(Closed) Deceuer Catch All

[mirshikar]

Who: Asura + Plotted CR
When: Deceuer
Where: Various locations in Aefenglom, the Outer City, and the Wilde.
What: Quest and event threads, along with a healthy dose of clowning. I'm always down for building new CR, so if you'd like a thread starter, feel free to hmu @ the Dec plotting post!
Warnings: Light violence.

Comments

[mirshikar]

He would've been exposed, if he did, and he would have lost you. [ You can't cover up dead, after all, and the blood magic practiced by the Kindred is an imperfect mask for it at best—it never lasted for long before needing to be fed again. Paloma, despite her too-human want to be wanted, would have surely noticed something were amiss if she and Carlos lingered in more than movie-poster kisses, their silhouette cast into artful shadow by the fixtures of light overhead. A fierce hatred for the Kindred quite nearly burns through the link of their Bond at the sight (stifled and blocked off in the instant it teems in his chest, because Paloma needs no further reason to press her lips and constrict her grip upon Asura's hand), because this is the reason why Asura fights. This is why he accepted Summer's damn diadem and the length of chain which came along with it: to allow for humans to live, infringed upon by no one. No undead charlatan and no True Fae nightmare. ] Drinking enough blood to sustain the blush of life isn't easy, and this Ginger...

[ Who had signed up for a drawing class. Who took time to woo and court a human. Who read as someone absent to any duties toward Clan and Prince. ]

He seems like a lone wolf, without much of anyone to keep him in check or to assist with landing that kind of meal on the regular.

[ And more and more, this story which Paloma's just begun to illustrate which such finesse and nuance that Asura can hardly believe that this is her first time commanding the skeins of a dreamscape, starts to veer toward an ending (and beginning) which no human deserves, least of all Paloma. Paloma, who still can't see that none of this is her fault. ]

Is he— [ It's a difficult question to pose, one he's purposely chosen to avoid out of respect for the sole exception to Asura's revulsion toward Kindred-kind. Even before the dream, they'd skirted past this mention many times, because even if the pain's old, being ripped away from who and what you were before is a wound which doesn't go away. It never heals. And Asura, he knows this for himself. ] —responsible for embracing you, Paloma?

[ Responsible, he says. Because Paloma is not. It's his turn, now, to tighten his hold upon the link of their hands, talons grazing just so against her skin in a unspoken reminder that he is here; that his body is that of a weapon. He can be used in any way she needs him to be (that is his choice, his promise to her). ]

[gehennawind]

[ The read on her sire's political disinclination wins a flickering glance, grateful for his fast and accurate understanding. His adamant refusal to use his name (Ginger!) would be funny if the man of the hour wasn't such a vile specter over her nights. Reminders of him plague them.

Paloma has relived these memories enough that they don't need the finesse of practiced dreamscaping to summon, imperfect and volatile. They are prone to wobbling and blurring apart when Asura says embracing. Her mind wants to recall with a hot-blooded clarity that final night in the hotel, shoving a dingy hotel carpet under their feet and a cramped hallway to either side of them. The hallway's end fluctuates from impossibly far to putting a door with chipped wood and a room number right in front of them, though the number is hazy. Not significant enough to remember. ]

Ah. Um—

[ She can hear a man's low voice on the other side of the door, a whisper, repeating and resetting to the first note. A broken record. The door cracks in places as if impacted, jigsaw puzzle pieces depressing and pushing out but never keeping the right shape. She does and does not want it to open.

If not for his talons, Paloma might've lost the whole project to panic. Asura's strength is her strength. Her eyes are glazed over and the nausea is... suffocating. ]

Yeah. Yes. [ Sick. This whole night and everyone in it, just sick. Something toxic, something animal dries out her mouth. ]

A special birthday present surprise. He said. But he didn't. Right away.

[mirshikar]

[ The taste of her abhorrence for this place (noxious and overwhelming, like carrion flowers and their sickly perfume) is all Asura needs to loathe this new change of scenery; this hotel which had cropped up reflexively when impetus (a question, one which Asura cannot regret) had been provided. The answer, of course, is yes, and though it had been anticipated and braced for, the impact of Paloma's affirmation gives rise to low rumblings of thunder in Asura's chest; a snarl which had been impossible to stay from the beginning. The refusal to use Carlos' name isn't enough, could never be adequate punishment for what he'd stolen from Paloma.

Asura is resolute when he lifts the link of their hands, presses the flat of Paloma's palm to the door which fissures and cracks, its many fragments expanding and contracting as though it were a living, breathing entity all its own. Like it were the monster, and not the Kindred (less than a man) with waxen skin and hair as red as their transgressions. ]

Push, when you are ready. [ Sliding over the back of Paloma's hand is Asura's massive one, fingers flexing in their sprawl, silent (as always) in their reminder that his power is her own. ] We'll break it down together.

Whatever he did, whatever he lead you to believe, it is in the past. [ And this is her retelling, her account which reflects terror and dread in this restrictive, never-ending hall. She can't go back, she can't advance, but Paloma, she isn't so immobilized. She isn't trapped. In this dream-memory, she is an architect; she can build something more: ] Now, you are the one who decides how to move forward.

[ Clear to him, that she has no wish to relive the before and after of the Embrace.

The question is now: ] What is it that you want to see beyond this door? You are strong enough to will it into existence.

[gehennawind]

[ At no point on her birthday in late October had Paloma touched this door. It lacks identifiable texture under their pressing, pushing fingers.

Echoes of his thunder rattle around in the cage of her ribs. It strengthens her heart and at first she thinks he's growling some more but recognizes it as her own private, suppressed hatred, hot and drumming her nerves raw to their last fraying thread. It pinches her mouth, it soaks her in a gasoline where her sire's voice is the match. It's all the venom of what Carlos did oozing through her pores. ]

What I want is— can you hear him?

[ Caressing and intimate and loving, the man on the other side of the door's lazy murmuring sharpens into clarity:

I want to show you something

I want to show you something

I want to show you something. ]

You hear him, right?

[ He says it again. I want to show you something. A skipping record, playing the same ugly song. The door bulges around her fingertips, curling into claws. Fear was, is, a natural response. Fury and naked loathing shatter the chipped wood keeping her away from the man who remade her in his image. He's in the process of dressing a faceless, colorless nude body on a hotel bed surrounded by opened condom wrappers, some pills on a dresser that didn't even belong to them but had come with this cheap and anonymous room. He blinks at her.

I want to show you something, is the only thing he says, and Paloma peels off of Asura to drive him into the muddy carpet. ]