Snowed In [Party Post][Forward-dated to 30th]
[OOC: Happy Three Year Anniversary one and all! You know the drill except this time you'll likely only be able to comment in on one thread depending on your characters locations. However, there can be aftermath threads as well as multiple during threads. I imagine anyone snowed in at the Tower could have multiple threads with others at the Tower.
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It's only until the lights go out that the nerve endings start to prickle in awareness.
Looking out the window only confirms his suspicions.
He doesn't know if Nikolas is in the club at this hour, but he needs to ensure Elizabeth is all right wherever she is, and that requires finding his journal to lock an entry to her. Josef fumbles his way through the office and once he's found a flashlight, he starts down the stairs to see if there's anyone in the lower level. "Anybody there?"
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Where else can they go?
If they try to move forward, there is Nikolas. If they try to move back, they get closer to that window which will break and fall on them.
Elizabeth decides he doesn't need the decision on his mind along with everything else, and by the time that Nikolas enters and starts speaking, she has almost forgotten about the glass.
Elizabeth. It's okay.
She looks up at his face. It is hard to see it well in the shadows created by the candle burning on the floor still. Elizabeth tightens her own grip on him. She is here still. Elizabeth takes a step to the side, trying to force herself not to lunge at him completely.
She is not the most perceptive but even she can sense the violence in his stance. Her ( ... )
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It does not mean that this end. Josef may be capable of changing his colors when it comes to their relationship, but Nikolas is not. It is the one thing that drives him, and it is the one thing that Josef cannot take from him, because he will fight to protect it as Josef is fighting to protect her right now.
He does not have to show his fear for Nikolas to know that it is there. Every action that Josef has taken in regards to that girl has made it clear to him that he must be afraid for her, afraid that Nikolas will succeed as Josef succeeded years ago.
Nikolas stalks forward toward him but not so close that Josef could reach out to punch him, not quite yet.
It is the words that are making it worse because they're true. Impatient. Nikolas is impatient because there's an itch of something crawling ( ... )
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His intentions did not pan out as he had planned. It was not the perfect chess game that he had imagined it to be. He had all his moves planned out ahead of time, because he has known his nephew so well.
He still does, but that change has made Josef unpredictable to him. It has required his intentions and plans to shift. It has made the chess game null and void in combination with his own change after falling through that green Rift. Nikolas spent years in another place, and it changed him ( ... )
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She knows that demons are stronger than angels.
She knows that if she jumps in, she'll get hurt or killed, because that is exactly what Nikolas wants. Elizabeth refuses to give him that, but she sees blood in the candlelight, hears their fists slamming against each other, and she wants to scream. Tears slide down her face, and her hands are shaking, and she does not know if she can remain where she is any longer.
There's blood, and it sounds painful.
Listening to him practically say out loud that he wants to destroy Josef, it made her sick. It infuriated her. It made her want to walk out from behind Josef and shove her fist in Nikolas' face.
"Josef--"
As soon as she allows her muscles to move, she will jump in there. She can't not. She can't, and she steps forward despite herself, rushes forward, but their fighting pushes her back, shoves her on ( ... )
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They've been at opposite ends that weren't meant to meet until one remained standing. Only one. It has been that way since the blood of Josef's father was in Nikolas's hands and Josef's mother was on his. It never could have been any other way. They weren't brought up to be a family.
They were brought up to be pitted against each other.
They were not taught to love. They were taught to survive, first and foremost, and the instinct of the demon is to destroy until there is nothing left standing in their way.
And right now, there is more of the demon than anything else when confronted with the uncle's demon. The wings are out and his strength is at its peak. Josef doesn't hold himself back. He does not merely connect his fist with Niko's jaw. He pummels into him with every ounce of strength he can muster.
"Elizabeth, get out," Josef says, and it might be comical under any other circumstance. When has Elizabeth ever left when Josef asked her to? It's still in him to ask. She has a chance to leave ( ... )
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It may have been what he was brought up to do, but he has never been against being what he is, doing what it is that he was made to do.
Josef has taken all that he ever cared about from him, and he wants to see Josef suffer. It has been years and years coming. At the end of the day, Nikolas is tired of the long drawn out battle, and he maybe could have fought like this for years and years to come if it weren't for that damned trip through a Rift that left him returning with an endless itch to see it all in flames, to see his nephew finally get what he deserves.
Nikolas is not aiming to kill, however. His intention is to disable Josef, knock him down long enough so that Nikolas can get his hands on the girl, because that is the kind of destruction that Nikolas longs for. To see his nephew ( ... )
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It is not within her heart to run away from him when he is in danger or when he is hurting. There is no telling who will come out on top, and if the tides start to turn, she has to be there to help him. There is no other option. Nikolas may be his family, but Elizabeth would not leave him alone with this.
She could never be able to do it, even with the way that Josef is saying it.
Elizabeth knows him well enough to hear the fear within the anger, and she wants to be able to do what he asks to help him but she can't. Her grip on the chair loosens. The window shatters behind them, and she wishes for half a second that she had mentioned it sooner despite there not really being an opportunity to do so.
She flies back, and the wind carries her further. Elizabeth is less than ( ... )
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Ensure he was disarmed, have him unconscious for the remainder of the snowstorm, hurt him enough he can't move--sure.
But he doesn't think he'd have it in him to kill his uncle when the time really called for it.
Whether Nikolas meant to kill him now or not, it doesn't change the fact it would have to end at some point. Nikolas would have killed him or tried to at some other time. Or worse, killed Elizabeth and have Josef watch. It's that thought, that panicking, horrible thought that had him moving forward without any sort of coherent thought in mind.
All he knew was he couldn't let that happen.
And now that they're both holding on to either of his arms, Josef tries with all his might to pull them both back up from the ( ... )
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She half expects Nikolas to reach over and push her. This is his chance, isn't it? This is what he wanted, and she is at a vulnerable position, dangling from Josef's arm who would not be able to save her if Nikolas strikes. So why isn't he doing something? Would he prefer they both fall to the ground? It makes no sense, but she is searching for the whys as she hangs there with the snow and the wind whipping over her, shoving her against the wall of the club again and again.
It is then that she understands, and she never, ever wanted to be able to understand it, understand what Nikolas might be thinking without being explicitly told. Nikolas wants Josef to make the choice. He knows that Josef cares about him, and he wants him in this position, ( ... )
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His death by his nephew's hands had always been the endgame. Nikolas had planned to drag this out longer and to allow for the further descent of Josef until he had been at a different edge.
However, he could not have asked for better circumstances than dangling from the side with the only other person that Josef loved in his grasp with him unable to pull both of them up at once. This moment will haunt him. There may have not been a choice in the end, but the guilt and the pain of this will follow him.
Maybe it will mark Josef's downfall. It is hard to calculate the possibilities in the thirty seconds that it takes for him to plummet to his death ( ... )
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There's silence as the snow pours down heavily onto the ground but the wind quiets into almost reverent silence.
If there was a scream right now, it would echo into the darkness.
Did he scream?
It isn't anything he wants to contemplate and he can't stop the question from forming in his head anyway. It sickens him to think this could have been an end Nikolas would not only be pleased with, but an end he'd desire so as long as Josef spent the rest of his days wrestling with it. That alone would make him want to not feel an ounce of guilt for what just transpired ( ... )
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The strangeness that the angel feels at seeing a death that she didn't actually help with or see is actually second to the rage and darkness that is Elizabeth's alone. The angel has nothing to do with it.
In the silence, she finds him, and it is her love for him that settles the rage back somewhere else in her heart and her head for the moment. She wants-- needs to take care of him how ever she can, even knowing that he will not be okay ( ... )
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