thechanged | HEARTS IN DARKNESS: EPILOGUE

It doesn't take long for them to be found. Jeff was there already, having spent most of the preceding hours unconscious in that very hall. "What...What. Haven't you done enough, you unbelievable asshole?" Even he's not certain who he's talking to. "God dammit, God dammit." His voice is unsteady and his breath is hitching as he works to get them down, using his claws to cut the threads suspending the cocoons and carefully lowering everyone down to the floor as gently as possible.

Edited 2013-10-28 22:26 (UTC)

Brimstone's wandered back from the Dining Hall, unable to bring herself to stay in that place with Lights' murderer still alive. She knows that it was the logical choice to make, but she can't help the feeling of impotent rage within her. It's not so much breaking her oath to put a bullet in the murderer's head as the fact that she let herself be talked out of it. She shouldn't have given Angel the chance to speak, to be reasonable. And yet, that earnest reasoning and heart are what draw her, inexplicably, to the bird woman. To destroy her hopes is not something that sits well with Brimstone.

Someone else snarling more vocally catches her attention and she speeds up toward the hall to see the gargoyle and the three bodies. Has he moved them here?

"What's happened?" she demands, approaching him. And then she sees the bodies are whole and stops. "When did you find 'em like this?"

He didn't know about Aria.

He sees her face when he brings the last cocoon down, and Brimstone finds him on hands and knees, trying to clear the webbing from her face. When he looks up at her approach tears are flowing freely down his face. "I-it happened this morning," he sniffles, wiping his eyes with his forearm. "S-someone attacked me before the lights came back on. I m-must've gotten knocked out." And indeed, his face shows hairline cracks, and dried blood stains his hair black.

"When I woke up, they were just...hhh...hanging there. And Aria...I didn't know they got her. I tried...I really tried...I shouldn't have let her leave. I just...I...shit." He hauls himself to his feet, hugging himself and turning his back to her. "I'm sorry," he whispers.

Edited 2013-10-29 04:38 (UTC)

"Oh," says the hourglass, quietly, staring at the bodies. There is something slightly less distracted about her than there has been for a while, and it's probably because the hourglass itself, the object that is her, is tucked under her arm, the falling sand visible through the glass of her elbow.

She's still holding the hearts, one stained magenta and one shimmering yellow, one in each hand. The blood stains her fingers and wrists, but she's made of glass; her skin will be easy to wipe down.

She bobs over to where they're lying, to look at them more closely. It's strange to be holding their insides when they look as if no harm has ever come to them. If they were cut open again, would there be new hearts, cold and dead, inside? The fuchsia one, of course, she thinks, would have always been cold. But not this cold.

She looks at their faces, and then down at the hearts in her hands, and frowns.

"We should probably have a party, or something," she says. "For the corpses."

Edited 2013-10-30 01:25 (UTC)

The timekeeper entered with the oracle's heart in hand. He'd been searching for her body in the library where he'd last seen it and was not expecting it to be strung up or whole when he made his way back to the Great Hall.

After a moment of staring, he turned to the others with a worried look, "How do we put their hearts back in if they're closed up?"

In the interest of proper corpse treatment, the hourglass figures, the hearts should probably be placed with their owners. This doesn't feel like a really great time to break out music and streamers, though, in spite of what that book she'd found in the library had said about corpse parties. If anything she is feeling pretty melancholy as she places the the two hearts she's been charged with on the chests of the bodies they belong inside. Maybe the party is supposed to distract you from getting too bothered by the dull, empty corpses of people you remember being alive? She isn't sure.

Once she's set down both the hearts she picks up her hourglass again, which she'd set down on the floor in front of her, and holds it close to her in her blood stained hands.

She's about to ask if anybody has any coloured paper, perhaps, or whimsical hats, when the timekeeper asks his question. She straightens up, and looks around at him.

"Put them back in?" She'd arrived at the confrontation too late to have heard anything about that. She'd only been holding onto the hearts because she'd read that some cultures liked to keep all of the parts of a body together for their burial. "What do you mean?"

Edited 2013-10-30 02:21 (UTC)

Having watched Brimestone put the hearts back in just by putting them on the chest and pressing a bit, Tick Tock carefully set the Oracle's heart on her chest and did the same. He was hesitant to press too hard. He didn't want to make her heart pop like a-

...something.

Thankfully, there is no popping of any sort. As with the searchlight and siren before her, the oracle's heart shimmers more brightly as it is urged to return to its body, then dissolves into little more than light as it pours into her chest like molten gold. For a moment, there is silence...

Then her eyes fly open. The oracle shudders into life violently, her first breath of air coming as a sharp gasp. Her hands shoot to her neck shortly thereafter, covering it, protecting it... and finding it and the rest of her body covered in the remnants of the inky black thread her body had been cocooned in. Disoriented, confused, and above all scared, she clumsily scrambles away from the gathered group, yanking and tearing at the threads and coughing when her shortness of breath doesn't allow for such sudden movements all the while.

She woke up... she was alive!

He backed up to give her space as she moved away, but followed in case she needed help, "Miss Oracle? It's okay. You're alive now."

Alive, maybe. Okay? Oh, most definitely not.

The fairest girl stops her panicked flailing when she registers another's voice, though so overwhelmed with the sudden presence of sound and touch and sight where there had been none for what seemed like an eternity, the timekeeper's words remain beyond her for the moment. She stares at him with wild, terrified eyes, and it's only between short, quick breaths that she manages to whisper a single word.

"What..." What happened?

"Please, take a deep breath," he replied slowly, in as soothing a voice as possible. "A slow one, okay? You're awake and you're alive and you need to breath properly to stay that way. I'll tell you what happened when you've calmed a bit."

He wanted to reach out for her, but held himself back. She was disorientated and upset. Touching her wouldn't help.

The longer he speaks, the more her fright seems to subside, at least. One she's actually gotten her mind in order enough to recognize him, the timekeeper's presence offers an inexplicable sense of safety none of the others in the room seem to provide.

Though she's still making no move to get closer. She hugs her knees to her chest, one hand still protectively covering the front of her neck, and tries to force her breathing to slow. Though she's only mildly successful, one word he continues to use at the forefront of her mind.

"I... I was killed..."

He hesitated before giving a nod and walking closer. He still didn't touch, but now he was kneeling near her. Within arms reach. Seeing her like that made all his chest feel constricted, his hearts aching.

"You were. The kitchen fire took your heart from you. But we got it back," he tried to sound reassuring. "We put it back in you."

"... My heart?" she repeats, looking at him with confusion. Obviously, she doesn't remember that much. Just the cold bite of a dagger at her throat, soul rending pain, and then...

Nothing.

"It was... It was nothingness," she says quietly, something far-off entering her gaze as she finds the words to describe her experience. "I couldn't hear, or feel, or see anything. And then— and then something was pulling at me. Something evil. B-but I couldn't get away, and—"

She stops there, biting her lip and trying very hard not to start hyperventilating again as the roar of thunder and the deafening gallop of hooves on cobblestone fills her mind.

Edited (htmllll o9) 2013-11-01 01:55 (UTC)

While the timekeeper and Satandir discuss how... and parties, Brimstone approaches Lights' body. He's still covered in the dark strands those, she thinks, are the first things that need to go. Brimstone carefully removes the heart from where the hourglass has placed it on his chest and then methodically rips away at the webs. She doesn't understand how he can be whole again, but she's not going to worry about that just yet. Freeing him for whatever has cocooned him had felt like some sort of progress and now she has a healed body and a heart that might - most probably does - contain a soul.

She picks up the searchlight's heart and places it on his chest again. "Mouth ain't big enough," she mutters as she considers the options. Cutting him open again will likely defeat the purpose of healing him. Considering they now have three hearts working independent of bodies, they probably aren't really hearts anymore. Maybe they're just symbols. How do you get a symbol into something? Well, you can always try pressing...

Brimstone presses down gently on the heart over Lights' chest. If all else fails, they can still try to get it down his throat.

Thankfully for everyone observing, attempting to stuff the heart down his throat never becomes necessary. Because as soon as Brimstone starts to push, the glow of the heart flares brighter and begins to dissolve into something significantly less substantial - a flickering light that settles naturally into the fairest's chest.

It only takes a few moments for things to start to change.

The whole body jolts as, abruptly, its lungs shudder into action again. Lights gasps, suddenly heaving for air, and deep within that heart begins to beat.

He sits up suddenly, visibly afraid, his claws digging into the ground at his sides. He stares forward blindly, but his skin is already regaining its shimmer, his glow illuminating the hall.

Upon waking, he's already hyperventilating with fear. He doesn't speak. He just squirms, like if he had the energy and wasn't so confused he'd be trying to get away.

Brimstone starts herself when Lights sits up, pulling her hand away from his chest and leaning away. It's easy enough to see and hear that the searchlight is panicking. She's more than a little confused herself. That had actually worked?

He can most certainly see her, but she raises a hand to draw his attention more fully. "We got him, Lights. Calm down. He ain't comin' after you no more."

Brimstone being the first one to speak to him definitely helps. He doesn't turn to face her when she tries to get his attention, but his body settles a little, like he's trying to focus. He sees her. He sees where he is, sees the others around him, without even having to look.

He raises his hand out in front of him, touching his chest, both for the physical sensation and because it allows him to actually see his own body through his palm. There's no blood, or open wounds, even when he specifically remembers someone having jammed a blade straight into his throat.

He presses his palm to his neck. He's tearing up a bit, even though he's not mentally present enough to acknowledge it. Just shimmers of yellow at the sides of his empty eyes.

"What...what the fuck. What the fuck how did...What the fuck?"

She wants to hug him for comfort, but isn't sure if that might just make him feel more trapped. Brimstone settles for tentatively placing her palm on one of his shoulders. She's ready to withdraw immediately if the sensory overload of seeing her that close is too much.

"Can't say how you're alive, but that kitchen fire was carvin' folk up for their hearts. Just sorta... pushed yours back in." That's not a great explanation, and she winces. "You want up?" And then, more importantly as she does pull her hand away, "Can you stand?"

He shivers when she touches him, and while he doesn't quite pull away, it's clear that the sensation is startling. His blackened eyes widen for moment, and he takes in a shark inhalation of breath. Vibrant yellow tears bead down his cheek, unnoticed in his current state of fear.

He's already starting to float a little, and he wordlessly answer her question by boosting himself up a little, though he remains in a slightly curled sitting position. His words come out slurred and mispronounced around his fangs.

"I didn't...I didn't see him," he says, shaking. "He wanted to see the room so I showed him and he..." He runs his hand down his throat and chest again. It had happened so fast - the knife had already started carving out his heart before the shock had taken him.

"There wasn't anything there," he says.

Satandir's been looking at the other body whose heart she'd had charge of, the magenta-blooded one, when the searchlight wakes up, and she looks over with a gasp when she notices his light flickering back into existence behind her. (Or, well, through her, really.)

She'd taken on board the idea that it was possible to bring them back to life easily enough – of course she had – but it's still startling that it's happened so quickly.

"Livingston!" she exclaims, clutching her hourglass to her in surprise, "You're alive!" He doesn't look nearly so happy about that as she might have expected, though, and her enthusiasm wanes in the face of his evident misery. There wasn't anything there... "You mean, when you were dead?" she asks, more subdued, as if that's a normal, considerate question to ask someone.

Brimstone looks over at Satandir, concerned. This had been her first thought, as well. Lights had talked about how death had been peaceful as he remembered it, but if there had been nothing here when he died, waking from that would be horrifying. Maybe, though...

"Might not've really been dead," she points out quickly, wishing she had something that could better comfort the searchlight. "Your soul, he took it out. That wángbādàn cut out more'n your heart. He was doin' somethin' with your soul. Maybe it wasn't like real death." Not that she has a clear idea of what real death would entail considering she hadn't thought there was anything after dying.

Edited 2013-10-31 03:38 (UTC)

He doesn't nod, exactly, but the look on his face seems to imply that Satandir is right. It isn't like what he remembered at all. And when that was his whole basis for his sense of well being...

Not that the idea of someone fucking around with his soul was much better.

"Why the fuck did he..." he trails off, frustrating and distress getting to him. He brings his hands up to clutch at the sides of his head. "The fuck did he do to me?"

She weighs just how much of what they saw to tell him. She knows he probably means the ritual, anyway, not so much the slitting him open from gullet to gizzard that preceded it. "Used that dagger in the secret room - the one that makes you hear voices - to pull out whatever we got in here." Brimstone taps her chest. If there were some way to pull him close without scaring him, she might try. She's kneeling anyway, and scoots as close as she can, practically with her knees below where Lights hovers.

"Think he was tryin' to bring some kinda darkness out. Didn't get to say much about why he was doin' it." Her voice is a little proud as she says, "Shot him for you. Think I got him three or four bullets straight where his heart should be."

There's so much on his mind that it's taking a while to shuffle around into an order that makes sense again. Because along with this memory of a more recent murder, he's come back with something a bit more aged as well. His ears push downwards. He tries to face her, but is just a little off, like usual. His empty eyes are somehow still filled with despair.

"I didn't think he'd do that," he says, his voice tense and vulnerable with the realization. "I kept thinking I'd see it if it was coming. I knew. I...I always fucking knew but I didn't see him. I was wrong."

His voice finally breaks at the end, and he does his best to stifle the sob that threatens to bubble up within him. He doesn't want to do this, he doesn't want to fucking embarrass himself. But his emotions are just out of control and he doesn't know what to do.

Satandir frowns. She definitely doesn't remember there being nothing at all, when she was dead, even if it had been terrible and empty.

She swallows. (Or at least, she makes the external appearance of swallowing. There is, of course, nothing inside her transparent neck to swallow with except for a few falling grains of sand.) She really hopes Brimstone is right, and that he wasn't really dead. She so badly wanted, before, to be okay with death, she'd felt as if she should be, but it's harder than she thought it would be.

She keeps quiet for a while, glancing from Livingston to Brimstone and back again as they talk, not sure how to feel about any of this.

"It's over," she says, "You aren't dead any more," but she can't convince herself that that makes it okay, even though the first thing she ever knew when she woke up here was that it did.

Brimstone can't help it. Lights is already practically in her lap, anyway. She reaches down her napkin belt and tears part of it off, raising the piece up Lights' face. She uses her free arm to wrap it around Light's waist in a semi-embrace.

This isn't her strong suit. She wants it to be very badly, but she doesn't know what else to say to him. And so, she says nothing and hopes some combination of drying his tears, the contact, and Satandir's words will do something.

Lights's ear flicks in Satandir's direction, trying to actually take in the sentiment for what it was. He wasn't dead. It shouldn't matter, right? What does anything matter if you make it out alive?

But then Brimstone holds him and he feels his ears reflexively pull pack, their expression at the mercy of his emotions. He hiccups the way one does when they are crying but are trying very hard not to, and as she begins to wipe away his tears he folds in against her, wrapping an arm around her waist for support.

He never really knew if this kind of thing would be okay between them, but right now it doesn't really seem to matter. For a moment, he just feels like a child.

She holds him tighter when he reciprocates, eyes closing as she masters her own emotions. This is familiar, somehow, horribly so. It's only a vague memory, like most things are, but there had been someone else she'd held like this, someone else who had been hurt beyond just physical wounds, and whom she'd saved. She wants to put that bullet through the kitchen fire's head even more now.

The heat of her anger has cooled, though. It's still there, but with Lights alive and the fire probably worse off for being allowed to survive and suffer as he is, the dragon of rage screaming out for vengeance in her has taken to lying low. "We got you back, and no one's doin' that to you again," she says at length. "This place ain't right. Things don't get to workin' like they're meant to. Forge is gettin' rid of that dagger. Won't be able to cut on no one no more, and that fire ain't movin' for a spell, neither."

After seeing the effect the heart has on Lights, he gapes slack-jawed for a moment, mouth working, no sound coming out. Then, with a slightly hysterical-sounding laugh, he practically dives for the magenta heart on the floor, the one that matches Aria's scales. He gulps audibly, his hands shaking as he presses the heart to her chest just like he saw Brimstone do. "Oh please work. Please. Please God let this work..." He cups her face gently. "Oh please honey wake up..."

The heart fades into her chest, leaving a glittering trail on her skins that fades, and once it dissipates completely, her body jerks as synapses fire to her nerves again. She opens her mouth to scream, but thankfully her empty lungs don't allow for it, and she gasps in uneven breaths of air. As her senses come back to her, she reaches for her throat, and backs away from... whatever, or whoever it is near her. She scrambles, but her vision is still coming back into focus, and she can't get a good grip.

"Don't--" Her unfocused eyes are wide with fear, looking just past him.

He quickly lets go, holding his hands up to show her that he's unarmed. "It's okay it's okay! You're fine. Everything's going to be fine." And it really, truly is. She's alive. Vigil grins like an idiot, though the gritty tears are still flowing freely from his eyes. "Nobody's going to hurt you." And the second she lets him, she is getting such a hug.

It may be a while yet before she lets anyone touch her, still trying to scramble away, but not finding any more luck at it, except to get her balance a little better. She's still staring past his head, as if at some unknown shape. In her eyes, it's still dark (mostly) and she hasn't taken full stock of the location or the surroundings or who else is there. At least she has enough of herself back not to shout at him, but she shakes her head emphatically.

Cool Kid is watching from a short distance, still afraid to approach, but wanting to make sure she was okay, even if she wouldn't want to see him. He'd tried to protect her and failed.

She doesn't have anything to say for the moment, too distracted and fearful and ashamed herself, but she does want to talk to him...

Vigil backs away quickly, holding up his hands to show he's unarmed. "Okay, okay," he says, keeping his voice low and soothing. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. You're okay. It's over now." He continues saying words to that effect, staying with her until she calms.

Her vision starts to come back into better focus, and she looks around at the room with a sense of bewilderment. Her chest is still heaving, and she's still trembling, but she's beginning to look a little less wild herself.

"Where am I...?"

"You're in the Grand Hall," Vigil says, still keeping his voice quiet. The next part is going to be harder to tell her, and there's a long pause before he speaks again. "The um...you were...um." Dammit, this is hard. "The killer, he...um...he got you. You were um...killed. I'm sorry. But you're alive! We were able to...reverse it somehow. So you're okay!"

"Oh."

She's quiet for a few moments, looking around at the room, and the other people in it. Some of them are familiar, and there's a small pang that wants to reach out to them, but an even strong desire to just sort of be alone for a little bit. She's still shaken, and she knows she'll want company at some point, but for just a moment, she wants to gather her thoughts. She died, and it hurt, and she felt betrayed that anyone else here would do that to her, but she's also confused and... well, alive.

"I think I want to go back to my pond, please."

"All right." He looks a little bit hurt, but the fact that she wants to be alone is more than understandable. He nods and offers a hand to help her up. "Did you want me to take you there?"

She accepts it, then shrugs. She doesn't know how to feel right now, but she doesn't have any particular reason to say no. "Sure."

"Okay." He offers an arm should she need to lean on him, but won't push if she'd rather walk on her own. It doesn't take long to get to their destination.

"Well uh...here we are," he says, a bit awkward. "Is there anything else I can do? Did you want to talk or anything? Or um...if you need some time alone that's okay too."

She does feel bad because he is being kind, and trying so hard, but she just has an overwhelming need to detach for the moment. It's been a long and trying stretch, and she just wants to collect herself. She tries to smile as brightly as she can.

"I just need some time alone. I'll come see you later, okay?"

Fortunately he seems to understand, though it does little to ease his worry. "That's fine. You've been through a lot. If you change your mind...just talk to my statue."

...that sounds so weird when he says it out loud. "I'll hear you," he adds, by way of explanation. He pats her shoulder gently and stands. "Get some rest, okay?" He leaves her to her thoughts, quickly swallowed up by the foliage.

HEARTS IN DARKNESS: EPILOGUE

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THE ORACLE

Re: THE ORACLE

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THE SEARCHLIGHT

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THE SIREN

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