OH LOOK A DUMP.
Some Goril and some Anarchists' Eden stuff I've been pecking away at.
Sometimes he gets lonely. At rarer times, he feels how tired he really is. But he keeps walking, hunting food and criminal alike, barely sleeping, until he is almost dead on the very doorstep of the City that he was born in. Not that he realizes or even knows or even knew that he was in the midst of his origin.
Even if he knew, he wouldn’t have cared much at that point. He’s numb to all but the burn scars across his back and the ring burning a cold circle on his fever-ridden chest.
He was found lying in a puddle of rain on the cracked and neglected asphalt on the outskirts of a city called the Brokedown Skyline. Sick. His body as neglected as the pavement beneath him, the price of becoming a soldier machine. He barely wakes up as he feels his torso lifted by his armpits, as he is dragged across damp tarmac and grassy areas where dirt collected in the absence of mankind. He has been in cities where there are still people servicing the concrete and steel and glass, but this world he views through his fever-dream eyes is a different story indeed. Almost a different planet. Broken, retaken by nature, but still alive and so green. So green.
It must be spring now.
It has been two months since he left Detroit.
“Hesuz almighty, man, what’d you get into?”
He can’t exactly identify the voice. It sounds like a little boy, but is far too mature. He mumbles an incoherent answer past his chapped lips, and receives water in return.
He chokes on it a little and then receives an apology as well.
“Oh man I’m sorry look I’m not a doctor I just know field stuff-“ he’s not really registering the almost constant flow of words. Just that there are words pushing past his fever. He is so sick he can see those words like red dripping across static shapes. His mind is a mess of white noise that’s slowly coming into focus. “-I know someone who does know better medical stuff though, if you can stand me moving you one more time. He doesn’t talk much but he knows what he’s doing-“
this time, he is not dragging. He’s bouncing along on some sort of rolling table and the sun is bright and it hurts and every bounce sends a jitter through the patterns of his fever dreams.
He passes out one more time and relives that moment standing in the snow, hiding away before the final charge. The ring was around someone else’s neck then. His partner’s neck. An his collar was still keeping him warm back then.
“We’re going to make it, right?”
“I dunno. The hell you ask something like that for?”
“I’ve just been thinking is all.”
“Tch. Didn’t know ya’ could do that.”
“Yeah, ha ha. Shut the fuck up.”
“I’ll shut up when ya’ damn well get to the point, kid.”
“Point taken. Look. Whether or not we make it out alive. About that ‘mistake’ I made…”
He had thrust the collar at his partner and he had felt winter breathe on his now uncovered neck. He didn’t give him a chance to refuse it. Almost at once, the ring made its way, chain and all, into his pocket.
“Best mistake I ever made.”
“… We ever made.”
Only shoulders touched. Sharing a tattoo, sharing heat; it seemed they could even share adrenaline, that they could be invincible that way.
It was that night out of all nights that they had to fail. It was inevitable.
He woke up reaching for his guns and letting out a bloody cry of a warrior, still fevered, face contorted in absolute fury.
He was surprised to find himself in a much more dilapidated room than he was just in, in his dream (it was so real, he swore, he swore) there had been so many men left to cut down-no. Just some scrawny boy in one corner, cowering away to avoid weapons of consequence. Jack looked to his hands, saw the broken bedpost in his right hand and the crowbar in his left and dropped them. His hand strayed to his chest on reflex, afraid, fear, af-oh god it was still there. That body-warmed ring of metal was still there.
That Ring and the Tattoo on his shoulder were all he had left of that life in the fever-dream.
Now there was something he didn't want to remember.
Loss.
-----------------------------------------------------------
“You… don’t want to look at that one.” He said. He placed the strange globe on a higher shelf. “It’s already a failing Memory anyhow. Best let it lie.”
“I can’t do that, you realize.” Yaremi, pale and beautiful Yaremi, prideful Yaremi, fearless Yaremi… He looked up the ladder, his face an indistinguishable mess of emotions, all of them colored with a hue of desperation. “It is a Memory that belongs to me… To my Brother and I. If we leave it to rot-“
Chi Ichi narrowed his eyes. The Hu-Hsein was a duplicitous creature, but this time the fear in his voice was real. And real fear came from real knowledge. “Something in this broken Memory troubles you?”
“Yes. And it will be troubling you as well,” He stepped back from the library ladder to allow the Godson to step down beside him; dark, traditional eastern robes beside bright, off-white western tailored suit clashed, everything about them men but their intelligence completely different. “I can promise you that.”
The globe pulsed eerily. Red. Chi Ichi nearly dropped it in disgust from what he felt beneath it.
“This Sphere is blasphemy.”
“And if you destroy it, what do you think will come of that? More blasphemy will crawl from between the shards into this realm, the blasphemy will creep into all that have a stake in this memory!”
The Godson closed his eyes, let the Memory Sphere pulse again, let it become one with his memory for mere moments.
Streets smeared with gore and smelling of fear and refuse and insanity and razor wires streaking through the air and pain and screams and the sun never rises on this accursed city-- People as weapons, people as slaves, people far beneath the city with broken souls ripped from tortured bodies to create things of cold and terrible beauty and power. The taste of joy in pain, the taste of ambition to take things further, the taste of the twisted state that considers murder an art and rapine a delicacy. A City as a game of Chess, and he recognized the faces upon the pieces, the faces of the puppets were the kind, just, real people that walked along the Fence, and those faces were contorted by the agonies within the Memory.
Within the Sphere was Hell. Deep, Pure. Hell.
“You understand? This is not simply any Broken Dream.”
Chi Ichi tossed the accursed thing to Yaremi, a rare look of disgust on his face.
“It will consume us.”
Sometimes he gets lonely. At rarer times, he feels how tired he really is. But he keeps walking, hunting food and criminal alike, barely sleeping, until he is almost dead on the very doorstep of the City that he was born in. Not that he realizes or even knows or even knew that he was in the midst of his origin.
Even if he knew, he wouldn’t have cared much at that point. He’s numb to all but the burn scars across his back and the ring burning a cold circle on his fever-ridden chest.
He was found lying in a puddle of rain on the cracked and neglected asphalt on the outskirts of a city called the Brokedown Skyline. Sick. His body as neglected as the pavement beneath him, the price of becoming a soldier machine. He barely wakes up as he feels his torso lifted by his armpits, as he is dragged across damp tarmac and grassy areas where dirt collected in the absence of mankind. He has been in cities where there are still people servicing the concrete and steel and glass, but this world he views through his fever-dream eyes is a different story indeed. Almost a different planet. Broken, retaken by nature, but still alive and so green. So green.
It must be spring now.
It has been two months since he left Detroit.
“Hesuz almighty, man, what’d you get into?”
He can’t exactly identify the voice. It sounds like a little boy, but is far too mature. He mumbles an incoherent answer past his chapped lips, and receives water in return.
He chokes on it a little and then receives an apology as well.
“Oh man I’m sorry look I’m not a doctor I just know field stuff-“ he’s not really registering the almost constant flow of words. Just that there are words pushing past his fever. He is so sick he can see those words like red dripping across static shapes. His mind is a mess of white noise that’s slowly coming into focus. “-I know someone who does know better medical stuff though, if you can stand me moving you one more time. He doesn’t talk much but he knows what he’s doing-“
this time, he is not dragging. He’s bouncing along on some sort of rolling table and the sun is bright and it hurts and every bounce sends a jitter through the patterns of his fever dreams.
He passes out one more time and relives that moment standing in the snow, hiding away before the final charge. The ring was around someone else’s neck then. His partner’s neck. An his collar was still keeping him warm back then.
“We’re going to make it, right?”
“I dunno. The hell you ask something like that for?”
“I’ve just been thinking is all.”
“Tch. Didn’t know ya’ could do that.”
“Yeah, ha ha. Shut the fuck up.”
“I’ll shut up when ya’ damn well get to the point, kid.”
“Point taken. Look. Whether or not we make it out alive. About that ‘mistake’ I made…”
He had thrust the collar at his partner and he had felt winter breathe on his now uncovered neck. He didn’t give him a chance to refuse it. Almost at once, the ring made its way, chain and all, into his pocket.
“Best mistake I ever made.”
“… We ever made.”
Only shoulders touched. Sharing a tattoo, sharing heat; it seemed they could even share adrenaline, that they could be invincible that way.
It was that night out of all nights that they had to fail. It was inevitable.
He woke up reaching for his guns and letting out a bloody cry of a warrior, still fevered, face contorted in absolute fury.
He was surprised to find himself in a much more dilapidated room than he was just in, in his dream (it was so real, he swore, he swore) there had been so many men left to cut down-no. Just some scrawny boy in one corner, cowering away to avoid weapons of consequence. Jack looked to his hands, saw the broken bedpost in his right hand and the crowbar in his left and dropped them. His hand strayed to his chest on reflex, afraid, fear, af-oh god it was still there. That body-warmed ring of metal was still there.
That Ring and the Tattoo on his shoulder were all he had left of that life in the fever-dream.
Now there was something he didn't want to remember.
Loss.
-----------------------------------------------------------
“You… don’t want to look at that one.” He said. He placed the strange globe on a higher shelf. “It’s already a failing Memory anyhow. Best let it lie.”
“I can’t do that, you realize.” Yaremi, pale and beautiful Yaremi, prideful Yaremi, fearless Yaremi… He looked up the ladder, his face an indistinguishable mess of emotions, all of them colored with a hue of desperation. “It is a Memory that belongs to me… To my Brother and I. If we leave it to rot-“
Chi Ichi narrowed his eyes. The Hu-Hsein was a duplicitous creature, but this time the fear in his voice was real. And real fear came from real knowledge. “Something in this broken Memory troubles you?”
“Yes. And it will be troubling you as well,” He stepped back from the library ladder to allow the Godson to step down beside him; dark, traditional eastern robes beside bright, off-white western tailored suit clashed, everything about them men but their intelligence completely different. “I can promise you that.”
The globe pulsed eerily. Red. Chi Ichi nearly dropped it in disgust from what he felt beneath it.
“This Sphere is blasphemy.”
“And if you destroy it, what do you think will come of that? More blasphemy will crawl from between the shards into this realm, the blasphemy will creep into all that have a stake in this memory!”
The Godson closed his eyes, let the Memory Sphere pulse again, let it become one with his memory for mere moments.
Streets smeared with gore and smelling of fear and refuse and insanity and razor wires streaking through the air and pain and screams and the sun never rises on this accursed city-- People as weapons, people as slaves, people far beneath the city with broken souls ripped from tortured bodies to create things of cold and terrible beauty and power. The taste of joy in pain, the taste of ambition to take things further, the taste of the twisted state that considers murder an art and rapine a delicacy. A City as a game of Chess, and he recognized the faces upon the pieces, the faces of the puppets were the kind, just, real people that walked along the Fence, and those faces were contorted by the agonies within the Memory.
Within the Sphere was Hell. Deep, Pure. Hell.
“You understand? This is not simply any Broken Dream.”
Chi Ichi tossed the accursed thing to Yaremi, a rare look of disgust on his face.
“It will consume us.”