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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If he was lucky, the cliff would be jagged enough there to let him sidle his way across without any constructs necessary. He let out an involuntary sigh of relief; if it had been another gap he wasn't sure what they would have done.

The archangel gave her a bright grin, the sort that comes on the last fumes of energy. "I knew you cared." Then he sobered again, shaking his head. "Did you see some of those gaps? There's no other way I could've gotten past those."

Re-l's shoulders drew in slightly, and her mouth twitched down.

"It would be annoying if you collapsed of exhaustion and I had to carry you, that's all." She finished rubbing her leg and stood up again, testing her weight. When she was sure it was firm she offered a hand to Gabriel.

"Stick close to me, in case your dizziness comes back," she said. Her heart was beating quite fast, she noticed. She wished she hadn't looked over the edge. The thought of falling from this height made her very nervous.

Gabriel opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. What could he say? 'I know for sure you have a soul because I'm pretty sure I can see it? I used to be able to see them all the time?'

Yeah, that'd go over well.

He dropped to his knees and crawled under the overhang, pulling his legs in as much as he could. "I always wondered what Hell was like," he muttered, pulling the blanket off his shoulders and rolling them. His face felt tender; he touched his cheeks with a wince. Definitely too much sun. But when he went rifling through his pack it was to find that his sunscreen must have dropped out or been left behind during the sandstorm, because it sure as Hell wasn't in his pack.

The archangel turned to Re-l to ask where hers was, saw she had fallen asleep, and huffed. Well, okay then. Instead he leaned over to check her pack's side-pockets in case hers was easily accessible.

"I'd say 'backatcha', but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't mind some part of that," Gabriel said with a smirk. He took Re-l's hand, but used the cliff-side as much as her help to lever himself up. When his head whirled he stopped, leaning against the rock and breathing deeply until the sensation went away.

"No problems there," he muttered, rubbing one temple, and then followed her up the track. Unlike the woman, he very staunchly did not look down over the side.

Re-l looked at him for a moment and then looked away, pointedly rolling her eyes. She didn't say anything, and wondered momentarily if she was actually becoming immune to comments like that.

The sun was right overhead now, brilliantly illuminating the whole canyon, stripping all shadows away and pinning Re-l like a bug to a rock under the intense hammer of its heat. She sidled warily along the cliff, watching her own feet carefully. When the track narrowed, she pressed herself closer to the cliff wall, gripping it tightly. When she had a good hold she moved her other hand over and let herself shuffle along until she was spread out again. It was slow progress, but it worked.

"There are lots of handholds here," she said. "You should be fine. If it gets harder again I'll say."

Re-l was about halfway across when her foot kicked a pebble, and the rattle of stone froze her to the wall. Terror thudded through her veins, totally unreasonable but nonetheless there. She swallowed tightly, trying to force her hands to move.

Re-l felt him reach across and her hand whipped out catching his wrist. She didn't open her eyes.

"Ask," she said.

She let him go and opened her eyes a little.

"And I don't see what this place has to do with Hell. It's just hot, not painful or scary."

Gabriel stopped about where the track began to narrow to see how Re-l went and watch where she put her hands, squinting through his goggles and the sun's glare. He should be able to manage, he decided, as long as she was right about the handholds; he was a bit bigger and would stick out more, but if he kept close to the wall it wouldn't be much of a problem.

The pebble clattered over the edge and Gabriel just managed to keep his gaze from following it, jerking his line-of-sight back up. Instead he saw Re-l, and though he couldn't see her face he could see the tension in her back, the quiver in her muscles. Fear.

"So what's the whole thing with 'permission to sleep beside you', anyway?" he asked casually, leaning back against the wall. "I mean, it's not like we were in a bed. It was a freaking rock." He wasn't trying to needle her. Well, he was. But although most angels were created fully-formed, and although they had certainly never been created with a fear of heights, the cupids in particular had tended to get over-emotional about things. And for one or two, that did manifest as fear.

Not recently. That was a long, long time ago; before the Fall, before humanity, back when Creation was new in all the ways that mattered. But that wasn't the point. The point was, in those rare one or two who had tended to cluster in suns instead of flitting about the cosmos taking in their Father's Creation with awe, Gabriel had distracted by talking--as far as angels had 'talked' back then, before language--about everything and nothing until they were too distracted to be afraid.

The memory made something pang in his chest. And so he kept talking, almost as much to distract himself. "Did you get all snarky if someone lay down just a little too close to you on the sand? Dad, I hope you don't have a guy. Most couches really suck with the whole 'damaged springs' thing, and I pity them if they were relegated to that every night."

"Figured you were asleep," Gabriel said lightly, covering his surprise. "Gonna need your suncreen. Mine decided to jump ship."

Then he snorted. "Hell is hot. Deserts have got to be a sneak-peek, and what we're walking into? Willing to be it could be classed as a sub-category."

Re-l's fear vanished as anger boiled up in the pit of her stomach. Her hands, which had been gripping the rock tightly enough to be painful, loosened in preparation for a fight. Only the fact that she was on a very high, very narrow ledge prevented her from trying to punch Gabriel then and there.

"I like space," she said, her teeth clenched. "Something the people I knew before were perfectly capable of respecting." She shuffled a little further, but his final words brought her up short. She looked away, at the canyon, at the sky, anything to hide her face.

A guy? It was obvious what he meant, but Re-l didn't know how to answer. She'd been taken to soon. She had no clarity around Vincent. She knew how she felt about him, and she had a fair instinct for how he felt about her (not that he'd ever been very subtle on that score), but she couldn't make those pieces fit into a description like her "guy".

Still, memories of him flooded her mind. Vincent smiling, Vincent blushing, Vincent, the fights they had had and the moments that they had shared. In the background of all of it was the kiss she had given him, however duplicitous, and behind that the indescribable moment when Ergo had slid his thumb across her mouth.

"The people I'm going back to are no business of yours," she said at last, and her voice was unbearably thick for a moment.

Re-l reached into her bag and pulled out a bottle.

"Suncream. Don't use too much."

She shut her eyes again, enjoying the darkness.

"That doesn't sound so bad," she said. "Heat is unpleasant, but you can endure it. I always imagined Hell being cold. Cold and lonely."

Good. Gabriel was very, very tired of anger, but on this occasion it was better than fear, and as long as she had control of it she'd be able to use it for her.

"Ohh. So there was a guy," Gabriel said with a grin, light-hearted and pretending. She'd given him a name, a few days ago--Vincent. He could guess. Except he didn't press, because the point wasn't to be annoying--well, not too much anyway--but to distract her from her fear. And her tone of voice said volumes.

He had people he'd been missing for centuries.

So he added casually instead, "So how much of that ledge d'you have left, anyway?"

"And here I was going to use it as lubricant." He took it, squeezed some into his hand and handed it back. With the long sleeves and long pants, it was mostly his hands, face and neck which were the problem; he wouldn't need too much for that.

"It's hard to endure never-ending flames," Gabriel pointed out. As hard as it would be to endure the freezing cold, really.

Re-l was still feeling angry, but it didn't interfere with her common sense, and she looked to her left.

"Not much," she said, and began shuffling again. She reached the end of the ledge with a sigh, stand up straight and shaking out her nerveless arms. From here the path climbed gently up, and though she couldn't see over the closest ridge, she was certain they were at the top.

Standing on solid ground, close to her goal drained away a lot of Re-l's anger, at which point it became obvious why Gabriel had been so idiotic. She ran a hand over her face, wiping away the sweat, and if it brushed her eyes, well there had been sweat on her eyelashes too, no doubt.

"That was clever," she said. "I'm not saying I liked it, but it was clever."

And she smiled.

"I suppose it might be," Re-l allowed. "If I ever have to worry about it, I will."

She'd never particularly thought about the afterlife. She'd always assumed she'd just end.

A breeze, quiet and gentle, swept into their hiding place and Re-l's hair fluttered against her cheek.

"I've been known for it on occasion," Gabriel said cheekily and with grin in return; but this one was a rare one, with only an edge of faux cheer and an undertone of true warmth. You're welcome, Re-l. He rubbed his hands together, half playfully and half to get rid of the sweat. "Now. My turn. Let's just hope I don't decide to try flying without my wings."

He took a deep breath, let it out, and then pressed himself against the cliff, reaching for the first handhold. He shuffled awkwardly across the ledge, slowly--much more slowly than Re-l had gone--and carefully and feeling ridiculously vulnerable to the open air behind him. The weight of his pack seemed to want to drag him backward. He kept his eyes on Re-l, but even without having looked, his imagination provided.

"So did I ever tell you about the time I got this guy kidnapped by aliens who made him slow-dance with them?" he asked with a strained smirk. Now he was the one who needed a distraction.

"Not exactly much you can do to worry about it until after you're already dead," Gabriel muttered, rubbing the last of the sunscreen into his cheek. The breeze made him sigh and lift his head to it. "Now that feels good. Too bad I can't bottle it and take it with me."

Re-l considered that.

"Did you have a reason," she asked, "or was it some kind of twisted idea of fun?"

She scratched her head, and sat down against the cliff to wait for Gabriel.

"I think the oddest situation I ever ended up in was when a Proxy kidnapped me and Pino and put us in glass cages so Vincent would have to play a game show." She pulled a face. "That was a very irritating day."

"It's remarkable how quickly we start missing the comforts of an easy life," Re-l said. "Even though I've been in much worse situations, right now I can't help wishing I was in a real house, with a real bed and a real bath."

She shifted slightly, and her head dropped onto her shoulder.

"While I'm wishing for the impossible, is there anything you'd like?"

"Well, he was a dick," Gabriel said with the slightest of slight shrugs. "All disdainful about anyone else's perceptions or opinions, especially if they were even remotely outlandish. So I gave him some perspective."

At least he didn't die. Just got a little ... traumatised.

At that the archangel could only laugh, and had to stop to do so without falling. "It wouldn't happen to have been called 'Nutcracker', would it?" he asked with a smirk. "Ah, throwing people into gameshows. That never gets old. I never needed to sink to the kidnapping route, though. Well, except for kidnapping the guys I threw into it--just not their friends."

His family, together and alive and not fighting. Dad, actually paying attention and showing He hadn't abandoned them. Lucifer, playful and clever and not trying to gut the planet. Michael, strong and firm but gentle, and no longer bitter with an urge to smite. The Earth, saved, but with Gabriel there to see it. No Hell. No fighting. Just peace, on Earth and in Heaven, and without the destruction of humanity to have it.

"A banana daiquiri," the archangel without missing a beat. "It's a meal and a drink, all in one!"

"Ah, well there's nothing like being taken away from the world you know to induce perspective. Did it help?"

Re-l took a swig of water and licked her lips.

"No, his name was MCQ. He was even more annoying than Vincent." She laughed. "The whole thing was stupid. I just kept waiting for Vincent to turn into Ergo and get us out of there. I would have got out myself, but I couldn't break the glass."

Re-l clicked her fingers lazily.

"It would be nice if I could actually make one appear," she said, not even bothering to open her eyes and check if one had. "I take it it's some kind of alcohol?"

She didn't have much experience with alcohol herself, and she'd never had a drink with a ridiculous name like that.

Somehow, thinking about comfort made the present situation even less bearable. Re-l opened her eyes to look at the sun. It was still too high for them to continue, no doubt about that.

"Probably. Once he got through a bit of therapy." He was starting to get into a rhythm. Breathe in, breath out, shuffle along a few inches, start all over again.

"That was the proxy. What was the gameshow?" He grinned a little in one of his pauses in response to the laugh. Much better than the doom and gloom ice-queen. "Come on, I'm begging for details, here! Give me the nitty-gritty so I know what to do for my next reality-warp."

"Of course. If I thought I'd be able to make one off-the-cuff, I'd whip one up for you," Gabriel said, rubbing his fingers together. He didn't dare snap them, since they'd probably make something appear. then he sighed and shrugged a little with a rueful twist of his mouth. "Buuut I'd need some time to figure out the consistency."

The archangel closed his eyes. No point in looking outside; all they'd see would be heat mirages. Maybe he could get a bit more of a nap himself.

"Hmmm. I think it was just called the Nightmare Quiz Show," Re-l said. "The rule was that either the challenger of the host died at the end. Of course, MCQ was a Proxy, so he'd won every show before Vincent showed up." She bit her thumb and thought about it a bit more.

"The questions were all about the world around us. And the proxies. It was in that dome that we first heard about Proxy One. And then they mixed in a lot of Philosophy and Literature. And a song title, for some reason. Vincent did really badly. He was never very bright."

She shaded her eyes and looked back at Gabriel.

"You take altogether too much enjoyment from this, considering how unpleasant it was. Though it fits your character, I must admit."

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