caveofsapphires | smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

WHO: EVERYONE. All PCs thus far will be in this log, through active tagging or implication.
WHAT: THRILLS. SPILLS. Hiking trip toward the Diamond City.
WHERE: The Overworld.
WHEN: Forward-dated to May 1st (Tuesday) through May 7th (Monday).
WARNINGS: May contain violence or other mentions of physical harm. This is not summer camp.
NOTES: More information can be found on the OOC post here. Please read it!

Gathered in the morning haze, Sleepers were brought to the mouth of the Cave with plenty of supplies and equipment. Compasses that would point them toward the City. Backpacks full of clothes and food, medical kits, tents and even weapons. Stun rifles and knives — to fight off any unwanted company, they said. ("Watch out for their bite," Ryan had commented. "Those fuckers are downright feral.") The straight and narrow path would get them there in six days if they kept a good clip. They were sent off just like that. Refusals to leave were met with a wall of guard force officers blocking the entrance back into the cave city. No way to go but forward, unless someone was particularly stalwart about remaining.

From the exterminator's station near the mouth, leaving the Cave was as simple as a short hike upward into the fresh air of the Overworld. Dust and an uncomfortable sort of heat pervaded the atmosphere, light winds stirring up the sand and teasing the meager bits of vegetation that had grown. No matter what direction you looked... it was all wasteland, cracked ground and desolate emptiness. Jutting up from scarred ground were boulders and small spires made entirely of glass and patches of stone; instead of reflecting the harsh sunlight, they seemed to absorb it and only add to the muted loneliness of the atmosphere. As far as the eye could see, there was no life to be found.

With no other option, the Sleepers eventually made their way onward.

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A grin that he returned, small and sharp, and seeing her all-but collapse to the ground he allowed himself to slide against the rock behind him until he was sitting with his back pressed against it. It was a far cry from anything he'd ever experienced before - or at least, ever remembered having experienced before - accustomed as he was to urban living and the relative comforts that came with it. He was tired, every part of him ached, and each day it seemed they were faced with some new difficulty, as she had so aptly pointed out.

"Ah, I wouldn't be surprised. Though if it forced us to stay here and rest a while, I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't welcome it," though there was the small matter of just how long their supplies would last, but right now there was no point in thinking about it.

"Pretty sure." Doul doesn't appear to be overly keen on discussing whatever his life was in dreams; either because it's a private affair or because the best disguise, like Downing, is one you learn to live with. It won't be easy to settle into the sort of life his 'real' counterpart led, but he's taken on worse masks and lived to tell the tale.

"With luck, a cart." Something with wheels would make their collective progress easier and allow some of the slighter travelers a bit of rest from their packs.

"With our luck, a cart covered in mass of grindylow limb-farmers," he says not bothering to hide the distaste in his voice. Doul can tolerate the grindylow, but he will never understand their appreciation for fleshcrafting.

Re-l flexed her arm and nodded. It was a well-tied bandage. Barring accidents, she should be fine. She pushed herself up onto her feet and stretched. Elation was bubbling up under her skin, the way it always did when she won a fight. It didn't show, except possibly as a slight bounce in her step, but it was there nonetheless.

She listened to his instructions, with half an ear, but his final words made her turn her head. Just for a moment, she was reminded strongly of herself, months ago.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," she said, her voice flat. "I'm Masa here, Re-l there. Re-l for preference."

"A rest would be astonishingly welcome," she agreed. "And some time out of the sun." With a few blinks, she got most of the sand out of her eyelashes, then shook out her shirtfront onto the floor of the crevasse. A small sand dune formed; with a sigh, she pushed it off into a corner.

"I've decided I hate sand," she added conversationally. "And sun. And walking."

"They did instruct us not to talk about our supposed dream selves, but they can hardly do anything about it away from the cave," Malcolm reasoned. There was no possible way for anyone to convince him that this Stark life was anything he ever experienced, not after the war.

"Gavin here. Malcolm there. I'd much prefer the latter as well." Although, once his double made it to the city, he might have to rethink that... "It's a pleasure to fight alongside you, Re-l. Let's hope we never have to again."

"Malcolm, then. At least until we reach the city."

It was time to start walking. She'd lost enough ground already, and a steady pace would make sure the fighting didn't leave her stiff. Besides, she needed to test out her endurance.

"I'll remember what you can do," she said, nodding to him. "If I ever need a weapons expert, I'll come to you first."

She could hope. They'd be lucky if the sandstorm didn't last for days.

"I prefer to think of it as a challenge," Gabriel said innocently. There was a moment or two of silence, howl of the wind notwithstanding, and then he huffed and said a little more quietly, "They called me Sylvester. My name--it's Gabriel."

It really was getting cold. The sun had been the one good thing about this stupid world, and with it gone, Re-l couldn't think of a single thing she liked about the place. At least she'd made decent progress today, because at this rate, she was going to be sleeping in the ravine. And there were a number of different reasons to avoid that.

Having a name would help her to organise her thoughts, though she couldn't say that either suited her companion particularly. On the other hand, his reluctance to give them away was mildly amusing. Re-l certainly wasn't above petty jabs, though she never thought of it that way.

"Gabriel. I'll remember." She huddled a little bit closer into her blanket, rubbing her fingers together and missing her big white coat. "With supernatural abilities and a name like that you almost could be a Proxy. And you match the idiocy requirement perfectly too. You don't burn up in sunlight, though." She muttered something under her breath, which might almost have sounded like "shame".

Her almost smile was probably a trick of the light.

At that, and the mutter, Gabriel could only laugh. "A vampire? Puh-lease. I have way more taste and style than them. Especially the kind who are actually allergic to sunlight."

Though it was curious she considered his name vampiric. He had to admit, he was intrigued. He grinned at her, saw the totally-not-a-smile and shifted into more of a smirk. "So why d'you call them Proxies, then?"

The word he used was unfamiliar, but the tone made it evident that they were talking about totally different things.

"Proxies are proxies. Made by the creators, to repopulate the earth after its destruction, and to die when their task was complete. Hence the weakness to sunlight. When light returns to the world, the Proxies are no longer needed. So they die. Except Ergo." She paused and corrected herself. "Vincent. But he was made to be different." She shrugged. "I don't understand everything that happened. Daedalus could tell you a lot more."

She looked down, remembering that Daedalus was dead, and would never tell anyone anything ever again.

"So not a proxy then. Or a vampire. What are you?"

Huh. No wonder she'd said that this scenario was actually possible, if that's the kind of place she came from.

"So what, you all live in atmosphere domes with self-sustained light, and outside everything's just ..." He waved a hand toward the exit. He was intrigued, but his mouth was twisted with ironic bitterness too. Just how many people here had come from worlds on the heels of Armageddon, failed or not?

He turned the smile on her, but its tenor didn't change. "So you have wannabe-vampires and a dead Greek inventor. Happen to have belief in God too?"

"It was like that, at the start. A dull, bland, pointless world, small and tiny." She closed her eyes, and her eyeshadow leapt out. "But it's all gone now. Then. Whenever. The domes collapsed, the Proxies died, and the Arc returned."

She opened her eyes and looked at him. That constant smile made his face hard to read, but he wasn't joking. What could she say?

"I heard the Proxies called Gods, more than once. But I don't think that's what you mean. I can't say I ever thought about it myself."

"The Arc?" he asked. "Wouldn't happen to be anything to do with that whole Awakening thing, would it?" She'd just told him that they were trying to renew the world, after all. It fit.

He snorted. They could've been akin to pagan gods, he supposed. Or maybe the Leviathan. "No. I mean the One, the Almighty. If you've heard of Him you'd have heard of His angels."

And the implication there was clear.

"They were connected in as much as they both marked the end of the world," Re-l said, "but Awakening had more to do with Vincent. He was what awoke." Her mouth twisted. "I'd say the gun was coincidence, but then Proxy One engineered me, so it would probably be a lie."

She let his final statement sink in. Was it even reasonable to believe him? But if his world held magic, then real gods were not so implausible. She couldn't judge anything on her own standards. There was only one conclusion she could come to.

"You're as bad as he was," she said. "You'd think angels would have better faces."

Her response elicited a short ripple of laughter from him and he nodded, reaching for his pack in order to fish out some much needed water; he was accustomed to the relatively temperate climate of Tokyo - no matter what they told him about his former life being a 'dream', he refused to believe it, and his body certainly seemed to agree with him - not a harsh, dry climate like this.

"You're not the only one. This City they're sending us to better be worth the effort," he paused briefly to drink from his flask before turning to observe her again, "so. What's your name?"

The details were vague, but Gabriel got enough of the context, and he echoed the twist of her lips with a wry smile of his own. Then his expression morphed into startled indignation.

"Hey!" he objected. "What's wrong with this face? I'll have you know I've worn it for fifteen hundred years!" Then he frowned. "Which, okay, I'll grant you is a while, but everyone else tended to burn out after a century or two no matter how careful I was with 'em."

He didn't think he want to give this one up, even if he could. Not jus because the man had been his one true vessel, which kept him from burning out, but because they'd had a lot of fun together before he asked Gabriel to send his soul on. Taking another meatsuit would have meant binding another soul all over again, and he had less justification for it now than he ever had.

Had Gabriel thought he was exhausted before? Forget that. This was exhaustion. It was beyond exhaustion. He trudged along mechanically without really knowing where it was he was going, as long as he had the sound of someone else's footsteps to follow. Half the time his eyes were closed behind his goggles, and it wasn't always because the light hurt his eyes. (Even though it still did.)

Part of him wished he hadn't pretended to his brothers that he was more recovered than he was, but Aziraphale had seemed on the verge of hovering and Balthazar ... well, the sort-of concern the hedonistic angel had been showing had been the equivalent of Aziraphale's clearly restrained urge to be a mother hen. Either way Gabriel had given in to the desire to pretend it was all okay--just like he'd been back in Heaven, reassuring the lower ranks that, yes, Michael was fine, just concentrating on this or that and not actually angry.

His head was throbbing again, not that it had ever really stopped. That, also, made it impossible to think. So he just didn't. It was this weird kind of haziness, this state of being so tired and pained beyond words that he was actually kind of used to it now. At this point it was only the knowledge that he'd die out here, and the fact he was too proud to just up and kill himself like that, that was keeping him upright.

All of which meant he followed Re-l's tracks right to the rock and was going to run into it if she didn't say something.

Re-l thought about asking what he meant by "burn out", and then decided she didn't want to know.

The flow of sand was definitely lessening. Whatever force had whipped up this sandstorm, it was fading away. The constant swish of sand grains was fading, and in its absence other sounds became magnified. She still couldn't see the sky, but by now it must be nearly night, or at least late evening.

"All those centuries," she said thoughtfully. "It might be nice to have so much time." She'd known it, even with Vincent in the last good days. There was every chance he could live forever. She had a century, at best. Her grandfather had had much more, but he'd been a sick and dying doll for most of it.

"Not that I'd trade," she added, just in case Gabriel was getting the wrong idea.

Re-l was half asleep when the shuffling noises and laboured breathing intruded on her consciousness. She jerked awake at once, her years of training taking over, and her gun was in her hand even as she spun around, her legs shifting to push her up into a crouch.

What she saw did not really warrant the reaction she had given it. One tired maybe-angel staggering through the ravine, looking like he should have stopped walking hours ago.

Part of Re-l reacted with extreme irritation, insisting to the rest of her that this was the last person she wanted to see. It used a lot of words like obnoxious and irritating. This part was swiftly overruled by the rest of Re-l, which was more aware of just how bad Gabriel looked.

"What are you doing?" she said, standing up and half catching, half colliding with the man. "Idiot. This kind of behaviour is going to kill you."

He looked at her, then, and smiled grimly; his amber eyes glittered, and for a moment the being peering out them was clearly not just old, but ancient. "You only think that because it's a basic human desire to want more. In my experience? You get so much more out of life than long-lived beings. You don't have many years, so you make the most of them. You can achieve so much in so little time--things other, more powerful beings I know have never been able to understand at all."

The way he spoke was just how he looked, and so familiar. Familiar, and fond, and not exactly awed, nor exactly respectful, but somewhere in-between.

He'd been alive since the dawn of time and he was one of the few of his kind who seemed to have found anything to do over the years. Most of the rest of his family had just stagnated, wallowing in orders and sameness and never having an original thought. Humanity, though. Humanity lived. Most of it. There were always those ones that didn't.

"Nng." The collision actually made Gabriel wake up, and he squinted at Re'l through his goggles, holding his head. Her voice hurt. Ow. "I was sleeping," he said, his voice pitched more quietly than hers. "Figured I'd give that whole 'exercise while you rest' thing a go."

How he was going to make it back up the cliff once it was time was something he hadn't quite stopped to think about when he'd heard the assertion down going down and back up again was the best route. He hadn't been in any position to argue, and part of him had suggested that going downstairs, where there would likely be less sunlight, would be a good idea. He just hadn't dared to stop and think it over beyond that, in case he wound up not moving again at all.

Re-l considered punching him, partially to relieve her feelings and also because at least he would sleep if she knocked him out. But he was holding his head as though it were hurting him, and she didn't particularly feel like adding to his list of complaints. Not right now, anyway.

She grabbed the front of his coat instead, pushing him down onto the closest rock. Being gentle did not occur to her.

"You, sit." She grabbed her pack and opened it. The blanket he had made for her was still in there, and she pulled it out, looking for food. She still had an apple and some stale bread. It would have to do.

She cut the apple up quickly and gave him a slice.

"Eat it."

For the first time she really understood that the man next to her had once not been human. His face looked old and tired, the way Proxy One had looked under all the bluster. The way Ergo had looked, when he stared at her in her apartment. Only beings like that were fascinated with humanity. Or pseudo-humanity, as it were.

"You're wrong," she said. "Time has nothing to do with it. My fellow citizens never had an original thought in their lives, and Pino had more creativity than most humans I met. Pseudo-human, AutoReiv, Proxy, angel. It's not what you are, it's what you do and what you think that matter."

Gabriel couldn't help but smile, and it was bitter, ironic and still, yes, still fond all at once. "You'd think it wouldn't. But most of my brothers and sisters have never had a creative thought in their lives. It's all orders, orders, orders and Destiny, all the time. That was the gift Dad gave to humanity."

He shrugged. "Sure, a ton of you don't do shit with anything. But where I came from there was almost seven freakin' billion of you. And most of the time? If you were given a reason to fight, to live, to try harder? You did. My brothers tried to destroy the whole damned world. It was humans who stopped it."

Okay, now he was depressed. With a sigh he let his head thunk back against the stone, and the archangel stared up at the clearing storm.

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smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

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I do try, I do.

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gotcha. XD let's say a bit of A and a bit of B, then

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