Thursday, August 30, 2007

Now I'm just spamming

Watching Master and Commander. May now be slightly in love with Russel Crowe? This is strange for me- but on the other hand, he's being really gay with Paul Bettany, and I really like Paul Bettany, and also his drunken delivery of the line "In the service, one must always choose the lesser of two weevils" is absolutely fucking brilliant.

Of TWO WEEVILS!

Oh, also? ALSO? You know what's really bad for musical instruments? DAMP AND COLD and FAST TEMPERATURE SHIFTS. Basically, being on a ship.

And yeah. Aubrey and Maturin? Really gay.

Nothing is real 'til it's gone

Well, this ended up being about six times longer than it needed to be. >_< AS USUAL, AUGH. I need to start seriously doing 50sentences prompts, because my inability to say things succinctly is getting irritating. And shit, but I do suck at endings something awful.

Orrin is a spaz, but he also tends to be very logical and methodical in his thought processes, if not in his actions. (He lacks organizational skills something fierce.) And he suffers from the affliction of incurable curiosity, which will undoubtedly get him into terrible trouble at some point in the future.

He knows Silverlock as Rien, and has a hard time thinking of him by any other name.

--------------------------------------------

"What are you doing?" Orrin squinted blearily at Rien, and tried to figure out where the clock had landed the night before.

"Nothing, go back to sleep." The other man sat beside the bed with a cup of coffee balanced on one knee and a sketchpad on the other.

"That doesn't look like nothing." He rubbed his eyes until his vision cleared and leaned over the edge of the bed to get a better look at the sketchpad. "What're you drawing?"

Rien looked vaguely embarrassed, and tilted the sketchpad out of Orrin's view. "It's just a sketch," he said, taking a sip of his coffee. "I picked up the habit a few centuries ago, but art has never been my strong suit."

"Come on, let me see." Orrin put on his best pleading expression; the only person he'd met who was consistently immune to it was Eleth, but Eleth didn't count as a whole person, anyway.

Rien thwacked him upside the head with the sketchpad and tossed it on the bed. "Fine, brat. But I'm no artist, so don't complain if you look like a cow. I'm making more coffee."

"Bitch," Orrin said affectionately. He picked up the sketchpad and began flipping through it. "Put the kettle on for tea? And make some pancakes?"

"Does this look like a bed and breakfast to you? Make your own godsdamned pancakes," Rien shouted from the kitchen.

Orrin snorted. Rien was an excellent artist- not professional quality, perhaps, but Orrin recognized his own face easily among the dozens of sketches in the book. There were several other pictures of him, in various states of unconsciousness, including one of him asleep in the lab, drooling on his notes. "Charming," he muttered. There were sketches of other people, most of whom he didn't recognize.

Rien sauntered back into the bedroom with his coffee in one hand and Orrin's tea in the other. Orrin took the tea with a grateful smile.

"These are all pretty good, you know. Maybe you should try drawing people who are awake to appreciate it."

"People's faces are more honest in sleep." Rien settled back into his chair and propped his feet on the bed. "And the majority of the people I draw wouldn't appreciate it."

"Huh. Really?"

"Security risk. And some of my older sketches are of people who were very self conscious."

"Mm. So, who's this?" She was young- younger than him, definitely- but her face was twisted in weariness.

"Anna DeLavrey."

"You had sex with Anna DeLavrey?" He couldn't decide if he was surprised or horrified.

"No. I spent several years as her body guard, however." Rien looked thoughtful. "That was done the night her mother died."

"Oh." He looked at the picture again. Anna DeLavrey was responsible for his soul, in a way, and though she'd been dead for years, he still felt grateful to her. "And this?"

"Zizi Menelek. He's an old friend, and the artist who did the linework on my face."

"You sleep with him?"

"On occasion." Rien shrugged. "I don't keep a log of my bedroom conquests in my sketchbooks, Orrin. It's more a record of the people I care about than anything else."

"Isn't that dangerous?"

"When they're not in my hands, they're in a locked box in my workroom."

Orrin still had yet to see the inside of Rien's workroom; there were enough magical wards on the door to give him a headache if he thought about it for too long. "Fair enough." He tilted his head to the side. "You have other pictures, then?"

Rien smiled mysteriously. "You're going to be late for class, you know."

"What?" He caught sight of the clock, lying on its side by one of the windows. "Fuck! Why didn't you warn me?" He scrambled out of bed, gulping the rest of his tea in the process and only spilling some of it on his chest. "This is the third time this month- my students are going to riot. Crap, crap, crap- where are my pants?"

"Your clothes are in the bathroom, on the counter, as usual." Rien leaned back in his chair, a serene expression on his face. "There's toast on the kitchen table, and your briefcase is by the door."

Orrin hurried to get dressed, any further thoughts of sketchbooks banished from his mind.

---

A week later; he'd managed to be late to class only one day, which was possibly a new record. His students had taken to showing up even later than he did, and as a result, the entire class was about a chapter behind schedule. If they all failed the final, he would probably have a lynch mob on his hands, and his department might take away his fellowship grant.

Well, that was fairly unlikely. But if he pissed off his advisors too much, they might downgrade his housing options. And he liked his apartment, for all that he didn't see the inside of it very often these days. It was optimally located for him to steal food out of Faraz's fridge.

Of course, Rien had plenty of space if it came to that, but Orrin wasn't sure he wanted to move in with the other man. It would mean putting a formal name to their arrangement, and he wasn't quite willing to do that yet. (He could hear Jay in the back of his head, using his most condescending therapist voice. "How does it really make you feel, Orrin?")

He kicked open the door to Rien's apartment, feeling slightly irritable, and ignored the sound of Jay's voice in the back of his head.

"Bad day?"

"Not really. Class is behind, as usual; they all blame me and not their own unwillingness to read the fucking textbook, as usual. What the hells are you doing?" He dropped his briefcase by the door, kicked off his shoes, and stepped across the mess Rien had made across the carpet, heading towards the kitchen.

"Indulging in nostalgia. I hadn't realized I'd collected so many sketchbooks over the years."

"Seriously?" Orrin found some cheese in the fridge and wandered back into the living room, gnawing absently. "I thought a filing cabinet attacked you or something."

Rien was leaning against the couch, surrounded by notebooks and photo albums and hundreds of sheets of heavy drawing paper, napkins, bits of newsprint, parchment, and what might have been vellum. Each page glittered with aether: preservation and protection castings.

"I thought you might like to see some of them." Rien's smile was distant. "Since you were so fascinated last week."

"Sure." Orrin sat on the edge of the couch and picked up a piece of parchment. "How much energy does it take to maintain these castings?" He turned it over and rubbed at it with a greasy finger; the spell shimmered, and the stain crumbled away.

Rien snorted. "Engineer."

Orrin blinked owlishly. "What? Some of these are hundreds of years old, right? And they're all in really good condition, and I bet you could set them on fire and they wouldn't even get singed. And there's a lot of paper here- the energy expenditure has to be enormous. They don't use spells this thorough in the library except in the classified archives." He pulled out his glasses. "You must have some sort of aether-dampening field working, too, because there's no way a spell this powerful would be so quiet."

A crumpled up ball of paper hit him on the nose. "I'm almost tempted to make you figure it out for yourself, but you'd probably try to deconstruct it, and that wouldn't be healthy for you or my sketches." Rien pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed heavily. "Do you want me to spoil it for you?"

"No! That takes all of the fun out of it." Orrin lit the tip of his finger on fire and held the paper over the flame. The casting shimmered, and the flame went out. "That's so cool."

"I'm glad you're amused." Rien began sorting through the papers, arranging them in neat stacks. "The casting uses some magicrafting techniques. I'll introduce you to Bellicose and Prufrock at some point, and they can explain the basics of crafting to you. Who knows, you might even have some talent for it."

"That would be awesome." Curiosity temporarily sated, Orrin turned the sketch over and adjusted his glasses. "So, who is this?" The sketch was old, if the date in the corner was to be believed. It was done with an amateur's hand, but lovingly- the young woman slept with a smile on her face.

"Sarila An'astri. My sister." Rien was looking out the window, away from Orrin.

Orrin's eyes widened. The date in the corner wasn't lying, then- and the woman was young, which meant Rien had been young as well. "How old were you?"

"Twenty three. I gave that to her when it was finished; it was found among her possessions after her death. Her husband's children were kind enough to let me keep it."

"She's hot." Orrin grinned.

"The most beautiful woman in the world," Rien agreed, grinning back. "She was the only sister from my age group to survive her indenture. The others killed themselves when they left the House, along with two of my brothers."

He set the sketch down, carefully. "That's...kind of terrible."

"Emotional enslavement usually is."

Orrin had nothing to say to that; slavery had been abolished for centuries, and the dwindling half elf population no longer bothered with the old traditions. Their god was dead, swallowed by the tower, and none of the Kin alive now remembered what it meant to wear a collar- none of them, except Rien.

He picked up another sketch; it was easy to forget, sometimes, exactly how old Rien was. "Who's this?" It was another very old sketch, though not quite as old as the first. A scar cut across the woman's right eye, and she slept with tension carving lines into her forehead.

"Ayanna DeLavrey. She put an end to the Fourth Era Riftwar by killing her brother and the Guildmaster of the Assassins' Guild."

"I've read about her- Eleth has some sort of weird historical crush on her."

Rien laughed. "Eleth has too much free time, but he certainly does have good taste. She was an amazing woman, and I loved her dearly- more than I should have, really, but she was...kind enough to not hold that against me. It's because of her that I've kept so close to the DeLavreys over the years."

Her features were strong, and she was older, probably in her fifties, but she'd clearly been quite beautiful once. "She reminds me of someone." He couldn't quite say why- there was nothing about her face that was familiar, but she reminded him of someone nonetheless.

Rien laughed again, but without humor. "Does she, now?" Mocking, slightly bitter.

"Ass," Orrin muttered. He hated when Rien did that- that irritating, I-know-something-you-don't-know tone of voice and smile. He set the sketch of the Lady DeLavrey aside and picked up another. It was from around the same time as the other two, of a man with scars across his mouth and nose. Orrin stared at the picture. This was familiar, too, and he had no idea why.

"He never knew I drew him." Rien nudged a stack of sketches towards Orrin, all of the same man. He was older in many of them, though curiously lacking the scars in some. "Towards the end, I filled an entire book with him, and I never told him, never showed him any of them."

Orrin looked through the stack of pages- there were hundreds of drawings, and couldn't shake the feeling he knew this face. "Who was he?"

"Someone else I loved more than I should have. It's something of a recurring theme in my life." Rueful, then sly. "He reminds you of someone, too, doesn't he?"

"Yeah." Orrin set the sketches aside and looked at Rien searchingly. "You're never going to tell me, are you?"

He shook his head. "You don't need to know."

"That isn't your choice to make." It angered him. It fucking pissed him off, actually, because he hated it when people knew things he didn't know, hated when information was witheld.

"It is, actually- possession is nine tenths of ownership, and that applies to information as well as anything else. If I told you who you were, you would live every moment of your life wondering if your thoughts or actions were your own, or those of someone who died well before you were born." He reached up and pulled Orrin's glasses from his face. "You are yourself, Orrin. Not any of them." He gestured to the stacks of paper. "And you might be able to believe that now, if you let yourself. If I tell you which of these faces might have been yours once, you never will."

"That isn't fair- I have the right to know." It wasn't just morbid curiosity, and it wasn't just because of Rien- even though he knew- knew, no matter what Rien said- that if it weren't for his soul, he wouldn't be in this- relationship, or whatever it was. He needed to know, because he could remember the Time Before, and he still woke up at night gasping, afraid that it was gone, that the bleakness would return.

He owed someone's memory a debt that he might never be able to repay. And if he had learned one thing in his life, it was to pay his debts.

Rien shook his head. "Jaden agrees with me on this- knowing would do you more harm than good." He took Orrin's chin and pulled him down so their faces were close. "And I am being selfish, Orrin. If I tell you where your soul came from, you would leave. I'm rather fond of you, for any number of completely unrelated reasons."

The kiss was less of an attempt to manipulate him than he expected.

"Please, just trust me- and if not me, trust Jaden."

"If I promised to stay, and if I told you I would leave if you didn't tell me-"

"It wouldn't change anything," Rien said gravely. "I'm selfish, but I'm not that selfish. Knowing would do you more harm than good."

Orrin leaned closer, so their foreheads touched. He liked his life. He liked his job, he liked his friends- he even liked his therapist. And he liked this- arrangement. Relationship. Whatever it was. He liked raiding Rien's kitchen and he liked the fantastic sex and he liked pancakes at three in the morning and waking up next to someone who remembered where he'd put his things the night before.

He still wanted to know the truth about his soul. But he wasn't a fool. "I trust you."

"Thank you." Rien sounded relieved- and Orrin wondered if he could push hard enough, if the other man would cave eventually. It was something to think about.

He sat back on the couch and picked up another sketch, this one of a woman with scaly shadows on her face and some sort of headdress or jewelry with a large cabochon stone centered on her forehead. It was dated about a hundred years after the others. "Who's this?"

Rien crossed his arms over Orrin's knees and leaned to get a better look. "Ah, that lovely lady is Her Holiness Manikarnika, Avatar of Venani. Brilliant woman, one of the most well read scholars of her time. Also one of the most amazingly flexible people I've ever met, though I do attribute that to her being half snake."

"Ugh. Snake? Seriously?" Orrin shuddered. "Scales and slithering- that's disgusting. Seriously disgusting."

Rien stared at him for a moment, then burst into laughter.

"Oh, screw you." The next sketch was of two people, an almost completely nondescript man and a fae-looking woman. "Who are they?"

"That's Lady Foxbird Torkehaav, City Walker and Guildmaster of the Assassins' Guild, with a lieutenant of the City Watch. I never could remember his name- I don't think she could, half the time, either." He picked up another stack of papers. "I did draw her awake several times, at her insistance. She was always particularly skilled at getting what she wanted."

Orrin knew he was slow sometimes, but he usually figured things out eventually. The fact that Lady Torkehaav's face was familiar to him was irrelevant. "Tell me more about her?" He held out the sketch.

Rien smiled all the time; he said it was a good way to put people off guard and that he was, by nature, a cheerful person. Orrin thought this was bullshit, generally. He'd gotten to know Rien well enough to tell when his smiles were hollow and when they were true, or rather, not quite as empty. The hollow, untrustworthy sort far, far out numbered the others.

He was smiling at Orrin now- a smile that barely reached his mouth, but one that lingered in the corners of his eyes. It was, Orrin realized, probably the first truly honest expression he'd ever seen on the other man's face.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Ha! Take that, sad lack of productivity!

Or, y'know, something. I should, perhaps, be spending more energy on finding employment and clearing up the mess with my previous employment than clearing out my collection of unposted drafts on Blogger. But. This entire year has been shit for my creativity, and that's frustrating. I mean, I didn't even post at all during April, and my average posts-per-month this year has been five. Even last year, I managed more than that, though things went to shit in the latter parts of the year, when my computer died.

I've gotten more writing finished this month than I have in nearly a year, which is a nice feeling. Granted, most of what I've posted was stuff I'd started nearly a year ago, but a few of those pieces are new. The dream fragments are, at any rate, though I doubt they'll go anywhere.

The Technotist dream was quite awful, though the Technotists themselves remind me a bit of Dreamscape's Rat Trappers. People capable of hacking the electrical signals in the brain, usually to the end of creating mass hallucinations. Some of them just do it for the hell of it, because they can; some of them are hired by marketing agencies. Others are anarchists, causing trouble where they can. Most are criminals. Many are gang members. In the dream, Chris and the others just got caught where they shouldn't have been- in the middle of a Technotist war.

The Capellae reminded me of the Stella Matin dream, when Theron first appeared in my head and turned an endive into a bird of paradise. Callum is a charmsmith in training; Penny is a girl with more charmskill than most. Money is made out of chips of charmstone- gaea are small currency, made of spent or flawed charmstone. Capellae are large currency, and very rarely seen outside of major cities. The quality of the charmstone and the crafting of the capella determine its value; the one Callum found for Penny was probably worth hundreds, if not thousands of gaea, though he didn't know that at the time.

There was more to the dream- something to do with elementals and earth and water being corrupted, and Penny being able to fix things, or at the very least, exercising a great mastery over fire and air. In that respect, she's a bit like Radrezyne, which is kind of funny. Nowhere near as crazy, though. She's just a nice girl, and Callum is a nice boy, and the two of them can pull of some remarkable charmwork together. Standard derivative fantasty dreck, for the most part, as opposed to Technotist's standard deriviative cyberpunk dreck.

Been having other dreams lately, too, but none of them as interesting or as good.

You will be the father of something terrible

Perhaps he should have been intimidated by the wolf, but Blaine was a son of the city, and the feeling that nondomesticated animals were a myth had been bred into him.

The wolf shook itself, and shifted. Harbard as a man probably should have been just as intimidating as Harbard-the-wolf- he was a hulking, scarred, beast of a man, covered in a thatch of hair nearly as thick as his wolf pelt. But Blaine could no longer be bothered with fearing anything on this plane, or any other, for that matter. There was too much of the serpent left in him for that.

"Huh." Harbard stayed in a low crouch, and scratched behind his ears. "You still smell like a thief."

"Really?" That made Blaine smile, inexplicably. He supposed it was good, that Tyrin wasn't completely dead. "I haven't been one of those in years. Decades, really."

Harbard made a noise halfway between a snort and a growl. "Like a criminal, then. What do you want?" He surged to his feet, and stalked across the room to a cupboard against the far wall. He took out a set of clothes and began dressing. "I was sleeping."

Blaine leaned against the desk, and thought that, as far as these things went, Harbard wasn't bad looking. Older, yes, but not so many years older than Blaine himself, and nowhere near as old as Silverlock. He was, by all reports, a good man. Fair with his men. Loose enough with his morality to, if not condone, perhaps at least to understand what it meant to be an assassin. And he was a Malestri, which meant more than the rest combined in the end.

But Blaine wasn't the one in danger of marrying the man, so he supposed it didn't really matter.

"I want you to stay away from my daughter."

Harbard finished pulling his tunic over his head, and laughed. Clothed, he looked less like some sort of creature born out of snow and jagged rock, but there was still something feral in his laughter, something a little too like the sound of howling on a moonless night.

Blaine crossed his arms, fully well aware of how thin he was now, and how Harbard could, theoretically, snap him in half one-handed. Theoretically. The other man would have to catch him first. "It wasn't my intention to be entertaining."

"I'm sure it wasn't, little man. I'm sure it wasn't." Harbard's eyes in human form were meant to be blue, but right now they were golden, and a little too round. Wolf eyes. "But you're no more her father than I am, and have even less right to be saying such things to me." There was a snarl in his voice.

"What I am to her exactly is of little relevance, I think." Blaine could hear the edges of the serpent curling his tongue. He hadn't intended to get into a pissing contest with a captain of the Watch, but he'd never been overly fond of bullies. "The fact remains that she is my family, and your attentions are unwanted. So: stay away from her."

"Or what, little criminal? I could have you jailed for threatening me. I could have you jailed as an accessory to murder a thousand times over, too." Harbard stepped closer, his height and bulk overshadowing Blaine. The growl in his voice became more pronounced. "Or I could see how you fare against the wolf. She's not your responsibility, human. She's Malestri."

He smirked, and forced the serpent back- he had no need for it here, now. "She's an assassin, Captain Halverness. First, last, and above all else. I'm not threatening you- I'm warning you. After all, if you don't leave her be, there's nothing I can do, save put you back together, perhaps- but she's more than capable of taking care of herself."

Harbard actually looked startled, and seemed to shrink slightly in his surprise. Blaine's smirk deepened. Bullies. He pushed past Harbard, toward the door. "Have a nice day, Captain Halverness."

Outside Harbard's office, the Liutenant managed to look completely casual, as though he hadn't just had his ear pressed to the door, listening. Tim was not quite so suave, and nearly caught the door with his face when it opened.

Blaine rolled his eyes. Kids. "Good evening, Lieutenant, Tim."

"Evening, Your Holiness!" Tim scrambled back to his desk, blushing fiercely.

The Lieutenant nodded, still pretending to be engrossed in paperwork. "Bright welcome to you, Mister Torkehaav." He looked up, and tapped his pen against the desk thoughtfully. "If you see Miss Foxbird-"

"I'll tell her you said hello."

The Lieutenant nodded, and turned back to his work.

Blaine shook his head as he left the Watchquarters; kids, indeed. He was getting old.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

bad dreams

Oh what the fucking fuck, subconscious? Seriously. There will be none of that. Absolutely none of it.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Rewatching the Buffy musical episode fills me with the urge to watch the rest of the sixth season so I can find a better context for Buffy and Spike's relationship. It's the sort of bitter, broken thing that I'm usually a huge fan of, but I'd like to know if it's actually as one sided as it looks. I think I'd honestly prefer it that way; I can find Spike's attachment to her reasonable and believable, but I don't see her returning that.

Maybe I just dislike Buffy as a character. *shrug* That's often what hapens with heroes- no one ever likes the main character. They're not there to be likeable- they're there to move the plot and move the rest of the cast.

Dunno. Still not that huge a fan of Buffy-the-series, though I'm fond of parts of it.

Friday, August 24, 2007

good dreams?

He knocked tentatively on the door of the hostelroom- it was really just a closet, but that was all they could afford for a hundred gaea. "Penny? Miss Penny?"

The door opened a crack, and a blue eye stared out. "Oh! Callum!" The door opened the rest of the way. He could see the cracked and peeling white paint on the walls behind her, and the tiny scrap of space between the bed and the wall. "Come in!"

He rubbed the back of his neck, nervous, and stepped into the tiny room. There was nowhere to sit but on the bed. "I brought you a capella," he said, holding out the palm sized swirl of charmstone. "I thought it might- you might- well, your hair. The villagers are starting to talk, about how pale you are and, well. Corwin says I should let you work the charm on your own."

"It's lovely." She took the capella and turned it over in her hands. It was a fine one, pale and luminous, and carved with a perfect snailshell spiral. "You didn't need to get this for me just so I could fix my hair- a few gaea would have done just fine."

He shrugged, uncomfortable. "I was just doing some charmwork over in the square- someone was generous, that's all." It had taken him hours to earn enough gaea to trade for the capella, but she didn't know that. "Miss Penny, could I- could I watch you do it? I haven't learned any changing charms yet-"

"Of course!" She smiled brightly, and the capella brightened in response, the charmstone reacting to her power. Penny sat beside Callum on the bed and closed her eyes. The colors of her hair shifted, melting away- from brown to black to white, then to red and all the colors of the rainbow. The shifting stopped at a deep violet, and the capella flickered.

Penny opened her eyes, and the purple melted away, leaving a completely unremarkable brown in its wake. The capella flickered again, and its light dimmed until it looked like a pretty bit of soapstone.

There was nothing special about her hair now, but Callum still wanted to touch it.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Naruto, What Remains

I watched a few episodes of the Naruto dub last week; they were doing a marathon in preparation for the hundreth episode. I saw the lead in to the Chuunin exam, and half of the written test part of it. Whoever they have doing Lee and Gai's voices are fantastic, and that's all I've really got to say about that.

I won't lie, watching the show did bring about a certain nostalgic twinge. I haven't been keeping up with any of the fan communities and I have no idea what's going on in the manga, except that, possibly, Tobi actually is Obito, and he's very evil? I don't know. But thinking about Obito got me thinking about that crazy AU I started writing a million years ago, back over here, that eventually turned into What Remains. You know, the one where Kakashi was standing a little to the left when the rocks came down. Obito lives, but loses his leg. Rin dies. Life continues, as it tends to.

This was a scene from much later on in that series- Obito is 19, Kakashi is 17. (I'd forgotten how much I enjoy completely-broken!Kakashi.) It's still a little rough- my Naruto headvoices don't really talk to me anymore.

And Obito, for the record, remains straight like a really straight thing.
------------

Kakashi usually stopped by his place after missions; Obito wasn't sure why, since they saw enough of each other every day when Kakashi wasn't on assignment. He got used to his friend showing up on his doorstep at odd hours, sometimes grinning with one eye, sometimes half dead from exhaustion and bleeding.

So it didn't come as a surprise when he heard the door open at two in the morning; he wasn't an active shinobi anymore, but he kept in condition as best he could, and he knew Kakashi was due back. His friend had a spare key, but Obito met him at the door anyway.

"You look like shit," he said bluntly. "How badly are you bleeding?"

Kakashi's Anbu mask hung by its strings from lax fingers; his cloth facemask was stained with blood. "Internally or externally?"

"Your sense of humor still needs work. C'mon, lean on me." They hobbled into the bathroom, where Obito helped Kakashi out of his clthoes. He hissed in sympathy at the bands of bruises that wrapped around Kakashi's chest and abdomen. "What happened?"

"Anbu stuff. Classified." Kakashi leaned against the countertop and let Obito clean him off and bandage him up. His expression was neutral, but his hands were shaking ever so slightly with the effort required to keep up the facade. "It wasn't...I..."

"It's okay." Obito wrapped a spare robe around his friend's thin frame and led him into the kitchen. "It was bad?"

"Yeah. There were kids. I don't..." Kakashi was shivering. "I should- I should go."

He snorted and poured cups of sake for both of them. It probably wasn't a good idea to give an injured man alcohol, but Obito wasn't too concerned with Kakashi's injuries; he'd bounced back from worse. "It's not like I don't have a spare bed with your name on it. Here. Drink."

Kakashi was shaking so hard he nearly spilled his drink, but he swallowed the stuff just fine. Obito poured him another.

"I need to rest. Have to give my report tomorrow, Hokage needs to know what happened...I should go." He drank the second glass too, though, mouth drawn into a thin line. The scars on his face stood out against his pale skin like red ink on fine paper, criss-crossing the blue tracings of veins just beneath the skin.

"If you try to sleep, you'll just have nightmares," Obito said gently. "It's okay. You're home. You don't have to say anything- just stay. You're always welcome here, you know that. Everything's okay."

That earned him a bitter laugh that turned into something like a sob. Kakashi reached for the bottle of sake, but his hands were trembling too hard; the alcohol spilled across the tabletop, dripping onto the floor.

"Shit." Kakashi stared at his hands, all the color completely gone from his face. Since there wasn't much to begin with, it wasn't noticeable- but Obito noticed. He always did, now- no one else would. "I'm sorry, shit, shit, shit, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm sorry oh god I'm sorry I didn't mean-"

"Kakashi!" Kakashi's mismatched eyes- on some level, it still creeped him out, even if he never, ever regretted it- were wide, pupils contracted to pinpoints. Even the sharingan was out of control, spinning wildly in either direction. This was bad; Kakashi hadn't been this broken since they'd lost sensei. Obito summoned his sharingan, and hoped Kakashi wasn't so far gone that he would see it as an attack.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so-"

He grabbed Kakashi's hands, feeling the thin, fragile bones and his friend's racing pulse. "Kakashi, look at me. Look at me." When the litany of apologies finally cut off, he continued. "Breathe. Just breathe, that's all." He stroked the backs of Kakashi's knuckles with his thumb and maintained eye contact, sharingan spinning slowly.

The hysterical pattern to Kakashi's chakra calmed as his breathing steadied. "I'm sorry," he said again, calmly.

"It's okay. It's just a little spill, no big deal. What am I here for, right?" He'd promised Rin, after all. And he'd promised sensei. "Somebody needs to take care of you."

There was something less-sane than usual in the smile Kakashi gave him. "That's not what I'm sorry for."

Obito realized that at some point, Kakashi had shifted his grip so he was the one holding Obito's hands, and just as he was realizing this, Kakashi was leaning forward, and then they were kissing. His mouth tasted like sake and blood and something sour that was probably bile, and it ocurred to him that he shouldn't be letting this happen.

He let Kakashi finish the kiss, though, because he owed his friend that much. "Kakashi...you know I'm not- I do care about you, but I don't-"

"I know. I'm sorry." Kakashi's crooked smile nearly broke his heart. "Thank you for the sake...and for everything. I'll go now."

He moved to leave, but Obito stopped him. "This doesn't change anything." He knew Kakashi, knew that he never took things as well as he appeared to, knew that he was in the sort of mood where he would do something incredibly stupid if he wasn't given a good reason not to. "You hear me? It doesn't change a thing. I'm not losing my best friend over something like this."

"Okay." Sometimes, Kakashi was a terrible liar. Obito wanted to shake him; instead, he kept his hands open at his sides as Kakashi stepped past him towards the door.

"Hey. You're buying me lunch tomorrow."

Kakashi stopped in the doorway. "What?"

Obito tried to look casual, and failed. "You owe me lunch. From last week. You left your wallet at home, and I paid for you. So you owe me lunch, and you can pay me back tomorrow." He lifted his chin stubbornly. If Kakashi thought he could go back to his apartment and, and curl up in a ball and do whatever it was he did when he was too miserable to breathe, he had another think coming. Obito didn't break promises to the dead- and Kakashi was his friend.

"I paid you back for that the next day." Despite his obvious weariness, a note of exhasperation crept into Kakashi's voice.

"Oh. Really?" Obito scratched the back of his head. So much for that. "Well, we should go out to lunch anyway. I haven't seen you in days."

Kakashi actually smiled a little. "Okay," he said again, sounding slightly defeated. "I'll see you tomorrow."

--------------------------------------

Maaaaan. Now I'm going back over all my notes and such for Blindsided- some of the unfinished pieces of that story were really, really beautiful. I almost want to write more of it, but I can't bring myself to care about the canon enough to continue any of it. *sigh*

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

I could be your father, I could be your brother, I could be a flower, rise up in the dirt

Blaine's parents are awesome, but his dad is such. a. dork.

(As always, three times longer than it needs to be! *chews off fingers*)
---------------------------

It had been, to put it mildly, a long week. He'd spent the last five days in a summoning circle, and had been running on adrenaline and raw aether for three of them. It had been worth it, certainly- he now held the true name of one of the Greater Shrive, but at the moment, all he really wanted to do was sleep for a week or three.

Living on the edge of Candlemark only meant he slept with one eye open, even when half dead from exhaustion. The sound of the window opening jolted him awake for half a moment- just long enough to throw a paralysis cantrip in the general direction of the window. He vaguely heard a thump and a clatter before turning over and falling back asleep.

He woke again a few hours later, to the sound of Master Sorlin moving about the kitchen. The smell of the weak green tea Master Sorlin drank was almost enough to rouse him from where he'd collapsed on the couch, but it would take far more caffeine than was contained in a watery cup of tea to entice him to move.

He was just about to drift back to sleep again when Master Sorlin slammed the teakettle down on the stove with a crash. "I know you're awake, Estri. I don't keep you around to be lazy- I'll be at the university all day, but I expect the workroom and the kitchen to be spotless by the time I return."

He muttered something halfway between "Yes, sir," and "Fuck you" in reply. His head hurt, and he wanted to go back to sleep.

Sorlin barked a short, derisive laugh. "I'll be back late, so there's no need to wait up for me- but I mean it about the kitchen." A moment later, he was gone.

Estri stretched, and luxuriated in the feel of the blessedly empty apartment.

His eyes snapped open. "Oh, hells."

There was a dagger driven into the kitchen table, its blade gleaming with something slick and purple. The owner of the dagger, dressed in black from head to toe, was sprawled beneath the window, caught in the same position he'd fallen in. Master Sorlin had pulled his hood back and he looked up at Estri from underneath his elbow; his neck had to be cramping terribly by now.

"Sweet Natasha, I am not awake enough for this." He rubbed his eyes wearily. A migraine began to throb behind his left eyebrow, the sort of pain that lodged deep in the bone, all the way down to his soul. "I'm making coffee. Would you like some?"

"Er. I'd have a rather hard time drinking it from here, wouldn't I?" The assassin grinned a little lopsidedly. He had incredibly bright blue eyes.

"I'll give you a straw. Or. Whatever. I'll think of something when I'm awake." He rummaged through the cubpoards, assembling the pieces of the coffee press. "I hope you don't mind if it tastes like magic."

"Can't say I've ever tried any before."

"Vaguely lemony. You get used to it after a while, but it's still...ngh." Estri left the water to heat on the stove and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, willing the pain to go away. Exhaustion and aether drain, and the assassin on his kitchen floor was keeping himself too calm for Estri to leech anything from him. His magical senses were worn raw, nearly to the point of bleeding.

The pain receded slowly. "It's still an acquired taste for most people."

"I'm sure I'll manage. And. Um. I do hate to be a bother- and, I mean, it looks like your day hasn't been much better than mine so far- but this is a remarkably uncomfortable position to be lying in."

Estri raised an incrdulous eyebrow at the man, and turned back to the stove without answering.

The coffee was dark and syrupy; he drank the first cup straight, and had to cling to the counter with white knuckled hands for a minute afterwards, trembling with the urge to retch.

The assassin let out a low whistle from the floor. "Brave man! I've seen coffee like that kill a man at thirty paces!"

Estri smiled weakly as the caffeine hit his system like a hammer and killed off the last vestiges of his headache. "It's remarkably useful in necromancy rituals, actually." He poured two more cups, dosed them both liberally with sugar and cardamom, and set them on the table. He sat down, and stared at the assassin. "So."

The man's grin faded slightly. "So?"

Estri sipped his coffee, feeling slightly less like death warmed over. There were few things that cured the ache of aetherial exhaustion as effectively as coffee. "I assume, from your garb and the knife ruining my table, that you came here to kill Master Sorlin."

"Well. Yes?" He looked a little sheepish. "Sorry. I suppose you're going to call the Watch, now."

"Mm...no. I've been ordered on pain of death to never let the Watch set foot in this house. And I am, above all else, obedient." He placed his palms together and bowed slightly, mocking. "I just need your assurance that you won't try anything stupid, if I release you from that cantrip."

"You have it. Sorlin made it clear before he left that it would be in my best interests to abandon this job. Killing you would have been sloppy before- now, it would be downright unprofessional."

He broke the cantrip with a gesture, and felt the release of it like something snapping quietly inside his skull, easing pressure he hadn't even noticed. The assassin uncoiled himself and stretched the kinks out of his neck and back with a hideous series of cracks from every vertebrae.

There was something in the way the man moved that reminded him of his brothers and sisters; he hadn't thought of them in years, but the sudden memory of them hurt less than he'd expected. "Come, sit. You owe me at least a little conversation for all the trouble you've caused me."

"Trouble I've caused you?" He sat, and cradled his cup of coffee in his long-fingered hands. Musician's hands, or a strangler's. "I'm the one out a job, you know. A screw up like this will be hell on my reputation." He was still smiling, if a little ruefully.

"Should've thought of that before you went breaking into a mage's home." Rummaging in the cupboard produced a loaf of bread, a piece of cheese, and a few apples. He set them on the table and the assassin obligingly produced a knife from his person and began slicing.

"Rather, I should just accept that I'm shit at solo missions. Planning isn't my strong suit, I'm afraid." He dipped a corner of the bread in his coffee.

"Then why not find yourself a partner?"

"I've got one- but she's on probation. Healer's orders, you see- broken ribs, punctured lung. She'll be fine, now that the healer's tied her to the bed and taken her off the mission roster." He shook his head. "She'll be up in another day, though. Not too fond of being tied down."

Estri chewed on a piece of apple and smiled slyly. The man was completely transparent, even if Estri was too burnt out to use his empathy. It was...cute. "To beds, or in general?"

The assassin flushed, and dropped his bread in his coffee. "Well- I-" He avoided the question by gulping his coffee. He flinched; the coffee had still been hot enough to scald. "I wouldn't really know."

Estri didn't laugh, though he dearly wanted to. "Perhaps you should ask her? I imagine it's not so much that she objects to the tying as to the person who is- or isn't- binding her."

Even his ears turned red. Charming. He took pity on the poor man. "It's something to think about, at any rate. Have you a name?"

"Hawk. Hawk Samarkand. And yourself?" He leapt on the chance to change the subject, but then his eyes widened, and he was flustered again. "That is- I mean- I don't have many dealings with slaves and if you don't-"

"My given name, for the time being, is Estri. But most of the neighbors have taken to calling me Silverlock," he said, touching the streak in his woefully shortened hair. "And I find that suits me better, these days." He stood, and cleared away the cups.

Hawk stood as well, smiling but still flushed. "Well met, Silverlock." He held out his hand; his grip on Estri's wrist was almost a threat; it was a completely unconscious gesture on Hawk's part. "Should you ever find yourself wandering the halls of the Guild, look me up. I owe you a cup of coffee."

His clumsy charisma was endearing, to say the least. "I'll hold you to that, Hawk." He still had a few years left to his indenture, but afterwards- why not? "Take the door out- the wards on the windows can be twitchy."

The assassin left, and Estri cleared away the rest of the food. He briefly contemplated cleaning out the workroom, but was asleep on his cot before the thought could fully formulate itself in his mind.

His dreams were prophetic, but he would not remember any of them upon waking.

----------------
----------------

Silverlock had been keeping track of the assassin's aura for the last ten minutes as he wandered the catacombs. Even so, the woman's knife knicked the side of his neck when she finally attacked; he just barely had time to put up a barrier between them before she attacked again.

"Ch'. Mages." Her knife disappeared and she crossed her arms impatiently. "If it is the necromancer covens you seek, you'll have to look elsewhere. This is assassin territory." She spoke with a faint Dzyrachan accent, all lilting vowels and softened gutterals.

"I'm not looking for any trouble, milady." He spread his hands, and did his best to project harmless innocence. "I'm looking for a man- about so tall, blue eyes, goes by the name of Hawk."

She snorted. "Then you are looking for trouble, for that man attracts it like little else. I hope you're not looking to hire him."

For some reason, Silverlock was not surprised in the slightest. "Nothing of the sort. He owes me a cup of coffee."

"Fair enough." A faint tremor shook the air- some sort of set spell. "Hawk will vouch for you if you speak truly- and if he does not, I'll try out each my knives on your pretty barier until we find something that cuts you." She leaned against the wall, the very picture of casual threat.

"You'll forgive me if I stop your heart the moment you try? I'm not so keen on having my throat slit." He projected an air of indifference in response to her spoken and unspoken threats; in an unfair fight, he was fairly certain he would win.

"You're welcome to make the attempt, mage. But better than you have tried and failed."

He sensed the other presence in the tunnel before a man stepped out of the shadows, but he wouldn't have felt it if he hadn't been looking for it. It seemed that Hawk had gained a few skills in the years since their first meeting.

His smile was still disarmingly open. "Silverlock!" He stopped, and looked nervous. "That is- if that's still the name you go by, I'm not-"

The woman elbowed him sharply, cutting off the stream of babble before it could start. Hawk rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. "Civ, do you remember, a few years ago, when I completely botched the mage job in Eastmark?"

She rolled her eyes and relaxed minutely. "How could I forget? You, then, are the one who didn't turn this poor fool over to the Watch?"

"That would be me, milady." He gave her a proper bow, with an exaggerated flourish. "Silverlock D'Alestri, at your service."

"A pleasure, I'm sure." She touched her forehead in a particularly Dzyrachan gesture of respect. "Civet Samarkand. And I suppose, if he's promised you coffee, I'll be the one making it." She gave Hawk a fondly exhasperated look.

"The pleasure is all mine, Lady Samarkand." He glanced at Hawk; the man's ears still turned red when he blushed. "I wouldn't want to trouble you-"

"What trouble? My husband has brought me far more troubling things than the chance to drink with an ally, and possibly a friend." She had a beautiful, deadly smile. "Come. I will show you proper hospitality, something of which these city-bred northern barbarians know little, indeed."

She gestured to the darkness of the tunnel, and Silverlock followed. Hawk fell into step beside him, and he glanced upwards at the other man, then forwards to the swaying cadence of Civet's hips as she strode silently ahead of them. "You, my friend," he murmured, "are the luckiest man in the world."

"I know." Hawk's grin was just as charming as he remembered.

It was good, he decided. Upon descending the steps of Master Sorlin's home for the last time, he had sworn that his life would always be interesting, if nothing else.

His gaze drifted back to Civet, and he permitted himself a small smile. Being free of his indenture was already less boring than he'd dreaded.

----------------
----------------

He stared at the ibrik in Blaine's cupboard; it was the sort of look he usually gave to uncooperative Shrivebeasts and other recalcitrant demons. "Huh." It was a lovely antique, its tall copper sides etched in swirling geometric patterns. The lip was dented, though, and the handle had a deep scratch in it.

"What? Is my coffee pot possessed now? Knew I shouldn't have taken it from that shifty eyed man at the bazaar, but he was giving it away for free." Blaine leaned down and rested his chin on Silverlock's shoulder. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Not a ghost. Just a memory that I'd not visited in quite some time." He closed the cupboard and turned around, looping his arms around Blaine's waist. "It's a very familiar coffee pot, that's all." He remembered the dent, and how much Civet had yelled when Hawk dropped it.

"Hm. I'll make you coffee some time- proper, Dzyrachan coffee." He smiled into Silverlock's hair. "Black as sin, strong as death, sweet as love."

"Careful now, someone might accuse you of being a romantic." He pulled Blaine a little closer, and raised an eyebrow suggestively.

"We can't have that. My reputation would be ruined."

"Don't worry." He leaned forward to steal a kiss, and did not say that Blaine had his mother's eyes, but his father's smile. "I can keep a secret."

_______________________ __________________________ ________________________

Hawk? Is the biggest dork to ever dork his way through assassin training in his own dorky, dorky idiom. I kind of adore him, in all his henpecked glory. (He looks rather like Daniel Craig, actually. Same eyes, same doofy grin, just make him about fifteen years younger for this particular fragment.) He and Civet are really amazingly cute together, but he's utterly useless without her, even if he does grow much less incompetent with age. After she dies, he...fades, a little. Leaves the Guild, becomes a regular at Templar's Rest, since that's where old characters go if they don't die in a horribly tragic manner.

Blaine tracks him down at some point, when he's much older, and they have an incredibly awkward and sad conversation, and then never see each other again. (Silverlock doesn't see Hawk again after Hawk leaves until after Blaine dies, and when he does finally go, he drags Foxbird with him for moral support.)

And yeah. Silverlock was kind of in love with Blaine's parents. Hawk and Civet sponsor him as an apprentice in the Guild, but once he earns his tags and particularly once Tyrin is born, they drift apart. He might have seen Tyrin once or twice, but they were never actually introduced.

Dzyrach is kind of Rothcar's equivalent of the Middle East; an ibrik is the sort of pot used to make Turkish coffee. Civet is actually a lesser princess of some sort in Dzyrach; eleventh daughter of a fifth wife, that sort of thing. She underwent her assassin apprenticeship there, under her family's spymaster, and transferred to the Rothcaran Guild to earn her tags.

Blaine grew up speaking Rothish and Dzyrachan; Civet made sure that, in the unlikely event that he did meet any members of his extended family, he wouldn't be a complete embarrassment to her. As an adult, he still speaks Dzyrachan, though he's only barely literate in it.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Final Fantasy IV for the DS

alsdkfjsdkfja

Why halo thar Paladin Cecil. You're looking mighty fine.

SD Kain looks a little silly, but the realistic render is really, really...mmm. Yes. (Sqeeeeeeeeeeee!)

I cannot wait. This, and the remake of Tactics have me terribly excited for the upcoming game season. Just- so excited.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

blarg

I've been working on two fragments for months now- once since December, the other since February- and they're both so ver, very close to being finished. I just need maybe three sentences, total, and they'll be done. But writing those three sentences is the most painful and difficult thing in the world.

It's not because the fragments themselves are particularly painful- they're backstory and mindless fluff, for the most part. But I suck at endings.

Lots of frustration, though it's good that I'm writing anything these days. It's possible I just want something new to work on, but I've grown self conscious over the years. It was easier to have no shame when I was fifteen; harder, now, to come up with something that interests me that isn't absolute crap. :/

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Song Call: Johnny Clegg, "Dela"

Last one of these for a while, I promise, but since I'm on a Blaine and Silverlock kick (as I have been for the past...well, a really long time, but whatever). This is them from Blaine's point of view, at the beginning. In this case, it's more the lyrics than anything else- in particular, the translation of the Zulu lyrics as "I am content," which is a particularly Blaine-like sentiment to express.

-----

One day I looked up and there you stood
Like a simple question looking for an answer
Now I am a whale listening to some inner call
Swimming blindly to throw myself upon your shores
But what if I don't find when I have landed?
Would you leave me here to die on your shores stranded?

I think I know why the dog howls at the moon.
I think I know why the dog howls at the moon.

I say:
"Dela! Dela! Ngiyadela!
(Content, content I am content)
When I am with you!
Dela! Sondela mama, sondela!
(Closer, closer, come closer mama)
I burn for you!

I've been waiting for you all my life -- hoping for a miracle
I've been waiting day and night -- day and night!
I've been waiting day and night -- waiting for redemption
I've been waiting day and night -- I burn for you

A blind bird sings inside the cage that is my heart
And the image of your face comes to me when I'm alone in the dark
If I could give a shape to this ache that I have for you
If I could find the voice that says the words that capture you
I think I know, I think I know
I think I know, I think I know

I think I know why the dog howls at the moon.
I think I know why the dog howls at the moon.

I say:
"Dela! Dela! Ngiyadela!
(Content, content I am content)
When I am with you!
Dela! Sondela mama, sondela!
(Closer, closer, come closer mama)
I burn for you!

I've been waiting for you all my life- hoping for a miracle
I've been waiting day and night- day and night!
I've been waiting day and night- waiting for redemption
I've been waiting day and night- I burn for you
Burn for you, I burn for you
-Johnny Clegg, "Dela"

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Song Call: Duncan Sheik, "Home"

Yes, Blaine, fine, you can have the entirety of Duncan Sheik's first album as your soundtrack, go ahead. And yes, you can have some of the tracks off "Daylight," too, but not all of them.

Wangsty little fucker. *rolling eyes*

The lyrics are horribly saccharine, but I'm fond of "Home" as a relationship song for Blaine and Silverlock, more from Blaine's point of view. It's less the lyrics than the tone and the melody, honestly, and something about Duncan Sheik's voice makes me think of Blaine.

-------

Don't get me wrong, I'm feeling O.K.
But when I'm without you, it's just not the same
Don't misunderstand me, I'm feeling alright
But when I'm without you the day turns into night...into night
You dream of a future...a possible place
Where we lie together face to face
And I'm looking forward
I will not deny
I dream of a future made for you and I
You and I

...and then I'm with you
No longer alone
When I'm with you
It feels like I'm home
And you are with me
No longer alone
How could it be?
It feels like I'm home
It feels like I'm home

I look through the darkness into the sky
The moon up above me brilliantly shines
I've never been happier watching it glow
I'm here by myself, but I know I'm not alone...I'm not alone
I look through the brightness into the sky
The sun up above me, spitting out fire
Call me a child, call me naive
The world is much brighter
Than it ever used to be

-Duncan Sheik, "Home"

Song call: Voxtrot, Rise Up In the Dirt

The first time I actually listened to the lyrics of this song, I nearly fell over; this is basically my Silverlock/Blaine "OMG we're retarded and in love" song. It's their quintessential relationship song. The whole thing is mostly Silverlock talking to Blaine, but a few lines fit both of them. The lyrics kill me with how hilariously appropriate they are; I've italicized the best ones, for my own entertainment.

-----

Too many times you're gonna go out river-walkin'
Too many times you come home late

Too many times you suck yourself out of the scene,
It makes you wanna go straight
It makes you wanna go straight

Too many times you trade the bottle for the body
One drop for breath and one for skin
You say nobody knows the truth about your body,
You look tired and thin.
Are you tired and thin?


But if I were a good man, would it really happen?
Would you walk me home then everyday from work?
But maybe I'm a good man, wouldn't let it happen
I believe in love, I'm married to my work

Cause I could be a father, I could be a brother,
I could be a flower, rise up in the dirt
We were born to live here, we were born to die here
And you know this when you work
Yeah, you watch me when you work

When you are free from the work of this house
Well, you know what to do with your hands
Yes I'm sure
You got a few ideas


And when you wake from the shell of this body
Oh will you sing your ghostly lament?
Oh yes I hope
You've got something better up your sleeve

Too many times you bleed your love dry for your family
And let it over in your sleep
You'll overtry some hold the burden like a man,
Something you can keep
Something you can keep

You smell the scent of something burning in the kitchen
He smells the future on the lawn
These are the things we've come to recognize as truth,
We cut the right into wrong
We cut the right into wrong

But if I were a good man, would it really happen?
Would you walk me home then everyday from work?
But maybe I'm a good man, wouldn't let it happen
I believe in love, I'm married to my work

Cause I could be a father, I could be a brother,
I could be a flower, rise up in the dirt
We were born to live here, we were born to die here
And you know this when you work
Yeah, you watch me when you work

It seems that we used to live like rebels
But now we get scared like our parents

I shudder and think
It's just a waste of money

And when you wake up tomorrow, my son
You will be the father of something terrible
It will it shine, throughout your life

It won't bury you, cause we know

Somewhere in the darkness, you will find love,
Baby you will find love
You will feel young again
And you will feel young
-Voxtrot, "Rise Up In the Dirt"

Friday, August 10, 2007

Bad dream

"zzzzchrkSNNZZKKfiftyfourzzSNKRRSCCCKKKK -warkkkkzzz-"

"Anyone seen the Bad King?"

"Whatchu lookin' at? Dontchu be lookin' at me like that."

"Fuck, nigga I'm right here, where you goin-"

"I said meet me at the station- what the fuck-"

"zzcchhkk zzzzssssscrkcrckseventy threecskkkrk Newarkkkkkzzzssss-"

Torrential downpour- I scrambled under the overhang as soon as I got off the bus. The Port Authority was a miserable place to be under any circumstances, but it was especially bad in the rain.

Station guards were shoving people off the platform, into the building. Was it colder in here than I remembered? Hard to tell. Rain makes things fuzzy, anyway.

The flourescent lights cast no shadows.

"Bad King, man, come on, I need to get me some of that-"

"zzzkkkmergency Alertzzzkk chkkk chkksssrrr"

"Bitch, don't be talking to me that way-"

Nothing but static from my phone. "Look, I know the weather is shitty- Mellani! Mellani- just tell me which bus I need to take so I can get my fucking ticket and get home."

"zzzkkk kkkyou take the zzzzchhhrrr -even through zzzkk kkchkrr Newark-"

"Shit." I cut the call; the rain was screwing with the lines or something. It happened sometimes.

One of the guards pointed me towards a set of stairs, and I went obediently. Best not to fuck with them, especially not in rain like this. The stairs led down, and then down, and then a gate fell over them with a clang.

More flourescent lights, but more shadows this time. Graffiti on the walls, incomprehensible messages scrawled in spit and spraypaint, weird murals done in that Japanimation style. Too narrow to be a hallway; this was an access tunnel of some sort.

"Bitch, I said-"

"And then I told her not to worry, 'cuz I'd be home soon but now they got all the fucking doors closed-"

"ZzZZZZkk..lani? ...zzztell me what chkchkzzZZZZssSS-" My cell phone was still spitting static, even though I'd cut the call.

Other people in the tunnel- black girl standing at the end, by a door. Waiting for the bathroom, talking on her phone. Two men on the stairs, wearing ski caps at funny angles. Me, suit, briefcase, phone. Laptop in the bag, but I wasn't going to get a signal down here.

Wherever "here" was. Goddamn, but I hate the bus.

Voices everywhere. Static.

Started walking- found a ladder, climbed up. Banged on the grate, told the assholes on top of it to move the fuck away, let me through. Need to get home- Mellani's a bitch, and a useless bitch at that, but she worries.

New tunnel, same light, same girl standing at the end of the hall, waiting for the bathroom. The lights flickered.
b

"Bad King, you seen it? Bad King, you wan' get some for me?"

"Come on, come on, I said just a little longer baby, you just gotta wait-"

"And I'm like, no she did not and she's all fuck whatever bitch so I slapped her- yeah, I fucking did, she deserved it-"

"zzzZZZchris?"

Weird mural staring at me with giant eyes. Some sort of music group out of Asia, under the Bad King label.

The lights flickered again.

My laptop crashed to the floor, falling out of my bag- something was stuck in my throat. I coughed. Again. Then again- it was still there, stuck, squirming. Stuck two fingers down my throat, got a grip on it, pulled-

Wires, tangled up and fine as vermicelli. Sparks crawled over them- reminded me of seaweed, and sealice.

Coughed again, choked again. Kept pulling. Could feel them sliding up my throat, gag reflex kicking in, dry heaves- wet, tangled mess of wires.

"Yo, man, you okay?"

"Fuck, that's disgusting- call the cops or something-"

"Can't get a fucking signal down here, Christ-"

"Who you been talking to, then?"

"ZZZZZZZsssssssss... ... ..."

"Shit, that's nasty- man, you okay?"

One last choking cough, and that was the worst of them out- tangled, stringy mass of wires, the length of my arm, spattered across the grimy concrete floor. All that remained were the last stringy wires hanging out of my mouth, the long singular strands that I pulled out one at a time. One was long enough to make me start retching again, but it passed quickly.

Stared at the mess. My laptop had landed and opened- the screen was fuzzy with static.

"You can maybe get a signal with that thing, right? We gotta call someone-"

"No fucking signal." My voice sounded like rust. "No fucking signal, the whole system just got hacked."

Static everywhere, cutting up the voices.

"ZZZzzzzSSSSking hacked..."

They were staring at my laptop. Panic. The lights flickered.

"Whatchu mean- hacked, like, hacked?" She had implants for eyes, and they were showing nothing but snow.

"Technotist." One of the guys shook his head. "No way. Not a fucking Technotist."

Nobody said anything. Even the static on my phone was quiet, listening. Nobody wanted to say it. But it was true- the rain, the tunnel, the static.

Lights went out. No light but the glow of the girl's implants, and the static on my laptop screen.

Could feel the rain again, torrential downpour on my face. Something stuck in my throat.

"Shit."

Technotist. We were fucked.

"ZzzzzsssBadKingkkkgkkkch ssssssssss... ... ..."

"..."

Thursday, August 09, 2007

On roleplaying, in general, and character relationships

Working on a general Blaine-in-Districtmancy post at the moment, and got sidetracked.

For the last few years, most of the characters I've roleplayed intensively have been transplants from other storylines of mine. Cecelia, Stacia, and Vlad are the only characters I played for any length of time that were completely original, created for the game. They've all inserted themselves into other stories, but they didn't have their roots in those plots. Tanavir, Nevaru, Nick, Liall, Spots, and Lenore were all from other stories of mine, even if they were transformed by the game.

They weren't all transformed completely; mostly, their origins and backstories suffered radical makeovers, but their personalities didn't actually change terribly much. Tanavir was always a bitch with weird attachment complexes- but her original incarnation didn't have a clan or a family. She was just a wandering vampire chick with a vaguely obsessive crush on a sixteen year old girl. Still a bitch, though, and perfectly willing to turn on any of her companions.

Nevaru was never an alcoholic, originally- and, originally, he was in love with Tanavir. I was hoping to keep him around as a character so I could develop that, but then Tana became a demi goddess and the campaign shifted continents, so that idea got scrapped. The original Neru was a demon slayer.

Spots went from being a fanatical freedom fighter to an archaeologist with terrible luck; the original Spots MacDowell wouldn't have recognized d20 Spots in the slightest. d20 Spots, however, is totally a proto-Blaine, from his curses and bad luck to his inability to shoot things. Spots probably underwent the most radical changes, both character and background-wise.

Len comes in at a close second; she was the angel of music from Boffo, and she became a twenty-something pyrokinetic with a deep abiding love of TS Eliot and a job as a fencing instructor. Same general attitude towards the world- very happy-go-lucky, somewhat crazy. Lots of protective instincts towards her family.

Nick and Liall didn't change much, even if Nick, in Blue Rose, is a lot goofier than Toggle!Nick. His bigotry manifested itself in game in silly ways that aren't funny at all, in the story. I just don't like playing incredibly serious characters in a game. Levity is good. And Liall is generally less of a hardass- but the important thing that remains true to both characters, in both universes, is that Liall takes her job very seriously, while Nick doesn't take it seriously at all. Nick is very loyal, yes- but in Toggle, he's loyal to his wife and his horse and, eventually, Aya. His entire character rests on his obsession with a fairy tale- he sees himself as the wandering knight, in search of adventure, with his untouchable, beautiful, noble female companion. (The Tale of the Templar is something I ought to write someday- it's a lot of standard fairy tale nonsense, with a properly tragic fairy tale ending. The Templar kills himself, and the girl lives forever- that's where the story ends. In reality, the girl raises horses for a while, and then leaves to open a bar in the city- The Templar's Rest.)

Nick's connection to the Tale of the Templar colors much of what he does in Toggle; less so in Blue Rose. Liall's obsession with her job showed up more in Blue Rose than it will in Toggle- she is a soldier first, above everything else. After that, she is Nick's wife and Aya's friend- or, in Blue Rose context, Skoros' friend.

I used a lot of Toggle characters in Dead Inside, since DMing Dead Inside was mostly just a chance to wank over the NPCs. But because they were all NPCs, and I was in control of half of the game, they didn't change much. The Dead Inside universe was as much like the Toggle universe as I needed it to be. Yeah, Foxbird ended up being a member of the police, but she does eventually end up doing that anyway (sort of). Everyone else was more or less unchanged. Theron was a little more badass, Stella was a little more crazy (Triforces everywhere!), Blaine was slightly more despondent than usual (with good reason, he likes to point out), but that was about it. Silverlock was the same mix of sleazy and pathetic he is in his original incarnation (sad, but true).

Using preexisting characters in roleplay is fun and useful for getting to know your characters in different contexts. I wouldn't be nearly as close to Nick or Liall without having roleplayed them- that does, however, make their deaths that much more painful for everyone involved. And Tanavir never would've seen the light of day without getting roleplayed. On the other hand, it does change them- Nick wasn't actually a bigot until Sammy's character started hitting on him, and Blaine was probably a whole lot happier before Dead Inside.

Some characters like shifting universes- Silverlock is a slut in every sense of the word, and is always up for a new perspective. Blaine doesn't enjoy change as much, as it tends to make him miserable. I don't know if it's stress I've been dealing with or the characters' difficulties adapting to new universes, but so far whenever I try roleplaying Blaine and Silverlock, they end up separating. They'll be back together by the end of the first plot arc of Districtmancy, but still. They've been going through all sorts of crazy issues for the last year or so.

Characters go through cycles, same as everything else. There was a point in time during which anything I wrote about Opal and Tyler involved in vicious arguments and cycles of self loathing. They've since gotten over that, in my head, and are one of my personal OTPs. So I'm not terribly worried about Blaine and Silverlock; they've been an OTP of mine for years- they predate Boffo, even.

I just find it interesting to track how my characters relate to each other in the backmatter in my head. It was easier with Opal and Tyler, since I did actually finish their story. Toggle is such an enormous undertaking for me, in terms of scope and plot, and I may never finish it. So the characters are all in a sort of limbo; everything I write for them is subject to change. This is good, in some ways, because it means I don't have to worry about writing characters into a corner. But it can also be frustrating for me and the characters, because there is no preexisting framework of a story in which to set things.

I've mostly come to accept that the only things I write really are just thinly veiled epic romance stories. More on that later, maybe; I need to get out of the habit of writing ridiculously long posts here.

BAM! ZAPPO! POW!

Why the fuck am I incapable of writing action scenes? Just- augh. I know it's a problem many writers have, but I'm utterly incapable of writing any sort of action. My mind just freezes up. I can write pages and pages of useless exposition and stupid dialogue, and I can see the action I want to write perfectly in my head. I just can't describe it.

Blarg. Maybe I should try writing sex scenes. Different sort of action, but action nonetheless- and the scene I want to write right now is just a few layers of clothing removed from a sex scene, anyway.

I get too hung up on making sure a scene is finished; I should start posting shit as I write it, just to get it out of my head and into a format where I can look at it critically.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

On roleplaying (Blaine in Districtmancy)

So, Districtmancy. (Shit, this got really, really long. >.>)

I'm not sure what it says about Blaine and Silverlock that whenever I roleplay them, they end up separating. In Dead Inside it was perfectly understandable, and mostly Silverlock's fault- he's occasionally very easily distracted by shiny things. And Drake is a very shiny thing; most of Blaine's dislike of the man stems from jealousy. Too, in Dead Inside, Drake and Silverlock were trying to take over the world, and Blaine will put up with a lot of nonsense, but he draws the line at world domination.

Blaine in Districtmancy is much, much less stable than Blaine is in his original incarnation. As much as it irritates him on occasion, his immunity to drugs and alcohol in Toggle saves him from a lifetime of battling addictions. And taking care of Foxbird gives him something positive to live for during the more difficult transitional periods of his life. He doesn't have either of those things going for him in Districtmancy; when his mother dies (unfortunate traffic accident), he starts stealing things and ends up getting thrown out a window by the police when they catch him. (Hence the scars on his face- face, meet plate glass window.) He's in juvie for a few years after that. Then his father dies (heroin overdose), and he gets sent to NYUAA for healer training, where he's an antisocial punk. He doesn't have many friends on Governor's Island; he's sixteen when he ends up there.

Orrin is four years younger, and a firemancer, but also something of a punk. He attaches himself to Blaine for no good reason that anyone else can discern. (Orrin is actually an incredibly accident prone kid- he mostly sticks to Blaine as a survival instinct, since Blaine never goes anywhere without a plentiful supply of bandaids.)

Between med school and keeping Orrin from cracking his skull open on things, he gets his life somewhat under control. He finishes off school and his residency a year or so early and gets a job at Columbia Presbyterian in the ER, and becomes addicted to his work. When he can't handle being addicted to his work, he gets addicted to cocaine, too. (It was actually a series of particularly brutal ER cases that pushed him into drug use as a coping mechanism.)

(Mildly entertaining things- chain smoking and twitching are characteristics of users, but Blaine didn't start doing either until he went into rehab. Jason may occasionally comment on this, but Blaine has been clean for the last five years, apart from the cigarettes and the occasional drink, and would take accusations of being back on drugs about as well as he takes reminders of the kidney thing.)

His dealer eventually stopped taking money and instead charged favors, which was how Jason and Co ended up busting him in the middle of harvesting an illegal immigrant's kidneys for sale on the black market. Blaine's only excuse was that he was higher than a kite on something new and unidentified at the time. He only used cocaine up until that point, but his dealer suggested he try something new, in exchange for a bigger favor than usual.

He sees that point in his life as hitting absolute zero; he comes out of rehab with an incredibly rarefied sense of self loathing that six years of counseling has just barely begun to dent. The real reason he hates Jason so much is not because he thinks Jason is an irritating fuckwit (though he does), but because Jason serves as a tangible reminder of how low he'd sunk as a human being, and how precarious his grip on stability really is. It's a touchy subject for him, which is why he flies off the handle and tries to hit Jason when Jason brings up the kidney thing.

He hates Orrin in part because they were best friends, and Orrin ratted him out to ARC- but primarily because they were best friends, and he never wanted Orrin to know how incredibly screwed up he was. At some point in the future, when Silverlock asks him if he'll ever forgive Orrin, his response is, "There's nothing to forgive." Which is true- he doesn't blame Orrin for turning him in, and he is, in fact, almost grateful for it. He hates himself now, but he hates who he was before even more. He hates Orrin as a defense mechanism- he doesn't think Orrin will ever be able to forgive him for sinking so low, and he certainly doesn't think he deserves Orrin's forgiveness.

He works for Paige, at Templar's Rest. Maddel worked with him at the hospital and at NYUAA, and got him the job- Maddel mostly did this because he knew Blaine could be useful, and he would be, at the very least, entertaining. (As surrogate father figures go, he kind of sucks.) The lower level of the Rest is an upscale lounge/bar; the upper levels are occupied by art galleries and private rooms that can be rented by the hour. Most of the time, he really does just do security work- he makes sure no one goes upstairs without a proper escort, makes sure clients treat employees with the proper respect, that sort of thing. When necessary, he beats people about the head and torso with the butt of a sawed off shotgun. Occasionally, someone from Faery with a few bullet wounds shows up in one of the rooms upstairs, and then he gets called on to deal with that.

More often than not, his patients give him a 0_o look over the fact that he's human. Blaine tells them this is merely an unfortunate accident of birth, and not something that should be held against him. He does genuinely enjoy being around citizens of Faery; something about their auras, if not their incredibly racist and bigoted attitudes, is soothing to him.

He meets Foxbird on his operating table; about a month later, he meets Silverlock, who thanks him for putting Foxbird back together. (And by "thanks him" I mean they kind of have sex in Blaine's office after Silverlock uses the worst pickup line in the history of ever. I kind of really want to write that scene, because it's hilarious for me.)

My characters are a lot sharper in Districtmancy; Maddel is more of a racist Nazi asshole, and Silverlock is more of a sociopath. (I need to stop watching Oz, or at the very least, stop equating Blaine and Silverlock with Beecher and Keller. It isn't pretty.)

Blaine and Rien (though Blaine and most of the people at the Rest call him Silverlock; I imagine Drake would, too) are together for about four years prior to the start of the game. Silverlock gets attached to the point where he would actually be monogamous if Blaine asked him to- but Blaine doesn't ask, because Blaine has no self esteem. (One would not characterize their relationship as being particularly healthy, no. But Blaine is less fucked up with it than without, so go figure.)

Life is fairly uneventful, until three days prior to the beginning of the game, when Blaine lets himself into Silverlock's apartment and finds Orrin there, mostly naked. (At some point when they were both in college, it's possible Blaine and Orrin hooked up drunkenly? And then never spoke of it again? But neither of them ever stopped thinking about it, except they tried really hard to forget about it because it was really weird for everyone involved, especially me? Yes.)

To be fair, Silverlock had a plan here- he was hoping to eventually get them back on speaking terms with each other (he meets Orrin by coincidence, but he knows all of Blaine's backstory, and he's seen pictures of Orrin). It was a very half assed plan, and he went about it in a very stupid manner, but he did have a plan. Both Orrin and Blaine flip out, and there is a minor brawl; Orrin's nose gets broken, and Silverlock ends up with a black eye and a split lip. Blaine gets out with a bitemark on his shoulder, because Orrin can be really fucking vicious sometimes.

Two days later, Jason shows up at his door, and points out that, hey, not only is Blaine a healer, but he's something of an expert on dark aligned soulmancers with ties to Faery! Blaine points out that Jason is as annoying as he is ugly, and also, fucking someone for four years doesn't make you an expert on their mancy. And Jason smiles, and says, sure, fine, sorry for bothering you, I'll just go ask Brannskada if he'd like to help- I'm sure he would, he's NYPD to begin with and this sort of case would look great on his record- and Blaine tells Jason to shut the fuck up and get off his porch, and also he'd better be getting paid in cash.

So, three days after his violent breakup with Rien, he goes clubbing for great justice with a necromancer and a cop; four days after, he has to go and visit Drake of all people, who feels the need to remind him of said violent breakup. Also, he gets attacked by an invisible stalker. Five days after, he gets attacked by a werewolf, finds the mutilated body of a fourteen year old girl, and becomes a vague older-brother-figure to the same werewolf that attacked him. And if the game stays on schedule, he'll be stuck seeing Silverlock exactly one week after their break up.

It's a good thing he's got a murder case to worry about and a bunch of crazy teammates to keep in one piece; if he didn't have something to distract him, he'd probably be finding himself a new dealer. As it is? He's still probably having a bad day.

only amounts to a couple of tears

Ugh. Writing anything lately is like pulling fucking teeth. (Case in point, I wrote that sentence hours ago and couldn't find it in myself to write anything further.)

Been having nightmares, which is always fun. I suppose there's something to be said for being predictable, but that doesn't mean I particularly enjoy it.

Build up to Blaine's death, because I can't, you know, write something upbeat for once. I blame it on listening to an excess of Duncan Sheik, and the heat. It's impossible to be upbeat in this weather.

-------------------

He knew most of the apprentices by name; all of them ended up in the infirmary at some point or other. Theirs wasn't a safe or easy profession, and training left scars.

"Thank you, Healer Torkehaav." The girl called herself Mist, though her mother had named her Cecily, and Blaine had been there to cut the cord when she was born. He wondered when he'd gotten so old, sometimes. She flexed her fingers carefully.

"My pleasure, Lady Mist. Your hand won't be back to full strength for another few weeks- don't strain it, or I'll put you on probation for stupidity."

"Aye, sir." She grinned. "As you say."

"Off with you- get out of my infirmary, I'm sick of seeing you here." He pushed her towards the door and she ran out without another word.

Blaine slumped against the examination table, head bowed. Mist's hand had been completely crushed- an accident with a locked vault, the sort of thing that happened more often to thieves than assassins. He stared at his own hands, which still surprised him with their lack of scars. His reflection in the mirror still startled him on occasion, though that was as much because he avoided mirrors out of habit as it was his appearance.

He clenched his right hand into a fist, and uncurled his fingers slowly, one by one. Then he clenched his left- but his fingers would only curl weakly towards his palm.

He touched the examination table, then tried to pick up a crucible- and he cursed when it slid through his fingers. He wasn't quick enough to catch it before it shattered on the floor.

Fighting down panic and despair, he took down a scalpel from the rack along the wall. He couldn't feel the edge of it along his palm, couldn't feel the tip of it pushing into his fingers. Just numbness, and the sight of blood pooling beneath his hand.

Maddel found him on the floor some time later; he'd sliced his hand to ribbons and hadn't bothered to stem the bleeding.

"What the fuck are you doing?" The elf knelt beside him and began binding the cuts with magic and bandages. "Idiot."

Blaine smiled weakly, and ran his good hand through his graying hair. "I think I'm dying," he said quietly. "What do you think?"

Maddel paused and stared him in the eye. Blaine could feel the soft brush of aether against his senses while the Masterhealer examined him.

"Well?" Blaine asked, after Maddel was silent for a little too long.

He looked away, frowning, and tied off the bandages around Blaine's hand. "I think you're right."

Blaine laughed humorlessly. "I hate it when that happens." He leaned his head back against the cabinets and stared at the ceiling.

Maddel sat back on his heels and lit a cigarette. "You only just noticed?"

"Aye."

"It's just the hand for now, but it'll spread- extremities first, then-"

"I'm aware of how it progresses, thank you, sir." Slow nerve death, his borrowed body grinding to a halt. He'd be bedridden within a matter of weeks, and then it would be a race to see whether his brain would die before his internal organs. Slow, messy, and inevitable.

"You'll have to tell your family."

His family. He almost laughed. "Not yet."

"Torkehaav." Maddel's voice was serious enough to pull Blaine's eyes away from the ceiling. "Don't be a fucking coward. You have to tell them."

"I'll tell them." He looked away. "But not yet." His good hand scrabbled for purchase against the counter, and he pulled himself to his feet. "I need a few days off, sir."

Maddel sighed, and rubbed his eyes. "Fine. You have three days, and if you try to disappear, I'll hunt you down and drag you back myself."

"Duly noted." He touched Maddel on the shoulder. "For what it's worth, old man, I'm sorry."

"Get out of here before I hurt you, Torkehaav. You know full well I'm not above hitting someone who can't hit back." Maddel's glare was fierce. "And don't you dare apologize to me again."

"Wouldn't dream of it, sir." He left Maddel staring at the shattered crucible on the floor, and pretended he didn't see or feel the hurt in the elf's stance.

Theoretically, he could live for months while his body broke down; the thought sickened and infuriated him. Some gods held suicide to be a sin, but his had never been one of them. It was time to pay the Avatar a visit.