[closed]
Who: Priscilla (yetsleeping) and Isley (swordofthenorth)
When: Wednesday Evening, after this thread.
Where: Priscilla's suite at the Alliance HQ.
Format: Actionsauce.
What: Isley comes by to discuss his issues with Priscilla. Priscilla, meanwhile, just accidentally awakened some of hers.
Warnings: ...Isley is a dick! also, tl;dr setup, geez.
[It's easy to just lose track of time.]
[Case in point: Priscilla. She knew, when she set about putting her things in order, that Isley would be coming, although he wasn't entirely concrete on the timing. And yet, somehow, rummaging through her old things, salvaged from the wreckage of the first Headquarters, she still manages to forget the time. Maybe it's the bag of stuffed animals - the ones she won at the carnival last winter, when she'd been stood up by someone... but had gone anyway, with Elena. Together they won every stuffed animal at every both they passed, and split the haul in two and... actually, knowing Elena, she probably sold hers. Priscilla, on the other hand? She set them up in a line in her closet, just before the vault. Nestled between her cloaks and her almost-entirely-normal Anatolian clothing. That was where they lived until the headquarters came down.]
[Now they're dusty, and a little lonely looking, so she drags the bag into the center of the floor, and makes a note that they need to be cleaned, and heads back into the closet to look through her armory, her boxes, her old things, things she hasn't looked at in nearly a year, aside from the few seconds it took to throw them in a box, or a bag. She didn't have much, then. She'd never been very materialistic. Only weapons, and souvenirs and--]
[--and one thing, purchased after, while she was staying in Senji's apartment over the noodle shop. Something she'd tossed in the back of the closet, behind all her things, when she moved back into her old home. Or her new home. The memory recorder.]
[Priscilla brushes her fingers over its screen, remembering - remembering the short but harrowing trek into Dismas with Senji, and haggling with the tunnelmen. Remembering the night she spent pouring everything she could remember about Isley into it - her warning to herself to remember what he was, if he tried to come near her again. Or if she disappeared, and was replaced with another her - one who didn't remember, didn't know. Her attempt to save herself from falling into his web... again.]
[In the end, it hadn't really done its job.]
[And she doesn't know why, or what she hopes to gain from it, or even if it was a conscious decision at all... but pressing that recorder's buttons, watching her own life play out across that screen in vivid color and perfect detail... that makes her lose time, too. Enough time to bring her from the moment they met - bare fingers touching in the ruins, white cloak passed from one to the other and Isley circling her like the predator he always has been - to the end of act one. The end of the tape: the shuddering house, and his cool voice telling her, Caterpillars disappear so that butterflies can be born. Telling her he expected her to be angrier.]
[Run, my dear, and I will give chase. Hide, and I will tear up by the roots everything in this wretched city until I find you...and I will find you, mark my words.]
[And she remembers drowning that day, suffocated by the oceans of his strength, the weight of it bearing down on her like a tsunami, and no escape. No exit. No freedom. She remembers.]
[Maybe if she could remember how to breathe properly, if she could think, she would have noticed that ocean drawing near.]
When: Wednesday Evening, after this thread.
Where: Priscilla's suite at the Alliance HQ.
Format: Actionsauce.
What: Isley comes by to discuss his issues with Priscilla. Priscilla, meanwhile, just accidentally awakened some of hers.
Warnings: ...Isley is a dick! also, tl;dr setup, geez.
[It's easy to just lose track of time.]
[Case in point: Priscilla. She knew, when she set about putting her things in order, that Isley would be coming, although he wasn't entirely concrete on the timing. And yet, somehow, rummaging through her old things, salvaged from the wreckage of the first Headquarters, she still manages to forget the time. Maybe it's the bag of stuffed animals - the ones she won at the carnival last winter, when she'd been stood up by someone... but had gone anyway, with Elena. Together they won every stuffed animal at every both they passed, and split the haul in two and... actually, knowing Elena, she probably sold hers. Priscilla, on the other hand? She set them up in a line in her closet, just before the vault. Nestled between her cloaks and her almost-entirely-normal Anatolian clothing. That was where they lived until the headquarters came down.]
[Now they're dusty, and a little lonely looking, so she drags the bag into the center of the floor, and makes a note that they need to be cleaned, and heads back into the closet to look through her armory, her boxes, her old things, things she hasn't looked at in nearly a year, aside from the few seconds it took to throw them in a box, or a bag. She didn't have much, then. She'd never been very materialistic. Only weapons, and souvenirs and--]
[--and one thing, purchased after, while she was staying in Senji's apartment over the noodle shop. Something she'd tossed in the back of the closet, behind all her things, when she moved back into her old home. Or her new home. The memory recorder.]
[Priscilla brushes her fingers over its screen, remembering - remembering the short but harrowing trek into Dismas with Senji, and haggling with the tunnelmen. Remembering the night she spent pouring everything she could remember about Isley into it - her warning to herself to remember what he was, if he tried to come near her again. Or if she disappeared, and was replaced with another her - one who didn't remember, didn't know. Her attempt to save herself from falling into his web... again.]
[In the end, it hadn't really done its job.]
[And she doesn't know why, or what she hopes to gain from it, or even if it was a conscious decision at all... but pressing that recorder's buttons, watching her own life play out across that screen in vivid color and perfect detail... that makes her lose time, too. Enough time to bring her from the moment they met - bare fingers touching in the ruins, white cloak passed from one to the other and Isley circling her like the predator he always has been - to the end of act one. The end of the tape: the shuddering house, and his cool voice telling her, Caterpillars disappear so that butterflies can be born. Telling her he expected her to be angrier.]
[Run, my dear, and I will give chase. Hide, and I will tear up by the roots everything in this wretched city until I find you...and I will find you, mark my words.]
[And she remembers drowning that day, suffocated by the oceans of his strength, the weight of it bearing down on her like a tsunami, and no escape. No exit. No freedom. She remembers.]
[Maybe if she could remember how to breathe properly, if she could think, she would have noticed that ocean drawing near.]