionics, and those are gone. Stuff gained through other means, whatever people from other worlds might have had there..." He motions, a sort of open, inclusive thing. "They sometimes grant them back to make the arenas more interesting, as they would put it, but they are almost always turned off."

He motions at him. "So what it is? Your sense?"

"The Touch, we call it. It's a kind of... well, of magic." There's a ghost of a smile there, but it's faint and gone almost before it appears. It's a little reassuring to know that it isn't just him, that it's something that can be understood. But that doesn't mean he doesn't feel blind and naked without it, or that he feels any less violated by its removal. In some ways, it's actually worse. Somebody did this to him on purpose, and to others besides.

He runs a hand over his face, takes a deep breath, and clears his throat. "I can - I could - feel the shape of things. People's minds, magic, the flow of k..." It sticks in his throat. He frowns deeply, and tries again. "K... k..." It's one syllable! he wants to shout. How can it be so hard to say? But no matter how he tries, it won't come out, so at last he settles with a sigh on "...Of fate. The way things align."

When Alain stumbles over the word, Karkat jumps in to supply, "Language is stupid here. It happens to everyone; we can only use English, spoken or written."

The rest crooks his lips as he thinks it over. It's not really like a singular power where he's from, more like...

"I knew people who could do some of those things in different ways. If you ask around you'll probably find others who know more," he offers. "I knew people who could 'See' certain paths of how things might happen, and some trolls had powers like Vision Twofold and Vision Eightfold, which did different stuff. Look for a guy with a blue and red eye and he can tell you about the Twofold version."

"I'll remember," Alain says. He sounds rather distant, even distracted, but he means it. When he isn't so thoroughly disoriented and grief-stricken, he would be more than interested to know about such things. The trouble is that, right now, his mind is too full to take much more on board, at least if it's not immediately relevant. Even knowing that his mission isn't a failure just yet, it's still been a horrific day, and he doesn't feel like himself right now.

He bites the inside of his cheek, steadying himself, and sighs. "This language. English. That's what we're speaking now?"

It doesn't matter overly much to Karkat whether Alain talks to the other trolls or not, so he lets the distant tone go without a fuss. It's not his own benefit he made the recommendation for.

He nods at the next bit. "I learned it and used it before I came here, but it seems like no matter what language a person had before, they get stuck with this. The older trolls around couldn't have used anything but Alternian before here, for example, and yet they're just like the rest of us." A frown crosses his face as he thinks back to the Signless's Crowning. "It's not that I've forgotten, either, because I have the words all right there in my head. But if I go to try to say it, or write something down, it doesn't work."

Alain nods. Considers for a moment. Opens his mouth to say something in the High Speech.

When all that comes out is a dull kind of squawk, he closes his mouth again, taking a deep breath. "All right. That may take a while to get used to. Yet I thankee for the warning." Most of it doesn't seem likely to damage his ability to talk. Some of it, though... words like ka and khef and dinh, words he uses every day... Those, he will miss. He can tell that immediately.

It's an odd thing to witness, but Karkat gathers the purpose of Alain's failed squawk without much trouble. It's obvious from context.

He shrugs off the thanks. "I was pissed when I learned it. There was this party with scribbling on a wall meant to look like Alternian but wasn't even close, so when I went to add something to show the ignorant pus suckers what's supposed to be, all I got was a bunch of aborted half-words and strings of English letters. If someone hadn't come up and explained I would have stalked my way across the gathering purely to find a table to flip--and I was still mad even then." He snorts.

"Do you have any other questions about this place, though?"

(no subject)

atouchofka - 2015-05-05 19:38 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

crabmunicator - 2015-05-05 21:46 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only