Oct 29, 2009 23:58
Midnight passes again
(
Read more... )
julian sark,
cy,
captain jack harkness,
josef soltini,
the baron,
elizabeth jules,
plot: ten plagues,
jamie d'vart,
avery campbell,
ruvin,
den varlis,
amity mackenzie,
fred burkle,
robin rice,
michael westen,
plot: game-wide,
babel,
kelly peyton,
ianto jones,
phoebe donovan,
sam tyler,
luke roberts,
tomei wolf,
aniki forfrysning,
csp-04,
jack bristow
Leave a comment
She exhales sharply and then inhales, reminding herself that she can breathe. It is apparently her ward that is slowly suffocating and being crushed and she felt that weird bonecrunching feeling that she's come to associate with shifting.
After getting herself untangled from her sheets, which is difficult as her wings have come out and as she's not wearing a pajama top that's wing-accessible, she's forced to toss the shirt aside. Hopefully, no one is going to mind if she tends to her ward wearing nothing but pajama pants and a bra.
Mac races towards the maintenance hallway, skidding to a stop when her WARD IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU sense goes off and does not find the rottweiler she was expecting to find, but a very displeased dolphin.
Her ward. Is a dolphin.
She tears at her hair and yells at the ceiling. "DOES ANY OTHER GUARDIAN ANGEL'S LIFE SUCK AS MUCH AS MINE? I REALLY WANNA KNOW."
Reply
J squirms enough to see who's just come skidding in, not that he expects Mac to be too far away when he's slowly being crushed under his own weight. He looks up, or tries to, and makes... a noise. He doesn't even want to know what that noise is classified as, but hopefully it gets across some if not all of I'm SORRY! I'm sure I'm going to be perfectly fine when this plague thing wears off and I understand that it's entirely unfair that you have to suffer through it with me but I had no control over this and it HURTS which I'm sure you know and WHY AM I A DOLPHIN? I - JUST - WHY?
...it's a very eloquent noise, his.
Reply
Upon actually seeing the flailing (and topless) redhead and dolphin, however, his expression undergoes a series of significant changes. For a moment, just a moment, there's wonder, because... Well, because Ianto's always been irrationally fond of dolphins, and J's beautiful, in a way. But the wonder gives way to obvious distress before it can even properly register -- beautiful and in pain, and it hurts, and then he reminds himself that this is J...
And really, that hurts more, but there's no sense in imposing his feelings on this, is there? J isn't Jack, not anymore, and that's not a mistake he can afford to make again. His expression settles into a hardened neutrality, as he offers Mac the bucket.
"Hopefully, these will help. I'll see what I can do about finding a temporary tank of some sort."
Reply
But apparently his skills in trans-species language aren't so hot when he's a sea mammal.
And then comes the clatter-clop of actually rather large hooves.
Great.
J has not ranked the list of people he would or would not like to see, but the math isn't hard to do. So far as who he'd most like to run into in this particular situation, Ianto Jones ranks somewhere above the Doctor and beneath literally everyone else in Torchwood, including Toshiko, if only because being stuck as an odontocetus is really more ludicrous than threatening or triggering.
Mac may be realizing that, along with the mass of physical discomfort she's still getting, there's also a cold, sharp-edged pressure congealing in the analogue to the pit of J's stomach. This, of course, is purely emotional.
He tries to bare his teeth; that's an instinctive reaction, carried up from the dog instinct that never entirely vanishes even at the best of times. And if you've never heard a dolphin try to make a dog's threatened snarl...
Lovely. Wonderful. I suppose you've come to see if I was comfortable? If you'd prefer, we can skip right to the part where you tell me to fuck myself or whatever the curse du jour is, and you can be on your way.
Reply
When Ianto shows up, the relief overwhelms everything else and Mac gratefully accepts the bucket. "I could kiss you right now, but I'm sure that's probably a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen," she mutters.
Thankfully, she's already set the bucket down when she feels J's weird emotional response, otherwise she might have dropped it. She hisses and then looks from J to Ianto and throws up her hands.
"There is no one in this world, you're not slightly dysfunctional with, is there?" She picks up a towel and starts wetting him down, muttering profanities under her breath. ..Yeah, she has no idea what's going on here and she really doesn't want to. She just wants to deal with the dolphin in the room and let them take care of their elephant.
Ward discomfort because he's a dolphin and slowly having his organs crushed? She can deal with that. Emotional baggage that could fill an airport? No way.
Reply
And that, on top of Mac's comment about sexual harassment. ("Careful, sir, that's harassment," years ago and a universe away...) His expression gets a bit more strained, a bit more determinedly neutral, and anyone watching his body language can see him flinch, ever so slightly, when she says that.
He closes his eyes, tries to push it all aside, to ignore the tail that's tucked tightly against the back of his kilt, pressed firmly down and wagging slowly back and forth in something that's equal parts submission and misery. He needs to get out of here. He needs...
He needs everything he can't have. Lisa, Jack, Anna, Winter... All of them out of reach, now.
"It's all right," he says. "I'll go." He's not sure which of them he's telling that to, and he's not really sure that it matters.
"I'll send word on the journals if I can track down anything that'll hold him."
He turns to leave, before he starts to cry, before he starts to scream, before he does anything else he'll regret.
Reply
Of course, if he did, certain parties would not be here at all.
He waits until Ianto's out of sight, then rears up and twists, catching Mac's wrist in his teeth. He doesn't bite down, but there's enough pressure there to suggest that oh, he could, and if the mass of tangled anger-resentment-frustration-pain coming down the ward link isn't enough to carry the message, he's hoping that the look in his eyes will carry it just as well. Not that he has any idea what his eyes look like, which ordinarily might be a sort of a blessing.
Don't. Don't even think about trying to comment on the history of damage I share with everyone in this tower. Don't even think about being smart about this, because this is a house of cards just waiting for an opportunity to fall into the fire.
After all, he did read that response - even with his senses fucked all to hell, even with an history full of holes with every Ianto he's ever run into, some things are gut instinct and some things are long accustomization and some things ring so loud to a torturer's sense of situational awareness that they might as well be trumpet calls. They may have already reached an agreement on what they are to each other - the coward, the user, the impostor versus the one who's already judged and found useless - but if anyone's going to be hurt on J's account, J would much rather it be under his control.
Not that he had a choice in any of this.
Dammit, he'd have taken the dog. He'd have taken the dog crushed under a fallen section of wall, he'd have taken the dog shot full of shotgun pellets or sick unto death, he'd have taken the dog because there'd be at least a chance the dog could have crawled away from this and left his suffering to be his own damn problem and not something to be solved by fucking committee.
He can handle pain. He can even handle powerlessness. What he can't handle is this sort of vulnerability, especially not when it's dragging charity out of people who could be existing quite happily if he'd never fallen (back) into their lives at all.
Reply
And then there's pressure on her wrist, mixed with the agitation in the pit of her stomach that comes from J's wonderful little melting pot of emotions, and while a lesser guardian would probably be losing their shit right now, Mac probably got J as a ward for a reason.
Rather than risk him biting her hand more if she tries to jerk her hand away, she rears back and punches him the head as hard as she possibly can. The recoil on the bond HURTS, but it's worth it. If she wasn't a little accustomed to pain, she would have broken ages ago.
"Don't look at me like I'm the root of all evil, boy," she snarls, hand still clenched into a fist. "Stop being an idjit."
Reply
He thrashes, recoiling from the shock of a hard punch from a wings-out angel. It's such a blinding percussion that for an instant it transcends pain.
Of course, the next instant leaves him dealing with the fact that he's pretty sure she just fractured his skull for him, and somewhere in the cascade of angry dolphin noises coming out of his gullet and the incoherent affront and screaming frustration dancing the fandango up and down his organs, somewhere in the quite literally splitting headache he's developed, he twists and kicks hard enough to almost double over, writhing painstakingly down the hall away from his guardian angel.
Fuck this. Fuck this. He didn't ask for any of this. They're perfectly free to leave him to his indignity. The drugs are still an option. He just needs to get away.
Reply
Mac ignores the blinding, skull-crushing pain in her head and the crushing weight on her organs that doesn't belong to her and whips one of the wet towels out of the bucket before chasing him down the hall and jumping on his back to pin him down.
The towel is promptly used to wet him down, although Mac is making no attempt to be gentle about this. He will stay put, he will covered in towels, and then he will be put into a dolphin tank and mailed to the San Diego zoo, for all she cares. Granted, she will have to follow, and she had no real aspirations at any point to be a dolphin's agent, BUT THIS WOULD BE PREFERABLE TO WHAT SHE HAS NOW.
"You are so not going to win this battle, J. Now hold still."
Reply
Oh, and he's still thrashing.
I don't NEED your concern! It's hard to communicate that with all normal modes of communication cut off. Oh, he could resort to morse code, but that would require him to cool down enough to apply rational thought to this situation, and that option's not on the table right now. No concern, no pity, no goddamn ACCOMMODATIONS, and if your godDAMN Supernatural court could have just thrown me in a lockup like any comparatively sane system of 20C/Local justice would have done we could have never met and this PROBLEM would never have arisen and I. DO NOT NEED. YOUR PHILANTHROPY!
He rolls.
He's not trying to crush her; just get her off his back and possibly pinned where he can... he's not sure. It's not as if he can communicate this mass of ultimatum, and it's possible her skull is just as thick as his. ...with the added advantage of not being in pieces, though he can feel the tingle of energy indicating that he won't have that problem for more than about ten seconds longer. With the jolt that runs through him, knitting the bones, for a moment the slow settling of his organs is relieved; then it's back to the beginning, the air easing its claws into his hide, his weight just beginning its surrender to gravity.
See? No damage! I'm really fucking GODDAMN FINE!
Reply
And then he rolls and Mac is smart enough to catch the sudden shift before it becomes a full on roll and all but throws herself off his back, using the momentum from his roll to propel her out of the way, tucking her wings in, which sends her rolling into the nearest wall with enough force to make her see stars for a second.
And then she gasps as she feels J's life trickle away and she instinctively curls into a fetal ball, the horrible WARD DYING, WARD DYING panic setting in, even though the bond isn't fully broken. It's like J just managed to run to Bermuda and get himself suffocated at the same time.
And then it's fine, aside from the crushing weight on her stomach again. She stays curled up, her back to J, her body pressed against the wall. Amity Jane Mackenzie does not say die, but first she has to recover enough of her senses and get her temper in check lest this situation become any more untenable.
Slowly, she uncurls herself, walks back to the bucket, retrieves it, walks back, and then proceeds to dump the water on J's body without a word. The remaining towel is slapped on his tail. The one that got discarded during the thrashing gets smacked behind his dorsal fin and the bucket gets dropped on his head.
Mac crosses her arms over her chest and arches an eyebrow. "Your move, Flipper."
Reply
He sort of just wants to curl up under something and wait for this day to be over.
Are we done? Can we be done? Another noise, this one distinctly plaintive. I'm just staying in here where I can't cause trouble with anyone. You can see how well bringing other people in will work. Just let me be.
Reply
She plops down in front of them and just stares. Eventually, someone will have to find a pool or something and until then, she can't rightly leave him in pain and agony. It's hard to do anything when you can't shake the constant WARD IS DYING, WARD IS DYING feeling and that's without the fucking emo.
"You don't believe in happiness ever, do you? Granted, if you were happy now, you'd be the worst kind of masochist. I mean in a general way."
She leans over to get the bucket and brings it closer. She has a feeling she'll need it. Even when he can't talk, he's annoying.
Reply
Pause.
Click-trill, trill-trill. Pause. Slowly, painstakingly, in Morse code, he spells out I am a WAR CRIMINAL.
War criminals don't get happiness. They especially don't get happy fun times with people who still hate them for who they are/what they've done/who they are not.
He lets his chin drop onto the floor again. He's a war criminal. And his three closest friends are a whore who can't let go of the hero-worship flowing up from before he went insane, a Charun who needs to periodically kill him, and a teenaged werewolf he didn't tell anything of his past to until he was on trial. Yeah. He's not holding out a lot of hope for rollicking joy any time in the next generation or two.
Reply
"Look, I'm still pissed about you kidnapping my sister, but the thing is, you're not exactly a walking paragon of terror right now. Oh sure, you could be. I've felt the shit that goes on in your head and if you had half a mind to, you would have torn my fuckin' arm off. You ever think that maybe trying to make a fresh start instead of nestin' in angst might be a better tactic?"
Of course not. She knows the type. Either they're always going to be unrepentant sociopaths or they repent and still think they're nothing but sociopaths.
She sighs and leans back, rubbing her temples. "You, sir, are an idjit."
Reply
Leave a comment