[Sloth] Titles Are Largely Things That Happen To Other Posts

[4_20_100]

Yellow light flickers in the soft, blue fields and two figures appear. Releasing Gabriel, Hastur staggers and weaves a few steps. The yellow light around him dies down completely, fading into him or wicking away in thin plumes and trails into the air until he is nothing more than a beaten-looking man in tattered yellow-gold robes

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[mrseysidescousr]

Sigh.

Only one thing for it, then.

He drinks at the stream, retches again in the weeds, finishes his drink and a bit of washing up later he drags Flavius over. He washes the man's face, takes a look at any wounds, and tries to rebandage them the best he can. His own shoulder gouges have stopped bleeding a while back, but they're swollen and hot. He carefully cleanses them, then removes his shirt and rips it into strips that he tries washing as well, before applying them.

Now. He wonders how far this place is across, what might be beyond. If they'll make it there. If it isn't just better to lie down and sleep. Sleep and sleep.

i won't die here. i refuse. [you have no choice in the matter. things are wrong here, and you know it, and you also know there's a crack in here that's widening, don't you? things are spilling out, and somewhere in here are spiders--]

Spiders. Like memories. Fragments.

Renewed in his mind, if not in his body, he gets to his feet and picks the body of Flavius up and draping him over his shoulder. The man was surprisingly light [or i'm not sure how much energy I'm using to move him] and he starts to walk.

[4_20_100]

The only clue, really, that Flavius is not as human as he appears to be, lies in the blood that oozes sluggishly from a few wounds--it's a deep, dark, black-purple-red, slightly thicker than a human's blood ought to be.

He still does not wake during all of this, though he makes a soft sound once or twice.

He is very light--terribly thin, really, and flops bonelessly over Gabriel's shoulder. And there he hangs, for many many steps. A very long time, until the blood in his head causes him to twitch, a slight myoclonic jerk of his legs, but it's strangely enough to wake him where all that washing and prodding and hauling about had failed.

He splutters and coughs and makes a few incoherent sounds.

[mrseysidescousr]

Gabriel has been walking for a long while. He hasn't noticed the time pass as many would, as he's been drifting in and out of sleep, out of memories. A grassy hill becomes a beach, which changes to the dark hallways of a house, footsteps creaking from his passage. An underground tunnel, dripping with condensation. An open-air market. A column of flame.

He's half-dozing when the man over his shoulder twitches, and stops when he hears the coughing. Luckily, he's been following the stream, so they're still near water.

Gabriel shifts Flavius so that he's sitting beside the stream and sits down himself. The weight is still there, coaxing him to sleep and sleep, but he pushes back.

refuse to die here.

[4_20_100]

Flavius rolls over onto his side, coughing, and then struggles up onto his elbows and knees, where his coughing expels some black substance or other, as well, amid pained sounds. He crawls weakly toward the stream, kittenlike, eyes half-open, and flops onto the ground. Shaking hands manage to bring water to his mouth, eventually. He uses the water to spit out the foul taste the black stuff left, and then drinks.

"How--" he coughs. "How long... have we been here?" More coughing. "What happened?" His voice is a rough scratch, so different from its usual soft tone.

[mrseysidescousr]

Gabriel moves closer and helps him get a drink, lets him lean if he needs to. He feels like he's done this before [white hair white hands] and he moves without thought.

"The... red thing exploded and took Jeff and Soze with it and... there was a tin of potted meat, the entire world wanted to kill us. And then we were here, suddenly." He brushes the hair out of the other man's [albino] eyes.

"I've been walking. I don't know how long."

Gabriel himself looks like a hairball that's been hacked up by a diseased cat. His eyes are black pits with blue at the centre, and like Flavius he's filthy and tattered. Only his two ivory fingers seem untouched, gleaming in the sunlight.

[4_20_100]

He is terribly pale, and though his hair is blond instead of white and his eyes yellow instead of pale blue/violet, his colour is so washed out that one might not notice these differences. He leans against Gabriel.

"... Exploded...." he whispers. Memories come back to him, flickering in yellow light. He'd meant to remove the infection from Jeff and his bondmate and instead ... they'd burst open. Blood and insides and ....

He'd killed them. Worse than destroying mind, he'd taken life, out of a misguided aim to do what he thought was right. Out of a grandiose notion that he could make things so much better.... And all he'd done was destroyed what he'd touched. Again. Like always.

Carter had been wrong. He should have gone home. Home to his silent halls and empty city. Just himself, alone, where no-one could be harmed or killed by his monstrous existence.

"Exploded... ah gods...." he chokes, before, without thinking, he buries his head against Gabriel's shoulder and sobs.

[mrseysidescousr]

Gabriel does know the difference, but he's so damned tired that the lines of reality--or the lack thereof--are blurring.

"Aye," he says as he pets Flavius' head, his accent sounding more and more of Liverpool and New Jersey. "Y'tried, though." He sighs, letting himself relax.

This is not a very smart thing to do in the realm of Sloth.

[4_20_100]

Flavius weeps for quite a while in this place where time seems to slip away. Weeps until he runs out of tears and finds himself coughing and wheezing again. That serves to wake him up a little, his head pounding. He looks at Gabriel, who is likely half asleep, at least, and then manages to reach out and scoop up some water, splashing it on his own face.

"This place ... I'm sure if we fall asleep here, we'll die here," he says shakily.

[mrseysidescousr]

"Mfh?" Yeah, he's more than halfway there. It's pulling him down.

not dying here.

"Nnh." He starts to get up, wavers and turns away from Flavius, retching again. More thick, chunky black stuff with red in.

not.

"Yeah, aye... I think so." Coughing, purging. Drinking water now.

[4_20_100]

"Not you, too..." Flavius chokes, trying desperately to stop himself curling up and weeping again. He pulls weakly at Gabriel's shoulder. "Don't die because of me, as well... please...."

[mrseysidescousr]

Gabriel clears his throat, spits.

"I refuse to die in this fucking place." He takes another drink of the water, washing his mouth out.

"I think I'm remembering things." [the dark stairs, fire, light lightning whisper smoke and ether]

He shakes his head to clear it. "You're not, either."

[4_20_100]

"... Remembering?" he searches his own memory and it takes a while before he recalls that, yes, this man had lost his memory. He manages a wan smile. "It's always hard, isn't it? You always have to ... die, or ... nearly die ...." He rubs his chest, more at the memory of pain than at any present pain. He'd been so weak after that. So fragile. His eyes slip shut but flicker open again when Gabriel speaks.

"I'm ... I'm not?"

[mrseysidescousr]

"No, you're not." Twitch. Damnit, not now. "I think... I was pretty good at keeping people alive, at one time."

Gabriel looks at him.

"Do you think you can walk, or should you go over the shoulder again?"

[4_20_100]

Flavius pushes himself up off the ground as well, and looks ahead of them. Oh... a building. Not far now, then, right?

"I think ... I think I can walk that far. Once we get out of here we shouldn't be nearly this sleepy." He isn't going to make someone carry his wretched carcass any further.

But they might find themselves leaning on each other.